Already Dead

by Charlie Huston

  I turn off the news and walk over to Niagara at the corner of 7th and A. It's about nine and the place is dead, the hipsters won't start crowding in till eleven.

  The bartender is a guy named Billy. He's floated around the East Village working the bars for the last nine, ten years. Far as he knows, I'm a kind of local tough guy does work for people who need it; some arm bending and maybe some PI type stuff. While back I bounced for a couple months at a place called the Road-house, Billy was working there at the time and we got to know each other a bit.

  He comes cruising down the bar. Good-looking guy, thirtyish, wearing pleated gabardine pants, two-tone loafers, and a silk Hawaiian print shirt. Got his hair slicked back and tattoos of dice and eight balls and bathing beauties on his forearms. And as greasy a greaser as Billy is, he is far from the greasiest that'll be cramming into this greaseball haven come midnight.

  —Yo, Joe, whaddaya know?

  He stops; his face freezes.

  —Jesus fuck! Whad happen ta yer fuckin' face?

  —Tanning bed, those things are dangerous.

  He blinks, slowly, a grin starting to tug the corner of his mouth.

  —Yeah?

  —Yeah, industry doesn't want you to know, but there are almost as many tanning-bed-related deaths a year as highway deaths.

  —No shit?

  —I barely got out, man.

  He takes another look at the severe scorch on my face and nods his head.

  —Bull.

  —Sunlamp?

  He squints his eyes. I hold up my right hand in pledge. He shakes his head.

  —Hey, man, ya done wanna tell me, ya done gotta, but hey, done fuck wit' me.

  I've been working on Billy's accent since I met him, and still don't know where the hell he's from. He claims to be Queens born and bred, but he sounds more like a French Canadian educated in Boston.

  I shrug my shoulders in surrender.

  —Kitchen accident. No shit, I fell asleep with my head in the microwave.

  He laughs and wipes at the bar with the rag he keeps tucked in

  his belt.

  —Yeah, baked ya fuckin' brains too, bub. Whad ya drinkin?

  Blood.

  —'Bout a bourbon? Whatever's on the rail is fine.

  —Heaven Hill comin' up.

  He grabs a rocks glass and fills it with whiskey while I look the place over. The Niagara is skinny around the bar then opens up into a big back room, but that area is kept roped off until the crowd builds up later and the cocktail waitress comes on. No sign of Philip. Billy plops the drink down in front of me.

  —There ya go, Mr. Marlowe, one cheap bourbon onna house.

  —Thanks. Seen Philip around?

  —Naw, not yet. He'll be in later.

  —You see him first, don't tell him I'm looking.

  Billy nods his head.

  —Sure thing. He owe ya money, something?

  —Something.

  —Well look, guy owes me money, two hundred fiddy and change. Get my coin outta him while yer shakin' 'im down, an I'll wipe yer tab.

  —I ain't got a tab here, I pay for my drinks.

  —That's right. Get my cash an I'll see ya ain't got no tab the next month or so. Everythin' onna house. Even the top shelf, you start ta feelin' fancy.

  —I'll see what I can do.

  Billy puts out his hand to shake, then slides back down the bar to work on a little number sporting the inevitable Betty Page cut and fishnets. I check her out. Nice package, round ass peeking over the edge of the stool, low-cut vintage dress with pale white cleavage pushed up out of a red lace bra. Billy makes out well with that kind of action. Hell, Billy makes out well with most kinds of action. Just one of those guys. Me, I haven't had a woman in over twenty-five years. Fooled around some, sure, but the whole deal I haven't had in about a quarter of a century. Long story. I look at the number's ass again then look away. I don't need to do that. I want to torture myself I can call Evie later.

  I sip my cheap booze and smoke Luckys and watch the crowd build. Around ten they open the back room and I move there. All the time I'm thinking I should be out looking for the carrier. Instead I'm here in greaser heaven watching all the wannabes compare their latest Sailor Jerry knockoff tattoos while they try to hook up with chicks in vintage dresses and sling-back pumps. I'm here because the only damn lead I maybe have on the carrier is Philip. The toad knows something and I'm gonna get it out of him.

