“But . . . I could watch you build then. I won’t sneeze,” Brennan said desperately.
“Dude, I can’t. Henry agrees. I’ll just take it home. He and I can work on it there.”
“Isn’t Henry part of Welcome Mat?”
“This isn’t Welcome Mat anymore.” Stephen jerked his backpack over his shoulders and lifted the box of battle bots. He lowered his voice to a hiss. “Didn’t you look over there? This is Zombie Mat now.” He walked past the curtain and out the door, not answering when students called.
Stunned that he had lost his first real friend, Brennan pulled on his backpack. It did not matter. God was his friend. Still, he couldn’t stay here, at the table that once meant happiness to him. The others turned to look when he came around, Corbin waving a hand in a splint and calling, “Hey, how’s it going?”
They were all gathered around the same table, six or seven of them, and two pizza boxes were open. There were liters of soda and cups, a pile of napkins and breadsticks, too. All had taken off their scarves or lowered their hoods, and two were scratching their necks like the fabric had been irritating. Brennan looked at them speechlessly, his heart tearing itself in two. He had no answer for how’s it going. Corbin repeated the question, thinking that Brennan hadn’t heard.
How’s it going? He had to learn a whole new language on his own. He had to convince God that he was worthy of healing, pick through every facet of his life and find where he was accidentally giving offense. He didn’t know if he could pull this off, and his first friend had just walked away. Brennan started to cry, ashamed of himself yet unable to stop. Corbin kicked out a chair and Brennan sat down, wanting to run out of the room but having to traverse the whole campus to escape to church. He covered his face in his hands and wept while they sat in silence.
The only one without a stamp at the table was Zaley, and when he lifted his head and saw this, he was horrified that she was eating from the same pizzas. “You- you should not be here!”
The look on her face was grim. One of her arms was in a sling. “This is my club, and these are my friends. That didn’t stop with the party.”
He wanted to tear the slice of pizza from her hand, offer her bleach solution to dip her fingers in, ferry her from the room to safety. God had judged this girl as righteous, letting Sombra C pass her by, and now she endangered herself! This horrified him. “But you will catch it from us! You do not want this.”
“For God’s sake,” Quinn said, “she won’t catch it that easily, and none of us have infections beyond two.”
Brennan was at five percent beneath his scarf, ironically the most dangerous to Zaley yet the only one wanting to usher her out. “She should not risk it! Don’t you want a husband? Children? A job? Those things God can take away so easily-”
Pushing her hair over her shoulders, Micah snorted. “Don’t worry. Zaley doesn’t want any of those things, she was planning to kill herself the night of the party.”
“Micah!” Zaley and Austin cried. Everyone else turned to Zaley in shock.
“Fuck it, I’m tired of all this civilized self-censoring,” Micah said wearily. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Zaley? Everyone knows your family is screwed up ten ways to Sunday but you hardly ever talk about it. If you did, you’d feel better. The meek don’t inherit the earth, that’s just something the powerful say to make everyone else content to be doormats.”
“Okay, Micah!” Corbin said with warning.
It only encouraged her. Resting her chin upon her hands, one of her third fingers pointed to Corbin. “And you were thinking with your dick to date a tool like Sally Wang. Sombra C did you a favor. Funny what you didn’t like about Zaley while you were dating was that she acquiesced to everything you wanted, and then you turned around to do the same damn thing with Sally. So you and Zaley were a pot and kettle relationship, and I don’t know why you broke up.” The third finger moved to another girl. “I wasn’t actually planning to apply to Pewter, Elania, I was just repeating what my moms are harping about incessantly.” Again it moved, and now a second finger came out to join it. “I barely know you two, Janie, Quinn, but I’m sure there’s something you can improve.”
“Probably,” Janie agreed.
The second finger lowered, and the third one pointed to Brennan. “And God? What the hell does God have to do with Sombra C, Brennan? We’re sick because of some stupid fucking trigger-happy cullers, not God.” Micah shook out her red-streaked hair, which was the exact color of her stamp, and stood up. “Enjoy the pizzas, kids, I’m out of here.” She freed a slice from a box and strode away.
