Dead Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

Tanner did a kind of jig on the tips of his toes. “Acetone! Epoxy! The raw materials for plastination, old boy! We need only to pool the time we’ve saved, and we’ll introduce the underworld to the most expensive preservative treatment ever conceived.”
    “I have no interest in becoming your junior partner,” said Jacob.
    Tanner leaned in close and growled, causing his face to vibrate. “It’s the name you’re after, is that it? Very well. I’ll hate myself for it later, but I relent: we’ll call it Campbell and Tanner, Limited. But you can print the bloody signs all by your—”
    Suddenly, Tanner’s jaw froze. Looking over Jacob’s shoulder, he pointed a shaky finger across the street. “That—that immigrant of yours—why, Jacob, he’s fondling the headless!”
    And fondling them he was.
    Remington, left unattended, had wandered over to the pair of headless corpses who’d recently appeared on the street below Jacob’s flat. They were a male and a female, both naked and just beginning to turn. How they got to the Preservative District without drawing anyone’s attention was a mystery, but the neighborhood favored a more fanciful question: whether they’d died with heads or stumbled out of the river without them. Because they never spoke and never moved, they’d been quickly adopted as a bit of local flavor, and had been nicknamed Adam and Eve.
    Now Remington had hit upon the bizarre idea of helping these unfortunates with a massage they could not feel. Patting them on their shoulders and the stumps between, kneading their muscles with his bare hands, he hummed tunelessly into their nonexistent ears.
    As Jacob staggered over, shouting Remington’s name, the crow launched itself from its bony nest and flew out of sight, cawing three times as it went.
    “Remington! Unhand them at once!” he cried. “This is a breach of every kind of decorum Dead City knows.”
    “But Jake, they can’t see anything. They’re frightened. I’m helping them, you’ll see.”
    Jacob shot a look over his shoulder, where John Tanner had overcome his shock and was looking for a confidant. “In that case,” said Jacob as evenly as he could, “won’t you invite your new friends up to my flat? It’s just down the street, and the three of you can get better acquainted there.”
    “That would be lovely!” said Remington.
    Communicating to the headless through taps and nudges, he urged them to their feet. Surprisingly, the corpses stood, and though their motions were stiff, they took the hands that Remington offered and followed after. “They say they’d be delighted,” he said.
    “He’s richer than Trimalchio,” whispered Jacob to Tanner as they passed, “and twice as eccentric. He’s paying me by the decade to preserve every downtrodden corpse he finds!”
    Tanner simply gaped, but as soon as the company had passed him by, Jacob knew he would waddle off to spread the gossip: Campbell was in league with a groper of amputees!
    Passing through the first of the many doorways that led to his flat, Jacob paused to ensure that Remington and the headless were following after, then walked on, muttering over the loss of his hard-earned reputation.
    Because so few Dead City habitations stood on their own, it was rare that one could reach an apartment through its front door. To access his flat, Jacob and his visitors were obliged to tramp through a number of hallways, parlors, and anterooms before coming to a fire-gutted convenience store, where, respectfully skirting a group of lady corpses shouting in an extinct Eastern European dialect, they came to a wooden staircase rising through the store’s roof to Jacob’s flat.
    Climbing with practiced ease, Jacob contorted himself through his open window, leaving Remington to get his headless followers through on his own, expecting it to take an hour or two and teach the boy a lesson in the process. Instead, he found Remington helping Adam and Eve inside moments later and