The Living Dead

by Kraus, Daniel

  They ran like they hadn’t in a while, Two minutes later, Muse took over wheelbarrow duty, and they kept going. Greer’s head still stormed. He was right she was picking a fight. What angered her—anger covering shame, if she was honest—was the possibility that Muse thought less of her for killing ghouls, no matter that she’d always tried to shield him from the ugliest parts.

  “What do you want to do?” Muse asked.

  Greer turned sharply to clear away the massed moths of bad thoughts. It looked aggressive, though, and he looked wounded. Her anger dissolved. She allowed her pumping legs to slow to a walk. Beside her, the squeak of the wheelbarrow slowed too. They walked through tall grass, side by side, their panting blending into the wind’s hiss.

  “I want,” she sighed. “I want what you want.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Greer Morgan.”

  He offered her a little grin. Her return smile came naturally.

  “I like it out here,” she said. “I do, But…”

  He nodded. “I know. How long can we do it, what’s the endgame? You got family. I can’t ask you to forget that.”

  “They’re gone.”

  “No, they’re not.” He gave her a serious look. “Bluefeather, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “Bluefeather Prison. Iowa. You said that’s where your mom is.”

  Vienna Morgan: the family shame, the Bulk pariah. Four years had passed since Greer had spoken to her, She’d been beautiful and curvaceous, with pouty lips and flashing eyes; it was why she scored cleaning gigs in all the best homes. What would Vienna look like after four years of prison grub, prison toiletries? That was the wrong question, of course.

  “She can’t be alive,” Greer said.

  “Why not? Prison might be the safest place there is. Walls to keep ghouls out. Cells to corral Them together.” Muse shrugged. “It’s a path to follow, you know? A lighthouse beacon? It’s something.”

  Greer found herself nodding. It was like a magnet inside her chest had switched on. She felt an unexpected, childlike urge to wrap her little arms around her mother’s knees. Muse had nailed it: Vienna Morgan might be a trash person, but caring for her, or hoping she would care for Greer, were other forms of the want that kept her and Muse alive.

  “After that,” Muse said, “it’s my turn. I got family too, even if you don’t like it.”

  “Will and Darlene.”

  “I’ve toured enough to know Rhode Island is a haul.”

  Greer was still nodding, “We’ll get there.”

  “There may not be cars to hop. There may not even be roads.”

  “I said, we’ll get there.”

  She stopped, turned, grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket, and pulled him a few inches down, lifted herself a few inches up. He smelled like he always did, like dried sweat, fresh dirt, and damp clothes. They didn’t kiss; they just lived in each other’s space for a minute, the heat of her lips, the dry fuzz of his face, the spider nest of four different sets of lashes.

  Like this is a test from the Big Man, he’d said, and we’re failing it.

  She recalled a snippet of a lecture Freddy Morgan had delivered to Conan after the boy had poked a deer with a stick after Freddy’s shot had only injured it. God put animals here to judge us on how we treat them, he’d said, and Greer had never forgotten how that line damned the world, She shivered; her face bumped Muse’s neck. She let it nuzzle there.

  “So what’d you see?” Her voice was muffled against leather.

  “Hm?”

  “In the binoculars. When you first saw those ghouls, you said it was weird.”

  He squeezed and released her and turned so the sun was at his right. North, the direction of Iowa.

  “Right. Yeah. Ghouls only eat people, right?”

  “Uh-huh. They don’t chase dogs or birds or anything.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I guess I saw it wrong. I thought I saw those two things eating a horse.”

  Fuck Jansky

  The end began with an innocuous thing: Paddy pushing Ramsey Dylan through the dark studio and parking the wheelchair right beside Camera 2.

  Probably meant nothing. Like propping Grandpa in front of the Thanksgiving game. Dylan had been checked out since arrival. Baseman had told Chuck he suspected Scotty Rolph of drugging the dynamic VP, maybe when he was in the restroom dealing with Dylan’s uncontrolled bladder and bowels. Chuck worried it was true. Still, he thought it possible Dylan might have asked to be wheeled in front of the set, a flattering idea and a possible sign of Dylan’s improvement.

  Two days before, Zoë had taken the desk so Chuck could meet the newcomers. The meeting had taken the shape of business lunches of yore, with the upscale restaurant replaced by the studio kitchen and the chef’s special replaced by peanut butter on crackers. Chuck felt a pinch of his old egotism upon seeing Scotty Rolph’s ratty high-tops propped on the table, a shoelace stuck to the peanut butter lid. Scotty’s four layers of flannel shirts were flayed open like a med-school cadaver, and his hair was blown out like a Halloween fright wig. That wasn’t far from the mark—his face was like white plastic, accentuating dried red blood in his nostrils.

