Dead Mann Walking (26 page)

The table had fine china and silverware set for fifty. There was still food on the plates. Everyone had left in a hurry. Tall windows lined the wall; wild shadows from them rolled across the table like waves.

After I kicked a few chairs in front of the door, thinking they'd at least slow the ferals if they came in from the kitchen, I tried to stand. I backed into a steak knife, grabbed it with my fingers, and sawed at the plastic cuffs.

I couldn't see what my hands were doing, but I could see out the windows. Ferals,
real
ferals, much farther gone than Jonesey in the alley, or me in my office, swarmed over a statue garden. Right now, at least, they had the guards outnumbered. The LBs were shooting and backing up, but the ferals didn't give a shit. One used what looked like the smoker's arm to whack a gun out of a guard's hand.

I didn't see any point in trying to talk to Nell again. I also didn't see any point in trying to leave in the middle of a war where either side wouldn't think twice about going after me. I spent the next half hour slipping from room to room, looking and listening. I wasn't trying to find anything in particular, but whenever I heard talking, I didn't shy away.

Inside, over time, things quieted. Outside, not so much. The little fire fight I saw through the dining room window was over, but the guards complained that they'd won too easily. They were worried there were more out there, waiting.

At the end of one long hall I found a huge stained-glass window depicting Epicurus the sage. Another bit of dead-mind trivia—he was a Greek philosopher who believed that pleasure was the sole intrinsic form of good. Had to be Green's hero. Figured.

No sooner did I smirk over it than some bluish lights reflected off the glass. Then they started getting bigger, as in closer. I kept low and slipped into a closet. Inside, I left the door half-open and acted like one of the coats.

Seconds later, the satyr himself, Colby Green, appeared. He was flanked by four men with AK-47s and high-intensity flashlights. The flashlights were the source of the blue glow.

Green was talking a mile a minute, not to himself but to someone on his Bluetooth. His voice had this weird tone. It sounded angry, but fatherly, like he was talking to a petulant child. It was definitely an act for the benefit of whoever was on the other end of the line.

“I've warned you once. I will not warn you again,” Green said. “Stop babbling. Listen. As my people have been trying to tell you, we've had an incident. Yes, ferals. No, I did not contact the police. My men have them surrounded outside. Yes, I thought you'd like that. The situation will be under control soon enough, but the swap has to be delayed.”

He stopped short, listened for a while, and rolled his eyes. “Well, you'll
have
to wait. Do
not
get any foolish ideas. You've already had one, but if you calm down and cooperate, you might survive it. Do you understand that? Calm down. Cooperate. I'll contact you when it's safe. Yes, she'll be ready. Things will occur exactly as we discussed, just not exactly
when
. Twelve hours. Are we clear,
Mr. Turgeon
?”

He hissed the name in a way that made me sorry we hadn't compared more notes on our favorite psycho, but now was not the time. My feelings on the matter were mixed at best anyway. As they passed the closet, I had one of those moments where the emotions rushed me so strongly, my body shook from the overload.

It was clear. Green
knew
Turgeon and he was planning to hand Nell over to him. Why? What kind of hold could that sick bastard possibly have on a man like Colby Green?

I was so busy trying to wrap my head around that one that I almost didn't hear the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. I peered out of the closet to see that Epicurus was gone, and a horde of semihuman silhouettes clambered in through the remains of the stained glass.

I think I knew what was happening. Just like Green said, his men had surrounded the ferals outside. They probably thought that from there it'd be easy to steer them into a corner and open fire. Instead they'd only managed to force them inside.

Colby and Co. broke into a run. Their blue-tinged flashlight beams vanished around a corner. I stepped out, planning to do likewise, but there were so many, I wound up standing there and staring like an idiot, long enough for the ferals to race up . . . and ignore me.

Huh. Maybe in the dark they'd taken me for one of their own, especially since I wasn't screaming. More likely they found the pretty blue lights more interesting.

