The Dead Run

by Adam Mansbach

  “This is gonna hurt like hell.”

  She opened her eyes to see the sheriff kneeling over Eric, and before reason could kick in, she’d jumped to her feet, shrieking.

  “No! Don’t touch him! Leave my friend alone!”

  Nichols froze, Eric’s arm clutched between both his hands, and looked over at her.

  “His shoulder’s dislocated,” he explained, voice soft and rough at the same time. “I’ve got to pop it back in, is all. Okay?” The sheriff held her gaze, making sure she understood, and Sherry felt her breathing slow down. There was something gentle in Nichols, something she trusted on instinct. Ruth probably would have said that Sherry saw some glimmer of her dad in him, some echo of the father she pined for. Ruth was always saying shit like that. Probably because it was true.

  Nichols turned back to Eric. “On three,” he said. “Ready?”

  Eric nodded, shut his eyes hard.

  “One. Two.”

  Eric’s scream drowned out the final word. He bucked against the floor as Nichols wrenched his arm back into place, and then sat up, breathing hard, relief painted all over his face.

  “Jesus Christ,” he panted, clutching the bad arm with the good. “Holy fuck.”

  “Enough with the sermon.” Nichols smiled, standing now, hands resting on his belt. “Next order of business, Mr. Marshall Buchanan over here. Not exactly the easiest sumbitch to move, but . . .” Nichols brandished a set of handcuffs and started toward him.

  Bent, grunted, flipped the monster from his side onto his stomach as if he were an old mattress. Click. Click. Steel encircled his wrists, and Sherry let go a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  “That’s a start,” Nichols said, standing back to admire his handiwork. “Now, let’s get you two someplace safe. The rest can wait.”

  Nichols offered Eric a hand up; Ruth draped an arm over Sherry. Slowly, the four of them walked toward the light.

  Hobbling. Quaking. Sobbing.

  Alive.

  Sherry felt the warmth immediately. She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward it—inviting the sunshine in, imploring it to dry her tears to salt. The heat was her new god. It would sustain her.

  No longer shall I walk in darkness, but rather seek the light.

  Suddenly, and absurdly, a sense of peace came over her. She was alive: Sherry knew it as she never had before. Felt it with a new majesty, a new depth.

  Then she opened her eyes, and saw two policemen pointing guns at her.

  “Hello again, Sheriff,” the bigger one crowed, aligning his weapon with Nichols’s chest. He blinked at Ruth with watering, flame-red eyes. “Doctor.

  “Cuff them all,” he barked to his partner, and Sherry felt the warmth drain right back out of her.

  CHAPTER 26

  That smell . . . it cannot be.

  Cucuy sat bolt upright in his tub, the blood streaming down his ancient face in thin rivulets and pooling in the deep lines of his skin.

  He leaned back his head and inhaled—a human habit, one of the scant few he had not yet discarded. With time, the Ancient One’s senses had grown diffuse, learned to function independently of their assigned organs. He no longer heard with his ears or saw with his eyes; instead, his entire being assimilated stimuli, in ever more subtle and sophisticated ways.

  And thus the shocking, terrifying odor suffusing his consciousness was not one he could easily escape, even if he wanted to.

  Which he did not.

  On the contrary, he was compelled to track it to its source.

  The Great One extricated himself from the tub, a seeping tide of blood unfurling before him like a red carpet. He walked across it, toward the smell.

  The impossible smell.

  For the first time he could remember, Cucuy felt fear. Though the sensation was unpleasant, he surrendered himself to it, allowed it to wash over him. Breathed in its bouquet as a connoisseur might a fine wine, and allowed it to transport him back across the centuries.

  The wedding ceremony.

  Held in the blazing sunlight, before a thousand prosperous guests.

  His bride, resplendent in a saffron dress. Bejeweled and dazzling. Her eyes shining at him. Always at him.

  This woman was the prize of an entire empire, bestowed upon its favorite son in a perfect union of beauty and power, flesh and spirit. Auspicious beyond all imagining.

