Jailbait Zombie fg-4

by Mario Acevedo

  Mel busied himself draining his bag of blood. He searched with the straw to slurp from the corners of his bag. His eyes turned to me and wrinkled with concern. “Felix, you look like there’s a spider crawling in your shorts. What’s up?”

  All of us wore contacts and we couldn’t read one another’s aura. I must’ve really telegraphed my emotions to have them read so easily.

  “What about hallucinations?” I asked.

  Phyllis had been drinking blood while she studied me with her keen eyes. She put down her bag. “What about them?” Her gaze pulled at me like hooks.

  Talking about the hallucinations would stir up my feelings of violation and guilt, but Phyllis might know something that could help.

  “The last few nights I’ve had bad dreams about my turning.” I fought to displace my emotions and kept my voice calm as if I were talking about someone else. “I’ve been getting hallucinations that bring back memories I worked hard to forget. A voice comes to me, repeating my name.”

  “Whose voice is it? A fanging victim?”

  “No.”

  “Was that it? Just a voice?” Phyllis fired the questions like an interrogator.

  “I saw a face.”

  “Whose?”

  “Someone from long ago. Someone dead.”

  Phyllis played with the straw in her bag of blood. “How do the hallucinations come to you?”

  “At first in nightmares. Lately I’ve been getting them even during the day.”

  “What triggers them?”

  “They just happen.”

  I remembered the girl. My kundalini noir wilted and I felt my shoulders sag with grief.

  Buck up, Felix. Don’t show weakness. I erased the girl’s image from my mind. I straightened up and put a stoic gaze into my eyes.

  For the first time since I’ve known Phyllis, a flicker of regret played across her face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Phyllis hardened her stare. The corners of her eyes twitched. “Are you up for this assignment?”

  “You mean finding the zombie creator?”

  “And the source of the psychic signals.”

  I didn’t appreciate these jabs she was throwing at me. “Are you doubting my abilities?”

  “I have my concerns.” Another jab.

  “What are you getting at?”

  Phyllis shifted uncomfortably as if she were about to say something that would hurt us both. “I’m sending you help.”

  The comment stung like one of those jabs had connected to my chin.

  Mel winced and whispered sympathetically, “Ouch.”

  Phyllis’s meaning lingered in the air, stinking. She’d lost confidence in me as an enforcer.

  I asked, “Why?”

  “No reason other than my own paranoia.”

  “I don’t like someone from the Araneum describing herself as paranoid,” I said. “The rest of us should be paranoid about you.”

  Phyllis’s expression seemed to petrify.

  I wanted to break through her calm veneer, so I added, “Unless this business of being paranoid is bullshit.”

  Phyllis let her face relax. A manipulative gleam sparkled in her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry.”

  “It’s my ass. I am worrying.”

  Her eyes went dim and her mouth flattened, like her mind had clicked off the “show emotions” button. She said, “I’m bringing in Jolie.”

  The name was a stab where my heart used to be. Jolie was another vampire enforcer from the Araneum. She and I had met through our friendship with Carmen Arellano. We both had been Carmen’s lovers. In the days since we lost Carmen, Jolie and I had kept in touch. Our conversations were strained by the mutual understanding that we had unknowingly betrayed Carmen. Because of our mistake, she was now a prisoner of extraterrestrial gangsters.

  Jolie and I once commiserated our way to sex. I’m sure both of us were thinking of Carmen as we screwed each other. I know I was. Afterward, we both pretended that the other no longer existed.

  “Send for her then,” I said. “You don’t need my permission.”

  Phyllis replied, “Jolie’s finishing another assignment. You should wait for her.”

  “I’ll get started now. The Araneum said ‘immediately.’”

  “You should wait. A repeat of what happened to Carmen would be a disaster.”

  This wasn’t another jab, it was an uppercut to my jaw.

  I looked away from Phyllis and let my ego absorb the blow.

  I slipped a few bills under my glass and collected my backpack. “Phyllis, you don’t think I can handle this, bring in anyone you want.”

