Zoey stood in her pajamas and huge furry slippers, waiting in the foyer just inside the giant doors that probably both cost and weighed more than her old trailer in Colorado. The haunted Halloween tree moaned behind her, the little robotic plastic skeletons clicking around the branches. Zoey’s eyes wandered toward a bowl of candy near those enormous doors and she had to force herself to look away. It was full of these golf ball–sized brownie things with an ice cream core. They sat at room temperature but opening the wrapper triggered some chemical magic that froze the ice cream inside in about ten seconds, while somehow warming the brownie exterior, creating a light crust. She’d had four of them today.
Wu pushed his way through one of the giant doors and she said, “Hey, I need you to protect me from those ice cream brownie balls. If I start to take one, chop my hand off.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to just throw them out?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Carlton is bringing up the box from the gate.”
The two of them stepped out into the chilly night to see Carlton rolling up the winding driveway in one of the electric carts the grounds crew used. He rounded an enormous jack-o’-lantern the size of a small house, the fiery interior casting an orange glow around the landscaping. Zoey hadn’t bought that one, it was already in the storage building with the other seasonal decorations, including the dozens of bat-shaped drones with glowing red eyes that were currently flapping around overhead. She unwrapped a brownie ball and waited for it to cook/freeze in her hand. She had no memory of picking it up.
Carlton’s cart skidded to a stop in front of them and from behind the wheel he asked, “Did you have a specific location in mind for the corpse?”
“I guess just plop it down right here. I definitely don’t want it in the house. Should we wait for Will to get here?”
She’d texted him, knowing he’d be annoyed if they waited until morning to tell him that they’d been mailed a dead body.
“That is up to your judgment,” said Wu. “The box contains no explosives, poisons, biotoxins, or booby traps that I can detect. Just the body. But those are all of the details I have, the best scan I could get just looks like a very blurry X-ray. It is clearly a person, though, and they are very clearly deceased.”
“So no idea who sent it?”
“The return address is fake, it’s the address of the construction site of your new office tower—a lot of the hate mail uses it. But right now, I am less concerned about the box’s sender than I am its inhabitant.”
“Well they’re dead, so I think they’re beyond earthly concerns.”
“So … everyone is accounted for, then?”
Zoey didn’t quite understand the question, then she went cold.
Somehow, the novelty of receiving a corpse delivery had completely obscured the possibility that this box may contain someone she actually knew, or loved. Zoey reached for her phone, found she didn’t have it, then sprinted back inside the foyer.
Carlton had said the box arrived in the afternoon.
She hadn’t seen her mother since yesterday.
Zoey found her purse where she’d left it at the bottom of the stairs, dug out her phone, then almost dropped it with shaking fingers.
She couldn’t breathe.
She dialed her mother.
There was no answer.
That, again, was not strange. Friday night, her mother was certainly at some party, or at a bar, or passed out in some gross guy’s bed. She tried again, no answer. Of course, she could just go out there, see who was in the box, see who her enemies had managed to snatch up and mutilate to death. But in that moment Zoey was seized by a superstition that what was in the box didn’t become real until she set eyes on it, that if she could reach her mother, it would somehow make it so that it wasn’t her in the box, that there was still a chance because the death wouldn’t become final until it was observed. It was stupid, she knew. She wasn’t thinking. Zoey put her hand on her forehead and tried to force herself to think, to be rational, to be like Will. She failed.
She didn’t have any of her mother’s friends’ contacts in her phone, and in fact didn’t know their names. She could try to find her on Blink, if she was in range of a live camera …
Zoey sensed Wu standing behind her.
He said, “Do you want me to open it for you? If it is your—if it is someone you know…”
“Yes. Please.”
He went outside and, after several seconds, Zoey followed. She found Wu already at the box, working a latch. He glanced back at her.
“I changed my mind. I want to see. I want to see what they did to her. If it is her…”
Zoey hadn’t had time to take inventory of who all it couldn’t be. Will had been at the meetings with her all day, but not the rest of the crew. It could also be Echo in there. Or Budd. The box looked too small for Andre.
“Are you certain?”
She wasn’t, but for some reason she felt like it was something she needed to do. If they’d rigged a camera in the box hoping to catch the moment of despair, she’d use it to talk to them, to tell them that she’d find them all and pound them into marmalade.
Wu opened one of the two overly complicated latches, then the other. Zoey’s cat had wandered up from the lawn. They tried to keep him restricted to the enclosed courtyard out back but he always found a way out when he felt like it.
Wu lifted the lid. Zoey steeled herself.
