by Chuck Wendig
Skelly stares up. Jaw slack.
Mother sees her. Laughs. “Girl, you gonna dress yourself up with skulls and death, you ought to know what it really looks like.” The old woman snaps her fingers and lickety-split Mother Cougar is covered in cats – a whole coat of undead felines crawling up her arms and slinking around the hem of her gown, leaving it wet with a trail of moist decay. “Death ain’t romantic, girlie. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t fashionable. Go on. Get a face-full. Gawk like a tourist!” Another laugh.
It’s then that Skelly turns. Sees how all the other dead are staring. She stops walking as Mother pauses to play with her kitties. Mookie watches as Skelly stiffens. Her hand falls to her knife and rests on the silver skull of the Bowie’s hilt.
“Relax,” Mookie tells her.
“I don’t like being made to feel like a heel,” she whispers. “That old woman is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.”
“Cool it. You start shit here, you won’t find me protecting you. You’ll find me on the other side, hauling your ass out. These folks are dead.”
“Yeah, I got that part, genius.”
“I’m just saying, they got it hard enough as it is without you comin’ in here like one day you won’t be a body in a hole, too.”
That shuts her up. Her hand drifts away from the knife.
Mother shakes herself free of all the cats but one: a lanky black cat that looks healthy until you see the roving stitch-scar that winds across the animal’s body. Toward the belly, the scar is open, and a few bits of what look to be curls of dried potpourri come drifting out. Mookie catches a scent like death and cinnamon.
“These are my best friends,” Mother says. “My babies. I find them up top sometimes – hit by cars or beaten to death by shitty blood-pumper kids or just dyin’ because it’s their time to die. They come to me without me asking. I bring ’em here and they keep the rat population down something fierce. This one got her back end crushed up by a taxi. Smelled pretty bad for a while, but she’s good now. Ain’t that right, Midnight?” She strokes the black cat behind the ears. “Wooshy booshy kitty witty.” The cat purrs like a guttering chainsaw – a sound too big for such a tiny beast. “Anyway. There’s Burnsy’s house.”
Up ahead is an octagonal structure, the walls of which are wooden pallets woven together with heavy gauge chain and wire. The roof is slate – cracked, busted slate, but slate just the same. Mookie sees sudden movement atop the roof: a scuttling shape, a glistening light on a hardened carapace. A roach-rat. Half-roach, half-rat. Never in the same proportion. This one looks like it’s got a bug’s head and wings perched atop a fuzzy body with a long pink tail.
Then a black flash. The cat – Midnight – launches up off Mother’s shoulder. Bounds over two roofs, clang clang thud, and hits the roach-rat like a fuzzy cannonball.
Mookie can’t see what becomes of the roach-rat. But he hears its trill scream. Hears the sound as the cat feasts. Crunch crunch crunch.
“See?” Mother says. “Anyway. That house over there, that’s Burnsy’s place. Be nice. He’s prickly. Probably on account of his skin and all.”
Skelly gives Mookie a look. He averts his gaze and walks forward, guilt dogging his heels like a starving hound.
Mookie knocks. Whonnnng, whonnnng.
The walls may be wooden pallets, but the door isn’t a door at all – it’s an upside-down car hood. A racecar hood, number 57 painted in red letters. Freshly painted, too – though the fresh paint fails to conceal the bumps and pocks of rust beneath.
Inside, the sound of a chain rattling.
The door opens out. Mookie steps back, but he’s too slow – it clips his chin. His teeth clack together over his tongue. He tastes blood.
He turns, spits a line of red on the stone.
And when he turns back, there’s Steve Lister.
Burnsy.
Mookie’s not a man given over to much guilt. In his line of work, guilt is a boat anchor around the ankle, a too-full colostomy bag hanging from the hip. It’s a burden. A does-nothing-for-you-but-slow-your-ass-down burden. Guilt will make you hesitate. Shame makes you weak. And Mookie’s tough. Tough like an anvil.
But this – the man’s skin. His body.
He’s like a giant walking third-degree burn. Blisters everywhere. Lobster flesh stretched taut. Burnsy’s wearing a white I HEART NYC T-shirt soaked through with custardy stains.
