Bob Fingerman: Pariah

Copyright © 2010 by Bob Fingerman

First up, I’d express everlasting gratitude to John Schoenfelder. After having read my first novel, John approached me to see if I had anything else up my sleeve. I told him about Pariah and he invited me to submit it. He loved it, and though it didn’t work out with him, rather than let it die, he did a truly rare and generous thing and passed it along to the next person I want to thank: my great editor, Eric Raab. Eric shared John’s passion for Pariah and made it happen at Tor. Which brings me to Tom Doherty, without whom there’d be no Tor, nor this deal. Thanks, also, to Whitney Ross, Eric’s able assistant. I’d also like to express gratitude to Irene Gallo and Jamie Stafford-Hill for making Pariah look so terrific. Thanks to Bob Mecoy, for brokering this deal. To Kirsten Wolf, for providing another pair of sharp eyes. To Helene and Saul, my magnificent parents, for (among many other things) fostering in me a love for the written word. I’d be remiss if I neglected to extend my thanks and undying admiration to George A. Romero, for minting the modern zombie; even when we add our own new wrinkles, we’re all just playing with Mr. Romero’s toys. And, once again, thanks, love, and all good stuff to my astonishingly wonderful, loving, supportive, beautiful wife, Michele. I think that was longer than my allotted forty-five seconds.

Larry Gabler lay there, gasping, bleeding. At seventy-two, he was Abe’s junior by eleven years, but at the moment he could have given Methuselah a run for his money.

“You gotta get home to Ruthie,” he wheezed as sweat glossed his waxy face.

“Yeah, yeah,” Abe said, pouring himself a stiff one from the bottle in his desk. The radio droned the barely cogent reportage of nerve-wracked correspondents attempting to articulate what was happening throughout the five boroughs-not to mention the entire globe . Abe took a tentative sip of the whisky, then downed it as he sauntered over to the window to catch an eyeful of uncorked chaos below. As he peered down, three taxis collided, the driver of one bursting through his windshield like a meat torpedo. People were jostling, shoving, climbing all over each other, every man for himself, the hell with the rest . The sounds of screams and random gunfire echoed in the darkening canyon of office buildings, the sun ducked for cover beyond Jersey to the west. Mixed in with the usual filth in the gathered curbside snowdrifts was a new hue: deep red, and plenty of it, like big, bloody snow cones.

“Oh yeah, I can’t wait to get down into all that,” Abe said.

The stray who’d brought Larry limping in cowered, nearly catatonic, on the other end of the waiting room’s lumpy sofa. She was a good-looking young Puerto Rican, maybe in her early to mid twenties. Maybe Dominican. Abe couldn’t tell. Young was young, old was old, Hispanic was Hispanic. Larry let out a chalky groan, farted loudly, and slumped forward, chin on chest, blood oozing from his nostrils.

“I think your friend is dead,” the Latin girl murmured.

“He was dead when he came in,” Abe replied. “I could smell it all over him. You get to my age and death’s one of the few things you can recognize easy.”

Abe looked at the blood-soaked material around Larry’s chewed up calf, the slacks shredded. He downed another shot of whisky and made for the door.

“Where you going?” asked the girl.

“I gotta pay Menachem Bender a visit.”

“Who?”

Without explaining, Abe left the office of Cutie-Pie Infant Wear and hastened down the hall to Menachem Bender Men’s Big & Tall to pay a visit. Abe tried the door. Locked.

“Bender, you in there?” He pounded a few times, rattling the pebbled glass with Bender’s name and logo painted upon it. “Bender, c’mon! It’s me, Abe Fogelhut! You in there?” No answer. Abe cased the hall, then elbowed the loose pane out of the frame, the glass crashing to the linoleum beneath. Taking care not to cut himself, he opened the door, experiencing the giddy thrill of breaking into his neighbor’s business as well as a jolt of bowel-tightening fear. “Bender!”

Nothing.

Abe gave the unlit room a quick once over, then stepped in, flicking on the overhead fluorescents, which buzzed in protest. A cursory look at Bender’s books made clear Cutie-Pie wasn’t the only outfit in the garment trade to have a lousy last quarter. “Oy,” Abe sighed. “My condolences.” Abe stepped around the desk toward the storeroom, nearly tripping over Bender’s body, a.38 clenched in his white-knuckled hand. Bits of skull and brain matter flecked the adjacent wall and floor. Abe raised a hand to his mouth and then lowered it, realizing he was going to neither scream nor throw up. He just shook his head and opened the stockroom, repeating his previous sympathies. Turning on the light, he allowed himself to smile.

“Perfect,” he said, eyeing stacks of unsold winter wear for enormous outdoorsmen.

Moments later, he returned to Cutie-Pie to find Larry hunched over the Latina, violently munching on her entrails. The contents of Abe’s stomach disgorged, searing his throat. Larry didn’t even look away from his still-twitching repast as Abe, grateful he’d retrieved the revolver from Bender, emptied the cylinder into his undead partner. The fifth shot removed the top of Larry’s skull and he collapsed onto the girl’s remains. Abe spat bile onto the floor, took a gulp straight from the bottle of Cutty Sark, swished it around, then spat again.

“Okay,” he said, affecting as much calm as possible. “Okay.”

He wiped his mouth with his hankie, took a box cutter and sliced open one of the myriad boxes of his unsold stock of Baby Sof’ Suit ®infant winter onesies. “Okay,” he said, “time to redeem yourselves.”

Five-foot-five Abe, with his thirty-inch waist, stepped into an XXXL pair of Bender’s Breathable Sub-zero Shield ® Sooper-System ™ Weather Bibs , a double-insulated hunting overall for fatties who like traipsing off into the wilderness to shoot helpless critters. Leaving the bib down, Abe began stuffing onesies down the pants, padding himself from the ankles up. When he’d reached maximum density he pulled up the bib, heaved on the matching camouflage parka, and stuffed in more onesies. With the hood cinched tight around his scarf and a pair of snow goggles, Abe resembled Santa Claus geared up for combat.

“Okay,” he said again, this time muffled, “let’s go home.”

Flat on his back, Dabney lay awake in the open, the sky above him a slab of starless slate. No clouds differentiated the opaque murk that hung above, but it wasn’t a rich blackness, either. It was grayed out, lifeless. Stars would be nice. Maybe the moon. Something. Instead there was nothing, nada, zip. How could that be? Maybe his eyes were going. Beneath him the silver-painted tar paper was lumpy and hot, still retaining the heat of the day. He felt the texture with his thick fingers, creased and peeling, much like his own skin, which was sunburnt from spending all his time up here on the roof. Let the others rot in their apartments, he figured. I’d rather rot in full sight of God .