Extreme Zombies, page 42
Then he did the thing every victorious zombo did, the thing that the organizers relied on to control their fighters. He smelled the sweaty, agitated spectators and leapt like a frog onto the reinforced Plexiglas. Blue sparks ran up the metal stanchions separating the see-through panes. Embedded filaments too small to see carried the current to the zombo at its every point of contact with the barrier. Orkon convulsed three, four times, and then fell motionless to the ring’s floor, face up and spread-eagled. The ringmen dashed out and rolled their victor into a canvas tarp, which they then pulled tight with what had to be several dozen sets of belts and buckles. By the end of the procedure, Orkon had opened its eyes and was irregularly blinking. The ring men hastened their buckling, and soon it was completely unable to move. They finished off by gingerly wrapping a ball gag around its slowly jawing mouth. A tentative-looking assistant, also fully geared up in padded armor, piloted a gurney onto the stage. The ringmen casually hefted the bagged zombo and flipped him onto the gurney, which they quickly wheeled off through parted curtains.
Forster could hear the blood rushing past his ears. Not a sound in the entire freaking place. He looked at the men across from him, saw their dropped jaws, and checked his own to see if it were also swinging back and forth like the head of a drinking bird. It was not.
The serene expression on Tim’s face as he rose to make his rounds through the arena showed that his money had been on Orkon.
Down front, a short, buck-toothed man wearing a fur cap sat staring at Hecuba’s opened corpse, tears rushing down both of his capillaried cheeks.
Tim sat across from him in their habitual coffee shop, his arms splayed across the red fake leather covering the backs of the booths. He had laid his hat down beside him, revealing his receding hairline, as accentuated by his habit of gelling his hair tight to his pointy-crowned skull.
“I had opportunity to smell-test Hecuba a couple days back,” he said. “Much as they tried to mask it, you couldn’t miss the formaldehyde. I mean, just count back the months to her first match. She had to be getting pretty squishy.”
“I think I’m bored with this shit, too,” Forster said.
“Don’t tell me.”
“I hardly felt anything at all this time.”
The waitress came with their coffees. Tim ordered an open-face turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes. Forster glanced at the menu for the first time, scratched his neck, and said he’d have what his friend was having.
“What has it been? Just six times? And it’s already paled on you.”
“The process of my beginning to feel nothing seems like it’s accelerating. It’s the same curve, just faster now. Like I could plot it on a graph.” Forster fished a ballpoint out of his coat pocket and began to draw a curving line, like the dorsal surface of a whale, on the diner’s all-white place mat. “First is the fear, I feel my heart pumping, and from then I can begin to feel other things: elation, fury, a sense of connectedness to the people around me. Then the fear dies down. Revulsion comes into replace it, and that’s fine, too. That’s feeling something, after all. I’ll settle for revulsion, I think. Then thorough self-loathing. Even more unpleasant, but still feeling. Then this begins to leach away, too, leaving just this sort of flat . . . grayness. Like the people around me are actually a million miles away.”
“Present company excluded, naturally.” Tim inspected the cigarette he’d been fidgeting with, broke it up into three pieces, and deposited it, unsmoked, in the amber-colored ashtray.
“The drugs were the first, and they lasted the longest of all. There were so many different ones to try. And part of the experience is the people you’re around when you’re on them, and the things that happen. But the end of that curve was when I couldn’t get a buzz off anything. All just maintenance. Big deal. The good time period: that lasted, what, eighteen months? Nearly two years?”
“Sounds about right. Plenty of people party-heartying then.”
Tim would know; he’d been Forster’s dealer from the start. The two of them had been in grad school together, way back. Now here they were again. Each was the only person the other could fully talk to. Tim had to dumb himself down around the lowlifes he worked with. References to Foucault or Godard strictly off-limits. Forster could share his spiral with no one at the office. The Post-Rising labor market tolerated many quirks, but certain things you didn’t discuss in the break room.
“Then the hooker thing,” Forster continued, “that overlapped, but all told lasted me maybe a year. Little less.”
“Lots of people find that alienating.”
“The various fetish scenes—I know you don’t want me to get into the details—”
He could see Tim tense up. “Yeah, keep it to vague allusions. That one time I asked . . . ”
“Each of those was its own separate curve. Things I never thought I’d ever see myself doing, then quicker and quicker, I was not only doing them but had gone through them, they were dead for me, passé.
“Okay, the S/M scene, that’s so all-encompassing. That did last longer than some of the things before it. But still, same pattern. Part of me was hoping that this deathmatch thing . . . It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t bodily, it would be different. The spiritual purity of the degradation of it, it would last longer. And the first time—”
“A classic match. Hecuba’s first.”
“Thought I’d shit myself, I was so scared going in. Scared of a raid. Of it being a scam, of getting robbed and beaten. Of how I’d react when I first saw one of them again. Of maybe one of them getting loose, biting somebody, starting a cascade.”
“And jeez, when the head went flying into the crowd . . . ”
Forster remembered his coffee and took a big drink of it before it cooled too much. “Yeah, maybe that was part of it. That first one was so . . . so . . . intense that the rest could only disappoint from there. If that third match, that awful drawn-out one where they just wouldn’t go for each other—If that had been my first one, if it had built up more, maybe I’d still be feeling a jolt. But the whole time tonight, I kept waiting for it to kick in, and nothing.”
