I coughed and spat, trying to get the taste out. “Cripes, you don’t smell that?”
She sniffed, then lifted her shoulders. “Smells like you’d expect this close to a butcher shop. Maybe something went bad?”
“Really bad.”
We tried the door on the off chance someone might have left it open, but of course the thing was locked. Both of us cupped the glass and peered inside, trying to see past the coat of dust and glare from a nearby streetlight.
There was a dim glow coming from the display case next to the register and from some fridges in the back with sodas and beer. The track lighting on the ceiling and above the board behind the counter with prices painted on it was turned off. The racks of snacks and junk food didn’t seem to be out of order, and aside from some chips in the paint, what I could see of the flooring, counters, and two tables inside was clean. If the attack had occurred inside, there was no sign of it from where we were standing.
Still, that smell led me to believe that there was more to see here, something we hadn’t found yet. Stepping back from the window, I took a few short, sniffling breaths through my nose, just enough to get a whiff of that decaying stuff again. It wasn’t coming from the front.
Sara followed me as I alternately sniffed and gagged. The looks she was giving me made me wonder just how weird my expression must have been. I couldn’t help the way my nose scrunched up, my eyes watered, or how my mouth was twisting, like I had bitten into a not-quite-ripe lemon. Whatever was giving off that odor was rank. Like bad meat in a plastic bag under the summer sun, left to bake until it burst.
There was a light illuminating the side of the building between the Laundromat and the carnicería. Roaches scuttled out of our path and disappeared into crevices as we moved closer to the source of that smell. It appeared to be coming from close to the Dumpster flush against the wall, next to an exit from the butcher shop.
I couldn’t get any closer. My nose had started running, and my eyes were watering so badly that I could barely see. Taking her cue from the wave of my hand in the general direction of the trash, Sara kept going while I turned away to retch by the sidewalk.
When I managed to lift my head and blink the worst of the sting from my eyes, I saw some of the people in the Laundromat giving me dirty looks as they sorted their colors and folded their undies. Awesome.
Scrubbing the back of my hand against my mouth, I turned, watching as Sara crouched and poked at something on the ground. With her bare hands? Yuck.
Suddenly, she rose, almost tipping over her high-heeled boots. Once she regained her balance, she strode back to my side in a hurry.
Once she reached me, she didn’t look at me, placing her hands just under her ribs and taking a deep breath. She stared at, but I had the suspicion did not see, the used car lot across the street.
“Your nose didn’t lie. There’s a piece of zombie back there. I think it’s a finger.”
Oh, God.
“It moved when I touched it.”
Oh, God.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Though I felt like making like Sir Robin in that Holy Grail movie, now wasn’t the time to run away. “We can’t leave without knowing what else happened here. Maybe someone in that Laundromat saw something. Which way did they go when they left? How did they get here? There’s got to be something more that we haven’t found yet.”
She nodded, but did not look particularly enthusiastic. We headed to the Laundromat, the people inside who hadn’t thought much of my behavior suddenly quite studious in their folding activities. One guy grabbed the remainder of his laundry in his arms and fled out the door opposite the one we were entering. He probably knew something, but I wasn’t in the mood to chase unwilling witnesses.
We went toward a lady leaning over the lower half of a Dutch door, watching one of the TVs playing from a wall mount across the room. She barely looked in our direction when Sara and I stopped in front of her.
“Excuse me,” I said, giving her a little wave. “Hi, there. Can we ask you a few questions?”
She tore her attention off the TV and looked me up and down. “No hablo Inglés.” Back to the TV.
Sara wasn’t deterred. She shot off some Spanish in rapid fire, and the older woman looked at her with surprise. They jabbered back and forth a bit, the lady becoming agitated before long. There were a lot of hand gestures and grabbing at the little gold cross around her neck.
After tonight, I was going to invest in a Spanish-English dictionary.
I gave Sara a pat on the back to indicate she should keep on with it while I moved to interview some of the other people hanging around.
There wasn’t much more to be learned from the others. Everyone I asked either didn’t speak English, hadn’t been around that night, or had only heard, not seen, what had happened. The noises they described were pretty par for the course considering it had been a zombie attack. Moans, groans, and screams had sent most of them diving for cover or calling the cops. They didn’t know what had made the noises, but they assumed it was shady business involving Others.
Sara startled me a few minutes later with a hand on my shoulder. The guy I was talking to eyeballed her cleavage like he hadn’t just been involved in what I considered to be a serious discussion about whether zombies that shamble versus the ones that run are more dangerous. He’d seen some of the ones that had attacked the vampires in the alley, though he had no recollection about where they’d come from or how they had left. Must have been some of that mage “fade” mojo, no doubt.
“I’ve got something. Let’s go,” Sara whispered.
I waved a good-bye to the guy, who failed to return the gesture. He was too busy gawking over Sara, who didn’t appear to notice his attention.
She kept her mouth shut until we were outside, slowing down a bit to mutter her findings to me under her breath before we returned to the car. “Looks like that mage knows how to cover his tracks. Rosalie said she saw the guy, looked right at him in fact, and that he tried to cast a black enchant on her to make her forget. Her family is a line of magic users, though, so she just pretended it worked and hid before he could figure out his spell didn’t work.
“He’s young, early twenties maybe, and wears stylish clothes. Pale skin, dark brown hair, tall and skinny. She didn’t get close enough to see his eye color, but she did spot a tattoo of a pentagram on his palm when he was casting at her. The zombies were brought here and taken away in a U-Haul, driven by a second man she didn’t see very well and couldn’t describe.”
“Not bad,” I said. “Don’t suppose she happened to catch the license plate, too?”
Sara smirked, moving around to the other side of the car. “Sadly, no. She did say the truck had a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the side, so that narrows it down—slightly.”
For a moment, I thought we might have the case in the bag—but then I groaned and slapped my palm on the roof. “Shit, no. We can’t call their home office to ask about rentals without using our PI license. Or call the cops and ask them to do the legwork for us. Damn.”
“Maybe not,” Sara replied, getting in and leaning across the seat to continue, “but I’m sure Clyde has connections, and we know enough to narrow down the search. With the guy’s description, and knowing about the truck, we should have enough info that Clyde could figure out who it was more rapidly than we could.”
Trinity tapped her nails on the steering wheel, not bothering to look back at us as I slid in beside Sara and buckled up. She took off almost as soon as the “click” of the seat belt locking sounded. “I take it you two found something?”