Strange Angels

CHAPTER 7

“You’re kidding,” I said for the fifth time. “In the mall?”

“It’s warm and it’s safe. It opens up in plenty of time to get to school in the morning.” Graves ran his hand back through his hair and checked the hallway. “Come on.”

I’d never been behind the scenes in a mall before. They’re huge places, and the stores are only half of it. Behind each store and threading through the entire complex were maintenance hallways and office space, just a thin doorway away. Graves loitered in the hall leading to the restrooms until it was clear, produced a thin rectangle of plastic—it looked like a credit card—to slip the lock on one of the doors with the ease of long practice, and motioned me through. He looked over my shoulder when he did, and his face was a lot older than usual, but it smoothed out by the time he pulled the door closed and made sure it was locked.

Muzak filtered into the maintenance hallway only faintly, for which I was unendingly grateful. My right hand ached, both from the kickback of the nine-millimeter and from air hockey. He played a mean game, this beaky little boy, and it was take-no-prisoners time once I beat him in the first two rounds.

I hadn’t thought about zombies for five-whole-minute stretches, while lunging over the top of the table. It was easier not to think when you were moving.

Our footsteps echoed on bare concrete. The walls were unpainted, and dust grimed the corners. “How often does anyone come through here?”

“Not very. The maintenance staff is gonna want to go home just like everyone else; if anyone’s left after they lock up it’ll be a miracle. Even the janitors leave early on days like this.” He took a right and led me into a confusing tangle of corridors that all looked the same. It was warm, at least, and I suddenly realized I was exhausted.

I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder, the strap cutting through Dad’s jacket and my T-shirt. The wool of my gloves rasped against my hands. “You do this often?”

“When I have to.” His shoulders hunched, but he slowed down so I could keep up with him. “We have to stay back here for a little while, until everyone’s cleared out. Then it’s safe, and we can play.”

“Play what? More air hockey?” I just wanted to take my boots off and sit down somewhere. A crying fit sounded good, too. Really good. Not to mention a hot shower and some television, while I was at it.

“If you want. Anything we want. They’ve got cameras, but most of ’em don’t work. The parent company that owns the mall is too cheap to put in real cameras, so most of ’em are dummies anyway, and the ones that do work don’t have any tapes or anything. Come nighttime, this place is a playground. There’s shit here you wouldn’t believe.”

I wanted to ask him if he had to go home sometime soon. Decided not to. His home life was his own problem; I had plenty of my own.

Graves turned sharp left, and I found myself in a cavernous space with a huge garage door pulled down, dumpsters lining the walls on the other side. A cardboard-crushing machine telling everyone to Reduce Reuse Recycle! with a cheerful cartoon mouse waving under a yellow-painted sun glowered at us. I shivered, hearing the wind pick up outside the big garagelike door. Thin fingers of cold air caressed my face.

It wasn’t the low moan of the wind at dusk, but something about it was hungry and ugly just the same. The shivers plucked at the aching muscles of my back, made the rug burn on my left hand prickle.

I kept expecting to hear the tapping again, or the screaming sound of dry tendons working, or a shuffling step.

“You okay?” Graves had turned to face me and stood with his hand on a stack of pallets leaning against the wall. He’d pushed his hair back, tucking some of it behind his ears, and I had to admit he wasn’t bad-looking, just babyfaced and beaky. I could see the adult face underneath, in the way his bones held his face up. Even if his eyes stayed muddy instead of greenish.

I’m not going to be okay for a while. I just have to figure out what to do. I swallowed a lump in my throat, my stomach unhappy with the sheer amount of grease in a mall bacon cheeseburger. “Copacetic.”

“Okay. You can’t tell anyone about this.” He hesitated.

I could have told him now wasn’t the time for him to be having second thoughts. “I don’t have anyone to tell. You’re about the only person I know here.” Cut the crap. I’m tired.

He nodded, chewing at his lower lip, then turned and shimmied sideways behind the cardboard crusher.

You have got to be kidding me. I took a deep breath, hitched my bag around so I could squeeze through the narrow slice, and followed.

