Dead Things
Authors: Stephen Blackmoore
Raves for
City of the Lost:
“A head-shakingly perfect blend of zombie schlock, deadpan wit, startling profanity, desperate improvisation and inventive brilliance
.”
—
Kirkus
(starred review)
“Blackmoore’s gritty, hardboiled approach to the supernatural is right on the money. A genre-blending fun-house thrill ride.”
— Victor Gischler, author of
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse
“The gritty streets of
City of the Lost
are filled with snappy dialog, and fascinating characters, as well as a rollercoaster of a plot that doesn’t slow down from beginning to end. This is the zombie crime novel we didn’t know we were all waiting for.”
—
Seanan McGuire, author of
Midnight Blue-Light Special
“Stephen Blackmoore could be the illegitimate lovechild of James Ellroy and George Romero—zombie noir at its bloody best!”
—Paul Goat Allen, Explorations
“The funhouse reflection of LA Blackmoore conjures is at once vibrant, seedy, and mysterious—streets so mean, they feel as though plucked straight from Chandler’s DT nightmares.
City of the Lost
effortlessly blends the grit with the fantastical, and paints a world in which magic is to be feared—but not nearly so much as the people behind it.”
—Chris F. Holm, author of
Dead Harvest
“
City of the Lost
is the best kind of paranormal noir: gritty, breakneck-paced, and impossible to put down.”
—Caitlin Kittredge, author of
The Iron Thorn
“Take a shot of noir, a shot of supernatural, a shot of mystery, add a dash of levity. Shake. Serve neat and you’ve got
City of the Lost
, Stephen Blackmoore’s exciting debut novel.”
—The Qwillery
“A zombie crime novel with fascinating characters and a brilliantly written plot. . . . This is one wild ride that I would love to take again.”
—Rex Robot
Also by Stephen Blackmoore:
CITY OF THE LOST
DEAD
THINGS
STEPHEN
BLACKMOORE
Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Blackmoore.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Chris McGrath.
Cover design by G-Force Design.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1613.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is hard.
Not ditch-digging hard. Not cancer-curing hard. But there’s a lot to juggle, a lot to keep track of. It’ll eat your brain like it’s a Little Debbie snack cake if you’re not careful. Mmmmm. Munch-munch. Braaaaains. Just like that. And if you don’t have people in your corner, people rooting for you, helping you out, you’re screwed. I’ve been lucky to have some amazing people in my corner.
Many thanks to all of the friends who have helped make this book what it is. People like Chuck Wendig, John Hornor Jacobs, Chris Holm and other people too numerous to count. Your input and support has meant a tremendous amount to me. Brett Battles, who beat me up in one of his books so many years ago; I’ve returned the favor. A special shout out to Wenhsiu Hassan, who gave me the title for the last book when the one it had just wouldn’t do. My agent, Allan Guthrie, who helped me hammer the hell out of this thing until it looked something like a book. To my editor Betsy Wollheim and the superhero team at DAW. They make me look good. A Herculean task at the best of times.
Most importantly, my wife, Kari, without whom this whole strange writing trip wouldn’t have even happened. Thank you, darlin’, for asking me if I wanted to write a book all those years ago.
Chapter 1
When I pull up to the bar, the truck kicking up dust and gravel behind me, I know it’s already too late to help anyone. Of the eight or nine cars in the parking lot, two of them are Texas State Troopers’, their roof racks still flashing.
The car I’m looking for, a ’73 Cadillac Eldorado convertible I’ve been following since Miami, sits parked neatly in the dirt lot next to a couple of F-150s with gun racks and mud flaps decorated with chrome women.
I check to make sure I have my gear on me, making the sign of the cross as I touch each thing. Like that old joke: spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.
Only this is a smudge of graveyard dirt on my forehead, my belt buckle (an intricate weave of braided iron to ward off the Evil Eye), a straight razor I stole from the man it’d been buried with, and yes, a watch. An Illinois Sangamo Special from 1919. Railroad grade. Keeps great time.
I hope I don’t have to use it.
Next comes the knapsack. I’ve looked inside fifteen times since I woke up this morning, but it pays to know where your shit is.
All the things the discerning necromancer could want: knucklebones, a noose from the neck of a hanged murderer, a pack of cards made up of aces and eights, and a pouch I hang from my belt full of powdered graveyard dirt, salt, ground bone, and blood dried under a full moon.
And a 9mm Browning Hi-Power made special for the Wehrmacht after the Nazis got hold of the factories and before the Belgians started sabotaging them. Thing’s got Waffen marks aplenty.
I’m not a big believer in evil, but this thing is just ugly. It’s a murderer’s gun, a sadist’s gun. Every kill is burned into it like the Third Reich stamps that cover its frame.
When a guy like me uses it, all that energy gives it a wallop that makes a .44 look like a popgun.
I don’t like shooting it. I don’t like touching it. Feels like cockroaches scurrying under my fingers.
But sometimes the best tool for the job is a tool that shouldn’t exist. It’s not as nasty as the watch, but it’ll do. I clip the holster on the inside of my waistband, hope I don’t blow my balls off.
The sun in West Texas is brutal, baking everything into a blur of burnt caramel. Why the fuck anyone would put a bar out in the middle of this limestone wasteland, I have no idea. Yucca, creosote, a scattering of agave and a wind-blasted Quonset hut are the only things to mar the endless landscape.
Charles Tyrone Washington is a real piece of work. Skipped out on a manslaughter charge in Detroit in the sixties and moved into a double-wide in Florida. Started up this bullshit Voodoo church where he bilked the locals and slept with their daughters.
Sweet deal if you can get it, I suppose. Helped that the guy’s the real deal. So, he talks to the dead, curses his enemies, divines the future. The whole shebang. Got some real muscle and he’s pissing it away on Evil Eyes and picking horses.
Eventually talking to Voodoo spirits paid off, and he pulled together enough dough in the nineties to pick up a burnt-out husk of an antebellum mansion in the middle of the Everglades. Six months later some of his followers came by and found his rotting corpse in the middle of a circle of salt and candle wax in the foyer.
And that’s when he really went to town.
—
“Hey, Chuck,” I say, looking at the carnage. “You’re getting creative.” I stand in the doorway looking over a grim tableau that would make Hieronymus Bosch blush.
It takes a lot to keep my cool and not throw up all over the place. I’ve seen death, but this is insane. The lucky ones died in their seats. Five, maybe six guys. Hard to tell in the tangle of body parts. He exploded their heads, leaving open stumps to dump a sea of blood onto the floor.
The others, particularly the Troopers, got the royal treatment. Pinned to the far wall with the blades of a ceiling fan, chests peeled back to show empty cavities, impaled on barstools, shredded by a thousand cuts from broken glass. One poor bastard is just a torso. Christ only knows what Washington did with the rest of him.
The worst one suffered an aborted transformation. Limbs stick out at odd angles, tufts of fur and chitin instead of skin. A dozen small mouths lie open, tongues lolling. The only recognizably human thing about him is his cowboy boots.
There are no ghosts around. This much devastation, you better believe somebody’d leave a ghost. Washington’s already eaten them.
He looks like a wiry, seventy-year-old black man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki cargo pants. Round, thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Typical Florida retiree. Plays some golf, maybe. Hangs out on his porch watching the Cuban chicas go by.