State of Decay Read Online Free

apartment the entire time I’d known him.
    Besides, I didn’t think of Doyle like that. It wasn’t even a departmental or career thing; I just didn’t think of him that way, and that made the whole thing all the more strange. Doyle Shanks was a friend and I liked him, but there was nothing else there. Not even the dreams could change that.
    My phone was ringing. I cracked my eyes open and saw that neon was still seeping through the blinds, but otherwise the room was dark. It wasn’t morning yet, then. I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep, but it hadn’t been nearly long enough.
    The room seemed to spin slightly as I oriented myself, finding the dresser where the indicator light on my cell made a mellow green strobe as it rang again. Cold air rushed under the blankets as I groped for it and brought it close to my face to check the number; it wasn’t Shanks’s cell, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be calling me.
    They found another body. That was the first thought that came into my head. That would make a fourth. Four murders, all the same. I knew somehow that the case was going to go from bad to worse. I retreated back under the covers and flipped open the phone.
    “Hello?”
    “Ms. Dasalia?” a man asked. It wasn’t Shanks; I didn’t recognize the voice.
    “Who is this?”
    “Is this Detective Dasalia?”
    “Yes. Who is this?”
    “Detective, someone is walking in your shadow.”
    Terrific. A precious handful of hours of sleep, cut short for this.
    “Look—”
    “Stop following me, Detective.”
    That got my attention. I sat up in bed, pulling the covers around me. Fumbling with the phone, I began recording the call and started a trace. Had he actually decided to make contact after being virtually invisible for so long? Could I be that lucky?
    “Who is this?” I asked.
    “Did you hear me? I said stop following me.”
    “Am I following you?”
    “Yes. You will find another one this morning. Your partner will find her first, but I want you to let it go.”
    “You want me to let you continue killing these people and do nothing?”
    “Yes.”
    Glancing at the screen, I could see the trace was coming up empty. The ’bot was having trouble following the circuit connections back to the source, for some reason.
    “Why should I do that?” I asked. “Why are you doing this? Help me understand it. Is it because they’re all first tier?”
    So far, that was the only thing any of the victims had in common; they all managed to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to serve. It was a category I hoped to fall into myself one day, but none of the victims so far looked like they had to work very hard for it.
    “Your only way out of this is to wake up,” he said, ignoring me.
    The trace had failed. Whoever he was, he could be anywhere. He was quiet for a minute. I listened but I couldn’t hear anything on his end. There was nothing to indicate where he might be. The line was eerily quiet, almost like a digital recording.
    “What do you mean—”
    “Try to wake up,” he said, and the line cut out.
    I stared at the LCD for a minute, trying to make sense of it as the screen flashed and the connection dropped.
    The time said 3:13 a.m. I’d been in bed for a little more than four hours, and I had one more hour of sleep coming that I wasn’t going to get. The cold was already invading my bed. It was time to get moving.
    Stretching again, I felt aches in my lower back and other places that were harder to explain. One night I had watched people on TV debate the possibility that a dream could be so vivid, it could affect a person’s physical body. At least one of them believed it was possible that dying in a dream that was vivid enough could result in a person’s death. It made me wonder whether the same premise held true for an erotic dream, and if one were vivid enough, would it be the same as actually committing the acts? If it was, it was grossly unfair.
    I got up, hating the