There are also some rags and a crusty paint brush with yellow paint on it. Denise picks up the blue can and spritzes the air with it. She smells chemicals and petroleum and her finger turns blue where the paint wells up on the nozzle. She wipes her finger on the jacket and puts it back on top of the paint, and then she takes her beans and rice upstairs.
Nancy is wrapped in a blanket and Cooper and Bretta are dragging her up the stairs. Cooper’s got his head turned to the side, and the blanket is wrapped tight around Nancy’s face. Cooper and Bretta are both bloody. They’re going to need the alcohol when they are done, if she can find it in Cooper’s room.
Denise walks by the spot where Nancy used to be, careful not to step in the blood pool. And then a thump comes from Scott’s room, and she gets distracted and steps in it anyway.
Her socks are ruined. But that’s not what she’s thinking about right now.
A dozen soft thumps on the outside wall immediately respond to the one in Scott’s room, and the band warms up.
Chapter 5
“Brett?” Denise calls out to her. But Bretta is halfway up the stairs with Nancy’s feet hooked under her armpits. Nancy’s ass is dragging, and it hits the edge of each stair because Bretta’s not strong enough to hold her friend’s body any higher.
As it is, Bretta is chewing her bottom lip and huffing every time Cooper pulls the body. He is hunched way over now because he’s being forced to carry most of the torso weight, plus ten pounds for Nancy’s broken head and twelve pounds for each of her arms.
And nobody hears Denise talking, so she says Bretta’s name again, louder this time. Finally, Bretta stops lifting and looks down from the stairs at her.
“What do you want?” she asks, looking down at her.
Denise pulls her hands up to her chest. “Scott’s,” she starts, and then stops. “There was a noise. From his room.”
Bretta looks up at Cooper, who nods.
“Denny, come trade places with her,” he says.
The girls touch hands as they pass each other at the bottom of the stairs, and Denise goes up toward Cooper and Nancy, leaving a single bloody footprint on every other step.
“Tuck her feet under your arms,” he says, when Denise is on the stairs. “Try to keep Nancy’s ass from dragging too much. She leaks.”
Bretta is down by Scott’s door, but she stops before going in.
“What if he…?” She seems unable to finish the thought.
“We’re almost done,” Cooper says. “Hold on a sec.”
Bretta nods and puts her ear to the door, listening for anything and hearing nothing.
Cooper and Denise get to the top of the stairs, and Denise starts to put the body down.
“Wait a sec,” Cooper says. “Just a bit more. Down the hall.” They lay her beside Allen under the window.
“You think we should leave them like that?” Denise eyes the bodies together. “After what he did?”
“It doesn’t matter now because they’re dead.”
Denise flinches when he says it, like the statement has a bee’s stinger in it and Cooper just flicked it at her. They go downstairs and Bretta is still listening, but she turns to them when Cooper asks if she hears anything.
“Not a thing,” Bretta says. “I’m going to go in alone, but if you can just stand by the door and watch. You know. In case anything happens.”
“We know,” Cooper says.
Bretta opens the door to the room. Sunlight is streaming in through the cracks between the boards covering the windows, and Scott is standing in front of it again. There’s no glass for him this time, just in case he figured on finishing the job. He’s got his back to Bretta so she can’t see his face. She sees the back of his head. His hair is a tangle of brown that Bretta calls bedhead because that’s what her parents called it when she was little. Now they all have it except for Cooper, who makes Denise shave his head.
Bretta calls to Scott and he doesn’t respond. She takes a few steps into the room, about halfway to the bed and says it again. Again, he doesn’t respond.
She turns and looks at Cooper and Denise.
“Scott,” Cooper says, with force. Like how men talk to each other when they aren’t in the mood for any shit.
Scott ignores him. He’s staring out the boarded window, and his fingers feeling the sunbeam, like it’s a thing you can pet. A yellow cat, maybe, all angles and dusty warmth. Bretta takes another step toward him.
“Maybe you should hang back,” Cooper says.
Bretta ignores him too, and now she’s nearly close enough to touch Scott. Or close enough for him to reach around and dig her eyes out if he feels the urge.
“Please be careful,” Denise says.
Cooper steps into the room and takes another step, and Denise follows behind, wringing her hands. Bretta reaches out and puts her hand on Scott’s shoulder. It’s warm from the sun and she feels the muscles in his shoulder under his shirt, like a block of wood wrapped in neoprene. Scott stops watching the window and looks down at the hand on his shoulder.
They can see the side of Scott’s face now, bloody and slack, his eye dark and unblinking, his lower lip drooped open like he’s had a stroke. He reaches up and takes her hand, and then he shuffles around, turning from the window to face her.
“Are you alright?” Bretta asks, her voice soft.
