“Thomas Wright?”
“Thomas Wright came from a disadvantaged background and busted his ass to get to where he was. Great grades, volunteered. On track to be exactly the kind of lawyer Hormel wasn’t. Saw a bad but easy path before him and wanted to walk the straight and narrow instead. And I was careless and now he’s dead. When I see scumbags get off for what should be cut and dry convictions, I think of him and how he might have been able to convict that guy if I hadn’t been careless. That was almost twenty years ago. I still think about him every time I see a headline like that.”
There is a silence from the other side of the door.
“You never forget it. Unless you’re a monster, it haunts you. But you learn to deal with it. To live with the ghosts. And then you do better because you have to, because you can’t keep company with any more dead men. Now come on out and we’ll talk. Maybe watch some Netflix. Just me and my ghosts and you and your ghosts.”
“Alright,” I say and put Lady Di(e) back to bed. I won’t be needing her right now. “But can you do me a favor?”
“Sure, princess. What do you need?”
“I need a ride to the cemetery.”
“What cemetery?”
“Bill Thompson’s,” I say. “And Clay Irondha’s and Helen and Robert Jenkins’ and Jamarcus Reed’s and Linda White’s and Hy Cho’s and Stan Laroue’s.”
“You know they’re all buried in Omaha, right?”
“I figured as much,” I say.
“And that’s a full day’s drive, right? And you’re asking for a ride like it’s as easy as going to the gas station for a candy bar?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I guess so.”
There’s a long pause.
“I can do that,” says Houston through the door, his voice as soft as marshmallows, which reminds me of something important he said.
“I also need that hot chocolate.”
It takes a while to find Bill Thompson’s grave. It isn’t the large, ostentatious affair I expected, with statuary or perhaps the Thompson’s logo. Instead, it’s a tombstone like any other, standing only mid-thigh. There are the usual dates, the name, and a simple epitaph, Beloved Husband, Businessman, And If He Was Quite Lucky, Boss.
The funeral was over a week ago, so the crowds have died away. The dark cover of night gives me even more of the privacy I so desperately want. I have some things I want to say and if anyone were to overhear, it will be not only embarrassing but incriminating, and while I no longer want to be punished by anyone other than myself, I know killing someone to keep me out of prison will be a big step on that slippery slope I worry so much about.
“Hello, Mister Thompson,” I say. “Or Bill… whichever you prefer.”
I stare awkwardly at the numbers, my eyes transfixed by the death date. My own sin carved in stone. “No, not Bill. That’s too friendly. I don’t deserve that… closeness? Familiarity? What’s the word?” I mull it over, opening every drawer in the vocabulary part of my brain, but I can’t find the one with the word I’m looking for. It doesn’t take long to give up. I’m not here to compose a speech, but apologize to someone I have wronged.
“Mister Thompson.” Yeah, that sounds right. “Mister Thompson, I’m sorry I killed you and all of those other people. I’m sorry I tried to poison your coffee. I’m sorry I threw you down forty flights of stairs. I’m sorry I poisoned your IV in the hospital, and I’m sorry I shot out your tire on the interstate. I’m sorry I planned to drown you on the golf course, to smother you with a pillow in the hospital, to slip metal into your casts so when they ran an MRI, very bad things would happen, to fake your suicide, to put out the pilot light in your house so it would explode once you lit the stove. There are others I’m forgetting, but I think you get the idea.
“I killed the guy who was trying to kidnap you, but what good does that do you? I killed one bad guy, not the one I thought, but one. But eight other decent people had to die for it. What does that make me? What kind of bad guy am I? Do I deserve to die for this? Probably. Probably. But I’m weak and I’m worthless and I can’t do it. I tried. Don’t tell Houston, but I tried. At least I think I did. I assume that’s why I had my gun out on my bed tonight. I don’t remember taking her out, but there she was. Lady Di(e). My first princess present. I thought about it. I deserved it. You didn’t, but I do. But I couldn’t do it.”
I pull Lady Di(e) from my pocket and look at her. My Walther PPK, just like James Bond used. It’s why I named her that. Because the gun was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The connection was always tenuous at best, but I was a little girl and I had just seen a show about Princess Diana, and what better name for a princess present than a princess? And here she is, my oldest friend. Ready to give me a goodbye kiss if I would just let her. But I can’t. Apparently, I can kill innocent people no problem, but not the guilty. Maybe I already have turned into my parents.
“I wish I could say that I didn’t mean to kill you, but I did. I planned it out time and again. Your death was a deliberate, conscious decision on my part, and I regret that. I didn’t mind killing you for twenty thousand dollars because I had reasons to hate you personally, to think you were the kind of person who had it coming. I took someone’s word for it, and I was wrong. I didn’t do my due diligence, and I made a mistake, and I was wrong. I was wrong and now you’re dead, and I’m sorry. Do you hear me, damn you? I’m sorry.”
I didn’t intend to cry or to shout, but I find myself doing both. Tears stream down my face in torrents, flooding my cheeks and soaking into my shirt.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m genuinely fucking sorry, and it doesn’t change anything, but I wish it could. I really do.”
