Flowers in a Dumpster (3 page)

“And not only did you lie your ass off to us all back then,” Miguel said, paying no heed to Edwin’s words, “but then you came into my home and lied to my family.”

“I did not lie.”

“You didn’t give us your real name and you said you were a lawyer before the world ended.”

“As you already deduced, Edwin
is
my real name, my middle name, and before I went into politics, I was a lawyer.”

Miguel smiled. In the flickering light it was frightening, predatory. “It’s pretty slippery maneuvering, deception without any outright lies. Typical politician.”

Edwin looked past Miguel toward the open back door of the mobile home. It was obvious to him that he was not going to be able to reason with this man, so he figured his only hope was Sadie. She seemed the more rational and compassionate of the two. “Sadie!” he yelled. “Sadie, please come out here!”

“I’m right here, Mr. President.”

The voice startled him, causing him to yelp. He craned his neck to look in the opposite direction, the far side of the yard that led to the lake. A figure stood just outside the torches’ reach, but then Sadie stepped forward and her face was painted with shifting light and shadow. She looked sad and weary.

“Sadie, thank God. You’ve got to help me. Your husband is out of control.”

Sadie walked forward slowly and took a seat on the picnic table’s bench. She stared off into the distance, her eyes unfocused as if she were seeing another place, another time. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “When my mother first got sick—just a case of the sniffles, that’s how it started—I begged her to go to one of those emergency clinics that sprung up around town, after the hospitals became overcrowded. I heard on the news they had specialists there that could help. I was down on my knees, in tears, pleading with her. She wouldn’t go, though. She’d always been a stubborn woman. She kept saying, ‘The President says there’s nothing to worry about, that people are freaking out for no good reason, like with the Bird Flu.’”

Here Sadie paused and turned her gaze on Edwin. He suddenly wished she’d look away again. “My mother died in agony, choking on phlegm, spitting up blood, struggling for each breath, cursing God and screaming for me to kill her.”

Edwin shook his head, still hoping to get through to her. “That’s not my fault. If she was showing
any
symptoms it means she was already infected. There was no cure, no treatment, so she was a dead woman regardless of whether or not she went to a clinic.”

Sadie’s expression became so cold and emotionless it terrified Edwin. He turned his head back toward Miguel, who suddenly seemed to be the lesser of the two evils.

Miguel laughed softly. “That was probably the wrong thing to say to her.”

Sadie pushed herself up from the picnic table and walked around it, joining her husband. The two stared down at Edwin as if he were a pesky insect that needed to be squashed. These two good Christian people, a former kindergarten teacher and nurse, now looked like monsters.

“So what are you going to do?” Edwin asked, not really wanting to know the answer. “Beat me to death with that bat?”

Miguel glanced over at the bat on his shoulder as if he’d forgotten it was there. Then he tossed it off to the side, where it landed in the high grass with a faint
thud
. “No, amigo. That would be too good for you.”

“What then, the shotgun?”

Sadie shook her head. “All that buckshot in your flesh would be too wasteful.”

“Wasteful? What are you talking about?”

Miguel reached to his waist where he pulled a serrated hunting knife, lethal and nasty looking, from a leather sheath. “Looks like we’re going to be having steaks for dinner tomorrow night.”

Sadie’s lips spread into a wicked grin. “With plenty left over for enough jerky to last us through next winter.”

Edwin screamed long before the knife was used, but there was no one left in the dead world to hear or care.

THE SUPPORT GROUP

New York arrived late, but New York was
always
late. He took his usual seat next to Los Angeles, who despite her caked-on makeup and hair extensions looked haggard and frail. Across the way, London nodded, sucking on his pipe so that an amorphous cloud of smoke enveloped his head. Paris was also in attendance, perched on the edge of one of the uncomfortable folding chairs that made up the circle. Her pointy hat looked rather ridiculous.

The group was packed today, almost all the seats taken.

“So what’d I miss?” New York asked then doubled over as a violent fit of coughing tore through him. He hacked up black sludge into a handkerchief.

Los Angeles had her chin tucked down against her chest, and she flicked her eyes toward him as if she hadn’t the strength to actually lift and turn her head. “I was telling everyone how I tried to shake the little buggers off again, but they just hold on for dear life and keep going like nothing happened.”

All around the circle, everyone nodded soberly. They were all inflicted with the same disease. Little parasites had infested them and were slowly killing them. They came to the group for mutual support but also to hear stories of possible treatments and cures.

“I tried washing them away,” Miami said, reaching up and scratching at her head. “I mean, I really doused the fuckers. Got rid of some of them, but not enough, and it seems more just came to take the place of those I washed away.”

Next to Miami, New Orleans laughed, the sound deep and resonant. “Tell me about it. Several years back I really thought I’d managed to wash myself clean of the things, but now they’re all back. I can feel them crawling all over my skin.”

New York squirmed in his seat. He too felt the parasites all over him, polluting his body with their foul sickness. It had been so long since he had felt anything but tired and weak and contaminated. He didn’t even know what it was to be healthy anymore.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, his voice breaking. The question, familiar to the group, summed up why they came back week after week.

“You could do what I did.”

All eyes turned at the sound of Chernobyl’s thick accent. She was the only person any of them knew that had actually beaten the disease. But the radiation treatment had taken a lot out of her, leaving her a withered husk of her former self. Her hair had fallen out except for a few matted clumps, and she seemed lost in her clothes, as if she were nothing more than a stick figure held together by twine and parchment.

Everyone was impressed by Chernobyl’s success at eradicating the parasites, but no one was willing to pay such a steep price to be free of them.

And yet, New York thought as he coughed up more black sludge mixed with his own blood, he might just be getting to the point that he’d try anything.

WELCOME

Stranded in the middle of somewhere.

