Zomburbia

by Adam Gallardo

  I leaned in and whispered. “Can you please just go?” I asked. “Like right now?”

  “Hi, Sherri.” Brandon was right behind me.

  I slumped against the door. “Why don’t you come inside?” I said to Sherri. Then, as she was walking past me, I whispered right in her ear, “You inconvenient skank.”

  She just sashayed into the house and smiled brightly. If Sherri was a comic book character, she’d be Loki. She really took a lot of joy in spreading chaos wherever she went.

  She sat down at the kitchen table, patted the seat next to her, and smiled up at Brandon. Looking huffy, he did as she wanted. I just stood there with my arms crossed and my bottom lip protruding about a mile.

  “So what were you two talking about?” God, I hated her right then.

  Brandon looked up at me and waited for me to say something. They both just sat there and stared at me. Those jerks.

  “I sell drugs.”

  My mouth fell open. Had I said that? It must have been me—neither of them had opened their mouths. Was that possible?

  Sherri did a double take, completely taken by surprise. That felt good, I have to admit. At least this afternoon wouldn’t be a complete loss. But it was Brandon’s reaction that concerned me. He sat there for another moment, studying me. He looked away. Oh, God, could he not even look at me now?

  “Is that all?” he said.

  I decided I needed to sit down. Sherri looked confused with a chance of angry. She glared at me for a second like I’d done this somehow.

  “That’s all you have to say?” she demanded.

  Brandon shook his head and then took a sip of his soda. He didn’t seem to care about the lipstick marks anymore.

  “You know that, like, half the kids I know sell pot, right?” he asked. “Ken Leung has been selling pot and speed since junior high! Hell, I’ve sold pot before.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “if this doesn’t faze you, then what did you think I’d done?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Since you weren’t talking to me, I guess my brain leaped to the worst-case, you know, situation.”

  “Scenario,” I said.

  “Selling drugs isn’t the worst-case?” Sherri said. She still sounded like she couldn’t get her bearings.

  “No, I guess I thought maybe she, you know, had something to do with her friend’s death. Your friend, too, I guess.”

  I felt suddenly queasy. There’s no way he could know I felt partly responsible for Willie’s suicide. I don’t know what my face did, but Brandon got really serious really fast.

  “You didn’t, did you?” he asked. “Have something to do with him dying, I mean. Like he didn’t overdose or anything?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Sherri said, and she stood fast and knocked the table. “I cannot believe you’re okay with this.”

  “What?” Brandon asked.

  “Sherri thought you were going to be disgusted,” I said. So did I, I thought. I didn’t know how to feel now that he seemed okay with it. Was that creeping sensation in my gut disappointment?

  “Why would you think that?” Brandon turned in his seat to look at Sherri.

  “Never mind.”

  “No, really.”

  “Really,” Sherri said. She kept her back to us. “Drop it.” It looked like she was studying a photo of me and my parents. From back in the day when Mom was still around, obviously.

  “Sure,” Brandon said. He turned back around and rolled his eyes at me. I ignored him.

  “I know what stupid thing I want to do,” Sherri said, her back to us still.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  She turned to face us. I thought maybe she’d been crying or at least holding back tears, instead her eyes were totally clear.

  “The other day,” she said, “I told you I wanted to do something stupid. I just didn’t know what. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” I said. It had been just yesterday, so of course I remembered.

  “Well, I figured out what stupid thing I want to do.”

  “What?” I asked. I didn’t like where this was going.

  “I want to go in with you when you go to see Buddha,” she said, “and I want to get high while we’re there.”

  “What the hell?” I asked. “Five minutes ago, you thought I was a lowlife for selling this stuff and now you want to get high?”

  She came and sat back down.

  “You’ve told me that you were curious about it before and you told me if you ever did it, it’d be with him because he’s the only person you’d trust not to kill you, right?”

  “ ‘Kill you’?” Brandon asked. He looked freaked out. “We are just talking about reefer or cross-tops or something like that, right?”

  Sherri gave him a withering look. “No, Nancy, we’re not. Our little Courtney sells Vitamin Z. Still think it’s no big deal?”

  He gave me a questioning look. I ignored him.

  “I’ll ask you again,” I said to Sherri. “What’s this all about?”

  She sat back and looked really tired. More than that, really. Defeated. Like she felt she couldn’t go on anymore. She actually gave me a little smile.

  “I want something that will make me forget everything that’s going on. Alcohol doesn’t do that. Weed doesn’t do it.” She shot a look at Brandon. He stared into the open soda can and didn’t see it. “But I’ve heard from people who’ve taken it that Vitamin Z does. I want that right now.”

  I’d heard the same thing from a couple of people. Mostly at parties. For some reason talk at our parties always included a lot of discussion about what sort of excesses people had experienced, either drugs or booze. The folks who’d done Z would say they couldn’t explain it to you, you’d have to try it for yourself. While they were on it, though, they felt completely gone from the world. They always had this sort of scary, faraway look in their eyes when they talked about it. It was a look I usually associated with religious nuts.