  The remains of Ramsey Dylan were slumped in a wheelchair to Scotty’s left. Across from Scotty was Paddy, huge and soft like a stuffed carnival prize. Aside from learning that Paddy was short for Paddington—Scotty thought, correctly, Paddy looked like a teddy bear—little info of consequence passed. No surprise, given that Scotty’s plate, instead of crackers, was filled with lines of cocaine. Chuck had a Boy Scout’s disinterest in recreational drugs, but didn’t blame anyone for using at a time like this.

  But there was the itch. That sinew tickle, that bone burn just under his skin. It flared up anytime he left the desk, but never as bad as this. A hundred hot wires laced through his forehead, cheeks, and chin. It felt like his body had developed a warning system. Something scared him about these strangers.

  It was a peculiar thing to feel about a shriveled, immobile man and two lackadaisical burnouts. Or was it? Over the past week, when Chuck’s exhausted mind wandered between stories, he’d begun to cultivate a notion the world hadn’t foundered due to evil but rather apathy. Quit looking, you quit seeing. Quit seeing, you quit feeling. Quit feeling, and you’re done. It’s already too late.

  Paddy fed Dylan too fast on purpose. Peanut butter smeared all over the exec’s face, which Paddy, his eyes leaking suppressed hilarity, styled into a gloppy beige goatee. Scotty, finally inspired to take his feet off the table, planted M&M’s all over the peanut-butter facial hair like a colorful pox. Tears squeezed from Dylan’s closed eyes.

  “He doesn’t look like he likes it,” Chuck observed. “Mr. Dylan? Can you hear me?”

  “Those are tears of joy!” Scotty cried, “He loves us, doesn’t he, Paddy?”

  Paddy mussed Dylan’s hair; the itch in Chuck’s face cranked.

  “Old Ramsey’s very grateful to us, because his chair’s batteries all burned out, didn’t they, Old Ramsey?”

  Dylan coughed up peanut butter globs; Chuck’s itch snaked roots into his brain.

  “You know what they call that little straw he steers with? Sip-and-Puff. Or is it Suck-and-Fuck?” Scotty stroked his chin. “I can never remember.”

  Dylan started sobbing; Chuck made fists to stop himself from sinking his nails into his face.

  “Paddy, why don’t you take Dylan to the bathroom?” Scotty asked. “He might have a diaper doody.”

  Paddy grinned through half-chewed crackers and wheeled Dylan about. Dylan’s eyes snapped open and found Chuck, but so briefly Chuck did not know if he had really seen what looked like pleading fear. Scotty’s squeaky laugh aligned with each turn of the chair’s wheels.

  Should Chuck have done something? Baseman relieved him of having to fret by fetching him for a news powwow, Chuck was glad it was Baseman and not Zoë. He hadn’t liked the way Scotty had looked at the intern, like she was Foxy Fiona and he was J. J. Jalopy. Chuck w
asn’t afraid of Scotty (the animator was impaired, to say the least), but that seemed to be the point of Paddy.

  Ramsey Dylan was parked a few inches from Camera 2, right in Chuck’s line of sight. It shouldn’t matter, but did: the itch roared back, a bucket of gasoline splashed on a dying match. Paddy’s hulking shape behind Dylan only made it worse. Chuck ordered himself not to be fazed and squinted to reduce Dylan and Paddy to smudges. He looked into the lens, cleared his throat.

  “Something’s rotten in Belgium,” Chuck declared.

  That fast, a screwup. Like the Face of old, he’d felt a need to be too clever and had bungled the quote. It was perplexed all over again, His heart pumped panic, a burn that, once upon a time, only ChuckSux69 could salve.

  Paddy snorted in amusement, He placed his heavy paws on Dylan’s back and began to massage the senior VP’s shoulders. Chuck could conceive of a situation in which the gesture was kind. Baseman had speculated that Paddy was Scotty’s dealer, but what if Paddy was Ramsey Dylan’s physical therapist, on hand on October 24 to deliver a massage? A nice fantasy that died quickly: Paddy leaned toward Dylan’s ear and, in a mealy mutter, delivered the first and last three words anyone at WWN would hear Paddy say.

  “Suck and fuck.”

