Kill the Dead (20 page)

I’m thinking
When the hell did you turn into Emma Peel?
but before I can say it, two more hungry-black-mouth scarecrows come stumbling in. Brigitte turns and blasts one before he gets more than three steps inside. The other one lunges for a woman by the jukebox. A blond civilian wearing her girlfriend’s oversize leather jacket. Lucky for her that her girl rides. Scarecrow Guy latches onto her shoulder, but
can’t bite through the thick leather. The blonde’s girlfriend pulls her one way while I get an arm around the guy’s throat and pull him the other. It doesn’t help. He’s not choking and he won’t let go of the jacket.

“Break his neck!”

It’s Brigitte.

“Don’t let him scratch her! Snap his neck!”

I slip my arm from around his throat, grab his jaw and the back of his head, and twist sharply. You can hear the crack of vertebrae and his spinal cord snapping over the music. I know this because everyone in the bar groans at exactly the same time. He drops to the ground near the scarecrow Brigitte shot. The crying blonde falls back on her girlfriend, who pulls her away. They bump into a table and a bottle smashes on the floor. The sound is like a starter’s pistol going off. Everyone in the bar decides to go batshit simultaneously and stampede over each other trying to get outside. In less than a minute it’s just Brigitte, Carlos, the corpses, and me. Except for a couple of drunk Deadheads slumped at a corner table in their purple necromancer robes.

The less drunk one shakes his head at us.

“Big deal. The soccer games at necromancer school were rougher than that.”

“We’re closed,” says Carlos.

The Deadheads stagger out while Brigitte and I drag the corpses into the back. Carlos goes to the doors and locks them.

“Can one of you tell me what the goddamn hell just happened?” I ask.

I look at Brigitte.

She says, “Don’t worry. Whatever you think you saw, no one died here tonight.”

“You’re saying Church and the others were already dead?” asks Carlos.

Brigitte nods.

“You’re saying they were a bunch of High Plains Drifters?” I ask.

“High Plains?”

“Zombies.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know Church and his friends were going to be here?”

“I didn’t. I came here looking for you.”

“You go everywhere with that gun?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of why I came to Los Angeles. My real work. I kill the dead.”

Carlos is leaning over Church’s body.

“Your friends are starting to leak on my floor. Should I be worried?”

“Is the back door unlocked?”

Carlos nods.

I grab Church and one of the other Drifters by the ankles while Brigitte grabs the third. We drag them into the alley behind the bar. The Dumpster is about half full, but I can make them fit if I push hard enough.

“Don’t bother,” says Brigitte.

“Why?”

Brigitte walks to the next building. Water is leaking from
an outdoor spigot. She turns it on harder and washes her hands. I follow her over and put my hands in when she’s done, letting the frigid flow rinse black gunk from my palms. When we’re done, I wipe my hands on my jeans. Brigitte is wearing a red T-shirt with the name of a Czech band, a black miniskirt, and boots.

She gives me a questioning look.

“Go ahead,” I tell her.

She’s not shy. She happily wipes her hands all over my jeans and even kneels down so she can use my cuffs to clean between her fingers. Wish I’d thought of that.

“I take it that you don’t know a lot about revenants?” she asks.

“I’ve never even seen one until last night.”

“Do you know how to kill one?”

“I thought I just did.”

She shakes her head.

“We haven’t killed any of them. Just their brains. The rest of them is still alive and will awaken soon. That’s why it’s pointless to put them in the trash. They will just crawl out. A revenant without a brain can still hold you while others attack and kill. Or bite or scratch you, passing on their disease.”

“Okay. How do you kill it?”

“The nerves are the key. You must completely destroy its nervous system by ripping out its spine.”

I should have stayed home and watched
Bedazzled
with Kasabian.

“I did that to a Hellion once. It peeled all the skin off my fingers and knuckles, and really hurt.”

Brigitte makes a “why bother teaching a retard to juggle?” face.

“Don’t be stupid. There are tools for it. I don’t have mine with me, but look here.”

