by Bryan Way
“Dude, it’s not like I’m buying him dinner… I don’t care about Herman…”
“Stop calling him that!”
“What does it matter if I call him Herman or turtleneck?” I insist.
“…do you feel bad for him?”
“You know… Christ, I’ll take care of it.”
Anderson mumbles something behind me as I walk past him into the group of six. Their arms come up when I unsheathe my katana, their tired old bodies following their fingertips toward me. Three women, two men, and one I can’t tell the sex. In a fit of pique, I take a wild swipe at the first one and send his head tumbling to the ground with the usual gurgle of blood from the severed neck. Herman’s next, but I don’t get a perfect slice and his head ends up flopping back over the nape of his neck. Sorry Herman.
‘It’ is next, and I screw up again, leaving the head dangling on the thick skin at the base of its skull. Three slices later and I’m left with the sound of clicking teeth as the severed heads uselessly bite at the air. When I turn back, Anderson and Jake are already on their way over. I walk over to the car blocking the closest library entrance to retrieve three crowbars and a tarp from the trunk as Anderson and Jake beat the decapitated skulls into oblivion. An hour later, our pool party has six more guests. Fortunately, the overpowering odor of chlorine abates the stench of brackish corpses.
Once Anderson affirms AlCon zero, which is a complex way of telling everyone to resume normal activity, I treat myself to some potato chips and iced tea back in my room, stopping to pick up the comfy leather wheeled chair in the guidance counselor’s office I noticed a few weeks back. Seated in this chair in my new room, I decide to put on Pink Floyd’s Animals, an album I’ve always used to inspire work. When I look back at the stacks of paper piled on the floor, I can’t think of how to get started.
After twenty minutes of feeling frustrated and annoyed at my lack of motivation, I wonder if this mounting irritation points to a psychological problem when it dawns on me that we have a shrink. I went to a psychologist once when I was doing poorly in high school, and though I remember feeling defensive at first, once he and I got to talking I actually felt a lot better. Maybe an afternoon of feeling pissed for no reason won’t be good enough for a psychologist, but if nothing else, it’ll give me a chance to let Althea practice her craft. If I formed my opinion of her correctly, that’ll be the best way to get her to open up.
How does one even approach the idea of asking another person in the group for mental guidance? Is it not an inherent sign of weakness, or am I stronger for admitting that I need help? I pull at my hair as I think of ways to approach Althea, but I eventually decide to start a casual conversation and drop hints, causing the mechanisms instilled by her education to kick in. Maybe she’ll start helping me without even knowing it.
It occurs to me that I’ve made this decision while walking toward the spot where I expect her to be; she goes to bed in the evenings and prefers to ‘work’ alone, often slinking to the computer lab in the first floor technology wing. With all the computers available in the school, it seems strange that she’d hole up in a room with only one door and no windows. Sure enough, I walk through the doorway and find her typing away. As I knock on the door frame, she kicks back her shoulder length blonde hair with a jerk of her head and matches her blue eyes to mine, smiling. “Hey…” She says softly, looking down at her keyboard.
“Hey… you seen Karen?”
“I… think she’s with Rob…”
“Ah, gotcha… she ever call you in for a consultation?”
“No…” Her laugh is affable, yet detached. “But I’ve talked to him.”
“He officially a psycho?”
“Hah… uh…”
“I’m kidding…” I mutter. “What are you working on?”
“Editing my thesis.”
I’m struck by the notion that this means she still believes she can achieve a degree. To this moment, Karen, Anderson, Mursak, and Rich have all agreed with my assessment that this will not end, and I suspect Melody feels the same way, but I dare not broach the subject with anyone else. I stroll over to an adjacent chair and have a seat.
“What’s it about?” I ask.
“It’s… uh… complicated…”
“Oh… is it… going well?”
“I think so…”
I’m already out of conversation topics. “How are you doing?” She asks, keeping her eyes trained on the screen.
“Good, I guess… rough day.”
“Wanna tell me about it?”
“Sure… uh…” Before I can continue, I realize the jig is up. She knows why I’m here. “…I dunno, I feel… aggravated.”
“Any thoughts on why?”
“I don’t want to keep you here all day…”
She pushes away from the screen to face me.
“Just start wherever you’re comfortable.”
“Well… I’m still thinking about Jules-y’know, I’ve been to a therapist before, and I know the stages of grief… I think anyone’d tell you I’ve been through them all.”
“The Kübler-Ross model? Some people have different experiences of it… but everyone ends with acceptance.” Althea says firmly.
“Ahh… I see what you did there…”
“…but I sense that’s not what’s troubling you.”
“…very perceptive.”
“Do you know what is?” She asks.
“Well… I just got my cell phone back today…”
“Yeah, Rich told me about that…”
“Christ, did he get a megaphone…?”
“I’m sorry…” She waves her arms. “I don’t want to complicate that… please continue. Your cell phone.”
