Euphoria-Z (22 page)

He climbed out of the ditch on the opposite side, away from the dead. It was dark, so dark he couldn’t see a thing, and the wind made hearing impossible. He felt safe waiting, so he waited for what seemed a very long time. He was tempted to cross the ditch and see what was taking them so long, but he continued to listen. Nothing.

Suddenly, a wave of moaning came in the wind, hardly audible, but it grew rapidly. The sound grew in the darkness until it broke with a roar as thousands of bodies crashed onto concrete. As the dead fell, their bodies compressed, sending any air in their lungs rushing out. Bones popped and snapped, jaws cracked as skulls struck concrete, and all this created a sound so loud and unnerving that Cooper turned and ran into the darkness. He fell. He stood, realizing his panic would get him killed, and walked quickly and calmly away. The wind carried the smell to him. It made him gag, and he pulled his shirt over his face. The smell was worse than anything, even looking at the dead.

He knew they couldn’t get out of the ditch. He’d observed them many times struggling to get over barriers, and anything higher than their chest halted them. He walked until he was stumbling over rougher ground, not sure where to go. It was so dark he could be walking in circles, but he had no choice but to keep walking.

The stars started to peek from behind the clouds, just enough for him to see where he was. He worked his way back to the highway. All was quiet. There were no cars on this stretch and no dead. He felt better. He could move faster on the hard surface. He had the white stripes on the road to guide his path. He moved farther north until he came across a cement monolith and recognized it immediately. It was the base of a highway sign.

Cooper knew those green-and-white signs were large—they spanned the length of the highway, held up by steel girders—but once he was right under it on foot, it seemed massive. There were rungs that led to a walkway that stretched across the front of the signs, but they didn’t go all the way to the ground. The column was too wide to wrap his arms around. He had to climb the first twenty feet by holding one end of his belt and whipping it around the column. He caught the buckle and used the belt to climb up. He could use the edges of the holes where temporary rungs could be inserted to make the climb up to the permanent rungs. The protrusions were enough to climb up with the belt, but impossible without it. He would be safe high and out of sight in the dark. A zombie couldn’t climb like that, and neither could most humans. He threaded his belt through the catwalk so he wouldn’t fall off while he slept.

In the deep dark of night, as Cooper slept soundly high above the 101, a pickup truck miles south started a journey north. It rumbled through the night, slow and steady as the driver rubbed the large painful knot on the back of his head. He cursed every time he touched it but couldn’t stop himself.

21.

“I can’t believe you would forget something like that.” Jeff was looking out the window, his brow furrowed.

“Well, we have been friends for a long time. He told me about it once back in high school, and it never came up again.” Ron felt bad about the oversight.

“So he’s what now?” Sal wasn’t clear on what Ron had just spit out as he raced back to the parking structure. “He’s schizophrenic?”

“Bill told me our senior year that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and started taking meds. I remember we were pretty tight and he just disappeared for like three months during the fall, and when he returned he told me what had happened. Anyway, it never came up again.”

“So he’s crazy, fucking awesome,” Jeff said. “That’s fucking awesome.”

“You sure that’s what’s happening?” Sal was leaning forward between the driver and passenger seat.

“Well, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that you just get over. I’m sure he needs pills or something and hasn’t been able to get to them. We need to ask Mary about this.”

“Yeah, she would know,” Sal said.

“Well, why the hell didn’t she say anything? You think his wife might think it’s important.”

“Not necessarily,” said Ron. “He might not have told her. Or maybe he’s lying about taking his meds. In any case, we’ll be there in a few minutes, and I don’t want Bill or Mary to know that you guys know about his condition. I’ll take Bill aside first and talk to him, then Mary if I have to. Besides, most paranoid schizophrenics aren’t violent.”

“This one is,” Jeff said to the window.

Sal and Ron both looked surprised. Jeff was aggravating them with his show of anger, but he was young and maybe scared.

Jeff finally turned from the window. “You’ve been friends with this guy for how long? You’ve been to his house how many times and you didn’t sense the violence?”

Ron looked confused. “Violence? No, he’s cranky and…”

“Cranky? Are you fucking stupid? He beats his wife!”

