Dead Mann Running (9781101596494)

by Petrucha, Stefan

  And yeah, when I got back to the room, it was empty.

  9

  A cell phone’s beveled rectangle stood out on the cushion like the monolith among the apes in 2001. I snapped it up and nearly went berserk trying to find the redial. It wasn’t fancy, but it was more complicated than the freebies they issued chakz, lots more buttons. When I finally got it, someone answered: “How smart a chak are you?”

  The voice was ocean-deep, modified electronically, the sharper tones eliminated by the pitch shift. It sounded like a drunken toad. When I didn’t answer right off, the toad repeated the question, so slow I heard his lips smack between words.

  “How smart a chak are you?”

  “Not smart enough to avoid getting stuck in the middle of this. Where’s Misty?”

  He ignored the question. “Someone thought you’d know what to do with the case. Any idea who brought it to you?”

  “No. Where’s Misty?”

  Another smack. “Any theories?”

  “No.” The only thing I did know was that by the time he reached me, there wasn’t much left of him. But why share everything with an anonymous toad?

  “If you find out, I’d really like to know.” I think he believed me.

  “Same here. Where’s…?”

  He cut me off. “Do you know who this is?”

  That game again. “No, but you know me pretty well, right? You told your boys I wouldn’t be much trouble. So, maybe you’ll believe me when I say I didn’t kill your man. We were attacked.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. He didn’t know until I’d told him. Dizzy with frustration, anger, and fear, I lowered myself onto the mattress. It was like sitting on a relief map of the moon.

  “Yeah, unless he can survive on his own with a severed jugular. I’m telling you it wasn’t me. I’m no trouble, remember?”

  “Who, then?”

  One wrong word, I’d lose him, and maybe lose Misty. “I didn’t ask for a name. A freak in ninja robes, someone fast, well trained.” I felt like I was trying to describe Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. “Whoever it was, they were better trained than the fake cop you sent to my office, and that guy was pretty good. You should’ve gotten him a better car, though.”

  “He wasn’t mine. My men picked up his car later.”

  “Then that makes at least three groups after this stuff.”

  “How so?” asked the toad.

  “I usually get a fee when I work, but under the circumstance, tell me where Misty is and I’ll share my deepest thoughts, okay? That is, if you know where she is.”

  There was a buzz and a click, like he’d swallowed a fly. “I do know, more or less. I’ll tell you depending on how the conversation goes.”

  “More or less?”

  “Nothing in life is certain.”

  “Except for death and taxes, right? And these days it’s just taxes. Fine. If the cop doesn’t work for you, that’s two. He was killed by the same ghost who got your boy, which means they don’t work for either of you. That much math I can do.”

  “A zombie telling a ghost story. Interesting.” There was a pause. “Unless you killed them in both cases. Convince me otherwise.”

  “Geez. Think about it. Even if I did manage to overpower a liveblood with some serious muscle tone, why the fuck would I go after your guy while Misty was in trouble? If you know me, you know that, being dead, I don’t care about much, but one of the only things I do care about used to be in this room. What would I have to gain?”

  “Maybe everything.” An electronic hiss came from the cell’s speaker as the voice shifter tried to compensate for the silence.

  “What?”

  “You don’t know what’s in the case?”

  “Two vials of blue liquid. They could be the plans for the Death Star or the one true ring. I don’t care.”

  I started pacing. Every minute I played word games with the toad was another minute Misty was alone with Flat-face.

  “Such emotions, from a chak. Do they hurt the way they did when you were alive, or is it more like a cut? Is it a throbbing or a stabbing pain?”

  Of course it hurt. My whole body was pulsating in a sickening way. There was something familiar about the line of questions, too.

  “Another fucking sadist! What is this, a club?”

  “You’re confusing me with my employee. I’m only trying to figure out whether to believe you or not. She’s alive. Safe depends on your definition. Her host is regrettably unpredictable.”

  I squeezed the phone like it was a neck. “I’m through with this shit. Call your man now, tell that flat-faced bastard if he does anything to her, I’ll shove those vials down his throat and pull them out the other end.”

