I nudged the top of the coffin aside by a few inches and let in some cool air. But I was still trapped.
A thick silver chain and a padlock had been wrapped around the coffin. Great. Silver chains and a nailed-down coffin—exactly what would be required to contain a vampire. Okay, B+ for effort, but somebody really needed to go back to the field guides and do a better job at identifying their unnaturals.
How could anyone have confused me for a vampire?
Then one or two of the pieces fell into place with a big thud. I wasn’t supposed to be here—this should have been someone else! I’d been duped, or switched.
Finally, I remembered about the witness protection program.
* * *
At Chambeaux & Deyer investigations, we take all sorts of cases—from a monster in trouble who lumbers through our doors, to humans having trouble with monsters, to monsters having trouble with one another. There’s never a dull moment.
Occasionally, we get cases punted to us from the police, usually because Officer Toby McGoohan, my best human friend, brings them to us. McGoo appreciated the extra help on his backlog, and we appreciated the business.
McGoo and I were old friends well before I got shot—a down-on-his-luck private detective and a politically incorrect, often rude, beat cop with no prospects for promotion, even in the Unnatural Quarter. Some friendships survive even death. If I could put up with McGoo’s lousy jokes, he could put up with my cadaverous infirmities.
He showed up in our offices wearing his full patrolman uniform and blue cap, leading a man in a ridiculous disguise: a trenchcoat, a wide-brimmed hat, and a curly wig that Harpo Marx would have found too extreme.
“Hey, Shamble,” McGoo said. I had long since stopped objecting to his nickname for me, a deliberate mispronunciation of my last name.
When he didn’t introduce his companion, I nodded to the stranger. “Correct me if I’m wrong, McGoo, but a disguise isn’t supposed to draw attention.”
The man in the goofy wig muttered, “I didn’t want anyone to recognize me.” He looked around, then muttered to McGoo, “Are we safe here?”
“Safe enough. These people are going to help get you into the witness protection program.”
The man took off the hat, silly wig, and trenchcoat, to reveal he was a slight-framed blond man, as scrawny and skittish as if he had stepped right off the “before” side of a muscle supplement ad. He was a vampire.
“Let me introduce Sebastian Bund,” McGoo said, “former blood barista at one of the Talbot & Knowles blood bars. He’s also a key witness in an important case involving the illicit blood market.”
Scrawny Sebastian slicked back his blond hair, which had been mussed by the wig. “Thank you for your help...as soon as you help.”
Our receptionist at Chambeaux & Deyer is my girlfriend—and former client—Sheyenne. She’s a ghost now, and I had been investigating her murder when I got killed, but we’re still a couple. Many spirits linger because they have unfinished business, but even after I solved Sheyenne’s murder, she remained, and she works for us now. Apparently her “unfinished business” now involved typing and filing in our offices. Chambeaux & Deyer couldn’t have functioned without her.
“Could I get you some coffee or tea, or blood, Mr. Bund?” she asked, as she dropped the intake paperwork on her desk.
“Do you have any B-positive?” Bund asked.
“I think we just keep O in stock for the clients.”
Bund shook his head. “Never mind. I can’t stand the generic stuff. I’m fine.”
McGoo pushed the papers aside. “There can’t be any record of this. Everything off-book.”
Sheyenne frowned. “Then how do we send our bill?”
“I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get it out of petty cash.”
“If it’s only petty cash,” she countered, “then maybe the case isn’t worth our time.”
“We have a big petty cash fund.”
Robin Deyer came out to meet the new client as well; she’s a young and feisty African-American woman, and when she sinks her teeth into a case, she’s as hard to shake as a zombie with lockjaw. We went into the conference room together, so McGoo could explain the case to us.
Sebastian Bund had been caught up in under-the-counter blood sales, watering down the product, selling the extra out a back alley, and using a seemingly legitimate blood bank to move his supplies. He would swap out rare and expensive types for more generic flavors. No one had noticed...until one of the mislabeled packets was actually used in surgery rather than for unnatural consumption, and the patient nearly died.