There was barely enough room for me and none at all for my bag. Still, I struggled through, almost hit my head on something metallic, and whispered a curse. Graves fiddled with the wall and—miraculously—a door opened inward. “They forgot about this once they put the dumpster and stuff down here.” His voice echoed and fell flat. There was a click, and warm electric light played over the dirty concrete wall in front of my face. I squirmed around the side of the door frame and almost fell into another hallway. “This used to be an office when it was a loading dock for Macy’s. When they did the big remodel two years ago they closed this all up, bricked up the back of the office and stuck all those dumpsters and stuff against the wall. I wondered if you could still get in here, and whaddaya know. Neat, huh?”

I looked around. There was a bathroom off to one side, through a half-open door. The rest of the office looked just like a studio apartment. “How the hell did you get the sleeping bag in here?” I didn’t have to work very hard to sound impressed.

He pointed up, a faint blush starting on his cheekbones. Two ceiling tiles were removed, the rest discolored and dirty. The only light came from a naked bulb dangling from an extension cord. “I lofted some stuff up through there. Welcome to Casa Graves, babe.”

The sleeping bag lay on a camp cot, and a flimsy plywood bookcase with a Discman and a stack of CDs stood next to a pair of tangled headphones. Jimi Hendrix leered at me from a poster tacked up on the wall. Another poster of a woman’s gigantic fake breasts cradling a cold Bud Light bottle stood above a coffeemaker and a hot plate, with a shelf of dishes and packages of Top Ramen stacked neatly underneath. Black T-shirts hung on a folding rack, and a few pairs of jeans were folded up underneath.

It reminded me of Dad’s room, always kept military-neat no matter where we landed. No matter what city we were in, I could always find anything in Dad’s room in seconds flat.

Dad. The lump in my throat refused to go away. I realized Graves was standing, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up even further, in the middle of the room next to the cot. His face was a study in disinterest, but I caught the darkening of his eyes and the shadow of hurt around his mouth. He was waiting for me to say something cruel.

I was starting to wonder about this kid.

“It’s nice,” I managed, around the lump. “It’s cozy.” It was so warm sweat prickled along my lower back. I slid my bag off my shoulder and felt like an idiot for wondering about his home life. I stripped my gloves off and stuffed them in my left coat pocket, trying not to stare at the breasts-and-Bud poster.

“There isn’t a shower.” Graves’s shoulders dropped down from their hunch, relieved. He stripped off his gloves with two quick movements and tossed them on the bed. They looked like crumpled imposters on its neatness. “But the bathroom works fine, and if I have to I can get a space heater through the roof. It’s safe. Nobody remembers it’s still here. Close the door, willya?”

I did. The hinges were held on with clumsily attached screws, and I was suddenly sure he’d rehung the door to make it swing inward—after monkeying through above the ceiling tiles. This kid was smart.

I set my bag down near the bookcase and wondered if I should slide out of the green Army coat before I felt the heavy accusing weight in its pocket again. I couldn’t remember if I’d shoved a fresh clip in the gun.

Sloppy, sweetheart. Always check your ammo. Dad’s voice again. I could almost forget the zombie’s howling bellow and the tip-taps of its bony fingers against the glass. The low moaning sound it made, an unmodulated groan. The sound of my own screams drowning out the gun’s blunt roar.

I shivered again.

Graves had shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on the cot as well. The entire room smelled like healthy teenage boy, a mix of hair, testosterone, and Speed Stick or Right Guard or one of those deodorants with heavy masculine names. “You can take your coat off. You want some coffee? I’ve got some Coke, too, but it’s not cold. And I’ve got Doritos, if you’re still hungry. Noodles, too.”

“No, I’m good.” I picked my way over to the bookcase and peered at the paperbacks. He liked horror novels, lots of Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Dean Koontz. But there was also a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and a stack of books about the Spanish Civil War, as well as a thick, well-read history of World War II. And—good Lord. There was a whole shelf of romance novels, with pink bodice-ripping covers. Right over the bottom shelf of heavy, thick math textbooks.

This guy was getting more interesting all the time.

“I read a lot,” he said behind me, a little unsteadily. “I can’t get a TV in here.” There were shuffling sounds, and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw he was making coffee despite his shaking hands. “Sure you don’t want a Coke or something?”