It takes a second for me to push the anger down.
“I just talked to my mom…”
“Was that hard for you?”
“No… well… I dunno, I guess it’s just sort of frustrating… I mean, but that’s mostly my fault…”
“Why’s that?”
“I, uh… she doesn’t know my brother Dave is dead.” I reply.
“Oh… I’m sorry… when did that happen?”
“A… few weeks ago?”
“Are you planning to tell her?”
“Well… I just don’t see the point… you know they’re on vacation, right?”
“Yeah, Karen mentioned it.” Althea mutters.
“So I don’t know what good it’ll do her…”
“What happens when they come back?”
Althea absolutely believes this is going to end. I’m content to let her believe that as long as she needs to.
“I dunno… I… I made it worse… Dave lives in Penn State, and… a mutual friend has his cell phone. When I talk to him, I ask him to send her text messages. She thinks Dave’s receiver is broken.”
“Hmm… you think we might be getting away from the point?”
“…I’m sorry?” I ask.
“I know this situation with your mom is… difficult. What about the situation with your brother?”
“…what about it?”
“Does something else about it upset you?”
When I inadvertently glance at the door, she immediately gets up to close it. As she turns back, I realize that her pasty skin, white-blonde hair, piercing eyes, and lean figure give me the impression of a German spy in the 1940s. She must look like some actress I’m forgetting.
“So… what upsets you?”
“…the fact that my brother is dead?”
“Jeff… I know you’re smart enough to see what I’m asking.”
Is this how shrinks talk?
“Well… I guess I sometimes think about… us as kids… playing, you know… going to school. Christmas…”
“Did you think of him as vulnerable?” She asks.
“…yes.”
“What could you have done?”
“I could’ve… called him…”
“Why didn’t you?”
�
��I was just… so focused on us…”
“Julia?” Althea asks.
“…yes.”
“Why?”
“I love her.”
“Do you love your brother?”
“Of course…” I insist. “But I was in love with her.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hold up a sec, Althea…”
“Jeff, call me Ally, please.”
“Ally… I already know I put a higher value on romantic attachments than I do familial ones.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the affection I get from others is an affirmation of my self-worth. I feel like I need it because I felt undesirable to the opposite sex for so long.”
“You really have been through therapy…”
We both laugh.
“So…” She continues. “If you had called your brother, what would you have said?”
“Depends on when I would’ve talked to him. I asked my mom to tell him to go west… before I thought it spread to Penn State. But he stayed… so did my other friends… a couple days later he was dead.”
“So if you’d spoken to him after he decided to stay… what would you have said?”
“He needed to find everyone else in the building, round up supplies, get off the first floor…” I pause to think it through. “If they were already inside, he needed to get to Alan and Jack…”
“Jeff, could you have guaranteed his safety?”
“No…”
“What could you have done?”
“Nothing.”
“Does this bear any relationship to what happened to Julia?”
“I… I don’t think so…”
“What happened to her?”
“We knocked a door in… and there was a Zombie on the other side… he, uh… had a scalpel… cut her.”
“Was there any way to know that was going to happen?”
“No?” I reply.
“You sound unsure.”
“There were… mattresses pushed against the door…”
“So it made sense that someone would be on the other side?”
“Of course, or we wouldn’t have opened it…”
“Could you have anticipated what happened next?”
“Of course not.” I state.
“So what could you have done?”
I see the game here. A swell of irritation boils up inside me as I sense a moment of epiphany that should have come from me, not her. A few seconds later, this feeling washes away.
“Nothing…”
“And John Johnston?”
“I… how did you know about that?”
“Your friends told me.”
“I could’ve… nothing.”
“Having acknowledged that… how do you feel about it?”
“Empty.”
“Have you ever heard of survivor’s guilt?”
“I think so…?”
“You’re alive, Jeff… and this problem claimed the lives of two people you cared about. Would you switch places with them?”
“…yes.”
I’m too ashamed to admit I wouldn’t switch places with Dave.
“Sometimes we encounter situations we can’t comprehend… they don’t make sense. You don’t have any answers. And when you can’t divine any, it’s easy to place the blame where it doesn’t belong. Counterintuitively, the people who blame themselves have the shortest path to recovery… provided they get proper treatment.”
“So… I blame myself for what happened to them?”
“Did you really doubt that?”
“No… I guess I didn’t.”
We sit silently. After a moment, she sits back in her chair.
“So… do you feel any different now?”
“Not… really… I mean… if there’s nothing I could do…”
“Ever heard about the Zen master who had a college professor ask him about Buddhist enlightenment?”
“I think I missed that one on the men’s room wall.”
“The Zen master pours him tea, but doesn’t stop when the cup is full. By the time it’s overflowing off the table, the professor tells him to stop. The Zen master says ‘Like this cup, you are full of opinions and speculations… I cannot show you Zen until you empty your cup.’”