The thought entered Steve’s mind as he stepped out onto the asphalt. Al exited the passenger’s side and joined him in front of the car. They raised the hood and stared down at the Toyota’s innards for some time.

“So,” Al said, breaking the silence, “how long are we going to look before we finally acknowledge that neither of us knows the first thing about cars?”

Steve closed the hood. “I think this is about long enough. I can’t figure out what could be wrong with it.”

They’d had the Toyota Celica only four months, the first new car either of them had ever owned. If the two men had not pooled their resources, they would never have been able to afford the automobile. It had been running smoothly up until a few minutes ago. Al noticed a low sound, like playing cards in bicycle spokes, and then everything shut down. No lurching or sputtering. The engine simply ceased, and Steve had guided the car to the right where it coasted to a gentle stop on the grassy curb.

“Well, looks like we’re stuck here,” Steve said. “Better pull out your phone and call a tow truck.”

“Oh yeah, my phone.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t bring your cell.”

“No, I brought it, it’s right here.” Al pulled the compact black phone from his pocket and held it up. “But I’m out of minutes.”

“Well, that’s great,” Steve said, but there was no harshness in his voice. While he was more than a bit irritated by their brand new car’s refusal to go, he found the situation more amusing than anything else. This whole scenario—a young couple’s car breaking down in a remote area—was straight out of one of those cheap horror flicks Al always dragged him to. With one significant deviation, though. In those movies, the car always broke down in some backwater hillbilly town where the residents wanted to rape you or eat you or sacrifice you to some corn god. The area in which Steve and Al now found themselves was nothing like that.

“I guess we should go ask someone if we can use their phone,” Al said, leaning over and bumping his shoulder into Steve’s.

Steve planted a quick kiss on Al’s lips. “Guess so. I just hope the people in this neighborhood can afford phones.”

Al laughed and the two headed across the street.

Ever since Steve and Al moved in together, they had developed a fondness for taking drives. It started out as a game. They would pick a road that neither of them had ever been down and see where it led. This soon evolved into routine drives through the more affluent neighborhoods of town. Steve and Al shared a studio apartment, a tiny box of a place that reminded both of them of a motel room. They couldn’t afford anything bigger yet, Steve worked as a waiter and Al with mentally handicapped children, but they could dream of something bigger. They would drive through the rich neighborhoods and pick out their favorite houses, speculating on how it would be to live in such domestic palaces.

It was toward one of those domestic palaces that Steve and Al now walked.

The house was large, two stories, of multi-colored brick. The downstairs boasted large bay windows under which beautifully landscaped shrubbery grew. On either side of the front door, a large oak slab with a polished brass knocker, were old-fashioned gas lanterns. Even now low flames flickered, though darkness had not yet fallen. The house was expansive without being cold and foreboding like some other large homes. There was a certain coziness to this house. In fact, Steve had been about to pronounce this home his favorite of the evening when the Celica had stopped running.

In the front of the house was a paved drive that curved in a semi-circle, bordered by a row of knee-high bushes. Steve and Al walked down one side of the drive, fingers intertwined, and a gentle breeze ruffled their hair. Al glanced at his watch. 06:47 PM. The sky was the deep purple of a fresh bruise, stars flickering like the flames of the gas lanterns. It was a gorgeous spring evening, the kind of evening romance novelists wrote about in their saccharine fiction.

“Think we’ll be invited in for tea?” Al asked. “Get a firsthand glance at how the other half lives?”

“Who knows? Maybe they’ll be looking for a couple of young house-boys to do the cleaning in nothing but a pair of bikini briefs.”

“Look no further then, we’re the fellas for the job.”

“Damn straight,” Steve said.

There were four steps leading up to the door, the brass knocker shaped like a Chinese dragon. Steve pressed the doorbell and he and Al waited for a glimpse into the type of house in which they’d always dreamed of living.

Several seconds ticked by with no response. They were beginning to wonder if anyone was home, whether they should walk down the street to the next house, when footsteps sounded from inside. Hurried, frantic footsteps, as if someone was running down the hallway to answer the door.

“Sounds like someone’s glad to have visitors,” Steve said.

The door was wrenched open, hard enough that it swung wide and banged into the wall inside the house. A young woman stood framed in the doorway, blonde hair swept up in a sloppy bun, her eyes wide and wild, her breathing ragged. She wore faded jeans that came a few inches short of her ankles and a T-shirt with the word ‘Superstar’ printed on the front in silver spangles. The shirt was too small for her, exposing her midriff and stretching the word across her chest.

“Oh my God,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You’re here. Someone’s really here.”

Steve and Al cut sideways glances at one another, not sure how to reply. Finally Steve held out his hand. “Hi, my name is Steve, and this is my friend, Al. Our car broke down across the street and—”

“Fred!” the woman shouted over her shoulder. “Fred, hurry. Someone’s here. Get Gracie.”

A man appeared beside the woman. He wore corduroy overalls that were at least three sizes too large for him and a pair of glasses that slid down his nose to perch on the tip like a gargoyle on the side of a building. “I can’t believe it. Linda, are we dreaming? After all this time, it’s too good to be true.”

Al tugged on the sleeve of Steve’s shirt and began to back away. “If this is a bad time, we don’t want to bother you. We’ll just be on our way.”

“No!” the couple in the doorway shouted in unison. The woman, Linda, spoke quickly, “Your car broke down, right? You’re stranded, you need help.”

Fred stepped aside. “You can use our phone. Please come in, the phone is in the living room.”

Steve and Al hesitated on the doorstep, a welcome mat with silly cat designs at their feet. Linda and Fred seemed like one seriously disturbed couple, their eagerness to have Steve and Al in their home on par with that of the witch’s to get Hansel and Gretel into her oven.