The Corpse Whisperer

by H. R. Boldwood

  Rico grinned. “We don’t have any zombie targets. Just pretend the pop-up perps are biters. Use the cover that’s out there. Condition one, Allie.”

  Allie? Wow. That was a first.

  “Cocked and locked,” I said. “That’s how I carry.”

  “Slice the pie. Center mass.”

  “De Palma, please. I don’t do center mass. Zombies…head shots, remember? Thanks for the tip, but I know what I’m doing.”

  He climbed the steps to the control tower that overlooked Perptown, and then turned back to me. “Signal when ready. I’ll be watching you on the monitor.”

  I’d been scoping out the place since we got there. Thanks to a wet March and no drainage, Main Street, about an eighth-of-a-mile long, was nothing more than a continuous mud slick connected by a series of chuck holes.

  On my right, was a supermarket, a bank, and an alley alongside a hardware store with a second-floor walk-up. On my left, an Italian restaurant, an open lot, and the police station. Telephone poles, a mailbox, and a few vehicles lined the concrete curbs, including a UPS truck on my left, about twenty feet down range.

  I took a deep breath, exhaling long and slow, then drew Hawk and signaled Rico.

  A beep came over the loudspeaker. The clock started.

  I sprinted toward the UPS truck, taking cover behind the front bumper. Both the supermarket and the restaurant were still ahead of me, the restaurant a little closer. I kept low, extended my left leg toward the end of the bumper, and leaned as far to the side as I could, without passing the corner of the truck. Clear.

  Then stretching to my right, I did the same. Clear again, so I rolled out from behind the bumper and did a duck-and-run for the side of the restaurant. Adrenaline soared through my veins as I slammed up against the side of the building.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  I moved toward the corner of the restaurant, tucked in my elbows, both hands on Hawk’s grip, and slowly sliced the pie, edging forward until I had a clear view of Main Street. An armed bogey popped up in the doorway of the supermarket across the road. I squared and squeezed. Tango down. Good to go.

  I jumped back behind the corner to take cover. It was close to fifty feet through the parking lot to the police station. After clearing the field at the corner, I tore through the lot like my ass was on fire. About halfway there, a target flew up, not five yards ahead, to my right.

  I aimed and started to squeeze the trigger. Shit, shit, shit! A mommy and her baby out for a stroll. No joy. Repeat, no joy. Holy crap, I almost shot her.

  Multiple targets popped, behind me, and to the right. I dove behind the mailbox and turned. Two more bogies, two head shots, problem solved.

  The targets flew fast and furious.

  I made it to the police station and pressed up against the wall, halfway hoping some officers might wander out and lend a hand. Like that was going to happen. I took a knee and sucked air like a Hoover, all the while keeping my eye on the far side of the street.

  A computerized voice blared over the loudspeaker, “Shooter proceed to the alleyway and ascend the stairs. Clean and clear the walk-up.”

  Are you shitting me? What the actual fu… Get a grip. Focus. I closed my eyes and pulled myself together. Steady now, breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Woosah. Woosah. My mind cleared and I was ready to rock.

  One last scramble across the street to the alley. Thankfully, no targets popped along the way, but that made me anxious as hell about what was inside the walk-up.

  I plastered myself against the stair rail, pivoting to see as much as possible at the top, and then took the steps one at a time, scanning right-to-left, left-to-right, listening to the thrum of my heartbeat and the squeak of the boards beneath my feet.

  It was quiet.

  Too quiet.

  I cleared the top of the stairway and hugged the building, reached across the door, and turned the knob. It was locked, so I kicked the door in and stepped back alongside the wall.

  Clearing the right side of the room, I caught a reflection in the mirror. Bad guy number four. Nailed him with a shot through the door.

  Two more rooms to go. I moved down the hall toward the first door and a target dropped from the ceiling behind me. I dove to the floor, rolled and turned, then squeezed the trigger and blew off its head.

  Last room. I sprang back to my feet and kicked in the door. A bogey at twelve o’clock had me in his sights. I dropped to my ass and took him out with one sweet shot.

  It’s over, I thought. Thank God.

