The trio were halfway across the lot when a bearded man in a jeans jacket stepped out from behind a van and levelled a pistol at them. Neuland shoved Tilda away. She lost her balance and grabbed Ford, pulling him away from the shooter. Before Neuland could get his pistol out, the bearded man shot him three times—twice in the stomach and once in the chest. Neuland fell back against a pickup truck. The bearded man’s gun had a silencer on it, so the shots were barely noticeable over the noise of the freeway. Ford left Tilda lying on the ground and rushed the shooter. The man turned, but Ford was fast. He pulled a knife from under his jacket and shoved it deep into his abdomen. The man gasped and Ford grabbed his gun hand, pointing the pistol at the ground. By now, Neuland had come around and rushed the man too. He held him from the front while Ford got behind him and, with a well-practiced motion, plunged the knife upward into the shooter’s back just below the left shoulder blade, shoving it into the man’s heart.

  Because the gun was silenced and the view of their area of the parking lot was blocked by trucks, no one in the cafe saw the incident. Ford dragged the dead man behind the van and, with Tilda, helped Neuland back to the Rolls.

  Once they’d put him in the back seat, Ford said, “Get us out of here.”

  Tilda looked at Neuland trying to sit up in the back. “I’ll call 911,” she shouted.

  Ford put a hand on her shoulder and calmly said, “Calling 911 will bring cops. We don’t like cops. He’ll be all right. Just get us back on the road.”

  Tilda started the car and it squealed out of the parking lot as she aimed it at the freeway.

  “Slow down,” said Neuland from the back. “It’s over now and everyone is all right.”

  “All right?” said Tilda. “You’re shot.”

  “It’s not the first time,” said Ford. “The big dope.”

  She looked at Neuland in the rearview mirror. “You saved my life.”

  “You can’t come to New York if you’re dead,” he said.

  Ford said, “We need to get to a motel or something. Do you know anything around here?”

  Tilda nodded, but didn’t speak. There were tears in her eyes.

  “You’re going to be okay,” said Neuland. “We’re all going to be okay.”

  * * *

  Tilda pulled into a Holiday Inn Express and got rooms for them in the back, away from the road. Then she and Ford helped Neuland upstairs and onto a king size bed in their suite. Ford brought a duffel bag with him and set it down next to Neuland.

  “How are you doing?” he said.

  “Better. I barely felt that shitty little 9mm he had.”

  “I could tell.”

  Ford took the bottle of goofer juice from Neuland’s jacket pocket and helped him take a long gulp of the stuff.

  Tilda stood at the foot of the bed with her hands balled into fists and pressed over her mouth. Neuland sat up and held a hand out to her. She reached out stiffly and took it.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “I just need to get these bullets out of me.”

  “How can you be all right?” said Tilda. She put a hand on his chest. “That one looks like it must have hit your heart.”

  Ford took a medical kit from the duffel bag and set it on the bed. To Neuland he said, “Do you want to do it or should I?”

  “I’m all right to do it. Thanks,” said Neuland as he took a set of forceps out of the kit.

  Ford took hold of Tilda’s arm and said, “You should go to your room. I’ll come and get you when this is all over.”

  She looked from him to Neuland, who sat against the headboard, the forceps in his hand. He looked miserable to her.

  “No. He saved my life. I want to stay and help.”

  “There’s nothing to help with,” said Neuland.

  “I’d still like to stay. Please.”

  “Okay. But if you start to feel sick, there’s no shame in puking in the bathroom.”

  She didn’t say anything and her hands were pressed to her mouth again. Neuland took off his shirt. Then he spread the forceps apart a few centimeters and slid them into a bullet hole in his stomach. He made faces while he probed for the slug, but didn’t utter a sound. After a minute or so he removed the forceps with the first bullet gripped between its teeth. There was something ochre on it that wasn’t blood. Ford held out a paper coffee cup he got from on top of the mini-bar, and Neuland dropped in the bullet. Then he probed for the second shot. That one he found a lot faster, and he dropped it into the cup with the first. But the bullet in his chest was harder to reach.

  After a few minutes he gave up and said, “It bounced off a rib, I think. I don’t know where the hell it is.”

  “That’s okay,” said Ford. “When the job is wrapped up, we’ll get you to a doctor and get some X-rays.”

  Neuland nodded and drained the bottle of goofer juice.

  Tilda held a roll of gauze that she’d taken from the medical kit. She stared at Neuland. “You’re not bleeding. I don’t think that’s normal.”

  “It is for me,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ford took the gauze from her and put it back in the kit. “That’s one of the reasons we wanted you to go to your room. You don’t need to see this or know about these things.”

  “Know about what? What’s happening?”

  Very gently, Neuland said, “Tilda, I’m dead. I don’t bleed because my heart doesn’t beat. Bullets can’t kill me because I’m already there.”

  Tilda turned to Ford. “He’s delirious,” she said. “I’m calling a doctor.” She pulled a phone from her shoulder bag, but Ford pushed it back in.

  “Everything my partner just said is true. He’s a dead man.”

