John Adams: The Living Dead 2

“It’s my heart. We’re out of the digitalis.”

“I’ll get it right now,” he answered. The digitalis-why hadn’t she reminded him?

“It’s no good, Connie,” she said, and he realized then that she hadn’t been too upset to help dig Adam’s plot: she’d been too sick. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to risk it.”

“Stop this talk,” he answered, standing now, in the dark. Orange light played through the cracks in the windows, because something out there was on fire. “I know a little high school chemistry. We’ll cook it on the kitchen stove. What’s digitalis made of?”

“No, Con. I’m on my way, and you’ve got to promise me something.”

He ran his hands along the sheets, and found that they were wet with her sweat. “I won’t promise you anything. You tricked me, you coward.”

Gladys shook her head. “Stop that, Connie. Now promise. I won’t rest peacefully knowing she’s alone. Locked up, even, with no one to remember to feed her. Remember the time with the blood? She drank it all straight out of the freezer bag. Maybe there’s a reason she ran off and it wasn’t just the drugs. We were wrong to give up on her like that. You’ve got to promise to see what’s become of her.”

He looked at his wife, whose complexion had turned orange with the fire. Over these last thirty-nine years, she’d grown wrinkled and fat and timid. He hated her whiny voice, and her old lady stink, and her sagging tits. Mostly, he hated her worthless ticker. “I’m empty, Gladys. I don’t love anything anymore. Not even you.”

She shook her head in what he would later remember as amusement. You’re married to somebody that long, you know better than to pretend like love is a fish. “Oh shut up and find her, you big baby!”

In the morning he dressed her in her comfy bathrobe and plastic-soled slippers, then cut off her head just in case, and buried her next to the boy and the dog. By noon he was gone. Walking south, toward Delia.

It’s only been two hours since he left the 7-Eleven, but his water is gone and he’s thirsty again. Dusk has settled like a tall man’s shadow, and though the prison is still two miles of dark, broken road to go, he doesn’t have time to set up camp for the night, so will instead persevere.

His back went out during that last fight, so his crab-walk is exaggerated, but at least his shoulder has stopped hurting and become numb. Veins along his neck shine bright blue and green with infection, and he wonders what those little virions are eating. His defenses probably, then his memories.

That’s when he hears the howl carrying across the broken blacktop. It sounds human-a soulful lament. He thinks it must be the thrumping bass of old world music since he can’t imagine there are any survivors left who’d be so incautious as to wail.

Then again, maybe it’s his imagination. Since he got bit, he’s been hearing voices. They don’t belong to Gladys.

– Sorry I bit you, mister.

– Could you help an old altar boy, Father?

– I saw the multitudes to every side of me, and their howls were loud.

He thinks it might be a disorder of the brain. He hopes so, at least.

“Maybe you didn’t even get bit, Con,” he says in the wrong voice. Gladys’ voice. “Maybe you just imagined it, and you’re totally fine.”

“No, Gladdy. I’m losing it,” he says as a second howl interrupts him. He spots the thing in the middle of the magnolia-strewn street. A black Lab retriever. A dog! It cowers with its head between its paws.

He can’t help it. He smiles and comes to life a little. A dog! He thought they all were dead-eaten up first by the infected, and then by the survivors. He shambles faster. Grinning like an idiot. Remembers games he taught his old mutt Barkley-fetch my beer and lift Gladys’ skirt.

As he crab-walks, he passes a crawling zombie without legs, that is chewing its own flesh-

I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.

– but is too decomposed to chase him.

When he gets to the pup he offers it his closed fist. Out of habit, he pulls back when he sees the thing’s chewed-up snout and bloated, white eyes. It doesn’t try to bite him, and he’s confused until he realizes that it smells his infection and knows they are kindred. So he does the dog a favor. With one hand, he takes it by the chin, and with the other he draws the butt of his shotgun and smashes it over the mutt’s skull. It whines, just like a real dog.

I loved you where the ocean met the sky, he thinks, even though your mouth was bloody. Then he keeps walking, toward Delia. By his map, he’s almost there.

He’s seen a lot of things, none of them good. In Tupelo he met a band of lunatics who sacrificed their healthiest to the infected in the hopes of pleasing God. Still, they’d been company. In Delaware he met a couple who traveled with him until they got botulism from canned Spam. How can you taste the difference? In Asheville he took pity on an old shut-in and stole a kitchen’s worth of food for her before leaving. On his way out she said, “Stay. Take care of me. You can’t really think your daughter’s still alive.” She wept as he shut the door to her small, airless basement, and it occurred to him that in the old days, he might have wasted more time trying to comfort her.

When Delia was small, he’d carried her on his shoulders from place to place, and pitied his bosses at the accounting firm, who’d considered their children’s rearing the domain of women. Now that seemed smug. Who had he been, to judge? Shit happens. You can blame yourself and God and everybody around you, but sometimes shit just happens.

Like when they went fishing, and the trout flopped in the plastic bucket filled with water. The stillness of the ocean had mesmerized him, and for a moment, he mistook nine-year-old Delia’s bloody mouth for a fever dream. But then he heard the slurping. The sun began to rise, and its color married the water to the sky. Maybe it was the blood treatments, or bad genes, or bad rearing. Maybe some people are just born wrong, and there is nothing you can do. “I love you,” he told her as he’d dumped the dead bluefish back into the water.

A few years later, Barkley turned up drained and hanging from the roof like a Christmas suckling pig. He buried the dog before Gladys ever saw how badly it was mangled.

Once, a long time ago, he got a phone call. Gladys slept through, even while he spoke in hushed tones next to her. The voice on the other line came reluctantly. “…Dad?”

“Yeah?” It had been months by then. She’d left on a Sunday afternoon while they were at church, and had taken her mother’s heirloom pearls with her.

“…I need help,” she said. “Money. I’m in trouble.”

He looked at the phone a long while, thinking. “Did you hurt somebody?”

“It’s not about that. It’s a debt. About five thousand.”

“We’re out, D. You robbed us blind and I’m not working full-time like I used to.”

“They’ll make me pay for it with my body,” she said. “And I’m pregnant, Dad.” She’d been crying, but that hadn’t meant it was true. He’d been so angry, or maybe so shocked, that he’d hung up.

Next time they heard from her was two years later, in Baton Rouge. His heart swelled like a leaking sponge when he found out she’d been telling the truth.

“Did you ever imagine she had a baby?” Gladys asked as they sat on the plane headed south, their IRAs cashed in for bail. “It’s a blessing, maybe,” she said with tearful eyes. “Little feet running around. Burping and pooping. God, I’ve missed that.”