Hitchers

CHAPTER 28

The phone jerked me awake. Or maybe I had been in a half-sleep, churning through my fears as I drifted. I hurried across the bedroom toward the phone’s solitary glow, stumbled on a shoe.

“Hello?” I answered, my stomach clenching in anticipation. When your phone rings in the middle of the night it’s almost always bad news.

“Finn?” It was a corpse-voice, sputtering my name like he’d just had a shot of Novocain at the dentist.

“Who’s this?”

“Dave. It’s Dave.”

I turned on the light. “Where are you?” It was so good to hear his voice, awful as it was.

“I’m homeless. What happened? I’m old.”

The pain and confusion in his voice was unbearable. “Where are you? I’ll come and get you.” I slid one of my shoes on my bare foot.

“Where’s Karen? I tried calling…”

If my mind had been clearer, if I wasn’t so exhausted, I probably would have deflected the question. Instead I said, “She’s gone. I’m sorry, Dave. She’s gone.”

“She’s dead?” I thought he was coughing—there was a deep, phlegmy rolling—then I realized he was crying.

“She may have come back, though. Like you. Don’t give up hope.” I pulled my coat off the hook, shrugged it on. “Tell me where you are. I’m coming.”

He was downtown in Pitman Park, in a phone booth, using change he’d begged. He was cold, and all alone. As I drove I tried to explain what was happening to him, to us, to Atlanta.

Before I even got to Route 85 I was on the phone with the homeless man, who shouted at me, sounding just as confused. Somehow he was convinced this was all my fault.

He promised to wait by the phone, but by the time I got there the receiver was dangling from its cord, swaying in the wind, and the man was nowhere in sight.

Dave would be back, though. Next time he’d have a little longer, maybe enough that I could reach him. It was no surprise; Dave would not have gone gently into Deadland. We were on the right track. I felt even more certain now. If I found Annie in her apartment in Deadland I’d be absolutely certain. I’m not sure where we went from there, but it was a start.

On the way home I made a call I’d been putting off, one I promised Lorena I’d make.

“Hola,” Lorena’s sister answered.

“Fatima, it’s Finn.”

“Finn, hello!” she said, switching easily to English. “It’s good to hear your voice. Are you all right? Are you out of Atlanta?”

“No, I’m still here.” Fatima and I hadn’t spoken since the funeral, though we’d exchanged a few emails.

“Why? You have to run while you can. The dead…” She trailed off breathlessly, the dread pungent in her tone.

“It wouldn’t help me to run. Unfortunately one of the dead is in me. My grandfather.”

She gasped, horrified. “Oh no. Oh, Finn.”

“But that’s not why I called, Fatima.” How could I say this? I struggled to find words. “It’s about Lorena.”

Fatima went silent.

“Are you still there? Fatima?”

It was a long moment before she answered. “Yes.” There was so much dread in that one word; she must have suspected what I was going to say.

“She’s back, Fatima. Lorena has come back.”

Without seeing her face I had no idea how she made the sound she made. It was an ululating wail that tore my eardrum. “No. Don’t say that. I don’t hear you.”

“She wants to speak to you—”

“Oh, God. Help me, God.” She hung up.

I closed my phone, dropped it on the passenger seat. I hadn’t been sure how Fatima would react, but I’d guessed it might go like that. The world was terrified. The dead were rising. It was Revelations, The Exorcist, the nightmares of our collective unconscious reaching out of the dark and grabbing our collective ankle. Fatima didn’t want to talk to her dead sister, because to her the emphasis went on dead, not sister.