Upright Beasts (24 page)

“I thought there might be some canned goods in the shed.”

“This was the first place.” Byrd sniffled. He moved his legs for Tim to sit down.

“What?” Tim said.

“Sophomore year, when we all came up here for spring break instead of going to Florida with everyone else. When you guys were watching old slasher movies, Charlotte and I sneaked out here and drank a bottle of Ketel One. When she pulled her shirt off, her breasts looked like . . . Christ. What the fuck are we going to do, man?”

They sat there swinging. Even though he was a writer, or trying to be, Tim didn't know what to say. He tried to think about what his coach would tell them after a big loss. “Sometimes things look bad, and they might even be bad, but the important thing is to pick yourself up and get ready for the next play that life throws at you,” he said.

Byrd cocked his head at Tim. The wind was warm and rattled the ripe leaves above their heads. In the distance, something moaned.

“What in the shit fuck does that mean?”

“Hi, Tracy.”

“Oh god!” Tracy jumped back against the laundry machine. She had been searching for a flashlight since the power had blinked off that morning.

“Do you ever wonder what love is?” Byrd said. He had dark bags under his eyes, and his clothes were dirty and filled with rips and holes.

“I have a knife,” Tracy said.

“Is love doing whatever you can do to synergize with someone? Is it giving up your own self to be what they need you to be?” Byrd was looking past Tracy at the rows of chemicals and tools. His shoulders were slumped, and he scratched at his neck with one long fingernail. “Coach always said love was sacrifice. He was talking about football, but is it the same thing with people?”

Tracy felt the terrible sadness that had been living in her for weeks rise up into her face. “I don't know, Byrd,” she said. “I don't know anything anymore.”

Byrd jiggled the doorknob and shouted, “Hey, the door is locked.”

Tim opened the door, then sat back on the bed with Tracy.

Byrd was wearing a dress shirt and a tie, and his blond hair was greased up and combed back. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days. His skin was covered in scabs.

Tracy held on to Tim's hand so hard her nails cut little semicircles into his palm.

“Guys, I just want you to know what amazing friends you've been and how much I've treasured life's journey with you, even though the journey turned on to a burning road of shit. I always thought of you like a little brother, Tim. Tracy, I know Charlotte was going to surprise you later by asking you to be her maid of honor. Isn't it crazy we've known each other for twelve years?”

He stayed at the door and gulped in his throat. Tim and Tracy didn't say anything.

“Tim, buddy, I'm sorry I broke the bro code and slept with Tracy. You two are welcome to stay here as long as you can. Maybe you can even build a life together while everything else is falling apart. Just remember that love is the key.”

Byrd surveyed them for one last time, sniffled, and closed the door.

“What?” Tim shouted.

“Oh my god,” Tracy said. “What is he going to do?”

“You slept with Byrd?”

“Tim, we have to stop him.” Tracy jumped up and headed for the door. They could hear thumping and sporadic moans from the room next door.

“When did this happen?”

“I don't know. He was so sad. It just happened.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tim said. He lay back on the bed. “My best fucking friend.”

“This isn't the time, Tim!”

But Tim stayed there on the bed, moaning. Tracy stayed with him. They listened to a door opening and the sounds of two people shuffling down the hall and out into the lush woods.

The undead continued to come and go. Some stumbled to the north and others ambled toward the south. Tracy thought they were different ones each time, until she saw the man who'd ripped up their garden crawling across the backyard. He was missing a foot, part of his rib cage, and both eyes, but the dried-up tomato vines were still wrapped around his leg.

Tim came into the living room holding a dusty box.

“Hey, I found this jigsaw puzzle.”

Tracy was sitting on one of the only chairs that hadn't been used to reinforce the doors. She had the shotgun between the chair legs.

“That's great, Tim. Productive.”

“Look you don't have to be sarcastic,” Tim said. “I'm just trying to be proactive.”

Tracy saw something at the edge of the woods and jumped for the gun, but it was only a baby deer. Was it a zombie baby deer? She sat back down and looked at Tim. He looked so angry and sad, but she didn't know what to say. They had no electricity, no home they could return to, and only half a grocery bag of food left. She hadn't done anything she'd wanted to do in life. She hadn't gotten her JD, hadn't learned ballroom dancing, and never got to live in Venice. For all she
knew, Venice didn't even exist anymore. She hadn't even finished
War and Peace
yet for Christ's sake.

“Fuck it,” Tim said after a while. “I'm going to go root through the storage room in the basement.”

“No, wait,” she said, forcing a smile. “I'll come with you. Maybe we can find a flare gun or something.”

A week later, while searching the forest's edge for kindling, Tim was injured when Byrd, Charlotte, and a crawling, half-formed blue fetus leapt out from behind a sycamore tree, grappled him to the ground, and sunk in their teeth.

Tracy found Tim crawling toward the front porch, bleeding and moaning. She screamed and locked the door. Tim heaved his body against the wood. Tracy watched through the peephole and cried for a long time.

