Dead Mann Walking

24

I was better off when I was depressed. Hessius Mann, detective, didn’t last.

First, the window was stuck. By the time I’d opened it half an inch, the Reservoir Dogs were through the door. I was off my feet before I knew what was happening. The one with the slightly bigger jowl smashed my head into the floor. If the rug hadn’t been plush, I’m sure my skull would’ve cracked.

His twin wrapped some plastic cuffs around my wrists, tying me like a garbage sack. The skin tore. I’d have rips for Misty to patch—if I ever saw her again.

But as they yanked me toward the door, I gave Nell Parker a wink.

The muscles on her face moved like the feathers on a startled bird. I wondered if that meant I was getting to her. Once I was in the hall, though, she stepped up to close the door. As the line of light narrowed, before she vanished, I caught another expression on her face, like she was thinking. It was something, I guess. Better than nothing?

I don’t know. I was never one for whistling in the dark. I could never carry the tune.

I tried to keep pace with the dogs, but they kept speeding up. They’d pull me off my feet, half carry, half drag me. We headed back down the stairs I took to get up here, through the tiled hall, and into a kitchen big enough to service a hotel.

There, they plopped me right next to the recycling. Nice smell.

Except for flashlight beams skittering across the windows, it was dark inside, and quiet, except for muffled gunfire. The slightly smaller gunsel lit a ciggie. The other stared at me like I was the Loch Ness monster.

“Something on my cheek?”

“I don’t get you,” he said.

“That a question?”

The smoker took a drag and wagged a finger. “Green said to keep him here. Didn’t say to talk to him.”

“Didn’t say anything about smoking in the house, either.”

The smoker shrugged. “The detectors are hardwired. No one will ever smell it over the rest of the stink.” His pal kept glaring until the smoker raised his hands in surrender. “But I take your point. So talk to him.”

Mr. Curious turned back to me. “The runners I understand; they want out. Ferals everybody understands; they’re animals. You, we let in, you break out, and then instead of leaving, you sneak back in to talk to a dead stripper. You working for someone?”

“Nobody living,” I told him.

“Maybe he just likes her,” the smoker said with a puff.

“He’s a chak. They can’t like anyone.”

“You sure?”

He brought his face closer, genuinely puzzled. “That it? You planning to run off with her and start a new life in the suburbs? Get a nice morgue? Adopt two-point-five chak kids?”

“No, thanks. I’m more the beach-house-and-dead-dog type.”

As he pulled on the filter, the red tip of the cigarette lit the smoker’s face. “Hey, in his case, it really could be two-point-five kids.”

A burst of gunfire startled him, knocking the ash from the end. We all froze until it stopped; then I heard something else: car wheels on gravel. I thought maybe the cops were arriving, but there were no sirens, and the sound got quieter instead of louder. Someone was driving away, fast.

“Mr. Green’s guests leaving?” I asked.

They eyed each other in a way that said I was right.

“Did anyone even call the police?”

Again, they eyed each other. This was too easy.

“But you’ve got ferals out there.”

The closer dog kicked me. “Shut it. You’ll be moaning soon enough yourself.”

“I’m just asking. Hate to run into one with my hands tied, you know? Hate to run into a bunch of them with my hands free. I saw that cell before it was opened. There were maybe thirty in there. You boys know what you’re dealing with, right? Numbers that big, pack instinct kicks in. You can’t just pick them off. They start hunting.”

I was lying. It was an urban legend, but as far as I knew, a bunch of ferals have as little idea what they’re doing as one. But I wanted to see if they knew that.

The smoker eyed his jowly twin. “Nothing to worry about. It’s covered.”

I pretended he was talking to me. “Thanks. You wanted to know what I was doing up there, right? Seeing as how we’re all friends now, I’ll tell you. I was trying to warn Nell, same way I tried to warn Green. There’s a psycho out to nab her, maybe the same guy who knocked out your power. . . .”

I stopped in midsentence. They were looking at each other again, like it was all old news. “Wait a minute. Did Green know someone was after her before I got here?”

I fell into that one, but it fit. It would certainly explain all his clever observations about Turgeon’s motives if he’d already been thinking about it. Crap. I didn’t see that coming at all; then again, I didn’t expect what happened next, either.

The jowly dog cupped his ear. “Didn’t catch that. Changing her mind? Who told her she had one?”

So I had gotten to her, a little at least.

“Okay, we’ll put this one downstairs, then deal with her.”

“The basement?” I said. “Ah, come on, boys! Can’t you just lock me in a cabinet? I promise I’ll be good.”

“No.”

Getting ready to leave, the smoker looked around for a place to crush his coffin nail, only everything was clean white tile and polished metal. He looked at me for a second, like maybe he could get me to swallow the damn thing, but then he walked to the sink and opened the window behind it.

When he leaned forward to toss the cigarette, two gray hands, torn flesh dangling from the fingers, reached up and grabbed his arm. The feral had probably been crouching out there for an hour, an unseen thing. Sure could see him now, though.

As I said, once a chak grabs on to something, feral or not, we don’t ever have to let go. The feral’s fingers had pierced the smoker’s black suit sleeves. The fabric glistened with fresh blood. By the time the jowly dog got there to help his pal, the smoker was across the sink and halfway through the window.

He started screaming. Oh, I understood why, but it was definitely the wrong thing to do. One of the reasons we have such bad press is that pained, wet liveblood screams attract ferals. Jowly Dog knew that much wasn’t an urban legend. As he tried to drag his buddy back inside, he kept saying, “Shut up! Shut up!”

