Dirty Laundry Read online

  “Pokey?”

  “You take out them ghouls?” he drawls.

  “Yeah, just finished,” she says. She tucks the phone between her ear and her shoulder, then grabs a paper towel to scrub at the bloodstains. “I’m just trying to clean up.”

  “What, the bodies? Why didn’t you just burn them?”

  “It was in a public park,” she says. The red is lifting, making a foamy paste that looks like bloody toothpaste suds. “I was afraid someone was going to show up. They already think they’ve got a serial killer in this town.”

  “You know, serial killers are really rare,” Pokey says. “Hey, what are you wearing?”

  “Jesus, Pokey,” she says. This is the other reason she didn’t want to call Pokey for backup. “Baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt from Louie’s Fat Bottom Barbecue.”

  “That’s not sexy,” he says. “Like, at all.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint.” She dips the edge of her pants in the sink, rinses it vigorously, then examines it. “Hey, it’s working.”

  “Not for me,” Pokey says.

  “What? No, you perv,” she says. “I’m trying to get blood out of my pants before it sets.”

  Someone clears their throat, but it’s not her or Pokey. Charity’s stomach plunges to the floor. She looks up to see a wide-eyed woman in the mirror’s reflection. Charity’s blood goes cold. How much did she hear?

  “I gotta go,” Charity says quietly, wiping one hand on her sweatpants. She hangs up the phone and jams it into her pocket, then turns to the woman.

  She’s maybe forty, with dark circles under wide brown eyes. A Food Lion nametag that reads Linda is pinned to her untucked white blouse, and she’s got a death grip on something inside her purse. Charity’s got three guesses what, and she doesn’t want any of them pointed at her. “I know what this looks like.”

  “I—I didn’t,” the woman stammers. “I don’t…”

  Charity shakes her head. “Oh, no, this isn’t mine.”

  Linda’s eyes go even wider.

  “No, no, it’s not human,” Charity says. “It’s from a pig.”

  That doesn’t seem to help matters. Without breaking her deer-in-the-headlights gaze, Linda reaches backward for the door. Charity lunges for it. Her hand knocks Linda’s away and closes around the handle. She cannot have this woman go out into the laundromat hollering about what she thinks she heard.

  “Let me out!” Linda says. Her white shirt is dotted with faint red stains. Charity must have splattered her in her dash for the door. She yanks on the door, and Charity backs up into it, planting her feet.

  “I know what this looks like,” Charity says. “I promise it’s not what you think.”

  “Fine, you didn’t hurt anyone. So let me out.”

  “Not until you promise not to call the cops on me,” Charity says. Shit. Shit. Why didn’t she lock the damn door?

  “I’m not gonna call the cops.”

  “Then give me your phone.”

  Linda wrinkles her nose. “Screw you.”

  This situation is going bad, and fast. If there’s a manual somewhere on how to make a situation go from bad to worse, then Charity is doing this completely by the book. She doesn’t have her sister’s gift for smooth talking, but she usually does all right. That said, starting the situation by being caught literally red-handed and talking about burning bodies in a public park is not ideal. Now she’s improvising, and that’s about as certain as Russian Roulette.

  Charity lunges for Linda’s purse. It takes her less than three seconds to realize that this is a mistake.

  The fear goes out of Linda’s eyes, replaced by predatory instinct. Linda grabs her arm, lets out a karate noise, and slings Charity around into the cinderblock wall. Charity’s head rocks back against the wall, and she sees a flash of white as pain bursts from the base of her neck. Her vision blurs. Through the ringing in her ears, she makes out the scrape of the door as Linda flees.

  “Dammit,” Charity groans. She grabs for the door and chases Linda out into the laundromat.

  Linda’s already on her phone as she hurries through the room. As the woman walks, she grabs for a purple mesh bag from the folding table. In a tiny moment of providence, the strap snags on the corner of the table. Linda stops to untangle it.

  Thank you, Lord, Charity thinks. She rushes around the table and grabs the other handle of Linda’s bag. Her eyes flit around wildly. The attendant is still engrossed in his phone. She can barely see his head over the change machine.

