Corpse Whisperer Sworn

by H. R. Boldwood

  “Captain Dorsey, does this incident have anything to do with the Z-virus manipulation?”

  Cap blew her off without so much as a glance. Give the botoxed bimbo a cookie. She wasn’t as stupid as she looked.

  Jade’s eyes shot daggers at me as she lunged toward Rico. “Detective De Palma, what prompted the attack on the deliveryman at Findlay Market?”

  “This is an ongoing investigation. Please, back up. Let us work here.”

  Jade jostled through the crowd of reporters until she was only inches from Cap. “Captain Dorsey, is CPD properly trained to handle hordes of this size?”

  I couldn’t hear Cap’s response because Little Allie instantly filled my brain with flashbacks of previous mass attacks: the night the deadheads overran my house while I was protecting Leo, and the night my old partner, Harry Delk, and I were attacked while investigating the Crosley building. The freaking brain bitch. That’s all I needed—a trip down memory lane. Properly trained? More like baptism by fire.

  Cap called out additional officers and widened the perimeter, pushing the media a block south. No doubt their cameras would continue to roll, pulling in tight with their zoom lenses. The entire city would be waiting for this video.

  Rico backed the truck flush against the precinct entrance, while Cap and I rolled up the truck door, slid the ramp into place, and funneled the biters into the brightly lit building. Rico climbed on top of the truck to man the roll-down door, in case something went wrong and we needed to abort the operation.

  Sunlight filtered into the cargo hold from the small gap between the building and the truck, blinding the biters. They stumbled over each other and what was left of the meat, pushing, crawling, and dragging themselves toward the front of the truck, away from the light.

  So much for planning.

  I climbed up the ramp and began pulling slabs of meat back toward the door. Those deadheads may have been blind, but they heard me moving behind them, and they smelled the blood. One of them spun and lunged at me.

  I flung the catchpole at the bastard’s head and instantly realized I had no idea how the damn contraption worked.

  “Just slip the noose over its head and pull,” Rico shouted.

  Really? Like the freaking rotter was going to let me slip a bolo tie around its neck.

  The good news is that after a couple of failed attempts, I managed to lasso a biter and drag it, a pole’s length away from its snapping teeth, down the ramp, through the building, and into the holding cell. The bad news is that the rest of the horde followed en masse, like I was the freaking Pied Piper of Pussbags.

  “Just keep them moving,” Rico shouted. “I’ll lock the cell door behind them.”

  Sure, now they were going where we wanted them to go, but things went a little sideways at the mouth of the holding cell. Once I deposited my lassoed deadhead, I made it back out into the hall, but there was nowhere to go. The other nineteen meatbags pushed forward through the narrow hallway, forcing me back against the door to the lockup. I had to scale the cross bars to the top of the cell, then swing myself over to a fluorescent light fixture and wrap my legs around it, while Rico corralled the last of the biters. When all twenty of them were safely inside, Rico hit the electronic lock.

  “See?” I said, jumping down from the light fixture. “This. This is why I don’t do plans. They never work.”

  Rico’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe it wasn’t the plan. Maybe it was the execution.”

  Freaking dill-weed.

  With the horde safely and privately tucked away, Rico and I returned to Cap’s office to settle on the cleanest, quietest method of disposal. If the P.R. guy, Milty, wanted to rifle through their pockets to figure out the next of kin, more power to him, but he could do it after we put them down. There was no way we could hold these rotters for days on end, hoping to locate their families. Besides, it would be better this way. Watching a loved one get put down is a sight that will haunt you forever.

  I’d been there and done that, and had Toussaint to thank for it. One day, I’d be making good on my promise to hunt him down. Just as soon as time and circumstance allowed. Little Allie planted this thought uppermost in my mind as Rico and I rejoined the ‘Biter Disposal Committee’ meeting in Cap’s office.

  Surprisingly, the first face I saw when I entered the room was Dickhead’s. So, he’d decided to stay engaged after all. He must have realized I’d been right. There’d been nothing accidental about this horde. I marched across the room and stood him, face-to-face. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Director.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stared down his nose at me. “You don’t say.”

