Dead Mann Walking

by Stefan Petrucha

  I kept my voice even. “It’s not like I was expecting you.”

  Turgeon cleared his throat. “Detective, I’d like . . .”

  The sentence ended with Booth’s finger an inch from Turgeon’s nose. “You know what I’d like? I’d like you to shut up. We’ve got two dead bodies, the real kind, upstairs. One with a mangled face, so I can guess what happened there, but the other has a nice neat bullet hole.” He tapped Turgeon’s forehead. “Right about there. I’m guessing, but the entry wound looks to me like a nine-millimeter reduced-velocity, maybe a Walther P99.” Finger still on my client’s forehead, Booth turned to me again. “That’d be a good gun for a chak. You wouldn’t have one on you, would you, Mann?”

  Matter of fact I did, tucked back in my waistband. “Why would I be carrying, Tom? It’s illegal, last I heard.”

  He came down the steps and leaned his face in, daring me to twitch, but my body only does that at random. There was broiled chicken and barbecue sauce on his breath. Home-cooked, I think. He’d been pulled away from a meal.

  “Because you’re one of the ‘smart’ ones,” he said. “And it’d be stupid to show up here tonight without a gun.”

  “Nice of you to say so, but I’m not feeling very smart right now.” No shit. If he frisked me, it’d be all over. Even our cut-rate ballistics department would match the bullet to my piece in under an hour.

  “I bet,” he said. “What is it they do to killer chakz?” He held two fingers up and scissored them, imitating the clippers they use on our heads. “D-cap.”

  I knew Booth pretty well, and one of the things I remembered was that he always held his breath when he patted down a chak. First, though, he’d give himself a good breath. He never warned them; he just inhaled and started patting.

  If he inhaled, I knew I was in trouble.

  He turned away and sucked down some air. Oh, shit.

  “I shot that man,” Turgeon squeaked. “With a Walter . . . uh . . . that gun you said.”

  We both turned to him. Booth clenched the flashlight tighter. “You?”

  “I had to. He was about to kill someone with a machete.”

  “A chak?”

  “It was dark. But that wouldn’t make any difference in court, would it? If you bring charges. And I do have witnesses.”

  “I saw it,” I said.

  “So did I,” Boyle put in.

  Booth laughed. “Chakz can’t be sworn in. Let’s see the gun.”

  Turgeon cleared his throat. He sounded dry. “I . . . must have dropped it.”

  Booth exhaled and looked around. I knew what he was thinking. If he pursued the shooting, he’d also have to pursue the technically illegal hakker attack. The livebloods had fled, chakz his only witnesses. He grunted.

  “Get out. Take them with you.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. The four of us filed up the stairs, Ashby first, me last. As I passed Booth, I tried to ask him about Lenore. I don’t know why—maybe because I used to admire the guy, maybe because I still had a thing for the truth, maybe because there were things he’d seen that might fill in the blanks for me.

  “Tom, I didn’t . . .”

  “Don’t. Don’t even think about it. Keep shambling.”

  “My mistake.”

  Back in the hallway, a few uniforms blocked our path until Booth reluctantly said, “Let them the fuck through.”

  “Heh-heh,” Ashby said. “We’re going through. We’re going the fuck through.”

  “Sh,” Boyle said. “Sh.”

  I wished the night had been cooler, but it was thick with August heat, so the humidity held the smell of rotting meat high in the air. As we walked, Boyle put his hand on Ashby’s head and tried to steer the kid’s gaze down at the ground so he wouldn’t see all the mangled bodies. But even the floor was littered with parts.

  “Is that Mrs. Winter’s arm? Heh-heh.”

  Boyle tried to keep him quiet, but Ashby kept naming limbs, recognizing who they belonged to from the torn clothing or the jewelry. Fortunately, when the kid spotted the Humvee, that grabbed all his attention.

  “Nice car! Will we ride in the nice car?”

  “Yes, Ashby.”

  “Heh-heh.”

  Once we were crunching along the road, the kid stopped using words altogether. He just made that little heh-heh noise. Turgeon looked like it was driving him crazy. Me, I was so relieved to be heading away from Bedland, it was as good as a song on the radio.

