999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [11]
Valentina wore a floor-length dressing gown over cotton pajamas. Here bare feet must be frozen on the marble. Toulbeyev had explained about the night visitors and she was reminding him of Captain Zharov’s report. These Amerikans repeated what the Captain had observed: the queuing behavior pattern. She brushed her hair out of the way and got an eye to the spy-hole. With an odd squeal of delight, she summoned Chirkov to take a look, telling him to angle his eye so he could look beyond the queue. A figure struggled out of the dark, feet flapping like beached fish. It went down on its face and crawled up the steps, then stood. It took a place behind the little girl. This one was naked, so rotted that even its sex was lost, a skeleton held together by strips of muscle that looked like wet leather. Valentina said she wanted that Amerikan for observation, but one of the others was necessary as well. She still thought of capturing and observing specimens. Toulbeyev reminded her of the strangeness of the situation and asked why the dead were just standing in line, stretching down the steps away from the Spa. She said something about residual instinct, the time a citizen must spend in queues, the dead’s inbuilt need to mimic the living, to re-create from trace memories the lives they once had. Toulbeyev agreed to help her capture the specimens but insisted they be careful not to damage the cameras. He told her they could all be millionaires.
Valentina held Toulbeyev’s rifle like a soldier would, stock close to her cheek, barrel straight. She stood by the doorway covering them as they ventured out on her mission. Toulbeyev assigned himself to the first in the queue, the dead man with the cameras. That left Chirkov to deal with the walking skeleton, even if it was last in line and, in Moscow, queue-jumping was considered a worse crime than matricide. From somewhere, Toulbeyev had found a supply of canvas post-bags. The idea was to pop a bag over an Amerikan’s head like a hood, then lead the dead thing indoors. Toulbeyev managed with one deft maneuver to drop his bag over the photographer’s head and whipped round behind the Amerikan, unravelling twine from a ball. As Toulbeyev bound dead wrists together, the twine cut through gray skin and greenish red fluid leaked over his gloves. The rest of the queue stood impassive, ignoring the treatment the photographer was getting. When Toulbeyev had wrestled his catch inside and trussed him like a pig, Chirkov was ready to go for the skeleton.
He stepped lightly down to the skeleton’s level, post-bag open as if he were a poacher after rabbit. The Amerikans all swivelled their eyes as he passed and, with a testicles-retracting spasm of panic, he missed his footing. His boot slipped on icy stone and he fell badly, his hip slamming a hard edge. He sledged down the steps, yelping as he went. A shot cracked, and the little girl, who had stepped out of the queue and scrambled towards him, became a limp doll, a chunk of her head dryly gone. Toulbeyev had got her. At the bottom of the steps, Chirkov stood. Hot pain spilled from his hip and his side was numb. His lungs hurt from the frozen air, and he coughed steam. He still held his bag and gun; luckily, the revolver had not discharged. He looked around: there were human shapes in the Square, shambling towards the Spa. Darting up the steps, unmindful of the dangers of ice, he made for the light of the doorway. He paused to grab the skeleton by the elbow and haul it to the entrance. It didn’t resist him. The muscles felt like snakes stretched over a bony frame. He shoved the skeleton into the foyer and Toulbeyev was there with his ball of twine. Chirkov turned as Valentina shut the doors. More Amerikans had come: the skeleton’s place was taken and the little girl’s, and two or three more steps were occupied. Before bolting the doors, Valentina opened them a crack and considered the queue. Again,