State of Decay (9 page)

It wasn’t a delivery guy, though, and it wasn’t a kid peddling something. It was the woman who lived in the apartment below me, standing there with a black eye and a cardboard box in her hands.

“Uh, hi,” she said. “I’m—”

“Yeah,” I said, “from downstairs. What do you want?”

“I’m Karen,” she said. She was looking at me expectantly. My head really hurt, and I was dying of thirst. I couldn’t figure out what she wanted.

“And you are?” she asked finally, extending her hand a little.

“Right,” I said, “Zoe. I’m Zoe.”

Her hand hovered between us uncertainly. I gave it a little shake.

“Look, no offense, but what do you want?”

“I just . . . wanted to . . .”

“Wanted to what?”

“Thank you,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you. I’ve never thanked you.”

“Oh.”

“Here,” she said, holding out the box, “I hope sugar cookies are okay. I would have made something better, but I didn’t know if you had any allergies or anything.”

I took the box.

“You made cookies for me?”

“Well, I bought them.”

“Why?”

She gave me a frustrated look, and I could tell she was starting to get upset.

“I mean, thanks,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t know what to do in these situations.”

“Usually you invite the other person in,” she said.

“My place is kind of a mess. Like, really.”

She smiled and nodded, but the smile didn’t stay. She looked upset, and I felt bad. I actually thought about letting her in, but I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t let anyone see my place the way it looked.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“No, really, maybe some other—”

“How do you do it?” she asked suddenly.

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Ted, when he gets like he does sometimes . . . like he was last night. You just tell him to calm down and he does. You just . . . switch him off. How do you—”

“Don’t read too much into it.”

One thing I learned a long time ago was not to talk about that. Bringing it up was a mistake.

“You shouldn’t hide it,” she said.

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“You do something to him,” she insisted. “I’ve watched it; it’s like your face changes. Your eyes change. Something happens. It’s like something passes between you, and he just stops being angry.”

“Maybe it’s my personality.”

I had meant it as a joke, but she made this kind of “as if” expression when I said it. My face started getting hot.

“No offense, but it’s not that,” she said.

“Yeah, well, no offense, but go away.”

“I don’t know how you do it, but he’s actually gotten better since you started coming down.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “If I could influence people, would I be living here, like this? Even if I could influence people, it doesn’t mean I can change anything that’s going to happen. I can’t change anything that’s going to happen; you should think about that.”

I focused on her and the lights surged brighter, the colors draining away. She looked surprised for just a second.

“There,” she said, pointing at my face. “That’s . . .”

Her finger stopped, hanging there. The aura around her head was blue and red, licking out curiously. I pushed it back.

“I can’t change what’s going to happen to you,” I told her. She didn’t say anything; she just stood there, her eyelids drooping a bit. For a minute I thought about trying to give her the idea to dump the stupid ox, but there wasn’t anything I could do. He had his hooks into her way deeper than I ever could, and nothing I did could change anything anyway.

He’d kill her eventually. It wasn’t my fault.

“Thanks for the cookies,” I said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have things to do. You should go do them.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly, and smiled. “I just wanted to swing by and say thanks. I’d better get going.”

“Bye.”

She turned and walked away, and I was just in the process of snapping the door shut when someone spoke to my right.

“It’s unfortunate.”

When I looked over, an older guy with red hair and a red beard was standing in the doorway of the apartment next to mine.

“Unfortunate?”

“That girl.”

Who was this guy? Why was he talking to me?

“Do you take care of the old woman?” I asked.

“The previous tenant passed away,” the man said, smiling gently. “Over a month ago. I am your new neighbor.”

“Oh. So, why is it unfortunate?”

“It’s unfortunate you choose to waste your time on someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”

A few different responses came to mind, and later I thought up some better ones, but what came out was less biting than I’d hoped.

“Whatever, jerk.”

He was talking, I think, when I shut the door and locked it. Who did he think he was anyway? My time was mine to waste on whatever I wanted.

I put the box on the counter and went back into the bedroom. Cookies. Why the hell did she go and do that? What was I supposed to say? Why did she even stay with him, and why did she have to just stand there looking like she did when I went down there?

I took the bottle off the nightstand, uncapped it, and took a swig. It burned going down and hit my stomach like a brick. I took two more swallows and put it back. Drinking when I first got up wasn’t a good idea, but the whole thing had me totally on edge.

There was a glass on the floor next to the bed, half full of water. I picked it up and took a gulp; it was warm and it tasted terrible, but it soothed my throat a little. I put the glass on the nightstand next to the bottle. I really needed to brush my teeth.

“I know,” I said out loud.

The thing was, though, she was wrong. He hadn’t gotten better since I started interfering; that was just wishful thinking. Sometimes I wondered if he had gotten worse. Maybe I could calm him down, but I couldn’t change who he was and I could feel him getting worse, struggling to fill the gaps I’d created.

I made my way into the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush out of the sink, dunking it in the mouthwash before scrubbing my teeth halfheartedly. That’s when I noticed the needle-head.

She was sitting on the toilet with her elbows on her knees and her head bowed. As usual, the skin had been peeled away in two big flaps right down the back of her skull and neck, where the white dome of her skull poked out. A big hole had been cut through the bone and a bunch of long, thin probes were sticking out of her brain. She rolled one eye up at me, watching as I chewed on the toothbrush bristles. Under the eye were three little star tattoos.

“It’s about time,” she said. The needle- heads never responded, so I didn’t say anything; I just kept brushing.