He was nervous, blushing, and almost stammering. It was kind of endearing.

“Maybe some coffee,” I volunteered, diplomatically. “This is really cool, Graves. It’s like your own little world.”

“No teachers and no jocks.” He made a short snorting noise that tried to be a laugh. “Come on in and sit down. You look tired.”

I felt tired. But it was weird—I felt safer than I had last night at home. There was no wind moaning at the windows, and I didn’t have to wait for the worst—it had already happened. Just having someone else near, talking while he made coffee, was enough to make me feel better.

I folded myself down next to the bookcase and hugged my knees. “You live here?”

A shrug, seen from the back. “Here and other places. Wherever I want.” He vanished into the bathroom with the coffeepot. “We can go out the other way once the mall’s closed down.”

Another way out? Smart, kid. Never have just one escape route. I put my forehead on my jean-clad knees and let out a long breath I hadn’t been aware of holding. Trembling spilled through my bones as Graves splashed in the bathroom. He finally came out, and a few minutes later the smell of coffee filled the small studio. It reminded me of Dad—he always needed caffeine in the mornings. I made his coffee the way he taught me, the way they made it in the Marines—strong and bitter enough to eat a silver spoon. Gran had boiled hers in a percolator, and Dad wasn’t far behind. I was probably the only kid in three states who knew how to run an old-timey coffee bubbler.

“Hey.” Graves had appeared right next to me, crouching down. Strings of wavy hair fell in his face, and he pushed them back with a quick flick of his long fingers. “You okay? You hurt anywhere?”

The question struck me as absurd. I hurt all over, every muscle in my back was tight, my legs ached, my shoulders felt like lead bars, my arms were heavy—and my heart, speared with something dark and terrible, hurt worst of all. My hands shook. Even my hair ached, now that I was sitting down, not moving from one thing to the next. I opened my mouth to tell him so, and a dry, barking sob interrupted me halfway.

“Oh shit.” He sounded really alarmed, and he dropped down next to me. “Dru? Jesus. Dru?”

I couldn’t answer him. Sobs racked me, horrible sounds like I was being strangled because I couldn’t keep them back but I tried so hard my teeth locked together, grinding. My jaw creaked, and I couldn’t smell the coffee after a while because my nose was full.

Graves put one bony arm around me and didn’t say anything while I cried. It was decent of him, and I liked him for it. I was almost sorry I was going to have to blow town and leave him behind.

He gave me the cot and the sleeping bag, and I passed out clutching my messenger bag to my chest, Dad’s coat on the floor next to the bed. When I woke up hours later, Graves was gone. There was a scrawled note attached to the inside of the door with a wad of spearmint gum.

Went to school. I’ll bring your homework back. You should really stop skipping. There was another line, more heavily crossed out, that I couldn’t decipher, then: Stay as long as you want. I’ll be back.

I dug in my bag until I came up with my watch, a waterproof Swiss number Dad had bought in New York when I was twelve. He’d left me with August for about a month while he was up near the Canadian border doing something or another. Even though August was pretty cool and knew more about the Real World than a lot of books, he still wasn’t real company, like Dad. And besides, he always made me stay inside while he was out “working.” A whole month in New York and all I knew was one street in Brooklyn.

It was a little after 3 p.m. I’d slept for a long time; my head felt heavy, my mouth sandy and nasty, every muscle stiff and my back hurting like a sonofabitch. I’d definitely pulled something getting away from the zombie.

The thought hurt, but not as much as I thought it would. It was like pinching your toes after they’ve gone to sleep. Dad was a zombie. Had been a zombie. Whatever.

What am I going to do now? I stood staring blankly at the note on the door for a little while, just breathing and feeling the inside of my head full of cotton wool.

A thought swam through the fuzziness, linking up with the memory of August’s close, stuffy apartment. Contacts. Dad has contacts. I should go find the list and let one of them know.

We weren’t the only ones hunting down ghosts, poltergeists, flickers, bad hexes, chupacabras, gator spirits, bad voodoo, or anything else you care to name. There’s a whole underground movement, checking in at occult and Army-Navy surplus stores, passing along information and trading tips on how to best clean out a haunted house or take down a sucker, how to disperse a poltergeist or where the next wave of weird crap moving through a region is coming from.

