by T. L. Bodine
It smells like my dad’s body, before whatever’s left of his consciousness crawled back into it.
I close the door, reeling back and swallowing down a gorge that threatens to rise. It’s utter cruelty that a body that has lost its need for food should still be able to respond to disgust; unfair that my reactions should still be so visceral. Like my body would be happy to turn itself inside out, to purge itself of whatever bits are left inside. Judging from the smell and the remnants of stains in the bathroom, that’s exactly what happened in there.
“Randy?” I call down the last length of hallway as I approach the closed door. This must be Ash and Lilith’s bedroom, and the fact that they gave it over to Randy is surprising and a little concerning. Did they tuck him back here for his comfort, or because they couldn’t get him to move? I think of the scene in the bathroom and swallow and nudge open the door.
Randy is sitting upright in the bed, mostly naked. His clothes are nowhere to be seen, but a good look at him makes me guess they’re in a trash bag somewhere like the stained towels in the bathroom. The blankets have been stripped from the bed, and he’s sitting on some thread-bare sheets, knees pulled up to his chin. He doesn’t look up when I come in, but he lets out a little grunt of acknowledgment.
He looks terrible.
His hair is disheveled, greasy pink strands pointing up at erratic angles. There is a big, dark bruise under one eye, a split down the center of his lip oozing red-black blood. There’s something off-kilter about his posture, something asymmetrical, and I realize that he’s leaning over to one side, hunched over a place where his ribs seem caved in. There’s an old wound there, the gunshot from Felix on that ill-fated night in the park, that’s torn its stitches and gaped open. Something pokes out, yellow-white like old grease in a pan, and I realize that it’s fat oozing out of the wound.
“What the fuck, Randy.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” he says, and he still doesn’t look up at me. “Isn’t that a bitch? I’m all fucked up, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything.”
“What happened to you?”
He shrugs, extending a hand to look at it. The knuckles of his right hand are scraped raw, skin peeled down to visible bone that flashes off-white through crimson gashes. “When I was alive, my dad was always putting me in rehab. I don’t remember if I ever told you that.”
I shake my head, uncertain where he’s going with this.
“It was all bullshit. I wasn’t addicted, not like the people in there. There’s folks who need rehab, but they’re sick with it, y’know? My thing was just that I liked to party. I liked to get fucked up. I’d go to a rave an’ drop some molly and pick fights just ‘cause I could, just ‘cause it felt like somethin’ different.”
I move to sit on the edge of the bed. I want to reach out to him, but I also don’t really want to touch him.
“I was always just too much. Too much fighting, too much drugs, too much sex with boys.”
“Randy,” I say, softly. “Did you get into a fight last night?”
He avoids my gaze, letting his split lower lip puff out petulantly.
I think of the mess in the bathroom, the liquor-scented ichor clinging to the grout. I narrow my eyes. “Did you try to get drunk and get into a fight and get the shit kicked out of you?”
“I used to be able to drink,” he says, almost a whine. “I used to be able to drink an’ even eat, sometimes, when I had some goddamn Lazarus.”
That’s all the confirmation I need. It’s easy enough to fill in the details: Randy finding some bar, stirring up trouble, starting a fight, taking punches, drinking beers. Driving here. Getting sick all over the bathroom. I bury my head in my hands, massaging the sudden throbbing in my temples. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“Ask me no questions,” he says, with forced lightheartedness, and I hold up a hand to stop him because I don’t want to hear it.
“Do they know what you are? Do they know who you are?”
He waves me off, lip curling up as if disgusted with the concern. “It’s fine. Just some rednecks drunker’n I was. Nobody’s gonna come lookin’ for me or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He looks at me, then, and his eyes are dark and cold, as empty as night. “That is all you worry about, isn’t it? Stay under the radar and play it safe. Like staying out of trouble means a damn thing when your life is…when this is all your life is ever gonna be.”
I want to pull him close, to wrap him protectively in my arms. I also want to punch him in the face. I split the difference by doing neither, just stare at the bare mattress with its crumpled old sheets. “You’re lucky Ash even let you in the door.”
“Yeah, well. Lucky.” He slowly unfurls, and it’s there between us again, that invisible partition, something breaking or broken. “Lilith made it real clear I’m not welcome here anymore. I don’t even know why they bothered to call you. What are you gonna do? Come in here an’ make me feel bad? You think anything you say is gonna make me more ashamed than knowing I’m gonna be walking around like a battered housewife forever?”
He’s pointing at the discoloration beneath his eye. It’s not a proper shiner; bodies this dead don’t have the energy for that kind of inflammation. But the blood vessels there are broken, the skin blemished like the smear of dead pixels on a broken plasma TV.
“If you had Lazarus,” I say, tentatively. I don’t know the science, how it works. But I know that the parts of me that he sewed up once, the ragged tears and broken parts left over from my death, kind of almost healed up. The scar on my face is more scar than wound, and it’s got to be the Lazarus responsible for that.
He gives me a sharp look. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we know someone who might be able to help,” I say, disgusted with myself for even suggesting it. “And if it’ll get you to stop…being like this. If it’ll get you back onto an even keel. Then I’ll help you this one time. It’ll make us even.”
