by A. J. Aalto
Harry quirked an eyebrow at me, a singularly arch smile on his lips, and I felt a teasing tremor flow through our Bond. A nauseated groan emanated from Wes’ casket. I smirked, and headed upstairs to finally take a nap.
CHAPTER 34
BY SEVEN O'CLOCK THAT EVENING, I was as refreshed as one could expect to be after a post-zombie nap and a long bubble bath. My office desk was a sea of coffee cups and tired faces.
“Marnie, so we're all on the same page?” Chapel began.
Batten grumbled, “She's running the show? You know she hit her head this morning, right?”
“You worry about the Goon Squad, Kill-Notch.” I pointed at him. “Right now, what you need more than anything is some serious geek.”
We had a war of stares across his half-lowered mug for a moment, and I expected more fight; he let it go with a shrug, leaning back far enough to make the chair beneath him creak a complaint. “If you say so. You're the doctor.”
I narrowed my eyes, in no way mollified by his easy surrender. “Yes, I am. I'm a bitchin’ doctor, now can we get to it? I have a lot to cover.”
Batten spread his palms and said nothing. I slapped the first photo up to the clip on Chapel's white board: Cosmo Winkle's guts, or lack thereof, up close and personal.
“We were originally told that Cosmo Winkle's autopsy showed early signs of a plague, in this case yersinia sarcophaginae, flesh-eater plague. This is a clear indication that the creature that chewed out his organs was absolutely a Type R zombie, one raised on purpose.”
De Cabrera asked, “Raised how, exactly?”
“The dark side of Haitian Vodou, necromancy,” I said. “It would have been performed by a bokor, a priest who works magic to serve their spirits, the loa, with both hands. Black magic and white.”
Declan added, “Or he could be a sevityi, a devotee of the Vodou, initiated or not, possibly an amateur.”
Batten fidgeted but surprised me. “Don't suppose we can narrow down when the bokor raised the zombie? How long Dunnachie has been…” He fought with words for a moment and settled on, “Up? Around?”
“Actually, we can,” I said, grabbing a black marker and scribbling on the white board. “The updated reports on Winkle show early signs of the secondary plague at the bite sites, Yersinia repens, or creeping plague. Usually it takes twenty-four hours for creeping plague to pop in a bitten human being; because of something we call the Revenant Factor, it takes a whole week for creeping plague to develop and become contagious in a Type R zombie, a shambler. So the zombie that bit and infected Winkle had to have been up and shambling for at least a week.”
“Where do the plagues come from?” de Cabrera asked.
“No one knows for sure,” Declan said, “but we have a theory. All magic has a cost. The cost of doing black magic as opposed to white is much higher. We think these bacteria came into being as the cost of necromancy, ages ago. Nowhere in nature do these unnatural plagues exist, outside of the undead. And where they enter nature, they cause nothing but illness or sublimation into the undead.”
“Marnie, would it be helpful for us to know the difference between the kinds of plague?” Chapel asked.
“It'll help you know how fucked we are, sure.”
De Cabrera swore under his breath. “Tarada …”
“Hey, I Googled that one, Cuban,” I warned him. He grinned in response, and I was reminded of his positive thinking stuff. I gave it a shot. “Okay, the good news: we know the zombie who killed Cosmo is gone. Let's call him X.”
Batten said stiffly, “Why not call him Dunnachie?”
My eyebrows puckered. “Because I don't wanna?”
“Marnie—”
“Fine. Dunnachie left traces of flesh-eater plague in Cosmo's belly — that's how we know Dunnachie was raised — and creeping plague, which indicates that Dunnachie was raised at least a week ago.”
“How was this accomplished, exactly?” Chapel asked.