The plot unraveled, arrests were made, and the operation was pinned on an ambitious gangster family led by Ma Hemoglobin. (Her real last name was Hamanubin, but nobody referred to her by that.) She had six sons, two of whom were vampires. Ma Hemoglobin and her boys ran blood-smuggling operations throughout the Quarter.
The District Attorney had vowed to bring them down. The owners of the Talbot & Knowles blood-bar chain (former clients of mine, I’m pleased to say) were eager to press charges.
“Unfortunately, each witness who would have testified against Ma Hemoglobin suffered an unfortunate demise,” McGoo said.
“Is there such thing as a fortunate demise?” I asked. McGoo ignored the interruption; I think he was annoyed that he hadn’t thought of the joke himself.
Several vampire witnesses had “accidentally” been locked in sunlit cells, and their ashes weren’t in any shape to testify. Some of the human witnesses were assigned to vampires-only holding cells, and after the prisoner meals were “accidentally delayed” by several hours, the human witnesses were too drained to be of any use and “accidentally” contaminated with holy water during the resuscitation efforts so they couldn’t even be turned into vamps themselves (thus, doubly prevented from taking the stand against Ma Hemoglobin). Another particularly important witness had vanished from a locked bathroom, and the only evidence was a brownish-green slime all around the toilet. There were rumors of sewer-dweller hit men who came up through the porcelain access to strike their target.
“Sebastian is the only witness left,” McGoo said. “And obviously our traditional police protection methods haven’t worked.”
“Sounds like you need a zombie detective,” I said.
“We need someone competent. Sebastian has to go into witness protection until the case comes up for trial.”
Robin just nibbled on her pencil, deep in thought. “So you need our help to make sure he’s moved without being seen.”
McGoo nodded. “We’ve already got an operation under contract. He’ll be taken cross-country in a coffin in the back of an eighteen-wheeler. We’ll disguise the truck, make it look like it’s hauling pre-packaged school lunches.”
I cringed, and Robin shuddered, both of us remembering our own experiences with school lunches. “No one’s going to mess with that cargo.”
So, McGoo already had the general plan and his connections to the police force. We just had to work out the details.
Obviously, as the ominous voice always says in movie trailers, something went wrong. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be riding in the coffin. Somebody had set me up.
* * *
Once I pushed the loosened coffin lid to one side, I began to work on the silver chains and padlock. Fortunately, silver has no effect on me—that’s an advantage to being a zombie, and I try to look at the glass as half full.
As a detective, I’m quite proficient, or at least marginally adequate, with lockpick tools that I keep in a handy travel pack in my pants pocket. My fingers were clumsy, but no more than usual. I worked with the tools until I sprung the padlock, removed the hasp, and shoved the chains to the floor.
Just as I sat up, the semi truck hit a bump in the road, which made the coffin thump against the trailer bed. My teeth clacked together, and then the hum of the road became smooth again. I knocked the lid to the floor and lurched up out of the co
ffin.
This was actually easier than when I had clawed my way up through the packed graveyard soil back when I first rose from the dead—not to mention a lot less dirty, too.
The truck rumbled along, and I stepped out of the coffin, flexing my stiff knees, stretching, brushing the wrinkles in my sport jacket. I looked around the coffin, but saw no sign of my fedora. I hoped it wasn’t lost.
Even though my leaky brain had recaptured the basic story of Sebastian Bund going into witness protection, there were still many gaps. Once again, I felt around my head, but discovered no lumps. It’s difficult to knock a zombie unconscious by bonking him on the head, anyway. There must have been something else, maybe a sleeping potion. I felt groggy, rubbed my eyes, still trying to get awake.
“Coffin” and “coffee” both derive from the root word “caffeine,” I think—and I could have used a strong cup right now to help wake the dead. I needed to be alert, to judge whether I might be in danger.
