Walkers

by Gary Brandner

  "He's with me," the detective said. "Go ahead and answer the question."

  "Well, what happened, we was eating lunch out in the back, me and Big Ed. We had sandwiches that we bought off the caterer's truck. There's no place around here where you can buy a decent sandwich. All they got is tacos and that shit." He glanced suddenly at Olivares, cleared his throat, and went on. "Anyhow, all of a sudden I hear Ed go 'Hut!' like that, and I look over to see him floppin' his head around with his eyes bugged out to here. At first I thought he was havin' some kind of a fit, then his face starts turning blue and I know what's happened. He swallowed something and got it caught in his throat. I ran over and pounded him on the back, but it didn't do no good. He kind of staggered around the yard out back, grabbin' at his throat, and all the time gettin' blacker in the face. Then all of a sudden he goes down, whop, like a sack of potatoes.

  "I got down next to him and I seen he ain't breathin' at all. I felt for his heartbeat and didn't get nothing. I said to myself, 'Oh, shit, this guy is dead or damn close to it.' I ran around to the front and got a couple of the guys to come back with me. When we got out there I'm damned if Big Ed ain't on his feet and walkin' around."

  "He was ali right?" Hovde asked.

  "I didn't say that. He was up on his feet, but he sure as hell didn't look good. His face still had that purplish color, and his eyes didn't seem to quite look at you, if you know what I mean. I asked him if he was okay, and he said yeah in a funny voice."

  "Funny in what way?" said Hovde.

  McCoy shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Thin, kind of. Flat. Like it was just coming from his mouth, not his chest. Anyway, I didn't like the way he looked at all, so I said why don't he take the rest of the day off. He said yeah again, and just walked out. Didn't even take his toolbox. I yelled 'See you Monday,' after him, but he didn't answer. I never saw him again."

  Dr. Hovde looked over and saw that Olivares was watching his face.

  "That's all I have," he said.

  The sergeant turned to the garage owner. "That's it for now, Mr. McCoy." He handed over a card with his name and telephone extension. "If you think of anything else, give me a call."

  "Absolutely, Sergeant. I've always been ready to cooperate with the police.''

  "Sure you have," said Olivares. He turned and walked out of the building. Dr. Hovde followed.

  When they were back in the car, Olivares sat behind the steering wheel and watched Hovde expectantly. He said, "All right, Doc, I saw how you picked up on it when the fat boy told us how Frankovich choked on his sandwich Friday. You ready to let me in on it?"

  Hovde squirmed in his seat. "I don't know quite how to say this."

  "Just put it in simple, elementary English. Something a Mexican cop can understand."

  Hovde laughed, but without mirth. "All right, here it is. What would you say if I told you Ed Frankovich actually died last Friday out in back of McCoy's garage when he choked on that sandwich?"

  Olivares peered at him with lowered lids. "I'd say you are making a very bad joke."

  "No joke," Hovde said. "You asked me, I told you. From what I've seen it's my opinion that Ed Frankovich was a dead man Friday afternoon."

  "Uh-huh. And who, in your opinion, was it that broke into Joana Raitt's house Sunday night and got his brains beat out?"

  Dr. Hovde shifted uncomfortably. "Ed Frankovich. Same guy."

  "Kind of an unusual situation," said Olivares drily. "Suppose you explain to this Mexican cop how such a thing could happen."

  "I can't explain it," Hovde admitted. "I can only tell you that last night Joana Raitt was attacked by a dead man."

  "Oh, shit," Olivares said in a groan.

  "I know how it sounds, Dan, believe me. But the pathologist's findings at my hospital will bear out what I said. Frankovich died of asphyxiation, and he had been dead more than forty-eight hours when he was brought in late Sunday."

  Olivares pinched his eyes together the way a man does when he feels a headache coming on.

  "And there was another one," Hovde continued, unable to stop now. "A woman who almost drove her car into Joana last Thursday, The autopsy showed that the woman had died hours before the accident. I talked to her husband, and he confirmed that there was an accident with an electric hair dryer that could have killed her. She was already dead when she steered her car at the girl."

