First Chapter of Untitled Novel

I suppose the best place to begin is … the beginning. Things are good now, with Sam, with my mom and dad, but they haven’t always been. There was a time when I thought they were dead.

Everything once seemed so hopeless. It was like every day was stormy. You walked outside and the chill reached deep inside you. And there was nobody around, hardly. There were only the dead ones and the suicidals and a few like me and Keith. We were out to make the best of things. We couldn’t figure the suicidals out.

Now, I understand…

Wait. You don’t even know who the dead ones and the suicidals are. You don’t even know who I am. I guess I’m terrible at telling stories. My mind just keeps jumping around like Mick Jagger on stage busting a button on his trousers, hoping they don’t fall down…

Oh man. There I go again. Maybe I better just start over.

---

The streets used to be busy. People casually going about their days, walking out of Sidney’s Market with grocery bags hooked around their fingers and elbows. They could barely walk. They would wobble to their cars.

And getting into their cars, that was something funny. We’d hang out at the market, sitting on the trunk of his Challenger, and we’d laugh so hard, me and Keith. Why did they think they needed so much food? It seems so pointless now. We’re never hungry.

The people, mostly fatties, would shimmy up to their car doors and reach out with stubby pinkies, prying at the door handle, grimacing. They’d scoot back pulling the door open, always losing a bag of grapes or oranges or tomatoes. They’d groan as they watched them roll under their cars.

They’d finally get the door open – those hungry people – and shimmy around it, placing their bags on the back seat. And they’d always bump their heads.

Then, without fear, they’d drop to their hands and knees and grope under the car, leaving their butts exposed. Juicy butts. Butts the dead ones would love to sink their teeth into.

---

There I go again, talking about dead ones. They weren’t even here yet.

That all changed, overnight. And people couldn’t bend over, exposing their butts, ever again.

---

It all started with “The Strange Case of the Missing Gas Station Owner.” Some say it’s just a legend and what really happened was just a lot of little things, one leading to another. They say Marge, who claimed to see the whole thing from her kitchen window, was a drunken loony.

But I know it to be true now, mostly. Everything has to start someplace you know. So why not on a morning like any other with a man named Mitch, a man named Ralph, and a bag of Doritos?

Every day, Mitch would pull into Ralph’s Fast & Go at 6:22 a.m. sharp to “top her off.” After getting caught in a blizzard with an empty tank, unable to keep his heater blowing, and losing two fingers to frostbite; he refused to ever let his tank dip below three quarters.

But, on the day of the “strange case” something wasn’t right. He pulled up to the pump, stepped out of his pickup, and yawned and stretched, as usual. He groped for the pump handle half asleep, as usual, and tried to lift it from its cradle, but it wouldn’t move. It was padlocked. He was confused. Then he noticed the lights were off in the station and Ralph wasn’t standing in the window smiling as usual.

“Criminy Christ” he muttered. (I don’t believe that part of the story. How could Marge hear a mutter from across the street?) Then he went to investigate.

What happened after he entered the Fast & Go, we’ll never know and, what happened after he came out, Marge will barely say.

Mitch walked outside carrying a bag of Doritos and stopped, staring straight ahead and holding his neck. The bag slipped from his hand and spilled, Doritos blowing about in the wind. He let go of his neck and blood spurted and gushed like an arch through the air. He gasped, “Criminy Christ,” and crumpled to the ground.

Ralph staggered out of the darkness of the Fast & Go and stood over Mitch. He was ghoulishly, greenish gray with blood dripping from his mouth and yet there was something about his eyes, a strange longing.

Marge told everyone, “He looked like someone waiting for something.”

After a while, Mitch sat up. He got slowly to his feet, his body trembling. He lunged toward Ralph as if every muscle in his body had a mind of its own. The two men looked into each other’s eyes for, as Marge described, “an eternity” and then they staggered inside.

They say they still sit together fumbling with a deck of cards. Some say they can still hear laughter coming from inside the Fast & Go.

---

From then on, nobody in town wobbled or shimmied or scooted anywhere. They would dash from place to place like mice out from under a refrigerator to snatch crumbs before scurrying back to safety. Taking too long to get anywhere gave the dead ones – slow moving, but so determined – too much time.

And bending down to pick up an apple was a sure way to die. The only people who would take such risks were the suicidals, people who couldn’t take it anymore.

Or, now I wonder. Were the suicidals just lonely people who had figured things out?

---

After those first dead ones, they began to multiply, fast. Two turned to four turned to sixteen which turned to way too many to count, just like that. You’d go to bed one night, doors and windows locked tight, and wake up the next morning and there’d be even more, clawing at your house. Your neighbors were normal one day and the next they were stumbling about and giving you the eye.

