2 Death Rejoices

by A. J. Aalto

  My gloved hand trembled badly as I probed the sticky pocket. Something oddly shaped caught my eye and I looked up, way up, to Cosmo's ear: a Bluetooth headset.

  Briefly, my gloved fingertips touched hard metal in his pocket, and it fell away. I took a shot: cramming my hand down deep, I fished against a second smooth surface. I grabbed both, a cell phone and the key ring, just as Cosmo felt me rummaging and turned.

  “Errrrrggggh,” he complained, and the whip of his head flung something gooey in my face. I wind-milled wildly backward, my Keds grinding in the mud, barely keeping upright. Dangling snot battened on my cheek and I swiped at it. The cell phone in its waterproof case slipped from my hands and bounced on the ground, settling in a vast, dirty puddle.

  Cosmo's slick foot went out from under him. I darted forward to help him fall, kicking his right knee hard. With a short, furious burst of power, he launched up from the asphalt toward me.

  “Down!” Batten shouted.

  I dove to the left without thinking, taking a textbook belly flop in the mud while Batten's gun went off twice in quick succession. Cosmo's left kneecap exploded and he fell hard enough to make the puddles around him splash a dozen feet in every direction. Batten fired twice more, sinking two bullets into the top of the giant's head. Cosmo looked up, the bottom of his chin just gone, his mouth a ruined landscape of shattered tooth and bone. He snarled and started to get up.

  Taking the second's reprieve, I scooped up the cell phone and ran around to the driver's side, fiddling with the keys. Two seconds later, Batten was at my back, shouting into his phone.

  “I-70 east of Glenwood Springs, Starlight Dreams motel, one Type C berserker zombie, Cosmo Winkle; two civilians in a sheriff's department vehicle, three rooms occupied, a total of sixteen civilians in all. Need containment team ASAP.”

  I peered into the cracked window and the stink of sweat, panic and urine hit me square in the nose. I jiggled the key into the door handle, unlocking it. The driver hit the automatic lock again. I unlocked it. He slapped the button again, shouting obscenities.

  “Coming out, Cheech and Chong?” I called. “Or are you waiting for him to come in?”

  “Jesus, lady, what the Jesus shit. Fuck you! Shit!” went the tumbling litany, one over another, blubbering. They were nearly in each other's laps in the driver's seat, now, pressed as far as they could get from where the zombie was at the passenger window.

  “I know, the beaver's trying to eat you. Pretty Freudian,” I agreed. “Get the fuck out of my car.”

  “Fuck that,” one of them whined. His shaking hand pointed to the passenger side, where Cosmo's face, drained and drawn, jaw lax, was pressed against the glass. “Freak come outta nowhere.”

  Unlikely. It made more sense that the punks were busy going through Hood's glove box and debating stealing what was obviously a cop's car, and didn't notice the zombie coming out of the darkness.

  “It's only one little zombie. Okay, one big zombie. Come on out,” I repeated.

  Batten added gruffly, “Or you're going back to jail, cholo.”

  “Fuck you, he'll get us!”

  “Not if you run,” I told them, lifting my voice to be heard over the rolling echo of thunder. “He's got a shattered knee. Run hard, and keep going. I'll distract him. Opening the door in ten …”

  “No, don't! Please, lady! Oh, Jesus.”

  “He's all the way on the other side of the truck, don't be a pussy,” I yelled. “You ready, Batten?”

  “Ready,” Batten assured me, gun aimed steadily at the zombie.

  “Nine!” I warned them.

  “Fuck you, cunt!”

  “You want help or not? Eight!”

  The bald one with teardrop tattoos under one eye clawed at the driver's face. “Okay, let's just go, let's do this shit, let's do it!”

  “I don't wanna die like this,” the other croaked. “Oh Jesus, Mary-madredeChristo!”

  Behind me, through the spray of rain, I heard Declan shout something at us. The driver brandished a weapon; through the drizzle-smeared window it looked like a Glock. I'd heard him fire at the zombie, probably emptying his clip in the process, but he clutched it like it was a security blanket.

  “Seven…” I watched Cosmo for movement. He was intent on spreading goo from his splitting fist on the passenger window, unthinkingly watching the streak go back and forth. Without warning, one thick punch pulverized the window glass in a splintering shatter.

