The room around him was cast into a tight circle of light. He could see the bar, the stools, a few of the tables that scattered across the floor like drunken dancers. What he needed now was the office. He wanted to find a pen and some paper. First he would write down all the things he had to remember, like Linda's name, her address, Matt's phone number, where he was headed. Then, he would write a letter to the people he cared about to serve as a last will and testament should he finally expire.
Expire.
Like rotted meat. That's all he was now, wasn't it? Rotted meat that, for some reason, was still able to ambulate.
He moved off toward the little hallway to his left, hoping that was the way to the office. If he could just find pen and paper, all his problems would be solved.
Linda slid in the door and dropped her purse and keys on the table in the little space she liked to call the foyer. It was in no way a real foyer, just a bit of tile floor adrift in the sea of carpet. She turned the latch on the door and took a quick peek in the mirror over the table. She was looking haggard, she knew. Perhaps she should invest a little money and go to the salon before Paul arrived. They hadn't seen each other in a while. What if he found her less desirable than he remembered?
With a heavy sigh, she wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. There were two containers of left-over takeout food in there: One definitely gone, one questionable at best. She shut the door.
The day had been long and hard and she was so glad to be off work. But there was nothing in the apartment to eat, nothing worth doing. She snagged her phone from her purse and dialed the closest pizza joint, ordered a small pepperoni, then clicked through to her email. She had sent Paul an email at lunch time, reminding him that she needed to know where he was, when he would arrive. There was still no answer.
Wandering to the sofa, she dropped onto it with a soft Oof! She tossed the phone onto the sofa cushion and hugged her legs then, resting her chin on her knees. It wasn't like Paul not to answer her emails. She could understand him not wanting to talk on the phone, what with his being sick and all. But to not answer emails? That was so not Paul.
She hadn't liked Paul when she first met him. He had been a tad too shy, too unsure of himself and nervous. She generally liked a guy with more hutzpah. The more dominant males were definitely her type. But he had persisted and she had acquiesced, if only to get rid of him. He had asked her out the very first time they met, but she had shut him down. Then, he had had the gall to send her one red rose every hour until she agreed to go out with him. In the end, they had gone to Jeeters and she had a cool six dozen red roses in her apartment. Paul was persistent.
The memory of it all made her smile, then giggle. Her green eyes sparkled and danced when she laughed. She knew that because Paul had said so about a hundred times.
Paul was a good man. He was thoughtful, neat, hard-working, loving, romantic, funny, smart, and loyal. Paul never broke promises and he never did anything to hurt anyone if he could help it. More than anything, she loved that one thing. They had never even had a fight.
She needed to touch up her roots, she remembered. She had let them go too long. Paul didn't care, of course. But she did.
By their second date, Linda had realized that Paul was THE ONE. He was MR. RIGHT, MR. PERFECT, HER BETTER HALF, HER SOUL MATE. By their fifth date, they were deciding their futures together; planning just how their lives together would be.
"Dammit!" she spat and snatched the phone off the cushion. She dialed Paul's number and listened to it ring and ring, her smile running away from her. Then the voice mail kicked in and she sighed. "Hi, baby. I know you can't call. But I sent two emails and in case they didn't go through, I need to know you're okay. I need to know when you'll arrive so I can be here. Anyway . . . email me back. Or call and tap on the phone or something. Anything. Just let me know you're okay. Love you. Bye."
Shutting off the phone, she dropped her feet to the floor and sank deeper into the sofa cushions. He wasn't ignoring her. He would never do that. Something was wrong, she just knew it. And she wasn't going to feel right until she knew that Paul was okay.
Paul sat behind the dust-coated desk of the former club owner, the pencil hovering over the paper as if waiting for permission to write. He had found a flashlight in one of the desk drawers and miracle of miracles, the thing had still worked. That pink bunny sure didn't lie.
