Communication with the dead, if it occurs, should never be attempted;
invariably, it confuses and distresses.
-H.R. Wakefield
“Goddamn,”
said Phil, “where do they all come from?”
“Everywhere,”
Laramie said.
Not less than thirty kudlaks were in plain view, and all of them were
converging on the McDonald's. “It's my fault,” Carlos said. “I
sent Meg there.” He leaned inside the van and pulled out an AK 47
with a hundred-round drum. “Lar, Daniel, you hold the fort.
Harry, get what you need.”
“Excuse
me,” another interjected. Carlos looked over his shoulder to see
Dr. Ling. He drew a revolver, casually took aim, and severed the
spine of a kudlak ten yards away. “I believe I can be of some
assistance.”
“Nay,”
Carlos said, eying the gun, “I think I might be...”
As he departed with the doctor, the other professor stepped into the
rear of the van and came out holding a small crate. Laramie looked
curiously over Harrington's shoulder as he took out another
cigarette. Just as Laramie ignited his lighter, the professor lifted
the lid, to reveal a box of brick-sized masses of a plastic-like
substance.
Laramie put away the lighter.
“What
do you want?” Meg shrieked. Greg stepped forward, while the other
kudlaks halted.
Joe lurched to his feet. “Woman,” he said, “do no talk to dead
men!”
“No!”
she shouted, as if in rebuttal to some unheard voice. “It is mine!
I gave you the money for it! It doesn't matter now, and what are you
going to do with it, anyway?”
Joe clapped a hand over Meg's mouth. “If you talk to the dead,”
he hissed, “they talk back.” Meg wrestled free of him, and
actually took a step toward Greg.
Greg's head tilted, and then he lurched as a .410 blast raked his
cheek. He gripped an anchored swiveling chair to steady himself,
while whatever senses were really behind his unseeing gaze locked on
his own gun in George's hand. With one motion, he ripped the chair
from its moorings and hurled it over the counter. George
instinctively ducked rather than taking a second shot. Meg then
stepped directly into the line of fire.
“Leave
him alone!” she shouted. “You want me, here I am! Now what do
you want?”
Greg
moved his mouth, and there was a skirling sound exactly like static
from a radio. “What do you mean? That's not true!” Meg shouted.
He inclined his head like a silent martyr. “I had to go to the
hospital!” He looked at her, a little less innocent. Meg's voice
rose to a shriek: “Well, so what? You think that matters? You
think it ever mattered? And you know what, I'm not
sorry. I was never
sorry. You deserved it, you bastard! If I could go back in time, the
only thing I'd do different is to make you the one who went to the
emergency room!”
Only
then did Greg reach for her, and Meg belatedly retreated, only to
find the pair behind her advancing. Joe lurched to her side, softly
chanting as he swung the machete. Then Meg looked back to Greg, and
her momentary sense of self interest evaporated. “What's it matter
now, you sonuvabitch? You're dead. You're dead, and it's your
fault. It's your
own damn fault you're dead, so leave me alone!”
For a moment, Greg seemed to hesitate. Then he hissed, and lunged,
just as the Indian grabbed Meg and somehow managed to vault over the
counter. Right about then, there was a rumble from the parking lot,
and Greg looked back (or whatever they did) just as Yellow Pup came
plowing straight through the doors.
“Well,”
Dianna said as she and Elayne stepped out of the cab and started
shooting maimed and mangled kudlaks, “I guess we won't have to use
the drive-thru...” She waved to Janie, who smiled and went down
the slide.
Just then, Carlos poked his head in a broken window. “An' I
suppose some thanks for us is out of the question...”
Elayne brushed past and murmured, “Oh, I could think of
something...”
While others were dispatching kudlaks, Meg peered across the counter
and then climbed right over, to kneel beside a brown shoe in front of
the truck. “This is Greg's,” she said flatly. “Where's Greg?”
Ling double-tapped a one-eyed kudlak with his Mauser, which with its
long barrel and detachable stock was closer to a carbine than a
pistol. When the twitching subsided, he looked back to address
Carlos: “I would like some clarification. Am I to understand that
Meg is a member of your party who was bitten?”
