Dead Mann Walking

threat level dropped a bit, but when the bus stopped across the street from the gas station, it was Ashby’s turn to get antsy. Apparently he didn’t like it when the bus stopped.

I nudged his shoulder and pointed at the lights, thinking they’d distract him.

Big mistake. He zeroed in on the station’s one customer, so I started watching, too.

“Big boned” is a nice way of saying fat, but there are no fat chakz, and some really do have big bones. This guy’s shoulders were door-wide, so he had to wear oversize clothes. With no meat below the rib cage, though, the T-shirt and denim jacket may as well have been on a hanger. His ride, an old pickup, was full of cans and bottles, stuff he could get a nickel a pop for, if the street people let him near a recycling machine.

He was at the pump, had the nozzle in his hand, but for whatever reason he couldn’t seem to get it into the gas tank. Weirder still, each try was lazier than the last. He didn’t stop trying; he just got slower and slower. I was as fascinated as Ashby, watching him push the nozzle against the side of the truck again and again, wondering if it would ever go in. After a while, it looked like he was missing on purpose.

Clunk. He tried. Clunk. Again.

Then he started talking. No window, so it was easier to hear what he had to say.

“Who gives a fuck?” he said loudly. “Who gives a fuck?”

“A fuck . . . heh-heh,” Ashby parroted.

I had a bad feeling. “Maybe you shouldn’t be looking out there, Ashby.”

I fished in my pockets, hoping to find something shiny he could play with. The only thing I had was my recorder and the bills, and I wasn’t about to hand either over.

The light changed, so I figured we’d be spared the rest of the scene. Only the bus driver didn’t move. He was busy staring at the chak, too.

“Who gives a fuck?” the chak said again.

He stretched the last word. It melted into a familiar tone that matched the rumble of the bus. I knew that tone. One feral coming up. That chak was going down hard. Any minute, he’d be moaning. I had no idea why, but I doubted it was the nozzle. Maybe he’d had the worst day in his unlife, or maybe he’d just had enough.

No reason we had to watch, though.

I called to the driver, “Buddy, light’s green!”

He gave me a dirty look, then went back to staring.

“Light’s green, heh-heh.”

I tried again. “Maybe you want to get out of here?”

“Who gives a . . .” the chak said one last time.

His moaning started in midsentence, low and long, a nice, deep, vibrating bass. Some lesser blues bands, looking for a gimmick, experimented with working moaners into their music, until they realized that the sound could make other chakz go.

The chak had a look on his face. He knew it; he knew he was going. That’s the worst, to feel yourself slipping away. I guess he could have let go gracefully, but instead he pulled the safety back on the nozzle, squeezed, and squirted a stream of pinkish liquid at the gas cap, like he hoped some would seep into the tank.

It splashed on the truck, on the chak, on the ground. The warm air quickly carried the stink to the bus.

“Will you go?” I called again. The bus driver was riveted worse than Ashby.

Still moaning, but not quite gone yet, the chak leaned against the car and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. Once the coffin nail was in his mouth he pulled out a lighter.

After that, it all happened fast. A stringy-haired attendant in the cashier booth, who looked like he belonged in high school, grabbed a double-barreled shotgun and rushed out. The bus driver, suddenly awake, pulled a gun from under his seat and, despite my warnings about how firing a gun with all that gas was just as bad as striking a match, popped open the door and rushed out.

They kept a good distance as they pointed their guns and screamed, “Stop!” at him. Maybe they were thinking they could scare him into dropping the lighter, but they couldn’t. He opened his mouth, teeth cracked and yellow. He didn’t moan. He howled an animal threat, loud enough to make them back off another five feet.

Good thing, too. The extra space probably kept them alive.

Out of reflex, or a final conscious act, the chak’s thumb raked the lighter wheel. Then, like all lost souls, he disappeared into the light.

The blast quickly changed color from a bluish white to a more organic yellow-orange. It didn’t blow the driver and the attendant up so much as off their feet. The shock wave rattled the bus. Intense heat washed in from the missing window.

If it’d been moister, I’d have worried about rot all over again.

I’m pretty sure he meant it, that it was suicide. A quick decision under strange circumstances. He probably didn’t like the idea of rushing around chewing on things like an extra in a grade-B horror movie. That’s a real gut fear for chakz, you know, having your existence end like a scene from a lousy movie. It’s not even the fact that it’s a lousy movie so much as that you already know how it ends—no mystery. No meat.

As chak suicides go, it may have even been successful. I didn’t see anything moving in the flames. Not that I’d ever try it myself. Though I remained unconvinced there was any other way we could be completely destroyed, burning looked real painful.

Ashby tugged on the cuff of my shirt like a sleepy kid who wanted to go home. “Too hot, heh-heh,” he said, the side of his face lit orange by the flames.

“You said it.” I pulled him up. “Let’s walk. It’s only about six more blocks.”

At the front of the bus, I grabbed the radio and called in the explosion, asking for fire trucks. The dispatcher wanted to know if we needed an ambulance. The driver and the attendant were both up, standing back, staring as the truck and the chak burned. They looked okay, but it wasn’t my call, so I said, “Yeah.”

We were a block away when I heard the sirens. Quick response. Why not? After all, our two great loves, gasoline and livebloods, were involved. Lots of cop cars followed. Must have been a slow night. At least it meant things would be quieter at the station.

They were. No one was outside the old building. There were some lights on in the windows, but no movement behind them. There should be night staff, but a lot of them could be off watching the gas station burn, which was fine by me. We headed around back. In the dark, the rear entrance looked a little like an alley framed by the building’s two wings.

“Cool,” Ashby said.

I think he was talking about the lower temperature. It was always cooler here, like the stone kept things naturally frigid. It tamped down the stench of abandoned fast food. Fewer rats, too. The basement windows were dark. Even Tommy had gone home.

I checked the door. Locked. I knew how to open it. Years back, a gang-banger got out of holding and nearly smashed his way out here. No one ever fixed the door, and it hasn’t been quite the same since. But Haze said to wait outside, so I did.

Only, no one came to let us in. I looked at my watch: twelve ten. He could be busy with the fire, might keep me waiting out of spite, or he might not show at all. After twenty minutes even Ashby figured out things weren’t happening the way they were supposed to.

“When are we going to find Frank?” he said.

I thought about telling him the truth. Now was as good a time as any.

“We’re not really going to find him, kid. . . .”

There was more to the sentence, but after the first half his expression sank like a stoolie with cement shoes.

I dived into a sin of omission. “Hey, no, no. Simmer down. We’re here to find someone who knows where he is, okay?”

Truth would have to wait. It always did anyway. Patient sucker, truth. I rationalized the lie by telling myself that sure, sooner or later he’d to have to deal with the fact that Frank wasn’t coming back, most of him, anyway, but in the meantime I needed him at his best. Ashby might recognize a mug shot, or twitch at the sound of a name. Besides, if I strung him along long enough, he might even forget about Frank.

Would that be a cruelty or a kindness? I keep confusing the two.

Didn’t matter. My backpedaling didn’t wash. Ashby started making all these jerky movements, doing his laugh