  Eleven days after Chuck had taken the desk, his tongue lost its wagging magic. His voice ran out. It simply ran out. Filling the sudden silence was the distant drumming of ghouls’ fists against the stairwell door, followed by the rat squeal of Paddy releasing the wheelchair’s brake. Dylan shook his head as much as his disability allowed, a frantic under-neck jiggling. The chair’s wheels made a flat sound with each revolution, filling Chuck’s head: suck, fuck, suck, fuck.

  “Stop,” Chuck said. His face boiled with itch.

  Paddy’s eyes glowed cheerily from the dim.

  “Face.” Lee’s voice in his earpiece. “What’s going on?”

  Chuck pointed past Camera 2. “You might have brought Mr. Dylan here, but he doesn’t belong to you, He’s a human being. Whatever you’re doing to him, I want you to stop. I’m asking nicely. Please.”

  Paddy kept staring. Lee kept questioning. Dead air, its own loud alarm, rang about the studio. Chuck heard doors fly open, voices mutter, footsteps scuttle. A shape frosted in red light slid from the darkness, and Chuck prayed it was Nathan Baseman, his producer, his promoter, his protector. But the stage lights revealed messy whips of hair and fuzzy ripples of flannel.

  Scotty Rolph rose on his toes to whisper in Paddy’s ear. Paddy considered, nodded, and withdrew into the blackness beyond the cameras—someone had dimmed the studio’s lights to former levels. Scotty mounted the riser and took a seat in the coanchor chair. Chuck stared. Like the ghouls, Scotty appeared human, but he was not. Blue veins glowed from beneath slimy white skin. Huge, addled eyes skittered as if following a bumblebee’s flight. His upper lip was bright red from his dripping nose.

  Frozen in shock, Chuck did nothing while Scotty picked up a lavalier mic and pinned it to his outermost flannel. He squared the pages of a dusty script, brushed back his white-dyed hair, and peeled his lips from decaying teeth, big Atlanta howdy-do.

  “Hello, I’m Scotty Rolph.” The voice was liquid cheese, a parody of everything Chuck Corso had once represented. “Welcome to Good Evening, America, your favorite program detailing the end of the world as we know it. I’m joined by Chuck Corso, a store mannequin brought to life by a Satanic ritual conducted at a local Neiman Marcus. Say hi to the people, Chuck.”

  Chuck watched sweat roll down Scotty’s beaming face. He felt detached, a hundred miles from the desk. In his gut, a dry prickling, like a thornbush had bloomed from a swallowed seed.

  “Well,” Scotty said, “he may not have a lot to say, but still, not too shabby for a man made of plastic, am I right? Before we get to the country’s latest spate of death spasms, I want to take a moment to say what an honor it is to be here on the actual WWN news desk. Wow. I’m a fan. I really am. Your show is a lot of fun, Chuck. Hilarious, actually. Nothing on J, J.’s Jamboree can compare. This is a comedy show, right? Wait. It is, isn’t it?”

  Trouble in the studio, real trouble, beyond what was visible from the desk. Running, cursing, skidding, thudding, screeching, cracking. Unable to see what was happening, Chuck couldn’t break focus from Scotty’s spiky, stabbing voice, too similar to the spiny bristle going on in his stomach, itself too similar to the itch prickling his face.

  Chuck identified this new emotion with mild wonder, Ambition, he knew. Joy, surprise, self-disgust, sadness, he knew, Vanity, he knew better than all else combined. But this was anger, and with it came the realization he’d built the nation’s trust in him and his network. More than trust—a belief that help and heart still existed. He wouldn’t let this brat butcher it.

  “Get off the desk,” Chuck said.

  Scotty ignored him.

  “Breaking news: we’re doomed! Then again, we’ve been doomed since we started tossing nonbiodegradable McDonald’s containers out of our Chevys. Or since we shoved our kids into the Vietnam Cuisinart. Or since we enslaved Africans who were just minding their own beeswax. One way or the other, the chickens were always going to come home to roost, right?”

  From the back of the studio came the chunky squeal of a heavy object being muscled across a concrete floor. Forty or fifty moans, as multitoned as a cathedral organ, rose at once, with chiseling clarity.

  Baseman’s holler from the dark, “Watch it, Face! Paddy moved the shit away from the—”

  Zoë’s scream. “Push! Push!”

  Fessler’s cry. “Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck, fuck!”

  Anger filled Chuck, lit him up like a jack-o’-lantern. Scotty Rolph was the draining of charity, the scraping off of belief, and removing him from significance would be as welcome as scratching his burning face.