  Just before eleven the cocktail waitress drifts over and tries to hand me a fresh drink. I look at the glass she's holding and shake my head.

  —I didn't order anything.

  —Yeah, I know.

  She puts the glass in my hands.

  —It's from Billy.

  She nods at the little napkin under the glass.

  —I think he likes you.

  I look at the napkin. It has a note written on it: He's here. I look up. The cocktail waitress is still standing there.

  —What?

  —You know, you should put something on your face for that burn.

  —Great, thanks for the tip.

  She snorts.

  —Yeah, thank you for the tip, too. Not.

  She starts to walk away and I put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off.

  —Easy, bruiser.

  —Yeah easy. Wait a sec.

  I dig in my pocket and come up with a few twenties and put one on her tray.

  —That's for the delivery service. You know a tall skinny guy named Philip, hangs out here?

  —Sure.

  —He just came in, right?

  —Yeah, he's in the crowd up by the door.

  I drop another twenty on her tray.

  —Do me a favor; take the guy a drink, one of those fancy Scotches is what he likes. Tell him it's from a chick back here, she wants him to come say hi.

  She looks at the money.

  —What do I tell him if he asks who she is?

  —Tell him she's the one with the Betty Page haircut.

  She heads over to the bar. I peek over the crowd and see Philip's pomp towering over the crowd. His hair is bleach blond, piled about ten inches high into a cliff that sticks out half a foot beyond his forehead. I see the cocktail waitress walk away from the bar with a McSomethingorother on her tray. She maneuvers through the press of bodies till she reaches Philip. His pompadour dips as he listens to what she has to say. She points in the direction of the back room and he starts to pick his way over. Someone steps out of the bathroom. I quickly pop in and stand just inside, the door half-open. A guy tries to crowd in.

  —Occupied.

  He looks at me standing there clearly not using the can for its intended purpose.

  —C'mon, man, I got to take a leak.

  —Go piss in your shoe, Jack.

  He opens his mouth to say something else and I take a step toward him. I stand six three and go two hundred and change. He lines up for the ladies' room. Just then Philip sashays by looking around for whatever kind of chick would be buying him a drink. I grab a fistful of his pink Rayon shirt with a black cat motif, drag him into the John and kick the door closed. He spills his Scotch and stares at it on the floor.

  —What the fuck!

  Then he looks up and sees that it's me.

  —Oh, Joe. Jesus, Joe, what happened to your face, man?

  And I start twisting his neck, trying to decide if I should pop his head off.

  The thing is, it's not as easy to pop off someone's head as you might think. I settle for forcing his face into the toilet bowl and flushing it a couple times. He comes up gasping.

  —The hair, man, the hair!

  I slam him against the wall.

  —That the only thing on your mind, Phil, your hair?

  —Why would I have anything on my mind, Joe? You know me, I don't like to think, it just gets me in trouble.

  —You got that right, buddy. Hey, I ever thank you for that call this morning?

  He looks a little confused
at my change in tone.

  —Uh, no, no you didn't.

  —Well, hell, that was sure inconsiderate of me.

  I reach in my pocket, grab a few bills and tuck them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  —Well thanks, Joe, but you don't gotta do that.

  Automatically, he has pulled a comb out of the back pocket of his painted-on black jeans and started to poke at his hair, trying to resculpt it.

  —No, I do. I owe you one there. That was good looking out, letting me know the heat was on like that. Too bad I got a call from uptown just about a second later.

  His hands are on automatic pilot, crawling over the gooey mound on top of his head.

  —Yeah? Sorry I couldn't give you more of a lead there.

  —Ya know the real drag about all this, Phil?

  —Aw, man, don't call me Phil, ya know I hate it.

  —You're right. Philip. I'm sorry. Ya know the real drag about this, Philip?

  He's got one hand above his head holding the pomp in place while his Other hand digs in his back pocket for his can of pomade. He's staring straight up so he can keep an eye on the overhang while the restoration continues.

  —Naw, man, what's the real drag?

  I grab a huge greasy handful of his hair and jerk him up onto his tiptoes.

