Something like that, I say.
Brilliant.
You have a better idea? KK says.
Let us not forget what happened when that was done to us, Jared says.
Different, Typewriter says.
We pass two walking dead teenage boys and their mouths open and I imagine laughs ricocheting against the Civic’s windows.
We’re not stealing anything, Type says.
No, we’re just arriving with shotguns. They’ll probably think kindly of four whites pulling up in this fashion. Good call, Chase.
Go fuck yourself.
I tap Typewriter on the shoulder. He flinches. I tell him up there on the left.
We pull over. We all stare at the yellow house, tiny, shutters long since broken, the front door rusted metal. I’m looking for movement. For light. There’s nothing. I crane my neck and the two reanimated have stopped. They stare at us.
I tell them I’ll go.
Be right here, Typewriter says, ready for anything.
I get out and hold my shotgun and it’s heavy as hell and the sun is directly overhead. I jog to the front door. I glance at the two Chucks down the street. They’ve started in my direction. I give three knocks, wait, then give another two. Nothing. I pound my fist against the metal grate of the door. I yell for Cheng. I tell him it’s me, Chase. They’re walking faster now, maybe fifty yards away.
Cheng.
Cheng, open up.
I’m hoping for the door to crack open and to see the cautious eyes of Cheng and I’m gripping Buster’s stock and yelling it’s me, I need help, it’s Chase Daniels, and I can hear the Chucks’ giggles. They’re different, the laughs, lighter, higher pitched. I wonder if this is due to their native tongue.
Chase, let’s go, KK yells. She waves at me from the lowered window.
I pound and pound. Then I stop. He’s not there. Why the fuck would he be? I’m not even sure he still lives here. And I’m looking at the two kids coming at me and I imagine one of them as Cheng and maybe he’s turned, maybe the shit they
cooked wasn’t pure enough, and KK is yelling my name and I hear Typewriter’s voice too.
I want to die.
The thought comes like an opened eyelid after sleeping off meth. When you wake up and know it’s over, the high, the night or days or weeks that you’ve been running, and you know you’re broke and you have no way to get more money and the rent’s due and the TV’s gone and the phone’s shut off—your eyes open and you just want them to close again, to be asleep, for the blotting out never to end.
I want to die.
I lower my gun.
They seem to be smiling. The shorter one’s missing his lower lip. I laugh at this. I’m laughing at the world for its perversion. I’m laughing at myself for the same reason. I’m laughing because I want to die.
I hear the rattling of metal. Cheng’s at the door. He holds a Glock. He says, Stupid motherfucker.
And maybe that’s all I need, a fucking option, something resembling hope.
I flip Buster up to my hands and I aim and they’re close, the two walking dead, and I unload into one’s throat, charge out the shell, and blow the other’s nose clean off his face.
Stupid motherfucker, Cheng yells again.
I take a step closer and he’s looking over my shoulder and I say, Please, and he says, Fuck no.
Cheng.
Fuck you.
Got nowhere else to go.
Shit ain’t my doing.
Bro.
Not your fucking
bro
.
Dude, you’ve got to—
I ain’t gotta do shit.
I stare at him. He points his gun at me, his black hair pulled into a ponytail, his red shants inches from his massive calves. Our area code, 651, is tattooed around his neck.
Cheng, all I’m asking is for one night.
He laughs.
Serious, one night. We can get your head, got some shit. Just need to find out who’s still cooking.
So now our shit’s good enough?
Trade you guns. Pistols, shotguns … I motion to Buster. I tell him we’re out of options.
Cheng looks between me and the car and then down the street and I see a woman walking and I know she’s one of them and I tell him it’s for one night and we can get him high and we just need his fucking help.
One night, he says. He opens the door. I motion to the rest to get out and I yell to get the bin and the duffle bags. It’s like we’re an estranged family unloading our luggage. I grab one of the bags from KK and follow her inside.
It’s dark in his house and it smells like pure fucking ammonia. Right there on his kitchen table, he’s got a tiny lab set up, something portable, and he’s distilling ephedrine and most of the poisonous smoke funnels into a tube that’s connected to the base of the window.
Jesus, man. Trying to kill yourself?
