“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.
What the hell, he figured. Put those filters to the test.
Karl had forgotten how reader unfriendly the Bible was, no matter which version-although he vaguely remembered the Good News Bible being dumbed down quite a bit. Awkward and often impenetrable phrasing. Contradictory accounts of the same events. Clearly it was the message and not the messenger. No wonder his mind had often wandered during church and Manfred’s sermonizing. The language was nearly impermeable. After browsing through the earlier sections, he skipped to Revelation, figuring this most germane.
Karl had forgotten-or maybe blocked-the particulars, but the imagery came flooding back: God and His four demon monsters covered with eyes sitting by His throne, the monsters incessantly repeating, “Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” The first creature like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like an eagle-four creatures, each of them with six wings and loads of watchful eyes. Surrounding God’s throne were twenty-four other thrones, occupied by twenty-four elders dressed in white garments, with crowns of gold on their heads. God’s throne emitted constant lightning and thunder. Like the ultimate booming system.
It sounded more like a rave than Heaven.
And God, evidently, had the appearance of jasper and sardius, a forgotten detail that sent Karl scurrying to his dictionary, which explained that jasper was, “an opaque form of quartz; red or yellow or brown or dark green in color; used for ornamentation or as a gemstone,” and that sardius was, “a deep orange-red variety of chalcedony,” which he also needed to look up, only to discover that chalcedony was, “a translucent to transparent milky or grayish quartz with distinctive microscopic crystals arranged in slender fibers in parallel bands,” which frankly didn’t help at all. It wasn’t very comforting to picture the Almighty made of stone, perched on His throne, with catchphrase-spewing monster lapdogs for company. How Jim Henson hadn’t adapted this was a mystery; it would have made a perfect vehicle for the Muppets.