“Sorry, Brennan, she blows now and then,” said Corbin when the door swung shut. Then he looked at Zaley with surprise and hurt. “You should have told me. I thought we were friends, if nothing else. How could you plan to do that and not even . . . not even tell me what you were thinking?”
“How do you say something like that?” Zaley asked, looking very embarrassed to have been exposed in front of the group.
“Couldn’t you have seen your counselor? I don’t know, go online, find some support if you couldn’t tell us? Why are we even friends if you can’t tell us when you need help?” They looked at one another in some quiet communication that did not include the rest of the table.
Brennan knew how to answer Corbin’s question now. He spoke to his hands about how it was going. “I feel like God has turned me away from His kingdom.”
“Why?” Elania asked, her voice much more polite than Micah’s had been. “God didn’t give us Sombra C. That was human fallibility, not divine vengeance.”
“God would have helped me, if I’d been better. If I’d gone to church,” Brennan said in misery.
“I don’t believe He looked down that night and determined which of us got infected and which of us didn’t based on who prayed the most,” she said gently. “That’s not an interpretation of God I accept, that He would be so petty and childish. Some of us were lucky. Some of us weren’t.”
Brennan would have to think about that for a while, since he never imagined God as being childish. Looking to Zaley, he said, “You shouldn’t want to die. Not when you’re fine.”
“You shouldn’t want to die at a five percent infection,” Zaley said, taking another piece of pizza. He clenched involuntarily.
“So Stephen’s out?” Austin rumbled with a dark look on his face.
“Guess so. Asshole,” Corbin said.
“Didn’t you save him, Brennan?” Austin asked, and his voice was very angry. “He would have drowned if you hadn’t pulled him out. What the hell kind of thank you is that?”
“He was the first friend I have ever had,” Brennan whispered.
“He wasn’t a friend,” Austin said hatefully.
“Maybe he just needs some time,” Corbin said.
Taking out his cell phone, Brennan deleted Stephen’s number. Now there was just the number for Mama. A tear rolled down his cheek, and then Corbin said, “Hey, you want to put my number in? We don’t have any classes with you since we’re all seniors in here, but you can hang out with us any time, man.” Brennan put in the number as Corbin recited it, and a hand came over the table from Elania. She put in her own number, and then she passed it to Austin. The phone went from seat to seat.
Corbin pushed over a pizza box. The roiling was fading from Brennan’s stomach so he took a piece. A few bites might be okay, and he did not want to say no to an offer from a boy who was trying to be nice. When the phone came back, he almost screamed to see that Zaley had put in her number, touched a phone with germs all over it. He wanted to tell her to wash her hands with hot water and soap. But he wanted to fit in at this table more, and no one else was screaming about Zaley sharing things. Someone had entered Micah’s name and number, too, even though she had been rude and left the room.
This had been an unexpected turn to the day, Stephen’s betrayal, crying in front of people like a baby, and now sitting at a table and eating pizza, talking to girls. It surprise
d him. Janie was crying quietly over pictures of Shelly and Trevor, but it was okay for a girl to cry. He looked away quickly to not start again.
“How is your arm?” Brennan asked Zaley, since this seemed like a logical thing to say. Why did this girl want to die? Everything was ahead of her in a way it wasn’t for the rest of them at the table.
She motioned to the sling. “Messed up. I start PT at the end of the month, twice a week.”
“I only get once a week,” Corbin said amiably, although the tension between the two of them was still palpable. “Thirty minutes of pinching my fingers together with this super-happy woman. She drinks way too much caffeine. Flex! Extend! Deviate! Wooo! Tap! Tight fist! Tighter! Wooo! Good job!”
Brennan smiled as the others laughed a little, and he poured himself a cup of soda.
