The replies from my hacker came back in a series of e-mails from various anonymous accounts.
As I sorted through the e-mails, Phyllis called. She represented the Araneum as my minder (that’s the closest word I could find to describe our relationship). The arrangement was definitely one-sided; her job was to make sure I understood the implications of my actions…and especially of my failures.
“We need to discuss your assignment.” Her tone was as inviting as the teeth on a steel trap.
My kundalini noir displaced uneasily. This was the first time the Araneum had contacted me like this at the beginning of an assignment. Usually I got my orders via the crow and off I went.
I waited for Phyllis and Mel outside Ojo del Azteca, one of the remaining dives in this part of the Highlands neighborhood, also known as the North Side. The dry cleaners next door was replaced by a boutique and the corner space—empty since forever—was an espresso and wine bar. The sky was deceptively bright for such a cold day, a reminder that much in this world wasn’t as it should be.
I kept thinking about the reason for our meeting and I formed the impression that the big thumb of the Araneum was about to press down upon me.
Phyllis turned the corner of the sidewalk from Zuni to Thirty-second Street. Besides jeans and a green jacket, she wore a knit cap the color of a maraschino cherry that emphasized her milk chocolate complexion. False advertising—there was nothing sweet about her.
In one hand she pulled a black rollaway carry-on. With her other hand she held the leash of her dog, a freakish golden retriever/blue heeler mix. The mutt had a long, skinny frame and a blue-gray pelt spotted with black markings. Straw-yellow hair sprouted from around its neck and bony legs. The dog looked like God couldn’t decide how to finish this mongrel before He gave up.
I said hello. Phyllis responded with a nod. She looped the dog’s leash over the metal railing in front of the cantina.
Phyllis removed her sunglasses and put them into a pocket of her jacket. We both wore brown contacts. Her face revealed no hint of her mood. You could read more emotion from a rock.
Phyllis retracted the handle and lifted the carry-on. We entered the bar and proceeded to a table in the back. The owners must have been stingy about paying for electricity because the place was as gloomy as a cavern.
A yuppie Latina in a navy blue power suit—lawyer, I guessed—sat knee to knee with a much younger man. They were tucked in a dark recess where the corner of the bar met the wall. He held her hand. As Phyllis and I passed, the woman lowered her face. The back of his jacket read LARRY’S LANDSCAPING. No question about whose bush he was trimming.
The only other customers—two men who dressed like they raided a Salvation Army donation box for clothes—occupied a table at the opposite corner from us. They fell silent when we entered and stared at their bottles of beer. Both men acted like we’d interrupted a supersecret discussion, probably about the best intersections for panhandling.
Phyllis and I took adjacent chairs facing the front door. She slid the carry-on onto the table, next to my backpack.
The front door opened and a wedge of light sliced across the floor. Mel’s broad silhouette filled the doorway. He did a quick take of the bar and ambled to us.
Mel carried a battered metal lunch box. He unbuttoned his denim work coat. Both his flannel shirt and his jeans were pock-marked with burn marks.
Mel took a seat. Under his bulk, the chair looked like a milking stool. He placed the lunch box on the floor. He smelled of welding flux and charred flesh. That explained the bandage on his left hand. Mel did a lot of welding but he wasn’t good at it.
The bartender left the bar and came toward us. She was a plump woman with a Mayan profile, a Frida Kahlo unibrow, and golden earrings the size of jalapeños. Tattoos peeked around the neckline of her peasant blouse. I ordered a Carta Blanca, Phyllis a Superior, and Mel whatever was cheapest.
When the bartender left, Phyllis glanced at the other customers. They’d forgotten about us and leaned close to one another and whispered.
Ojo del Azteca was a good place to trade secrets.
I looked at the carry-on and wondered what it had to do with our inquiry into the zombie.
Mel fiddled with a zipper pull on the carry-on until Phyllis pushed his hand away.
“It’s your meeting,” I said to her. “Start with the questions.”
Phyllis set her gaze on mine. The heat of her vampiric nature radiated through her contacts. “What have you found out about the zombie?”
I opened my backpack and pulled out copies of the e-mails I’d gotten from my hacker. “Here’s what I’ve got on Chambers. His commercial footprints—use of credit cards, telephone calls, bank activity—stopped six weeks ago, about the time I’m guessing he became a zombie. His last address was in Morada, where I’m headed.”
“Any leads?”
“A couple. His landlord. His ex.”
Phyllis asked, “What do you expect to find?”
“In Morada? What I’d like to find is a big neon sign saying, ZOMBIE LAIR THIS WAY. But what I expect to find is a trail of flimsy clues. The usual.”
Phyllis unzipped the main compartment of the carry-on. “When you get to Morada, you need to consider something else.” She said this like she was about to drop a heavy weight on my shoulders.