  —It's the way they made me crawl up there in the middle of the day. The way Dexter Predo knew all about the carrier when I hadn't told anyone but you. The way you called me first thing when you heard about the mess, like you already knew I was involved. That makes me wonder if maybe you were spying on me. Which makes me wonder if maybe you were spying on me for Predo and the fucking Coalition.

  I let him drop to the floor, his pomp a hopeless ruin, and turn to the sink to wash the grease off my hands. Philip sits on the floor, hair finally forgotten.

  —Jesus, Joe, you crazy or somethin'? Me spyin' for the Coalition? I mean, hey, even if I would do somethin' like that, you know them tight-asses wouldn't have me on the regular payroll or nothin'. You know that. I mean sure, maybe I pick up some change from them, I got a loose piece of information or they got somethin' shitty ta be done or somethin'. But spyin'? Hell, they got pros for that. And even sayin' I wanted ta spy for the Coa-fucking-lition, and even saying they would have me, I wouldn't never take a job ta spy on you, Joe. That's just something I wouldn't never do, you know that. Ya got ta know that.

  I turn from the sink, wiping my hands on a paper towel.

  —So what are you saying, Phil, you saying I'm wrong here? I'm lying?

  —Aw, no, man, no. I know you know what you know and all. If you're sayin' Mr. Predo knew somethin', well, he musta known it. All I'm sayin' is, he didn't never get it from me. I'm just sayin' I didn't ever call the guy at all. I got off the phone with you I figured maybe you'd be slipping me some coin later, so I went out lookin' ta score. You know me. I didn't never even get it in my head to call Mr. Predo or none of them guys. You tell me there's a carrier? Well, hell, I just figure you must be probably takin' care of it for the Coalition anyway. No change in it for me if I give them a call, now is there? So why'd I call them? Huh, Joe, why'd I call them?

  He's doing his best to come across sincere, looking me in the eyes, his pupils pinned out from whatever kind of bennies he got his hands on tonight.

  —How much money you got on you, Phil?

  —Well, uh.

  He pulls the bills I gave him out of his breast pocket and counts them.

  —Looks like I got about fifty here.

  —What other money?

  He pats at his pockets, gives me a hopeless look and shrugs his shoulders. I squat down and put my face close to his.

  —You might be close to getting off the hook here, Phil. I suggest that now is not the time to start fucking with me.

  He nods and starts digging into his pockets, turning them inside out. A handful of change, his hair goop, a pack of Dentyne, a baggie full of about twenty little black capsules, and a small wad of cash all spill out onto his lap. I grab the cash and give it a quick count. Hundred and eighty bucks. I hold the bills in front of his face.

  —I'm giving this to Billy, toward what you owe him.

  —Sure, sure, I mean, that's what I had it on me for was ta give ta Billy for what I owe him.

  I stand up.

  —Yeah, right. Do what you want with the fifty, that's for the phone call. But pay Billy off before Monday.

  —Yeah, before Monday, no sweat, Joe.

  I bend over, pick Philip's comb up off the floor and toss it at him.

  —Fix your hair, Philip, it looks like crap.

  Walking past the bar I get Billy's attention and slip him the buck eighty. He counts it and smiles. —S'more than I thought he'd cough up.

  —Yeah. He'll come through with the rest by Monday. He don't, give me a call.

  —Thanks, Joe. Ya gonna stay, start runnin' up that tab? Got some sweet Betties in here t'night. I could maybe hook ya up.

  —Thanks anyway, Billy, I got work to do.

  He nods and waves and gets back to shaking martinis. I squeeze through the crowd, out the door and onto the hot street.

  The problem with Philip is, even when he's telling the truth, it looks like lying. But he has a point. The Coalition wants to keep an eye on me they got better ways of doing it than him. They really want to keep an eye on me they'll send someone down here far more subtle and dangerous. Then again, a hundred eighty is a lot of cash for him to be packing, and he would have needed more to score the speed he was carrying. He got that money somewhere. Damn it. He's dirty on something, but I don't have time to dig it out right now. The carrier is still out there and I don't know any more than I did before. Except that maybe I do.