  “You say these things,” Chuck said, “because you like to sound smart. But you’re just … attitude. Attitude is what’s going to kill us.”

  Scotty touched his nonexistent earpiece. “What’s this? Hold on. This just in: people haven’t watched TV for news for like twenty years, Chuck! You want to talk about attitude? People tune in to watch bickering, dude. That’s it, You’re one of the Real Housewives of America, Congratulations!”

  Chuck wasn’t done, “You, and everyone like you. Commenters. That’s it: you comment. You get others like you to comment back. You tell people who think different they’re stupid, You’ve got nothing to say that’s original. Nothing that’s heartfelt. Nothing that will help anyone. You’re not trying to do anything. You never have. We don’t need you.”

  “Oh, but you do, Mr, Mannequin!” Scotty spread his arms wide. “When the world’s gone mad, the only medicine is madness! The whole wide world is J. J.’s Jamboree now! We’re all broken-down jalopies who think we’re lobster dinners! So suck on the tap of whatever you’ve always wanted! Drink! Smoke! Snort! Live, you lousy Mendicans! Live!”

  “Hold the—” Baseman, winded, “Get the—shit, no, watch the—”

  “I can’t!” Zoë, terrified, “It’s falling, They’re coming!”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Fessler, running, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—”

  Arms and legs, thrash and kick, right beside Chuck, papers and laptop flying, and Scotty was out of his chair, laughing and applauding as Paddy loomed into view, his leviathan arms cinched around the chest of a ghoul, and not some random ghoul who’d just wiggled into the studio.

  Paddy slammed Rochelle Glass down into the coanchor chair.

  She hadn’t looked great the last time Chuck saw her, gored throat spattering bubbly blood, the pearly gleam of her eyes matched by her drool. She looked worse now. Two weeks dead, Glass’s skin was peeling. Clumps of hair had dislodged from her scalp but somehow clung to her head. Her fleshiest bits had gone green, with purple marbling the major veins. All of that might have been concealed by her caravan of makeup artists, though they would have failed at remedying her greatest sin: weight gain. Her body cavitie
s had distended with putrefying gas, ripping her designer suit to ribbons.

  Chuck tensed. He’d been lucky to escape Glass last time with no more than yanked hair plugs. This time, the second Rochelle Glass’s butt hit the seat, her body quit whipping. Her milk-white eyes widened. She sat up straighter, One of her hands, all five nails broken, rose and oafishly patted her barely-there hair. Scotty Rolph stood stage right of Glass, his jaw dropped in the amazement Chuck felt. Glass remembered. These lights, these cameras. Her dying wish had been to claim the desk, and she’d finally done it.

  “Fluuggh,” she said, rather amiably, “Maahhhrrggh.” She tilted her head for emphasis and black sludge dripped from her ear. “Slummph.”

  Chuck had a vision, freakishly beautiful. He and Glass—this Glass—were working together. In his mind, Chuck yielded speaking time to Glass, whose fingers smeared black gunk over her script while she moaned incoherently. Somewhere in the outside world, ghouls wandering past TVs stopped, arrested by her voice. Ceilings had been broken on network TV before. Barbara Walters, first female cohost, NBC’s Today; Max Robinson, first Black coanchor, ABC World News Tonight. In death, Rochelle Glass might break the final barrier, bringing together two halves of a riven country, and Chuck would be proud to sit beside her.

  The vision lasted for a gasp. Three ghouls with eyes as white as breakers rolled in from the studio’s night ocean, and beyond Them, a wave of a dozen more, arms as gray as the sea. Beyond that, too many stairwell ghouls to count, scattered like spindrift. Paddy probably hadn’t intended to let the ghouls actually breach the studio, but that was live TV for you.

  Even in the crowded gloom, Chuck could spot the living; they moved more erratically than the dead, unsure of their purpose. He saw Tim Fessler race for the kitchen, a dead end in which his body was destined to be the next peanut butter on crackers. Zoë Shillace’s uneven lope suggested she’d hurt a foot, but Chuck saw the flash of the master key ring, implying she was headed for the elevator with the means to unlock it.

  Scotty Rolph shoved Paddy off the stage. The doughy giant landed in front of Camera 3, his seal bulk sweeping the legs from a clutch of ghouls who gladly collapsed atop him. Scotty, looking frantic, climbed onto the anchor desk to see better, his coke eyes and coke ears tuned for Zoë and the elevator exit. His radar locked upon its objective, and his knees bent, ready to leap past the gathering ghouls. Fueled through the nose, he just might make it.