Kin, who aren’t particularly fond of us either. And this is not a zombie. There are no such things as zombies.”
The torso on the floor twitched, convulsed, and for a gruesome and nearly pants-wetting moment, I was positive it was going to get to its feet and keep going, decapitated or not. Head? Who needed that? I was damn grateful Goodfellow wasn’t here to answer that question for me.
“No zombies. Thanks for clearing that up for me. With it rotting and smelling like roadkill, I let myself jump to conclusions.” Dramatic, my ass. I stepped over its splayed arm and worked further on the urine-suppression issue when a hand with thick twisted nails grabbed my ankle. Even badass monster killers had freaked-out moments and this was one of them.
“Always cut their head off, and even then it takes a minute of two for them to die,” Leandros advised. “Don’t bother with their arms or legs. They’ll only pick them up and do their best to bludgeon you to death with them.”
“The head. No arms or legs. I’ll write it down. Just let me get my notebook.” I kicked the hand off my ankle and went into my room, then immediately under the bed. When I returned, I had two things with me I didn’t need memories to know that I loved with all the passion of an alcoholic for his next drink. In one hand I had a matte black Desert Eagle .50 and in the other, a knife, also matte black. She was a Ka-Bar serrated combat knife, and if she was good enough for the United States Marine Corps, she might let me survive taking a leak in peace. It wasn’t that peculiar that I could remember things like that, weapons down to the last detail, but I couldn’t remember a brother. That could be blamed on the fact that he and my whole life up until a week ago would take up a much bigger chunk of my gray matter than the best weapons to use to clear a path to the toilet paper.
“Cover me,” I said, stepping over the body this time … after giving it a solid kick in the ribs. He wanted me to be prepared, he’d said. I was prepared, but no one was going to pass up pausing to sightsee at what he thought was a zombie. “I’m going in. I’ll flush twice if I need reinforcements.”
It’d been a long drive and all the new information—new to me at any rate—in the world couldn’t change one of life’s most basic facts: When you gotta go, you gotta go.
5
“Who am I?”
Leandros was fishing a feather out of his soy milk with an irritated sigh when the question registered. Discarding the feather on the table, he looked at me, and it was strange. It had been strange, weird, and just fucking bizarre from the moment he’d walked into the Oleander Diner—seeing my eyes gazing back at me, not that I spent a lot of time looking at my own in mirrors. But that didn’t matter. There was someone who was literally part of me walking around in the world. We shared blood, flesh, DNA. We were joined, chained together, in a way only nature could pull off. It shouldn’t have felt that odd. How many people didn’t have blood relatives? None. How many people didn’t have brothers or sisters? It was so normal to have siblings that not having a brother or sister would’ve been more statistically off than having one—or that was what I guessed. I didn’t much care about accuracy and statistics. It didn’t change the fact that looking at part of myself was stranger than bathroom-loving spiders and nonzombies by far and away, and I had no idea why.
Maybe because you don’t deserve it.
Bullshit. I did too deserve it. Hard worker, monster killer, protector of the weak, kicker of the alcoholic and perverted ass. Why wouldn’t I deserve family?
“Who are you?” He distracted me from my inner pep talk/argument with myself. “As in you are Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan? That you work in this bar that cannot serve one drink in three years that hasn’t had at least one feather in it? That you hunt monsters if they warrant it?” Resigned to
The torso on the floor twitched, convulsed, and for a gruesome and nearly pants-wetting moment, I was positive it was going to get to its feet and keep going, decapitated or not. Head? Who needed that? I was damn grateful Goodfellow wasn’t here to answer that question for me.
“No zombies. Thanks for clearing that up for me. With it rotting and smelling like roadkill, I let myself jump to conclusions.” Dramatic, my ass. I stepped over its splayed arm and worked further on the urine-suppression issue when a hand with thick twisted nails grabbed my ankle. Even badass monster killers had freaked-out moments and this was one of them.
“Always cut their head off, and even then it takes a minute of two for them to die,” Leandros advised. “Don’t bother with their arms or legs. They’ll only pick them up and do their best to bludgeon you to death with them.”
“The head. No arms or legs. I’ll write it down. Just let me get my notebook.” I kicked the hand off my ankle and went into my room, then immediately under the bed. When I returned, I had two things with me I didn’t need memories to know that I loved with all the passion of an alcoholic for his next drink. In one hand I had a matte black Desert Eagle .50 and in the other, a knife, also matte black. She was a Ka-Bar serrated combat knife, and if she was good enough for the United States Marine Corps, she might let me survive taking a leak in peace. It wasn’t that peculiar that I could remember things like that, weapons down to the last detail, but I couldn’t remember a brother. That could be blamed on the fact that he and my whole life up until a week ago would take up a much bigger chunk of my gray matter than the best weapons to use to clear a path to the toilet paper.
“Cover me,” I said, stepping over the body this time … after giving it a solid kick in the ribs. He wanted me to be prepared, he’d said. I was prepared, but no one was going to pass up pausing to sightsee at what he thought was a zombie. “I’m going in. I’ll flush twice if I need reinforcements.”
It’d been a long drive and all the new information—new to me at any rate—in the world couldn’t change one of life’s most basic facts: When you gotta go, you gotta go.
5
“Who am I?”
Leandros was fishing a feather out of his soy milk with an irritated sigh when the question registered. Discarding the feather on the table, he looked at me, and it was strange. It had been strange, weird, and just fucking bizarre from the moment he’d walked into the Oleander Diner—seeing my eyes gazing back at me, not that I spent a lot of time looking at my own in mirrors. But that didn’t matter. There was someone who was literally part of me walking around in the world. We shared blood, flesh, DNA. We were joined, chained together, in a way only nature could pull off. It shouldn’t have felt that odd. How many people didn’t have blood relatives? None. How many people didn’t have brothers or sisters? It was so normal to have siblings that not having a brother or sister would’ve been more statistically off than having one—or that was what I guessed. I didn’t much care about accuracy and statistics. It didn’t change the fact that looking at part of myself was stranger than bathroom-loving spiders and nonzombies by far and away, and I had no idea why.
Maybe because you don’t deserve it.
Bullshit. I did too deserve it. Hard worker, monster killer, protector of the weak, kicker of the alcoholic and perverted ass. Why wouldn’t I deserve family?
“Who are you?” He distracted me from my inner pep talk/argument with myself. “As in you are Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan? That you work in this bar that cannot serve one drink in three years that hasn’t had at least one feather in it? That you hunt monsters if they warrant it?” Resigned to
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