“Freeze!” Jeff yelled.
The two boys popped up, hands behind their backs. They were young, Tahmina thought. Maybe sophomores or freshmen. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“Nothing,” the shorter one with the long brown hair said. His words had the frayed ends of a voice stretching from boy to adolescent. Not even high school. Middle school. The taller boy still had braces. He’d have those braces for as long as the infection held.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Jeff demanded. “Show me your hands.”
When the boys didn’t, Tahmina repeated the order.
The smaller boy smirked. “What are you, his bitch?”
Jeff whacked the kid’s head with the palm of his hand. “Watch it, shithead.”
“Hey, that’s police brutality!”
“Fine. Make a report. If you can find somebody to take it.”
“Partner,” Tahmina warned, shaking her head. “What’re you guys holding?”
The taller boy, the follower, held out his palm full of round white pills. “This shit’s mine. I got it from when I had surgery last year. So why can’t I do what I want with it?”
“Because it’s called drug dealing and it’s illegal,” Tahmina said. “Besides, we don’t know how long the infection will last. We might need those.”
The smaller kid smirked. “What I need is cash. Then I’ll own this fucking town.”
Tahmina laughed. She gestured to the smashed windows of the ruined Gas ’Er Up, the burned-out streetlamps, the litter skittering across the parking lot, the halfstarved cat skulking near the trash can. “Be my guest. Run for mayor.”
“Whatever,” the kid said. “Who died and made you God?”
“Everybody,” Tahmina said quietly. She looked from one kid to the other. There was no remorse to be seen. No fear or hope. Just a relentless need, an angry want that would never be satisfied no matter how many pills they sold. “Just give me the drugs and get out of here.”
“Repent! The end days are upon us and we must be purified by the holy fire!”
The figure caught Tahmina and Jeff off guard.
“What the fuck!” Jeff gasped, fumbling for his gun.
The boys took their chance and sprinted across the open field, taking the cache of pills with them. “Hey!” Tahmina shouted after them, but it was no use and she knew it. “Dammit!”
“The fire of heaven will save us all,” the figure said, stepping closer. He was a tall, skinny guy in shorts and an ASU cap, a poster-board sign hanging from a string around his neck.
“It’s our old buddy Zeke. Gonna be a banner night,” Jeff said, holstering his gun.
He approached Zeke warily. “Hey, Zeke. Whassup, buddy?”
Tahmina could read Zeke’s sign now: REPENT OF YUR SINS! GOD’S RATH IS JUDGEMINT UPON YOU! Zeke’s spelling was no match for his zeal.
“The end days have come. We have to repent, repent.” Zeke’s eyes scanned the road constantly, unable to rest on any one spot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and Tahmina wondered if he had stopped taking his Risperdal for the schizophrenia that the shrink in Phoenix had diagnosed his junior year. Two red gasoline cans rested at his feet, though Tahmina knew the Gas ’Er Up’s pumps were empty. There was only the one by the precinct, which was for the Hummer.
These cans were probably left over from his family’s lawn care service.
“Zeke, what’s in the cans?”
“The fire of heaven. It will cleanse the earth. Not like what you’re doing on the mountain. That’s an abomination.”
“It’s … Whatever. Never mind.” Explaining Zoroastrianism to Zeke would take more trouble than it was worth, and Tahmina needed to save her energy. It was prom night, after all. No telling what was ahead.
“Hey, buddy, you want to ride with us? Come on. We’ll take a nice ride in the car,” Jeff said, like he was talking down a grumpy toddler.
“No! I have to purify!” Zeke zigzagged in the empty parking lot. His foot caught a squished Twinkie pack, and he tracked fake cream filling across the asphalt in little white heel marks. “Don’t you get it? This is a punishment on us. We have to be cleansed. Then it will stop. I’ve heard the voices. They tell me it’s so.”
“What’s it a punishment for, then?” Tahmina asked sharply. “What did you or me or Jeff or anybody else in this town do to deserve this?”
“Our parents, all the grown-ups, they fought the wars and ruined the land and exploited each other.”
“And what did we do?” Tahmina pressed.
