The Laughing Corpse abvh-2

by Laurell Kaye Hamilton

  The arms were almost at my bare feet. I fired two quick shots and the hand shattered, exploding on the white carpet. The handless arms flopped and struggled. They were still trying to reach me.

  There was a brush of cloth, a sense of movement just behind me, in the darkened living room. I was standing with my back to the open door. I turned and knew it was too late.

  Arms grabbed me, clutching me to a very solid chest. Fingers dug into my right arm, pinning the gun against my body. I turned my head away, using my hair to shield my face and neck. Teeth sank into my shoulder. I screamed.

  My face was pressed against the thing’s shoulder. The fingers were digging in. It was going to crush my arm. The gun barrel was pressed against its shoulder. Teeth tore at the flesh of my shoulder, but it wasn’t fangs. It only had human teeth to work with. It hurt like hell, but it would be alright, if I could get away.

  I turned my face forward away from the shoulder and pulled the trigger. The entire body jerked backwards. The left arm crumbled. I rolled out of its grip. The arm dangled from my forearm, fingers hanging on.

  I was standing in the doorway of my bedroom staring at the thing that had almost got me. It had been a white male, about six-one, built like a football player. It was fresh from the farm. Blood spattered where the shoulder had torn away. The fingers on my arm tightened. It couldn’t crush my arm, but I couldn’t make it let go either. I didn’t have the time.

  The zombie charged, one arm wide to grab me. I seemed to have all the time in the world to lift the gun, two-handed. The arm struggled and fought me as if it were still connected to the zombie’s brain. I got off two quick shots. The zombie stumbled, its left leg collapsing, but it was too late. It was too close. As it fell, it took me with it.

  We landed on the floor with me on the bottom. I managed to keep the Browning up, so that my arms were free and so was the gun. His weight pinned my body, nothing I could do about it. Blood glistened on his lips. I fired point-blank, closing my eyes as I pulled the trigger. Not just because I didn’t want to see, but to save my eyes from bone shards.

  When I looked, the head was gone except for a thin line of naked jawbone and a fragment of skull. The remaining hand scrambled for my throat. The hand still attached to my arm was helping its body. I couldn’t get the gun around to shoot the arm. The angle was wrong.

  A sound of something heavy sliding behind me. I risked a glance, craning my neck backwards to see the first zombie coming towards me. Its mouth, all that it had left to hurt me with, was open wide.

  I screamed and turned back to the one on top of me. The attached hand fluttered at my neck. I pulled it away and gave it its own arm to hold. It grabbed it. With the brain gone, it wasn’t as smart. I felt the fingers on my arm loosen. A shudder ran through the dangling arm. Blood burst out of it like a ripe melon. The fingers spasmed, releasing my arm. The zombie crushed its own arm until it spattered and bones snapped.

  The scrambling sounds behind me were closer. “God!”

  “Police! Come out with your hands up!” The voice was male and loud from the hallway.

  The hell with being cool and self-sufficient. “Help me!”

  “Miss, what’s happening in there?”

  The scrambling sounds were right next to me. I craned my neck and found myself almost nose to nose with the first zombie. I shoved the Browning in its open mouth. Its teeth scrapped on the barrel, and I pulled the trigger.

  A policeman was suddenly in the doorway framed against the darkness. From my angle he was huge. Curly brown hair, going gray, mustache, gun in hand. “Jesus,” he said.

  The second zombie dropped its crushed arm and reached for me again. The policeman took a firm grip of the zombie’s belt and pulled him upward with one hand. “Get her out of here,” he said.

  His partner moved in, but I didn’t give him time. I scrambled out from under the half-raised body, scuttling on all fours into the living room. You didn’t have to ask me twice. The partner lifted me to my feet by one arm. It was my right and the Browning came up with it.

  Normally, a cop will make you drop your gun before anything else. There, is usually no way to tell who the bad guy is. If you have a gun, you are a bad guy unless proven otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty does not work in the field.

  He scooped the gun from my hand. I let him. I knew the drill.

