Pariah

“It gets merrier and merrier around here,” Ellen said, sourness sliming off her tongue. “So what do we do?”

“We have to get rid of him, obviously.”

“It’s come to this. Evicting our senior citizens,” Ellen said, her wryness not abating.

“Well, yeah,” Alan agreed.

“Ugh. The peachiness of this whole situation is really beginning to wear on me, you know? You die, you come back as one of those. Delightful. Being alive is just the next step to being undead. You think anyone just stays dead any more? Or is that passe?”

Alan shrugged.

“Some must stay dead,” Ellen continued. “They must. I mean it’s not like there’s eight million zombies out there. The streets are packed, but not that packed. But maybe they are. Like I know anything. There are probably apartments all over the city packed with zombies too stupid to let themselves out. Fuck. I thought I knew where we stood on this but we don’t know anything. I thought it was rat bites or poison gas or some communicable germ or whatever, but it’s just how it is now. We come back. Awesome.” Ellen took a sip of tepid herbal tea and repositioned her hair clip. “This tea is supposed to calm the nerves.” She let out a derisory laugh. “So whattaya think? Is Karl doing great or does Mona return a solo act?”

“Um.”

“Yeah, well, if Mona makes it back-and I see no reason to doubt she will unless Karl’s managed to fuck up her good thing-she’s bringing me a little something special to take care of our situation. So, maybe I’m a little edgy. Just a little. A tad.”

“What situation?”

“Don’t be fucking obtuse, Alan. The baby.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ It’s the kind of situation that merits that kind of response. And don’t worry. I don’t hate you. You’re right. When you’re right you’re right and you’ve been right all along to think having this baby was wrong. It’s wrong. So today I make it right and take care of it. It’ll be taken care of.”

Alan let out a long breath, half relief, half sympathy, half something else. That was one too many halves, but the sigh was full of subdued emotion. He didn’t know what to do. Pat her on the back? Give her a hug? He stepped over and extended his arms for the latter, but Ellen made no effort to accept the embrace.

“This isn’t a huggy moment,” Ellen said, voice flat. “It is what it is, and all without the hassle of pro-lifers to complicate things. That’s pretty all right. I call that progress. Whattaya think the pro- lifers’ stance on aborting a fetus in a dead world would be? Would that still be so bad? Not that it matters, but we’re making conversation while we put off Abe’s expulsion from the building. I’m ragging on you. Don’t give me that look. He has to go. Neighbors who will eat their fellow neighbors are not to be permitted. I think that’s in the charter. What? What’s that look?”

Alan wasn’t aware of what look he wore, but he felt completely flummoxed.

“No look,” he said, his voice soft with apprehension. “No look. Just my face.”

“If you say so. So, maybe one horror show will take my mind off what’s on my mind, if you follow. You wanna go deal with Abe and toss him or what? I’m game if you are. I could use the exercise.”

Alan fidgeted for a moment, chewing his lip till he drew blood. The coppery taste was unpleasant. Abe was one of their own. But Ellen was right: no zombies allowed. Eddie would probably relish a go, what with some of Abe’s previous remarks at his expense, but Abe deserved better. He deserved to be put to final rest with some kindness. Some dignity, if such a thing was now possible.

“Sure. Let’s get it over with.”

“He’s feisty for a dead man with a busted hip,” Ellen observed as she forced Abe’s head down with a mop, the spongy pad pressed hard against the old man’s windpipe. Abe’s arms flailed impotently at his attackers.

“Maybe we should get the others,” Alan suggested, having second thoughts. “Eddie would…”

“No Eddie. We don’t need that throwback to help us.”

Alan looked at Abe. It wasn’t Abe any more, but it was. It still looked like Abe. He wasn’t some rotting thing. Not yet, anyway. His eyes weren’t glazed over and remote; there was rage in those undead orbs. Rage and confusion. Abe caught Ellen’s pants cuff in his spastic fingers and tugged, pulling her low riders a bit lower, exposing the elastic of her thong.

“Uh-uh-uh, you dirty old man,” Ellen scolded, but the humor was gone. This wasn’t funny, even in the sickest way. She pushed the mop harder into Fogelhut’s throat, the pressure precipitating a volley of excruciatingly thick, wet sounds of strangulation and cartilage being demolished. Alan fought the urge to retch or pass out and grabbed a large towel from the bathroom, which he quickly threw over Abe’s face, partly to muzzle him, partly to mask him. Alan didn’t want to see that mechanical simulation of life. With the towel firmly secured over the old man’s face, Ellen released the mop. Alan blinked away tears. This was so not right. Abe had probably slipped away into a peaceful, Valium-smoothed death, yet here he was, snapping at them. Abe rocked back and forth, his legs useless. That broken hip had hobbled him. He wouldn’t even be able to shamble around out there.

“Keep the towel over his face,” Alan snapped. “And sit on his chest. Something to keep him still.”

“What? Aren’t we going to toss him?”

“We are. But in a minute. Hold his arms.”

On the floor Abe undulated, the towel tied firmly over his whole head. He looked like a hostage, crippled and hooded. Alan looked around the room, then spotted a large burnt-orange alabaster ashtray. As he hefted it, feeling its substantial weight and solidity, he remembered his own mom had one similar back when he was a kid.

Alan stalked over to Abe’s wiggling recumbent form, lofted the ashtray in a high arc, then brought it down hard on the old man’s skull, pulverizing it. The sound, muffled though it may have been, was sickening, but to make sure, Alan repeated the motion five times until there was only crunchy pulp beneath the soaked terry cloth. Ellen edged back, mouth hanging open, her bout of grim wit quelled by Alan’s benevolent savagery.

Without asking for her assistance, Alan lifted the inert body, walked it over to the window and dropped it out. He stared as Abe’s body rested for a moment on the surface of the crowd below like a body surfer in a mosh pit, before it was absorbed, the new addition sinking to the pavement, lost, soon to be trampled into paste.

No eulogy.

Nothing.

Ellen let some tears escape, not even sure who or what they were for.

Alan offered no comfort.

They both retreated to their respective apartments and closed the doors.

And Eddie caught a big one on the roof.

Three rooftops away from the hump angling, Dabney stubbed out his umpteenth chain-smoked cigarette. Eyes watery and throat scorched from the combination of butts and booze he’d been consuming since Karl and Mona debarked, Dabney divided his fogged attention between the idiot antics of the meatheads and periodically looking for any sign of their return. He didn’t know how long it had been since they left. His watch had died.

Eddie had certainly gotten his recreational sadism down tight. The big greaseball would catch one and reel it in with almost no effort, then go to town on it with his trusty box of tools. Wrenches, hammers, pliers-the works. Did it count as torture if the victims weren’t strictly human or strictly alive? Dabney could imagine congressional hearings on that subject. The freckly mick, Dave, at one point had been cheerleader, spending time offsides shouting halfhearted variations on “Rah-rah, go team go!” Pathetic. But lately he just sat on the wall, head in his hands, brooding, watching his buddy.

Dabney jiggled the bottle by the neck, listening to the liquid slosh around. The bottle had been mostly full when the two had left. Now it was more than half gone. Either Dabney had gone through it fast or it had been a while. He looked over at the other roof. Three dismembered zombies lay in a heap. Catches of the day. Funny way to gauge the passage of time without a timepiece, Dabney mused, too drunk to take into account the position of the sun or other such time-honored pre-Swiss Quartz movement methods. He should have asked Karl to pick up a fresh battery.

Karl.

Would that naive cracker make it home in one piece? Karl was a poor substitute for his own dead offspring,