Road Kill
1
It’s never a good thing to wake up in a coffin, unless you’re a vampire—and I’m definitely not a vampire. I’m an entirely different sort of undead.
Now, vampires belong in coffins; they actually find them comfortable. Vamps go there regularly to get their sleep. I’ve even known several who kept everyday coffins and vacation coffins (fitted with tropical interior décor). Some are just stripped-down pine boxes, while others are luxury models rigged with stereo systems for music or audiobooks. Some coffins even have tingly massage fingers on the bottom.
The coffin I woke up in wasn’t one of those types, and I sure as hell didn’t belong here.
I’m a zombie, and zombies aren’t so picky about where they rest. Sure, coffins will do just fine, but once we’ve clawed our way out of the grave, we don’t need to sleep often, and when we do we’re okay with sleeping on a sofa, or even just propped up in a corner somewhere. It doesn’t really matter.
But I knew I hadn’t taken a nap here on purpose.
I’m not just any zombie: I’m a zombie detective, and it’s my job to figure out mysteries. I’m good at my job—though I try to avoid being part of the mystery itself.
The coffin was dark and cramped, with very little elbow room. I squirmed, thumped the sides of the box with my arms, managed to roll myself over onto my stomach—which did me no good at all—then had to exert twice as much effort to roll myself onto my back again.
I pounded the wooden lid with my fists. Yes, it’s a cliché: I had become one of those things that go bump in the night.
I felt the entire coffin vibrating beneath me, accompanied by a low pleasant thrumming. No wonder I had dozed off for so long! But this wasn’t a timed “Magic Massage Fingers” sensation. I realized the sound was road noise, the vibration of wheels.
I was in the back of a vehicle somewhere.
Worse, I was in a coffin in the back of a vehicle going somewhere.
I hammered on the lid of the coffin, felt around the edge. No safety latch there. That was a code violation, and I was starting to feel testy.
Coffins are supposed to have quick-release latches, otherwise it’s a safety hazard. Ever since the Big Uneasy, laws had changed to protect the unnaturals. My partner Robin had hung out her attorney-for-hire shingle on behalf of the vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, and other assorted “beings” that needed legal representation in the changing world. One of her early legal victories was to institute safety systems in coffins and crypts so that, in the event that a dead body came back to life, he or she could re-emerge without discomfort or inconvenience.
I got my hands in front of my chest, flattened my palms, and pushed up against the coffin lid. The planks creaked but remained fastened. Nailed shut. This was getting more annoying by the minute.
I tried to remember where I’d been and how I’d gotten there, but it was all a big blank. I’m better-preserved than most zombies, many of whom eat brains because they have a deficiency in that department (kind of like a vitamin deficiency). Me, I’ve always loved a good cheeseburger, but these days I rarely bother to eat except out of habit, or sociability. I don’t have much appetite, and my taste buds aren’t what they used to be.
My mind, though, is sharp as a tack … usually. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be much of a detective. At present, I felt as blank and stupid as one of those shamblers who can only remember long strings of vowels without any consonants.
Moving in the cramped box now, I patted myself down and realized that I still wore my usual sport jacket with the lumpy threads where the bullet holes had been crudely stitched up. I managed to get my fingers up to my face, felt the cold skin, ran them up around my forehead and skull, felt a crater there—a bullet hole, entry wound in the back of my head, exit wound in my forehead.
Yes, everything seemed normal.
For many years, I’d been a detective in the Unnatural Quarter, a human detective at first, working on cases where unnaturals ran afoul of the law, or stumbled into curses, or just lost things from their original lives. I made a decent living at it, especially after I partnered with Robin, and the cases we dealt with were more interesting than typical adultery spying for divorce cases.
On the downside, I had ended up getting shot in the back of the head while investigating the poisoning death of my girlfriend. That would have been the end of any regular Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, but the cases don’t solve themselves, so when I came back from the dead … I went right back to work.
I pressed hard against the lid of the coffin again, heard the boards creak, listened to the nails groan a little bit. That was some progress, at least. I kept pushing.
Even though zombies have the advantage of being able to sleep wherever they like, vampires are generally more limber. I was accustomed to stiff muscles and sore joints, however, so I kept pushing. I put my back into it. (What, was I going to get a bruise?) With steady pressure, I managed to coax the nails farther out. The boards splintered, and the lid finally came loose.
I nudged the top of the coffin aside by a few inches and let in some cool air. But I was still trapped.
