Fiend (7 page)

I hear the pumping of a shotgun.

You been shooting your profits? Typewriter asks.

I kick him.

Fucking old Albino, all alone in them woods, cookin’ and ready for the apocalypse. That’s what you was thinking, huh?

Just didn’t know where else to—

Come here to rob me, that it?

No, we thought that maybe you—

Was either dead or would protect you. Either way, don’t look too good.

Maybe this is a giant waste of fucking time. The Albino is nearly impossible to deal with on a good day, one where he’d been cooking and shooting, but with this, the world completely fucked, it’s pointless. I decide to switch tactics. I say, We brought guns for you, to trade.

Sure as shit you did, Crooked Cock. Don’t come to the Rapture with a knife fight.

This doesn’t really make sense but I get where he’s going with it.

Rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Can take your pick.

Type, your faggot friend tellin’ the truth?

Yup.

Y’all fucking with me?

No, straight up, got guns, go ahead and take your pick. Just a simple trade.

Didn’t care if I was dead, huh?

What? Typewriter says.

Just here to get shit. That’s all I am to you.

I think about chiming in about him only wanting that role, our whole relationship predicated on us giving him money for crystal, that’s the way he wanted it.

Can we just come in? Typewriter says.

If you want a shell through the chest.

I whisper to Type that the Albino is so far past the point of spun that he’d probably see us with decaying flesh, hallucinate our giggles, and blast us full of shotgun BBs. Maybe we should just wait him out, go back to the car, lock the weapons up, take turns trying to sleep. Typewriter isn’t feeling this. I know his reasoning—he wants to get high.

Albino, Typewriter says.

The
, he calls back.

The
Albino, Typewriter says, we will trade you a shotgun and—

Got one of those.

Then a rifle and a pistol.

Got one of those too.

Then a pistol with a shit ton of ammo.

For what? To watch you suck Crooked Cock’s crooked cock?

He thinks this is funny.

Just to let us in, I say.

We wait in the darkness on our stomachs and I know we’re talking more to a drug than to a person. It was always hard to tell the difference with the Albino, but it’s worse
now, everything heightened. Methamphetamines can be a nasty old cunt, greedy in their possessiveness over reality. I tell Type
no sudden movements
, and I call out, Sliding in a pistol now, okay?

We’ll see, the Albino says.

I’m not sure what this means. I inch forward and push open the shredded door and I’m trying to keep my head out of his sights. I take the nine out of my pants. I say, Here it is. I put it on the linoleum floor of the shed. Pushing it toward you, I say, giving it a little shove. I roll back to the side of the building.

Now where’s those shotguns? he yells.

Thought you didn’t want any, Typewriter says.

Oh, yeah, sure do. Can’t never have too many friends.

So we give you one, then you let us in? I ask.

Silence.

I motion for Typewriter to crawl forward on his fat stomach. He shakes his head. I kick him. He does it, shoving his gun into the shed. We can hear the Albino sweet-talking something, and it’s probably closer to porn talk, the suck-that-shit-you-filthy-fucking-whore monologue, and I can hear movement in there, then the sturdy sound of oiled metal, the loading and unloading of a clip.

We all good? I say.

Your cock crooked?

The answer is no, not really, but the Albino thinks it is, so I’m taking his comment as a
yes
.

So we’re coming in, I say.

With your motherfucking hands ticklin’ God’s feet.

I crouch on my knees. I tell myself that the Albino’s just a little jumpy. I stand, bracing myself against the shed’s corrugated siding. I’m trying not to remember the moments in my life when I knew I was dealing with people completely swallowed by chemicals, moments when I looked at friends or acquaintances and they stared back without a single morsel of recognition, not just of me but of anything or even their own fucking hands, themselves. At those times it wasn’t Typewriter or KK or whoever sitting by my side, but shit, pure fucking shit coursing through capillaries, clogging overworked synapses with come-shots of dopamine.

Coming in, I say.