  “Then you still have them, despite the attack. Does the anger hurt less than fear?”

  More, but seeing as how he tricked me into telling him that much, I stayed quiet until he spoke again.

  “Let’s assume I believe you. You’ll need to get out of the area soon. A senator staying in one of the rooms called 911 a while ago. I’ll give you some coordinates and have my associate meet you there with your friend.”

  “Coordinates?”

  “Latitude and longitude.”

  I clenched the phone so hard I nearly broke it. “I know what coordinates are! I just don’t know what to do with them without a map!”

  The toad tried to talk some sense into me. “Take a breath, detective. Oh, that’s right. Never mind. Do whatever it is you do to calm down. Find a pen and write these numbers down. You can punch them into the GPS in the squad car.”

  Detective. The voice shifter hid subtleties like a sarcastic tone, but I was pretty sure it was there. I scribbled the numbers on a napkin and pocketed the cell. I gave the room a quick once-over, found nothing except a stale stench in the bathroom that even the bleach couldn’t hide, and headed out.

  The empty motel was sullen, the only sound the wind slapping the few raindrops still clinging to the gutters back into the air. Wherever they hit, my skin went briefly numb. I looked around enough to notice that the doors to two of the rooms were open. I didn’t want to see what was inside. Flat-face had left quickly. He’d probably stolen another car and didn’t want to leave any loose ends.

  Assuming the toad hadn’t lied about the police, I should get out first and worry about directions later. With the squad car’s one headlight off, I pulled onto the road. After a minute of driving dark, some red pimples flashed low against the cityscape. I headed off-road, stopped, then waited until three squad cars rushed by, leaving the road behind them empty.

  Satisfied they hadn’t seen me, I took a look at the GPS. It may as well have been the instrument panel for a jumbo jet. My fingers kept missing the right spots on the touch screen. In no time, I had the thing talking Russian, then German. When I finally got the coordinates in, the damn thing announced:

  “Biegen sie links ab in hundert Metern.”

  Looked like I’d be following the little yellow line on the map screen.

  It wanted to take me straight through Fort Hammer, but I respectfully disagreed. If someone spotted a chak driving a police car, I doubted they’d think it a good thing. The GPS voice said, “Neuberechnung!” so often it started to sound angry.

  Over the course of half an hour, it took me east, where the increasingly quiet roads were lined by wet junk pines and the occasional oak. I’d call it a forest, but that sounds more organized. This was nature’s version of Fort Hammer, a gangly mess that’d been put out of its misery ages ago but still hadn’t realized it.

  In short order, the badly paved road gave it up to a muddy, winding path. The growth was so thick on either side, it looked like a tunnel. It didn’t get more private. After the third twist, the headlight illuminated a fallen oak. I thought about ramming it, but it was big enough to total the car. If I did find Misty…when…when I found Misty, we’d need wheels to get out of this wasteland. According to the GPS, I was either half a mile
or half a kilometer from ground zero. Shit.

  I unplugged it, hoping the battery would last, opened the trunk and picked up my good buddy the briefcase. Just to make sure, I took another look at the tree trunk. Some of the moss-covered wood was rotten, but not enough to matter. It came up to my waist. Like it or not, I was one of the walking dead again.

  Taking marching orders from the Germanic GPS, my shoes, which had seen better days, crunched on thin ice, sometimes slipping, sometimes breaking into a frigid puddle. At least it wasn’t raining anymore.

  Minutes later, a light finger-poked the gray. It was too low to be a plane or the moon, so I turned off my cyber-guide and headed for it. As I got nearer, the dark surrounding the glow acquired shape, forming into something like a single-room shack, maybe a hunting lodge. I didn’t see any power lines. A look at the cell told me there was no signal. Mr. Toad and Flat-face wanted to be sure no one could listen in. Either that, or this was their magic forest home.

  Another shape rose from the gloom, a green Subaru. That meant there was another way in and out. Stupid GPS. By the time I reached the car, I could tell that the light inside the cabin came from a Coleman lamp, typical camping gear. Remembering my mistake at the motel, instead of heading straight for the door, I made for the window, hoping to get a look inside before I knocked.