The hair is a forest of charred stubs.
Big round unblinking eyes stare out.
The muscles around the mouth pull a pair of lips made of scar tissue into something resembling a scowl. A grim rictus of displeasure.
“You.”
That’s all Steve – Burnsy – says. You.
“Yeah.” That’s all Mookie can say in response.
“Die in a fire,” Burnsy says. “Blood-pumper.”
The hood slams shut with a clang.
Skelly says, “Hey, I guess you two know each other.”
“You guess right.”
“I’m also using my powers of perception to suss out that this crusty cat is not your biggest fan.”
Mookie growls. “Well, shit. You must be psychic.”
“What’s the score?”
“I’m the one who killed him.”
“… Oh.”
He steps back. Pounds on the car hood. “Lemme in, Lister. I need to talk.”
From inside: “Name’s Burnsy now. Don’t know any Lister.”
“I got a favor to ask.”
Now Burnsy’s laughing. The kind of laugh where every time you try to stop, you just laugh harder. Like you’re laughing in church and just can’t quit. The funniest joke among the living and the dead.
“Do I wanna know how you killed him?” Skelly asks.
“In a fire.”
She goggles. “You burned him alive?”
Mookie sighs. “Not on purpose. I didn’t burn him alive. I was… listen, he stole from us. From the Organization. He was a stuntman on the side, but a driver for us–”
From inside: “A driver on the side, and a stuntman for real, you fat-necked thug.”
“And he drove whatever needed driving. Dealers, people, pros, pimps, and above all else, packages. Turns out he’d been taking a cut. He got hooked on the Blue, but when he couldn’t get his hands on that he started up with heroin and decided one day to run off with a package of Burmese Brown. They told me to stop him. I stopped him.”
Skelly stares.
Burnsy yells, “Tell her how you stopped me.”
“Goddamnit.”
“Tell her.”
“I hit him with a garbage truck.”
Skelly’s eyes go wide.
Suddenly, a chain rattles and the car hood door whips open. Burnsy stands there, a glistening red finger pointing, his eyes bulging. “So, I’m in my car, right? A ’67 Mustang. Paint the color of mist just before sunrise. I’m hard-charging toward the Brooklyn Bridge around 3am, thinking that I was gonna be free, and who comes barreling up out of a side-street but this sack of lard driving a fucking trash truck. Truck plows into the Mustang. My heart breaks. My ride’s over. But does he quit? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. He keeps driving. My car, my beautiful car, is smooshed on the end of the truck like a booger on a kid’s finger and he pushes it forward into the front of a Duane Reade. Glass and metal crunch up. Car catches fire. And – spoiler alert – I burn alive inside the damn thing. I remember smelling my own hair on fire. Hearing the leather bubble and snap. The dashboard melted. So did my skin. And did he do anything to help? Put out the fire? Drag me out onto the sidewalk? Oh no. The bald prick, far as anyone can tell, hopped out of the truck and sauntered off like he was thinking of grabbing a late-night taco somewhere.”
“I don’t ‘saunter’,” Mookie says. Then, in a quieter voice, “I do like tacos.”
“You fuck!” Burnsy shrieks. “You insensitive fuck.” Flailing his arms, he spins toward Skelly. “You know why I’m still stuck in this body? Because I got family to take care of
. Because I got a wife and a daughter. Because they mean everything to me and this dumb hairless ape ripped my family apart–”
Anger blooms in Mookie’s heart like fire in a stoked forge. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s got Lister by the throat and he’s stomping forward into the dead man’s house, thrashing him left and right, into shelves that contain strange cloudy jars and odd Byzantine brass boxes. Jars drop, pop, and shatter. Boxes clatter. A horseshoe clangs and rolls. A plastic box hits on its corner and vomits cat’s eye marbles everywhere. Artifacts from Lister’s old life – reels of film, a series of knob-toppers for a gear-shifter, a motorcycle helmet painted with lightning bolts – rattle but do not fall as Mookie jams the dead man hard against the wall of the house.
