by Ivan Turner
Toby didn’t like to hear that, but he didn’t argue.
“Then get some help and search around for Leron.” Without waiting for an answer, Marcus put his phone away, hit the stairs, and went for the back entrance. It was cold and dark outside and he hated checking in new zombies. When he reached the pen, he was surprised to see Luthor and Worm, but no Lodi. They had two zombies with them, as Toby had said. The first was a kid, no older than twelve. He looked pretty unblemished and he kicked like a mule. He was a good catch. The other was an older guy, probably somewhere in his fifties. He was in pretty good shape. A leftover hippy from the sixties or seventies, he wore his white hair in a long pony tail. A lot of the strands had come out, but the rubber band had held. There was a vicious tear in the leg of his jeans and the whole thing was stained dark brown.
Then another figure detached itself from the group. He was cold and he was angry. It was Shawn.
“It’s just us,” Luthor said noticing the look on Marcus’ face. He jerked a finger at Shawn. “He said Lodi got eaten and Everett took off. We never saw the other two. But Worm and me caught these two zombies on our own.”
“I don’t want your money,” Shawn hissed, his eyes never leaving Marcus.
And Marcus’ eyes never left Shawn. “Vito, pen these zombies up and pay Luthor and Worm, please.”
Vito, a tall and wiry guy with slick dark hair and glasses, pulled the zombies away from the hunters and marched them toward the pen. Luthor and Worm followed leaving Marcus and Shawn to stand together in the cold. They stared at each other, eyes alight, smoke pluming from their nostrils. Each grew ever more furious by the moment.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Marcus asked in a hoarse whisper.
At the moment, Shawn had nothing to say. When they’d parted that morning, one of the most pervasive thoughts on his mind had been how he could explain what he wanted to do. How would he make Marcus understand that he needed to face up to the fear and revulsion? But now it was Marcus who had to explain. When Lodi had told him who was responsible for the hunt, Shawn hadn’t really believed him. Not really. But there was someone responsible and he was determined to make that someone pay. He’d left Angus with murderous thoughts on his mind. It was just blind luck that he’d stumbled upon Luthor and Worm. Though clearly worried about having to split the money with him, they hadn’t said anything about him tagging along to the fights.
“You shouldn’t have been there,” Marcus said. “I told you to stay out of it.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Shawn answered, his voice surprisingly even.
“What?”
“I don’t have to answer to you. I’m not your bitch.” He used Lodi’s word, the word that had set him off.
Marcus softened, moved toward him. “Shawn…”
But Shawn took a step back. “Don’t touch me. Do you have any idea what you’re doing? There’s a plague out there and after what I’ve seen tonight, I can tell you that we are losing to it. Civilization is hanging over the edge and you’re out here making money off of it.”
Marcus shook his head. It was as he expected. Shawn’s trauma and fear had consumed him. He was just sitting on a tree stump, waiting for the apocalypse. “The world is not coming to an end, Shawn.”
“There were dozens of them, Marcus. Enough to fill your fights for weeks.” He saw the sparkle in Marcus’ eyes and it made him sick. “So all you care about is the money? Forget about the people and world?”
“You’re overreacting. We’re not making zombies and we’re not sending infected people back onto the streets. And, yes, we’re making lots and lots of money.”
“You have to shut it down,” Shawn said. “You can’t do this. I can’t live with this…”
Marcus shook his head, looked away. “Shawn, it’s not your decision. I’m not shutting it down.” He was ashamed of the way Shawn was making him feel.
“It is my decision, Marcus.”
When Marcus looked up, Shawn was pointing a gun at him. It was Lodi’s gun. Strangely enough, he wasn’t afraid. “And if you shoot me, Shawn? Do you think this will stop?”
Shawn shook his head. “You’ll stop,” he said quietly. “Then I can love you again.”
Marcus laughed out loud. “You think you’ll be able to love me again? Will you just pretend you never saw this?”
“Please, Marcus. I…you…”
Marcus leaned in. “I did this for us, Shawn. Do you have any idea how much money I’m making? Forget about pissing off your dad. I can send you to college.”
Shawn didn’t care about the money. He only cared about Marcus. Throughout everything, Marcus had been constant in his life. He’d loved him the same even when his parents had doubted him. After everything the zombies had taken from Shawn, he had clung to knowledge that Marcus was good and their relationship pure. But now the zombies had robbed him of Marcus as well. They’d taken him as surely as if he had gotten the infection and turned. He was not the man Shawn had thought he was. He was just this disgusting, profiteering bastard.
And now what was left of Shawn Rudd. He was without confidence and without friends. He was without love and without a will of his own. Perhaps murderer was the identity that suited him best. Perhaps his mother was right. So he fired the gun, his arms kicking upward and the bullet sailing well to the left and over Marcus’ head.