  Tilda took a step back. “Does that mean you’re dead too?”

  “No. I’m alive, just like you. But understand, Neuland being dead is one of the reasons we’re such a good team. We can each do things the other can’t.”

  Tilda sagged and sat in a chair. “I don’t know if you’re fucking with me because you think I’m a bumpkin or what.”

  “Listen to me,” said Neuland. “I’m what you call a Marcheur. I died and was brought back to life by people who do that kind of thing for a living. There are a few people like me out there, walking and working among the living. We’re not much different from you. We just want to have a life like anyone else.”

  Tilda shook her head. “I don’t know. I have to think.”

  “Take whatever time you need.”

  Ford took peroxide from the medical kit and used a hand towel from the bathroom to wipe away the reddish-black fluid from around Neuland’s wounds.

  “Thanks,” said the dead man. Ford nodded and threw the towel into a waste basket.

  “What do you think that was about back there?” he said.

  “It had to be one of Garrick’s people, right?” said Neuland. “There’s no one in San Francisco dumb enough to try something that low class on us.”

  “He must have followed us from the city.”

  “He must have. Except I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Me neither,” said Ford. “We’re going to have to be more careful until we can get out of the Bay Area.”

  Still in the chair, Tilda had a hand over her eyes.

  “You okay?” said Ford.

  When she took her hand away, her eyes were red. “I don’t know,” she said. “First, I’m almost shot. Then my life is saved—by a dead man—and I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

  “I understand,” said Neuland. “We’re not exactly regular people.”

  Ford said, “Listen, if you don’t want to drive us the rest of the way to Mansfield’s place, it’s okay. Just give us the address and we’ll get there ourselves. We’ll even come up with a story that will clear you and make us the assholes. Okay?”

  Tilda propped her chin on her hand. “I don’t know. I have to think.” She got up abruptly and said, “I’m going to go now.”

  Ford walked her to the door and said, “If you’re scared tomorrow, just slip Mansfield’s address under the door and you’ll never see us again.”

  She went outside and gave him an abrupt nod before walking down the hall.

  Ford went back and sat at the end of the bed. Neuland was still propped against the headboard. He said, “Good thing she kissed us yesterday.”

  Neuland nodded. “No more kisses from her.”

  7

  Later, Neuland dreamed of the swamp again. It was in the Deep South sometime in the nineteen-thirties. He’d died only recently and had woken up to the wet heat and the constant smell of rot. Rotten vegetation. Rotting animal carcasses. The rotting bodies of the city men who’d come looking for secrets and only found a quick death. Some of the bodies were resurrected while the rest were fed to the things of the swamp. Most were the ordinary wildlife Neuland had seen in books and newsreels, but others were from somewhere else entirely. Hideous things with too many eyes or arms that gnarled into toothed tentacles. Some had the heads of nightmare animals while others—the worst ones—caterwauled and screamed through clusters of tiny heads that looked like leprous children. Neuland’s captors would never say exactly where the creatures came from. Some had been summoned and refused to go back where they belonged. Others simply appeared on their own, either from the bowels of the swamp itself or some other realm that the locals refused to talk about.

  Because he was a big man, Neuland mostly did manual labor, moving bales of hay or crates around the hidden compound. But because of his size and strength, he occasionally had to help drive off the nightmare things when they attacked. Those were the worst times. The times he’d wished he’d never been given a second life. However, he proved an adept hunter and killer, and that earned him both praise and extra rations of goofer juice. These made him stronger and faster, but he didn’t let anyone know. Those abilities would come in handy one day and, being a patient man, Neuland was willing to wait until the right time to use them.

  8

  Tilda knocked on their door at precisely nine the next morning and Ford let her in. She wasn’t dressed in a business suit, but casually in black slacks and a red-and-white-striped blouse, no longer pretending to be something she wasn’t. When Neuland came out of the bathroom she said, “How are you today?”

  “Right as rain. I just needed some rest.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did it hurt when that man shot you?”

  “It did. A lot.”

  “But not now.”

  “The stuff I drink? It fixes me up quickly.”

  Tilda shook her head. “Most days, I think I could use some of that.”

  “Me too,” said Ford. “Listen, we’ve been talking. We don’t like this slow-boat-north trip, especially after what happened yesterday. We want to see Mansfield today.”

  Tilda frowned and looked around the room. “He won’t like it. He wanted us to take another day and meet him in the morning.”

  “If he’s mad, we’ll deal with it,” Ford said.

  She looked at the men. “I’m sorry about running out last night.” Neuland shook his head. “That’s okay. The offers still stands. If you want, we can drive ourselves.”

  “No. It’s my job and I’m much better today.” Tilda smiled pleasantly, but there was a tightness around her mouth. The men understood that after the previous night, she was likely to be a lot more reserved for the rest of the trip.

  Ford and Neuland put on thin white necklaces on before they buttoned their shirts. Ford gave one to Tilda. “Put it on under your shirt, so no one can see it.”

  After a moment, Tilda opened the top two buttons of her blouse, but she didn’t put the necklace on right away. “What’s this for?”

