Dead Mann Walking

17

I expected I’d be D-capped, my head harvested, my body tossed into the acid. The idea of losing my head always got to me, but I’d been picturing it clearer and clearer ever since I’d first heard about Wilson: blades pressing my neck, cold metal so razor-sharp I wouldn’t have the slightest idea when they first sliced my skin. There’d be pinching as the muscles and veins snapped, more pressure, and one final crunch as my spine was severed.

Little happens the way I expect. With Grandpa and Watt flanking me, everyone’s favorite mystery date came closer holding not the choppers, but the leather strap I’d seen among his toys. In a flash, I caught onto the plan. He’d use the strap to keep my head above the acid as they lowered the rest of me in. As my body melted into human stew, if the liquid was clear enough, I’d get to watch. I didn’t figure I’d be able to talk after that, what with no lungs, but I did think I’d see, and keep seeing, unless someone buried me . . . or shoved me in a duffel bag.

Why? Maybe it was some kind of experiment, or maybe he got off on seeing pain, the way boys take a magnifying glass to a bug and watch it burn. Maybe there was no malice at all, just a gross curiosity.

Watt moved in to get me in another hug. I slammed the top of my skull into his nose, wishing I’d fought as hard for Ashby. The human skull is thinnest right above the nose. Hit it at the right angle, with the right amount of force, and you can send a shard up into the brain, killing the target instantly.

It didn’t work. I heard a pleasant crack, but he didn’t die. I’d staggered Watt, drawn some blood, seemed to confuse him, but, like Curly from the Three Stooges, he slapped it off and came at me again. He didn’t even look as mad as Grandpa, who cursed me out in some language I couldn’t identify.

When Watt got close enough again, I stomped both of his feet. No reaction. He grabbed me. I twisted my shoulders, but his arms were too thick, and the cuffs on my wrists didn’t help. I yanked at the metal rings, hoping I could break my own hand and get a limb free. I couldn’t manage it, and not for lack of trying.

The masked maniac moved in with the strap.

I moved the only part of me I could, my head, snapping it back and forth. Grandpa, still pissed, grabbed my skull and jaw and held them so tightly, I thought I’d swallow the fucking glove. “Hurt my boy, will you?”

His weathered palm covered my field of vision. I felt the strap slip around my neck, as cool and about the same texture as my skin.

Satisfied I was helpless, the figure came nearer. Grandpa repositioned his hand so we could see each other. I couldn’t even bite the bastard’s gas mask. The best I could manage was to exhale on him angrily through my nose. He clicked some sort of padlock on the strap, then stepped back, humming, until he glanced at Grandpa’s hands. One was a rubbery yellow, the other pale pink.

“Tsk,” he said.

Grandpa opened my mouth and yanked the glove out. He flicked it in the air as if trying to get the zombie cooties off it and put it back on his hand.

Meanwhile, I could talk again, for all it was worth.

“Could you at least tell me why?”

Stupid question, the sort of thing you ask God on your deathbed. I got the answer I expected: stone silence. I wanted to come up with some clever, compelling last words, but all I managed to do was turn to Grandpa and splutter, “How can you do this?”

The old man didn’t skip a beat. “With this pole, that acid, and those clippers.”

I was spending my last moments playing straight man, lobbing them over the plate so he could whack them out of the park. With my baseball bat.

Tugging the pole, the Mask led me like a dog. Watt and Grandpa marched on either side of me. If I tried to head the other way, they pushed me toward the vat. When I buckled to my knees, they pulled me back up. When I collapsed again, they helped the Mask drag me by the neck.

Less than a yard to go and nothing I could do about it. Anything else I could say? I was pretty good at pissing people off, like with Grandpa, getting under their skin, but you never could tell how that might work out. If I insulted Watt, by the time he figured it out, I’d be long gone. Gramps wasn’t stupid. He’d be on his best behavior with a vat of acid so close.

“You gotta realize your boss here is a psychopath, right, Gramps? You and your kid are connected to Booth, the cops. That means sooner or later, he’ll have to kill you to cover his tracks.”

The Mask kept humming. Grandpa gave me a shrug. “I got a rule about not discussing clients with corpses that break my son’s nose.”

“I can see that. But maybe you could make an exception?”

At the edge of the vat, they turned me sideways.

“For what it’s worth,” Grandpa said, “and I know that ain’t much, I am sorry about this. About the kid, anyway.”

That was it, then. Watt and Grandpa grabbed a leg each and lifted. I rose and saw the surface of the acid, smooth and quiet. The smell, though still thick, had changed. I couldn’t say how. I guess I was looking in the wrong direction, because the Mask yanked my hair and held my head straighter.

No reason not to give it one last shot; I squirmed and flailed for all I was worth. I got lucky, caught Watt off balance. He slipped, but his hand shot out and grabbed the edge of the vat. The liquid inside sloshed, nearly touching his fingers.

Grandpa gasped. “Tony!”

“I’ll yank him in with me; I swear I will!” I screamed. “I’ll kick and splash and get it all over you fuckers!”

Grandpa twisted my leg so hard it felt like my hip would break.

I stared at the Mask. “I’ll dunk myself, you son of bitch! I’ll pull myself down, head and all. You won’t get a single piece of me!”

