Jamie let go of Christ, who slumped back down against the wall and let himself flop there. “I object to the designation of ’schmuck,’ you cheesy-ass microphone masturbator.”
“Enough,” I waved my hands. “Enough. Look. We’re tired and pissy. Stop it. Both of you. All of us. Stop it. I don’t have the energy to do all this by myself and argue with you all, too.”
“You started it,” Nick said, but he sidled up next to me anyway, striving to get out of the rain and underneath the old-fashioned hotel canopy. It didn’t give us much protection from anything; but when the wind came swooping down and the thunder rang out loud again, it gave us all an excuse to fold in closer together, and watch the sky without feeling alone.
“The newspaper,” I said again when the thunder strike had petered away. Two ideas were struggling hard to collide in my brain, and when they did I still wasn’t sure they made any sense side by side. “That building over there—next block over, and down one—didn’t that used to be the newspaper building?”
“Naw,” Nick shook his head. “Don’t think so. It’s been in the old warehouse building, or bottling plant, or whatever back in southside for ages. Like I said, high and dry.”
“Naw,” Jamie sided with Nick, then corrected him. “She means the old Free Press building, from back before the two big papers merged. You know the place—back behind the Pickle Barrel. It looks like the Daily Planet, all chrome and shiny stuff. That’s the old newspaper building.”
“Older than that,” I murmured. “I know about the Daily Planet building, and that’s not what I meant. On one of the old buildings near the Bijou theater, there’s a historical marker. I remember it, down by—”
“The river,” Nick finished for me.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Lucky guess. If it wasn’t towards the river, it wouldn’t be bad, and you wouldn’t be thinking about checking it out. That’s just the sort of luck we’ve got.”
I slapped his arm. “You’re the one who got me this close to the water. I was back over at the Choo-Choo until you called. What’s another block or so in a bad direction?”
“Towards zombies and the river,” Christ said from his spot down on the sidewalk. Jamie kicked him gently with the back of his boot.
“Ix-nay on the ombie-zays,” he said, catching a pointed look from a nearby cop with a clipboard. “Seriously. Knock it off. We believe you already, but don’t make a big case about it. You’re going to get us hauled off to the loony bin.”
“How?” he asked, palms up. “Right now, I’d take a ride to the loony bin just to get the hell out of here.”
He had a point. “Regardless,” Jamie fussed. “Just . . . don’t. You hang around shouting about zombies and they might find a way to make you a priority—in a way you most definitely won’t like.”
“Who cares? This guy’s going to rat me out to the news anyway.”
Nick acted like he hadn’t heard it. “Let me make a phone call or two. The producer down on the other side of the river, he’s lived here forever. He might know about the building you’re talking about. Though I have to ask—even if he does know where it is, what do you think you’re going to do? Break in?”
“Probably won’t have to,” I said. “Stay under the cops’ radar. Look around inside, if I can. See if there’s something important there—something that has to do with all this.”
“Ghosts talking again?” Christ asked.
“They were.”
“They never seem to be very helpful, really,” he observed.
“I know, and I wish I knew why. Most of the time it’s like they’ve only got a few minutes to say their piece; and sometimes it’s like they don’t know what’s important and what’s not. The rest of the time, I think they’re just being contrary.”
“Why would dead people be contrary?” Jamie wanted to know.
“Why are living people contrary? Same reasons. They aren’t so different from those of us with a pulse, especially the ones who have strong enough personalities to stay or linger. I think maybe they like the attention, because being dead makes them feel left out.”
Christ had found a cigarette—or part of one—that wasn’t completely soaked. He pulled a plastic lighter out of a cargo pocket and managed to light the remainder. “I don’t know about you people, but I wouldn’t put up with that kind of shit,” he said.
“I put up with it because it’s different. It beats to hell the scores of sad, frightened dead people who just want one more chance to say the things they should’ve said every day while they were alive.”
Nick had his back turned while he chattered into his cell phone. Jamie asked what I meant. “What, so the rest of it is just static?”
