One morning, residents of Cain’s complex started to drop dead. Just like that. Bam! they’re dead. By noon the body count reached seventy-five. And like the current stiff lying before me, their brains were gone. Not broken, splattered, or spilled. Gone.

All the while, Edgar Cain grew inside his apartment. With each death, Cain’s brain increased in size and so did his skull and head. Somehow, he was absorbing the brains of everyone around him. With the brains came their intellects, memories, and ideas. In his own horrific way, Edgar Cain undid years of loneliness by making a community inside his enormous, growing head.

That was the point where I came in: scores dead and a giant head going berserk on the top floor of an apartment building. The cops had come to the right guy—it had me written all over it.

Of course, I was wasted that day, but this time it would work in my favor. I didn’t know it right away but Edgar couldn’t absorb my brain because of the tremendous amounts of narcotics swimming in my bloodstream. When I marched off the elevator with a shotgun, there was nothing he could do to stop me.

But I didn’t just run in shooting. First I tried to reason with him. He ranted on about becoming one entity, one life, making loneliness impossible. Blah, blah, blah. After the speech, he attacked me and went airborne. The fucking head could fly! I tried to shoot him but only managed to blast his skinny little leg. He hit me hard. We went out the window, and just like that, we were flying over the city, a thousand feet up. I was clinging to his hair, ears, an open wound, anything to stay on while I punched and kicked at the wailing head.

Then I remembered the syringe in my pocket that I had shot up with earlier. I used that very syringe to stab out Cain’s eyes and bring him crashing to the ground. He exploded in a massive spray of tissue and bone chips, which conveniently broke my fall. A perfect ending—I was alive and there was nothing left of the head.

5

“End of case. Until this,” I finished. I looked from Mo’Lock to Blout and then to the body. “I thought it was a simple case of spontaneous phenomenon, but if it’s happened again . . .”

Blout shook his head, “What the hell’s spontaneous phenomenon?”

“I made it up,” I said, “It means something that’s never happened before.”

Blout raised his hands. “You can’t make up case descriptions!”

“Sure can,” I shot back. “I just did.”

Blout was about to blow his top. The fact that I smiled didn’t help.

“There has to be a source.” Mo’Lock said, moving the conversation back on topic.

I rubbed my eyes. “Exactly.”

Blout looked at Mo’Lock’s pale flesh and deep sunken eyes. The ghoul bothered him in a way he’d never admit. To even entertain the thought of the walking dead would drive a normal person over the edge. For a cop like Blout whose entire existence is grounded in fact, the truth would kill him.