Richard Kadrey: Dead Set

The sound of the television, the smell of coffee, and the noises her mother made in the kitchen seemed as out of place and exotic as a circus in the living room. Give it time, she thought. Iphigene sort of made sense by the end. This will, again, too. She went into the kitchen, where her mother was in a terry-cloth robe, putting milk into her coffee. Zoe hugged her briefly from behind.

“Morning,” she said sleepily.

“Morning. Sleep okay?” her mother asked.

Zoe nodded, still trying to shake away the last few cobwebs.

“Want some coffee?”

“In a little while. I think I need a shower.”

“Thank God,” said her mother. “I’m going to have to burn your sheets. I didn’t want to have to boil the rest of the house, too.” They both cracked up a little at that.

In the bathroom, Zoe thought about how weird it was to laugh with her mother. Their relationship had become based so much on tension, that the absence of tension, even for a while, felt odd. Maybe not a bad odd either. It was kind of nice not to have her stomach tied in knots as she waited for the next explosion.

The hot water in the shower stung her cuts and scrapes, but still felt great. As she washed, she felt between her breasts and found a small, round patch of raised skin-a scar from where the arrow had gone in. Zoe smiled. When she turned eighteen, maybe she would have something tattooed around it. What? A snake, maybe. An ouroboros. She stayed under the hot water until it ran out and turned cold.

Her mother suggested that since it was already Thursday, Zoe take the next couple of days to rest before going back to school on Monday. It would also give them time to work out some kind of family emergency to use as an excuse for Zoe’s absence. At around noon, her mother dressed and headed out for another interview at the design company where she’d applied for a job before Zoe had left.

“Good luck,” Zoe called as her mother left.

“Thanks. There’s food in the fridge, if you get hungry.”

“Thanks.”

Her mother started to close the door, then came back in the living room. “Look,” she said, “I’m not going to lock you up or anything, but for the next few days, do me a favor and don’t go too far, okay?” She smiled at Zoe a little sadly. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours and I’d really like it if you were here when I got back.”

Zoe smiled and picked up a cup of coffee she’d brought in from the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Mom,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thanks. Is my hair okay?”

“Perfect.”

After her mother left, Zoe watched cartoons and then part of an old black-and-white Fred Astaire movie. After that, The Wizard of Oz came on. She fell asleep just as the flying monkeys were taking off to attack Dorothy and the others.

When she woke up a couple of hours later, her mother still wasn’t back. She hoped that was a good sign. Maybe the guy at the design company had put her to work right away, she thought.

While she’d been asleep, the flying monkeys had invaded her dreams. They’d circled overhead, just above the clouds, waiting for their chance to take her away. It didn’t feel exactly like a regular dream, more like something she was trying to remember. That night, she lay in bed, willing herself to stay awake. And then she heard it-a scratching at the window. When she went to look, there was nothing there, but the window frame was torn and splintered, as if by claws.

Her mother was already dressed when she got up. She moved around the kitchen in an anxious rush, gulping coffee and wolfing down mouthfuls of buttered toast.

“Choking to death is not a good way to start a new job,” said Zoe, pouring herself some coffee.

“I’m so nervous,” said her mother through a full mouth. “I know I can do the work, but I haven’t worked in an office in so long, and everyone else there looks like they’re twelve years old and have been doing design since they were a fetus.”

“You’ll do great,” said Zoe, stealing a half slice of toast from her mother’s plate.

“Hey!” her mother said. “Now I’m going to starve to death!”

“Don’t worry. It’s your first day. They’ll take you to lunch,” said Zoe cheerfully.

“You think so? That would be nice,” her mother said, her voice dropping into a low, thoughtful tone. “If they don’t and I faint at my desk, I’ll tell them it’s my daughter’s fault.”

“Say, do we still have that old Polaroid around?”

“The camera? Yeah, it’s in one of those boxes behind the couch. The one marked ‘Random Household,’ I think. You going to take some pictures?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe I’d shoot some stuff around here for Julie and Laura.”

“Great idea,” said her mother distractedly. She set her coffee cup and plate in the sink. “Is my hair okay?”

“Great.”

“See you tonight.”

After her mother left, Zoe thought about what she could to do to get ready. She should have known Ammut wasn’t going to let her get away. She’d killed his mother, even if she hadn’t meant to. And Valentine had warned her that the snakes wouldn’t finish him off. He’d marked her window for two nights running. She was certain that he’d come for her tonight. He liked threes.

Gathering the clothes she wore in Iphigene, she left them in a pile by the window. In the bathroom, she checked the cabinets for rubbing alcohol, but didn’t find any. She dug through the boxes in her closet and found an old diary with a few dollars hidden in the spine. She got dressed and walked to the corner.

The liquor store sold cigarettes individually, for a dollar each, and on the counter were little glass tubes that were labeled as cigarette holders but which everyone with two brain cells knew were actually crack pipes. On the shelves were brightly colored candles set in tall glass holders with pictures of Jesus and saints she’d never heard of. There were dusty boxes of ancient laundry soap and pet food, but she couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol. But she noticed that the store seemed to have every kind of liquor known to man. She went to the counter, where the bored clerk was watching a talk show on a small television propped up on a milk crate, and pointed to a pint bottle of vodka on a lower shelf, a cheap off-brand with a white plastic screw-on cap.

“How much?” she asked.

“You got ID?” asked the clerk.

Zoe leaned around the man and saw a hand-lettered sticker reading “$3.99” by the vodka. She put five dollars on the counter, took another five from her pocket and set it on top. It was all the money she had. The clerk looked her over for a moment. Zoe looked right back at him, hoping her scratches and bruises made her look older. The clerk took a small bag from under the counter, slipped the bottle inside, and twisted the top closed. As he handed it to her, he swept the ten dollars off the counter and into the pocket of his baggy chinos.

“There’s no drinking in front of the store,” he said.

Zoe took the bottle back to her room and hid it under the mattress. In the living room, she found her mother’s cigarettes and the disposable plastic lighter. She threw the cigarettes in the trash and took the lighter to her room, slipping it under the mattress with the vodka. She went into the kitchen and found a small box of laundry detergent and put it in the pocket of her heaviest winter coat.

She napped as much as she could during the afternoon so that she could stay awake later. She tried to will herself not to dream, but it didn’t work. When the dreams came, they were confusing, a murky combination of Iphigene’s worst sights-the dying dead, the flying snakes descending on her father-and the tree fort where she and Valentine had played. The fort and tree were burning and the snakes she’d seen there once before had overrun the field.