A thick silver chain and a padlock had been wrapped around the coffin. Great. Silver chains and a nailed-down coffin—exactly what would be required to contain a vampire. Okay, B+ for effort, but somebody really needed to go back to the field guides and do a better job at identifying their unnaturals.
How could anyone have confused me for a vampire?
Then one or two of the pieces fell into place with a big thud. I wasn’t supposed to be here—this should have been someone else! I’d been duped, or switched.
Finally, I remembered about the witness protection program.
At Chambeaux & Deyer investigations, we take all sorts of cases—from a monster in trouble who lumbers through our doors, to humans having trouble with monsters, to monsters having trouble with one another. There’s never a dull moment.
Occasionally, we get cases punted to us from the police, usually because Officer Toby McGoohan, my best human friend, brings them to us. McGoo appreciated the extra help on his backlog, and we appreciated the business.
McGoo and I were old friends well before I got shot—a down-on-his-luck private detective and a politically incorrect, often rude, beat cop with no prospects for promotion, even in the Unnatural Quarter. Some friendships survive even death. If I could put up with McGoo’s lousy jokes, he could put up with my cadaverous infirmities.
He showed up in our offices wearing his full patrolman uniform and blue cap, leading a man in a ridiculous disguise: a trenchcoat, a wide-brimmed hat, and a curly wig that Harpo Marx would have found too extreme.
“Hey, Shamble,” McGoo said. I had long since stopped objecting to his nickname for me, a deliberate mispronunciation of my last name.
When he didn’t introduce his companion, I nodded to the stranger. “Correct me if I’m wrong, McGoo, but a disguise isn’t supposed to draw attention.”
The man in the goofy wig muttered, “I didn’t want anyone to recognize me.” He looked around, then muttered to McGoo, “Are we safe here?”
“Safe enough. These people are going to help get you into the witness protection program.”
The man took off the hat, silly wig, and trenchcoat, to reveal he was a slight-framed blond man, as scrawny and skittish as if he had stepped right off the “before” side of a muscle supplement ad. He was a vampire.
“Let me introduce Sebastian Bund,” McGoo said, “former blood barista at one of the Talbot & Knowles blood bars. He’s also a key witness in an important case involving the illicit blood market.”
Scrawny Sebastian slicked back his blond hair, which had been mussed by the wig. “Thank you for your help … as soon as you help.”
Our receptionist at Chambeaux & Deyer is my girlfriend—and former client—Sheyenne. She’s a ghost now, and I had been investigating her murder when I got killed, but we’re still a couple. Many spirits linger because they have unfinished business, but even after I solved Sheyenne’s murder, she remained, and she works for us now. Apparently her “unfinished business” now involved typing and filing in our offices. Chambeaux & Deyer couldn’t have functioned without her.
“Could I get you some coffee or tea, or blood, Mr. Bund?” she asked, as she dropped the intake paperwork on her desk.
“Do you have any B-positive?” Bund asked.
“I think we just keep O in stock for the clients.”
Bund shook his head. “Never mind. I can’t stand the generic stuff. I’m fine.”
McGoo pushed the papers aside. “There can’t be any record of this. Everything off-book.”
Sheyenne frowned. “Then how do we send our bill?”
“I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get it out of petty cash.”
“If it’s only petty cash,” she countered, “then maybe the case isn’t worth our time.”
“We have a big petty cash fund.”
Robin came out to meet the new client as well, looking friendly now, but when she sinks her teeth into a case, she’s as hard to shake as a zombie with lockjaw. We went into the conference room together, so McGoo could explain the case to us.
Sebastian Bund had been caught up in under-the-counter blood sales, watering down the product, selling the extra out a back alley and using a seemingly legitimate blood bank to move his supplies. He would swap out rare and expensive types for more generic flavors. No one had noticed … until one of the mislabeled packets was actually used in surgery rather than for unnatural consumption, and the patient nearly died.
The plot unraveled, arrests were made, and the operation was pinned on an ambitious gangster family led by Ma Hemoglobin. (Her real last name was Hamanubin, but nobody referred to her by that.) She had six sons, two of whom were vampires. Ma Hemoglobin and her boys ran blood-smuggling operations throughout the Quarter.
The District Attorney had vowed to bring them down. The owners of the Talbot & Knowles blood-bar chain (former clients of mine, I’m pleased to say) were eager to press charges.
