And what was she going to say? "You'd be surprised what a really good party costs?"
Plus she was failing all of her classes, assuming she did show up to the final exams. There went the scholarship. There went Winthrop. What was she going to do next?
She spotted something under a bush close to her-- a guy, a little older than she and dressed like a bike messenger, lying flat on the ground, staring up at the sky.
Was he dead? If he was, she ought to call the police.
He turned towards her, propping himself up on an elbow, and smiled. "Hi, beautiful."
Sloane liked it when people called her beautiful. She came a little closer.
#
“If it makes any difference,” Lisa said as she drove, “I always told him he should go back home. Or at least call. You know? Let everyone know he was all right.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Sam, looking out the window. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he didn’t look impressed by what he saw.
Maybe it was just the way he got after a lot of traveling, and his uncle being so sick, but this guy was a little hard to read. Distant, unfocused. Maybe it was just that in her head she was trying to make him more like Jack, who noticed everything, and who couldn’t drive anywhere without finding six places he wanted to check out next time he was in the area. An interesting church, or a used bookstore, or just a cemetery with a low-slung fence. Compared to his cousin, Sam seemed a little flattened out.
She could make him talk. “Are you a reporter, too?”
Sam shook his head. “He told you he was a reporter?”
“I had to drag it out of him.”
He looked straight at her. “His parents publish the Palmetto.”
She kept driving.
“I guess you don’t know what that means. They own the newspaper.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “I own my own restaurant. That means I do every dirty job there is, from cleaning the toilet, to checking the rat traps. And I cook the pizza, too.”
“I’m sure it’s excellent, ma’am.”
Was she too sensitive, or did she hear something patronizing in Sam’s voice? Hell, no. This man was a snob.
He’d have to pay for his own goddamned slice if he wanted one.
She soldiered on. “But Jack was working as a reporter when he disappeared, right? Is there any chance he wrote something that made someone want to kill him?" Something he wouldn't want to tell me about?
“He wasn’t working on a story. He wasn’t a reporter. Jack disappeared the night his parents told the staff of the Palmetto that they had chosen him to be the next publisher.”
“Jesus,” said Lisa.
“Typical,” said Sam. “That man could piss anything away.”
“You don’t like your cousin,” she said.
“My cousin wears me out. But you must know what I mean. You fired him.”
“That was personal,” she said.
He looked her up and down, pausing at her stomach. “Is there something else I’m going to have to deal with here?”
No, she did not like this man. She did not like him at all, which is why she pulled over to the side of the road. “Get out of my car,” she said.
“What?”
“There’s a T stop five blocks back. You can take the subway back to Logan. I’ll track down Jack, I’ll tell him about his father, and I bet I’ll do it nicer than you will, so why don’t you get going, Bubba Joe.”
To her total shock, he drew a gun on her. “I don’t think so, Lisa.”
Oh Jesus, she thought. He’s going to kill me. Which meant-- and now she knew the whole thing, knew it in a flash-- he’d killed his cousin, too. And then he'd gotten away too quickly to see Jack come back. Now she was sitting in a car with the man who’d killed Jack, and as soon as she showed him where Jack’s apartment was, he was going to kill her.
She was such a goddamn idiot.
She pulled the car back into the line of traffic. What was she going to do? She tried to think about all the mystery novels she’d read. Maybe there was some kind of clue there. Some kind of hint. What to do if trapped in the car with a murderer: first, don't get in the car.
“Are we nearly there?”
“Nearly,” she said. “So guess what? You get to shoot me soon. Aren’t you excited? Won’t that be fun?”
“I’ll shoot you only if you make me do it.”
“Oh, don’t lie to me. Once you drew the gun you had to shoot me. Guy like you? Can’t be threatening honest business owners. So I have to disappear first.”
He didn’t disagree with her.
“But there’s something you don’t know about me.”
He snorted. “You’re connected. Mobbed up.”
Could she like this guy any less? “Yeah, me and Whitey Bulger. We're best buds. No, asshole. I’m immortal. I can’t die.”
She could almost hear the wheels turning in Sam’s head, as he began to consider whether he’d actually heard what she just said.
“Well, I will die,” she continued. “And then I’ll come back as a zombie, cursed to walk the earth forever, eating only the flesh of the living. And you’ll be in deep shit, because when I come back, I’m going to be hungry, and I’m going to eat your face.”
He reached for the door handle and she accelerated. Her little Toyota skipped over the top of the hill and landed on the other side with a thump. Good girl.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said, holding the gun firmly pointed at her chest. “I don’t believe you’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy. There are zombies all over Boston. They meet in Mount Auburn Cemetery, right near where they buried Mary Baker Eddy. Once a week, five bucks if you want hors d’oeuvres.”
She thought she could hear a little quaver in his voice. “I have this gun for my own protection. My cousin’s gotten mixed up with all kinds of people before. I don’t plan to kill anyone.”
“What, you don’t believe me? I can prove it to you. Shoot me. It’ll be funny.” She sped up a little faster, swerving around a parked delivery truck, so the tires squealed.
