Kill The Dead Part 24

"Dobrou noc, Sandman."

I KICK THE sheet down by my feet and roll out of bed the moment I wake up. I'm still naked from the long shower I took last night. Kasabian stares at me from the desk, his little legs poised over the keyboard.

"Morning, sunshine."

"Do you smell anything funny?"

"No. What's wrong with you?"

I know it's in my head, but I swear I can still smell Drifter gunk all over me.

"Nothing. Just a funny dream."

"Good for you. Get dressed. I don't need your junk staring at me while I'm trying to work."

Last night's clothes are getting burned as soon as I get some lighter fluid. I find a pair of jeans tossed over the back of a chair and one clean and folded T-shirt in the drawer. Thank the G.o.ds of laundry for wash-and-fold places.

"You've got some donuts left over from the last night, but the coffee is cold."

The crumpled donut bag is on the floor near the head of the bed. I open it, take out one of the old-fashioneds and take a bite. I can't taste it. I'm afraid to breathe because I might get a whiff of Drifter. I go in the bathroom, gargle, and wash my face in cold water.

"You didn't talk much when you got back last night. You're no fun when you go to bed sober."

The bullet wound in my side still looks pretty raw. It doesn't hurt, but it should have faded to just another scar by now. I'll have to ask Allegra about that. If she's talking to me.

I sit on the bed and eat the rest of the donut. I can sort of taste it now.

"What happened last night? All you did was grunt when you got back and then you were running a marathon all night in your sleep. Chasing bunnies again, La.s.sie?"

"There anything in the Codex about Drifters?"

"Lots. Why?"

"I think I killed some with a friend last night."

"Is that what they're doing in Hollywood instead of aerobics? Who did you hunt coffin jockeys with?"

"I just met her. Name is Brigitte Bardo. She's supposed to be kind of an actress in Europe."

Kasabian looks at me for a minute.

"Are you s.h.i.tting me? The star of Cosmonauts of Sodom Brigitte Bardo?"

"I have no idea."

"You'd know her. She has a tattoo of an angel that starts on her stomach and the wings wrap around her and up her back."

"I wasn't looking at her stomach."

"Oh man. She does this scene with these two other chicks."

"I don't need to hear about this from you."

"No, listen. All the chick cosmonauts quit the s.p.a.ce program and joined a traveling circus. They're all dressed like clowns, only their noses are d.i.l.d.os-"

"Stop right there and tell me about Drifters."

He stares at me. If he had regular hands, he'd give me the finger.

"At least get me her autograph."

"If you promise not to talk about clown f.u.c.king, I'll get her to Xerox her a.s.s for you."

"Think I could meet her?"

"Are you crazy? She kills Drifters. What's she going to make of you?"

"I'm not a zombie."

"You're undead. She'll think you're a new model Lucifer just invented."

"Do you know anything about zombies at all?"

"Yeah. They smell like an abandoned slaughterhouse when you pull their spines out."

"You know about spines. That's a start. What else do you want to know?"

"Everything. But I don't need a Ph.D. Just give me the Trivial Pursuit version."

"Okay."

He looks at me.

"You're really going to get me her autograph?"

"Christ."

"Forget it. Tell me about the zombies last night."

"They stank. They were stupid. They drooled and grunted and tried to bite us."

He nods.

"Zeds and zots."

"What?"

"Zombie shoptalk. They're zeros. Dumbest of the dumb. Nothing more than a mouth with legs. What most people call golems."

"It sounds like there's something besides golems."

"See? Who says you have a learning disability?"

"Yeah, who says that?"

"There's another kind of zombie. Lacunas. You don't want to meet them."

"What's the difference?"

"Lacunas have some brain function left. They can talk, walk, and dress themselves. You might not even notice one in a crowd. But don't get close enough to smell their breath. They can't really think for themselves, but they can take orders. The other thing is they're mean. Old-timers called them St. George's Pet, like all that's working upstairs is their speech centers and their lizard brains. Because they're such little s.h.i.ts, they mostly get used for muscle work."

"Like Mason with Parker."

"Exactly. You don't usually see them unless there's Deadheads having a turf war, but sometimes they make money renting them out or selling them to street gangs. Lacunas are pretty much the perfect thug."

"How do you kill them?"