I shivered at the thought of suckers, gooseflesh rising hard and hot on my arms, spilling down my back. They were bad news, like werwulfen—though wulfen were generally not dangerous to people like Dad, having their own running feud with the suckers to keep them busy.

I shut my eyes. Why hadn’t I told Dad about Gran’s owl? He might have listened and not gone out that night.

Which made it my fault, in a fuzzy sort of way. And the house was standing open, getting colder and colder, with a hole the size of Texas in the back door and a stain on the living-room carpet, plus a bullet hole in the living-room wall.

What am I going to do?

First things first. I was starving. I needed food, and I needed to think. I had to make a list of Things To Do. I’d have to go back to the house during daylight. Daylight was safest. I needed to get the ammo together, and all the weapons. I needed to pack up, and I needed to find Dad’s truck.

Our battered blue Ford truck rose up inside my head like a beacon. If I could find the truck, I could make it out of town and figure out what to do next. Gran’s house up in the Blue Ridge was still standing solid—we’d been there a few months back, swinging through to check in on it—and mine under the terms of the trust fund she and Dad had set up. I could hide out there. Once I was up in the mountains, I would have a little space to breathe. Nobody would come looking for me there—it took two dirt roads and a piece to even get close, as Gran always said.

Dad deserved a funeral service. There wouldn’t be anything left of him but greasy dust and bits of bleached bone, though. Zombies fall apart amazingly quick.

One scorching tear trickled down my cheek, then another. He wasn’t going to come stamping in the door yelling, Dru, honey, get your ass up! He wasn’t going to walk in tired and heavy, lock the door, and ask me what was for dinner. He wasn’t ever going to quiz me about sage smudging, hex-breaking, or poltergeist-clearing ever again. Or even leave me a note reminding me to do my katas.

I came back to myself with a jolt and looked down at my watch. It was buckled on my wrist now, my clever little fingers doing the work for me. Thirty minutes had passed while I stood staring at the note on the door. My back ached, every single muscle glued to its neighbors and protesting. I needed some aspirin in the worst way.

I had money. I could make it up to the food court—but what if someone saw me behind the mall’s scenes? Would I get in trouble I couldn’t lie my way out of, or would someone start watching the halls and catch Graves on his way back?

Oh, for God’s sake. You’ve got plenty of problems without worrying about him.

But you don’t blow someone else’s bolt-hole. It’s like a law among hunters. And if Dad was gone, I was the only one left to do the hunting.

That was a scary thought, and one I pushed away as soon as I could.

I stamped back to the bed and dug in my bag. It was deathly quiet down here, but even if I made any noise someone outside wouldn’t be able to tell where it was coming from, would they? How often did people scurry down to the dumpsters during the day, anyway? Who used the cardboard crusher?

My artist’s pad was a bit worn around the edges from being smashed into my bag all the time. I flipped through it, looking for a clean sheet so I could leave a note for Graves.

The strength went out of my legs, and I sat down hard on the concrete floor, my teeth clicking together as my ass hit.

There was the drawing of the iris I’d been working on, shaded lovingly. Then the doodles of shapes, the closet door, and my nightstand. The pile of laundry. On the next page the pencil had dug into the paper, rasping harshly and shading giant blocks of shadow. I didn’t remember drawing this, but I knew I had. Who else could’ve?

It was the back of a warehouse or another large building butted up against an even larger one, broken windows suggested with slices of pencil shading. There was a busted-down chain-link fence, and in front of the fence was something familiar—a truck crouched like a big cat.

Our truck. I’d know that camper anywhere. My mouth went dry and copper-tasting. My heartbeat thudded in my throat and ears.

I don’t remember drawing this. I fell asleep after drawing the laundry—I know I did!

But I’d dreamed, hadn’t I? A bad dream, about . . . what? Dad, and a door. And something behind the door. The more I looked at the building crouching behind our truck, the more certain I was that something horrible had happened in there, something that ended up with Dad getting turned into a flesh-eating, shambling horror.

The pencil had been broken in my hand, digging in with sharp edges when I woke up. The drawing had obviously been done quickly, using shortcuts I knew about from years of scribbling sketches. It was ridiculous, impossible. Gran would have been proud of me for displaying a new talent, but I wasn’t so happy about it at all.