He smiles then, light coming into his dead eyes, his split lip gaping wider with his grin. “Davin honey, you’re too good to me.”
“I know.”
Chapter 14
This was a bad idea, and it feels more and more like a mistake the further we get out of town.
I shouldn’t have suggested it. It was a stupid knee-jerk offer, more pity than sense, and now that I’m thinking through the possible implications, I’m regretting it. But then, what have I been trying to build rapport with the camp in the desert for if not something like this?
I’m driving, and Randy’s sitting in the passenger seat, bundled up into some of Ash’s clothes. None of them fit, and he’s sunken down into the shirt like it’s a shawl, burrowing into the flannel. He fiddles with the radio dial for a while, but he catches me looking at his messed-up hand and retreats, pulling back inside himself.
We need to talk about what happened between us. We need to clear the air about what happened last night, that weird dark shadow that passed between us in his car and the choices he made afterward, those bad decisions that cascaded like dominoes into this moment. And maybe we need to talk, too, abut my meeting with Chuy, and the things that have been circling through my mind since. We especially need to talk so I can relieve some of the guilt of driving him further into such a desperate corner, and so I can make room for the anger that’s rising up because how dare he make me feel like this.
We need to talk, but neither of us do.
Inaction is its own kind of choice.
“They might not be there anymore,” I tell him. “So don’t get your hopes up.”
“Where else you figure they’ve run an’ gone? The Ritz?”
That’s not quite what I meant — more like someone might have picked them up by now, more like some wild animal might have made a meal of them — but I don’t want to consider such dark possibilities aloud. They’re bad enough lurking at the back of my mind, but speaking them aloud seems like taunting fate.
Even if the
y are there, I think, I’m not sure whether they’ll even talk to us. Will they have received my offering in the desert? Will they have appreciated it, or been insulted? There’s no way of knowing what kind of reception we’ll get when we arrive. For all I know, the whole crew of them will turn on us like a pack of ravenous wolves. Maybe they’ll tear apart the pickup to get at us. It’s almost impossible to guess.
***
I follow the old oilfield roads, the rabbit trail of gravel peeling off the country highway that breaks off the interstate, navigating my way by touch and muscle memory as much as anything. There’s not exactly much else going on out here, and a plume of smoke rising up from their camp is the final beacon I need to find the place. I pass the place where I left the sleeping bag and tarps and see that they’re missing. I hope that’s a good sign, but maybe the wind just gusted up and carried them somewhere. Maybe a bear roamed through here and dragged them away.
We roll up onto their camp, and I’m honestly expecting to be met with open hostility, as if the Undead are going to come out and circle us with spears or guns or fingers curved into bony talons and gnashing teeth hungry for flesh. Instead, one of the guys — I think he’d said his name was Duncan — meets us with a little half-wave, coming around to the driver’s side as I pull the truck into a sandy patch just off the main path.
“You lost?” he asks, with a bit of a leer.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” I say, stupidly, a feeble attempt at diplomacy.
Duncan’s brow lifts. “Do you think we’re idiots, kid?”
Randy hops down from the passenger side, cradling his wounded side. But he flashes a friendly smile, one I realize uneasily that he inherited. A politician’s smile for a politician’s son. “Don’t mind him, he’s just tryin’ to be polite and failing at every turn.”
Right, of course, as soon as Randy has an audience to perform for, it’s open season on me. I hesitate, thinking I might just stay in the truck, thinking that more and more I don’t want any part of this. But I heave myself out anyway and follow Duncan back up to the main camp. Here I was, thinking I’d be out here brokering peace, negotiating a deal, but Randy’s already smoothly slipped into the role all on his own. Elliot has already come out to investigate, and soon he and Randy have started talking, hitting it off like old friends within minutes of their introduction. Randy starts telling a story about what’s happened to his face. It’s funny, the way he tells it, and I can’t stand the sound of Elliot’s laughter so I pull away from the two of them to hide my irritation.
Of course it’s like that. It was like that with my dad for a long time, too: The people who knew him least were the ones who liked him best. The only reward for getting close to him was feeling the radiant heat of his own self-loathing, that bitter black star at the heart of his universe.
“Where’s Julian?” I ask, realizing I can’t see him anywhere.
“He’s over there.” Duncan points at a makeshift tent, little more than a tarp drawn over a few rocks for shade. “He’s not in great shape.”
The women are nowhere to be found, either, but I do see the kid sitting over by some rocks, the stuffed roadrunner cliched in his hands. That makes me smile.
“We got your stuff. That was nice of you. Sorry we weren’t so friendly last time.”
“It’s okay. I wasn’t really expecting you to be.”
I realize that Duncan is beating a path toward the tent where Julian is resting, and I follow him. He gestures to a wide, flat rock and takes a seat on another similar one. It looks like somebody dragged these out here on purpose, some attempt at assembling a sort of furniture. I think of the city carved into the stone face of the mesa, that ancient pueblo with its rock paintings and its many-roomed living space and wonder how long it would take to build something like that from scratch, whether a civilization living out in the desert would somehow stumble into making something similar on accident if they were left alone long enough.
