Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

I thought I heard howls and gunshots. I didn’t know if it was from the Bones, or my ears were remembering Bedland. At some point, I wanted to get up, but the office had vanished and the floor was opening up. Below, there was a sickly green liquid. I struggled, but then gave up. They say once you’ve already said fuck it , it gets easier the second time. It certainly felt easier.

I was more than halfway gone, and nothing was pulling me back.

19

Ididn’t know how long I’d been there when the door clicked open and the rotten, stinking world rushed back into place. Misty stepped in, face wrapped in worry.

“Hess? Can you talk? You’ve got to get up. You have to.”

It was dark out, so I pretended I’d been asleep. “Huh? Whazzat?”

“Jonesey’s here. He’s pretty upset.”

Before I could say a word, Jonesey was halfway inside, pushing past Misty like she was a set of drapes. Things still felt arm’s-length distant, but some habit told me I should keep up appearances in front of a guest. I managed to turn on the lamp. The light hit him under the chin. His head was bouncing like a doggy decorating the back of somebody’s car.

“You look natural,” he said. I think it was a compliment.

“And you look like you’ve seen a . . .” I caught myself. “Never mind. What’s up?”

“Everything.” He took to pacing, and talking too fast for me to follow. “It’s gotten bad out there, right? Big cop presence? But I keep working on the rally, one pamphlet at a time, one chak at a time. It’s happening, too. Really, really happening. I’ve got commitments. One chak talks to another, and those chakz talk to more. It’s like a virus of positive energy . . . and then . . . and then . . .”

I was grateful for the pause. “Is there a point in there somewhere?”

“I managed to get the police to back off a little. The police . To. Back. Off. It was a miracle, a light from the sky, the dove from above. When they saw me in action, defusing tension, getting chakz to cooperate peacefully, I earned their respect .”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “Yeah. And now you’ll be the first chak elected president.”

Making fun made me feel better, but Jonesey wasn’t in the mood.

“Shut up. Don’t talk like that, Hessius. I don’t think I could take it right now.”

“Since when do you call me Hessius? What the hell is going on? Sit down and take it slow, for Pete’s sake.”

He sat down. The change in the angle of the lamp did nothing for his looks.

“Boom, everything goes to confusion. Boom. Out of nowhere, fucking nowhere, like out of the darkness before the world began, this . . . this . . . skeleton shows up and starts tearing things apart.”

At long last, something got my attention. I clenched my jaw. “Tearing things, or people?”

“Both, if he gets the chance. He’s worse than feral, and he’s strong. He puts his fist through a windshield, tries to grab the driver. The cops freak, the chakz freak, and everybody’s running like crazy back to square one.”

“Enough about the political climate. Focus. The skeleton, where is it now?”

Jonesey couldn’t sit still. He jumped up and started acting the story out. I have to admit, it helped. “The cops go after him, guns blazing, but they miss, miss, miss, and he ducks into an alley. Then they lose him, ten of them, probably because they’re so weirded out. So am I; so’s everybody. Two chakz moan just because they were watching. But I don’t panic. I stay in control, Mann, and I look, look, look and spot his freaky ass. I follow, figuring I can, you know, try to talk him down or something, but it’s like he can’t see or hear me, like I’m the same as any other thing in his way. I stand in front of him and he nearly tears me apart. And all the while keeps making this sound, like . . . like . . .”

“Heh-heh?”

Jonesey snapped his fingers. “That’s the one.” He twisted his head and stared. “You know him. You know him?”

“I know who it was .”

He shook his head. “He, Mann. He .”

That was Jonesey. He’d call a lamppost he or she . Part of his philosophy. Treat something as if it’s a person and it’s more likely to act like one. I somehow didn’t think it applied to a bunch of bones—me, either, for that matter. I was barely back from the brink, and the only thing holding me there was the thought that I could prevent some damage if I put a stop to it .

But hope springs eternal. Jonesey even thought I might have some answers. “How does he even talk? How does he walk? There’s no muscle.”

I shook my head. “I said I knew who it was, not that I know what it is. All I can tell you is that it’s what’s left of a chak after an acid bath, and its name used to be Ashby.”

He blinked. “Acid bath? You mean like a bath with acid in it?”

“Yeah. Long story. Right now we’ve got to find it before the police do, or before it gets its hands on another liveblood.”

Jonesey’s mouth opened so quick his jawbone cracked. “No, no, no. Another?”

I nodded. “Already killed two. Arguably self-defense . . . after the fact. Where’d you see it last?”

“Collin Hills.”

He might as well have said Disneyland. Collin Hills was a McMansion neighborhood separated from the Bones by General Buell Park. A definite no-no for any chak.

“Collin Hills? Fuck . . . how . . . ?”

Jonesey went back into his pantomime thing, swooping his arms to imitate the skeleton’s movements. “He headed into the park, over the fence, then over the freaking electrified wall!” Finished, he slapped himself in the head. “If he gets into one of those houses you know what that’ll mean. . . .”

I did. The LBs were already on pins and needles. If it so much as tromped on the landscaping in a gated community, it’d be like what they did with the Japanese-Americans during WWII, without the food and water. I already had enough to feel guilty about.

For the first time in ages, I got to my feet. “What day is it?”

Jonesey gave me a look like he remembered having this conversation from the other side. “Check your watch,” he said.

“Right.”

Three days. Good enough for Jesus and vampires, good enough for me.

I’d need something serious to deal with this. Ashby’d saved my ass twice—first by coming out of the vat, now by giving me a reason to get up. In exchange, I’d have to put him out of his misery.

It . I’d have to put it out of its misery.

I’d given my gun to that freak Turgeon, but I doubted it’d do any good here. I reached for a crowbar I kept at the side of the desk.

Jonesey looked at the iron the same way he’d just looked at me. “You said you knew him. Can’t you talk to him?”

I tapped the bar into my palm. “Already tried. And don’t ask me about it again until later. Much later.”

I thought I’d have to talk Misty out of coming with us, but as we headed for the door she didn’t say a word. And she looked as bad as I felt.

“You been eating?” I asked her.

No answer. She didn’t look high, so I guessed she’d been worried about me, keeping vigil. I told Jonesey to wait outside a minute.

I said, “Three days, Misty. I’m lucky Turgeon didn’t come for me. Uh . . . he didn’t, did he?”

“No,” she said. “Maybe he was just as freaked out as you were by . . . you know. . . .”

Ashby . I shivered. There but for fortune.

“How long would you have waited on me, Mist?”

“Until the end, until you changed.”

“Then what? Would you have done like I asked?”