Inside the trailer, other crates were stacked high all around where the coffin had been stashed. The crates were all filled with prepackaged school lunches; from the “Use By” dates stamped on the sides, they would not expire for more than a century.
I worked my way toward the front of the trailer, hoping I could find some way to signal the cab. The driver up there needed to know he had the wrong cargo. If someone had knocked me out and switched me with Sebastian Bund, then the star witness might be in danger.
The engine noise was loud, but I leaned against the wall and started pounding as hard as I could. (For a trucker hauling coffins filled with the undead, that would probably be unnerving.) If he had the window open, maybe he’d be able to hear me back here. I pounded harder and then, to reassure him, hammered out “Shave and a Haircut.”
Faintly, from the cab, I heard him pound back on the door, “Two Bits.”
I pounded harder, more desperately. He pounded back, and I heard his muffled voice. “Quiet back there!”
So much for raising the alarm. I guess I would have to wait until he stopped for a potty break—I hoped he had a small bladder.
I sat back down on the edge of the coffin, slipped my hands into the jacket pockets—and felt immediately stupid when I found my phone. That would have been a good thing to remember from the start. I didn’t like all these lapses in my memory. Could a zombie get a concussion?
Since I had no idea where the truck was, possibly out in the middle of nowhere, I hoped that I’d get a signal. I was pleased to see at least one-and-a-half bars; that should be good enough.
I kept McGoo’s number on speed-dial, and he picked up on the second ring. He must have seen the Caller ID. “Shamble! What are you doing awake already?”
“Trying to figure out where the hell I am.” He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. “You sound like you know more about this than I do.”
McGoo snorted. “I know more about most things than you do.”
“I’d argue with that, but today I’ll give you a free pass if you can tell me why I woke up in a nailed-shut coffin surrounded by silver chains in the back of a semi truck.”
“Silver chains? There weren’t supposed to be any silver chains.”
I stared at the phone, then put it back to my ear.
“That’s the part you find unusual? Why am I here in the first place?”
“It was your idea, Shamble, but if you don’t remember your own brilliant solution, I’ll take credit for it. The narcomancer said you might suffer some temporary memory loss as a side effect. It was a powerful spell.”
“Narcomancer?” The word meant nothing to me, and I couldn’t call any image to mind. “Don’t you mean ‘necromancer’?”
“Narco—narcomancer,” McGoo said. “I suppose you’ve forgotten you owe me a hundred bucks, too?”
“I don’t owe you a hundred bucks. But narcomancer...like in narcotics?”
“No, like narcolepsy. His name was Rufus. He’s a wizard who worked a spell to put you to sleep—and putting a zombie to sleep is no easy task.”
“Rufus?” The name still didn’t ring a bell.
And suddenly, it did.
I recalled the man whose matted mouse-brown hair seemed to have a moral disagreement with combs. His wispy beard looked as if someone had been experimenting with spirit gum and theatrical makeup but had given up halfway through the job. His watery blue eyes were extremely bloodshot, and he seemed jittery. Although he specialized in putting people to sleep, he seemed to be an insomniac himself.
I remember him rubbing his hands together, repeating his name and grinning. “Yes, Rufus...are you ready for my special roofie? You’ll snooze away the journey.”
He began to speak an incantation—then everything went blank.
“It’s all going down as planned,” McGoo said on the phone. “We made all the arrangements for Sebastian to be whisked away in the truck to his new home, but we put you in the coffin instead, under a sleep spell—it was supposed to last for the entire drive—while Sebastian went by a roundabout route. A brilliant idea, actually. I suggested it.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “That was my idea.”
“I thought you didn’t remember.”
“But why would we do that?”
McGoo said, “Just to be safe. You were triggered to wake up if anyone tampered with the coffin. You were worried something bad might go down.”
At that moment, an explosion hit the truck, blowing out the side of the trailer, scattering packaged school lunches everywhere, and hurling me out into the pitch-black night.
