Read The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology Online
Authors: Christopher Golden
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology (11 page)
Copper waves.
I wave at Copper.
I stand behind Copper’s car.
Copper pops the trunk.
Copper is talking about somebody I don’t remember.
Hank.
I don’t remember any ‘Hank’.
Something upsets Copper.
It is Hank.
No, it’s T.
It’s what T and his crew do to Hank that breaks Copper.
‘A cat.’ He shook his head. ‘Who would do that to a cat?’
I lift the bags of groceries out of Copper’s car trunk.
Copper walks ahead of me, old man steps, slow and deliberate.
Copper opens the back door and lets me in.
I’ve been here before.
I can’t remember.
Kitchen, all neat.
Copper sets down his bag of groceries.
Shelves, pantry, cupboards.
All neat, nice.
Copper keeps it nice.
In the kitchen window, a ceramic sign:
WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST THINGS, WINS.
I set the groceries on Copper’s oak table.
I see Copper flinch as he passes the cellar door by the pantry.
What the hell?
Copper doesn’t flinch; here he is, flinching.
I offer to put away the groceries.
Copper nods and motions for me to bring a bag to the pantry.
I offer to pass them to him, it’ll go quicker, just to see what he’ll say.
Copper shakes his head and motions for me to carry the bag to the pantry.
I press the point.
‘Something wrong with that cellar door, Copper?’
Copper shoots me a pained look.
His milky blues go flat, watery.
I press the point.
‘They took Hank downstairs,’ he whispers, and his voice splinters.
I’m sorry.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I found him down there . . .’
Copper sags and sighs, his voice almost inaudible.
‘I don’t go there no more.’
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I look down the hallway, toward the living room.
Copper points to the hallway wall.
‘That quilt, she made it.’
The quilt is hung on the wall, like a tapestry.
‘My Becca made that.’
The quilt is made of a street made of cloth.
The quilt is made of houses made of cloth.
The quilt is the neighborhood.
‘She was quite the quilter,’ Copper sighs.
The quilt is the neighborhood, as it was.
Cloth people are in front of their cloth houses.
Cloth Copper is on his cloth rocker on his cloth front porch.
I touch cloth Copper.
I leave a wet stain on cloth Copper.
‘I better go.’
I look back at the cloth houses and the cloth Copper and the cloth neighborhood.
I look at Copper.
He doesn’t see the stain.
He doesn’t smell me.
I’m sorry.
‘I’m sorry.’
I go.
I have the dream of Mount McKinley.
I screw twenty virgins on my way to the top, crest the ridge with a raging boner.
I find my uniform across the lobby, and my dick is completely exposed.
Damn, it’s fucking cold.
I pop my helmet over my cock, the way I did when there was incoming, but I’m too late. It’s cold on McKinley.
The subzero temps kiss my dick; the wet bead of blood and jizz on the tip deep- freezes into an instant Santa’s cap.
My joint blues and splits with a sudden
snap
, like a log in a splitter.
snap
, like a log in a splitter.
I’m pushing my helmet between my legs to cover my nuts, keep them warm, careful not to hit my bleeding rod, but my nuts are in full retreat, my sac hard and taut and wrinkled like a walnut and my cojones seeking warmth up in my fucking lungs, a height from which they will never drop ever again.
I wake up.
It’s how I wake up every time I sleep the sleep of the dead, which isn’t sleep at all, it’s reruns.
I grope around down there to see if anything’s wet.
Hand to crotch.
Dry as a bone.
Dry reruns.
I am standing by T’s car.
You’d think he could smell me.
Maybe he can; T won’t let me in his car.
I must be getting rank; I can’t tell.
I am outside T’s car.
T is quiet.
It’s the first time I’ve been near T’s car since I came back.
I can’t remember coming back.
T’s just chilling, waiting.
T’s watching Copper, a block away.
I’m not watching Copper.
I am looking down at the sidewalk.
Among the tags on what’s left of the sidewalk, six faded spray-painted letters, now soft as chalk:
RAPIST
Two yellow-orange letters intrude, the colors still vibrant:
TRAPpIST
That’s the best Trapper could muster ten years ago.
T sees me looking at the sidewalk.
T clears his throat.
‘Shit, man, leaving a bigger mark now.’
T won’t look at me.
T glares at the Baker house.
‘You gut something, you leave a mark.’
‘Where’s everyone?’ I ask.
T looks away.
‘I only see you around here.’
T smiles.
‘Me and that old fucker,’ T says.
‘Copper.’
‘That his name?’
‘What about Jeph?’
‘J? Shit. Don’t ask.’
‘I’m asking.’
T puts his long fingers to his face, pinches his eyes.
There’s a ring on every finger.
‘J and C. Shit.’
‘C?’
‘Connie, man. You remember.’
I don’t remember.
T remembers.
‘They got each other through high school and through all kinds of neighborhood shit.’
‘That’s a lot of shit, T.’
‘That shit killed a lot of folks, y’know?’
‘Killed me.’
I remember dying, in the Baker House basement.
I remember the needle, the cold, the slow draining, the cold.
T laughs.
T thinks I’m joking.
T keeps his eyes closed.
‘Jeph just about got to graduation, and Connie was honor roll her freshman and sophomore year. But she was two years younger than Jeph, and her father hated his bones; like, sicko shit, man. Made no sense.’
T’s a talker. Always was.
I let him.
I keep mum.
T leans in close. He stinks of anger.
‘No sooner J turned eighteen to the second than her pop had the state on his ass for statutory rape.’
T pointed to the Baker digs.
‘Right fucking there, man. The cops crashed his birthday party and took him out in handcuffs.’
He shuts up, still working his bile.
‘I remember.’
I do remember.
T, just a kid, crying.
J in the cop car.
Connie crying.
I remember.
‘Turns out her pop had been prepping for this for over a year; had witnesses lined up and everything.’
‘Set up.’
‘The sick fuck joke of it all is Jeph and Connie had never done the deed.’
T glares at the Baker house.
‘She was still a virgin, saving herself for when she turned eighteen and they could marry. That meant they’d done everything but the mission - you name it, anything to bring her pleasure but keep her pure, crazy-ass abstinence-only shit, all short of the deed.’
‘Huh.’
‘She was still cherry, but Connie’s dad got the medical examination barred from testimony. And J got four years in the pen.’
I remember.
‘Connie gave up. She banged every swinging dick in the se nior class and ditched home base before her seventeenth. She was gone baby gone; stopped writing J after he told her what was happening to him after lights out.’
T’s eyes are slits, cold blades.
‘He fought, but Jeph wasn’t packing muscle; he was a skinny kid. Lost it all on his eighteenth birthday, all for loving that bitch and being a stand-up beau.’
‘You?’
‘I’m hard long before Iraq.’
I think, T, you were never there.
I say, ‘Yep.’
‘I’m hard from the second I saw them cram his head down into the backseat of the cruiser. I see that move - man’s hand on his head, pushing him down - every time I thought of what J had to do to survive in the pen.’
T bites something back, spits.
‘That lovey-dovey true- love shit hit the wind forever. Fuck that, fuck family, fuck this whole fucking shit-hole. Jeph believed all that, lived all that, and it got him sucking sap with his ass spread, shooting shit to shut it all out.’
‘You and Uncle Sam?’
‘I fucked every girl I could before the end of my seventeenth year and signed up and off to boot the day of my eighteenth birthday. Nine-eleven was my ticket out.’
T grinned at the Baker digs.
‘Just wish I coulda torched Connie’s home into the fucking cellar before I was on the bus.’
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