  “Let go,” Linda says. She pulls back on the laundry bag. “I don’t want trouble. I just want to go home.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Charity says, twisting the strap around her hand. Good lord, could she sound more like a murderer now?

  Linda sticks her free hand into her purse. “I’m warning you.”

  “Warn away,” Charity snaps. “You start shooting up this place and the cops are gonna question you, not me.”

  Charity peeks around to look out the windows for flashing lights. It’s a small town, and if Linda called about a psycho at the laundromat, it won’t take long.

  Oh, shit. She should have known it wouldn’t be so smooth.

  “I’ll scream,” Linda says. “Let go.”

  “Don’t,” Charity says. But it’s not because she’s worried about the attendant, or even the cops now. Something else has caught her eye. She puts one finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  “Screw you.” But Linda’s brow furrows, and her head turns ever so slightly, like she wants to see what Charity’s looking at but doesn’t want to take her eyes away.

  There’s a shadow moving outside. The front face of the laundromat is all glass, which gives a splendid view of the parking lot. A couple of cars are parked against the curb, with the neon 24 Hours sign reflecting off their hoods. Her big red pickup is parked right next to the handicapped spot. Standing in the striped unloading zone is a humanoid figure, peering over the edge of the truck bed. It’s standing in the shadows just right, so she can make out its silhouette but not its features. Even so, she’ll bet her meager stash of cash that it’s not human.

  “Linda, I know this is some crazy shit,” Charity says quietly. “But I need you to trust me.”

  Hunters have an unspoken rule. You don’t tell people about what’s really out there. Everyone who watches a zombie movie develops their own idea of who they’d be in the zombie apocalypse. And everyone fancies themselves the badass with a sawed-off. No one admits they’d be part of the screaming, fleeing masses. She’s seen it half a dozen times. In the face of a real-life monster, in all its clawing smell-o-vision glory, most normal people turn to Jell-O. And when they survive the encounter, thanks to people like her, there’s no unseeing it. They’ll never sleep the same, and Halloween becomes a whole barrel of traumatized monkeys.

  Then again, is it better for Linda to think Charity’s a serial killer who’s going to come back for her, or for her to know that things really do go bump in the night? Both options suck.

  What would her sister do?

  Well, for starters, her sister would probably have been a hell of a lot smoother with the bloody jeans. Or she would have locked the damn door in the first place. Really, how hard is that?

  Suddenly, a sharp pain blooms in her hand and jerks her out of her self-reproach. Charity jerks away and looks up in disbelief to see Linda with her keys grasped tightly and one of them dripping red. The woman grabs her laundry bag and throws the door open.

  Well, she may not know how her sister would handle it, but Charity knows for damn sure that her sister wouldn’t stand there and let Linda stab her.

  Charity can’t help but stare at the back of her hand, which now has its own shallow keyhole right between her first two knuckles. She managed to take out four ghouls, counting the one last night, and it’s the cashier with self-defense training who finally puts a hole in her.

  A shriek comes from the pa
rking lot. Linda is frozen with her laundry clutched in one hand. The bag is flopped open, spilling her dirty underwear onto the sidewalk.

  Charity rushes out the door and into the parking lot. “I tried to tell you,” she says petulantly.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Their visitor has climbed up into her truck now, and one hand is curled over the edge. Out here, she can see it better, and there’s no doubt that it’s undead. Judging by the grayish, gore-streaked face, it’s another ghoul. Her bait had worked, all right. This one is just a slowpoke. Judging by the sack-like dress it’s wearing, this is Mama Ghoul.

  “It’s a ghoul,” Charity says, edging past Linda. She snaps her fingers at the creature. “Hey, you. Yeah, over here.” Her head snaps up, and Mama Ghoul hisses at her like a big cat. The neon Laundromat sign reflects blood-red off her cloudy eyes.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “This is what I do. Linda, you got two options. You can go inside where it’s safe, or you can stay out here and help me.”

  The ghoul watches Charity intently as she moves her hand slowly like teasing a dog with a treat. Her gun is locked inside the truck, because she’s a damn responsible gun owner. But her crossbow is about two feet from where the ghoul is standing.

  “I’ll help,” Linda says. “I kinda feel bad that I stabbed you.”

