Nightshifted

I’d had the night—well, morning really—to think on what Geoffrey had said. And on what Ti had said too. Before he even knew that I needed help—about just being the helpful type. I suppose you didn’t get to be a firefighter without some of the same predispositions that got you into nursing. A misguided sense of purpose, for one. Thinking that you needed to save other people around you, that too.

A knock at my fogged window startled the hell out of me. I yelped and swiped at the glass. Ti was waiting outside.

“Did I scare you?” he asked, concerned, as I opened the door.

“Only a little.” I grinned at him. He was in a bulky coat with a black hood, but the healing scars covering his face were easily seen. Seeing him would have scared most people. I imagined he had to do his grocery shopping late at night, so that mothers didn’t yank stunned children out of his path. But I was made of sterner stuff. Plus, I was scheduled to die in T minus three days. I could cut a man some slack.

“So what’s the plan?” I bounced up and down to stay warm.

“I checked—I don’t think you were followed.”

“Followed?” I quickly scanned over my shoulders, back at the desolate parking lot. Not many people wanted to buy SEWING NOTIONS! or CASH CHECKS HERE! during the middle of a workday. Except for the sad green tinsel shaped into Christmas trees and hung on every light pole, we might as well have been on the moon. There was only my car and Ti’s car, an El Camino in bright cranberry red.

“I assume whoever has your friend wants to keep her, right? Better safe than sorry.”

“Oh.” I wanted to hit myself. If I’d been thinking like that, maybe Anna wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped again.

Ti swayed back and forth to stay warm in the cold. Is he really cold, or just pretending to blend in? I tried to shush Geoffrey’s voice away. “Did you bring the shirt?” he asked.

I nodded, and reached for my door handle. I’d brought the shirt that she’d cried on. I pulled it out, burping the last of my car’s heat into the cold. “Can’t we just sit inside where it’s warm?”

“Nah. Madge’ll be here any minute.”

Madge seemed like an odd name for, well, anyone really, and I almost said so, when—a truck pulled into the parking lot and headed straight for us. My instinct was to dive aside, but Ti didn’t move. So I took a step closer to him instead, realizing as I did so that Ti didn’t have to fear trucks barreling out of nowhere—he was already dead.

The truck threw on its emergency brake and skidded artfully to a sideways stop ten feet from the far side of my car. Several dogs in the bed of the truck stood up and started barking, tails wagging madly at the sight of Ti.

“Madge,” Ti said to me, by way of explanation. “And company.”

“Ti!” A rough-cut man wrapped in flannels and corduroy swung out of the truck’s cab.

“Hello, Madigan. This is Edie.” He stepped aside so that I could be seen. “She’s the one I was telling you about.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Edie,” he said, and he seemed like the type who meant it. I smiled back, and shook his offered hand.

“Thanks—I appreciate you wanting to help.”

“Well, I’ve got to let the gang out every now and then.” He tilted his head toward the dogs peering out at us from the truck bed. One of them made a short bark at the attention.

“So,” Ti continued. “About today—”

“Let’s load up here, and then drive down. You got an address?” Madigan asked me, and I nodded. I gave him Mr. November’s place. “Good. We’ll start there and then crisscross a few blocks around for leads.”

“Does that sound good to you, Edie?” Ti asked.

“Sure.” I hopped into the truck cab between Madigan and Ti. The truck smelled deeply of dog, and there were all sorts of multicolored strands of fur almost woven into the upholstery by time.

I held the tearstained shirt to my chest. I wasn’t sure what exactly we were going to do, but it was doing something, which was better than doing nothing at all.

* * *

I couldn’t help but peek in the rearview mirror at the dogs in the truck bed. Driving the way Madigan was on the lightly iced roads seemed like a bad idea—I expected them to be sliding around, hurting themselves, as we rounded corners at almost impossible speeds. The dogs in the back appeared unconcerned, bracing themselves against the ruts in the truck bed as Madigan made rolling stop-turn after rolling stop-turn.

“So you … track things often?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how Ti had explained things to Madigan, and didn’t want to give too much away just in case.

“As often as I can. It’s great fun.”

“In the city, even?”