“What?” Both Sal and Ron were startled.

Ron got defensive. “Man, you don’t even know him. Don’t start saying shit about someone…”

“I know him, all right. All I needed was a few minutes to know everything I needed to know about him. He’s a bully and abuser. Believe me, I know him well.” Jeff pulled his coat sleeve up, and his arm was covered in what appeared to be healed cigarette burns and other scars. He jerked his sleeve back down and turned to look out the window again. “I know him very well.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Jeff had more to say. He was calmer now. “Don’t ask her if she’s abused, she’ll just say no. Get her alone and ask her to show you her arms or neck. She wears a turtleneck for a reason. Yeah, I suspected he was a bully when I met him, but I knew he was an abuser the second I met his wife.”

Ron felt like an idiot. How had he not seen that? Or maybe Jeff was just quick to see an abuser in everyone, given the treatment he had apparently suffered in his past.

At the structure, no one replied to their signal, but the others weren’t expecting them to return so soon. They drove up the ramps quickly, tires squealing on the turns. Ron slowed the van when they reached the topmost level. They saw no one. They continued to the roof and were alarmed at what they saw. Bill was naked and walking around the roof of the parking structure, screaming.

The van stopped, and they were out and by Mary and Donna in seconds. Mary was sobbing, and Donna was trying to comfort her. Mary turned to Ron.

“What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong?”

Ron came to her and spoke low. “Are you aware of his condition?”

She turned and looked at Ron with complete confusion. “What condition?”

“He has paranoid schizophrenia. He never told you?”

“What? He’s schizophrenic? No, he told me he was depressed was all.”

“And he was taking meds and stopped very recently?”

“Yes, we had to run. He wasn’t able to get his pills.”

“We need to get him calm. Figure out what he needs and get to a pharmacy.” Ron was watching Bill with concern.

Mary was scared. She wrung her hands, not sure what to do. She’d never seen Bill act this way before. She opened her mouth to speak to Ron, but before she could Bill screamed and charged Sal. Bill was punching at Sal in wild, wide swings, cursing and screaming at him. He kicked out at him awkwardly and almost fell.

Sal didn’t know what to do and was about to turn his back like he used to in a fight, but he stopped himself. Instead he lunged at Bill and wrapped his arms around his upper body, pinning Bill’s arms to his sides, and he lifted him off his feet and held him tightly. Bill struggled for a few moments then went limp and started sobbing.

“You bastard.” He was talking to Sal. “You big bastard. You stole her from me. She’s mine, you fucker.”

Sal let Bill go, and he slid to the concrete in a ball. Mary rushed to his side.

“Bill. Bill, are you all right?” As she knelt by him, he jumped up, grabbed her by the throat, and was squeezing the life out of her in seconds. She didn’t even have time to scream.

Sal jumped to her aid, but Bill’s grip was strong and he couldn’t break it, Mary was turning blue, her eyes bulging. He punched Bill in the face to no effect. Mary was probably moments from death or brain damage. Sal didn’t know what he was going to do as he frantically pried at Bill’s fingers, unable to remove even one of them from her neck. His fingers were gripping her neck so tightly that Sal was worried he would hurt her if he dug too hard at them.

Suddenly Bill began to seize and his grasp loosened, then he dropped to the ground. A pool of blood was spreading on the concrete beneath him. Mary fell back, gasping for air in loud, ragged breaths. She held a blood-smeared pencil in her right hand. Bill had three holes punched into his ribcage; one of her blows apparently had found his heart.

Sal knelt by Mary and patted her hand. “What can I do? What can I do for you?” She was still gasping. He noticed that she was holding the pencil in a way his wife Maria had showed him after she learned it in a self-defense class. Mary’s hand was in a tight fist, and the pencil was between her middle and ring finger. The eraser was against her palm, so when she punched, the pencil was driven deep into his body.

Ron and Donna came to Sal’s side. Jeff stood apart from everyone for a moment then turned and walked off. “I’m taking the van.”

Ron took Mary and Donna down a level while Sal wrapped Bill’s body in a sleeping bag. He used duct tape to seal the seams and placed him in a stairwell until they decided what to do with him.

