Bob Fingerman - Pariah

Though the sun was lost in a gauzy white haze, the light was intense to Dave, especially after having been indoors. He shielded his eyes and fished his Giants baseball cap out of his back pocket. Instead of lying belly down on his tarp, Dabney was seated at an aluminum folding card table doing something Dave couldn’t quite discern. A conversational opener presented itself-something to distract from his current romantic woe-so Dave, attempting to affect insouciance, strolled over and took it.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he approached. Dabney was hunched over and wearing thick magnifying glasses, something Dave had never witnessed before on the older man. He neared the table and saw many small parts, some loose, some still connected to plastic sprues. Dabney was building a model kit. How adorable. Wait a minute. Did Dave really think that? Was he being ironic or facetious or patronizing? No, it was adorable, this middle-aged man using a pair of eyebrow tweezers to delicately assemble parts from this, what was it, model airplane, maybe?

“Makin’ a North American P-51D Mustang. Good way to pass time, plus the glue gets you a little high.” Dabney looked up and smiled. “Just kidding. Takes more than a little glue for me. Speaking of which, you want a beer? You look like you could use one.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” Dave hadn’t even thought to ask Mona for suds. Stupid. Dabney handed him a bottle of Heineken and Dave held back the urge to weep with gratitude.

“All these little parts and pieces. Been a while since I put one of these together. My boys used to be wild for these things. They liked doing the hot rods and whatnot, but I prefer planes.” Dabney looked up at the sky, scanning for nothing. “I used to complain about the roar of jet planes, ’specially during TV shows. Used to have to turn the volume up to compete with them. Now I’d give my left nut for a plane to go zipping by up there. Even if it wasn’t meant for me, least it would be a sign of something going on out there. Some sign that maybe there were others. Before Mona showed, last sign we had of life was that crash, and that was snuffed out before it even made an impression. I asked Mona if she’s encountered any others on her errands and she said no. There’s gotta be others. Just maybe not around here.”

“How does she do it, is what I wonder.”

“Yeah, well that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, ain’t it? How come those godless motherfuckers don’t eat her up like the rest of us mere mortals? Yeah.” Dabney finished off his beer, then tossed it over the edge of the roof, not even watching its trajectory. Out of sight it crashed, hopefully against the skull of one of the undead. Dabney snapped a tiny piece off the sprue and filed it smooth with a small wedge of sandpaper, his eyes on the instructions held in place by a small monophonic cassette player that warbled a well-worn tape of Ben Webster. “I’d like to see several squadrons of these strafing the bejeezus out of those assholes down there,” he said, holding the box art up for Dave to admire. “Imagine that? A bunch of these babies blasting the holy living hell out of those cannibal bastards? That’d be sweet.”

Dave nodded, sipping his beer. It was warm, so Dave pretended he was in Europe. He’d read somewhere that Europeans drank their beer warm. Sounded weird, if given the choice, but he’d never know firsthand. Dave looked out at the horizon to the north and wished he’d traveled, seen the world, broadened his vistas. Too late now. He then looked south and gasped.

“Look over there,” he said, pointing.

In the distance a thick, black cloud churned skyward from below, its origin blocked by buildings. But somewhere, looked like maybe in the east forties, a fire blazed. Was that a sign of life elsewhere? Or maybe a gas line blew all by itself.

“Hold on a sec,” Dabney said, reaching over to switch the dial on his radio-cassette player. He then stopped, midgesture, and let out a derisive snort. “Idiot. I was going to say, let’s turn on the news. Pavlovian response, I suppose. You’d think after several months of this shit I’d know not to try. Then again, I got some sweet notes serenading. I’m building a model kit. I’m drinking a beer. It feels almost normal, ’cept for me living up on a roof. But even that feels kind of normal. It is normal, now. Amazing how the definition of what passes for normal is always changing. If normal means what’s most common, those zombies are normal and we’re not.”

Dave nodded, taking another swig of Heineken. Normal didn’t used to entail a physical relationship with Eddie-or at least not a sexual one. It had always been pretty physical. The only time in their past that had been sexual was when they’d fucked a couple of coeds in their dorm room. Dave shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. He didn’t want to think about Eddie now.

Both men’s attention drifted southwards again as a loud thud, dulled by distance, was heard, followed by a ball of fire which shot into the sky, only to be absorbed by the black smoke. A succession of muffled explosions followed, each punctuated by thick clouds of melanoid brume. Easterly winds bent the plumes of smoke into choky question marks in the sky.

“What do you suppose it is?” Dave asked.

“I dunno. Looks to be pretty far east. Could be the old Con Ed steam plant, near the UN. Or did they tear that down? I can’t remember now. Could be a lot of things, though. And unless we send our girl Friday down there to check it out, we’ll never know. And frankly I don’t think that would be a very good use of her time.”

“No, I suppose not. Jesus, you think it will get up to us?”

“Don’t be simpleminded, son. I wouldn’t want to be in that vicinity, but we got us a few miles between here and there. Don’t sweat it. And think on the bright side, maybe it’s frying up a mess of zombies. Wouldn’t that be something?” Dabney held up the half-finished Mustang and mimed a few swoops, adding appropriate rat-a-tat-tat sound effects. “Not quite as cathartic as a good strafing, but it’ll have to do.”

Whatever was going on downtown it was dramatic. Volleys of muted concussions recurred with some regularity and a significant portion of the southern sky was smudged, the undersides of the dark clouds tinged orange from the blaze that raged out of sight below. The cloud of smoke and soot blew north and soon the sky directly above began to sicken. The charcoal gray began to leech pigment away, the already anemic sky turning greenish gray. The air smelled bad, a combination of charred solid matter and burning petrol.

“Something always gotta come along and rain on your parade,” Dabney muttered. He eyeballed the symmetrical rows of the new Brita Ultramax water purifiers arranged by the low dividing wall. If it did begin to rain, as it now threatened to, even those filters might not be sufficient to fully cleanse the tainted water. A heavy drop fell on his nose and he frowned, adding, “literally,” as he restored the remaining parts of his model kit to the box. As more drops began to pelt the roof Dave bid him a quick adieu, and then fled into the stairwell. After a few moments Dabney took off his clothes and stowed them in his lean-to.

The water was cool and good enough for an impromptu shower. He stood in the center of the roof, head tilted back, letting the rain pummel his face, saturating his salt-and-pepper beard. He squeezed his facial hair, wringing out the excess wetness, letting the overflow cascade down his chest. Unlike the previous downpour, which had been so mirthful, such a communal affair, this time he stood alone. Maybe Dave had warned the others about the black cloud. Fine. Dabney didn’t mind a solitary soaking. Let them be afraid. Rain was nature’s way of purging poison from the clouds, putting out the fires below. Who was Dabney to question that? The rain seemed all right. It didn’t burn or even prickle his skin in any way that raised a red flag. He opened his eyes as a very unscientific litmus test. No, the water didn’t sting. Good enough for my eyes , he reasoned, good enough to drink . He removed the lids of the Brita dispensers.