Grim Tidings

by Caitlin Kittredge

  I swiped at my eyes as sun glinted off the ice on the sides of the highway and fished around until I found a pair of mirrored sunglasses that Ronnie kept in his glove box. I was awake. I needed to stop dwelling on my crappy life choices and make a plan for when I got to Kansas City. In the annoying way of psychics, the message I’d gotten hadn’t included anything useful, like an address or a name of someone I was supposed to meet.

  The river glinted, chunks of ice floating below me as I crossed the bridge, and I took the first city exit with a street name I remembered. I figured a lot had changed since ’51, but at least I’d be starting from a familiar point.

  The Raven’s Tale hadn’t changed much. It was still a shitty little hole in the wall that smelled like wet paper and wetter dogs, windows filmed up with grime and a door that wailed on rusty hinges.

  It was daytime, so I didn’t expect Rusty to be awake. The minion sitting behind the high old-fashioned shop counter looked at me, pretending he was looking at one of the old magazines stacked in big slippery towers all over the countertop.

  Technically the place was a bookshop, but that was like saying technically I was a canine. Both accurate, and at the same time missing the essential parts by a mile.

  The minion looked me over. Judging by the half-shaved head of ratty black hair and the bad posture, Rusty had gotten to him sometime in the eighties. Or he could still be human, and just have crappy hygiene. It was always hard to tell.

  “We’re closed,” he said when I got close.

  “Then you should lock your doors,” I said. He sighed.

  “If you’re a cop, you can buzz off. This is just a bookstore and whatever else you’ve heard is spiteful rumors generated by rival shop owners to cut into our business.”

  “What business?” I said. “You don’t have any business. This place is deader than your boss.” Up close, I caught the pungent herbal stench of dried blood and slow decay. Robert Smith, Jr. here was definitely a vamp.

  “You’re not a witch,” the minion sniffed. “And you’re not one of the kindred, so any business we do have, you’re not a part of. Since you’re not a customer, take your bargain basement, tired-out punk-rock hooker act somewhere else.”

  I got closer than I wanted to, already regretting what I was going to have to do. I hate touching dead things, especially when they wiggle and squirm and talk like this douchebag. I hate the whole tough-girl routine, period. I prefer to stay quiet, keep my head down, do the work, and get gone.

  Unfortunately, vamps are too stupid to grasp subtlety of that level.

  I grabbed the guy by the side of his head that still had hair, slamming his skull into the brass cash register that hadn’t worked in the entire time I’d been coming to this smelly dump. “You know what I find really hilarious?” I asked as I knotted my fingers in the greasy tangle, using my free hand to swat away his grasping nails. “That you virus-ridden pieces of rotting meat use words like kindred to try to hide the fact that you are, in fact, diseased hunks of flesh who can still talk.”

  He opened his mouth and let out a string of curse words, and I jammed Ronnie’s sunglasses into his mouth. “Now I’m going to give you a simple choice,” I said. “You can tell Rusty that Ava is here to see him. That’s choice one.” I put my free hand under his chin and pushed to the point where his fangs scraped the mirrored glass. “Choice two is I close your mouth and you get enough crushed glass between those teeth of yours they’ll be sliced clean out of your head.”

  He squirmed and I clicked my tongue. “Hold up your fingers.”

  After a long moment while his deep black eyes glared at me with hatred, he held up one finger. “Good choice,” I said, pulling the sunglasses out of his mouth. He spat at me.

  “Go screw yourself, whore! I don’t answer to any dogs!”

  I sighed. “So you’re not telling Rusty, then.”

  “You’re not fit to look upon his face!”

  “I’ve seen his face way too often for my liking,” I said as he hopped the counter and came at me. His apathy belied that vicious, ratlike speed that vamps possess, especially if they’re angry.

  “Have it your way,” I muttered, taking out the other thing I’d brought from Ronnie’s car and pulling the tab. Road flares are pretty useful against vamps, especially older ones. They need blood to survive but the virus dries up their tissues and hair, makes them almost tinder, if they’re old enough and live in a dry climate.