Scott is staring at the hand he’s holding, his head forward like it’s too heavy to lift. There’s no movement in his eyes. There’s stubble on his face and blood sticking to the black hair.
Bretta asks again if he’s okay, and then she pulls her hand away because something important occurs to her.
Scott hasn’t taken a breath yet.
He looks up, his eyes unfocused, not looking at Bretta, but not away. His mouth is open. The flesh in his mouth is pink, but his tongue is white, and the gums around his teeth are red in spots.
“Bretta,” Cooper says. “I think you should get over here.”
“No, I—” Bretta says, watching Scott’s face for a sign of movement, a sign of life. Even a single breath. Anything that will tell them he isn’t what he looks like. Something to tell them he didn’t go away and isn’t coming back.
Scott looks into Bretta’s face. His lips pull back, showing teeth. Showing gum.
Denise calls Bretta’s name but now it’s too late, because Scott’s arms are up around Bretta’s neck, and he’s got them wrapped around her shoulders now and he pulls her in. His body heaves, and he buries his face in Bretta’s neck.
Bretta whimpers and Cooper runs toward them.
And Scott heaves a long wracking sigh, and Bretta pulls his head down so she can hold him. Scott straightens up after a moment, and he looks over Bretta’s shoulder at Cooper and nods to him.
Bretta’s next words are spoken into Scott’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I am.” And then he pulls away. “Sorry. Just really tired.”
“Do you want something to eat? Drink?” Bretta asks.
“I’m just tired.”
“Want me to lay with you?” Bretta’s hands are up and down his back, cupping his shoulder blades. Playing the good wife. The concerned wife.
“I just. No. I’m just going to lay here for a while alone.”
“I think the man is tired,” Cooper says. He turns and walks out of the room, putting an arm around Denise as he passes her.
“Well, I want to check that bandage on your arm anyway,” says Bretta. She sits down and motions for Scott to join her. He looks at her, and then once more at the window, and then he sits down and holds his hand out.
Loud enough to be meant for Cooper and Denise, Bretta says, “I’m going to need the alcohol.”
In the hall, Cooper is halfway up the stairs and then he stops, and Denise almost bumps her face into his ass.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“You heard her,” he says. “She needs the booze.” He pushes past her and heads back down to the main floor, and then down the hall to his room at the back of the house.
“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Denise says. “It really isn’t booze.” She follows after him, stripping her socks off in the process and balling them up. Her feet are sticky and damp, and there’s sock fluff sitting between her toes. Her feet slap the hardwood.
Cooper is already sitting on the bed, and he tips his head back.
“What the hell are you doing?” Denise asks.
Cooper’s got the rubbing alcohol at his lips and he’s gagging on it, his eyes watering, his face red and getting redder. He doesn’t say anything, but he looks at her from the side of his face, his one watery blue eye like a fish eye. Gasping, he says, “Shut the door.”
“You can’t drink any more of that!” Denise says, running over to the bed. Cooper takes another sip from the bottle, and she makes a pass to grab it from him. “We need it!”
“Fuck off,” he rasps, slapping her hands and turning his face. He gags and his face goes from red to purple. He has veins bulging on his neck, like he’s trying to force the blood in his body to go shooting out of the holes in his head.
Denise says, “Oh my God, Cooper.” She tries for the bottle again, and this time he slaps her hand a good one. She pulls back. “You shit!” she yelps. “Nice. You hit girls now?”
Cooper’s face is a grimace, and he puts the lid on the bottle and smiles drunkenly.
“You want any?” Cooper asks, and she grabs the bottle.
There’s only about a third of it left. She shakes her head. “Bretta is going to freak out when she sees this.”
“I only took a couple swigs.” He holds up his hand, showing Denise an inch with his forefinger and his thumb. “It’s going to be shit putting Nancy and Allen out the window. I needed to take the edge off.”
“It’s bad enough sniffing it.” Denise makes a face. “I don’t think you can drink it.”
Cooper, wiping slime from his lips, shrugs and blinks, his eyes red and slow. “I think I just proved you can. Look. I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Denise says. She leaves and walks the bottle back to Scott’s room, and instead of knocking, says, “Knock knock” and walks in. Bretta’s got the bandage off Scott’s wrist. The slash from the broken window is already an angry red thing.
Denise hands the bottle of alcohol to Bretta. “That looks bad.”
“Speaking of pretty bad,” Bretta holds the bottle up to the light. She swishes the fluid around, as though the act of movement will somehow reveal a trick her eyes are seeing; and that she’s not staring at a mostly empty bottle of rubbing alcohol. “What happened?”
Denise shrugs like she knows but doesn’t want to say. Bretta looks up at her, expecting an answer, and finally Denise says, “I don’t know. Ask Coop.”
“You guys bathe in this?” Bretta says. “Is that why you both reeked like chemicals this morning?”
