Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

  D. A squad of dirt bikes cresting the hill, the people onboard masked by their helmets, swinging baseball bats and tire irons and shower-curtain rods at any still-moving face. Behind these, a Jeep with spotlights, spitting up mud from its roiling tires, the shadows of two or three people leaning out over its open top, firing off rifles at their undead targets.

  The bikes circle tightly around Renni and me, still lying, shocked or trapped, on the ground. Even though they kick up more mud on us, I’m overwhelmingly grateful for their presence; they rescued us. Their tight circle forms a protective seal around us, and they stop, kicking out legs to lean on while they brandish their mêlée weapons, and stare out at the dropped zombies, not taking any chances. The Jeep takes a couple laps around them, rolling over zombie flesh and bones with no qualms, popping off a shot here and there, until finally, this vehicle also stops.

  As the spotlights on the Jeep click off, I can hear again. I’ve stopped screaming. The dirt-bike engines rumble reassuringly, and people’s muffled voices shout beneath their helmets. A couple of people jump down from the Jeep and approach the circle. Immediately to my right, Renni punches one of the dead zombies in the face, and shouts, “Get this fucker off of me!”

  Finally able to move again, I spring into action (momentarily inspecting my pants to make sure they are soaked through from the still-falling rain and not my overactive bladder), bolting up and lugging the second zombie off of Renni. She kicks the other one to the side and fumbles to get up. I grip her forearm and pull, and she grips my good shoulder for leverage. Two of the dirt bikes part like a gate and a dark, imposing figure steps into our inner circle.

  He stands at a little over six feet tall, deep black shirt clinging to his barrel chest, the short sleeves frayed at the ends as if his muscles flexed one too many times and tore them apart. He wears black militia-style cargo pants and shin-high black lace-up combat boots, similar to Renni’s, but heavier looking. Crisscrossed over his chest is a double strand of extra silver-tipped rifle rounds. His rifle casually rests over his shoulder, his finger comfortably planted against the trigger, his other hand reaching to his bearded mouth to remove the stub of a soggy, unlit cigar. His short black hair is matted to his large forehead, and the straps of his eyepatch disappear into its scraggly depths. He’s like a more pissed off Nick Fury, crossed with a calmer, taller Wolverine.

  “You ladies lost?” he shouts over the rain. His one exposed eye glints at us and he sneers a little.

  I’m kind of at a loss for words. On the one hand, he and his people just rescued me and Renni from an ugly death, one I’m not sure even Renni’s physical cunning and action-girl strength could have gotten us out of. But on the other hand, he is kind of scary and I don’t know what he wants.

  “What do you want?” Renni just up and asks him. Subtly, and probably not even consciously aware of it, she has straightened up to her full height and circled in front of me, her arms held out protectively at her sides, blocking my body from this guy’s view. She’s instinctively protecting me, which makes me feel simultaneously proud but small, like she thinks in some ways I am still a kid.

  The man laughs boisterously. “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do!” Renni lets him laugh through her silence. Some of the people on their dirt bikes turn around to watch us, but he doesn’t look at them. Finally, he sticks the cigar back into the corner of his large mouth, and speaks through it, “Come with me if you don’t want to get dead.”

  “Where?” Renni demands.

  The man cocks his head in the direction over the hill. “Fullmont High School. Base camp. Impenetrable. You ladies can make me dinner. As a thank you.”

  He doesn’t wait for a response, just turns around and heads back to his Jeep.

  Renni looks at me. I nod at her, confirming that the location of his base camp is also our destination. She nods back, silently agreeing to go with him. She stoops to pick up her dropped axe and rifle, and we follow the guy back to his Jeep.

  We climb into the backseat beside a skinny boy dressed all in black. He wears a black beret and handles his hunting rifle like it’s a third arm; slightly awkward, but also natural. He looks incredibly young in the blue tint of the moonlight, the rain washing over the smooth skin of his cheeks. He doesn’t look at either Renni or me but keeps his eyes trained on the edge of the tree line. Up front, the Nick Fury guy takes his seat behind the wheel and pops the clutch, throwing the Jeep into gear and peeling backwards out of the mud. A second man sits in the passenger side, ageless because I can only see the back of his dark, buzzed head. He points his rifle off into the distant fields and his body rocks with every bump and jolt the Jeep takes.