  Olivares held up a hand. "Hold it."

  "You wanted to hear."

  "Okay, so now I've heard. And what I am going to do next is forget what I've heard. My advice to you is to do the same."

  "I can't forget it, Dan, I'm involved."

  "If you are, I'm sorry for you. I don't want any part of it."

  "But you're a policeman."

  "That's the point exactly, I'm a policeman. What I've got here is a simple case of homicide. Justifiable homicide, from the looks of it. My report will go in with the recommendation that no charges be filed."

  "Aren't you even curious about what happened?"

  "I know what happened, Doc. An ordinary guy went berserk. Happens every day. He attacked a citizen, got chilled by the citizen's boyfriend. Simple and straightforward."

  "But—"

  Olivares cut him off. "I don't know anything about any walking dead men, and I don't want to know anything about walking dead men."

  Hovde subsided. "I kind of thought you'd feel that way.

  Sergeant Olivares gave him a long, guarded look, then put the car in gear and took off.

  Chapter 17

  Dr. Hovde was waiting at the door when Joana and Glen arrived. The doctor's apartment, like Glen's, was a one-bedroom with a compact kitchen, tile bathroom, and breakfast bar. Unlike Glen's, which reflected the occupant's personality in a kind of organized disarray, Warren Hovde's apartment was as sterile and unlived-in-looking as the day he had moved in. Most of his personal things were still in the house with Marge. There was no place to put them here. Nor did he have any interest in making the place more homelike. At best, he could only think of the Marina Village as extremely temporary.

  Glen and Joana came in and sat down on the sofa. Dr. Hovde opened a cold bottle of Heineken's for each of them.

  "How's the head feeling, Glen?" he asked.

  Glen reached back and gingerly touched the lump where his head had struck the wall beam during the battle at Joana's house. "Tender, but it's no problem.''

  "That's good. How about you, Joana, are you sleeping all right?"

  "Well enough. I wake up with a start two or three times a night, but I've been able to get back to sleep with no trouble."

  "Good. If you think you need a sedative, I'll write you a prescription."

  "I'm all right," Joana said. She caught and held the doctor's eyes. "But you didn't invite us here tonight to get a medical report."

  Hovde gave them an embarrassed smile. "No, I didn't. I was sort of easing into what I really want to talk about. This isn't easy for me. I've been a doctor too long. I am comfortable with broken bones and bedsores and fever charts, but I am now going to have to admit that we're faced with something here that they didn't teach us about in med school."

  "Did you say 'we'?" Joana asked.

  Dr. Hovde nodded slowly. "Believe me, it is not my habit to involve myself in other people's personal lives. For a doctor that would be disastrous. But this...this is different. It's too close to me to ignore. Besides, Joana, I feel I owe you."

  "Owe me? I don't understand."

  "You came to me last week after your accident in the swimming pool. You had a bizarre story to tell, and you badly needed someone to listen to you. I listened, all right, but I didn't really hear you. The symptoms you described did not fit any known physical ailment, so I rejected them. Wrote them off as hallucinations. I sent you away with platitudes and a prescription for tranquilizers. That wasn't the kind of help you needed."

  "What are you getting at, Doctor?" Glen said.

  "In a moment," said Hovde. "Meantime, it would help if you both would ca
ll me Warren. Then I wouldn't feel so professorial."

  They gave him brief smiles of assent.

  "The first thing we should recognize," he continued, "is that Joana is in danger. Mortal danger."

  "Even now?" Glen said.

  "As far as we know. There have been two incidents already, and to be on the safe side we'd better assume there will be more."

  "Excuse me," Glen said, "but I seem to be a couple of beats out of synch. What incidents?"

  "The two attempts on Joana's life—Thursday afternoon, and again Sunday night."

  "The woman in the car was no accident, was it?" Joana said.

  "No. With what I've learned since then, I can assure you it was no accident.

  "Explain that, Warren," Glen said.

  "I will in a minute, but first consider the man who attacked Sunday night. There's no question that he was after Joana."

