MALE BONDING STRATEGIES

Dew Phillips knocked on Perry’s door.

“Come on in.”

Dew did so and shut the door behind him. Perry Dawsey looked like h.e.l.l. A red and black scalp line ran through his blond hair. Another such line ran down his forehead in an angle from above his left eye almost down to the bridge of his nose. His lips were horribly swollen. The left eye was pure red dotted with a blue iris.

Dawsey was sitting on his bare mattress, elbows resting on his thighs, head hung low. He held a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey American Spirit.

“Where the f.u.c.k did you get that bottle?”

“You get your per diem, I get mine,” Perry said. “Had another bottle in the trunk of the ’Stang, but it broke.”

Dew casually pressed his right arm against his right side, feeling the comforting bulge of the .45 under his jacket. He’d gotten lucky fighting Dawsey, and he wasn’t about to push that luck—if Dawsey attacked, Dew was going to shoot him.

“How you feeling?” Dew asked.

Perry raised his head. The blond hair hung in his face.

“I feel like someone hit me in the head with a table leg,” Perry said. “And the mouth. And back. And thigh. And look at you—I can tell by that little Band-Aid that I really f.u.c.ked up your world.”

Dew’s hand went to the small Band-Aid on his forehead. The cut from hitting the table hadn’t even required a st.i.tch.

“If it’s any consolation,” Dew said, “I can still barely move my arm.”

“Why, do you have arthritis? I didn’t even land a punch.”

“You grazed me,” Dew said. “That’s all it took. Look, I’m not going to lie to you—my patience is at its end. You hurt any more of my men, I’m going to shoot you. If you come at me again, I’m going to shoot you. In the leg if I have time, in the face if I don’t. We need you real bad, but I’m not about to take one for the team, if you catch my drift.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll behave,” Perry said. “You whipped me fair and square.”

Dew marveled at the phrase. It sounded like something Dew would have said in his childhood after a fight. But that had been over fifty years ago. Kids today weren’t like that: they didn’t trade punches, then shake hands and call it good. Nowadays they talked s.h.i.t and found a gun. Dew felt a surprise spike of admiration for Perry.

“I’d hardly call beating you with a table leg fair,” Dew said.

Perry shrugged. “I outweigh you by like sixty pounds. If I’d got my hands on you, I think I would have killed you. Besides, it doesn’t matter how you win, as long as you win.”

Silence filled the room for a few moments.

“So,” Dew said, “you’re not looking for a rematch?”

Perry stared at the wall for a few seconds, then spoke slowly, thoughtfully.

“Not very many people can take me out. There’s you, and . . . there was one other person that’s ever done that. I don’t want a rematch. I’ll play ball.”

Dew nodded. He let himself hope that maybe he’d finally gotten through. “Okay, kid. Let’s start from the top. You told me that something had changed. What changed?”

“The voice.”

“The voice. You said they hadn’t said any words yet. Can you hear any now?”

Perry shook his head. “No. If I’m close enough to an infected, I can hear words, but when I’m far away, it’s more like a sensation. Images, emotions, stuff like that. Sometimes I can get a grip on it, sometimes it’s like a half-whisper in a crowded room. The more infected there are in one place, the stronger the sensation. You can only pick out little bits and pieces, maybe enough to get the gist of a conversation, you know what I mean?”

Dew nodded.

“Now there’s the same bits and pieces, but there’s a different . . . intensity. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of feels like . . . like you were down by twenty-one at the end of the half but you adjusted your blitzing strategy, you shut them down, and your offense scored twice to cut it to seven, and there’s three minutes left, and you’re so excited, because if you get just one more stop, your offense can tie it up or even win it. And that’s hard to do, right? But you feel like it’s destiny, it’s going to happen for sure. You’ve got the momentum. You think you’ve got them figured out, and the win is . . . is . . .”

“Inevitable?” Dew asked.

Perry snapped his fingers, pointed at Dew and smiled. The smile looked ghastly on his st.i.tched, swollen lips.

“That’s it,” Perry said. “It’s inevitable. That’s what it feels like.”

“So this voice of G.o.d says, or feels like, it’s . . . uh, mounting a fourth-quarter comeback?”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty close.”

“So what happens next?”

“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Maybe it actually is the voice of G.o.d, and if we get to heaven, he’s going to kick us in the Jimmy and send us packing.”

“There ain’t no heaven,” Dew said. “And there ain’t no G.o.d. ’Cause if there is some all-powerful deity, he sure is one mean f.u.c.ker. He likes to let good people die and bad people live. And, apparently, he likes to infect former football stars with things that eat them up from the inside.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Perry said, and took a long swig of Wild Turkey.

“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, boy,” Dew said. “Maybe you should stop drinking.”

“Maybe you should start,” Perry said. “I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I’m some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you’re dropping bombs on America. You’re in charge of fighting honest-to-G.o.d aliens. Ask me, that’s a pretty good reason for a snort or three.”

Perry held out the bottle. Dew looked at the nasty scar on Perry’s left forearm. War scars, that’s what Perry had.

Dew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Dew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull, then handed the bottle to Perry.