“Aye,
she's one of us as far as I'm concerned,” Carlos answered. “You
gonna make something of it?”
Ling smiled. “I should not think it is my affair. I would simply
like you to be aware that I have experience dealing with these
situations, probably- with all due respect- more than you.”
“When
and where?” Carlos asked.
“Shkodra,”
Ling said, “among other places.”
Carlos nodded. “Albania, aye? You got in early, then.”
“In
all likelihood, the beginning,” Ling said. “The best available
evidence suggests that the revenation phenomenon began in northern
Albania. At the time of the outbreak, I was present as part of a
People's Republic humanitarian aid detachment.”
“Did
you take those guns with you?” Carlos mused.
“This?”
Ling said with a hint of a smile. “Strictly for personal defense.”
An ambulatory kudlak had wandered up to the window. He turned the
gun sideways and fired a short burst of fully automatic fire. The
Mauser's fire cut left to right, catching the revenant in the neck.
“Not much more than a ceremonial item, really.”
“How
'bout t'other one?” Carlos said.
Ling lifted it from the holster. “This? It's a Nagant M1895
double-action gas-sealed revolver. It was manufactured in Tsarist and
Soviet Russia through the Great Patriotic War, and some were exported
to the PRC after the war... But, I expect you are already familiar
with it.”
“Aye,
you could say I've seen it up close,” Carlos said coolly. “The
one I saw had an extra bit, to suppress the sound of the shots. I
wouldn'ta heard it myself, if I hadn'ta been in the same room.
Wouldn'ta seen it, either, except the guy went for officials and
officers first. You wouldn't have something like that stowed away in
your luggage, would you?”
“Professor
Wrzniewski,” Ling said, “the suppressed variant of the M1895 was
only issued to special operatives on missions of assassination.”
He pointedly said no more.
Meg knelt again, beside a badly mangled kudlak outside the door. Its
jaw had been blown off, and the rest of the damage could only be from
a massive application of force. Dr. Carradine took one look and
said, “This one must have been hit by another revenant after it was
thrown by the truck.”
“Yeah,”
Meg said. “But where's
Greg?”
“You
believe this Greg was the one you spoke to?” George asked.
“I...
Wait, I said something? I don't... I must have zoned out. I suppose
I just babbled, right?” George did not venture to contradict her.
“But, yeah, I'm sure one of them was Greg. Even if I wasn't... You
see this shoe? It looks fancy, and I guess the name brand on it is
supposed to be a big deal. It's fake. Greg got it eight months ago
at a flea market. The dealer admitted it was knock-off, but he
insisted the leather was just as good. He said something about the
leather coming from an eel...”
“It's
made from the skin of a Pacific hagfish, also known as the slime
eel,” Dr. Carradine said. “It's not a true eel, or even a fish
in the conventional sense, but a jawless, cartilaginous vertebrate
that lives in deep marine environment. It is called a slime eel
because it secretes large quantities of a viscous substance as a
defense mechanism. It is also well-known for scavenging, which is
the main reason I am familiar with them. A few years ago, the Koreans
started making leather products out of it, and it was becoming a
major export item. The manufacturers always call it eelskin,
presumably because they would prefer that potential customers remain
unfamiliar with the animal's biology.”
“So,
my boyfriend's best shoes came from a bottom-dwelling, toothless,
boneless, slime-spewing scavenger,” Meg said. “Yeah, that's Greg
all over. So, if we're going at this like a crime scene, the shoe's
right where he would have been when the truck hit him, like, it got
knocked right off. Then it only makes sense that he hit this guy
here. So... where's Greg?”
Ling and Joe talked in Navajo as the doctor tended to the Indian's
injuries. As Meg and Dr. Carradine walked up, Joe paused at a curt
interjection by the doctor. “Any idea what just happened?” Meg
whispered.
“If
I'm not mistaken,” Carradine said, “the doctor just corrected
Joe's grammar.”
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