Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

There were only ten feet between us, tops. The clippers were still clamped shut. But you know those dreams where you can’t move even though you absolutely have to? This was one. If my ankle hadn’t been broken, I’m sure I could’ve reached him before Turgeon picked up the choppers and got them open again, but every time I took a step, it felt like my foot would tear off completely.

I always felt bad for those chakz who looked like they were in a grade-B movie, but here I was, dragging my leg, lurching just like a Romero wannabe. Instead of attacking, I limped off, heading for the nearest pillar, praying I’d blend in with the darkness behind the plastic.

Turgeon heard me, but didn’t see me yet. His head was up, scanning. His voice called out above the hissing heads: “Mann?”

He put his new trophy down and snarled at the others, “Quiet! Quiet! Can’t you see I have to find him!” When they didn’t obey, he kicked at them. He even raised the blade like he was going to stab his favorite. “Don’t make me hurt you, Daddy! Quiet them down, now!”

While he tried to get his eggs in a row, I shambled deeper into shadow. It was slow going, but I still had my one last trick. If I could come up behind him, I could still use the vial. All I’d have to do would be to pull it out, clamp down, and spray it into his liveblood face. It’d be all over, except for the running from the bomb.

As I winced and crept along, “Daddy” neared his boy. The head looked up at the killer with an expression I thought might be hatred, then clicked its tongue a few times and made a high-pitched whistling noise that seemed to come from his nose, like a steam kettle. At once, the others settled down.

Turgeon picked up the blade, then turned off the vacuums. Suddenly, dead or not, it was too quiet for me to move without being heard.

Fortunately, it was also quiet enough for Turgeon to hear the beeping timer. Eyes wide, he cursed under his breath and made for the dolly, moving away from me. As he pushed aside the plastic, he realized the ticking bomb wasn’t his only problem. Nell Parker was missing. He hadn’t seen her run.

He popped up like a jack-in-the-box, his funky blue eyes drilling every corner of the long funhouse maze of plastic sheets, work-light reflections, and stagnant shadows.

I knelt, with less trouble than I expected, and grabbed a small chunk of plasterboard. I threw it hard. It skittered along the ground about five feet in front of where I was hiding. Turgeon turned to it, following the sound as the plaster rolled into a different darkness.

I’d expected him to turn the timer off before coming after me, but he didn’t. He just stepped back in my direction. Either he figured there was plenty of time left before the big ka-boom , or I was wrong and this was a suicide run. I tossed another piece, bringing him closer, then another. It was time to fish out the vial, but my bruised tongue felt like a piece of hot charcoal in my mouth. I felt like a stroke victim trying to cover six months of therapy in under a minute.

Rather than try to move it again, I shoved my index finger in my mouth. It was too thick to dig under my jaw, but I did manage, with a wild blast of hurting, to push my tongue into the hollow. From there, it scooped the vial out. I held it gently between my back molars, shivering as the ache rushed through me in waves. I was ready for Turgeon.

But he was gone.

While I’d been fussing with my bruised tongue, he’d slipped off. I looked at the heads, hoping they’d give me a clue, but they were helter-skelter, as if whatever intelligence they possessed had fled. Even Daddy lay listlessly on his side, staring up at the work light as if it were the sun and he was tanning at the beach.

I found another piece of plaster and threw it. But when it landed and rolled, Baby-Egghead called out, “Stupid, Mann. Really stupid!”

I scanned the filthy sheen of the plastic, eyed the grays and blacks, looked for odd shadows near the light. Nothing moved. All I heard was the beeping. Where was he?

A skittering on the floor caught my attention. I turned my head in time to see a piece of rolling plaster. It stopped in a pool of light on the opposite side of the pillar I was near.

“I can play, too!” he said.

If he came at me with those blades from behind I was a goner. I pushed my back into the concrete. Even if he came at me head-on, at least I had a chance to poison the son of a bitch. Not that it would do much for me, long-term. If I remembered my VX correctly, with a full dose it’d take two minutes for him to pass out, another twenty for brain death. That was more than enough time to lop a head off. Much as I wanted to watch him die, I didn’t particularly want a floor view.

A shadow grew along the floor on my left, distorting against the broken plasterboard Jenkins would never be cleaning. I saw the distended shape of the egghead, the shoulders, the length of the clippers. He was right there, just on the other side of the pillar, about to see me.

I inched away from the column, turned to face the shadow, and hobbled backward, timing my steps with the beeps, hoping there wasn’t anything on the floor behind me to trip me up.

The shadow stopped moving. It lay there on the ground, neither advancing or retreating. The shadow lips parted. His high-pitched voice, disembodied, floated across the dark into my increasingly pathetic hiding spot.

He was whispering, so softly I barely heard him above the beeping.

“Almost over now, Mr. Mann. Mr. Mann. You want to hear something else funny? Way back when I found you and your wife, I thought you’d be the hardest. But you were the easiest of all of them.”

What was he on about?

He went on. It was an intimate whisper, the voice of a sleepy child lying in bed, talking to a parent. “I watched for months, up in the trees, behind the bushes. I saw how she drove you crazy, how she’d push you right up to the edge. But you wouldn’t jump. You couldn’t. You were a chained dog, a poor chained dog. And she was a sadist with a stick. Do you remember that?”

Bad as my memory was, it wasn’t how I recalled things. Maybe that’s how a fucked-up kid would see it, good guy/bad guy, someone to root for, a villain to hate.

It was obvious he was trying to get to me, keep me distracted. He kept cooing, reciting details, telling me what was in our house, talking about the photos on the fridge, what we’d had for dinner, what dishes were left in the sink.

How long had that son of a bitch been stalking us?

“And the hole in the wall from the bottle you threw the night before.”

That I hadn’t remembered until he reminded me. It was the day Booth denied me that raise, the money Lenore and I’d been banking on. Not getting it meant our debt would keep piling up. It also meant we’d keep holding off on having kids. Forever, as it turned out.

In that sick singsong voice, Turgeon whispered every word of the argument I had with Lenore that night. “You said, ‘Just admit it, you blame me. Just fucking admit you blame me.’ She wouldn’t. She’d say, ‘No, I don’t blame you.’ Then a minute later she’d remind you of something else you’d put on the credit card. ‘I just don’t understand why you had to get that TV set. We can live without TV.’ ”

Every word brought up an ugly picture. Only now it wasn’t just me and Lenore. Turgeon was there, too, outside the window, lurking behind a bush.

As he went on, his tone changed. Something lizard-like grew behind the sweetness. He knew it was working. He knew he was getting to me. Smart. Smart sick fuck. He knew I’d only hear him if I was nearby. He wanted a reaction, any reaction, anything that’d let him gauge where I was.