  I’m sitting between the young gunman and Renni in the back, so that I have nothing to hold onto as we careen past the dirt bikers, who kickstart their engines to follow us, and lightly lift off from the earth as we shoot over the lip of the hill. I bounce a good six inches off the seat and yelp. I dig my fingers into the padded seat when I come back down, and catch Renni laughing raucously at me out of the corner of my eye. She, of course, has the frame of the Jeep to hold onto. Lucky bitch.

  Nick Fury and his lackeys keep silent as we ride along the fields, finally crossing onto the side streets I intended to walk us through, passing the church, the general store, moving into residential territory, then there it is in the distance, the two-story brick building that held my life in suspension for four whole years. The wind picks up as we near it, as if warding us off, and in the distance thunder claps violently and lightning splits the sky. In the tail of its luminescent burst, I can see the dark outlines of a few scattered zombies, lumbering down alleyways, crawling out of the shadows between cars abandoned on the street.

  Nick Fury turns wide with one hand, lifting at least two of our four tires off the asphalt, and squawks into the CB radio attached to the dashboard of the jeep: “McMillan, Harm’s Way, coming through.”

  It’s almost like a code, until I read by the faded orange light of the street lamps that flicker quickly by, the words “Harm’s Way” etched into the dash above the radio dials. It must be the name of the guy’s Jeep. Pretty clever, I have to admit. “Get out of Harm’s Way.” Yeah, I like it.

  “Roger that,” comes the response on the radio. “South entrance,” it says, and Nick Fury makes another one-armed, wild turn. I begin to feel queasy.

  We shoot through the parking lot, parallel to the darkened building. At first it looks like all the lights are off, nobody home, but I squint and think I see why: all the windows on the ground floor have been covered by opaque plastic sheeting or planks of wood. Perhaps the lights attract the zombies, and the people inside are trying to pretend like no one is home. But if that’s the case, we sure are behaving counterintuitively, revving our engines seven strong through this parking lot, headlights blazing.

  The Jeep pulls up close to the double-wide doors leading to the gymnasium, and the doors open only once our bumper nearly grazes them. Light and heat emanate forth from the depths of the gym and we drive, a little slower now, right into it. The dirt bikes take up our rear, and the doors are closed by two large men, probably basketball players, who wrap a heavy chain around their handles, securing them behind us.

  Fury kills the engine, flicks his cigar at a kid who has suddenly appeared at his door holding up a blue bucket. The soggy cigar stub plunks into the plastic bucket, a small amount of water spraying up as the cigar hits bottom. The kid can’t be older then ten, maybe eleven, and he’s scrawny, his twig arms poking out of his horizontally striped Abercrombie and Fitch polo shirt like popsicle sticks on a homemade Christmas ornament. He smiles wide at the large militia leader, as if he is in awe. Fury climbs out of the Jeep and ruffles the kid’s hair, then moves on without a word. The kid shuffles after him.

  Our two other companions jump down out of the Jeep and we think it’s best to follow suit. Everyone seems to be heading to the double doors along the far wall, which I remember from years of ditching gym as leading to the
hall just outside the library, where the school hadn’t had enough in the budget at the time to place a security camera. There are several people already in the gym, guys and girls, all fairly young, high schoolers maybe, or at least no older than me. Some hang back, eyeing Renni and me suspiciously, while others run up to the dirt bikers and embrace them, or start a conversation. Me and Renni make like to follow the Nick Fury guy out of the double doors, but he turns on his heel and bends down a little to glower at us.

  “Uh uh, ladies,” he sneers. “Dinner is a formal affair. Or at least, not a farmhouse pig trough.” He points his considerable nose at the ceiling and sniffs at us. “No, you won’t do. The locker rooms are over there. Get yourselves cleaned up.”