“You tore your family apart,” Mookie yells. “You were the one who got hooked on that shit. Go on, tell us – that day you were taking a little spin, were you going home? Or were you going to sell the drugs? Or did you have a couple stuntman buddies in Red Hook where you were going to hole up and shoot poison into your arms until you could see God? Wasn’t that your plan, asshole? You hadn’t been home in months. Months. Trust me, I know. You want to know why you’re still clinging to this world like a fucking flea on a dog’s back? You wanna do right by your family, but only because you did so wrong by them for so long.”
Burnsy’s eyes glisten. He wheezes, “You got a… funny way of asking… for a favor.”
Mookie roars, throws the dead man to the ground.
Skelly appears at his elbow. Pulls him aside. “Mook, he’s right. If you need him, maybe you want to go easy. He’s dead. You… did that to him.” She pauses. “Like you said, they got it hard enough.”
Mookie’s chest rises, then falls. The breathing earth. A cooling mountain. A volcano finally falling quiet.
Mookie sighs and offers a massive hand to Lister. The words that come next don’t come easy, like they’re trying to grab Mookie’s lips and crawl back down his throat before they fall out: “I’m… sorry about your family.”
Burnsy grumbles, “And I’m sorry about yours.”
Mookie retracts his hand. “What’d you say?”
“I’m sure you didn’t have a mug that said FATHER OF THE YEAR either.”
False alarm. Full eruption. Lava gushes. All Mookie can see – all he can feel – is ash and smoke and melting stone. With both hands he reaches for Burnsy, but the dead man is gone – scurrying through the archway formed by Mookie’s legs, crawling on all fours like a whipped terrier.
When he turns, there’s Burnsy. A tire iron in his hand.
He swings. Cracks Mookie in the elbow. Pain glows bright, radiating down to the wrist, all the way to the shoulder. And as Mookie is reeling back and waving his arm like he’s trying to shake loose a bunch of ants, Burney takes another step back and pops the motorcycle helmet off the back shelf. Mookie bellows, an avalanche roar, then charges the dead man just as Burnsy drops the helmet over his own head.
The two of them go crashing through the wall and back out into the town of Daisypusher.
Skelly’s not sure what to do.
The two men – one living, one dead, one a human bulldozer, the other a microwaved chimpanzee – kick king hell out of one another on the stone thoroughfare of Daisypusher.
Mookie’s big, powerful, and slow. Burnsy doesn’t have much power, but he’s quick – and, being dead, he doesn’t have much to lose. He fights like a rabid weasel.
The fight is a constant give-and-take, push-and-pull.
The big man’s boot on the dead man’s chest. The tire iron against the side of Mookie’s skull. Burned face smashed into broken plywood. Dead man on Mookie’s back like a rodeo man on the back of a Brahma bull, clinging to life for five, six, seven – oh, sorry, not eight seconds; dead man, meet big hand; dead man, meet hard stone.
They take the fight all around the octagon. Pummeling and spinning, hitting and kicking. Out back of the house is something bulky under a tarp, smaller than a car but bigger than a generator. Skelly doesn’t have time to think about it because there they go again – stumbling and punching around the other side and back into what passes for the street.
She wonders if she should stop it. When her girls have a problem, she doesn’t let them fight out in the open. For them, the battle is either on skates or doesn’t happen at all.
Just the same, the fight sometimes needs to happen.
The girls. She hopes they’re OK. Way they scattered after the attack on the warehouse – they know where to go. They know where to hide. She told them what was up: Boss is sick, a whole rain of shit could come down on everybody’s heads, but it means opportunity, too. Back the right bitch – in this case, Persephone – and they might find their standing in this city to be greatly improved by the time the dust settles.
She’s still not sure what to make of Mookie. First she thought, hell with this big palooka. King Kong’s gonna fall and he’s gonna fall hard along with the rest of his Organization. Staying with him was easy. He wasn’t smart enough to see her as a threat. He trusted her. Which was insane. And stupid. If he was anybody else, she’d think it was part of some counter-plan to keep an eye on her, to keep her close so he can find Nora.
But no, the big dumb thug just plain trusts her.
And that’s what gets her. Because here’s this guy, supposed to be an enemy, and – what? He’s just happy to have someone along for the ride. He’s not nice. Not exactly. But he doesn’t seem as bad as Nora led her to believe.
