Dead Ice

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Everyone thinks that about the people they love," I said. "Trust me, supernatural hungers don't care about emotions."

  She hugged him tighter. "I don't believe that."

  "Why is a vampire able to control his craving for blood enough to be a legal citizen, but zombies cannot?" Warrington asked.

  "Zombies eat the flesh of living, screaming bodies. Vampires sip a little blood from two fang marks. They can't even drink enough blood at one sitting to kill a person. Zombies seem to consume more than a human stomach can hold at just one sitting, and before you ask, no one knows how that works. Zombies seem to have lost that part of us that lets us know we're full."

  "Like that one genetic disorder?" Bob the camera guy asked.

  I nodded. "Yeah, Prader-Willi syndrome. Zombies are eating the living, but same principle."

  "How did you know about Prader-Willi syndrome?" MacDougal asked.

  "I know things," Bob said.

  MacDougal and even Justine looked at him.

  He looked a little embarrassed and said, "CSI had an episode about it."

  MacDougal nodded as if that he believed. "Is there no cure for this hunger?"

  "For zombies, eating the flesh of the living cures it until the hunger hits again, but I don't think Warrington wants to start eating people."

  "No, I do not. It is not a choice that any man should have to make."

  Maybe it was just a longer way of saying no, but something in the phrasing made me look at him. He met my eyes, and when I said, "Can I have a few minutes in private, Mr. Warrington?" he nodded.

  Justine had a death grip on his arm. "Whatever you have to say to Tom, you can say to me." She was pretty much repeating his own words from inside the restaurant back to me, but this time he patted her arm and said, "Miss Justine, there are some topics that aren't meant for a lady. Ms. Blake here has seen things that most grown men couldn't have handled from what I saw on the . . . Inter . . . web. I'd rather we just talk soldier to soldier for a few minutes."

  She protested, but in the end she let him put her in the girl box, and we stepped away from the others. Nicky started to follow, and I shook my head. Manny gave me a look that offered to come with, but I shook my head at him, too. I was hoping that Warrington would be more honest with just me, and I needed honest right now.

  I put him so his back was to the group so they couldn't see his face. I was sure I could control my expression, but if he looked stricken then Justine would hound him for why he was emotional, and that wouldn't go well for either of them.

  "It's just us, Mr. Warrington, so I'll ask the question and you'll be honest with me."

  "I will do my best," he said, his slight southern drawl coming out under stress. The fact that this stressed him more than waking up as a zombie said something about the topic.

  "Did you consume human flesh when you were alive?"

  "We were trapped in the mountains by an early blizzard that blocked the pass, and then true winter fell upon us. I was young and inexperienced, and it was only after we were well and truly trapped that the senior officer admitted that we had started too late. He thought we could make it out before snow, but that once we were delayed we were there until they found us in the spring. We were able to trap and hunt meat for a time, and we had melted snow to drink, but in the end the animals fled the heights and it was just our small group up on the mountain."

  I watched his face, though he'd looked away into the distance so he wouldn't have to see the look on mine. I gave him blank cop face, because I'd learned that people will tell you their horrors, but you can't be horrified by it. You have to be their blank witness, because what they fear most is that you will see them as monsters, or broken, if you know the deepest, darkest stuff in them. I tried to make sure that this man I'd called from the grave wouldn't feel more of a monster than I'd already made him.

  He was quiet so long I had to prompt him. "What happened then, Mr. Warrington?"

  "We ran out of food, and the snow was ceaseless. It was like being buried alive." He laughed then, but it had more bitterness in it than sweetness. "And then Charlie died. We put him out in the snow to preserve him, but some predator that we'd missed in our hunting found him, dug him up, and ate part of him." He looked at me then. "Have you ever been hungry, Ms. Blake?"

  "If you mean starving, then no."

  "That is a blessing for you, then."

  "It is," I said.

