Working Stiff

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “It took you long enough!” She was indignant, but her voice sounded as if it came from a great distance. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  McGoo and I looked at each other. Robin said, “Not right away. It wasn’t clear.”

  The ghost of Angina let out a disgusted snort. “Zombies are lousy messengers.”

  In sharp contrast to the decrepit old, overweight, and age-spotted corpse of the Mistress of Fright, Angina’s ghost looked as if she had stepped right off of one of her pristine DVD images: beautiful face, voluptuous body, fine skin tone, and bodily curves that went gently in and out rather than just out.

  “You’re a ghost, just like me,” Sheyenne said. “Don’t you have poltergeist powers? Couldn’t you just walk through the wall and get out?”

  Angina’s ghost let out a metaphorical sigh. “I tried, but I couldn’t walk through walls, and I don’t have any poltergeist powers. Looks like I washed out as a ghost, just like I washed out as a serious actress. I’m weak, and I’m trapped inside this house, but I feel that I’m supposed to move on. I needed help.”

  I made the connection. “So you possessed those zombies to put out your message.”

  “Zombies are very poor conduits, but they were the only thing I could use. Undead slackers—they’re hard to control for more than a few minutes at a time.”

  I tried not to sound testy. “Some of us are well-preserved zombies.”

  “And a lot of them aren’t well-preserved at all,” Angina snapped. “It was an ungodly challenge to get them to write down one or two letters before their attention would wander off somewhere. The whole thing took days!”

  Robin nodded solemnly. “Yes, ADDD.”

  “I couldn’t leave the house, and I was stuck here, fading away, like my career. But at least you finally came.”

  “We were too late to save you, though.” Robin frowned.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. It was quick—I tumbled down the stairs, and … then I was a ghost. Besides”—she drew herself up, touched her breasts, ran her spectral hands along her spectral waist—“look at me! Quite an improvement, I’d say. That old body was quite a burden, and I’m glad to be rid of it. I like this much better.

  “But after I died, I was trapped in this house, and I just couldn’t figure out how to let anyone know.” She glanced at Sheyenne, gave one of her signature Mistress of Fright winks. “Now, I may not be a poltergeist, but after all the movies I hosted, I remember damn well that ghosts can possess people—particularly weak-willed people. And who’s more weak-willed than a zombie?”

  I chose not to take offense at that.

  “I just didn’t realize it would be so tedious just to get one line right. Ugh, it reminds me of some of the actors I worked with.”

  “Well, we’re happy to have found you now,” Robin said. “We’ll let you out of the house. Even as a ghost, you’ll be welcome in the Unnatural Quarter. You’ll fit right in. A lot of monsters watched your show, too. And …” She seemed embarrassed. “I’m a big fan, too.”

  Angina shook her faint, spectral head. “Oh, I’m not going out there! I need to move on. I know I do.”

  Yes, the undead had become a common sight—vampires, zombies or ghosts—but not everyone came back for an encore. Some people died and stayed dead … and they liked it that way. I was glad that Sheyenne had come back to haunt me, but Angina just felt trapped.

  “Then I’m not sure I understand,” I said. “What do you need our help for?”

  “I died here alone, under violent circumstances. My body needs a proper burial before I can head toward the light.”

  “You sure that’ll work?” McGoo asked.

  Angina huffed. “Mister, do you know how many hundreds of horror movies I hosted? I’ve seen enough to know that’s what you have to do.”

  6

  The Quarter offered several services that could take care of Angina’s needs, such as ghost-removal services and licensed “proper burial” teams with all the bells and whistles. There were budget plans and extravagant ones.

  Angina, of course, needed to have the best.

  Once released from her house, Angina had followed us out the front door, and now she hovered around the Chambeaux & Deyer offices, waiting as we wrapped up the details. Sheyenne described the ins and outs of being a ghost, but Angina wasn’t really interested, since it wouldn’t matter for long.

  But I had other cases as well, and I always keep my clients’ needs foremost in my mind. While we arranged for the proper disposition of Angina’s corporeal remains, the real client who had started this whole mess—or adventure—was the autograph collector, Jackson B. Hayes. I wanted to wrap up that case while I had the chance.