  I really can’t be too angry at this guy for pointing out the obvious: Renni and me do stink, and we’re not looking too pretty either, having just spent the better part of at least a half an hour rolling around in the mud and the rain, and, later, some zombie matter. But when I look to Renni to shrug it off and smirk his comment away, she is fuming.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, man?” She pokes him in his barrel chest with her finger, leaving an indentation in his wet shirt. “We don’t take shit from you.”

  Nick fury is unfazed. “You do if you want to eat a decent meal. But, of course, you’re welcome to leave anytime.” He flips up the flap on his breast pocket and retrieves a slightly less soggy stogie. He sticks it between his teeth and bites off the end. The kid with the bucket is magically beside him again, all too eager to catch the clipped end.

  “We don’t need you,” Renni starts to say, but I elbow her ribs and give her a look. We need to get to the tunnels, my look says. Maybe this guy can help us out. Too bad Renni has kind of a hard time reading minds. “What, Devin?”

  “We are kind of smelly,” I say, beseeching. Renni huffs, but turns away from the guy, relinquishing her hold on the debate. I look at the guy, who has just finished lighting the end of his cigar with a lighter shaped like a miniature .44 Magnum. “We’ll meet you in the cafeteria in ten minutes, okay?”

  He puffs on the cigar, blowing out smoke like a fog machine. “Make it twenty. Don’t rush yourselves.”

  “What’s your name, anyway? I keep calling you Nick Fury in my head.”

  His laugh thunders out of the very core of him. He pokes himself in the eye patch with his thumb. “Is it the eye patch?”

  “No,” Renni chimes in, deadpan. “It’s your striking resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson.”

  The guy laughs again, and shakes his smoking cigar in Renni’s direction. “You resemble somebody as well.” He sticks the cigar back into his smiling mouth. “Fury’s fine with me. See you in twenty, ladies.”

  He aboutfaces out the door, and Renni and me trod over to the locker room doors. “I hate that guy,” Renni hisses.

  “He could be a white Samuel L. Jackson,” I say. “Pre-Jurassic Park.”

  In the locker room, I go straight for my old locker, out of habit, I guess. It’s in the corner closest to the showers. I see a ghostly image of myself as a freshman, looking down at the floor as I unbuttoned my shirt to change into my gym clothes, pausing to steal brief surreptitious glances at the half-naked, towel-wrapped girls coming and going from the shower room. The locker now has someone else’s combination lock on it, and I kick it for no reason.

  “Okay, so we’re supposed to shower,” Renni says to the wall, tracing someone’s indecipherable graffiti with her finger. “And then change into what clothes, exactly?”

  As if on cue, a tiny old woman scuttles into the locker room like a turtle bearing gifts. She places two sets of folded black clothes on the bench in front of us and then backs away shyly, never making eye contact.

  After a beat, Renni says, “That was weird.”

  I pick through the clothes, holding up a black cotton sleeve. “Uniforms are kind of drab.”

  Then the air becomes weighty with the sudden burden of awkwardness. There’s no more stalling to be done; we have our change of clothes and we have our fresh towels, hanging near the shower room entrance. We’re expected to shower, but are we expected to shower together? And if we shower together, are we expected to not look at each other? Or can we look at each other, but no touching? Or can we touch each other, but no looking? Is twenty minutes enough time for a quickie? I mean, sure, okay, we got caught up in the heat of some ridiculous, hurtful argument that maybe cut deeper than either of us meant for it to, and we expressed our hurt (and our desperation not to be hurt) through the copious use of tongues and hands in certain places. But that was then (like, maybe fifteen minutes ago) and this is now, and now we’re looking at each other like, who undresses first?

  “Should we just go in with our clothes on?” Renni asks, smirking a little.

  I shake my head and laugh, acknowledging how ridiculous it is to feel this awkward, but still feeling awkward nevertheless. “I know, right.”

  “Look, I’ll go first,” Renni says, pulling her mucked up t-shirt off over her head in one fluid movement, and dropping it onto the floor. “You can wait, and go after me, if you want.”

  She unbuttons her camo pants without looking at me, concentrating instead on removing the contents of her pockets and grouping everything together with her axe and rifle under the bench. She grabs a towel hanging from the rack and turns into the shower room, waiting until she’s out of sight to slip off her bra and panties. She kicks them out onto the floor, and seconds later, I hear the rush of water as she turns on the shower.

