Strange Angels (7 page)

zombie dead in my living room, and here this girl was, dressed like a hooker and laughing. My hand curled into a fist. I took a deep breath.

“I know a place.” Graves said it quietly, leaning forward across the table. He braced his thin elbows and rested his chin on his fist. “If you want, you know.”

Oh, Jesus. Not now.“Why is it there’s always a guy who thinks he can get something out of the new girl?” My fingernails dug into my palm. “Every goddamn town, it’s the same thing. Some guy thinks he’s God’s gift to the displaced.”

“I just asked if you wanted a place to sleep.” Graves hunched his shoulders defensively.

“Jesus.”

Then I felt bad. It wasn’t his fault I had a dead zombie in my house. The back door was open; the place would be freezing in the morning. I couldn’t think about going back until daylight.

Then what will you do, Dru?Dad’s voice in my head, as if he was giving me a test. What’s going to happen then? You need a plan. Right now you’re running on rabbit. Graves was still peering at me, his eyes darker greenish under his curly mass of hair. His earring winked again, a hard clear dart of light.

“Sorry.” My throat ached. How loudly had I screamed? Had anyone heard the gunshots? I couldn’t stop wondering about it. “It’s been a bad day.” You have no idea how bad it’s been .

“No problem.” He spread his hands, brushing away the apology. His coat whispered as he shifted in the creaking plastic seat. “So, I’ll take you someplace you can sleep tonight. Someplace safe. Okay?”

“How much?” I had some money—usually there was no shortage of cash where Dad was concerned; liquid resources were critical to our type of lifestyle. But if Dad was really, truly gone, I had to take careful stock of what I had and make sure I could get more before I started spending like a maniac.

And his billfold was gone. He might’ve tucked it in the car. But . . .

“I keep telling you, first one’s free.” He glanced around the food court. “You want to play some air hockey? Good way to get your mind off stuff.”

I don’t know how I’m going to get my mind off zombies, kid.But it was something to do. I couldn’t just sit here until the mall closed. I’d explode. Or start crying. Or something else guaranteed to draw attention to myself.

“Sure,” I heard myself say.

His face lit up. “Cool. You finished?”

I pushed back my chair and felt my back spasm as I hauled myself upright, wincing and sucking in a sharp breath. I’d probably pulled something, trying to get away from the zombie. “Yeah, I guess. Graves?”

“Huh?” He shook his hair down over his face, but the grin still remained. It made him look a little bit older, cutting lines into his baby face.

“Thanks.” The word wasn’t adequate, and I searched for something else to say. “Nice gloves.”

“Hey, you know.” He scooped up the tray and my still-full cup of ice-cold coffee. The unibrow waggled at me, and then he actually, of all things, winked . “Chicks dig guys in gloves.”

I actually laughed. Call it a miracle.

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CHAPTER 7

“You’re kidding,” Isaid for the fifth time. “In the mall ?”

“It’swarm and it’s safe. It opens up in plenty of time to get to school in the morning.”

Graves ran his hand back through his hair and checked the hallway. “Come on.”

I’d never been behind the scenes in a mall before. They’re huge places, and the stores are only half of it. Behind each store and threading through the entire complex were maintenance hallways and office space, just a thin doorway away. Graves loitered in the hall leading to the restrooms until it was clear, produced a thin rectangle of plastic—it looked like a credit card—to slip the lock on one of the doors with the ease of long practice, and motioned me through. He looked over my shoulder when he did, and his face was a lot older than usual, but it smoothed out by the time he pulled the door closed and made sure it was locked.

Muzak filtered into the maintenance hallway only faintly, for which I was unendingly grateful. My right hand ached, both from the kickback of the nine-millimeter and from air hockey. He played a mean game, this beaky little boy, and it was take-no-prisoners time once I beat him in the first two rounds.

I hadn’t thought about zombies for five-whole-minute stretches, while lunging over the top of the table. It was easier not to think when you were moving. Our footsteps echoed on bare concrete. The walls were unpainted, and dust grimed the corners. “How often does anyone come through here?”

