“There’s another kind of zombie. Lacunas. You don’t want to meet them.” “What’s the difference?” “Lacunas have some brain function left. They can talk, walk, and dress themselves. You might not even notice one in a crowd. But don’t get close enough to smell their breath. They can’t really think for themselves, but they can take orders. The other thing is they’re mean. Old-timers called them St. George’s Pet, like all that’s working upstairs is their speech centers and their lizard brains. Because they’re such little shits, they mostly get used for muscle work.” “Like Mason with Parker.” “Exactly. You don’t usually see them unless there’s Deadheads having a turf war, but sometimes they make money renting them out or selling them to street gangs. Lacunas are pretty much the perfect thug.” “How do you kill them?” “Like the others. The spine.” “That’s it? Nothing else?” “Whatever fucks up the nervous system. Run them through a wood chipper. Nuke them. Chase them down the street like an angry mob in Frankenstein and burn them.” “I wonder if I could mount a wood chipper on the front of a Bugatti?” “What happened with you and Ms. Bardo last night?” “You’re talking your way out of an autograph fast.” “Asshole.” I offer Kasabian the last donut, but he shakes his head. There’s a half-smoked cigarette butt in the ashtray and I light it up. That he wants, of course. I let him have a couple of puffs and then kill it off. “Does the Codex say where zombies came from?” He shakes his head. “Not really. Hellions have plenty of blind spots and their own tall tales to fill in the missing pieces. Most Hellions say that Cain was Patient Zero. After he killed Abel, God sent him out to wander the earth forever and put a mark on him so no one would stop his wandering and torment. The Hellion smart set think zombieism was the mark. When Cain got into beefs with pushy civilians, he’d just bite them. They became the first golems and Lacunas.” “The ones who don’t think it was Cain, what do they say?” “This is bullshit, man. There’s facts and there’s fairy tales. None of this is going to help you kill them any better.” “Who says I’m going to kill them? I killed those ones last night because they attacked us. I don’t have anything against going on a Drifter safari, but I want to get paid for it.” “Goddamn it, you don’t get to be a brat when it comes to zombies. They’re like jackrabbits. They make new zombies, eat everything in sight, and then migrate down the road and do it again.” “What do you care, Alfredo Garcia? You don’t owe this world anything either.” “No, but I happen to live here and I like beer and burritos and cigarettes. Last time I checked, zombies don’t deliver.” Alice and Brigitte’s voices come back to me. They’re telling me that something bad is coming. Is this it? I hope not. That would be about the lamest prophecy in history. I don’t exactly need a vision to explain how everyone getting eaten, including me, would be a downer. No, it can’t be this and that’s bad news. It means there’s something even worse coming. “What’s the other Drifter story?” “You’re like a dog with a bone. Let it go. Go chase a ball. Hump a stranger’s leg.”
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