Dead and Alive

CHAPTER 55

Duke led them across a wide earthen rampart, between vast pits of trash, through the dump, as if he knew the way.

With the moon and the stars sequestered behind ominous clouds, Crosswoods for the most part lay in darkness, although a few small fires burned out there in the black remoteness.

Carson and Michael followed the dog, in the company of Nick Frigg and Gunny Alecto, who with flashlights picked out potholes and places where the crumbling brink might be treacherous, as if every detail of this terrain was engraved in the memory of each.

“I’m a Gamma,” Nick said, “or I was, and Gunny here — she’s an Epsilon.”

“Or was,” she said. “Now I’m reborn freeborn, and I don’t hate anymore. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“It’s like we’ve been living with bands of iron around our heads, and now they’re cut away, the pressure gone,” said Nick.

Carson didn’t know what to make of their strange born-again declarations. She still expected one of them suddenly to come at her with no more goodwill than a buzz saw.

“Sign, sink, spoon, spade, soup, stone, spinach, sparkler, soda, sand, seed, sex. Sex!” Gunny laughed with delight that she had found the word she wanted. “Man, oh, man, I wonder what it’ll be like the next time the whole dump gang gets sexed up together, going at each other every which way, but none of us angry, nobody punching or biting, just doing all the better kind of stuff to each other. It should be interesting.”

“It should,” Nick said. “Interesting. Okay, folks, right up here, we’re gonna go down a ramp into the west pit. See the torches and oil lamps out there a ways? That’s where Deucalion’s waiting.”

“He’s waiting out there by the big hole,” Gunny said.

Nick said, “We’re all going down the big hole again.”

“This is some night,” Gunny declared.

“Some crazy night,” Nick agreed.

“What a night, huh, Nick?”

“What a night,” Nick agreed.

“Down the big hole again!”

“It’s sure a big hole.”

“And we’re going down it again!”

“We are, for sure. The big hole.”

“Mother of all gone-wrongs!”

“Something to see.”

“I’m just all up!” said Gunny.

“I’m all up, too,” Nick said.

Grabbing at Nick’s crotch, Gunny said, “I bet you are!”

“You know I am.”

“You know I know you are.”

“Don’t I know?”

Carson figured she was no more than two conversational exchanges from either bolting back to the car or emptying the Urban Sniper into both of them.

Michael saved her sanity by breaking the rhythm and asking Nick, “How do you live with this stench?”

“How do you live without it?” Nick asked.

From the top of the rampart, they descended a slope of earth, into the west pit. Trash crunched and crackled and rustled underfoot, but it was well-compacted and didn’t shift much.

More than a dozen people stood with Deucalion, but he was a head taller than the tallest of them. He wore his long black coat, the hood thrown back. His half-broken and tattooed face, uplit by torchlight, was not as disturbing as it ought to have been in this setting, under these circumstances. In fact, he had an air of calm certainty and unflinching resolve that reminded Carson of her father, who had been a military man before becoming a detective. Deucalion projected that competence and integrity that motivated men to follow a leader into battle — which apparently was what they were soon to do.

Michael said to him, “Hey, big guy, you’re standing there like we’re in a rose garden. How do you tolerate this stench?”

“Controlled synesthesia,” Deucalion explained. “I convince myself to perceive the malodors as colors, not smells. I see us standing in a weave of rainbows.”

“I’m going to hope you’re pulling my chain.”

“Carson,” Deucalion said, “there’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

From behind Deucalion stepped a beautiful woman in a dress stained and crusted with filth.

“Good evening, Detective O’Connor.”

Recognizing the voice from the phone, Carson said, “Mrs. Helios.”

“Yes. Erika Four. I apologize for the condition of my dress. I was murdered little more than a day ago and buried in garbage. My darling Victor didn’t think to send me here with a supply of moist towelettes and a change of clothes.”