Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

As I fell to the floor, I heard his screams swallowed by a thick, horrible splash.

No longer held, I rolled away. Drops of splashing liquid hit my jacket and started steaming. Grandpa wasn’t so lucky. He caught some on the side of his face. It started steaming, too. Ignoring the physical pain, the old man moved closer to the vat. Planning what? To pull Watt out with his hands?

Didn’t matter. The skeleton, standing now, dug its hands into Grandpa’s face, right where the acid was burning, and yanked him in, too.

As Grandpa bubbled away, I realized the pole attached to my neck strap was dangling. I looked around for the Mask, but all I could see was a slightly swinging chain near a door marked EXIT. Hands and ankles cuffed, I was in no position to chase him, but I tried. I got up, tripped, and fell after two yards.

“Heh-heh.”

I looked back as the meatless skeleton clambered out of the vat, acid dripping in a small puddle at its feet. It didn’t look like it had any more idea what it was than I did.

When it was happening, I thought Ashby had attacked Watt and Grandpa on purpose, for vengeance, or whatever. From the way it moved now, bumping and crashing into everything, I started thinking it was just trying to get out of the tank, grabbing whatever happened to be around. It was blind. It had to be. It had no eyes.

“Heh-heh.”

Or throat. So how did it make that sound? Was it really his laugh, or just the way the bones creaked against one another? Was I only hearing it in my head?

It neared me, dripping, so I squirmed out of the way. I didn’t know if it could hear, but I wasn’t going to call. For all I knew it would run over to me like a wet dog and shake that crap all over me. So I stayed quiet and watched as it stumbled into the table, knocking over all those pretty tools.

I noticed that the duffel bag and the clippers were gone.

“Heh-heh.”

By the time I squirmed up to sitting, it was farther away from me, banging among some crates. It was no longer dripping so much, so I called out, softly, “Ashby?”

It didn’t react.

“Ashby,” I managed again. “You in there?”

It hesitated. I don’t think it’d heard me. It stood in front of an open door, the one the Mask must have fled through. Maybe it sensed the breeze.

And then the body, the moving bones, the thing that used to be a chak, that was someone named Ashby before that, threw itself through the door and creaked off into the night. I heard the acid bubble in the vat, the scrape of foot bone against concrete, and the fading sound of that crazy laugh: “Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh.”

18

Though my immediate prospects had much improved, my hands and ankles were still cuffed, and there was a leather strap around my neck. Reaching my cell phone was out, but I was sort of mobile. I hopped when I stood, dragged myself when I fell. After about an hour, I made it to a pay phone and punched the keys with my nose.

Though it was free and only three numbers, I sure as hell wasn’t going to try 911. They’d probably send Booth. Maybe he wasn’t out to D-cap me, but that didn’t make us friends. I could tell him about Mr. Gas Mask until I was even bluer in the face than usual, and Booth would only wonder why my legs hadn’t been broken.

To pay for a call, I had to punch in my debit card. Took six tries before I got the number right. Then I did like E.T. and phoned home. When I was finished, I leaned against a streetlamp and scanned the dark, straight line of road between the warehouses. The sedan was gone, so I didn’t expect the Mask to leap out at me, and there was no sign of Ashby. Just the same, I kept my eyes open.

It wasn’t only outside threats I had to watch for. My rich inner world had gotten pretty bad, too. In the warehouse, I’d started moaning. Street wisdom said it was only a matter of time before I went feral. Then again, if the street was so damn smart, why would it be on the street to begin with?

Half an hour later, a cab showed. The door opened. Misty’s legs slid onto the pavement, followed by the rest of her. She was so shocked when she saw me, she tripped twice running over, then wrapped her arms around me. The cabbie, who had two grisly beards, one on each chin, took one look at us, muttered something about not being into that kinky shit, and drove off.

Misty picked the handcuffs with a safety pin. Able to move my arms and legs, I checked my body, satisfied that everything was still working. She got the pole off easily enough. It just unscrewed. The padlock on the leather strap was a problem.

“It’s too narrow for the pin. I need to cut it off with some clippers or something,” she said.

I rubbed my wrists. “Could you please not use that word right now?”

I told her a little about what happened, enough for her to ask if I was okay, enough for me to say sure. I wasn’t. Yes, I was back in my body and didn’t feel a need to moan right then and there, but it’d been a real long couple of days. I didn’t know it, but it was about to get worse.

The second cab we called wouldn’t take chakz. When a third showed, Misty offered the driver an extra twenty. He was hungry enough to take it. Thank the stars for the desperate among us, for they can still be hired.

Back at the office, while Misty worked at the strap with a file and a pair of scissors, I collapsed into my desk chair. She wanted to talk. I didn’t. While she sawed away, I flicked on the set, hungry for anything except reality. I found what I was looking for. Tea with the Dead was on, one of a dozen zombie-themed shows. Most were comedies that portrayed chakz as a really lame, laughable threat, sort of like the Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes .

After a while, I heard Misty’s nails scratching, then felt the soft pads of her fingers on the back of my neck. She’d cut most of the way through the leather and was trying to tear the last inch. She grunted, strained, and I heard a sound disturbingly similar to ripping flesh. The collar came free.

“I keep thinking about poor Ashby,” she said.

“You and me both,” I told her.

“It’s so crazy. Why would anyone collect chak heads?”

I shrugged as I rubbed my neck. “Because someone’s a sick fuck, and sick fucks do fucking sick things.” After a pause and a look at her face, I got a little more introspective. “Could be a ritual thing. Psychos like to collect souvenirs, body parts. Y’know, in some primitive tribes warriors collected the heads of their enemies; gave them someone to talk to.”

Takes a lot to freak someone out when they spend all day with the dead, but she started rubbing her neck, too. “You joking?”

“I wish. I took some psych classes once, learned just enough to hurt myself. Freud wrote about some old chief who used to pull out the skull of his greatest foe, put a cigar in it, light it up for him, and have a good, long, one-sided chat—y’know, ‘Buddy, you’re the only one who understands me’ . . . that sort of thing.”

I must have shivered or something, because she started rubbing my neck and shoulders.

“Try not to break anything back there, okay?”

She slapped at my back. “You’re tougher than you think. Lucky, too.”

“Oh, yeah. My luck’s been amazing. Got one chak D-capped and another melted to the bone. Think I should buy a lottery ticket today?”

“You blame yourself for Ashby?”

“It’s not rocket science. I didn’t have to let him come with me. Could’ve forced him to stay with you. I didn’t, and he lost a lot of weight because of it.”

She shook her head, but I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. “He’d have tried to follow, and it could’ve wound up worse for him.”