The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(54)

“Aww, shit—it’s Hot Stuff, Renny!”

“Yep.” Jesus, wasn’t there anyone whose life hadn’t been touched by Harvey Comics?

Victor Jacks had gotten his ink at a Sunset Boulevard parlor called Skin Illos, at the behest of Nikki, who had been his girlfriend of record prior to Barb. Barb had heard you could bleach tattoos by using a laser. She hadn’t been able to work up the spit to suggest this to Victor prior to his very timely demise.

“Renny…hon…I don’t want to make you mad or nothin, but—”

“But?”

“What if Victor…you know, keeps coming back every time we, you and I…you know.”

“Victor ain’t coming back again.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“What I wanted to do originally. Dump him in the sewer. What’s left of him. Let the rats chow down.”

“Guess we’re gonna need another Hefty bag, huh?”

Barb grimaced at the sliced-and-diced assemblage of tissue on the floor. It relaxed and settled, shifting softly. Renny stared at it, too, pant-ing, with shiny eyes, the sweat leaving his chin in droplets.

“But first, babe—hand me that meat cleaver.”





The manhole cover weighed ninety-five pounds, give or take. Renny had the advantages of a pry bar and good upper torso strength. Thus were the headless, autopsied, dismembered, broken-boned earthly rem-nants of Victor Jacks consigned to LA County waste disposal network.

Hacking Victor into itty-bitty bite-sized morsels had given Renny a peculiar thrill—the same excitement that had granted him a full-on chubby while bludgeoning Vic-baby the first time.

Sucker just wouldn’t give it up. Renny had to admire that, begrudg-ingly.

And if Vic-baby somehow managed to make a third curtain call, why, that’d be the tits, too. Because Renny was starting to enjoy the new, fun things he could do with his hands.

Like what he might do if Barb lost her marbles and started that gawdawful shrieking again…

Nahh. Just a vagrant thought. No problem, there.

Renny yanked his fingers clean and the lid seated with an iron clank. An old pal of his had once broken three fingers by not letting go soon enough, after chasing a frisbee into the sewer. That made Renny think again of Barb. Maybe it was getting time to let her go. True, she’d come to his rescue and handled herself well enough tonight, but what if Victor was some kind of curse or something, specific to her?

You don’t pull back your hand in time, you lose. And it wasn’t his fingers that Renny had been parking inside of Barb, most of the recent past.

Just now, in fact, he was up for another bout. His body urged him to hurry home to her. She would be fresh out of her bath, tasty and scented, and Renny wanted to ride her until she screamed for real.





“Do you hear something? A noise, or—”

“Oh for Christ sake, Barb!”

“I’m serious. Stop it.”

Feeling like a wiener, Renny backed out and listened to the double-time of his own heart, backdraft from his urgent need to climax, soon--sorta-like-immediately. Barb listened intently—she resembled a grade-schooler trying too hard to concentrate—not for sounds from the heart, but telltales of nearing monsters. She was still head down, ass up after coyly asking Renny to do her that way, and she clung to the mattress as though it could render her some psychic truth.

“I don’t hear anything, babe, except maybe your own paranoia bounc-ing back at us from the walls.” Fed up, he grabbed his smokes off the nightstand. Pretty glib, he thought, for a guy who was strangling on a rope of living dead ligaments about an hour ago.

“I thought I heard the seat fall down in the bathroom.”


“My fault. I left it up.” When Renny strove to impress, he could be the most courteous, thoughtful man on earth. Then, as he procured what he wanted, he let the courtesies slide. Like tonight: He’d left the seat up on purpose, a territorial assertion he knew she’d notice, yet tolerate. The brilliant trick of Renny’s life was that he made sure people always noticed him when he was being a swell guy, so there was less risk of him being singled out when he was being a turd of ethics. Voila—he was known far and wide for being fair, wise and trusty. No way he’d ever sleep with another man’s partner, or murder someone, or even think of doing the deed.

Even to someone already dead.

Renny could take blame artfully, too—whamming it back the way a tennis pro returns a smartass serve. Like the toilet seat thing.

“I admit I left the seat up, babe. Your house, your rules. But that fuzzy cover on the tank makes it fall down again, and—”

“Shh!”

He smoked in silence, having scored his point. Barb took the cigarette from between his lips, stole two quick puffs, and replaced it as though afraid of being caught tampering with the evidence at a murder scene.

Renny gave up and went to use the bathroom. He left the seat up.

“Barb, there’s water all over the bathroom floor. I think maybe your pipes are backing up. Roots, maybe.”

“Oh, no! Is it all—you know, messy?”

“Just water. Like a big splash, all over.”

“Renny!”

That brought him back quick enough. What a man.

As he skidded in barefoot, he caught Barb shrinking and pointing. Something had just moved near the juncture of wall and ceiling above her cosmetic table. Renny squinted. The something was low-slung, slid along lizard-fashion, and was now watching them both coldly from seven feet up.