The Spy's Little Zonbi

by Cole Alpaugh

  The dream changed toward the end of the summer. He began catching glimpses of something that had grabbed her from below and was dragging her down into the bottomless depths. Yes, he’d pushed his little girl, but something snagged her and wouldn’t let go. He saw the white knuckles of a hand encircling Tylea’s ankle, and the pale arm that was pulling and pulling. One night, he saw the face of Mitra.

  The woman he’d loved and married was drawing Tylea down into the abyss, wrenching the precious air out of his child, stealing her away to a place impossibly out of reach.

  But it wasn’t the Mitra he knew. He could tell from a glimpse of her eyes it was someone very different, a stranger.

  It was a woman he’d never met.

  Chapter 23

  The assignment was murder.

  An encrypted email from DB6 appeared in Chase’s inbox during the first cool days of October. He hadn’t seen it right away, only checking when he went online for something else. It had been the weather this time. The extended forecast, a look at the radar, then over to his inbox as an afterthought. It was a message marked urgent, an assignment to kill a man and grab a laptop computer. Make and model, the guy’s name, address, and brief physical description went along with the death sentence.

  Chase came close to clicking the delete button, forgetting he’d read the message. It would have been so easy and made so much sense the way his life was going. Nightmares? Everyone had a few nightmares here and there. Had something changed between Mitra and him? He supposed they were still recuperating from what had happened in Bernie’s bedroom. Better to let it fade, the way things faded at the bottom of a deep swimming pool.

  Richard Holeva’s home was on a narrow road that wound through small towns in Northern New Jersey. Towns with familiar names Chase knew from growing up in the next county. He’d played soccer and baseball on some of their high school fields.

  Holeva had no immediate neighbors, just an old, non-working farm across the street, its owners selling pints of raspberries from an honor-system table out front. A hand-printed sign read THREE DOLLARS. According to township records, Holeva had a pair of licensed dogs, which would be an issue. But his house was surrounded by woods and there was a row of pine trees in front for easy cover. No alarm services were available in the area and the local township police only had three full-time officers, according to their website.

  He should have been given more information. Married, arrest record, military record, gun permits—things that could provide a heads-up. Even something easy like the occupation listed on his tax returns. Gun store owner? Hazardous chemical engineer?

  There was a single exterior light at the end of a hundred-foot driveway, then plenty of shadows and unkempt shrubs in front of the ranch-style house. There was the front door and eight windows for possible entrance, and an attached two-car garage on the right side with probable access to the kitchen. The slope of the yard fell away, so the rear of the house was actually two stories. A deck ran the length of the top floor in back, but that’s all Chase could tell from slow drive-bys.

  He stashed his Jeep less than a quarter mile down the road, behind the guts of a new-home construction site. Lifting the hood, he used a wrench to loosen one battery cable. It would look like a drywaller’s broken-down vehicle, just in case this was a routine spot for the cops to check. With a third of the soccer season remaining—and a lifetime with his little girl—it was no time to be sloppy. And he already had a bad feeling about this job.

  It was dark when Chase walked away from his Jeep and followed the beam of his small flashlight. He stopped at the road to listen for cars, then turned and jogged toward Holeva’s house. The road was lined by thick trees to the last fifty yards, but no cars came. He stepped onto Holeva’s property, found a spot with a good view and waited.

  Holeva arrived at six forty-five, using an automatic garage door opener to pull his Ford Explorer into one of the two parking spots. He left the door open and went inside to let out his dogs—two yellow Labs. The dogs pissed on half a dozen bushes before clamoring back into the garage for bowls of dry kibble. Holeva stayed with them, tinkering while they finished. The dogs then came back outside to crap along the narrow lawn, off to the right of the house.

  Holeva was dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeved button-down shirt. He wore running shoes and didn’t have a visible cellphone.

