Kill the Dead

I take a couple of steps closer to the mob. It’s a mixed bunch. Some of the dead are very recent. They look like regular civilians who’ve missed a night or two of sleep. Others aren’t much more than gristle and bones in decaying rags. A lot of the older ones are eyeless, so whatever brought them here must be pretty powerful hoodoo. I’m right behind them now. I could touch the one in front of me without stretching my arm. He’s wearing shorts and sandals and an orange “I’m Not as Think as You Drunk I Am” T-shirt. I put the knife to the back of his neck. If he so much as twitches, I can take his head off and slice up the nearest ones enough so the others will trip on them when they come for me. But I don’t have to do anything. Slowly and steadily I shoulder my way between the stinking dead, inching toward the center of the room. I keep the knife up, but none of them have the slightest interest in me. They’re all hypnotized by what’s on the floor. It feels like it takes a week to get to where they’re all looking. And there it is, lying on an altar of broken glass and crushed Mickey’s malt-liquor cans. Eleanor’s belt buckle. I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Eleanor. I should have known that the stunt in public with the flamethrower and the mad dash home to the theater weren’t accidental. You wanted to get caught. You wanted someone to find you and whatever it was you’d stolen and kill you for it so Mommy and the rest of the Sub Rosa would know what you’d done and what happened to you. That’s a lot of pain for a kid to be hauling around. It makes me not mind you frying my arm so much. I know what it’s like to want to cook the world. I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner, but, for what it’s worth, I’m here now, and if I don’t end up a Quarter Pounder with cheese in the next few minutes, I’ll take your buckle and do something with it. If I do end up eaten, well, I’ll buy you a Happy Meal in Hell. At the center of the crowd, the Drifters are so packed together I have to knock a zed on his face to squeeze through. I freeze, waiting for the crowd to lunge. But the zed on the floor just stands up and goes back to staring. I know they can smell me. I’m sweating like a three-legged racehorse, but even now when I’m about to pick up their holy grail, they ignore me. I’m in too deep to back off now. I put the knife back in my jacket and hold the lighter close to the floor so I get the buckle without wasting time. Crouching, I touch the edge, ready to back off at the slightest reaction from the Drifters. Nothing. I get my hand around the buckle and slowly lift it a few inches, then a foot off the ground. Still no reaction. Either I was wrong about the buckle or Drifter brains are so slow to process information it’ll take them a while to notice that the family jewels are gone. I hope it’s the second one. I slip the buckle into my coat pocket, but keep one hand under my coat. Slowly, I push my way through the Drifters back the way I came. They stay put, though the moaners are getting louder. Without warning, they all step forward at once. They sense that the talisman is gone and want to get closer to where it was and soak up the residual hoodoo. There’s a hundred or more of them trying to squeeze into a space about the size of a phone booth. I lean forward and put my shoulder into them. I have to use all my weight to move forward. I’m getting through, but the farther back I go, the more they press forward. The mood is changing. The place was a church when I got here. Cool and contemplative. Getting the buckle wasn’t much worse that pushing to the front of the stage at a hardcore club. Now the air is getting bad. Jittery with panic and confusion. I’ve been here before. I know what’s coming. Time to de-ass the premises. Fuck close quarters. I pull the .460 from its holster and pop a shoulder-level shot between two zeds I want to move. The blast knocks one off its feet and rips the other’s arm loose, so it’s hanging by a few strands of tendon. With just the loose limb in my way, I push past them without slowing down. I need out of here ASAP and get into a rhythm about it. Take a step. Blow open a porthole. Take a step. Fire. Step. Fire. It’s working. I’m moving faster now. My only worry is slipping on corpse leakage or a severed arm. Just as I’m about to step out of the circle, it tightens. Pins me where I am. I can’t even raise my arm to shoot. Then the mob relaxes. The magic in the center of the room is gone and they have no reason to crowd there anymore. I break free of them and head for a wall. It’s taken me longer to get out than I counted on. Plenty of time for even these rotten brains to figure out that something is going on and look around for what. I have a bad feeling that if I turn around, a hundred pairs of dead eyes will be aimed straight at me and what’s in my pocket. “Who the fuck are you, motherfucker?” I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it. I turn and look. So that’s what a Lacuna looks like. Cabal was right. I wouldn’t notice him in a crowd. He’s in a double- breasted gray suit, and if it wasn’t for all the dried blood on his jacket from the ragged bite mark in his neck, I wouldn’t look at him twice. He’s looking at me like a starving wolf. Like he’s trying to read the theater marquee through my chest. Blank-eyed shamblers behind him are turning this way. “I said, ‘Who the fuck are you?’” I take a step back and hold the lighter so he can see my face. “You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.”