“You say that like you’re two hundred years old,” I said, and then remembered that his personnel file marked him as closer to three hundred. “Never mind. Anyway, you were saying?”
“It’s an old art. One of darkness. Communion with the dead.” He paused as he glanced around. Finally, he whispered, “Unholy.”
“Scary as hell, if you ask me.” I was trying to be careful where I stepped, considering that I had only one shoe on. “These things aren’t supposed to exist.” I held up a warning hand at Rachel. “I know, I know. But still, some supernatural bullshit is just that: bullshit. Zombies? Come on. It was so ridiculous that when you first called me I thought for certain you guys were pulling a prank on me.”
“Why would we do that?” Rachel asked.
“Hmmm?”
“Why would we be playing a trick on you?”
I began moving my shoeless foot around on a soft patch of grass.
“Good natured fun maybe?” I replied with a shrug. “Could have been boss-appreciation day or something.”
They all gave me a you’re-joking-right? look.
“Some employees do it,” I said sullenly. “Anyway, my point is that nobody’s going to believe this.”
“On the contrary,” Lydia said through the connector, obviously having been listening in on us. She was clearly worried about our…well, my safety. “The Directors have heard what’s happened and they’re very interested in speaking with you.”
I dropped my head forward and sighed.
“Lydia,” I said as sweetly as I could manage, “please let them know that we have some cleanup work to do first. I’ll get with them as soon as possible.”
“I’ve already told them that, babycakes.”
“Thank you.”
“They said to make it quick.”
Chapter 5
I snapped on a fresh pair of shoes, after wrangling the old ones into a bag, being careful not to touch the goop-covered one. I wasn’t going to wear them again because I knew what they’d been through.
“You think I should donate these?” I asked Rachel.
“Seriously?”
“What? I’d have them cleaned first.”
“Would you wear them knowing where they’d been, even after having them cleaned?”
I frowned at her. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be considering donating them.”
“My point, exactly.” She looked back at the shoes. “I’d say burn them.”
She was probably right, but the idea was silly. It’s not like they had any weird infection on them that would cause the next person who wore them to turn into a zombie.
“Shit,” I said, feeling the blood fall from my face.
“What?”
“You don’t think the blood or goop or whatever it was on my shoes is infectious, do you?”
She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been touching that shoe,” I answered, pointing. “So did Felicia. Are we going to turn into…”
“Don’t say it,” she interrupted before I could continue my thought. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“You’ve seen the movies, Rachel.”
“Hollywood, Ian.” She had her arms crossed again. Why she ever uncrossed them around me was a mystery. “There’s no evidence that a zombie bite or zombie…juice is going to cause you or anyone to become a zombie.”
“But you don’t know that.”
We were both silent for a few moments, staring at the bag in the back of the car. Sure it was ridiculous to think that this was some kind of infectious thing, even if most of the movies and books said that was the case. But what if there was something to it? Most stories that we read are based on facts, right? Tales about vampires, werewolves, pixies, and so on were all based on reality. Loosely based, sure, but legends are rarely grown out of nothing.
“Burn them,” she said again, looking less sure of herself. She obviously caught on to the fact that I was staring at her incredulously. “What?”
“You just said…”
“I know what I said, Ian.” Her arms tightened as a worried look crested her face. “Burn them.”
“Yeah.”
“Actually,” she said, unfolding her arms and pushing me back, “I have an even better idea.”
A light energy rolled out of her hands and levitated the bag out of the car. She moved it until it was on the grass and then blasted it with a fireball. It made a whooshing sound and disappeared.
“You okay?” yelled Jasmine from her spot near the rest of the gang.
“Yeah,” I called back. “Just…uh…getting rid of my shoes.”
There was no response. Either they thought we were nuts or they agreed with our level of caution. Probably a little of both.
“What about me and Felicia?” I said, reminding Rachel that we’d both touched the shoes.
She began walking back toward the others. “I could flame you both like I did your shoes, but I’m guessing you’d rather wait to see if symptoms appear.”
“Nice.”
When we approached the rest of the crew, Griff was walking along the opened graves.
Rick Portman from the supernatural morgue would be here any minute to help clean things up. If Lydia gave him the full lowdown, he and his crew would have some type of hazmat suits on. At least, I hoped they would. Until we knew more about this zombie stuff, precaution would be rule one.
“What’s he doing?” Rachel asked Chuck.
“Counting the graves.”
“Why?”
“To be certain that we have a one-to-one ratio,” Griff replied before Chuck could. “If there are more graves then there are bodies, that will mean…”
“That some of them got away,” I finished for him.
“Precisely so,” Griff stated with a stiff nod.
Then he let out a slow breath. The look on his face spelled trouble. Everyone knew it.
“How many?” I said, trying to keep a measure of calm.
“Seven.”
“Swell.” I paused. “Maybe they all froze up because you shut off the magic light show?”
“You saw those above ground were still moving, Chief,” noted Chuck.
“True.”
