Joan Frances Turner - Frail

Table of Contents

DUST
FRAIL

TO MARY S.

AND IN MEMORY OF R.C.,
WHO DEPARTED TOO SOON.

Once again the greatest thanks to my agent, Michelle Brower, and my editor, Michelle Vega, for their unflagging work on my behalf, and to everyone at The Berkley Publishing Group and Folio Literary Management. To Kenneth V. Iserson, whose Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? was an invaluable research resource for both Frail and its predecessor. To staff and volunteers at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, with thanks for letting me overrun Lake Street Beach, Marquette Park Beach and Kemil Beach with imaginary corpses of all kinds. To Ann Larimer, Betsy Hanes Perry, Liz Barr, Eoghann Renfroe, Merri-Todd Webster and Minette Joseph for their friendship, moral support and reality checks administered whenever necessary. And as always, to my family for always believing in me.

When I was fourteen there was a security breach near the intersection of Seventy-Third and Klein and my mother killed her first intruder, and her last. She was on the six-to-three shift and I had guitar lessons a four-toll drive away in Leyton and she was supposed to pick me up straight from school, so we could hit U.S. 30 before the evening checkpoints started. But she didnt show, wasnt answering her cell, so I just sat there in the cafeteria, waiting, inhaling traces of stale crinkle-fry grease and watching the sky fade from drab blue to deep gray. Dave, one of the janitors, was mopping the floor like he wanted to slap its imaginary face and Ms. Acosta slipped and skidded in the wet and almost fell. I was glad to see it after all her clucking to my mother about slacking off and bad attitudes and twoooo-antsy (thats how she pronounced it, all bird-whistle fluttery like a comedienne in some old movie). She saw my lips twitching and glared at me, got what my mother called a cough-syrup smile right back, and I was reaching for my phone again when the warning siren kicked to life.

Louder and louder, that singular cadence distinguishing it from tornado and fire alarms: aieeeow-oooo, woooo-owwwww, low and moaning like an animal in pain. A very particular animal, creature, inhuman thing, that one-note wail all it had left for a voice. Onomatopoeia, wed just learned that in English: natural sound encapsulated into speech, like a captured insect buzzing in a new-made bottle. Onomatopoeia, onomatopoeia, the word kept winding and tongue-twisting through my head. Remain in your seats. This is only a test.

Damn, Ms. Acosta said, going pale under her orangey streaks of foundation.

Theyre just testing it! Dave shouted over the noise, supremely bored, nails raking at an angry pink splotch on the side of his neck. The sun hasnt even set, those things are barely awake

The intercom snapped on. Code Orange alert, said a womans voice, prerecorded, urgent but serene. Code Orange, located atKleinandSeventy-Third

Halfway across town. Dave shrugged, and kept squeezing out his mop.

Just what I need. Haul it, Amy. Ms. Acosta swept my backpack off the table, grabbed it like itd burden me too much to run from the crippled hordes. Dave? Move it! Lets go!

Theyre halfway across town, I said, and folded my arms. No wonder I couldnt reach my mom, there hadnt been a Code Orange in years and never with her on shift. If I could somehow get over there I could watch her toast their asses, maybe flick one with my own lighter if it tried to run away

Amy, I swear to God Im not in the moodDave? Dave! Put that mop down and lets go!

Dave just snorted. Jesus Christ, Alicia, calm down. They move about two miles an hour and they aint gonna roller-skate over here

Fine! She flapped her bony bangled arms at an imaginary audience, the only one thatd applaud her dramatics. Fine! Im not your mother, you get a leg torn off like Cris Antczyk did dont bother hopping over to me for sympathyAmy! The siren kept sounding, Dave nonchalantly fussing with his dirty yellow plastic bucket and CUIDADO: PISO MOJADO sign. Get up. Follow me. Now.

I got up. Shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling with fingertips for my school ID, town ID, curfew card, access gate e-pass. Followed her a few steps, sizing up her scuffed beige pumps with the one loose wobbly heel, my black flats. Then I ran, sailing over the damp linoleum, Ms. Acosta stumbling and screaming, Amy, goddammit! and Dave shaking his head laughing but I was already down the hall, out the steel double doors, the approaching sunset tinting Sycamore Street in a lurid orange wash and the sirens making the air tremble and throb.

My chest was a hot hollow husk but I was laughing as I ran, nobody can catch me, everyone else was basement-bound but I was going to see an honest-to-God living dead body get exactly what it deserved. Id never seen one in the flesh, not even by the roadside, and even on the news all you ever saw was dramatic re-creations and shitty movie CGII was gunning for the real thing and to see my mother do the deed. Shed get a raise, a promotion, if she faced it down. She could do it without puking or fainting, not like so many of the men. All their big talk. I was proud of her, still one of the only women on the security squads, and this wasnt just to gawk and rubberneck. It wasnt just for me. After everything that happened you have to understand, Im not lying, this wasnt all just about

Im getting ahead of myself. Sorry. You start to ramble, blither, when theres nothing left to talk to but the air. Ms. Acosta, shed tell you all about that, if she were still alive.

The little white stucco house on the corner of Sycamore and Cypress had gone creamy pink, quivering like a slab as the sunlight went rich and deep; I tunneled through their lilacs and kept on going. Seventy-Thirds halfway across town, Dave was right, but Lepingville wasnt that big a town. As I veered off Maplewood I could already see the police cars and fire engines and Lepingville Civic Security vans blocking the streets, great grape-like clusters of red, blue, bottle-green flashing lights. I picked through backyards and easements looking for the best vantage point and completely by accident I saw her, framed perfectly by the gnarled, curving tree branches around me: my mother, an ambulatory burnt marshmallow in thick padded charcoal-gray fatigues, coppery hair twisted up at the back of her head, waddling down Seventy-Third calm as you please as she fitted another cartridge to her flamethrower.

Everybody in town joked about intruders but they were still scared shitless. My mother, though, shed grown up over in Gary with no alarms, no fencing unless you put it up yourself, nothing but a half-defunct PA system, your basement and you. Anything could happen, any time, and you had to keep cool or youd go crazy. I wanted to be cool,