Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

Henry returned my stare and bobbed his head, like he knew what I was thinking. “I ate the old bag’s terrible cooking for fifty-seven years,” he said. “Figured it was time I got a decent meal out of her!” He convulsed with laughter, blood and bile burbling over his lips.

“Charming,” Adan said.

“Let me dust this asshole,” said Honey.

“Wait!” Henry said. “That’s not even the funny part.”

A crowd had gathered. Cars and pedestrians had stopped and people stood at a safe distance, not understanding what they were seeing, unwilling or unable to either approach or run screaming.

“We’re on crowd-control,” Honey said. She and Jack buzzed over the onlookers’ heads, crop-dusting them with some discombobulating piskie glamour. The civilians began to mill about in confusion, some standing slack-jawed and others wandering in circles or just walking away. It wasn’t really control, if you asked me, but at least it would keep the rubberneckers from getting up in our business.

“The funny part is,” Henry continued, his torn mouth slurring the words, “when I bit her, she was already cold! Can you believe that? I finally get a chance at a nice dinner and the bitch serves it up cold!”

I peered at Pearl with my witch sight. What little juice she’d had when she was alive was settling in her tissues like lividity and just beginning to ooze from her skin. She stared back at me, her eyes wide and glassy. Pearl was dead as disco but she obviously hadn’t noticed it yet.

“Let’s just do what we have to do and get out of here, Domino,” Adan said. “No point in having a conversation about it.”

“Henry and Pearl are zombies, Adan,” I said.

“Well, I never!” Pearl protested. “I’m Presbyterian, young lady.”

“Yeah, so we have to put them down,” Adan said.

“We’re talking to a couple of zombies.”

“What’s your point?”

“Braaaiiins,” Henry said, giggling. He slid his broken body off the trunk and staggered to his feet.

“Let’s say your home computer wasn’t working, and you needed to figure out what was wrong with it. What would you do?”

“I don’t have a computer,” Adan said.

“Damn, you’re country.”

“I grew up in Faerie.”

“If you had a computer and it wasn’t working, you could run a diagnostic program…okay, skip the analogy. The point is, we need to figure out what’s causing the zombie outbreak. Here we happen to have a couple zombies. We could ask them.”

“That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not my strong point,” I allowed.

“You already talked to Terrence’s nephews. One of them, anyway. You said he really didn’t know anything. Pearl here doesn’t even know she’s dead.”

“I am not dead!” Pearl said.

“See?” Adan said.

“I never finished talking to Tony, because Pac-Man ate him. Plus, no disrespect to the mostly dead, but Tony wasn’t that bright. Pearl might have better answers.”

“What about Henry?”

“What about him?”

“He’s stepping up on you.” Adan nodded his head, looking over my shoulder.

I jumped, turning, and sure enough Henry was creeping up on me from behind, his arms outstretched and his hands grasping spasmodically. His eyes shone with madness and wickedness, though I had the feeling the wickedness, at least, had probably been there even before he died.

“Vi Victa Vis!” I yelled, and the force spell hurled him back and slammed him into the Lincoln’s rear suicide door. His already abused skull made a pulpy sound when it struck steel, and he slumped to the ground, moaning.

I pulled juice from the streets-I was on my home turf now and it came easily. “At first cock-crow the ghosts must go back to their quiet graves below,” I said. The magic burned through Henry’s ravaged body and wrenched his spirit free of the flesh. The corpse toppled over and lay still on the sidewalk.

Pearl screamed and rushed to Henry’s body. She dropped to her knees on the concrete hard enough to tear skin, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She cradled him in her arms and sobbed, and then she jerked her head around to look at me. There were no tears but there was genuine hate in her eyes. “What did you do,” she snarled.

Jesus Christ. “He was dead, Pearl,” I said. “I just ended his suffering.”

“You killed him!” she wailed.

“No, Pearl. He was already dead, remember? You told me that. You also told me he tried to eat you. I had the idea you hated his guts.”

“He was my husband. For fifty-seven years. Of course I hated him! But he was the love of my life. He gave me three beautiful children. Oh, God, how I loved him when we were young. He was so handsome and strong…all of my friends were jealous and I was so proud. He was a good man. What am I supposed to do now?” Pearl buried her face in Henry’s chest and sobbed uncontrollably.

You’re supposed to get hungry and start eating people, I thought. “I have to ask you some questions about what happened, Pearl,” I said. “This is going down all over the city and it’s wrong. You see that, don’t you?”

Pearl lifted her head and nodded. She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with wrinkled hands. “How can you stop it? Are you a pastor or something? I don’t hold with women pastors.”

“Not a pastor, Pearl, but something like it. Will you answer my questions?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what happened after Henry died.”

“I already told you-I didn’t feel well, so I went to lie down for a while. It was just too much, finally, do you understand? I just couldn’t deal with it all right then.”

“I understand, Pearl. But tell me more about what you felt. Did you notice anything unusual?”

“It was my heart,” she said. “It’s always my heart. I had chest pains, dizziness. Maybe it was a little worse than usual. I took one of my pills but it didn’t seem to help. I felt worse, so I went to lie down on the bed for a while. And like I said, I must have dozed off because the next thing I remember is waking up.”

“How did you feel when you woke up?”

“Strange, I suppose. Nothing I could put my finger on that felt wrong…just, nothing felt quite right. You get used to the way your body feels-you even get used to your pain, when you’re my age. It just felt off, like it wasn’t the body I was used to. Was Henry right? Am I dead, too?”

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t think of a good lie, or any reason to use one on her if I could.

“Why hasn’t the Lord called me home? I’m ready to go.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Tell me anything else you remember.”

“I felt alone,” Pearl whispered. “I thought it was just because of Henry dying, but now I don’t think so. It felt like…waiting.”

“Do you know what you were waiting for, Pearl?”

“No, it’s not like that.” Pearl shook her head and thought for a moment. “I was born during the Great Depression,” she said finally. “We came out here from Oklahoma when I was a little girl, and my father worked in the orchards and the fields. He’d be gone for weeks at a time, and sometimes we didn’t know when he’d come back. When I was a little older, he enlisted and went away to the war. That was even worse-we didn’t know if he’d come back at all. I know what it feels like to wait for someone, honey. This feeling wasn’t the same. With Daddy, the feeling was always about him. I was waiting for him. This time…it was just an absence and a sense of expectation that hung there in the room, thick enough to breathe. I was just waiting.”

I glanced at Adan and he shrugged. I turned back to Pearl. “Is there anything else you can tell me? How are you feeling now?”