“Not very. The maintenance staff is gonna want to go home just like everyone else; if anyone’s left after they lock up it’ll be a miracle. Even the janitors leave early on days like this.” He took a right and led me into a confusing tangle of corridors that all looked the same. It was warm, at least, and I suddenly realized I was exhausted. I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder, the strap cutting through Dad’s jacket and my Tshirt. The wool of my gloves rasped against my hands. “You do this often?”

“When I have to.” His shoulders hunched, but he slowed down so I could keep up with him. “We have to stay back here for a little while, until everyone’s cleared out. Then it’s safe, and we can play.”

“Play what? More air hockey?” I just wanted to take my boots off and sit down somewhere. A crying fit sounded good, too. Really good. Not to mention a hot shower and some television, while I was at it.

“If you want. Anything we want. They’ve got cameras, but most of ’em don’t work. The parent company that owns the mall is too cheap to put in real cameras, so most of ’em are dummies anyway, and the ones that do work don’t have any tapes or anything. Come nighttime, this place is a playground. There’s shit here you wouldn’t believe .”

I wanted to ask him if he had to go home sometime soon. Decided not to. His home life was his own problem; I had plenty of my own.

Graves turned sharp left, and I found myself in a cavernous space with a huge garage door pulled down, dumpsters lining the walls on the other side. A cardboard-crushing machine telling everyone to Reduce Reuse Recycle! with a cheerful cartoon mouse waving under a yellow-painted sun glowered at us. I shivered, hearing the wind pick up outside the big garagelike door. Thin fingers of cold air caressed my face. It wasn’t the low moan of the wind at dusk, but something about it was hungry and ugly

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just the same. The shivers plucked at the aching muscles of my back, made the rug burn on my left hand prickle.

I kept expecting to hear the tapping again, or the screaming sound of dry tendons working, or a shuffling step.

“You okay?” Graves had turned to face me and stood with his hand on a stack of pallets leaning against the wall. He’d pushed his hair back, tucking some of it behind his ears, and I had to admit he wasn’t bad-looking, just babyfaced and beaky. I could see the adult face underneath, in the way his bones held his face up. Even if his eyes stayed muddy instead of greenish.

I’m not going to be okay for a while. I just have to figure out what to do.I swallowed a lump in my throat, my stomach unhappy with the sheer amount of grease in a mall bacon cheeseburger. “Copacetic.”

“Okay. You can’t tell anyone about this.” He hesitated. I could have told him now wasn’t the time for him to be having second thoughts. “I don’t have anyone to tell. You’re about the only person I know here.” Cut the crap. I’m tired. He nodded, chewing at his lower lip, then turned and shimmied sideways behind the cardboard crusher.

You havegot to be kidding me. I took a deep breath, hitched my bag around so I could squeeze through the narrow slice, and followed.

There was barely enough room for me and none at all for my bag. Still, I struggled through, almost hit my head on something metallic, and whispered a curse. Graves fiddled with the wall and—miraculously—a door opened inward. “They forgot about this once they put the dumpster and stuff down here.” His voice echoed and fell flat. There was a click, and warm electric light played over the dirty concrete wall in front of my face. I squirmed around the side of the door frame and almost fell into another hallway. “This used to be an office when it was a loading dock for Macy’s. When they did the big remodel two years ago they closed this all up, bricked up the back of the office and stuck all those dumpsters and stuff against the wall. I wondered if you could still get in here, and whaddaya know. Neat, huh?”

I looked around. There was a bathroom off to one side, through a half-open door. The rest of the office looked just like a studio apartment. “How the hell did you get the sleeping bag in here?” I didn’t have to work very hard to sound impressed. He pointed up, a faint blush starting on his cheekbones. Two ceiling tiles were removed, the rest discolored and dirty. The only light came from a naked bulb dangling from an extension cord. “I lofted some stuff up through there. Welcome to Casa Graves, babe.”