What are the options? he says.
I nod. I set the duffle bag down and look around the room. It’s red, the walls, the couch, the shag carpet, and there’s a golden coffee table with curved legs. Some of the paint has peeled off and flakes lie on the floor. I wonder about the chemicals filling this room.
Cheng checks on his beaker. He flicks its side with his finger. He tucks a strand of his bangs behind his ear.
Thanks again, I say.
One night.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And give me a taste of that Albino shit. With this he smiles, his first, and his teeth are dark little nubs, crowded.
Now we’re having fun, I say.
He sits in the red chair next to the couch. The arms are tattered. He rubs his hands together like he’s cold. He looks at me and says, Knew you’d be one of the slippery motherfuckers left.
That’s supposed to mean?
Shit ain’t stick to you. Never. Not Chase Daniels.
I laugh.
He doesn’t. He’s staring at the bin. I open it up. We’re not looking great, under an ounce left, and I’m thinking that maybe it makes sense that Cheng smoke his own shit, that we all smoke his shit because he’s still cooking, still manufacturing our survival, but I don’t say anything. I’m telling myself it’s an investment.
I hand over a decent-sized shard.
Cheng holds it up to the light coming in through the
window. He turns it this way and that way like he’s inspecting a diamond. Then it’s his smile, awful, his teeth all sorts of rotten. He sets it on the table. He crushes it with a lighter. He covers one wide nostril and snorts the majority of it, then he leans back, one hand on the bridge of his nose, one hand tapping his thigh.
He rattles off something in Hmong.
I breathe. I glance over at the couch and Jared and KK and Typewriter seem to breathe too.
You got the recipe?
No.
Still tellin’ me
no
with all this shit?
He’s gone, man.
Little Chase popped him?
No.
Cheng laughs, rocks a little bit. He rubs some of the powder around his gums. He says, No, man, I can tell. Little Chase Daniels is a killer. Fucking rich kid learned to kill, huh?
I shake my head. Tell him something about doing what we need to do and he interrupts me by saying, Now you’re gettin’ it.
Getting what?
Just what you said. Doin’ what you need to.
I nod.
I look up at KK and I start to introduce them and Cheng waves his small hand. I stop.
He says, Why you here?
Because—
Because you figured us Hmong trash know what to do when the world ended.
Dude, I just thought—
Your little game of pretend got bad, huh? Got bad. Got real. So you come running to the ghetto where we’ve been gettin’ by the whole time.
No, like, all I was thinking was who smokes shit, you know? Like who might still be alive and we’re—
And mommy and daddy are dead. Gone. Can’t bail you out with rehab. Can’t float you money.
Just trying to find people still alive.
Cheng grins. He leans back, his arms outstretched. He says, This is it.
This doesn’t make sense. I wonder where his boys are, the guys he’d surrounded himself with since I knew him back in high school. I ask him about this.
He leans forward. He points a finger at me. He says, It’s not a game for us. Get it? We don’t traffic in this shit to get high. We do it to make
money
. To survive. We sell shit to stupid motherfuckers like you, the rich kids with daddy’s checkbook.
His stubby finger waving in my face makes me feel like I pissed the bed.
My
boys
, they didn’t fuck around with their own supply. I did. So it’s just me.
I want to tell him that I didn’t come here to exploit him and that we’re not that different, that I was on my own, that my parents hadn’t given me money in years, that I just put a
bullet between my mom’s eyes. But I get it, Cheng’s anger. I know it’s different. Growing up, I’d make the five-minute drive in my father’s Camry across I-94 into Frogtown. I’d look for Hmong teenagers standing on corners. I’d slow down, money in hand, get my shit, and drive off to my seven acres, to my own room that locked and had a walk-in closet and connecting bathroom. I get it. I hand over another shard.
Atonement, Cheng says. He laughs. Snorts the whole thing. He sets his gun on the table. He looks over at the couch like it’s the first time he’s noticed there were other people besides me. He tells them to relax, that the big bad gangster isn’t going to hurt them.
Jared lets out a nervous laugh.
Typewriter introduces himself. Cheng says, Remember you. Only fat guy who smokes crank I ever known.