  Turgeon didn’t speak until the dull glow of the city was visible; then he half stammered, “That was . . . close.”

  He’d pulled my ass out of the fire with Booth, so I was feeling generous.

  “Any landing you can walk away from, right, Mr. Turgeon?” I said. “And, hell, you were right about coming tonight. If you’d listened to me and waited until morning, we’d be trying to find Frank Boyle’s pieces, no offense.”

  “None taken,” Boyle said.

  “I was . . . happy to thwart that Detective Booth,” Turgeon said.

  I shrugged. “He’s not so bad. Good cop. Just has a blind spot.”

  “Are you joking?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he added, “You might want to leave that gun with me. I can . . . you know . . . make sure it disappears.”

  I pulled out the Walther, emptied the clip, and handed it over. “Not the kind of thing I’d expect from a liveblood attorney, sticking his neck out for a chak. Mind my asking if you do that sort of thing a lot?”

  “No,” he said. “Never.”

  He opened his glove compartment, tossed in the gun, and pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash.

  “How many of those do you usually carry?”

  “As many as I think I might need.”

  After he handed me the envelope, we all got quiet for a while, but it was a long ride. At some point I turned to the man of the hour, the guy we’d risked our necks for. “Boyle, you really going to use the money to build some kind of shelter for chakz?”

  “That’s the plan. What do you think, Ashby?”

  “Sounds good. Good. Good. Heh-heh.”

  I believed him. So who knew? Maybe it was worth it. But every silver lining has a cloud. Something told me I just hadn’t found this one yet.

  As we passed through the edge of the Bones, I spotted a familiar silhouette by a vacant lot. It was Misty, rubbing a rag against her skirt like she was trying to set it on fire. The shadows farther back in the lot shifted, telling me she wasn’t alone.

  There was only one thing I could think of that would get her out at this hour: scoring meth. Damn.

  “Turgeon, pull over here. Let me out.”

  When she saw the Humvee, Misty reared like a deer and looked ready to book. Worried I’d have to chase her down, I popped the door and unbuckled my belt. To my surprise, the minute she saw my kisser, she gave me a big smile. It wasn’t drugs then, not with that grin.

  Relief washed over me, uncomfortable as any emotion, but not unwelcome. Remembering my manners, I turned back to Turgeon. “Guess this concludes our contract.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Thanks for helping me out with Booth.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I was going to tell him he wasn’t so bad, but seeing as I hadn’t said he was bad in the first place, it didn’t seem appropriate. He was probably exhausted from all the excitement, eager to get to some comfy hotel bed, and I doubted I’d be contacting him for an effusive letter of reference anytime soon. So that was about it.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Detective, heh-heh.”

  “Bye, Ashby. Hey, Boyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have any trouble when you try to set up that home, you let me know, okay?”

  “Will do, Mann.”

  I closed the door. The environmental terror headed down the road, a big, bright yellow toy in a junkyard. Case closed.

  “What took you so long?” Misty said.

  “Traffic,” I said, pointing out at the barren street
s. “But what’re you doing out at this hour, young lady?”

  She made a face, pulled off a flat, and rubbed the bottom of her foot. “That chak you sent me to clean up? He may have had trouble with his finger, but there was nothing wrong with his feet. Took me two hours to chase him down. I had to get Jonesey to help. Got damn bleach all over my skirt. It’s ruined.”

  One of the shadows shifted into the light. It was Jonesey. The gang was all here.

  “Hey, Hess.” He was still looking a little out of it. Misty probably wanted to keep an eye on him after I mentioned the feral thing.

  “Hey, yourself. Weren’t you heading off to—” I stopped myself short. Last we spoke, he was going to try to get his crack back. If he’d forgotten that brilliantly suicidal idea, I wasn’t going to remind him about it. “. . . Disney World, or some other happy place?”

  “Funny. That guy you were talking to in the backseat, that was Frank Boyle, right? The one who inherited all the money?”

  “Six points to you, Jonesey.”

