While waiting for Uma and Tuma to go to bed so that she could sneak out, Micah looked up facts about stamps posted on the Yale website. They didn’t talk much about Sombra C at the dinner table, as Uma liked to focus all of her energy on the positive. The older Micah got, the more she realized how timid Uma was. To not be able to even speak of certain things! She was so afraid of darkness that her only means of coping was to block it out. Tuma had lost clients to Sombra C in July, but she did not mention it at dinner in order to keep Uma happy. The news rarely played in their home.
The stamps were made of semi-permanent ink that could not be washed away. It was illegal to tamper with them. Students who scored between one and nine percent had to undergo blood tests twice a month to ensure that their number remained stable. From ten to nineteen percent, it was every week, and for twenty to twenty-nine percent, it was twice a week. A fourth Yale student was holding steady at 31%, but he was not allowed back on campus. Shalom heard that he was planning to sue.
When her parents finally retired, Micah pulled out dark clothing and changed from her pajamas. She stuffed a pillow under her blanket and slipped from her window to the grass. Harbo was waiting, having dragged the leash to the gate and eager to go. He was a smart dog. Then they were off into the dark. There was no plan for the night, so they walked and walked in random directions. Homeless people were bunked down behind the library, dark shapes under blankets beside the tall windows. A cat hissed at Harbo and vanished under a parked car in a driveway. At Cornie’s Bar was the ever-present Feemer, and Richard Bowdon getting smashed somewhere inside. Micah walked by the windows twice, wondering which head in the dark of the bar was his. Then she moved deep into a residential area, following curbs looping around cul-de-sacs and cutting through a park.
Diagonally across the street from the park was a driveway full of light. Men were inside the open garage on scattered chairs, their voices shocking in loudness when every house she had passed until now was silent. Beer bottles were under chairs and in hands. Micah and Harbo listened to the crash and boom of excited voices, the men speaking of Sombra C and zombies and street names.
Shepherds. One said it with a hand gesture to include all of the men in the garage. Most were heavy and middle-aged, with thinning hair and stained T-shirts. They were a Shepherd squad for Cloudy Valley when there hadn’t been a single incident of it in the city! Micah thought that was dumb. The most exciting event locally was the destruction of campaign signs in yards. If they wanted something to do so badly, they should hunt around for the person destroying signs. But that wasn’t as fun as zombie hunting.
The man who gestured said, “They think we don’t know! They think we don’t know there’s a confinement point right over there in Blue Hill! Why else do they have guards for that rehabilitation center? How many breakouts have there been from those places?”
“Yeah!” the men chorused. Micah had had no idea there was a confinement point in Blue Hill. She wondered if that was even true, or if these guys were just drunk and delusional.
“Why are they protecting zombies when they should be protecting us?”
“Yeah!”
“Put them down! Put those zombies out of their misery!”
“Yeah!”
“Since they won’t do their job, we’ve got to do it for them! We’ve got to watch these streets since no one else is! Is this going to be like Miller? Pensacola? Durbin? Madison? Are we going to allow that to happen here?”
“No!”
“Zyllevir doesn’t fix ‘em! You know what Zyllevir does? It lets them live. It lets them keep passing on their filthy infection! You want them shopping next to your wife in the store, those taking Zyllevir? You want them leaving their germs on the merry-go-round at the park where your kids play? What if it stops keeping the virus from growing? They are stamping and releasing these people with Zyllevir, presuming that it will keep working. And that is crazy! That is absolutely crazy, my friends!”
“Yeah!”
Micah was riveted, there beside a tree at the edge of the park. The night was so dark and quiet and emotionless, except for here. It pulsed from the garage, a living, breathing being, and Micah realized that she was going to walk straight by them. Penetrate that bubble of anger and excitement. Disrupt it with her presence.
“So you are the eyes, my friends. You are the ears. You are the guns! We don’t want to share our community with the stamped! We don’t want zombies breaking out of that joint in Blue Hill to our streets! Where else are they hiding zombies around here? You might have one next door! If I had my way and I don’t, but if I did, anyone with that virus would get a bullet in the brain!”
