Pariah

listen to that noise? He tried the doorknob to no avail, rattling it in frustration. Oh come on, he thought. After several more thuds the door opened a crack, held that way by the chain, and Mona greeted him with a dull stare, her earbuds draped around her shoulders. If this chick had tits, Eddie started thinking, then stifled the notion. He was here on a different kind of business.

“Sup?” he said, flashing her his most winning smile.

“Nothing,” she replied.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

“Uh-huh.” She undid the chain and opened the door the whole way, ushering Eddie in. As he stepped past her he took in their disparity in size, he standing at least a foot taller than she.

“What are you,” he began, “like maybe five one or something?”

“Five two.”

“Wow. It’s so fuckin’ weird that a tiny chick like you-no offense-can just truck around town with all those zombies and a big guy like me can’t. I can’t figure it out.”

“Uh-huh.”

I’ll “uh-huh” you, you fuckin’… No, no. Stow that shit. Make nice. “So, okay, what I was thinking was this: you’re always going out on these errands, right? And the most you can carry is what you can pile in a shopping cart. So that limits what you can score. So maybe, I dunno if you can drive, but maybe you could make the most of your trips out there in the world, if you drove a truck or Hummer or something. Even a Mini Cooper. Anything.”

“Can’t.”

“I could teach you.”

“They have to sense me.”

“Huh?”

“In a car they can’t sense me so they don’t disperse.”

Eddie was doubly stunned. Not only had she answered his question but also it was a complete sentence and it made sense. Sense. The senses. Eddie didn’t even think about that before. The zombies still had senses, even if they were a bunch of rotting brain-dead skinbags.

“Sense,” he repeated. “Like maybe you give off a stink-no offense-that those pusbags can’t abide. Wicked. Like because maybe you…” Eddie cut himself off before he tipped his hand. He didn’t want her to know he’d filched those pills. But this was the lynchpin. This was it. He felt sure. The pills. The quantity. She’d been megadosing those pills and it made her immune to attack. Oh, this sly bitch. And she didn’t want to share. He’d tell the others and they’d flip. All those smarty-pants. Should he tell them? Yeah, because then they could decide what to do. He didn’t want to flat out accuse her, but if they were all on the same page, like a committee, then they could move as a unit. That was strategy. He felt like he did when he was playing hockey. Strategy was never his strong suit, at least not formulating it, but he had some dope-literally and figuratively-that the others didn’t. He’d present his findings and they’d take it from there.

“I tried driving once. They tipped the car over.” Her dull face actually betrayed a trace of anxiety. She didn’t like the memory. “Never again.”

“That’s really interesting,” Eddie said with unaccustomed sincerity. She was a waste case, all right, but she was human. “Listen, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just thought maybe it was a good idea about the car and all. Sorry. I’ll leave you alone, a’right?” She nodded and Eddie let himself out, grinning as he turned his back on her, feeling smarter than everyone else in the joint. It was cool knowing something no one else did. And he got it out of her. He did.

Suck on that, you faggots.

part three

***

32

“It would be a total betrayal,” Ellen said, rubbing her abdomen, phantom kicks pummeling her innards. “We shouldn’t, and you had no right to do what you did. My God, if she discovered what you did it could mean the end of everything we’ve got.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie sulked.

“Or the beginning of a brave new era,” Karl added. “Really. If she isn’t sharing knowledge of how to walk among the unclean then she’s done nothing to engender our loyalty.”

“Unclean? Engender?” Alan echoed.

“What? I’m not entitled to be articulate?”

“Um, of course you are, it just sounds a little unnatural, you know? You never spoke in such a grandiloquent manner before.”

“Oh, and so what’s ‘grandiloquent,’ then?” Karl bristled.

“It’s mockery.” Alan pushed back his chair and crossed his legs with a smirk.

“Shut up, both of you,” Ellen snapped. “This is serious. Eddie’s proposed betraying Mona’s trust, and moreover turned it into a conspiracy of us against her, which, frankly, is pretty fucked.”

“Hey, I didn’t put it like that,” Eddie said.

“No, but that’s the gist. And listen, I wasn’t going to share this little tidbit with the rest of you, but I’m pregnant and I’m not about to risk poisoning my baby in some experiment with mystery drugs.” Ellen looked at her watch to confirm how long Mona had been away on an errand. She felt tired and irritable, some of which was hormonal, but mostly it was disgust. The others offered no comment on her gravidity. Whether that was in deference or indifference was anyone’s guess, though Dabney did look away.

“Well, I’m in,” Karl said. “I need to know whether she’s divinely imbued or just a druggie with a heckuva side effect.”

“I guess I’m in, too,” Dave said, winning a clap on the back from Eddie.

“Include me out,” Abe said, softly. “That little girl has been good to us and I don’t plan on returning the favor with treachery.”

“Yeah, me neither,” said Alan.

“Same here,” said Dabney. “ ’Less we keep it honest and talk to her about it, I don’t want no part of it.”

Outside heavy rain pelted the windows, but no one was rushing upstairs to frolic and strip. The sky was an oppressive, ever-darkening gray and the climate inside wasn’t conducive to abrupt shifts in mood. Even though this meeting was taking place in Ellen’s dining area, four floors above pavement, a bunker mentality prevailed. Ellen wondered if this was how Hitler’s staff felt as it plotted his demise. Was that an apt comparison? She hoped not. How about Kennedy’s people plotting his? Ellen believed the conspiracy theories. Not all of them, but some.

She got up from the table and stretched, then stepped over to the front windows. Below, the horde shambled, aimless, ugly as ever, pockets of unrest visible from this elevation. Some pushed and shoved, others stumbled, fell from view, trampled underfoot. It always looked like the least festive New Year’s Eve gathering ever down there; Times Square, apocalypse-style.

Behind her the others continued to dicker about whether or not to raid Mona’s pharmaceutical stash. Abe had no interest. Since Ruth’s death Mona had gotten him hooked on Valium and now he almost matched his supplier in imperturbability. He was like the pod-people version of his former self. It didn’t seem possible that a chemical