  With a short scope, Chase could have dropped him from where he watched with a single shot, snatched the computer and put distance between him and this place in a matter of minutes. But he wasn’t a hit man, he was a reporter slash spy, and didn’t have an arsenal of high-power rifles. The feeling that something was very wrong about this job grew stronger, wouldn’t let his heart and breathing recover after the short jog. Chase stood on the dark carpet of pine needles and newly fallen leaves, certain it was his last job for DB6. He didn’t sign on to be an assassin. Exactly what would they do if he simply stopped reading his emails? Would they send someone to try and convince him to keep working? Or had the screw-up in Vermont changed things? Was being sent here to kill a man part of that change?

  When the dogs were inside and settled, Chase walked across the front lawn right up to the front left corner of the house. He could hear music and Holeva’s voice as he sang along; he smelled roasting meat. The shower turned on. At eight, Holeva saved Chase the trouble of searching for the laptop by pulling a case from inside the closet door of his small, front bedroom office. Chase moved right up to the window—black cap and sweater absorbing the light through the glass—and watched Holeva power up and click open the browser. Holeva opened a mail server that looked vaguely familiar from across the room.

  Chase backed away, slipped off his dark cotton cap and pulled the white shirt collar to expose it at the neckline of his sweater. He removed his PPK from its shoulder holster, checked the indicator pin to confirm the round in the chamber, and clicked off the safety. He made three unhurried, polite knocks on the front door. Nothing urgent sounding that might cause an adult male to first dial the cops, even out in these suburbs at this time of night.

  Both dogs barked, sounding curious rather than angry.

  “I’m so sorry.” Chase was congenial over the dog racket, as the front door was unlocked and swung partly open. “I’m coming from my mother’s home, and can’t believe I ran out of gas.” He gestured out toward the road, shaking his head apologetically.

  “Oh, sure, okay,” Holeva began, adjusting his bathrobe and trying to usher both large dogs out of the way. “Sorry, they’ll lick you to death before …”

  Chase’s gun pressed to the side of the man’s head.

  “Put them in the garage.” Chase’s voice was slow and firm. No need to make this all crazy. Just keep things calm, he thought. But what was he waiting for? Leaving his Jeep exposed wasn’t a huge risk, but any risk was bad. Risks had a cumulative effect. Half of him wanted to pop the man right there, just do the hit and get out. But something was wrong with this situation. The dead silence from DB6, then a domestic job so close by? Chase was hired as a spy, not a cold-blooded murderer. And DB6 knew this. They had to expect him to have apprehensions. They would have told Chase if this guy was plotting to import black-market radioactive materials from Russia. They’d have justified the hit for his benefit.

  Or would they?

  “Slow and easy.” Chase followed Holeva through to the kitchen to shut the dogs in the garage. His finger tight on the trigger, he let Holeva turn and face him after closing off the dogs, who’d begun to whine at the stranger. Chase took a step back.

  “I know who you are,” Holeva said, and reached up to casually run both hands through his damp hair. “And I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if you’d lighten your grip on that trigger.”

  “You have ten seconds to live, so you might want to talk fast,” Chase said, without meaning it at all. Somehow, from somewhere deep inside his brain, he suddenly knew the swimming pool nightmare he’d been having was in some way real.


  “Limp Shockley was my recruiter,” Holeva said. “Your assignment to kill me didn’t come from DB6 or the CIA, it came from the outside.”

  “What do you mean the outside?” Chase asked, but he already knew. He knew it in his heart and in his legs, which now threatened to collapse.

  “Your wife, Chase, is one of the bad guys. I have a file for you to read on my computer.” Holeva pushed past him, brushed the gun out of his face. He’d called him Chase.

  “Stop,” Chase said, but there was no stopping.

  “She’s an Iranian agent,” Holeva called over his shoulder, and Chase’s finger very nearly pulled the trigger.

