Dead Man's Hand

by Richard Levesque

  Knowing I’d be hating myself for a long time after, I said, “Give me Drea’s info.” I blocked out Bascom’s gushing thanks, consoling myself with the knowledge that I’d have hated myself a lot more for throwing Pixel to the dogs.

  Four

  I don’t claim to be an expert on the zombie trade. All I know for sure is that a zombie factory relies on a chemical process that includes a cocktail of viruses and toxins all aimed at getting the corpse up on its feet—presuming it still has feet to get up on. The result is definitely unpleasant for the subject, and so docility is achieved through a second cocktail. I’d seen Bascom use both to re-animate and calm the corpse in his shop earlier. The contents are trade secrets, of course, and different practitioners meet with varying degrees of success; hence, their good or bad reputations, their supply and demand cycles, etc.

  The tricky part is the viral component. When a zombie bites, the virus is transferred, and if the victim dies from the bite, death isn’t exactly a permanent state. You don’t always die from it, as far as I know, but surviving the bite is often such a horrible process that most people wish they were dead instead. It’s not uncommon for a surviving bite victim to blow his own head off before his body’s had the chance to let the virus win or lose.

  For the most part, victims of such attacks are either people working in the zombie factories—victims of carelessness or shoddy safeguards—or the people purchasing the zombies for use in myriad operations. In those cases, it’s maker or buyer beware, and there’s not a lot of public outcry when a normal human gets Turned in a zombie accident. But when it’s an innocent victim, you’re looking at a nasty lawsuit at best, criminal negligence or maybe even second-degree homicide at worst. Those were the ends of it that I knew well.

  I’d never heard of a whole shipment of zombies going off the radar. And how many were in the shipment in question I didn’t know yet. But the possibilities were ugly, and I tried running through all of them on my way to Drea Wexler’s shop. All the while, I kept trying to work the Grommets and Neat Pete and Pixel into the different equations, not to mention myself. None of them worked out in my favor, and I kept telling myself to turn around, to call Bascom back and get out of our agreement. But city block after city block kept rolling by as I drove into the heart of the industrial zone, and before I’d managed to do anything in the way of self-preservation, I was parked in front of a little building with a cheap, fading sign that read “Quality Re-Animation.”

  Neither the building nor the sign seemed to have a sense of its own irony. From the looks of it, the business had been here a while, and I guessed that Drea had bought the existing clientele and business name not long ago. Someone else had started the process of running it into the ground, and it looked like Drea was doing a good job of finishing it off. Whatever she and Bascom had going, it hadn’t been strong enough to move Bascom to share his secret formulas and help his girlfriend move up the ladder of zombie success. Thinking of this, I reminded myself not to count on Bascom for any favors when all of this was over.

  I parked and went in, not bothering to knock. The entrance area was bare concrete floor, a small waiting room with a couple of chairs against the bare walls. A long waist-high counter took up most of the room, and beyond it was a single open door. At the far left end, the counter had one of those piano-hinged sections that could lift for easy entrances and exits. A dim light shone through the doorway into the rest of the building, and I could see tanks back there similar to the ones at Bascom’s.

  “Hello?” I called out and was rewarded by a feminine yelp from somewhere in the back room.

  Drea Wexler came through the doorway a few seconds later, looking unsettled to the core. She was one of those people who wear sunglasses indoors, probably as an affectation aimed at creating mystique, but which was really just annoying more than anything else. Her hair was long and straight and dark, and her skin was pale and cold looking. She had no actual chin to speak of but had managed to cultivate a little round of a double chin that tried to get the job done. I was immediately reminded of the sort of thing you’d see on the muddy ground that had been hidden under a rock you’d just turned over and immediately wished you hadn’t. Still, there must have been something about her that had rung Bascom Quibble’s bell, and there probably still was from the way he’d sounded on the phone. The break-up had been her doing, and now Bascom carried the torch. Poor guy, I thought.

  I introduced myself and told her Bascom had sent me.

  “Thank God,” she said in a voice choked with tears and fear. She reached out a pale hand, and I shook it politely. It was as moist and cold as I’d imagined. Then she said, “Excuse me,” and pulled off the sunglasses to wipe at her smeared mascara and tears with the back of her hand. “I’ve had a hard night. I’m so glad someone’s come to help.” She flashed a feeble smile, then slipped the glasses back on.

  “I don’t know just how helpful I’ll be, but I’m willing to try,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  She shrugged. “There’s not much to it. I had a shipment to go out to a client outside of town. The van carrying the product never arrived. When I got the call, I checked the van’s GPS coordinates, and there’s nothing.”

  “How long ago did you get the call?”

  “About two hours now.”

  “And when did the van leave here?”

  She looked at her watch. “Maybe three hours, three and a half?”

  “And how much…product are we talking about?”

  “Six.”

  “Six zombies?” I asked just to be sure.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any reason to suspect your driver might have taken a payment to let this shipment go astray?”

  “Henry?” She gave me an incredulous chuckle. “Henry’s eighty-three, and all he knows how to do is drive from point A to point B. That’s all he’s ever done. If anyone tried to flip him, he’d be so confused they wouldn’t get anywhere.”