She poured a glass of wine she had distilled from wild blackberries, sat down, and closed her eyes. She could still hear Tim's muffled thumps. Her hands were shaking, and some of the wine in her glass spilled down her arm. It dried there in dark red streaks.

Tracy thought about her life with Tim. They had met, drunk, at a party during her first weekend as a college freshman. He had fallen asleep on top of her two minutes into sex, and she could barely breathe. His warm body was comforting though. Second semester they had the same sociology class, and he asked her out, and she thought he seemed sweet. Things snowballed along in the way they do. She had even thought they might get married since they'd been together for so long, and she didn't know what else to do.

Tim had always been nice to her, always buying her little bundles of flowers that died in a day or two. She felt she
had never been as nice to him. She liked to spend her time by herself, and he always seemed angry about how often she couldn't fit him in to her schedule. Tim was always angry about so many things, from his failed sports career to his nonexistent writing career.

If she ignored Tim, maybe he would crawl away and go where all the other undead people were going. Maybe that would be the place where he could be happy.

For the next five mornings, Tracy awoke to Tim's thumps. She realized he was never going to go away. He was going to keep thumping against the wood, compelled by some brainless inertia, until he turned into mush on the doorstep.

The sun was shining angrily through a hole in the curtain. After eating the last of the oatmeal, she sneaked out the side door and went to the shed. She grabbed the largest weapon she could lift and walked back to the front porch.

Tim felt pain. Saw Tracy and Tracy was sad. Tracy was sad and causing pain to Tim. Causing pain with sharp metal thing.

Tim held up hand. Tracy brought down metal thing and hand fell off. Held up other hand. Same thing.

Water came out Tracy's eyes.

“Gwah?” Tim said.

Tim didn't understand. Tim didn't understand pain or sadness. Never understood whole life. Tim thought pain and sadness would never stop. Hoped stop all time. Hurt all over and wanting to hurt other things. Always like this. Every day he remember. Why? Angry at sad and pain. On and on.

“Klluuuuurggg,” Tim said. “Traggeee! Gwah? Gwah? Gwaahh?”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
any thanks to:

My friends and fellow writers who read drafts of these stories, especially Adrian Van Young, James Yeh, John Dermot Woods, Chloé Cooper Jones, and Adam Wilson.

All the professors and mentors who encouraged me, especially Sam Lipsyte, Alan Ziegler, Ben Marcus, Rebecca Curtis, Maxine Clair, David McAleavey, Rob Spillman, and Diane Williams.

My
Gigantic
people.

Halimah Marcus, Andy Hunter, and Electric Literature.

Friends who provided advice or support, including Ann DeWitt, Rozalia Jovanovic, Isaac Fitzgerald, Ryan Britt, Benjamin Samuel, Will Chancellor, Catherine Foulkrod, and Justin Taylor.

Internet literary friends. You are real to me.

My brother, my mother, and my father.

The Millay Colony, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for much needed space and time.

Every magazine, journal, or site that published my work over the years.

Michelle Brower, my agent, who fought to find my work a home.

Anitra Budd, my fantastic editor, as well as Chris Fischbach, Caroline Casey, Molly Fuller, Amelia Foster, and everyone
else at Coffee House for seeing something in these odd little stories.

Most of all Nadxieli Nieto for counsel, support, design, and everything else.

And, of course, last but never least—I couldn't forget—thanks are due to you, you vile, luminescent animal, sitting there with this book in your gnarled and sculpted hands.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

T
his work has been set in Berdych, a typeface named after Antun Berdych, who was a prominent typesetter and printer in the first half of the seventeenth century. The typeface was originally designed as a stunted, incongruous font, with the kerning between the glyphs inconsistent and the vowels improperly rounded. The typeface was given its name by rival typesetter Milos Heyduk on the occasion of Berdych's death in April of 1657. Heyduk designed the typeface to cause strain in the eyes while reading and to impart a lingering ocular discomfort throughout the day.

Heyduk and Berdych were neighbors as children, both born into long lines of carriage makers in the southern Czech town of Pisek. Local legend says both boys pined after little Rayna Richta, the last daughter of lingering Hussite nobility. As children, they played the usual games of rocks and sticks in the dusty streets together. Berdych always knocked the rock farthest and broke the stick quickest, while the clumsier and more portly Heyduk would trip and fall into the dusty street. “Come Milos,” Antun would say, “You're rolling in the dirt like a filthy piglet.” Little Rayna would giggle with glee.

It was expected that both boys would follow in their wood-shaping fathers' footsteps, but young Antun and Milos became embroiled in the typesetting heyday of the early 1600s. Both decided to leave Pisek to seek their fortunes: Berdych to Paris,
Heyduk to Antwerp, Cologne, and then Berlin. Both men found some degree of success, but it was Berdych's early seventeenth-century print series of French erotica commissioned by the Duke of Lorraine that propelled him to instant stardom in the close-knit world of typesetting. Berdych rode his success by designing a startling series of elegant yet salacious typefaces—the glyphs allegedly fashioned after the curves of his various mistresses—that caused disquiet and scandal among high society.