Now he sounded outright scared. If he shot her at this speed, who could tell what would happen? “Why don’t we just--”
“Oh, I’ve got another way to prove it to you. I've got super-healing. Jack bit me on the stomach two days ago, and now it’s just a scar. Check it out,” and she yanked up her shirt, high enough to show her bra.
He looked.
She accelerated and yanked the wheel to the right, crashing into the brick face of a building. She felt her head whip forward and back, as the airbags punched her back, back into the chair. A horrible burned latex smell filled her nose.
The two of them sat there, stunned and breathing hard, for a moment.
“Jesus,” said Sam, bending forward and reaching for the gun he’d dropped in the wheel well. “What is wrong with you?” He picked up the gun and pointed it back at her. “Get out of the car. Leave the keys.”
Lisa leaned on the horn until she saw the door to the building open.
Sam cocked the gun.
“Listen, asshole,” she said. “We just crashed into the front of the Everett Police Department. See all the guys in the pretty blue uniforms? No matter how much trouble you’re in, it’s only going to get worse if you shoot me.”
ch. 27
Lisa felt pretty damn good as she parked her car. Okay, she had several thousand dollars worth of front end damage to her Toyota which would mean she’d have to spend a lot of time talking to her insurance agent, time she’d honestly rather spend shoving needles in her eyes. And her neck was going to kill her tomorrow, though she bet Sam’s would be worse. But she, totally unarmed little Lisa Alioto, wouldn’t hurt a fly (with maybe one exception), had managed to save herself from a crazy murderer with a loaded handgun about a foot away from her.
How badass was she? Oh, so badass.
Plus, there was absolutely no trouble from the police, even though she’d
dinged up a few bricks on their nice building. When she told them the whole story, and delivered Sam to them, plus the handgun with only his prints all over it... Well. They were all very impressed.
It probably didn’t hurt that her high school buddy Ed happened to work for the Everett Police Department. Suck on that, Lazarus!
But now she had to call Jack. Had she forgiven him? Not a chance. But she had to tell him about his dad, just in case Sam wasn’t lying about everything. And she probably ought to tell Jack what she did to his cousin. Wham! Splat! You should have see his face when I drove right into the wall!
That’s what he gets for killing you...
And now she knew why Jack kept quiet about how he died. It was family stuff. She understood that. Families were private. But his right to hide it from her officially ended when his cousin tried to kill her, too.
Then again, Jack might have an excuse. He might not have thought his cousin was dangerous to anyone else. She could understand that, too-- the only time Sam seemed to wake up all the way is when his cousin's name was mentioned. Jack might have picked up on that.
Or maybe Jack was too self-absorbed to worry about how his problems might affect other people. Like when he tried to keep her from knowing that she'd been infected. Maybe she'd found yet another guy who was always about himself, never about her.
Had she really read him so wrong? What about all the times she came downstairs to find him doing her work, so she wouldn't have to? What did all of that mean? Was it just a ploy to keep her from firing him?
What had Jack done to Sam, anyway?
And, lost in thought, she opened to the door to her apartment and walked upstairs, not even noticing that the door hadn’t been locked.
She looked up and saw five guys in white jumpsuits looking right back at her. "Oh, hell," she said. "Not again."
#
"So you're helping us because you'll get your PhD?" asked Arturo, the zombie who looked a lot like Winnie-the-Pooh.
“Uh-huh," said Ian. "Besides, I’m one of you."
Arturo looked him over dubiously.
“I mean, I’m infected.”
“You don’t smell infected.” Arturo gestured to Jack, who was hovering next to the cages that held the Winthrop guys. Like a cat outside a birdcage, thought Ian, with a shiver. “Jack, come on over here and smell Ian. Is he infected?”
Jack shook his head. “Sure isn’t.”
“I’m not infected?” said Ian. That means I’m just a guy trapped in a basement with a bunch of hungry zombies... Sarah, you liar!
“Do you want to be infected? I can bite you if you want," said Jack.
“Not really,” said Ian.
A loud thump came from the door, like a battering ram. “They’re going to get in here eventually,” said Arturo. “Do you have a cell phone, Ian?”
“Sure,” said Ian.
“Call the police,” said Arturo. “Tell them that there are several people held captive in the basement.”
“This isn’t Boston,” said Ian. “The cops are private. Like these guys.” He pointed to the white-jumpsuited men in the cages.
“Then call the Boston police.”
“They won’t go on Winthrop property. I know because the undergrads behind me had a party once. It was eleven o’clock. I had to study, but they just kept laughing and playing Bob Marley, No Woman No Cry.” He grimaced. “I hate undergrads.”
“So what do we do?” said Arturo. “Ideas, people!”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Jack, and smiled at Ian in a way that made all the blood drain from his head.
#
The man in the white jumpsuit ripped the duct tape from Lisa’s face, and she let fly a stream of profanity strong enough to turn the air blue. She rubbed her face with her newly untied hand and looked around the room. She was sitting in a leather chair in some kind of snooty men’s club. There was a fat guy in the chair opposite her, and a whole bunch of guards. “Who the hell are you people?” asked Lisa. "And what am I doing here?"
