Dead Ice

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Not to complicate things," Zerbrowski said, "but won't the zombie have an issue with sunlight, too?"

  "Shit," I said.

  "Will it burn in sunlight like a vampire?" Nicky asked.

  "No," I said, "but zombies hide from the light."

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Some of them fall into a vampire-like torpor once the sun rises. Flesh eaters are smart enough to find cover before dawn sometimes."

  "Will this one die at dawn like a vampire?" Zerbrowski asked.

  "I don't know."

  "You're saying that a lot tonight," he said.

  "I've noticed."

  "Order them to go back to their cemetery again, Anita."

  "I tried, Manny."

  "Make it more of an order," he suggested.

  I looked at the ghoul in front of me and said, "I order you to go back to the cemetery you crawled out of tonight."

  "Think dog, not person, Anita," Nicky said.

  "How would you word it?"

  He was quiet for a minute, and I almost said, See, not so easy, but he said, "Do they burn in daylight like a vampire?"

  "No, but they hide from daylight, so it doesn't feel good. They can come out at dusk before it's truly dark; most vampires can't."

  "If dawn comes and they aren't near their tunnels, what do they do?" he asked.

  "Take shelter until dark."

  "Look around, Anita, where can they hide? It's going to be light soon."

  I looked for a shed, or a mausoleum, and found a tomb that rose above the others in the distance. I motioned toward it. "They might be able to hide in there."

  "Are they strong enough to break into it?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  The ghoul looked at me, his crimson eyes doing that flat shine again as if reflecting light I couldn't see. It made a different noise higher in its throat and started backing away. I had a sense of movement out among the graves, and knew it was the other ghouls.

  "What are they doing?" Domino asked.

  The one in front of me got very low to the ground and sort of groveled, and then it began to crawl backward away from us. It kept looking at Nicky and then Domino and the two exterminators in their fire suits, as it tried to keep all the dangers in sight. It stopped and groveled again, but that was always aimed at me.

  "The others are at the mausoleum," Nicky said.

  I glanced up and could see the others like gray shadows skulking around the huge stone. The ghoul in front of me made an abrupt, sharp almost-growl that made the hair at the back of my neck stand up, and then he turned and crept out among the tombstones, using them for cover the way a lion used the long grass.

  "Don't shoot it," I said.

  "No, we'll burn them out once daylight comes," Susannah said.

  "No," I said.

  She looked at me. "Yes, we will."

  "You're not paid for ghoul extermination tonight."

  "You're protecting them."

  Manny said, "Contact the company that runs the graveyard, and then they'll pay you to do it."

  "Is that what you meant, Anita?"

  "Why do it for free if you can do it for money?"

  Her body language was all relief as she let go of the serious mad-on she'd been about to aim at me. Her father added, "I like the way you think, Anita; business first."

  "If I took it personally every time a monster pissed me off, I couldn't do my job."

  "I guess not," Susannah said.

  Zerbrowski gave me a look, and then Manny. Both of them were wondering if I'd meant business, or if I just hadn't wanted them fried in front of me. Since I wasn't sure, I didn't try to enlighten them. You can't share the light if you're still in the dark yourself, and I was stumbling around in the pitch black, wondering why the hell a ghoul pack had come to visit me tonight. The ghoul had taken my orders, which wasn't possible, but it had happened, so it was possible. Impossible: I was beginning to think it didn't mean what I thought it meant.

  36

  FALSE DAWN CAME, making the darkness lighter, but it wasn't truly daylight. Vampires would still have time to run for cover before they started to burn. The ghouls had broken into the crypt and were crawling inside like rats in a hidey-hole. That left just one undead to deal with, and I turned back to the open grave.

  The zombie had managed to free itself to its waist in the dirt and was still wiggling more of itself free. Domino was keeping an eye on it the way Nicky and I had told him to. If I gave the word, or the zombie tried to get out of the grave, he'd shoot it. I didn't want to shoot it, but I didn't know what else to do with it either.

