Free Dead Man's Hand by Richard Levesque

in
that vat. It wasn’t like I carried rubber gloves or anything. Plus,
I really didn’t want to try that hard.
    When I turned from the vat, I saw Edward
trying to help the Grommets to sit up. It required a lot of moving
of legs and shifting of weight, all of which was rather undignified
for the conjoined mobsters, and they both cursed him as he worked.
In their twisting around, I could see each brother’s face, and they
both looked scared, though not just from the attack.
    Edward saw me looking and said, “He’s bit.
What do we do?”
    The blood I’d seen on Clancy’s shirt hadn’t
just been from Pete getting shot. The former blade man had taken a
little chunk out of Clancy’s pectoral muscle, right through his
shirt—one last betrayal of his boss. Now the question of whether
the brothers shared more than just skin and bone would be answered.
Clancy was bound to Turn, but would Yancy, too? And what would it
be like being joined at the head to a thrashing, raging, flesh
hungry zombie if it turned out that only one brother should Turn? I
supposed if anyone deserved to find out, it had to be one of the
Grommets.
    Edward looked at me, expectant, as though he
figured I’d know what to do, as though I had some expertise in this
area. And, of course, I did. Zombies, vile and dangerous though
they were, were my people, too.
    The thing was: I was faced with a choice.
Rescue one or both of the Grommets and earn whatever passed for
gratitude among their kind as they went back to double-crossing
each other in more conventional ways. Or let one or both Grommets
die, their criminal empires expiring with them. I’d be a hero to
many, having effectively dropped a house on two witches at the same
time. But it would only have meant watching over the next couple of
months as petty thugs and killers nastier than Neat Pete struggled
over bits of the Grommets’ turf. After a while, two or three would
emerge, clamp down on the rest, and the city would be back to what
it was now—only with criminal overlords of a type I couldn’t know
or predict.
    It took me only a few seconds to see I
really didn’t have a choice. It was a case of the devil you knew
and the devil you didn’t. I reached into my back pocket and pulled
out the case containing Drea’s antidote.
    “ We can talk later about
what this is worth to you,” I said, my voice still hollow in my
ears from the effects of the gunshot.

 
    Seven
     
    “ That ought to do it,”
Bascom Quibble said, pulling the needle out of the hand and
stepping away from the table.
    He looked disgusted, like he was a stuffy
art collector who’d just had to purchase a comic book for a
nine-year-old.
    The hypodermic fitted neatly into a
foam-lined case, which he zipped shut with finality and tucked into
his briefcase.
    “ We’re done then?” he
asked, looking from me to Pixel.
    “ No quality control?” I
asked.
    He narrowed his eyes at me and then answered
his own question. “We’re done. I’ll see myself out.”
    He turned without another word and was out
the door in seconds.
    I was glad to see him go, having already
told myself he’d have to find someone else the next time he or his
girlfriend got themselves into a jam. I didn’t like the way they
worked.
    Pixel barely noticed Bascom’s passing. I
could see she was nervous. She looked at the severed hand where it
sat on a plastic cutting board that she’d placed on the plain pine
boards that made her coffee table, her lips held tightly together
and sucked in between her teeth just a bit. I doubted she got this
tense when doing a major hack. Lester Rincon’s hand was a bigger
deal than anything else she’d done in a long time.
    I’d phoned Pixel the night before after
walking out of the drug lab with all my body parts intact to tell
her it looked like I’d be able to get Bascom Quibble to work his
magic on the hand. It had been good news, but she still hadn’t
heard from her old man, and his absence was starting to get to