  "I'd known hunger as a child, but not like this. My stomach didn't hurt anymore, there was no ache of emptiness. It was almost peaceful. We were starting to sleep whenever we stopped moving; even talking became too much. We'd be talking to each other and suddenly drift off in midsentence. It was as if we were already partially dead and the sleep was merely a preview, but then we saw Charlie all torn up and . . ."

  "You saw meat," I said.

  He wiped a hand across his face, the broad shoulders rounding, and I realized he was crying softly, silently, so that he could only nod. He finally mumbled, "God forgive us. God forgive me."

  I almost said what I was thinking, which was, You've already died once; whatever God thought of your actions has already been decided, but I didn't. I so did not want to have a discussion about theology with someone I was going to put back in his grave tonight, because if his soul was here in him, then had I just dragged him out of heaven, or rescued him from hell? Or, if you believe in reincarnation, how could I possibly have ripped him out of whatever body he was currently incarnated in? It was all beyond my pay grade as a Christian. I needed to sit down with my priest and see if he was open-minded enough to talk about it. Or someone's priest. There had to be some clergy somewhere that I could talk with about all this. I prayed that I'd find the right person to discuss things with, and added an extra prayer that I'd be able to do the right thing by the man, or zombie, standing in front of me.

  He was looking at me now with tears still wet on his face. "Your silence speaks volumes, Ms. Blake. I understand your disgust with me."

  "It's not that, Mr. Warrington; I'm just thinking about other things a little too hard."

  "You do not have to save my feelings, Ms. Blake. I deserve whatever you think of me."

  "It's not my job to judge your ethics, Mr. Warrington. I have too many skeletons in my own past to be high and mighty about anyone. I've never been that hungry in my life; who am I to judge you?"

  "You are very understanding, Ms. Blake. I am most grateful."

  I shrugged. "I do my best."

  "I believe that you do."

  I smiled. "You described yourself as ravenous right now, Mr. Warrington. How does that compare to the hunger you experienced in the mountains that awful winter?"

  He thought seriously before answering, which I appreciated. "I feel empty. My stomach is beginning to hurt, with that ache you get when you've gone too long without eating. It's early stages, but I shouldn't be feeling this way with everything I ate tonight."

  "You threw all of it up," I said.

  He shook his head. "It's not the same thing as going hungry, Ms. Blake. My body should know it ate tonight, and it doesn't seem to have counted any of that good grub I just had."

  "I'm afraid that there may only be one kind of food that fills the needs of your body now, Mr. Warrington."

  "You mean human flesh," he said, voice serious and low.

  I nodded. "I'm afraid so."

  He frowned just enough to wrinkle the skin between his eyes. "Do you think it's because I ate it in life that I've risen like this?"

  "Honestly, I'm not sure, but I think so."

  He smiled at me, the tears still drying on his face. "Thank you for admitting that you don't know for certain. I do appreciate that level of honesty."

  I shrugged again. "I think you deserve it."

  "You feel guilty about me for some reason."

  I nodded, not even arguing that he was right. "I think I shouldn't have slaughtered the cow to raise you. I think it helped boost my power too much and here you are so
very . . . alive-ish."

  "I feel alive."

  "I know."

  "If I had been able to keep my food down and eat like a man, would you still have to put me back in the ground?"

  "I don't know; technically yes, but honestly, I don't know. It doesn't matter now."

  "Because I can't eat food like a man and I'm still hungry, so very hungry."

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "You have to put me back before I try to hurt anyone, Ms. Blake."

  "Yeah, I do."

  He nodded, then straightened his spine all the way up, so his posture was military straight. He tugged the T-shirt down as if it were a suit coat. "Do I need my old clothes before we do this?"

  "Again, honestly I don't know."

  "Better safe than sorry," he said.

  "Yeah, let's get your clothes."

  "They put them through a dry . . . cleaner."

  "I'll have MacDougal call and see if we can pick them up."

  "If they aren't ready to go?"

  "One problem at a time."

  "Very true, very true." He looked down, gave that little frown again, and then gave me very direct eye contact from those hazel eyes of his. "I never found the right girl when I was alive, but I believe Justine would be that girl. What does it mean that I had to die and come back to find someone that I loved?"