  Instead of reading the file about his wife, Chase slipped out the front door. He didn’t need to read it. It fit together like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It took him over three hours to get home, but he wouldn’t remember the drive. He just drove and drove, parked his Jeep when he got to the house and headed inside. He climbed out of his clothes, shoved his holstered gun on top of the bookshelf, and slid into bed next to Mitra, who had fallen asleep reading, as usual. He carefully pulled off her glasses and set them on the nightstand, along with her book.

  Chase woke up just as the sky was transitioning from black to purple and quietly wandered into Tylea’s room. She was surrounded by dozens of stuffed animals, sleeping on her belly with her hands tucked underneath. Her little kid breath still sweet in her sleep, Chase kissed her soft cheek and told her he loved her. She’d laid her book and glasses on the nightstand.

  He went back to bed and fell asleep again. The nightmare didn’t come.

  Hours later, Mitra’s car door woke him. She was loading Tylea in the back seat for school, just outside their bedroom window. He sat up in the shadowy room, waiting for her car to start, but something was different from the normal routine. No car engine, only low music from her speakers, and then the crunch of footsteps in the crushed gravel leading back to the kitchen door.

  He glanced up at the high bookshelf where his gun should have been. The open end of the thin leather holster was facing him, and even in the bad light he could see it was empty. The kitchen door opened and closed, and there were light steps on the carpet outside their bedroom. The door pushed open. Mitra stood there a moment, momentarily silhouetted, before stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

  Chase was grateful she wasn’t smiling. He really wanted to believe she was regretting having to do this.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  “I love you, too.” She squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 24

  Chase hoped the song wouldn’t be disco.

  He could hear the cranky old CD changer’s inner mechanisms struggling with the next disc. The distinct clicking and snapping echoed inside their small, high-ceilinged house in the hills, making its way through the open kitchen door to where he lay bleeding. The player hadn’t been cleaned in years—if ever—and would sometimes skip past disc after disc before some glob of dust particles dislodged from the special eye on its own, bringing life back to music.

  Disco would have added insult to injury. It was as if a KC and the Sunshine Band brotherhood existed among Third World dictators and drug lords he’d encountered. He needed something peaceful, encouraging.

  Stoney had accused him of always worrying too much, sweating the details beyond what any sane person cared about. Chase recognized the irony in how he seemed to have missed so many of the details that had led him to his current state of affairs. And it left quite a bit more to worry over. But those worries could wait. Instead of his wife’s Ultra Disco Dance Fever workout CD, the air was filled with the most beautiful song in the world. Bob Marley was how he put his little angel to sleep every night. Even a terrible singer like Chase gets the job done when the words mean so much to a little girl who’s had a long, hard day.

  And, boy, did Chase need a lullaby at that very moment.

  The words told him not to worry, that it would turn out all right.

  God, he was so cold and so hot, life suddenly complicated by paradox. His head felt like it was floating, yet filled with lead. He was trying not to fall asleep; it wasn’t quite time to die. He wanted to hear the song one last time.

  Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, drop by drop, urged on by his heart’s rhythm. It splashed on his shoulder and raced down his bicep and forearm, pooling in the cup of an upturned palm. He watched the flood level rise until it spilled over, some of it marking a path along his index finger where, like a tiny ruby waterfall, the drops cascaded one after the other into the goldfish pond.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Maybe it was a mixture of the soothing music and the hypnotic sound of the dripping making him so very, very tired.

  Yes, his fat, overfed goldfish with gigantic eyes were sure going to miss him. There they were, hoping for a morning snack, making big Os with their mouths pressed right up to the air. Big “Feed me now” Os. But Chase had been lucky to get this far, having stumbled out of the bedroom, along the hall, and through the kitchen door. He had staggered down the deck stairs, finally collapsing on the large flat boulder at the edge of the small pond he’d dug and lined with heavy plastic after they’d bought the house.

  All the blood … he was sure he’d made an absolute mess of the carpet, but the linoleum would be just fine. How long since they’d water-sealed the deck? The wood boards should be okay after a quick power-wash. No need for sanding and re-staining.