  A gunshot exploded behind us. I jumped, and the cop did, too. He was about my age, but right then I felt about a million years old. We turned and found the first cop shooting into the zombie. The thing had struggled free of his hand. It was on its feet, staggered by the bullets but not stopped.

  “Get over here, Brady,” the first cop said. The younger cop drew his gun and moved forward. He hesitated, glancing at me.

  “Help him,” I said.

  He nodded and started firing into the zombie. The sound of gunfire was like thunder. It filled the room until my ears were ringing and the reek of gunpowder was almost overpowering. Bullet holes blossomed in the walls. The zombie kept staggering forward. They were just annoying it.

  The problem for police is that they can’t load up with Glazer Safety Rounds. Most cops don’t run into the supernatural as much as I do. Most of the time they’re chasing human crooks. The powers that be frown on taking off the leg of John Q. Public just ‘cause he fired at you. You’re not really supposed to kill people just because they’re trying to kill you. Right?

  So they had normal rounds, maybe a little silver coating to make the medicine go down, but nothing that could stop a zombie. They were being backed up. One reloaded while the other fired. The thing staggered forward. Its remaining arm sweeping in front of it, searching. For me. Shit.

  “My gun’s loaded with Glazer Safety Rounds,” I said. “Use it.”

  The first cop said, “Brady, I told you to get her out of here.”

  “You needed help,” Brady said.

  “Get the civilian the fuck out of here.”

  Civilian, me?

  Brady didn’t question again. He just backed towards me, gun out but not firing. “Come on, miss, we gotta get out of here.”

  “Give me my gun.”

  He glanced at me, shook his head.

  “I’m with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team.” Which was true. I was hoping he would assume I was a cop, which wasn’t true.

  He was young. He assumed. He handed me back the Browning. “Thanks.”

  I moved up with the older cop. “I’m with the Spook Squad.”

  He glanced at me, gun still trained on the advancing corpse. “Then do something.”

  Someone had turned on the living-room light. Now that no one was shooting it, the zombie was moving out. It walked like a man striding down the street, except it had no head and only one arm. There was a spring in its step. Maybe it sensed I was close.

  The body was in better condition than the first zombie’s had been. I could cripple it but not incapacitate it. I’d settle for crippled. I fired a third round into the left leg that I had wounded earlier. I had more time to aim, and my aim was true.

  The leg collapsed under it. It pulled itself forward with the one arm, leg pushing against the rug. He was on his last leg. I started to smile, then to laugh, but it choked in my throat. I walked around the far side of the couch. I didn’t want any accidents after what I’d seen it do to its own body. I didn’t want any crushed limbs.

  I came in behind it, and it scrambled quicker than it should have to try to face me. It took two shots for the other leg. I couldn’t remember how many bullets I’d used. Did I have one more left, or two, or none?

  I felt like Dirty Harry, except that this punk didn’t give a damn how many bullets I had left. The dead don’t scare easy.

  It was still pulling itself and its damaged legs along. That one hand. I fired nearly point-blank, and the hand exploded like a crimson flower on the white carpet. It kept coming, using the wrist stump to push along.

  I pulled the trigger, and it clicked empty. S
hit. “I’m out,” I said. I stepped back away from it. It followed me.

  The older cop moved in and grabbed it by both ankles. He pulled it backwards. One leg slid slowly out of the pants and twisted free in his hand. “Fuck!” He dropped the leg. It wiggled like a broken-backed snake.

  I stared down at the still determined corpse. It was struggling towards me. It wasn’t making much progress. The policeman was holding it one-legged sort of in the air. But the zombie kept trying. It would keep trying until it was incinerated or Dominga Salvador changed her orders.

  More uniformed cops came in the door. They fell on the butchered zombie like vultures on a wildebeest. It bucked and struggled. Fought to get away, to finish its mission. To kill me. There were enough cops to subdue it. They would hold it until the lab boys arrived. The lab boys would do what they could on-site. Then the zombie would be incinerated by an exterminator team. They had tried taking zombies down to the morgue and holding them for tests, but little pieces kept escaping and hiding out in the strangest places.