  This question was soooo above my pay grade. "I don't know what to tell you, Mr. Warrington, except that we don't plan who we fall in love with, it just happens."

  "Justine has spent her life studying the past. She feels more at home with it than current reality."

  I nodded. "I figured something like that, and here you are a true blast from the past."

  "Blast from the past?"

  "It's a saying, just something old, like a song you haven't heard in a long time, or a trend in clothing."

  "Ah," he said. "Well, then I am truly a blast from the past."

  I smiled at him; I just couldn't help it. He seemed like a nice guy. I really didn't want to see what would happen when the hunger gnawing at his gut overrode all that niceness. "I can give you a few minutes with Justine."

  "Would it be safe to have some true privacy with her?"

  I debated and then went for truth. "I don't know; maybe. How much privacy were you wanting, and for how long?"

  "I'd love to have all night, but you have to put me back in my grave before dawn."

  I nodded. "I do."

  "Would it be possible to have an hour?"

  "I'm going to have to be blunt here, Mr. Warrington, and I'm sorry for that."

  "You raised me from the grave, Ms. Blake; surely we can be blunt with each other."

  "Are you just planning to talk for an hour, or have sex?"

  He blushed. Zombies didn't blush. Fuck. "Well, that is indeed blunt, Ms. Blake. I think I am shocked."

  "Sorry, but I feel responsible for you, and that means whatever you do with Justine is kinda my responsibility, too."

  "Would it be so wrong?"

  "I can't answer that, but I know that if a woman gets pregnant by a vampire over a hundred years old, then you can have birth defects, things wrong with the baby. So I'd need to know to keep an eye on Justine, if anything happened."

  He nodded. "I could not leave her with child and me dead; it would ruin her."

  I didn't bother explaining the change in morality, because it wasn't ruining her morally I was worried about. It was more the thought of the baby being part zombie. I couldn't even imagine what that would mean for the child, or Justine.

  "Justine did mention there were ways to prevent such things."

  "There are, but they aren't a hundred percent reliable."

  "Blunt for blunt, Ms. Blake; do you have . . . intimate relations with your vampire fiance?"

  I nodded. "I do."

  "Aren't you afraid of the very thing that you fear for my lady?"

  "Yeah, but we take precautions and so far, so good."

  "Then isn't it a choice for Justine and myself?"

  I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. "I don't know, I just fucking don't know."

  "There is no reason for such language from any woman," he said, and he was genuinely outraged. It made me laugh; I couldn't help it.

  "I am sorry that I shocked you, and I will watch my language in the future, Mr. Warrington."

  "I truly do not see the humor in a woman, a lady, using such language."

  "I suppose you don't, but . . . I will refrain from using that word in front of you again."

  "Or in front of Miss Justine."

  "Of course not in front of her," I said, and managed to keep a straight face. I cussed like a sailor, but no need to tell the zombie that.

  "I am asking you for time to be with the only woman I have ever loved."

  "You just met her tonight."

  "Have women ceased to believe in love at first sight?"

  "I believe in lust at first sight, Mr. Warrington, but not love."

  "You are very cynical for a woman. I suppose it is being a law officer that has done it."

  "I was cynical before I put on a badge, but yeah, most police officers end up pretty cynical."

  "It is a sad state of affairs if a beautiful woman doesn't believe in love at first sight."

  "You're a romantic, Mr. Warrington."

  "Most gentlemen are, Ms. Blake; we just hide it better than the gentler sex."

  I wasn't sure women had ever truly been the gentler sex--it depended on how you defined gentle--but I didn't argue with him. I just wanted time to discuss the moral implications of Warrington and Justine with Manny before I said yes or no. It wasn't the romantic in me; it was the fucking guilt. I'd raised him from the grave and Justine was in love with him. There was no Hippocratic oath for animators, but it seemed like I'd broken some rule somewhere. I just wasn't sure what rule, or when it broke. It was just all so fucked up in ways that I'd never imagined. I called Manny over to me; Nicky and Domino trailed him and I didn't tell them to stay back. Warrington went to hold hands with Justine while I tried to decide what was the lesser evil. Or hell, if it was evil at all.

