Pariah

“And that, my friend, is the difference between your generation and mine,” Abe scoffed. “If I had a starving child you can bet your last goddamn cent I’d be out the door trying to provide for her, damn the consequences.”

“Easy for you to say-,” Mike started, but Abe cut him off.

“Damn right it’s easy for me to say. As I recall you were home when this all began. Me, I hadda schlep all the way from the garment district to get home. I braved all kinds of madness to get home to my frightened little wifey. Granted, if I’d had some foresight I’d have stopped at the grocers before coming in, but hind-sight’s twenty- twenty.”

“It was different then,” Mike stammered. He’d really thought other men would commiserate with him over female troubles; bad to worse.

“Different! Feh. There were those lousy zombies all over then and they’re all over now. What, you think they weren’t chowing down on everyone in sight that day? Eighty-three years of age, I managed to get myself home intact. If any of you young men-,” the word curdled in Abe’s mouth, “-had any cojones you’d go out and do what I did. Show the same resourcefulness and-”

Mike was tiring of having his gonads impugned and was about to protest-albeit weakly-when Paolo chimed in, his machismo also under attack.

“I have the cojones, Abraham,” Paolo spat, pique scoring his rugged features.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You challenge me? You saying I don’t have the cojones of an old man?”

Abe chuckled. “I sure as hell hope you don’t have a pair like mine.”

Paolo’s expression softened as Abe winked at him.

“These are dark days,” Paolo repeated, a bitter smile sneaking past his anger onto his lips.

“Amen,” Abe agreed. The sound of the crying, which hadn’t abated, brought the three men back to the matter at hand. “Regardless-and I don’t want to get into a shouting match-but the fact remains that there is a woman and a child who need sustenance and it’s a man’s job to provide.”

Mike’s face flushed. Sitting at computer consoles for the last decade hadn’t exactly toughened him up or primed him for hunter-gatherer mode. Men of Abe’s generation were built differently. They were shaped and hardened by war. Abe was a vet of World War II. Mike’s only combat experience involved button mashing on a game controller. Countless hours spent on World of Warcraft and Call of Duty didn’t count. He nudged the door open an inch to look in on Ellie and Em. Though the volume had decreased, both were in a bad way. And Ellie had said Em was blue and meant it literally. The apartment could be warmer and even though they were all wearing layers, they were cold in the damp chill.

“That baby needs to eat,” Paolo said, voice steely.

“I know, I know,” Mike replied, eyeing his shoes.

“If you are not enough a man to go, I will.”

“Now wait a minute-”

“Abraham is right,” Paolo said, in his formal, mild accent. “He is an old man and he made it here. He’s told us many, many, many times of his perilous journey. We were lucky, you and I and some of the others, to be here already, but he and John came late. And they suffered.”

Mike was about to assert that they’d all suffered, but point taken. Abe had walked the walk. As an old man was wont to do, he’d recounted his trek often-maybe even embellished a little-but scrawny old Abe Fogelhut had bested all the “young bucks.”

“My gear is down in the locker,” Abe said, but Paolo waved him off.

“I do not need hand-me-downs, senor.”

Paolo about-faced and trundled down to his apartment.

“What? I insulted him?” Abe scoffed.

“You insulted both of us.”

“Shaming isn’t the same thing. A little shame is a good thing.”

“If you say so.”

From their respective windows the residents of 1620 watched Paolo make it halfway across the avenue before being overwhelmed and consumed in his insufficient version of Abe’s improvised survival gear.

Abe retired his heroic saga.

A week later, Emily died.

Mike manned up enough to dispose of the petite corpse, sparing Ellen the details. He hoped the wrappings were sufficient to keep the creatures from eating her. But then again, they only seemed to go for live flesh.

Did that count as a blessing?

10

July, Now

Karl stood by his open window, looking out across York Avenue. Between the zombies and the abandoned cars, including today’s fresh one, the street was so packed you couldn’t see the pavement, but Karl knew it was sticky as a movie theater floor in the glory days of Times Square. The street below, however, was shellacked with immeasurable quantities of blood. With the fire having burned itself out, the only noise was the hum of flies and the occasional grunt or moan.

Karl often wished he’d been old enough to enjoy the myriad adult entertainment palaces that had operated freely in the days before “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, had cleaned up the city. It was getting harder and harder to remember “important” figures from the days before the pandemic. Giuliani had been on a mission: to make the city safer and more antiseptic for its citizenry, but mainly for the tourists. New York had endured decades’ worth of bad image, fostered by both fact and distortions in the media. America overall had a skewed conception of the Big Apple: graffiti-streaked, litter-strewn, oozing with degenerates of every ilk who were ready to ply their vile talents on wholesome, unsuspecting visitors.

Karl had relocated to New York from Ohio for the express purpose of being plied vilely, but it never happened. Like a nomad in the desert he’d followed a dreamy ignis fatuus of chimerical pendulous bosoms swaying to throbbing disco beats. By the time Karl got to Fun City, however, Times Square no longer resembled the one captured by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Paul Morrissey, or even Frank Henenlotter. This Ohio boy had wanted Taxi Driver, Forty Deuce, and Basket Case.

Instead he got The Lion King.

Karl got a job, an apartment, and an education in reality versus illusion. And shortly thereafter it all went south. People started dying and coming back and eating each other and the rest was history. Who was to blame? No one knew, or at least no one was saying.

“Thanks, Mean Joe,” Karl spat, a vicious parrot tormenting himself. “Thanks, Mean Joe. Thanks, Mean Joe. Oh yeah, Dabney’s really going to welcome me up there again. Beyond thinking that I’m the biggest douche in the world, now he probably thinks I’m a racist. Thanks, Mean Joe. What else is he going to think? Stupid dumb stupid-head! Of course some hick from the hinterlands is going to be a cracker redneck racist. I’m just fulfilling my genetic-slash- socioeconomic obligation.”

Karl continued to glare at the graceless meat puppets stumbling around beneath his window, more vegetable than animal. Meat. Vegetables. Karl’s stomach growled. He wished he had more of Dabney’s vermin jerky. Rat. Pigeon. Squirrel. Whatever it was, it was good. The way they meandered down there, individual forms swallowed by the massiveness of the crowd, Karl could cross his eyes slightly and blur the overlapping double image. Meat. Vegetables. The surface pulsated like stew burbling in a boundless Crock-Pot. Meat. Vegetables. His life had been