And he’s a fine lookin’ piece of meat. The bee’s knees. The cat’s paw. That doesn’t mean he’s a pretty man. He isn’t. He’s pit bull ugly. Got a face like a fist, a body like a bunch of tractor tires fitted around an oil drum.
But those hands. That jaw. He could crush her. Could eat her right up.
She shakes her head suddenly. No. No. Not going to do this. Not going to think this. She shakes the mental Etch-a-Sketch, clears her thoughts.
Right now, Burnsy’s hugging the front of Mookie’s (big and powerful and handsome in the way you might admire the side of a mountain) face, bringing the tire iron down between Mookie’s shoulder blades – and Mookie’s spinning like a drunken carousel, trying to grab hold of the blister-skinned corpse-walker.
Behind her, she sees they’ve drawn a crowd of dead folk. None of them hoping to intervene, by the look it. The hausfrau in the pink bathrobe seems to be really getting into it, a bloodthirsty grin on her zombie’s face.
Fine. Time for somebody to do something.
Skelly walks up, draws her knife.
Then she bashes Burnsy on the back of the head with the hilt.
Bam.
She’d never hit somebody that hard unless she was planning on killing them, but – hey, this one’s already stunt-jumped over the mortal coil.
Burnsy yelps and drops off onto his butt. To make sure he doesn’t come back at Mookie, she kneels and puts the big blade up against his throat. And oh what a big blade it is – inches of steel reach beyond each side of the dead man’s red, raw neck.
“You move I’ll pop your head off like a Black-eyed Susan.”
Burnsy sighs. Drops the tire iron. “Fine. Whatever.” He pauses. “I’m tired.”
Mookie rubs his face. Wipes blood from his lip. Stretches.
“I’m tired too,” he says.
“You boys ready to talk?”
“Long as he doesn’t punch me anymore,” Burnsy says. “Because, ow.”
Mookie shrugs, nods. “Deal.”
And back into the octagon – now with one pallet wall knocked flat – they go.
As Skelly helps pick up the pieces of the broken home, Mookie stands still in the middle of it and lets the weariness wash over him. His body is pulsing with the after-effects of the fight. The pain a distant throb – all the more irritating because it’s not front and center, not driving him like a knife in the ribs. Instead it’s like a heavy bass booming on the other side of the wall when you’re trying to sleep. He thin
ks about his daughter. About his ex-wife. About how his whole Organization is falling down around his ears with the Boss being sick and the gangs smelling the sour stink of an infected wound and how somebody – maybe Werth – sold him out. Then back to Nora, and how maybe a lot of this is her fault to begin with.
Where did I go wrong, he asks himself, but it’s a question he already knows the answer to. And he knows it’s not just one answer but a whole series of them, one after the other, the ants-go-marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah. Carrying his regrets and mistakes like little crumbs of poisoned bread. He reminds himself that when all this is said and done, if he’s still alive, he’s going to find Jess and tell her sorry.
Something he’s never done.
Something he starts doing now.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Lets those two words hang there for a while because he’s not sure where he’s going with them. Skelly gives him a look as she cleans up, and Burnsy – who sits on an overturned bucket – stops dabbing parts of his skin with a wet rag and stares. “I’m sorry about your family. Sorry about killing you. It wasn’t my plan. I thought I’d smash your car, drag you out, give you a beatin’, bring you back to the Boss. But then I saw the car was on fire…” He stares off at nothing, remembering the day. “I went to the trunk, popped it. Took the heroin. By then it was too late for you. I did the job. I got the drugs. I’m sorry you’re dead and that death sucks.”
Burnsy stands. Hissing in pain as he does. He looks Mookie up and down. “Fuck you, Pearl. Fuck you up, down, and sideways. Fuck you with a knife, a fist, a baseball bat, a fucking goddamn thermonuclear warhead shoved so far up your corn-hole your teeth glow. Fuck you to hell and back and deeper still. Fuck you from me, from my family, from the bottom of my fuckin’ fuck-you heart, you fucking fuck-headed fuck-hearted animal.”
Mookie nods. Says nothing.
Then: Burnsy offers a hand.