Asylum (5 page)

Madam Diva came up into darkness.
The upstairs lights hadn’t been turned on, and the light from
downstairs couldn’t quite penetrate all the shadows that had
gathered here.
Like a shadow
convention
, she thought then laughed at
herself.

She made her way past the pool tables, heading
across to the balcony. Voices drifted from downstairs, and she
could hear Toby talking about his documentary. Diva smiled to
herself, feeling a sudden well of affection for the man. Clive and
Toby were two of her regulars, had been frequenting Asylum since
she’d first opened the club three years ago. And Toby had been
talking about that damn documentary as long as she’d known him. She
had her doubts as to whether or not it would ever be completed, but
she had to admire his passion and his dedication to the project.
She didn’t think there had ever been anything in her life that had
inspired such passion.

Of course, there was the club.
Growing up a sissy that played with dolls and couldn’t catch a
ball, Diva—formerly known as Gilbert—had always felt different. No
one had understood her. Not her classmates, not her teachers, not
her family. To her mother, she’d never been more than an enigma.
And to her father, she’d been nothing more than a disappointment
and a punching bag. She’d dropped out of school at sixteen and left
home, taking work where she could as a female impersonator. That
was how they billed her, as a “female impersonator.” The ironic
thing was that, despite the piece of meat dangling between her
legs, she felt she
was
a woman. All those years masquerading as a boy, that was when
she’d been an impersonator.

She’d developed a reputation among the better
establishments in town, and soon she was in demand. A hot property,
as one of the club owners had said. She saved up some money and
decided to open her own club. A place for all those little sissy
boys out there, the ones who felt different and alone. A place
where they could come and not have to feel that way, at least for a
few hours. A place where no one would call them names or judge
them. Diva sometimes felt like Mother Hen, taking in all the
world’s gay orphans and offering them protection. A safe haven.
Asylum.

And they needed it tonight more than ever.

Diva reached the balcony and turned back, frowning.
She knew Devon had come up here, but where was he? She walked back
to the small booth, no larger than a closet, that housed all the
equipment that worked the lights and the sound system. She knocked
lightly on the door and thought she heard a soft whimpering from
inside.

Turning the knob, Diva opened the door and squinted
into the darkness of the booth. She could just make out Devon,
huddled on the floor with a pool cue across his lap. He was rocking
back and forth, and tears streaked his cheeks. He was chewing on
his bottom lip hard enough that he’d drawn blood.

“
Devon, what’s wrong?” Diva said,
crouching next to him and placing a hand on his
shoulder.

He looked up at her with red, dazed eyes. “What’s
wrong? Are you serious? You mean, other than the fact that the dead
have come back to life and are trying to get in here so they can
eat our brains or whatever? What’s wrong besides that?”

“
Devon, I know you’re scared. We
all are.”

“
God, I can’t stand all that
noise,” Devon said, clamping his hands over his ears. “That
constant pounding, it’s driving me crazy.”

Diva realized then that she had grown so accustomed
to the pounding on the doors that she no longer really heard it.
“Maybe you should come downstairs with me.”

“
Why? So I’ll be that much closer
to those things when they finally get inside?”

“
No, so you won’t be
alone.”

“
I think we’re being punished,”
Devon said, so softly that Diva could barely hear him over the
pounding. Now that Devon had drawn her attention back to the noise,
it was all she could hear.

“
Punished? For what?”

Devon didn’t answer at first. He continued to rock,
fresh tears spilling down his cheeks, then he looked up suddenly,
his expression naked and raw, and said, “When I came out to my
grandmother, she told me I was sinful and wicked. She said I was an
abomination and that God would punish me. Is that what’s happening?
Is God punishing us because we’re bad?”

“
Oh, honey, of course not,” Diva
said, running a hand down Devon’s cheek, wiping away the tears.
“People who say things like that are talking out of ignorance. God
made us, and therefore he loves us just the way we are.”