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “Tough titties,” Sherri said. “If you want a ride out there today, I’m going in with you.” Normally she’d smile when she said something like that. A mean smile, but still. This time she was totally serious.

  “Brandon, tell her this is nuts,” I told him.

  “You guys shouldn’t go by yourselves,” he said. “I should go, too.”

  I felt like I was going crazy. Or everyone else was crazy and I was still holding it together. Somewhere along the line, all control over the situation had slipped out of my hands. Really, I should have been used to the feeling. At least Sherri was looking smug again—we were back on familiar ground there.

  “You want to go, too,” I said.

  “You’re going to go visit a drug dealer,” he said. He said it the way you’d tell someone with a stick of dynamite to step away from the open fire. “It’ll be dangerous, Courtney.”

  “I’ve been going to see this guy twice a month for more than a year now. By myself. I think we’ll be fine.”

  “Well, I still want to go.”

  I was about to keep arguing. Sherri cut in.

  “You should let him come,” she said. “If nothing else, we can take his truck. It’s a lot nicer ride than my POS car.”

  “This is crazy,” I said. “It’s bat-shit stupid is what it is.” I felt desperate. No matter what either of them said, or how casual they both seemed to be taking it, I knew for a damned fact it was going to end badly. But I guess that was never enough reason not to do something.

  “Why not?” I said, invoking the Wild Bunch mantra again. Hey, things worked out for them, right?

  I got up from the table and headed down the hall.

  “You two stay here,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Where are you going?” Sherri asked.

  “To wash this crap off my face,” I answered. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to see Buddha made up like this.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Counting Coup<
br />
  We got through the freeway checkpoint with no problems. The guards acted all soldierly when we first pulled up—standing at attention and weapons at the ready, like that. Then they saw me in the passenger seat and they relaxed.

  “Hey, Courtney,” a guy named Winton said. He’s a black guy only two or three years older than me and he acts like he’s all worldly. Based on his accent, I’d say he was from Georgia—I’d never bothered to ask him. “This your boyfriend?”

  I felt Brandon tense beside me.

  “No,” called Sherri from the backseat. “I’m her girlfriend !”

  Winton looked a little shocked. Then a crooked smile broke out across his face and exposed a gold tooth. “Sweet,” he said. “I thought so . . .” He shouldered his rifle. “ID, Miss?”

  I don’t know why we had to go through this every time. I handed him my student ID. Tucked behind it I’d folded five twenty-dollar bills. One for each of the guys at the checkpoint. Buddha arranged for all of this, though I had to pay them out of my share.

  Winton counted the money and then showed me that gold tooth again. “Everything looks in order, Miss.” He pulled back the sleeve on his right arm and checked a big ol’ military watch. “I’ve got thirteen-twelve right now. Our boy in Portland will open up the road block at Exit Six-B at fourteen-hundred sharp. It’ll stay open for a half-hour. Okay?”

  “Just like we always do it, Private.”

  He laughed. “Now I know why you never give me any play,” he said, and he peered at Sherri in the backseat.

  “Yeah,” I said as Brandon put the truck in drive, “that’s why.”

  They pulled the Humvee out of our way and Brandon accelerated onto the freeway.

  Road trips were usually a lot of fun. This one not so much. I sat and stewed, pissed off that I’d allowed myself to be pressured into letting the two of them come along and wondering what I would tell Buddha when he opened the door and saw Brandon and Sherri following me around like puppies I’d picked up in the Safeway parking lot. Brandon was trying to act stoic and tough—supposedly for my sake. Sherri sat in the back plotting her self-destruction.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Brandon asked.

  “It’s obvious you can,” said Sherri from the backseat. “The question is, may you?”

  Brandon looked surprised and a little confused. I suppressed a grin. Who knew Sherri paid attention when I corrected her grammar?

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why do you sell drugs?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Brandon kept his eyes on the road.

  “I mean, it’s not like you’re spending the cash on stuff,” Brandon said. “At least, nothing obvious. You don’t have a car, no flashy phone, no designer clothes.”

  “You don’t like what she’s wearing?” Sherri asked. “I think she’s very stylish.”

  “What I’m saying,” said Brandon through teeth that were ever so slightly gritted, “is that I can’t figure out what you’re doing with the money you’re obviously making.”

  “I’m saving it,” I said. I felt my cheeks grow flush and hated that I had that response.

  “For . . . ?” Brandon prompted.

  I shot a glance back at Sherri. She just stared back. Waiting.

  “When I finish school, I’m going to move to New York and go to school at Columbia,” I said. “I’m going to eventually get a doctorate in epidemiology from the Mailman School there.”

  “New York is closed,” Brandon said.

  “The Army’ll open it in time for me to go.”

  “Why New York?” Brandon asked.

  “Good question,” said Sherri.

  “There are places all over that study the spread of disease,” he went on.

  I heaved a huge sigh. I told very few people my plan because even to me it sounded a little crazy. Crazy or not, however, it was the plan.

  “My mom studied at the Mailman School,” I said. “A couple of years before the dead came back, she dropped out.”