  "Ms. Blake," it said, "please, I just want out of this awful place." His face looked more cadaverous with the growing light, so that no matter how cultured his language was he still looked like a rotting corpse.

  "Are you still craving flesh?"

  He stopped trying to get his legs free and seemed to think about my question. "Yes, yes, I am."

  "Do you feel as empty as you did in the mountains when the snow trapped you?"

  "I don't understand what that means."

  "Do you remember your name?"

  "Tom."

  "Tom what?"

  "I don't know." He'd gone back to trying to free his legs; he was only caught below the knees now.

  "Do you know what Tom is short for?"

  "Thomas."

  "Thomas, what's your last name?"

  It blinked eyes up at me that were still hazel, but watching the balls roll in the nearly exposed sockets meant that they weren't lovely hazel eyes anymore. There was so little flesh on the face that I couldn't read his expressions anymore.

  "Thomas Warrington," I said.

  "Is that me?"

  "Yes."

  "I should know my own name, shouldn't I?"

  "Yes, Mr. Warrington, you should."

  "Why does it sound strange, as if it's not me at all?"

  "Dawn is coming," I said.

  "I don't understand."

  I didn't know if he had forgotten what dawn meant, or if he didn't understand that the sun coming up was a potentially bad thing for a zombie. Hell, maybe he didn't even know that last part. Most people didn't understand that zombies preferred darkness, and some couldn't move around in daylight at all. I was pretty sure Warrington would still be moving, but his mind was going as the light grew, and that wasn't going to be a good thing for any of us.

  I motioned to Susannah and her father to suit up. They didn't question me, just pulled their hoods up over their heads. They were out of sight of the zombie. What was left of Warrington might not understand what their suiting up meant, but I didn't want him to be frightened in his last few minutes of conscious thought, because that was what he seemed to be losing. When the sun came up, I was pretty sure he'd be the walking dead inside and out. Once he was that, he wouldn't be able to be afraid. I was going to wait for it.

  "He'll stop moving and just fall down like a broken doll when the sun rises," the tall blond grave digger said from the edge of the grave as he gazed down at the zombie.

  "Not always," I said.

  "Anita's zombies don't die at dawn," Manny said.

  "Yours don't either," I said.

  He grinned at me; the white in his hair seemed to glow in the growing light. It was a nice effect. "I do all right for an old man."

  I shook my head. "Don't old-man me, Manny, you can still raise more zombies per night than anyone at Animators Inc. except Larry and me."

  He shrugged and didn't try to hide the pleased look on his face.

  "Anita," Domino said, and he was pointing the shotgun down into the grave now.

  The zombie was almost free, and he was fighting harder, not like a person struggles, but more like that mindless give-it-your-all that real zombies have.

  "Thomas Warrington, are you in there?" I asked.

  "Hungry," he said in a voice that didn't sound like Warrington at all.

  "Mr. Warrington, can you hear me?"

  "Hungry," it said.<
br />
  "It's almost free, Anita," Domino said.

  "I order you to stop struggling," I said.

  It didn't stop; in fact, it struggled harder. It was making a high-pitched hissing noise and staring at Domino as if the gun didn't exist. About every other sound or so, it was still saying, "Hungry."

  "If it gets free, I'm shooting it," Domino said.

  "Agreed," I said.

  Nicky was beside me now. He had the AR snugged to his shoulder. "Let us shoot it."

  "When the sun rises."

  "Anita," Domino said.

  The zombie freed one leg, only a bit of its foot still caught in the dry dirt. "Hungry . . . hungry . . . hungry." It said it like a mantra, as if that were all that was left in his brain.

  "Susannah, Eddie, get ready."

  "Just give the word, Anita," she said.

  "Wait for it," I said, and raised the shotgun to my shoulder. I sighted at the zombie's face as it gazed up at Domino as if it had picked its target. They could be single-minded sometimes. "I've got the head," I said, voice even.

