James Axler – Road Wars

“Blue Jays came back, top of the sixth, last night”

“So the priest looks at it and sprinkles holy water over the hood”

” Should’ve gone to the wide receiver on that third and long call”

“Bases loaded when he comes in and trips over the dugout steps and breaks his ankle”

“Buddhist holy man lights twenty sticks of incense and waves them around the outside of the auto”

“Little bit more off over the ears, sir? I couldn’t agree more. Change comes from the top, not the guys doing the business on the line”

There was a click as the hidden tape wound through to its ending.

Though the recreation had been done with considerable skill, the overall effect was undeniably creepy. The skins had been cleverly preserved, and it was only when you looked real close that you saw the tiny network of fine lines and cracks that revealed the embalmer’s artifice. Ryan noticed that one of the customers had tiny flecks of sawdust leaking out from a fault where the right hand joined the wrist.

“Think the rest of these painted buildings are going to be filled with thesethese things?” J.B. pushed back the fedora and shook his head.

“One way to find out.”

“Yeah.”

They shut the door behind them, just as the tape started to play through again. “Blue Jays came back”

Ryan paused, fingers on the brass handle. “You notice something about those three voices?”

“No.”

“Reckon they’re all the same person. Just disguising himself by using different accents.”

“Could be.”

EACH OF THE REDECORATED buildings had its own macabre inhabitants, and each one had its own recorded tapes that could be played by turning the handle on the little generator fixed discreetly to the walls. The lawyer’s office had a tall, stately old man in a high wing collar, with long white hair and a snowy beard, his hands clasped piously in front of him dictating to his prim, gray-haired secretary.

“The message and other elements of the hereditament can be included, inter alia, as in the above-mentioned paragraph, which shall be interpreted as at the vendor’s discretion for all purposes and uses. Notwithstanding per ardua ad astra and nemo me impune lacessit whereby”

Ryan and J.B. left at that point, but the thin, prissy little Connecticut voice kept droning on behind them in the walnut-and-oak office.

“Triple crazy,” the Armorer said.

“Can’t argue with you.”

They wandered through the largest house, decorated in the white Victorian Gothic style that they’d seen in other parts of Deathlands, but rarely in such wonderful condition as here.

There were embalmed corpses in most of the rooms, all placed with infinite care into pseudolifelike poses. Everything had been done with an astonishing eye for detail a grandmother in a mobcap, fringed with stiff white lace, perched in a rocking chair with an armful of knitting, a stuffed Pekingese dog by her slippered feet; father, reading a book, in a comfortable armchair in the parlour, a luxuriant mustache, each hair carefully glued into place by the mysterious master craftsman, a monocle gleaming in his right eye. Mother was in the kitchen at the back of the house, surrounded by shining copper pots and pans. There was the makings of a meal on the table, with a middle-aged cook, rosy-cheeked, up to her elbows in flour. J.B. checked out the meat and vegetables that lay scattered artistically around.

“False,” he said. “Made out of clay or something like that. Looks good enough to eat.”

There was another of the black plastic generator boxes on the wall, with another misspelled notice at its side, identical to the one in the barbershop.

Ryan turned the handle and waited.

The voice that floated out of the speakers was high and strained, giving the instant suspicion that it was a man attempting to impersonate a woman.

“Now make sure you get the bread baked, May, and you know that the master must have his gentleman’s relish with his rarebit. The stew goes on in forty minutes, and remember to mix in the sassafras and moonlight.”

J.B. walked out into the shadowed hall, pushing at a half-open door, brushing past a tinkling curtain of beautiful colored crystal beads.