Destiny Nowhere: A Zombie Novel

by Matthew Hollis Damon

  Marsha laughs with him and continues, “Underneath all his crazy shit, Sam’s the same as every other man. He’s got all this fear of women, but that’s just because of whatever beat him down and made him go inside himself.”

  “Um, I am right here you know,” I say.

  “I see that,” she says. “You know it’s true, though. I don’t have to pull punches.” She laughs loudly. “You’re all Mr. Smarty Pants College Psychology Professor who can’t even sort your own crazy head out! Have you ever noticed that the craziest people become psychologists?”

  “I noticed that,” Vance says. “You’re always reading crazy shit about therapists bangin’ patients in the New York Post. Them and teachers have more affairs than politicians!”

  “Sam is a teacher and a therapist!” Marsha says, and they crack up hysterically.

  “I’m a professor, not a therapist,” I say. “I read a study that ninety percent of therapists have had sex fantasies about patients. Now that’s fucked up--they’re supposed to be treating someone with problems and not thinking about that.”

  “Oh yeah right, like you never thought about stuffing it in your hot little college students,” Marsha shoots back with her grotesque vernacular. “Their perky little titties hanging out for you to see while they bat their eyelashes at you.”

  I stammer, “No--I don’t see them like that. I see--”

  “Everybody thinks of having sex with everybody, admit it!” Vance says.

  I’d had thoughts about it, and Vance was right on some level; everyone sizes everyone else up as a prospective mate. But I’m furiously embarrassed, as if they both just busted me on something. “Thoughts are one thing, and actions are another. The majority of my colleagues abide by an ethical standard and don’t engage in conduct like that. The news is just a big witch hunt.”

  “True,” Vance says. “But don’t you wish we had news now? Wasn’t it great bein’ able to wake up and drink a cuppa joe and read about what was going on everywhere in the world? One day you’d get up and read about that urban gardener feeding thousands of poor people in Los Angeles by growing food on the sidewalk. Then some dude who just got attacked by Sherpas on Mount Everest. Did y’all hear ‘bout that? They said Mount Everest was gettin’ overcrowded! How can a frozen mountain top get overpopulated? And we could just sit here and watch all the horrors and beauty from far away and be glad we lived here and appreciate what we have. It ain’t perfect, but…”

  “But it was fuckin’ better than this!” Marsha chimes in with her ape laugh.

  I laugh along with her, but I secretly love this moment, more than I’d loved most nights at the comic shop playing Warhammer 40K. There’s something more real about this, talking about life. It’s something my friends and I mostly didn’t do, other than mundane crap with their kids, or our jobs. It takes me a minute to work up the nerve, but then I just blurt out, “I really like this moment, here with you guys.”

  They both look at me while I shyly dart my glance back and forth to them. “What?” I say. “This is nice, isn’t it?

  “Yeah, it is,” Vance says.

  “I like it, too,” Marsha says.

  “I mean, of course I’d rather be with my family,” Vance says. “I miss Rosie so much, and I hope Jamie and my other kids are okay--they’re in a secure spot with good people last I talked to them. Once I find Jamie, I’ma head back down south for sure. But in the meantime, I couldn’t be happier than being with y’all.”

  “I don’t have any family,” Marsha says. “Not really. My daughter don’t talk to me no more; I don’t even know where she is. I hope she’s okay, too. But I got no way to find her…” At this, she tears up, then puts her face into her hands and begins crying.

  I pat her back awkwardly. “Maybe…” I trail off, unable to think of any solution for her.

  “Maybe you should take your woman to bed and hold her close,” Vance says. “I think I’ll retire in one of the guest rooms here, and in the morning, we can go to this Walmart and see about Jamie.” He gets up, hoisting the whiskey. “Don’t mind if I take this?”

  Marsha says, “Go ahead; just fill me up before you go.”

  “Hold on, I thought I was leavin’ so your man could fill you up,” Vance says, eliciting a Marsha cackle. He pours her some whiskey. “Love to you, sweet lady,” Vance says, leaning down to hug her and kissing the top of her head. Then he throws an arm around me and hugs me. “Love to you too, brother. Take care of this sweet lady.”

