I, Zombie (15 page)

It was one of his dad’s books, a ratty paperback passed to
him on the stoop, a book he’d never finished. His old man was always bringing
him worn books with chipped edges and broken spines that smelled of wet rope
and low tide. He said he read them while the ferry was waiting on passengers.
Jeffery never asked where his father got the books, always assumed he stole
them from those racks of dollar paperbacks crazy white bookstore owners left on
the sidewalk like a temptation. He tended to assume the worst about his old
man. It was hard not to, growing up in a nest with his momma’s hate—all those
vile thoughts regurgitated and forced down Jeffery’s open beak.

Most of the books his father gave him went in the trash. He
would try and read them, try and sell them, but they rarely took to him or were
taken up by others. The only book his old man ever gave him that he read cover
to cover was the one on sculpture. It was a guilty pleasure, that book. Not
sure what the draw was, and Jeffery had never told anyone about it. His father
had brought it one day to show Jeffery where he worked. There was a picture of
two sculptures by the water, two towers.
The Pylons
, the book called
them. They sat on the edge of the Hudson right there at the World Trade Center
where his father’s boat docked six times a day.

“A black man made these,” his father had said.

The picture showed the two sculptures looking out over the
river toward Jersey, a big clock on the other side that his father said all the
men in suits could see clear across the Hudson so they could manage their time,
clock in and clock out, cinch up or loosen their ties.

“This is where we been,” his old man had said, tapping one
of the towers. It was a blocky structure, the corners sharp and built of heavy
stone. It had sections, like the body of an insect, six or seven of them. They
got more squat toward the bottom, all of them pointing down into the earth. It
was the saddest thing Jeffery had ever seen, this coming before he’d seen war.
Something about the heavy weight of those sections, crushing each other, made
it the most heartbreaking of sights.

It looked like the sculpture was being driven into the
earth, the sections on top weighing the others down, the ones on the bottom
squashed and flattened. And maybe those towers could represent anything a
person wanted to see, but Jeffery saw what his old man saw. This was their race
captured by a brother sculptor; this was the generations piling up on those
that came before. Once you saw it like that, it was impossible to see anything
else.

“And this is us dreamin’,” his father said, running his
finger across the neighboring tower. “This is hope.”

If the stone sculpture made Jeffery frown without knowing
why, if it made his gut sink, this one made him suck in his breath. It was a
sculpture crafted of air. A wire frame, twisting and weaving, pointing up like
smoke rising toward the sky. It was a sister’s braids. It was a dozen
long-fingered hands interlocked with glory, the blue sky caught between their
palms. It was the flutter above a choir as those voices and arms and those
gaping sleeves raised up and lost themselves in their own song.

A black man had made these, his father had told him. This
was where he worked.

That chapter was about a man named Martin. Here were these
two towers, sadness and joy, hope and resignation, side by side. It was a
father on a stoop, back bent, the years driving him toward his grave. It was a
son with a thrust chest and lifted chin, full of dreams and news of enlistment.
It was a boy signing up for a thing he didn’t know, vigor in his limbs, hopes
and wishes of becoming a man in other men’s eyes. It was a sculpture of the
before and after, of that man returning home, cast out of a war he understood
even less having looked it in its eyes, his belly a knot of scars from where
they’d pulled out bits of Hummer, shoved him back together, sewn him up.

Jeffery felt the pull of those towers, that place, that zero
ground, that wharf where his old man wrapped lines around bollards and greeted
passengers while the captain stood on the deck smoking cigarettes. He felt the
pull of those towers, a Pylon full of life pointing toward the heavens, one
full of despair driving deep into the earth.

He had spent hours looking at that picture, but he had never
seen them with his own eyes.

A block away, as he leaned south, guiding his limbs like
water around a pier, he heard the sounds of a fight, the familiar pops of
gunfire that used to mean grabbing your helmet and running off to kill someone.
Sounds that now meant there were still people alive and able to put up a fight.
Jeffery could smell living meat and fresh fear in the direction of the gunfire.
Most of the tottering undead around him angled that way, picking up the pace,
pushing deeper into the heart of the financial district.

