Lesser Creatures Read online

Love.

  * * *

  The day leaves in shades of rust,

  Cruel as it is long,

  Nightbirds wail for this dying land,

  The lesser creature love song.

  Wounded child take my hand,

  And rest your fears away,

  For the night is ours alone,

  To love for the coming day.

  —The Waves, from “Lesser Creature Love Song”

  * * *

  “Why do you play this damn song over and over?” Monika asked.

  He tightened his grip on the wheel as he slowed through a curve on the winding road back to the city. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just…depressing.”

  “Said the depressed girl.”

  “Yeah, so…that’s why I like dance music, Coop.”

  “And rap.”

  “Here we go again.”

  “I don’t see how gangster rap doesn’t depress you, Mon. This is a song of hope, free of all that—”

  “It’s not the words. It’s the tone. I never listen to words in music anyway. And my taste in music is eclectic. I like a lot of things, but not this.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  “Missing out on what?”

  “The power of words.”

  “Fuck words,” she said. “Words are overrated.”

  “Fine.”

  “So we can listen to something else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “’Cause I’m locked into this right now. It’s taking me back to better days.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” She snapped her fingers. “Ground control to Major Tom, what’s so wrong with me? Why can’t you be here, with me?”

  “Don’t get bent out of shape,” he said, “sometimes I just like to drift.”

  “Well, this fucking song’s giving me a headache.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But not sorry enough to turn it off.”

  “That’s right.”

  They didn’t say anything for the next few minutes, Eric tapping his fingers in time with Malcolm Wave’s crazy drum fills. The song faded, then started again.

  “You know,” Monika growled, “my shrink suggested I bring you along for my next session.”

  “He’s suggested that before, but isn’t there some kind of doctor-patient confidentiality? I really shouldn’t know this shit.”

  “That’s a lame excuse. And he’s a she. You should know that by now.”

  “Hey, therapy’s your deal, not mine.”

  “So what are you saying? I’m the crazy one and you’re…sane?”

  “Something like that.” He smiled and started tapping his fingers again.

  “Why do you even love me?”

  “I’m an idiot, I guess. Why do you love me?”

  “I don’t fucking know, and neither does Dr. Shire. That’s why she wants to see us together, to understand why we…”

  “Why we what?”

  “Why we can’t leave each other alone.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  “Christ, can you at least turn the music down so we can talk?”

  “No, I hear you just fine.”

  “That’s ’cause I’m shouting and you’re mumbling, you fucking mush-mouth.”

  “Let’s talk when we get home,” he said.

  “No. Let’s talk now.”

  As she continued shouting and pleading he did his best to ignore her, but she wouldn’t stop. Finally, he cranked the stereo’s volume and jammed his foot deeper into the accelerator, a white-knuckled grip clenching the wheel. She’d fucked his calm, every nerve and muscle in his body tensing with rage.

  “Just shut up,” he yelled, but that didn’t work. He couldn’t make out what she was shouting. Insults. Probably dredging up past mistakes he’d made. Petty shit, like how he’d fucked up the laundry or hadn’t cleaned the coffeemaker right or…

  “Shut up!” he repeated.

  In a frenzied blur, Monika snapped off her seat belt, leaned into the driver’s seat, and grabbed the steering wheel.

  “What the hell are you…?” He never finished that sentence. Shock took over, freezing his tongue as Monika jerked the wheel hard right.

  The screech of tires…the shattering of glass…

  Then darkness.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Cooper!” Frank Allen shouted.

  Eric snapped back into the conference room, the other junior executives scrutinizing him like an exhibit in a freak show. Not Monika. She smiled at him, a shocking rictus of unholy perversity, exposing blackened gums and serrated teeth. Her tongue, the color of well-done meat, slithered behind wide dental gaps, and her gray, hideous hand clutched her chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, swaying back and forth, feeling dizzy. He slumped into his chair, then bowed forward, clutching his knees.

  “Jesus Christ,” Frank said.

  Eric swallowed back bile as spasms rippled through his gut. Then, unable to curb the tide, he heaved his celebratory breakfast onto the dark maroon carpet adorned with dizzying diamond patterns.

  Ted Mallory leaned toward him and whispered, “Pull yourself together, man. None of us likes this, but—”

  “Zombie,” Eric mumbled.

  “What’s that?” Frank growled.

  “Oh shit,” Ted Mallory moaned.

  Eric looked up, puke running down his chin, eyes wide. He pointed at Monika and stood. “Zombie!” he shouted.

  The others gasped in unison. “The Z-word, Eric. How could you?” whined Ted.

  “Fuck you, Ted,” Eric said. “I’ve heard you use that word more times than I can count.”

  “I know this is difficult,” Frank said. “But get a grip. We’ve decided—”

  “We’ve decided,” Eric cried. “We’ve decided that I should work with a woman who tried to kill me? No, you’ve decided.” Eric fell back into his chair.

  “The meeting’s over,” Frank said. “Everyone go back to work and I’ll call you later. Ms. Janus, Stacy will take you to your office and help you get set up, okay?”

