Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least Read online

  Robert swiveled to fire again but the gun was cracked out of his hand by the third Orandelle's boot. Green-O's pops was down, two of the Orandelles were down, and now the third was about to stab a knife into Robert's chest.

  Zane, bloody and pale-faced, rose up and took the knife through the throat. Blood gushed out, and he wore a faint look of surprise on his face as he fell into the brown dirt. The Orandelle lurched for the gun but Robert snatched it up first, holding it in the Orandelle's face.

  The man sneered. "Goddamn-"

  Robert fired. The bullet blew through his face and out the back of his head.

  He dropped. Robert dropped too, to his knees. His shoulder was throbbing and Zane was dead. He turned him over and looked into his still and staring eyes.

  "I think Green-O's dead!" somebody shouted.

  He peered through the thin mist of gun smoke, lit strangely by the headlights of two yellow Humvees parked amongst the trees. Green-O was lying in the dirt with his hands on his belly. He looked dead. There was blood all over him. Robert turned. The others had run off, and bloody bodies lay everywhere. A minute, maybe less, and everyone was dead.

  What had he just done?

  He dropped to his knees by Zane's side and tried to staunch the wound in his neck and another in his belly, but Zane was already dead. Feeling numb, Robert moved to the next body. Green-O's father and Furious were dead too, the Orandelles were dead, everyone was dead.

  He dialed 911, called in the police and an ambulance, then checked Green-O. He was unconscious, but a whisper of breath leaked from his mouth. Robert lifted him to his shoulder and ran through the woods to the road in front of Denver Elementary to meet the ambulance.

  Hero, they'd called him. He hadn't felt like a hero.

  On the bus Robert rubbed his temples. As a rule he tried not to think of any of that. Killing people wasn't heroic, and Zane's loss had been crushing. But every year Green-O made him go to the memorial, tying it to new attempts at killing, hoping some of Zane's glow would rub off on him. Every year he'd increased his role at the graveside to something nearing master of ceremonies. When Green-O retold the story now he elevated both his and his father's roles. The Orandelles were still their enemy, and every year they took another shot at revenge.

  There would be blood tomorrow. If Green-O had his way, Robert would pull the trigger like a good little soldier.

  He rubbed his tired, chlorine-reddened eyes. If it was only about pride he'd do it, he'd swallow it as the price of getting out. But it was more than that. It was people's lives, and his life and his mother's life.

  It left only one decision. They were leaving Frayser tonight.

  2. FRAYSER

  He hurried through the lamp-lit streets of suburban Frayser, passing like a thief in and out of pools of shadow. Down the alley behind Walgreens there were scattered soda cans, beer crates and a single fly-tipped washing machine. On the corner of Frayser and North Watkins he turned left and made for the row of houses on Riney Street.

  They were mean and largely ill kept. Many had overgrown front yards, some with rusted cars raised up on blocks with all the wheels missing, though a few had green lawns. Each one carried memories from his youth. Once Green-O had dared him and Zane to hump every bit of grass on the street and shout out, "Damn she's fine!" when they were done. They'd done it, racing each other along with tears of laughter in their eyes and lights flicking on in windows behind them.

  At the end Green-O had solemnly awarded them a scrap of paper each which read:

  Hand job

  "Where do we cash this in?" Zane had asked.

  Green-O just winked, looked between them, and nodded.

  He turned to run but Zane caught him in seconds, dropped him on the floor, then he and Robert took turns humping him sideways, yelling, "Damn she's fine!" They'd laughed about that for years.

  The streets were cool with the wind blowing down off the Mississippi river. This was his home, but it hadn't felt like home since Zane.

  His mom's duplex sat near the corner of Riney and Frayser School drive. It looked nice enough, small but with some new aluminum siding he'd put up himself, a neat patch of grass with a cement walk-up, though that was all a façade. Inside the plumbing was haphazard, the air con was busted, the windowless basement was his bedroom, illegally, and there were rats. They'd never had the money to do it up or get out, what with his dive trips and training, his grandmother's cancer which had churned on for six long years, his two sisters both going through rehab with one of them now serving in Syria and the other in jail, and the landlord forever raising the rent.