Micah
He was literally a cliché, the man who shot a doctor and infected Micah with Sombra C. Jeffrey Parro was twenty-seven years old and lived in the basement of his mother’s beautiful home on the east side of Cloudy Valley. Through the nights, a tiny, ground level window flickered with the light of video games. Micah flattened herself to the grass and watched the figure on the beanbag jam his fingers into the controller, pausing only to scratch at his ankle bracelet and eat. Pizza Whippers, Tasty Rooster, Shor-Bee’s, Tic-Tac-Taco, he pulled out of his driveway (his mom’s driveway) every evening in a filthy old green hybrid car (had to have once belonged to his mom) to visit some drive-through and return with an extra-large soda and a packed paper bag or box.
She inspected the car, but it was Harbo who sniffed a partially ripped off bumper sticker that had just enough lettering on it to investigate. It was for a school district south in a city called Pinton, and online research revealed a Denise Parro once worked there as a fourth-grade teacher. Now the mom drove a newer (and cleaner) hybrid, and Micah wondered if the green one had been given to the son, or if he paid for it. She put her money on given. Since graduating from Cloudy Valley High years ago, Jeffrey had had a multitude of different jobs, none of which paid above minimum wage and all of which were part-time. A lifeguard at the community pool. A busboy at Aye-Aye, Captain. A dishwasher at Spinners Italian. Holiday help at Booksies. At the time of the party, he hadn’t been employed for more than six months.
Micah paid fifty dollars to have an online background check done, giving her his full name, birthday, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, and criminal history. The rest of the information on him was gleaned from other sources on the Internet. Jeffrey Alexander Parro was born to this upper class family on the second of August. They lived in Pinton until his parents divorced when he was in junior high. The mom moved with Jeffrey to Cloudy Valley; Roger Parro remarried within a year and lived in San Francisco with his new wife and child. Inspecting the picture she found of the father, Micah thought that Jeffrey either took after a grandparent or was adopted. The parents were pleasant looking people in their online photos, and Jeffrey was homely as hell. The pale crag of his face, narrow and strange, was pockmarked with acne scars. A little overweight, the added padding did not reach his cheeks to flesh them out.
No criminal history. That was interesting. No mention of him in any Cloudy Valley High newspaper until he was a senior, when he was listed in the last issue of the school year as joining the Army. But he hadn’t gotten any farther than that basement, to play war games and eat fast food. It was the very opposite of Nancy Hormel, who Micah also researched. Born in Spokane to a working class family, she graduated at the top of her high school class and went on to blaze a path of academic glory through college with dual majors in Spanish and biological sciences. On to medical school, an internship, three years in a residency program, highly rated on a website gauging doctors at San Criata Health, married for fifteen years and owned her own home. Her daughter was in seventh grade and on the honor roll, her son an adorable tot in a preschool picture on his school’s website. Then the storm of Sombra C began, bringing together the unlikely pair of a gifted doctor and one of life’s flunkies in Blue Hill. It brought Micah and Austin along, too, to share in their story.
And it brought her along to give Jeffrey Parro what he deserved, and what he didn’t. Through the light from his television, she saw the stamp on his neck. That gave her joy, being able to welcome him into the ranks, and it gave her sorrow, since he didn’t deserve the Sombra C that once flooded the doctor’s body. It was too good for him, that virus. He wasn’t worthy to carry it.
The bracelet on his ankle kept him from running. The only outcry was local. As shocking as this case had been, it was swallowed by equally appalling events days after its occurrence. The wending of the case through the court system wasn’t going to be sped along to appease the public, and Jeffrey Parro was released since the jail didn’t have separate facilities for Sombra C.
“She must be so upset,” Uma said after the diagnosis to Tuma.