“Unfortunately, each witness who would have testified against Ma Hemoglobin suffered an unfortunate demise,” McGoo said.
“Is there such thing as a fortunate demise?” I asked. McGoo ignored the interruption; I think he was annoyed that he hadn’t thought of the joke himself.
Several vampire witnesses had “accidentally” been locked in sunlit cells, and their ashes weren’t in any shape to testify. Some of the human witnesses were assigned to vampires-only holding cells, and after the prisoner meals were “accidentally delayed” by several hours, the human witnesses were too drained to be of any use and “accidentally” contaminated with holy water during the resuscitation efforts so they couldn’t even be turned into vamps themselves (thus, doubly prevented from taking the stand against Ma Hemoglobin). Another particularly important witness had vanished from a locked bathroom, and the only evidence was a brownish-green slime all around the toilet. There were rumors of sewer-dweller hit men who came up through the porcelain access to strike their target.
“Sebastian is the only witness left,” McGoo said. “And obviously our traditional police protection methods haven’t worked.”
“Sounds like you need a zombie detective,” I said.
“We need someone competent. Sebastian has to go into witness protection until the case comes up for trial.”
Robin just nibbled on her pencil, deep in thought. “So you need our help to make sure he’s moved without being seen.”
McGoo nodded. “We’ve already got an operation under contract. He’ll be taken cross-country in a coffin in the back of an eighteen-wheeler. We’ll disguise the truck, make it look like it’s hauling pre-packaged school lunches.”
I cringed, and Robin shuddered, both of us remembering our own experiences with school lunches. “No one’s going to mess with that cargo.”
So, McGoo already had the general plan and his connections to the police force. We just had to work out the details.
Obviously, as the ominous voice always says in movie trailers, something went wrong. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be riding in the coffin. Somebody had set me up.
Once I pushed the loosened coffin lid to one side, I began to work on the silver chains and padlock. Fortunately, silver has no effect on me—that’s an advantage to being a zombie, and I try to look at the glass as half full.
As a detective, I’m quite proficient, or at least marginally adequate, with lockpick tools that I keep in a handy travel pack in my pants pocket. My fingers were clumsy, but no more than usual. I worked with the tools until I sprung the padlock, removed the hasp, and shoved the chains to the floor.
Just as I sat up, the semi truck hit a bump in the road, which made the coffin thump against the trailer bed. My teeth clacked together, and then the hum of the road became smooth again. I knocked the lid to the floor and lurched up out of the coffin.
This was actually easier than when I had clawed my way up through the packed graveyard soil back when I first rose from the dead—not to mention a lot less dirty, too.
The truck rumbled along, and I stepped out of the coffin, flexing my stiff knees, stretching, brushing the wrinkles in my sport jacket. I looked around the coffin, but saw no sign of my fedora. I hoped it wasn’t lost.
Even though my leaky brain had recaptured the basic story of Sebastian Bund going into witness protection, there were still many gaps. Once again, I felt around my head, but discovered no lumps. It’s difficult to knock a zombie unconscious by bonking him on the head, anyway. There must have been something else, maybe a sleeping potion. I felt groggy, rubbed my eyes, still trying to get awake.
“Coffin” and “coffee” both derive from the root word “caffeine,” I think—and I could have used a strong cup right now to help wake the dead. I needed to be alert, to judge whether I might be in danger.
Inside the trailer, other crates were stacked high all around where the coffin had been stashed. The crates were all filled with prepackaged school lunches; from the “Use By” dates stamped on the sides, they would not expire for more than a century.
I worked my way toward the front of the trailer, hoping I could find some way to signal the cab. The driver up there needed to know he had the wrong cargo. If someone had knocked me out and switched me with Sebastian Bund, then the star witness might be in danger.
The engine noise was loud, but I leaned against the wall and started pounding as hard as I could. (For a trucker hauling coffins filled with the undead, that would probably be unnerving.) If he had the window open, maybe he’d be able to hear me back here. I pounded harder and then, to reassure him, hammered out “Shave and a Haircut.”
Faintly, from the cab, I heard him pound back on the door, “Two Bits.”
I pounded harder, more desperately. He pounded back, and I heard his muffled voice. “Quiet back there!”
So much for raising the alarm. I guess I would have to wait until he stopped for a potty break—I hoped he had a small bladder.
I sat back down on the edge of the coffin, slipped my hands into the jacket pockets—and felt immediately stupid when I found my phone. That would have been a good thing to remember from the start. I didn’t like all these lapses in my memory. Could a zombie get a concussion?
