The Laughing Corpse

There was a sense of movement everywhere in the darkness. Cops ru

We ran down the side yards of four houses when we hit a metal fence. Had to holster the guns. Couldn’t climb it with one hand. Dammit. I did my best to vault the fence using my hands for leverage.

I stumbled to my knees in the soft dirt of a flower bed. I was trampling some tall summer flowers. On my knees I was considerably shorter than the flowers. Ki landed beside me. Only Roberts landed on her feet.

Ki stood up without drawing his gun. I drew the Browning while I crouched in the flowers. I could stand up after I was armed.

I had a sense of rushing movement but not clear sight. The flowers obscured my vision. Roberts was suddenly tumbling backwards, screaming.

Ki was drawing his gun, but something hit him, knocked him on top of me. I rolled but was still half under him. He lay still on top of me.

“Ki, move it, dammit!”

He sat up and crawled towards his partner, his gun silhouetted against the streetlight. He was staring down at Roberts. She wasn’t moving.

I searched the darkness trying to see something, anything. It had moved more than human fast. Fast as a ghoul. No zombie moved like that. Had I been wrong all along? Was it something else? Something worse? How many lives would my mistake cost tonight? Was Roberts dead?

“Ki, is she alive?” I searched the darkness, fighting the urge to look only at the lighted areas. There was shouting, but it was confusion, “Where is it? Where did it go?” The sounds were getting farther away.

I screamed, “Here, here!” The voices hesitated, then started our way. They were making so much noise, like a heard of arthritic elephants.

“How bad is she hurt?”

“Bad.” He’d put his gun down. He was pressing his hands over her neck. Something black and liquid was spreading over his hands. God.

I knelt on the other side of Roberts, gun ready, searching the darkness. Everything was taking forever, yet it was only seconds.

I checked her pulse, one-handed. It was thready, but there. My hand came away covered in blood. I wiped it on my pants. The thing had damn near slit her throat.

Where was it?

Ki’s eyes were huge, all pupil. His skin looked leprous in the streetlight. His partner’s blood was dripping out between his fingers.

Something moved, too low to the ground to be a man, but about that size. It was just a shape creeping along the back of the house in front of us. Whatever it was had found the deepest shadow and was trying to creep away.

That showed more intelligence than a zombie had. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was fucking wrong. And Roberts was dying because of it.

“Stay with her. Keep her alive.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“After it.” I climbed the fence one-handed. The adrenaline must have been pumping because I made it.

I gained the yard and it was gone. A streaking shape fast as a mouse caught in the kitchen light. A blur of speed, but big, big as a man.

It rounded the corner of the house and I lost sight of it. Dammit. I ran as far from the wall as I could, my stomach tight with anticipation of fingers ripping my throat out. I came round the house gun pointed, two-handed, ready. Nothing. I sca

Shouts behind me. The cops had arrived. God, let Roberts live.

There, movement, creeping across the streetlight around the edge of another house. Someone shouted, “Anita!”

I was already ru

I ran into the darkness, alone, after something that might not be a zombie at all. Not the brightest thing I’ve ever done, but it wasn’t going to get away. It wasn’t.

It was never going to hurt another family. Not if I could stop it. Now. Tonight.

I ran through a pool of light and it made the darkness heavier, blinding me temporarily. I froze in the dark, willing my eyes to adjust faster.

“Perssisstent woman,” a voice hissed. It was to my right, so close the hair on my arms stood up.

I froze, straining my peripheral vision. There, a darker shape rising out of the evergreen shrubs that hugged the edge of the house. It rose to its full height, but didn’t attack. If it wanted me, it could have me before I could turn and fire. I’d seen it move. I knew I was dead.

“You arrre not like the resst.” The voice was sibilant, as if parts of the mouth were missing, so it put great effort into forming each word. A gentleman’s voice decayed by the grave.

I turned towards it, slowly, slowly.

“Put me back.”

I had turned my head enough to be able to see some of it. My night vision is better than most. And the streetlights made it lighter than it should have been.

The skin was pale, yellowish-white. The skin clung to the bones of his face like wax that had half-melted. But the eyes, they weren’t decayed. They burned out at me with a glitter that was more than just eyes.

“Put you back where?” I asked.

“My grave,” he said. His lips didn’t work quite right, there wasn’t enough flesh left on them.

Light blazed into my eyes. The zombie screamed, covering his face. I couldn’t see shit. It crashed into me. I pulled the trigger blind. I thought I heard a grunt as the bullet hit home. I fired the gun again one-handed, throwing an arm across my neck. Trying to protect myself as I fell half-blind.

When I blinked up into the electric-shot darkness, I was alone. I was unhurt. Why? Put me back, it had said. In my grave. How had it known what I was? Most humans couldn’t tell. Witches could tell sometimes, and other animators always spotted me. Other animators. Shit.

Dolph was suddenly there, pulling me to my feet. “God, Blake, are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “What the hell was that light?”

“A halogen flashlight.”

“You damn near blinded me.”

“We couldn’t see to shoot,” he said.

Police had run past us in the darkness. There were shouts of, “There it is!” Dolph and I and the offending flashlight, bright as day, were left behind as the chase ran merrily on.

“It spoke to me, Dolph,” I said.

“What do you mean, it spoke to you?”

“It asked me to put it back in its grave.” I stared up at him as I said it. I wondered if my face looked like Ki’s had, pale, eyes wide and black. Why wasn’t I scared?

“It’s old, a century at least. It was a voodoo something in life. That’s what went wrong. That’s why Peter Burke couldn’t control it.”

“How do you know all this? Did it tell you?”

I shook my head. “The way it looked, I could judge the age. It recognized me as someone who could lay it to rest. Only a witch or another animator could have recognized me for what I am. My money’s on an animator.”

“Does that change our plan?” he asked.

I stared up at him. “It’s killed how many people?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “We kill it. Period.”

“You think like a cop, Anita.” It was a great compliment from Dolph, and I took it as one.

It didn’t matter what it had been in life. So it had been an animator, or rather a voodoo practioner. So what? It was a killing machine. It hadn’t killed me. Hadn’t hurt me. I couldn’t afford to return the favor.

Shots echoed far way. Some trick of the summer air made them echo. Dolph and I looked at each other.

I still had the Browning in my hand. “Let’s do it.”

He nodded.

We started ru

He hesitated, glancing at me.