Dead Mann Walking

to adjust to the dark. As we went farther in, my eyes could barely sort one shadow from another.

Suddenly, though, my nose grabbed all the attention. A sharp chemical odor was piggybacking on the breeze. I thought it was cleaning fluid, but that’d be pointless in this place. It was too strong, anyway, and lacked the perfumes Mr. Clean likes to wear.

Then I saw the source—a circular tub, four feet tall and just as wide. In its youth, it may have been a Jacuzzi or a hot tub. Now it was more a cauldron, the kind cannibals used in those old cartoons for the missionaries they were having for dinner. It was filled nearly to the brim with a gross, slick liquid that gave the color green a bad name.

The man I’d been looking for stood to the side, head covered in a hood, the rest decked out in overalls, a gas mask, and protective gloves. Whoever he was, he hummed and swayed, looking like a toddler dressed in a costume. Mom! Look at me! I’m a hazmat worker! For lack of a better word, he played with the silvery tools laid out on a narrow table in front of him. He’d turn one sharp instrument over, pick up another, then put it back down someplace else. One, a leather strap at the end of a long pole, looked like a bondage sex toy. Another looked like a garden tool, something you’d use to snap off thick branches—say, an arm or a leg. Yeah, the head clippers were there, center place, sharper and shinier than all the others put together.

I could see where this was going.

Getting a head start on that electric-syrup feeling I knew was coming, I looked down and tried not to think. My bad. A duffel bag sat below the table. I thought it was for the tools, but it was still full, the string at the top tied. It was stuffed with roundish things, basketballs, bowling balls, or . . .

No. Couldn’t be. Not just lying there like that.

I shuddered as the syrup roiled inside me.

As if he’d heard what I was thinking, the killer looked up and found my eyes.

“Where do you want them?” Grandpa asked.

The masked man looked as if he hadn’t even thought about that part. He’d been too busy pouring all those cool-colored chemicals into the tub, making sure his nifty tools were nice and clean.

“How’d you work it with Booth?” I said. “I’ve got my guesses, but it’d be nice to know for sure. You plant them there ahead of me or did they work with him before? Odd jobs on the far side of the law? He still thinks they’re going to beat me up, break an arm at most, right?”

He gave a little shrug that ruined the neat line of his hazmat suit.

I was actually doing okay until the moment he hefted the head clippers. Then it was like he’d stuck a chubby finger down my throat and touched the bottom of my stomach. A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but one. Call me a coward, then. I could already feel the silver blades against my neck. I was ready to go to my knees and beg, offer to let him take the kid instead of me. But I knew it wouldn’t have worked, and I already had crap enough to live with.

Instead I straightened and tried to pretend I was somebody else, role-playing my pathetic excuse for an existence. “Let the kid go. He’s a babbler. Doesn’t know what’s going on from one minute to the next.”

He shook his head no.

“Why? This how you get your jollies?”

He stiffened and shook his head no again.

“What, then? It’s going to hurt you more than it will me? Little hard to believe, don’t you think?”

Grandpa pointed at the vat. “That’s what the acid’s for, to make it easier.”

“What do you mean, easier?”

“You’ll see,” the old man said. He and Watt put some thick gloves on; then, with a nod from the high priest, Grandpa put his hands on Ashby’s shoulders.

“No!” I shouted.

I tried to move. Watt grabbed me from behind, but I managed a quick kick to his groin. I prayed it’d put him down, but he mumbled something about chemical sterilization and got me in a bear hug. My arms were pinned, and seconds later my feet were dangling off the ground. I grunted and kicked, but any strength I had was useless.

Ashby looked very worried. “Heh-heh.”

Mr. Mask put a yellow-gloved finger to his lips and said, “Shhh! Shh!”

Ashby stared at him like he was watching a cartoon. I could see how he’d make the mistake. Watt tightened his bear hug until my ribs felt ready to crack.

Grandpa turned and whispered to me, “Don’t tell him. It won’t change anything. You’ll only scare him.”

“Sweet of you to be so concerned,” I said, croaking more than talking. “What’s he going to do with the kid’s head? Keep it as another souvenir?”

His eyes flitted to the duffel bag, then back to me.

Grandpa gritted his teeth. “He doesn’t want his head. He’s an experiment. The acid should destroy him faster than fire. Completely. You tell him what’s going to happen, he’ll spend his last moments thinking about it. What do you think would be best for him?”

“Killing all three of you and getting out of here. But I guess I shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ashby’s head twitched from me to Grandpa to Watt to the mystery man.

“Are we going to find Frank? Heh-heh.”

It may have been my imagination, but when the kid said Frank, it looked like one of the bowling balls in the duffel bag twitched.

Christ, I didn’t want to think about it.

Gramps gave Ashby a paternal smile. “You’ll see Frank in a second. First you gotta take a little bath.”

“I don’t like baths. Heh-heh.”

“Even for Frank?”

“Frank didn’t say take a bath. Frank said to run.”

“That was a game,” Grandpa said. “Game time’s over. Now it’s bath time.”

He hooked him by the arm and walked him toward the vat. Ashby looked back at me with a grin that deserved to be a picture in the dictionary, next to the word insipid.

“A bath. A bath for Frank, heh-heh.”

Death, real death. I knew there was worse than that, and hell, maybe it would be better if he didn’t know it was coming. What did he have to look forward to, anyway? Fuck. Moral questions are easy when the situation’s black and white. The tough shit is figuring out the lesser of two evils. You can’t win, but you have to choose anyway. I decided that the bigger evil would be satisfying the son of a bitch with the headgear. If he was for it, I was against it.

“Ashby, for fuck’s sake, fight!” I screamed. “Poke his fucking eyes out! Kick! Scratch! They killed Frank and they’re going to kill you!”

“Killed Frank? Killed Frank? Heh-heh?”

Moving fast for his age, Grandpa snapped off a glove, yanked my head back by the hair, and stuffed it down my throat. But I’d made my point.

Ashby screamed, writhed, whirled, twisted, and kicked. Good for you, Ashby.

I tried to help, if only by fighting Watt. I pulled and kicked, but my best didn’t impress him at all. As for Ashby, well, for a second it looked like he was actually getting away from the old geezer. Instead he flew sideways into the concrete. Grandpa had thrown him to the ground to avoid the kicks. Then the old man plopped himself down on Ashby like a cowboy roping a calf, slapped another set of cuffs around his ankles, and tied his knees together.

As Ashby writhed, the masked man shook his head at me like it was my fault. I would have said if he didn’t like it he should take his vat and go home, but there was this rubber glove in my throat. It filled my mouth and throat with an acrid taste that I was sure wasn’t healthy even for dead things. I only hoped it wasn’t burning anything important.

I wanted to scream. I tried. I tried to scream as Watt chained me to a support beam, tried again when the two of them hefted Ashby into the air. I kept trying as I pulled against the chains so hard it felt like I was breaking my own bones. When I heard Grandpa caution Watt to be gentle in order to avoid spills, yeah, I tried screaming then, too.