  “You really should. That was an asshole move,” Charity says.

  The ghoul starts to climb toward her, hitching one leg up to come over the edge. She makes a quick lunge toward the ghoul, a you wanna fight? move pulled straight from the Fighting for High School Boys manual. Mama Ghoul shrinks away and goes clambering over the other side.

  She digs in her pocket and throws her keys backward at Linda’s feet. “In the glovebox, there’s a .45. If things get hairy and it comes back here, you shoot it. Then get the hell away from my truck, or they’ll have questions that you definitely can’t answer.”

  Linda digs in her purse and pulls out a small revolver. Called it. “Don’t worry, I got my own.”

  “Damn, Linda. You ride dirty,” Charity says. She grabs the edge of the truck bed and hauls herself up into it. The black plastic tarps are pulled back, and there’s a big hunk missing out of Daddy Ghoul’s arm. A wave of decay hits her like a billow of steam from a boiling pot. She dry-heaves and kicks the plastic back over the body. After grabbing the crossbow, she climbs over the other side of the truck and chases the ghoul.

  The laundromat is on one end of a small strip mall bordering Haversham Park. One of the entrances to the walking trail starts just across the street, which is probably how Mama Ghoul found her way here. Mama moves fast now, disappearing around the corner of the laundromat and down the alley behind the strip.

  Charity jams her foot into the stirrup of the crossbow and yanks the string back. As she loads a new bolt into the flight track, she watches the ghoul intently. It’s not quite running, but doing a weird lopsided gallop toward the safety of the dark woods.

  She hitches up her baggy sweatpants with one hand and takes off running, crossbow braced in the other hand. “Hey!” she shouts.

  Mama Ghoul hisses, then turns to run at a sharp angle. Charity freezes, aims, and squeezes the trigger. The bolt pierces her jowly neck, and Mama Ghoul roars. She stops her retreat and turns toward Charity. She checks the quiver.

  Empty.

  Shit.

  She shouldn’t have left the gun with Linda. Especially since she’s packing heat of her own. This is a bad idea, she thinks as she runs at Mama Ghoul. A hot rush of adrenaline washes over her.

  The ghoul swipes at her with one filthy hand. Charity ducks and kicks out the ghoul’s leg. Mama Ghoul falls to her knees. With a swing of the crossbow, Charity clips her under the chin. Mama Ghoul swipes at her again and gets a handful of her dingy T-shirt. She ignores it and grabs the fletchings on the crossbow bolt, then yanks backward. There’s a squelching sound as the bolt slides out of the ghoul’s saggy flesh. Mama Ghoul screeches.

  Charity drops the crossbow and tries to ignore the scrape of the beautiful weapon hitting the asphalt. She plants her hands on the ghoul’s shoulders and bears it to the ground. Her fingers press into soft, damp flesh. Her skin crawls at the sensation. Mama Ghoul’s jaws snap, and she lets out a snarl of hot breath that smells like a compost heap.

  With one hand planted on Mama Ghoul’s forehead, Charity raises the bolt high with the other, then stabs it down into the ghoul’s eye. Clammy hands beat at her, but she puts her weight behind the bolt and finally feels the hard scrape of the tip against bone. The ghoul suddenly stops moving. Charity leans back to rest on her heels.

  Up close, Mama Ghoul’s dirty dress looks like one of those shapeless robes her mother used to call a house dress, or definitive proof that one no longer gave a solitary shit. Once upon a time, the dress might have been blue. Now, she can barely make out some small embroidered flowers under the mud and bloodstains. “You would not have been my next pick for riding cowgirl. I’m just saying.”

  From behind her, she hears the familiar and unpleasant whoop whoop of a police siren. Her stomach twists into a knot as she glances over her shoulder. There’s no one here yet, but she sees the blue and red lights reflecting around the side of the laundromat.

  She looks down at Mama Ghoul, then back at the lights. Shit. Her heart races, and she suddenly feels the hot, claustrophobic sensation of panic pressing in. She can only run so far, and the cops are not going to look kindly at the dead body of something that still resembles a human being. Even worse, if Mama Ghoul’s eaten any people lately, she might well be the end of a missing persons case. And then Charity will really have some splainin’ to do.

