Dust by Joan Frances Turner Page A

congealing the second it hit air. We yanked them upright and shoved them in the direction of the parking lot; they inched like failing windup toys back over the lot and toward the empty road, voices rising and falling in unmistakable hurt and confusion, like dogs wanting to play. We spat at them, bared our teeth, until they vanished from sight.
    Nobody else had heard a thing, or if they had still couldn’t tear themselves from the dance; I could hear the real music again, but it was ruined. Joe led me into the trees, out of earshot. “You okay?”
    I nodded, shaking. “It’s nothing,” he said, rubbing my back. “Just some gang rejects from somewhere who heard the music way off, wanted a party—they’ll wander back to the city, get an even bigger ass-kicking soon enough.” He grinned. “C’mon, Jessie, they were pathetic. You have to admit it’s kind of funny.”
    I waited for laughter to bubble up and banish fear. Joe was waiting too.
    “Those things,” I said, “whatever they are, they were breathing. I felt it. And they bled red. And the smell, I know you caught it, like—”
    “Jess? No offense, but you need to cycle down.”
    “—like antiseptic and bug spray, not even honest formaldehyde, and don’t tell me to cycle down. That hoocow who drove her car in here? Florian and I found her wandering in the woods, looking just like that bunch, exactly like—and she died right in front of us. I mean, she wasn’t really alive, and she wasn’t really dead, and then she wasn’t anything at all.” I growled at a raccoon, who fled back into the brush. “Her body’s beneath that old underpass, you can see it yourself.”
    Joe’s expression had turned wary, that look you give someone who’s raving about how the Jews shot JFK or Clinton was secretly elected pope. “Jessie, remember I was on watch last night with Billy? We went through the underpass, out to where that old cornfield is, and there’s no body anywhere around there. No smell of one either.”
    “You can’t have missed it. She had blond hair, her skin was all sticky like—”
    “Jessie, I didn’t see a damned thing—and if you don’t believe me , does this sound like something Billy would keep to himself? You know what a mouth he has. Ask him.” He gave me a shove. “Well? If you’re so sure I’m lying, go yank him out of a sound waltz and ask him!”
    Could Florian have moved the body, got nervous and decided to hide it better without telling me? That wasn’t like him, though, even if he’d still had the strength. I was somehow sure no animal would touch it. Which left only two possibilities: Joe was lying, or someone took the body away. My money was on Teresa, and would Joe cover for someone who’d humiliated him like that? Never. Which made me feel no better, because it meant he was in fact ignoring his own senses and acting like a fool. I couldn’t figure this out with the help of dying old dusties and stubborn fools.
    I shoved Joe back, a lot harder. We tussled for a while, more feet than fists, and when he got me pinned his mood lifted and his face grew thoughtful. “Of course,” he mused, “the real question is how Teresa ended up with that stink all over her too—”
    “So you did notice?” I sat up, squirming away from his grip.
    “She had her hand wrapped around my throat, how could I not? I thought maybe it was from dragging that ’maldie back, but it didn’t seem like an embalming smell. I didn’t know what it was.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe the Rat Patrol knows something about it—Billy does walkabout with them a lot, you know, goes hoo-hunting with them, he says she wants to try to join back up.”
    Joe and Teresa both used to be in the Rat Patrol, before my time, or so they said. The Rat was the largest gang in our neck of the woods, hundreds, sometimes thousands of members, all constantly trawling the unsecured neighborhoods of Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, South Chicago, Whiting, Marquette, Calumet