Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

I shrugged. “It’s time to play hardball. You turn Wale loose, Mobley will come to you. He’ll be begging for a sit-down.”

Terrence nodded and was about to respond when a sound like a snapping tree limb split the air. The sound came from behind us.

From the graves.

Terrence and I turned together, toward the sound. Splintered wood from one of the coffins lay scattered around the gravesite. As we watched, one of Terrence’s nephews climbed from his shattered coffin and stood up. He staggered and then braced himself with both hands on the sides of his grave. He looked down at himself, at the dark suit his mother had buried him in, and then he looked around. His gaze landed on us, and his eyes were a dull, filmy gray. They were a dead man’s eyes.

“What the fuck, Uncle T?” he said. “Why you got to put a brother in the ground?”

The kid climbed out of his hole and stumbled toward us. He seemed a little stiff. After a few jerking steps, he wobbled to a stop and fell back on his ass, his legs splayed out in front of him.

Terrence and I just looked at him.

“I feel like shit, Uncle T,” the kid said. He was holding his head in both hands and craning his neck to either side. It snapped and popped like dry kindling in a fire.

“You got shot seven times, Tony,” Terrence said. His voice sounded dry and harsh, like he just woke up from a hard night of drinking and too many cigars.

“Damn, Uncle T, it’s Antoine, I keep telling you that. No one calls me Tony anymore.”

“You got shot seven times, Tony,” Terrence repeated. “One of the bullets went in your brain. They didn’t even bother to dig it out when they put you on the table.”

I thought it was a little more detail than the kid probably needed, but Terrence sounded like he was saying it to remind himself more than for his nephew’s benefit.

Tony raised a hand to his forehead and probed the gray, puckered entry wound with his fingertips. “Why ain’t I dead, Uncle T?”

Terrence didn’t say anything. I didn’t either-I just relaxed my vision and looked at Tony with my witch sight. Terrence had said the kid didn’t have any juice, but that wasn’t exactly right. Every human has a little juice in them-an aura or whatever you want to call it. I could see what was left of Tony’s juice soaking into the soggy earth with the rain. It was exactly what I’d expect to see on a human body that had been dead a couple days.

I dropped the sight and looked over at Terrence. He turned to me and I shook my head.

“Tell me what you remember, Tony,” he said, looking back to the kid again. He stayed where he was, about ten feet from where Tony had dropped into the mud.

“I remember all of it. I remember getting shot. We were just hanging out at the store and the Rastas rolled up on us in a black Escalade. I didn’t even have time to be scared, Uncle T. I saw them roll up and then I was down.”

“What else, Tony? You remember anything after that?”

“I remember everything,” he said. “I remember the uniforms showing up, and later the murder police. And after, when the doctors laid me out and started cutting on me. I was awake but I couldn’t move. It didn’t hurt, you know, but I could feel what they were doing.” The kid started crying but there were no tears. His eyes were dry and gray. “I remember the funeral. But I was lying in that fucking box and I couldn’t see anything. I was able to open my eyes but all I could do was lie there and look up at the ceiling.”

“Any hoodoo on him, Domino?” Terrence asked. You could use magic to raise the dead, to make a zombie out of a corpse. I even knew the spell, though I’d never used it.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Maybe that fairy shit?”

“No, I’d see it.” When I’d killed the changeling who’d replaced Adan, I’d also taken his magic. Now I could see fairy glamour as easily as human sorcery and there was no glamour on Tony. Raising zombies wasn’t exactly the Seelie Court’s style, anyway.

“What you think we should do?”

“No clue.”

“We can’t put him back in the ground.”

“No, that doesn’t seem right.”

“Maybe if we wait awhile he’ll die again.”

“Fuck you, Uncle T. You think I can’t hear you?” Tony had stopped crying and was scowling at us.

“Sorry, Tony, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just not sure what to do about this.”

Tony staggered to his feet again. He was moving jerkily around the grave site when we heard a thumping sound coming from the other coffin. Terrence and I looked at each other and then at the grave. We walked over and looked down.

“I hurt, Uncle T,” Tony called from behind us. “Before I couldn’t feel nothing, now it hurts, real bad.”

“Chill out, Tony. I got to help Keshawn.” Terrence dropped to his knees in the mud, reached into the grave and unlatched the coffin. He opened the lid.

The body lying there didn’t look quite as good as Tony’s. Keshawn had taken one in the head, too, but the exit wound had torn away one side of his skull. The funeral home hadn’t done much more than slap some industrial-strength Maybelline on it. I flowed a little juice to steady my nerves and calm my stomach.

“I think I’m hungry, Uncle T,” Tony called.

“I said chill the fuck out, Tony. Give me a minute and I’ll take you to Mickey D’s.”

Keshawn opened his eyes. They were gray, empty and lifeless, just like Tony’s. His lips pulled back in a snarl and bared yellow teeth, and his hands flashed up and grabbed Terrence by the throat. Keshawn screamed and thrashed and pulled Terrence into the grave. Terror welled up from someplace deep in my mind and tried to paralyze me. I flowed more juice to take the edge off it and moved forward to help. Then I heard Tony step up behind me.

“I don’t want Mickey D’s, Uncle T,” he said, and I felt his cold, cold hands on my neck.

Everyone has an irrational fear. For some people it’s spiders, for others it’s snakes, or maybe clowns. I have a big fucking problem with zombies. I can deal with ghosts-even the really creepy ones. Hell, I share my condo with a spook, an old woman named Mrs. Dawson. I can also deal with dead bodies-as long as they stay down. If they get up and try to eat me, that’s just too fucking much.

So when Tony put his hands around my neck, I didn’t spin a combat spell. I didn’t trigger the defensive ring on my pinkie finger or do anything else that might have been vaguely constructive. Instead, my body seized up, my hands flew to my face and I screamed like a little girl. Actually, that’s not quite right. I screamed just like a bimbo in a zombie movie.

I stayed like that, frozen in place and screaming at the top of my lungs, until Tony’s teeth clamped down on my ear. In a zombie movie, flesh would have torn and blood would have sprayed, but fortunately, Tony’s teeth weren’t exactly designed for chewing ears. Blunt teeth or not, I can say one thing about having someone bite into your ear, and I think Evander Holyfield would back me up on this: it hurts like a motherfucker.

It hurt enough that it probably saved my life, or at least my profile. When I felt Tony’s teeth sink into my flesh, my scream turned into an outraged roar and I twisted, swinging an elbow into his face. I heard a sickening, crunchy, squelching sound as it slammed into his nose, and he staggered back from the blow. I turned to face him and put one hand to my ear. I looked at the hand and there was blood on my fingers. I looked up at Tony, who was staggering toward me again, his arms outstretched and his hands grasping like claws.

“You dirty, dead motherfucker,” I said. “You bit my fucking ear.” Tony made a terrible moaning, mewling sound. His lips curled away from his teeth, like that hideous thing chimpanzees do, and he kept coming.