I give a tentative push on the door. I’m expecting a shotgun blast to the face. The Albino is talking, guttural whispers followed by squeals, and I hope he’s lost in the promise of the new guns, forgetting about us and the threat he thinks we pose. I peer inside and see the skeleton that is the Albino—all elbows and kneecaps, his skin dirty-snow white, baby blue contrails of veins swirling down his neck, a supernova of bruised veins exploding from the crook of his left arm, his balding head and ratty ponytail, his chapped lips, his red eyes—and he’s cradling two shotguns, petting the one Type just handed over. I glance around his lab. It’s still immaculate, the burners and Erlenmeyer flasks and beakers and the five-hundred-milliliter round bottom and burets and funnels and evaporation dishes, and this makes me almost as happy as not being shot dead.

Hey, man, how you doing? I say.

Old Albino, just minding his own business. Been waiting for this since I was born.

For us to show up? Type says. He smiles, looking down at our cook.

They always do, he says.

So where you hiding the—

It’s good to see you, I say, interrupting Typewriter.

The Albino looks up at me. He points the shotgun right at my dick. I’m trying to laugh and move out of the way, but really I’m thinking about getting buckshot in the pecker. The Albino says, Crooked Cock, tell me why you’re here.

See how you’re holding up.

I know you’ve been eyein’ my dick for long as I know you.

Just here because we didn’t know where else to go. Less people.

Less them walking dead, the Albino says.

You’ve seen ’em? Typewriter says.

The Albino points the gun at Typewriter. He jams the barrel into his pooch. He says, Killed one.

So they’re out here, the Chucks, like in the woods and shit?

In town. Headed that way when none of y’all bitches showed up. Figured somebody got popped, rolled. That’s what you’d think, huh?

Nobody got pop—

No shit, Crooked Cock. Saw what’s out there. Killed one woman with no face. Run her over in the Jimmy.

The Albino starts laughing and ends up coughing.

So what’s up with the trade? Trying to get some of that Albino shit, Typewriter says.

Ain’t shit left, the Albino says.

You’re fucking me?

Want me to?

Bro, come on.

Got this here, he says. He holds up a fistful of needles, none of them packaged.

Typewriter walks over to the main cooking station. He lifts a few beakers, a baking tray.

Touch my shit again, gonna get your fucking spine blasted, the Albino says.

Stop, I whisper to Typewriter. But it doesn’t matter, I can tell he’s about to freak the fuck out. One of his meaty hands pulls at his greasy Italian hair. He’s shaking his head, scratching the pink film of congealed ephedrine from the inside of a beaker. I worry that he’ll smash something. Even in the best of times, the Albino would kill you for fucking with his equipment. I tell Typewriter it’s cool. He’s not hearing me. He’s at that point of expected payoff. Like he’s killed a soccer team’s worth of walking dead; driven away from Travis the trucker, sealing his fate with the acceleration of his shitty Civic; he’s nearly been blown to bits by a tweaked cook and sacrificed his shotgun—and now he expects to get high in return. I get it. There’s no task too big, as long as the trade-off is crystalline Tina’s plump lips wrapped around your cock. It’s the only way we’re able to do what we do, the thank-you, the love, the smoke telling us she understands, motherfuckers just don’t get it, it’s all good, you’re okay.

And if that isn’t there, the reward? Then you’re stuck with yourself and every stupid and horrible thing you’ve ever done.

What about our ounce, fucking Monday, Typewriter says.

Expecting the Albino to be cooking during the apocalypse?

Fuck, Type screams.

Stop, I say.

The Albino points his gun at Typewriter. He says, Ungrateful piece of shit.

He didn’t mean anything, I say.

Comin’ up here, to
my
place, trying to smoke
my
shit, raising your voice in
my
lab.

Just put the gun down, I tell him.

I grab Typewriter. His eyes are seconds away from tears and I know it’s not because of fear, but because he needs dope. I feel him on this, like really I do, because the majority of me is screaming for more, but I tell him to chill the fuck out.

My Sudafed guy didn’t come down from Canada. Probably turned, all gigglin’ now, huh? the Albino says.

Typewriter keeps saying shit and fuck and I’m still holding on to his shirt, telling him it’s cool, we’ll figure out a way.

The Albino holds out his hand. It’s a bouquet of single-use syringes. He says, Pick a card, any card. He laughs. Ain’t got time to load ’em while I cook, so do it beforehand.