Since I had no idea where the truck was, possibly out in the middle of nowhere, I hoped that I’d get a signal. I was pleased to see at least one-and-a-half bars; that should be good enough.
I kept McGoo’s number on speed-dial, and he picked up on the second ring. He must have seen the Caller ID. “Shamble! What are you doing awake already?”
“Trying to figure out where the hell I am.” He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. “You sound like you know more about this than I do.”
McGoo snorted. “I know more about most things than you do.”
“I’d argue with that, but today I’ll give you a free pass if you can tell me why I woke up in a nailed-shut coffin surrounded by silver chains in the back of a semi truck.”
“Silver chains? There weren’t supposed to be any silver chains.”
I stared at the phone, then put it back to my ear.
“That’s the part you find unusual? Why am I here in the first place?”
“It was your idea, Shamble, but if you don’t remember your own brilliant solution, I’ll take credit for it. The narcomancer said you might suffer some temporary memory loss as a side effect. It was a powerful spell.”
“Narcomancer?” The word meant nothing to me, and I couldn’t call any image to mind. “Don’t you mean ‘necromancer’?”
“Narco—narcomancer,” McGoo said. “I suppose you’ve forgotten you owe me a hundred bucks, too?”
“I don’t owe you a hundred bucks. But narcomancer … like in narcotics?”
“No, like narcolepsy. His name was Rufus. He’s a wizard who worked a spell to put you to sleep—and putting a zombie to sleep is no easy task.”
“Rufus?” The name still didn’t ring a bell.
And suddenly, it did.
I recalled the man whose matted mouse-brown hair seemed to have a moral disagreement with combs. His wispy beard looked as if someone had been experimenting with spirit gum and theatrical makeup but had given up halfway through the job. His watery blue eyes were extremely bloodshot, and he seemed jittery. Although he specialized in putting people to sleep, he seemed to be an insomniac himself.
I remember him rubbing his hands together, repeating his name and grinning. “Yes, Rufus … are you ready for my special roofie? You’ll snooze away the journey.”
He began to speak an incantation—then everything went blank.
“It’s all going down as planned,” McGoo said on the phone. “We made all the arrangements for Sebastian to be whisked away in the truck to his new home, but we put you in the coffin instead, under a sleep spell—it was supposed to last for the entire drive—while Sebastian went by a roundabout route. A brilliant idea, actually. I suggested it.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “That was my idea.”
“I thought you didn’t remember.”
“But why would we do that?”
McGoo said, “Just to be safe. You were triggered to wake up if anyone tampered with the coffin. You were worried something bad might go down.”
At that moment, an explosion hit the truck, blowing out the side of the trailer, scattering packaged school lunches everywhere, and hurling me out into the pitch-black night.
2
The squeal of the truck’s air brakes would have made a banshee envious. The semi jack-knifed, its wheels smearing rubber along the highway like black fingerpaint. The truck groaned to a halt with a cough and gasp, and debris rained down everywhere.
After being thrown from the truck, I landed in a ditch—a mud-filled ditch, of course. I got to my feet, dripping; stagnant slime oozed out of my hair. It seems the harder I work to keep myself well-preserved, the faster karma comes back and smacks me.
The door to the truck cab popped open, and a stocky man with a black jawline beard swung out. His eyes burned like coals, and even from a distance I could tell he was hopping mad. He wore a trucker’s cap, a red checked flannel shirt open to show his white undershirt, and jeans. He didn’t seem injured, just furious as he stepped away from the wheezing and gurgling diesel engine that fought to keep running.
He stared at the ruined trailer, where a blackened crater and splintered wood surrounded the remnants of a slogan: “The Finest in Processed Lunches—Tolerated by Children for over Twenty Years!” On the image, a group of gaunt boys and girls looked dubiously toward the picture of their meal, which had been obliterated by the blast.
“They blew up my rig!” The trucker stalked back and forth, twisted his cap around backward, then, dissatisfied, twisted it back around front. “Out here on an empty stretch of highway? They blew up my rig!” He kicked gravel with his steel-toed boots, then looked up and saw me shambling toward him. “Did you see that?” Then he glowered, giving me a second look. “Where did you come from?”
“I was inside your truck,” I said. “I’m Dan Chambeaux, private investigator.”
