“Booth thought it smelled funny. He never liked chakz, so he had me take a look at the wife. She was my first chak interview. Quiet little thing. Wouldn’t say mousy so much as still. Didn’t move or talk much. Detectives have, like, a radar for liars, but the cues are different with the dead. I didn’t know what to make of her. I didn’t think she’d killed him, but I couldn’t tell whether she felt guilty or didn’t feel much at all.
“For her part, she didn’t have a clue why we were suspicious about her husband’s death. I had to spell it out—if he didn’t have a reason to kill himself, maybe she did. That, she seemed adamant about. The idea made her shake, like it hurt to think about. She didn’t hurt him, she said; they’d always loved each other deeply.
“When it dawned on her how important it was, though, she did tell me something she hadn’t told anyone else. Mr. Flitwick kept a journal. He wanted to keep it private, so she’d kept it from the police and hadn’t even read it herself. It’s a chak thing, especially among the low-levels, taking things too literally. Private meant private. But with a little coaxing, she did give it to me, and it did explain things.
“According to what he’d written, ever since he’d brought her back, Flitwick felt something was missing. Nothing crass, like sex—he understood the limits of the process—but there was, in his words, a sense of intimacy missing. He thought it had to do with the fact that she’d experienced death and he hadn’t. So he kept asking, like you, what’s it like? What’s it like?
“She told him what I told you, she didn’t remember, but that wasn’t enough. Flitwick was convinced she’d had some mystical experience, and that was what was keeping them apart. If only he could feel what she’d felt, they could love each other the same way again, whatever that means. I’d seen that kind of thinking in rape or violent crime cases. It’s a variation on survivor’s guilt. Some spouses even put themselves in dangerous situations, trying to get the same thing to happen to them.
“In Flitwick’s case I don’t know if it was guilt, curiosity, or exactly like he said, but he decided to kill himself. He didn’t tell her why, though, didn’t want her to know he doubted their relationship. He figured that of course she’d bring him back. Then they’d be together like in the old days. Cue sappy music. So one fine morning, he kissed her on the cheek, headed to the garage, and sucked down some exhaust fumes. But she didn’t bring him back. As far as I know, she never considered it. Once I knew the whole story, of course I told her about her husband’s expectations.”
Turgeon was wide-eyed, but I let him hang until he asked.
“And did she? Did she bring him back like he’d wanted?”
“No.”
He looked angry. “Why? Why not?”
“I asked her the same question. Even had the same look on my face you do now. She had a hard time phrasing it, and I didn’t really understand until I came back myself, but it was something along the lines of she’d never do that to anyone, let alone someone she loved.”
He exhaled, made a sound like a word. I think it may have been bitch, like from the song he was listening to. No wonder he didn’t have a family.
Whether the story satisfied his curiosity or not, the conversation was over. A dull glow to our right told me we were nearly there. Dim orange fingers poked through the maze of dead branches. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Slow up. You’ll miss the turn.”
His head twisted. “Is that a fire? Does it mean the hakkers are here?”
“Nah. All it means is that they don’t have electricity.”
Even so, I rolled down the window and listened carefully. Nothing.
“The real thing to worry about is a motorcycle whine,” I explained. “Hakkers love riding in on rice grinders. Makes them feel like they’re playing polo or something. Your hearing’s probably better than mine. Keep your ears peeled and don’t keep any strange sounds to yourself.”
He nodded. “If you don’t mind my asking, then, you’ve seen an attack?”
“I never mind smart questions. Not usually, anyway. Yeah, I did, once. It’s why I moved back to the city. Look, Mr. Turgeon, I was against it, but we’re here now and things look quiet. Do what I say when I say it and I think we’ll have a decent shot at getting out of this in one piece. Okay?”
He didn’t answer. He was so mesmerized by the dark rectangles of the buildings above the tree line that he missed the turn. We had to back up.
Not a good start.