  She dropped her empty bag of blood into Mel’s lunch box. “Felix, you’re the best we have. Unfortunately, even the best can’t afford to make mistakes.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The psychotronic diviner sat on the front passenger’s seat. A dim white glow shimmered inside the crystal.

  I was on the way to Morada. I had borrowed an older Toyota 4Runner from Mel because I didn’t want to bang up my Cadillac.

  South of Saguache, the highway emptied into the San Luis Valley. Yellow and orange autumn leaves splashed like fire across the evergreens of La Garita Hills. The highway made one last jag before heading straight south along the western boundary of the valley.

  I was about to tune the stereo when the girl appeared. Her face and those unforgiving eyes loomed before me.

  The voice returned.

  Felix…ix…ix.

  Just as suddenly, her face disappeared and I stared at the square grill of a semitruck coming straight at me. Its horn bellowed.

  A shock wave of panic and terror ripped through me. I snagged the steering wheel to the right and jammed on the brakes.

  The semi roared by, the horn blaring even louder, the driver flipping me off.

  The Toyota skidded across the pavement and swerved left. My guts seized in fear that I would flip over. I countersteered. The 4Runner snaked back and forth, losing speed, and came to a halt. The sharp odor of burned rubber came through the vents. The back end of the semitrailer receded in my rearview mirror.

  I rested my head against the rim of the steering wheel and let go a long sigh of thanks.

  Something shone in my peripheral vision.

  The crystal in the diviner burned bright white.

  It burned bright white.

  The diviner had just detected a psychic signal.

  During the hallucination.

  This couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Did this confirm that the hallucinations were psychic energy attacks?

  It had to.

  The glow in the crystal faded. I put my hands close to the pyramid and my fingers trembled in dread.

  If the hallucinations were the result of my guilt, I could find a way to cope. But what defense did I have against a psychic attack?

  I imagined a hand groping inside my skull, fingers sifting through my brain. The sense of violation returned.

  I felt stripped and humiliated.

  Naked.

  Unclean.

  Why the attack? Why me?

  Who was doing this?

  A sense of foreboding cut deep into me, as if I were pressed against the edge of a giant knife.

  Were the zombies and the psychic attacks related?

  What else could the psychic attacks do? Could they only manipulate my thoughts or could they also steal from my mind?

  The foreboding cut sharper.

  Was the Araneum not telling me something about this assignment?

  How much danger waited for me in Morada?

  Why was the Araneum sending me out here like this? As bait? Was I that expendable?

  I reached behind me for a cooler on the rear seat. A dozen 450-milliliter bags of whole human blood sat in the cooler. I snatched a bag and fanged a hole in an O-neg, inserted a plastic straw, and sipped.

  The taste of human blood comforted me. My fear eased and I became filled with a calm and cold determination.
I had powerful weapons of my own and my enemies would be foolish to underestimate me.

  It was time to get my questions answered. In Morada.

  I took my foot off the brake and pressed hard on the accelerator pedal.

  The highway crossed a bridge over the Rio Grande, passed a potato co-op, and led to the one stoplight in town. To my left, a giant white letter M decorated the side of a tall rocky hill.

  I turned west on Abundance Boulevard. Wasn’t much in abundance except for wishful thinking. A sporting goods store with grimy, opaque windows. A big-game meat processor offered family discounts. A couple of antique shoppes sold junk. Faded real estate signs advertised mountain views and country living.

  My first stop would be Donald Johansen, Barrett Chambers’s landlord. I followed the MapQuest printouts to the address of the apartments on the north side of town.

  The street became a washboard dirt road. Small forlorn houses with tarpaper roofs sat behind rickety fences of slack wire. Rusting cars, tractors, and farm machinery rested like broken statues in weed-filled yards.

  I got to the address on C Street, a row of five tiny apartments on a scraggy lot. The twisted window screens looked like gray scabs. Half of the windows either had cardboard inserts or were covered on the inside with aluminum foil. Chambers had lived behind door number three.