The trucker blinked, still suspicious. “And I’m Earl—Earl Joe Bob, owner and operator of Earl Joe Bob Trucking.” He scratched his beard. “Say, what were you doing in that coffin? You weren’t supposed to be in there.”
“Ever hear those stories about babies being switched in the nursery?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“I guess it happens with coffins, too.”
Earl Joe Bob put his hands on his hips and swung his head from side to side, looking in dismay at his mortally wounded rig. Under the bright running lights, which could have given a Christmas tree on the Las Vegas Strip a run for its money, I saw “Earl Joe Bob Trucking” and a phone number, as well as government license number on the driver’s door. He sighed. “At least the cab and engine are still intact. But damn—I’m liable for all this! And, hey, you weren’t supposed to be in that coffin!” He shook his head again, stuck his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans. “What a mess.”
At least the trailer hadn’t caught fire, though some of the shards of wood still smoldered. “I think we were hit with a rocket launcher.”
“It happens,” said Earl Joe Bob. He went back to the cab, got some flares and reflective hazard triangles.
I realized that out here on this open and silent stretch of highway, under the stars and with no city lights in sight, we were much too vulnerable. This truck hadn’t run into a random migratory rocket. I patted my pockets, looked around—I had lost my phone during the explosion.
“We have to call for help. Can we use your CB? Or a cell phone?”
Earl Joe Bob shook his head. “No, wouldn’t be wise to use it.”
I was exasperated. “Why not?”
The trucker narrowed his eyes at me. “Just can’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic. I walked around the other side of the truck again, working my way back to the ditch, where I hunted around for my phone. The weeds were tall, and I splashed through the standing water. Mosquitoes fled from me—another advantage of being a zombie. I would have to write all the advantages down one day, just as a reminder.
Fortunately, the phone’s screen light was still on, though my call with McGoo had been disconnected in the explosion. I smeared it against my muddy shirt, making a marginally clean patch, and was dismayed to see that my Angry Vultures scores had been wiped out. That was a problem I would have to deal with later.
I phoned McGoo, who answered right away. “Where are you, Shamble? What happened?”
“I’m on a road somewhere,” I said, glancing around. “And I don’t see one of those You Are Here X’s.” I told McGoo about the explosion, and that we were stranded. He promised to call in reinforcements right away.
“I’ll see if we can track your signal through the cell towers,” he said. “Maybe the truck has a GPS in the cab.”
I ended the call and began making my way along the back of the rig, when I froze, hearing voices. I saw two figures approach the wounded truck. It was a starlit night, clear skies, a quarter moon. Zombie night vision is generally good, but I didn’t need any supernatural powers to pick out the two young men. They wore camouflage jumpsuits—but light-colored desert camo, so they stood out plainly. They carried long rifles.
Since the side of the truck had been blasted open with a rocket launcher, and since these two men were approaching heavily armed, I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to wave my arms and hail them for help.
Earl Joe Bob spotted them as well, and bunched his meaty arms as he stalked toward them. “This wasn’t the deal I had with Ma Hemoglobin! Which two of her boys are you—Moron and Imbecile?”
“No,” said one of the young men. “I’m Huey, and that’s Louis.”
“Well, you’re still Moron and Imbecile to me. You wrecked my rig! We were supposed to meet up at the Rest In Peace area down the road and make the transfer!” He spluttered, waving his hand at the crater in the side of his truck. “What kind of stupid—”
The two boys raised their rifles. Huey said, “Ma thought you might double-cross us, so we took matters into our own hands.”
“You must be two of her human boys,” Earl Joe Bob said. “A vampire wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“We’ll show you stupid!” said Louis. He opened fire with his high-powered rifle. Not to be left behind, Huey shot Earl Joe Bob as well. The bullets slammed into the trucker’s red flannel shirt, and he dropped to the ground.
I silently reaffirmed my wisdom in not waving my arms and calling attention to myself.
Now, as a detective, I solve cases, and I’m the hero in my own story. But sometimes heroes stick around longer if they aren’t always … heroic.
I didn’t know how I was going to get out of here, or how long it would take McGoo to bring in reinforcements. If this truck was on a cross-country trip to deliver a decoy into witness protection, McGoo could be miles away, even if he had been shadowing me.
