Nocturnal: A Novel

“It’s from a stuffed person we found in Erickson’s basement. Can you run DNA on it?”

She reached out and took the bag, looked at the contents. The skin looked dry and brittle, almost like leather. “When you say stuffed, you mean like a big-game animal? Stuffed for display?”

“Yeah. Can you test it for the Zed chromosome?”

“Not here,” she said. “The tanning process destroys most of the cellular DNA. I’d need a biology lab, something with the equipment needed to try and extract any remaining DNA and a PCR machine to amplify it. A university lab would work. Maybe SFSU, or I could try the hospitals. But that’s going to take a few days, and I wouldn’t hold your breath that it’ll work.”

Bryan just looked at her. His eyes burned with both anger and anguish. He was a cauldron of emotions, so much so that Robin couldn’t really remember the old Bryan, the one with the cold, unfeeling stare.

The machine beeped. Robin looked at the little screen.

ERICKSON SAMPLE COMPLETE.

She pressed the icon and read the results.

“Zed-X,” she said. “Wow, Erickson is a Zed.”

Bryan and Pookie didn’t look surprised in the least.

“Related?” Bryan said. “Is Erickson related to the others?”

Robin tapped the touch screen, scrolling through to the familial indicators. There it was — a match.

“Bingo,” she said. “Jebediah Erickson, Rex Deprovdechuk, Blackbeard and Oscar Woody’s killer all have the same mother.”

Bryan seemed to shrink into himself. He leaned back in his chair. His chin dropped to his chest.

Pookie shook his head. “Wait a minute. We think Marie’s Children are these Zeds. If so, Erickson isn’t just killing his own kind, he’s killing his direct family? What is that all about?”

Robin shrugged. “If Erickson is in custody, can’t you ask him?”

“Might not be talkative,” Pookie said. “You know, considering he’s in the ICU after taking a knife to the belly.”

Bryan looked up. “He’s a Zed. He’ll heal fast. We can go to the hospital and question Erickson directly — we just have to get around Zou.”

Pookie thought this over, then sipped at his mug. “Robin, you’re a doctor — can you find out Erickson’s condition without anyone knowing that we’re asking?”

She hadn’t been part of the hospital system for years, but many of her friends still worked there. “I probably can’t get detailed patient info, but I can find someone to tell me if he’s out of the ICU.”

The RapScan beeped.

SAMPLE TWO COMPLETE.

“Here we go,” she said. She clicked the icon and the results flashed up. She saw the marker for an X, then a Zed … and also a Y. “This one is trisomal. It’s X-Y-Zed, just like Rex. In fact” — she thumbed through the screens, looking for the familial indicator — “yes, once again, the same mother. All these guys are one big, happy family.”

Pookie’s eyes widened.

Bryan’s eyes burned with intensity, maybe even rage. “The same mother? You’re absolutely sure?”

Robin nodded.

He stood and held out his right hand to Pookie, palm-up. “Keys,” he said.

Pookie looked worried. “Going somewhere, Bri-Bri?”

“Keys.”

“Maybe I should drive you,” Pookie said. “We could—”

“Give me the fucking keys!”

Pookie leaned away. Robin held her breath. She’d never heard Bryan raise his voice before, not ever, not even during their worst fights.

Pookie dug his hand into his pocket and handed Bryan his car keys. Bryan took them and walked out of the dining room. Emma followed, tail wagging. The apartment door opened and shut. Emma came wandering slowly back into the dining room, looking for someone else to pay attention to her.

Why had Bryan stormed out like that?

“Pookie, what the hell just happened?”

Pookie leaned forward, rested his head in his hands. “I think Bryan needs to go see his dad. Fuck this. I’m going back to sleep.”

He stood up and and pulled out his phone. He walked into the living room, his fingers texting out a message as he went. Without breaking stride, he finished the text, put the phone back in his pocket, then collapsed onto the couch, his back facing out into the living room. Emma shot in like a black-and-white streak, jumped up after him and settled into the crook of his legs.

Robin stared at Pookie. He was wiped out. Something big was happening between him and Bryan, and she didn’t know what it was.

Why wouldn’t they trust her?

She wasn’t tired, not at all. She found her phone and started scrolling through her contacts, looking for people that still worked at SFGH.

Aggie Gets a Roommate

Aggie James didn’t want to wake up, but a part of his mind pulled at him, tried to drag him out of a dream where a little girl’s lips pecked feather-light on his cheek, and her arms wrapped around his neck.

He didn’t want to wake, but wake he did.

He sniffed. He rubbed at his face. The real bitch about getting sober? You start to remember things.

Aggie James hadn’t always been a strung-out, homeless bum. Once upon a time, in fact, he’d owned a little counterculture Internet cafe. He’d attracted a certain antiestablishment clientele. All kinds of people wandered in, but after seeing the giant FUCK STARBUCKS mural painted on the wall behind the coffee counter, the visitors either smiled and stayed or frowned and left.

He’d run the place with his wife and his teenage daughter, right up until the robbery.

The robbers shot Aggie first. Shot him twice, in fact, once in the leg and once in the chest. He remembered dropping to his ass, back propped up by the counter. His blood ran everywhere. He couldn’t move, couldn’t lift a finger, but he stayed conscious long enough to see them put a bullet in his wife’s head. He stayed conscious long enough to see his daughter run for the door, to see her shot in the back before she could reach it. He stayed conscious long enough to see her crawling across the floor, bloody hands reaching for him, begging for her daddy to help her, to please help her, please!

Aggie James even stayed conscious long enough to see the gun pointed at his daughter’s face, and just long enough to hear her last scream stop abruptly when the gunman pulled the trigger. Only then had he passed out.

The cops told him the robbers probably thought he was dead, and that passing out had probably saved his life.

His life.

What a joke.

Fucking memories. He couldn’t shake them, not until he’d done heroin for about a month straight. That made you forget everything. Almost.

He’d lost all that mattered to him. Nothing would fill that inescapable dullness in his heart. Not that he’d tried very hard to fill it, of course. With no reason to go on — and not enough guts to kill himself — he’d chosen a slow route to the grave. A painful route. It’s what he had coming, after all … if a man can’t protect his family, does he deserve to live? Aggie had thought not.

That was before the white dungeon.

This horrific place reminded Aggie that life — no matter how crappy it might be — was far better than the alternative. A day and a half ago, as near as he could tell, Hillary had given him hope. If there was even a chance to get out of this, to live, Aggie would do anything she asked.

He finally blinked away the sleep to see that a new man had been chained to the wall on his left, where the