  “Um, yeah, you too, Vance,” I say, awkward from the affection but also appreciating it.

  He smiles and winks, tipping his straw hat, then closes the bedroom door behind him. What’s up with guys from his generation and their creepy winking at people?

  Marsha starts giving me bedroom eyes.

  Chapter 29: Then

  So this shotgun-toting black guy thug with the number 86 on his jersey searched me and took my duffel bag. Then he marched me down to the spot where his friends were all hanging out, getting drunk, hooting and hollering, and shooting zombies.

  “Well well, what we got here?” one of the guys in the crowd said.

  “We got a super spy, creeping up on us,” Number 86 said.

  “I wasn’t spying,” I told them. “I heard--”

  “Oh yes you wuz. I walk out my front door and this motherfucker is crouched down sneaking away from y’all like he just stole yo’ stash.”

  “See, you din’t cap 007,” the girl said to another guy “He right here.” She was wearing a black shirt that said ‘Sparkle’ in pink glitter. Her hair was a complex mess of beads and braiding, and her eyes avoided mine.

  I spoke up to Number 86 and the guy next to him who was the size of a refrigerator, “I just heard noise,” I told them. “I thought it was the police so I went to investigate it.”

  “Oh yeah, you thought it was the police and then you saw it was a buncha niggers and didn’t want to say hi no more, right?” the Fridge replied.

  “Ha, that’s the opposite of how I think. I’d be like ‘thank God it’s some niggas with guns!” someone said, followed by a bunch of laughter.

  “Shit, if it was a bunch of cops, they’d look at you and open fire!” Sparkle said to the guy. She pantomimed blasting someone with her gun and then acted all panicky and wide-eyed, “Oh no, I was in fear of my life because this black dude was holding a coffee cup and a donut—all I saw was a grenade and a machine gun!”

  “That will be one-year paid vacation officer,” the first guy said in a stiff white guy voice, slamming down an imaginary gavel, “and a medal for courage in the face of negros!”

  There was a whole crowd of black people surrounding me, a lot of them smiling. Which one of these things is not like the other ones? The occasional gunshots faded into the background of this drama.

  It looked like I was the only white person here, and I suddenly realized black people really do look the same to me. Probably like white people do to them. Weird. Before this shit happened, you weren’t allowed to say stuff like that. You had to pretend we’re all the same.

  Not all of them look exactly alike, of course--there’s different types: the ones who look like Dave Chappelle, and the ones who look like Snoop Dogg, and the chubby ones with perfectly round heads like Ving Rhames. OJ Simpson and Fred Williamson are twins as far as I’m concerned.

  Of course, I read the studies in undergrad--how members of outgroups all look the same, and people in your group look more unique.

  Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, it’s the same across the board; everyone sees themselves as more unique. I was living inside a psychology textbook.

  That study did me diddly shit now, because I couldn’t stop the suspicion and anger in the sea of brown eyes around me. If I didn’t do something fast, it was gonna end badly.

  “Look, you guys are fuckin’ scary, okay? I saw Boyz in the Hood,” I told them. “For fuck’s sakes, if one of you was walking around and saw a bunch of white guys carrying guns and wearing fla
nnel, you’d sneak away too.”

  This drew laughter and some comments.

  “He right about that,” someone said.

  “This dude’s slick!”

  Someone said, “Oh hell yeah, I saw Deliverance! Did y’all see that movie? Where that fat dude got butt-raped!”

  Some groans rose from the crowd.

  “Yeah by them rednecks!”

  “Squeal like a pig!”

  86 said, “He a slick motherfucker.”

  Some gunshots ripped the air apart from right across the street. “Oh shit, this nigga was right up on us,” someone yelled from over there.

  The Fridge yelled, “Aybody keepin’ eyes out for the zombies? Don’t let the Great White Hope here get yo’ dumb asses kilt now.”

  There were more gunshots from around the intersection.

  Another big guy stepped up and said, “Just let him go, he alright.” His voice was deep and commanding.

  “Fuck that,” 86 said. “I wanna know why a white man all alone in the middle of this shit is still tryin’ to get away from us. You can see by his actions he the white devil.”

