Fiend Read Online Free Page B

the pipe from my pocket. I put the whole piece in the bowl. My hands shake. They’re stained black from Svetlana’s blood or maybe that’s mine and the lighter won’t catch. I just want a hit, that’s all I want, like everything—survival and death and being one of the few still alive—doesn’t matter, not really, the stem shaking in my mouth, my breath held. Finally the flame stays. I drag. It’s the smell of burning plastic and chemicals, of being sixteen and wanting to be rad like the kids I skated with, of wanting to fit in behind the dumpster at Burger King, of fear, of not knowing what I was smoking, of my lungs rebelling against poison, and then the release, clear smoke expelled with a sigh like pissing in a pool.
    My head becomes lighter, my shoulders released from the vise grip of being me sober.
    It’s okay then, everything.
9:29 PM
    Sometimes when I smoke shit, I reach the perfect balance of motivation and concentration. This is one of those times. I create a list as we drive north. A list of things we need to do,and of things we know or think we know. I’m writing on the back of an El Sombrero single-slice box.
    1. We have killed two people things today (self-defense).
    2. These things are zombielike.
    3. Zombies don’t exist.
    4. There are at least two other people (perv on 18toplay, and Tibbs) who aren’t dead.
    I stop making the list and pull out my cell phone for the first time. Why the fuck haven’t I tried to call anyone? I hit speed dial one, KK. It goes straight to voice mail. I think about her being Svetlana, naked and skinny and laughing a demonic laugh. I picture her as Rebecca, alone and dead, being eaten by greedy cats. Then I picture her as me, trying to make sense out of everything, terrified. I call again. I tell the machine I love her, it will be okay, to call and let me know she’s alive.
    Then I call my parents. It’s been at least a year since I’ve talked to them. The phone rings and I’m picturing them sitting around the kitchen table, my dad with his graying hair, his readers resting on the bridge of his nose, holding my mother’s hand, maybe brushing her dehydrated-piss-yellow hair away from her eyes. They’re sitting there worrying, waiting for the call that tells them their son is dead.
    It goes to voice mail.
    Guns and shit, Typewriter says.
    Huh?
    Supplies. Weapons. The list. Cabela’s is ’bout twenty miles away.
    I write:
    5. Weapons. Food and water.
    And dope, Type says.
    You fucking serious?
    As hepatitis, he says.
    6. Meth
    I look over the list. My fleeting sense of accomplishment fades. The list is retarded. It gets me no closer to understanding what’s happening. I light a cigarette. Typewriter asks for one. He tells me to put cigarettes on the list.
    Fuck the list, I say.
    I look out the window and it’s dark now, like really dark, an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities, nothing but an abandoned two-lane highway. Where is everyone? Like, if things really were the way they seemed—people were either dead or walking dead—then where was the panic? Movies showed that shit all the time. Some dude getting bit in a shit box of a country, then flying back to the US, chewing up his family, and from there the plague shit spreading with the speed of herpes on an Ivy League squash team. But people panic on TV. They break into stores. They board up houses. They run out of gas. And here we are, driving eighty, not a single car in the way. I mention this to Typewriter.
    He looks over, a Newport dangling from his swollen lips. He says, How the fuck do they know?
    Who?
    Hollywood and shit.
    What do—
    Like there’s rules to the fucking apocalypse? Bro, this shit here, whatever is going on, you can bet your ass it’s never happened before. Not in some movie. Not in a book. It’s some dinosaur shit, you know?
    I tell him I have no idea what he’s talking about.
    Extinction, man. The end. Finished. Us. Humans. Thanks for playing. Better luck next—
    Yeah, got