He looked as if he was thinking about it for a second, but then shook his head as if to say, Nah. You won’t do that.

They lifted again.

I’d like to say my life flashed before my eyes, or that I had some profound insight, even that I was imagining what it’d feel like when I hit the acid. But there was none of that, no inner existence at all. I was totally focused on the here and now: the vat, its size and shape, the liquid, its different shades of green, a single red thread sticking out of Grandpa’s shirt, how much it looked like a hair. I’ve never been more in touch with hard reality.

But as I got closer, the sensations dimmed. Something inside broke, let go, detached. It was like I was in a space capsule and the hull had been breached. I felt myself drift away. Thoughts slowed. Consciousness ran down. I wasn’t in the scene at all; I was a million miles away, watching it, getting ready to weep for the poor sucker being tossed in the vat. If I’d been a liveblood, I might’ve thought I was achieving some other incredible spiritual state, like satori, dancing on the edge of eternal bliss.

But I was a chak, and it meant I was going feral.

A sadness in the pit of my gut rumbled and grew, filling me until it wanted to explode in a moan. What difference would it make? Even if the sudden savagery gave me a burst of energy, it wouldn’t be enough to snap the handcuffs or the leather strap.

Funny. Ashby didn’t lose what was left of his mind when he went in. Maybe I was right: He’d been damaged in a way that kept him static. Not me, though. Not damaged nearly enough.

Oh, well. I’d never been very good at the whole consciousness thing anyway.

But like I said, things usually don’t work out the way I expect. This time it didn’t work out the way any of us expected. So I wasn’t in control, but it turned out neither were they. Something else was, and right before they got me over the rim, it came up to meet them.

A hand, pure, clean bone with a green liquid sheen, rose from the acid. It was followed by an arm. Together, they were more than long enough to grab Watt’s meaty shoulder. A fleshless skull broke the surface next, acid rolling off the top. Chemicals oozed from its hollows as it lifted. The jaw lowered and made an impossible sound:

“Heh-heh.”

They’d miscalculated. The acid bath, whatever was in it, didn’t work on bone. Maybe the Mask had read the recipe wrong, or maybe it was some crappy brand of acid made in China. Who knew? As for the thing that came out, Ashby’s unearthly remains, the sight of it bitch-slapped me back into my body.

What the fuck? I don’t believe in ghosts. Sometimes I don’t even believe what my eyes tell me. Whatever energized our molecular structure may work on the bones, too, but that didn’t come near to explaining how a thing without muscle was moving or making noises.

The second hand came up and also grabbed onto Watt.

“Heh-heh.”

Both hands pulled. Watt screamed.

Grandpa let go of me. Bad move. It gave me a chance to help the skeleton. I kicked with both feet, ramming Watt’s chest. He tumbled toward the vat and that was all it took. The skeleton flipped him and dragged him into the acid.

As I fell to the floor, I heard his screams swallowed by a thick, horrible splash.

No longer held, I rolled away. Drops of splashing liquid hit my jacket and started steaming. Grandpa wasn’t so lucky. He caught some on the side of his face. It started steaming, too. Ignoring the physical pain, the old man moved closer to the vat. Planning what? To pull Watt out with his hands?

Didn’t matter. The skeleton, standing now, dug its hands into Grandpa’s face, right where the acid was burning, and yanked him in, too.

As Grandpa bubbled away, I realized the pole attached to my neck strap was dangling. I looked around for the Mask, but all I could see was a slightly swinging chain near a door marked EXIT. Hands and ankles cuffed, I was in no position to chase him, but I tried. I got up, tripped, and fell after two yards.

“Heh-heh.”

I looked back as the meatless skeleton clambered out of the vat, acid dripping in a small puddle at its feet. It didn’t look like it had any more idea what it was than I did.

When it was happening, I thought Ashby had attacked Watt and Grandpa on purpose, for vengeance, or whatever. From the way it moved now, bumping and crashing into everything, I started thinking it was just trying to get out of the tank, grabbing whatever happened to be around. It was blind. It had to be. It had no eyes.

“Heh-heh.”

Or throat. So how did it make that sound? Was it really his laugh, or just the way the bones creaked against one another? Was I only hearing it in my head?

It neared me, dripping, so I squirmed out of the way. I didn’t know if it could hear, but I wasn’t going to call. For all I knew it would run over to me like a wet dog and shake that crap all over me. So I stayed quiet and watched as it stumbled into the table, knocking over all those pretty tools.

I noticed that the duffel bag and the clippers were gone.

“Heh-heh.”

By the time I squirmed up to sitting, it was farther away from me, banging among some crates. It was no longer dripping so much, so I called out, softly, “Ashby?”

It didn’t react.

“Ashby,” I managed again. “You in there?”

It hesitated. I don’t think it’d heard me. It stood in front of an open door, the one the Mask must have fled through. Maybe it sensed the breeze.

And then the body, the moving bones, the thing that used to be a chak, that was someone named Ashby before that, threw itself through the door and creaked off into the night. I heard the acid bubble in the vat, the scrape of foot bone against concrete, and the fading sound of that crazy laugh: “Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh.”