Never thought I’d be trying to get there, Type says.
Feel you.
No more than three miles, I say.
Need a car, yo, KK says.
Not trying to go back to Cheng’s.
Then steal one, Typewriter says.
And you know how to hot-wire since when?
Motherfuckers all dead. Break in, take the keys on the kitchen table.
I nod. We fall silent, staring at the barricaded door. They’re out there, the Chucks, somewhere. Maybe they’re right outside the door and they’ve figured out silence is their best asset or maybe they’re behind trees or maybe walking down streets under the artificial glow of lamps.
I know there’s no other option. We have to leave.
We stand. I’m sore as a motherfucker. I take KK’s hand. I want her to come into my arms but she raises her eyebrows and says, Get to it, yo. We hold guns. We move the benches and the trash can with a smiley face tagged on its side. I think about motherfuckers waiting on the other side and I think about my dead mother and I’m telling myself it will be fine, everything, and then it’s that moment of predawn when shadows are long as fuck. We stare outside. It smells like duck shit. Buck up. My feet don’t move. KK leads the way. It takes all
my power to follow her, watching her flat back, her bony arms rigid at her side.
We walk through Como Park. There are houses up to the right, squat ramblers. It’s us three spinning with every sound, guns pointed at trees and sometimes at each other. We get out of the wooded area and I see a Hmong Chuck who can’t be more than five foot. She’s just staring at a house and I wonder if somebody’s alive on the other side. Maybe some teenager burning the last of his scante and he’s scared and he knows he’s going to die and for some reason I don’t give a fuck. I just don’t want to fight. Don’t want to run. I want to be at the jail and for them to have a Mexico-sized operation and I want there to be food and unbreakable steel doors and I want KK to have my children and I want shit to work out. That’s all we’ve ever wanted. It’s the unsaid prayer each time we put a stem to our mouths or a needle in our veins—just work out.
We come up to some piece of shit Toyota Tacoma. It’s probably not the best choice, but fuck it, it’s the first car we come across. Our eyes go between the midget walking dead across the street and the truck and the house. It’s a white rectangle. The wood around the windows is rotten.
I test the Toyota’s door. It’s locked.
Just break in? Typewriter asks.
The house, yeah, KK says.
I nod.
I’m not trying to make any noise. I don’t want that cunt midget coming over and I don’t know what’s inside and I think about my mom feeding off the ribs of my father and we’re at the door, jiggling the handle. Locked. Fuck. The window’s our best bet. I tell this to KK and Typewriter and they agree. But they just sit there crouched, willing invisibility. The sun will be up in a few minutes. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
The duty falls on me.
I crouch down and scamper to the bay window. The glass feels cheap, wouldn’t take more than a half swing of the pistol. KK motions for me to hurry up. I flip the gun around in my hand. I’m about to swing, but I stop. It’s like a pure fear takes over, making me retarded. They’re probably inside and they’re probably coming, hordes of Chucks, and this shit will never end and it feels like too much, everything.
Hurry the fuck up, KK hisses.
I swing. The bottom corner of the glass shatters. I knock out enough space for my arm to reach through. I crank the handle. The window opens. I look back over my shoulder. The midget Chuck turns. She stares. She starts her steady walk across the street. I wonder how far the sound traveled, how many walking dead heard that single pane shatter. The window’s open enough for me to fit through, and I do, whispering that I’ll get the door.
I drop to the shag carpet.
I’m ready for demonic laughs and for my throat to be ripped open and I’m pointing a pistol at a La-Z-Boy and a TV
and a framed Norman Rockwell print, the one with the little boy and girl staring at the sun, the one that makes you feel like true love is shit you know about from grade school.
I creep to the door.
KK and Type push in once it’s open. The midget Chuck stands fifty feet behind them. Just as I’m closing the door, I see the sparkle of white, her teeth, her smile, then the start of a high-pitched giggle.
Typewriter deadbolts the door.
Get the keys, KK says.
We’re in the kitchen looking on counters and tables. Typewriter stands some sort of guard or maybe he’s scared too. Then we’re in the family room and I can’t stop staring at the print, like it’s some cruel joke—life an idealized version of serenity—and KK throws cushions around and something tells me to turn around. The top two-thirds of the midget Chuck stare at me through the window. I scream a rich-bitch scream. Type blasts a hole into her face.
