The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (122 page)

The trouble was, in for a penny, in for
a pound. It all mattered. He had taken job after job where he might
leave an item on a park bench. Drop off a set of wheels in the
middle of the desert. Switch a suitcase at an airport. Little jobs.
Little jobs and he had never said no. Never complained about them.
Never turned one down. And so here he was about to press the
activator on a small, silver canister that might do anything.
Anything at all. And was he worried about that? Yes, he
was.

It was not so much worry for himself.
He didn't really believe the thing would blow up. He didn't truly
think they would take him out that way, if there was ever a reason
to take him out, that was. He quickly shut down that line of
thought. He had too much to worry about right now without starting
a whole new avenue of doubt.

So,
no
, he did not believe it would blow
up. He believed it would hiss and release a giant cloud of some
sort of toxic gas,
gases
even, he amended. Waste, poison, something, but,
if that were the case, how could he safely set it off and not be
contaminated himself?

The instructions were to walk to the
top of the courthouse steps, depress the red button, and then toss
it away. No specific direction, just away. It apparently didn't
matter. And, he thought now, wasn't this exactly the way some
terrorist would do it? Do an attack? A poison gas attack? An
unclassified viral attack? He had seen a few movies, this was the
way he would do it if he was writing the script. The girl beside
him spoke.

“
If this is going to take
much longer you're gonna have to pay more. I know I said it would
be cool, a fifty, I mean, but standing around here is wasting my
time. I got places to be. I got...”

He cut her off. “And you
ain't got no money
yet
. And if you do want the money then you need to shut the fuck
up.” He went back to his self observation. A second later he looked
back at her. “Hey,
hey,”
he soothed. She had begun to pout. Just another
street girl with a habit and too much time on her hands to feed
it.

“
Look...” He waited for her
to look at his hand. He held the small vial upright. “Do me a
favor, okay? I was looking around because, well because, I want a
picture right here. Now all you have to do is push this little red
button... Aim at me, it's got a little camera in there...You can't
see it, it's one of those new ones, like them spy ones? So all you
got to do is point it at me and then press the button.” He held the
canister and looked around. She tried to take the canister from his
hand and he snatched it away.

“
Goddammit, Dude, You want
it or not?” She stamped her foot exactly like the spoiled child she
was and was destined to always be.

“
Yeah...
Yeah I do
. Just... See
that corner over there? The top of the stairs? That little
what-do-you-call-it
hollow
between those two pillars? Wait until I get there
and take the picture.” He handed her the silver canister and
started away.

“
Hey! How the fuck am I
spos'ed to tell? There ain't no screen thingy,
what-the-fuck-it-is?”

He turned back and smiled.
“Just face it to me and do it. It's not supposed to have a
thing,
screen
,
just do it.”

She turned the canister to her face. It
was only about four inches long, maybe an inch thick. It didn't
look like a camera at all. She turned it back to John and clicked
the button. Nothing, not even a click. It didn't work. It was
bullshit just as she had thought.

John froze when he saw her push the
button, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. She had pushed it
just a few inches from his nose. No odor. No vapor he could see. No
anything. He pulled it from her fingers and flipped it back and
forth. The red button was depressed now and although he tried to
work a thumbnail under it to pull it back up he couldn't do it. He
bought it closer to his nose, nothing. No odor. He pressed it to
his ear. No hissing. It was a dead. A dud. Whatever it was it did
nothing at all. Maybe it had even malfunctioned. He hefted it a few
times and then let it drop from his fingers. It hit the stone step
below him with a small metallic click, and then rolled away to the
edge. It dropped to the next step, but it didn't have enough
momentum to find it's way across that step to the next. He turned
back to the girl.

“
You broke my camera,” he
told her.

“
Did not, and that ain't no
fuckin' camera anyway.
You think I'm just
stupid?
”

“
I do think you're stupid.
You broke it. You broke it and so I ain't paying you. Fact, you
should pay me for breaking my camera! Besides which, you pressed it
before it was time. You fucked the whole thing up. I shouldn't pay
you shit. Not a fuckin' dime.”

“
Yeah?” she asked. Her eyes
were wet, but they were also hard. She looked around at the crowd.
“That's okay, because you know what?”

“
What?” John asked. He
smiled. She was stuck and he knew it.

“
What is, I'm
fourteen.
Fourteen
. And I bet you if I was to start yelling right now, oh,
something like rape. If I was to say
Rape!”
She raised her voice a little
and a nearby couple flashed their eyes at the two and
slowed.

John flinched and drew back from
her.

“
Yeah, see? So, now if I
was to do that I bet your tune would be different. I just bet it
would.”

“
Twenty,” John said. His
smile was gone.