We all started scanning the area, hoping to spot them in the yard. Even with my enhanced vision, I couldn’t spot any of the damn things nearby. I zoomed as far as I could and swept the area again.
There was one across the street. It was heading toward the housing complex across Eldorado. I couldn’t have that.
“There’s one,” I said as I took off running at it.
“Make sure it’s a zombie before you fire at it, Chief,” Felicia called after me.
I hopped the fence in full stride and bolted right at the creature, pulling out Boomy in the process. Within a few feet of it, I heard the wheezing and coughing that was the trademark of all zombies in the movies.
Just as I was about to pop a bullet into its head, it turned and looked at me.
“Don’t shoo…hic…shoot,” said a man who looked to have seen better years.
It was a hobo who was clearly shitfaced. He reeked of soured booze and a lack of proper bathing. And even though I had a gun pointed at him, he clung to his bottled wine like it was his most prized possession.
Rachel caught up a moment later, hands aglow.
“It’s just a bum,” I said, panting.
“That’s not ni…hic…nice,” the guy said as if affronted. “I used to be som…somebody, you know?”
“Right,” I said with a weak smile. “Sorry, pops. Thought you were someone else.”
“Sto…hic…story of my life.”
He continued on his way while singing some song about lost love and loneliness.
“Well, that was close,” said Rachel. “Obviously we’re going to need to vet our zombies before just outright killing them.”
“Seems so.” I glanced back at the cemetery and opened the full channel on the connector. “False alarm. Was just an o
ld drunk guy. Is there any way to track these damn things?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, then let’s start combing the area. We have seven to pick up before they start biting people and turning everyone into zombies!”
Chapter 6
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Griff after Rachel and I rejoined the group.
I turned and looked at him. “What doesn’t work like what?”
“The myth regarding a zombie bite resulting in the one bitten turning into a zombie.”
“Oh, right.” I nodded and then squinted. “It doesn’t?”
“No. In fact, the term zombie is rather boorish.” Sometimes his uppityness was annoying. He was wealthy, yes, but so was I, and you didn’t hear me talking condescendingly all the time. Sometimes, certainly, but that was a requirement of being uber rich. To be fair, though, Griff was from old money. Very old. He came from an age where drinking tea with your pinky sticking out was considered civilized. “What we saw here were merely reanimated corpses who had been instilled with a desire to attack.”
“Right,” I said, rubbing my chin seriously. “So, you mean they’re…zombies?”
Griff sighed.
“Whatever we call them,” said Jasmine as she walked between Griff and me, “we need to round them up before they attack someone.”
“True,” said Griff and I in unison.
A slew of white vans pulled up, signaling that Rick Portman and his cleanup crew had arrived.
Portman was a werebear. You could almost tell by looking at him in his normal state because he was a big bear of a man with bushy brown hair and a matching beard. Plus, he was the kind of guy who lumbered when he walked. His crew were all donning protective suits, but Portman wasn’t the type who bothered with things like that.
“Everyone split up,” I commanded my team. “They couldn’t have gotten too far. Remember there are seven of them. We get seven and we’re done.”
Griff and Chuck took off toward South Eastern, and Jasmine and Felicia headed to Robindale.
“Dex?” called out Portman as Rachel and I took the Eldorado side and combed our way toward the housing development at the end of the cemetery grounds.
“Hey, Portman,” I said, pausing while Rachel continued on. “Can’t really chat. Got a bunch of zombies on the loose.”
“Zombies, eh?” He’d said it in such a way that made me think he thought I’d been drinking. I pointed at the corpses littering the ground. “Oh, wow. There are zombies. Lydia told me that, but I thought maybe she’d had a software upgrade to add in a sense of humor or something.”
“That’s what I thought!”
He eyed the area worriedly. “Need any help?”
“If you want to take a few people and go up to that corner,” I said, pointing, “we’ve got seven on the loose.”
“Sweet.” He rubbed his hands excitedly. “I usually don’t get them until after they’re dead. It’ll be fun to take some out beforehand for once.”
“That’s…disturbing.” I then raised an eyebrow. “You do realize that they’re already dead, technically speaking?”
“Thanks for ruining it for me, Dex.”
With that we split apart and took off running. Rachel was already a good distance in front of me, clearly having decided not to sit through my stirring discourse with Portman. I caught up to her quickly.
“Anything?”
“Nope.”
“Chief,” said Chuck through the connector, “Griff and I just dropped two of them. They were heading in from the corner of Eldorado and South Eastern.”
So those were zombies that I saw when I’d turned the corner after the taco joint.
Right?
“You did verify they were zombies first, yes?”
“They were most assuredly reanimated corpses,” Griff answered.
I made a face in the air, mocking Griff, but simply replied, “Excellent.”
“Straight ahead,” Rachel said, holding out a hand to slow me down. “Do you see them?”
There were three forms dragging themselves across the dirt field. This section of the cemetery hadn’t been greened up with grass yet. King David was apparently growing their business, though, because the dirt looked to be packed down nicely. I guess when it came to cemeteries, people were just dying to get in there.