Man, did I hear moaning then. Lots, like it wasn’t just one, but a mob hiding right below that kitchen window. Maybe I was wrong about the whole pack-instinct thing.

If the idiots hadn’t cuffed me, I might’ve helped the dogs out. I’m not one to hold a grudge against the hired hands. Thinking the ferals’d be in soon, I realized I might not get to my feet fast enough, so I squirmed across the floor and through a swinging door. Last I looked there was a real tug-of-war going on at the window. Five feral hands pulled at the smoker.

Bet he wished he’d quit.

The kitchen sounds grew more violent. There was a tearing, deeper, more heartfelt screaming, and then one gunshot. I was in a short access hall, another swinging door about five feet away. I rolled through it onto to the wooden floor of a huge dining hall, accent on the “hall.”

The table had fine china and silverware set for fifty. There was still food on the plates. Everyone had left in a hurry. Tall windows lined the wall; wild shadows from them rolled across the table like waves.

After I kicked a few chairs in front of the door, thinking they’d at least slow the ferals if they came in from the kitchen, I tried to stand. I backed into a steak knife, grabbed it with my fingers, and sawed at the plastic cuffs.

I couldn’t see what my hands were doing, but I could see out the windows. Ferals, real ferals, much farther gone than Jonesey in the alley, or me in my office, swarmed over a statue garden. Right now, at least, they had the guards outnumbered. The LBs were shooting and backing up, but the ferals didn’t give a shit. One used what looked like the smoker’s arm to whack a gun out of a guard’s hand.

I didn’t see any point in trying to talk to Nell again. I also didn’t see any point in trying to leave in the middle of a war where either side wouldn’t think twice about going after me. I spent the next half hour slipping from room to room, looking and listening. I wasn’t trying to find anything in particular, but whenever I heard talking, I didn’t shy away.

Inside, over time, things quieted. Outside, not so much. The little fire fight I saw through the dining room window was over, but the guards complained that they’d won too easily. They were worried there were more out there, waiting.

At the end of one long hall I found a huge stained-glass window depicting Epicurus the sage. Another bit of dead-mind trivia—he was a Greek philosopher who believed that pleasure was the sole intrinsic form of good. Had to be Green’s hero. Figured.

No sooner did I smirk over it than some bluish lights reflected off the glass. Then they started getting bigger, as in closer. I kept low and slipped into a closet. Inside, I left the door half-open and acted like one of the coats.

Seconds later, the satyr himself, Colby Green, appeared. He was flanked by four men with AK-47s and high-intensity flashlights. The flashlights were the source of the blue glow.

Green was talking a mile a minute, not to himself but to someone on his Bluetooth. His voice had this weird tone. It sounded angry, but fatherly, like he was talking to a petulant child. It was definitely an act for the benefit of whoever was on the other end of the line.

“I’ve warned you once. I will not warn you again,” Green said. “Stop babbling. Listen. As my people have been trying to tell you, we’ve had an incident. Yes, ferals. No, I did not contact the police. My men have them surrounded outside. Yes, I thought you’d like that. The situation will be under control soon enough, but the swap has to be delayed.”

He stopped short, listened for a while, and rolled his eyes. “Well, you’ll have to wait. Do not get any foolish ideas. You’ve already had one, but if you calm down and cooperate, you might survive it. Do you understand that? Calm down. Cooperate. I’ll contact you when it’s safe. Yes, she’ll be ready. Things will occur exactly as we discussed, just not exactly when. Twelve hours. Are we clear, Mr. Turgeon?”

He hissed the name in a way that made me sorry we hadn’t compared more notes on our favorite psycho, but now was not the time. My feelings on the matter were mixed at best anyway. As they passed the closet, I had one of those moments where the emotions rushed me so strongly, my body shook from the overload.

It was clear. Green knew Turgeon and he was planning to hand Nell over to him. Why? What kind of hold could that sick bastard possibly have on a man like Colby Green?

I was so busy trying to wrap my head around that one that I almost didn’t hear the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. I peered out of the closet to see that Epicurus was gone, and a horde of semihuman silhouettes clambered in through the remains of the stained glass.

I think I knew what was happening. Just like Green said, his men had surrounded the ferals outside. They probably thought that from there it’d be easy to steer them into a corner and open fire. Instead they’d only managed to force them inside.

Colby and Co. broke into a run. Their blue-tinged flashlight beams vanished around a corner. I stepped out, planning to do likewise, but there were so many, I wound up standing there and staring like an idiot, long enough for the ferals to race up . . . and ignore me.

Huh. Maybe in the dark they’d taken me for one of their own, especially since I wasn’t screaming. More likely they found the pretty blue lights more interesting.

Hoping they’d keep ignoring me long enough for me to get the fuck out of there, I started moaning and gnashing my teeth. That was when Green’s men doubled back and opened fire. Even with bullets tearing through their bodies, the raging ferals hurled themselves forward.

Me, I headed for the broken image of Epicurus and jumped out.

Free? No. I landed smack in the middle of another fight.

I was face–to-face with a guard. I screamed. He screamed. A dozen wild zombies jumped him from nowhere. I looked around for a place to run, realized I was in a courtyard. Green’s men were trying to get into some kind of defensive formation, but the ferals were all over them. Freaking out, they opened fire on all of us.

The poor son of a bitch who’d been jumped went down in a hail of bullets and blood-soaked gurgling. I ducked and rolled.

On my left, bullets still flew from the shattered window. To my right, the courtyard guards were firing away. Dead ahead, near the path that led to the statue garden, I saw a swimming pool. Not having any particular need for air, I jumped the short brick wall and dived into the deep end, hoping that with all the excitement, no one had seen.