Free The Spy's Little Zonbi by Cole Alpaugh Page A

one, Salisbury Fire on two and three, Wicomico County PD on four, then the larger volunteer fire companies on the remaining channels.
    â€œ Come check this out!” A youngish cop led Chase to the far side of a wrecked Chevy, oil and coolant seeping toward the darkness at the edge of the road.
    â€œ My god, look at that.” The cop’s voice was hushed as he pointed down through the gutted remains of a customized ’72 Nova. Its polished intake manifold was spattered with blood and its twisted right front quarter-panel was torn back to expose an engine block clean enough to eat off. Except now there was gore splashed from the passenger’s upper torso.
    The call came in as a “ten forty-two” (traffic accident) “and ten thirty-eight” (ambulance needed), “Route 50 at Powellville Road, all units respond.” The first officer had arrived a few minutes later and the call came in to “slow the ten thirty-eight and please ten twenty-one” (call by landline). Chase had learned that meant the accident was fatal and the details would be shared by telephone, depriving the civilians with scanners the macabre details.
    It was a certain detail the young cop wanted to share with Chase in the glare of the emergency spotlight along Route 50, just east of Salisbury, the road he and his friends traveled to reach the ocean.
    â€œ I never seen anything like this.” The cop squatted just above the black pavement. “Ain’t that something?”
    Chase leaned over the cop’s broad shoulder and squinted into the maze of car parts to follow his line of sight. Next to a wiper blade and a large chunk of windshield was the steering wheel, still connected to a foot-long piece of steering column. Propped up by the spidery remains of glass, it still had both of the driver’s hands attached, neatly sliced away just below each wrist. The white-knuckled appendages gripped the wheel at the proper ten and two o’clock positions.
    â€œ Talk about a death grip.” The officer stood to stretch his legs and start writing his report. In what seemed like an afterthought, the cop asked for a favor. “Get a picture of that, would ya? But don’t show nobody, all right?”
    An hour later, both lanes were open, the wreck had been towed on a flatbed and the glass swept away, leaving the scene as if nothing had happened. As if a car hadn’t lost control at a hundred or so miles per hour chasing a friend’s Camaro, glancing off a tree just a few feet from the shoulder, then bouncing and rolling down the slow lane until it came to a stop, hissing, with a turn signal blinking and one tire still spinning.
    Alive one minute and dead the next could have been the official Delmarva bumper sticker on summer weekends.
    Chase was scrubbing the developing trays and preparing to mix fresh chemicals when Limp barged through the large revolving door that kept the darkroom light-safe. An old radio was wired to a rooftop antenna to pull in an Ocean City station that played decent music at night. Eurythmics, Boy George, and Eddie Grant were big that summer. Prince and the dispatcher from the Salisbury City Police kept Chase company as he performed his own cleaning up after a car wreck.
    â€œ We gotta talk, Pie.” Limp sat with hands clasped behind his head and legs stretched out in front.
    â€œ What brings you out in the dark?” Chase rinsed his hands with warm water and grabbed an old dishtowel.
    â€œ Mack and I have been talking ’bout you finally gettin’ your crack at a special story,” he said in his extra slow Southern way. “You been chasin’ ambulances and robbers and gettin’ along just fine. He agrees with my line of thought that all the noise those crazy Klan boys been makin’ deserves a little more notice from the likes of our news pages.”
    â€œ An investigative story on the Klan? Really?”
    Limp pursed his lips and