  Until another scumbag dropped from the roof on a rope just outside the window. One final squeeze of the trigger put him down with a dose of ballistic therapy.

  Six up, six down. Who’s your momma?

  The loudspeaker crackled. “Exercise complete. Shooter return to the top of the course.”

  I was halfway back to the entrance of the walk-up when a damn biter busted through the closet door and jumped me.

  The bastard jostled my hand and sent poor Hawk flying across the room.

  That deadhead was on me faster than flies on a flesh-eater. And wouldn’t you know it? He was a stinking flesh-eater, the meanest, most unpredictable deadhead of all.

  I body-slammed it to the floor and scrambled for my gun, but the biter grabbed my right foot and bit down hard.

  Damn, that hurt! I flipped onto my back and rocked a scissors kick straight into its face, knocking it on its ass, and pulverizing everything from its eyes to its chin. Then I reached into my left boot, pulled Baby from my ankle holster, and tapped that mother right between the eyes.

  Allie: One. Biter: Zero.

  Seconds later, Rico raced through the door. “You okay?”

  “Just peachy.” I glanced down at the tooth-shaped hole in the side of my boot, fighting the urge to yank out my foot and look for blood.

  That damn biter shook me up, but Rico didn’t need to know that.

  He picked his way across the brain splatter on the floor, stared at the remains of my rotter, and pulled on some nitrile gloves. “I don’t understand. This is a private range. There’re security cameras everywhere. How’d that thing get in here?”

  That was the $64,000 question. How indeed?

  Rico turned a little green as he stuck his hand in the biter’s pants looking for some ID.

  “Nothing,” he said, sounding annoyed that his first ever pat-down of a deadhead had come up empty.

  “The mystery doesn’t end there.” I shook my left foot a few times and splattered what was left of the biter’s face across the wall. “Zombies don’t come out in the daytime. They’re blind in the sunlight. But this one grabbed my foot when he fell. He saw me.”

  Rico and I stared at each other in silence, letting that factoid sink in.

  Rico’s phone rang and I was glad for the intrusion. Biters that can see in the daylight. That was a game-changing event. Had the virus mutated? Or had someone altered it?

  After a brief conversation, Rico hung up and said, “Cap wants to see us. We’ve got a new case.” He took one last look at the fresh coat of bio-goo on the walls and floor. “Looks like a job for Splatz.”

  “Hey, I get a fifty-dollar credit for referrals. Tell Jack, Allie sent you.”

  “So, what does this mean—the Z’s changing?”

  “Hard to say.” I ducked into the hallway before he had a chance to ask anything else.

  If my hunch was correct, we’d be up to our butts in biters before you could say Jack Splatz.

  The 51st Precinct, a brownstone at the corner of Erie and Melbourne, smelled like stale smoke and marinara from Ricardo’s Pizzeria next door. Its walls were a dingy yellow, which might have passed for white fifty years ago. A double-row of solid-oak desks faced each other and divided the bullpen.

  What was probably the original flooring, a black and white checkerboard linoleum, was scuffed and worn with the occasional cigarette burn and unrecognizable stain. Add the empty pizza boxes and sticky coffee cups, and it was pretty indistinguishable fr
om any other station I’d seen.

  I ducked into the john as soon as we got there, to clean up and check my foot. An angry purple bruise had bloomed, but the skin wasn’t broken.

  That turned out to be the only good news of the day.

  Cap’s admin, an aging fussbudget named Miriam Miller, buzzed him to let him know we were there. His office was the first door on the right, past the bullpen. We hung in his doorway, waiting for him to wave us in.

  Cap, aka Philip Dorsey, was in his 50s, almost as round as he was tall, and bald as a cue-ball. Old-school and hard-boiled, he preferred his skells living. He’s had a hard time wrapping his mind around me and my freaky Voodoo shit. That’s made me the proverbial fly in his ointment.

  He looked lost in thought, gazing at a photo of a woman on the corner of his desk. When he realized we were there, he turned the picture around and waved us toward some chairs.

  “How’d the qualification go?” he asked.

  I started to answer but Rico jumped in. “She did great, Cap, but somehow a biter got into the walk-up and attacked her—in broad daylight.”