“He will lead you to us,” she said, “and you . . . you will end my pain.”

There was no way to know who they were, if they were even anyone at all, but one thing they all had in common was they always called for help. They never said where they might be. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe I was just crazy. I kind of hoped I was.

When I was done brushing my teeth, I spit in the sink and then left her in there.

“Go to him when he calls,” she said, as I walked away and slammed the door on her. I plodded back into the bedroom and crawled under the covers.

The first time I saw something like that, I thought I’d gone nuts. It freaked me out so badly I didn’t sleep for two whole days, and that just made it worse. When I got my first period, I thought it was a hallucination. When my father came to me one night in a dream and began to flatten to bloody pulp from his toes up, I told myself that’s all it was . . . a dream.

I pulled the covers over my head, leaving just my nose sticking out so I could breathe. The problem was there was a lot of daylight left and nothing to do to fill it. I didn’t want to see or hear anything anymore, I didn’t want to talk to the woman from downstairs, and I wasn’t tired enough to sleep. I just wanted to shut my mind off. Just for a few days, or even just a few hours.

When I got up to puke an hour later, the woman was gone from the toilet. I sat there, my forehead on the back of one hand and my face hanging over the cloudy water, and promised my reflection that I would go to him when he called, whoever he was, if they would leave me alone. If they would do that, then even if he was the devil himself, I would go to him.

The fire was out by the time I got there, and the local police had cordoned off the scene. Even so, the whole area was mobbed, with people pushing up against the perimeter and trying to get images. I had to flash my blues just to get them to grudgingly move out of the way enough for me to park on the sidewalk, but they crowded me on my way out. I held up my badge, pushing through.

“Federal agent; stand aside.”

Bodies were clustered at the edge of the scene, shoulder to shoulder and leaning forward to get a better view. Handheld cameras, phone cameras, and tons of others fitted into palm tablets, pens, and anywhere else they could be squeezed stood out under the electronics scan. At least five people within spitting distance had them implanted behind the eyes, like the kid who got gunned down on the dock, and a helicopter was passing by overhead. Every move was being watched and recorded from every angle.

“Agent?”

One of the police officers was approaching from the direction of the burnt-out truck. He waved me over.

“Agent Wachalowski?”

I nodded.

“The fire’s completely out and the remains of the vehicle have been screened for radiation and tox,” he said. “It’s safe to go inside, when you’re ready.”

“Thanks.”

There was a body at my feet. Its pretty face was burnt and most of its hair had been singed away, but I could tell it was the revivor from the bathroom. Its bare legs were sprawled in the light dusting of snow, black toes pointed up at the sky. A trail, two heel marks, snaked from where the body lay back to the truck. It had been dragged there.

“Put a blanket on her,” I said.

The officer nodded and hustled off.

Kneeling down for a closer look, I could see that whatever burnt her had come from in front of her; the left arm and shoulder got it the worst, along with the tops of the thighs. She had been partially behind something, or more likely someone, when the flames hit.

The left hand had been burnt down to the bone, the two smallest fingers gone completely. The body hadn’t been on fire when it came out, and unlike the others, it was pulled away from the flames. This wasn’t a bomb or a grenade, then. There were no shrapnel marks, and no sign of gelatinized gas or other propellant. It had been hit with a sustained blast of something hot enough to carbonize muscle and bone. A directed blast. Not the type of weapon you normally saw on the street.

The fire department had managed to put out the truck, and it sat in the middle of the parking lot, leaning to one side where the tires had blown out. The crowd had left behind chaotic trails of many footprints, but as I mapped them, one set in particular stood out; a pair of shoe prints that were near the body. Unlike the others, they didn’t move much, and they’d gotten there early, because a lot of them had been walked over. The soles were large, definitely a man’s. They stuck near the truck before moving closer to the body than any of the others. Whoever made them would have been standing very close to where Faye had knelt. He would have been right next to her.

A call forced its way in. It was Noakes.

Bringing up the various feeds that had made their way onto the wire, I filtered through them, watching Faye in a blur of overlapped images as she knelt by the revivor. In none of the shots was there anyone standing in the spot where the footprints were.

When I picked up the message, the last voice I ever expected to hear was hers. All I wanted to do was put the case behind me, but when I heard her voice . . . I don’t know. I changed my mind.

In a little window, framed in my field of vision next to the burned body, someone had zoomed right in on Faye’s face. She wore no makeup and a masculine suit, but Faye Dasalia would never be mistaken for a man. I froze the image of her face, noting how her blond hair was shorter and her cheeks were more drawn, but how good it still was to see her. She looked tired, but her eyes were sharp. Her full lips were turned down at the corners, like they did when she was troubled.

I caught myself lingering, and closed the image. She had held the revivor in her arms like it was a human. She held it like a child. When she looked at it, there were almost tears in her eyes.

I approached the vehicle, but it didn’t look like there were any survivors. It was completely gutted, the back doors hanging open. I flashed my badge at the cops.

“Agent Wachalowski,” I said. “Who’s in charge?”

“Detective Hamilton,” a man in a suit said, stepping forward and shaking my hand.

“What about Dasalia?”

“She’s up to her neck in bullshit, chasing bodies,” he said. “She tip you?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know she had a contact at the bureau.”

“Where is she now?”

“She got a fresh one just this morning. If I had to guess, she’s at the scene.”

“I’d like to speak with her; can you let me know how she can be reached?”