  Robbie here wasn’t old enough to be good firewood, but I jammed the flare into the soft spot under his rib cage, getting it way in there, past the muscles and into the abdominal cavity. His nasty polyester shirt smoked and crackled as he fell back, croaking out his last bad word.

  “For the record,” I said, brushing ashes off myself. “This punk rock hooker paid full price for her look.” I kicked his limp foot. “Asshole.”

  Fire is the only way to make sure you kill a vamp—burn the blood and tissue, burn up the virus. Otherwise the damn thing is just going to keep getting up.

  The curtains that cordoned off the back half of the building swished, and I looked up. “Setting a fire in a bookshop is very stupid, Ava,” Rusty said. “Even for the likes of you.”

  “If you’d stop hiring mouth-breathers, I wouldn’t need to burn them down,” I said. Rusty cinched the belt of his bathrobe, his thin face crinkling. I could see the red of the flare reflected in the small round lenses of his glasses.

  “There are many whispers behind your back these days,” he said. “From all sorts of startling places.”

  I folded my arms. Rusty tossed back the thinning red forelock he called hair, huffing. “Well don’t blame me, darling. It’s that young man you’re keeping company with. You and the Grim Reaper are the couple of the moment.”

  “Rusty, shut up,” I said. The key with him was not talking too much. He quieted, then immediately opened his mouth again.

  “But here you are alone, in Kansas, with dark clouds forming on the horizon. I hear of solitary souls that have spent these past dark days in Tartarus, free again. I don’t hear anything of why you’re here, however. Who are you after?” He sniffed as the smoke from his buddy filled the low-ceilinged space. “If he’s one of my customers I will not betray a confidence. Warlocks are not your chew toys, girl.”

  “I’m not here for one of your shitbag customers, Rusty,” I said. He threw out his arms, undoing the belt a bit and making his bathrobe flap like cheap silk wings.

  “Then what, dear girl? What reason?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said, heading for the door. He shouted over my shoulder.

  “If you’d just name a name, I could tell this doomed individual of your inquiry and avoid more scenes like this!”

  I turned back, letting the cold air from outside fan the flames of the dead vamp on the floor. “Tell everyone.”

  After the show with Rusty, I realized that despite still smelling of the human tire fire that is burnt vamp, I was starving. I walked a couple of blocks and found a pancake house that had actually survived the intervening decades. It had a different sign and a different name, but the place still served greasy bacon, bad coffee, and huge plates of flapjacks.

  Rusty, in addition to being a profiteering ghoul who sold knockoff magic books and spell supplies to every warlock in the two states, was an inveterate gossip. If my psychic had even a little toe dipped in the KC underground, they’d know I was here within the hour.

  I took a booth by the window where I could see the door, the kitchen, and the bathrooms. I wasted one hour, then another, sucking down coffee and hoping I didn’t have to use the bathroom before somebody showed.

  I was well into hour three when I realized there was a man watching me. He was alone, wearing one of those canvas jacket/ button-down combos popular with middle-aged dads and white serial killers. His hair, his little steel glasses, even his cheap watch was way too old for the face, which looked maybe thirty, tops. What little hair his crew cut had left was dark and he
tapped his fingers nervously against his day planner, which sat next to an untouched cup of coffee.

  I set my knife down slowly, but I kept hold of my fork. I wasn’t used to humans staring at me. I wasn’t used to humans being aware I was in a room, unless I explicitly got their attention. And when someone did stare at me like that, it usually ended with them trying to put a bullet in my chest, at the very least.

  But this guy didn’t move. He just sat, staring and tapping like a tiny speed metal drummer. I put down some money for my food and stood up, walking over to his booth. “Can I help you?” I said, stopping just out of lunging distance.

  “Not here,” he said, trying to do that thing where you talk but don’t move your lips. “Bathroom. Sixty seconds.”

  “No,” I said. “Now.”

  “We can’t be seen talking,” he ground out. “There are people watching who might be very upset.”