"Like the others. The spine."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"Whatever f.u.c.ks up the nervous system. Run them through a wood chipper. Nuke them. Chase them down the street like an angry mob in Frankenstein and burn them."

"I wonder if I could mount a wood chipper on the front of a Bugatti?"

"What happened with you and Ms. Bardo last night?"

"You're talking your way out of an autograph fast."

"a.s.shole."

I offer Kasabian the last donut, but he shakes his head. There's a half-smoked cigarette b.u.t.t in the ashtray and I light it up. That he wants, of course. I let him have a couple of puffs and then kill it off.

"Does the Codex say where zombies came from?"

He shakes his head.

"Not really. h.e.l.lions have plenty of blind spots and their own tall tales to fill in the missing pieces. Most h.e.l.lions say that Cain was Patient Zero. After he killed Abel, G.o.d sent him out to wander the earth forever and put a mark on him so no one would stop his wandering and torment. The h.e.l.lion smart set think zombieism was the mark. When Cain got into beefs with pushy civilians, he'd just bite them. They became the first golems and Lacunas."

"The ones who don't think it was Cain, what do they say?"

"This is bulls.h.i.t, man. There's facts and there's fairy tales. None of this is going to help you kill them any better."

"Who says I'm going to kill them? I killed those ones last night because they attacked us. I don't have anything against going on a Drifter safari, but I want to get paid for it."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you don't get to be a brat when it comes to zombies. They're like jackrabbits. They make new zombies, eat everything in sight, and then migrate down the road and do it again."

"What do you care, Alfredo Garcia? You don't owe this world anything either."

"No, but I happen to live here and I like beer and burritos and cigarettes. Last time I checked, zombies don't deliver."

Alice and Brigitte's voices come back to me. They're telling me that something bad is coming. Is this it? I hope not. That would be about the lamest prophecy in history. I don't exactly need a vision to explain how everyone getting eaten, including me, would be a downer. No, it can't be this and that's bad news. It means there's something even worse coming.

"What's the other Drifter story?"

"You're like a dog with a bone. Let it go. Go chase a ball. Hump a stranger's leg."

"Tell me the story and I will."

"The story? You're the story. You and your kind. You f.u.c.ked-up angels. The Codex says that when Lucifer's army was cast out of Heaven, one of the fallen didn't make it all the way to h.e.l.l and landed in a valley on earth instead. It was burned and broken, but humans still recognized it as an angel. The local blue bloods sent their doctors to help it, but the angel was sick and bloated like a tick by then. It attacked anyone who came near it. All of those people ended up turning into zeds. Those zeds attacked their families and friends. The ones they didn't eat became zeds and attacked other people. The people who lived in the hills saw that things were getting out of control, so they started fires and burned the whole valley. They thought they'd gotten everything, but some of the zeds supposedly escaped into caves. Mostly they stay underground, but every now and then one wanders out or gets summoned by a necromancer. That's it. They all lived happily ever f.u.c.king after. The end."

I wave him off.

"You were right. This isn't any help. Might as well say Muppets did it."

"You asked and I answered. You still owe me an autograph."

"You'll get your scrawl. I wonder who'll pay me more to hunt zeds and zots? Lucifer or the Vigil?"

"You don't actually have to say 'zeds and zots' all the time. You can say one or the other."

"I'll stick with Drifters. Those other names make them sound like candy."

"Lucifer and the Vigil both have a stake in keeping humans in general and L.A. in particular alive. Get them both to pay."

"That's what I was thinking. But there's one thing bugging me."

"What?"

"When those Drifters came in, I knew one of them. I mean I knew who he was. A guy named Spencer Church. I only heard of this guy the day before when someone said he was missing. I asked a couple of people about him. Then, out of nowhere, the guy shows up at Bamboo House like the place is a zombie salad bar."

"That's a h.e.l.l of a coincidence."

"Isn't it? And if golems can't think..."

"It means someone sent him there. Probably walked him right up to the door and pushed him in."

"Somebody who knew where I was and happened to have a few spare Drifters lying around."

"You know the most interesting people."

"Guess I do have a vested interest in this after all. But I still want to get paid."

"h.e.l.l yeah."

"I need to set up meetings with the Vigil and Lucifer."

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I pick it up and listen. It's a short call.