  The medical examiner had decreed that all zombies were to be truly dead before shipping. The ambulance crew and lab techs agreed with her. I sympathized but knew that most evidence disappears in a fire. Choices, choices.

  I stood to one side of my living room. They had forgotten me in the melee. Fine, I didn’t feel like wrestling any more zombies tonight. I realized for the first time that I was wearing nothing but an oversize T-shirt and panties. The T-shirt clung wetly to my body, thick with blood. I started towards the bedroom. I think I meant to get a pair of pants. The sight on the floor stopped me.

  The first zombie was like a legless insect. It couldn’t move, but it was trying. The bloody stump of a body was still trying to carry out its orders. To kill me.

  Dominga Salvador had meant to kill me. Two zombies, one almost new. She had meant to kill me. That one thought chased round my head like a piece of song. We had threatened each other, but why this level of violence? Why kill me? I couldn’t stop her legally. She knew that. So why make such a damned serious attempt to kill me?

  Maybe because she had something to hide? Dominga had given her word that she hadn’t raised the killer zombie, but maybe her word didn’t mean anything. It was the only answer. She had something to do with the killer zombie. Had she raised it? Or did she know who had? No. She’d raised the beast or why kill me the night after I talked to her? It was too big a coincidence. Dominga Salvador had raised a zombie, and it had gotten away from her. That was it. Evil as she was, she wasn’t psychotic. She wouldn’t just raise a killer zombie and let it loose. The great voodoo queen had screwed up royally. That, more than anything else, more than the deaths, or the possible murder charge, would piss her off. She couldn’t afford her reputation to be trashed like that.

  I stared past the bloody, stinking remnants in the bedroom. My stuffed penguins were covered in blood and worse. Could my long suffering dry cleaner get them clean? He did pretty good with my suits.

  Glazer Safety Rounds didn’t go through walls. It was another reason I liked them. My neighbors didn’t get shot up. The police bullets had pierced the bedroom walls. Neat round holes were everywhere.

  No one had ever attacked me at home before, not like this. It should have been against the rules. You should be safe in your own bed. I know, I know. Bad guys don’t have rules. It’s one of the reasons they’re bad guys.

  I knew who had raised the zombie. All I had to do was prove it. There was blood everywhere. Blood and worse things. I was actually getting used to the smell. God. But it stank. The whole apartment stank. Almost everything in my apartment is white; walls, carpet, couch, chair. It made the stains show up nicely, like fresh wounds. The bullet holes and cracked plaster board set off the blood nicely.

  The apartment was trashed. I would prove Dominga had done this, then, if I was lucky, I’d get to return the favor.

  “Sweets to the sweet,” I whispered to no one in particular. Tears started to burn at the back of my throat. I didn’t want to cry, but a scream was sort of tickling around in my throat, too. Crying or screaming. Crying seemed better.

  The paramedics came. One was a short black woman about my own age. “Come on, honey, we got to take a look at you.” Her voice was gentle, her hands sort of leading me away from the carnage. I didn’t even mind her calling me honey.

  I wanted very much to crawl up into someone’s lap about now and be comforted. I needed that badly. I wasn’t going to get it.

  “Honey, we need to see how bad you’re bleeding before we take you down to the ambulance.”

  I shook my head. My voice sounded far away, detached. “It’s not my blood.”

  “What?”

  I looked at her, fighting to focus and not drift. Shock was setting in. I’m usually better than this, but hey, we all have our nights.

  “It’s not my blood. I’ve got a bite on the shoulder, that’s it.”

  She looked like she didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame her. Most people see you covered in blood, they just assume part of it has to be yours. They do not take into account that they are dealing with a tough-as-nails vampire slayer and corpse raiser.

  The tears were back, stinging just behind my eyes. There was blood all over my penguins. I didn’t give a damn about the walls and carpet. They could be replaced, but I’d collected those damned stuffed toys over years. I let the paramedic lead me away. Tears trickling down my cheeks. I wasn’t crying, my eyes were running. My eyes were running because there were pieces of zombie all over my toys. Jesus.