  Monika nodded, her eyes never completely leaving Eric as she was led away by the administrative assistant.

  All but Frank and Eric dispersed. Eric started to get up.

  “Stay,” Frank commanded.

  Eric dropped back in his seat, then swiveled to face his boss. The two of them locked eyes for what seemed a long time. Then: “No bullshit,” Frank said. “What was that all about?”

  Eric told him about his past with Monika, about the crash. His voice cracked several times, but he was able to leave every painful detail on the table, something he’d never been able to do, not even with his mother. When Eric reached the end of his story, Frank said, “Christ almighty,” then took a seat next to him.

  “She can’t work here,” Eric said. “She can’t.”

  “Eric, I’m sorry, but…if she doesn’t work here, there is no more here. This firm is bleeding, and the board will shut us down if we don’t do this. It’s either this or a lousy severance package.”

  “Get someone else.”

  Frank shook his head. “There is no one else, amigo. We looked high and low for her, for a second-lifer with the cognitive grasp needed—”

  “There are others. We hear about them all the time.”

  “Sure, but the government already has their claws in most of them. We were damn lucky to find her when we did. Her Blue clearance is approved. The government isn’t likely to give us a second go if we fuck up the first.”

  “Her or me, Frank.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t give me an ultimatum like that unless you’re prepared to quit right now.”

  “She tried to kill me.”

  “Are you sure about that? What if she saw something you didn’t and was trying to save your ass? Are you really sure it didn’t happen that way? Damn, t
he girl might be the only reason you’re even sitting here right now.”

  “I was there, Frank.”

  “I know, I know, but I’ve been in a bad accident. I know how the mind can distort the before and after—”

  “Clear as a bell,” Eric said, tapping his head. “And it wasn’t an accident.”

  Frank took a deep breath and looked up, drumming his fingers on the table. “If you wanna leave, Cooper, I can’t make you stay.”

  “So you’re choosing her over me?”

  “No, I’m choosing me over you. I’m choosing my daughter’s college education over you. See the difference?”

  “Christ…”

  “So what’s it going to be, Cooper? You gonna tough it out, or should I call security and have them escort you from the building?”

  “Can I go home now, take the weekend to sort this out?”

  Frank squeezed Eric’s shoulder and smiled. “Sure. Now you’re making sense.”

  But Eric wasn’t so sure anything would ever make sense again.

  * * *

  Frank hadn’t been back in his office for five minutes when the phone rang. He hated when Stacy stepped away from her desk, even though he’d sent her away. He didn’t like taking his own calls. But letting these things roll to voice mail, as he saw it, could be read as a sign of weakness, a sign that he wasn’t minding the store. And this call, Unidentified on the phone’s display, might be from a board member.

  “Frank Allen,” he answered.

  “Mr. Allen,” came the chipper, unmistakable reply.

  “Pastor Lingk. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

  “You didn’t expect that your adoption of one of my flock would draw my attention?”

  Frank gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, then in the calmest voice he could manage: “What are you talking about?”

  “Monika Janus.”

  Christ, he even knew her name. How was that possible? The AdCorp scouts had only picked her up yesterday and nothing had been released to the press yet. Crazy as it made him feel, Frank started wondering if the Pastor really did have supernatural powers.

  “How do you know that? Did Cooper call you?” Frank asked.

  “Cooper? Eric Cooper? The man you assigned to my account? What’s his part in all of this?”

  “Nothing,” Frank snapped. “Besides, he’s the one who landed your account, so you must have seen something in him.”

  Lingk laughed. “Look, Frank, this isn’t a hostile call. I’m impressed, really. I thought any number of advertising firms would have made this move years before AdCorp. I’m currently working with MarkLinx out of Dallas, and I’ve suggested a second-life executive to them several times. They placate me with smiles and nods and ‘we’ll run that up the flagpole, sir,’ but they never do shit.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I misjudged you.”

  “Really?” Frank felt a glimmer of hope. Could the new strategy already be paying dividends? Recapturing the Lingk account, even though the pastor’s organization was in serious peril at the moment, would go a long way to getting the board off his back.

  “Can I come by this afternoon, say around one? I have a gift for Ms. Janus. And maybe Eric Cooper and I can sit down and talk about the future.”

  “Eric’s taken ill and will be out for the rest of the day, but I can—”

  “No, I’d rather stick with Eric. Like you said, I did see something in him. Tell you what, I’ll come by, meet your new associate, and leave a message for Mr. Cooper. You and I can spend some time together, too. I’m very curious about how you plan to utilize the girl.”

  “I can have lunch brought—”

  “No need, Frank. I’m not very hungry today. Think I might have caught the same bug Cooper did. But there’s no rest for a man in my position.”

  Much as it wasn’t above Frank to pay undue respect to a potential client, Lingk’s pompous implication made him stifle a chuckle. Internalizing the reaction, he simply said, “One o’clock, then.”

  A sharp click, then the line went dead.