Marcus was surprised, but recovered quickly. He rushed Shawn and grabbed him around the waist and by the wrist. The two tumbled into the dirt. Screaming, Shawn tried to bring his gun hand forward, but Marcus bent it backwards, banging it against the ground. Marcus was stronger, but not by much. They grappled there, neither gaining any ground. Throughout the struggle, Shawn was shouting, I’ll kill you over and over again. Finally, Marcus managed to make him drop the gun. It cracked against a rock and skidded away from them.
“Please,” Marcus was saying. “Please, Shawn.” He shifted his balance to the balls of his feet and managed to lift Shawn upward and into his arms. For a moment, the boy relaxed and Marcus thought he was going to return the embrace. But it was a ploy. Loosening his muscles, Shawn was able to gain some wiggle room. He shoved Marcus away and sprang to his feet. Marcus tried to approach but Shawn feinted and punched him in the stomach. Infuriated, Marcus shoved ducked the next strike and landed a solid blow to Shawn’s face. The boy reeled and Marcus hit him again.
“You’ll listen to me!” Marcus shouted. “You dumb ass kid, you’d better listen!”
Shawn made a show of being hurt, then wheeled and caught Marcus under the jaw with his fist. Stumbling back, Marcus tripped and fell backward to the ground. Instead of continuing the fight, Shawn went for the gun. He was in a frenzy now. He grabbed up the weapon and pulled it forward. Growling like an animal, Marcus spun around and drew his own gun. At that moment, everything froze. There was no more façade between them. They were two men pointing guns at each other and they were each well aware that neither of them was bluffing.
“I love you, Shawn,” Marcus said, though his tone had a hard edge to it. “Put the gun down. We’ll work it out.”
For a moment, Shawn’s eyes glazed over, as if he was going to cry. Then they cleared again. “You’re right, I can’t love you. Not after this. Now that I know what you are…God, I was so stupid.”
Marcus breathed. “Let’s go home, Shawn. Let’s go home and we can work this out.”
Now Shawn laughed. “Yes. Let’s work it out. It’ll be okay and we can go back to playing your X-Box and eating Chinese food.” He fired the gun again. This shot was better placed, Shawn having learned from his first attempt. The bullet grazed Marcus’s shoulder.
“Son of a bitch!” Marcus cried out and fired his own gun. Unfortunately for Shawn, he was a much better shot.
***
At about 11:36 pm, Culph had been in the bar for an hour and a half. He was halfway through is first beer, not in any mood to get drunk, and staring at his cell phone. The phone sat on the bar, inches from a pu
ddle of condensation. He'd placed it there when he'd come in, knowing he wanted to make the call but afraid to all the same. There was a woman at the bar and she'd been looking at him, but he was afraid to talk to her. Nowadays, he was afraid of a lot of things. Oddly enough, zombies were pretty low on the list. That very morning, he'd gone head first into a den full of the things and had barely felt anything akin to fear. At least not of the zombies. They were nothing to him. They were slow and weak and smelly and ugly. Putting them down was easy, because they weren't even people anymore. And that was the first thing that scared him. He didn't see people when he saw the zombies. He saw monsters. Sure enough, there was nothing left of the people they had once been. It didn't matter what those Zombie Rights nuts preached. Zombies were dangerous. They were plague rats. But they had been people. At some point, they'd been living, breathing people. They were fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. They were loved by other people or completely unloved, hermits living in their parents' basements. Either way they'd each been a unique individual.
He'd forgotten that this morning. He'd forgotten it while firing at the throng rushing down the corridor at him. He'd forgotten that while shooting and beating the woman who'd been in the room with the children. He'd forgotten that while fighting off the children themselves. And he'd especially forgotten it when he'd shot the poor boy who hadn't even died yet.
Drinking down half of what was left of his beer, Culph slammed the stein down on the bar and grabbed his phone. Before he could think about what he was doing, he scrolled through his contacts and pushed the connect button.
After two rings, she picked up, but she didn't say anything.
"Rose?" he asked.
Still silence.
"Rose, please," he said into the phone and actually felt his eyes water up.
"Were you there?" she asked him.
"What? Where?"
"At that church this morning. In Queens?"
"Yeah," he whispered, shuddering. "I was there."
"Is that why you're calling?"
"I miss you, Rose. I'm sorry."
"There were a lot of them, weren't there. The zombies. Were there enough for you?"
"Please, Rose."
Her voice took on a honed edge. "Did it drain all of the fight out of you, Frank? Did it steal the power from you?"