She takes a broken slat from an orange crate and draws something on the ground. It’s like a spear, but with a kind of claw and long backward-facing barbs on one end, like a hand with the fingers pointing the wrong way.

“The Hellion weapon you use. A na’at? Can you shape it into something like that?”

“I’ve never tried, but probably. Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Don’t take long. Depending on their injuries, revenants will revive in five to ten minutes.”

She paces back and forth while I rework the na’at. The clicking of her boots echoes down the alley. She isn’t like the woman I was talking to in the bar. More like a tiger waiting to eat an antelope it took down.

“What kind of gun was that?” I ask.

“Compressed CO
₂
, like at an amusement park. Mine is more powerful and fires sharpened silver-coated stainless-steel bolts.”

“Why silver?”

“It’s not necessary for revenants, but the silver allows you to also use them against verdilacs, beast men, and other undesirables.”

“You’ll have to let me try it sometime.”

“After you take me to your donut shop.”

“Are you really here to get into the movies?”

“Of course. I’ve wanted to come to Hollywood for a long
time, but I was needed at home. My erotic career was going well. I made money and had ample time to do my family’s real work. Now, though, I’m needed here. It wasn’t hard to get Simon to invite me. I’m going to be in a big-budget Hollywood movie and still have time to do my other work. This is what you call a win-win, yes?”

“You think there’s more Drifters out there?”

“If there are three here, there are many more. How many is the question. We believe the numbers must be dealt with now before things become intolerable.”

“How do you know about all this?”

“My family has done this work for centuries. In the old world and the new. I’m Roma.”

“Gypsies.”

“My grandfather would shoot you for using that word.”

“I’ve been shot for less.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it’s a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right?”

She crosses her arms and looks at me like if we weren’t on a timetable she’d kick my ass.

“Forgive me. I didn’t think my life would seem so strange to Lucifer’s alcoholic cowboy assassin.”

“I wasn’t criticizing. I’m just trying to get everyone’s résumé straight. Last night you were a pretty girl at a party and tonight you’re Catwoman.”

She shrugs.

“Secrets quickly revealed often seem more profound than they really are.”

“Everything’s profound when there’s guns and zombies.”

She taps her wrist.

“Ticktock, Wild Bill.”

“Done. How does that look?”

I hold out the na’at to her. She takes it and spins it easily, making thrusts, jabbing the air. She drops into a strong forward stance, mimes pushing it through a body and yanking it back out. Whatever else she is, she’s comfortable with weapons.

“Church will revive first. Bring him to me and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

I kick the other two aside and pick up Church. He’s already starting to twitch.

“Lean him against the wall, facing away from us.”

I do it and get behind her.

“Your weapon isn’t perfectly designed yet, but you’ll fix it when I show you a real one. It’s best to go in through the back so you aren’t forced to rip out the rib cage and organs. Thrust the weapon at heart height through the back with an upward motion so you slide between the ribs. Try not to pop it out the front of the body. The blades will expand inside the body and grip the spinal column. Spin the blades to cut away connective tissue and pull sharply using your body weight. Only when the spine is out is the revenant dead.”

Church groans. His body straightens as much as it can, but stays facing the wall. Without its brain it doesn’t occur to it to turn around.

“You can do the next one,” she says.

Brigitte collapses the na’at as small as it will go. Stands at
a forty-five-degree angle to Church’s body, resting most of her weight on her back leg, and then swings the na’at over her head. On the third rotation, she snaps the na’at out like she’s throwing a blade. The weapon extends in a second, spearing Church in the back. That wakes him up. He groans and wiggles around like a fish on a line, reaching back with his one good arm to grab at the na’at. Brigitte gives the na’at a sharp snap to the right. Church stiffens. The blades are a Veg-O-Matic in his dead guts. Brigitte crouches and jumps, not an easy thing in her boots. When she comes down she shouts something in Czech and drops her weight back. Church’s back splits open and his spinal column pops out like the handle on a one-armed bandit. This time he goes down and stays down.

“Now you.”

Brigitte retracts the na’at and hands it to me.

