Joe Schreiber - Chasing the dead

Sue glances at Phillip, but he's looking at the knife.

No, Phillip, she thinks suddenly. This is a mistake.

"Oh, one more thing." All at once the man looks up from the map, straight at her, close enough that she can almost see through the sunglasses' tinted lenses. "I know you're lying about your age."

Sue is still processing this as Phillip grabs the knife from behind the driver's seat, comes forward between Sue and the car, and stabs the knife straight into the man's chest. The man sits straight upright, his left hand flying out in an attempt to grab the blade. And as Phillip's arm brushes against his wrist, Sue sees the fake yellowish orange color smearing off the Engineer's flesh, revealing the skin underneath to be bluish black.

Phillip swings the knife again.

His second thrust only grazes the Engineer's arm and more flesh-colored paint streaks away, sticking to the blade. But it's not just the makeup that comes off, Sue sees, it's the skin itself, peeling off the Engineer's wrist and coating Phillip's hand in a sticky smear of gristle. Phillip isn't aware of it yet, he's busy thrusting the knife back at the Engineer, shoving it hard, forcing the blade again and again into the man's chest.

And that's when the sunglasses fall off.

The eyes beneath are huge and desolate, utterly black, and they jiggle in the man's sockets like the tainted egg sacs of some unthinkable demon. Within them Sue glimpses some vestige of limited intelligence, but it's like nothing she's ever seen in the eyes of people or animals-it's completely alien, their depths animated solely by appetite which even now seems to be fading swiftly into nothingness.

Sue is still staring deep into the memory, her mind's own eye dilated to an almost perfect circle, astonished at how different things really are from the way she's recalled them in the past. She sees the Engineer's head swivel to the side, his struggles already weakening, and then suddenly his mouth opens and spurts out a spray of thick grayish black fluid across the ground. Sue sees chunks floating in the fluid, pieces of what looks like dead skin, she thinks, but there's no blood in it-and in fact, there's no bloodanywhere. All the punctures and stab wounds across the Engineer's chest, torn to pieces, his bib overalls and thoracic cavity alike, but there'sno blood.

And when Phillip finally stops stabbing him, he sits up, sweat trickling into his eyes, breathing in gasps, and looks at Sue. The hysteria beneath his dazed expression is rising fast, like some iridescent fish flashing just centimeters from the surface. For a second he can't speak. "What is this?" he rasps, eyes flashing down to the bloodless, black body sprawled out beneath him. "What is this, Sue? It's like-"

It's like-

"Like he's not even alive," Sue says aloud now, and realizes she's been shocked back to the present moment by the realization. "I-I blocked it out of my memory, Phillip. That whole thing, I blotted the details right out of my mind. I remembered it wrong."

"Doesn't matter," Phillip's corpse says in its flinty, rasping voice next to her.

Sue shakes her head. "Itdoes matter. I always told myself we didn't tell anyone because we thought we might've gotten the wrong guy, but that's not why. We never told because we were so freaked out, and we knew no one would believe us. And eventually I never even believed us. But you remembered. Younever forgot."

"Doesn't matter."Phillip wrenches his head up toward her. "Go. Get out of here. He's coming back into me. I can feel it. Leave me here. Turn around."

"What about Veda?"

"He'll-never let her-live."

"Where is she?"

One hand flicks at her, a feeble shooing movement. "Go. Isaac Hamilton is here. Coming back into me." Urgently now, but undercut by a failing vitality. "Feel him. So close. Can't hold him back. Just…go."

Sue looks at him, this corpse, this cursed thing wavering in front of her and feels a single blue spark fly across her stomach and land, sizzling, in her chest, where without warning it ignites a puddle of untapped adrenaline. There's a whoosh, and she feels a wellspring of fury, a geyser of indignation and rage for which no precedent exists in her life, ever. And she says, "No."

Phillip doesn't reply. Maybe he can't. Sue throws both her arms straight out in front of her, clenching the thing by its shoulders, feeling its collarbones sticking out beneath dead skin and the fabric of the jacket. "Now you listen to me," she says. "I'm still alive. I'm not dead, and that thing doesn't own me, and until it does I'm going to fight the shit out of it. So you tell me. Where the hell is Veda?"

"Hamilton." The name like a stone. "Using her as bait. To make you bring me fully back to life. Like you said. Vengeance. For what we did that day. Attacking the Engineer. His first and favorite vessel."

"Fuck himand his vessel. I'm delivering you to Ocean Street as promised. And I'm getting Veda back from him."

"Sue…no." He's losing his voice. "A trap."

"I know it is."

"Won't be able to stop myself-from hurting you-"

"I'll handle that." She climbs to her feet, digging out infinitesimal scraps of strength from beneath the layer of fatigue and pain that was all she knew a moment ago, gathering it up and compressing it together in an airtight diamond against the wall of her heart. There's a length of tow rope in the back of the Expedition, and she grabs it. She remembers how Jeff Tatum waffled and wavered right before he started screaming at her again, and she knows she has to hit this right or else she'll have no chance at all. She waits until Phillip's face begins to twitch, the fibers contorting, hands going up to the dry sockets"Coming," he groans. "He's coming."

"Good," Sue says, "let him come," and in one fluid move she shoves her husband's body back into the trunk of the Expedition. Wherever Phillip is on the continuum between himself and Isaac Hamilton, the shove catches him supremely off guard because the corpse tilts and flops straight into the open space, head whacking against the hatchback before he lands inside with a thud. His legs aren't all the way in, they're sticking out at shin-level, but that's how she wants it, and she grabs the hatch and slams it down hard with both hands.

There's a dull crunch as one of the bones in his lower leg snaps, and she's not sure whether she actually hears him howl or if it's just her imagination. Not that it matters. Her hands are already moving again, looping the tow rope around the steel hitch beneath the bumper and then up to the latch-ring inside the Expedition's reargate, yanking the hatch down as tight as it'll go, pinning his ankles. Phillip's feet, encased in Bass loafers, squirm furiously. But they're not going anywhere.

"Let me go, you cocksucking bitch!" the thing in the back of her Expedition shrieks, back to Isaac Hamilton's voice. It's pounding on the floor, flopping around back there, gagging on rage. "I'll kill your daughter, you hear me? I'll fucking tear out her tongue! I'll rip her heart out andeat the fucking thing!"

"Not if I turn around and drive you straight back to Gray Haven. If I do that, you'll go back to being just another lifeless pile of skin."

"It doesn't work that way."

Sue doesn't answer, realizing he's probably right. And even if the processis reversible, there must be other bodies at his disposal. She thinks of the two-hundred-year period that has elapsed since Gideon Winter's sister inadvertently provided Hamilton with his first servant. One corpse could've easily driven the next through the towns, creating an entire arsenal of bodies for Hamilton to inhabit.

But maybe, she thinks, just maybe, no matter how many bodies he has to choose from, he wants Phillip's corpse in particular. And her own. Why? Because they were the only two who had ever damaged his most precious vessel, his beloved Engineer, his first infernal emissary sent back into the world to do his will.