Finally, he plunged ahead. He made note of Linda's full name, her phone number at the apartment and her cell phone number. Then, he wrote down her address (that one took a lot more thought) and made a small note below that so that he would remember where she worked. He continued writing, jotting down Matt's name and number, their shared address, and the license plate number of their car, should he ever need it.
All of this took him over an hour and he still wasn't sure that he had remembered all the details correctly. For example, the last four digits of Linda's phone number might have been 0323 or 0232. He wasn't completely sure. Then he set about writing a farewell note to his loved ones. He began to cry halfway through, thinking of all that had happened to him, all that he'd done, and all the things he would never get to do again. When he was done, he sat back in the filthy chair and sighed. After staring at the paper for a long time, he folded it carefully and put it into his pocket.
He had no idea where to go from here. He couldn't just waltz into the police department and demand his car back. He was wanted for murder, after all. Aside from that, he looked like an extra from a Michael Jackson video.
The only thing to do was press on. He had to find another phone and another car. His face was severely blotched now and his stomach had begun to roil and cramp.
"You're not a thief," he said to the dark. "No, I'm broke."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Matt was kicked back on the couch, sucking down his third Pepsi and munching a bag of chips. In the ashtray next to him sat two roaches. The apartment smelled of pot and day-old pizza. On the TV: Some stupid show about Vikings. Matt didn't really like Vikings. He was just too lazy to reach for the remote.
There was a vicious knocking at his door then and it jolted him off the couch, making him spill his chips and nearly spill his Pepsi. He forced himself to sit up, though slowly, and he dumped the two roaches under the sofa.
"Damn," he muttered to himself, then, louder, "Coming! I'm coming!"
His large feet shuffled across the worn carpet as Matt made his way to the door. The chain was on, the lock was on. He stared at them for a few seconds while he decided which on the best procedure for opening the door. Finally, he unbolted the locks and opened it a few inches, peering out with one heavily-lidded eye.
"Detective Thomas Milligan of the NYPD." A badge shone through the crack in the door. "Are you Matt Cassidy?"
"Shit," Matt growled between clenched teeth. He cleared his throat, rubbed his face. "Yea, that's me. Matt Cassidy." Blink.
"Would you mind opening the door, sir? I'd like to have a word with you."
Matt pushed the door closed, ran a reckless hand through his hair and disengaged the chain. When he pulled the door open again, he was smiling. "How can I help you, officer?"
Clearly, the detective planned to come inside, but Matt managed to edge out the door and pull it shut behind him.
"You have a roommate? Paul Tremblay?"
The detective's eyes were piercing and Matt found himself shying away from them. "Yea, Paul and I live together. Why? What's wrong with Paul?"
"You own a car together? A brand new Toyota Camry, license number YKR 3182?"
"I don't know the license number, man, but yea. That's our car. And again I ask . . . what happened?"
"Your car was found parked outside a SuperMart in Lebanon, Kansas. It was covered in blood and there was a body in the back seat."
"Body?" Matt's chin dropped, his voice became deeper, more serious.
"The body of a man. We're not sure of his identity yet. He's still in the autopsy room. But the thing is, this guy was parti
ally . . . eaten." The detective's eyes met Matt's and narrowed.
"Eaten?" Matt asked, as if he hadn't heard correctly. What in the hell did Paul do, he wondered? I don't want to get Paul into trouble, but I'm not going down for murder.
"Mr. Cassidy, where have you been for the last thirty-six hours? If I may ask."
"I went to work yesterday. There's like ten guys who can put me on the job. And this morning I got up around ten, and then I went to the bank to cash my check. Then I went to . . ." he stopped for a moment, thinking.
"Sir, when was the last time you saw your car?"
Matt stared at the detective, trying to figure a way out of all this without getting him and Paul in trouble. "Umm . . . the car was here three nights ago when I drove home from work in it. Look, detective, dude, I didn't kill nobody."
"I'm not saying you did, sir. But tell me, how did your car get all the way to Kansas and why was there a dead guy in the back seat?"