“It’s mostly just that Elliot gets real protective of Gail. She’s…you know. Special.”
I raise a questioning brow.
“I guess she wasn’t always. I don’t know, I haven’t known these guys all that long, but I guess those two go way back. And she used to be, you know, normal. Well. I mean. Normal, in an Undead way.”
“Then she went loco,” I say. “After taking Lazarus.”
“Yeah.”
“But she can…get along okay?”
“She’s not…really safe around Breathers, if you know what I mean? And kind of rough around strangers in general. But, I mean…family, right? What can you do.”
What can you do, indeed.
It’s just a thing that happens sometimes, Chuy had said, and now that I’ve seen it twice, in the flesh rather than on the news, I don’t know what to think at all.
“It’s that place,” Julian says, and the sudden sound of his rasping voice makes me jump. I had thought he was asleep; he’s so still and quiet under his tarp.
“What?”
“It’s that place. They…do things….to you there.”
He’s interrupted by a coughing fit, and I get up from my spot on the rocks and crouch down next to him. Eyes roll, loose in their sockets, to fix me with a cool gaze. He’d been in rough shape when I saw him before, but that’s nothing compared to the withered mummy he is now. He’s eyeballing me now with deep suspicion, like he’s expecting me to grab him, but he doesn’t flinch.
“I won’t go back,” Julian says when he recovers, shaking his head. “I won’t. I don’t care.”
“Go back to what?” I ask, carefully. “The Lazarus House?”
A small nod, almost imperceptible.
I bark out a laugh, squatting down next to him. “Oh, Jesus, no, I’m not…we’re not here about that. I’m not going to rat you out. Why would I?”
A shrug, small but deliberate, as if the movement causes him great pain. It probably does. “Good. I won’t let you.”
I stare in disbelief. Those are bold words coming from a guy who looks like this — a guy who’s falling apart, like some kind of scarecrow left to rot and molder in the damp. Like his guts are stuffed with leaves that go black and slimy with decay, spilling out and leaking down a tattered pants leg. He looks like a thing forgotten, and it’s incomprehensible to me that there’d be something out there he’d find even worse than this.
“Tell me,” I say, and the disbelief has shifted its weight to let the uneasiness start to bubble through. “What exactly happens in there?”
Does it matter? A nasty voice at the back of my mind asks. Do you really care what they’re doing to him there?
Davin please they’re hurting me they’re doing terrible things please.
If it mattered so much, I think, wouldn’t you have done something? Wouldn’t you have at least bothered to answer your phone? If you really believe that they’re doing something evil, why did you give even a second of thought to working there? Why are you still thinking about it?
“What do you think they’re doing there, kid?” Julian rasps, and there’s open derision in his voice. “What do you tell yourself it’s there to do? Can’t treat ‘em. There’s no cure for being dead. No light of recovery at the end of that tunnel.” He looks away, averting his eyes toward the horizon, and for a second I think that’s it, that’s all he’s going to say, no way to get him to open up and spill out any more. But then he continues, talking as if to himself, not clear if he even knows I’m listening or if he cares that I am. “No, you don’t talk people there to get better. You take ‘em there to forget about them, to let them rot away from everyone else, where they can’t bother anyone with the stench. So what do you care what happens to someone you’ve already thrown away?”
“I didn’t throw him away,” I reply, sulky. I don’t know why I’m rising to the bait. “It’s hard. People have the right to walk away from things when they’re that hard. They have a right to save themselves.”
Do I really believe that?
Julian ignores me. “You don’t care. That’s the thing they count on. You don’t care, and nobody else does either. That’s how they get away with it.”
“With what?” I ask, and grimace at the pleading in my voice. “Get away with what?”
He shrugs, vaguely, and then starts coughing, a long coughing fit that dredges up some slimy dark ichor from his chest; lumpy gobs of it dribble over his chin. “They call it the Lazarus House,” he says, finally, wiping his mouth on the back of a hand. “Do I look like I’ve been taking Lazarus, to you?”
“They’re withholding Lazarus?”
“For some of us, sure. We’re better off than…the others. That group doesn’t stop screaming.”
My dad’s words echo in my ears again, and a deep, terrible feeling of cold settles down in my gut.
“They keep them locked up. I’ve never seen them. I could just hear them. The screaming. The growling. It sounds like a dog pound, the way they howl. I don’t know what they’re doing to them, but I know it’s worse than what they did to me.” He holds out a shaking hand, the skin blackening and twisted across bony fingers. “And that’s saying something.”
“That other group. People…people like Gail?”
He nods. “Yeah. Inside. There’s…different groups. Some get treated real nice. They let them wander around, go wherever they want. Some just get locked up in rooms to rot. But there’s some of us who got picked for their…special project. Said they’d send money to our families if we participated. Don’t bother telling you what it is they’re really doing.”
“They’re experimenting.” It’s all, very suddenly, horrifyingly, starting to come together. “That’s what you’re saying. They’re doing experiments to see…what happens if you go off Lazarus, or if you take too much, or try some other formula — something like that?”