Once we were pointed the right way, the Turgeon-mobile took the buckled asphalt and rocks easily. I started thinking the Hummer wasn’t a bad idea. It could probably even handle its share of machete and crowbar blows. Worse came to worst we could take cover in it. Wished it wasn’t piss yellow, though. Aside from being embarrassing, the gaudy color was easy to spot.
After a few curves, the road straightened on a nice postcard view of Bedland. Years back, Mayor Kagan and the board convinced Bedland Mattresses Inc. to open a factory here. Everyone thought it’d bring a ton of jobs. Two thousand, they guessed. In the middle of construction, the recession hit. Bedland went under, and I don’t mean under the blankets, and stiffed a bunch of local contractors. One wound up throwing himself off the main building so his family could collect on his life insurance policy. Nobody ever brought him back either. Lucky bastard.
With the girders, concrete, and drywall in place for three buildings, it made a perfect home-away-from-home for a certain class of pulse-challenged undesirables.
The banana-mobile crunched along, its halogen headlights hitting makeshift tents and tin-and-cardboard huts. They usually housed the overflow crowd, but they were dark, lifeless, to coin a phrase. The fire lights we’d seen from the main road were inside the buildings. Funny.
Funnier still when, as we watched, one by one, those lights went out.
They’d spotted us. It dawned on me that there was another really good reason coming here at night was a stupid idea. Mistaken identity. Nobody ever visits shantytowns at night except hakkers, so that’s what they took us for. How could I be so stupid?
“Slow down!” I said.
Too late. The air in front of the Hummer exploded.
Turgeon slammed the brakes so hard the shoulder belt nearly crushed my collarbone. As the heat blast hit the windshield, an enormous fire flower blossomed a few yards ahead. I could barely make out the shape of the wrecked car behind it.
“The chakz are getting more aggressive in their defense tactics,” I said. I was impressed. I opened the glove compartment and found a flashlight. With a click the light came on.
“Are you sure it’s the chakz?” Turgeon said. His voice had gone up half an octave.
“Pretty much. Relax. Kill the engine and get out of the car, slow. Once we’re outside, don’t say anything; just stand behind me.”
He was busy staring at the fire, so I had to tap him and repeat myself. Once he cut the ignition, he pulled a large piece from the same jacket pocket that used to hold the envelopes.
Looked like a forty-five.
“Put that away,” I hissed. “And don’t take it out again unless I say otherwise.”
He hesitated.
I put my hand on the gun. “This is what you paid for, right? My expertise?”
He gave me that pouty expression again, but shoved it back in his pocket. I wanted to pat him on the cheek and tell him what a good boy he was.
Instead, I got out, my eyes half on the fire, half on Turgeon. Once I was certain he was between me and the Hummer, I faced the burning car and held up my arms.
“Hey! We’re not hakkers, you idiots! You think those lowlifes could afford wheels like this? You think if they could they’d drive it out here and scratch the finish? Hello?”
Nothing. I pointed to my face.
“I’m one of you! I’m a chak! Hessius Mann! Any of you out there with half a brain left know me?”
Again, nothing.
Turgeon nudged me and whispered, “Ask about Boyle.”
I waved him off
. “Shh! They heard me. They’re thinking about it. Keep quiet and watch.”
I trained my eyes on the edges of the flames, trying to peer into the long, flat darkness between the burning car and the main factory building. That’s when I saw them. They’d blended in so well with the shadows, the dead bushes, the broken bits of concrete, they were as good as invisible until they moved. It was as if they’d planned it that way.
Chakz. Lots. Five. Ten. Twenty. All shambling toward us. A field of rotting flesh and gnashing teeth.
“Oh, my God,” Turgeon said. He whimpered and staggered backward.
I kept my eyes on what was coming and muttered, “You think?”
4
The closest was a real walking-dead poster child—a gleet in a construction jumpsuit with a juicy hole in his forehead the size of a golf ball. Arms out Frankenstein style, he looked as if he was leading the others like a parade marshal.
There’s a song in there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.
As they came forward, I was more worried about Turgeon. He held his ground, but shook so badly I felt a breeze at my back. I was afraid he’d do something stupid that’d require quick thinking on my part, or at least a phone call to Misty to say good-bye.