Upset? Austin was upset, but Micah felt elevated. She didn’t need the Kwan Yin goddess statue in her bedroom, or the booklet of positive thoughts. Her mothers were upset that she wouldn’t wear anything to conceal the stamp, that she often drew her hair back into a bun or ponytail to give it more prominence. Uma was disturbed at the constant reminder (can’t we have two seconds without Sombra C?); Tuma was disturbed at the threat it represented (honey, you’re endangering yourself!); only Shalom approved of the bare neck but didn’t grasp the reason why. It was her sister who went to bat for her when their mothers flourished scarves and turtlenecks and warnings. “You didn’t wait around for society to approve of your relationship! To approve of you having a family! You did it anyway, because it was true to yourselves and to hell with society. That took bravery and she’s the same kind of brave. Why should she hide who she is, someone with Sombra C? Why should she be ashamed?”
“She’s going to get shot!” Tuma almost screamed. “I can’t turn on the radio without hearing about cullers storming a school and pulling out the stamped, a Sombra C ward being blown up, people disappearing into illegal confinement points! This isn’t about shame; it’s too dangerous!”
But people should see it. They should see what had been done to Micah, made uncomfortable by the stamp’s presence, by her presence. They should know that she would rather have the virus of a good person than be uninfected like a bad one. Micah looked at her stamp in the mirror and thought fuck you every morning. Fuck you to the people who might try to mess with her. She’d claw faces, spit in eyes, cut her hand and slap their gouges with her blood. Let them be reborn into this world, to join the ranks of the struggling under their oppressors. Let them know the chasm they envisioned between them and us was as small as a droplet of blood.
The façade of civility she always carried around was growing harder and harder to maintain. In the first week of school after vacation, she got in trouble. When Mr. Dayze made fun of Zaley’s awkward left-handed note taking and swiped at the board to erase what she was so desperately trying to write down, Micah blurted, “You’re an asshole! Zaley, sit by me and copy off mine.” Only Micah could abuse her friends, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t think that Zaley would actually do it, not timid-always-make-nice-please-the-teacher Zaley, but Zaley moved her things to the handicapped table. Even she had her limits, or a strong enough desire to pass this class that she’d be brave. The class was horrified and stunned, hissing at her to come back as Mr. Dayze wrote out a referral.
The power was dizzying. All Micah had to do was lick her finger and draw it over the whiteboard, and she would be expelled. Spit in Mr. Dayze’s face, bring brownies and share them with her classmates, she was a loaded gun just waiting for a good pull on her trigger. Her mothers were scandalized about the referral and Micah sat on the sofa at home feeling frustrated with them. She hadn’t done anything wrong! He was being an asshole, and she didn’t care if she had hurt his feelings or set a bad example for some younger student. Why should she have reported his offense to the office, to have her complaint buried in his file that must be several
inches thick? Why did conflict resolution always dance around feelings, insist on mutual understanding, sharing and compromise and capitulation? He was mocking an injured student! Zaley didn’t have the wherewithal to call him an asshole, nor did the thirty-five other students in the room, and it wasn’t like the district would or could fire this tenured dipshit who closed his pants with a safety pin. If he didn’t like being called an asshole, then he could stop acting like one. Micah had called him on it. She had done the right thing.
Back at Yale, Shalom sent a text message. Good for you. He teased students when I had him, too. How are the applications going?
The applications. They were due at the end of January, Tuma pressuring her to fill them out and send them in, decide if she wanted to go once she had acceptances. She was avoiding it. Austin read the text from Shalom and settled at Micah’s laptop to start on the forms. He was halfway through the first page before Micah looked over to see why he was asking for her place of birth and social security number. She let him continue with it, loving the furrows of concentration in his forehead. Austin skimmed the essay options and told her to think about some of the best moments of her life.
“Shoplifting fake mustaches from Rubenz,” Micah said.
“No.”
“Throwing a brick through a homophobe’s windshield.”
“No.”
“Infecting a killer with Sombra C.”
“No!” He glared over the laptop and she laughed. “Micah! You just have to fudge something. Like realizing when Dale made fun that you weren’t going to be embarrassed about your family. How you stood tall and proud.”
“Why would I be embarrassed?”
“You fudge it for a page, that’s all.” His eyes returned to the screen. “I’m going to write your essay, and you’re going to go to college.”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 37