The Living End (12 page)

“It’s Agent Black.”

I opened my eyes. The sunrise rubbed up against the living room curtains, painting the white gauze in shades of gold.

“I called in a favor and fast-tracked that chemical analysis,” Harmony said. “You were right. The sandwich was dosed with the same chemicals as the business card. Now you need to tell me exactly what this is about.”

“What was the drug?”

“Where did you get this, Faust? Is somebody actually handing this stuff out on the street? This is serious.”

“You first,” I said.

I might have been half-asleep, but I could still hear her teeth grind on the other end of the line.

“It’s a custom mix,” she finally said. “A blend of tetrodotoxin and
datura stramonium
.”

“I know those words,” I muttered. I pushed against the cushions, forcing myself to sit up, and ran my fingers through my tangled hair. “Why do I know those words?”

“What do you know about zombies?”

“Shooting them in the head doesn’t work,” I said. “You’ve got to completely dismember them or they’ll just keep coming.”

“Not
movie
zombies, Faust. I mean real Haitian zombies.”

“Right,” I said. “Movies. That’s totally what I was talking about.”

Agent Black was a competent magician, bless her noble heart, but she was a little less worldly than I was. I tried to keep her that way.

“‘Zombie powder’ is a drug,” she said. “Induces a temporary coma, hallucinatory trance, sometimes even long-term brain damage. It’s mind control, old-school style. You dose some poor victim, bury him and dig him up again, and convince him he’s an undead slave who’s powerless to disobey you. Presto, you’ve got a zombie.”

“And this is the same stuff?” I said.

“Very close, but much less concentrated. A dose this light won’t be putting anyone in a coma, but it will cause a sense of passiveness and heightened suggestibility. Maybe even a waking trance state, if your victim’s susceptible enough.”

“So if you get the right dosage,” I said, “and a friendly-looking guy says, ‘Hey, you should come with me,’ especially if he backs it up with a little magical nudge—”

“You’ll do exactly what you’re told,” she said, finishing my thought for me. “Your turn. Who are these people? And what are they doing with this stuff?”

“Snatching homeless people. The ‘why’ part, I’m still working on.”

“Not your job,” Harmony said. “The drugged business card is enough probable cause to buy me a search warrant. We’ll raid their offices and sort this out.”

“No,” I said quickly. “Don’t do that. Let me check it out first, my way. New Life is connected to Senator Roth and to Lauren Carmichael.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I can, but
you
can’t. My source of information isn’t exactly legal. Give me a chance to find something that’ll stick, something that’ll let you hit them both with kidnapping charges, before you go in guns blazing and scare off our only lead.”

It was one of those sneaky little half-truths. If she got a chance to arrest Roth, more power to her. I’d never met the guy, but everybody likes seeing a politician in handcuffs. What I wanted was a line on where Carmichael was hiding so I could track her down before Harmony did.

Agent Black wanted to put Lauren Carmichael in a ten-by-ten prison cell. I had a better idea: a hole out in the desert, three feet wide and six feet deep.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” she said and hung up on me.

I stumbled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and rubbed a hand across my bristly cheeks. Two days without shaving and my face was firmly in the “too long for roguish stubble, too short for a beard” category. I mussed my hair and changed into my panhandling outfit.

Corman was in the kitchen, wearing his ragged old gray robe and boxers, pouring himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. He watched me come down the hall. One of his bushy eyebrows rose like a flag.

“Are those my clothes?” he said.

“Just borrowing,” I told him. “I’m on a job, needed to whip up a little disguise.”

“What are you disguising yourself as, a Dodgers fan?”

I just nodded. It seemed the prudent thing to do.

“Well,” he said, “just bring everything back in one piece. I like that shirt.”

I parked the car in a side lot about two blocks from New Life, tipped the attendant an extra twenty to keep an eye on it, and walked the rest of the way. The address led me to a run-down industrial park where half the doors had big For Lease signs. It looked like those signs had been hanging there for a while.

The New Life Project’s welcome sign was shiny and new, though, standing out in front of a refurbished warehouse painted battleship gray. The place was big enough to be a homeless shelter, no doubt, but the lack of windows didn’t give me a lot of optimism. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire ran around the back of the building, cutting off the Dumpsters and the back door from casual access.