  “Good,” I said, sliding into the booth opposite him. “I feel like hitting somebody right now and if you play your cards right it might not be you.”

  “Are you insane?” he barked, grabbing up the planner and holding it in front of him like a shield.

  “Opinions vary,” I said. “Who are you and why are you staring at me like you do it for a living?”

  He sighed, wrapping his arms around the leather book. “I heard you were in town. From Russell—Mr. Raven. I’m the one you were dreaming about.”

  “Oh really,” I said, sitting back. He sighed.

  “I’m sorry it was garbled. I’ve never—I’m not good at transmitting. I’m more of a receiver.”

  “What’s your name?” I said quietly. He sighed, looking at me desperately.

  “Can we please go somewhere private?” The finger tapping started up again and I took the fork I’d pocketed and slammed it tines-first into the table between his thumb and forefinger. He froze, eyes wide as half dollars.

  “That’s really annoying,” I said.

  “I see a lot about you,” he squeaked. “You’re all I’ve seen, for months. When an impression is that persistent it means I have to do something about it.” He swallowed a hard lump in his throat. “I’m sorry if that makes you mad but you need to be here, now. I’m not wrong about things that I see.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

  “You’re Ava,” he said. He jumped topics with no regard for verbal niceties. It was like trying to follow a hyperactive squirrel from one branch to the next. “I’m Henry,” he said, extending his hand. “Hank. Most people call me Hank.”

  I regarded his hand. “Are you going to start speaking in tongues if I touch you, Hank?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mostly have dreams, and sometimes I can see a spirit, if it’s very strong. I’m not very good with objects or people. My grandmother was better at picking up information from people and objects. She was a reader. I’m a visitor. I visit—”

  “You visit other people’s minds, I get it,” I said. “That’s cute.”

  “It’s not really all that extraordinary when you think about it,” he said. “The science of it. There are frequencies we can’t hear, so why not other frequencies most people can’t sense, but psychics can? I’m just open on more channels than the average person. There’s really nothing mystical about it.”

  “Fascinating,” I said.

  “You and the Walking Man,” Hank said. “I got that much from what I’ve been seeing. You’re looking for him?”

  “You’re very perceptive in that not-at-all way,” I said. “Do you have something for me or do you just invade people’s REM cycles as a hobby?”

  Hank took a deep breath. “I can tell you where he’s going to be. I can point you toward the outbreak his next victim will cause. But then I need you to leave.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?” I’d been expecting a sales pitch, or at least a well-laid trap. This guy had to be shilling for Cain—there wasn’t any other reason I could think of why he was all over me to validate his psychic visions. Telling me to get the fuck out didn’t jibe.

  “Let the Walking Man go. He won’t be any more trouble,” Hank insisted. “I’ll keep tabs on him for you. No more of those zompire things will rise after this next one.”

  “Zompire?” I said.

  “Zombie-slash-vampire. That’s what they are, near as I can tell from reading about the last outbreak. Like I said, I’ll keep an eye on him and take care of the problem.”

  “Thanks, guy I just met and have no reason to trust.” I pulled the fork out of the table. “I guess I can just go home now.”

  “You don’t understand!” Hank hissed, grabbing my wrist. “The Walking Man has to stay alive. I don’t know why, but that’s what everything is showing me. He lives, you live. He dies . . . and I can’t see anything after that. And that’s bad. So you kill the zompire, but you leave him alone, understand?”

  My jaw set. I didn’t like it when people tried to drag me into their shit, and I liked it even less when it involved somebody like the Walking Man. “Thanks for the advice, Hank,” I said, turning my hand so I was holding his wrist, bending his fingers backward toward his forearm. “But I didn’t come here to clean up his messes. I came to send him back to Hell.”

  He whimpered. “Why are you getting violent with me? I’m on your side! Just trying to make you understand.”

  “You think my problem right now is you touching me?” I said. “Get up or I’m going to break your hand.”

