Zombie Mountain

by J. R. Rain

  We spend our time mostly divided between the observatory and the Los Feliz home, although Brice and I venture to the zoo every day to care for the animals who still take refuge there, too afraid to leave their only home. Brice loves the animals, and now I understand why he has spent the last three decades providing for those in need. Sometimes, we hear a wildcat at night—most have probably moved up into the local mountains, but not all. We still carry arms whenever we venture out, especially up at the Hill, or as we have come to call it, Zombie Mountain.

  I know Anna is hoping for new wildlife. She watches and waits to hear the meowing or young growl of a litter and has made gentle friends of the meerkats, who seem to like peering at us from around the observatory grounds and come close to her when she chirps at them.

  Almost every night, the house in Los Feliz is full. Carla has moved in, as has Mike, Jared and Brice. Carla and Anna team up together, against us men. They monopolize the bathroom with their female grooming sessions and occasional laughter and girl talk. But it’s all right. Something normal, and we cling to those last vestiges of normalcy in this violent, crazy world.

  Carla and I still keep our security beats, roaming the zoo and observatory for miscreants, and of course, for the infected that remain quite numerous. They may not ever go away. But we have each other, which is enough for now.

  Much of my free time is spent gardening now, preparing for a spring planting. After all, we need food, good fresh food, and a lot of it to keep us healthy and strong.

  Carla has surprised me with her knowledge of growing crops. We brought a bulldozer up to the observatory. We dug up the grounds, and with her direction, we spread out fertilizer to ready the ground for planting. The rainy season helped, and when the sun goes down over the neatly planted rows, I feel a sense of accomplishment. Like we are starting something important... something good. Not exactly the Garden of Eden, to be sure, but we are making it up as we go along, what we all want it to be.

  Along with the game hunting Mike and Jared have taken on, this will sustain us as a group, I do believe.

  And would you believe that Julie is Mike’s girl now? They bicker like an old married couple, and then hold hands. In late afternoons they often take long walks with a blanket, a picnic basket, along with guns and ammo.

  At the moment, I’m watching Jared pitch a baseball for Anna to hit, in a park near the observatory. She strikes out a lot, but never gives up swinging at every ball. She’s a fighter and so is he. They are close, and perfect for each other.

  Not far from here lies the grave of my brother. I can see the fresh flowers from where I’m sitting, that Carla, Anna, Jared and I brought out here yesterday. Sometimes, I forget he’s not here, and find myself talking to him. I like to believe he hears me, and the gratitude I will always hold in my heart toward him. I will never forget that he gave his life for Anna’s. Never.

  Well, Carla is calling me from the cop radio she still insists on using. Dinner is almost ready. It’s her turn to cook tonight; roasted wild pig and a salad of wild greens. My birthday dinner. I better gather the kids and let them know it’s time to go.

  Besides, it looks like fog is beginning to creep up the hill.

  The End

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  Chapter One

  I am sitting with a friend at a coffee shop. We do this every afternoon and I enjoy the routine. In general, we don’t say much, and I enjoy that, too.

  Today is no different. We are sitting together under a wide umbrella near the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills at my favorite outdoor cafe, The Coffee Bean. I like the Bean. Here, they use vanilla powder instead of syrup; the powder adds just enough texture to the drink to give it some added density and grit. I like that.

  The day is hot and the sun has found a small patch of my exposed arm. My skin is burning in the direct glare, but I do not move my arm. I let my flesh burn slowly because I do not care about such things anymore. It’s just a sunburned arm, after all. I have bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

  My friend, Numilekunoluwa, or Numi, looks up from the journal he’s writing in, one where he jots down random thoughts, impressions, and observations. Th is journal is his life and he goes through many such booklets each year. Such constant writing looks like a lot of work to me. I don’t have the strength for such work. I barely have the strength to sit here in my chair without toppling over.

  “Eddie wants to see you,” says Numi in his strong Nigerian accent. “He says he wants to talk to you about something important.”

  I nod and turn back to my arm, where I can see my skin now noticeably reddening. I open and flex my hand, spreading my fingers wide. My hand appears incandescent in the splash of sunlight. Bluish veins glow like neon tubes just beneath the surface of my skin. I try to make a fist, but I’m too weak to do even that.

  “Don’t you even want to know why he wants to see you, man?” asks Numi. He sets down his pen, which for him is serious business. It means his journal will wait.

  “To say good-bye, I assume,” I say.

  “You assume incorrectly, cowboy. He wants to hire you.”

  “Hire me?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “He has a job for you, boss.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He laces his fingers over his notepad and levels his considerable stare at me. His eyes are piercingly white against his rich black skin. “Do I look like I’m joking, kemosabe?”

  “If by joking you mean looking scary as hell, then yes.”

  “Is that another reference to my beautiful black skin?”

  “You mean your terrifyingly black skin.”

  Numi shakes his head and grins. “Do you want to hear about the job or not?”

  A hot wind ruffles the canvas umbrella above us, rocking the metal pipe in the center hole of the glass table. Someone had shoved a piece of paper between the pipe and the table, perhaps to keep it from clanging. I reach over and remove the piece of paper. My detective’s curiosity still alive, I begin unfolding it. There is nothing written on it.