The second Drifter is dressed in brown shorts and shirt. Some kind of delivery guy. He’s pulling himself to his feet hand over hand, using the Dumpster like a ladder. His back is to me. When he’s upright, I spin the na’at and toss it.

It goes all the way out his front and one of the barbs hooks on the edge of the Dumpster.

When I pull the na’at, the Dumpster moves, too, and the Drifter has to do a little soft shoe to stay upright.

Brigitte sighs and walks to the Dumpster. The Drifter lunges for her and she calmly spins and catches him with a roundhouse kick to the head. While it’s dazed, she climbs onto the Dumpster’s lid and kicks the na’at free.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t talk. Kill it.”

That might be the sweetest thing a woman’s ever said to me on a first date.

I snap my wrist the way she did, but the barbs are still out the front of the guy’s body. The spinning helps dig through his chest, but I get stuck on his rib cage. I’m pushing and pulling the guy all over the alley, like I’m the worst puppeteer in the universe.

“You’ve shit it all up. There’s no finesse here. Use your strength. Just rip it out.”

I take half a step forward and then snap back, using all my body weight to pull. The Drifter’s back explodes as its rib cage, lungs, heart, and spine spill out onto the alley floor. The stink is worse than a Hellion outhouse.

“Now you know why we try not to do that,” Brigitte says.

“Thanks, Nurse Ratched. Haul up the other one. I’m getting a feel for this.”

Brigitte sets the third one upright. It takes one drunken step toward her. As she steps back, her left boot heel comes down on a chunk of the delivery guy’s liver. Brigitte wobbles for just a second, but it’s just long enough for the Drifter to lunge forward and grab her wrist.

She lays into the guy hard with fists, knees, and elbows, hammering him and twisting her arm to break his grip. A living guy would have let go just from the pain. The problem is that Drifters don’t feel pain and none of her shots are quite hard enough to lay him out because she’s still ice-skating on the guts of the other Drifter.

I swing the na’at and throw. It hits the Drifter square in the back and this time it stays inside. Wrist snap and pull. His spine pops out of his back like a bony jack-in-the-box.

I run over to where Brigitte is leaning on the Dumpster, scraping pieces of lungs, muscle, and who knows what else off her boots.

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“Do you know what these boots cost? Of course you don’t because if you did you’d be shitting yourself.”

“Sorry. I don’t have money, but I can walk into any store in the world and steal you another pair.”

“I’m not worried about the boots. Simon will buy me all the fucking boots I want. I’m worried about what I’ll tell him happened to them.”

“He doesn’t know about your hobby?”

“Simon can be a sweet man, but ninety-nine percent of his IQ is in his cock. I’m his trophy fuck and he can’t conceive of me as anything else.”

“Too bad. He’s missing out.”

Brigitte looks around at the gore-filled alley.

“I’ve seen neater kills, but I’ve also seen worse.”

“I need to call someone about this. I can’t leave a bunch of corpses lying around Carlos’s back door. I know some people, the Golden Vigil. They have all kinds of resources. They can handle this kind of thing.”

“I have people, too. They know how to dispose of revenants. Besides, I don’t much like your Vigil.”

“What do you have against them?”

“They’re the government. They’re police. That’s enough.”

Can’t argue with that. I let her call her people.

I go back into the bar. Carlos is closing up, putting glasses in the washer, dumping ice in the sink, and wiping down the bar top.

“Brigitte is finishing up out back. The bodies will be gone soon.”

“I never thought I’d see anything in here scarier than those skinheads that used to come in, but you always manage to surprise me.”

“Don’t worry. We’re going to check this out and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Está chido.
I’d appreciate that.”

“This is probably a bad time to ask, but can I still get a burrito to go?”

Carlos looks at me for a second.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I go into the men’s room and check myself in the mirror. I don’t look too bad, but there’s more blood spatter than I’d hoped. I slip off my shirt and hang it on a hook on the back of one of the toilet stall doors. I turn on the spigot in one of the sinks and wait for hot water.

A minute later, Brigitte comes in, slapping her cell phone closed.

“My people are on their way.”

“Who are your people?”

“Friends.”