  It was a little higher than my shoulders, so most of what I saw were shadows cast on the ceiling. A woodpile sat nearby. It looked as sturdy as the shack, so I grabbed the handle of an old axe whose business end was embedded in a log, and pulled myself up.

  Not being an optimist, I imagined a series of bad outcomes: Misty dead; the Red Riding Ninja leaping from the window to cut me up like year-old salami; the cops arriving.

  But I had no clue what fresh hell was coming.

  Flat-face and Misty were in the rough center of the room. She was tied in a chair, and he was hovering over her. There was a long scratch on his face, two lines of blood trailing from it, almost like tears. That wasn’t completely unexpected, it was a hostage situation. Misty would fight back. But both of them looked crazed, sweaty, in a way that didn’t fit.

  A table sat nearby, pulled close for convenience. Its surface was so dark it seemed to sop up the Coleman’s light, making the silver foil the size of a gum wrapper glow. In the foil were a few small, off-white nuggets with jagged edges.

  As I watched, Flat-face forced a smoke-filled pipe into Misty’s mouth. He clamped her nostrils with his other hand. The seeping smoke crawled up the side of her nose, wafting into her watery, bloodshot eyes.

  He spit as he spoke: “Suck it, bitch, suck it!”

  Misty, bruised, twisted her head feebly, but did as she was told. Sweat, tears, or both, streamed down her cheeks. When he pulled the pipe away, I could see that her eyes were completely black, the pupils fully dilated. It wasn’t her first toke. That first one must’ve been tough for Flat-face. It was probably how he earned that scratch. Each one after that, well, it had to be a little easier.

  He howled like he’d just slammed the pigskin over the goal line: “Yeah!”

  You’d think that would’ve been enough to drive me feral, but that’s about giving up, and I had something very definite I wanted to do.

  I let the precious briefcase fall and grabbed the axe handle with both hands. A thick splinter lodged in the dry meat of my right hand, but the axe came free nice and easy. It went through the rotted window frame pretty easy, too. So did I.

  I even landed on both feet.

  Still hunched over her, he didn’t straighten. He did drop the pipe and look at me with those tiny, bat-shit-razy eyes.

  “Oooh! A mon-ster!” he said, lips curling into a smile. “What a big bad…”

  I slammed the flat end of the axe into his head. I felt the bone in my forearm bend, but not break. Why not the blade? I don’t know, really. Maybe I was figuring on keeping him alive, but most likely it just happened to be how I was holding it.

  Flat-face was no fun. He fell right over.

  “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “Stupid fucking…”

  He was dead before he reached the floor, but that made two of us, and I was still pissed. I smashed the table and the wall. As if he could still hear me, I kept talking: “I’d have given it to you…handed it right over, asshole…if you just hadn’t…why’d you have to…?”

  The next swing, stronger than I planned, dislodged my shoulder. No pain, but the out-of-place bone made it easier to stop. I got a look at myself in a wall mirror and understood why someone like Tom Booth might have a hard time believing I was innocent of murder. I dropped the axe.

  I turned to Misty. She was staring, not at me, but at what was left of Flat-face.

  I rushed over to untie her. With my shoulder out, it was slow going. I tried to block the gory scene behind me, but she, wide-eyed, shaking, kept shifting her head for a better view.

  I had no idea what to say to her, about what I’d done to Flat-face, about the crack burning through her, about anything. For a while, the only sound was the hissing of the Coleman lamp.

  No sooner did I have the ropes off than she bolted to her feet. Her body wavered like a branch in a heavy wind, but her eyes stayed fixed on the bloody corpse.

  I fumbled for words. “Misty, I had to stop him…after I saw what he was doing to you….”

  Noticing I’d smeared some of his blood on her wrists, I wiped my hand against my jacket, leaving a five-fingered stain.

  And then she asked, “You going to eat him?”

  I thought she was accusing me. “That’s the drugs talking.”