  “You still owe me for the Leo Abruzzi case. I need that money, and I want it now.”

  With a single nod of his head, he reached into his suit coat and pulled out a check. “It’s all here,” he said. “Every last dime.”

  He held the check in front of him, but didn’t hand it to me. When I reached to grab it, he pulled it back.

  “First things first, Nighthawk. You keep dodging my calls. Are you in, or are you out?”

  Damn him, anyway. He’d made me a job offer after Leo died, working as a temporary consultant—apparently that’s code for ‘we pay you if and when the sun, the moon, and the stars are aligned.’ He’d given me forty-eight hours to make up my mind. But after Leo’s case, I needed a few weeks to get my head straight. I’d gone off the grid and left him hanging.

  “Fine. I’m in,” I said, snagging the check from his hand.

  Cap steepled his fingers beneath his chin and waited for an explanation.

  “Don’t worry,” I quipped. “Now I get paid to consult with CPD and the FBI. Maybe between the two of you, I’ll be able to afford a can of tomato soup instead of stealing ketchup packets from the breakroom.”

  Cap rubbed his face with his hands. “Now that you have your career path in order, let’s get back to the task at hand, shall we? How’re we going to dispatch these deadheads?”

  Before he could utter another word, Chuck Clawson, the desk sergeant, rapped on the doorframe. Without waiting to be invited in, he strode to Cap’s desk and handed him a document.

  “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but you need to see this pronto.”

  Cap slipped on his drugstore cheaters, scanned the text, and then tossed the form across his desk. “Well, that’s great. Just great. The ACLU’s filed a preliminary injunction to keep us from,” he picked up the document and searched for the actual language, “‘taking any and all actions that may result in the termination of…undead lives.’ Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Milty’s eyes grew wide. “The litigation could take years. This is horrible.”

  “That’s a lot of stink,” I said. “You’re gonna need a shit-ton of Renuzits.”

  Dickhead barked a response, but whatever he said was drowned out by the blare of a siren screaming through the building.

  “Sweet baby Jesus,” Cap said, scrambling out of his chair. “That’s the holding cell alarm.”

  6

  Injunction Dysfunction

  “What the hell?” Cap said, rushing into the hall. “That’s an electronic lock.”

  The siren continued to blare as Cap grabbed a couple of officers from the bullpen, and posted them at the doors, to make sure none of the biters escaped the building. The rest of the squad brought their guns to high ready and systematically cleared the administrative offices. Rico and I sprinted through the pandemonium, taking down a couple of rotters as we navigated the hallway that led to the holding cell.

  Rico reached the cell first and shut off the alarm. A chorus of shouts and curse words rang out from behind the door directly to my left. I took a deep breath, brought Hawk to bear, and burst into the room, coming nose-to-nose with a rotter. It lunged for me, and I spun sideways, pumping a single shot into its temple as it stumbled past. Whirling around to make sure there weren’t any more surprises, I found two naked men, eyes wide, mouths gaped in perfect Os, standing beneath what
apparently were very cold showers. One of them screamed, “Shit,” and turned his back to me. The other remained motionless, staring straight ahead, eyes glazed over with that deer-in-headlights look. Rico pushed through the door, gun at the ready, drawing additional shouts from the naked guys.

  Little Allie scolded me, telling me to glance away. And I did, after I got an eyeful. But she should have shoved a sock in my mouth. “Good thing I happened along. My gun’s bigger than both of yours.”

  The guy who’d turned his back to me grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist. “The d-d-damn thing wandered through the door right before you, looked at us like we were a couple of ham sandwiches, and started closing in. If you hadn’t come along when you did—”

  A volley of gunfire erupted somewhere down the hallway.

  “Sorry. Gotta run,” I said, as Rico and I rushed back out the door.