  Chapter 17

  I’d seen enough crime scenes to know what to expect. It was like a play I’d seen too many times. I could tell you all the entrances, the exits, most of the lines. But this was different. This was my place.

  It was silly to be offended that Dominga Salvador had attacked me in my own home. It was stupid, but there it was. She had broken a rule. One I hadn’t even known I had. Thou shalt not attack the good guy in his, or her, own home. Shit.

  I was going to nail her hide to a tree for it. Yeah, me and what army? Maybe, me and the police.

  The living-room curtains billowed in the hot breeze. The glass had been shattered in the firefight. I was glad I had just signed a two-year lease. At least they couldn’t kick me out.

  Dolph sat across from me in my little kitchen area. The breakfast table with its two straight-backed chairs seemed tiny with him sitting at it. He sort of filled my kitchen. Or maybe I was just feeling small tonight. Or was it morning?

  I glanced at my watch. There was a dark, slick smear obscuring the face. Couldn’t read it. Would have to chip the damn thing clean. I tucked my arm back inside the blanket the paramedic had given me. My skin was colder than it should have been. Even thoughts of vengeance couldn’t warm me. Later, later I would be warm. Later I would be pissed. Right now I was glad to be alive.

  “Okay, Anita, what happened?”

  I glanced at the living room. It was nearly empty. The zombies had been carried away. Incinerated on the street no less. Entertainment for the entire neighborhood. Family fun.

  “Could I change clothes before I give a statement, please?”

  He looked at me for maybe a second, then nodded.

  “Great.” I got up gripping the blanket around me, edges folded carefully. Didn’t want to accidentally trip on the ends. I’d embarrassed myself enough for one night.

  “Save the T-shirt for evidence,” Dolph called.

  I said, “Sure thing,” without turning around.

  They had thrown sheets over the worst of the stains so they didn’t track blood all over the apartment building. Nice. The bedroom stank of rotted corpse, stale blood, old death. God. I’d never be able to sleep in here tonight. Even I had my limits.

  What I wanted was a shower, but I didn’t think Dolph would wait that long. I settled for jeans, socks, and a clean T-shirt. I carried all of it into the bathroom. With the door closed, the smell was very faint. It looked like my bathroom. No disasters
here.

  I dropped the blanket on the floor with the T-shirt. There was a bulky bandage over my shoulder where the zombie had bitten me. I was lucky it hadn’t taken a hunk of flesh. The paramedic warned me to get a tetanus booster. Zombies don’t make more zombies by biting, but the dead have nasty mouths. Infection is more of a danger but a tetanus booster is a precaution.

  Blood had dried in flaking patches on my legs and arms. I didn’t bother washing my hands. I’d shower later. Get everything clean at once.

  The T-shirt hung almost to my knees. A huge caricature of Arthur Conan Doyle was on the front. He was peering through a huge magnifying glass, one eye comically large. I gazed into the mirror over the sink, looking at the shirt. It was soft and warm and comforting. Comforting was good right now.

  The old T-shirt was ruined. No saving it. But maybe I could save some of the penguins. I ran cold water into the bathtub. If it was a shirt, I’d soak it in cold water. Maybe it worked with toys.

  I got a pair of jogging shoes out from under the bed. I didn’t really want to walk over the drying stains in only socks. Shoes were made for such occasions. Alright, so the creator of Nike Airs never foresaw walking over drying zombie blood. It’s hard to prepare for everything.

  Two of the penguins were turning brown as the blood dried. I carried them gingerly into the bathroom and laid them in the water. I pushed them under until they soaked up enough water to stay partially submerged, then I turned the water off. My hands were cleaner. The water wasn’t. Blood trailed out of the two soft toys like water squeezed out of a sponge. If these two came clean, I could save them all.

  I dried my hands on the blanket. No sense getting blood on anything else.

  Sigmund, the penguin I occasionally slept with, was barely spattered. Just a few specks across his fuzzy white belly. Small blessings. I almost tucked him under my arm to hold while I gave a statement. Dolph probably wouldn’t tell. I put Sigmund a little farther from the worst stains, as if that would help. Seeing the stupid toy tucked safely in a corner did make me feel better. Great.