  “Eddie knows I’m sick,” I say. The fact that Eddie hasn’t bothered to see me in two years is a source of some hurt for me.

  Numi unlaces his fingers and eases back in his chair. His iced coffee sits in front of him, forgotten and pooling condensation. Numi looks away when he says, “I told him he should speak with you anyway, cowboy.”

  I am about to sit forward until I realize that sitting forward takes more effort than I’m willing to give. So, I stay back in my bamboo chair and say, “Why would you tell him that?”

  Numi continues not looking at me. He has taken my illness hardest of all. No surprise there. “Because you’re the only one who can help him, man, and you ain’t dead yet.”

  It’s not that Numi forgets I’m sick. It’s not that he forgets that I’ve been diagnosed with an incurable AIDS-related cancer that has spread to my lungs. It’s not that eight months ago, I was given six months to live and that I’m now living on borrowed time. It’s that my old friend is in some serious denial, and he only wishes it was a damn river in Egypt.

  “True,” I say. “I’m not dead yet.”

  I look at my coffee in front of me and I want to reach for it, but my shoulder hurts so much that I don’t want to move. All I want to do is sit there and close my eyes and feel the hot sun on my arm. I have no business being up and about. The doc had insisted I stay in bed. But I figure if I’m gonna die, I might as well do it with a latte in my hand.
r />   “Just talk to him, cowboy.”

  I look at Numi and he suddenly grins broadly, showing a blindingly white row of tiny bottom teeth. I know this smile. It is a new smile meant for me, created for me. It’s a little too big, too unnatural, too patronizing, too euphoric. It is a smile that Numi gives only me when he’s willing my world to be safe. As if my African friend can will away my sickness with his bright smile. I wish he could. He has given it his best shot.

  I take in some air, which rattles around in my chest. “Help him, how?”

  Numi thinks it’s his smile that has willed me forward, and so he flashes it again, and this time, reaches out and takes my hand. Numi is gay, and I am not. Lately, he has taken my hand a lot and I have let him. Mostly, I do not have the strength to pull it away. And truth be known, I appreciate his comforting touch. He is the only one who touches me, outside of the prodding and poking of doctors. Instinctively, I want to pull away, but I don’t. He squeezes my hand and his touch alone, his very strong touch,

  gives me a jolt of strength.

  Numi says, “Someone close to him is missing.”

  Now, I do pull my hand away and sit up. The effort alone causes a wave of dizziness that nearly overwhelms me. I feel myself swaying in my chair and I nearly vomit, but I fight through it. After all, this is what I did years ago, before the sickness. Before I was diagnosed with AIDS. Before the cancer. Before all of that, I found those who were missing. I found them, one way or another. Dead or alive.

  “Who’s missing?” I ask.

  Numi shakes his head and then flicks his eyes over my shoulder. “I don’t know, man, but he’s coming now. He can tell you.”

  Chapter Two

  A moment later, Eddie comes around and stands in front of me and looks down at me as he might a dying grandfather. His lips are pressed together and he’s sort of smiling, but sort of not. He’s happy, it seems, to see me again, but clearly sad to see me in this current dilapidated state. Mostly, he’s unsure of how to react to me. I’m used to it.

  He’s also a little standoffish, which I’ve also grown used to. Someone who’s dying of AIDS doesn’t elicit a lot of physical contact, although that doesn’t seem to stop Numi. Nothing stops Numi—at least, not when it comes to me.

  Eddie settles for a gesture I’m used to. The gentle shoulder pat. I’m so used the gesture that I barely notice it anymore, or let it bother me. Where once, my close friends hugged me, they now pat me on the shoulder. And handshakes are nonexistent. It is my reality. I accept it.

  Numi doesn’t accept it. Eddie’s little gesture bugs my Nigerian friend. I can see it in his alert eyes. He wishes people would treat me the same. Sometimes, he insists on it. But lately, he has eased up on people. Insisting that people act a certain way generally causes conflict. People do not want to be told how to act, especially towards someone with an infectious disease.

  Eddie sits opposite me, next to Numi. I try not to think that he’s sitting as far away from me as possible, but I suspect he is. Such thoughts get me nowhere. Such thoughts remind me that I’m less than human, unworthy of contact or love or compassion. Sympathy maybe. Distant sympathy.

  Do you blame them? I think again for perhaps the thousandth time. They value their lives. Contact with a diseased man isn’t valuing their lives, now is it? It’s putting themselves at risk, or so they think.

  Wrong or not, I get used to it, and so I sigh as Eddie gestures awkwardly towards me. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. His hand sort of flops around like something dying on a hook. Finally, he drops it to the table, unsure of what to do with it or himself or what to say to me.

  So I help a brother out. “Eddie, I have AIDS. Full-blown fucking AIDS with a lung cancer chaser. I’m as good as dead. So stop behaving like a scared dick. I don’t have time for dicks. Just be real.”

