Even though I’m a zombie, my driver’s license remains valid—a landmark case that Robin herself had pushed through the court system. However, I’d been required to reapply and take another driving test shortly after returning from the grave. I memorized the traffic rules and passed the written part of the test, but no one should have to go through an actual driving examination more than once. Parallel parking had always been a challenge for me, even when I was alive.
The Department of Motor Vehicles driving-test administrator was a rotund balding man who perspired profusely and seemed very uncomfortable to have to sit in the front seat with an undead applicant. He rolled down both windows and breathed as if he were either aroused or hyperventilating.
I performed my hand signals by the book, drove properly on one-way streets, executed a perfect Y-turn, and, with a generous amount of open curb, managed to parallel park. I left more than the preferred gap between the tires and the curb, but the DMV test administrator called it good enough and marked on his clipboard. If he failed me, he knew I would just reapply, and he was anxious for the test to be over. I got my renewed license.
Robin owned a rusted-out Ford Maverick two-tone (three tones, if you count the rust as a separate color). The original paint job was a brilliant lime green that had faded to a color more akin to snot. The engine puttered and snickered, but the muffler wasn’t too loud, and at least the car ran. Sheyenne decided to dub the Maverick the “Pro Bono Mobile.”
I drove out of town. The landfill’s euphemistic name—the Metropolitan Pre-Used Resource Depository, according to the sign—was a reflection of some deluded city councilman’s idea of beautifying an eyesore without actually changing anything but the name. Sanitation trucks from all over the city, both the Unnatural Quarter and the natural populated areas, poured their refuse here until high mounds of bagged garbage, loose litter, discarded furniture, and cast-off machinery formed an exotic artificial mountain range. Foul-smelling organic stuff belched and burbled as it rotted. Dried paper and cardboard whispered around in updraft circles as if stirred by a witch’s broom.
For some mysterious, and therefore suspicious, reason, Harvey Jekyll had come out here late at night, alone and secretive, and I’d followed him. He must have delivered something that he didn’t want a sanitation engineer, or even his own henchmen, to know about. And that made it very interesting to me . . . although shady company dealings would not necessarily help Miranda Jekyll get a good divorce settlement.
Nevertheless, I wanted to find out what he’d been doing. Since I had no particular desire to wade through the mounds of piled garbage, I went to the man who might have some idea what Jekyll was up to.
The dump manager lived in his own single-wide house trailer parked in the foothills of the ever-changing debris landscape. The trailer had plywood for windows, sheet metal for an awning, and two old and bent folding lawn chairs so that he could sit outside and watch the rot.
After parking in the dirt clearing in front of the trailer, I climbed out of the Maverick and slammed the creaky car door. Three large flakes of rust broke off the driver’s side door and fell to the ground; rust was basically the only thing holding Robin’s car together. I knew what Sheyenne would have said: If Robin didn’t do so much work for free, Chambeaux & Deyer would be able to afford a decent company car. Maybe our cut from the Ricketts art auction would be enough to upgrade.
I called out, “Hey, Mel, you in there?” I heard movement inside the trailer, and the door swung wide open with a bang because one of the hinges was loose and the air-piston door stop had broken off.
A hulking zombie—one of the putrefying kind—stepped onto the front step, swayed, caught his balance, then got his other foot on solid ground. “Dan Chambeaux! How are you, bud?”
“Just great, Mel.” I don’t know how he could be so cheery with his body falling apart like that. “How’s life treating you?”
“Just as good the second time around as it was the first. Let’s see where karma takes me this time.”
I’ve mentioned Mel before: He was one of my very first cases, when his family hired me to find him, but then decided they didn’t want him back after all. Mrs. Saldana had helped Mel get his job as landfill manager, and he loved the work. I had stopped by to see him often over the years.
Sometimes on my visits he’d invite me inside, and we would sit, holding highball glasses filled with ginger ale—not because Mel couldn’t afford real booze, but because in life he’d been a recovering alcoholic. Even though dead, he didn’t want to fall off the wagon, just on general principles. On a bowed shelf above his sofa, sandwiched between two wooden bookends, was an array of old used paperbacks, self-help books that he read with great interest.
Now that I’d also come back from the grave, Mel and I had more in common. Seeing me, he reached out and pumped my hand. I cringed at his strength. “Careful, Mel! Don’t do any damage—it’s hard to fix.”
“Sorry, bud. I just like to have visitors. We zombies gotta stick together. We’re blood brothers—or we would be, if anything was still pumping.”
“I guess we’re embalming-fluid brothers.” He grinned at that. “I’ve got a few questions to ask you about a case. Maybe you could help me?”
“Feel free to ask anything, bud,” Mel said. “You already helped me out so much. It’s what friends do for each other.”
Before I could inquire about Harvey Jekyll, I heard a loud rustling from the garbage embankment. Bloated black plastic bags were nudged aside, and I saw a huge rodent with bright beady eyes tunneling its way out of the pile like a gigantic mole—a rat the size of a German shepherd.
“Holy crap, Mel! What is that thing?”
Mel whistled to the emerging rat and slapped the thighs of his stained pants. “Here, boy! Come on.” He was grinning. “That one’s Spot, I think. Or it could be Fido. The third one’s Rover. I haven’t named the other ones yet.”
“Other ones? How many are there?”
“It’s a dump, bud. There’s bound to be rats. And it’s a big dump, so why wouldn’t we expect big rats?”
The gargantuan rat waddled forward, enormously fat, no doubt because of all the garbage available to eat. Mel patted the brown bristly fur on its head, scratched behind the pink ears. The rat turned to regard me, snuffling, its whiskers twitching.
Two other enormous rodents followed the first out of the trash tunnel. Mel laughed and patted all three. “No, no treats for you today.”
I didn’t think monstrous mutated rats were an aftereffect of the Big Uneasy, but I couldn’t be sure. “This is . . . unsettling, Mel. Why do they grow so big?” I had never much liked rats.