“You’re more awake than this morning.”
“Yes. Almost back to my old dead self. That snack you brought hit the spot.”
“You have a sweet tooth.”
“I have a sweet tooth.”
I look the building over, wondering about the best way in. I’ve never tried to take a dead man through the Room and this doesn’t seem like the right time to turn Einstein and run experiments.
“I guess you twenty-seven Drifters really are special. How did they put your soul back in when they made you a Savant?”
He shifts his gaze from the building to me.
“What do you mean?”
“I can see souls and you have one.”
I point at the ball of light behind his ribs.
“How did they put it back in after you died?”
“No one put it back. It never went anywhere. I told you before. The dead live in the Jackal’s Backbone. Everyone who’s ever died in L.A. is down there.”
“Right. I got that.”
“If everyone is down there, where else would their souls be? What’s the use of holding on to the bodies if you don’t have the souls? The Backbone is here because L.A. is a power spot. We’re here because it needs to be fed.”
“It feeds on the souls.”
“That’s what I said.”
“What happens to the souls when the city sucks them dry?”
He shrugs.
“They’re gone. Poof. Dust in the wind.”
“I’ll get us inside.”
I gun the Hummer, crank the wheel, and hit the gas. The Hummer blasts over the curb and up the stone stairs, and smashes through the glass front doors. Yeah, I just set off a shitload of alarms, but LAPD has more to do tonight than check out a B&E. Johnny gets out of the Hummer with his big kid grin plastered across his face.
“Cool.”
“You lead the way from here.”
We go through an atrium and paneled doors that look like they lead to business offices. But it’s not offices on the other side. It’s machinery. The interior of the building is hollow and it’s full of generators and pipes. Huge fucking pipes that come out of the ground and twist around each other like Gigantor’s intestines.
“Where the hell are we?”
Johnny’s smile grows wider.
“In the pumping station. Right over the Backbone.”
“What’s it pump?”
“Oil. I looked it up. This is the largest station, but there’s ninety-seven active wells in this field pumping almost a million barrels a year. One of them is right by the football field at Beverly Hills High School.”
“I’ll call my broker when we get back. Take me to where the dead people are.”