“
Then why is this
happening?”

Diva really wished she had an answer for him, but
she didn’t.

When the lights went out, Devon screamed and clung
to her arm. “This is it, they’re coming in after us.”

“
Calm down,” Diva said, but she
was trembling herself and her heart was galloping in her chest.
“Let’s go downstairs and see what’s happening.”

“
No, they’re down there, I just
know it.”

With some effort, Diva managed to free her arm from
Devon’s vise-like grip. She didn’t want to leave the poor soul up
here, especially in this condition, but she needed to get
downstairs and check on everyone. “Devon, I’m going back
downstairs. You’re free to join us if you feel up to it. If not,
I’ll be up to check on you a little later. Okay?”

“
We’re all gonna die,” was Devon’s
only response.

The darkness was total, a complete absence of light
like nothing Diva had ever experienced. Luckily, she knew every
inch of this club like her own backyard. She successfully managed
to maneuver her way to the stairs without running into anything.
She descended slowly, placing each step carefully, so she wouldn’t
fall in her heels. She got to the bottom just as someone was coming
out of the restroom alcove.

“
Who’s there?”

“
It’s Daniel Craig,” Jarvis said
in his distinctive British lilt.

“
Please, if it was Daniel Craig
I’d have you stripped and spread over the bar by now.”

A light flared in the darkness to their left, and
she saw Gil standing there, holding up a cigarette lighter, the
small flame creating a halo around his head. “Everybody okay?”

Another light flared by the bar, and she could just
make out the rest of the group. Jimmy, Lance, and Autumn sitting on
the floor; Curtis, Toby, and Clive sitting at the bar, Toby holding
up his own lighter. All of them looked frightened.

“
What happened to the lights?”
Autumn asked, and her voice quavered like the light.

“
I don’t know,” Diva said. “Maybe
those things out there cut the power.”

Gil shook his head. “No, they’re not smart enough
for that.”

“
How can you be sure?” Lance
asked.

“
For one, if they were smart
enough to cut the power, surely they’d be smart enough to figure
out how to unlock the door. Two, I saw those things. They were like
wild animals, all instinct and savagery. There was no intellect
going on there.”

“
Well, then what happened to the
lights? Did you guys just not pay the electric bill this
month?”

In the wavering illumination of the lighter, Diva
could see the way Gil’s mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed, a
sure sign he was royally pissed. “Listen up, smart ass, the last
thing we need right now is your attitude.”

Lance appeared cowed by the forcefulness of Gil’s
words. “I didn’t mean anything by it, but the fact remains that the
lights are out.”

“
Maybe it was just random,” Diva
said. “I mean, if those things are out there trying every way they
can to get inside, they may have tripped the breaker out
front.”

“
Or someone could have driven
their car into a transformer,” Gil said. “There are a million
possibilities.”

“
The important thing is that we’re
all okay,” Curtis offered.

Jimmy looked up from his nearly-empty vodka bottle
for the first time since the lights had gone out. “As okay as a
bunch of strangers trapped in a club by the living dead can be,
that is.”

Toby cursed and then his lighter went out. When it
flared again, Clive was holding it, and Toby was sucking on his
thumb. “Sorry, burned myself.”

“
Do you have any candles?” Autumn
asked, hugging her legs to her chest. Diva suspected that the woman
had been afraid of the dark even before the events of the
night.

“
Yes, dear, there are some behind
the bar.”

“
I’ll get ‘em,” Gil said,
extinguishing his light and disappearing, as if the darkness had
swallowed him whole. Diva sensed him moving past her and then he
was revealed in the light from the lighter Clive held.

“
Where’s the other guy?” Curtis
asked. “Devon. Is he still upstairs?”

“
Yes. He’s having a hard time
dealing with all this. He needs a little time alone.”

“
Is he all right?”

“
Yes, dear. He’ll be just
fine.”