If the shambling didn’t freak him, the moaning would. It rose above the crackle of the car fire, one sandpaper-dry voice overlapping another, making a steady rush, like the ocean on a white-noise machine.
When a chak moans in torpor, I take it for sorrow, profound sorrow. That doesn’t explain it in a feral. At that point, why moan at all? There’s also the weird fact that when a feral shambles, he moans louder, as if there’s a gear connecting the diaphragm and the legs, like the way a pigeon’s head bobs when it walks. Human body is a complicated mother. The dead ones more so. Sometimes my left leg shakes like it’s hooked up to a vibrator.
Sure enough, soon as Frankenstein was three yards off, Turgeon went for his gun. I grabbed his elbow. It was a breach in living/dead etiquette, but too fucking bad if he didn’t like a chak touching him. The fat moved loosely aside under my fingers, as if I hadn’t gauged my own strength correctly. The elbow was surprisingly bony.
He yelped and tried to pull his arm free.
“No!” I said. “Listen to me. If they’re feral, it won’t help. Kneecap one and you’ll only piss the others off.”
His face went blank. “You said to bring a gun.”
“For the hakkers!” I said. “But I guess we should have gone over that in the car, huh?”
“What do we do?”
I was about to tell him to dive for the Humvee, but something caught my eye. The minute I’d said “hakkers,” Frankenstein blinked. Blinking is not something ferals do. It could’ve been a trick of the light, but I didn’t think so. Plus, they were already close enough to charge, but hadn’t.
I raised my voice so anyone listening could hear me. “Mr. Turgeon, I know you’re scared, but please put the gun away for now, nice and slow.”
The moment it disappeared into his pocket, the crowd slowed. I heard a relieved hiss.
Damn.
I rolled my eyes. “Who the fuck do you think you’re playing with?” I yelled.
“What? I did what you asked!” Turgeon said.
“Not you, them!”
I took a step toward the crowd. “I already said I was one of you!” I shone the flashlight up into my face. “You think I need this crap?”
When Frankenstein stopped and squinted, it was obvious even to Turgeon they’d been faking. It was a setup. They’d taken us for hakkers and hoped a mass of ferals might scare us off. If we’d been a bunch of drunks on motorcycles it could’ve worked. Nice.
Frankie held up his hand. “False alarm! Everyone back to places!”
More moans. Not desolate, just annoyed. He jerked a thumb at the burning car. “And somebody put that thing out!”
I stuck my hand out open palmed and took our new friend’s paw in my wrinkled mitt.
“He’s just nervous,” I said, pointing back at Turgeon.
“He’s not the only one, Mann. I’m Thornell. Word is Bedland’s getting hit tonight.”
I let go of his hand and punched the air. “Shit! Shit! Shit! That’s what all the theatrics are about?”
“Hell, yeah,” Thornell said. “It’s not like the cops are going to help.” As if it itched, he rubbed the rim of the hole in his head, then wiped his fingers on his arm. “You’re so worried about it, what’re you doing here? We figured you had to be hakkers. Who else?”
I’d hoped to play this close to the chest, in case anyone working for Boyle’s siblings was here ahead of us. But with the hakker odds ramped up, my strategy shifted.
“Long story short, I’ve got some good news for a chak I heard stays here.”
Thornell laughed. That meant that he was high-functioning, and that he was easing up on us. “Good news? Didn’t know they made that kind.”
“Yeah, there are probably snowballs in hell, too.” I pulled out the photo. “Frank Boyle. Look familiar?”
Thornell stared and scratched his forehead hole again. “We’ve got a Frank, but that’s not him.”
Maybe he wasn’t all that high-functioning. You never know which parts of the brain are working, and that hole meant at least some was missing.
“Look again. Picture him dead a few months.”
He squinted, shook his head a while, but finally nodded. “Yeah, yeah. That is Frank. One of our community organizers. Lives in a room off the front hall of the admin building. Shares a space with Ashby.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Shares? I didn’t think we went for roomies.”