But not Jeffery. He leaned on the walls of the hollow thing
he’d become, this walking fist of hunger, this shell grown exhausted from not
sleeping. He steered toward the unfinished skyscraper standing in the empty
space where two other towers once stood, an incomplete boy trying to stand
proud now that its parents were gone. He saw Winter Garden, a glass dome his
father had described in whispers, these landmarks a simple walk from his home,
but he had never taken the time to visit. All within reach, a long walk, that
place where those towers stood, those Pylons near where his father worked, but
he had never taken the time to visit. Not even back when he could.

29 • Jeffery Biggers

Jeffery knew from watching unfortunate others that he didn’t
have long. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? He’d seen it go fast for neck bites. Seen
it take almost an hour for that big brother who’d lost a finger and had asked
to be locked down with bike chains. Decisions. Damn. He had run this shit
through his mind every possible way a thousand times, but it was different now
with the clock tickin’, with the sickness spreading in his veins. Damn. Fifteen
minutes to off himself or to crawl away somewhere safe where he wouldn’t be
eaten, where he could slip off into that gazing stupor people went into until
they came back as something else.

Fifteen minutes. He gazed at the smashed window he’d come
through. The frustrated gurgles and hungry groans could be heard from the
alley. The dumpster was still being knocked around out there. One dive back
through, he thought. Give them what they want, make sure there was nothing
left. Go be bones.

The kid kicked his legs on the sofa beside him, riding an
imaginary bike. Jeffery looked over and watched the boy yawn, eyes puckered
shut, tiny hands waving at the air. No one would ever teach him how to ride a
bike. That shit was through. This kid had no idea what he’d been born into. In
fact, he looked bored, like:
let’s get this over with, motherfucker.

Jeffery looked around the apartment. No lurkers. Safe, not
like that mattered. It was the typical wreck he’d seen the last weeks: cabinets
standing open, drawers a-kilter, nothing put back in its place. The coffee
table had been used as an ashtray. It smelled like the sink had been used as a
toilet. The fucking world he lived in.
Used
to live in. How much longer?

The goddamn kid. Jeffery felt like his own father must’ve
felt. A man, terrified, stuck with this kid. Shit. Shit. How do you blame a
guy? A ticket out of there, and now what? Your life was over.

He felt old. Old and tired. Was this the sickness? Was this
the first thing you felt when you got bit:
old?
All the damn stages of
life, and now this one. The baby. His old man. Him—

The kid across the alley.

Jeffery sat up. Goddamit. Ten minutes left? Fuck.

He grabbed the baby and the stupid yuppie pack. The kid
squealed as Jeffery pushed away from that busted sofa with its white foam guts
hanging out. The ashes on the table stirred in his wake.

The door swung open, lock busted. He didn’t pause to listen
for the dragging of feet, didn’t stop to sniff for that putrified smell that
sometimes preceded an attack. He’d been through the building once before, and
now it didn’t matter. Fuck. How long? His foot hurt like a sonofabitch, worse than
anything that’d earned him those two Purple Stars. He dripped blood and limped
his way up crooked stairs that could somehow still command any damn rent they
wanted. Third floor. He needed the third floor.

On the landing of the second, someone banged a door shut.
Another survivor. They were like rats scurrying from the sounds of each other.
People living on top of people and pretending they weren’t there. Just like
it’d always been. A hotel of strangers. The only sign of a neighbor the voices
from their TVs seeping through ceiling and walls. Now, not even that.

Jeffery didn’t call out, didn’t ask for help. He didn’t know
this person, this rat. The kid across the alley. That’s who. No one else.

He spotted the boy again from the old apartment. The bag of
chips was still there, the window still open, ugly curtains fluttering like the
building was still alive, still doing its thing. Across the way, the teenager
was watching the scene in the alley, the boxed-in chompers agitated and
confused, stuck like fish that’d swum into a net and couldn’t figure how to get
loose.