Glancing back toward the staircase, which she
couldn’t actually see in the darkness, Diva wondered if her words
were true. Maybe Devon wouldn’t be fine.

Maybe none of them would be.

Gil rummaged around behind the bar until he found a
box of long, tapered candles. He had no candleholders, so he lit
them, held them at an angle so wax would drip onto the top of the
bar, then stuck the base of each candle into the wax. The box held
six candles, and he spaced them evenly down the length of the bar.
The candles didn’t provide much light, but they did manage to push
back the darkness somewhat.

“
Do you think someone will come
for us soon?” Autumn asked. Gil had come to think of her as The
Whiner.

“
Like who?” Lance
asked.

“
Well, Toby called 911, so the
authorities know we’re trapped here.”

Gil snorted. “I think we’re probably pretty low on
their list of priorities.”

“
They know we’re here,” The Whiner
said again, her voice becoming shrill. “They won’t just leave us
here. They’ll send someone to save us.”

Gil turned to Lance, who was busy groping the
bleach-blonde. “You gonna comfort your friend or what?”

Lance cut his eyes at Autumn and said, “Get a grip.
Nobody’s coming.”

The Whiner started sobbing quietly into her hands,
and Gil considered kicking Lance’s ass on general principle. Diva
went to Autumn and took her hand. “Come on, let’s go to the Little
Girl’s Room and wash your face.” The Whiner allowed herself to be
led across the club. As she passed, Diva looked at Gil and mouthed
the word, “FUBAR.” Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Gil poured himself a beer and
drank it down in two gulps. He would have comforted The Whiner
himself, telling her that everything was going to be okay, that the
National Guard would be swooping in any minute to rescue them like
some great
deus ex
machina
, but he knew better. If this were
some country club full of rich straight white guys, it would be the
first place the government sent a rescue team. As it were, they
were just a bunch of queers, and the government would leave them to
die without thinking twice.

Gil’s view of the U.S. Government
hadn’t always been so bleak. Once, as a young man, he had believed
in America and its ideals to the point of idolatry. His sense of
patriotism had been so strong that he’d enlisted in the Army for a
tour of duty in Vietnam. He hadn’t been drafted; he’d
enlisted
. Those
dope-smoking hippies with their peace signs and long hair had
disgusted him. They were cowards. Gil had loved his country and
been willing to die to uphold its values.

Vietnam was an experience he rarely thought about
these days. He’d seen more death and cruelty and insanity than he
had ever dreamed existed. Of course, as a balance, he’d also seen
more heroism and sacrifice and love. He’d come back from his tour
of duty not one of those bitter vets that suddenly joined the
hippie’s cause; he had still believed in the justness and
righteousness of the war. In fact, he wanted to return for another
tour. The Army was his home; it was his family.

A family from which he had been disowned
when they discovered he was gay. An immediate dishonorable
discharge. No thank you for everything he’d given; no commendation
for his dedication and sacrifice. Everything he had believed in had
been stripped away overnight, the only life he had ever known
blasted to bits. He didn’t understand how the fact that he liked
dick—such a small part of who he was—could make him unworthy to
serve his country.

Gil had soon discovered that as a gay man he
was viewed as nothing more than a pile of dog shit on the sole of a
shoe by the U.S. Government. He had no rights, no protections. He
might as well have been branded with the scarlet letter F for
“Faggot.” His friends—men he had served with in ‘nam, men he had
thought of as his brothers—would no longer speak to him. He was
fired from his job as a cafeteria worker at a high school because
they didn’t want him “influencing” the kids, and when he’d tried to
take the school board to court, the judge had laughed him out of
the courtroom. The lawsuit made the national news, and his landlady
had kicked him out of his apartment. One night, he had watched a
man viciously beaten by three others outside a gay bar while the
police simply watched, cheering the beaters on. Gil had tried to
intervene, but the police had arrested
him
. He’d found out
later that the man beaten had died.