The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(133)

It was a little early in the season for this buck to be shedding its antlers. Maybe it had gotten caught on something or been in a fight over a doe. Satisfied it wasn’t a zombie I closed the door and resumed my repast, savoring each salty morsel of dry beef and chips. Amazing how salty American snack foods are. Stomach full of delicious garbage, I fell asleep easily, legs sore from all the abuse I’d heaped on them.

Over the course of the next few days my notion of retreating to Fire Island proved both a prescient blessing and shortsighted curse. It was indeed quite empty, but too empty. I was hoping to find some other refugees from the world. A young or even not so young widow. A couple with the swinger ethos. Maybe just a guy to hang with. I rode southwest through Robbins Rest, Atlantique, the aptly named Lonelyville, Dunewood, Fair Harbor, Saltaire, and Kismet. I stopped there because I didn’t want to get too close to the Robert Moses Causeway, the bridge linking the island with the mainland—or at least Long Island proper. I was afraid that where there were cars there might be problems. Zombies and people in quantity.

I felt like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth, both mediocre adaptations of Matheson’s I am Legend. Oddly, the one that felt the least like the book was the one that used the actual title. Go figure. Anyway, tooling around like a tool on my ten-speed I was nobody’s legend, that’s for sure.

As a boy I’d been pretty self-sufficient, at least in terms of my ability to have fun alone. Often I’d play games like I was the last person on the planet. I’d deliberately choose routes to and fro bereft of people. I’d walk beside the tracks of the Long Island Railroad or along the traffic islands down the median of Queens Boulevard. Sure there’d be cars whipping by, but for miles I could walk without encountering another person in the flesh. My dad accused me of having a morbid fascination. I liked horror movies too much. Now, looking back, I reckon it was all a rehearsal for what was coming. Look at me, the Nostradamus Kid.

The loneliness was eroding me from within.

I tried heading in the other direction, which proved tricky. Point o’ Woods was fenced off from Ocean Bay Park—no doubt to keep out the riffraff, of which in its day OBP had been densely populated. Unable to negotiate my bike over or around the fence, I climbed over and made the rest of my slog on foot. I’d never explored any of the other parts of the island back when it was alive. Sunken Forest was just that. Pretty, but creepy like everyplace else. Sailor’s Haven wasn’t. The super gay Cherry Grove was a bust. Hell, not that I’d have made a lifestyle change, but I craved camaraderie and so long as it was platonic I was up for anything. Anyone.

But there was nothing. No one.

I was so tired and dispirited I didn’t bother schlepping to The Pines and points beyond. This was a ghost island, and I suppose as crushing as that fact was, ghosts were less harmful than zombies—at least physically. I’d managed to evade being literally consumed only to end up consumed by crippling melancholy. This was living?

There was no television, not even a test pattern.

Radio was fine if you enjoyed static.

I embarked on a house-to-house search for reading matter. I needed something with which to keep my mind occupied. Crossword puzzles. A Game Boy. Anything. The problem with summer rentals is that people don’t leave stuff year-round. Sure I found some romance paperbacks—which I read, I hate to say—but nothing edifying. I found a cache of techno-thrillers, you know, Tom Clancy garbage. I read those, too, but stultifying doesn’t begin to describe them. The bodice-rippers were better. I was in and out of almost every house between OBP and Robbins Rest before it dawned on me that I didn’t have to stay in my trifling little shack. What the hell is wrong with me? Seriously. I had the run of the land and I spent my first three weeks in that drafty dive.

What a goon.

I took up residence in a sturdy and significantly more comfortable five-bedroom ranch-style number. The little pig had wised up and abandoned his straw hut for the brick palace. There was even a stash of porn in the master bedroom. I’d found my roost. With the power still on I kept my drinks cold. There was booze, and though I’d always been pretty much a teetotaler I began indulging. I’m not saying I became a drunkard, but every night after sashaying around my new demesne I took the edge off. And if that sometimes meant ending the night flat on my back, the room spinning like Dorothy’s house on its way to Oz, so be it. Sobriety had lost its charm.





On a ride back from the market in Ocean Beach my front tire blew and I wiped out, spilling ass over tit into a shallow ditch opposite the ball field. Maybe I was a little hung over. It’s possible. Not being a seasoned inebriate I was still defining my limits. For the first time in weeks the sky was cloudless and the sun was blinding. Even before the tumble my head ached. Now it throbbed, my palms were scraped raw and my vision was impaired. Even behind dark glasses I squinted against the glare, sprawled in the dirt angry, and even though there were no witnesses to my slapstick, embarrassed.

But there was a witness.

Hiding behind a water fountain near the bleachers was a zombie. How could we have missed each other this whole time? I scrabbled to my feet, groping for whatever weapon I could find, but in my pie-eyed complacency I’d left them all back at the ranch. All I could manage was my tire pump, which was pretty impotent.

The thing is, the zombie just cowered there, maintaining its position. Still wobbly from the fall and residual spirits, I stumbled backwards against a staple-riddled lamppost, gauzy remnants of weather-beaten notices for past community events clinging like scabs to the splintery surface. We stared at each other for what felt like eternity, neither of us doing anything. I began to wonder if this was a zombie or just a hallucination. Maybe the spill had given me a concussion. But it wasn’t. My vision cleared, yet the zombie remained, staying put. Not attacking.