We were halfway up the stairs when the last light vanished. The world went black. I froze on the stairs unwilling to move without being able to see. Manny's arm brushed mine, but I couldn't see him. The darkness was complete. I could have touched my eyeballs and not seen my finger. We grabbed hands and held on. His hand wasn't much bigger than mine. It was warm and familiar, and damn comforting.
The cracking of wood was loud as a shotgun blast in the dark. The stench of rotting meat filled the stairwell. "Shit!" The word echoed and bounced in the blackness. I wished I hadn't said it. Something large pulled itself into the corridor. It couldn't be as big as it sounded. The wet, slithering sounds moved towards the stairs. Or sounded like they did.
I stumbled up two steps. Manny didn't need any urging. We stumbled through the darkness, and the sounds below hurried. The light under the door was so bright, it almost hurt. Manny flung open the door. The sunlight blazed against my eyes. We were both momentarily blinded.
Something screamed behind us, caught in the edge of daylight. The scream was almost human. I started to turn, to look. Manny slammed the door. He shook his head. "You don't want to see. I don't want to see."
He was right. So why did I have this urge to yank the door open, to stare down into the dark until I saw something pale and shapeless? A screaming nightmare of a sight. I stared at the closed door, and I let it go.
"Do you think it will come out after us?" I asked.
"Into the daylight?" Manny asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"I don't think so. Let's leave without finding out."
I agreed. The August sunlight streamed into the living room. Warm and real. The scream, the darkness, the zombies, all of it seemed wrong for the sunlight. Things that go bump in the morning. It didn't sound quite right.
I opened the screen door calmly, slowly. Panicked, me? But I was listening so hard I could hear blood rush in my ears. Listening for slithery sounds of pursuit. Nothing.
Antonio was still on guard outside. Should we warn him about the possibility of a Lovecraftian horror nipping at our heels?
"Did you f**k the zombie downstairs?" Antonio asked.
So much for warning old Tony.
Manny ignored him.
"Go f**k yourself," I said.
He said, "Heh!"
I kept walking down the porch steps. Manny stayed with me. Antonio didn't draw his gun and shoot us. The day was looking up.
The little girl on the tricycle had stopped by Manny's car. She stared up at me as I got in the passenger side door. I stared back into huge brown eyes. Her face was darkly tanned. She couldn't have been more than five.
Manny got in the driver's side door. He put the car in gear, and we pulled away. The little girl and I stared at each other. Just before we turned the corner she started pedaling up and down the sidewalk again.
Chapter 7
The air conditioner blasted cold air into the car. Manny drove through the residential streets. Most of the driveways were empty. People off to work. Small children playing in the yards. A few moms out on the front steps. I didn't see any daddies at home with the kids. Things change, but not that much. The silence stretched out between us. It was not a comfortable silence.
Manny glanced at me furtively out of the corner of his eye.
I slumped in the passenger seat, the seat belt digging across my gun. "So," I said, "you used to perform human sacrifice."
I think he flinched. "Do you want me to lie?"
"No, I want to not know. I want to live in blessed ignorance."
"It doesn't work that way, Anita," he said.
"I guess it doesn't," I said. I adjusted the lap strap so it didn't press over my gun. Ah, comfort. If only everything else were that easy to fix. "What are we going to do about it?"
"About you knowing?" he asked. He glanced at me as he asked. I nodded.
"You aren't going to rant and rave? Tell me what an evil bastard I am?"
"Doesn't seem much point in it," I said.
He looked at me a little longer this time. "Thanks."
"I didn't say it was alright, Manny. I'm just not going to yell at you. Not yet, anyway."
He passed a large white car full of dark-skinned teenagers. Their car stereo was up so loud, my teeth rattled. The driver had one of those high-boned, flat faces, straight off of an Aztec carving. Our eyes met as we moved by them. He made kissing motions with his mouth. The others laughed uproariously.
I resisted the urge to flip them off. Mustn't encourage the little tykes.
They turned right. We went straight. Relief.
Manny stopped two cars back from a light. Just beyond the light was the turnoff 40 West. We'd take 270 up to Olive and then a short jaunt to my apartment. We had forty-five minutes to an hour of travel time. Not a problem normally. Today I wanted away from Manny. I wanted some time to digest. To decide how to feel.
"Talk to me, Anita, please."
"Honest to God, Manny, I don't know what to say." Truth, try to stick to the truth between friends. Yeah.
"I've known you for four years, Manny. You are a good man. You love your wife, your kids. You've saved my life. I've saved yours. I thought I knew you."
"I haven't changed."
"Yes," I looked at him as I said it, "you have. Manny Rodriguez would never under any circumstance take part in human sacrifice."
"It's been twenty years."
"There's no statute of limitations on murder."
"You going to the cops?" His voice was very quiet.
The light changed. We waited our turn and merged into the morning traffic. It was as heavy as it ever got in St. Louis. It's not the gridlock of L.A., but stop and jerk is still pretty darn annoying. Especially this morning.
"I don't have any proof. Just Dominga Salvador's word. I wouldn't exactly call her a reliable witness."
"If you had proof?"
"Don't push me on this, Manny." I stared out the window. There was a silver Miada with the top down. The driver was white-haired, male, and wore a jaunty little cap, plus racing gloves. Middle-age crisis.
"Does Rosita know?" I asked.
"She suspects, but she doesn't know for sure."
"Doesn't want to know," I said.
"Probably not." He turned and stared at me then.
A red Ford truck was nearly in front of us. I yelled, "Manny!"
He slammed on the brakes, and only the seat belt kept me from kissing the dashboard.
"Jesus, Manny, watch your driving!"
He concentrated on traffic for a few seconds, then without looking at me this time, "Are you going to tell Rosita?"
I thought about that for about a second. I shook my head, realized he couldn't see it, and said, "I don't think so. Ignorance is bliss on this one, Manny. I don't think your wife could deal with it."
"She'd leave me and take the kids."
I believed she would. Rosita was a very religious person. She took all the commandments very seriously.
"She already thinks I'm risking my eternal soul by raising the dead," Manny said.
"She didn't have a problem until the pope threatened to excommunicate all animators unless they stopped raising the dead."
"The Church is very important to Rosita."
"Me, too, but I'm a happy little Episcopalian now. Switch churches."
"It's not that easy," he said.
It wasn't. I knew that. But, hey, you do what you can, or what you have to. "Can you explain why you would do human sacrifice? I mean, something that will make sense to me?"
"No," he said. He pulled into the far lane. It seemed to be going a little faster. It slowed down as soon as we pulled in. Murphy's law of traffic.
"You won't even try to explain?"
"It's indefensible, Anita. I live with what I did. I can't do anything else."
He had a point. "This has to change the way I think about you, Manny."
"In what way?"
"I don't know yet." Honesty. If we were very careful, we could still be honest with each other. "Is there anything else you think I should know? Anything that Dominga might spill later on?"
He shook his head. "Nothing worse."
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," he said. "That's it, no interrogation?"
"Not now, maybe not ever." I was tired all at once. It was 9:23 in the morning, and I needed a nap. Emotionally drained. "I don't know how to feel about this, Manny. I don't know how it changes our friendship, or our working relationship, or even if it does. I think it does. Oh, hell, I don't know."