Keith and I didn’t care though. We were out to have fun. As long as you were quick and kept your wits about you, the dead ones couldn’t touch you. They were too slow. It was pretty funny how slow they were actually. We’d just watch each other’s back and skip and dance amongst them. We’d even taunt them.

We felt like that Pied Piper guy. We could smile at them and twirl about and walk in any direction and they’d follow us, the fools. One of our favorite games was “herd the ghouls and make them pay.” We’d find a bunch of them gathered together and dangle ourselves before them. Soon they’d all be following us to wherever.

My favorite times were when they followed us to Pussy Whipped, the best titty-bar on the strip – or at least it used to be. By then, people had to spend too much time watching their own asses to care about watching some girls and no girls had danced in the joint for the longest time.

The last show ever had ended abruptly and the doors had been long left wide open, the inside of the bar blasted by summer sands and winter blizzards. We led our herd inside. The tables and chairs were still covered with beer bottles and blood. Some of the chairs had been knocked over, so we picked them up and playfully offered them to our guests. They would just lunge toward us. They didn’t seem to care much about sitting down.

Two of them seemed to know each other like they’d once been a couple. He looked like an office worker with dress pants and white shirt and tie and black shoes. He wore glasses although now they only dangled from one ear. She wore a skirt and an apron and a badge that read “Jean.” They moved slowly and jerkily as if any movement was difficult and, once started, was hard to stop without stumbling. And yet they both managed to move and stumble together like two people who had stumbled together for years and years.

Their faces, as with all of the dead ones, looked frozen like masks. It seemed that whatever expression was on their faces at the end would forever be there. Mostly, they looked surprised.

They both stood with a slouch and her arm, bitten almost clean off, was limp and motionless. He tripped over the chair Keith offered him and his glasses finally fell off and clattered across the floor. He stumbled into Jean and her arm fell off, landing on the table, spilling what was left of a glass of beer, flies buzzing everywhere. They stared at it and leaned against each other as if seeking comfort.

Watching them, I lost my concentration for just a moment, but a moment is all it took and Keith had to yell, “Finn! Watch out!”

It was close. A scrawny dead one almost got a hold of my arm. And then Keith was all action.

He’s usually so easygoing. But if he’s in danger, watch out. He reminds me of an outlaw out of some Jamaican B-movie. He always wears the same t-shirt. It’s torn and faded and dull red and you can just make out the image of Bob Marley. His hair is kind of stringy like dreadlocks gone wrong. What stand out the most though are all the knives and guns and a samurai sword strapped to his body.

He pulled a knife and was going straight for the dead one, but I grabbed him and spun him around.

“Not now Keith. Let’s go.”

We took no more chances and dashed out of the Pussy Whipped, shutting the doors behind us.

We ran around back and went in through the service entrance, worked our way through the dressing rooms which were strewn with bras and panties – some still filled with rotten flesh – and blood. There were several bodies on the floor, two nude young women and a fat, middle-aged man. They had all been shot in the head and there was blood and brains everywhere. It had taken me months to get used to the stench. It was like opening that picnic cooler in the fall that you used for the first outing of the summer to discover that you forget to empty out the ham and turkey sandwiches.

We ignored all of that though. We’d seen it all before, smelled it all before. And besides, we had things to do.

We burst onto the stage and our audience of dead ones immediately turned and came toward us. It was useless though. Like all good titty-bars, there was a barrier of chicken wire, barbed at the top, between the stage and the tables. We relaxed and sat down in two chairs on the stage, stripper chairs. We had other plans for them though.

Keith picked up a guitar he always kept stashed on the stage and began to tune up. He paused for a moment to light a cigarette and dangled it from his mouth. I picked up a microphone and tapped it with the palm of my hand. Nope, still didn’t work just like every other time we’d played there.

I said, “Ready Keith?” he nodded. “A one and a two and a one, two, three and…”

Keith began strumming furiously and after a few bars I began singing:

Well a poor boy took his father's bread and started down the road

Started down the road

Took all he had and started down the road

Going out in this world, where God only knows

And that'll be the way to get along



Well poor boy spent all he had, famine come in the land

Famine come in the land

Spent all he had and famine come in the land

Said, "I believe I'll go and hire me to some man"

And that'll be the way I'll get along…

Keith was making a good show of it. He dragged on his cigarette with exaggerated casualness and even stopped strumming for a moment to re-tune the guitar. I just charged ahead, imagining myself to be Mick Jagger, 1969.

The dead ones stopped clawing away at the wire by the end of the first verse and stumbled back toward the tables. They sat and actually seemed to be listening. If I squinted just right, I could actually imagine myself performing at Madison Square Garden. If I opened my eyes too wide and noticed the carnage, I just imagined we were at Altamont.

