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A bloody hand shot out and clamped around the throat of the zombie a split second before those teeth could snap shut on Goat’s flesh.
“Hold on a minute, slick,” said Homer Gibbon. He was smiling and there was a crooked playfulness in his voice. “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”
The zombie tried to pull free. It clawed at Homer with its fingernails and squirmed around, attempting to bite the wrist of the hand that held it. Goat shrank back from it, and then he saw the look in Homer’s face. There was no trace of fear. Nothing. The man squatted there, his face and body covered with fresh blood, maggots wriggling in open wounds in his skin, and yet his mouth wore a smile of curious wonder like that of a child watching a butterfly. Homer’s eyes were filled with dark lights.
“I know you,” he said softly, directed his words to the struggling zombie. “I see you with the Black Eye, yes I do. I see all the way into your soul. Do you believe me?”
The creature writhed and snapped, but he was helpless in Homer’s powerful grip.
“The Red Mouth has whispered to you, hasn’t it? You understand its secrets now, don’t you, boy? Yes … I can see that you do. And that Red Mouth is screaming so loud inside your head that you have to do something. You have to let it speak through you. You have to feed it because it’s so goddamn hungry, tell me if I’m lying.”
The zombie did not respond, though Goat turned to look at it, to seek for something in its eyes. Was there something there? Was there a flicker of something deep in those dark wells?
They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Goat had heard that a million times. If so, then these windows looked into a landscape that had suddenly become blighted, like the floodplains of Mississippi and Louisiana after the levees failed. Like Japan after the tsunami. There was wreckage that proved that life had once existed there, but the life itself was gone.
Or … was it?
“Yes, you’ve heard the Red Mouth speak and you’ve listened, haven’t you, boy? You listened real good and you took it all to heart. That’s nice. That’s real nice.”
For the briefest of moments, as Homer spoke to the infected in his slow, rhythmic backwoods voice, Goat thought he saw a shadow move behind the zombie’s eyes. Was it the mind of the dead leaving a deserted house? Or was it something else? A lingering trace of the man Homer had killed? A ghost haunting the body it once owned.
Whatever was happening, it was horrible from every angle. A life destroyed. A monster created. And a soul …
What?
Lost?
Trapped?
Goat’s mind rebelled at placing too precise a label on it.
The zombie pounded at Homer’s hand with soft, clumsy fists.
Without turning to Goat, Homer spoke to him, “I done this, you know.”
“What?”
“I done this. This plague thing. It ain’t no bioweapon like they’re saying on the radio. It was me that done this. The Black Eye opened in my mind and now I speak with the voice of the Red Mouth. Used to be I was a slave of the Red Mouth, or at least I thought I was, but after I died and woke up in that body bag…? Well, hell, I knew. I realized that all this time the Black Eye was my own mind’s eye, and the Red Mouth is my mouth. You understand what I mean by that, son?”
Goat didn’t know how to answer that question. It seemed like there was a thin tightrope between possible answers and that rope was covered in slippery grease. He clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
“Go on, son,” said Homer, clearly understanding Goat’s reluctance. “Don’t be shy. I won’t bite.”
There was a beat after that last phrase came out and then Homer realized what he’d said and what it meant, and he burst out laughing.
The zombie pounded on his arm, tore at the flesh of the hand holding him. Black saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
Suddenly Homer got to his feet and dragged the zombie upright. It was a display of enormous strength because the struggling infected had to weigh at least two hundred pounds. Homer let go of the creature’s throat, grabbed both shoulders, spun him around, and shoved him toward the door. The zombie staggered and tripped over the twitching leg of a barista who was just now returning from some dark place to a world that was darker still. Homer looked down at her and at the man he’d just shoved.
“This is about to get twitchy,” he said, though Goat didn’t know if he was speaking to himself or not. Then a slow smile began to form on the killer’s pale lips and he turned fully toward Goat. That smile was perhaps the most frightening thing Goat had ever seen. Homer once more stabbed a finger at Goat. “You tell stories, right? I mean, that’s what reporters do, right?”
Goat nodded. A tiny, frightened nod, but there didn’t seem to be any traps built into so simple a question.
The zombie Homer had shoved, spun back around, and he lunged forward. Not at Homer, but to try and barrel past him to get to the only person in the whole place who wasn’t dying or dead. Goat.
Without a blink, without a fragment of hesitation, Homer drove an elbow into the zombie’s face with such sudden, shocking force that the infected’s whole upper torso froze in place while his legs ran up into the air. Then the creature’s body canted backward and he fell bonelessly to the floor. The back of his head struck the marble floor and exploded, spraying red and black outward in a starburst pattern. His legs and arms instantly stopped moving and he lay dead. Truly dead.
“Impolite motherfucker,” muttered Homer. Then he smiled once more at Goat. “Where was I? Oh yeah, telling stories and shit. During my trial and when they killed me, you were one of those asshole reporters who was there nearly every day. Telling the court’s version of my story. Only the thing is it isn’t really my story. It isn’t the story of the Black Eye and the Red Mouth. No, sir, it is not. It isn’t the full story and it sure as shit ain’t the right story. And, let’s face it, son, I got a story worth telling. Look at me. I mean, seriously, look at fucking me.”