  “All right.” I didn’t have as much faith in her driver as she did, but I wasn’t going to argue the point. “Bascom told me you’ve had people from the Grommet organization asking questions. What did they want?”

  “Well, the first was Neat Pete, and he wasn’t asking questions. He sold me some merchandise.”

  “And by merchandise, you mean of the dead variety.”

  Even through the sunglasses, I could see she was giving me a cold stare. “Yes.”

  “Anything unusual about it?”

  “Not where Pete’s concerned.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Pete’s items usually come in less than whole. It’s sort of a niche market in terms of how I can handle re-sale.”

  “And in this case, we’d be talking about a hand?”

  She nodded and then sighed uncomfortably before saying, “Which is what Grommet’s boys came asking me about.”

  “Clancy or Yancy?”

  “They don’t exactly leave business cards, and I didn’t ask. I just knew where they were from.”

  “And what did they want to know about the hand?”

  “They wanted to know if one could be re-animated all by itself, separate from the rest of the package.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That it could be done in theory but that I’d never tried anything like that.”

  I nodded. “That satisfy them?”

  She shrugged. “It was a short conversation. They left pretty quickly.”

  “They didn’t ask about the body Pete had sold you?”

  She set her jaw firmly, one of her buttons just having been pushed. “The merchandise I got from Pete did not come up in conversation.”

  “Sorry,” I said without meaning it. “I was absent the day they went over re-animator etiquette.”

  She ignored the remark. “Why all this interest in the Grommets? Do you think they took my cargo?”

  “There’s a good chance.”

  “Why?
”

  Now it was my turn to ignore her. “Tell me about your van.”

  She gave me the basics—make and model, white paint, three hubcaps.

  “And the last location you have on it?” I asked.

  “Here.” She pulled a tablet out from behind the counter, ran her fingers across its screen and then tapped it once before turning it to face me. I was looking at a map of the city, a blue line leading away from our current location to a spot about five miles away. Once I’d spoken the coordinates into my phone, it plotted the same route for me.

  “That’s not so far,” I said. “You haven’t been inclined to go have a look yourself?”

  “With those things on the loose?”

  “Somebody could get hurt.”

  “It won’t be me.”

  She said it without shame. I gave her a little nod. Part of me appreciated her coldness. “It’ll come back to haunt you.”

  I meant it in the legal sense, but she took it otherwise. “I’m haunted already, Mr. Stubble. For the rest of my life and by things you don’t even want to try imagining. This won’t make much difference.”

  It wasn’t the reply I’d expected, and I almost felt some sympathy for her. But then I remembered that she was sending me out to clean up her mess, and I felt glad for whatever demons she had to wrestle with. I had no plans on getting myself killed in the next few hours, but if it should work out that way, I had just decided that I’d join the ranks of whatever else was tormenting her soul.

  “Well, wish me luck,” I said, not expecting her to say anything even remotely optimistic.

  “You’ll need more than luck,” she said. “Take this.”

  From under the counter, she pulled out a small grey metallic case, about the size of a thick paperback book. She popped the latch, and the lid sprang up. Inside were an empty syringe and vial full of an amber liquid.

  In response to my questioning look, she said, “It’s an antidote. In case you survive an attack. Take it within twenty minutes and you’ll be okay. Take the whole tube, just straight into muscle.”

  I’d never heard of an antidote to the zombie virus, but then again I didn’t know any of the re-animators’ trade secrets. “Can’t I just take it now?”

  She shook her head. “It’s an antidote, not a vaccine. It’s a different virus, attacks the one that’ll Turn you. If you take it now and it doesn’t find anything to attack, it’ll just go dormant and be useless when you need it.”

  I hated to think of how these things had been found out and knew there wasn’t any point in asking. I also wondered why vials of this stuff weren’t on every drug store shelf and first aid kit in the city, but knew the answer lay once more in the secrets of the re-animators. If this was publicly available and open to analysis, it might open doors to the rest of their trade and put them out of business.

  “Thanks,” I said with a nod, then snapped the lid shut and turned to go.

  Five

  It was easy enough to find the spot where Drea’s van had stopped sending signals. The driver had taken his undead passengers from the heart of the city’s industrial zone and almost to its edge when things had gone wrong. A few more blocks and he’d have been in a more suburban area. If the zombies were loose, one or two might have made it that far already, but I doubted that was the case. If that had happened, there would have been reports by now. Helicopters with searchlights would have been crisscrossing the skyline, and the roads would have been blocked by squad cars and growling German Shepherds barely held back on leashes.

  As it was, the street was quiet. Nothing crisscrossed the skyline but wires strung between poles, and the only growls I heard came from a pair of cats squaring off over territory in a nearby alley. I parked and got out of my car, walking along the dotted white line that ran up the center of the street. According to Drea’s data, her van’s GPS had cut out in the middle of this block, which made a car accident seem unusual. Either her driver had been incompetent when it came to strapping in his cargo or the Grommets had gotten to him and he’d had a meet-up somewhere along this street, at which point the GPS could have been disabled, the driver paid off, and the vanload of zombies taken wherever the Grommets wanted.

