Blackcoats: Dead Man Walking by Michael Lachman

Author:Michael Lachman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Speculative
Publisher: Sudden Impact Press
Published: 2021-03-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Holly leaned in close to me, her eyes shifting side to side. I felt a nervous excitement, like a tingling numbness in my gut as I wondered if I really wanted to hear what she had to say or not.

Anything is better than nothing, I told myself, trying to keep the ever-creeping feeling of dread at bay. Even an awful truth is still the truth.

“We managed to find some security footage taken not far from your house,” she said in her usual emotionless voice, as though discussing the weather. “It showed your father, who appeared to be unconscious, being thrown into the trunk of a car, which then left the scene. We’re still canvassing the area for more footage, hoping it’ll give us a better idea of where the vehicle was going.”

My heart skipped a beat. There was actually a lead! My mouth began racing, stumbling over itself to keep pace with my thoughts. “D-did you find the car? Whose was it? Can you s-see the guy’s face? Who is he?”

“The car was stolen and hasn’t turned up yet. As for the guy, yeah, we know who he is.” She tapped her phone a few times and handed it over to me.

The screen showed a picture of a man from the waist up, lying naked on a metal slab with his eyes closed. He was young, mid-twenties, I’d guess, and built like a tank, with almost cartoonishly large muscles. He had black hair, a strong jaw, and had an intricate tattoo resting on his neck. He was absurdly pale—almost white, and had two bullet holes in the chest, with congealed blood. He was very, very dead.

“Is this the guy?” I whispered.

She nodded.

“You guys killed him?” I asked, shocked. “What about interrogating him? How are we going to find my dad now?”

Holly shook her head. “This picture of Jason Henri, a former mob enforcer, was taken some six hours before your father’s abduction.”

“Before his abduction…” I trailed off, playing the words over again in my head a few more times, as it slowly sunk in. The edges of Holly’s lips curled into the slightest of smiles, as though she was taking some kind of perverse enjoyment in watching the cogs in my brain turn as I struggled to work it out. Finally, it hit me, and my jaw dropped.

A zombie.

That was the only explanation I could think of. My dad was kidnapped by an undead zombie. “Holy smokes. A zombie? Really?”

“No, not a zombie. Well, not a zombie in the classical sense. Though not far off, actually. No brain or flesh-eating, but it is an animated corpse. Lately, this area has seen a rash of Wrain infestations, which we’ve had to deal with.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Rain? Like the weather?”

Holly sighed. “Wrain. W-R-A-I-N.”

I stared at her, giving off my most confused expression. Was spelling it out supposed to make anything clearer?

Picking up on my confusion, Holly sighed again and launched into an explanation. “I think it’s an acronym, not sure what it stands for though.

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