“Yeah, that night, that was a classic, all right.”
“But tonight, it was all just the same old dull feeling—the same non-feeling. And the people around me, I didn’t feel like I was part of them, a member of their race, or even in the same room with them. Like I’m watching via a grainy, black-and-white security monitor. The only thing that got my blood pumping at all was first contact with that smell, and even that was only for the first few moments. You can get used to fuckin’ anything, that’s what I’ve learned.”
“Ever given any thought to Africa? Or New Orleans?” Tim was referring to places where the syndrome still raged. Most of the Third World still writhed with it; their governments couldn’t afford the full array of Gauzner technologies. They had plenty of the bombs but not enough spray units. Various outside funding proposals were snarled in the U.N. for the third year running. New Orleans was still under military quarantine, with only the most determined death’s-heads getting through. The whole coastal region of Louisiana kept breaking out and no one was quite sure why. Urban legend held forth on the subject of a Gauzner-resistant strain, but proofs remained elusive.
“They don’t interest me. I keep telling you, it’s not a death wish. I want to feel the opposite of dead. If I wanted to top myself, I’d just head out to the viaduct and jump. To expose myself to the infection again—you know what that would betray.”
“Yeah. Of course.” Tim pursed his lips. “I didn’t mean to—all I was saying is, the gladiator thing, I was really hoping it would last longer for you.”
“Yeah, me, too.” The waitress brought the food. Forster stared down at it, unhungrily. Tim dug in. The matches always gave him an appetite.
“Look,” said Tim, between oversize mouthfuls of mashed potato and gravy. “I knew this time would come, though not so soon. And you know I sympathize with your malaise. And admire the headlong way you pursue it. There for the grace of god and all that.
“So.
“There’s this thing. I been keeping it in reserve for you. I’m only in the preliminary stages of hooking it up. The people who handle this, they’re not my usual circle. You’d say they’re several circles away, okay? So what I’m saying is it’s all chancy. Can’t guarantee anything. And if it does go through, these are some crazy, nasty mofos and I can’t extend any kind of my usual dispensation. If things go wrong, it’s all on you, right?”
Forster sat forward. He felt like his heart had started up again.
“It’s really freaking sick, okay? And if this doesn’t do it for you, I tell you, my wad is shot. There’s no further frontier I’m capable of pointing you towards. But, jeez, if you’re into it, it should last you more than six lousy times. Now I know you know the kind of discretion I expect of you. So don’t be insulted if I repeat that this has absolutely, in no circumstances, not a word breathed to anyone except for me. This is not like the thing tonight, where they’re inviting in half the world and its uncle. Okay?”
“Come on. Tell me.”
Tim looked around for eavesdroppers. “Like I say, it’s preliminary. It might not come off.”
“Come on.”
He leaned forward and spoke sotto voce. “How would you like to fuck one of them?”
He walked home from the subway, rock salt crunching under his boots, his breath illuminated by orange streetlights. The very idea of it had given him a hard-on, his first in months. The bitter chill of the air invigorated him. He strode up the concrete steps towards his building’s foyer, reaching into his pocket past the Ziplocked supply Tim had sold him, to his keys. As he unlocked the front door, he saw, through its glass, a slim figure wearing a hooded coat. Forster could not see her features, but knew her frame. Sephronia. Her presence utterly deflated him, threw him back into the gray again. He resigned himself and opened the door.
She stepped towards him. “John, I’ve been waiting for you, hoping you’d—I’m sorry, but this is the only way.”
Forster stood before her, paralyzed, not knowing whether to stand there and take it or shove past her wordlessly.
She took another step his way, and lowered her hood, revealing the harsh pink and unwholesome smoothness of the scar tissue that covered her face and entire skull. She’d left off her wig. The gesture was one of remonstrance. Forster knew he should be feeling bad, but had forgotten how.
“I need you to see me,” Sephronia said. “To look into my eyes.”
He had done this to her, tenderly, over a period of weeks, with a portable acetylene cutwelder. She had consented to the act, sure, but in the expectation that he’d keep her around. That it was a sealing of the permanency between them.
“Please at least say something.”
“If I could think of something to say, I would.”
She made a third step toward him. He thought he might flinch from her, get backed into the mailboxes, but found himself standing his ground.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “That you didn’t see the degree of commitment I had ready for you. That you needed to see how far I am willing to go for us.”
She pulled back her coat’s fake-furred left cuff, to reveal, at her wrist, a freshly cauterized, naked stump. “I did this to show you.”
Forster finally found what it took to brush past her. “That’s sweet, honey, and I wish I could care.” He slid-clicked the lock on the interior door and slipped through. She tried to catch it and hold it open, but he closed it quickly. He headed to the stairs without looking back at her. As he walked up towards his apartment door, he tried unsuccessfully to make himself feel guilt for what he’d driven her to, or, if not that, at least empathy for her state. Most elective amps started with their off-hand, but Sephronia did everything with her left. She’d find someone. The amp lifestyle was one of the fastest-growing out there. She’d get over him and settle down with some young, apprehensive stump-lover anxious to abase himself before her every crippled need. Maybe if he knew she’d end up worse off than that, he’d be able to conjure up the proper remorse.
