Dead Mann Walking

It was close. The soles of his shoes cleared by an inch. Once he landed, I squirmed along the branch as far as I could, then jumped. I hit the ground on a patch of wood chips. Some splinters, but no big damage so far.

The lights of the security gate glowed beyond the neatly trimmed hedges. I could see the rent-a-cop in his little house, guarding the main entrance. He was awake, listening to some iThing. Good. The skeleton hadn’t attracted attention here yet.

With no trail to follow, we skirted the edges of the properties. I was hoping it might still stink of acid, but the whole place was thick with the smell of chemicals, fertilizer and chlorine from the pools.

On the one hand, we hoped we’d bump into it; on the other, we were so terrified we would that we were startled by every cricket chirp. We really jumped when we heard the dog. A big one, it barked three times, then let loose with a final, pained yelp.

Not good for us or the doggy. It sounded like it was nearby, right in the next yard. With a quick glance at each other, we gave up on crouching and ran toward the sound.

When I saw how the pretty little picket gate was mangled, I half knew what to expect. I didn’t expect something heavy to fly through the air and land at my feet with a warm, wet thud. Jonesey clamped his hand over his mouth. I had to bend down to make sure. It was a rottweiler, head twisted around so it had a nice view of its own tail. The heart-shaped collar said the dog’s name was Annie.

“Heh-heh.”

Beyond the gate, I saw it. The moonlight and streetlamps gave it a kind of perfect, white metal sheen. The color fit. It was bouncing around the fenced yard like a silver pinball: hitting a wall, changing direction, hitting a fence, changing direction again. Sometimes, out of frustration, I think, it lashed out at whatever was nearest, like a lawn mower. Something like that must’ve happened to the dog. Either Annie had been stepped on, or she got wide-eyed at all those yummy bones and attacked.

“Heh-heh.”

As for the skeleton, left on its own, eventually it’d either fall into the pool or find the exit and wander out. We didn’t have time to see which, because the house lights came on. We didn’t have time at all.

Moving fast, I grabbed the longest thing lying around, a pool net, and whacked the skull with it to get its attention. Jaw slack, it turned, laughed, and headed toward me.

Careful to stay out of its reach, with a few more well-placed whacks I managed to steer it out the gate, all the way across the next yard, and then into a little patch of trees near the security wall.

So far so good, and I knew what had to happen next. But with all of Misty’s soul talk and Jonesey insisting on calling it he, I was having trouble. I had to wonder if Ashby might still be in there. It was the fucking heads all over again, theme and variation.

Was he still thinking, still feeling?

If I played it long enough, the guessing game would drive me feral all by itself. I had to tell myself it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter. It couldn’t. It, it, it.

I gave Jonesey the pole, told him to keep whacking the skull and backing up. I took out the crowbar. The skeleton moved past me, blind, oblivious. I came up behind it.

In case it was an issue, I wanted it to be quick, merciful. There was survival involved, too. I had to make sure the first blow immobilized it, so I wouldn’t wind up clawed to pieces. So did I hit the neck or the hips first?

I swallowed hard and swung at the neck for all I was worth. The bones were strong. The first blow only staggered it. It took another swing, so strong it nearly yanked my arm out of the socket. It sent the skull flying. The body crumpled. The skull careened into the stucco, bounced off, and fell where I couldn’t see. It was only quiet for a beat.

“Heh-heh.”

Damn. It was still talking. I didn’t want to think about it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. Behind us, a door was opening.

“Annie? Where are you, girl?”

They’d find the dog. Even if the alarms didn’t work, there’d be lots of screaming.

I stepped toward the bushes where the skull had landed.

“Jonesey, grab those bones,” I whispered.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Finish it.”

I saw a clump of white and poked it with the crowbar. A stone. A big white stone. I had to wait until I heard the laugh again. It only took seconds.

“Heh-heh.”

The sound was waist-level. It hadn’t hit the ground. There it was, held by a web of branches, wedged in the bush. I stuck the crowbar in and lifted it by the eye socket. The jaws kept moving. Alas, poor Ashby.

“Heh-heh.”

Trying to act dead, like an it myself, I laid it sideways on the stone, pulled back, aimed, and swung. I didn’t just swing once; I did it again and again. I cracked the skull, snapped the jaws, and kept swinging. It—fine, maybe he—had saved my neck, or to be accurate, everything below my neck, and here I was pummeling his remains.

Misty’s words echoed in my ears: It could have been worse.

When I was finished, the stone was covered with white dust and a few pieces no bigger than a marble. But I swear—I’m telling you, I swear—that even the white flakes looked like they were still moving, curling, twitching.

I backed away, scaring the shit out of myself when I bumped into Jonesey.

We both stared at the shivering pieces a while before they finally stopped.

“How the hell was he moving at all?” I whispered. “No muscle, no ligature. Nothing.”

I was thinking out loud, but Jonesey answered. “A luz.”

“A what?”

He shook his head apologetically, like he was sorry he hadn’t thought of it sooner. “It popped into my head just now. It’s from the midrash. A luz is a bone in the human body that’s completely indestructible. They believed it contained the soul. Maybe after everything else was burned away, your friend was one big luz.”

“The midrash? You Jewish, Jonesey?”

“I . . . I don’t remember.”

20

The same oak tree got us back over the fence. We dumped the bones, luz and all, into the sewer. It hadn’t rained in a while, so they landed with a low, distant clatter.

Ashby, ripped and RIP.

Alarms were beeping and clanging everywhere. Police, with their flashlights and flamethrower, rushed into the front entrance of Collin Hills. We waited, then made it back into the park.

Soon all the screams were behind us. Annie’s owners might be bereft, but for the cops it’d just be a dead dog. There’d be a few chakz dragged out of bed, more tension, more patrols, but nothing as bad as if that thing had stumbled in on some family curled around the TV laughing over Tea with the Dead.

The deeper into the park we went, the fewer working lights, leaving us to rely on what there was of the moon. We tramped through the grass, silent as zombie church mice. I kept rubbing my hands, thinking little pieces of Ashby were still on my fingers. I didn’t want to say anything to Jonesey. I especially didn’t want to tell him how I’d nearly moaned before he walked in on me, or how I wasn’t sure what was holding me together now.

But as the shapeless bushes and half-dead trees gave way to the broken-box rectangles of our beloved neighborhood, Jonesey decided to tell me what I was feeling.

“You must be pissed.”

Pissed? More like if there was a button on the wall that said, PUSH TO END WORLD, I was ready to press it. I wiped my hands on my pants and looked at him.

“I know I’m pissed,” he said. “Now, more than ever, I’m ready to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get out there and organize.” To punctuate his cliched imagery, he slammed his fist into his hand.