“Please excuse the imposition, Miss Alioto,” said one of the men. “I am Mr. Dudley. I speak for Winthrop University’s Board of Overseers. Would you care for a drink?”
“Hell, no,” said Lisa.
“I apologize for the disrespectful way that your arrival was handled. But it was necessary that it be done this way, in order to preserve some secrecy."
Lisa crossed her arms and glared at him.
"As I said," said Mr. Dudley. "I regret the need to be disrespectful. But I have made a study of your character, Miss Alioto, and I believe that above all things you respect the truth. Winthrop University would like to buy your building."
A snort of disbelief from Lisa. "Why? Because it worked out so well in Allston?"
Mr. Dudley relaxed in his chair. "At Winthrop, we take the long view. Yes, we ran out of money for the project in Allston. But we have a substantial endowment. The markets will rebound, given enough time, and the Allston project will be completed. And this is a fine time to invest in real estate. Somerville is our next frontier."
"Like I said to Tina, the answer is a firm no."
"I understand that you have a family business. And of course you treasure those associations, as would I. But Miss Alioto, you have no children. No obvious heirs. Forty years from now, will you still relish the prospect of waking early every morning to run your business? I may say, through sad experience, that eventually the flesh begins to fail, and that we all crave our rest."
Yes, she thought, but I'll be like Jack, I'll be able to run the business forever... She couldn't do it. No. It hurt her even to think about it, no freedom, never, not even in death.
To distract herself, she asked him something else. "Why do you even want to expand into Somerville? This campus is huge."
"We are the most powerful university in America," said Mr. Dudley. "Our role is to educate the world."
"What an arrogant thing to say."
"I never claimed that we were free from arrogance. But if it weren't us, it would be someone else. Columbia, maybe, or Yale. Someone must be the king. And I would much rather it were us, so ever onward, ever onward. All we ask of you, Miss Alioto, is a promise that you will leave your land to us in your will. In return, we will give you as much money as you can reasonably desire."
It was tempting. It would have been even more tempting if she hadn't known she was infected. She had to think.
"Is it a difficult decision? Is there some relative whom you would rather designate as your heir? Some cause dear to your heart?"
She slowly shook her head.
"I was correct," said Mr. Dudley. "I am so sorry, Miss Alioto."
She shivered. "What are you talking about?"
"You had an employee. A Mr. Jack Kershaw."
"Yeah, I did, and I fired him."
"Your employee was-- not to mince words-- a zombie."
"What are you talking about?" Lisa stood up, sensing movement behind her. "Are you people crazy? What do you mean, zombie?"
Mr. Dudley shook his head. "Miss Alioto, you are a terrible liar. And Miss Chen-- I'm sorry, Dr. Chen-- told us all about you."
Obviously pretending ignorance wasn't going to do her any good. "All right. You want my land. You're not getting it, and you know why. So let me go."
"I'm sorry, Miss Alioto. But you're infected. I can't let you leave."
Lisa opened her mouth and then shut it. Goddamn it, Jack, why do you keep doing this to me?
ch. 28
At least they treated her well, thought Lisa. She was allowed to roam around the club room at will, and to talk to Sarah Chen, for as long as the girl stayed conscious. "You want to cut back on those," said Lisa to Sarah, who was slurping up her drink. Lisa knew she should be angry, but every time she looked at the girl she thought, Young. Young and stupid.
"No, no," said Sarah. "I've got a plan. See, when they catch all the zombies, and all the infected people, they're going to kill us all."
"And your
plan is--"
"To be so drunk that I won't know it's happening," said Sarah. "Did you ever hear about the gargoyles on this building?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They're alive."
Lisa looked through the window. Yes, this tower had an amazing number of gargoyles on it. And they were fifteen stories above the ground, which was actually scarier. "I was looking for you."
"That's nice," said Sarah, and giggled. "Did you find me?"
"I wanted to know-- if I'm infected, am I contagious?"
"Contagious?"
"Because if we are, we can go sneeze on those guys."
"No, we're not contagious. Even the zombies aren't that contagious. You'd have to exchange-- wait, how did you get infected? Did one of the zombies bite you? Or bleed on you?"
For the first time in what had to have been years, Lisa found herself blushing. "I'm not really sure when it happened."
"Ew!" said Sarah, a look of utter horror on her face. "Oh, my God! Ew! Ew! Ew!" She clamped a hand over her mouth. "You're going to make me lose all my alcohol!"
#
“I won’t do it,” said Ian, trying to look resolute.
“But you could,” said Jack, his blue eyes nearly glowing with intensity. Was he the creepiest individual Ian had ever met? Oh, yes. “You remember what you did. We’re in a laboratory.”
“I took the lab book from Prof. Leschke’s office,” said Ian. “Our notes are on it. I guess I could do it again.”
“Well?”
“Intentionally create more zombies?”
Jack smiled, showing more teeth than any person should possibly have. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“Yeah, guy,” said Arturo. “Are you saying you don’t like us?”
How could I say that? thought Ian. A giant crash came from the corner of the room, which was one of the other zombies hurling a liquid nitrogen tank into the door of the cage.
“Quit trying to eat the ones in the cage! Jesus, people!” said Arturo, as he went over to check the door.
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