  I yelled, “Two, one, go!”

  The driver and I jerked the handle at the same time, and the door spilled both punks at my feet in a mass of flailing limbs. They bolted into the night, mud spraying from their heels. Batten covered their escape by firing two more slugs into the zombie's chest.

  The zombie gave a cry of anguish as his meal escaped, lurching forward around the front of the vehicle. It swung its hungry gaze at me. That look made everything in my chest want to be in the back of my throat.

  Batten leapt at it, swinging his foot out in some nifty take-down maneuver, kicking it hard where the right foot met the ankle, then sweeping Cosmo off his feet. I heard a satisfying crunch as something broke. All three hundred and something pounds went down.

  I bellowed, “Declan, salt!”

  “Try this!” Declan threw us something, which Batten caught neatly; a small sachet with dried, golden herbs projecting from the top, and coarse salt in the packet. Some of the flowers clinging to the sticks were still slightly bluish.

  “Salt and Wolfsbane, throw it!”

  Batten darted forward and crammed it in the zombie's collar, and then scuttled away. It lay against his throat, a misplaced corsage.

  “No, get back!” I cried, grabbing Batten by the elbow and manhandling him backward. “The salt has to go in his mouth.”

  Batten swiped the wet hair out of his face. “How are we going to do that without getting bitten?” he demanded over the creeping thunder.

  I looked up into the relentless storm, then down at the zombie. “No idea.”

  Cosmo had made it to hands and knees. Batten stepped forward, dancing nimbly on the balls of his feet, and used a deft foot sweep to take Cosmo's hands out from under him again. The warbling zombie collapsed on its shattered face in the mud. Cosmo's muddy chin came up and he said, “Errrrrggggh.”

  Mud.

  Earth.

  Clay. My mouth dropped open. “Sodium bentonite. Clay.” An improbable solution started swirling in the front of my skull, but I didn't think it would sound so bright out loud. “Keep him busy! Don't get bitten! I'll be right back!”

  Batten fired off a shot that took out Cosmo's femur in an impressive spray of bone.

  I started for the manager's office, taking the Taurus out of my waistband. I pelted along the wet sidewalk, Keds slapping uneven concrete, dodging curious whores and horrified businessmen who had come back out despite Batten's warning. Praying that the office was open and I wouldn't have to shoot the lock or break a window, I grabbed the handle. The door swung open to the reek of cat piss.

  My eyes watered instantly as the stink overwhelmed me. Coughing hard, I had to struggle to breathe. I heard the chirrup of curious felines as I crammed Batten's gun in the back of my jeans and squinted around the dark office until I found a cat box.

  There was a bag of Happy Kitty cat litter beside the box, a pink and yellow bag with a big grinning cartoon tabby on the front. I picked it up, but the bag was empty, only a few granules skittering inside the plastic.

  I wrinkled my nose and picked up the nearest of the cat boxes. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. There was barely any free litter that wasn't clumped in gummy-dry pee piles or stuck to cat shit.

  “When I find out who made me sink to this level of drive-bygenius,” I whispered, bending at the knees to lift the box. “I am going to clog their suckhole with my foot.”

  I hoisted the whole damn box, struggled under its impressive weight for a second, held it as far away from my face as possible, and started bac
k to the fracas.

  “Hold him by the shoulders!” I cried, as I ran bent-kneed under the weight of the cat box past two curious whores. “Hold him by the shoulders! Don't get bitten!”

  “What the hell?” Declan shouted, a demand rather than a question. “That's not going to work.”

  Cosmo was dragging his lower half, now, his trajectory an elbowed see-saw through the mud toward Batten.

  My cell rang against my ass cheek, a brief clip of music from Rameau's Rondeau des Indes Galantes: Harry. I'd put it on auto-answer, and from within my jeans I heard his crisp British complaint.

  “My, but you are breathing rather heavily, sugarplum.”

  I raised my voice to be heard through my pants. “Kinda busy, Harry!”

  “Whatever could you be doing, dare I ask?”

  “Heaving dirty kitty litter down the gullet of a half-naked zombie beaver!”

  “As you do,” he said, as if I'd said playing chess or having a picnic. “Home before I go to rest, I hope?”

  “I don't know!”

