Pariah

weasel like Zotz was keeping all that lovin’ to himself. Wasn’t it just like a Jew to hoard the precious? Zotz. That was Jewish, right? Of course it was. And in the meantime, here was Eddie, fitter than them all, plodding upstairs to cut across the roofs to get his porn. No justice.

Eddie pounded open the door to the roof with the flats of his palms, earning a startled yelp from Dabney. Good. Eddie liked spooking the spook. Reminded him of past glories. Eddie remembered one night in particular that gave him pleasure but also chafed his balls. Pleasure was the fact that he and some buddies had beaten the holy hell out of a couple of wayward niggers who’d strayed into Bensonhurst and were trying to make time with a couple of the local girls-nice Italian girls. Well, not nice, exactly, but Italian. Annoyance was because it never made the news. No use crying over spilled blood, especially when there wasn’t enough of it. At least he’d gotten away clean. Going to jail would have sucked, big time.

“The hell is wrong with you, son?” Dabney hollered. “Slamming up here like that. You wanna give me a heart attack?”

As a matter of fact, Eddie thought as he stalked by, ignoring Dabney’s upbraiding. And I’m not your son.

Eddie reached his old building and headed down the fire escape to his window, still open like Dave had left it. Eddie hadn’t returned since the Wandering Jewess incident. That was intense. Eddie thought about the way Dave had handled her and he felt pride swell in his chest. Dave was a finocchio, but still a man. That was some hardcore shit. The way he knocked her block off-or almost off. With an elephant’s foot? Just thinking about it made him chuckle. Reminded him of his childhood Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. Two robots pounding the bolts out of each other, one red, one blue. Eddie was always blue because his dad said red was a commie color. Papa knew best. That was a cool toy.

Eddie recalled his time with Gerri. Sure she was a vegetable-at least until she became the meat course-and nothing to look at, but he’d almost forgotten how nice pussy felt.

“Gotta get the porn,” Eddie said. “Stay on point. Focus.”

He vaulted through the apartment to his old room and threw open the door. At the foot of his bed, under a pile of clothes, was his dad’s old army footlocker. He knelt down and undid the combination lock, which opened with a sturdy pop. Inside was his treasure trove. He felt like Indiana Jones scoring that shiny bauble at the beginning of Raiders. He’d forgotten to bring something to carry home the boodle, but nearby was his old gym bag, still overstuffed with dirty laundry. He unzipped it and dumped its contents on the floor.

“So that’s where these were. Duh,” he said, shaking his head as he put his Nike Air Mowabb cross trainers back in the bag. He then started loading DVDs into the sack.

As he struggled with the zipper, the bag now stuffed to bursting, he heard a sound from the living room. He ceased his activities and froze. There it was again, a soft shuffling. The Wandering Jewess had been evicted so what was this shit? Eddie gingerly placed the overstuffed bag on the bed and tiptoed into the hall. He held his breath and eyeballed the exit window. He was curious, but how curious? Wasn’t the cat killed by curiosity? Eddie hated cats, with their rough tongues, bad breath, and haughty attitude. Who was the first to call vagina pussy? Why insult such a sweet thing by naming it after a cat? Whatever. The sound happened again. There was somebody in the other room. That spooky chick? Nah. Why would she come here? Cursing himself for pursuing it, Eddie stepped into the hall and slunk toward the living room.

A plastic cup from 7-Eleven rolled toward him, settling at his right foot.

“Hey,” Eddie said, voice steely. “Who the fuck is there?”

Eddie poked his head into the room and several zombies stood there. The front door wide was open. As he turned to flee, two more stumbled from the bathroom, which was between him and the exit window.

“Fuck me,” Eddie growled, cursing himself for the stunod that he was.