  He checked the street but there was no sign of Green-O's red Cadillac.

  He slotted in the key and opened the door.

  "Hey, Bobby," his mom called from the kitchen. She sounded fatigued, another double shift at the hospital. It was taking it out of her, had been sucking her dry for years, but a job was a job. It was just one of many factors that kept them both in a strange twilight state, between partners, between dreams, between lives really, just existing.

  He squeezed down the narrow beige hall and into the pokey kitchen, where orange cracked tiles lined the floor and the white kitchen cabinets seemed more ingrained food stain than actual wood, despite long bouts of scrubbing. The small back window was cracked and beside it the air con ticked over halfheartedly, puffing gusts of cool through the swampy southern humidity.

  On the table was a huge weight of spaghetti bolognese, with his mom sat in a plastic bucket next to it, weary like a smoked-down cigarette butt, but smiling still through the straight lines of her new brown weave.

  He couldn't help but smile. She was the best thing in his life; she'd always pushed him to pursue his diving though it meant ultimately he couldn't go to college, as holding down a job at the Yangtze fulfillment center and diving had taken all his time, but she'd had faith.

  He sat down. The spaghetti looked amazing, and sitting there with her weary smile glowing on him, it felt like the concerns of Green-O and his gang were figments from a different world.

  But they weren't.

  "I screwed up, mom," he said.

  Her eyes woke up. Though he was twenty-three she wasn't above giving him a whupping.

  "So tell me," she said.

  * * *

  They packed fast and light. His mom knew Green-O and what kind of man he'd turned into. She knew the law and that it would never protect them in advance, not on the strength of such a vague threat. One of them would have to die first, or get arrested. Then the cops might listen.

  After he'd finished talking she made a show of studying his cheek, even moved to the medicine cabinet to get out antiseptic alcohol.

  "Am I supposed to drink that now?" he asked. "It wasn't a cut."

  She applied it to his cheek anyway.

  The plan was fuzzy, but they'd been saving for years to leave, getting seven thousand dollars together. Most of it was in the bank, but they had enough cash to stay in a Big Eastern motel or something while he dived tomorrow, then catch the Greyhound west afterward, hopefully bound for Colorado Springs.

  "I like the idea of Seattle," his mom said. "I mean, for a holiday. Of course we're going to Colorado."

  Robert laughed while he polished off his spaghetti. "Seattle, because of that movie?"

  "Sure because of the movie. Tom Hanks is my kind of man."

  "He's as white as you can get! He's the white man's white man."

  "He's white and all right," his mom answered. "White like sweet sugar."

  Robert frowned. "Ugh."

  "Put some white sugar in this black coffee."

  "God, I get it, mom!"

  She laughed and they packed, with Robert down in his basement bedroom and her upstairs.

  "I always said that Green-O was a little shit," she shouted down to him after half an hour. "Greedy face, pug eyes, like a spiteful little teacup pig."

  When they were all packed, three bags each of essentials and mementoes, he called the t
axi, then stood for a final time in the basement that had been his room all his life. Beneath the raft of many posters, half of them of old female rappers put there by his sisters back when they'd all shared this space, the wall was bare concrete. He could smell the damp underneath, as he'd smelled it for years.

  Here was his cot, with his one extravagance the games console; five years old but it still worked. By the TV was a rickety cabinet holding all his remaining dive trophies. He'd had to start culling them when they grew too numerous, getting a few dollars for each at the pawnshop, leaving only the biggest, brightest and most impressive. He wouldn't take any of them; too bulky to pack into a Greyhound. If Green-O didn't burn the place to the ground he could send for them.

  He climbed the steep stairs to where his mother was waiting. She pulled him into a hug.

  "Lots of memories," she said. "I know, sugar."

  He cleared his throat. "We need to go."

  "You're a good boy, Bobby. Good to all the least of your brothers and sisters."