I was still staring at the drawing’s heavy, thick strokes when a scratching sound from the wall brought my head up. I dove off the bed and rolled, grabbing the jacket and ending up full-length on the floor, my hand squirming for the gun just like Dad taught me. Get down first, then return fire. Making yourself a target while you fire back is bad business, sweetheart.

Sanity caught up with me just as the door swung inward. Who else knew I was down here?

Graves hopped through the door and shook his head sharply. He was soaking wet and shivering, water dripping from his curly hair and the hem of his long black coat. His lips were almost blue, his nose bright red and dripping, and his cheeks looked yellow-raw. “It’s c-cold as sh-shit out there,” he stuttered, and blinked owlishly at me as he swept the door closed, a black backpack hanging wetly from one sodden bony shoulder. “And snowing again. I had a hell of a time getting back in here. I brought you something.”

I felt ridiculous, lying on the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. He shut the door and stamped, shaking himself like a golden retriever just come up out of a freezing lake. Water flew.

I clicked the safety back on and eased my finger off the trigger. Clambered to my feet, leaving the gun in my coat. “It’s snowing again?”

“God, is it ever. You wouldn’t believe what I went through to get inside the mall. Here.” He dug in his backpack, shaking more water out of his hair. I could see the melting ice sticking to the dark strands. He was soaked.

“Jesus.” I crossed the small room and tried to take the backpack away from him. “Get out of that coat, your lips are blue. You’d better get into something dry.”

“She’s already trying to get my clothes off,” he announced to the ceiling, refusing to relinquish his bag. “You sound all Southern when you—hang on for a second. Jeez, patience is a virtue. Slow down, it’s for you.”

The backpack yielded a smaller paper bag that smelled like meat and fries. I got him out of the coat and was looking around for someplace to hang the heavy dark material when he dropped the pack, pulled his wet shirt off over his head, and shook all over again, splattering me with cold water and bits of ice.

“What did you do, roll in it? Jesus.” I rescued the bag of food. “Where did you get this?”

“Place on Marshall that never closes. I worked there one summer. They do good food. Start eating, don’t wait for me. You want some coffee?”

He headed off for the bathroom, his shoulder blades like fragile wings under copper-tinted skin. There was a bloom of red across his shoulders from the cold, and he was already unbuttoning his pants. He had nice musculature, a bit scrawny but developed, at odds with his baby-cheeked face.

A flush worked its way up my neck, found my cheeks. I looked quickly away, found a hanger and got his coat hung up where it could drip onto the floor.

He came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and another one scrubbing at his hair. I dug in the bag and found three cheesesteak sandwiches and a triple order of curly fries. They smelled divine. “Wow. What do I owe you?”

A flash of a grin eased his face. “First one’s free, kid. Start eating; you probably haven’t had anything all day, have you? They even canceled school, for once. Bletch was madder than a jock with his balls kicked in. It took me a couple hours to get to the place out on Marshall and another—” He broke off, looking down at me with one half of his unibrow cocked. “You’d better eat. I didn’t haul it out here for nothing.”

At least he was looking a little less like a half-melted Popsicle. “Christ, will you put your clothes on?” Dad walked around shirtless whenever he wanted to and I was sure I wasn’t a prude, but still.

“I thought you were trying to get me out of my clothes.” He snorted his particular sarcastic laugh, half bark and half yip of pain. “Start eating.”

“Really, what do I owe you?” And where do you get your money, kid? Do I care? There were all sorts of questions about why a kid would live in a mall, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know. His problems were just that—his. I had enough on my hands.

“Told you, first one’s free.” He actually winked, his eyes more brown than green today. He grabbed a shirt and pulled it over his head, took a handful of other clothes while I looked down at the floor, that strange heat swamping my cheeks like water filling up a footprint.

“You bought me dinner the other day, remember?”

“But I didn’t buy you a Marshall Street Special. I wasn’t sure you’d be here, but then I thought you’d probably still be sleeping. You were passed out pretty hard when I left this morning.” He dropped down next to me wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt and dry jeans. The towel landed with a thump near the duffel bag that held his dirty laundry, and he picked up one of the sandwiches. “Hope it’s still warm.”