  "Leg," Nicky called.

  "Arm," Domino said. He probably didn't have a clear shot at much of anything else; I probably should have let him have the head. I might even have said that, but then two things happened at once; the sun rose like a ball of fire above the trees and the zombie freed itself.

  It grabbed the edge of the grave to scramble out. Nicky's rifle sounded first and the zombie stumbled, one leg taken out at the knee, but it still held to the edge and was still trying to get out. I pulled the trigger and the shotgun rocked in my hands, putting a lot of energy into my shoulder where I held the butt. The top of the zombie's head exploded into blood, brains, and bits. It pulled itself up on the lip of the grave. Domino fired and one arm vanished at around the elbow, so that the zombie started to slide back into the grave. I fired at the head again and took the rest of it. If it had been a vampire it would have lain down and known it was dead, but it was a zombie, and headless it kept fighting to get out of its grave.

  Nicky had moved around so he could shoot the other leg that was helping to push the body up and out. It fell a little into the grave then, only one hand holding on, and then Domino shot that hand into bits and the zombie fell back into the hole.

  "Burn it!" I yelled, and stepped back from the grave. Nicky followed my lead, but Domino was still beside the hole. He fired again.

  "Domino, get back!" I yelled that, too.

  He glanced up, as if he hadn't realized we'd moved back. Maybe he hadn't heard over the guns. He moved back to stand with us, as we gave the grave over to something more cleansing than bullets.

  The flamethrowers whooshed to life and filled the grave as if we were trying to set fire to hell. The heat drove us back; without the protective suits, human flesh would burn as quick as anything else. The sun was chasing back all the shadows, but under the tall trees it was still dusk, the fire rolling back out of the grave setting the last shadows of night dancing around us. Then something appeared at the lip of the grave; it was covered in flames, but it still moved. It took a moment for my eyes to see that it was using the stumps of its shattered arms like blades driven into the ground, almost like belaying pins as if the grave were just a mountain to scale. Nicky shot it in the upper chest with the AR a second before I shot it and the chest exploded into flame and burning bits. It fell back into the grave, and they kept pouring fire into the hole.

  Sunlight patterned through the leaves above us and the fire stopped, as if the coming of the day had made that impossible, too. Susannah came over, dragging the hood of her suit off. Her face was dewed with sweat. It's hot working that close to hell.

  "It'll burn for a while longer, but it's done."

  Now that they weren't actively burning it I could smell the burning meat. Burning person may smell like cooking meat, but zombies don't. They always just smell burned and acrid. I fought an urge to cover my nose and breathe shallow.

  "Burn it to ashes and bones," I said; my voice was empty and sounded unmoved by any of it.

  "This is usually good enough," Susannah said, wiping sweat from her forehead.

  "This isn't a usual kind of zombie. I need as close to ashes as you can get it."

  "You're going to treat it like a vampire, aren't you?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "We won't be able to get much ash, but we can give you burned bones. It's going to stink if you put it in your car to transport it."

  "I've got containers in the car."

  "Okay, I'll tell Dad. I'm not sure we brought enough fuel with us to do what you're asking. It takes a lot of heat to turn a body into ash and bone."

  "Zombies are like vampires; they burn better than human bodies."

  She nodded, shrugged, and then shook her head. "Okay, like I said, let me see if we have enough with us to get the job done." She went to talk to Eddie and see if they had the supplies they needed.

  Manny came up as she left. "What are you going to do with the ashes?"

  "There's a stream just down the slope," I said.

  "It's a tiny stream; you can't put much into it, or some hiker will find human remains and call the police. They get upset about wasted man-hours," he said.

  "I know. I'll be careful, but a little in the stream here, and a little bit more dumped into the river on the way home."

  "Different bodies of running water," he said, studying my face.

  "Yep."

  "You want to make sure that no one else can raise this one as a zombie again."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "It's not a vampire, Anita. It's just a zombie. We've never taken these kind of precautions for one of them."