"I dunno, Mister." Matt collapsed against the door frame with a heavy sigh. "Listen, here's the thing: My roommate, Paul, he took the car three nights ago so he could go see his girlfriend." That was the honest to God truth, Matt realized, and he pressed on. "I haven't seen the car, or Paul, since then."
"This girlfriend, would that be Linda Gilchrist? Lives in Los Angeles?" Detective Milligan was reading from his little notebook. He looked up then to check Matt's face.
"Yea," Matt answered slowly.
"You should know," Milligan began, "that your friend, Paul's, fingerprints were all over the car. He was covered in blood and, my guess is, when the test results come back, we'll find that the blood is that of the deceased. We found Paul's phone in the car, but we haven't found Paul yet. I'm working with the Lebanon police department on this, since our main suspect is a New York resident. So, if your buddy shows up or happens to call you, you tell him that he needs to come turn himself in. And then you call me. Here's my card." He flipped the card out with a flourish, as though he had done so a thousand times.
Matt suddenly realized that his jaw was hanging and he hadn't blinked in about five minutes. He let the gritty surface of his lids scrape over his dry eyes and swallowed. He took the card and tucked it into his pocket, his gaze never leaving Milligan's face.
Milligan turned and left then, without saying a word. Matt watched him go for a moment, then let himself slide down the door until he was sitting on the floor.
"Christ!" he groaned. "Paul, what have you done?"
Paul sat, curled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging his knees and rocking. Long periods lapsed during which he couldn't remember where he was, how he had gotten there, or what it was that he was supposed to do. All he knew was that it was very important that he do this thing.
He might have sat there forever, rocking and wondering, had the rat not come along. There were countless rats in the building; they pretty much ran the place. But Paul had been hearing this particular rat for the better part of an hour as it scurried along the shelves and rooted through a pile of debris on the floor next to the potted (dead) plant. Now, however, the rat had become emboldened and had made a bid for the sofa.
The creature managed to scratch and claw its way up the short arm of the sofa farthest from where Paul sat. It was perched on the sofa back now, glaring at him with beady eyes and cleaning its whiskers. Paul watched it without fear. Once you were (un)dead, what had you left to fear?
Then the rat ran along the back of the sofa, charging straight at Paul. Its intent was unclear but Paul, having worked the sewers for nearly ten years, had a natural aversion to rats. The minute the thing was in his reach, he lashed out with one hand. His original plan was to slap the thing away, make sure it didn't get to his face. But at the last second, his hand swiveled and he grabbed it tightly in his fist.
The rat squirmed for a moment, obviously stunned at its capture. Paul felt the whiskers working against his hand, sensed the creature's fear as he brought it closer to his face. And then the rat, in a final bid for freedom, bit him.
What followed then was the most disgusting and digestively horrid thing Paul had ever experienced. The rat, having filled its mouth with a good chunk of Paul, spat and squirmed and tried to get the taste of him out of its mouth. The feel of its little claws on Paul's hand drove him into revulsive rage and with a movement that was so quick and so unpremeditated that he couldn't have stopped himself if he'd tried, Paul popped the rat into his mouth.
There was a sickening snap and squish sound as Paul bit down on the rat. Blood filled his mouth and he found within a moment that the taste was not unlike the taste of the car-jacker. Paul chewed once, twice, swallowed the thing's head. And then he smiled.
The effect was almost instantaneous. At once, Paul's mind cleared, his memories began to return. He felt renewed strength and vigor. And if he'd had enough light and a clean enough mirror, he was certain that he'd find his face devoid of those ruptures and pustules. He smiled again.
It was all so clear to him now. He needed a new car . . . something nondescript but drivable. He also needed a map or a GPS or some other method of finding Linda. And he needed a source of food . . . or what passed as food for him these days.