My coat was lying on the floor right next to him. It looked innocent, but I knew what was in the pocket. What would he say if he guessed what I’d been about to do?

Just who was this kid, anyway? “Why are you doing this?”

His shoulders hunched again. He took a massive bite of cheesy steak sandwich and closed his eyes. The floor was hard and cold, and I wondered where he’d slept last night. I hadn’t even thought about it before.

He chewed, his hair hanging in damp black strings over his eyes, and shrugged. “Mrfle.”

What the hell does that mean? I decided to let it go. He’d brought me down here, after all, and I wasn’t one to throw stones when it came to abnormal living arrangements. “Thank you. I mean, it’s been bad. Thanks.” The urge to tell him something, anything, rose in my throat.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Want to talk about it? It’s cool if you don’t.”

What could I tell you that you’d believe? At least when I had Dad I wasn’t so lonely.

Dad. I heard that weird bellow again, air forced through a frozen throat. What had the zombie been trying to say? Anything?

Tears prickled my eyes for the thousandth time, hot and hard. The lump congealed in my windpipe. I had to breathe deep. I was starving, and I don’t think straight when I’m hungry. “My dad.” I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite.

It was really good, salty and cheesy and full of fat and carbohydrates. The bun was fresh, and it was still warm.

“What about him?” Graves said it carefully, and I could have laughed.

“It’s not what you think. He’s dead.” The word sounded strange in my mouth. A single syllable that didn’t belong to my Dad. It belonged somewhere out there, and putting it in a sentence with him was wrong, even though I knew it was true.

If he was surprised, he hid it really well. His eyes got really wide and very green. He took another bite, chewed thoughtfully. Snagged a handful of curly fries and stuffed them in his mouth, still watching me. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I reached over to the bed and fished my artist’s pad out of the tangled mess of the sleeping bag. I opened it to the drawing of Dad’s truck. “Do you know where this is?”

He took the paper. His eyes widened briefly, again. He swallowed again, throat working. His earring glittered at me, like a signal. “This is really good.”

Duh, I’ve been drawing since I was five. “Thanks. Do you know where that is?”

“No.” He waited, his eyebrows up. His mouth made a little inquisitive movement, and he licked the grease off his fingers.

Shit. “I have to find it. I have to find our truck so I can . . . Well, I have to find it.” I took a bite, swallowed it without tasting, and laid down the sixty-four-million-dollar question. “Will you help me? Please?”

“Help you find that building?” He shrugged. “Sure, I guess. It’ll take a while with all the snow. The radio said it won’t stop for a week. We’re in for a regular old whiteout.”

I waited for him to ask more questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he just ate, watching me between bites. When he finished the first sandwich, he started on the second. I listened to the silence outside the walls, chewing reflexively. It might have been cardboard for all I could taste.

He was halfway done when he stopped chewing and looked at me. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

I don’t know yet. I wish I did. If I told you, you’d think I was crazy. “It’s pretty bad.” That was about all I could say.

“Okay.” He shrugged again. “Sounds interesting. We’ll start looking tomorrow. But we’ll have to do it after school.”

My jaw threatened to drop.

His shoulders hunched again. “You think I want to live in the corners like this for the rest of my life? I’ve got a plan. I’m going to get my GED and go to community college; then I’m going to go to real college. I’m going to be a mathematician. They get paid crap until they get tenure, but after that it’s pretty cool. I’m going to be a physics professor.”

A physics professor? I tried to imagine him as an adult, or as a teacher, and failed. The effort made my brain hurt. He was just so gawky and young. “Everybody’s got to have a goal.” Odd relief bloomed under my breastbone, filled my entire chest. “You don’t skip school?”

“No way. It’s a one-way ticket back to foster care if I fly above the radar, you know.” The thoughts crossing his face went too quickly for me to even guess at before the wall went back up behind his eyes. “That was my first time, with you.” He grinned, a fetching, lopsided smile that he ended up stuffing more curly fries into. “You’re a bad influence, Dru.”

You have no idea, kid. I was startled into another laugh. The sandwich tasted pretty good after that.