With a jolt, I got a few more of my memories back: I did remember the idea of taking Sebastian’s place in the coffin aboard the truck. Meanwhile, Robin would take our nondescript and rusty old Ford Maverick, lovingly named the Pro Bono Mobile, with the scrawny blond vampire dressed in my fedora and a similar sport jacket, sunshades down, traveling across the state line to where he would be hidden in his new life. My ghost girlfriend Sheyenne was going to ride shotgun. Nobody would be looking for them. They would be safe. It would be a lark. I was the one under a narcolepsy spell in the back of a semi truck, a decoy. It should have been a long sleep for me.
Now, Ma Hemoglobin’s two boys climbed through the blasted crater in the side of the trailer. My best bet was probably to climb back into the ditch and hide in the mud, but McGoo would never let me forget it.
Instead, I crept along the opposite side of the trailer. If I could make it to the cab, open the passenger side door, and climb into the cab, I was sure to find some kind of firearm, baseball bat, or tire iron that Earl Joe Bob kept there.
I heard Huey and Louis rummaging around inside the trailer, shining flashlights; I saw the gleam through splintered cracks in the opposite wall. They tossed aside a clutter of prepackaged school lunches. “The coffin’s empty! He’s not here!”
The other voice said, “I hate it when coffins turn up empty! But was it empty in the first place, or were we tricked?”
I made it to the front of the rig, yanked open the cab door—and of course the hinges screeched and groaned loudly enough to make any haunted house proud. The two Hemoglobin boys clambered out of the blasted trailer, brandishing their rifles, looking around.
“There he is!” yelled Louis.
“I see him,” said Huey. They began sprinting toward me, running past the body of Earl Joe Bob, who lay sprawled at the side of the truck.
Earl groaned and sat up, shaking his head. “Dammit! You wrecked my rig and you shot me?” He sprang to his feet and flashed a set of ivory fangs.
I should have recognized earlier that he was a vampire. Many truckers who specialize in all-night hauls are vampires; they have no trouble staying awake, though they had to park in Rest In Peace areas and pull down the shades by dawn.
The two Hemoglobin boys turned white and spun around, raising their rifles again. Each managed to fire one more shot. This time, Earl Joe Bob merely flinched before lunging forward again.
“I thought you loaded the rifles with silver bullets!” Huey shouted.
“I thought you loaded the rifles with silver bullets!”
Earl Joe Bob was pissed.
Moving with vampire speed (earlier, I did mention that vamps can be quite swift and agile), he lunged forward and grabbed the young men by their necks, one in each hand. His grip was powerful, and he squeezed hard. I heard the loud double-crack as their necks snapped; it sounded like popcorn in a microwave bag. He tossed the two dead bodies on the ground—truly dead, because Huey and Louis had been two of Ma Hemoglobin’s four human sons. (These days one or the other could still come back as an unnatural, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon.)
Earl Joe Bob made a disgusted sound, brushed at his flannel shirt, looked down at the bullet holes healing in his chest. “I’m as much a mess as my rig is.” He saw me hanging onto the door and flashed his fangs. “And where do you think you’re going?”
The vampire trucker moved toward me. I held up my cell phone as if inviting him to play a game of Curses With Friends. “I already called in for help. The police are coming.”
Earl Joe Bob scowled. “That doesn’t give me much time, then. It wasn’t supposed to go down this way.” He straightened his cap, which sat askew from when he’d been gunned down. He sneered at the two Hemoglobin boys, who lay in their light camouflage on the ground, necks bent at improbable angles. “I hate dealing with amateurs. I’ve dealt with witness protection cases plenty of times, and I’m always available for additional ‘enhanced disappearing’ for a substantial fee. When I make people disappear, I really make them disappear.”
I tried to move along the side of the truck; in a race, I could never outrun the vampire. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
“I don’t lose any sleep over it,” Earl Joe Bob said. “Pay is good, and I gotta earn a living.”
I knew that he was going to have to get rid of me. I was the only one who could explain the mess around me, but Earl Joe Bob would make up some story of his own.
“We can be reasonable about this,” I offered.
“Good idea.” He lunged. I lurched—it was a much less fluid movement than his, but I did manage to evade the first pass. Earl Joe Bob slammed into the side of the trailer, shattering more wood.
“Careful about the splinters.” My mind was racing. I could get one of the jagged spears and thrust it through the vampire’s heart. In my imagination, it all worked out just fine, but in practice I wasn’t quite the nimble athlete that I’d need to be for the scheme to work.
I did break off the long wooden splinter, lifted it—and Earl Joe Bob slapped it out of my hands. At least he got a splinter in his palm, and he paused to pluck it out. That brief respite gave me the chance to scramble through the blasted crater in the side of the trailer.
