Skeleton Crew. Cameron Haley

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СКАЧАТЬ lay splayed out on the trunk, chuckling wetly.

      “Okay,” I said. “How do you know he died, Pearl?”

      “The machine! He’s been hooked up to those damn machines for months, good for nothing except lying in bed shitting himself.” She shook with fury. “I had to clean it up!”

      “And he died?”

      “Yes! He flatlined. When you get to be my age, honey, you’ll know what it looks like. And he shit himself again!” Now that she mentioned it, Henry did smell a bit fragrant.

      “Code Blue!” Henry said, cackling.

      “Okay, okay. Then what happened, Pearl?”

      Pearl calmed a bit and the knife dropped to her side. “I was feeling poorly myself, so I turned off the machines and went to lie down a bit. I must have dozed off, so then I got up and came back and unhooked him. And I was going to clean him up again, for the last time, praise Jesus, and he…he…he fucking bit me!” Pearl dropped the f-bomb like she hadn’t dropped one in a few decades. Maybe never.

      I looked at Henry. It hadn’t taken him long to go cannibal. I had the idea he may have been homicidal even before he turned, at least where Pearl was concerned.

      Henry returned my stare and bobbed his head, like he knew what I was thinking. “I ate the old bag’s terrible cooking for fifty-seven years,” he said. “Figured it was time I got a decent meal out of her!” He convulsed with laughter, blood and bile burbling over his lips.

      “Charming,” Adan said.

      “Let me dust this asshole,” said Honey.

      “Wait!” Henry said. “That’s not even the funny part.”

      A crowd had gathered. Cars and pedestrians had stopped and people stood at a safe distance, not understanding what they were seeing, unwilling or unable to either approach or run screaming.

      “We’re on crowd-control,” Honey said. She and Jack buzzed over the onlookers’ heads, crop-dusting them with some discombobulating piskie glamour. The civilians began to mill about in confusion, some standing slack-jawed and others wandering in circles or just walking away. It wasn’t really control, if you asked me, but at least it would keep the rubberneckers from getting up in our business.

      “The funny part is,” Henry continued, his torn mouth slurring the words, “when I bit her, she was already cold! Can you believe that? I finally get a chance at a nice dinner and the bitch serves it up cold!”

      I peered at Pearl with my witch sight. What little juice she’d had when she was alive was settling in her tissues like lividity and just beginning to ooze from her skin. She stared back at me, her eyes wide and glassy. Pearl was dead as disco but she obviously hadn’t noticed it yet.

      “Let’s just do what we have to do and get out of here, Domino,” Adan said. “No point in having a conversation about it.”

      “Henry and Pearl are zombies, Adan,” I said.

      “Well, I never!” Pearl protested. “I’m Presbyterian, young lady.”

      “Yeah, so we have to put them down,” Adan said.

      “We’re talking to a couple of zombies.”

      “What’s your point?”

      “Braaaiiins,” Henry said, giggling. He slid his broken body off the trunk and staggered to his feet.

      “Let’s say your home computer wasn’t working, and you needed to figure out what was wrong with it. What would you do?”

      “I don’t have a computer,” Adan said.

      “Damn, you’re country.”

      “I grew up in Faerie.”

      “If you had a computer and it wasn’t working, you could run a diagnostic program…okay, skip the analogy. The point is, we need to figure out what’s causing the zombie outbreak. Here we happen to have a couple zombies. We could ask them.”

      “That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard.”

      “It’s not my strong point,” I allowed.

      “You already talked to Terrence’s nephews. One of them, anyway. You said he really didn’t know anything. Pearl here doesn’t even know she’s dead.”

      “I am not dead!” Pearl said.

      “See?” Adan said.

      “I never finished talking to Tony, because Pac-Man ate him. Plus, no disrespect to the mostly dead, but Tony wasn’t that bright. Pearl might have better answers.”

      “What about Henry?”

      “What about him?”

      “He’s stepping up on you.” Adan nodded his head, looking over my shoulder.

      I jumped, turning, and sure enough Henry was creeping up on me from behind, his arms outstretched and his hands grasping spasmodically. His eyes shone with madness and wickedness, though I had the feeling the wickedness, at least, had probably been there even before he died.

      “Vi Victa Vis!” I yelled, and the force spell hurled him back and slammed him into the Lincoln’s rear suicide door. His already abused skull made a pulpy sound when it struck steel, and he slumped to the ground, moaning.

      I pulled juice from the streets—I was on my home turf now and it came easily. “At first cock-crow the ghosts must go back to their quiet graves below,” I said. The magic burned through Henry’s ravaged body and wrenched his spirit free of the flesh. The corpse toppled over and lay still on the sidewalk.

      Pearl screamed and rushed to Henry’s body. She dropped to her knees on the concrete hard enough to tear skin, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She cradled him in her arms and sobbed, and then she jerked her head around to look at me. There were no tears but there was genuine hate in her eyes. “What did you do,” she snarled.

      Jesus Christ. “He was dead, Pearl,” I said. “I just ended his suffering.”

      “You killed him!” she wailed.

      “No, Pearl. He was already dead, remember? You told me that. You also told me he tried to eat you. I had the idea you hated his guts.”

      “He was my husband. For fifty-seven years. Of course I hated him! But he was the love of my life. He gave me three beautiful children. Oh, God, how I loved him when we were young. He was so handsome and strong…all of my friends were jealous and I was so proud. He was a good man. What am I supposed to do now?” Pearl buried her face in Henry’s chest and sobbed uncontrollably.

      You’re supposed to get hungry and start eating people, I thought. “I have to ask you some questions about what happened, Pearl,” I said. “This is going down all over the city and it’s wrong. You see that, don’t you?”

      Pearl lifted her head and nodded. She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with wrinkled hands. “How can you stop СКАЧАТЬ