Dead Mann Walking

29

If you have to be tied up, rope’s more comfortable than handcuffs or plastic bands. Rope gives, breathes a little. It also gives you hope. If I wriggled and twisted my hands, pulled, relaxed, repeated, eventually they’d loosen. Eventually they’d loosen enough for me to get free. At best it would take an hour or two, long after whatever Turgeon was planning would be all over. Still, it was something to do.

I was lying near the front of the flat cart, looking up at Turgeon’s back while he looked up at the elevator lights. They blinked lower and lower: basement, subbasement, sub-subbasement, then some initials I didn’t understand. It felt like I was in one of those old cartoons where the elevator goes so low that the doors open up in hell—flaming pits and a grinning devil with a pitchfork. Wrong floor. Besides, I was already in hell.

Behind me there was a frantic rustling. If it had been Nell, that would’ve been bearable, but the shape was wrong and the pieces kept coming apart and rolling off one another. Heads, I lose. They were shifting around like they still had bladders and had to pee real bad. I tried to stay calm, concentrate on the ropes. I was doing okay, relatively, until, through the bag, I felt a mouth close on my shin.

Electric-syrup time.

I dry-heaved. I pulled my legs in tight. I crammed my eyes shut. I stayed that way until the elevator stopped and the doors opened. When Turgeon wheeled us out, the drone of the dolly seemed to calm the heads, so the gnawing stopped.

I looked again. Turgeon was pushing from behind, so I couldn’t see him at all. We were in the lowest part of the complex. Plastic sheets were everywhere, ceiling to floor, a poor man’s picture windows, held by a series of monolithic concrete pillars. It looked like a buried temple to some industrial god who couldn’t care less whether you worshiped him or not. As good a place for a nightmare as any.

A thin, barely visible cloud of white powder hung in the air, but there was a steady breeze disturbing its peace. The hum of vacuums sucking air through long, cylindrical tubes was loud enough to make the plastic vibrate and drown out the dolly’s wheels. Part of the remediation. They were trying to take asbestos out of the air.

As he pushed us through the plastic maze, Turgeon stopped a few times and looked around. I don’t think he was admiring the view; he just didn’t know exactly where Odell Jenkins was. Grateful for the extra seconds, I kept at the ropes. If Egghead saw me squirming, he didn’t say anything. I got nowhere, but Turgeon had some success.

He’d found an area where even the emergency lights didn’t work, and a long yellow extension cord ran to a distant hanging lamp. There were new sounds—hammering, crunching, shredding—and the shadows shifted with them.

Turgeon’s pace picked up. He’d found Odell. Rather than head straight for the light, he wheeled the dolly toward the gloom behind the sheets. As we rolled through, the plastic crawled across my body, leaving a sheen of white dust. Funny, it reminded me of Ashby.

Ahead was a dark nothing. To the left, the hammering got louder. I twisted my neck and caught my first, plastic-blurred glimpse of Odell Jenkins. He worked alone. Maybe it didn’t make sense to give zombies a day off. He was standing near the hanging light, where the ends of the vacuum tubes had been set up. At first I thought his hair was white, but when he swung a sledgehammer into the wall, a cloud of plaster dust puffed from the top of his head.

He didn’t wear a protective mask or a hood. From the looks of the rest of him, he wouldn’t go down easily. The former brain surgeon was a bruiser with anaconda arms and door-wide shoulders. He swung that sledgehammer like it was a feather, tore off the drywall by hand, and then yanked the exposed two-by-fours free, nails and all. Maybe his boss figured he didn’t need any help. Given enough time, he’d take the whole hospital down himself.

Turgeon stopped us alongside one of the wide concrete supports. I still couldn’t see him, but I imagined he was eyeing Jenkins the way a starving hyena might look at a distracted lion. He had all the cards; the only question was how he’d play them. He’d want to D-cap Jenkins, then me and Nell, set his explosives, and leave with his bag full. When the building came down, this place would make a nice mausoleum. If they ever dug us up, it’d be no surprise to find a few chak pieces. Better than the desert or the acid. The daddy head might not like it, but there wasn’t much it could do.

Chk. Chk.

Somewhere above my left ear, Turgeon was testing the clippers, slowly, quietly, so Jenkins wouldn’t hear. He stepped to the side of the dolly and held open the nearest plastic flap. It gave me a clear look at him, and a clearer view of Jenkins.