The stench hit her first, a hot wave of it. She tried not to gag and made herself step forward, to examine the contents. It was a man, naked, compressed into the box in the fetal position. White guy, looked fairly young. Definitely dead and not recently, either. Maggots pooled in the bottom of the box. The last thing Zoey noticed before she turned her back to it was that his eyelids had been sewn shut.
Zoey put her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath. It wasn’t any of her people. Good. Then she felt a pang of guilt because of course this was still someone else’s father, son, brother, friend, whatever. Had they killed a guy just for a dumb prank? Or maybe stolen a body from a morgue, or funeral home? Maybe that was it.
Wu was still standing over the open box, leaning into it, scrutinizing the contents for clues with a small flashlight and taking photos with his phone. Which, of course, is what she should have been doing, trying to gather information. Zoey had nothing to fear from what was in the box other than a very bad smell. And, if her enemies had killed this man in her name, this was now her responsibility, like it or not.
Zoey covered her mouth and nose with her shirt and joined Wu.
“Do you see anyth—”
The corpse reached up and punched her in the face.
Zoey tumbled back onto the cobblestones. Her eyes watered. She tasted blood.
Wu stood there stunned for the moment, unsure of what had just happened, looking back and forth from her to the fist that was still standing erect from the box. The naked corpse then raised itself up slowly from the steamer trunk. It moved unnaturally, not using its hands at all to climb to its feet. It just unfolded itself, like a machine. Dark fluids oozed from various holes, maggots dripped off of it in squirming clumps.
The corpse took a step out of the box. Wu sprang into action.
He pointed his closed fist at the figure and with a sharp mechanical snap, an unseen object launched from his wrist and whizzed through the night, punching the corpse in the chest. Blue arcs of electricity flickered and popped off the embedded projectile, the smell of cooked flesh filled the air.
The corpse was not bothered. It stepped out of the box and lumbered toward Zoey. Its face was slack, the head lolling around without purpose, the mouth drooping open stupidly. The sewn-shut eyelids were sunken, as if there were no eyeballs behind them. A viscous stream of dumpster water ran freely from its lips.
Wu ran in Zoey’s direction, pulled her to her feet, and urged her through the doors, back into the foyer. She and Wu tumbled through and spun to close the door on the approaching corpse—
Zoey said, “Wait!”
Stench Machine the Cat was still out there, heading toward the door but not really showing the urgency Zoey would have preferred.
“GET IN HERE!”
Stench Machine, still traveling according to his own itinerary and no one else’s, trotted through the doorway. The corpse stepped purposefully toward the door, just two strides behind him. Zoey and Wu shoved at the door—
Too late. The corpse effortlessly flung the doors open. Zoey and Wu staggered backward. The corpse stepped forward, then its left hand pistoned out and slammed Wu in the chest so hard that he fell and then slid backward on the marble tiles for several feet.
The corpse, Zoey saw, was wearing a glowing apparatus around its neck. It blinked and got brighter, then a hologram flashed to life, an image projected over the corpse’s dead, slack face. It was another face, a translucent mask of light. It had chiseled features and a pompadour of sculpted, unmoving black hair. A cartoon face, not a real one.
The face smiled and in a modulated voice said, “Didn’t think you’d see him again, did you? Everything comes back around, my dear. WE are RISING.”
Zoey tried to process what it had just said. Then she noticed the sloppy surgery scars on the corpse’s shoulders. It appeared that sparing Dexter Tilley had only bought another four weeks or so of life and Zoey was going to go out on a limb and say that he had not made the most of it.
Then Zoey realized that someone was remotely driving the dead body’s implants and that, oh yeah, it meant this corpse was strong enough to tear her in half.
Wu jumped to his feet, making the simple movement look acrobatic. He waved at her and said, “GO!”
The problem was that the place Zoey needed to go—her bedroom, where she had both a panic room and a necklace that could shut down the corpse’s mechanism—was upstairs. Tilley’s resurrected robot corpse stood right between the two staircases, meaning he’d be able to easily snatch her before she hit the first step on either.
Wu knew her dilemma and urged her to just go, in any direction, to just get distance.
Zoey snatched up her cat and ran out of the foyer, toward the nearest hallway, which led to the west wing of the mansion. Behind her came rapid footsteps, each one beginning with a faint electrical whine and ending with a slap of rotten meat, the machinery inside doing its work. Wu was shouting instructions that she could not hear over the sound of her own frantic breaths and hammering heart. She put a hand on her neck, hoping her override necklace would have magically appeared there despite the fact that she’d taken it off an hour ago, before her bath. No such luck.
Zoey ducked into the first room she came to, a space walled with glass cases that had been Arthur Livingston’s cigar humidor. The floor was now mostly occupied by a life-sized animatronic moose Zoey had accidentally won in an online auction while drunk and then quickly broken while attempting to ride it. Before she could turn and force the door closed, a hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her backward.
