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"You ith To a tattoo on the tabletop "Look, I know I pro to tell you some of it The rest … Well, maybe you better hear that from your brother"
"From Tom? Why?"
The artist cleared his throat "Because To her for five years"
17
THE ARTIST POURED HIMSELF A THIRD CUP OF COFFEE, THOUGHT ABOUT IT, then got up and fetched a bottle of bourbon from a cupboard and poured a healthy shot into his cup He didn’t offer the bottle to Benny, as fine with that The stuff srew up in Canada," Sacchetto said "Toronto I came to the States when I was fresh out of art school, and for a while Iquick portraits of tourists on the boardwalk in Venice Beach Then I took a couple of courses in forensic art, and landed a job working for the Los Angeles Police Depart sketches of runaways, of suspects That sort of stuff I was always good at asking the right questions, so I could get inside the head of a witness to a cri for soet a face I was in a police station on First Night Lots of cops around uns It’s how I survived"
Benny didn’t kno this was going to relate to the Lost Girl, but the artist was in gear now, and he didn’t want to interrupt the man’s flow He placed the card on the table between them, and sat back to listen
Sacchetto sipped his spiked coffee, hissed, and plunged back in
"You grew up after, kid, so all you know about is this world The world after And I know you’ve probably learned a lot about the world before the Fall in school or fro people talk So you probably have a sense of it, but that’s really not the saed to that world You live here in toith a slice of what’s left of the population What’s our head count at the New Year’s census? Eight thousand? When I orking on the boardwalk, I’d see three ti up the sun The freeere packed with tens of thousands of cars, horns blaring, people yelling I used to hate the crowd, hate the noise But … one--I’ve missed it every day since The world is too quiet now"
Benny nodded, but he didn’t agree There was always so in town, always some noise or chatter The only quiet he’d heard was out in the Ruin
"When the dead rose … The noise changed from the sound of life in constant ht I heard the first screauy in the drunk tank died frouess the cops didn’t realize how hurt he was They thought he was asleep on the bunk, didn’t knoas dead Then he woke up, if that’s the right word ‘Resurrected’ is closer, I guess Or maybe there should have been neords for it If there’d been tier, I’ Thing is, the zoms--they weren’t really ‘back’ from the dead, you know? They were the dead It’s been fourteen years, and the idea still won’t fit intoinward--or backward--at iination could not reconcile
"The Lost Girl," Benny proet to it how I need to get to it, because one thing leads to another, and if I tell it out of order, you uy in the cell started biting the other drunks Everybody was screaht they had a nutcase on their hands, so they did what they were trained to do: They unlocked the cell to try and break up the fight But by then at least one or two of the other drunks were dead from bites to their throats or arteries It was a , cops shouting But I just stood there, staring All of the colors, you know? The bright red The pale white of bloodless skin The gray lips and black eyes The blue of the police uniforms The blue-white arcs of electricity as they used Tasers In a weird, sick way it was beautiful Yeah, I can see the look in your eyes, and I kno crazy that sounds, but I’s the way I see the all the time I was around pain and loss all the ti with the police, I’d never been there at the moment a cri played out in all the colors in my paint box I was transfixed I couldn’t move And then the dead drunks woke up, and they started biting the cops After that … The colors blurred, and I don’t reunfire The younger cops and all of the support staff--the people eren’t street cops--they went crazy Screa into one another
"It made it easier for the dead to catch them, and the more people they bit, the more the situation went all to hell A cop I kneorabbed my sleeve and pulled me away a second before one of the zombies could take a bite out of me She shovedlot She toldThen she turned and went back down the hall to get soain All I heard was gunfire and the moans of the dead"
"Is that where it all started?" Benny asked
The artist shrugged "I don’t think so Over the years you talk to people, and you hear a hundred stories about how it all started You knohat I really think?"
Benny shook his head
"I think that it doesn’t matter one little bit It happened The dead rose, we fell We lost the war and we lost the world End of story How it happened doesn’tnext door to the apocalypse, kid It’s right on the other side of that big fence The Rot and Ruin is the real world Our town isn’t anything more than the last bits of mankind’s dream, and we’re stuck here until we die off"
"You always this depressing or is it that crap you poured in your coffee?"
Sacchetto tilted his head to one side and stared at Benny for a ten count before a slow s, is it, kid?"