He looked again at the slip of paper with the address on it. He’d expected another disused industrial site, like the one where the fights were held. But this was an old restaurant with papered-over windows. NEW HARMONY RESTAURANT, said the sign that hung overhead. “DELICIOUS MEALS—“delicious” in quotation marks.
His hard-on was back, after having deserted him again. The anticipation had made him feel real, for the first couple of weeks. By week three, with still no phone call from Tim, it trickled away. With anyone else, Forster would have concluded he’d been taken in by a line of bull, but he trusted Tim better than that. Tim had made clear that his arrangements might not come through. By the time the call came, Forster had given up on the whole prospect. Yet here he really was, he told himself, really standing in front of the place where he was going to get to fuck a zombo. There were three doorbells, and he’d been told which one to buzz, and how many times to hit it. As he followed his instructions, it occurred to him that the sex of the subject had never been mentioned. He thought it would be better if it were female. Despite his expanded experiences of the aftermath years, he hadn’t completely shaken his preference for the woman’s equipment.
They kept him standing there for a while, stamping his feet against the sharp cold. Finally a small tear opened up in the butcher’s paper that lined the glass door. Dark, heavy-browed eyes appeared.
“Yeah?” said a voice muffled by the glass.
“You got some videos for me to return?” replied Forster, providing the prearranged response.
The door opened. The man behind it was mountainously tall and fat, wearing a food-stained, khaki T-shirt stretched too tight across his belly and man-tits. His long beard and shaggy dark hair were all of a piece. He didn’t step aside to let Forster in until Forster took a step towards him. He glowered suspiciously down. Forster understood this as the intimidation necessary to the arrangement. Still, a little talk from the guy could at least indicate what was expected of him next. He looked around at the interior of the building. The restaurant fixtures had been completely torn out. Busted pieces of gyp-rock lay on the floor amid a dusting of plaster. Most of the golden wallpaper had been torn off the walls, but a few pieces remained, and they were stained the color of rust. Could well have been blood; this place might have been a massacre site. This had been one of the city’s worst-hit neighborhoods.
Two men appeared, from what would probably have been the former kitchen. One wore a Juventus soccer jersey over gray wool slacks and had a heavy gold chain-link bracelet around his hairy wrist. The other was skinny and looked like he should be working in tech support somewhere, with a white dress shirt, bushy carrot-colored hair, thick-framed glasses, and an overbite.
Juventus-jersey did the talking. “You’re Forster?”
Forster nodded.
“Cash up front.”
Forster reached casually into his coat, pulled out the roll, and tossed it to Juventus, who plucked it from the air and, without looking at him, passed it back to Tech Support. “Count this,” he said. Tech Support rolled away the thick rubber band, dangling it off his thumb as he riffled through the bills nearly as fast as a machine would. Juventus pocketed the entire amount and left the room, going back where he’d come from.
Man-Tits lumbered forward and pointed towards a wooden door, painted white. “She’s down there.” Forster had been in some pretty brusquely run brothels before, but this was the epitome. It was perfect.
Tech Support evidently felt the lack of amenities and beat Forster to the door, opening it wide for him. He gestured for Forster to precede him down the dark stairs. For a moment, Forster’s shoulders tensed up, ready for a conk from behind. But he’d already given up all but pocket change. They had no good reason to conk him.
Forster heard a switch flicked behind him. A utility light hung from a wooden ceiling beam. The staircase led down into a dingy corridor. There were more rusty stains on the whitewashed walls. Under the stairs stood a row of unplugged refrigerators.
“So,” came Tech Support’s voice, “do you, uh, live in the city, or have you come down maybe from somewhere else?”
Forster was uncomfortable with them even knowing his real last name. The guy had to be fishing for clues they could use in an after-the-fact blackmail operation. “No offense, but I’m not really in a frame of mind for chit-chat.”
“Right, sure.”
Forster reached the end of the staircase, expecting Tech Support to follow and point him towards the room where she’d be waiting. Instead the guy sat himself down on the second-last step. He brushed some lint off a pant leg. “Look, the others only care about money. For you to do your business and go.” He had some kind of subtle speech impediment, but Forster couldn’t narrow down exactly what. “But there’s a right way and a wrong way to, uh, go about this.” He stopped, clearly struggling for the exact right phrase. “Look, you’ve got to treat Susan in a certain way. You can’t assume just because of her condition that she isn’t feeling what’s happening to her.” Tech Support’s eyes were watering up. He stuck a finger in past his glasses to rub at an eye. “Try and be—I know gentle sounds funny. It’s not the right . . . I guess try and be receptive to her mood, to the kinds of movements she makes.” He swallowed hard. “Don’t just force yourself and pump, pump, pump. That makes Susan very unhappy, very unsettled for days afterwards. For you, this is just a one-time thing. In and out. Just try to understand and don’t be a jerk.” He looked searchingly up into Forster’s face, presumably looking for a nod of assent or something.
