Cheng smiles.
I understand everything and I see each of our auras—KK’s is golden and withdrawing and Typewriter’s is blue and stationary and Cheng’s billows in red flames and Jared’s is black and suffocating—and I see the future, somebody dying, and this doesn’t make me sad, not like it should.
Everybody out, Jared yells.
Bro …
Everybody out. Right fucking now. Out.
Cheng says, You really going to do that? Be a fucking coward, send us out there, instead of killin’ us yourself?
Put the gun down, KK says.
I was wrong. She isn’t a demon. She’s a princess. Her aura is too bright to be demonic. I love her. I think about how many Chucks I’ve missed counting. I say, Twenty-eight.
Get the fuck out!
Jared’s pointing the gun at me now.
Drop the gun, and get out. All of you. You’re all trying to kill me.
I want to tell him his aura is Satan.
He’s screaming and waving his gun. KK and Typewriter make their way to the door but Cheng hasn’t moved, still the king in his throne. KK’s crying and begging. Jared screams at me to drop my gun. I do.
Open the door, Jared says.
Typewriter opens the wooden door but not the metal security door.
KK’s on her knees. She’s pulling at Jared’s jeans. She’s saying
please
.
You’re waiting for me to fall asleep so you can slit my throat, he yells.
I see the twenty-eight walking dead outside. Some of them have started giggling.
Get the fuck out or I’ll shoot. Jared looks down at KK. He shakes his leg. Tells her, You too.
Somebody is about to die.
I know it because I’m God or a fortune-teller and because I see our energies working things out before our earthly bodies have the chance and the red of Cheng darts toward the duffle bag and the black of Jared throws a thunderbolt into his back and the golden of KK reaches for the pistol. I see it explode, golden light blinding, and maybe angels sing and the black of Jared drops to the floor. It’s a tire losing air and then it’s just him, his horse face gasping, blood trickling, KK draped over his dying body.
KK won’t come out of the bathroom. I tell myself this is for the better. Typewriter and I have dumped Jared’s body in the basement. Then Cheng’s an hour later when he took his last
breath. She’s probably burning her stomach. It’s probably worse, what she’s doing. Slit wrists. Only part of me cares. We’re all going to fucking die.
Bro, should probably go in there, don’t you think?
She told me to leave her alone.
Dude …
What the fuck am I going to say? It’s cool you killed your boyfriend? We’re looking good, a few days’ worth of dope left?
I’m just saying.
Fuck.
She was there for you, Typewriter says. He’s digging his face. Blood drips down his chin. I don’t have the energy to tell him the bugs aren’t real.
I know he’s right, that I need to try again. I think about how when she left me I’d called and called and waited outside her apartment,
our
apartment, and I’d bought gas station flowers and stalked her at meetings. I tried everything. I told her I loved her. I told her I’d kill myself. I told her she was the only thing I had and that I would do whatever it took.
But I didn’t.
I smoked scante. Day in and day out.
And I think about the time I spotted her from the bus. She was sitting outside Starbucks on a black metal chair. My boy Frank from the halfway house had died in that very restroom a year before. She was with Jared and some other people I knew from my stint of sobriety. They were smoking and sipping from large white cups. They were laughing. They looked so fucking happy. And I was on the bus, taking it back
to Summit Avenue, down, down, to the river flats of St. Paul, to West Seventh, to Rebecca and her loud-ass TV, to mysterious Svetlana, to the Groveland Tap, to Tibbs, to women working parking lots and brothers working corners, to my mattress on a dusty floor. I knew she was better off without me. Like not just some bullshit self-pity, but I legitimately knew it. I cried that night. I cried and dialed my parents’ phone number. My mom answered on the first ring and this broke my fucking heart because it meant she waited there in fear. I didn’t say anything. My mom was all
hello, hello
and then she was like
Chase, is that you
and I didn’t know how to speak, to say I need help, to say everything I’ve ever tried has gotten me into this miserable little efficiency and alone, and she was like
honey, talk to me
. I was silent. She said
I love you so much
.
I knock on the bathroom door. I brace myself for what I know I’ll see.
