Precinct 13 Read Online Free PDF Page B

had been patched in places with silver duct tape. A large army pack sat beside her. Though I was less than a foot behind her, I hesitated, especially since I could hear her muttering to herself about the government and space aliens.
    I turned away. Shoving the toe tag into my coat pocket, I continued toward the address on the slip.
    Even if the old lady
had
any information, I wasn’t prepared to do anything with it. Let’s say I had caught up with the reanimated corpse; then what? I wasn’t even sure what a person did when confronting a naked dead guy. This was the sort of thing I desperately hoped that the people at Precinct 13 specialized in. Best to let the experts deal with it.
    It didn’t take me long to find the address.
    I’d walked as far as downtown. It was about three blocks up from the waterfront. The trees had disappeared as I left behind the river. Many of the buildings were box stores,unadorned concrete with big, asphalt parking lots around them. For a Chicago girl like me, the squat buildings spaced so far apart were disconcerting, as if I were exposed in all the emptiness.
    The address directed me to a group of buildings that had a more old-fashioned, frontier-town look. Built of red brick with white stone trim around the windows, they were two stories tall. On the side of one, paint peeled off an advertisement for Coca-Cola featuring a woman with a 1940s hairdo. I stopped in front of the street number that matched the one on my slip of paper.
    Considering I walked from the station house, I couldn’t quite see how this was a new “jurisdiction,” as the chief implied. In fact, the place to which he’d directed me appeared to be an empty storefront. A dusty film covered the windows, and an OPENING SOON sign was propped against the sill. I double-checked the address. This was supposed to be the place. Despite my better judgment, I knocked. The head of the snake was just visible peering out from under the cuff of my coat sleeve.
    Cupping my hand, I peered into the storefront. No one seemed to be around, but it looked as though someone were renovating the place. There was an ancient, paint-spattered boom box stereo plugged into an outlet, and one of those massive floor polishers propped up against a wall.
    My earlier euphoria began to drain. Maybe the chief
was
just being polite and was giving the crazy girl somewhere to go while he called in the city council or whatever it took to fire me. What if, when I went back, there really
were
men in white coats waiting for me?
    I shook my head.
Thinking like that is real paranoia, Alex. Don’t go there. Not yet.
    “Hello?” I said to the door, knocking again. “The chief sent me!” I plastered the slip of paper up against the glass door as proof, even though there was no one to see it.
    I nearly jumped when I heard the sound of sleigh bells as the door opened. “You must be looking for Precinct Thirteen.”
    With the whole “precinct” part, I expected a cop. The guy who answered the door looked more like a—well, like he could be a friend of mine.
    He wore mostly Goth gear: a lot of black on black. Underneath his leather jacket, his T-shirt…glowed. It looked like the icon on my laptop that showed how many bars my Wi-Fi connection had. Plus, he’d accessorized with a multicolored striped scarf that was completely oversized on his slender frame, which reminded me of old-school Dr. Who. So what did that make him? Gothy geek? Nerdy Goth?
    His hair was short and either badly slept in or a carefully stylized mess. He was pretty enough that it could have been the latter, but the earrings and the nose ring made me lean toward the former.
    “I’m Jack,” he said. “You must be Alice.”
    “Alex,” I corrected.
    “I was making a literary reference,” he said with a sniff and a London accent. He stepped aside to let me in. “Because,
Alex
, you’re about to enter Wonderland.”
    I stepped over the threshold. The coil of the tattoo tightened slightly,