  He went right and I went left. Between the two of us, we’d taken out a total of three rotters. There’d been several other blasts of gunfire throughout the ordeal. The only way I could know how many rotters had been downed was by counting their corpses as I cleared each room on my way back to the bullpen. I verified that the bodies were rotters (as opposed to humans) and double-checked that each had been taken down with a headshot. By the time I made it back to Cap’s office, I’d counted sixteen. That meant there were four more rotters, either already downed elsewhere, or roaming the part of the building Rico was clearing.

  The officers Cap had assigned to maintain the external perimeter had returned to the building when the first shots rang out. They followed me down the hallway, past the holding cell, to provide back-up for Rico. Not fifteen feet from the locker room door, two more rotters lay crumpled on the precinct’s linoleum floor. That brought the total count of downed rotters to eighteen, leaving only two unaccounted for.

  As we pushed further through the hallway, I heard scuffling up ahead, then a louder, more distinct thud. Rico’s voice joined the mix, followed by a single, unmistakable pop of a gun. I broke into a dead run and reached the end of the passage to find Rico’s Glock laying on the floor. I cleared the corner and found him flat on his back, with one head-shot rotter splayed crosswise at his feet, and another clawing its way up his stomach, snapping its jaws, and clacking its mossy, gnarled teeth.

  A primal scream pierced the air, a scream I didn’t recognize as my own. I pulled my Ka-Bar, flung myself on top of the rotter, and plunged the knife into its brainstem.

  “Did it bite you?” I asked, rolling its carcass aside.

  Rico’s chest heaved as he gulped for air. I turned his jaw from side to side, looking for bite marks. His neck was clean. I yanked his shirt out of his pants and tore it open. Small, tooth-shaped rips marred the cover of his Kevlar vest.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  “Did it bite you?” I shouted, tearing at the vest’s Velcro straps.

  Rico slapped at my hands then rolled onto his side, panting. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Give me…a minute…catch…my breath.”

  He wasn’t the only one breathing like a freight train. I slid down the wall beside him, sucking air like a Hoover. “You’re sure? You’re sure it didn’t get you?”

  “No. I’m fine. Damned things…double-teamed me.” He took a few more breaths. “Got off one shot, but the bastard was standing so close that it fell on me and knocked my gun loose.”

  Cap and Dickhead threaded their way through the officers and surveyed the scene.

  “That’s the last of them,” Cap said, staring at the corpses beside Rico. “All twenty of them.”

  I climbed to my feet and holstered Hawk. “Guess we won’t be needing those Renuzits after all.”

  “Maybe not,” Cap said. “But the press will have a field day with this mess.” He grabbed Rico’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “You good to go, son?”

  “Yeah. Just a little winded.”

  Cap shook his head and sighed. “That’s an electronic lock. How did it fail?”

  Rico rubbed his neck and rolled his shoulders. “Maybe there was a power surge.”

  “Or maybe somebody unlocked the door,” I blurted.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cap said, as we started back up the hall. “We’ll know more once we have the lock inspected. In the meantime, all those reporters who were at the perimeter followed the sound of gunfire back to our parking lot. They’ll be clamoring for answers, and they won’t leave until they get them.”

  “Good luck with that.” Dickhead sneered. “You’re on your own.”

  Cap glowered at him, then stepped in a puddle of zushi and slipped, grabbing the wall to steady himself.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, shaking brain splatter off his foot.

  Twenty rotters makes a lot of zushi.

  “Want me to call Splatz?” I asked, navigating around the bio-puddles in some jacked up game of Twister. Splatz is my favorite biohazard remediation service. They’re fast and cheap. Plus, I get a ten percent off coupon for every referral.

  Cap stopped in his tracks. “They got any kind of BOGO rate?”

  “Speaking of rates,” I said. “Let’s do some math. Two rotters in the hallway at two-fifty a pop, one in the shower, and snaggletooth here.”

  Rico raised his hand. “One of those hallway rotters was technically mine.”

  “Yours, mine, whatever. Oh, plus the overtime premium pay for the predawn call to Findlay Market to wrangle twenty biters.”