Phyllis reached inside the carry-on and withdrew an odd contraption. It was a shiny metallic case the size of a large dictionary. A four-sided pyramid sat on top. The pyramid seemed made of glass triangles about six inches along each side. On closer inspection, I saw the sides weren’t glass but sheets of thin, transparent quartz. A crystal the size of my thumb stood upright in a cup-sized depression inside the square base of the pyramid. The ornately filigreed case, the use of gemstones as rivet heads, and the gold seams along the corners of the pyramid told me this device had most likely been crafted by the Araneum.
An elongated ruby the size of a pen cap angled from a top corner of the case. Phyllis flicked the ruby like a switch. A faint silvery glow illuminated the crystal.
Mel asked, “Looks pretty, but what the hell is it?”
“A psychotronic diviner,” Phyllis answered. “It detects psychic energy.”
Psychic energy. The two words boomeranged into my brain. This was another example of how my experiences with the weird and supernatural kept twirling back upon themselves.
What originally brought me to Colorado was an assignment I had contracted with an alien masquerading as a college friend. The alien wanted me to find out what was causing an outbreak of nymphomania at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The alien knew all along what the cause was—a bizarre red mercury isotope leaking from a UFO the government was studying at Rocky Flats. What the alien really wanted, and couldn’t get because of government security, was a different psychotronic instrument, what he called simply a device, that was stored in the UFO.
I turned my attention to the diviner. “This doesn’t look like the device I found in the UFO.” That one resembled a box camera with two handgrips. It was a prototype with a more sinister application than merely detecting psychic energy: it was to test psychic control of humans.
After I had retrieved the device from the UFO—at great risk to myself—and learned about its function, I destroyed it. The alien hadn’t liked that, but screw him for lying to me.
I studied the diviner, fascinated by the ostentatious decoration. “So this detects psychic energy. What’s the big deal? I can take off my contacts and see auras.”
Phyllis grew pensive, as if gathering herself to explain something complicated to someone not as smart as she. “Are you familiar with the astral plane?”
“I’ve heard of it. That’s the extent of what I know.”
“In our physical world,” Phyllis said, “we have three dimensions.”
Mel interrupted and said, “Actually four, as you have to include time,” proving he’s more than his Neanderthal appearance.
“Okay, four,” Phyllis relented. “Consider the astral plane as another dimension. One we can access only by using the psychic energy component of our being. You’ve heard of astral projection?”
“I saw an ad about it in a comic book. Right next to one about X-ray specs.”
Phyllis kept her expression arid and inert. “Astral projection is when our psychic selves travel from one place to another across the astral plane. That’s one phenomenon involving the astral plane. Others include remote viewing and out-of-body experiences.”
I asked, “How does this concern the Araneum?”
“The Araneum is investigating the use of the astral plane.”
“For what reasons? Discount travel?”
Phyllis’s voice became a little more dry. “Something like that but we shouldn’t speculate.”
As in, you don’t need to know.
The bartender interrupted when she brought our drinks. She glanced at the diviner and remained unamused, as if she’d seen stranger things in the bar. She poured the beers into glasses and left.
I tasted my beer. “Where did this diviner come from?”
Phyllis took a collection of papers from the carry-on. They were photocopies of pages from a notebook. The writing on the margins used Cyrillic letters. “In your investigation of Rocky Flats, did you ever come across a Dr. Milan Blavatsky?”
“No.”
Phyllis said, “He was a scientist hired to reverse-engineer what the government could of the UFO. These are his private notes.”
Workers at Rocky Flats were forbidden from taking classified material. Sometimes the security precautions were concrete solid; other times, they were a sieve.
I studied the small drawings and the cramped lettering. The notes were reduced images of much larger originals. Some of the drawings were simple representations of the case and the pyramid. There was also one sketch of the original psychotronic device. Other drawings were as complex and indecipherable as the electrical schematics of a rocket ship.
Mel traced a big finger along the most complicated of the drawings. His eyes registered admiration.
I went from the plans to the diviner. “I was under the impression the government couldn’t deduce much from the UFO. Too advanced.”
Phyllis said, “Another lie.”
“Figures. Where did you get these notes?”
“After Blavatsky retired”—Phyllis drank from her glass—“he went public with them but didn’t get much attention outside of obscure pseudoscience journals.”
“Seems the government would’ve tried to stop him.”
“Maybe they did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dr. Blavatsky was obsessed with UFO phenomenon,” Phyllis replied. “When he went to a wheat field to investigate a crop circle, he got run over by a combine.”
Phyllis waited as if she wanted a chuckle, but to me, the point of her anecdote was that psychic energy studies were not only weird but deadly.
I didn’t laugh.
I opened my right hand. “Here’s my zombie.” I opened my left hand. “Here is the psychotronic diviner.” I put my hands together. “What’s the connection?”
Phyllis reached back into the carry-on and withdrew a state highway map of Colorado. “The Araneum has triangulated the source of an unusual set of psychic signals.” She laid the map flat beside the diviner and noted two thick pencil lines. One started in Boulder. The other came from the southeast, off the map.
“Austin, Texas,” Phyllis explained.
The two lines intersected over Morada.