  “Piece of cake. No problem.” I said, catching Rico’s eye. “Just some random biter stuck in a closet.”

  Really? Stuck in a closet?

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  I didn’t want to start fielding questions that I didn’t have the answers to, so I changed the subject. “Cap, I wanted to talk to you about hiring me full-time.”

  Rico groaned and melted into his chair.

  “You did? What a coincidence! I wanted to talk to you, too, Nighthawk.” Cap’s face blazed.

  He picked up a piece of paper, wadded it into a ball, and threw it at my head.

  “$13,456.17 for…mausoleum repairs?” Then he picked up another piece of paper. “$5,621.42, biohazard cleanup at city hall?”

  “I can get you a better deal than that, Cap. I use Splatz. The owner—”

  “Ah, ah, ahhh. I’m not finished yet.” He held up yet another document, my employment application. “Hire you? Hire you! Nighthawk, I can’t afford you. And while I’m at it, why are these bills coming here? You do have liability coverage, don’t you?”

  He peered over a pile of paperwork, like a vulture waiting to swoop.

  “Of course, I do!”

  Truthfully, I was only sixty-percent sure I did. I didn’t keep track of all that minutiae. I’m a freaking corpse whisperer, damn it. I’ve got more important things to worry about—like saving the world from meatbags.

  Little Allie was banging on my brain to let her speak, but I blew the little bitch fairy off. Screw her. She could save her own ass. It was every man for himself.

  “For now,” Cap continued, “You’ll stay an independent contractor. I’ll pay you a hundred bucks an hour. When you find a way to conduct your business using something other than the scorched earth method, we can revisit this conversation.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to circle back to the corpsicle in the closet. How the hell did it get in there? That’s our facility. No one else has access.”

  “We’re already looking into that,” Rico said.

  “I’ll call in Internal Affairs, if I have to. I want answers. It’s not going to be my ass in a sling.”

  Rico winced “Roger that, Cap.”

  “Um… It was a flesh-eater, not a corpsicle,” I mumbled. “There’s a difference, you know.”

  Cap rolled up his sleeves and loosened his collar. “I may not like all this paranormal hoodoo, but I do keep up on it. That’s my job. As I understand it, deadheads can’t see during the day. So, how is it that this one broke form?”

  I couldn’t skirt the issue anymore. “To be honest, I don’t know. But I’ve got some connections. I’ll be reaching out as soon as we’re finished here.”

  Like any moment now… Just get me the hell out of here.

  Rico heard the word ‘finished’ and jumped up like he’d been shot out of a cannon.

  But Cap wasn’t finished yet. “How can these things, all of a sudden, start seeing in the light? Are they evolving? Has the disease mutated? If this gets out, the press will have a field day.”

  Oh, sweet Lord, the press. Chen would be like a rotter gnawing on a rib bone.

  Cap pointed at me. “I want answers, Nighthawk. Before the mayor calls me and asks what the hell’s going on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who’re these connections of yours?”

  “I have several, Cap. I’m not the only corpse whisperer in the world, or even in this country. I thought I’d contact Sandoval Latka, a European protégé of mine. He’s a scientist with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm—Europe’s version of our CDC. He’s on the cutting edge of Carovescology, the study of the zombie virus. If there’s any precedent for this, he’ll know.”

  Cap leaned forward. “All right, then. Keep me posted. Now, on to new business. I’ve got another case for you. The FBI has requested your assistance with a mob informant, by the name of Leo Abruzzi. He’s the financial wizard who cooked the books for the Giordano Family, and shuffled their money from one invisible holding company to another. Abruzzi contracted the virus several weeks back, when a biter sunk its teeth into him. He couldn’t stomach the thought of turning, and lacked the intestinal fortitude to swallow his own gun, so he offered to turn state’s evidence in return for a supply of Narco… Naco… Necro...”

  He’d never get it, so I helped him out. “Nacarotoxin. The drug that slows the progression of symptoms.”