Madigan took his eyes off the road to look askance at me. “Where else would we go?” he said, staring far too long before looking back at the road and finding a slowing car ahead of us. He signaled and maneuvered around it. He reminded me of Jake playing that way old arcade game Dragonslayer, signal, merge, signal, weave. Except that my life was still worth more than a quarter, at least to me. Ti patted my leg, and I switched from making panicked fists to holding on to his hand with both of my own. It was a natural enough transition, especially since every veering left-hand turn threatened to send me into his lap.

“What do you normally track for?” I asked instead.

“You know. Lost things.” He grinned in profile, showing me quite a lot of teeth. “Here we are.”

He used the emergency brake to stop us, and I let go of Ti’s hand awkwardly as the car settled to a stop, bumping the curb gently with the two right-hand-side tires. Ti got out of the car and I quickly followed—I’d miss its heat, but not Madigan’s driving. The dogs in the back perked up as Madigan got out on his side of the cab.

“Jimmie—guard,” Madigan told the biggest dog. It was black and looked like a Labrador except for its square jaw, where it looked like a pit bull. Definitely the right choice to leave guard duty here. As if it perfectly understood its owner, it sat down on its haunches and stopped wagging its tail, slurping up its long pink tongue to appear serious about its job.

“Jenny, Jack—get down.” Madigan swung the gate of the truck open, and the two other dogs jumped out to run over and smell us and lick our hands. Jenny was red, with a thick retriever’s belly coat, and Jack was all mutt, splotchy with black and brown and white, multicolored even down to his one blue and one green eye. “So—your shirt, Edie?”

I handed over the shirt that Anna had cried on with the bloodstained mark from her tears, without saying where it came from. Any normal person would ask about that sort of thing, it being blood and all—but I had a feeling that Madigan wasn’t very normal.

He proffered the stain to Jenny and Jack in turn, who took long whiffs of it.

“Is there anything else, now that we’re here?” Ti asked me.

“This is where the fight was.” I walked over and ran my glove against the dent Anna had left in the lamppost. I didn’t remember the light there working before the fight. I would bet it didn’t work now.

Madigan kept hold of Mr. N—Yuri’s—shirt. Jenny and Jack were circling outward, but how could they smell anything under the snow? Their tails were wagging and I got the impression that they were enjoying themselves, but I wasn’t sure how useful they could really be. All this was really some sort of wild-goose chase, and possibly a huge waste of time. I heaved a sigh.

“Hey, don’t give up.” Ti moved to stand in front of me. I looked up at him. He’d taken off his hood and his dark skin was clearly outlined against the gray afternoon sky. His features had just a touch of asymmetry that made you look twice. He had a strong jaw and a wide nose, and his hair was beginning to grow back in a short layer across his scalp and he almost needed to shave his chin. Burn victims usually didn’t have hair regrow; their scars precluded it. But maybe he was transitioning back to the body he’d had before, because he was a zombie. I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the new growth to see.

“I’m not the giving-up sort. I am the easily frustrated sort, though.” A wind kicked up between us. I held my own arms and shivered.

“I don’t put out much body heat. But I function as an adequate windblock.” He grinned and moved to stand beside me. Somewhere, underneath layer after layer of cotton and nylon on both sides, our elbows touched.

Madigan whistled to his dogs and started walking up the street with them.

“Should we follow?”

“He’ll whistle when they’re onto something.” He was watching his friend and the dogs walk down the street, and I was watching him.

“Mind telling me what all this is about?” he asked me.

He had just jumped through every hoop I’d held out and then some. But— “What’s your stake in helping me?”

Scar tissue around his eyes crinkled in thought. “I have to have a stake? I can’t just be a helpful kind of guy?”

“No one is just a helpful kind of guy. I’m a nurse, but I only became a nurse because they freaking pay me.” I stared straight out at the red stone of Mr. November’s town house. From the second floor, the old lady I remembered peered out from between her curtains, and then yanked her head back. At least she was still alive.

“All right.” He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ll admit I have some scores to settle. But none of them matter right now. I really am helping you of my own accord.”

“How’d you become a zombie?” I asked.

“I didn’t get a choice.” He looked down at me and smiled softly. “Your turn. What’s behind you that’s got you running so scared?”

I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Maybe he did deserve an explanation. I inhaled to tell him all of it when Madigan whistled from down the street. Jimmie leaned out of the truck bed to butt the back of my head with his nose. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">