The Albino is a disgusting man and he’s fingering an open sore smack-dab in the center of his forehead. I want to tell him to shut the fuck up, that the last thing we need is to cross the irreversible line between smoking and shooting up. I’m remembering the people I knew who started putting holes in
their veins. How they’re dead, in state pens, or state asylums. But then I’m thinking about KK, how she’d had the sexiest eye shadow of discoloration on the back of her hand from where she shot shit, how she’d stumbled, to be sure, that year with me, but she’d gotten her shit back together, chosen sobriety over the mess I was again becoming.

Typewriter goes over to the Albino. He asks if they’ve been used. The Albino tells him they’re clean. And just like that it’s a done fucking deal.

Typewriter sits next to the Albino. His stomach bulges over his sweats. They start talking but I’m not really listening because I’ve always been scared of needles and I know this isn’t good, my best and only friend starting down this path. The Albino is tying a rubber hose around Type’s arm, and I’m trying not to watch, I want to go outside, and I think of the darkness and the wind and the walking dead. This isn’t even what fucks me up, but rather, the thought of KK dead, of my parents dead, of never being able to tell them all that I’m sorry.

Typewriter looks like he’s been waiting his entire life to be called up to the majors. He finds a vein on his second try. I watch him thumb the plunger and then that magic moment of pupil dilation. The change is instant, and I’m jealous because I know his night just got a lot better. I’m thinking about how long it will be until I can get high. Like having to track down Sudafed, which means having to go into town and dealing with whatever the fuck there is to deal with, the two hours to cook, like fuck, it’ll be so long. I’m thinking about all the drugs I’ve done, how they’ve always fallen the tiniest bit short,
how this shortcoming was because I smoked, chewed, or snorted them. The refrain gets louder and louder in my head: nothing matters and you’ll be dead soon anyway and nobody who loves you is still alive.

I sit next to Typewriter, who’s smiling.

I prepare as I’ve seen KK do.

I use the back of my hand. I find a vein and push the plunger and the liquid hits my heart and explodes dopamine and love and God and I think
everyone still alive is addicted to methamphetamines
.

We’re in the Albino’s main cabin. The left side of my tongue is bleeding because I’ve been chewing it. We’re not allowed any lights but I’m fine with that because my eyes are like an eagle’s, my hearing like an elephant’s, my mind like Einstein’s. I’ve named my shotgun Buster. Typewriter alternates between war stories and bouts of silence. He’s on the stories right now, talking about the gas station, how it was a fucking videogame, a movie, how he just kept unloading into Satan’s children.

The Albino gets excited at this, saying, Fucking right, Satan’s children.

We’ve each shot another tenth.

I call KK.

It rings.

I try to remember if it rang before or went straight to voice mail and it keeps ringing and I’m traveling upward and I give
a high five to a satellite and then fly back down to St. Paul and into her apartment and burst through her cell phone and I interrupt Typewriter, asking him if it went straight to voice mail before.

The Albino screams at me, tells me no calls on his property.

I hang up.

I tell him the world is dead.

This makes us laugh.

I whisper to Buster that she’s alive, that we’ll find her.

Typewriter slams on the brakes in the Walgreens parking lot. We’re going fast, or at least it feels like we are. We’re all sorts of prepared, the battle plan hatched as we blasted our third tenth thirty minutes ago. It’s Operation Get Sudafed. We’re out of the car and jogging to Walgreens’ glass doors. I’m carrying Buster and Typewriter’s shotgun and we each have a spare rifle tied to our backs like ninjas. Typewriter holds the duffle bags and two bowling balls, both engraved with
THE ALBINO
in the space between thumb and finger holes.

Objective One—Break doors.

We’ve learned from Cabela’s. Typewriter is a fucking maniac charging the door. He lets one of the balls soar from five feet away. The glass spiders. He sends the other one. It spiders more. He kicks the glass inward and it caves still in one sheet and the alarm sounds but the lights are no big deal because the sun is shining.

I toss Typewriter his gun.

We walk through the smashed door.

Objective Two—Get into pharmacy.

We’re running down the aisles and I can’t feel my feet hitting the floor or really anything other than my breathing, heavy in my chest. I’m at the closed pharmacy window way before Typewriter because I don’t weigh two thirty-five. I aim Buster at the glass, close my eyes, and fire. The glass shatters. I use Buster’s butt to knock out the loose shards and I crawl onto the counter and through the window. Typewriter hands me one of the empty duffles.