  "No argument on that," Glen said. "He wasn't interested in me at all. All he wanted was to put me out of the way so he could get at Joana."

  "Exactly. That makes two attempts on Joana's life in four days. Until we know exactly what we're up against, we've got to assume there will be more."

  "Well, damn it, what are we supposed to do?" Glen

  demanded. "I already killed one man."

  "No you didn't," Hovde said.

  There was a long moment during which no one spoke. Laughter from outside on the tennis court filtered in with the cool June air.

  "Warren, I killed that man Frankovich," Glen said. "I hit him with a poker as hard as I could maybe a dozen times. I saw his skull break. I could have killed him with any one of those blows."

  "That's the point," Hovde said. "Any single blow like that might have killed a normal person. The autopsy report confirmed that."

  Glen's forehead creased in a puzzled frown. "But then..."

  "You were hitting a dead man," Hovde told him.

  Glen stared. Joana sat quietly, waiting for the doctor to go on.

  "The autopsy on Frankovich was done at my hospital. So was the one on Mrs. Carlson, the woman in the car last Thursday. In both cases the time of death was established as being many hours before witnesses saw them fall."

  "Do the police know about this?" Glen asked.

  "They don't want to know. I tried telling Sergeant Olivares. He's an intelligent, capable man, but first and foremost, he is a policeman. When I started talking about walking dead people, he tuned me out. And I can't honestly say I blame him. There is no procedure to follow in a case like that, and policemen have to be very careful about improvising these days."

  "But...what does it mean?" Glen asked. "What the hell is going on?"

  "I wish I knew," said Hovde. "All I can say for sure is that these...walkers were dead when they attacked Joana."

  "It has something to do with what happened to me last week in the swimming pool, doesn't it?" Joana said. "The tunnel, the watchers along the walls, the voice that didn't want to let me come back."

  "That I can't answer," Hovde said. "Nothing in my experience equips me for speculating on things outside the normal."

  "It's crazy," Glen said. "It doesn't compute. But for the moment, let's say that is what's happening. Dead people, walkers, as you call them, are somehow, and for some reason, attacking Joana." He stopped and grinned without humor. "Jesus, it's even hard for me to say that aloud."

  "That will give you an idea of the trouble we'd have convincing the police."

  "I see what you mean. So the question now is where do we go from here? We can't just sit around and wait for another one of these zombies to make a move.

  "No, we can't do that," Hovde agreed. "And I have a suggestion. That's why I asked both of you to come here tonight."

  When he fell silent for a moment, Joana said, "What is it, Warren?"

  Hovde grinned crookedly. "Like Glen, I find it difficult to say this aloud. What it amounts to, there's someone I want you to meet. She's a nurse at the West Los Angeles Hospital."

  "A nurse?" Glen said. "What good can a nurse do us?"

  "Let him finish, Glen," Joana said quietly.

  "She's an intelligent girl, and a truly dedicated nurse," Hovde continued, "but it's not in that capacity that she can help us."

  "What, then?" Glen said impatiently.

  "She has, well, I guess you could call it an occult connection."

  "What is she, a witch?"

  "It's not the girl herself, it's her grandmother. I've heard her talk about the old lady and some of the strange powers she has." He gave a little snort of laughter. "I always thought it was foolishness. But that was before."

  Joana grew thoughtful, and the doctor looked at her questioningly.

  "What is it?"

  "Talking about the occult reminded me, Peter Landau never did show up Sunday night. On the telephone he sounded really excited. Said he had learned something important. Then, with everything that happened that night, I forgot all about him until just now. I wonder why I haven't heard from him."

  "Never mind him," Glen said, "he probably found another party to go to. There's no way he could help us with his astrological parlor tricks."

  "All the same, I wonder about him."

  "So what about this old lady, Warren?" Glen said. "The one with the power?"

  "I don't know any more than I've already told you," Hovde said. "If you'll agree, we can drive out and I'll introduce you to the nurse. Maybe she can put you in touch with her grandmother."

  "It's worth a try," Joana said.

  "What have we got to lose?" Glen added.

  Joana frowned and Glen looked at her. "Is something wrong?"