Paul knew from experience that if you stole a car in the city, the reaction was immediate. The alarm went off, the police were called, an APB issued within the hour. Even in the absence of an alarm, most people would discover their car gone within two hours' time. But if you stole a car in the middle of the night, out in the country, it might go unnoticed for hours, even days. The odds were better if you stole someone's second car or a beater. If they didn't use it every day, they might not notice it was gone for a week or more. And out in the country, the cops took longer to get to the scene of the crime.
That was it then. Paul had to go out into the country and steal a car, perhaps an old farm truck or something. It might be morning before the cops arrived and the warrant was issued. But it had to be at night.
He focused his eyes on the plywood that covered the windows. There was a gap, albeit tiny, at the bottom left corner and light shone through. He would have plenty of time to gather his supplies and head out of town once the sun set.
He opened the drawers in the desk once more, finding the pen he had used before. He studied each object in the drawers, trying them on for size, hoping to find something else of use. At the back of the left top drawer, he found a stack of sticky notes – ah, sticky notes, my old friend – and he stuffed those, along with the pen, into his pocket. He found a pocket knife in the bottom right drawer and he took that too. His first car had been a beater and, when he couldn't afford to fix the dead starter, he had simply bypassed it and hotwired the thing, using the connection and disconnection of the wires as a form of starter. He would need the knife to cut and strip the wires.
Paul was not by nature a thief but his back was against the wall. He was wanted for a murder he couldn't really be faulted for being undead and, desperate. He wasn't sure how this all would end, but he made a mental note to return to this town if it all ended well, and pay back the guy for his car.
Paul fumbled his way to the front door, inching it open and looking outside for just a second. Judging by the position of the sun, he had a few hours before he would be able to leave. That in mind, he set about trapping another rat. He didn't like the idea, but if he was going to travel all the way out to the farm land on foot, he would need some sustenance.
Behind the bar was a small kitchen and it was in that direction that he heard the scuttling sounds of tiny rat feet as they searched for food, tended their young, whatever it was that rats did when left to their own devices. He felt his way to the kitchen and went in, planted himself in the middle of the floor and waited. He sat cross-legged for a little over an hour before a rat finally worked up enough courage to come close to him. When it did, Paul lashed out his hand and grabbed the thing, thrusting it under a large pot on the counter. He would keep it there until right before he left and then he would eat it.
>
Linda woke early that morning from a dream that scared the hell out of her. In this dream, Paul was falling out of the sky and she had been charged with catching him. But she had been given nothing more than a coffee cup to catch him in. She watched and waited as the small dot that was Paul fell through the air, trying to adjust her position so that she was always directly beneath him. Eyes turned skyward, she watched as the dot grew and became a man, fell faster. She aimed the cup, crying, and tried to figure out how in the world she was going to catch him in such a tiny vessel. All of a sudden, Paul simply melted, turning into a falling, trailing blob of goo which dropped into the cup, splattering Linda's shirt and making her scream.
She was still screaming when she woke up, her face and chest drenched in sweat and her entire body shaking. She threw back the covers and grabbed for her cell. There were no messages and no emails from Paul. Linda started to cry.
They had always been so close, so connected. Dreams aside, she knew him well enough to know when something was wrong. She hadn't heard from him for days and, even if he was still sick, that was unusual.
She had never wanted to be one of those stalker-chicks, checking up on her boyfriend every two hours, tracking him by the GPS, and whatnot. But she was scared now. She had called four times, sent five emails, and there had been not one answer. He could be dead, lying in a ditch somewhere, or at the bottom of a ravine, surrounded by smashed car parts.
Somewhere on that phone, she had Matt's number. Nobody had picked up at the apartment when she had called last night, so she tried to find Matt's cell number. He would know what was going on. He would put her mind at ease.
The very next to last number on her recently called list was Matt's. She had a few friends, but she never gave her cell phone number out to anyone unless they factored heavily in her life. Matt had called her two months ago to give her clues as to what Paul wanted for his birthday. And that was the only time he had ever called her.
Zombie - A Love Story Page 6