Wild Cards V Read Online Free Page B

key. It was a dark, cold, depressing room with floor-to-ceiling body lockers in the walls. It was where the city kept all the corpses that no one wanted or that no one could identify, before their pauper burials.
    Deadhead’s jittery smile widened when they entered the room, and he hopped from foot to foot with ill-suppressed excitement.
    â€œHelp me find it!” he commanded. “Help me find it!”
    â€œWhat?” Brennan asked, truly mystified.
    â€œThe body. Gruber’s fat, cold body.” He looked frantically at the lockers, capering in a macabre dance as he went along the wall.
    Brennan frowned, herded the janitor in front of him, and started searching the opposite wall. Most of the name tags set into the little metal holders on the locker doors simply had anonymous ID numbers. A few had names.
    â€œSay, this what you looking for?”
    The docile janitor, who was preceeding Brennan, looked back helpfully. Brennan stepped to his side. The locker he was pointing at was third up from the floor, about waist high. The tag on it said Leon Gruber, September 16.
    â€œHere it is,” Brennan called softly, and Deadhead scuttled across the room. There had to be, Brennan thought, some sort of message on the corpse, something that only Deadhead could decipher. Perhaps this Gruber had smuggled something into the country in a body cavity … but surely, he thought, anything like that would’ve been found by the morgue technicians.
    â€œThe body’s been here a long time,” Brennan commented as Deadhead opened the locker door and pulled out the retractable table on which the corpse lay.
    â€œYes, it has, yes, indeed,” Deadhead said, staring at the dingy sheet that covered the body. “They pulled strings. Pulled strings to keep it here until I … until I could get out.”
    â€œGet out?”
    Deadhead pulled the sheet down, exposing Gruber’s face and chest. He had been a fat young man, soft and pasty-looking. The expression of fear and horror pasted on his face was the worst that Brennan had ever seen on a corpse. His chest was puckered with bullet holes, small caliber from the look of them.
    â€œYes,” Deadhead said, but he never looked up from Gruber’s dead, staring eyes. “I was in prison … hospital, really.” From somewhere on his person he had produced a small, shiny hacksaw. His lips twitched in incessant, spasmodic jerks, and a line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth to drip off his chin. “For corpse abuse.”
    â€œAre we taking the body with us?” Brennan asked through tightly clenched lips.
    â€œNo thanks,” Deadhead said brightly. “I’ll eat it here.”
    He began to saw Gruber’s skull. The blade cut through the bone easily. Brennan and the janitor watched, horrified, as the top of the skull came off and Deadhead, with maniacal, somehow furtive glee, scooped chunks off Gruber’s brain and stuffed them in his mouth. He chewed noisily.
    Brennan felt Lazy Dragon dive into his vest pocket. The janitor vomited and Brennan fought off the rising tide of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, holding on with grim, tight-lipped self-control.
    III
    Brennan gagged the janitor with his handkerchief and bound him at wrist and ankle with packing tape Lazy Dragon found in a corner of the storage room. He had to do all the work himself because Deadhead, mumbling incoherently, had sagged against the wall after wolfing down Gruber’s brain. After Brennan took care of the janitor he guided the mumbling maniac out of the storeroom. Brennan wished that Lazy Dragon could tell him what the hell was going on.
    â€œHow’d it go?” Whiskers asked when Brennan threw open the Buick’s rear passenger door and pushed Deadhead in. Brennan slammed the door and slid onto the front seat before answering.
    â€œFine, I think. Deadhead had a snack.”
    Whiskers nodded, started the car,