“All are welcome,” the sign said. Time to put that to the test.

I’d left my wallet and phone back in the car, in case they searched me going in. My gun stayed securely in the trunk for the same reason. I still had my deck of cards, though. Being a sorcerer means you’re never unarmed.

New Life had a cheap little lobby with a couple of overstuffed chairs, a reception desk on rolling casters, and a potted fern drooping in the corner. It looked more like a doctor’s office waiting room than what I imagined a homeless shelter would look like. I wished I could have brought Pixie along for some color commentary—she would have known in a heartbeat if the place was wrong.

The frizzy-haired woman behind the desk had a bright smile and glassy eyes that read like two big blue Vacancy signs. I would have pegged her for a pill popper, but Valium didn’t have anything on New Life’s brand of chemical bliss.

“Welcome!” she said, a little too friendly to be real. “How can we help you? Are you looking for a place to stay?”

I nodded, scrunching up my face, putting on my burnout routine.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Guy gave me a—a card and a sammich. Said I should come around, you’d help me out.”

“Absolutely! Let’s just have you sign in.”

She gestured to a clipboard on the edge of the desk. The sheet on top was filled with scribbled names, just two vacant spaces left at the bottom of the page. Judging from the dates, they’d had more than a few visitors in the last couple of days. I wondered where they were right now. I reached for the pen, then froze.

The plastic glistened. It was wet, a trap waiting to be sprung.

I looked up at her and gave an apologetic shrug. “I, uh…I don’t know how t’write so good.”

“It’s okay! Just do your best, sweetie. You can even just draw a little
X
if you want.”

Picking up that pen meant getting a dose of the Missionary’s zombie juice straight through the skin of my fingers, just like when I’d taken his business card. On the other hand, the effects from my first exposure had only lasted about fifteen minutes. If I kept myself together, I could probably ride it out. The receptionist wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and I was about five seconds from blowing my own cover.

I picked up the pen, scribbled an
X,
and dropped it as fast as I could. The familiar tingling numbness hit me in seconds, making my fingers go slack.

Remember the numbness
, I told myself.
If you’re numb, you’re not yourself. Remember that!

Strangely, though, it didn’t seem as important as it had a minute ago. I couldn’t remember why I was so worried. The receptionist leaned over and clicked a little white button on her desk intercom.

“That’s perfect, sweetie! Now you just wait one second, right there, and somebody will come along to help you out.”

I waited. It felt like a good idea.

The door behind her desk swung open, and the Missionary came out with a big smile and a hearty “Hey there, buddy!” He’d traded in his street ensemble for a pristine white lab coat and thick white latex gloves. I thought, on some level, that his new outfit should concern me, but I couldn’t figure out why. He was such a nice guy, why worry about it? His tranquil blue eyes, so big and expressive, welcomed me in.

“I am so glad you came,” he told me. “Are you hungry? It’s almost lunchtime! Come on back with me. Let’s get you taken care of.”

He led me down a green-walled corridor lined with crisp white tiles. The air smelled like Listerine and mothballs. We paused by a rolling cart stocked with supplies from a clinic: cotton swabs, tongue depressors, bandages, and a glass jar with a shiny chrome lid.

“Just one last thing, buddy,” he said. “Stand right there, real still, okay?”

He pulled back the lid on the jar. Green glittery dust sparkled inside, like ground glass from a church window.

My thoughts squeezed through my brain like molasses, my reactions confused, like a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. I had just enough time to realize what was coming, but not enough time to stop it. He dipped his gloved fingers into the jar, raised them to his lips, and blew. The dust hit my face and I impulsively jerked back, inhaling sharply, pulling it in through my mouth and nose.

The world turned into an oil painting. Colors faded and blurred and ran like melted wax. My body went numb, and under the numbness came a wriggling itching feeling all over my body, like centipedes under my skin. My ears rang with a slow dull droning like a wordless lullaby.

“That’s better, friend. Let’s put you with the others,” I heard the Missionary say as he put his hand on my back, steering me up the corridor. Sure. Put me with the others. That sounded fine.

