Alyssa gaped up at him for a few seconds. “Did you just…is that…”
“Shakespeare,” he said, and beamed down at her. His gaze shifted back to me, and became contemplative. “I hear you come to us from…The Outside.”
“You make it sound so dramatic,” I said. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. He did love Shakespeare, after all.
“What have you noticed about the dead out there?” he asked. “The dead—have you noticed—”
And then he looked at Alyssa and stopped himself.
She seemed unamused. “Maybe don’t talk about zombies in front of the sick girl.”
“Of course. My apologies.”
Renati did seem relatively remorseful. He bowed to us, then scurried back over to his side of the tent, his multicolored coat fluttering softly behind him. How did it get that way? Is that on purpose? Or is he spilling blue shit on himself? These days, anything was possible.
“And that’s Renati.” Alyssa picked her phone up again and turned it over in her hands. I knew the gesture; I had done that often enough when I found myself with nothing to do. Sometimes I didn’t even want to look at the phone—I just wanted to hold it, feel that strange sense of security it used to provide wash over me.
What was he saying about the dead outside? He had been on the verge of asking me something.
“What’d you have for lunch?” she asked, effectively steering my mind away from the undead.
“Pastrami.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure that’s why half the city keeps getting sick. No human can successfully ingest that much pastrami and survive.”
“This is how society will split,” I said. “Pastrami Clan can hold it down. The others…well…”
“Cannibalism?” she suggested.
So much for not thinking about the undead. “I wasn’t about to go that far.”
“Still better than pastrami.”
She grinned at me. I grinned back.
I injected her with the necessary sedative and marked her chart accordingly. Some small part of me wanted to grill her about the radio, but I sensed now was not the time. Besides, her eyes were already getting glassy thanks to the drug. “You feeling better?” I asked.
“I’m not really feeling anything,” she admitted. “And I guess that’s good.”
It would be nice not to feel anything.
“I went for a walk during lunch,” I said. “Wound up at Norwall Park. They play soccer there, I think?”
Alyssa frowned. “Soccer?”
“Is it soccer? Dax and I visited it today and it looks like…not soccer.” I paused, wondering if I could properly convey how uneasy the place made me feel. “At least, I wouldn’t be playing soccer on it. If I knew how to play soccer. Which I don’t.”
She laughed weakly, then turned her head slightly away from me, facing the tent wall as she ran her hands along the blanket. I hovered a little bit, rearranging my kit, hoping for some tidbit of information. She’d reacted to the topic. She had to know something.
“Alyssa?” I asked.
She sighed, and looked at me. “Don’t look into it further,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re nice. Because you seem like you’re basically an okay person.” She glanced at me again, and this time all merriment had fled her dark eyes. “You might not want to know what goes on there. People do some sick shit when they think their God isn’t watching anymore.”
Chapter Nine
Well, when she framed it that way, of course I had to go find out what was happening.
We ate a depressingly silent dinner that evening. Pastrami again, of course. Afterward, Dax sacked out on the living room couch with a magazine over his eyes. Tony vanished into his bedroom, ostensibly to read more of Dead Mennonite Walking until he passed out. I stayed up, puttering around the kitchen, waiting until I heard the crowd cheering.
Don’t get me wrong, I did think about leaving it alone. Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t go investigating whatever was happening at the stadium. I should let this sleeping dog lie and go see if this house had any copies of Sex and the City lying around.
Instead, I woke up our own sleeping dog, clipped on her leash, and tiptoed down the front stoop with her in what I believe was my first act of outright rebellion against Tony’s orders.
It was also one of the dumber things I’d done since the world ended. Honestly, I blame all the pastrami.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Evie twisted around and started wagging her tail. I sighed and swung around.
Tony stormed down the front walk, his gaze locked on me.
“How did you know I was out here?” I asked.
He grasped the back of his neck in what I had learned was something of an irritated tic of his. “Do you actually think you’re sneaky? I heard the door open.”
“I was taking the dog out,” I said.
“Not alone.”
I actually didn’t remember that rule. “She had to go now.”
Tony looked down at the dog, who thumped her tail, smiled, and most definitely did not urinate on command.
“Dammit, Evie,” I muttered.