Hoping they'd keep ignoring me long enough for me to get the fuck out of there, I started moaning and gnashing my teeth. That was when Green's men doubled back and opened fire. Even with bullets tearing through their bodies, the raging ferals hurled themselves forward.

Me, I headed for the broken image of Epicurus and jumped out.

Free? No. I landed smack in the middle of another fight.

I was face–to-face with a guard. I screamed. He screamed. A dozen wild zombies jumped him from nowhere. I looked around for a place to run, realized I was in a courtyard. Green's men were trying to get into some kind of defensive formation, but the ferals were all over them. Freaking out, they opened fire on all of us.

The poor son of a bitch who'd been jumped went down in a hail of bullets and blood-soaked gurgling. I ducked and rolled.

On my left, bullets still flew from the shattered window. To my right, the courtyard guards were firing away. Dead ahead, near the path that led to the statue garden, I saw a swimming pool. Not having any particular need for air, I jumped the short brick wall and dived into the deep end, hoping that with all the excitement, no one had seen.

I
slipped into the water quick and quiet. If I could move more easily once I was under, I'd have patted myself on the back. The pool was a perfect place to wait out Colby Green's private zombie hunt. Buoyancy wasn't a problem. It's easier for a chak than a liveblood to stay submerged. All I had to do was suck in the water until my lungs were full and down I went. Deadweight, right? Better yet, the chlorine would kill any mold that might be growing in the old air sacs.

I was surprised none of the other chakz had thought of it, but maybe by now, if they hadn't gone feral, they'd escaped. I hoped the one-eyed cowboy made it, even if this was his fault.

Given how clean the grounds were, the thick layer of dead leaves at the bottom of the pool surprised me, but I wasn't complaining. It was camouflage, a place to bury myself in case one of the rent-a-cops actually had a bright idea and decided to peek in. The only downside would be my soaked clothes when I eventually climbed out. The muck swirled as I lay in it. It felt pretty cozy.

I've always liked pools, not for swimming, but to go under and see how long I could hold my breath. As a kid, the way it muffled everything except the thrumming of my heart made me feel alone and protected at the same time. It even reduced my father's drill-sergeant voice to a distant gurgle. He was a real sink-or-swim kind of guy, my dad. You didn't want to get on his bad side.

No heartbeat now, no angry father, but that made it easier to keep track of the fighting. The low
budda-budda
of the automatic fire registered more as a vibration than a sound. The screams, well, they were faint, but there were enough to tell me I'd be here a while.

Thinking of Dad made me squirm, but then my brain did something useful for a change. I remembered the “fatherly” tone Green took with Turgeon. He must've figured Baby-head would respond.

Devil or not, he was smart. What had he said? That Turgeon didn't destroy the heads because he
couldn't
—that he wanted their approval. Christ, he acted enough like a baby. Could it be that obvious? Raised in an abusive family, he still wanted the abuser's approval, even after he cut his head off? Maybe he'd seen his father kill his mother. My mother and father got into it pretty bad sometimes. Mom swung a mean frying pan, but she was no match for Dad's thick arms. It made me want to . . .

Had Turgeon killed his father?

The idea felt important. Might make him easy to find. I wanted to get it down, but there was no way I'd be making audio notes eight feet under. I hoped to hell the water didn't destroy the recorder. As long as it was off at the time, and dry enough before I turned it back on, I had a shot.

Soon the sounds were more distant, harder to follow. Just trying to guess what they might mean made me tired. It's not easy to keep focused for too long on a good day. Here I was comfortable and tired enough to drift off.

Next thing I knew I was lying back in a Barcalounger, a local paper open in front of me. There were slippers on my feet. I was in a bathrobe. My arms were thick like Dad's. Lenore was humming in the kitchen. I knew the song, the closing theme from
All in the Family
. I turned to look. She was just out of view, but I caught a shadow of her swaying hips on the front of the dishwasher.

A knock came at the door.