Steel bars rattled. A cell door slid open. Bodies moved all around me, drifting aimlessly or just standing still, wavering on their feet. I walked until I came to a cinder-block wall, and then I stopped and stared at it. The block in front of my face had so many tiny ripples, imperfections in the concrete, and I wanted to count them all. That seemed like a fine thing to do.

“His mind is not in his mind,” a voice whispered off to my side. It echoed, the reverb bouncing around inside my cotton-candy skull. I looked to my left and squinted.

The smoke-faced men hovered before me, their polished black leather Oxfords dangling an inch above the floor of the cell. The rest of the room was a blur of blobs and smears, but they stood out as if drawn onto the skin of the world with a calligrapher’s pen.

“Yes,” the other said. “He can hear us now.”

I
’d only seen them once before, in the tortured memories of Eugene Planck’s dreams. They’d appeared to Lauren Carmichael in Nepal, taught her the arts of a sorcerer, and handed her the Ring of Solomon. They’d groomed her for twenty years, guiding her pursuit of power, but it was all a long con: she would have accidentally jump-started the apocalypse if we hadn’t been there to stop her.

“Objection!” said one of the men, his words buzzing like the thrum of a thousand flies’ wings flurrying in concert. His face was a blur of smoke, a break in reality. He wore a smock and mortarboard like an old-time professor, while his companion dressed in Armani black.

“Lauren and we are
un-hello
!” the other shrilled. “She couldn’t fail properly! Some planetary disassembly required!”

I tried to answer, but the zombie powder had my words locked in a vice. My tongue felt fat, numb and useless in my mouth, like a dead slug.

“We had to destroy the village to save the village,” the professor buzzed. “Burn out the infection. We were not in the tomb. We did not give her the ring.”

“We do not believe in marriage! Only divorce! Are you on our frequency, Kenneth?”

I shook my head, mute. I could feel them scrabbling at my mind, trying to take hold—no, trying to explain. They wanted to show me something, but they didn’t know how to talk and I didn’t know how to listen.

“Get your mind right,” the professor said, “and come see us. We will teach you gardening skills. There are strange weeds to be pulled.”

“Limited-time offer!” the other buzzed. “Act now or forever hold your peace!”

“What’s another word for life abundant, Faust? What’s another word for life abundant?”

I rubbed at my forehead. My numb fingers slicked off beadlets of hot sweat, like oil on rubber.

“When you know the word, you will know your enemy,” the professor said. “But not if you die here. Wake up! Wake up and go deaf!”

Their images faded, turning blurry and vague at the edges. I felt my thoughts slowly returning as the dose of the Missionary’s powder passed its peak and ebbed away.

“Come and find us,” the professor droned. “We have to show you—”

Then they were gone. I blinked, trying to focus my eyes, struggling to make sense of the world. The drugs in my system were wearing off, but they were still strong enough to keep my brain locked in a straitjacket.

“Line up!” a gruff voice shouted. “Lunchtime! You’re hungry! Take a sandwich and eat it!”

I stood at the end of a ragged line. I wasn’t sure how many of us there were, squeezed into the prison cell, and nobody talked. We shuffled ahead, one at a time, as a man in camouflage fatigues shoved sandwiches into our hands. My stomach grumbled, and I staggered toward the back of the cell, eager to eat. I hoped I remembered how.

“You?” a voice whispered. “Holy shit, it
is
you! Dan, hey, focus!”

I didn’t want to focus. I wanted to eat. The first man had said I was hungry, and I was. I ignored the new voice and lifted the sandwich, but rough hands tore it away from me and snapped their fingers in my ear.

“Don’t eat that shit! They lace the food, that’s how they keep you stupid. Hey, you listening? You remember me? Eric, from the storm tunnels!”

He grabbed my chin and turned my face toward him. He looked more ragged than the last time I’d seen him, with bloodshot eyes and a week’s worth of scraggly chestnut beard, but his face sparked something in the back of my mind.

The Stacy Pankow murder. The job that had put me on a head-on collision with Lauren and her cult. I’d gone down into the tunnels under Vegas to check out an alleged drowning, and found an enraged wraith instead.