  “I hear you say he was going to build a home for chakz?”

  I nodded. “That’s what he called it. Could be our first philanthropist, if Turgeon doesn’t rob him blind.”

  After the nod, Jonesey only half listened. He was rolling the idea around in his head, hoping to get it stuck somewhere. “Safe place? Huh. Safe. Yeah. Y’know, that is such a good idea, a really good idea. I’ve been thinking about stuff like that, like maybe we could get a little organized, try to protect our rights more. I . . . I could help do that. I used to motivate people. I could put together a rally.”

  “Yeah, Jonesey. You could,” I told him.

  “I’m going to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t hurt yourself.”

  “Funny. I’ll see you, Mann.”

  He walked off, nodding to himself. Misty put her hand in the crook of my arm. We watched him for a bit, then headed in the opposite direction.

  “So, it went well, huh?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Did you mean that, what you said to Jonesey about organizing chakz being a good idea?”

  I laughed. “Hell, no. It’d be like getting cats to line up.”

  “Really? Because I bet he could do it.”

  I stopped and looked at her. “I hope the hell not. If he succeeded, even a little, it’d be worse than the mess I just left behind. Get more than five chakz together in the same place, the livebloods will think we’ve gone feral en masse and start D-capping like we were flowers and they needed a bouquet. Haven’t you ever seen a zombie movie?”

  She scrunched that pretty, pockmarked face of hers. “Then why’d you lie?”

  I shrugged. “I wanted to keep his brain busy. After I snapped him out of that feral fit, he was planning a home invasion. An hour from now he’ll be trying to assemble a moon rocket out of piss and cardboard. Why not let him hold on to something?”

  She seemed a little deflated. “Same thing with Frank Boyle and that home?”

  “I have to admit, that’s a different case. He’s smart. If Turgeon’s honest . . . and Boyle plays it right, buys some property as far from what they call civilization as possible. Then maybe . . .”

  Misty narrowed her eyes. “So you do believe in something?”

  “Now, don’t go talking crazy like that.”

  “Come on, Hess, new life comes out of the dead, right?”

  “Sounds like you’re expecting a tree to grow out of my chest.”

  She slapped my shoulder. “Shut up. I’m just saying maybe something’s watching out for people like us. Maybe the universe has plans for Boyle, or Jonesey, or even you.”

  I didn’t want to get into it. Like Jonesey and his PAC of the living dead, if it made Misty happy to believe in some spaghetti monster in the sky, if it kept her sober one more day, I didn’t see the harm in it.

  We found an all-night CVS. Feeling like a big man, I bought Misty a new coffee machine, and myself a new digital voice recorder with two gigs of flash memory and a couple of James Bond microphone attachments. I paid too much for both, but what the hell.

  Our prizes wrapped in plastic, we headed home. After we made it up the stairs, she made for the mattress in the front room. I yanked off my tie and shambled toward the office recliner. I thought about the cash I had, how I could actually get some furniture for the place. I had to admit, right then and there, it looked like a happy ending. It was almost enough to make me think the universe did have plans for me.

  Then again, I’ve seen too much of its other work to consider that a good thing.

  7

  Happy ending? Tell it to my dreams.

  No sooner did Mr. Sandman whisk me out of my dried husk than I was in a nightmare. I still dream, but wish to hell I didn’t. And this one I remembered. It was in a kind of Technicolor that makes your skin crawl. I was in the suburbs of Fort Hammer. Lenore was there, alive. We had two kids playing out back. I didn’t know their names. I think it was a boy and a girl.

  The bell rang. I got a bad feeling about it, but I opened the door anyway, because it’s silly not to, right? There was a mattress-wide guy on the front step. He was hairless; his rounded shoulders matched the curve of his bald head. He had waxy skin, a thick brow, and dead eyes. Dead eyes. He didn’t look at me. He looked off to the side and waited, like I was the one who was supposed to know what came next.

  Telling myself I was crazy for being nervous, I asked, “Can I help you, buddy?”