  He smiled. It was one of her favorite sayings, from the Bible somewhere.

  He led the way down the narrow hall, pulling behind him two overstuffed suitcases and three plastic bags stuffed full of clothes, and opened the door.

  Green-O was standing there. He had his gun held low in one hand, the other raised up to knock. Shock registered briefly on his face, then he peered past Robert to the bags in the hall.

  "You idiot," he said, and raised the gun.

  * * *

  Robert dived.

  It wasn't much of a dive, with only time enough to push with his ankles and get an inch or two of height, but it carried him into the air and over the threshold to hit Green-O with all the force of a wet kitchen towel.

  He deflated across him, pushing the gun barrel down with his thigh, where it discharged with a BANG and crunched a bullet into the concrete path. Robert kicked his other foot off the wall of the house and drove Green-O backward hard. He staggered and fell, his back thumped on the cement walk, his head cracked off it loudly, and the gun fired with another brittle bang.

  Robert grabbed at the weapon. Green-O's grip was limp and sloppy and his fingers opened easily. Robert took the gun and sprang back to his feet. Green-O was out cold and bleeding. He turned to survey the street.

  The red Cadillac was there, parked three houses down. A skinny white guy in Sons of the Harp red was leaning against its side with an expression of stunned surprise on his face.

  Robert raised the gun and pointed it at him. The guy's hands went up at once.

  "Robert, wait," his mother called from behind. He ignored her and strode forward, filled with a sudden high tide of rage. He'd kept his head down, he'd paid his respects, he'd done everything they'd asked, and in return he'd just asked to be left alone.

  He stopped in the guy's face with the gun barrel pressed against his clammy forehead, next to a zit.

  "Robert!" came his mother's voice.

  "Give me your gun," Robert said through gritted teeth. The guy reached gingerly into his waistband and fished it out, holding it between finger and thumb like a dainty tissue. Robert took it.

  "Now run."

  The guy looked at him bewildered. There was the glaze of dope in his eyes. "What, man?"

  "Run away. Go."

  He inched sideways out from under the gun muzzle, then started to lope hesitatingly away, looking back a lot. Robert kept the gun trained on him until he disappeared round the bend of Riney Street.

  Then he sagged. His mother was there to steady him.

  "We have to go," he said.

  They went.

  They left Green-O unconscious on the path. They met the taxi halfway down the street after dumping both guns in a neighbor's abandoned fishpond.

  In the cab Robert gritted his teeth through the shock reaction. His mom kept talking about nothings; that was her way to deal with it. The taxi drove on and he glared out of the window. They passed south out of Frayser, through the high-rises of downtown Memphis, pulling onto I-40 to roll over the Mississippi river on the Hernando de Soto bridge.

  The first step west of many.

  His mom pinched his arm gently. "Colorado Springs," she said. He nodded.

  They pulled into a Big Eastern in Clarkdale thirty minutes later, and ate bacon and maple pancakes in silence in the motel's all-night restaurant, with their bags piled up around them. There wasn't much else to say.

  Frayser had said its goodbyes.

  3. THE DIVE

  The next day dawned gray, dreary and intensely humid. Robert lay in the narrow, too-short Big Eastern bed with the too-thin covers that couldn't ward off the air con's drying chill and looked up at the stained cream ceiling. All of this was crazy, fleeing a city with your mother. Most people his age still dreamed of becoming rap stars or gangsters like Green-O, or they'd gone to college and were now starting careers in a far-off city.

  Not Robert.

  His first shot at serious diving had come at 16, only one or two years behind the most advanced in his state. He'd been selected for the national training camp, then his eldest sister Bethy had had a mental breakdown and he had to work doubles at the Yangtze fulfillment center in south Memphis to help pay the medical bills.

  Something like that happened every year after. He worked hard on his diving technique, Coach Willings encouraged him, then another disaster would strike. His other sister got arrested. His mom lost her job in layoffs and was unemployed for a year. Throughout most of it his grandmother's cancer just went on and on like a dog barking through the night, until they were all so sick of her croaky, desperate pleas for water that any one of them was likely to end it with a pillow.

