Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“I wonder if I could mount a wood chipper on the front of a Bugatti?”

“What happened with you and Ms. Bardo last night?”

“You’re talking your way out of an autograph fast.”

“Asshole.”

I offer Kasabian the last donut, but he shakes his head. There’s a half-smoked cigarette butt in the ashtray and I light it up. That he wants, of course. I let him have a couple of puffs and then kill it off.

“Does the Codex say where zombies came from?”

He shakes his head.

“Not really. Hellions have plenty of blind spots and their own tall tales to fill in the missing pieces. Most Hellions say that Cain was Patient Zero. After he killed Abel, God sent him out to wander the earth forever and put a mark on him so no one would stop his wandering and torment. The Hellion smart set think zombieism was the mark. When Cain got into beefs with pushy civilians, he’d just bite them. They became the first golems and Lacunas.”

“The ones who don’t think it was Cain, what do they say?”

“This is bullshit, man. There’s facts and there’s fairy tales. None of this is going to help you kill them any better.”

“Who says I’m going to kill them? I killed those ones last night because they attacked us. I don’t have anything against going on a Drifter safari, but I want to get paid for it.”

“Goddamn it, you don’t get to be a brat when it comes to zombies. They’re like jackrabbits. They make new zombies, eat everything in sight, and then migrate down the road and do it again.”

“What do you care, Alfredo Garcia? You don’t owe this world anything either.”

“No, but I happen to live here and I like beer and burritos and cigarettes. Last time I checked, zombies don’t deliver.”

Alice and Brigitte’s voices come back to me. They’re telling me that something bad is coming. Is this it? I hope not. That would be about the lamest prophecy in history. I don’t exactly need a vision to explain how everyone getting eaten, including me, would be a downer. No, it can’t be this and that’s bad news. It means there’s something even worse coming.

“What’s the other Drifter story?”

“You’re like a dog with a bone. Let it go. Go chase a ball. Hump a stranger’s leg.”

“Tell me the story and I will.”

“The story? You’re the story. You and your kind. You fucked-up angels. The Codex says that when Lucifer’s army was cast out of Heaven, one of the fallen didn’t make it all the way to Hell and landed in a valley on earth instead. It was burned and broken, but humans still recognized it as an angel. The local blue bloods sent their doctors to help it, but the angel was sick and bloated like a tick by then. It attacked anyone who came near it. All of those people ended up turning into zeds. Those zeds attacked their families and friends. The ones they didn’t eat became zeds and attacked other people. The people who lived in the hills saw that things were getting out of control, so they started fires and burned the whole valley. They thought they’d gotten everything, but some of the zeds supposedly escaped into caves. Mostly they stay underground, but every now and then one wanders out or gets summoned by a necromancer. That’s it. They all lived happily ever fucking after. The end.”

I wave him off.

“You were right. This isn’t any help. Might as well say Muppets did it.”

“You asked and I answered. You still owe me an autograph.”

“You’ll get your scrawl. I wonder who’ll pay me more to hunt zeds and zots? Lucifer or the Vigil?”

“You don’t actually have to say ‘zeds and zots’ all the time. You can say one or the other.”

“I’ll stick with Drifters. Those other names make them sound like candy.”

“Lucifer and the Vigil both have a stake in keeping humans in general and L.A. in particular alive. Get them both to pay.”

“That’s what I was thinking. But there’s one thing bugging me.”

“What?”

“When those Drifters came in, I knew one of them. I mean I knew who he was. A guy named Spencer Church. I only heard of this guy the day before when someone said he was missing. I asked a couple of people about him. Then, out of nowhere, the guy shows up at Bamboo House like the place is a zombie salad bar.”

“That’s a hell of a coincidence.”