“To raise Dunnachie, the bokor would have had to call the corpse with magic.” I couldn't help but wonder how the hell the bokor could have known Dunnachie was in a duffel bag at the bottom of Shaw's Fist. That was a mystery to solve privately, if I could. “Once the corpse heard the summons of the magic and made the initial approach, the bokor would then inject Dunnachie's dead body with a combination of stuff, like tetrodotoxin from pufferfish, datura, toxins from marine toads, dust from human bones, and a bunch of other arcane poisonous shit.” I waved this away. “You don't need the list. For simplicity's sake, let's just call it zombie juice. Once the juice was inside Dunnachie's dead body, the bokor would perform a ritual to call Dunnachie's ti bon ange, which is kind of but not really like a soul. Then they'd seal it into a soul jar, or a talisman known as an ounga, or another vessel, sometimes a doll or a skull, to contain the spirit. Then, after all that shit, Dunnachie would obey the bokor’s commands. These commands must be given verbally, and control can only be maintained on a Type R zombie verbally.”
I slid Chapel a look, which he dutifully returned with his poker face. I had tucked the demolished waterproof Bluetooth bits in his hand with an explanation prior to the meeting, and he'd agreed with Harry's assessment that it was not necessary to bring oh-holy-nuts-it's-a-Technozombie to the whole team's attention just yet.
“Why did the bokor choose to use Dunnachie of all people, and what did he intend to do with the zombie?” de Cabrera wanted to know. “And what was Dunnachie's soul still doing here? Should it not have gone to Heaven?”
“Well, it's not for me to judge, but there are several options. Maybe Dunnachie was stuck in Limbo, maybe his ghost was lost and hovering close to his body?” Anxious to get away from that line of questioning, and persistent, nagging questions about the duffel bag in my head, I continued, “A Type R zombie like Dunnachie is a slow-moving, shambling stiff; he rots very slowly because of the side effects of flesh-eater plague. Its byproducts act with a preservative effect on the raised zombie's flesh. He would appear pretty much as he did in his grave, and it's likely the bokor would choose a fresh corpse to raise. A totally rotten one would be falling apart, useless.”
“But the bokor chose Dunnachie, who's been gone for months.” Chapel mused. “Why?”
I was left with a helpless shrug as my answer. “Maybe he wasn't dead until lately. Maybe his corpse had been left somewhere it would be preserved better than if he'd been left in the air or exposed to animals.”
“So the bokor sent Dunnachie to kill Winkle on purpose at the fish camp,” de Cabrera supposed.
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. The only thing raised zombies do, other than follow orders, is eat. If it got hungry enough, Zombie Dunnachie may have wandered off, or been given permission to go feed itself, and attacked Winkle out of hunger and convenience. The other alternative on the table is that it was sent to kill Winkle specifically, or sent to kill someone else at that fish camp and Winkle got in the way. Or, Zombie Dunnachie was held in check until it developed the creeping plague, the contagion, to spread zombies. I don't know why someone would do that, but then I also don't understand going to the trouble of creating a zombie just to kill a human being, when a gun would be cheaper, cleaner, and easier.”
De Cabrera put his forehead in his hands. “This is very complicated.”
“And you better thank fuck for that, chucklehead,” I said. “Positive thinking, yeah? Because if it were easy, everyone and their grandmother might be out there raising zombies.”
Chapel cleared his throat. “When Dunnachie was first raised, he wasn't contagious? He only had the first type of plague?”
“Correct. Only after creeping plague set in would Dunnachie have been contagious by biting people. This bacteria doesn't spread much throughout the zombie's body. It's found mainly in the moist places of the head: mouth and eyes and brain tissue. The blood-brain barrier actually prevents most of the bacteria's spread. The bacteria's byproducts filter down through the tissue, but the byproducts aren't contagious.”
&
nbsp; “Contagious by bites,” Chapel repeated. “Dunnachie infected Cosmo when he consumed his entrails.”
Yurp. “Yes. We can see human bite marks on the anterior wall of what remains of the stomach and the left kidney … and here the patches of flesh-eater plague infection, blooming greenish black along this tissue.” I showed them with the tip of a fork, not wanting to touch the picture, even with my gloves on. Silly, I know. “This patch here, more purple than black, iscreeping plague. This is why our second zombie, Cosmo Winkle, got up and walked out of the hospital.”
“And why we better find him soon,” Declan added. “Cosmo has become undead, but not the way Dunnachie's zombie did; when Cosmo got creeping plague, he was alive, so the Revenant Coefficient doesn't factor in. Cosmo is full-on Type C zombie, C for contagious. Would have happened quickly.”
