Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

where she lived, according to the two guys upstairs. Loud and freaky in bed, they tell me.”
    I coughed into a fist, again damning my fugitive memories. “You know who lives here now?”
    “Guy called Max. He works days.”
    I knocked hard. No answer.
    Lace sighed. “I told you he wouldn’t be home.”
    “Glad to hear it.” I pulled out another of the items requisitioned that morning and knelt by the door: The lock was a standard piece-of-crap deadbolt, five tumblers. Into its keyhole I sprayed some graphite, which is the same gray stuff that gets on your fingers if you fiddle with the end of a pencil, and does the same thing to locks that Bahamalama-Dingdongs do to repressed memories—lubricates them. Two of the tumblers rolled over as my pick slid in. Easy-peasy.
    “Dude,” Lace whispered, “shouldn’t you get a warrant or something?”
    I was ready for this one. “Doesn’t matter. You only need a warrant if you want the evidence to stand up in court. But I’m not taking anyone to court.” Another tumbler rolled over. “This isn’t a criminal investigation.”
    “But you can’t just break into people’s apartments!”
    “I’m not breaking. Just looking.”
    “Still!”
    “Look, Lace, maybe this isn’t strictly legal. But if people in my job didn’t cut a few corners every now and then, everyone in this city would be infected, okay?”
    She paused for a moment, but the ring of truth had filled my words. I’ve seen simulations of what would happen if the parasite were to spread unchecked, and believe me, it’s not pretty. Zombie Apocalypse, we call it.
    Finally, she scowled. “You better not steal anything.”
    “I won’t.” The last two tumblers went, and I opened the door. “You can stay out here if you want. Knock hard if Max comes out of that elevator.”
    “Forget it,” she said. “I’m going to make sure you don’t do anything weird. Besides, he’s had my blender for four months.”
    She pushed in past me, heading for the kitchen. I sighed, putting my lock-pick away and closing the door behind us.
    The apartment was a carbon copy of Lace’s, but with better furniture. The shape of the living room refired my recognition pistons. Finally, I had found the place where the parasite had entered me, making me a carrier and changing my life forever.
    It was much tidier than Lace’s apartment, which might be a problem. After seven months of living there, an obsessive cleaner would have swept away a lot of evidence.
    I crossed to the sliding glass doors and shut the curtains to make it darker, trying to ignore the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen.
    “You know,” I called, “ you’re the one who’s going to have to explain to Max how you got your blender back.”
    “I’ll tell him I astral-projected. Butt-head.”
    “Huh?”
    “Him, not you. He had my blender all summer. Margarita season.”
    “Oh.” I shook my head—infection, cannibalism, blender appropriation. The Curse of 704 was alive and well.
    I pulled out another little toy I’d picked up that morning—an ultraviolet wand—and flicked it on. The demon’s eyes on my Kill Fee shirt began to give off an otherworldly glow. I swept the wand across the same wall that, back in Lace’s apartment, had held the words written in gristle.
    “Dude! Flashback!” Lace said, crossing the living room. She smiled, and her teeth flickered as white as a radioactive beach at noon.
    “Flashback?”
    “Yeah, your teeth are glowing, like at a dance club.”
    I shrugged. “Don’t go to clubs much since I . . . got this job.”
    “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said. “All that sexual transmission just waiting to happen.”
    “Huh? Hey, I don’t have anything against—”
    She smiled. “Just kidding, dude. Relax.”
    “Ah.” I cleared my throat.
    Nothing glowed on the wall in the ultraviolet. I held the wand closer, casting weird shadows across the stucco mountainscape. No pattern of a hurried paint roller