  She was the scion of a prosperous clan of merchants, dealers in everything from gold to spice; they had been wise and savvy with their wealth, ridden it to political prominence, curried favor with the right people for decades—and now, the right people curried favor with them. Her mother and grandmother had been renowned beauties in their own times; she was every bit their equal, and also her clan’s sharpest young business mind, her father’s right hand and presumed successor.

  Cucuy had loved her fiercely before they ever met, and she’d fulfilled his every expectation when they did. This moment should have been the culmination of all desire, the apex of all triumph. Instead, he was alone amidst the throngs, the well-wishers, the celebrants. Instead of drunk with elation, he was stiff with a fear so paralyzing he could scarcely move. Each look she cast his way was an arrow. Each trill of her honeyed voice threatened to bring him to his knees.

  A doom invisible to all but he hung over her.

  Over them both.

  The god was cruel, and Cucuy was his priest.

  His fear was unbefitting. He would conquer it. Do what he must.

  The sacred knife lay waiting by the bedside, sharp as death. He knew what he would say.

  My heart dies with you, my love.

  The vision faded from Cucuy’s mind now as the smell grew stronger. He passed through a long stone passageway, damp with mildew, and then the priest was standing in the cavernous, rough-hewn antechamber his minions used to test prospective Messengers. Once, the wills and bones of infidels had been broken upon these racks. Now they might never taste blood again.

  The smell was dizzying—intoxicating, as only danger could be. How had he failed to distinguish it earlier? Perhaps it had been mingled with too many other odors, the distinct, noble notes blunted by the brutish strains with which they competed.

  Or perhaps, Cucuy thought with a sudden, cold-eyed sobriety, his abilities had eroded more than he realized. Perhaps the melancholy that had surrounded him like a mist of late—the persistent, unwelcome thoughts of her that flooded his mind, even as he stood at the precipice of monumental change—had clouded the Timeless One’s awareness.

  He brushed the notion away, strode to the spot from which the smell radiated, and eased his aged frame down to the cool stone floor.

  The most powerful creature still drawing breath in this diminished world, supplicating himself before a spatter of blood.

  Cucuy’s mouth opened, and his long black tongue snaked forth until the tip touched the spot. The blood was dry now; his taste moistened it and unleashed the aroma’s full potency.

  The Great One collapsed onto his side, stars dancing across his field of vision.

  It was just as he had dreaded. An oversight of ruinous proportions.

  He and the Righteous Messenger shared a bloodline. It was distant, the man one-sixteenth Aztec, a debased and diluted descendant of the Sacred House of Priests. Galvan and Cucuy were separated by some twenty generations, and the blood signature did not suggest that he was the priest’s progeny, but that was insignificant. They were genetically linked; whether Galvan’s line had been sired by a sister, a cousin, a brother, did not matter.

  He was a threat.

  Were this insignificant mestizo thug, this pathetic accident, to realize who he was—what rarefied blood beat, even weakly, through his veins—he could jeopardize all that Cucuy had schemed to bring to fruition.

  The assiduous grooming of Aaron Seth could not be wa
sted—not at this late stage. He was Cucuy’s final true son, his last pure descendant. The priest had spent decades nurturing Seth’s belief, strengthening his grasp of theology, feeding his lust for power. Stoking the furnace of his ambition until the child could think of nothing but his impending godhood, the assumption of his father’s power. The world he would inherit, and the transformation he would wreak upon it.

  Until all suspicions had been eradicated from Aaron Seth’s mind.

  The child would give himself over willingly. He would consume the heart and be obliterated even as he exulted in his triumph, so blinded by his own lust that he failed to consider his father’s.

  God did not die for man.

  Man died for god.

  As his soul disintegrated, Seth’s corporeal shell would become a new vessel for Cucuy’s spirit—an infinitely stronger one.

  Able to travel without limitations.

  And sire infinite sons.

  To bring this world to its knees—to say nothing of the traitorous god in exile.