De Cabrera said, “If you call Type R raised zombies ‘shamblers’ because they're slow and clumsy, what do you call Type C contagious zombies?”
I floundered, not wanting to say it.
Declan cleared his throat, pinched his lips together, but finally told him, “Berserkers.”
I diagnosed the look on Batten's face. “Yeah, there are some words you really don't want applied to zombie. That's one of them.”
“Do I want to know why they're called that?” Batten asked.
“Probably not,” I admitted with a grimace. “They're fast. Alarmingly fast. Not as quick as, say, a revenant, but they can easily outpace a human. Or a car. Violent like you wouldn't believe. And you've met me before my morning coffee.”
Declan added, “You saw how fast that zombie spider moved. She had fed on beetle larvae that had fed on Roger Kelly's infected body.”
“Type C zombie spider,” I said. “Not good.”
Batten grunted to hide a shudder that I took only a little pleasure in catching him doing. “So these plagues can infect animals, insects, birds?”
I shrugged, and it caused his cheeks to go splotchy red in addition to doing his clenchy jaw thing. “Don't shrug at me, Baranuik, you're supposed to be our expert.”
“Then I guess we're fucked,” I said sincerely.
“To be fair,” Declan said, “Dr. B. can't have all the answers. There are very few studies done on zombies or the scourge plagues; I'm afraid science simply doesn't know much yet.”
“So Cosmo Winkle's zombie is contagious, fast, and missing. What do we do about this?” Chapel asked.
I propped my fists on my hips. “Well, here's a little concept I've been working on: killing the zombies without getting bitten. Also, moving to Mars.”
De Cabrera's eyebrows pinched up. “You're bad at being good at this.”
“Your input is always appreciated,” I replied. “Listen, zombies are extremely rare. Rumors of zombies in Haiti, and drugged human slaves called zombies, are far more prevalent than the actual thing. You need to understand: while science has been making great strides toward understanding this type of undead creature, a lot of what we suspect and theorize is completely untested. It's not like we have labs where we inject the scourge plagues into human guinea pigs to observe the results.”
“Hold on.” Batten shifted forward in his chair. “How much of what you're telling us is untested speculation?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Wellllll, for instance, how to kill ’em.”
De Cabrera groaned.
“I think we can say with some confidence that a propane tank explosion works, though,” I offered. “Small arms fire to the torso, not so much.”
Chapel said, “Our guidelines call for a clean shot to the head.”
“I just blew most of Dunnachie's brains out, and he kept coming. Dunnachie's severed arm was twitching sans brain power. Explain that one,” I said with a shudder. “Clearly, our intel is for shit.”
“Fire,” Batten said, pulling at his earlobe in thought.
“I wouldn't try just setting one on fire, though,” I said. “Corpses are moist, especially the organs. There's a lot of water in a human body, which, at best, will slow down combustion. Revenants go up like kindling because they're so dry. Also, zombies don't feel pain in the same way we do, so a zombie might be able to ignore the fact that it's on fire and keep coming. So you have a ravenous, violent, and supernaturally fast thing chasing you, while it's on fire. Doesn't sound like a good time to me.”
Chapel said quietly, “Marnie, are you absolutely certain that Dunnachie is dead?”
Silence fell around the table and I'm pretty sure the cluster ofofficers around the table could hear my innards quake. “Declan raked his bits into a pile and built a fire over them. When the fire does go out, and the ashes cool, we'll douse them with salt and clay to bind them into the Earth. How much more dead can you get?”
“You're sure?” Chapel repeated. “We needn't be preparing for him to rise again?”
“I suppose if the bokor is in my yard right now, he could be doing something funky to piece the crispy bits together,” I said uncertainly. “Like I said, besides the biochemistry of the scourge plagues, we just don't know. Only the bokor knows what he can or cannot do. Black magic isn't my forte.” My spiteful brain supplied, Ruby Valli would have known. How bad would it be to check her Grimoire just this one time?
The alarm clock began to quietly trill in my bedroom just off the kitchen. “Meeting adjourned. When can I expect copies of the reports by the health department and CDC, boss?”