  “Did your mom die in the zombie attacks?” Brandon asked.

  “No,” I said, “but sometimes I think she should have. She screwed off to Seattle with some douche when I was a kid.”

  Brandon took his eyes from the road long enough to give me a look.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “My mom was studying at the Mailman Center,” I said. “She might have been the one to discover a way to stop the spread of zombie-ism. But she quit, just like she quit my family. Well, I’m going to go there and finish what she refused to.”

  The road noise seemed really loud, and none of us spoke to replace it.

  Brandon finally cleared his throat and said, “That still doesn’t make any sense to me, Courtney.”

  My heartbeat quickened. I sat forward and stared out the windshield. I didn’t want to look at him just then.

  “OHSU, right here in Oregon, just up in Portland,” he said, “they’re doing research into whatever spreads the zombie virus. Why not just go there? Why pin your hopes on such a long shot? Why risk jail and your whole future on something that may never happen?”

  “Let’s change the subject,” I said. I wanted to scream, to lash out and punch Brandon as hard as possible. I just sat there.

  “Even if they open New York, and the . . . whatever center,” Brandon went on, “what makes you think you’ll be accepted?”

  He waited for me to answer, which I refused to do.

  “I think Courtney said to change the subject,” Sherri said. I heard the ice in her voice. She may think my plan is crazy, and that the way I’m going about funding it is wrong, but I was still her friend and she had my back. Thank God.

  “Right,” said Brandon. “I’ll shut up.”

  None of us said anything for a while. I mean, what was there to say?

  “Will you at least put some music on?” I asked after a few miles. The silence was killing me.

  The Pixies came over the speakers as he flipped on the CD player. Good, I could do with some thrashing guitar, and Black Francis’s screaming fit my mood.

  “Jesus,” Sherri said from the backseat, “could we have some music from this century?”

  Brandon pressed buttons until he found something Sherri could live with.

  We’d been on the road for about thirty-five minutes, which felt about right since we’d just hit the Tigard exit. We had another fifteen or so to go. When you’re traveling north, Tigard is where you first see the wall. Right after the dead came back, the government decided they were going to build a wall around the greater Portland area. You know, seal the suckers in so they couldn’t get out and spread their disease. I don’t think the wall even got half-built. There are sections of it all around the city. There are also gaps all along it, too, so it’s pretty worthless. It’s like the fence around the school on a huge scale. But along that stretch of freeway, both sides of the road were lined with twelve-foot-tall concrete slabs. They wanted to keep the roads safe to encourage highway travel and shipping. It was two in the afternoon and we were the only car on the road, so I don’t think it worked the way they planned.

  As you motor along I-5, the freeway rises up and crosses the river from the west side of Portland to the east. When it does, you can finally get a look at the city. The buildings along the waterfront are all rotting and falling apart. It’s sad, really. I guess Portland used to be pretty dank back before the zombie infestation. It was no New York, but what is?

  As we drove past, I saw what looked like a bunch of people strolling up and down the Esplanade. Looking closer I saw that it was zombies milling around. They were the reason the city was closed off, and why the people who lived on the east side of the river had blown up all the bridges that connected them to the other side.

  Speaking of the people, I could see some cars and trucks—trucks mostly—parked along the water on the east side. Guys with rifles stood out there aiming across the river at the zombies. Every once in a while, there’d be a popping s
ound and a puff of smoke, and then a zombie across the water would fall down or not. It seemed like an interesting way to kill time.

  We drove past that scene, and Brandon exited I-5. We looped around to our left and we were on the 405. We drove west for just a few minutes. I told Brandon to start slowing down and pretty soon I told him to get off the freeway. A Hummer was parked next to a dismantled barricade. I saw a soldier sitting behind the wheel, and I waved as we drove past. He totally ignored me. From there, I directed Brandon through the twisty streets to a spot where we could park.

  Buddha lived on the west side of the river, where all the zombies were confined. His apartment building sat at the foot of the West Hills, tucked behind the baseball stadium and just a couple of blocks from the Max light rail line. It would have been a really desirable location if it wasn’t for all the undead strolling through the streets.

  We parked in a tree-lined cul-de-sac up a hill from where the apartment sat, the branches overgrown and making the whole street shadowy and spooky despite the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon. We climbed out and Brandon got into the back of his truck to grab a shotgun from the gun rack.

  “You should leave that,” I said.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “First, let’s stop questioning my sanity for the rest of the day, okay?” I said, and Brandon turned an appropriate shade of crimson. “Second, Buddha won’t really appreciate you showing up at his front door with a loaded shotgun—he’s funny that way. Finally, fire that thing and you’ll attract every shuffler in a half-mile area.” We stood there for a minute while he thought through it.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “You can stay in the truck and wait for us if you want.” I felt mean saying it. There was just no way I wanted him taking the boom stick along with us. Finally he shrugged and put the shotgun back and closed the truck’s door. He dug the key fob out of his pocket and pointed it at the truck.

  “Don’t lock it.” Sherri stood with her hands in her pockets. She looked down the street toward where we would be headed in a second.