  But if Jess Galvan were to consume it?

  He would not be banished to the Dominio Gris, the grim domain of the soul-stripped living. Nor would he be annihilated, as a direct descendant would.

  The truth was, Cucuy did not know what would happen. To Galvan, or to him.

  He rose slowly to his feet, the flavor of the mestizo’s blood still burning his tongue. It tasted of danger and of the unknown. Neither was a realm the priest traversed willingly. He turned and walked swiftly from the chamber. There was work to do.

  CHAPTER 27

  Payaso’s screams still rang in his ears—or maybe in his memory; either way, the sound was unbearable as Galvan aimed the station wagon at the river, hand fisted against the wheel, elbow locked, death-dealing ghouls on every side.

  He was going to vault the bank and plow right into the fucking water, he decided. That way, at least, they’d be beyond the Virgin Army’s reach, with nothing to worry about but the raging current.

  And whatever was supposed to happen when they reached the other side.

  Assuming Britannica was right about the dead girls’ agua aversion or their souls being bound to the desert or whatever the fuck. Come to think of it, the con man hadn’t exactly explained what prevented the monsters from crossing the channel.

  Hell, maybe it was the current. Certainly laid low plenty of the living.

  Speaking of which, Galvan was overdue for a little theological consultation.

  “Hey, Padre. How come this thing is still beating, if I lost my stripes? Cucuy said only a righteous motherfucker could keep it alive, right?”

  Britannica shrugged. “Guess the Virgin Army holds you to a higher standard than—”

  “Than what? This lump of muscle?”

  “I was going to say ‘than the ancient, bloodthirsty deity who made the rules.’ ”

  Galvan shrugged. “Whatever. Way above my pay grade. Anyway, we got bigger fish to massacre.”

  Dead girls were still making regular runs at the car, but Galvan had built up such a head of steam that they ricocheted off, flipping and crumpling and twirling like players in some elaborate, macabre ballet.

  Five more minutes, Payaso. If only you’d held on for five more minutes you’d still be alive, you crazy son of a bitch.

  The windshield was a spider’s web of fractured glass, courtesy of some dead chick who’d gotten plowed, done a three-sixty, and come down face-first.

  But Galvan could see enough.

  T minus ten seconds, brace for impact.

  In the extremely fucking likely event of a water landing, your seat cushion cannot be used as a flotation device.

  He shouted above the full-throated screams of the two girls in the backseat. In lieu of proper introductions, he’d come to think of them as Betty and Veronica.

  “Here we go! Get ready to swim!”

  The riverbank loomed straight ahead, and Galvan gritted his teeth. Then the ground vanished beneath them, and for a glorious, breath-arresting moment, the car was airborne, floating through the sky as the frothy, mud-brown water rushed harmlessly below. As if held aloft by the four-part harmony of their screams, Galvan thought crazily, the notion sliding across the top of his own bellow.

  Then gravity finished its coffee break and the station wagon plunged into the river, fifteen feet from the wrong bank and thirty from the right one. It entered headlights-first, the impact knocking Galvan against the steering wheel and robbing him of breath.

  For a moment, the car teetered indecisively, half underwater and half above, rear wheels still spinning, the current slamming against the hull with so much force that for an instant, Galvan thought it might flip them upside down.

  Then there was darkness, and the sound of water rushing in—brackish and frigid, a liquid version of dirt, as if the river were doing its best grave impression.

  The station wagon sank fast—deceptively so, the river cushioning the descent, creating the illusion of time. But Galvan knew better; their demise was written in the rising tide, the water’s swift encroachment, the growing distance to the surface.

  He grabbed the box and clambered toward the backseat—just as the cracked-to-hell windshield succumbed to the water pressure and caved in, a fractal of exploding shards riding a geyser.

  Britannica, Betty, and Veronica were sipping at the last inch of air left, cheeks pressed flat against the ceiling upholstery. Galvan grabbed a lungful himself, then wasted half of it on the most obvious statement in the history of the world.

  “We gotta go.”

