The story shook me and I studied Quinton’s face; he looked grim and didn’t meet my eyes. I couldn’t think of what to say, so we just walked on in silence.
We headed up the hill toward the Union Gospel Mission in Chinatown, hoping to catch some more of the undergrounders sitting still to have dinner.
UGM took in families and women as well as men and were a little more open to letting us come in and talk to people, though I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have let me in without Quinton beside me. The volunteers running the kitchen and dining room told us we could talk to anyone in the common room, but we couldn’t go into the sleeping areas and that was fine by me. I figured most of the people we wanted to see would be awake, but I was surprised by how many people had already gone to bed.
“Homeless is hard work,” one of the volunteers said. “These people are on their feet all day, and having no home doesn’t mean a lot of them don’t work or try to get work. If nothing else, they panhandle, sweep sidewalks, wash windows, do manual day labor, and walk their rounds, looking for work, or food, or recyclables—whatever they do to put a little change in their pockets. They hit the hay while the night’s still young and its not only because the good places to sleep fill up fast. Sometimes going to bed early is the only way to get any sleep at all.”
That puzzled me. “It seems quiet compared to the street and its warm. Why don’t they sleep?”
“They’re worried about being robbed or attacked. Even in here where we try to make it safe.”
I looked at the heaving roomful of people. In such a mob scene, where no one was turned away until the shelter was full, crimes would be easy to perpetrate.
Though the theft of what these people owned was petty to the law, it would be much more important to the people who had so little to begin with. Assault of some kind would be even worse.
“They must live in a state of constant paranoia,” I said.
“Yup. That’s why a lot of them drink or use drugs—though we don’t allow that here—so they don’t have to feel so much. Despair’s an easy trap to fall into.”
I could see that too in the sick, sad colors that swirled around many of the figures in the room. Here and there, hot sparks and columns of brighter or cruder emotions pushed up from the low-lying fog of exhaustion. The smell that clung to them seemed to be as much despair or apathy as dirt.
“How do you keep doing this? Doesn’t it grind you down?”
The volunteer gave a tired smile. “The Lord gives me strength. If I can help some of them in His name, even if it’s just a night’s hot meal or a blanket, then maybe they will find hope and strength to rise from this.”
A child’s wail distracted us. “Oh, boy… I’d better go see what that is. You know, if you have a lot of questions about who’s doing what, you might want to talk to Sandy over there.” She pointed and I followed her indication to a woman sitting against the near wall in a bright yellow energy corona that sent tendrils over everything near it. “She’s a little… imaginative, but she keeps a sharp eye on things.”
Then the volunteer left me alone.
I glanced around and spotted Quinton moving slowly through the room. He seemed to be making slow progress, so I thought I’d give Sandy a try. I walked over to where she was sitting and plopped myself onto the floor in front of her. My knee complained a little at the sudden acute angle as I folded my legs.
She was probably in her mid-sixties—though it was hard to tell the ages of the homeless and most seemed much older than they had to be. Her salt-and-pepper hair was clipped very short, and she was curiously round and thin at the same time as if she’d been comfortably well off before something had changed her circumstances drastically. She had a pair of very large glasses that she adjusted on her nose as I sat down. She was still shorter than me, but not tiny, so I guessed she was about average height when standing. She was wearing a white raincoat over a collection of blue and purple sweaters and skirts and ragged work boots. She smelled of potting soil and talcum powder.
She met my eyes at once. “Hello,” she said. “Do you need help?”
“Are you Sandy?” I asked.
She nodded once. “I am Sandy. What do you want?”
“The volunteer back there said you see everything that happens around here, and I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“I can answer some. So long as they don’t blow my cover.”
“Your cover?”
“Yes. I’m undercover. Part of an ongoing investigation. I can’t discuss the details. You’d have to call my lieutenant.”
“Oh.” She didn’t sound much like any undercover cop I’d ever met—they don’t go around saying they’re undercover for one thing. But she seemed willing to talk if I was willing to play along. So I did. “I’ll be discreet when I call. What’s your full name?”
“Detective Sergeant Sandra Livengood.”
“Thank you, Sandy. Here’s the situation. I’m a private investigator—”
She interrupted me. “Oh, I know who you are, Ms. Blaine. I see you in the Square all the time. We’ve checked you out. Go on.”
That startled me a little, but it was plausible that she had seen me and did know who I was if she spent enough time in Pioneer Square. Though it was strange that I didn’t recognize her. In spite of that creepy factor, I went on. “I’m trying to discover if there’s been anything… strange going on in the area around the underground accesses in Pioneer Square.”
“Oh, that. Yes, there’ve definitely been more of them lately.” As she was talking to me, she scanned the room, watching constantly.
“More what?”
“Zombies. I’m pretty sure some of them are recently coined, not just immigrants or plants. The new ones smell less.”
“Immigrant zombies? Where do they come from?”
“Oh, for the love of—They come from China. On boats. In containers. Or they come in from Tacoma and Bellingham at their master’s bidding. You can bet we’ll figure out who he is someday. We can’t let this zombie thing get out of hand. Luckily, they’re easy to kill.”
If I hadn’t seen one myself, I’d have thought she was totally bonkers. As it was, I thought she was mostly bonkers. “What did you mean by ‘recently coined’?”
“I mean they’re the recent dead raised by whatever voodoo someone is up to. I really could wish the department was a little more on the ball about that—I know they’re fragile, but that doesn’t mean zombies aren’t a threat for as long as they do survive. Good Lord, they’re not exactly the sort of things you want crawling around in infrastructure. Next to bioterrorism, there’s not much worse than a zombie in the water supply. They’re no treat in the electrical systems, either.”
“Could their appearance be related to the spate of disappearances and deaths among the homeless?”
“Certainly! I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. Now you mention it, I think the first one turned up a few weeks after they found that leg at the construction site on Occidental South. I’ve found a few bits and pieces since then.”
“What sort of bits and pieces?”
“Body parts. Let me think. A few fingers, a toe, a hand, a foot, most of an arm.”
“Where did you find them?” I asked, leaning forward.
“Some of the fingers I found in the alley behind the kite shop. The arm was down under Jackson Street. The foot… I think that was up against the wall by the Grand Central Bakery’s glass porch, though that might have been the hand—I’d have to look at my notes. The toe I found on Yesler in a stairwell. No—I’m confusing that with the hand. Definitely. I found the hand in the stairwell by Bud’s Jazz Records. The toe was on Yesler, but it was just next to the door the Underground tour uses when they come up from the bank. The tourists probably walked right past it and didn’t notice—it looked like a piece of dog dropping.”