roof. With their so-called “flynchin’ ” activities on hold the roof felt safe again, even with the dismembered corpses of their last haul still lying in a heap three buildings away. Though it was evident they were beyond locomotion, Dabney maintained his distance.
Dabney lit a cigarette from the tip of the one he’d just finished and felt decadent. In his days as a breadwinner he savored cigarettes and put some time between them. Last he was paying for this particular vice, coffin nails were going for nearly ten bucks a pack over the counter. He’d started buying from the Native Americans via the Internet for roughly half that price, but still, even at five he didn’t blow through them like they cost nothing. Now they did, so what the hell. Live a little, even if the living he was doing was sure to accelerate dying. He poured himself two fingers of bourbon and swished them around the glass to aerate the hooch. Fancy. Sophisticated. And again, it was “the good stuff.” He felt very James Bond. Or Shaft. Somebody debonair. That’s why he wasn’t just swigging out of the bottle.
He drank the two fingers and then poured another two.
How long had it been since Karl and Mona had gone out? How long since Mona and Eddie? Eight or ten fingers later-at least two hands’ worth-Dabney shakily put down the bottle and straddled the low dividing wall.
“Giddyup,” he slurred, wiping some boozy spittle from his stubbly chin. He dug his heels into the puckered tar paper and slapped the curved top of the wall. “Git along little dogies.” He thought of Woody Strode and began to tear up. Woody was long gone. Everything he cared about was.
Once upon a time his wife had called him “adorable.”
Once upon a time small children had called him “Daddy.”
Once upon a time he’d been his own boss.
Clumsily, Dabney hoisted his ass off the divider and loped putty limbed across the rooftop toward the pile of cadavers. He tripped over the second wall and fell, his numbed palms scraped raw on impact. He pulled himself off the ground and continued north, the mutilated corpses drawing him nearer. It was foolish, but pixilated from the booze, his curiosity won out. By the time he reached those dear, dead friends he was dog tired and dropped his leaden keister into Eddie’s ersatz fighting chair. It felt good. Better than the wall.
“Damn,” he said, assessing the ruined carrion. These were not the fearsome cannibals they’d been down below. This was a sad mess of humanity, retired. In death it was hard to tell male from female, black from white from Asian from whatever. One of the fractured heads looked maybe sort of Negroid. But the skin was so excavated and overcooked it stymied easy identification. It was obvious Eddie was a total racist, so did hauling in a brother bring him extra pleasure or were all zombies created equal? Dabney sniggered as he contemplated those two crazy white boys snaring undead brothers.
So stupid.
He reached out for the bottle but had left it three roofs behind.
So stupid.
He fell asleep, the hot sun baking his marinated brains.
40
“You know we’re completely nuts for having let Eddie escort Mona.”
“Mona escorted Eddie.”
“Whatever, Alan,” Ellen snapped. “Don’t nitpick. Eddie’s on a wild tear all hopped up on Mona’s mystery meds. He was trouble before, now he’s flat-out dangerous.”
Alan couldn’t argue that point. He looked out the window. It hadn’t even been an hour since they’d left to rescue Karl, but anxiety was peaking. Ellen was right and Alan cursed himself for his cowardice.
“She might be immune to those things,” Ellen said, “but she’s not immune to a Neanderthal like Tommasi. We’re idiots. And now there’s nothing we can do about it.”
She joined Alan at the window and put an arm around his waist, the first tender contact they’d shared in ages. That touch, that small embrace, rattled Alan even more than Ellen’s words. Though he made no sound, she felt something in his manner change. She looked at his face and caressed his cheek. She tilted her head back and he responded with a kiss that lasted for long, restorative minutes. For all their sexual encounters, this was the first time either of them felt real love for the other. When their lips disengaged they both stared down at the crowd below.
Within the sepulchral gloom of the bookstore, Mona slipped on her headlamp and flicked on the beam. She didn’t have another to offer Eddie, so she beckoned him to stay close, within the light, within the umbrella.
“If I find any Steinbecks I’m gonna piss on ’em,” Eddie said.
“Mm-hmm.”
Mona made a beeline for the table Karl had fallen onto, finding nothing but burnt books in his place and a couple of completely kaput zombies, their backs and limbs broken, the last vestiges of unlife gone.
“He was here,” she said, pointing.
“He ain’t here now.”
Mona looked up, aiming the light at the hole Karl had made, which was now many times larger. That explained the wrecked carcasses and the additional timber. Eddie looked up at the opening.
“That’s a big fuckin’ hole.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So whatta you suggest?” Eddie said, swallowing his annoyance. “It looks like Karl might’ve got up on his own steam, no? Them zombies clean their plates, but not so’s there’s nothing left. There’d be blood or something. Bones. Something
“Dunno.”
“Think he got up and went on home?”
“We’d have seen him.”
She had a point. It seemed unlikely that Karl would have taken a divergent path from the one he and little miss talkative just took, especially if he was all busted up. A noise came from the upper landing and Eddie looked up into the gloom at the spot where the hole was. In the murk it looked like a busted mouth, the splintery floorboards like crooked teeth.
“You heard that.” Lacking any clear inflection, it wasn’t so much a question as a statement. Eddie made a face as he considered Mona’s way of speaking might be contagious. He said it again, this time as an obvious query.
“Mm-hmm.”
Without waiting for Mona he dashed up the down escalator and ran onto the mezzanine, taking care to avoid the gaping hole. The gun felt good against his thigh, heavy and reassuring. Screw Mona and her “no guns” policy. Finders, keepers. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw nothing unusual: some chairs, the upholstery cooked away, the springs and foundations jutting out, bookcases, books, books, and more books.
“Yo!” he shouted, caution to the wind. “Karl, you in here?”
A soft moan from the back of the landing.
Mona softly touched his bare shoulder and he felt a tingle from head to toe. It was the first time a woman had voluntarily made contact with him since everything went kablooey. What was harder, he wondered, his dick or the barrel of the gun, and which would do more damage if it went off? The light from Mona’s headlamp bothered Eddie’s dark-adjusted eyes and he fanned it away, frowning deeply as she stepped ahead of him. Those dead eyes