"Rose, I didn't call because of that." But he had. And they both knew it.
"I'm sorry, too, Frank. I really did want to love you."
Culph didn't know what to say. Then he heard a throat clearing in the background, and a question being asked. It was a man's voice.
"Who's that?" Now Culph’s tone sharpened.
She hesitated, then took a steadying breath and said, "That's none of your business. It's over between us."
"You didn't even give me a chance!" he screamed into the phone.
"You threw that chance away when you hit me, Frank."
"God, Rose, I didn’t mean to. I just…the lines get so blurred that I forget where I am. I just…I…"
"I know, Frank. I know. I'm not really angry now but I know that I can't love you anymore. I'm sorry, Frank. I'm so sorry…" She began to cry and he didn't know what to do. He was so overcome with sorrow and guilt and anger that he just hung up the phone and put it into his pocket. Every instinct told him to go over to her house, beat the crap out of whoever that bastard was that was screwing her, and take her back. But he knew that none of those things could happen. He needed to put Rose behind him and become a better, stronger person so he wouldn't make the same mistakes next time.
"You okay?"
He looked up at the woman, two stools away, drinking something from a martini class. She was older than he was, probably pushing forty and well used, but still pretty. She kept herself in good shape. Clearly she was unattached and looking for just the right man to rescue her. Culph chuckled to himself. She was looking in the wrong place.
"Did I say something funny?" she asked.
"No," he answered, shaking the mirth from his face.
"I'm Wilma," she introduced, extending a hand.
"Really?" he asked. "Like the Flintstones."
A look of mild offense crossed her face, but she quelled it quickly enough. She didn't want to blow this. Did he?
"Francis," he said, taking her hand. "Most people call me Frank."
"Nice to meet you, Frank."
"I wouldn't jump to conclusions," he chuckled.
She waved him away. "Don't be silly. When something bad happens to people, they always look down on themselves. I've been through my share."
He grunted, finishing his beer.
"What do you do, Frank?"
"I'm a cop," he said. "You?"
She ignored his question. "A cop, huh? Out here in Manhattan?"
He shrugged. "I get around."
"Ha ha," she laughed. "Me, too."
They spoke for a while but Culph didn't learn very much about her. She, on the other hand, was very good at getting him to open up about himself. He told her about his childhood and about Heron and how he felt about him, which was borderline father figure and borderline oppressive teacher. He told her about Rose. The only secret he kept guarded was his job on the police force. He didn't know why he wouldn't tell her but every time the word zombie crept up his throat, he swallowed it down aggressively. When she invited him back to her place for "a little privacy", he refused. He was sure that the last thing he needed was female companionship. But she was persistent. She read him very well, playing on his need to protect someone. She complained about her neighborhood and her neighbors and her ex-boyfriend who popped in every once in a while and needed someone to show him the door. She said absolutely everything a woman could say to entice Francis Culph. There was no way he wasn't eventually going to be hooked.
Wilma lived only a few blocks from the bar. They walked there arm in arm, their breath making small plumes of steam in the crisp November air. The weatherman had called for light snow overnight but nothing had developed yet. They talked some more but just small talk. She was done pressing him and he was done pressing her. She snuggled against him, using every trick she knew to make him feel comfortable, as if this was their fiftieth date instead of their first meeting. And he bought every line she threw at him partly because he was as naïve as he was brash and partly because he found himself more and more wanting to lose himself in the fantasy.
She lived on the fifth floor of a five floor walk-up. The neighborhood wasn't so bad. The building was narrow, sandwiched between a hotel and a restaurant. On the first floor, Culph could hear opera music playing. On the second floor, he smelled the remnants of Polish cooking. His mom was Polish. She could cook. On the third floor, the light bulb was out and they were engulfed in darkness. She gripped him tightly and he stopped right there and kissed her. It was an instinct and she went with it, elated. On the fourth floor, they giggled because someone had left their wet shoes in the hallway and the puddle had flowed away making it look as if the shoes had peed. On the fifth floor, Wilma was home.
They went into the apartment smiling, Culph's tension having eased. Like the building, Wilma's apartment was narrow. They walked into the living room, which looked out over a kitchenette. Toward the back was a bedroom and through the bedroom was a bathroom. And that was it. The TV was old but the couch was comfortable. There were cheap IKEA shelves mounted badly all over the living room and they all held porcelain kittens. Culph wondered why all of the dirtiest women insisted on filling their apartments with the cutesiest knick knacks. It probably had something to do with her father. He was sure some psychiatrist had worked it out ages ago. But those were dark thoughts and he wanted nothing to do with dark thoughts tonight. Whatever her motives, Wilma had put him at ease and he was glad of her company.