  "Mom," he said softly, across the quiet room.

  "Yes, son," she answered sleepily.

  "If I get shot today, promise you'll go to Seattle. Find yourself a nice guy like Tom Hanks."

  She didn't say anything cruel like, 'That won't happen,' or 'You're going to make it!', which he was grateful for. They were both adults and knew enough disappointment to be honest. Instead she said, "I promise."

  In the restaurant they ate, sitting on sticky red leather seats and looking out over I-55, where semis whipped by in a fog of rain and spray. It was 6am and the meet started at 11, with his dives listed from 1. He didn't eat much, just a few egg whites and a small portion of waffles.

  He got in a taxi alone and his mom waved him off.

  "Good luck, sugar," she said, "focus and faith."

  The taxi pulled away and he ran over his dive list, as they blustered down the highway in a flurry of rain. Ten dives, all of them easy except for the final dive: an inward arm-stand. Nobody ever did that dive because it was considered to be physically impossible. It meant spinning inward toward the platform, which was impossible on a falling, flicking arm-stand because arms couldn't 'jump' away from the platform edge like legs could. They weren't strong enough.

  People broke toes attempting it. One guy had broken a leg, someone else had cracked his skull open.

  Robert was different. Perhaps it was a freak of his physiology, gifting him with great upper body strength despite a lack of obvious, heavy bulk, or maybe it was technique. The first time he tried it, he'd skinned his forehead on the platform edge and Coach Willings told him never to try it again.

  The next time he broke two toes, and the time after he half-knocked himself out with a solid impact. But the time after that he got it, and every time since, slipping by the platform edge by a whisker's margin. But a whisker was enough. If he could just pull it off today he'd be on the Olympic team for sure. They'd leave Frayser and Memphis behind forever.

  * * *

  Outside the University swim hall the parking lot was buzzing with the mood of a festival, despite the sodden gray rain. There was a dive meet and a swim meet that day, and bustling beneath banners announcing the Olympic assessment were clustered families, parents, girlfriends, boyfriends and small children clamoring for popcorn.

  The taxi dr
opped Robert off in the thick of them and he overpaid to avoid waiting for change, rolling out smoothly with a hoodie drawn tight over his head and his gear bag on his back.

  "It's not a movie, honey, there's no popcorn," he heard as he joined the throng; a parent patiently explaining to his daughter.

  There was the smell of hot dogs on the air though, and greasy fried chicken from a tailgate party in the lot, sheltered beneath one of the big sycamores. For some this was all just good fun, with a friend's or a child's medal and position on the podium at stake. For others it was a moment where everything could change.

  For Robert it was life or death.

  He shuffled along in the thick of the crowd, sneaking glances to either side, but there was no sign of Green-O. It wouldn't stay that way, he was sure. He'd knocked a general of the Sons of the Harp out cold, pulled a gun on another, for which there would be no forgiveness.

  He let the crowd guide him through the sports center's airy lobby, beneath more festival bunting announcing the names of the Olympic hopefuls, his included. There actually was popcorn on a stand off to his right, filling the air with its rich salt and butter smell, making an odd combination with the ever-present fog of chlorine.

  He reached the sign-in desk and joined the line, keeping his head tucked low. Ahead there was a group of young, tall swimmers and he pressed up amongst them.

  "Hey Robert," one of them said, and he mumbled a reply. They talked to him but he looked straight down until they tailed off. Green-O might be anywhere, looking out with a knife in his hand ready to shank him and move on.

  The line progressed and he dripped with sweat inside his hoodie, almost at the front now.

  "Robert!" came a cheerful cry.

  It was Coach Willings. Robert looked up and saw him passing easily through the line as his many protégés parted like water. He patted Robert on the shoulder and peered into the depths of his hood.

  "What have you got that thing on for, it's sweltering in here?" He flipped the hood off, and droplets of sweat flicked out. The Coach frowned. "God, Robert, you look half-dead. What's going on?"