“Wow.”
“I don’t want to overload you… if there’s something else you’d like to talk about, we can do it another time… after you’ve had a while to think.”
“Ally… thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
I shake her hand and walk out of the room, feeling as though her anecdote was the push off a ledge I’d been sitting on for too long. Delivered as a cumulative punch after everything before it, she might be the fastest working shrink in the business. Feeling lost in the hallways I know only too well, I continue through the doors and up the steps toward 218, but as soon as I set foot in the second floor hallway, I hear two voices in distress.
It only takes me a few more steps to pinpoint the source: Rob is howling away in the new nurse’s station, or medlab. Reasoning that human repairs were best left to a location with a safe escape route on the second floor, all the supplies in the nurse’s office were moved within two rooms of the keep so the population would be close and still avoid listening to Rob’s tantrums. This one sounds like a whopper.
Rob’s voice cuts out moments before Karen comes bounding through the door; once she spots me, she immediately turns away. “Karen…” I jog over and she keeps her back pointed at me while Rob’s diffused wails continue through the closed door. I put my hand on Karen’s shoulder and she shudders. “It’s nothin’…” It’s something. I finally get her to turn around, but she attempts to hide the right side of her face.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothin’…”
“Karen!”
My tone shocks her enough to face me and reveal a blushing red swatch on her right cheek. “Look, he asked for a candy bar… when I got it, he wanted a cigarette… I said no, and he just… he went crazy…” I pull her skinny shoulders into my chest for a hug. After a moment, I release her, sensing that she’s more irritated than upset.
“He’s fine now…”
“He doesn’t sound fine.”
“Jeff, I can handle it!”
I step away. “Did he threaten you?” I ask, and she can only respond with a scoff. I nod and reach for the handle.
“Jeff, no…”
“He hit you… he needs to know that’s not okay.”
“Stop…” Karen starts. “I told you, he’s got PAWS…”
“…doesn’t mean he’s allowed to hit you!”
“We don’t have a lot of trazodone, but it’s been effective…”
“Hasn’t he wasted enough of our shit?” I ask.
“We’re not gonna be usin’ trazodone…”
“I don’t care! What’s to stop him tryin’ to kill you?”
“…fear.” She admits.
“Is he afraid of me?”
She says nothing.
“Karen, is he-”
“I heard you.”
“Well?”
Her silence says enough. I turn the handle and she plops her hand on my wrist. “Karen. I won’t hurt him.” Karen releases my arm out of either exhaustion or indifference, letting me enter the room undisturbed. Rob, bound to one of the old examination beds from the nurse’s station, instantly clams up. He tries to wriggle away as the blood surges through my veins, burying his head in the pillow and whining when I get close. Saliva bubbles up at his lips when I slap my hand on his wrist and pull it toward me.
“I don’t care what you’re on. If you touch Karen again, I’m gonna tie you up, cut you, and leave you in the middle of the road.”
“Hrrrmmm…”
“LOOK AT ME!”
Rob has a hard time making eye contact. “I know what you did in the community center, before you tried to shoot me. That’s two strikes. One more… I knock you o
ut and you don’t wake up until they’re taking pieces out of you. Do you understand me?” He blinks the tears out of his eyes, nods, and I let go of his wrist. He recoils like a worn slinky as I make my way to the door.
I open it to find Karen clutching her walkie. “Let me know if he does it again.” Karen nods, stepping back into the doorway. As I head down the hallway again, Melody exits 218, smiling at me as she heads to the bathroom. The idea of going to my room doesn’t seem as inviting as it did previously, so I head to the caf. Once there, I find Anderson and Helen digging in to pre-packaged meat, cheese, crackers, and drinks.
“What’s the occasion?” I ask. This question has become standard when we’re eating anything other than stew. Anderson hands me the box with the edge pointing out, making sure I don’t miss that the expiration for this particular batch was yesterday. Obligingly, I go get myself one so they don’t go to waste. Once Melody enters and receives the education I just did, she gets one for herself and rejoins the group. “I used to think the kids that had these were so lame…”
She’s met with silence, but I subtly nod in agreement; does bringing lunch anywhere ever stop being embarrassing to some degree? It’s like keeping plastic bags under the sink or rationalizing buying something because it’s on sale. “How many we got left?” Anderson holds up his hands to signify nine with his fingers. I nod again and dig in. “I don’t care if it’s lame, I’m gonna miss ‘em.”
“Why’d you have to say that?” Helen asks. She pierces me with her glare, but after talking to Ally, I don’t feel particularly submissive, so I drill her with a return stare. In moments like this, I can’t understand what Anderson sees in this girl beyond what’s between her legs. She finally returns her eyes to her food in a manner so casual I don’t feel as though I’ve won the staring contest. That this disappoints me is depressing beyond words. “How’d you guys make out?” Melody asks, attempting to curtail the silence. I wonder if it was a double entendre.