  Well. Here I am.

  Gah. Fuck. Why does everything have to be so hard? I sit down on the bench to contemplate this, to tally it up. As of now I have two (2) relatively large chunks of flesh missing from various body parts as a result of a couple of hungry zombies, one (1) cheating girlfriend whom I claim to have forgiven (but then what the hell was all that back in the field with Renni?), probably a little less than four (4) hours to get out of this forsaken town before the government napalms it, and exactly one (1) woman who gives a damn about me enough to stick by me and make out with me even after I’ve both broken her nose and puked in her mouth. What the hell am I still doing sitting out here?

  My clothes are off in a matter of seconds. I leave my bandages on because the wounds are kind of gross to look at and that would defeat the purpose of my bold charging into the shower room. Of course, once I get into the room, my plan to sweep up sexily behind Renni and take her like some beefed up minotaur out of a paranormal romance novel completely shrivels up like the skin on my toes that is already beginning to prune in the mixture of heat and moisture. I try not to stare at Renni’s naked body as I go to the shower on her left and turn on the hot water, adjusting the cold with a concentration that rivals Michelangelo’s, struggling beneath the Sistine Chapel.

  Finally, I get it just right, and then I just stand there.

  “There’s no shampoo,” Renni says. I look at her, looking at me, making no attempt to hide just exactly what she’s looking at.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I say before I can stop myself.

  Renni smiles. “Are you sure you’re really looking at me?”

  I stare harder, stare right into her eyes. “I’m sure.”

  “Then come here,” she says, and takes a small step back, inviting me into her stream.

  I turn the water in my shower off and walk slowly over to her. The hot water from her shower only cascades over one side of me, my bad side, the bandages over my wounds soaking through, the warmth flooding that side of my body with relief, but leaving my entire right side trembling in the relative cold, sprouting gooseflesh. Renni’s skin seems unaffected by either the warmth or the cold. She stands less than a foot away from me, her shallow breathing indicated by the rise and fall of her immaculately toned stomach, which for some reason I can’t look away from. I want to look at her face but I am too nervous. I have all these questions spinning through my head that I really don’t want any answers to: what are we doing? what does she want?
what do I want? what about Carmelle? I’m pretty much a top, Renni probably is too, how is this going to work?

  Renni reaches out and scrapes her nails lightly across the skin of my scalp, through my wet hair, but that’s the only touch she allows me. “You’re too young for me,” she says.

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  She laughs, and looks down at her feet, for the first time behaving like she might also be nervous. “This doesn’t have to be anything, you know?” she says, still not looking at me. She hugs her arms to herself and shrugs, looking at the wall, speaking into the steaming water. “It can just be a dream.”

  It’s easier to make an advance when she isn’t looking at me. I take one step closer to her, which presses our stomachs ever so slightly together. Her arms still crossed over her chest, I press my own breasts into her forearms. Keeping my arms at my sides, I lean in, nuzzling my chin in her shoulder, essentially hugging her with only my neck. She rubs her cheek against my ear, and smells my hair. I can’t see her face, but I imagine her eyes are closed, as mine are.

  “I just feel,” she says, her whisper dissipating in the steam so that I have to strain to catch her words, “I just feel…undone.”

  There are no words to speak after this. She’s nailed exactly how I’ve felt since the first night Carmelle held her headache before her like a shield between us in our bed. And now the only thing left to do is to nail each other.

  Except, we don’t get that far. She unlaces her arms from her chest and pulls me into her, and we embrace, moving our mouths to each other and kissing first softly, tentatively, then more intensely. Our hands rove, our lips smack and press and pull, our tongues taste throats, lips, skin, tears, steam. But neither of us makes the move to take it further; her hands stay firmly above my waist, and I copy her. Whatever happened in that field earlier was different than this; that was retaliation—against the people who hurt us, who weren’t there to bear the brunt, so we had no choice but to turn to the closest warm body. This—here, now, wrapped up deep within each other—this is consolation.