The softest of voices tells me it’s open.
I push on the door.
She sits on the floor, her back against the side of the bathtub. I scan her wrists and thighs for blotches of red and then I look at the green tile for blood and there’s nothing and she says, Remember last time we were here?
I sit on the toilet. It’s covered in curly black hairs. I tell her I do.
She laughs and it’s a defeated sound. She says, You were so fucking worried.
Yeah.
Still have them, she says, raising her shirt.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to look so I study my fingers and she says, It’s okay to look.
I do.
Her stomach is nothing but ribs and healed burns and she traces them with her fingers and it feels wrong. I pick a nail.
Thought I was gonzo, didn’t you?
I don’t know.
Crazy KK off slitting her wrists in the bathroom.
Stop.
KK reaches her hand toward me and flaps her fingers. This is an invitation to join her on the floor. I do. Our shoulders touch. I’m still looking at KK for an injury I missed, and she must see me doing this because she says, Didn’t do anything.
I didn’t—
Didn’t have to.
She moves her foot on its heel. Her toes trace my shin. She asks me what the fuck happened. I tell her she did what she had to do.
Sounds familiar. That’s what I was telling you just, fuck, yesterday, the day before?
Yeah.
I can feel each of her breaths against my side. Each one seems like so much work.
Is that enough? Reason, I mean.
It’s all there is, I say.
You really believe that?
I think so.
Do what you have to.
Yeah, do what you have to.
I killed my fucking boyfriend.
I killed my mom.
KK laughs and it’s real, her body clenching, leaning forward a few inches. When she settles back against the tub, she’s closer. She rests her head on my shoulder. This is nice.
What if it’s not? she asks.
What’s not?
A good enough reason.
Then what the fuck do we tell ourselves? I say.
That we’re fucked up.
That nothing matters.
That everything matters.
But what does that really do? I ask.
Fuels the fire.
Talking self-hatred?
Check.
I feel her hands on the outside of my thigh. They’re moving up and down and remind me of a kneading cat.
She asks me if I really think Jared would have forced us out. No doubt.
Fucked up, yo.
Scante takes over. You know that. Fucking snaps.
I killed him.
Then she has her right arm around me, her face buried in my armpit. Her leg ventures over. She’s shaking. I put my arm around her and I tell her she’s okay. I can hear her repeat
I killed him, I killed him
. She fumbles around at my zipper and I move my knee up and tell her to stop. She doesn’t. She’s bawling. She has my dick out and I’m telling her to stop, that I
can get her some of the Oxys, that tomorrow she’ll feel better, and she’s stroking my dick and I feel wetness on my dickhead and realize it’s tears and this is rape of some kind and I give a tentative pull of her waist but I don’t do it hard and then she has her mouth around my dick and I’m a bad person because I close my eyes. She keeps going. My hips give an involuntary jerk. I’m trying not to think, to live in the moment, to be present and embrace this opportunity and to know that this was how it had to turn out, us, and I think about what we’d been talking about—doing what we had to do—and if this was good enough. This isn’t something I have to do. Not even a little bit. And I can hear her crying and I’m a fucking pig and I wrap both arms around her. I pull her off my dick. She has snot running down her nose and over her thin upper lip.
Come here, I say.
She leans forward to kiss me and I pull her closer, past my mouth, my hand around the back of her head. She tells me to fuck her. I shake my head. She reaches her hand back down to my dick and I cross my legs and I hold her tight and she tells me to fuck her and I say
shh
and she’s reaching for me, for anything that will distract her, and I know that shit matters even when it doesn’t seem to and she’s demanding that I fuck her and I tell her I love her and that it’s okay and that I won’t do that to her and she finally stops fighting and I feel her body relax all at once and she’s a broken child in my arms and her eyes close and open, close and open.
Finally, they close.
I know she won’t be able to sleep but I like to think of
her this way, asleep, dreaming of rainbows and lollipops and returned phone calls.
I hear the crashing of glass.
I hear Typewriter yelling fuck, and gunfire.
KK digs her chewed nails into my chest and I stand and yell, Are you okay?