  She shivered like she’d been dunked in ice. “No,” she said. “I want you to. Hess, I want you to eat that son of a bitch.” She aimed a shaky finger at him. “Eat him!”

  I staggered back. “Misty, you know chakz don’t…you know, I’m not…”

  “What do I know?” she said. She slammed her index finger into her chest. “What the fuck do I know?”

  She ran, not bothering to avoid stepping on Flat-face on the way out. The last part to leave was her shadow, cast long and large by the hissing lantern.

  10

  I followed, called her name, pushed my way through thicker and thicker wood. Now and then, a sliver of ice green blouse poked through the mangled gray, but it was smaller every time I saw it, until, finally, I didn’t see it again.

  Foot-long pangs, radiating from my shoulder down into my ribs, made me stop. It was no use. I’d never beat her on foot even if she wasn’t fuelled by crack cocaine. Finding a thick bastard of an oak, I threw myself into it, mostly out of rage, until the shoulder popped back into place. At least I think it was back in place. It hung a little looser, but everything seemed to work.

  Now what? Come back when it was light, look for footprints? Right. By then she’d be dead or in Disney World. The high would fade. Once she stopped sobbing her guts out, she’d keep running or head someplace familiar. That wasn’t much to go on. I’d met her on the streets, in the Bones, and she’d never said where she’d been before that.

  Big picture, there were two possibilities: she’d stay straight or she’d find more drugs. She might decide she’d come too far to head back, or pure spite could keep her from giving Flat-face the postmortem satisfaction of knocking her off the wagon. In that case, she’d try to find someone to talk her down. That was no help to me. I didn’t know anyone from the program other than Chester.

  And then, what help would I be if I did find her? Spiritual support was never my forte. I mean, what could I say? Sure, your lover’s dead, your body’s full of poison, and the dead guy you’re living with turned out to be an axe murderer, but cheer up, things could be worse?

  If it wasn’t for possibility two, I’d have left her alone. But she could just as easily end up thinking she didn’t have any reason left to just say no. In that case, she’d need money, but we’d spent all we had. There was some cash in the office. She’d realize the danger, but calling a junkie self-destructive is redundant. Sh
e could waltz right into the arms of the toad, the police, or the ninja.

  For starters, I headed back to the Subaru. There weren’t many roads around here, and with a little luck, I might find her trying to hitch a ride.

  On my way, I stopped at the cabin to peer in at my handiwork. Looking at what was left of Flat-face, I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it. Then again, if I’d been a sadist, I’d have taken some pleasure in it, but I didn’t do that, either. That was something, wasn’t it? I told myself I had to save Misty. Was it my fault his skull was thin?

  Crap. Another sin to carry.

  Pandora’s briefcase, now my only pal, sat lopsided against the cabin, looking like she knew I’d be back to pick her up. My biggest reason for trying to ditch the case had run off in a drug-fuelled haze. Not that I wanted to keep it, but now I didn’t want all those assholes looking for it to have it either.

  I clicked it open to see if anything had broken. Last I’d looked, the two vials were perfect, pristine, but they’d been through a lot since. One had what looked like a hair clinging to the narrow neck. I ran my finger against it, gently, but it didn’t move. It felt sharp. It was a crack, not as thick as the glass, nothing seeping yet, but a crack. Another few bumps and whatever was inside would be out.

  Pandora. Now there’s a story that never made sense. A teenager can’t keep from peeking in a closed box, surprise, surprise, and releases all the ills of the world. Then, she closes it just in time to keep hope inside. What the fuck? All the evils out, hope still trapped? Even the ancients needed a good editor.

  I closed the case, carried it to the Subaru, put it in the passenger seat and wrapped the belt around it nice and snug. The keys were still in the ignition, the tank half-full.

  I was cruising the dirt road, looking for Misty, seeing nothing but dark, when the cell phone they’d left for me back at the motel rang. I doubted that with two of his men dead I’d be able to again convince the toad of my good intentions. I turned it off so the sound wouldn’t bug me, then found myself missing the voice of the German GPS.