  “Whatever,” Cap said, waving me off. “Abruzzi’s a few weeks into treatment. He knows the drug will stop working someday. The FBI deposed him, so they have his testimony on file, but they’re still gathering physical evidence for the indictment. They want to keep him safe until he testifies before the grand jury.”

  Crap, crap, crappity, crap. Talk about the icing on the turd cake.

  Rico went slack-jawed. “You want us to babysit the numbers guy?”

  “Call it what you will,” said Cap. “Between the two of you, keep him out of harm’s way.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “I can’t make the drug work any better, or longer, than it was designed to.”

  Cap shrugged. “True, but if anyone can pick up on signs that he’s deteriorating, or outright turning, it’s you. If he doesn’t make it to the stand, the FBI wants to be sure to get a final deposition from him while he’s still mentally competent, just in case he’s been holding back. He’s flying in tonight, on the redeye, with an agent escort. So, here’s what’s going to happen. De Palma, tomorrow morning, you’re going to play Uber driver for Abruzzi, pick him up from the Kenwood FBI office at nine, and bring him back here for a little chat about his security detail.”

  Cap turned to me. “You’re going to call that Latka guy in Stockholm and find out if there are any more of these mutant meatbags showing up.”

  Rico got up to leave, but Cap had something else on his mind.

  “Wait a minute, Nighthawk.” He shot a quick glance toward the photo on his desk and hesitated like he was collecting his thoughts. “Tell me something. These creatures…these…deadheads. How long have they been around?”

  “Forever.” I let out a sigh. “When people like me get it right, they’re almost invisible. They’re like the derelicts living under railroad trestles or the addicts wandering the alleys. They’re just another monster no one wants to see.”

  That was so sad and true, that it hurt.

  I flashed a half-hearted smile, tired and paper-thin. “Not to worry. We whisperers always manage to keep them in check.”

  Cap lowered his voice. “Don’t get me wrong, but if the game is changing—if the disease is changing—can you still do that? Keep them in check?”

  “Damn straight, I can. I’m the best of the bad-ass zombie hunters. Remember?” I threw him a wink, spun on my heel and walked out the door.

  No sense in l
etting the man lose sleep over something he couldn’t control.

  Me? I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again.

  5

  Dealing with the Devil

  Stockholm is six hours ahead of Cincinnati, so I sipped my morning coffee and considered giving Sandoval a call. Then I heard Nussbaum and Headbutt going at it in the backyard. I didn’t need to look out the window to see what was going on. It was a daily ritual that never got old: Headbutt whizzing on Nussbaum’s rosebushes through the chain-link fence and Nussbaum vaulting off her porch, brandishing a broom, support hose billowing around her cankles, flying after him like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  I had to give the old bat some props. She was spry for a fossil. She swung that broom like a battle-axe—straight into the top of the metal fence rail, making her batwings jiggle like jello in a wave tank.

  “Mrs. Nighthawk,” she yelled. “Keep that four-legged golem away from my bushes. Always, every day is same. He has no manners. Your father—God rest his soul—would never allow such monkeyshines. The dog is like spoilt child. Feh!”

  I inherited the house when my father passed away three years ago. My mother died when I was eleven. I’ve never been married a day in my life, and yet for some reason, this nut-job blue-hair always referred to me as Mrs. Nighthawk.

  I knew Headbutt shouldn’t pee on her bushes, and Headbutt knew he shouldn’t pee on her bushes. But it was one of his few pleasures in life. What can I say? Rules aren’t his thing. Mine either.

  I waved at her from the backdoor. “Sorry, Mrs. Nussbaum. Headbutt, come in here!”

  He waddled inside as fast as his short legs could carry him, wearing a proud, accomplished smile. It earned him a dog biscuit.

  “Could you at least try to not pee on her bushes? It drives her crazy.”

  He snorted and walked away, a dog that bowed to no man. He and I were more alike than either of us would have cared to admit.

  I refilled my coffee cup and called Sandoval, aka Sandy, to ask if he’d heard tales of sighted Z’s popping up. Sandy, an old friend, a man who’d dedicated his work at the European CPDC to the study of Carovescology, was a leading authority on the virus. His research had saved me more than once. I’d have walked through fire for the man, and he the same for me.