Page 35 of The Undead

“Take it right now, Momma. Here.” She put the spoon down and opened the bottle, then shook out the right dosage of pills. Her fingers were shaking.

“I can’t find the glasses. I need some water,” Momma said petulantly. “I’ll choke if I don’t have some water.”

“They’ve been in the same place for thirty years.”

“Well, I don’t remember!” Momma nearly shouted, and started to cry. When Rebecca, frightened, reached up over the sink and got a glass for her, the crying stopped, just like a two-year-old who’d gotten her way.

When Rebecca turned around, her mother had laid the pills down and walked over to wipe down the dinner table. “Momma …”

“What, honey?”

“Momma,pleasetake your pills.” She felt a growing helplessness clog her throat, and a growing rage deep down under that. It was so hard, so hard to remember her mother as she’d been before, so strong and sure. Rebecca walked over to her and pressed the pills into her damp palm. “Here. Take them.” Momma watched her for a moment with those childlike, suspicious eyes, then swallowed the dose obediently. She forgot about wiping down the table and went into the living room, dropping the damp cloth on the faded linoleum on the way. Rebecca didn’t follow her, just went back to the stove and looked in the pot her mother had kept simmering.

It was just water. Nothing else. Rebecca bit her lip hard enough to bite back tears and turned the burner off. Momma’s forgetfulness had already cost them one melted teakettle and a minor fire on the wallpaper behind the stove. She’d never forget coming in and smelling the smoke, seeing the fire, finding Momma sitting blankly in the living room watching a rerun ofI Love Lucy.

Please, God, no more. I can’t do any more…

“What do you want for dinner, Momma?” Rebecca called out. Her voice was almost steady.

“What’s wrong with what I fixed?”

“Nothing, we can have that if you want.”

There was a long, long silence. The television wasn’t playing. A lump rose in Rebecca’s throat because she knew what her mother was doing; she was sitting in her chair fingering the tattered lace doilies on the arms, staring off into space. A zombie-thing, half in this world, half in the next.

Please, God, take her now, if you are a God of mercy, don’t do this to me any more…

Rebecca took a deep breath, opened the refrigerator and looked at the contents, then pulled out a half chicken. She unwrapped it and started washing it in the sink.

“What did I fix?” Momma wanted to know. Rebecca took the boning knife from the rack and diced the chicken apart. Pinkish blood oozed out over her fingers, reminding her of the morgue, the dead, the damned. Of Adam. Her hands started to tremble; she brought the knife down badly and cut her finger open. She held the wound under cold running water until it had sealed, then pulled an adhesive bandage out of the utility drawer to bind it.

“Chicken,” Rebecca finally said. There was a pause from the other room as Momma tried to remember and failed.

“Yes, chicken’s good. I thought chicken would be good for you, Becky, you don’t eat enough chicken. I ate chicken nearly every day when I was growing up.” Momma’s voice was soft and quiet. “I used to have to go out and decide which chicken to kill. My momma showed me how to wring it so its head came off all in one piece. It was easier that way. Lord, but that was messy. I hated having to kill chickens. You had to pick it up and whirl it around, and the blood—that blood used to get all over. All over.”

Rebecca pressed her hands to her mouth and tried not to throw up.

It hadn’t been very hard to kill the first one. He was sickly, drained by Adam’s evil spells and hungers, a man with a woman’s soft eyes. She’d taken his groceries in for him from his car—just a stranger, a helpful Samaritan—and when he’d gone in the bathroom to put his toilet tissue away she’d pushed him. He’d hit his head on the corner of the bathtub with enough force to shatter his skull. Rebecca hadn’t really intended to kill him—just scare him a little—but somehow that was all right, that was what God had intended all along. He was simply a weak man who’d been consorting with Adam Radburn, giving life and strength to the devil, and so he’d been struck down. Yes, that was all right. She’d checked his pulse and left him there with his blood running along the white tile, walked through the unlocked door, and drove away. It had all been very deliberate, no panic. God’s hand had been on her the whole time.

Even afterward. The coroner ruled it a death by misadventure. A tragic household accident. Rebecca was sorry that it had taken so long to find him, though; she hadn’t wanted his body to lie there for days and days, but she couldn’t call and report him, could she?

She traced Adam to another one, a young black woman. Her name was Aida, and she was loud and abrasive; some people thought she was funny, but her jokes were never appropriate and all too often mocked God and morals. It had made Rebecca feel dirty and uncomfortable to watch her. Aida didn’t have any health problems at all, except that she ran a bit to fat. She managed a clothing store out on Inwood Road, something that carried those things Rebecca’s momma called “hooker clothes.” When Rebecca had tried to talk to her one night after she closed her store, Aida had slapped her and walked away. It was God’s will, again; Rebecca hadn’t meant to run her off the road, but she couldn’t be sorry for it. Better the flames of a burning car than the flames of hell, she’d thought. Her only regret was that she wished the colored woman had died more quickly. Rebecca kept seeing her in nightmares, jerking and twisting in that orange light.

It had all been a plan to hurt Adam, to weaken him; Julie Gilmore had hurt him the worst of all. Rebecca had wanted it that way. She’d taken a long time looking for someone to do the job, and do it right. She’d paid him well to do it, much more than a homeless wreck like he was could have expected. When he was done—she didn’t watch the filthy act, of course—she’d gone in and checked Julie Gilmore herself. She’d certainly looked dead.

But shehadn’tbeen dead. No one was more surprised than Rebecca when she heard Gilmore had been brought into City Square; no one was more relieved when she died without speaking. Rebecca had been desperate enough to think of killing her in the hospital, and she’d have done it before she let Adam Radburn get close enough to find out what had happened. Again, God had held Rebecca in the hollow of his hand, and she’d gone to the hospital chapel to thank him for his mercy. Rebecca had been several steps into the dim peace when she sawhim,the white devil, sitting in the front by the altar.

He’d looked as if he was praying. He was mocking God, defiling the chapel by his presence. He’d looked up as if he’d felt her stare, and his eyes were as red as hot coals in the dimness.

He blinked, and they were brown.

But she knew the truth.

“Rebecca!”

She gasped and flinched. Grease spattered her, red dots of pain along her hands. Momma blinked at her from the other side of thick glasses, eyes vague and annoyed. Rebecca scrubbed at the painful bums nervously and held them under cold water.

“Did you hear me?” Momma asked, in that Momma-tone that nobody could ever do quite so well as her. “I said you’ve got a telephone call. Lord, I don’t know what to do with you, child, those boys always calling you up—not decent, I’ve always said. And you with school in the morning.”

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