  I parked next to the only car on the lot, a dusty Chevy Lumina, and got out.

  MANAGER had been scrawled in black marker on the door closest to the Chevy.

  I removed my contacts and checked to see if anyone watched. The only life I saw were a few birds flying overhead and the traffic passing down the street.

  I stored my contacts in their case and covered my eyes with sunglasses. I had to be ready to use hypnosis.

  I pressed my hand against the manager’s door. The texture was rough from the peeling varnish. By feeling for vibrations and using my hearing, I could get a better picture of what was going on inside.

  A television commercial sang the praises for yet another breakthrough in toothbrush technology. I heard a gentle rustle, like someone shifting on a chair.

  I stood to one side of the door-a habit in case the occupant answered with a shotgun blast-and knocked.

  The volume of the TV was turned down.

  “Yeah?”

  I knocked again. “Hey, Donald, I got the rent money.” I emphasized “rent money.”

  The chair squeaked and approaching steps rattled the door.

  “That you, Barrett?” A man’s voice. “About goddamn time.”

  The door jerked open. A guy in his mid-thirties stared out. His flabby face had the dull color of cold cuts that had been forgotten in the fridge. The mood in his eyes went from anticipation to surprise. His dark hair was parted in the middle and hung to his shoulders. He was barefoot and wore sweats and a ratty green T-shirt that said ROCK-N-ROLL FOREVER.

  His eyes gave me the quick one, two appraisal, and his expression turned hostile. He kept his hand on the doorknob. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here about Barrett Chambers.”

  “Haven’t seen him since the beginning of last month. I’m about to evict his deadbeat ass.” Johansen squinted at me and grimaced. “Who are you?”

  I held out a business card. “A friend of the family.”

  Johansen’s eyes cut to the card and back to me. “What friend? What family?” He started to close the door. “Unless you’re here to settle his rent, I’m not talking. You got any problems with Barrett, go to the cops.”

  I had to search Chambers’s apartment, and if Johansen didn’t want to cooperate, I had other ways.

  I dropped the card into my shirt pocket. I jabbed my hand and the toe of my shoe in between the door and the jamb. Johansen’s expression exploded with alarm. One shove using vampiric strength and I was inside. Johansen tripped over a vacuum cleaner and stumbled against the wall. He made a choking noise like a scream for help was stuck in his throat. I kicked the door shut, grabbed his arm, and pulled him upright.

  Johansen’s eyes fixed on mine, and they said: Don’t hurt me. I jerked the sunglasses from my face and gave him a blast of hypnosis. His pupils unscrewed into enormous black dots. His aura flashed with a silky red texture.

  He went limp in surrender. I wouldn’t fang him unless I had to. I asked what he knew about Chambers. Under hypnosis Johansen had to tell the truth, which he readily did. Johansen had no idea what had happened to Chambers or where he had last gone.

  To deepen Johansen’s hypnosis, I led him to a chair, sat him down, and rubbed the webs of flesh between his thumbs and index fingers. His face and posture relaxed until his head tipped forward in sleep. He should stay under for twenty to thirty minutes.

  I left him slumped in front of his TV. A ring of keys hung from a nail on a post by the counter separating the living room from a tiny kitchen. I put on a pair of latex gloves and took the keys.

  Outside of unit three, I tried the keys until I found one that worked.

  I stood back and pushed the door fully open. The air gushed out in a wave of musty odors and harsh chemical smells. A pile of mail scattered along the threshold.

  I entered and closed the door. The interior was dark. His place was one with aluminum foil over the windows.

  Propane tanks were stacked along one wall. The tanks had markings of the stores I was certain they were stolen from. Drug labs used the empty tanks to cook meth.

  Was Barrett Chambers a tweaker? If he was, didn’t mean he was a zombie, just acting like one.

  What had happened during his last days as a human? Who reanimated him-step one of the process was killing him-and why?

  Shredded cartons of Sudafed-more evidence of meth trafficking-filled a large cardboard box. Stacks of old pizza boxes and empty cans of beer and diet soda littered the floor. Heaps of dirty clothes, car stereos, and all kinds of hand tools lay everywhere.