  “This black-white bullshit is stupid,” I told him.

  He laughed, his eyes boring right into mine. “Oh yeah, it’s stupid now when you all by yo-self unarmed and there’s no po-lice to protect yo racist ass from the Negro rage!”

  I didn’t know how to convince them of anything. All they saw was a white guy who was afraid, and they were feeding off it. Nothing I said would overcome the growing mob mentality, because they weren’t seeing or hearing me. I thought about telling them I’m a professor, that I’ve taught people of all colors. But these are uneducated, bitter young people. The situation was dangerous because these kids acted like caricatures of gangsta rap bullshit. I couldn’t tell them that, though.

  My heart raced so fast, and something crazy popped into my head. A joke I’d heard from a friend, Tom Carpenter, during gaming sessions. Tom wasn’t a racist; he was a big, lovable guy who would give the shirt off his back to anyone for any reason. But he had good race jokes, but I can’t remember his jokes about white people.

  The joke went like this: What’s the difference between Batman and a black man?

  Answer: Batman can go out at night without Robin. (robbin’)!

  It doesn’t quite translate in writing, you gotta say it out loud.

  I almost told the joke, but decided that would give 86 the excuse he was looking for to shoot me.

  “Oh that shut you up, did it?” The Fridge said.

  “Listen, man,” I said. “Your black bullshit is just as stupid and racist as America’s white bullshit. If you wanna fuckin’ shoot me, then go ahead. Otherwise, get the fuck out of my way.”

  “Amen!” someone said, drawing a few laughs.

  “Fuck yeah, he right,” Sparkle said.

  86’s eyes bored into mine. I held his gaze. I didn’t know where those words came from in me. It felt like the most courageous thing I’d ever done.

  86 smiled slightly. “You a crazy motherfucker, and you alright wid me,” he said, tucking his pistol into his belt and holding out his hand.

  His eyes were smirking, and it felt like a trap--if I didn’t shake his hand, they’d think I’m weak, and if I did shake it, he would sucker punch me. I reached for his hand, hoping for the best.

  Chapter 30: Now

  When Vance leaves, I help Drunk Marsha stand up and walk to her bed. She keeps trying to kiss me and paw at me, but I dodge her. She falls heavily and pulls me down with her death grip on my shirt, then keeps kissing me, rubbing her tongue against my face like a slimy turtle head on my cheek.

  “Marsha, stop, you’re drunk,” I say.

  “You’re not exactly the man of my dreams either, Sam,” she replies, her gross tongue trying to infiltrate my mouth.

  “Okay, good,” I say. “You should sleep it off, then.”

  “I want you to fuck me.” She reaches her hand down toward my inadvertently stiffening crotch, and I scooch away. “I need to get laid so bad,” she mumbles, swiping her arms in the air where I’d been.

  “You’re just drunk,” I say.

  “You’re just a pussy, pining over some pretty young girl you met who wouldn’t give you the time of day,” she says. “You’re not a fucking man, Sam.”

  “Oh right, a real man has to fuck any woman on command!” I hate her. Her comment about Charisse stabs at me and I want to hurt her back. “Hang on, Marsha,” I say sarcastically, “let me see if Vance is still up and wants to be a real man and come fuck you.”

  “I don’t fuck nigs,” she says.

  “Nigs? Really? What’s your problem with Vance?”

  “A nig is a nig,” she says. “They can keep their shit-colored dicks away from me. I ain’t never let one touch me before and I ain’t startin’ now.”

  I groan. I’m now stuck with a racist redneck and a black guy during the end times! Even Doyle wasn’t redneck enough to be a racist. Could life get any more stupid?

  “Give it to me, you pussy,” she says.

  “Tempting, but uh, listen, Marsha.” I draw close to her so I can speak in a hushed tone, close enough to smell the alcohol breath and rotting teeth in her mouth. “Vance gave you a gun. He’s obviously a trustworthy guy, who’s good at surviving out here. All of us need to drop our--”

  Her hand lunges out and catches my hair, yanking me toward her. Her mouth is a pit of snakes. “Marsha, let go!” I try to twist out, but she has a firm grip in my hair. “Marsha!” She keeps yanking my hair, so I ball my fist and sock her in the forehead.