When Sal came down, everyone was sitting around on some lawn furniture and not doing much of anything. Their home so far was a handful of lawn furniture, some sleeping bags, a few boxes of supplies, and now a large pile of construction supplies. A little farther back on the same level, Jeff had set up a few tables and had piles of electronic equipment all around.

Ron approached Sal. “Thanks for taking care of that.”

Sal just nodded.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do. Maybe one of us can learn to use the backhoe. I really wanted to get those ramps down. Maybe it’s too much for us.”

“I got that.” It was Jeff again. He apparently had used the stairwell to get between floors. “The first ramp is coming down now.”

Ron and Sal looked at each other and were about to ask Jeff some questions when they heard a loud shuddering moan, a metallic squeak, and then silence. Jeff was already walking back down the stairs. Ron and Sal were on his heels.

“Wait.” Ron was running. “What did you do? What the hell did you do?”

22.

Jeeter walked around the giant store, trying to figure out what day it was and where the fuck Banjo was. He remembered something had happened that involved a spook, but whether it was last night or many days ago he had no idea. Banjo had been pissed, they all got on their ride, some shit happened, they wrecked?

Jeeter rubbed a big scab on his forehead. His ribs were sore, and he had bumps and scrapes all over him. He briefly wondered what happened but let it go. Many times he’d woken up with injuries, and Banjo was always there to tell him what happened, what day it was, and things of that nature. Whenever Banjo was gone, he always returned, except that time he landed in jail.

Jeeter was feeling better and better, but not great. He grabbed an open bottle of some dark liquor and sucked down a few swallows to settle his nerves as he searched the building. The store had plenty of bottled water and sodas as well as chips, crackers, and candy. He scooped up a bunch of the crap and walked back to the cushions in the center of the store. Fats was laid out, snoring and lying in a puddle of his own piss. He still wet himself when he slept, but that was Fats, and no one knew this but Jeeter and Banjo. They didn’t care what Fats did or didn’t do, he was just a big retard. But Fats was a handy retard to have around. He had no fear of most things and could fight like a gorilla. He wasn’t a trained and graceful fighter by any stretch, but most people would rather face a human they could possibly reason with than an angry gorilla.

Jeeter threw most of the stuff he gathered in front of Fats so he would find it when he woke up.

His own cushions were next to a few piles of vomit near where his head had been. He might have pissed himself in his sleep; he was sure he did. He was still groggy from the pills. He kicked the cushions a few feet away from the puke and lay back down. The world blurred then went dark for Jeeter in a matter of minutes. No one was witness as a dark circle appeared in the crotch of Fat’s jeans and spread wide across his lower body.

§

Jeeter sat up from a deep sleep, holding a large knife in his hand that he didn’t remember pulling from its sheath. Something had woken him, and he hadn’t even processed it yet. He sat blinking.

Fats was sound asleep, all the candy, crackers, and chips where he’d left them. Jeeter stood and kicked Fats in the side of his enormous belly to wake him. He noted that Fats was stinking again. It was time for him and Banjo to strip and hose Fats down and find him some new clothes.

As he walked to the front door, the rumble that woke him got louder, and he recognized it. It was a large diesel engine. He debated what he should do. Banjo wasn’t here to back him up if some shit went down, and Fats was still on the floor moaning. Jeeter could smell the diesel as he stood by the front doors. The engine cut off. A hiss of air brakes, then he heard pounding.

“Hey, it’s me! Open up! Open up, man!”

It was Banjo. Jeeter unlocked the metal door and swung it open wide. Banjo was standing there with a line of beautiful, naked women.

“You ready to party, brother?” Banjo was smiling like the devil.

§

Across the street and almost a quarter of a mile away, Wendy’s car sat behind a row of palm trees, engine off but still clicking and creaking from the heat. The driver’s door popped open, and the buxom brunette emerged and looked around cautiously. She walked away from the car toward a looted CVS, hoping to find some supplies to clean Sally’s wound and maybe reduce her pain. She still wasn’t sure what to do to help her sisters, but she was going to do what she could for now.