* * *
The squeal of the truck’s air brakes would have made a banshee envious. The semi jack-knifed, its wheels smearing rubber along the highway like black fingerpaint. The truck groaned to a halt with a cough and gasp, and debris rained down everywhere.
After being thrown from the truck, I landed in a ditch—a mud-filled ditch, of course. I got to my feet, dripping; stagnant slime oozed out of my hair. It seems the harder I work to keep myself well-preserved, the faster karma comes back and smacks me.
The door to the truck cab popped open, and a stocky man with a black jawline beard swung out. His eyes burned like coals, and even from a distance I could tell he was hopping mad. He wore a trucker’s cap, a red-checked flannel shirt open to show his white undershirt, and jeans. He didn’t seem injured, just furious as he stepped away from the wheezing and gurgling diesel engine that fought to keep running.
He stared at the ruined trailer, where a blackened crater and splintered wood surrounded the remnants of a slogan: “The Finest in Processed Lunches—Tolerated by Children for over Twenty Years!” On the image, a group of gaunt boys and girls looked dubiously toward the picture of their meal, which had been obliterated by the blast.
“They blew up my rig!” The trucker stalked back and forth, twisted his cap around backward, then, dissatisfied, twisted it back around front. “Out here on an empty stretch of highway? They blew up my rig!” He kicked gravel with his steel-toed boots, then looked up and saw me shambling toward him. “Did you see that?” Then he glowered, giving me a second look. “Where did you come from?”
“I was inside your truck,” I said. “I’m Dan Chambeaux, private investigator.”
The trucker blinked, still suspicious. “And I’m Earl—Earl Joe Bob, owner and operator of Earl Joe Bob Trucking.” He scratched his beard. “Say, what were you doing in that coffin? You weren’t supposed to be in there.”
“Ever hear those stories about babies being switched in the nursery?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“I guess it happens with coffins, too.”
Earl Joe Bob put his hands on his hips and swung his head from side to side, looking in dismay at his mortally wounded rig. Under the bright running lights, which could have given a Christmas tree on the Las Vegas Strip a run for its money, I saw “Earl Joe Bob Trucking” and a phone number, as well as government license number on the driver’s door. He sighed. “At least th
e cab and engine are still intact. But damn—I’m liable for all this! And, hey, you weren’t supposed to be in that coffin!” He shook his head again, stuck his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans. “What a mess.”
At least the trailer hadn’t caught fire, though some of the shards of wood still smoldered. “I think we were hit with a rocket launcher.”
“It happens,” said Earl Joe Bob. He went back to the cab, got some flares and reflective hazard triangles.
I realized that out here on this open and silent stretch of highway, under the stars and with no city lights in sight, we were much too vulnerable. This truck hadn’t run into a random migratory rocket. I patted my pockets, looked around—I had lost my phone during the explosion.
“We have to call for help. Can we use your CB? Or a cell phone?”
Earl Joe Bob shook his head. “No, wouldn’t be wise to use it.”
I was exasperated. “Why not?”
The trucker narrowed his eyes at me. “Just can’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic. I walked around the other side of the truck again, working my way back to the ditch, where I hunted around for my phone. The weeds were tall, and I splashed through the standing water. Mosquitoes fled from me—another advantage of being a zombie. I would have to write all the advantages down one day, just as a reminder.
Fortunately, the phone’s screen light was still on, though my call with McGoo had been disconnected in the explosion. I smeared it against my muddy shirt, making a marginally clean patch, and was dismayed to see that my Angry Vultures scores had been wiped out. That was a problem I would have to deal with later.
I phoned McGoo, who answered right away. “Where are you, Shamble? What happened?”
“I’m on a road somewhere,” I said, glancing around. “And I don’t see one of those You Are Here Xs.” I told McGoo about the explosion and that we were stranded. He promised to call in reinforcements right away.
Mister October - Volume Two Page 17