Denise shakes her head. Just then, Cooper stumbles into the room, his shirt off, one hand on the door frame and the other leaning on the doorknob, hanging there, flushed, his eyes shot with blood and drool shining his lips. He looks at Scott, and he smiles and says, “Hey, buddy.”
“Oh no,” Bretta says. “Oh you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” Denise says.
The sound of her voice makes Cooper laugh, in time to the beat of fists on walls.
Chapter 6
Bretta’s parents always told her there’s a right way and a wrong way to have an argument. The right way, her momma said, was to stay calm and make a point about the issue without being critical. Don’t resort to name-calling, and always be respectful of the other person’s feelings. Her father told her she should always try to see it from the other person’s viewpoint; both the argument and the way she presented her case.
Seeing it the way another person would is called being empathic, and having empathy allows you to be a better person. Her parents began telling her this at a very young age. When she first started fighting with her younger sister, and all through her life until she left home at 20.
They said all of this, and Bretta tried to always mind them.
She starts her side of the argument like this:
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid asshole? You want to fucking kill yourself too?” She’s got the bottle in hand, and she’s shaking it at him like she’s mixing a bottle of salad dressing.
Cooper’s eyebrows twitch. He says, “Come on now, calm down.”
He pulls himself up so he’s not leaning on the door anymore, and Denise, hands up by her throat, says, “Come on guys, Scott’s not feeling well.”
“Seriously, Cooper?” Bretta is not to be outdone by reason. “Forget for a second we need this stuff to clean people’s fucking wounds, but you can literally die from drinking this.”
“I only drank a little bit,” Cooper says, his voice rising with annoyance. “I needed it after what happened.” His face is beginning to harden, and he huffs his breath drunkenly through his nose. The sound of Bretta and Cooper as a duet renews the interest of the dead people outside. A lone, hard fist thuds on the boards covering the window to Scott’s room. Then a pair start up near the front of the house.
Cooper waves a hand toward the drumming. “Happy now?”
“Can you guys bring it down a notch?” Denise asks, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
Scott turns so he can look at the window.
“I’m not fucking happy,” Bretta huffs. “I’m pissed off. And now we have barely enough alcohol left to clean Scott’s arm.”
“Well maybe Scott shouldn’t have fucking cut his arm!”
“You think I don’t know that? You think you’re some big fucking genius, Cooper?”
“You mean, do you think I’m you?” Cooper laughs. “No way, lady.”
Bretta holds up the bottle. “You’re damned right you’re not me. I’d never be stupid enough to guzzle this shit like I’m a goddamn hobo.”
“Don’t call me a
homo!
” Cooper’s hand is on the doorknob and his knuckles are white. More drummers have found the house, and their noise is getting louder.
“Enough already,” Denise says, louder. “Stop it, both of you.”
“Oh my God, Cooper! Are you retarded? I said ho-BO. Do you have shit in your ears?”
There’s a thump on the wall, inside the room this time. “Oh,” Denise says, startled. “What?”
Everybody looks at Scott.
Scott, with his damaged arm ending in a tight fist, clenching his knuckles tight enough to make them pop. He holds the fist up and pounds on the boards over the window, mimicking the sound the dead people are making outside. He does it again, and then he does it again and again.
Bretta turns and reaches for him. “Oh, baby.” Her voice is instantly soft, her anger either buried or fled from this new drama. Scott’s mouth is turned down; he’s clenching his jaw and staring at the wall. He’s pounding and pounding. Spittle flies from his lips with every forced breath. The sound is like a confirmation for the dead outside, and they renew their own pounding with abandon.
Bretta is at Scott’s side, and he pushes her away with a twitch of his shoulder.
“Hey, it’s OK, Scott,” Cooper says. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“It’s all right,” Bretta reaches up and runs a hand over the back of Scott’s head. “Everything is okay now. Everyone has been a little stressed out.”
Denise grabs Cooper and starts pushing him toward the door.
“Let’s give them a minute,” she says, her voice a rabbit, her hands soft on Cooper’s chest. When she has Cooper out in the hall, she reaches to shut the door behind her. Bretta watches them go and mouths a ‘thank-you’ to Denise.
Outside, standing in the hall, listening to the murmur of Bretta and the thudding of Scott’s fist on the window, Cooper puts a hand on Denise’s shoulder and then turns away from her, headed for the stairs. She asks where he’s going.
He totters on the first few steps. He slips and bangs his knee. “I’m gonna get us some peace and damned quiet,” he says, crawling up the rest of the stairs like a bear. At the top, he heads down the hall. When Denise hears an upstairs window open, she follows him.
Cooper is hanging half out the window. He’s leaning over Nancy and Allen’s bodies and bracing himself on the window ledge with his hands. He looks like he’s doing a push up against the wall, with half his body outside and half inside.