  She lets go. I stand up, panting a bit from the struggle. I’d never punched anyone in my life, and my first punch is a woman! My pinky knuckle is painfully jammed, and I try to twist it out, feeling pathetic.

  “Ow! Did you just punch me in the face?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  That’s when she starts crying. “Fuck you,” she says. “Get out of my room.”

  I take the pistol off the nightstand and leave her to her maudlin.

  The house is dark, of course, but is that a flashlight in my pocket or am I just happy to see you! I pull it out and click it on, then stroll down the stairs. There’s some light in the kitchen, and I find Vance sitting at the kitchen table poring over a map that’s got red marker lines on it.

  Beside the map sits the whiskey bottle and a creased photo of a handsome black teenager with quite a large, round 70s-looking afro. I want to make a Jackson Five joke, but it’s a sensitive moment. It’s weird to think about the Jackson Five, and I wonder if any of them survived. Or Madonna, or Brad Pitt, or AC/DC, or Obama. Trump probably made it to a secret bunker with all the other weasely shitheads we called ‘leaders.’ All these people who used to have more value than the rest of us-- after the zombies came, it was an even playing field. Even a geek like me could survive, while so many ‘superior’ people died horrible deaths. Schwarzenegger was probably lumbering around chewing on peoples ligaments right now in his most famous I’ll Be Back moment ever!

  “You alright?” Vance says. “I heard yelling.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Marsha’s drunk. She’s not my woman, by the way. I find her gross.”

  “A gross woman is better than no woman any day.”

  Charisse is too fresh in my mind, and so are Marsha’s words, which had really stung. There’s a hope I’d kept buried in my mind, that I could somehow get Charisse out of Mavmart. Having sex with Marsha feels like letting go of that dream, and death would be more fun. I say, “Marsha’s a racist.”

  Vance raises his eyebrows. “Marsha’s a sweet woman. Guess a lot of racists are on the surface, though, huh?”

  “You mean you don’t have some super sense that lets you detect when people hate black people?” I ask.

  Vance laughs. “Nope. No extra sensory Negro perception. We’re just regular people, like you.”

  “Oh.” Was I being racist?

  Vance pauses, looking into my eyes. “That r
acist shit, that’s not who she is, though. Funny that after the world fell to pieces, people are still afraid like that. All that hate inside…” He trails off.

  Fear of the Other is a hard-wired mechanism. I know this because I used to be a psychologist. It goes back to pre-sapient tribal days when humans survived by staying with their people. I tell him as much, like I’m some academic robot.

  He shakes his head at me. “I’m a lot older than you, and it ain’t hard-wired in me.”

  “I’m not into it either.” For a minute, we just sit there in silence. We share a look where maybe I see Vance for the first time as he is--frail but sturdy, hopeful in the midst of this deep sadness he’s carrying. I want to hug him, but I know he would take it like pity, because part of it is pity. “What’s this map?” I say.

  “This is the areas I’ve searched so far. Roads I’ve walked down.” His route came up through Lafayette to the University, up and down Westcott neighborhood, onto the campus where he reached the dorms through Thorndon Park, then cut a wide swath around, through the south end of the city, crossing Geddes a few blocks north of where I’d been waylaid by all the gangsters. I wonder if he ran into any of them and how it went.

  After that, he cut through Tipp Hill, Solvay, and up into Fairmount, before finally heading down Milton Ave into Camillus. That’s how he missed Mavmart.

  “Listen, about Mavmart,” I say. “I’m gonna take you there tomorrow. But, I can’t go to the door with you. There’s bad people in there. If you can find a girl named Charisse in there, tell her…” I trail off, not sure what he should say to Charisse. “Tell her I’m gonna get her out. She’s a skinny girl with long brown hair.”

  He nods. “Bad people? How you mean bad?”

  I tell him what Charisse told me. He says that sounds like nothing Jamie would ever be part of, and I say, “Yeah, but if it’s a matter of life or death, and saving his girlfriend…”