Shot after shot. I sprint out of the bathroom and draw my pistol with my right and KK holds my left and I come to the main room and Chucks are climbing through the window and I don’t hear their giggles because I’m unloading bullets into the opening. A few reanimated tumble against the window-pane. A crash from the left side of the house and I turn and there’s another one, the janitor type, and I fire three shots, two of them hitting his neck, and he falls, his Hmong giggles fading.
There’s the briefest of lulls and I ask Typewriter what the fuck happened. He says he doesn’t know. KK says, They can smell death. I look at her and she’s dropped my hand, picked up a shotgun, and I love her and know she’s right. It’s not just sound but smell and death and fear: that’s how they find us. Another one appears at the window and she aims and fires.
Then a window in the kitchen explodes and I hear another noise in the back of the house.
Need to go, I say.
Type turns in circles, each sound a potential death sentence.
Get the shit, I say.
He grabs the bin and I step toward the door and I can
hear them out there, laughing. We’ll never make it through the front door. KK screams and fires, this time at one coming from the back hallway. We’re surrounded.
Go, I yell.
I grab her wrist and start running down the hall. A woman with short spiked hair comes toward me and I fire into her chest. She just stumbles so I pull the trigger again. It clicks. Fuck. She’s still coming and I yell for somebody to shoot. The shadows behind her fill with movement. Typewriter’s firing but in the other direction.
I reach to my right and hit a door handle. The basement. I fling it open and practically shove KK down the stairs and Typewriter follows and then me and I slam the door. I trip down the stairs, catching myself on the banister. A security light shines through the slit of a window. It casts its glow over KK. She’s looking at Jared’s and Cheng’s bodies, one hand covering her mouth. Type pulls her away.
We hear fists on wood, fists breaking wood. They’ll be down here in less than a minute. I’m looking around the basement, nothing but cinder blocks and empty bottles of HCl. The window is fucking small but KK could fit for sure and probably me and Typewriter will have to make do. I run over. The window’s at head level. I bash it with my elbow. I don’t give a fuck if the walking dead hear it. I don’t give a fuck about anything besides getting KK out of this house. I rip the shards out with my hand. We hear the door splinter. I push the bin out of the window first, then grab KK and tell her to go. She says, What about—, but I squeeze her nonexistent bicep and yell, Go! I cup my hands and she steps in. I shove
her up. She’s saying fuck and shit and I push her legs through the small opening and blood leaks from the jagged glass down the cinder block. Giggles. Creaking stairs. I’m holding my hands for Typewriter and he says, Fucking go. I yell for him to hurry and he says, It’s easier for you to pull me through. He knows and I know this isn’t true, but I let myself believe it because I need to. I step on his thigh and squeeze through the opening. My stomach’s cut to shit. I turn back. Typewriter reaches his hand up and I grab it with both of mine, bracing my feet against the foundation, and I pull like a motherfucker. His head comes through and then his upper body. I pull and pull and pull and blood seeps around his torso and I’m looking into his eyes and they are saying
fucking pull
and they’re saying
leave me
and they’re saying
you’re my best friend
and
we tried
.
He screams.
It’s the sound of knowing you’re going to die.
The pitch is piercing.
It’s the sound of knowing you’re dead.
Something gives and I yank him through another foot. I drag his body the rest of the way out. I help him to his feet and I hear KK’s shotgun. The only light comes from streetlamps and every shadow is a body and there’s no way we’re getting to the car. I grab the bin and yell for them to follow me.
I run between Cheng’s house and another. There’s a Chuck waiting. I don’t have bullets so I flip the pistol in my hand and smash his head and I feel the cracking of bones. The motherfucker drops. We emerge into an alley. They’re coming at us from both directions. Typewriter runs with a limp. KK grabs
my hand and we keep running between houses to a chain-link fence, which we hop over. They seem to be everywhere. As we run, I’m trying to figure out what the fuck to do, where to find safety. Shelter. Cars. Dope. Guns. Then I scream
fuck
, because we left the duffle bag in Cheng’s living room, so no more stockpile of weapons. KK and Typewriter still have guns but we’re low as shit on ammo.