Stench Machine thrashed free, as usual deciding that he’d have a better shot on his own. Zoey tried to remember Wu’s self-defense training. Don’t pull away, turn and face the attacker, get your balance, strike back, go for the eyes. She twisted herself around, feeling hair getting ripped from her scalp, in time to see that the holographic face was grinning at her, the slack visage of the corpse lolling behind it. Well, clearly clawing at its sewn-up eyes wasn’t going to accomplish a lot.
Wu burst into the room and pulled out a jagged, black knife. He plunged it into the corpse’s shoulder and punched a button with his thumb. There was a flash from the blade and a meaty ripping noise. The corpse’s shoulder exploded, sending bits of putrid meat flying. The arm went limp and Zoey twisted out of its grip, then stumbled and fell to the floor.
Wu reared back with his explode-knife again and tried to stab the ghoul in the lower back, as if hoping to sever its spine and paralyze it. Instead, the one-armed corpse spun on him, reaching out with its remaining arm and snatching his knife hand by the wrist. Wu tried to pull himself away, causing the pair of them to crash into a glass case, sending shards and cigars flying. They then toppled to the floor, the corpse on top.
The corpse’s hand was still around Wu’s wrist.
It squeezed.
There was a sound like a bag of peanuts getting crushed under a boot. Wu tried to suppress his scream, then failed. The noise he made terrified Zoey. The knife fell to the floor and his hand flopped over, now barely connected to his arm.
Zoey had to get that necklace.
She yelled, “I’ll be back!”
Over Wu’s protests, she ran and leaped over the two of them, stumbling into the hall and sprinting toward the stairs. She went up, nearly bowling over Carlton on the way. She made it to her bedroom, then pushed through into the bathroom. She always left the necklace next to the sink …
It wasn’t there.
She looked around, knocking aside face creams and toothpaste. She faintly heard another howl from Wu, the noise rolling through the halls below her. The Tilley zombie could crush his skull any time it chose to.
She looked around the tub. Nothing. She stumbled back out into the bedroom. No necklace on the nightstand. Not on her dresser. Not on top of her mini-fridge, or Stench Machine’s mini-fridge. Had it fallen under the bed? She dropped to the floor, looked.
There was a crash and tinkle of glass breaking from downstairs. But no more screams …
She went back into the bathroom. Had she checked by the sink? She checked again. Had she really checked the lip of the tub carefully? Maybe it fell onto the floor and got kicked under the bath mat. She looked. She was covered in sweat.
It wasn’t here.
Okay. Okay. Plan B.
She needed a weapon. There was a cheese knife on the tray … no, it was flimsy.
She paused to listen.
From below, only silence.
Damn it. So stupid. Wasting time.
She grabbed one of the empty beer bottles from the floor. Through the bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs. Her heart drumming. She braced herself for what she would see when she arrived back in the moose humidor. For what she would do after she saw it.
She slowed as she got closer to the doorway. Creeping down the hall, she stopped about ten feet away and slammed the beer bottle against the wall, to turn it into a jagged weapon.
It didn’t break.
She tried it again. It just bounced.
What the—?
She smacked the bottle against the wall again, and again. It just kind of made a hollow bonking sound. What the hell do they make these bottles out of?
“What are you doing?”
A confused Wu was standing outside the door to the humidor, clutching his left arm, the hand dangling at a gut-churning angle. Carlton stepped out of the room behind him, holding Zoey’s necklace. She stopped bonking the beer bottle.
“I was looking for that!”
Wu silenced her with a head shake, then nodded toward the room behind him. She moved to where she could see inside, noting on the way that Wu now had a reddish-brown stain of corpse ooze on his shirt and neck, and a few wriggling maggots strewn across his chest. The corpse was flat on its back, the holographic face showing some confusion as it found the mechanism suddenly unresponsive. Stench Machine was sniffing the corpse and Zoey leaned in and picked him up before he could start eating it.
Zoey knew why Wu had silenced her. Whoever was operating Tilley was about to figure out that the implants had been remotely disabled—the big tactical secret Will had continually lectured them about keeping.
Zoey looked around and quickly said, “He, uh, stopped moving. I think it’s … cats. The technology doesn’t work near cats.”
Wu said, “I managed to dislodge the Raiden capacitor with my blade, before we went down. We were fortunate.”
“Right, right,” she murmured, going along with this much better lie. “The power source is usually located in the, uh … butt … area.”
The holographic face said, “There you are, cow.”
“I have to admit,” replied Zoey, “if this was all a prank, you absolutely win Halloween.”