  His daughter had named each and every one of the of the twenty-three surviving fish—a raccoon family had come through and eaten half the population—but he wasn’t sure which of them took a taste of his blood before backing up, shaking its head disapprovingly, then bolting into the murky depths. Sorry guys. He really hated to disappoint them, but their bright orange can of flakes in the shed might just as well have been on Pluto.

  And thirsty? The kind of thirst you get from trying to swallow a handful of baby powder. His tongue seemed to creak like an old stair as he willed it forward, hopelessly far from the surface of the water.

  This was dying: being dreadfully tired and everything beyond your grasp.

  Bob Marley was still telling him not to worry …

  Chase had never been very good at managing worries. When you abandoned people you loved—like your best friend and your mother and father—a dark space formed in your mind. Chase imagined the space as a tumor-like black hole, surviving and growing as it ate away at the good things. But he also knew he wasn’t special, that everyone had holes. He giggled painfully when it dawned on him that he’d recently acquired a brand new hole, thank you very much, Mitra. God, laughing was no good; it burned and twisted his guts.

  As the minutes passed and the blood dripped, the pain from the hole punched somewhere in his stomach receded. It seemed that dying wasn’t particularly excruciating once you got past the initial blast, which hurt like an absolute motherfucker. And he’d barked his right shin on the coffee table during the uneven journey out of the house. But then it was okay and the pain became manageable—as long as you kept from laughing. Chase was exhausted, and the rock was cold and not so comfortable, but nothing hurt anymore.

  Chase decided that dying was mostly just melancholy. Despite some pretty big issues he’d had with Mitra, it was mighty sad to think of the lonely darkness he was headed for. He would miss dancing with her, especially those crazy weekend nights before Tylea and before her disco fad started. His petite biochemist turned small town librarian had been an amazing sight under the flashing lights. Floating among the Mohawk-headed, industrial punk boys, and the black-lipped goth girls with hulking shoulders, Mitra had been his little leather-clad pinball. If conjuring up images is something humans are able to pass time with in the hereafter, then those are the snippets he’d use to recall his wife.

  Tylea? His funny little genius who’d made the newspaper as one of the rare children accepted into American Mensa. The reporter described her as a tiny, shy, bespectacled girl, politely quizzing the journalist
on Occam's razor and the superstring theory during the interview.

  His little girl would be crying herself to sleep an awful lot, and only because her father had screwed up and not seen this coming.

  Tears burned his dry eyes, blurred the world. He remembered the look on Tylea’s face when she’d scored her first goal. After three seasons and dozens of games against girls and boys who always seemed to tower over her, after being elbowed and knocked down and even laughed at by a couple of mean kids, after hundreds of hours of drills and juggling, of one-touch passes and shots, she had finally scored. And it was what they called a skill goal, as opposed to a lucky shot or just firing a blast from fifteen yards. Coach Chase’s little striker dribbled through two fullbacks and chipped a soft shot over the diving goalie. Tiny Tylea Rain Allen looked at her coach with nothing more than surprise. Then she sprinted back to midfield for the kick off, ready to do it again.

  Soccer is so beautiful. She is so beautiful.

  Chase wondered if you could still love someone after you were dead.

  And he prayed Tylea wouldn’t be the one to find his body, although she’d long since ditched her goldfish feeding chore. It was just too sad for her after the raccoon family incident. Christ, what would this incident do to her?

  At some point, a new Marley song had begun. Chase thought he might have drifted in and out of sleep, in and out of consciousness, maybe.

  The Rasta told him to rise up …

  He’d had a great run, for sure. The nature of his job wouldn’t let him show them off to the neighbors, but he was proud of the souvenirs collected over the years. A leper’s right index finger he’d received as a present, his gun—the one used to shoot him, Adolph Hitler’s favorite—the quarter he’d flipped in his dorm room that Stoney had finally found. All were treasures.