“Yeah!”
“You heard the President! No one will be prosecuted for killing zombies if they’ve gone crazy! They’ve lost their human rights. So I’m meeting up with my guard friend tomorrow morning to get a better handle on what’s going on over there, and we’re meeting up with the other hometown squad tomorrow night, pull our two groups together into one-” He stopped and looked out of the garage as Micah came away from the tree. “Identify yourself!”
Heads turned. She strode off the sidewalk and into the road, aiming for them. Harbo trailed after her, his leash sliding on the ground. Micah kept walking, her head down to shield her face. A chair scraped on the concrete, a bottle rattled, and she kept walking, she kept walking (I love this, oh God I love this, Monday I’ll be sitting in class with my blood so still but now my heart is pounding so hard that I can hear it and I want to tell Austin so he shoves me against the freezer again . . .)
Then hands were rough on her shoulders, and she screamed so loudly that a light went on in the house. “What the fuck? What the fuck? Get your fucking hands off me! Someone call 911! Help!”
Her hood was yanked down and a flashlight blinded her, a man saying, “It’s just a girl!”
“Does she have a stamp?”
Micah flailed in the circle of men, kicking and thrashing as the light moved down from her face. The dog growled on the dead grass of the lawn. Most of the men backed away when there was nothing on the right side of her neck. The other side was checked just in case and a man cried, “Let her go! You’re going to get the cops called on us!”
She was turned roughly. The last man holding onto her yelled, “Get inside! What the hell is wrong with you, walking around at night when there are zombies around? Get home and lock your doors!”
“Let go of me, you crazy asshole!” Micah screamed. When she shoved her knee upwards, he released her hastily and backed off. The other men looked startled, like she had just woken them from a trance.
As she walked away, calling to the dog in a voice that had the faintest tremble, she did not know if she was terrified or excited, or if there was any difference between the two.
Austin
They had been black.
Dante Jordan. Kevin and Jonny Briggs. Antoine Armstrong. Sammy Pearson. Just hearing those names made Austin want to cry, and seeing their faces did make him cry. The braces on Kevin’s teeth, the old-fashioned glasses on Dante, the elfin chin on Sammy, the faint scar cutting from Jonny’s lip to his nose from a repaired cleft palate, the cheerful smile of Antoine’s. When all five were together on the screen, just like they had been together on the field, Austin had to look away or bawl. Two reporters on Lynx compared their skin shades to chocolate and coffee (Kevin was milk chocolate, Antoine was dark chocolate, Jonny was coffee with cream, Dante was straight black, Sammy was just like a mocha frappuccino with caramel drizzle hair) and Austin yelled hysterically, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” to the screen.
Actually, he screamed it six times, five for the boys and one for himself. If it had been five white boys, there would have been no discussion. No one would have taken the time to debate if the murdered boys had skin the color of eggshell, snow, milk, pearl, or old lace. They would not have been reduced to paint color samples, to food and beverages.
Because it happened in Squay, they became known as
the Squay Five. But only four of them were students at Hickory, the private high school in Squay, Texas. Kevin and Jonny were fraternal twins in their sophomore year. Dante Jordan and Sammy Pearson were juniors. Antoine Armstrong attended school one town over, a junior at Yonders Public. He was a friend of Sammy’s from babyhood when they were neighbors.
It was not important that Antoine had been in a fight two years before, leading to a three-day in-school suspension. It was not important that Sammy had an uncle in prison for a drive-by shooting, or that two of the boys came from broken homes. It was not important that the boys had a six-pack of beer with them. But this was what made the headlines of the news. SQUAY 5’S VIOLENT PASTS. WAS ALCOHOL A FACTOR IN THE DEATHS OF THE SQUAY 5? That was how the media framed it, as if the violence to befall five teenaged boys goofing around on a field had been brought upon them by their very own selves.