My eyes popped open. I was back in the bottom of the pool. Little globs of brown and black swirled around me in the water. How long had I been asleep?

Another knock. Was I still dreaming? No. The power was back on, bringing Colby's world back from the dead. That included the pool filter. A bare branch was dancing in front of the suction vent. Too big to go in, it hit the vent, drifted back, then got caught in the current so it hit again. Whenever it clunked, it sounded just like a door.

There was light above me, but electric, not sunlight. Other than that, silence. The assault was over. Of course the livebloods won; they always did. The crippled ferals would all be writhing in a bonfire by now. I said a little prayer for the undead.

I'm not a big believer like Misty. I just figured with all that pain floating around, someone should say something, and it might as well be me.

Green said he'd delay the swap for twelve hours. I checked my watch. At least three to go, so I waited, and did not dream, or think, really, again. Judging by the light on the water's surface, I watched morning roll around to early afternoon. It was time.

I crawled to the nearest wall, stood, and slowly pulled myself up along the tile work, surfacing beneath the diving board. There was no one in the pool area. Through the estate's windows, I saw people moving, pacing. Security guards. It didn't look like anything was chasing them anymore.

Putting my hands on the edge of the pool, I pulled and flopped out, imagining I looked like a dead manta ray. I rose into a crouch. My clothes were soaked. The dead leaves covering me made it hard to move, but I managed to reach the low brick wall. I rolled over that with a loud slapping, slurping sound, then hightailed it for the hemlocks. Better cover.

My timing wasn't bad. In under an hour, a piss yellow Humvee came up the white gravel drive. Ever since I found out Martin Boyle was alive, I knew Turgeon was my psycho. Who else could it be? But seeing it was still different from thinking it. I was angry at him for being a sick fuck, and at myself for feeling satisfied that I'd finally gotten the answer right.

I followed the car, keeping the hedges between it and myself. I expected it to head for the front entrance, but it turned. I almost lost it until, through the branches, I spotted its taillights moving along a narrower road.

Past the rear of the main building, the road curved into an open area. I slowed down to keep covered, and crept to the edge of a circular driveway. Big enough for a truck to do an easy turnaround, it sat in front of a pretty banal section of the otherwise ornate mansion. No fountain, no decorations to speak of, erotic or otherwise, only the gravel, a flat wall, and some doors and windows. The most expensive thing there was Colby Green.

He was waiting by the door with two more brand-new gunsels. He probably had a bunch of spares behind a door marked MEN. I missed the original dogs; at least they had attitude. One of the newbies was balding, the other fair-haired, but again they wore black clothes and dark sunglasses—like they were the red shirts from
Star Trek
.

The Humvee was in the drive, hugging to the farthest spot from the building. That told me something: Turgeon was afraid of Green. Which meant he wasn't completely crazy. My clothes were a little drier, which made moving easier, and the muck left me with a nice earthy brown color that sort of matched the dirt and wood of the hedge.

I tried to stay down, on my hands and knees, but that obscured my view. Feeling a bit daring, I came forward a yard or so, but found myself staring at the rear end of Turgeon's car and not much else. I heard a power window lower, then Turgeon's eager-beaver, childlike voice.

“Where is she? Is she ready? Why isn't she here?”

Developmentally arrested or not, he sure as hell was a brat.

I stretched my neck. Green hadn't even nodded in response, but the balding dog pulled a slight figure from the doorway. Nell Parker, and she wasn't dancing now. The ropes prevented that. She was tied up tight, gagged and squirming. Her green eyes flashed from face to face like she was watching a Ping-Pong match.

I assumed she was sorry she hadn't believed me.

Green stuck his hand out and spoke two words real slowly. “The drive?”

He was using his “daddy” voice.

The window rolled back up. The door clicked open. Turgeon's expensive lawyer shoes hit the gravel a few feet from my face. I couldn't see the egghead's face, but as he came around toward the back of the car, I saw his hands. One held out what looked like a ritzy version of a data drive, silver and sleek.