Pariah

These things were dead but still moving around.

And hungry.

He tried starting the engine again. No use. He looked at his crumpled hood and saw steam jetting out. He had moments before the ravenous mass outside reached his van. He clambered out onto the hood and climbed onto his roof.

Over the tinny roar in his ears he heard voices. Though the front of the building he’d crashed into was boarded up, there were people calling out from the windows above.

Hands reached down.

He was saved.

And getting home was no longer an option.

16

July, Now

“Hey, where’s Eddie?” Dave asked.

Ellen was flabbergasted. “You don’t know where he is?”

“No. I haven’t seen him today. I can’t believe he missed the rain.”

“That is pretty odd,” Alan said, glad the ape hadn’t been there to ruin it.

“Now I’m worried,” Dave said, looking it. “I knocked on his door on the way up. I just assumed he’d follow and once I got up here I got all jazzed and forgot about him.”

Without dressing, Dave went back into the building and ran down to Eddie’s door, which was unlocked. He stepped into the apartment and called out a couple of times, going from room to room, leaving puddles. Eddie wasn’t there. He then tried his place with the same result. On each landing he pounded doors and called Eddie’s name to no avail. He wasn’t around. The elation from the rain dance burned off quickly as worry set in.

“He’s not in the building,” Dave said as he stepped back onto the roof. The others were all there, except Ruth who’d hobbled back to her apartment in disgust. Abe still sat naked on a low wall, basking in the waning precipitation. After being distracted for a moment by how long and low the old man’s testicles hung, Dave stalked off in search of his comrade, unsurprised that no one offered to help.

Working his way north, the first building Dave tried was the one directly next door. Dave gave the stairwell door a few yanks but it remained locked tight, the norm since they’d thrown together this tattered kibbutz. The next building the stairwell door was unlocked and blackness waited within. Dave poked his head in, reticent to venture into the strange building. Maybe it wasn’t as secure as theirs. Who knew? It all depended on how well the slapdash exterior fortifications had held up and if the former occupants of the building had bolstered them from within. No, if the zombies had gotten in they’d have made their way to the roof by now. In the back of his mind Dave remembered the front door was secure, but that gloom yawned like a hungry mouth. Maybe just Gerri lurked down in the dark. The Wandering Jewess’s absence at the rain party didn’t disturb Dave at all. She was a ghost; what did ghosts need with rain?

“Hello?” Dave called. “Eddie? You there?”

No answer.

“Eddie?” Dave shouted. The sound reverberated off the walls. Dave was in no mood to go spelunking in an unfamiliar building. Not naked. He wondered if he should go back for his clothes. It had stopped raining and like the moisture on his body, his jollity was evaporating. Any dampness now was fresh perspiration. After a few more tries, Dave gave up and moved on to the next building, which was the one he and Eddie had resided in previously. Maybe Eddie had gotten homesick or something. Maybe he needed something they’d left behind. Eddie did periodically make trips over there to mine their old digs for abandoned artifacts. The stairwell door was blocked, as ever, but he pounded on it a few times anyway, to no avail.

Holding the handrail because of the wetness, Dave stepped onto the fire escape and carefully walked down to the top floor. Both windows were closed and locked, gated inside. He went down to the next landing and tried the left window. It had no gate but was locked. The right one was locked and gated. According to Eddie, gates were for pussies. “I’m not paying to live in a cage,” he’d declared. “Faggots wanna live like zoo animals, that’s their problem. I’d like to see some nigger come through our window and try to steal our stuff. I’d Luima the shit out of him. Literally!” Then he’d laugh and glare at their unprotected window as if willing someone to breach it. That was then, of course. With the zombies, everyone kept their gates locked, even though the likelihood of one getting up a fire escape was pretty negligible.

On the next landing the right window was gated, but the left-theirs-slid open, vulnerable as ever. About a year earlier he and Eddie had crouched in silence out here, stifling giggles as Eddie videoed the couple next door doing it. It wasn’t that they were that great looking, but it was still exciting. Eddie would play that tape often; he called it his “hunting trophy.” Dave stepped into the dark apartment. The sky had turned colorless but was bright, so his eyes adjusted quickly.

“Eddie?” Dave called again.

“Don’t come in here,” a husky voice responded.

“Eddie?” Dave ignored the admonition and raced into the apartment, tripping over a pile on the floor. His knees hit the bare floorboards hard and he yelped in pain, then rolled onto his side to massage the injured joints. Both were abraded and wet with blood. He clenched his eyes shut as he rubbed them, stars swimming inside his closed lids. “Ouch, Jesus.”

“I told you not to come in here.” It was Eddie’s voice, but he sounded different.

When Dave opened his eyes he looked directly into another pair, only these looked glassy with indifference. He blinked a few times, then jerked bolt upright and scooted backward away from the unblinking visage.

“Gerri!” he yawped.

Though dim, there was sufficient light to see that Gerri was dead, yet still she clutched the husk of her late Yorkie.

“What happened to Gerri?” Dave whispered.

“I did.”

“Whattaya mean, Eddie? What happened here?” Dave stood up and looked down at Gerri’s body. It was folded in half at the waist and pearly gelatinous spume speckled her rangy bare buttocks. One of her flaplike teats spilled out of her torn housecoat. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle and blood leaked from both nostrils and the corner of her mouth. Purple hand-shaped bruises clasped her shoulders. Dave looked up from the cadaver at Eddie, who from the waist down was bare, blood smeared on his hands and across his groin.

“Why don’t you have your pants on, Eddie?”

“You’re one to talk.” Eddie said.

“What did you do, Eddie?” Dave asked. It was a formality. It was obvious what he’d done.

“I was wandering around, y’know, burnin’ off some rage. I decided to visit the old crib, grab some copies of Sports Illustrated-like that one with the chick with the seashells on her boobs-and anyhow, who’s sittin’ on our old couch but the Wandering Jewess. Some rat was bitin’ on her ankle and she’s just sittin’ there, so I stomped the little fucker. See?” He pointed at its furry remains. “So I ask her if she’s okay, right? I tried a little, what was your special word? Tenderness. Anyway, one thing led to another. Listen, with a harpoon of cum built up you don’t think so straight, bro. Pussy is pussy. I needed to get it in there and this bitch was all there was. Zotz is bonin’ the merry widow, D. Doesn’t leave much for the rest of us swingin’ dicks.”

“Was it consensual?”

“Guy does one year prelaw and he thinks he’s Alan Dershowitz.”

“Jesus Christ, Eddie.”

“Hey, least she died with a smile on her face.”

On Gerri’s dead face was a rictus grin nobody in his or her right mind would describe as a smile.

“Oh, Eddie.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t take that tone with me. The Comet needed to get his freak on with some genuine