“As soon as I know, you'll know,” Chapel promised, checking his Blackberry. “We've got scouts out scouring the neighborhood around the hospital for Cosmo Winkle.”
“Type C zombie,” Declan reminded. “Contagious.”
Chapel's frown deepened as he flicked through his texts. Something that sounded like an uncharacteristic curse word dropped from his lips.
“Boss?” I said, not wanting to know.
“During the commotion following the propane explosion,” Chapel said, “the men monitoring the van holding Roger Kelly's corpse got distracted. They've been searching for him all day and just now decided to inform me. So much for cooperation.”
“Roger Kelly's corpse walked away from the fish camp?” I blurted in the stunned silence that followed. “They didn't think to mention it until dark?”
Batten was up and out of his chair with a shove and stomping out the door without so much as a parting glance. De Cabrera hurried to catch up.
Unflappable Chapel looked like he was about to lose his shit or his lunch or both; his cheeks were pale and his forehead sweaty. He swore, excused himself, then, as Declan gathered up his notes, said, “Let me worry about it, Marnie. I'll keep in touch.”
Declan watched him go, putting his iPad away in his doctor's bag. He shot me a look. “Somebody fucked that up large.”
“And didn't want to admit it until they had it fixed,” I said with a grimace. “Watch them for me. And by them, I mean him. Chapel's under some weird stresses lately. He seems off. Keep me updated, eh?”
“Will do, Dr. B.,” he promised, but his promise didn't quell my worries, and as Declan took off after my former dhaugir into the dark front yard, I wondered if my Companion would be more help.
CHAPTER 35
HARRY KEEPS HIS HANDS all kinds of soft: triple milled soap, lack of menial labor, and fancy hand lotion trucked home from Penhaligon's in London will do that. When he ran the back of his hand under my chin, it felt was like he was covered in cool satin. There was something unusual in his eyes, as though he had a delightful secret he had nointention of sharing. Maybe it was about Gary; after a brief intervention by Harry next door, SSA Chapel had agreed to take up residence in the spare room upstairs. I had no idea what excuses Harry had made, and at this point, didn't care. Harry must have picked up thoughts of Gary in my mind, because his step across the bedroom lightened and his face brightened, and through the Bond I read a blend of contentment and joy.
He set the lap tray on the bed, lifted the napkin off the fresh-baked rolls, and began to butter one for me.
“I am delighted to report that your long-suffering employer has agreed to stay in the second spare room upstairs as we discussed, and has kindly tended the mess left by your meeting.”
“Yeah, Chapel's got so many uses around here,” I said wryly.
“Many more than does your Agent Batten, who is a single-function device.” He flashed fang in a smile, daring me to argue. “Like a pocket watch.”
Hoping to derail that train of thought, I said, “You look yummy tonight, Harry.”
He straightened, displayed for me with one sweeping handtonight's charming ensemble: his red apron, his jackboots — the Germanhob-nailed Marschstiefel — and not a stitch else. “One does one's best.”
“Are you going to let Declan have a real interview?” Dear mouth, what the fuck is wrong with you? No love, the rest of your body.
“Ah, yes. Your young scambler wore me down with his moon eyes and his rope-tricks.”
“No, he didn't.” I gave a long sigh. “Who do you think you're talking to, Harry? You love the attention.”
“ ’Tis agony both dull and dateless.”
“Dateless meaning eternal?”
“My, my, look who has supplemented her charmingly limited vocabulary.” He snapped the napkin and laid it across my lap. “This manurement of your wits pleases me enormously.”
“Declan's not going to be here eternally, Harry. Stop being a suck.”
“I'll show you suck,” he promised, his eyebrow piercings twitching upward.
I chuckled tiredly. “All right, revenant, settle down. Are you going to tell him the truth, this time?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “His reactions to the small number of truths I've offered thus far have been more interesting than my vigilant mendacity.”
“Meaning?”
“Mendacity means—”
“No, I got that: you were fibbing. What were his reactions to the truth?”
“Upon hearing those tiddly bits, his cheeks became positively incarnadine.”
I let my head fall back against the headboard. “You can't just say red, can you? I mean, just once? Try it. Red.”