  I opened the fridge and immediately regretted it. The smell was like a cow decomposing. The shelves held lumps of hairy shapes in shades of green and yellow. Even the water pitcher had stuff growing in it.

  The bathroom and bedroom weren’t in better condition. Interestingly, dry-cleaned trousers still in plastic hung in the closest. That was the extent of any tidy habits.

  I searched the drawers and found a large mailer tucked beneath loose underwear and socks, beside the porn. Inside the mailer were letters with postmarks going back seven years with the most recent being from two years ago. Every letter had been sent to a different address. Barrett had flitted from place to place like a plastic bag in the wind.

  One letter was from his mom-the return address said MOM-and the rest were from someone named Robbie. Turned out to be his younger brother. Robbie kept sending updates of his progress in school. He asked when Barrett was going to get “right” and come home again. Home was Emporia, Kansas.

  I looked at the squalor in the room. Barrett never got right-whatever that was.

  I thumbed through the mail piled up by the door. Most were stamped: Past Due.

  Barrett Chambers, it seemed, was skidding to the end of the earth and one day fell off the edge.

  The problem was that Barrett returned from that edge as a zombie.

  How?

  I locked up and returned the keys. Johansen would remember hearing me knock and then nothing until he awoke in his chair.

  Next stop, Chambers’s ex, Adrianna Maestas.

  CHAPTER 10

  Adrianna lived south of Abundance Boulevard. Here the roads were paved, the lawns neat, the fences straight and in repair. Most of the streets had sidewalks. No cars or tractors sat dismantled in the yards. The contrast between north and south Morada seemed mandated by law.

  The address was a tidy cottage in pristine white stucco protected by walls of rectangular hedges. I parked next to a white picket fence. Cottonwood trees flush with gold and copper leaves shaded the porch. Lace curtains were drawn behind the windows.

  After using my vampire powers on Jo
hansen I decided to keep a low supernatural profile, so I had put my contacts back on. I figured I could charm anything I needed out of Adrianna.

  I rang the doorbell. The door curtains parted briefly. The deadbolt clicked and the door opened a crack, secured by a chain.

  A woman with a slender olive-skinned face and black hair shiny as gloss enamel peered at me. She wore a colored blouse and a neck lanyard with a plastic badge I couldn’t read. I got the feeling she was on the way to work. Despite her pleasant looks, her eyes smoldered with distrust.

  An older woman inside the house called out in Spanish. “Who is it?”

  “Some strange man, Mama,” the woman at the door shouted back, also in Spanish.

  Strange? I’ve been called worse.

  To my left, the curtains in another window parted and a set of young eyes watched.

  “My name is Felix Gomez,” I said in Spanish, hoping that by leaning on our common heritage, she would soften and welcome me in. “Are you Adrianna Maestas?”

  She gave a guarded nod. I couldn’t imagine what such an attractive woman had seen in a loser like Chambers.

  I handed her my business card.

  She read the card and passed it to someone behind her. Adrianna brought those pretty eyes back to me and remarked in English. “So?”

  “I’m looking for Barrett Chambers.”

  Her face shriveled with disgust like she had milk curdling in her stomach. “Why the hell you asking me?”

  I tried to play the sympathy angle. “I’m afraid something bad might have happened to him.”

  “Oh yeah?” Her voice turned gleefully poisonous. “Well, I hope the worthless bastard drowned in a toilet while rats chewed his balls.” She slammed the door with the clank of the deadbolt as an exclamation mark.

  Being married to this harpy might have driven Chambers to become a zombie.

  I remained outside the door, not sure what to do next. I could break in and use hypnosis to make Adrianna talk. But she wasn’t alone. At least two more were in the house. Corralling so many witnesses wouldn’t be worth the trouble, especially if Adrianna didn’t know much. I’m sure she and Chambers parted ways long before he was recruited into the undead.

  The Araneum suspected the reanimator was nearby but where? What new leads could I follow?