  I pulled out the black-and-white head shot that the fan had lovingly sent to us. “We were trying to get your autograph, Ms. Angina. That’s why we visited you in the first place.”

  I showed her Jackson’s letter, and faint fuzzy tears appeared in her translucent eyes. “I was always good to my fans.”

  “Is there any chance…?” I held up a pen. “An autograph would mean so much. Then we could close out the case.”

  Sheyenne drifted closer. “But if she doesn’t have any poltergeist powers, Beaux, she can’t scrawl her name.”

  “My penmanship was very neat,” Angina said. “I would never scrawl.”

  “Maybe we could just get a photo of me holding up the glossy with you in the frame,” I said. It was all I could think of.

  Robin joined us. “She’s very faint. I doubt the ghost image would even show up in the picture.”

  Angina, though, had a bright idea. “You’re a zombie, Mr. Shamble. I could do what I did before. Hold onto that pen and empty your head of thoughts.”

  “That’s easy enough for him,” Sheyenne teased.

  I couldn’t let her get away with that. “Not when you’re around, Spooky. I have lots of thoughts.”

  Robin was uncertain. “You want to possess Dan, so that he can write, just like the other zombies did with graffiti?”

  “I can try,” said Angina.

  Whatever it takes to wrap up a case. I dutifully cleared my head, held the pen, and felt a strange presence enter through the bullet hole in my forehead, which was a very strange experience.

  My hand moved of its own accord, flexing my wrist, limbering up, and then with a flourish I signed, “To my Number One Fan—Best Wishes, Angina, Mistress of Fright.” For veracity, Angina possessed my hand and forced me to make the final exclamation point, complete with a cute little heart for a dot.

  “There,” Angina said. “See? A stake headed straight for the heart.”

  Robin witnessed the signature and signed a certificate of authenticity to verify for Jackson B. Hayes that Angina herself had autographed the photo. She also made a secondary notation that this was guaranteed to be the last signature Angina ever gave to a fan. Jackson would love that.

  Within an hour, the proper disposal service had been completed, Angina waved farewell and then winked out of existence heading off to a better place where she hoped to find a new audience for her work.

  After Angina vanished, I stood next to Sheyenne, who looked somewhat wistful. “I could’ve gone on at one time, but I stayed behind to seek justice, to find my killer … and to hang out with you, Beaux.”

  I didn’t know what I’d do without Sheyenne. Unlife was so much better with her around. “You’re not going to leave me, are you, Spooky?”

  She smiled and snuggled close. I felt a tingle, but little else. It didn’t matter, I knew she was right there, and her presence warmed my cold blood.

  “No, Beaux. I’m here on purpose, and I intend to stay. We’ve got a lot more cases to solve.”

  ***

  Role Model

  1

  “Come on, Shamble—it’ll be fun,” said Officer Toby McGoohan, my best human friend. He acted as if he’d gotten season tickets to his favorite sports team.

  I was immediately suspicious, sure that this w
ould not be typical police business. “I don’t even know what a cosplay convention is, McGoo.”

  He had met me outside the offices of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations, seemingly by happy coincidence as he walked his beat, but we both knew it wasn’t an accident. He’d been waiting for me.

  “Cosplay—costume playing. It’s when people dress up as characters from their favorite movies, TV shows, comics, video games, whatever.” He had looked it up online, so he considered himself an expert.

  “Oh. Trick or treat for grownups.” Every day in the Unnatural Quarter, I saw a parade of werewolves, mummies, vampires, zombies, ghosts, witches, and second-string monsters, so I wasn’t going to be impressed by a few interesting costumes.

  “A lot more than that. These people think they are the characters. It gets a little intense. And weird. And fun.”

  It didn’t sound any stranger than my usual cases, and McGoo and I often helped each other out. “So why do they need a zombie detective?”