  There’s a Dumpster about thirty feet away behind a red door with a Damon’s California Cafe sign on it.

  “Shit the bed,” she mutters. She scrambles around on the ground and gets her arms under the ghoul’s armpits. With a grunt, she pulls it backward toward Damon’s Dumpster. The ghoul’s ratty slipper falls off as she drags it. Sweat beads on her back.

  World’s worst workout.

  Charity finally gets to the Dumpster and slumps against it, breathing hard. She looks down the back alley. Lights are still flashing, and she hears the sound of a police radio. Her heart thumps. Move it. You got no time.

  Metal scrapes as she shoves open the Dumpster’s side panel. She crouches, then lurches upward. “Lift with your legs,” she grunts to herself. She gets Mama Ghoul on her feet, head lolling into her chest. A dribble of black runs down her face and onto Charity’s shirt. She shakes her head. “Ugh.”

  She pushes back on Mama Ghoul’s chest, then reaches down to loop her arm under her legs. She flips the ghoul’s body up, legs shaking with the effort of lifting the dead weight. Finally, gravity takes over, and the ghoul tips back into the Dumpster. There’s a meaty thump, then an echoing clang as the ghoul’s head smacks the metal side. She peeks inside. It’s empty. Must have been trash day today. Maybe she can burn this one without catching the attention of the whole damn town.

  Charity scrubs sweat off her face and runs back down the alley. Along the way, she scoops up the crossbow and leans it against the back of the laundromat. She jogs around the edge of the building just in time to get a flashlight in her face.

  “Miss?” a male voice says. “Can I ask what you’re doing back here?”

  She winces and throws up one hand. It stings against the sweat on her forehead. As she shields her eyes, she traces the red trickle of blood down her forearm and prays the cop doesn’t notice. “Uh, I was just sneaking a cigarette while my clothes were in the washer.”

  “Really?” he says. His flashlight runs over her, and she knows he’s looking to see where she might have a gun concealed. “Are you Ms. Peterson?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Listen, how about you do me a favor and come around front with me.” His voice is light and easy, but his free hand rests lightly on the gun at his hi
p.

  “Okay,” she says. Shit, shit. Her stomach is a whirlpool of dread. She needs an airtight story. Problem is, she doesn’t know what Linda told them.

  The cop walks right next to her. “You doin’ all right?”

  “Can’t complain, Officer,” she says flatly. She freezes in her tracks as they round the edge of the building.

  The police cruiser is parked in the spot right next to the handicapped spot with its normal headlights on. It takes her a long pause to realize her truck is gone from the parking lot. She gapes at it. What the hell?

  Linda’s purple laundry bag is still on the sidewalk, but the spilled clothes have been stuffed inside. Linda herself is nowhere to be found. Charity peeks over her shoulder into the laundromat. There’s another cop inside the building. He’s speaking to the attendant, whose giant headphones hang around his neck. As the cop speaks, he just shrugs and shakes his head. His eyes are wide, and he’s probably thinking “Oh shit, oh shit.”

  You and me both.

  “How about you just have a seat on the curb for me, Miss,” the officer says. In the light, she gets a better glimpse at him. His name tag says Carver. He’s got a smooth baby face that’s kind of cute. Well, it would be if he wasn’t on the verge of taking her downtown, and not in a let’s-have-a-beer-or-five kind of way.

  Charity sits down on the curb, sneaking a peek at her clothes. At least there’s no noticeable blood. There’s some ghoul leakage, but it looks like she spilled motor oil on herself. She casually folds her arms over her chest, scrubbing the drip of blood from her hand onto her shirt.

  “Did you see anything strange going on in the laundromat?” Carver asks.

  “No, sir,” she says. “I generally try to mind my own business.”

  “That’s funny. We got a call saying there was a blond lady here who was acting real strange.” He shines the light on her. “Sounds like that could be you, don’t you think?”

  “Lots of blond ladies in the world,” she says. She laughs, and it sounds hollow and manic to her. “Plus, anyone who’s been around me for more than a couple of minutes wouldn’t make the mistake of calling me a lady.”