The sleeping bag lay on a camp cot, and a flimsy plywood bookcase with a Discman and a stack of CDs stood next to a pair of tangled headphones. Jimi Hendrix leered at me from a poster tacked up on the wall. Another poster of a woman’s gigantic fake breasts cradling a cold Bud Light bottle stood above a coffeemaker and a hot plate, with a shelf of dishes and packages of Top Ramen stacked neatly underneath. Black T-shirts hung on a folding rack, and a few pairs of jeans were folded up underneath. It reminded me of Dad’s room, always kept military-neat no matter where we landed. No matter what city we were in, I could always find anything in Dad’s room in seconds flat. Dad.The lump in my throat refused to go away. I realized Graves was standing, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up even further, in the middle of the room next

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to the cot. His face was a study in disinterest, but I caught the darkening of his eyes and the shadow of hurt around his mouth. He was waiting for me to say something cruel. I was starting to wonder about this kid.

“It’s nice,” I managed, around the lump. “It’s cozy.” It was so warm sweat prickled along my lower back. I slid my bag off my shoulder and felt like an idiot for wondering about his home life. I stripped my gloves off and stuffed them in my left coat pocket, trying not to stare at the breasts-and-Bud poster.

“There isn’t a shower.” Graves’s shoulders dropped down from their hunch, relieved. He stripped off his gloves with two quick movements and tossed them on the bed. They looked like crumpled imposters on its neatness. “But the bathroom works fine, and if I have to I can get a space heater through the roof. It’s safe. Nobody remembers it’s still here. Close the door, willya?”

I did. The hinges were held on with clumsily attached screws, and I was suddenly sure he’d rehung the door to make it swing inward—after monkeying through above the ceiling tiles. This kid was smart.

I set my bag down near the bookcase and wondered if I should slide out of the green Army coat before I felt the heavy accusing weight in its pocket again. I couldn’t remember if I’d shoved a fresh clip in the gun.

Sloppy, sweetheart. Always check your ammo.Dad’s voice again. I could almost forget the zombie’s howling bellow and the tip-taps of its bony fingers against the glass. The low moaning sound it made, an unmodulated groan. The sound of my own screams drowning out the gun’s blunt roar.

I shivered again.

Graves had shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on the cot as well. The entire room smelled like healthy teenage boy, a mix of hair, testosterone, and Speed Stick or Right Guard or one of those deodorants with heavy masculine names. “You can take your coat off. You want some coffee? I’ve got some Coke, too, but it’s not cold. And I’ve got Doritos, if you’re still hungry. Noodles, too.”

“No, I’m good.” I picked my way over to the bookcase and peered at the paperbacks. He liked horror novels, lots of Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Dean Koontz. But there was also a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and a stack of books about the Spanish Civil War, as well as a thick, well-read history of World War II. And—good Lord. There was a whole shelf of romance novels, with pink bodice-ripping covers. Right over the bottom shelf of heavy, thick math textbooks.

This guy was getting more interesting all the time.

“I read a lot,” he said behind me, a little unsteadily. “I can’t get a TV in here.” There were shuffling sounds, and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw he was making coffee despite his shaking hands. “Sure you don’t want a Coke or something?”

He was nervous, blushing, and almost stammering. It was kind of endearing.

“Maybe some coffee,” I volunteered, diplomatically. “This is really cool, Graves. It’s like your own little world.”

“No teachers and no jocks.” He made a short snorting noise that tried to be a laugh.

“Come on in and sit down. You look tired.”

I felt tired. But it was weird—I felt safer than I had last night at home. There was no wind moaning at the windows, and I didn’t have to wait for the worst—it had already

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happened. Just having someone else near, talking while he made coffee, was enough to make me feel better.

I folded myself down next to the bookcase and hugged my knees. “You live here?”

A shrug, seen from the back. “Here and other places. Wherever I want.” He vanished into the bathroom with the coffeepot. “We can go out the other way once the mall’s closed down.”

Another way out? Smart, kid. Never have just one escape route.I put my forehead on my jean-clad knees and let out a long breath I hadn’t been aware of holding. Trembling spilled through my bones as Graves splashed in the bathroom. He finally came out, and a few minutes later the smell of coffee filled the small studio. It reminded me of Dad—he always needed caffeine in the mornings. I made his coffee the way he taught me, the way they made it in the Marines—strong and bitter enough to eat a silver spoon. Gran had boiled hers in a percolator, and Dad wasn’t far behind. I was probably the only kid in three states who knew how to run an old-timey coffee bubbler.