  He seemed exasperated that I was spoiling his fun by being such a hard sell. “They don’t need a zombie detective any more than they need a beat cop, but the hotel manager is nervous about having such big crowds—naturals, unnaturals, all those people running around in costumes. Thought he might need some extra security.” McGoo flashed one of those grins that had, over the years, convinced me to do things that would get us both in trouble. “Besides, he gave us two free passes to the con.”

  He’s a redhead with a round, freckled face and a rough sense of humor (to put it mildly). We’ve been friends for a long time, even back when I was still alive, and our friendship had survived me coming back as one of the walking dead. If a friendship can survive that, it can survive anything (though he still makes jokes about the unsightly bullet hole in my forehead).

  My caseload at Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations was light at the moment, so I shrugged and agreed to go. I had already been to the Worldwide Horror Convention when it was held in the Quarter last year. I assumed this would be the same sort of thing.

  So, that was why the two of us found ourselves in the lobby of the Motel Six Feet Under and Conference Center standing next to two clattery silver-armored cylons from the old Battlestar Galactica TV show. They gleamed and hummed, red optical sensors in their helmet visors drifting to and fro.

  “CosplayCon security,” one said in a vibrating synthetic voice that I could barely understand. He took his helmet off to reveal a young man with dark sweat-plastered hair. “Whew, those things get hot after awhile! Thanks for joining us, but I doubt you guys’ll be needed. We don’t expect any trouble. Everyone has a good time at the con.”

  As I looked around the lobby and common areas, I saw Klingons with wicked-looking bat’leths, masked ninjas with curved swords, Star Wars stormtroopers with heavy blasters, Lord of the Rings orcs with large battle-axes.

  “How could there possibly be trouble?” I asked. “Nothing looks harmful at all.”

  “All the weapons are peace-bonded,” said the cylon. When I gave him a blank look and McGoo didn’t seem to recognize the term from his extensive Wikipedia research, the cylon security guard said, “Zip-tied. Everything’s strapped down so the bladed weapons are perfectly safe. And of course the blasters are just molded resin props. The Jedi lightsabers are neon tubes.” The cylon put his helmet back on and told us in his monotone robotic voice, “Have fun—and stay in character,” then marched off with a clatter of silver armor.

  Tables had been set up in the hall with volunteer staff doing their best to register attendees. This was the first year of CosplayCon in the Unnatural Quarter, and they were glad for the added attraction of real monster attendees as well as cosplayers.

  A banner over the registration area proclaimed “We are all someone else inside!” and the program book cover said, “Find your inner YOU!” as if this was a therapy session. Maybe it was—costume therapy.

  At the motel front desk, a lone vampire clerk shook his head at all the costumes. He muttered, “Bunch of weirdos,” then went back to a magazine he was reading. I didn’t see why costumed fans were any weirder than the socially acceptable sports fans who put Viking helmets or cheese wedges on their heads.

  Normally on a slow Saturday I might have walked around the Quarter with Sheyenne, or helped Robin finish paperwork on cases. Like any workaholic, I had “fun” by doing my job—solving cases and helping clients. It was my reason for living, in a loose definition of the term.

  Over the past decade since their reappearances, unnaturals tended to gather in this section of the city where they were accepted, where they felt right at home. But they still had problems, just like anyone else. While most unnaturals lived perfectly normal everyday lives, some were criminals; others wanted a divorce; others needed to find lost family members. A detective working in the Quarter had the same sort of cases as a mundane detective on the outside, but the clientele was a little stranger.

  Back when I was living, and trying to make a living, I’d partnered up with a young firebrand lawyer, and I had a good run, a successful business, before I was killed. But, as I said, I like doing what I do. So when I came back from the dead, I just got back to work.

  In the Unnatural Quarter, being a zombie is no handicap to being a detective, though I insist on maintaining my physical appearance, bathing regularly, going for scheduled top-offs at the embalming parlor, even seeing to it that I receive my monthly maintenance spell. I won’t let myself turn into one of those slobbering, shuffling embarrassments that make polite society turn up their noses at zombies.

  I’m accustomed to seeing monsters in my everyday life, but I had to admit these costumes were amazing, even a little intimidating, when I started to think about the obsessive time and effort the fans had put into making them.