From the living room, one loped toward him, then tripped and fell as its legs became entangled in its own leathery intestines, which dangled from a gaping cavity in its lower abdomen. Its jaw hit the linoleum floor and came loose, leaving it cocked to one side and toothless. Eddie would have enjoyed the zombie’s clumsiness were there not several others who shuffled his way, their paths free of stray innards. Eddie cursed the narrowness of the hall, a mere three feet wide, but long. Goddamn railroad apartments. The ones emerging from the john effectively blocked his exit, but he’d have to bull through. Hockey penalty time. Still, he wished he were less exposed. Maybe the Tarzan wardrobe isn’t the best idea.

Eddie gulped a few deep breaths, then ran forward. He caught a female zombie in the face with his fist, sending her careening backward, ass over tit. Her head hit the doorsill and split open, spilling coagulated gunk, dark and thick as molasses. Her bathroom buddy, a rangy male with graveyard halitosis, lunged for him and from behind, slung his gangly arms around Eddie’s waist. Eddie couldn’t turn around, so he did a backward head butt, ramming the back of his skull into the zombie’s face, praying all the while that the zombie wouldn’t bite him. Fuck that shit. The zombie’s grasp loosened and Eddie shrugged him off, spinning on his heel. Even though he knew he should flee, he was now pissed. He blundered back into his bedroom and slid open his closet door, the action so violent the door came off its tracks and fell against the inside wall. Eddie grappled with the door and flung it off to the side, groping for his hockey stick.

“High-sticking, huh? The Comet’ll show you motherfuckers some high-fuckin’- sticking!”

Like some po-mo Spartan warrior, Eddie turned back into the hall, stick in hand, helmet his only other garment besides his briefs and espadrilles. With a vicious upward slash he took the head off the one that bear hugged him in the hall. From his bedroom in the middle, Eddie still needed to get to the fire escape at the rear of the apartment. The headless body convulsed as Eddie stepped over it and a palsied, rotten hand shot up and grabbed the back of his briefs, tearing them.

“The fuck?” Eddie cried. “Oh, you wanna play fuckin’ games?”

He stomped on the thing’s solar plexus, its withered organs emitted muffled popping noises. The arm went limp but the rigor mortis grip on Eddie’s Calvins intensified, pulling them down like a macabre pastiche of the Coppertone pooch yanking down that little pigtailed girl’s bathing suit. Eddie tore free, now wearing just the waistband and pouch in the front, like some poorly constructed jockstrap.

Only one adversary left, an eyeless one-armed creep of indeterminate gender, face composed-or decomposed-solely of strands of muscle tissue barely masked by shredded, papery epidermis. Eddie jerked back the stick, then rammed it as hard as he could through the thing’s chest, impaling it. “Vlad don’t have shit on me!” Eddie wailed. He raked the stick back and forth, the zombie clawing at it, trying to free itself. Eddie jerked it upward, lifting his foe off the ground. The rib cage split open like a zipper, bits of desiccated bone and sinew raining down as Eddie worked the stick up and down until the thing split in half. As it twitched pitiably on the floor, Eddie swung down the stick and delivered the killing blow, shattering its skull.

Eddie grabbed the bag of porn and stepped onto the fire escape, slamming the window shut after him, hoping against hope that those zombie gavones were the only ones to breach the building. Still, he wouldn’t be coming back to the old roost. On the roof he checked the stairwell door to confirm its security status. It was sealed shut. Relieved, he slumped back against the warty black tar paper and caught his breath, quaking. So, they got in. That meant the half-assed fortification the Guardsmen had installed was wrecked. Great. He gulped air and punched his chest. Now that he was safe, the fear sluiced over him. Though it had to be ninety degrees he was shivering. Calm the fuck down, he admonished himself. Don’t be a fuckin’ girl. Calm the fuck down.

Even alone he won no prize for compassion.

25

“I’d forgotten how comforting banality can be,” Alan said as he shut off the little DVD player. He’d been watching back-to-back episodes of Three’s Company. “What a stupid show. Why did you have this in your library?”

“It was Mike’s. He loved John Ritter.”