  He pushed off, feet to seat cushion, and propelled himself out the window, box in hand, toward the faint nimbus of sunlight playing on the surface of the water, eight or nine feet above.

  Roll with a squad that’s ill / and duck suckers / it’s hell on earth, kid / Welcome to the Ruckus . . .

  The journey took only seconds—might’ve been the easiest part of Galvan’s goddamn day, the underwater quietude a form of respite, a kind of revelation. For a little while, he could hear nothing but the beating of his own heart, and Galvan felt his muscles relax, despite the bracing chill of the water, and the tension leave his body. It was like the walk from the on-deck circle to home plate. A ritual emptying of the vessel, so it could resume its job anew.

  As he breached the surface, it occurred to Galvan that it might not be his own heart beating in his ears, but the other one.

  The time for wondering was gone. The current seized him immediately, Galvan no more than another piece of flotsam. He kicked furiously, paddling with his free arm and clamping down on the box with the other.

  There was a reason you didn’t see too many one-armed swimmers in the Olympics. For each foot of progress he made toward the opposite bank, the current pulled him five feet sideways. The water was a stew of fellow travelers: tree limbs and trash and who-knew-what burbled up and disappeared again, dragged down by the current—some of it harmless, some perfectly capable of knocking him unconscious should Galvan find himself occupying the wrong coordinates at the wrong instant. He scanned for something to grab hold of. Shipwrecked sailors in stories always happened on a shard of mast, rode the remains of their vessels to terra firma.

  You’re not a sailor, asshole. And this ain’t no kids’ book.

  Britannica and the girls surfaced, a few yards downstream, the tight cluster of their heads barely visible above the rapids. One glimpse of the girls’ drenched manes, the terror on their faces, and Galvan’s determination was vibrating at an even higher pitch.

  I can’t let them drown, he thought, even as he felt the fatigue returning, burning in his limbs. No quicker way to exhaust yourself than trying to stay afloat.

  There’s nothing you can do. Not until you get yourself to dry land.

  Galvan redoubled his efforts, putting on a burst of speed and reaching midriver. He’
d settled on a strategy: ten all-out strokes, rest, and repeat. It took a certain force to cut through the current; better to summon that energy in pockets than to fight constantly and futilely.

  Another burst, and the far bank was coming into focus. It wasn’t as steep as the one they’d Dukes of Hazzarded across; it looked like there were shallows. Five or six walkable feet, if he could get there, get his legs beneath him.

  Two more bursts might do it. He took a deep breath, started paddling.

  Right into traffic.

  Galvan never saw the log. Just the stars, after it slalomed into his solar plexus. The impact threw him below the surface, and for a terrifying moment, Galvan didn’t know which way was up. He thrashed, spun, spun again, found the light, rejoined the world of oxygen, drew a ragged breath, realized something was wrong, cast desperately around.

  The box was gone.

  Borne downriver, if he was lucky.

  Touching down atop the silty riverbed, if he was not.

  Luck hadn’t exactly been a strong suit, lately.

  Galvan gave himself over to the current, throwing his body headlong and paddling with all he had left.

  How remarkable it was to give in and go with the flow instead of fighting it, he reflected. How quickly you moved. What harmony you felt.

  And yet, Galvan had spent his whole life doing the opposite.

  The metal glinted, up ahead—or else, Galvan imagined it did. He was closing in on Britannica and the girls, the three of them bobbing in the middle of the river, holding on to something. That storybook hunk of driftwood, perhaps.

  “The box!” he called. “Look for the box!” And though the rapids swallowed much of the sound, Galvan saw Veronica’s head snap toward him. She screamed something he couldn’t hear, and then Britannica was calling Galvan’s name.

  He tried to answer and inhaled a mouthful of river instead: subtle notes of mud and lichen, paired well with poached salmon, soft cheeses, death by drowning. The rapids flipped him onto his side, and by the time he recovered, Galvan was nearly on top of the others, and a crimson eddy of unclear origin was swirling its way into the water.