Austin needed to stop watching the case unfold in the news, but he could not tear himself away. At night he dreamed of them bleeding on the field, hearing their last thoughts (of parents or girlfriends or boyfriends) feeling their last emotions (of shock or pain or bewilderment) and sometimes Austin was dying on the field with them. Had he lived in Squay and been their friend, he would have been shot dead, too.
In the comments, people questioned what the boys were doing outside. They never let their own kids out that late! But the youngest boys were fifteen, not five, and it was a little after nine, not two in the morning. People wondered where they got the beer. Who cared? Six beers split between five boys was not going to create intoxication, and two of the bottles hadn’t even been opened. People blamed them for climbing over the fence to the athletic field of Hickory High. They should not have been there! Trespassers! They should not have been drinking! Then they might have thought twice about the game that got them killed. So while it wasn’t quite their fault, they had definitely not helped their case. Austin read the comments and steamed.
They had gone to play soccer.
All of them had contracted Sombra B last year. None of them contracted Sombra C. They were healthy boys, fair to excellent students, and bored with their schools closing and consequently empty days. Sammy Pearson (mocha frappuccino with drizzled caramel hair and all A’s) recorded a video of the five of them booting the ball around. Then Dante (straight black and a cashier at the local Pizza Whippers) booted the ball hard and nailed Antoine Armstrong (dark chocolate and the class clown) on the side of the head. He fell to the grass. The boys rushed over, laughing nervously to check on him, and the laughter died at his stillness. Kevin (milk chocolate and played the drums) said, “You okay, man?”
Worried, his brother Jonny (coffee with cream and loved to skateboard) knelt down and said, “I think he got knocked out. Hey, Antoine? Dude, Antoine!”
Antoine’s eyes flew open, he put his arms straight out in front of him, lurched to his feet, and said, “Grrrr!”
The soccer ball forgotten, the boys laughed as he chased them around pretending to be a zombie. Then the twins turned into zombies when Antoine caught them, and they caught the last two boys. Now all five of them were lurching around the field with their arms out, growling loudly. And shots rang out.
Antoine was struck first, square in the forehead. He was dead by the time he hit the grass. Kevin fell second with a bullet that drove through his chest and exited his back. Seeing his brother fall, Jonny ran to him. He never made it. Dante was shot while running away in terror, and Sammy screamed, “We’re not really-” before the bullet hit him in the stomach.
It was the twins’ mother who discovered the field of dead boys. Austin screamed at the comments after her interview, her numb, blank-eyed interview (she didn’t look that sad, you couldn’t drag me out of bed if those were my kids, those boys should have thought about their mama before they played zombies!) and shed the tears that she could not. He called Micah and read her those comments, those hateful, spiteful comments about a devastated woman who just lost her sons, and he asked how anyone could write shit like that. Micah knew why. That was how people convinced themselves it could never happen to them. They denied the truth that they did not have utter and total control over their lives and their children’s lives, that at any moment, crazy assholes with guns could turn their world upside down. Oh, he loved how Micah saw the truth. She had been his best friend since junior high, and he loved her like a sister.
The shooters were Kenny Miller and Ray Corley, unemployed Caucasian twenty-year-olds who dropped out of high school in their sophomore and junior years respectively. They were Shepherds, and also videographers. Having filmed what they had done, they edited and posted it to their HomeBase pages with the caption: all in a good day’s work. Someone reported it to the police, who appeared on their doorsteps days later for questioning.
The Squay Shepherds were quick to back away from two of their force. These guys had only attended one meeting and collected their badges of a shepherd’s crook crossed with a musket. They were not on any official duty that night. But it was an honest mistake! The scene looked like a field full of people driven mad by Sombra C! This was a terrible tragedy, yet Kenny and Ray had acted out of goodness.
Facts about the interrogations were released, how a cop went in chummy, asked them everything they knew about zombies, and the guys answered point-by-point what had been in the media for months. So why had they thought five boys running around with their arms held out in front had Sombra C, when that was not a trait of it? They were clearly playing television zombies. The shooters had no answer.