  "Have you ever seen a zombie act like Warrington did?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Anything close to this kind of behavior?"

  "I've never even read about a zombie like him in back issues of The Animator." That was the professional publication for us zombie raisers.

  "And I've never seen anything like it in any of the preternatural biology write-ups either."

  "That's probably not a good thing," he said.

  "Agreed."

  Susannah came back over. They had to get a second tank from their truck, and the body was still big enough to look like a body, but they were able to scrape some ash and bone fragments into the two small screwtop containers I gave them. The containers were in my vampire-executing kit in case I needed to spread vamp ashes; like Manny said, we'd never done it with zombie ashes before, but hey, there's always a first time.

  Zerbrowski joined Manny and me and said, "I've never known you to treat a zombie like a vamp, Anita."

  "Cautious in my old age, I guess."

  He raised an eyebrow at me. "If you're old, then I must be ancient."

  "And I should be dead," Manny said.

  Nicky and Domino joined us; they had been having a little heart-to-heart of their own. I didn't know what it was about, but Domino wasn't happy. I'd ask later, or they could tell me later; right that minute I didn't have anything left to play emotional caretaker for anyone else. I was having my own issues about Warrington, and the ghouls, and what the fuck was going on with my necromancy. And I was tired of the weretigers in my life pouting about shit; what was it with all of them and all the fucking angst? The voice in my head that tried to be more reasonable than my temper, or my personal intimacy issues, said I had more weretigers in my life than any other kind of shapeshifter and maybe it wasn't the tiger part that made them pouty; maybe it was just the sheer number of them. On one hand that was a positive thought, it wasn't just because they were tigers, but on the other hand it put me right back into thinking there were too many people in my life who looked to me for most of their emotional support. Always nice when the reasonable part of me manages to be both helpful and unhelpful in one fell swoop.

  I explained what I was going to do with the jar in my hand, because bodyguards tend to get cranky if you just walk off without them.

  "I'll go with
," Domino said.

  Nicky just came at our back without asking. I didn't mind; if I hadn't wanted to keep one hand free for my gun and had a container of zombie ashes in the other, I'd have taken his hand in mine. A little comfort would have been a good thing. At least I had the shotgun back behind my shoulder on the tactical sling, so it didn't take up another hand. Nicky and Domino had done the same thing with their long guns.

  "Be careful going under trees with the tac slings, they can get caught," I said. Honestly, I was saying it more for Domino than Nicky. I knew my Bride could handle himself in actual woods. He'd proven that in Colorado, not that long ago.

  "If that was for my benefit, just say so," Domino said.

  "Fine, city boy, be careful under the trees near the stream."

  "I've been camping before, Anita."

  "Where at?"

  "Near Vegas," he said.

  "So desert?"

  "Yeah, why does that matter?"

  "I don't see many trees in the desert, so my caution stands."

  "You won't give an inch, will you?"

  I frowned at him. "I don't know what's got your panties in a twist, Domino, but I don't have the energy to deal with it right now."

  "You never do," he said.

  I sighed, and turned to Manny and Zerbrowski. "Can you give me and the guys a few minutes?"

  "Of course," Manny said, and walked away.

  Zerbrowski looked at me and then at both of the men. "I was going to make a smart-ass comment, but I can barely have a serious relationship with one person; I don't know how the hell you're doing it with this many." He tipped an imaginary hat and started to walk away.

  "She's not," Domino said.

  Zerbrowski stopped, looked at him, and then looked at me.

  "It's not serious with all of us, Sergeant, or not equally serious; trust me."

  "Go, just go," I said.

  For maybe the first time ever, Zerbrowski just walked away from a barrel full of snarky comments instead of shooting the fish. I really appreciated it. When the three of us were alone I turned to Domino and said, "What the hell was that about? This is work for me, and I don't bring personal stuff to work."

  "Nicky may be able to separate out work from personal like that, and maybe you can, too, but I'm not that good at compartmentalizing."