  “Wesley and I have a lovely surprise for you.”

  Cosmo was still doing a gruesome parody of a Marine's belly crawl towards us. Zombies: not very bright, but big on follow through.

  “Can I get back to you, Harry?” I asked.

  Even through my jeans, I could hear his wounded tsk. “Very well. As you would prefer to dally with your monster hunters, I shall leave you to it.”

  Prefer. Riiiiigggght. I struggled to lift the cat box to hip level. “Not now, Harry! Declan, hold his other shoulder.”

  “Run along now, my resplendent little radish leaf, but don't lollygag. I'm making you a nice kidney pie for dinner tonight.”

  Blerg. Kidney pie? Apparently my culinary punishment.

  “Gotta go, Harry!”

  “As you wish, my sweet. Do take care.” Harry hung up.

  Batten had managed to kick Cosmo over to his side and hauled on his shoulder to bring him all the way to his back. Declan took one shoulder while Batten held the other, while Cosmo roared and tried to snap at them. The cat tray was now so heavy with a rain-filled soup of cat crap and piss and clumps of litter that I almost couldn't heave it into Cosmo's gaping maw. The next time he opened his ruined jaw, I dumped.

  At first, nothing happened. Batten let go, and Declan scrambled back, kicking to gain distance against the asphalt. Then Cosmo went stiff, and his back arched clear off the ground. The asphalt began to smoke beneath him. Cracks swam out in multiple directions, hissing fissures opening like an old, dry mouth. Rain sizzled like water droplets on a hot skillet where the cracks heaved. Molten rock pushed up beneath him, like a hand from hell, clutching at him, and swallowed him into the yawning, frothing ditch. Declan and I scurried back, clutching at each other's arms. Batten didn't flinch: he'd looked into far too many graves in his lifetime to be intimidated.

  I stared down at the bubbling asphalt, where torrents of molten rock were crackling with a new, cool skin. Nifty. The scientist in me wanted to know how it worked, the witch in me wanted to try it again, and the coward in me was really super glad it was over.

  Sirens were wailing in the distance. They were too late. The only thing for the health department or CDC to do now was collect any evidence left on Rob Hood's truck.

  Batten came to stand panting over my shoulder. “Harry calls you ‘radish leaf’?”

  “I've stopped asking,” I said, numb from the neck down.

  “Better question: do you like kidney pie?”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  Declan rubbed the back of his neck. “You okay?”

  “I'm still sucking wind. That counts, right?” I looked around. “Now what?”

  “To the sea?” he rallied half-heartedly.

  I winced. “Only if I can barf in it.”

  “I fucking hate this zombie bullshit.” His Irish snuck through, softening his vowels and giving his regret a lyrical tilt.

  “C'mon, now, don't blame the zombies. They didn't ask for this.”

  His cheeks pooched-out like he might lose his breakfast and his forehead started to sweat. I touched his forearm and whispered, “I need to ride back with you.”

  Declan eyeballed Batten, who was storming over to meet the local cops through a whirl of fogbank and colored emergency lights.

  “Can't ride back with Agent Batten?”

  “Wouldn't be wise at this time,” I said warily.

  Declan made a thoughtful noise. “He's going to be a while. We'll let him know we're going, and get you home.” He picked up his doctor's bag and we started to walk back to my room, dodging the same curious onlookers, both of us soaked and tired and in a fuzzy, stunned state. Declan flapped an evidence bag at me, and I deposited Cosmo's phone in it.

  “Did we do any work last night?” I asked.

  “Let's see. Is this work-related?” He read back from his iPad, squinting blearily, “And I quote, ‘That jackass plunged into me like I was the last evacuation shuttle off an imploding Earth’.”

  I almost dropped the evidence bag. “Who said that?”

  “You did, about Agent Batten.”

  I blinked rapidly. “Sweet fancy Christ!”

  “You also said he was, quote, ‘a visual picnic for my sex drive’ and ‘unforgivably good with his tongue’. You then made sure I knew you meant ‘sex of the oral variety’. Thanks for clearing that up, by the way.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I should probably delete all that.”

  “Ya think?” I squawked.