  He almost jumped up, and I pulled him next to me, like we were a couple. “Walk out of here with me and if you so much as let a bead of sweat roll off that square chin of yours I am going to snap you in half.” I shoved us forward. “Nod if you understand.”

  He nodded. We walked. I shoved him into the front seat of Ronnie’s truck. Hank cried out when I swerved into traffic, scrambling for his seat belt. “Why are you doing this to me? I thought you were somebody I could trust, Ava!”

  “Stop talking to me like you know me,” I said, hanging a U-turn and heading back toward the interstate. “Matter of fact, while we drive to wherever the Walking Man’s next victim is you’re going to tell me exactly how you know so much about me.”

  “I’m psychic?” Hank said, so dry he could have chapped my skin.

  I shot a glance at him as I passed up a tractor trailer. I was going up past eighty, partly because I was angry and partly because I didn’t want Hank to do something stupid like try to tuck and roll when he realized I wasn’t going to obey his order to stand down like a good dog.

  Hank’s face was tight in response to my look. “I’m not setting you up, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Funny, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said. “You really do have psychic powers.”

  “Look, all I know is that the Walking Man has to keep doing what he’s doing, or bad things are gonna happen.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve looked outside lately, but bad things are happening.” I said. “They have happened and they continue to happen and they’ll keep on happening no matter how many women you follow into diners.”

  Hank was quiet for a long time. I let him stew, let him wonder whether or not I’d really sussed out that he was the Walking Man’s stooge.

  “I usually see things I can actually fix,” he said at last. “Missing kids. Guys planning to rob liquor stores. I have an okay relationship with a few cops I trust. Most of the time this is more like a second job than a calling. I don’t know why my impressions don’t give me winning lottery numbers or tell me where to find high-ranking terrorists. I figured it was a range thing. I don’t pick up on stuff I can’t prevent.” He gulped. “But I’ve been having the same dream over and over. You stand above the Walking Man. You kill him. And then everything ends. Not like the dream ends—the world ends. Nuclear bombs, rains of fire, those zompire things dotting the entire landscape. I don’t know why, but you killing the Walking Man starts something that ends with me and everyone I love dead.
”

  He held up his planner, riffling the pages. I saw it wasn’t a planner but a notebook, every sheet lined with meticulous handwriting. “I record my dreams and stuff in here. I’ve met a few other people like me and over the last year or so we’ve all been having this dream.” He tapped the open page, deliberate instead of nervous. “I don’t mean similar dreams. I mean the exact same dream. Except none of them knew who you were. Just me. Figured it was my job to get in touch.”

  I pulled over into a rest stop, putting the truck in park and gripping the wheel. “And how do you know who I am, Hank?” I was poised to do something violent, if I had to. Kill him, shut down the hotline to the Walking Man, at the very least leave him on the side of the road.

  He sighed, rubbing his forehead. His perfect hair went askew. “My grandfather had abilities too. Not mine, but similar. He said if I ever ran into trouble like this, I should find you. That you could help. He said you’d know who he was because in 1945 you saved his life.”

  I felt all the indignation flow out of me, sure as if I’d been punched. Hank looked slightly afraid as I sagged back against the seat and put my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I . . .” He reached for me, then pulled his hand back when I sucked in air. I was trying not to sob, and I was doing a crappy job.

  “What was your grandfather’s name?” I whispered. Hank looked at his hands.

  “Jacob Gottlieb.”

  After that I couldn’t help myself. Everything awful that had happened in the last week, all the dreams I’d had of Jacob, piled up like a car wreck. I buried my face in my hands and started to cry, big ugly sobs that ripped out of me like screams.

  I felt a hand on my back after a few seconds, rubbing in gentle circles. Hank offered me a crumpled packet of tissues when I looked up. “Allergies,” he said. “I always have tissues.”

  “Jacob . . . Jacob survived?” I choked out. Hank nodded.

  “He made it through the woods and after a couple days he found a forward detachment of the Third Army,” Hank said. “He was frostbitten pretty bad and his ankle was never right. He had a cane—he used to let me play with it. But he lived. Thanks to you.”