  Now, he looked at me, but I could tell he didn’t like it. Not me—he didn’t like seeing anyone else’s eyes. His thick lips parted. He struggled to make some sounds. It was a big effort, frustrating in the extreme. It made him angry to have to try.

  I felt bad, but I couldn’t make out any words. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

  He did it again, made the sounds, only slower and louder. His bare feet lifted a bit as he shifted from side to side. I could tell it was the same noises in the same sequence, but that was all. “Sorry?”

  He gritted his teeth. His muscles tensed. I was creeped-out big-time and worried that if he smelled it on me, my fear would add to his frustration. He repeated himself a third time, but still no go.

  I twisted my head to look past him, hoping there was a neighbor out, someone who might know what this was about, someone I could ask for help. Instead, all over the cul-de-sac, there were more like him, dozens, like a plague. They weren’t exactly identical. One was a little shorter, another a little thinner, but they were all the same. There was at least one at the door of each house.

  I turned back to mine and realized he’d been talking all along. Maybe he said it more clearly this last time and I hadn’t paid attention. There was nothing I could do about it now, or about what came next. When I shook my head apologetically, his eyes flared. His thick lips curled into a bestial snarl. He screamed the sounds so loud it hurt my ears. I had to take a step back.

  The others heard him. In unison, they turned toward my house, toward me. They walked toward me, slowly, like the shadow of a cloud.

  Panting, he glared at me, waiting for my response. Our eyes met. He saw my fear.

  “I don’t understand!”

  The nearest of the others reached my lawn. He looked angry, too. They all did. They were growling now. The one at my door stepped in. I tried to stop him, but couldn’t. He was too big. I fell backward. He didn’t hit me; I fell because I was so afraid. I lay on my back, helpless as they came.

  The terror was so strong I wanted to curl into a ball and roll away forever. I tried to fight it, distract myself, but part of me knew that sooner or later, it was going to get me.

  They were going to get me. And make me one of them.

  “Hess, Hess! Wake up!”

  Reality split like the pants on a fat man. I was in two places at once, no idea which one was real, which to believe in. I was standing in the living room surrounded by the idiot jackals. At the same time I was lying in the ratty recliner, looking up at
Misty. If I had a choice, I knew which one I wanted, even if I was dead there. I lunged for my office.

  “Hess, will you . . . ?”

  The living room and the bald men flickered. There was a shiver or two, or three. As the dream let go, I threw myself out of the recliner, literally falling back into my office, the more palatable hell.

  Sickly light dribbled through the holes in the yellowed shade behind Misty. It was morning. Misty, seeing my eyes open, stopped screaming and let go of me. Something was wrong. The more she came into focus, the more she seemed upset. About what? I wasn’t moaning, was I? Not now. Things were looking up, right?

  I sat and rubbed some splinters from the floor off my fingers.

  “Sorry, Misty. Was I screaming in my sleep again? The drug dealers complaining?”

  She shook her head. There were tears on her face. She looked like she had a dog I didn’t know about, and it’d gotten hit by a car.

  “What?”

  “You have to see. . . .”

  “What do I have to see?”

  She could hardly talk. She turned her back, looking like she was going to run. Instead, she turned on the TV. A familiar talking head, the “litter-news” blonde. Over her shoulder a drone camera showed a stretch of the desert highway outside Fort Hammer. The scene looked familiar, like it was the same footage they used yesterday during Colin Wilson’s story. Was it something new about him? Not bloody likely. Misty wouldn’t shed tears over that. Still trying to orient myself, I caught a few snippets from the speaker:

  “. . . another chak body in pieces . . .”

  “. . . again, no head . . .”

  “. . . the mess never ends . . .”

  Cut to garbage bag commercial. Nice placement.

  The thought of another head out there gave me a shudder, but that still didn’t explain Misty’s reaction. While the set squawked about the bag’s tight seal, I searched for her eyes in the dim room. What was I missing? She’s bighearted, might be sympathetic about a D-cap, but it’s a rough world and she knows it.

  “You worried about me? Okay, so I was freaked out about Wilson, but do you really think a second D-cap story is going to put me over the edge? Hey . . . did I even tell you about Wilson?”