  “Are we of a different opinion about Agent Batten this morning?” he asked, and then tried to hide a knowing smirk behind his iPad. “The walls are awfully thin. Between you and the prostitutes, there's a whole lotta panty-dropping going on at this motel.”

  My shoulders fell. “You heard?”

  “Every damn word.”

  CHAPTER 45

  UPON OUR RETURN TO SHAW'S FIST, my yard was full of scientists, because apparently my milkshake brings all the nerds to the yard. The CDC had set up a tent in my driveway, more or less where I'd blown Dunnachie to rotten chunks. I had no idea what was going on inside the tent, and I didn't really want to. A very official-looking laminated sign on the tent-flap said: Department of Special Pathogens and CDC and at the bottom, warnings of a fate worse than death with the terms forced resurrection and plague and contagion underlined, and, in case there was any doubt remaining, a big, crimson biohazard symbol.

  Harry was waiting in the kitchen, his apron in place across one of his blue Turnbull & Asser shirts. I threw my go-bag in the corner and collapsed into a kitchen chair beside Agent de Cabrera, who was eating, and didn't bother to look up.

  “You'll let me know if there's anything I can do for you,” de Cabrera said.

  I mumbled something foul.

  De Cabrera added, “Cheer up. Use your positive words, remember? The CDC brought everyone their own personal gas mask.”

  “The fact that I could use a gas mask is positively depressing,” I said.

  Harry gave me a glare full of platinum disapproval as he prepared a plate for me. “You were very curt with me on the phone. I was not amused.”

  “Look, before you go dick-whipping me into submission, I've had a bad few days. I was in the middle of fighting a fucking zombie and had an armload of extremely used cat litter, so can the angst, bat-breath.”

  Harry made an unhappy noise and put kidney pie in front of me, nudging aside a small bowl of blood that I hadn't noticed was there.

  I wrinkled my nose at it. “What's this for?”

  “Good heavens. I suppose a man may drink blood in his own kitchen without being interrogated.”

  “You're miserable, revenant, what's wrong? Is the CDC making life difficult for you?”

  “So many anxious men, flitting about with their paranoia and cold dismay,” he exclaimed. “I daresay, it's enough to drive one mad.”

  The Blue Sense had been tormenting him. I'd been too worked-up with my own stress to ev
en notice anyone else's; I gave Harry an understanding smile.

  “You're late,” he continued, “and I've been waiting to feed before I rest.”

  “I'm so sorry that my zombie killing made you late for your nap,” I replied, aiming for dry. “I'll serve you as soon as humanly possible. Want me to dress up for the occasion? Maybe that raspberry silk and chiffon robe with satin sash and cuffs?”

  “That sounds not unsatisfactory, darling,” he said, missing the sarcasm completely, “only, do eat first.”

  I lifted a forkful of organ meat to my nose, sniffed, and sighed. “Do I have to?”

  Harry scowled. “I do not mean to speak slightingly of present company,” Harry said tightly, “but you left me alone with such intellectually-deficient attendants that my well-being has suffered greatly.”

  De Cabrera muttered, “I can hear you,” though it seemed he'd adjusted to the revenant's attitude readily enough; he propped his cheek on his fist and rolled his eyes.

  “Now you sass me in front of said company and insult my offerings,” Harry finished.

  I stared at my plate. “When I left, you were with Chapel. You like Chapel.”

  “Your Agent Chapel had to attend to the CDC's arrival, both here and at the fish camp.”

  “Hey, I didn't know”.

  “You ought to keep yourself better informed.”

  “Nobody's perfect, Fancy-Pants, not even you.”

  “Oh?” His argentine gaze fixed on me, and he lit a cigarette.

  “Yeah. For instance, you make kidney pie for lunch. Nobody eats that shit.”

  De Cabrera picked up his plate, paused by the stove to pick up the rest of the entree under discussion, and walked out the mudroom door. I glowered after his retreating back.

  Harry retorted, “Well, you cock up just about everything you attempt.”

  “You Bogart the remote.”

  “You talk in your sleep. Correction,” Harry pursed his lips primly. “You swear in your sleep.”

  “I swear when I'm awake, too. You wear too much cologne,” I said.

  Harry tapped his ash in the ashtray. “You need hardly remind me of that, and you know precisely why I do so.” He watched me through cigarette smoke for a long moment. “You give up too easily.”