“Okay, you know what? I’m not one of your three-minute feature packages. I’m not obligated to explain myself to you, so if you could drop the roving reporter act right about now, that would be great.”
“I’m only making conversation.”
“You’re digging for dirt and I don’t like it.” I put my hands over my face and breathed through my fingers. “This was all a bad idea. A cosmically bad idea. I should’ve never . . .” I stopped myself.
He got the gist of it, whether or not I’d finished it. “Nobody made you.”
“I know. I know—but you’d think I’d know better, by now. Forget it. The short answer is yes, I knew Christ set the fire. The rest of it—about why I didn’t tell anybody—you ought to have figured out for yourself by now. He was on to something. I didn’t know what, and I’m still not positive; but I think we can both agree that maybe he was right insomuch as there was definitely something weird going on down by the river.”
“Agreed. But here’s what I was getting at before when you tried to shut me down for asking questions: what was he right about? What did the construction work over there turn up—the bodies? Some relics of what happened to them?”
“My money’s on the bodies, since we have to assume that whatever was dug up prompted all of this. The construction disturbed them, and here they come. Maybe it’s just coincidence that the construction here at the Read House disturbed Caroline too, and maybe it isn’t. We don’t believe in coincidences.”
A splash just a heartbeat stronger than the drizzle hit my head, and yes, the rain was working itself back up again. We edged ourselves closer together, and into the crowd that was clotting up under the canopy. Nick wiped his hair back across his skull and coughed softly.
“It can’t be as simple as that,” he said, wrapping one hand around the metal pole that supported the overhang. “You think that these . . . things—you think they caused the flood and the problem at the locks?”
I had to think about that one before answering it. “No. No, I think it’s a combination of bad timing and opportunism. Cat-food Dude went missing first, and that was a couple of weeks ago. They had to wait for the water to rise in order to get any traction. And then—then I don’t know. Maybe it’s just nasty timing. Or maybe they’re more talented than we know. And at the end of the day, given how little we know about them, that’s entirely possible. Why does it matter?”
“It matters because, if we know why they’re here, we’ve got a chance of figuring out how to make them leave.”
He was right in principle, but Caroline was more right than he was. They were dead but defying all the rules of death. There might not be a way to send them home, or back from whence they came. Maybe they didn’t want to go back. Who could blame them, with a grave like the river banks, in the earth beneath a housing development? It wasn’t like we could just offer them a Christian burial, sprinkle a little holy water, and call them satisfied.
That line of thinking brought me back around to the one Caroline had started. “You never did answer me about those explosives. Where might we procure such things, if we were to hypothetically need them?”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, sweetheart. Do I look like a guy who works with dynamite for a living?”
“Right now you look like a guy who forages under bridges, fighting trolls for a living—but that makes two of us, I’m sure. I don’t know about you, but I’d throttle a puppy for a chance at a hot shower and a change of clothes right now.”
“Maybe not a puppy. But definitely a dog of some sort.” He tried to smile and I tried to encourage him by smiling back; but, like everything else in the world right then, it was watered down and cool.
“We can’t talk like this here,” I said.
“You’re right. Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Where did you want to go? The old newspaper building? What say we run past the Red Cross station and grab a granola bar, then see about taking a walk. Even zombies need their beauty rest, right?”
“I doubt it.”
“So do I,” he admitted. “But it beats standing here, waiting for the sky to fall or the water to rise, doesn’t it?”
He was right, and it did. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until he mentioned it, and even though I’m not a huge fan of anything granola-based, it sounded like a three-course meal.
We waited our turn in line, in silence for the most part. It was weird how quiet everyone was—like we were all so exhausted by the noise, and panic, and running and swimming and frustration that standing in line waiting for snack food from the back of an ambulance looked like a good chance to take a break.
All the while I was thinking, trying to sort through my store of accumulated life-knowledge. Where do explosives come from? Construction companies, maybe. Demolition sites, obviously. Mining digs, more likely than not. None of these were within immediate walking distance.