Thornell gave me a good-natured shrug. “I don’t, but he does. It’s company, I guess. Rumor is the kid reminds Frank of someone, maybe a younger brother.”
“Kid?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Ashby’s a juvie. They tried him as an adult for shooting a cop with his own gun during a convenience-store robbery.”
Having been a detective means I heard a lot of the local RAR stories. This one rang a bell because it sucked so much. “Right. Didn’t bother with ballistics, then found out the cop’s gun misfired. He’d accidentally shot himself. Hey, I do remember things sometimes.”
“Good for you,” Thornell said. “Good for Boyle, too, I guess. Hope he stays. This whole thing was his idea. He’s one of the smart ones. We don’t have many.”
That bit of news lowered my threat level from panicked to anxious. Not only was Boyle here, but we’d be able to talk to him. I nudged Turgeon, but he didn’t look as happy as I thought he should. He was probably still thinking about the hakkers.
Thornell looked over his shoulder at the smoldering car fire. “Better get back to my spot. Whatever business you’ve got with Frank, be quick.”
He trudged off, calling the names of a few stragglers. Some tripped, bumped into one another, backed up, and bumped into one another again.
The smart ones are pretty rare. It must have taken hours for them to set that trap up.
Turgeon still seemed out of it, so I said, “We could come back in the morning.”
Stunned as he was, he shook his head no. Right answer. One, we were too close to give up now, and two, by morning, after the hakker attack, Boyle might not be one of the smart ones anymore.
I didn’t feel good about leaving the Humvee behind, but the smoldering car was blocking the road. Pointing the flashlight at the broken asphalt, I nodded for Turgeon to follow. He stayed so close behind me, if I so much as slowed down, he’d smack into me. I had to tell him twice to give me some space.
Like the dead, the place had yet to be completely reclaimed by nature. We made our way along a concrete path shattered and cracked a thousand times by years, neglect, and pretty thick weeds. Whenever we passed some chakz, they’d moan, not stopping until I pointed the light up at my kisser and mentioned Thornell. Then they cursed us out.
Admin was a smaller building sitting to the right of the massive factory, t
he upscale Bedland neighborhood, compared to the middle-class factory and the makeshift shelter ghetto. By the time we reached it, all the fires inside had gone out, leaving the place as pitch-black as it gets.
Back when I lived here, I’d managed a spot in the factory, but admin was where I’d want to hole up in case of attack. The concrete walls were so thick and strong, they seemed smug. The windows were tall and narrow, more for light than air, not wide enough for a man to pass through. The only spot that might be vulnerable was the front entrance.
Still, even as we walked up to it I couldn’t see inside. The dirt on the glass doors was so thick it sent the flashlight beam bouncing back empty-handed. There could be an army or a toy store in there and I wouldn’t know until it was too late. Good for Boyle. If he was really lucky there’d be a rear entrance and a basement.
Turgeon was getting too close again. I put a hand back to restore some distance, then pushed the door open with my foot. It swung in noiselessly. Someone kept the hinges oiled.
I turned the beam to the four corners and crept into the tomblike reception area. It was surprisingly intact, with a front desk, still-life paintings on the wall, and one or two plastic potted plants. There was a big cracked coffee table surrounded by cushioned seats and couches. Some chak who was either anal or had kept his sense of humor had put a few magazines out on it. Far to the left there was a wide hallway with closed doors. Offices, I figured.
But no sound came from anywhere.
Turgeon whispered, “Now what?”
“Call him?” I suggested. I was going to try it myself, but he beat me to it.
“Is Frank Boyle here?” His thin voice didn’t even echo.
“Connect the dots,” I whispered. “Give him details. Little louder wouldn’t hurt, either.”
“Mr. Boyle, I have a message from your father!”
Nothing.
“More.”
“Your dead father. I mean . . . I’m sorry to say that your father passed away. That’s why I’m here. It’s unusual, considering your condition . . . but he’s left you a lot of money. His name is Martin Boyle. That’s your father, yes? I’m his attorney. Actually, I work for his friend. . . .”
Dead Mann Walking Page 4