I closed my eyes and tried to nod at him. “It’s always the same thing. ‘Tell him I’m okay and I love him. Tell her I love her. Tell them I love them.’ I’m not saying it’s not important, but come on. Say it while you’ve got the breath to do it. And you know what? I think it’s one reason people disbelieve psychics so much—the way the message is always the same. Love and roses. Warm fuzzy feelings from dead child, dead husband, dead mother or wife. It’s rarely specific or checkable. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less true.”
Jamie thought about it for a second. He reached down and took a drag from the semi-cigarette Christ had found on the street. “I guess that does make it easier for the phonies to work—especially if it’s true. Especially if that’s all the dead have to say—that they’re okay and they love us.”
“It’s true. Eighty-five percent of the time, that’s all it is.”
“Bullshit,” Christ said, reclaiming his cigarette. “If you’re going to come back from the dead, at least have something important to say.”
“What could be more important?” Jamie asked him.
“Anything. Lottery numbers. Where the gold is buried. Why zombies are attacking the city.”
I nudged him with my shoe. “Think of 9/11. Think of all those phone calls, tying up the cell towers—from the buildings and from that plane that went down in Pennsylvania. People everywhere who knew it was their last phone call—they sent the same messages, ‘I love you,’ over and over again.”
That shut him up, at least temporarily.
Nick flipped his cell phone shut and rejoined the circle. “You’re right. There was an old newspaper in one of the buildings down there, near the aquarium. And here’s an interesting corollary—just as our First Congregationalist Church was significant for having black and white members, the newspaper was noted for being owned by a black family. You see? All this shit is sort of coming together, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“What shit?” Christ wanted to know, so I caught him and Jamie up as fast as possible. “Themes emerging. Motives. A church fire and some burned up bodies, an integrated congregation and a black-owned paper, the KKK—these are things which ought to, if we knew a little bit more, merge to form a more complete picture of whatever the bloody red hell is going on down here.”
Nick tapped his phone against his elbow while he thought. “What do you want to bet, since it’s not too far away—that the family who owned the paper also went to Caroline’s church?”
“I doubt it was Caroline’s church,” I said again, even though I didn’t have any good reason to. “I just can’t picture it. A rich, respectable black family might have gone to an integrated church eighty years ago, but a rich, respectable white family probably wouldn’t have, that’s all.”
“Whatever. Allen says the place is something else now, though. No trace of what it used to be except the historical marker you spoke of. He thinks maybe it’s owned by Blue Cross or the Electric Power Board now.”
“So?”
“So, I can’t imagine what good it will do us to check it out.”
“What else are we doing right now?” I asked, and they all looked at me like I was deranged.
“Well,” Christ glared up at me from his spot on the sidewalk. “For one thing, we’re not running towards a rising river full of—”
“I’m just trying to brainstorm here, and think of something useful and practical we can do.”
Behind us, another ambulance was trying hard to work its way up to the Read House and meeting limited success. Too many cars were in the way, and too many people wanted too many things from it. Folks who were on the sidewalks, standing there clumped together and getting wet, tried to mob the vehicle. Police pushed them back. A foot or two at a time the stubby medical van crawled forward.
Nick sighed and the rest of us did it too—like a yawn that gets passed around a circle. “Right now, maybe the most practical thing we can do is find a corner, close our eyes, and get some sleep. We’re running on empty here. We all know it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Christ ordered, but he was at the end of his rope too, and not fooling anyone.
“How much longer till morning?” I asked.
Nick turned his phone over and squinted at the display. “A few hours, tops. Maybe less. Maybe in the daylight this won’t look so bad. Maybe the things down by the river will slow down.”
“Why?” Christ complained. “They aren’t vampires.”
I thwapped him on the head with the back of my hand. “Have you actually seen any of them? During the day, I mean?”
“Not during the day. But until tonight, pretty much everybody who ever saw them died shortly thereafter. The mere fact that we haven’t seen them when the sun’s out does not mean they can’t wander about in search of a tan, if they want.”