Free Skeletons by Al Sarrantonio

I've already moved way back in the shadows, around the grille of the car.
    It's a bonehead, this time, automatic slung over one shoulder. He's just close enough where I can see he's not as fearless as he seems. All bones, he looks scary; but when I get a load of the ghostly outline that goes with it, I see the fat couch barnacle he was, beer gut hanging over the stretch pants. The T-shirt, just visible, says, GO LAKERS.
    What a dope.
    But sis isn't so smart after all. The fat skel is nearly past when she rushes out at him, catching him from behind. She produces a long TV-offer-type knife and then plunges it in.
    The skeleton cries out a little and nearly gets the Uzi around on her before collapsing.
    Soon, next amazing thing: the bony body, ghostly T-shirt, beer belly, and all, turns to a pile of dust. So.
    "World's changing, son," I say.
    She's back in front of me instantly. She does seem to know how to use that knife, and she's got it up in front of my face.
    "I asked you who you are," she says, in a movie-tough tone.
    I push her hand away, but maybe she's nuts after all and willing to cut me. The Roger danger radar has begun to go off again.
    I ease back on the smile, make it more friendly. "Sorry," I say. "Been a tough night. My plane was shot out of the sky, then everybody in it was murdered by skeletons. Call me a kook, but I'm not quite myself this evening."
    She untenses , just a bit, just to the point where my radar stops blaring and tells me she might not kill me after all.
    'Take it you've had a rough one, too?" I try.
    "Yes." All at once she unwinds, lowers the knife to her boot, where it disappears into a sheath somewhere. She looks at me, grim but not murderous. "Real bitch of a night."
    I venture a short laugh. "Right."
    She keeps looking at me. Suddenly I know I have had a bad day because normally I would have smelled cop all over her the moment she appeared. I consider it unwise to offer her a snort of cocaine, as I was about to do.
    "I'm Roger," I say, holding out my hand. "I work for Roundabout Records."
    She looks at the hand, then suddenly takes it. "I'm Marianne. Until two hours ago I was a cop. Now I guess I'm just a human being."
    "I knew you were a cop," I say, grinning, because she would have stopped being weary in a few minutes anyway and started getting suspicious of me. It's another radar I have. "Undercover, right?"
    "Highway Patrol," she says. "Actually, I was at home when this shit started. Just heading out to work. When I got there, half the station was already dead. Bodies all over the place, coming back to life as . . . those things.   Streets were swarming with them."
    She had more, so I let her catch her breath, go into shock for a moment, do the tough-cop thing, and come out of it.
    "I've been killing them ever since."
    "Jeez," I say, putting, I think, just the right amount of sympathy into it. Actually, I want to yawn.
    The sincerity thing must have been what she wanted, because she breaks down for a moment.
    "I never actually killed anybody on this job. And now I've done nothing but kill for the last eight hours."
    "I was in the air when it started," I say, trying to figure out a way of getting her to go away. "Must have been hell here on the ground."
    This time I do yawn, but she doesn't catch it.
    "It was," she says. She runs her hand back through her hair. She's not ugly at all, but I know the type. She's got a boyfriend who's a bodybuilder or something, and spends a lot of time on the beach, maybe surfing, and if I put a hand on her, she'd whip that knife out and cut it off at the wrist. `"There's fighting going on all over L.A.," she says. "All the main highways are blocked with wrecked cars. There's National Guard units out fighting in Torrance and San Pedro. Jesus..."
    She collapses into a weeping wreck, which is good because my radar has gone off again and I have time to react, but she doesn't. I get down flat and roll under the nearest car as two boners appear, walking