Pariah

was as determined to reclaim this girl as she and the others were to having her run errands for them.

“Maybe more’n one trip,” Mona mumbled, folding the slip of paper and tucking it in her pocket.

“And you’re cool with going back out there? We don’t want to pressure you.”

“No big.”

And with that she wedged the earbuds in-her signature gesture, like Carson’s golf swing-and rappelled out the window via the ratty rope they’d used to haul her in. When she touched down on the roof of Dabney’s ruined van she looked up at Ellen and the others, all of whom wore the expectant look of latchkey kids afraid mommy would never return.

“I’m getting new rope, too,” she said, dangling the frayed end.

The others nodded yes and Mona climbed off the vehicle, the zombies spreading out with a sibilant anthem of reproach. As she headed north toward Eighty-sixth Street, her Hello Kitty knapsack looking back at them with its vapid beady black eyes, the throng opened and closed, a long, wide mouth that couldn’t devour this one small girl. When she turned the corner everyone but Abe, the self-appointed lookout, left 2B to resume the daily grind. Abe sat and watched as the zombies settled down, some still hissing and spitting like rabid bipedal cats. He pawed his scruffy chin, images of cranky and crotchety cowboy sidekicks floating in his mind. All he needed was to be stirring a pot o’ beans on an open fire to complete the picture, and now, with this Mona girl, the pot o’ beans was attainable.

That’s who I look like, Abe mused. A Jewish Gabby Hayes. Well, not after I shave off this soup strainer. Oh, I can’t wait. He leaned on the windowsill and his smile faded, his stomach soured. From this same vantage point he’d watched this apartment’s previous tenant, Paolo, get devoured down below.

Abe hoped Mona could remove that stigma from this empty dwelling.

22

The sun was setting and although there was plenty of food in the building, Ellen couldn’t stop herself from looking out the window every few minutes. This wasn’t about food, anyway. If anything, at this moment having a full stomach just stoked her agita.

“You’re gonna wear a groove into the floor,” Alan said, in a poor attempt to break the tension.

“I’m just worried, okay? Am I allowed to be worried? She left hours ago and it’s almost dark. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe she isn’t immune and it was some fluke and we sent her out there and now she’s dead. And if that’s the case then it’s all our fault and we’re responsible for sending a young girl to her death.”

Alan opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. He’d already paid lip service to Ellen’s anxiety and it had done no good. It was troubling that Mona had been gone for the better part of the day. He’d posited several plausible scenarios. It was possible that several items on the list had proven more difficult to procure than others and that Mona was traipsing all around town in an attempt to accommodate every request. It was also possible that she had forgotten how to find her way back, even though she had neatly printed the address of the building in big block letters on the list. Maybe she lost the list. It was imaginable that she had gotten to one of her destinations and gotten jammed up by the zombies-but that she was all right. She was just temporarily waylaid and would be back soon. For Ellen’s sake he had to keep the propositions upbeat.

But it was also quite reasonable to assume that Mona had been devoured.

Ellen’s eyes darted back and forth from the street below to the sky above, both growing darker and more ominous. She wound her hair around her fingers and chewed the ends. Alan again attempted levity by suggesting she’d get split ends doing that but Ellen just looked at him like he was an idiot. Alan sat there internally reciting the names of hair products and quoting lines from TV commercials. “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.” Vidal Sassoon. Pantene Pro-V. Paul Mitchell. L’Oreal. What the hell was the one with those stupid commercials where girls would rub it into their scalps in public and semipublic places? And for all intents and purposes they’d be having noisy orgasms? Then they’d emerge, from like the toilet on an airplane, tousling their shimmering manes and everyone would look at them with lust and envy? What was that stuff? Some herbal something? Maybe Mona should pick up some of that. Ellen could do with some shiny locks. What kind of thinking is this? Yesterday there’s no food. All that matters is some clean, drinkable water and food that will sustain the organism for another twenty-four hours. Now it’s “Ellen could use a nice shampoo.” I must be out of my friggin’ gourd.

“Seriously, Ellen, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Oh really? You can say that authoritatively? You know that for a fact do you? How interesting. Because, see, the way I see it, none of us knows a damned thing right now and for all we know chunks of her are being digested-if those things even digest. I mean, do they? Do they eat and shit and breathe? What do they do besides stumble around and eat us when they can? They sure made short work of Mike. They gobbled him down like no tomorrow. But are there piles of zombie scat out there composed of my husband? Are there? We don’t know. I don’t know. None of us knows anything!”

Should I get up and hug her? Alan wondered. When he’d gotten into fights in the past with women-various girlfriends and one ex-wife-after all the sour words and recriminations and accusations and you did this and you did that it always came down to something simple like she just needed a hug and a kiss. Then the situation would calm down and laughter would come and then maybe, in the best of times, they’d make love or at least have sex. Was this one of those occasions where a hug was the answer? Alan got up and gently placed his arms around Ellen’s shoulders.

“What? What? You want sex now? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t. I don’t want sex,” Alan stammered. “I just thought maybe a hug would…” Why bother finishing the thought? He withdrew his arms and turned to resume his place on the couch.

“Where are you going? I didn’t say I didn’t want to be hugged. I just… I’m just freaking out.” She shot another glance out the window. “Maybe you should fuck me right about now.”

“What?”

“Do I stutter? Maybe you should fuck me. Now.”

“But this wasn’t about sex, honest. I swear. I wasn’t being…” Was she toying with him?

“Just fuck me. I need to be penetrated. I need to have something tearing my mind from Mona. But don’t think about Mona while we’re doing it. I know she’s healthy and young and I’m not. Well, I’m young, but you know what I mean. Her body versus mine. Don’t fantasize about her. Or don’t think about her being torn limb from limb like chicken. You won’t get an erection from a thought like that. Maybe Eddie would, but Christ, I don’t want to think about what gets Eddie off.”

Ellen marched into the kitchen, shucked off her baggy army-surplus shorts and cotton undies, grabbed the counter and pushed her ass out at him. “Do it,” she commanded. Normally a take-charge woman was a turn-on, but this was a lot of pressure combined with deeply troubling extenuating circumstances. Alan dropped his pants and massaged into being a serviceable if slightly spongy erection. “Don’t be gentle. Don’t be slow,” Ellen ordered. Such hard words. Such hard angles. Though he didn’t want to think about Mona, he did think about the food. Food would soon inflate everything back to normal.

Alan followed Ellen’s edicts and pounded away. She gritted her teeth and bucked against his pelvis, meeting each thrust with equal force. Alan thought about stacking china and how delicate porcelain was. He thought about building model kits as a boy, then dropping rocks on them or blowing them up with firecrackers. He hoped their bones were up to this punishment. It had been a while since he’d run out of vitamins. How was his calcium? How was Ellen’s? They should have added a good multivitamin to the shopping list. And Jesus, lots of items from the pharmacy. What were they thinking? Just food and batteries? They’d been discussing keeping it to necessities. What could be more necessary than vitamins and headache remedies? Some pink bismuth. And not store-brand. Pepto Bismol. Or Pepcid AC! Some antidiarrheal. Oh yeah, that’s hot stuff. That’s the stuff of a Penthouse letter. Why not just start contemplating osteoporosis? Or scoliosis? Or any other bone-wrecking -osis?