“We turned them out into the desert to die!”
“It was them or us,” Tahmina started. “I’m sure they would have wanted us to—”
Zeke raised his arms heavenward. “It was wrong! When Abraham offered Isaac on the mountain, God spared him. Maybe God was testing us. Parents give us protection, and we owe them our obedience.”
“Not when they’re trying to eat us. Just sayin’,” Jeff spat back.
Tahmina shook the gasoline cans. They were mostly empty, but she could smell the gasoline, and even a little gas was dangerous. “Sorry, Zeke. You know you can’t have this. We need it.”
Zeke stood right in front of Tahmina, his eyes searching hers. “For what? What are we saving it for? There’s no help coming. It’s like the last month of school all the time.”
Tahmina couldn’t help but laugh. In some ways that was the worst part of the infection—the endless waiting, the absolute crushing boredom of it all.
“I’ll save you,” Zeke whispered, his eyes huge. “I’ll save you all.”
In a flash, he had one of the cans. He ran to the edge of the lot, unscrewed the cap, and poured the trickle of gas over his body.
“Holy shit!” Jeff yelled. He and Tahmina raced for Zeke, and shoved him to the ground. Tahmina secured Zeke’s hands with the cuffs, and they hauled him, screaming, to the cruiser.
“I will die for you! Let me die for you!” he shouted.
“Not tonight,” Jeff answered, and locked Zeke in the backseat. He sniffed his wet sleeve, made a face. “Fuck. Now I smell like gas.”
“Let’s drop him at the station, then check the perimeter,” Tahmina said.
The last time Tahmina had gone to the Tower of Silence was Monday. She and Jeff had taken the body of an anonymous soldier Tahmina had shot as he’d tried to tunnel under the fence with his clawlike hands. They’d also taken a half-starved uninfected dog they couldn’t afford to feed. Jeff had driven, and through the metal grate over the windshield (it had been fashioned by the automotive kids in the old shop classroom), Tahmina had kept watch, letting the sun-bleached sameness of the desert lull her into reverie. It was Tahmina’s father who had built the tower, who’d taught her to say the prayers, who’d showed her how to keep the fire going for three days. “You must be the law now, Mina,” he’d said, pressing his palms to her cheeks as if he’d wanted to memorize the geography of her face.
She’d tried to honor the traditions, but it was getting harder. While Tahmina performed the rites, Jeff would stand guard with the rifle and Molotov cocktails in case of ambush. Once, two undead were waiting at the base of the tower when they got there, and Jeff had to slice through their necks with his machete. Tahmina tended the sacred fire in a trash can just inside the fence, feeding it small bits of wood, the clothing of the dead, spent cereal boxes. The week before, when they’d found Leonard Smalls hanging from a rafter in his garage, his car radio still blaring Metallica (if it hadn’t been for the noise, they might not have found him for days), they’d loaded up the house’s furniture and picture frames, and even his suicide note, which read only, I’m so tired of this bullshit. The new kindling would last them a while, so there was that, at least. The smoke and soot was harsh, though, and Tahmina lived with an almost constant irritation in her eyes, nose, and throat, as if her body wanted to expel something but couldn’t.
Now, as they drove Zeke to the station, they passed neighborhoods of darkened houses. On the left a sign boasted the future site of Bliss Valley, a gated community with a golf course. The half-built houses loomed like skeletons. About a dozen teens walked hand in hand down the side of the road, heading toward the high school stadium, where prom was taking place. Somebody sang a song that had been popular the summer before. In the backseat Zeke began a prayerful monologue.
Jeff started in again. “I’m just saying, like, this scene here—you, me, Zeke spouting the crazy in the backseat—this would be great fucking TV. I mean, the cruiser’s already outfitted with a camera. We just upload.”
“Remind me to get right on that,” Tahmina muttered.
“Hey, don’t be a hater,” Jeff said. “Who’s my partner, huh? Who’s my copilot?”
“I am,” Tahmina said. “I’m your partner.”
“I promise, if you turn, I will pop a cap in your head, no questions asked.”
“Gee, thanks. So sweet.”
“I would do that for you. Would you do that for me?”