The odds weren’t as good as I thought. Jenkins’s bright orange jumpsuit made him a great target, but worse than that, he was wearing earbuds. The poor sap was listening to music, or an audiobook, trying to improve himself. Turgeon could play a trumpet and still sneak up on him. And the clippers were very sharp.

I grunted and kicked, hoping Jenkins might hear me even through whatever iThing he had on and turn around. The heads rustled a bit, but the one who really responded was Turgeon. He held the blades in front of my eyes and said, “Shhh.”

I could have kept kicking. If I forced it, made him D-cap me first, Jenkins might hear something and get away. Y’know, if it’d just been about my death, I might’ve gone for it, but I really did not want to wind up in that bag. So one look at those razors and I clammed up tighter than a crab’s ass at high tide.

With such concerns behind them, there was nothing to keep the heads quiet. They kept jostling, their twitching joined by those scraping paper-bag voices. But the vacuums were loud and their voices so soft that Turgeon only gave the duffel bag a halfhearted kick before stepping to the other side of the plastic.

Would Turgeon really take him? Likely. There was so much noise, so much concrete and hanging plastic to conceal his approach, he could get close easily and get the blades in place. One spring-assisted crunch and it’d be all over.

As Egghead crept from one hiding spot to another, Jenkins never turned from his work. The chak still had his focus, I’ll give him that, but it was the kind of concentration that’d keep his back turned long enough for his head to get sliced off. Makes you wonder what the hell’s worth wishing for.

I grunted and pulled. The heads started gnashing. I could see their mouths open and close through the fabric, as if they wanted to chew their way out. I might have frozen in fear, but beyond the duffel bag I caught a glimpse of green eyes. Nell Parker wasn’t moving much, but she was staring at me and making noises like she was trying to talk. The gag must’ve been buried pretty deep in her throat. She sounded worse than the heads.

Thinking she could squirm away and hide if she was fast enough, I twisted around and tried kicking her off the dolly. All I managed was to push the bag of heads into her, and her into the handles. It wasn’t happening. The only way to free her was to free myself first. So I had to do it somehow. I had to.

But “had to” is a funny thing if physics disagrees. Despite my best writhing, all I did was flop around like a fish. I stopped when my head neared the top of the duffel bag. The cord that held it closed slapped against the gag in my mouth.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all, but it gave me another idea. The heads had no love for Turgeon. If I could get my ropes near those gnashing teeth, maybe they’d, I don’t know, gnaw them off?

I’d rather be picking my nose in a septic tank, but that wasn’t an option. I closed my eyes and white-knuckled it. I gulped, trying to swallow the electric syrup already filling my throat, and wedged my nose into the opening of the duffel bag. After some effort, I managed to wriggle my nose and then my jaw inside.

It sucked. It was so close I was already claustrophobic. Little puffs of dry air from nostrils and open mouths hit my cheeks and eyelids. I heard jaws open and clamp, teeth click. They were excited, either happy to see me or annoyed at having to share their space.

Hoping I wouldn’t pass out or go feral, I pivoted my own head along the opening, trying to make it bigger. I told myself if it worked, it’d all be over in a few seconds. Just a few tiny seconds. I forced my head in deeper, widening the opening even more.

I was finished, but it turned out I’d lied to myself about the few seconds. Before I could yank my head back out, a set of teeth clamped down on a clump of my hair. The only thing that stopped me from screaming was the thought that Turgeon might still be close enough to hear me even through the gag.

Acting like a weird cyborg somewhere between animal and machine, I clamped my jaw shut and snapped my head left and right, trying to shake the son of a bitch loose. The other heads nuzzled closer. I kept my eyes shut, but I could hear their teeth grinding, clicking, chomping. I’d stuck my head into a fucking piranha tank. They’d tear me up, rip the flesh from my skull, chew my eyes, crunch the bones.

I was hungry to leave my body, like I did when the acid pool was bubbling beneath me, but before I could, no longer caring who heard, I howled the way only a dead man can. The sound startled the heads long enough for me to yank my head, and the head clamped onto my hair, out of the bag and into the dusty air.