“Why are we slowing down?” I asked, thinking that maybe Rachel had some interesting plan in mind.
“I uh…” She stopped and looked at me. “Habit, I guess. Sneaking up on the bad guys and all that, you know?”
“Gotcha.” Then I had an idea. “Any chance you could cast a nifty spell that causes roots to come up out of the ground and hold them in place?”
She merely blinked at me.
“What?”
“Roots?” she mostly snorted. “Wizards do crap like that. You know I don’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be roots, exactly, Rachel,” I retaliated. Why was everyone so particular? “My point is to find some way to hold them in place so they can’t attack us.”
She sighed and said, “Fine.” She waved her hands around for a second and launched a white orb at their legs. They instantly fell down. Then they turned and started crawling toward us. “There.”
“That was pretty effective. Why didn’t you do this before when we were fighting a bunch of them?”
“Because I didn’t think about it.”
“It just seems that it would make sense…”
She pointed at the oncoming zombies. “Any chance you could shut up and shoot those damn things?”
I casually leveled my gun and placed three bullets into three craniums.
They stopped crawling.
“Boy, that sure was a lot simpler than when they…”
Something slammed in to me from behind, knocking Boomy from my hands and throwing me facedown in the dirt. The smell of rotted flesh was nearly overwhelming until my world became a searing force of pain and anguish.
The thing had bitten me.
Chapter 7
“Ian,” Rachel yelled as I writhed around on the ground, “it did not bite you.”
I stopped my groaning and looked up at her. She was leaning over with a face that mixed concern and disbelief. It reminded me of a time when we used to date and I asked how she’d felt about handcuffs in the bedroom.
“It didn’t?” I asked, hoping that she was right.
“No.”
I felt at my neck, expecting the worst, but there was no gouge. I was covered in slime or something, but there were no holes in my flesh that I could make out.
“Then what the hell did I feel?” I asked. “It hurt like hell.”
“I cast a targeted blast of energy and blew its head off before it could bite you.”
“Oh…thanks.” I sat up and nearly vomited at the realization of what constituted the slime that was covering me. To be sure, though, I asked the question I really didn’t want to ask. “Are you saying that this is brain goop all over me?”
“Yep.”
“Nasty!” I began pulling it out of my hair and scooping it off my face, throwing it all on the ground while fighting the urge to decorate my second pair of shoes with bile.
Then I paused.
Something wasn’t adding up. If Rachel blew the thing’s head off before it could bite me, what was that searing pain I’d felt? Maybe it did bite me and she’d just healed it? She wasn’t a healer like Serena was, but she had a spell or two that she could use in a pinch.
“If I wasn’t bitten,” I said as my thoughts continued racing, “why did that hurt so bad?”
“Hmmm?” she said while looking around the area.
“My neck.”
“What about it?”
She was acting too innocent. Something was going on. I’d known her long enough to tell when she was hiding something from me.
“Rachel?”
“I think I see one over there,” she said, ignoring me. “No, that’s Portman.”
“Rachel?” I became a little more insistent.
“We should probably head down…”
“Rachel!”
She jolted. “What?”
“Why did that hurt so bad?”
“Why did what hurt so bad?”
“You’re stalling,” I said with a sharp look.
And then it hit me. I reached for my neck again and noticed that the flesh was a little softer in one spot than in the rest. That only happened when…
“Holy shit,” I said, opening my eyes in shock. “You shot me!”
“Hmmm?”
“Son of a bitch.” I was beside myself at this point. “When you fired at that zombie, it went straight through and took a chunk out of my neck.”
She tilted her head and squinted, peering in to study the covered-up wound. “It did?”
“Unbelievable.”
It was a rare thing for Rachel to screw up. I did it all the time, and she pointed it out in equal measure, but for her to foul things up somehow was like finding a diamond at the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t happen very often.
Then I felt a sense of horror. “Did zombie bits get into the cut? Oh shit! Have I got zombie bits in me?”
“Relax, Ian,” she stated firmly. “I made sure all the zombie bits were out before…”
She stopped herself and turned white. Then she opened and closed her mouth a few times, clearly seeking the right words. Finally, she slumped over.
I took a deep breath, trying to maintain my composure. It wasn’t easy. I had no doubt she’d actually got all the zombie bits out, and I believed Griff when he said that there was no “infection” or anything related to being bitten by a zombie or by touching zombie juice, but it was still beyond disgusting.
It was my turn to cross my arms at her.
“Remember a couple weeks back when I screwed up and you were kidnapped by a werewolf?” I asked pointedly.
Her eyes grew dark for a moment and then she tore away her gaze and nodded.
“We’re even,” I stated sternly. “And I want it noted that you were never injured or anything when you were taken during my mistake. You also didn’t get covered in werewolf parts.” I started walking away, but stopped and yelled, “Oh yeah, and I didn’t shoot you!”
The Ian Dex Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 1 - 4 (Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department Box Sets) Page 15
