“That’s what I think it means “
“Dead. I told you… they all said… like they was talkin’ back in the hotel! Everybody’s dead… dead… but they’re comin’ back’. They’re not really dead, Sol!” Natalie began to blubber.
“God damn it, you and your poggin’ zombies! Ever since you read that article in the paper!” The man sighted his weapon. “I’m gonna let some light through this foozy! Then we’ll see about your dead people!”
Riva snapped, “No. No shooting! He is not dead! You can see that. It must have been the plague… Pacov. The police must have made a mistake. Anyway, he’s harmless!”
“If he’s alive then why is his face like that?” Natalie skittered back from the curb. “All grey… tongue hangin’ out… his eyes…?”
“He’s injured, brain-damaged. Maybe Pacov got him but didn’t kill him. An immune… like us…”
“He’s dead!” Natalie shrilled from out in the street by the produce van. “He’s a zombie, I tell you!” Her leather sandals creaked as she backed away into the red-lit darkness.
Sol uttered a cross between a snort and a sigh. “Now look what you done, Riva! Why’d you have to read it to her?”
The moc/zagave him a cool look. “You asked me to. If your wife can’t handle it, that’s her… and your… problem.”
“Nice! Nice! She ain’t my poggin’ wife. She’s just another jizmo tourist on our tour. Hell, what’s it matter anyhow? We got to fuckin’ stick together “
“So stick! Stick yourself! Stick her, if you’ve got anything to stick her with! This man isn’t dead, and he isn’t going to hurt us.”
The bald man grinned. “Hey, hey now, come on! We go together’ That way we live.” He gestured. “So he’s alive. So what good is he to us? He’s gone-o, red light, dunked, kungled, thumbed! Come on let’s grease!”
Riva bent down again and pulled the tag off. Unbalanced, he sat down hard on his rump on the concrete. This made him laugh.
She looked into his eyes. “You understand me? You speak English?” She repeated herself in Hebrew.
He grinned. It was all he could do. He liked being naked and being stared at by a girl. Emily Pietrick used to admire him like that. Once she had painted his body with magic symbols with acrylics from her art class. Then she had done some really kinky things.
“For God’s sake, Riva!” Sol sounded desperate. “Natalie’s leavin,’ and I’m goin’ after her.”
“This man… anybody alive… may be useful!”
“Dink my pog, Riva! You know he’s brain-dead! What’s he good for? Or maybe you get juiced by gubbin’ zombies?”
Riva gave his nakedness a dark, appraising look. “You alive, man? You sick? You need help?” She asked again in Hebrew.
He struggled to smile. His hands came up, and she exclaimed at the scars circling his wrists. “Prisoner? The police? But you are not Arab, I think. Not Israeli. You look American. English? German? No? Who?”
“Let’s grease out, Riva!” Sol yelled. He and Natalie were shadows in the smoke-drifting dark. “Last call!”
“Just a damned minute! What’s your hurry?”
“Speed! We grab a car, we’re out. Hit Kahane Airport… double around if we got to, over to Ben Gurion Airport. Find a plane… I grabbed all the money we’ll ever need back at the bank. Shoot our way on if need be.”
“You are stupid! We try to leave Israel, the sanitation teams will thumb us! No one wants Pacov victims in his country! We take a plane, they shoot us down! We’re infected’.” She swore dispiritedly in Hebrew. “A car is better. We drive north through Syria, to our Israeli settlements in Russia. We get in, somehow, some way.” She gulped hot, barbecue-stinking air and spat.
“We got fuckin’ rights’.” Sol declared righteously. “Me ‘n’ Natalie’re poggin’ American citizens! They got to take us in, give us medical care! Stick with us, Riva! We’ll get you in, too!”
“They shoot diseased cattle, don’t they?” She looked down at him, then at the tag she had taken off his toe. She muttered, “And I think Sol and Natalie will desert me the first chance they get.”
He wasn’t listening. He watched his father inject a sad, old dog with euthanine, and he wept as it died in his arms. The canine stink of the pet shop made him ill. Sol’s voice came from very far away, perhaps out in the back lot, beyond the kennels: “Last chance, you lez jizmo! Stay ‘n’ screw your zombie! Maybe you like suckin’ corpse cock!”
“Get gubbed!”
There was no reply. Sol and Natalie were gone.
Riva turned back to him. “You! The morgue tag says your name is Alan Lessing. Is that right?”
He nodded. It was all he could do. He was watching a movie again, this time with Emily Pietrick. She had her hand inside his pants. Then she bent her head so that her long, black tresses spilled out over his lap. He gasped with ecstasy as her lips and tongue found him.
Riva’s fury brought him back. “You got an erection? You look at me and got an erection”! You corpse! You dead meat!”
He was ashamed. An apology was in order, but he couldn’t say it He opened his mouth. “Ah! Ah?”
“Ah? Oh… I see. You have no control. You cannot speak.” She grimaced. “Sol is wrong. I am no lez… lesbian. It is just that I hate pigs like him! You are a man, but you have not the wit to be a pig, eh? Not now, not any more.” She pointed to the blue sedan. “See this automobile here? The driver is… how do you say?… dead. Yet I think the car works. The key is there, on the floor by the brake pedal. You get the driver out, and I drive. Green light?”
He liked her stilted, funny, Israeli accent and the smoky, sweaty look of her. He wondered why she averted her face and held her nose. He smelled nothing. The driver’s flesh was puffed and blackish, but he got hold of the man’s lime-green pants and slid him out, with hardly any pieces left behind. Then, at her direction, he pulled off the seat covers and threw them away.
His hands were becoming very dextrous; he would see that they were cited for agility beyond the call of duty the next time the admiral was piped aboard.
“Clothes,” Riva’s dark-honey voice purred in his ear. “Our driver was going on a trip, eh? Shoes… too small.” A tiny pocket knife flashed, and he heard ripping noises. “Eh, so. Put them on now. Good. Trousers? Underwear? Here, this suitcase: a shirt, a belt! Good. And what is this? A pistol! Very good! Our driver must have been a policeman!”
She turned the car around and drove. Sometimes he got down and lifted things; sometimes she bumped and banged over them. The streets were dark, but there was light from the fires. A few places had electricity, and twice Riva stopped to loot food from deserted shops. If it hadn’t been for the corpses, this could have been any American city after midnight. She found him a six-pack of cherry pop, and he guzzled it gratefully, all of it. Then he was sick. Afterward they were off again: where, he neither knew nor cared. He was content to let her wrestle the sturdy little car through the clogged streets. Eventually he fell asleep.
Memory awoke him promptly at 0500 hours. “Captain, Captain, there’s news! Terrible news!” He asked what it was, and Memory told him. It was so bad he didn’t dare remember it. He found his cheeks wet with tears, his chin sticky with dried vomit, and his mouth tasting like a mouse had died in it — not too recently.
The world outside the car window was yellow, brown, and dusty white: houses of crumbling stone, shacks, signs in Hebrew and Arabic, garbage, and, yes, a body there behind a shed of corrugated iron. A second corpse, an old woman, lay sprawled face down in front of her door nearby. Pacov was master here.
He rolled to his left and discovered pain. Everything ached. His legs were cramped under the dashboard, and it was all he could do to get the door open and drag himself out. As he did so he caught a glimpse of the Israeli woman — what was her name? — asleep in the back seat. She was older than he had thought. Tiny wrinkles webbed the comers of her eyes, and lines drew down beside her broad mouth. In sleep she looked hard and used and leathery.