  * * *

  Eric lay on the couch and cried. He thought about calling his mother, about turning on the television, considered getting together an entourage to hit the club as he’d planned, but these were all fleeting thoughts.

  He had been sold out by a company he’d given two decades of his life. Even worse, he’d been crushed beneath the unyielding wheels of the same bus twice.

  Monika.

  How was it possible? he wondered. He’d occasionally pictured her out there somewhere, tethered to a smarter zombie, following mindlessly into one abyss or another.

  Accepting that she was AdCorp’s only salvation fell well beyond the pale.

  Exhausted, Eric finally fell asleep.

  The music at first is a distant echo, darkness the only accompaniment to Frankie Wave’s beautiful voice.

  “The day leaves in shades of rust…Cruel as it is long…”

  Darkness is replaced by a dust-filled kaleidoscope of blue and gray, which slowly morphs into Monika. She stands before him in the same field they took their last meal together. She’s smiling, beautiful, alive, the daughter of Polish immigrants. Big eyes, long golden hair, fair skin. The girl he’d loved so much that it hurt.

  Above her, storm clouds roll.

  She extends a hand, and the music rises, now made whole with drums and horns and steel guitar, as if God is standing at a mixing board in some celestial studio, twisting knobs.

  His hand joins hers, and with that nonaction he understands this is lucid dreaming without the benefit of control. Harmless, he tells himself, moving without moving, in step with her languid lead, the field blooming into forest. Nearly a foot shorter than he, she glances over her shoulder, and he feels himself drawn into her upturned eyes. There, a reflection of an open-beaked crow perched upon a branch. The implied caw is inaudible; music, the only sound here.

  Their path weaves serpentine around crumbling tombstones, day quickening to night, and through the trees comes a clearing; another field, this one dead.

  They stop, and Monika points. In the distance, a boy holds a girl close. Nothing more than teenagers, they rest on the edge of a cliff, high above the city.

  Eric opens his mouth to ask who they are, but no words come. Monika, still standing in front of him, appears intent upon the young couple, but he can only see the back of her head.

  When she finally looks at him, her eyes are milky white and her skin is ashen gray.

  He lets go of her hand, suddenly aware of control, and the music abruptly stops with a night-piercing cry that can only be one thing: a turntable needle cutting through vinyl.

  He runs into the woods, around decaying landmarks of departed souls, aimlessly pressing into darkness made blue by slivers of moonlight.

  Something catches his ankle, and he collapses painlessly onto a mound of dirt. He can hear the caws of a nearby murder from above, but a tightening sensation around his leg makes him look down rather than up. A skeletal hand, coming up through the dirt, holds him in place.

  He struggles but can’t break free, then looks up into several small glowing eyes as the clouds eclipse the peeking moon, and darkness, save only those carrion-starved pinpricks of unnatural light, becomes everything.

  CHAPTER 8

  Monika sat behind her desk, eating the food and sipping the whiskey the girl named Stacy had paid for with real money. Their trip outside the office marked the second time today she’d taken a ride in a car, but the office girl hadn’t laid plastic where Monika was supposed to sit, as the early-morning driver had, and that almost made her feel like a real person again.

  Monika liked Stacy, who was still pacing in front of the desk, acting like her job was not yet done. “There has to be something we can do to brighten this drab space,” she said.

  Monika shook her head and smiled.

  “Well, shoot,” Stacy said, “I guess it doesn’t make much differenc
e to you anyway, but still…” She went back to looking around the room.

  And Monika returned to thoughts of Eric, to that incredible moment she’d laid eyes on him at the meeting. The intensity of the moment had occurred the night before, too, when she’d heard that song playing next door, but not like today.

  Colors burned brighter.

  She’d always been able to distinguish one hue from another, though not as easily as she’d done in life. But simple things, like the variance between red and blue, allowed her to order quickly in line and press the right buttons for the men who’d brought her to her new home.

  Before today, whiskey had always helped with colors. But when Monika had pointed to the Jack Daniel’s sign at the drive-through (the passage a rare privilege for her kind, although it had seemed to put the girl behind the order window on edge), Stacy had shaken her head. “They don’t allow drinking in the office, hon.” Then she’d laughed and said, “Oh, that’s right, drinking’s different for y’all, isn’t it? More like a cup of joe for one of us.”

  Monika hadn’t really understood the girl in full, but she liked how Stacy had seemed to forget the status rift between the living and her, which made her feel like she was taking a ride with a friend rather than playing the role of breather’s burden.

  But the glow of that moment paled next to seeing Eric. Knowing he was all right, that he’d lived through the crash without permanent injury. The past had hit her in fragments the night before, causing her to spend every dark hour trying to piece things together.

  Now the puzzle seemed meaningless, because the pieces had linked on their own: being discovered for her new assignment, the song, and now the last piece…

  Reunion.

  “Do you like flowers?” Stacy asked. Then, not waiting for an answer: “Nah, you probably don’t. Plus they’d only die. Let’s see…”

  The door opened, and in the frame stood two people: Frank Allen and the nice man from last night. Monika put down her whiskey cup and stood.