I collapse to the cold, damp earth, the grass not fully grown back yet from when they buried him. The mud and dew soaks into my jeans, chilling me with the cold grasp of death on my knees. My fists pound against the grave, against the headstone, against my own thighs to make it hurt, to feel pain for what I have done. I can handle physical pain. I can deal with the pain of a fist or a burn or a knife wound. Pain is temporary. Guilt is eternal, and try as I might, no amount of self-abuse can convert my guilt into pain.
“If I could bring you back, I would. I would do anything to bring you back. But I can’t. I made one stupid fucking decision and now you’re gone forever and I can’t change that. I was sloppy. I was careless. And now you’re dead and seven other good people are dead, or at least three other good people and several people who didn’t deserve to die but did anyway, and it’s all my fault. I just…”
I wipe the tears from my face, the act of which smears mud all over my cheeks and around my eyes. I hear a rustling nearby and worry someone may have heard me. I look around as best I can, hoping to see Houston or perhaps some animal, but I see nothing. I hoped that would ease my jangled nerves, but it only makes them worse.
“I just wish I could take it all back. I wish I could bring you back to life. But I can’t… I can’t…”
Lacking the strength to keep going, I collapse on the dirt and lie there, breathing in its earthy scent and watching the bugs of night crawl across the ground. The scratching, rustling noise draws closer, but I no longer care. Let them come. I can fight no more. I’m not suicidal. I just want to die, just as I want Bill, Helen and Robert, Jamarcus, Red, Hy, Stan, and Linda alive once more. It’s a trade I would gladly make.
I feel a tickle on my cheek, then a scratching. Startled, I try pulling back, but something grabs hold of my hair. I press my hands against the earth, hoping to heave myself up, but I’ve gotten tangled in something roots or…
I scream.
Rising from the grave dirt, a withered old hand claws at my hair, pulling me down. My fingers fumble along the ground trying to find where I left Lady Di(e). My sorrowful tears have turned fearful, and I realize I was wrong. I don’t want to die, and though I feel terrible for what I’ve done, I certainly do not want to be punished by the undead hands of my victims. Poetic justice is overrated.
/> “Zombie!”
Chapter 14
JAMIE
I’M NOT ME ANYMORE
In retrospect, I found myself wondering a great many things about that escape from Bill Thompson’s grave. How would investigators explain away the fact that I had clearly been dug out from the casket up rather than the surface down? And what of the forensic evidence? Many times, my fingernails tore off as I struggled to break free. Those fingernails were still down there in the dirt and muck, waiting for some crime scene investigator to find. And because my body regenerated completely before reviving, there were no doubt more fingernails than Bill Thompson had fingers, all of which would match his DNA perfectly. How often had I died? I couldn’t tell how long I had been digging, how many hundreds or thousands of deaths came and went trying to free myself from that cold, earthen tomb. These questions only occurred to me much later. At the time, I was possessed of one singular thought. I just knew on a deep, primal, savage level, that I had to get out.
I did not care what injuries I sustained. The frantic climb to sweet, clean, unconfined air pushed me upward, hands raking at earth and stone and root like a madman.
No, not like a madman. I was a madman, maybe less. Maybe a beast, the last of the true wild things consumed by the need break free from his cage. There were sounds, thuds, muddy whispers that some part of me knew meant danger, meant I should be cautious. The beast devoured that part of me and kept digging.
The earth had grown warm around me from my furious exertions and the heat of resurrection, so when at last my fingers felt the coolness of air, they scratched wildly, urgently seeking something to get a little leverage, to pull myself free. Twisting my fingers into a knot of grass, I pulled hard. I felt a little give at first, then the grass held mostly firm, save some wild movements, and a muffled scream. Let the grass scream, the beast said. I pulled harder.
Something cold pressed against my wrist, some branch perhaps. Then with a roar of thunder, my arm screamed in savage pain, and everything above it went numb. I howled in mad agony. Some part of my brain told me that meant something, but the beast ate that part of my brain too. I would show that thunder branch what happened when it messed with the beast. My other hand shot wildly out and scrambled to find the branch. It was gone and so was the struggling grass. With nothing to hold onto, I again clawed at the ground to escape. The hole grew. Cool air came down and the fires of the beast began to wane. I could breathe the first clean air in some unmeasurable amount of time and with a choking gasp, I inhaled the world again, each lungful of air a thousand lives deep.
I struggled to remember how words were formed as things came back into focus. It was night. Someone must have been near because I finally realized that the thunder branch was gunfire. I tried to think of what to say, how to draw suspicion away from my circumstances to avoid more gunfire, and I hoped I had command of language by the time some semi-reasonable explanation came to me.
When my eyes finally crested the lip of the hole, I had to squint to pull any detail out of the silhouette that stood before me. The person was lean, determined, poised to strike. Feminine. Some part of my brain told me I should recognize her, but the beast ate that part of my brain and it hadn’t come back to life yet. I resolved myself to keep climbing, and it wasn’t until my shoulders broke the earthen plane that I finally recognized her, even with her mousy hair gone unkempt, her office attire exchanged for worn pajama pants and a Bauhaus t-shirt.