Fuck, I yell.
Bro?
The sound man, fuck.
She was …
Just help find the goddamn keys, KK yells.
She starts toward the stairs. I don’t want to follow. I don’t want to know what’s up there. Outside, thick brown blood makes an amoeba on the trampled grass.
Typewriter nudges me, motions to follow KK up the stairs. He takes them two at a time. I lag behind. I’m slow in my ascent. I’m waiting to hear screams and gunshots and
I’m waiting for this shit to end. My body feels heavy, tired. I hear KK and Type in what is probably the master bedroom. KK calls out that they’re both dead, didn’t reanimate. They’re rifling through drawers.
Some soft coo comes from my right. I’m at a door. I creak it open with the tip of my Glock. It’s lighter in there, a single ray of sun coming through the back window. There’s a crib. The walls are covered—I mean fucking covered, not a single inch of white space—with some sort of Rockwell wallpaper. What the fuck is with these people? I step into the nursery. The cooing gets louder. The wall is nothing but families sitting around Thanksgiving dinner, kids at baseball games, a pedophile doctor feeling a chest, the
Saturday Evening Post
, Rosie the Riveter, a cop at a diner—all of them staring down at me. The shit feels spooky. Otherworldly. So many sets of eyes.
I make my way to the crib.
I know what I’ll see, but I tell myself I’m wrong. I’m not. It’s a baby, maybe six months old. He’s in a green one-piece with connected feet and that’s what he’s holding on to, his fucking feet, rocking just a little bit, a smile like he knows things will be okay.
I feel like vomiting.
I stare back at the door. They must still be looking for the keys. The baby reaches for me. His eyes are blue, the pretty kind that people notice. And I’m thinking about this baby and this family and they were probably the blue-collar type who grew up on stories from their grandparents about the happy misery of the Depression and the Greatest Generation, and for them, the people of this house, I’m sure there was nothing
better than returning home to their family from a day of hanging Sheetrock and having a beer and grilling in the backyard, the wife adding a bit of garlic powder to the patties, sitting around listening to the Twins on the radio, just like their parents had done. A simpler time. That’s what they wanted. That’s what this baby would grow up to cherish.
His coos turn to giggles.
He has to be turned. There’s no other explanation why he wouldn’t have died of dehydration. His eyes are so fucking blue. His smile makes me think about Disney movies, the ones actually drawn, the ones from my childhood.
He will die.
He’s already dead.
But maybe not.
Maybe he’s survived because how much nourishment does a baby really need? Maybe these giggles and coos are real? The pressure behind my eyes feels like ice picks. I don’t realize I’m talking to him, but I am. I’m using my singsongy baby voice. I’m saying things about him being so fucking cute, such blue eyes, such a nice pajama set. I’m telling him his parents are dead. I’m telling him those lies on your walls, those happy little moments from a dead generation, are bullshit. Your parents didn’t believe in them. You wouldn’t either. The baby wraps his chubby fingers around the nose of my gun. It’s not a toy, I say. He laughs. I laugh. We laugh. We laugh because we don’t know what’s funny anymore, only that something has to be. I tell the baby I was wrong before about the little girl with the socks, she wasn’t innocence, he is.
Yes, you are.
Such a chubby-wubby.
No, that’s not a chew toy, that’s a gun.
Oh, let me get your pillow a little more comfortable.
It’s okay, just taking a nap. Just a little nap. Nap time.
Shh, shh.
Look at your feet go. Kick-kick-kick.
What? Tired already?
My little boy is all tuckered out.
I straighten my back. I stare out of the window. Some stupid birds sit on the power line dissecting the alley. I say, Don’t you fucking judge me.
I turn toward the door.
Typewriter stands a few feet inside the nursery. His fat face hangs slack, his mouth open. He fingers a scab with his hand not holding the shotgun.
What the fuck was that?
What?
He points to the crib.
Just putting the little guy to sleep, I say. I smile. KK yells that she found the keys, jacket pocket. She runs to the nursery. Everything about her is frantic. She says, Hurry the fuck up. She starts down the stairs. Typewriter’s scab is bleeding. He puts two hands on the shotgun, his finger pressing against the trigger.
After you, I say.
Fuck that noise, he says. He steps aside.
Shit had to be done, I say.