“
You said fifty. Fifty is
what you said, and it should be eighty.” She picked eighty out of a
hat. It was three more dimes, and three more dimes was a lot better
than five. “It
is
eighty. It's eighty because you tried to
rape
me!” She raised her voice once
more and John's hand plunged quickly into his back pocket. He
flipped a fifty and three tens at her from the wallet he quickly
pulled free, and she had to scramble to catch the money. Two of the
tens fluttered to the stone step below her and she flashed a hard
smile at him. The couple that had cut their eyes at them were now
stopped and staring at the two of them. A cell phone appeared in
the woman's hand and when John met her eyes there was something
there he didn't like at all. The girl scooped up the money,
muttering as she did, and John headed down the stairs two at a
time. A few minutes later he had blended into the crowd and was
making his way away from the downtown area.

Seattle Washington

Bobby

The prostitutes were just
beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning
traffic.
Bobby Chambers sat with his back
against the wall of an alley: Needle ready, and a speed-ball
cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a
little further down the alley. Bobby ignored him, watching the
mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting
together.

Two hours before he had
been sitting in the diner waiting for his world to end. He had paid
for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups
had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He
was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the
real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that time. A
trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from
Bobby, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a
couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had
changed his mind.

He had just made up his mind to leave.
Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more
coffee. The cops couldn't be far away, when the trucker had reached
back for his wallet, pulled it free, took a ten from inside and
dropped it on the counter top.

Bobby watched. It was involuntary. One
of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and
static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet
was one of those types he had seen bikers use. A long chain
connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard
to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his
pocket. Sloppy, Bobby saw, probably because he knew the chain was
there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put
his ass nearly in Bobby's face as he got up from the stool. The
wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the
pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the
chain, frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and
the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped
down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the
steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Bobby's lap.
He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His
hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered
windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second
later.

“
Listen...”

Bobby jumped and straightened quickly
in his seat, his heart hammering hard against his rib cage. Busted.
Busted and he had shoved the wallet into his wind breaker, double
busted...

“
Listen,” the waitress
continued, “buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me?
Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve
through window, “Says to call the cops.”

Bobby stared at her in disbelief. He
was sure that everyone in the diner had seen the wallet fall into
his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah... Okay... I'm leaving,” he said with
his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn't speak for
weeks. It just wasn't necessary. When he did he would find his
voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes
he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the
words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He
cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained
it. “Going,” he said.

He got up from the stool, kept one hand
in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked
out the front door.

L.A.: 2:00 am.

Beth

The night wore on. Midnight came and
went and the club shut down for another day. Beth worked at
cleaning up the last little area of the bar as two of the dancers
finished their drinks and hushed conversations, smiled at her and
walked away. A short conversation with Don, probably some crude
remark, Beth has seen how both of them had instantly stiffened
their backs after he spoke. It wasn't just her, Don was an actual
creep. Whatever he had said the two girls chose to ignore it,
turning away, making eye contact with Beth, waving as if they had
been at the bar talking to her, and when Don looked back to see who
they had been waving at they slipped out the door. Don mad his way
over to the bar.

“
You scared my honeys
away,” he told her.

“
I think you can do that
all on your own,” Beth told him.

“
What's that supposed to
mean?” Don asked.

Beth frowned and shook her head.
Sometimes she wondered if Don even knew what a creep he was. How he
made the girls who worked here, her included, feel. “It means that
not everyone is always on the same page,” Beth said. She had
changed her mind at the last second. She had to work here. Don was
the nephew of the owner. Creep or not he was part of the
package.

Don looked confused.

“
Donny, it means that
sometimes you just have to let things happen. Go slow. A girl wants
to think it was her own idea to like you,” she told him.

“
Yeah... I can see that,
but when you need it you need it. Some of these bitches need to be
on point.” One finger disappeared into his nose and then he seemed
to suddenly remember she was there. “You know, me and you need to
hook up. I got ...” One massive hand settled onto his shoulder and
he stopped in mid sentence.

“
Disappear, Donny. I need
to talk to Beth right now,” Jimmy told him as he sat down at one of
the stools.

“
We was just talking, uncle
Jimmy.”

“
Right. And now you're done
talking... Unless you're not? Am I interrupting you?”

Don turned beet red. He laughed to hide
the embarrassment. “No... No,” he turned and walked
away.

Jimmy turned to Beth. “I guess you'll
have to get used to the kid. He's a pain in the ass, but he's my
pain in the ass... Load to bear,” He turned and watched Don step
out the door to the parking lot. “Donny,” Jimmy yelled. Don poked
his head back in the door and looked at his uncle. “Take a good
look around out there, make sure the lot's empty and the girls all
got to their cars okay.”

“
Okay, uncle Jimmy,” Don
called back. The dopey smile that he usually wore settled back on
his face as he stepped out into the darkness. Jimmy turned back to
Beth.

“
Billy Jingo,” he
said.

Beth looked at him.

“
I think that kid is bad
news for you... Not telling you how you should live your life, just
distributing advice... A girl like you, a singer, don't need a
distraction like that. The customers don't want to see no boyfriend
hanging around. Spoils the fantasy that you're singing just to
them.” He held her stare.