  29

  "YOU CAN'T REALLY be thinking this is a good idea," Domino said.

  "I didn't say it was a good idea."

  "Anita, you can't let the nice white-bread girl have sex with a zombie," Manny said.

  "What does her ethnicity or lack thereof have to do with anything?" I asked.

  "It's not her ethnicity, Anita, it's that she's never had a bad thing happen to her."

  "You don't know that, she could have a tragic past."

  "Look at her, Anita, she's nearly thirty and still shiny." All four of us turned and looked at Justine, like one of those movie takes where everyone looks and tries so hard not to look like they're looking that it's painful. She was gazing up at the zombie as if he were the most wonderful thing in the world, but that wasn't it. Her brown hair was straight and untouched by chemicals, skirt not too short or too long. Her blouse was long-sleeved with a little frilly collar; her shoes were sensible pumps. But it wasn't the clothes either. I'd known people who dressed like that who actually had had horribly tragic childhoods, or old romances that had needed police to save the day. I couldn't put my finger on it, or list the reasons, but Manny was right.

  Justine looked at us and said, "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I said, and we all looked away at once, which wasn't suspicious at all.

  "See, white bread," Manny said.

  "I get it, she still has that new-car smell," I said.

  "Yes."

  "How do people get that old and be that . . ." Nicky groped for a word.

  "Untouched," I offered.

  "Fresh," Manny said.

  "Innocent," Domino said.

  "Yeah, that."

  "I don't know," Domino and I said together.

  "Dominga Salvador's sister was like that," Manny said.

  "Was, as in past tense?"

  He nodded.

&nb
sp; "What happened to her?" Domino asked.

  "She fell in love with a man she thought was the moon and stars. We all liked him, too."

  "Your voice has that bad sound to it."

  He nodded again, face very solemn. "He ended up beating her; by the time Dominga got her away from him they had two boys. The oldest is just like him. There's something wrong with him."

  "Has he hit any of his dates yet?" I asked.

  "I lost touch once I left Dominga's circle, but her sister remarried a nice guy from all accounts."

  "How do you know that there's something wrong with the boy then, if you lost contact?" I asked.

  "I watched him from a baby, Anita; he's not right. He's never been right. That's not going to change. Men like that are attracted to girls like that."

  "The crazy bitches are attracted to the male equivalent," Nicky said.

  Manny and I nodded.

  "Bad boys and girls either like the good boys and girls, or people as bad as they are," Domino said.

  "Agreed; now what are we going to do about Justine and the love of her life?" I asked.

  "Anita, he goes back in the grave tonight; you can't let this girl carry the memory of the one perfect night with her forever."

  "She knows he goes back in the grave tonight, so it won't be perfect. It'll be sad and full of her knowing this is the only time they'll ever have together."

  "It's like Romeo and Juliet stuff," Domino said.

  "Girls like her eat that tragic shit up," Nicky said.

  "Anita," Manny said, "someone like her could take the tragic romance of tonight and live on it forever."

  "Is that bad?"

  "No man will ever be able to live up to the romance of this, Anita. Either she'll never date again, or she'll compare every man to this, and every other man will lose."

  "Why will they lose?"

  "Because she'll build it up in her mind until it was the perfect sex, the perfect man, and if they had been born in the same century then they could have been perfectly happy."

  "You sound like experience talking again," I said.

  "I had a good friend in high school, Maria. She lost her first love in a car accident. She married and had children, but her husband is still fighting the ghost of that perfect love thirty years after they married, and thirty-two years after the boyfriend died. I knew Ricky, he was a good guy, but he wasn't all that Maria remembers. I've always felt sorry for Carlos, because he's still fighting the perfect boyfriend who will forever be young, handsome, and perfect."