Mario Acevedo - Jailbait Zombie

The street became a washboard dirt road. Small forlorn houses with tarpaper roofs sat behind rickety fences of slack wire. Rusting cars, tractors, and farm machinery rested like broken statues in weed-filled yards.

I got to the address on C Street, a row of five tiny apartments on a scraggy lot. The twisted window screens looked like gray scabs. Half of the windows either had cardboard inserts or were covered on the inside with aluminum foil. Chambers had lived behind door number three.

I parked next to the only car on the lot, a dusty Chevy Lumina, and got out.

MANAGER had been scrawled in black marker on the door closest to the Chevy.

I removed my contacts and checked to see if anyone watched. The only life I saw were a few birds flying overhead and the traffic passing down the street.

I stored my contacts in their case and covered my eyes with sunglasses. I had to be ready to use hypnosis.

I pressed my hand against the manager’s door. The texture was rough from the peeling varnish. By feeling for vibrations and using my hearing, I could get a better picture of what was going on inside.

A television commercial sang the praises for yet another breakthrough in toothbrush technology. I heard a gentle rustle, like someone shifting on a chair.

I stood to one side of the door-a habit in case the occupant answered with a shotgun blast-and knocked.

The volume of the TV was turned down.

“Yeah?”

I knocked again. “Hey, Donald, I got the rent money.” I emphasized “rent money.”

The chair squeaked and approaching steps rattled the door.

“That you, Barrett?” A man’s voice. “About goddamn time.”

The door jerked open. A guy in his mid-thirties stared out. His flabby face had the dull color of cold cuts that had been forgotten in the fridge. The mood in his eyes went from anticipation to surprise. His dark hair was parted in the middle and hung to his shoulders. He was barefoot and wore sweats and a ratty green T-shirt that said ROCK-N-ROLL FOREVER.

His eyes gave me the quick one, two appraisal, and his expression turned hostile. He kept his hand on the doorknob. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about Barrett Chambers.”

“Haven’t seen him since the beginning of last month. I’m about to evict his deadbeat ass.” Johansen squinted at me and grimaced. “Who are you?”

I held out a business card. “A friend of the family.”

Johansen’s eyes cut to the card and back to me. “What friend? What family?” He started to close the door. “Unless you’re here to settle his rent, I’m not talking. You got any problems with Barrett, go to the cops.”

I had to search Chambers’s apartment, and if Johansen didn’t want to cooperate, I had other ways.

I dropped the card into my shirt pocket. I jabbed my hand and the toe of my shoe in between the door and the jamb. Johansen’s expression exploded with alarm. One shove using vampiric strength and I was inside. Johansen tripped over a vacuum cleaner and stumbled against the wall. He made a choking noise like a scream for help was stuck in his throat. I kicked the door shut, grabbed his arm, and pulled him upright.

Johansen’s eyes fixed on mine, and they said: Don’t hurt me. I jerked the sunglasses from my face and gave him a blast of hypnosis. His pupils unscrewed into enormous black dots. His aura flashed with a silky red texture.

He went limp in surrender. I wouldn’t fang him unless I had to. I asked what he knew about Chambers. Under hypnosis Johansen had to tell the truth, which he readily did. Johansen had no idea what had happened to Chambers or where he had last gone.

To deepen Johansen’s hypnosis, I led him to a chair, sat him down, and rubbed the webs of flesh between his thumbs and index fingers. His face and posture relaxed until his head tipped forward in sleep. He should stay under for twenty to thirty minutes.

I left him slumped in front of his TV. A ring of keys hung from a nail on a post by the counter separating the living room from a tiny kitchen. I put on a pair of latex gloves and took the keys.

Outside of unit three, I tried the keys until I found one that worked.

I stood back and pushed the door fully open. The air gushed out in a wave of musty odors and harsh chemical smells. A pile of mail scattered along the threshold.

I entered and closed the door. The interior was dark. His place was one with aluminum foil over the windows.

Propane tanks were stacked along one wall. The tanks had markings of the stores I was certain they were stolen from. Drug labs used the empty tanks to cook meth.

Was Barrett Chambers a tweaker? If he was, didn’t mean he was a zombie, just acting like one.

What had happened during his last days as a human? Who reanimated him-step one of the process was killing him-and why?

Shredded cartons of Sudafed-more evidence of meth trafficking-filled a large cardboard box. Stacks of old pizza boxes and empty cans of beer and diet soda littered the floor. Heaps of dirty clothes, car stereos, and all kinds of hand tools lay everywhere.

I opened the fridge and immediately regretted it. The smell was like a cow decomposing. The shelves held lumps of hairy shapes in shades of green and yellow. Even the water pitcher had stuff growing in it.

The bathroom and bedroom weren’t in better condition. Interestingly, dry-cleaned trousers still in plastic hung in the closest. That was the extent of any tidy habits.

I searched the drawers and found a large mailer tucked beneath loose underwear and socks, beside the porn. Inside the mailer were letters with postmarks going back seven years with the most recent being from two years ago. Every letter had been sent to a different address. Barrett had flitted from place to place like a plastic bag in the wind.

One letter was from his mom-the return address said MOM-and the rest were from someone named Robbie. Turned out to be his younger brother. Robbie kept sending updates of his progress in school. He asked when Barrett was going to get “right” and come home again. Home was Emporia, Kansas.

I looked at the squalor in the room. Barrett never got right-whatever that was.

I thumbed through the mail piled up by the door. Most were stamped: Past Due.

Barrett Chambers, it seemed, was skidding to the end of the earth and one day fell off the edge.

The problem was that Barrett returned from that edge as a zombie.

How?

I locked up and returned the keys. Johansen would remember hearing me knock and then nothing until he awoke in his chair.

Next stop, Chambers’s ex, Adrianna Maestas.

Adrianna lived south of Abundance Boulevard.Here the roads were paved, the lawns neat, the fences straight and in repair. Most of the streets had sidewalks. No cars or tractors sat dismantled in the yards. The contrast between north and south Morada seemed mandated by law.

The address was a tidy cottage in pristine white stucco protected by walls of rectangular hedges. I parked next to a white picket fence. Cottonwood trees flush with gold and copper leaves shaded the porch. Lace curtains were drawn behind the windows.

After using my vampire powers on Johansen I decided to keep a low supernatural profile, so I had put my contacts back on. I figured I could charm anything I needed out of Adrianna.

I rang the doorbell. The door curtains parted briefly. The deadbolt clicked and the door opened a crack, secured by a chain.

A woman with a slender olive-skinned face and black hair shiny as gloss enamel peered at me. She wore a colored blouse and a neck lanyard with a plastic badge I couldn’t read. I got the feeling she was on the way to work. Despite her pleasant looks, her eyes smoldered with distrust.