“You’ll never turn,” Tahmina said.
“Anybody can be turned,” Jeff said.
Sometimes Jeff got like this, and Tahmina just had to ride it out. On all the shows and in the movies, partners supported each other, and she and Jeff were partners.
In the past six months they’d been through a lot together. Jeff had been there when Tahmina had had to wrap her father’s decapitated body in the tarp and drive him to the Tower of Silence. He’d kept a lookout while she read the prayers from the Avesta and waited for the birds to pick her father’s bones clean and for the hot desert sun to purge those bones of impurity so that his soul could join Zoroaster.
Tahmina had sat with Jeff the night he’d had to put a bullet through his mother’s forehead and another two into his brother, who’d lain sick on the couch, insisting he would get better, and please, please, please, for the love of God, would Jeff put the gun away? Afterward, Jeff got so drunk he puked on the carpet twice and it smelled awful. Tahmina cleaned up the mess and burned the traces of his family. The next day she moved him into the old Sheraton, which had a really nice pool. Jeff liked to swim.
At the intersection the crowd of teens waited. From the backseat Zeke shouted at them to repent of their sins, and they laughed. A tall guy in a ridiculous top hat flipped him the bird. Robin Watson hovered around the edge of the pack, her white dress fluttering in the hot wind. Two fat lines of mascara scarred her cheeks. Some of the other girls hugged her, and one of them held out a flask, refusing to take it back until Robin had drawn hard on the illicit liquid inside. Tahmina waved them on, waiting as they streamed past in streaks of color, tuxes and gowns probably looted from the mall. Prom night. There were no parents to take pictures, to fuss over the placement of a corsage. In fact, there were no corsages at all, since The Little Flower Shoppe was dark, the flowers inside long since dried up in their tall plastic buckets. Tansey Jacobsen bumped into the car as she wobbled across the street in tall heels. She had pinned an orange-red papier-mâché rose to her sparkly silver mini-dress. In the car’s headlights the fake flower lit the night like a flare, before being swallowed by the dark again. Robin trailed after the others, her face eerie in the glare of the headlights.
The precinct was pretty quiet when they arrived—just a few teens helping out.
Jeff took Zeke to a holding cell and went hunting for some Valium to help him sleep.
Otherwise he’d spend the night yelling. At the front desk the Goth girl dispatcher looked up from her Sudoku puzzle. “Somebody’s here to see you.” Tahmina immediately thought of her mother, and her heartbeat quickened. But then she saw Steve Konig sitting on the other side of her desk, all taut energy, like a windup toy somebody had turned the screw on and was just waiting to let go.
“Crap,” Tahmina muttered. “Hey, Steve. What can I help you with?”
“I want to make a report of suspicious activity, possible infected,” he spat out. He wore his Mustangs varsity baseball shirt. If they’d had a season, he probably would have been named MVP and picked up a nice scholarship, too. He’d put on a little weight around the middle, Tahmina noted.
She took a seat and opened her notepad. “What’s the complaint?”
“It’s Javier Ramirez. He lives next door to me.”
“Yeah, I know.” Tahmina resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “What makes you think he’s infected?” Since they’d turned out the adults, there’d been no new cases of infection among them.
“He’s been acting kinda funny.”
She snorted. “That describes Javier on a good day.”
“I saw him sniffing around the trash cans. He told me he ate an armadillo. Those things could be crazy infected.” He poked a finger at her notepad. “Aren’t you supposed to be writing this down? Isn’t this what you guys are supposed to do?”
Tahmina raised an eyebrow. “Steve. C’mon. Javier’s just messing with you.
That’s what he does. That’s what he’s done since eighth grade. If you ask me, that’s the most normal thing I’ve heard in, like, forever.”
“Okay. How about this: He’s stockpiling. I don’t know what, but I’ve seen him hauling out boxes. Who knows what it is or what he’s planning on doing with it?”
Tahmina tapped her pencil against her thigh, thinking. Steve and Javier had had a beef since eighth grade, when Steve had bullied Javier in gym class, and Javier had retaliated by making a fake website nominating Steve for douche of the year.