“Hey stinkers!” he yells, and claps his hand against the window ledge. “I got somethin’ for yah.”
“What are you doing?” Denise asks.
“Giving them what they want.”
At first, she’s afraid that means he’s going to jump out the window, but then she watches as he pulls himself inside and grabs the blanket holding Allen’s body. He pulls Allen into a sitting position, and then hugs him around the ass and lifts him. Allen’s head goes back, straight out the window, and Cooper grunts and pulls the body higher until he can rest the torso on the window ledge.
“I thought this was a two-person job,” Denise says, moving to help.
“Just leave it,” Cooper barks. “I got it.”
The blanket unravels, and Allen’s arms flop out behind him. Denise sees blood, and Allen leans back like his spine is made of sponges. Cooper grunts again, and pushes on Allen’s legs. Once his thighs are out the window, the body’s center of gravity shifts away from the house and Allen disappears.
His feet banging off the bottom of the window pane is the last thing Denise sees. There’s a thump outside like a bag of cat litter hitting the ground.
“Come and get it, stinkers!” Cooper yells, and then he sits Nancy up, and when he grabs the dead girl around the ass, Denise feels a pang of distaste. Like touching a dead girl’s ass is something Cooper shouldn’t be doing. Cooper rests his shoulder against Nancy’s dead chest as he’s lifting her, and then Nancy is out the window too, just like Allen, only this time the thump is softer, and there’s a bright slap like a hand on a thigh.
Cooper is out of breath, and he leans out the window again. “Smelly bitches. Come git sum!” His voice sounds dirty. Denise approaches from behind, not wanting to see but looking anyway. She puts a hand on his shoulder and he looks at her, his eyes unfocused.
“Probably shouldn’t look,” he says. “It’s pretty bad.”
She looks anyway. Of course she looks, because they were her friends and she needs to see what becomes of people she loves after they’re gone. She has to look because one day that will be her out there, and she wants to know what’s waiting ahead. She has to look the way anybody has to look, the way people used to slow down to rubberneck traffic accidents, to see the chaos, to see the awfulness of the world in real time. But most of all, she has to look because not looking is so much worse.
Allen is laying on his back, face up, his eyes still knocked out of alignment. One is staring straight back up at them, and the other seems to be looking down, to where Nancy landed, her head seeming to rest on his stomach as she stretches out away from him. They look like a capital ‘T’ together. Nancy’s neck has been broken, but Denise doesn’t know if that’s from the fall or if Allen did it. Her hands and legs are splayed out like she’s making snow angels in the dirt and the blood, and her head is buried in her chest and pushed further than it was ever meant to be because large parts of her jaw are missing. Her head is wider than it should be, pushing out at the ears, and more narrow from front or back than it should be. There’s an ugly, jagged crease in her forehead.
“Look at her neck,” Denise says, and her voice is sad.
Cooper grunts. “Looks like she’s eatin’ her own tits.”
The first dead person shuffles around from the side of the house, a young guy wearing a Black Sabbath shirt. His left arm is bone from the wrist to the elbow. Part of his face is black and shining and sagging, and he’s got an off-balance shuffle made worse when he bumps his shoulder against the side of the house. Behind him is an old man with his head shaved, wearing a blue track suit, his shirt and pants glued tight to his body with blood. Cooper points at the old man. “That guy lives down the street. He was friends with my dad.”
He thinks for a moment. “Walter something.”
On their left, a woman with yellow hair and a bloody groin shuffles into view. Behind her, a brown man with a turban half unravelled around his head and neck; his hair is black with streaks of silver, and it’s sticky with blood. Wisps of it hang down nearly to his waist. More come after them. And then more. Fourteen in all, eight from one side and six from the other. Walter Something is the first one to reach Allen’s body. He drops to his knees beside Allen’s head. He rakes Allen’s face with black fingers, the knuckles swollen; the skin broke open like little burned sausages. One of the black fingers catches in Allen’s eye. The other hooks his nose and tears it at the nostril. Not satisfied, Walter Something leans forward and bites into the soft cheek flesh under the burst eyeball. The sound he makes chewing sounds like a fatty chunk of roast, and Walter smacks his lips when he chews. Apparently being dead means you forget all your manners.
Denise turns away. “I can’t watch this,” she says, leaving Cooper at the window with his head poking out. Watching the dead people and their picnic.
After a while, the smell of corpses starts to get to him, and the soft, shit smell of Nancy’s entrails when they are broken open makes Cooper’s stomach roll over, and he pukes on their heads while they are eating. Everything Cooper smells is washed out with alcohol and bile. His nostrils burning, he spits a ball of puke slime down on their heads and wipes his eyes with his arm. But he doesn’t turn away.
For now, the band is quiet.