Will Blackwater walked up behind them, looking extremely confused. Zoey watched him scan the room and it was kind of alarming how quickly the confusion dissipated.
“Someone operated the corpse remotely,” he said. He looked the holographic face in the eye. “Who are you?”
“I am The Blowback.”
Zoey said, “Great, do you have a name?”
“First name ‘The,’ last name ‘Blowback.’”
“Oh. Of course. And your gimmick is you murder people and turn them into puppets? Is that just for your own amusement or do you have some other goal in mind?”
“Your feigned ignorance does not impress me.”
“We know this is that Tilley kid. Did you kill him?”
“Dexter Tilley’s murdered corpse was found Tuesday morning missing its eyes, stomach, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and testicles. Among other parts. He was found in the parking garage of Fort Fortuna.”
That was a hotel and casino Zoey owned. The largest one, in fact. It was shaped like a sprawling medieval castle and its dining area featured entire animals being roasted over open flame, served by scantily clad wenches. Otherwise the only way it was period-accurate was that a lot of men probably contracted flesh-rotting diseases there.
Zoey said, “So you killed him to, what, send a message to me?”
The holographic face said, “Spare me. We know who you are. All of you.”
“Wait, are you saying we killed him? Did you not watch us go out of our way to not do that like a month ago? Even though he totally deserved it? You, meanwhile, have just shown yourself to at the very least be capable of nonconsensual corpse puppetry.”
“The very next night after Dexter Tilley was found missing his organs, your estate hosted a dinner party.”
“Uh … probably? My life is a never-ending stream of banquets and functions with people I’m told are important. It’s the main reason I secretly suspect that I died a year ago and am actually in Hell.”
“I am sure you ate well that night.”
“Is that a fat joke? You’re losing me.”
“It is very interesting,” said the holographic face, “how every time you and your people plan a feast, another corpse is discovered missing key pieces. Which of you ate his liver? Or do you share it? I hear it’s the best part.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re crazy.”
Will said, “Just turn it off.”
To the corpse, Zoey said, “Not that you’re going to listen to anything I say, but while my deceased father was undoubtedly a pile of hot garbage shaped like a person, he wasn’t that kind of garbage, and neither are we. Nobody is eating people over here. Especially not this kid. You think we gave him a good construction job just to make him taste better? The added muscle would just make him stringy.”
“Like the rest of your team, you are a skilled liar.”
“I’m really not.”
“Tilley was one of us.”
Will said, “One of what?”
“The Blowback. We know you killed this man and partook of his flesh in order to send a message, to try to quell the uprising. It has only birthed in us a new resolve.”
Zoey said, “Wait, is your ‘uprising’ just all of those twenty-year-old dudes who keep mooing at me at public appearances? You think we cannibalized somebody in response to that? To the mooing?”
“You deny now, because you are afraid. You will soon have greater reason to be. The bounty went up on the Skin Wall one minute ago. One million dollars for evidence of your complicity in Tilley’s murder. Sleep well.”
The hologram disappeared, leaving only the slack, gray face behind. Even now, Zoey barely recognized the man.
Wu went to Zoey. “Are you all right?”
“Your hand is barely attached. Go tell the sedan to drive you to the hospital.” To Will, she said, “We need to do something with that body. Does the city still do that?”
The machinery of justice existed in Tabula Ra$a, but was about 10 percent of what was needed. There was a coroner’s office that tried to process the obvious murders but it usually took a bribe to get your case to the front of the line.
Wu, who had made no move to leave for the hospital, said, “They claimed he was their friend, but were willing to defile his body like this? I don’t understand these people.”
Zoey said, “Actually, if I get taken out one of these days, I want you to do exactly this with my body. Rig me up and unleash me on my enemies. Stick a flamethrower inside so I breathe fire. We need to notify his family, so they can arrange a funeral. And to let them know that we’re going to find who killed him.”
Will said, “We are?”
Zoey said, “It’s the right thing to do. Also, it kind of sounds like we have to. Wu, if you don’t go to the hospital right now, I’m breaking your other arm.”
Wu reluctantly left and Carlton went to go get a mop. Will made like he was going to call someone about the body, but Zoey put her hand over his phone.
He met her eyes. “What?”
“Did you do this?”
“Did I do what?”
“Did you decide to finish the job on Tilley? Like you said you wanted?”
“And steal his organs? No.”
She studied his face. “If you did it, because you thought it was safer, or whatever, just tell me. I won’t be happy, but it’s better than us running around in circles trying to answer a question you already know the answer to.”
“You told me not to do it, so I didn’t. I shouldn’t have to keep saying it.”
“But you wish you had done it.”
“We wouldn’t be in this situation if I had.”