The Killing Floor by Craig Dilouie

Author:Craig Dilouie [Dilouie, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: permuted press, postapocalyptic, world war z, 28 days later, Zombies, Armageddon, apocalypse, War, Lang:en, The Infection
Publisher: Craig DiLouie
Published: 2012-05-17T08:45:29+00:00

Jean

She was starving. Someone was going to have to go out for food, but they were too weak to do it. And Prendergast would not shut the hell up.

They’d been stuck in the art gallery for six days. Instead of sanctuary, it had become a tomb. They were dying by inches, surrounded by Prendergast’s massive, horrible paintings.

The artist himself lay spread eagled at the foot of one these paintings, sweating profusely, his wrinkled black shirt riding up to expose his round white belly.

“My work connects the real and the imaginary,” he said.

“Your work idealizes ideology through literary exposure, and yet real ideology is a hidden force, a political prime mover, not something you can frame and point to,” Jean whispered, laboring to speak clearly. “The paintings juxtapose the real and the imaginary in conflict, not connection.”

“The connection is within the conflict of these opposites,” Prendergast insisted. “My work is fascism expressed as a brand. You can buy it, you can use it, you can throw it away.”

Jean closed her eyes. She did not have the energy to say anything else.

At the other end of the gallery, Gary sat huddled against the wall, hugging his knees and rocking, watching them with narrowed eyes that appeared sunken into his skull.

Getting Ricky Prendergast and Jean Byrd together at the gallery had been his idea. He owned the gallery and considered Prendergast the local boy who made good. The artist’s paintings and their declaration of a stark totalitarianism repulsed and attracted at the same time. Their size enveloped the viewer, threatening his or her individuality, and yet were strangely seductive, promising an existence without thought, whispering, you kind of want this.

Jean was an East Coast art critic who wrote for several important art magazines. Her pen had made a few careers, and broken more than she could count. She and Gary had fallen into bed together after Grady Tallman’s opening (which she later skewered) in New York three years ago. Hearing she was going to be in Akron, he’d convinced her to visit his gallery in Hopedale and review Prendergast’s exhibition at Wild Arts. After the Screaming screwed everything up from air travel to basic utilities, he’d doubted she would show, but she did.

“You’ll love it,” Gary had told her when she’d appeared at his door first thing in the morning. “His paintings are like propaganda for a fantasy regime built on absolutes. They make you want to punch a Nazi in the face. Wow, Jean, I’m so happy you’re here!”

He’d kissed her, laughing, and handed her a mimosa in a champagne flute. He told her how good she looked in her black and white Chanel suit. She sipped her drink, smiling back at him. Gary was strictly small town, but he was extremely cute, and she had always had a soft spot for him.

Jean had toured the gallery, aware of Gary’s eyes on her, and concluded Prendergast’s work stank. His paintings were childish in their assumptions, their one saving grace, in her opinion,

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