There was no clothesline from that apartment, just a
jury-rigged wire for sharing cable TV, a pair of shoes hanging from its laces,
a long-ago prank from laughing days.

Jeffery spotted a clothesline next door. He went down the
hall to a place he’d cleared hours earlier. Putrified remains of a likely
renter swung from an electrical wire in the bedroom, neck bulging. He’d taken
the lazy way out. Jeffery ignored this, wondered vaguely if he’d be eating that
mess in half an hour. Or maybe he’d be going after the survivor one floor down,
that rat. He forgot about this and made sure the squirming kid was in the
backpack, did the restraints up tight, swung him over his shoulders. Goddamn,
his foot hurt. He could feel it working up past his knee. Five minutes?
Goddamn.

The window wouldn’t budge. Painted tight a long time ago.
Jeffery didn’t have time for this bullshit. He could see the clothesline right
out by the fire escape, but he didn’t want to go through the bedroom with the
dangler, so he shoved his boot through the glass. He kicked the remaining
shards out and beat the top pane with his fist to knock the hangers loose. He’d
gotten good at this, he saw, busting in and out of places. Damn. A lot of
talents wasted. Gone. Stupid.

He stooped real low to get outside, mindful of the kid on
his back. The young man from across the way was watching him. Shit, this was a
lot to saddle a young man with. A lot. Then again, giving life to someone
weren’t always a gift. You’d really done something when you knocked a girl up.
Done something with lasting consequences. All the good and bad in a life, all
set into motion with a mindless romp.

The kid watched him, chewing something. He had food. That
was good. Must be a good kid to still be around. By now they were either the
best of them or the worst of them. This kid didn’t look like one of the worst
of them.

The straps of the yuppie pack cinched tight to the line.
There was a pair of red boxers flapping out there like some kind of flag, one
of those messages the Navy cats used. Fuck, that was a different lifetime, all
the fighting. This was something else.

The line squeaked around the white plastic pulley as Jeffery
hauled the cord. The boxers jerked through the air like a fish, contracting as
it dove forward, fins popping out when it paused. The baby with no name, a name
lost with its momma, slid out after it. Squealing with delight, a cluster of
foul motherfuckers down in the alley sniffing the air, the baby chased the red
fish across the alley.

Jeffery looked up and saw that the kid from the window was
gone. Damn, his shoulders were stiff. Fuck. Hard to move. He gritted his teeth
and kept pulling in cord. Fingers would lock on the wire, but it was getting
difficult to open them back up. Damn. Happening fast. Needed to sit down. Took
work to breathe. Instead, he leaned against the creaky metal railing of the
high fire escape and tried to grab more wire. A clothespin popped off out there
in the alley and tumbled down into the orgy of undead. An infant bobbed,
precarious, squealing faintly, hanging from a thread.

Jeffery couldn’t move his arms. He sagged down on stiff and
tired legs, collapsed back on his ass, his pulse in his foot, but not so much blood
leaking out anymore.

Hungry. He thought about those potato chips, still crisp,
but they didn’t seem appetizing. He thought about that poor man swinging from a
length of electrical wire in the other room, the one who’d given up, the
dangler who took the lazy way. Meanwhile, an infant swung on a different wire,
squealing, legs walking on empty air.

Goddamn.

The end comes slow so you can think about it. Jeffery
thought of the soldier from another unit whose hand he’d held while he’d panted
those thin gasps that you reckon for a man’s last. He’d watched the life spiral
out of that soldier while gunfire popped all around, helicopters saying it was
too hot to land. Wasn’t much later he’d been on the other end, fighting for his
own lungful of air, squeezing the hand of an Iraqi militia man they were there
to advise, there to hand off the deep shit to someone else, like generations
coming one after another. An old man was hanging in the next room, a baby
dangling from a wire, Jeffery sitting powerless in between. Nothing moving for
a long moment. Nothing moving maybe ever again.

There was a squeak.

Jeffery figured it came from his own lungs, from the baby,
from the dumpster far below. He’d seen that big brother with the missing finger
start making noises after a period of quiet.