“Now I’ve got you cornered,” the trucker said. While I shuffled and slipped among the debris of packaged school lunches, I saw his sturdy muscular form silhouetted against the starlit sky as he pulled himself through the hole. “Where are you going to hide?”
I hurled a package of Salisbury steak, which struck him in the center of the chest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the stake through the heart I required. The vamp trucker’s eyes were glowing in the shadows. I could see him coming toward me. I nearly tripped backward over the coffin that had held me during my cross-country trip.
Police sirens howled down the highway, coming closer. Ironic, I thought: the cavalry was going to arrive much too late.
“At least we’ve already got a coffin to store you in,” said Earl Joe Bob.
“Been there, done that,” I answered.
He came closer, fangs bared, eyes glowing, hands outstretched. Earl Joe Bob was a burly guy, powerful enough to change one of his eighteen tires simply by lifting the rig and undoing the lug nuts with his fingertips. He could probably rip me limb from limb, stomp on any pieces still twitching, and then claim I’d been mangled in the explosion. McGoo already knew better than that.
“You haven’t thought this through,” I said.
The trucker laughed. “I could say the same to you—a vampire versus a zombie? The vamp will win, every time.” He reached toward me.
That’s when I pulled up the loose silver chains that lay draped over the coffin. I threw them onto Earl Joe Bob.
“Not every time,” I said.
It was like Superman and Kryptonite—a real sight to see. Within seconds, the vamp trucker went from being a scary, overpowering opponent to a whimpering and helpless guy in a flannel shirt who squirmed under the chains.
“Awww crap!” Earl Joe whined. “That’s not fair!”
Now the sirens were louder, and I could see the flashing lights through the hole in the side of the truck. Squad cars raced along the highway, followed by the state patrol. I was still undead and kicking, but I no longer needed them to rescue me. Still, I’d be happy to let McGoo handle the wrap-up paperwork.
As soon as the police climbed into the trailer, I waved McGoo over. He looked flushed and worried. “Shamble, you all right?”
There were shouts outside as other officers found the two bodies of Ma Hemoglobin’s boys.
“Better than they are. And better than he is.” I nodded to where Earl Joe Bob squirmed on the floor under the silver chains.
His cap had fallen off in the struggle, and I reached down and plucked it up. It wasn’t my style—I much preferred the fedora, but that was gone for now, apparently on the head of a disguised Sebastian Bund. Since I felt naked without a hat, I settled the trucker cap in place.
I started rattling off the full story as an officer handcuffed Earl Joe Bob with silver-plated handcuffs. The vamp trucker spluttered and groaned at the way I described a few things, but he didn’t deny any of the details.
“I’ll cut a deal,” he said. “Ma Hemoglobin is scary, and she’s got four boys left. I’ll turn State’s witness. Put me into witness protection, otherwise I’ll never survive until the trial.” His eyes flashed, and he struggled against the silver handcuffs. “I know where all the bodies are buried—some of them more than once.”
3
Back in the offices, Robin and Sheyenne were both in very good moods, having delivered Sebastian Bund to his official new undisclosed location.
“He was delightful company.” Robin flashed a smile at me. “Did you know he used to be a singing barista?”
“Broadway show tunes,” Sheyenne said. “That’s all we talked about. He’s a fan of musicals. Why don’t you ever see musicals with me?”
“Because I don’t like musicals,” I said.
She gave me a spectral raspberry. “When you go out on a date, you’re supposed to do something you don’t like. That’s how you show a girl you care for her.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time we go out on a date.” Our cases almost always interfered with our love life—and so did the fact that, as a ghost, she couldn’t physically touch me, which made the intimate aspect of our relationship much more problematic. “Did we at least get paid for the case?”
“We got paid in satisfaction,” Robin said. “That’s our purpose here, to know that justice is done.”
“Right.” I turned to Sheyenne, repeating the question. “Did we at least get paid?”
She showed me a Chambeaux & Deyer invoice, on which she had merely written in capital letters: SERVICES RENDERED, no other details. “Officer McGoohan was true to his word.” She pulled out a stack of other pending cases and floated ahead to place the files on my desk. “One more step in making the world safe for naturals and unnaturals everywhere.”
“It’s a start.” I looked down at all the folders Sheyenne had gotten out, and I knew exactly what they were. Job security.
***