  Neuland said, “It will make it harder to track us.”

  Tilda examined the many segments of necklace. She said, “Are these bones?”

  “Yes. Bird bones. Lizard. Amber beads with insects inside. Some other things, all strung on red thread.”

  “Is it magic or something?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like you’re magic?”

  Neuland thought about it. “I’m not sure I’m magic.”

  “What would you call a walking, talking dead man?”

  “Neuland.”

  Tilda frowned and put on her necklace, buttoning her blouse again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay. You had the whole thing sprung on you pretty quickly.”

  “Points to you for not screaming and running away,” said Ford. “We’ve seen dangerous men do it when they figured out my partner.”

  Neuland laughed. “Remember Robbie Erickson?”

  Ford looked at Tilda. “He ran away screaming like someone put a badger down his pants.”

  Tilda gave them a minute smile. “You know, I’ve seen magic before. Not like people coming back from the dead, but magic.”

  “Yeah? What kind?”

  “Scared kind.”

  Neuland said, “Like the magic scared you or the magic was for scared people.”

  “The second thing.”

  “Papa Shep, maybe?”

  “Dad and grandpa too.”

  “Not your mother or grandmother?” said Ford.

  “Grandma was a widower ever since I can remember. I don’t know what happened to mom. When I brought her up Dad would get upset and Papa Shep would throw things.”

  “Since we’ll already be there, want us to look into your mom’s situation?”

  Neuland came over, tying his tie. “If Papa Shep throws things at us, we’ll throw them right back.”

  This time Tilda smiled for real. “Thank you, but I decided a while ago that it was time to let go.”

  Ford said, “Okay. But let us know if you change your mind. We have more than guns in these bags.”

  “More magic?”

  “Lots.”

  Tilda nodded to the door. “We should probably get going.”

  They went downstairs together and Neuland had Tilda wait in the hotel lobby while he and Ford checked out the parking lot. When they were sure it was safe, Ford retrieved her and they drove off in the Rolls.

  After a half hour on the road with country music playing on the radio, Ford said,

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He was in the front seat and Tilda glanced over at him. “Sure.”

  “Why haven’t you left home? You want to. You’re smart. You didn’t run off last night, so you can roll with the punches. What’s keeping you there?”

  “Mr. Mansfield is the head of the family. I can’t just abandon my family.”

  “What other family do you have?” said Neuland.

  “Just Mr. Mansfield.”

  “He controls the money, doesn’t he?”

  “You can say that again. There isn’t a penny he doesn’t know about.”

  “He’d cut you off if you left.”

  She nodded. “He takes disloyalty very seriously.”

  “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Ford said, “You’re scared of him.”

  Tilda didn’t reply.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  Neuland said, “We’re just trying to get a sense of the man before we meet him.”

  “Right,” said Tilda tightly. “That’s all you care about.”

  “No,” said Ford. “Just understand that you don’t have to be scared while we’re around.”

  “I’m scared all the time. Aren’t you?”

  “Us? We’re too dumb to be scared.”

  Neuland said, “I can’t tie my shoes without his help.”

  “And I can’t work a toothpaste tube.”

  Tilda laughed a little. “You two. Sometimes I don’t know how much of what you say to believe.”

  “Believe this,” said Neuland. “We have your back.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “That’s a good start,” said Ford.

  The men watched the road behind them to see if they were being followed but didn’t see anything of note.

  * * *

  When they reached Red Bluff, Tilda said, “Do you mind if we stop here for a while?”

  “You want to get lunch?” said Ford.

  “We can do that. But I just don’t want…”

  “You don’t want to get home too early.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would it help if you called and told him we were coming?” said Neuland.

  “Mr. Mansfield doesn’t like phones.”

  “He doesn’t have one?”

  “He has a phone, but I’m the only one who uses it.”

  Ford said, “What if we called him instead of you?”

  “I’m the only one who uses the phone.”

  “There isn’t anyone to take a message?”

  “Just me.”

  Ford frowned and Neuland said, “Why is he scared of the phone?”

  Tilda shook her head. “Mr. Mansfield is scared of his shadow.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Ford pointed to a Denny’s a short distance away. “Let’s stop here and have a leisurely lunch. We don’t have to get to him right this minute.”

  “As long as we’re there while it’s still light,” said Neuland.

  Tilda said, “Why light?”

  “I like to see a place before I go inside.”

  “It makes it easier to find the way out,” said Ford.

  “You think of everything,” said Tilda.

  “If we thought of everything, I wouldn’t have gotten shot,” said Neuland.

  Tilda squeezed the steering wheel harder. “Do you think we’re safe now?”

  “I’ve been watching. No one is following us.”

  “And we have our necklaces,” said Ford.

  “If you’re sure.”

  “We are.”

  Ford and Tilda ate lunch, had dessert, and drank pots of coffee while Neuland sipped from his bottle. They stayed until it was late afternoon. Tilda, who’d relaxed during lunch, tensed up again when it came to leave. Neuland left their waitress a hundred-dollar tip.

 

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