Nick asked what was on my mind, so I went ahead and told him.
“Maybe you’re thinking about this too narrowly. What sorts of things might be used for explosive purposes, in a pinch?” He asked this between bites of the cereal bar, which he chewed hard because, my God, it was like eating the sole of a dried out sandal.
“I don’t know. Large machinery? Bulldozers, or cranes, or the like—they can be used to knock things down. A backhoe might work. We could fill the hole in or kick the building down on top of it. There you go, man. Thinking outside the box. Or better yet—oh man, it’s so obvious.” I slapped him with the back of my hand. “Seriously. I’ve got an idea now.”“Oh God.”
“No, it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
I took a swallow from the water bottle that came with the granola, and motioned for him to join me as I started a quick pace back around the side of the building. We were in the rain again, but it was becoming a mere condition of life and I was learning to ignore it.
“What’s today?” I asked him. “Sunday, right? No, Saturday. It’s got to be Saturday by now.”
“I don’t know. Sure, let’s say Saturday. What of it?”
“All this started going down, what, Friday morning? Things went to hell and they never had the usual Lookouts baseball game this weekend. I’m betting the stadium over there is probably set up as another shelter too.”
“Yeah, it’s a shelter now, but they’re clearing people out of it. The old newspaper building wasn’t close enough to trouble for you—now you want to go right into the thick of it?”
I stopped, not because of what he was telling me, but because the flaw in my plan had hit me upside the head. “Huh. Here’s the trouble. I have no idea where they keep the fireworks. I know they shoot them off from Cameron Hill, but I don’t guess they store them there between firings. They must store them down at BellSouth Park. And you’re right that the stadium’s right by the water, but it’s up there on the hill next to the interstate. It’s not underwater, I’m sure. But there’s no guarantee that’s where the fireworks are kept anyway. For all I know it’s handled by some outside company. I don’t guess there’s any chance you could hop on your cell phone and find out, could you?”
“What’s wrong with yours?”
“It rests in peace.”
“Well mine isn’t made of pixie dust. I don’t know who I’d call to find out something like that.”
“Who was that guy you called to find out about the paper building?”
“Allen, the morning show producer. But he used to work for the Times-Free Press, so it wasn’t totally off the wall that he might know something like that. You’re asking me for a shot in the dark.”
I tapped my foot and tried not to listen to it splashing. “The Internet. Maybe if we had access to a computer—ooh! We could go to the library!”
“Right. And you think that’s the sort of thing you could find out from a search engine? If the library is even open or has power?”
“Maybe not, but . . .” But I was backing myself into a corner, and running out of ideas.
“Why are we chasing down fireworks, anyway?” asked Nick.
“Because I bet those industrial-size fireworks could take down a rickety old tunnel and probably the building with it, if we could light enough of them down there.”
“You want to fight zombies with fireworks.” At least he said it with a straight face.
“Why not? You have any better ideas? Because right now I’d love to hear them.”
He threw his hands up and made a gesture that implied he’d love to wring my neck. “Redoubling the efforts when you’ve lost sight of the objective. Great. We call that fanaticism.”
“No! I haven’t lost sight of anything. I’m just becoming better focused, damn you. Look—they’re coming up from under the city, and I know where they’ll come out. They were buried for who-knows-how-many years, so let’s bury them again! I’m chock-full of objective!”
“You won’t get them all that way. Some of them are still trolling the riverbanks.”
“It’ll get some of them—and some of them’s better than none of them. Jesus, if we only knew what they wanted.” I started walking then, because the sound of the scratching, scratching, scratching from below that old building was ringing in my ears and I had no idea how close they were.
He followed me and fell into step beside me, because I guess he didn’t know what else to do. I hadn’t asked him to, though. I didn’t make him do anything. He volunteered for the mission, even if it was only to try and talk me out of it.
“The fireworks might not be there.”
“But they might be.”
“You think we can just walk out with them?”