The one thing that wasn’t fixed on the faces of our audience, strangely enough, was their eyes. Those dead ones looked in body and face like creatures sitting and waiting for a chance to sink their teeth into us. But their eyes said something else. Their eyes said, “May we buy you a drink after the show?”

I’ve always believed it when people said that the eyes are the windows into the soul. Now, I know it’s true.

That game was so much fun and that look in their eyes was so sad and searching. I didn’t find them scary at all. What I did find upsetting was that so many cowboys wanted to shoot them in the head and wanted them dead.

---

I don’t remember how they became known as “the cowboys.” I always thought of cowboys as being noble. But these cowboys weren’t anything like that. They’d run over the dead ones with cars and they’d shoot them from rooftops as they cackled with glee. They’d hold up in empty houses and string heads of dead ones in the front windows for all to see.

I’ve seen bands of cowboys walking together with rifles looking for dead ones. They’d stop short and take aim and shoot them from far away, those cowards. It’s so much fairer to get up close and play with them like me and Keith.

The cowboys actually looked disgusted by it all. Maybe they’d also looked into the eyes of the dead ones and saw what I saw. Maybe they hated what they saw. Maybe they saw themselves. Maybe they shoot them from so far away so they don’t have to look into their eyes.

The cowboys have a leader and I’d always hoped that I’d never have to meet him. He was one of those guys that few people had seen and yet everyone knew about. The suicidals seemed to want to become dead ones. He would do anything to stay alive.

---

There’s something else I’ve heard, but I don’t know if it’s true. They say the cowboys had a game. It’s the one time they’d get close to a dead one. If they saw a beautiful woman get bit, they’d catch her and tie her up.

Once you’d seen it happen a million times, you knew how it went. It takes about 20 minutes after being bit for someone to turn. First the fever, then the spasms, and finally the eyes close for just a moment. And when they open again, they’ve changed. If they bite you then, you’re almost surely a goner. But, before that, you’re safe.

The cowboys would wait for the fever to strike and then they’d have their fun. One by one, they’d rape the woman, laughing more than ever. One after another after another they’d take their turns as fever turned to spasms.

Vic always wanted to be last, the spasms always making it the best he’s said to have said. But, really, I think he just liked the thrill of coming just as she closed her eyes. Then he’d step back, wait for her eyes to open, say, “Thank you Ma’am,” raise his shotgun, and blow her head off.

One time though, he got carried away and closed his own eyes as he came and he opened them to see the waitress’ teeth sink into his wrist. He pulled away, splattered her brains all over the coffee pots, and quickly ordered another cowboy to “do it!” Without hesitation, he placed his arm on the countertop and, with a flash of steel; a machete sliced his arm off just below the shoulder.

All I know for sure is he is missing his left arm and fires his shotgun balanced only with his right. And he’s known as Vic “the merciless."

---

I’d always end my days at home with my mom and my dad. I’d fix dinner, sometimes I’d splurge by opening a can of hash or Spam, and sometimes I’d pull a gopher out of trap in the backyard. I’d sit at the table across from my mom as always. My dad would sit at his usual place at the head of the table.

For a while, I’d still put food on their plates, mom first, and then dad. But I stopped after a while and would just serve myself.

My mom and dad were two of the first dead ones. I came home in the evening to tell them about the strange stories I’d heard about Mitch and Ralph and the Fast & Go. I found them sitting on the couch together watching the news as always, his right arm around her neck, his hand gently squeezing her shoulder, her left leg resting on his right knee. They have always been so much in love.

I sat down in the rocker and didn’t even notice anything had changed at first. I looked up at them and our eyes met. Their eyes were filled with concern. And then I noticed their mouths looked funny. They were sort of smiling, sort of grimacing. They were drooling. Then it started as a gurgle and slowly turned to a growl, that sound coming from my dad that I’ll never forget.

They untangled their legs and stood up and then fell back onto the couch and I knew. I did the first thing that came to me. I grabbed a blanket from the bedroom and threw it over both of them and then I got dad’s shotgun from the broom closet.

But I couldn’t pull the trigger. Maybe it was because I made the mistake of pulling the blanket down to look into their eyes one last time, to say goodbye. But I just couldn’t shoot them.

I lowered the gun barrel and blew their legs to bits so they wouldn’t be able to walk. They didn’t even squirm or scream. Then I tore a sheet into strips and tied their arms tightly to their sides. It took all of my strength and I had to be careful to stay away from their mouths as I carried them to the kitchen table.

Since then, I just tried to keep things as usual. Maybe I was going crazy. I’d eat and even tell them about my day. I’d do the dishes and go to bed after saying, “Good night.”

First though, I’d always look into the bathroom mirror and stare into my eyes. I’d wonder, “What is it about the eyes of the dead ones that always gets to me?”