  I pulled out my abacus, carried the one, and applied the city’s ten percent frequent flyer discount.

  “That’s $1,400.00 even. Who gets the bill?” I asked, darting my eyes from Cap to Dickhead.

  Cap harrumphed.

  Dickhead waved me off in disgust. “If, and only if, this horde ties back to the task force, I’ll consider it.”

  “Cheapskate.”

  “Opportunist.”

  “You make that sound so dirty.”

  Clearly there was only one answer. I’d bill both of them. End of discussion.

  Dickhead ducked into Cap’s office while Rico and I cleaned up. A half-hour later, Rico and I followed Cap up the hallway, headed for the press conference from hell.

  As we pushed through the door, reporters raced up the steps, thrusting their microphones in Cap’s face. Cameramen pushed and shoved, jockeying for position. Protesters carrying signs and chanting, “Dead lives matter,” brought up the rear.

  Jade Chen emerged from the throng with fire in her eyes. “Captain Dors—”

  Cap held up his hand. “At approximately five this morning, CPD responded to an assault at Findlay Market. The victim, Gary Walker, was successfully rescued, and twenty zombies were taken into custody. They were transported here to the 51st Precinct for holding while city administrators evaluated the most humane methods of identifying and neutralizing the undead, notifying their families, and ultimately, re-interring them.”

  Cap sucked in a breath and then continued.

  “At approximately one this afternoon, the electronic lock on the holding cell that housed the zombies failed. These zombies were newly turned and retained a high degree of coordination and muscle control, which allowed them to quickly move through the precinct at large. Extreme measures—”

  Jeers and boos rocketed through the crowd.

  “We had an injunction,” someone shouted.

  Cap cleared his throat, then stood a little taller and continued.

  “Extreme measures had to be taken to ensure the safety of the city personnel inside the precinct. Even as I speak, officers are attempting to identify the undead. Next of kin will be notified in a professional and compassionate manner.”

  A chant broke out among the protesters. “Dead lives matter. Dead lives matter.”

  “We got an injunction! Stop killing the undead!”

  “They’re already dead,” I muttered.

  Rico elbowed me, and I elbowed him back.

  Cap side-eyed us both, then pushed on. “CPD had been notified
of the injunction and acted accordingly, in good faith. Extreme measures were only employed once human lives were endangered and no other viable options remained. Security footage from inside the precinct will bear this out.”

  Jade Chen seized the moment. “The public wants to see that video, Captain Dorsey.”

  “No,” Cap said, shaking his head. “The video is part of an ongoing investigation, Ms. Chen, and therefore, will not be released at this time.”

  Another round of jeers and chants filled the air.

  “Police brutality!”

  “Cover up!”

  Jade fanned the flames. “What role did Ms. Nighthawk play in today’s events?”

  That freaking, botoxed biotch.

  I stepped forward to respond, but Rico pulled me back. Turns out, I didn’t need to worry. Cap had my six.

  “Ms. Nighthawk acted with courage, dignity, and the highest moral fiber. She saved lives today, as did the other officers present. She is an asset to the city. We’re lucky to have her.”

  Hah! Take that, you addle-brained, over-processed bimho.

  Cap brought the press conference to a close, promising to provide further updates as warranted. We stepped back inside and watched from Cap’s office as the mob dispersed. Then I pulled Rico aside and let him have it.

  “What is it with your girlfriend? I’m tired of her taking pot shots at me.”

  He yanked his arm away. “That’s a two-way street, now. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah? Well you’d better keep her on a leash, before we’re out of a job. She’s showing up at all of our crime scenes lately, because of you. This whole mess with the ACLU today was her doing.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Like hell, I don’t. I’m not going to have my livelihood jeopardized because you can’t keep Mr. Happy in your pants.”

  “My sex life is none of your business.”

  “So, get my business out of your sex life. I hope she was worth you almost turning into rotter stew today.”

  It had already been a long day, that followed an equally long and ridiculous night. We gave each other some space for the rest of the afternoon. As usual, he had a mountain of paperwork waiting for him.