He nods, Typewriter always fucking nodding.
I tell him there was no other choice. To lighten the fuck up.
I head downstairs. We stand at the door. A few stragglers are headed in our direction, but we’ll be able to get to the truck with no problem. KK tells us she’ll drive and I tell her fine and then we’re outside and I’m climbing into the bitch position of the truck and it smells like feet. There’s a small sticker on the dashboard. It’s the same Rockwell from the living room. The boy and girl in love. I think about it being KK and me. The engine sputters and then turns. The Chucks are jogging now. KK puts it in reverse. I scratch at the sticker. Type stares out of the window. I use the nail on my index finger to blot out the little boy, then the little girl, then the sun. KK swerves to avoid a hysterical walking dead. The baby had turned. It was mercy. My head throbs. He had to have fucking turned.
We drive through Frogtown. A few Hmong Chucks wander the streets, but we’re able to stay clear. Past Midway it’s more crowded, the skin color darkening, and it’s weird to see the intersections clear, buses nowhere, shoppers nowhere. The teenagers who used to hang out smoking cigarettes in hightops are either dead or lurching around giggling and I realize there’s no real difference—people standing there bored either way. We pass Interstate 94. The houses get bigger and older. They’re bastardized versions of Victorians in reds and blues
and slates. The skin color switches again and it’s Caucasian walking dead loitering around. And then we’re at Grand, the yuppie shopping district, and it’s J. Crew and CorePower Yoga and women sporting hundred-dollar haircuts atop their decaying flesh. At Summit, the apex of our shitty little town, stands the governor’s mansion with its slabs of imported stone and then the Summit Club, and I picture a young F. Scott sitting in there writing about Bernice bobbing her hair. From this elevation we can see West Seventh, the flats of St. Paul, where we see poor white Chucks shuffle around, tiny as ants, each and every one of them unified in their singleness of mind. Beyond them, across the Mississippi, not really visible, is the south side, streets like Chavez and Independence, the skin once again darkening. Our city: each neighborhood segregated, first by economics, then by race. Each neighborhood now hosting its own walking dead, its own hidden pockets of shit-smoking motherfuckers trying to find their next hit.
We’re quiet. KK because she’s concentrating. Typewriter because he just saw me kill that Chuck baby. Me because the pressure behind my eyes is putting a yellow lens flare on everything. Or maybe it’s because we’re driving the speed limit through an abandoned city, trying to pretend the naked people staring at us laughing are really friendly neighbors.
They’re not going to be there, KK says. Nobody’s gonna fucking be there.
Can’t think like that, I say.
But if they aren’t? KK asks.
Eat a bullet, Type says.
Shut the fuck up, I say.
KK’s like, He’s right, last chance shit, yo.
Better than this, Typewriter says.
I say, They’ll be there. Can’t think like that, your mind will turn and shit.
Type snorts a laugh. I stare at him but he won’t meet my eye. I ask why he’s laughing and he just shakes his head.
They’ll be there, I say again.
I think about County being locked and empty, not a single shit-smoking person on the premises, or worse, a bashed window as our entrance, our growing hope of a community with crank on tap, and us running in, giddy, our greeting committee thousands of giggles.
We descend Summit Hill. I grip my pistol, Type his shotgun. There’s more of them. They’re everywhere. They’re standing in the Burger King parking lot and on the sidewalk in front of the dollar store. At least fifty in every shape and size. KK swerves to dodge a three-hundred pounder with tits for days. We go twenty miles per hour until a skinny black Chuck manages to smash his head into the passenger side window, and then we’re gone, KK stomping the fuck out of pedal.
She skids through the intersection of Summit and Seventh. I’m worried about the car flipping and I yell to slow down and she’s biting her bottom lip to the point of blood.
Oh God, Typewriter says.
Seventh is even more crowded. Like practically full of these bobbing and weaving pieces of shit. KK screams and I scream and Type whimpers and it’s that moment when you realize all other options are gone, have been for some time, and you’re unemployable and soon to be homeless and your parents
won’t return your phone calls and you’re short on what you owe the dealer and you’re out of scante and you’ll do whatever it takes to get the next hit—rob a motherfucker, suck a dick. Only one option. Ours is to drive as fast as we can, hoping the Tacoma holds up to flattening a hundred Chucks.