Peter Stenson - Fiend

I say, Can you hear me?

BIGHRYBALLS: did she turn?

Can’t hear you, write something, Type says.

I peck on the keyboard. It chimes.

RUSSIANDOLL 69: Who is this?

BIGHRYBALLS: is she walking?

Typewriter says, What is this guy talking about?

RUSSIANDOLL 69: What is happening?

BIGHRYBALLS: you kill her—y or n?

I’m hoping this guy is fucking with me. Maybe he’s some narc trying to uncover the murder of that little girl. At least this is what I’m telling myself. Like it’s so much better to be wanted for murder than for… shit, I don’t know, whatever the fuck the alternative is.

RUSSIANDOLL 69: Of course didn’t kill anyone.

BIGHRYBALLS: she didn’t reanimate?

Ask him where everyone is, Typewriter says.

RUSSIANDOLL 69: Please tell me what is happening.

Where is everybody?

BIGHRYBALLS: dead

My stomach drops out of my ass with this chime. Typewriter is saying he fucking knew it. I’m thinking about the little girl and about this guy’s comments about walking and I tell myself that it’s only in movies and comics where people can come back and eat flesh. I’m thinking about every show I’ve ever seen, every film, about arms outstretched, moans, and decaying flesh, and ghouls and living dead.

I’m muttering no, no .

BIGHRYBALLS: u kill her?

RUSSIANDOLL 69: I said no.

BIGHRYBALLS: why not?

I hear something resembling a two-pack-a-day fit of laughter. I scream. Standing maybe ten feet away is a naked Svetlana. Her blond hair is matted to the side of her face, which is half dark, like her blood has pooled there and there alone. She just keeps laughing. Typewriter and I run to a corner of the room. He’s holding on to a giant black dildo like a sword.

She takes a step forward.

The computer chimes and chimes and chimes.

She rolls her head and we hear a cracking of vertebrae and she’s smiling, laughing, walking toward us. I’ve envisioned my death countless ways, none of them at the hands of some walking dead Russian whore. She’s getting closer. I need to do something. I’m looking for weapons. Typewriter throws the dildo. It bounces off her chest. This really gets her going. This is my chance; she’s distracted, thinking how that rubber dong would do anything but annoy her. I reach for the coffee table and shove it with everything I’ve got. It bumps into her knees, sending her back a few steps. Then in one motion, she kicks it to shit, shattering the glass across the floor. A jagged piece shaped like a slice of pizza clatters at my feet. I grab it.

Fucking run, Typewriter says.

I try to grab him before he sprints for the door. It’s too late and he’s running and she turns and claws at his back and there’s blood and I’m not thinking, just acting, reacting . She’s got one hand on his shoulder and she’s clawing and scratching and he’s flailing and crying, begging for God to save him, for his mother, and I’m behind Svetlana, and I don’t know the first fucking thing about arteries or jugulars but that doesn’t matter. I stab the shit out of her neck. She seems to go limp for a second. I do it again. Thick, oil-like fluid oozes out of her. Then she’s on the ground and I’m screaming and still stabbing. I feel something break and I think it’s the glass but no, it’s still in one piece in my sliced hand. I look down. The end of her spine juts out from the top of her neck. Her severed head rolls in a semicircle.

The computer keeps chiming.

Her naked body gives soft jerks. I think of KK falling asleep, how her path to sleep was violent.

I’m holding on to Typewriter’s arm and we’re running down the stairs. We’re outside and the sun is about to set behind the small river valley of St. Paul and we’re not alone anymore—the streets have started to fill with what looks like the usual haggard motherfuckers of tame midwestern ghettos—and we get in Typewriter’s Civic and they are coming toward us, these people, these walking dead motherfuckers, all of them probably having reanimated and broken down their doors, and we’re driving away from them all.

I tell Typewriter to give me what he’s holding.

He starts with some shit about not knowing what I’m talking about. I pound the dash. I say, Give me your shit.

He reaches into his pocket.

It’s a decent-sized thirty rock.

I pull the pipe from my pocket. I put the whole piece in the bowl. My hands shake. They’re stained black from Svetlana’s blood or maybe that’s mine and the lighter won’t catch. I just want a hit, that’s all I want, like everything—survival and death and being one of the few still alive—doesn’t matter, not really, the stem shaking in my mouth, my breath held. Finally the flame stays. I drag. It’s the smell of burning plastic and chemicals, of being sixteen and wanting to be rad like the kids I skated with, of wanting to fit in behind the dumpster at Burger King, of fear, of not knowing what I was smoking, of my lungs rebelling against poison, and then the release, clear smoke expelled with a sigh like pissing in a pool.

My head becomes lighter, my shoulders released from the vise grip of being me sober.

It’s okay then, everything.

9:29 PM

Sometimes when I smoke shit, I reach the perfect balance of motivation and concentration. This is one of those times. I create a list as we drive north. A list of things we need to do, and of things we know or think we know. I’m writing on the back of an El Sombrero single-slice box.

1. We have killed two { people} things today (self-defense).

2. These things are zombielike.

3. Zombies don’t exist.

4. There are at least two other people (perv on 18toplay, and Tibbs) who aren’t dead.

I stop making the list and pull out my cell phone for the first time. Why the fuck haven’t I tried to call anyone? I hit speed dial one, KK. It goes straight to voice mail. I think about her being Svetlana, naked and skinny and laughing a demonic laugh. I picture her as Rebecca, alone and dead, being eaten by greedy cats. Then I picture her as me, trying to make sense out of everything, terrified. I call again. I tell the machine I love her, it will be okay, to call and let me know she’s alive.

Then I call my parents. It’s been at least a year since I’ve talked to them. The phone rings and I’m picturing them sitting around the kitchen table, my dad with his graying hair, his readers resting on the bridge of his nose, holding my mother’s hand, maybe brushing her dehydrated-piss-yellow hair away from her eyes. They’re sitting there worrying, waiting for the call that tells them their son is dead.

It goes to voice mail.

Guns and shit, Typewriter says.

Huh?

Supplies. Weapons. The list. Cabela’s is ’bout twenty miles away.

I write:

5. Weapons. Food and water.

And dope, Type says.

You fucking serious?

As hepatitis, he says.

6. Meth

I look over the list. My fleeting sense of accomplishment fades. The list is retarded. It gets me no closer to understanding what’s happening. I light a cigarette. Typewriter asks for one. He tells me to put cigarettes on the list.

Fuck the list, I say.

I look out the window and it’s dark now, like really dark, an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities, nothing but an abandoned two-lane highway. Where is everyone? Like, if things really were the way they seemed—people were either dead or walking dead—then where was the panic? Movies showed that shit all the time. Some dude getting bit in a shit box of a country, then flying back to the US, chewing up his family, and from there the plague shit spreading with the speed of herpes on an Ivy League squash team. But people panic on TV. They break into stores. They board up houses. They run out of gas. And here we are, driving eighty, not a single car in the way. I mention this to Typewriter.