How determined, how professional an assassin was she that after killing me several times, she still waited at my grave to kill me once more? Dumb luck.
“…coffee girl…?” I said with a dry cough, clearing who knows how much grave dirt from my lungs and parched throat. “…fu-”
Then there was a burst of gunfire and I fell back into the flames. Dumb. Fucking. Luck.
Chapter 15
OLIVIA
I’LL MAKE THINGS RIGHT INSTEAD
Running on pure killer instinct, my left hand closes around the Lady’s grip, and in a blink, I press the barrel tightly against the monster’s wrist. A clean shot through the center will sever the tendons the hand use to grasp. I could pull free, take several steps back, and easily pick off the monster as it rises from the grave.
The rapport of the 7.65mm round erupting from the barrel and blasting through the monster’s flesh fills the once peaceful cemetery air. Blood and bone fragments splatter across the dirt, and from somewhere beneath me, an unearthly howl of inhuman agony rises up. The hand flails, scraping frantically at the dirt and soon another hand thrusts upward from the earth and joins it, digging at the ground surrounding it, pulling itself up. My first instinct is to shoot it the moment it breaks free from the grave, but I decide each burst of gunfire increases the odds of someone stumbling upon the surreal scene. Even with zombies, I will be a professional. I will wait until I can see the head and finish the creature off once and for all.
The back of my mind screams about the impossibility of it all, consumed by the fear that comes with wondering whether this is just one of many zombies rising to devour all of humanity or whether it is a spirit of vengeance risen with the single purpose of destroying me. Either way I am right and proper fucked. But I don’t have time to listen to that part of me. I have a thing to kill this thing. I have to survive. There will be a time for whats and whys later, but not now. Now is all about killing. After that will come disposing, unless this is not an isolated corpse coming for me. In that case, then it will be a time for running and hiding.
But first things first. I listen intently, watching the hole grow larger, the dry, rasping moan beneath the surface growing louder as it rises. It doesn’t take long for the head to crest the hole’s rim, but I don’t shoot. Not yet. Not until I can see the whole thing. I want a good, clean shot.
Slowly, the head inches its way out of the ground, the accusing eyes, the nose, the mouth and chin. I aim my pistol at the thing as it breaks through, its face twisting into an expression of rage and confusion.
“…coffee girl…?” it says with a dry cough. “…fu-”
I let Lady Di(e) punctuate its sentence with a period right in the eye. I watch the zombie for a few moments, making sure it doesn’t move, making sure no others are coming. So far so good. Of course, now I have the dead body of Bill Thompson half hanging out of the ground with a bullet through its head and hand. I can’t exactly leave it that way. What if it’s contagious? The body will have to be burned. Plus, there is the issue of someone coming through, thinking grave robbers hit up the place. I’ll have to clean up the grave. Damn Bill Thompson. Everything about this guy means more work for me. Can’t he let anything be easy?
I begin to pull at the body, but it must have gotten itself wedged into the ground good and solid. Maybe I should have waited until it climbed completely from its grave, but too late for woulda’s and shoulda’s. What I need now is help.
I have only gone a few yards back toward the car when I meet Houston, huffing and sweating. When he sees me, he rushes me and held me tight.
“Oh, thank heaven,” he says. “I heard the gunshot, and I thought maybe you’d done something stupid. But then I heard the second one and I didn’t know what to think.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Houston, I’m okay. But there’s something you need to see.”
I lead him back to Bill Thompson’s grave where the pale body lies in the moonlight, soaking in a pool of dirt and blood. My mentor says nothing for a minute, though he tries, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as he struggles to piece a thought together.
“I see you did something stupid after all.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say.
“Good, because it looks like you went crazy, dug up Bill Thompson’s body, and decided to kill him all over again.”
“No,” I say. “He dug up himself. He was a zombie. But I did kill him all over again.”
“Yeah,” he says after a moment’s consideration. “That’s exactly what happene
d. You went crazy, dug him up, and killed him all over again.”
“I know you don’t think all my marbles are in the same bag right now,” I say. “Hell, I know I’m missing a few after what happened, but I do know I have at least most of them. You can doubt my sanity all you want later, but for now, I need you to help me get the body out of the ground so we can burn it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from zombie movies, it’s that burning it is the only way to keep it from infecting anything else.”
Houston considers me, then the body before crossing to the grave. Without fanfare, ceremony, or explanation, he begins to stomp the body back down the hole it dug its way out of.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Get away from it!”
“Look,” he says. “I’m old. It’s late. We have a body maybe one eighth out of the ground. It’ll be a whole lot easier just to shove one eighth down than to dig seven eighths up. We throw a little dirt over it and we never talk about this again.”
“It could bite you!”
“You said you killed it. I can see the hole in its head with my own eyes.”
“Yeah, but how do we know that’s what kills zombies in real life?”
“There are no zombies in real life,” he says impatiently. “Olivia, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re having a psychotic break. We have to get this cleaned up and we have to get you out of here before you do something stupid, or rather something even more stupid than you’ve already done.”
The Professional Corpse (The Departed Book 1) Page 13
