Damage & Decay

Chapter 17

Part two: Zombie Cards (Collect the Whole Set!)

"Everyone carries around his own monsters."

-Richard Pryor

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The artist poured himself a third cup of coffee, thought about it, then got up and fetched a bottle of bourbon from a cupboard and poured a healthy shot into his cup. He didn't offer the bottle to Eren, who was fine with that. The stuff smelled like old socks.

"I grew up in Canada," Pixis said. "Toronto. I came to the States when I was fresh out of art school, and for a while I made money doing quick portraits of tourists on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Then I took a couple of courses in forensic art, and landed a job working for the Lost Angeles Police Department. You know, doing sketches of runaways, of suspects. That sort of stuff. I was always good at asking the right questions, so I could get inside the head of a witness to a crime or a family member who was looking for someone. And I never forget a face. I was in a police station on First Night. Lots of cops around me, lots of guns. It's how I survived."

Eren didn't know how this was going to relate to the Lost Girl, but the artist was in gear now, and he didn't want to interrupt the man's flow. He placed the card on the table between them, and sat back to listen.

Pixis sipped his spiked coffee, hissed, and plunged back in.

"You grew up after, kid, so all you know about is this world. The world after. And I know you've probably learned a lot about the world before the Fall in school or from hearing people talk. So you probably have a sense of it, but that's really not the same thing as having belonged to that world. You live here in town, with a slice of what's left of the population. What's our head count at the New Year's census? Eight thousand? When I was working on the boardwalk, I'd see three times that many people just sprawled in the sand, soaking up the sun. The freeways were packed with tens of thousands of cars, horns blaring, people yelling. I used to hate the crowd, hate the noise. But . . . man, once it was all gone--I've missed it every day since. The world is too quiet now."

Eren nodded, but he didn't agree. There was always something happening in town, always some noise or chatter. The only quiet he'd heard was out in the Ruins.

"When the dead rose . . . The noise changed from the sound of life in constant motion to the sound of dying in panicked flight. I heard the first screams just as the sun was setting. A guy in the drunk tank died from a beating he'd gotten when he'd been mugged. I guess the cops didn't realize how hurt he was. They thought he was asleep on the bunk, didn't know he was dead. Then he woke up, if that's the right word. 'Resurrected' is closer, I guess. Or maybe there should have been new words for it. If there'd been time, if the world had lasted longer, I'm sure there would have been all sorts of new words, new slang. Thing is, the zoms--they weren't really 'back' from the dead, you know? They were  dead. It's been fourteen years, and the idea still wont fit into my head." He closed his eyes for a moment, looking inward--or backward--at the images that even his artist's imagination could not reconcile.

"The Lost Girl," Eren prompted gently.

"Right. That was later. Let me get to it how I need to get to it, because one thing leads to another, and if I tell it out of order, you might not understand." He took another sip of coffee. "The guy in the cell started biting the other drunks. Everybody was screaming. The cops thought they had a butcase on their hands, so they did what they were trained to do: They unlocked the cell to try and break up the fight. But by then at least one or two of the other drunks were dead from bites to their throats or arteries. It was a mess-blood all over the walls and floor, grown men screaming, cops shouting. But I just stood there, staring. All of the colors, you know? The bright red. The pale white of bloodless skin. The gray lips and black eyes. The blue of the police uniforms. The blue-white arcs of electricity as they used Tasers. In a weird, sick way it was beautiful. Yeah, I can see the look in your eyes, and I know how crazy that sounds, but I'm an artist. I guess we're all a little crazy. I see things the way I see them. Besides, I was around death and dying all the time. I was around pain and loss all the time. This was so real, so immediate. Even working with the police, I'd never been there at the moment a crime was committed . . . and here I was. Murder and mayhem being played out in all the colors in my paint box. I was transfixed. I couldn't move. And then the dead drunks woke up, and they started biting the cops. After that . . . the colors blurred, and I don't remember much except that there was screaming and gunfire. The younger cops and all of the support staff--the people who weren't street cops--they went crazy. Screaming, running, crashing into one another.