I laugh at this. So does KK. Then it’s what we know how to do. I dole out bits of shit and the three on the couch cook them up and I share a freebase with Cheng and we’re better then, our energy veered away from confrontation and guilt, and we’re just five people getting high.
I eventually ask Cheng if he knows anyone still cooking on a large scale.
He tells me everyone’s dead.
We aren’t.
Bullshit, he says.
Anyone?
He tells me that he’d heard a rumor, back when phones were still working, that a group of motherfuckers were staked out in Ramsey County lockup.
You for real?
What I heard.
Hmong?
Don’t know. Heard it from Tou. Said he was going down. Haven’t heard from him since.
Think it’s legit?
Fuck if I know. But I know I’m set up here. Cookin’ a dime a day, enough to keep me not dead.
Maybe Cheng sees the way I’m looking at him, the way it’s a plea, a bartering, because he says, Enough for me. One day, motherfucker, one day.
Cheng is a cartoon. Typewriter is his mother. KK’s a demon. Jared’s a horse. I’m peeking out of Cheng’s windows and giving status updates about how many of
them
walk around. There’s fifteen. I keep track, marking race, age, and gender. I think this is very important.
We all hold guns.
The paint on the walls is peeling.
Cartoon Cheng holds the bin. He’s claimed responsibility for the dope, cutting everyone off. I’m glad that I’m relieved of this duty.
I see another one. A middle-aged man, squat, definitely
Hmong, and he wears the navy blue of a janitor’s uniform. I mark him down on a sheet of paper.
Sixteen, I say or maybe think.
I can hear them all talking. Their voices get louder. I hear
just one more
. I can’t be bothered because I’m on lookout and I’m important and I’m on the frontlines perched in a tree and our species’ survival depends on my ability to catalog the enemy and I’m a researcher and these are my subjects and demon KK says, Fucking quit, and I need them to be quiet because my brain is beautiful, my mission of utmost importance, and I’m top secret and chemical weapons and I wish I had a battle-axe, razor sharp on both crescent arcs.
I’m not sure if I’ve already counted the woman in a fuzzy bathrobe. I jot her down anyway. Seventeen.
I taste the blood of my heart and it beats through my chest and my eardrums and the ooze drips down my throat and voices are raised and I need concentration, need secrecy. We’re in a castle and our moat is Prince Street and dragons fly overhead and golems stalk the streets.
Movement in the yard across the street. Eighteen.
I open the blinds with the tip of my pistol. I think I see the Canadians, the motherfucker with the mesh cap, his throat, his sidekick, the concave dent of his face. I see my dad’s rotting body. My mother’s red Hindu dot of a bullet hole. I see them all and they’re outside in a single-file line and Innocence in her little umbrella socks is in front and I’m only a little certain they can’t see me. I mark them down—nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—and I report my findings to the group.
They don’t respond.
I can’t take my eyes off the street.
They know we’re in here.
I tell them again—twenty-two.
I hear Cheng’s accented English. He’s saying something about pulling the trigger.
Twenty-two of them, I say again.
Jared, KK says.
Bro, Typewriter says.
I hear Jared’s voice and it’s waving in pitch and he’s saying
just give me the fucking shit
.
For the briefest of moments, I understand what’s going on—Jared has finally lost it, snapped—and I feel bad for him. But I can’t turn to help because I’m Braveheart and I’m the only line of defense and what I’m doing is important.
Pull the fucking trigger, Cheng says.
Another one down by the stop sign. Twenty-three.
Give me the fucking shit!
Just chill, just fucking chill, Type says.
I’m not fucking around.
Pull the fucking trigger.
I hear KK’s pleas, Cheng’s threats, Typewriter’s confusion. They need me. Everybody fucking needs me. I’m being pulled in so many directions and I’m a peacemaker and I’m a Boy Scout and it’s painful to pull my stare away from the window but I do.
I’m like, What the fuck? Jared stands with a pistol pointed against Cheng’s head. Cheng sits in the red chair, his arms around the blue bin.
Give it right fucking now, Jared screams.
You better fucking kill me. Because ain’t nobody point a gun at me and live to tell about it.
Jared cocks the hammer.