And right about then is when I realize that something funny just happened.
I lean my head over the opening in the ceiling after Tyrone scrambles past me, and I look down at Roger, who’s looking up at me. I’m about to ask Roger why the hell he sent them all up and who the hell is the one who’s infected, but before I can say anything, two things happen.
The first thing that happens is this: The door bursts open and a roiling mass of them fills the closet, a clawing, moaning, death-gray crowd of arms and legs and bloodied heads, and I think, Oh my God, they’ve got Roger.
The second thing that happens is that Roger, still looking up at me, bares his rotted, wormy teeth at me.
And then he leaps.
I pull my head back in time, but only just. I see Roger’s dead hands grab blindly through the opening in the ceiling at whatever part of me he can catch hold of. Then he jumps again, and then again, and then I hear the crash of shelves and boxes on the floor, and while I’m not sure if zombie-like creatures can construct things like stacks of boxes to climb up on so they can follow after us, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to find out, so I leave.
From that point forward, things go from bad to worse.
I stumble across a hole in the ceiling and look down only long enough to catch sight of one of the men whose name I do not know, or parts of him, anyway, as they seem to have rendered him into his smallest components, such that I don’t know for sure which one he is, or was.
For a moment, I wonder by what criteria they determine who is all-consumed and who is infected, but I don’t have much time to dwell on this, as I see Francis the security guard ahead of me, struggling to pull himself back into the ceiling. Suddenly we seem to be surrounded by weak or weakened ceiling tiles. I think I should help Francis, my security guard friend, but I have no desire to go down with that big ship. I slip past him. I feel bad for it, but that’s what I do. I slip by and then I hear and then come up on Tyrone.
He’s looking down at his feet and then back up to his hands, which barely grip the thin metal support. He doesn’t see me. His eyes are crazed with fear, or blank with it, or blinded by it, I don’t know. A huddle of them are jumping at him, grazing the tips of his sneakers. Any concerted effort on their part gets them their prize.
But he’s not so heavy. And he’s a kid.
I grab his arm and he squeals at my touch, jerks and tries to break free, and I almost let him drop. I shake him instead and repeat his name again and again and again, but I never find out if I get through to him. The ceiling drops out from under me, and I fall.
I take them by surprise and knock two, maybe three to the floor by landing on them. I see Tyrone’s white shoe slip back into the blackness above us and take some pride in the fact that, while cooked myself, I pulled Tyrone out of the fire.
Then they’re on me, grabbing at whatever’s in reach, and I choke on their smell, and I gag on the strips of their now rotted clothing flung into my mouth and nose and eyes. But there are too many of them and they are too eager to have at me, and for a moment I find myself in a kind of cocoon. A pocket made up of flailing arms and teeth and feet. Then one of them swipes at my face, so close I hear the soft whisht of air and feel its knuckle graze my nose, and that swipe lands in some hidden recess of their bodies and dislodges a packet of cigarettes from some torn pocket, and after the cigarettes falls a lighter.
The ones nearest the one I light go up like dry kindling.
And then I’m running, exhilarated by what I have just done, by what this might mean for me — not just escape from the mall, but a kind of escape from life, from my old life, from that tired old existence.
I think to myself, This was for the best. All of this.
And maybe I should feel worse for Roger and the security guard and the rest of the human race, but I can’t help but wonder that maybe we need these kinds of moments. Not moments of quiet, but moments when our lives are upended by violent tragedy, monsters, zombies, because without them, how would we meet the men and women of our dreams, how would we make up for the sins of our pasts, how would we show our true natures — brave, caring, strong, intelligent?
I wonder, How would we?
And then it happens: I slip. I’m looking one way and moving the other, and maybe there’s a wet spot, or a blood spot, or a stray piece of gray matter, some viscous thing that grabs just enough of a hold over the toe of my boot, and I fall forward. Falling like this, so unprepared, so forcefully, hurts more than I could have imagined it would, and the wind is knocked out of me.
As I land, out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of them coming for me. But I’m not done yet. I can pull myself up. I can pull myself to my feet and run and run harder and faster than I’ve ever run before. I can make it to those doors and burst through them and into the parking lot and find my car. I can outrun those bastards and start this all over. I will watch less television. I will spend more time outside. I will foster stray animals and donate to charity walk-a-thons and look both ways at intersections. I will call my sister and apologize for what I said to her on her wedding day. I will let love into my heart. I can survive this. I can run and my life will be different and I will not look back. I will gun the engine and peel out of the parking lot and merge onto the traffic-less freeway and speed down newly empty streets, and not look back, not once look back.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the many people who have helped me pull this collection together, most notably Dinaw Mengestu, who nudged me forward just when I needed nudging, and PJ Mark and Megan Lynch who, when I was nudged in their directions, saw my work and liked it and took it upon themselves to help me make it better.
To Jennifer and Kit at the Paris Bakery, who not only opened their doors to me but gave me a key and license to drink as much day-old coffee as I could stomach, I’m very much in your debt. I’m grateful to Ryan Bartelmay, Mark Binelli, Bryan Dunn, Julia Holmes, Hillery Hugg, E. Tyler Lindvall, Meredith Phillips, Liza Powell, Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, and Marcela Valdes for suffering through early first drafts of these stories and remaining my friend afterwards. Thanks also goes out to Judy Budnitz, Maureen Howard, Heidi Julavits, Paul LaFarge, Ben Marcus, and Victoria Redel for helping me find a good way to write the stories I wanted to write when I first decided I wanted to write them. And to everyone who’s ever given me a job and didn’t mind that I wrote while on the job or didn’t notice that I wrote while on the job, thanks.
Nothing I’ve done would have been possible, of course, without the love and support of my parents, Juan & Juanita Gonzales, and my sister, Cecilia Gonzales. And no one means more to me or to this work of mine than you, Sharon.