  "You just reminded me of something Peter said. I know he was kidding around at first, but I think he really wanted to help."

  "I know," Glen said more gently. "If we haven't i heard anything in the next couple of days, we'll look him up."

  Joana smiled at him. Then to Dr. Hovde she said, "You say we can meet this nurse tonight?"

  Hovde consulted his watch. "She'll be on her break at the hospital in twenty minutes. That would be the best time to talk to her."

  "We can take my car," Glen said. "I'll go get the keys."

  Glen went out, and they heard him jog off around the building toward his own apartment. Joana leaned forward on the sofa and searched the doctor with her eyes.

  "Warren, will you tell me something honestly?"

  "If I can."

  "Did I really drown in that pool last week? Did I die?"

  "What do you mean, Joana?"

  "I mean, what if I really don't belong here? What if coming back was a mistake? If they, the walkers, have a real claim on me, maybe I'm just hurting other people by trying to stay where I shouldn't be. You, Glen, Peter, all of you are mixed up in something that could be deadly dangerous because of me."

  "I don't know how to answer you, Joana. As for involving the rest of us, we're all acting of our own free will."

  "That night of the party here, you saw my...my body. Just tell me, was I dead?"

  Dr. Hovde was silent for a moment, then he said, "When I saw you, after they had pulled you out of the pool and Glen was working over you, my first thought was that you were gone."

  Joana winced.

  "But there are many, many documented cases where the vital signs were negative, where the patient was actually given up for dead, and yet revived and lived out a normal lifetime. Another thing I can assure you of, there is no record anywhere of anybody who was really and truly dead coming back to life. I don't think you have, either. If there was a mistake made, the other side made it, whoever they are. You're alive, Joana, as alive as any of us. You belong here, and we'll fight this out together to see that you stay here."

  Impulsively Joana got up and came over to kiss the doctor lightly on the cheek. She said. "Thanks, Warren, for reminding me how dear life is, and how really lucky I am to have such friends."

  The door opened and Glen came in jiggling the car keys. "All set."

 
Joana and the doctor followed him out to the Camaro.

  The cafeteria on the second floor of the West Los Angeles Receiving Hospital was roomy, efficient, and impersonal. Baskets of plastic flowers had been placed on the Formica-topped tables in a vain attempt to warm up the room. Doctors, nurses, and night-shift employees drifted in, ordered coffee, a roll, a sandwich, and hurried out. It was not an atmosphere that encouraged people to linger.

  At a table off to one side sat Joana, Glen, and Dr. Hovde. They had heavy white mugs of coffee in front of them, which they ignored, keeping their eyes on the entrance.

  "Here she comes now," said Hovde.

  A girl with clear olive skin and eyes like black coffee came into the cafeteria. She wore a white nylon nurses's uniform that moved with her small, well-proportioned body. She stood inside the doorway for a moment, looking around.

  "Over here, Ynez," said Dr. Hovde.

  She recognized him and came toward the table. Her smile was warm and honest.

  Dr. Hovde rose and made the introductions. "Glen, Joana, this is the lady I was telling you about, Ynez Villanueva. Ynez, these are my friends, Joana Raitt and Glen Early."

  "I'm happy to meet you ," said Ynez. Her voice held just a trace of musical Spanish.

  "Can I get you something?" Hovde asked. "A cup of coffee?"

  The nurse shook her head. "I never drink hospital coffee. Too much of it can dissolve your stomach lining."

  They laughed easily and Ynez sat down at the table. She looked expectantly at Hovde.

  "I appreciate your coming, Ynez," he said. "I've heard you speak several times of your grandmother. My friends may need her help."

  The dark girl looked first at Glen, then Joana. Her gaze lingered for a moment, and a shadow crossed her face. Then she turned to Dr. Hovde.

  "I thought you did not believe the stories of my grandmother."

  "I'm not sure what I believe in anymore," Hovde said. "One thing is sure, I'm not as quick to deny that things are possible just because they're outside my experience."

  " 'More things in heaven and earth,' eh, Doctor?" said Ynez with a soft smile.