As I came free, I felt something heavy clonk into my forehead. The sensation was followed by a sharp tug and tear on my scalp. The head went flying over my shoulder, a clump of my hair still clenched in its teeth. I heard the thud of its landing, a thrumming as it rolled, and a plop as it hit a plastic sheet.

Oddly enough, everything had gone according to plan. The duffel bag was open.

Now I just had to get the heads out and hope they’d chew on the rope instead of me. I wasn’t particularly convinced they would, but I had no plan B. I kicked the bag, evening out the heads along its length. I laid my feet down on the middle of the bag, thinking I could push a few out. Flexing my tied ankles, I worked two of the heads toward the opening. As I went at it, I caught glimpses of Nell’s eyes, her expression telling me what I already knew—that I was out of my fucking mind.

Of course, my brilliant idea didn’t work at all. Once the two heads were separated from the others, the bag shifted and nearly rolled off the dolly. The bulk stayed on the wooden flat, but the two heads rolled off the edge. With a crunk and a puff of dust, the first hit the floor. The second landed on the first.

They were far from where they’d be any use to me. Their eyes rolled wildly, then settled as they took in their surroundings. One head had half its skin missing. It also had an aquiline nose and dark wavy hair that, I swear, looked recently combed. The other was younger, sporting a blond Mohawk and what was either a big scar or an ornate tattoo on a flat forehead.

They saw me, saw the dolly. Twisting toward the light, they saw Jenkins. They kept twisting, looking around, trying to find something. Turgeon, I guessed. When they didn’t see him, they were either pleased or worried. It’s hard to tell with heads.

The next surprise was that they could move. Not that they’d win any races at the county fair, but the one with the fancy part had enough neck muscles left to inch along as if he were being pulled by a few thick worms. Not to be outdone, Mohawk Joe, on his side, used his jaw to crawl.

As they moved, they made those scraping, hissing noises. I barely heard them, but they meant something to the heads still in the bag. Working their jaws, pulsing their remaining muscles, like the two on the floor, they all shuffled out of the bag. Some rolled off the dolly and fell to the ground. Others settled on the wood before jumping down to join the others.

Most were male, but there was one woman, a redhead with a missing eye. Some were older, with bald spots; some had neatly cropped hair. One was ugly as a prizefighter, nose broken in a dozen places; another was still handsome enough to have a career modeling hats. I wouldn’t say they were all high-functioning. More like they ran the gamut.

Daddy emerged last, as if he’d waited for the others. I took a good long look at it. Despite being the cleanest, best-cared-for of the lot, it looked the most drained, the most worried. When it hissed and clicked, the others gathered around.

As the heads arranged themselves, it turned and stared right at me. There were lines in its face that told me that in life it had been a tense, angry man, kind of like my own father. It blinked, hard, over and over, trying to communicate. I showed it my ropes, but it didn’t seem to care. When I nodded toward Jenkins, though, it followed my gaze. Its hissing grew louder, frenzied. Obedient, the others started moving, rolling, crawling, under the plastic, toward Jenkins.

That could work, too. If they kept heading toward him and making those creepy noises, he might hear them. The heads on their way, I thought I’d go back to working the ropes. A scraping turned my eyes down. It was a head. Instead of going along with the others, it had squirmed up to me. It was right below my face, listing left, then right, trying to get my attention. I had to fight an urge to kick it away.

When it realized I was watching, it rolled onto its side. Mouth opening and closing, it made the same two terrible, impossible sounds over and over—achshh bree achshh bree achshh bree.

I knew what it meant. It was saying, “Ashby. Ashby.”

It was Frank Boyle’s head, asking about his adopted son.

For better or worse, I had an answer. “He’s at peace.”

As it took in the news, Boyle’s head made a motion like it wanted to swallow hard. It blinked, huffed some air through its nostrils, then turned to join the others.

The heads moved slowly, but surely. Ten feet from Jenkins, seven. Their little noises were barely a whisper above the vacuum’s rush, but they might make it. They might.

If Turgeon hadn’t spotted them first.

He emerged from the dark with a wicked glint of silver, still a few yards from Jenkins, but knowing he had to make his move fast. He crept with exaggerated slowness, choppers out, blades extended. The heads picked up speed, hopping, rolling, trying to make themselves loud enough to warn Odell about what was inching toward his neck.

It definitely wasn’t something you see every day.