The Rising Dead by Stella Green Page A

the peeling tan paint around the door. The house hadn’t been shown any love for years. The button moved reluctantly, like it wasn’t used much. Just as he was about to give up and walk away, a twenty-something man with a shaved head opened the door. His tight muscle shirt showed off hefty biceps and black chest hair. On his forehead was a moldy green sore the size of a dime. A small spot of rot like this one might not be a problem, but Matt knew it could grow quickly. He caught a faint whiff of decomposing flesh.
    “I just wanted to tell all of you how sorry I am…”
    “Fuck off!” The sullen man spoke with a heavy Russian accent.
    From somewhere back in the house an older woman called out, “Please, please wait.”
    A plump, silver-haired head squeezed into the doorway. “I’m sorry. Dmitri is a friend of my daughter’s. He’s still learning English.”
    Dmitri was now dribbling tiny globules of a putrid yellow liquid from the spreading sore, which now covered his forehead. He looked like he might swing his weight to the side and crush the woman’s neck against the doorframe.
    Matt knew that if the climber had lived here, he’d definitely been seeing monsters.
    The mother invited Matt to stay for dinner. Because she had a fermenting Russian at her house, Matt agreed. Inside, two skinny female shapes emerged from behind clouds of cigarette smoke.
    “This is Nadia—she’s our exchange student—and my daughter, Chloe.”
    “Who this is?” Nadia’s low, throaty voice was deeper than Dmitri’s. She approached on stiletto heels as smoothly as if she were walking barefoot. Nadia’s dark eye makeup was heavy enough to have made Cleopatra proud. The bloodshot eyes and sallow skin hinted at a life of excess. She looked thirty-five, but Matt guessed she was really about ten years younger. At the corner of her lip was something that looked like a small cold sore. He was sure it would turn out to be something more.
    “Mom! You can’t just ask some loser in. You’re so stupid!” A skinny teenager with blue streaks in her long black hair wobbled through the haze in high heels just like Nadia’s. The skin around her left eye was gray and cracked.
    “She isn’t dealing well with her brother’s death.”
    “He was fucking nuts. Said I looked like a zombie. Said I stink, too.”
    “It’s the pain talking.”
    Matt nodded, even though he was pretty sure Chloe wasn’t as broken up as her mother thought.
    The Russians began to argue loudly in Russian like no one else was in the room.
    “Talk English!” Chloe was on the verge of tears. Then she turned to her mother, yelling, “You ruin everything!” before running into the back of the house. A door slammed. The Russians followed her and the house was quiet, but not peaceful. The presence of the trio unsettled the atmosphere.
    The daughter was in a pout and refused to come into the dining room for dinner, which left the mother running back and forth like a waitress. Matt felt sorry for her, but he was glad those three were in the other room, because the lady could cook. He didn’t need festering sores ruining the meal. After dinner, she fed him homemade apple pie with ice cream. Every time he tried to excuse himself, she brought out other goodies: beer, brownies, chips. Matt refused the food, but the mother nervously pressed him to eat while flitting around the room like a pigeon afraid to land.
    During one of her trips to the kitchen, Matt slipped away and peeked through the now open door into Chloe’s room. Dmitri was playing video games with Chloe while Nadia, still smoking, talked endlessly on a cell phone. Dmitri stopped for a moment to squeeze Nadia’s puny ass. Then he grabbed Chloe with his other arm and stuck his tongue down her throat. Matt sat back down at the table. “What grade is your exchange student?”
    “We were supposed to get a seventeen-year-old high school girl. We’ve done this before and it was always so nice. Inga from Sweden was