  Several yards from where I started, I caught a glint on the pavement and stooped to get a closer look. A few dozen fragments of orange or yellow plastic were scattered around my feet. I picked up one of the bigger pieces, about the size of my thumbnail, and held it up to one of the streetlights. It looked like the kind of reflective plastic they use for turn signals on cars. A closer look at the pavement revealed some pretty fresh skid marks close by. It wasn’t proof that something had happened to the van, but I had to re-evaluate my accident theory.

  I stood up and looked around, turning a full circle and then back again. Then a smile broke out on my face, and I crossed to the other side of the street. A little red car was parked there. It had a small dent in its front fender and the turn signal’s plastic lens was gone. When I got closer to it, I saw a scrape of white paint in the middle of the dented fender. And next to the dent, the car’s emblem read “Getabout.”

  “Well, how about that,” I said to the car, patting its bruised fender.

  After shining a light into the windows for any signs of life and coming up with nothing, I headed back to my car with my phone out and Pixel’s number already on the screen.

  She answered on the third ring. “Ace! Have you got it worked out?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “This thing isn’t getting any fresher.”

  “I’m sure. Look, this is complicated, getting more so by the minute.”

  “Is it going to work out?”

  “It’s conceivable. I need your help, though.”

  A moment’s hesitation, then, “How?”

  “Do you have Pete’s number, or can you get it?”

  “I’ve got it. Why? You want to call him?”

  “No. And don’t you call him. I don’t want him knowing I’m interested in what he’s doing. But can you use some of your toys to track him, tell me where he is right now?”

  “I should be able to. But I don’t—”

  “You don’t need to understand. Like I said, it’s complicated. The less you know at this point, probably the better. Just tell me where he is right now, okay?”

  “Okay.” She sounded chastised, which wasn’t what I’d intended, but if it got her to stop asking questions that weren’t going to help either of us, so much the better.

  I waited on the line while she worked, could hear the clicking of her keyboard. Then there was a rustling sound as she picked up her phone again.

  “838 South Harbor,” she said.

  “You know it?”

  “No. But…satellite shows it’s a in a row of buildings just north of downtown. Doesn’t look like a nightlife area, more industrial.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “You going there?”

  “I might.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anybody right now, Pixel. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Good.” I was in my car by now but hadn’t started it yet. “Hey, one more thing. Did you tell Pete your plan about the hand, why you wanted it?”

  She hesitated. All the answer I needed. “I didn’t tell him everything, not about what I’d do once I got it re-animated. Was that bad?”

  “Not necessarily,” I lied. “I gotta go. I’ll call if I get anywhere with this.”

  I clicked off before she had a chance to try to change my mind. Soon, the Getabout was far behind me and I was letting my Nav guide me to 838 South Harbor. Neat Pete may have filled in the blanks on Pixel’s plan or he may have gotten help thinking it through. Regardless of how it had gone, though, I knew for certain that he’d spilled at least some of the details to one of Clancy’s boys; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been snooping around Drea’s and asking questions about re-animating hands. It was pos
sible Pete had a partner, somebody maybe a little smarter, a little savvier than him, and the two of them had cooked up a plan to get the second hand away from Drea. And it was also possible that Pete was being shadowed, that Pete’s interest in the first hand had awoken Clancy’s suspicions. If that was the case, I might not be the only one on Pete’s trail. Not for the first time in my career, I wished I owned a gun.

  Not ten minutes later, I was cruising past the address Pixel had given me. A chain link fence ran around the perimeter, its gate padlocked shut. The building was dark, but since no windows faced the street that didn’t tell me much. The place had big roll-up doors at its front, the kind it would be easy to pull cars in and out of. Maybe it had started out as a body shop. And then evolved into a chop shop as times got tougher and the neighborhood followed suit. Running through what I knew about this area, my guess was that the place had now transformed into a drug lab, probably the one Neat Pete had been sentenced to after his dalliance with Clancy’s dancer.

  I parked across the street and rolled down my window, just staring at the building and listening for signs of life. Either Pete was in there, or his phone was in there, or Pixel had steered me wrong. I just sat there, letting maybe fifteen minutes tick past, trying to work all the angles. None emerged as more likely than another, and the building wasn’t giving up any clues as to what was going on past those roll-up doors. So with a sigh, I rolled up and got out, but not before digging my pick set out of the car’s storage compartment and grabbing Drea’s antidote kit from the passenger seat.

  The kit barely fit into my back pocket, but even so I reached around twice as I crossed the street just to make sure there was no chance of it falling out. When I got to the gate, I looked around for a few seconds, taking extra time to peer into the dark around the side of the building before me just to make sure I wasn’t being watched. Two bats fluttered around a streetlamp half a block down, maybe real bats and maybe not. They made me stop and think. My people, I told myself, and I almost turned around to go back to my car, thinking of a dozen better ways I could spend my night. Then I snapped the cover on the little leather lock pick set and went to work anyway.