  A squad of white-armored Star Wars stormtroopers marched past, representing the 501st Legion, led by an impressive black-caped and wheezing Darth Vader impersonator.

  A group of Klingons had taken over the motel’s woefully inadequate coffee shop and sat around the tables, pounding fists and demanding more coffee. They grew louder and more unruly by the minute, while a harried-looking mummy waitress tried her best to serve them.

  A drunk furry fan was coming on to a full-furred werewolf busboy, who didn’t know how to react to all the unwarranted and unwanted attention.

  “See, told you this would be fun, Shamble,” McGoo said. “Look over there, it’s the Doctor. How many can you name?”

  I looked around, but only saw a random assortment of eccentric-looking men. “Who?”

  McGoo rolled his eyes. “Let’s not get into the Abbott and Costello routine. Dr. Who. The first one there with short dark hair—he’s the David Tennant Doctor. And the one with the scarf—you gotta recognize him—it’s a Tom Baker lookalike, probably the most classic Dr. Who. And the one with the bow tie—Matt Smith.”

  Even after all this time, I was surprised to learn something new about my friend. “I didn’t know you were a fanboy, McGoo.”

  “Not to this extent,” he said, gesturing around. “But I’ve got a TV, and I am culturally aware.”

  One tall beanpole fan peered over the crowd, trying to reach the information table. Finally he gave up and just yelled, “What time is Van Helsing going to be on stage?” Some of the vampire attendees booed.

  “Five o’clock in the main ballroom,” yelled an unseen person from behind the desk.

  Four skinny guys in clinging red shirts from classic Star Trek walked by, and someone yelled in mock panic, “Look out, it’s redshirts!” I couldn’t see why they posed any kind of threat; in fact, the tight shirts emphasized how scrawny their arms and chests were. If that was the kind of security available to Captain Kirk and crew, no wonder the old show got canceled after only three seasons.

  For my own part, I wore my usual sports jacket with crudely stitched-up bullet holes and my fedora—it’s my trademark, and what PI would be without one? McGoo wore his blue beat-cop uniform, and everyone seemed
to think he was playing a part from an old police show. Several fans came up with very clever guesses from obscure programs that I hadn’t heard of in years. One fan marched up with a sneer, poked a finger at McGoo’s chest, and said, “T.J. Hooker—not Shatner’s best,” then walked away without waiting for a response.

  Suddenly, we heard yelling from the mezzanine open area and the sounds of a growing altercation. McGoo glanced at me. “This is what we’re here for, Shamble. Come on.”

  We ran up the stairs (and I use the term “ran” loosely, since my joints are stiff enough that it takes me a while to get up to speed). A group of rowdy Klingons yelled, “Star Trek is better!” One heavyset Klingon woman had the loudest voice of all.

  Across the room, the 501st stormtroopers, who had made an uneasy alliance with costumed Jedi Knights and Mandalorian bounty hunters, took offense. “Star Wars is better!”

  “Star Trek!” insisted the Klingons.

  “No, Star Wars!” The intellectual debate continued in that fashion for a few more exchanges before the groups ran forward and clashed in an all-out brawl. The Klingons struggled to draw their bat’leths against the peacebonding ties. The stormtroopers punched and pummeled with a clatter of white plastic armor. The Jedi Knights lit their fluorescent-tube lightsabers, but were careful not to damage them.

  Before McGoo and I could break up the fight, the group of redshirts rushed into the fray, trying to drive the combatants apart. Eventually, the Klingons brushed themselves off and the 501sters adjusted their body armor. Somehow, the only ones genuinely battered, bruised, and injured in the fight were the redshirts.

  “You’re right, McGoo. This is fun.” I smiled.

  Wandering about to get the lay of the con, we walked past large and small panel rooms, costuming workshops, and autograph tables featuring bit actors from long-canceled programs. One large room hosted a “robot smash” where model-builders pitted a remote-controlled R2D2 against a more ominous-looking Dalek. The two machines clashed, with the Dalek crying in a synthesized voice, “Annihilate, Annihilate!” while R2D2 responded with a series of incomprehensible but clearly rude beeps and squeals.