  If Philip is telling the truth, then Predo is keeping an eye on me some other way. Which means the Coalition is keeping tabs on me personally, or the whole neighborhood, or both. Which means something is going on down here. And I don't have any idea what it is. My only move is to try and find the carrier, just like they want me to. So I go home and get my guns.

  Killing a zombie isn't complicated, it's just hard. The first problem is that the damn things are not quite alive in the first place. Or not quite dead. I'm not really sure which it is. The way it is, these things, they've been infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. This bacteria is slowly consuming all their soft tissues, muscle, fat, blood, cartilage, you name it. But mostly it's eating their brains. The catch is that the bacteria can only eat living tissue. So more than anything else in the world, this bacteria wants to keep its host alive and breathing, because once the host dies, I mean really finally croaks, the bacteria goes soon after. And what this bacteria does to extend its own life span is it pumps the host body full of endorphins and adrenaline and serotonin and all kinds of naturally occurring crap that kills pain, induces euphoria, and keeps a body moving. And to replenish these chemicals the bacteria gives its zombie a taste for human flesh and, in particular, For brain matter.

  So, for the sake of argument, say you have a zombie in front of you and you want to kill it. Well the best, quickest, and easiest thing to do is sever the connection between its brain and the rest of its body. This may not in actuality kill the host, but not even the zombie bacteria can move a host once its brain stem is hacked or its neck is snapped. Now, say you have two or more zombies standing there and you want all of them dead and you don't really have any practical zombie-killing experience to draw on. In that case you might try pulling out your large-caliber hand-gun and shooting them in the heart. You could try for the face, but unless you hit the brain stem or blow out some really enormous chunks of gray matter, they're gonna keep coming after you. So just go for the heart. Explode the heart and the machine can't run no matter how hard the bacteria works. You could also strangle or drown or burn or blow up or hang or chop up or push from a tall building your average zombie. As long as you stop the heart or the brain or just cause massive physical trauma, you're gonna kill the thing. But we're talking abo
ut finding a quick and easy method here. So my advice is use a gun and a lot of bullets, just like if you were trying to kill your wife or husband.

  I keep my guns in a gun safe in the back of my closet down in the secret Vampyre room. Not that I have any little kids running around I need to keep away from the guns. I had any kids I'd get rid of the guns. Nothing more dangerous to the life of a child than a house full of firearms. Nothing more dangerous except maybe a parent. No, I keep my guns locked up because on bad days, really bad days, it makes it that much harder for me to get my hands on them and go walking through the streets killing random strangers until the police come and shoot me down. Not that I get that urge too often. Just when I haven't had blood for about a week and the alien thing in my veins starts burning me from the inside out and I start thinking about cutting open my own wrists so I can suck at them.

  I'm not one of those guys gets all breathy over his guns. I have two, one is a small, reliable revolver and one is a big, nasty automatic that holds a lot of bullets. I got both of them off of dead guys and I know just enough about the guns to shoot them straight, keep them clean and make sure they never get pointed at me. In the general course of life these things never see the light of day. And I'm not just trying to be funny. I mean things like this carrier are pretty rare even in my life, so I don't have much use for guns and they usually stay in the safe where they belong. The good thing about the guns is that when you shoot someone, nobody looks twice at the corpse. As opposed to a dead body with, say, half of its brain gone and its head chopped off.

  I load the guns and pocket some extra ammo. I'm on my way back upstairs when I think about the blood in my fridge. I had a pint last night after my fight with the shamblers and another today to help with my burn. Normally I keep it to one pint every few days. That's enough to keep me healthy and take the edge off the hunger, but I'm going hunting and every little bit helps. Another pint and I'll be primed, the top of my game. I open the fridge. Eleven pints. I don't like to let my stash get much below ten pints. If I take another one I'll need to replenish the stock in the next day or two. I think about the three zombies last night and how close the girl came to cutting my eyes out. I grab one of the little bags. I suck it dry, standing there in the middle of the room, and it makes me feel the way it always makes me feel, it makes me feel alive.