  He nods. We’ve known each other since high school, where he and I had been close friends. Eddie went on to marry his high school sweetheart, Olivia, a girl who had been my sweetheart as well. Secretly, of course. Eddie and I had met Olivia on the same night. We both liked her, although I suspected that I liked her more. As I had been working up the courage to go talk to her, Eddie had beat me to the punch. I had hated him for that at the time, but went on to accept it. Eddie and Olivia hit it off, although once, when she had been drinking, Olivia admitted to me privately that she wished I had asked her out instead of Eddie.

  My connection with Olivia would carry on into our adult lives. A sweet connection really, since we never acted inappropriately. Still, more than once we had discussed what life might have been like if the two of us had gotten together. It was a sweet thought, and often I caught her looking at me sadly. Eddie, I think, caught us looking at each other as well, but said nothing.

  Now Eddie looks sheepish and finally says, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

  “So am I.”

  “I should have come by more often.”

  Numi, who is sitting perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, says, “By more often you mean never one time?”

  Numi and Eddie have never liked each other. Numi had always thought Eddie was an asshole. Probably because Eddie made it a habit to cheat on Olivia. And Numi knew of my fondness for Olivia.

  Eddie looks at Numi long and hard. Numi continues staring forward, hands resting comfortably in his lap. He literally doesn’t move a muscle.

  Finally, Eddie looks back at me. “I just didn’t know what to say, you know?”

  I nod. This is coming from my closest high school friend. A guy I had spent most of my youth with. Hell, I had been his best man, watching him as he married a girl I knew I had feeling for.

  “It’s okay,” I say as Numi frowns. “You’ve been busy.”

  I know I’m making excuses for Eddie; I’ve done this for most of my life. Eddie was always getting into trouble and getting me into trouble as well. I also know that most people aren’t so busy that they can’t take a few minutes to visit a dying friend. But I’m not here to make people hate themselves. I do enough self-hating for everyone.

  “No, man. I’m unemployed again. I have no excuse. I don’t know what to say.”

  I like that about Eddie. He can be real and honest. Most of my friends are honest. It’s a trait I look for in friends. If you’re dishonest, then beat it. Who needs you, right?

  * * *

  Anyway, Eddie is growing a goatee and I see a tattoo hiding under his short sleeve. I wonder about both, especially the tattoo. I try to grasp its meaning: two vertical lines topped with a horizontal one, kind of like a capitol T but the two lines make it plain it is a symbol of some sort. The horizontal top is curved a little. Maybe it’s his mane in Chinese or Sanskrit or who the hell knows. I figure Eddie is going through some kind of midlife crisis with the tat and goatee.

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Look, I’m and asshole. I’m the worst fucking friend.”

  “No,” I say. He doesn’t need to be down on himself. His reaction is normal, after all. I didn’t expect anymore, or any less. “You’re not an asshole.”

  Numi makes the smallest movement of his head to indicate that he disagrees with me. I ignore Numi.

  Eddie doesn’t notice. He says, “A friend of mine, a good friend of mine is…”

  “Dying,” I say.

  “Yeah, that. And I don’t even have the balls to see him.”

  “You have little balls,” I say. It is part of our humor. My balls are big, his balls are small, and vice versa. Har, har. It’s what guys do. Simple creatures we are.

  But Eddie isn’t up to my playful ribbing. I’m barely up to it myself. That joke took a lot of energy. He says, “How… how did this happen?”

  “How did I get AIDS?”

  He nods and shrugs a little. Even mentioning the word makes him clearly uncomfortable. More so, I see that he’s embarrassed that others might have overheard us. Numi misses nothing. He sees Eddie’s embarrassment and frowns even more.<
br />
  “I had a steady girl,” I say. “She had it and didn’t know it. A few weeks into our relationship, the condom came off and never went back on. We saw each other on and off for a few months. Months that were filled with lots of sex. She had some random blood work done and the results came back. She had it, and now I have it, too.”

  Eddie turns a little pale. I avoid using the word “AIDS” for his benefit. He says, “But I thought, you know, guys didn’t really get it from girls.”

  “Not common, certainly, but there are times when it’s not safe to have sex with a woman.”

  He nods. “Her period.”

  I nod. “Bingo.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It happens,” I say. “It’s in the blood. I must have been chafed at the time. Like I said, too much sex.”

  “But I thought AIDS was, you know, treatable these days. You know, Magic Johnson and all.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Except when it’s not.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do the doctors. Not really. It’s called AIDS-related cancer, and the connection is not completely understood, but the link probably depends on a weakened immune system. Had I just had AIDS, I would probably beat it. My AIDS was the prelude to my cancer.”

  “And having AIDS…”

  “There’s no fighting the cancer,” I say. “Although we tried.”

  Months of radiation had proved fruitless. It had only proven to weaken me more.

  “I’m sorry,” says Eddie.

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  We’re both silent. Numi’s silent, too, but he doesn’t count. He’s usually silent, especially when Eddie’s around. Numi, I think, was glad that Eddie disappeared. Showed his true colors, as Numi tells me. I watch a small, fat bird nibble on some fattening crumbs.

  “Do you still see her?” Eddie asks me.

  “The girl who gave me HIV?”

  “Yes.”