It was early night and the boys were in the glow from the streetlamps, not out in the darkness. Since Kenny and Ray knew how light-sensitive sufferers of the virus were, yet saw the boys in the light instead of fleeing for the dark, how did they connect this to Sombra C? Again, the shooters had no answer. The boys weren’t hitting or biting one another, just chasing and growling, their gait at a lurch but their faces expressive and Antoine laughing once. Knowing that those in the last of the illness could not speak, and were reduced to animal noises or even less than that, why had they shot the verbal and fully coherent Sammy?
No answer. Then they asked for lawyers.
The police got hold of the unedited version of the video, and the two were arrested and charged with five counts of first-degree murder. They had taped the initial rise of Antoine from the grass and the other boys fleeing away gleefully. The passing of the infection was an obvious game. They knew damn well these boys were normal. Under the advice of their lawyers, Kenny and Ray clammed up. But the video said it all. They had committed a hate crime and pretended it was public safety.
Austin shouldn’t watch, especially not on Lynx! It was the weekend before school started and he was doing it again anyway. Mamma was running errands through the afternoon while he stayed home, charged with doing the laundry and selecting a restaurant for dinner. Today the tune on the news was poor Kenny Miller, abused by his folks and with a borderline IQ. He was an unsung victim of this tragedy, too. Austin thought if the guy’s IQ was high enough to figure out how to buy a gun and get his driver’s license, it was high enough to know not to shoot five boys playing on a field. Poor Kenny indeed!
A Shepherd being interviewed reiterated that it had been an honest mistake, and Austin threw a foul look to the screen. He hated whole-heartedly anyone who said that. Muting the television, he surfed around on his laptop and landed on the website for Palimi in San Francisco. He called Mamma after making reservations and said, “It has steak. It has fish. It has us. Tonight at six.”
They loved to check out the restaurants in San Francisco, although Austin made sure not to seem too interested. Food presentation was only a little under arranging flowers after all, which he concluded when the matter passed through his straight filter as everything did. It was okay for Mamma to know spices, but not Austin. It was okay for her to admire the waitress’ shoes or necklace, but not for him unless it was obviously a flirtation. When he once explained the filter to Micah, she lau
ghed incredulously and said, “Do you realize for every fifty thoughts you have, I have one?” But she didn’t have to pretend to be anything that she was not, and he did.
“Is this what the world has come to?” Mamma said after agreeing to Palimi, the radio nattering as she drove to the store. “Now they can just shoot us and say oops! I thought he was a zombie! Sweet Jesus, save your lambs from these Shepherds. Don’t these men have enough to do? And women? Go home! For every two problems you fix, you create three more. Why should I have to tell my son not to play zombies because he’ll be shot?”
“I’m too old to play that,” Austin said.
“No, boys your age don’t play zombies, they play with girls! Isn’t that right, Aus?”
Their relationship was the warmest embrace balanced on a tightrope. It ripped his heart to shreds. He loved his mamma so much. His love for her did not stand on such a precarious perch but her love for him did. Her love for everyone was this way. She cut off her sister and mother over some petty squabble a decade ago and was always going in or out with his uncles. More often out than in.
She loved Austin as long as he did not speak the truth about himself ever again. She loved him as long as he played a person he was not. He could not do differently, since he did not want to lose her love.
Mamma, this is Robert. Mamma, this is Zane. Mamma, this is Dmitri. He could never speak these things to her. Only Mamma, this is Elania. Meredith. Anya.
When she got home, they readied for a night on the town. He read the menu from his phone out loud on the drive. Warm marinated olives and curry squash soup, an heirloom tomato salad, grass fed beef and pan seared rainbow trout, scones with honey cream, Austin was in love with this restaurant. The cafeteria at Cloudy Valley High was a culinary reduction. Pizza. Nachos. Hamburger. There was no style, no taste beyond what was expected, no stretching of boundaries, no pride. Nothing to savor, nothing to experience! Pizza. Nachos. Hamburger. Sometimes he skipped lunch rather than have one of those cheap splashes of manufactured tastes across his palate. Cloudy Valley High had a lengthy mission statement that concluded with broadening horizons, but the mission statement was posted in the office, not the cafeteria.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 10