The Laughing Corpse

“Go on, run,” I said.

He put on an extra burst of speed and was gone into the darkness. He didn’t even look back. If you said you were fine in the dark with a killer zombie on the loose, Dolph would believe you. Or at least he believed me.

It was a compliment but it left me ru

I slowed. I had no desire to run into the thing blind. It hadn’t hurt me the first time, but I’d put at least one bullet into it. Even a zombie gets pissed about things like that.

I was under the cool darkness of a tree shadow. I was on the edge of the development. A barbed-wire fence cut across the entire back of the subdivision. Farmland stretched as far as I could see. At least the field was planted in beans. The zombie’d have to be lying flat to hide in there. I caught glimpses of policemen with flashlights, searching the darkness, but they were all about fifty yards to either side of me.

They were searching the ground, the shadows, because I’d told them zombies didn’t like to climb. But this wasn’t any ordinary zombie. The tree rustled over my head. The hair on my neck crawled down my spine. I whirled, looking upwards, gun pointing.

It snarled at me and leapt.

I fired twice before its weight hit me and knocked us both to the ground. Two bullets in the chest, and it wasn’t even hurt.

I fired a third time, but I might as well have been hitting a wall.

It snarled in my face, broken teeth with dark stains, breath foul as a new opened grave. I screamed back, wordless, and pulled the trigger again. The bullet hit it in the throat. It paused, trying to swallow. To swallow the bullet?

Those glittering eyes stared down at me. There was someone home, like Dominga’s soul-locked zombies. There was someone looking out of those eyes. We froze in one of those illusionary seconds that last years. He was straddling my waist, hands at my throat, but not pressing, not hurting, not yet. I had the gun under his chin. None of the other bullets had hurt him; why would this one?

“Didn’t mean to kill,” it said softly, “didn’t understand at firsst. Didn’t remember what I wass.”

The police were there on either side, hesitating. Dolph screamed, “Hold your fire, hold your fire, dammit!”

“I needed meat, needed it to remember who I wass. Tried not to kill. Tried to walk past all the houssess, but I could not. Too many houssess,” he whispered. His hands tensed, stained nails digging in. I fired into his chin. His body jerked backwards, but the hands squeezed my neck.

Pressure, pressure, tighter, tighter. I was begi

My vision faded, but I could still feel my hands, pulling the trigger. Darkness flowed over my eyes and swallowed the world. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore.

I woke to screams, horrible screams. The stink of burning flesh and hair was thick and choking on my tongue.

I took a deep shaking breath and it hurt. I coughed and tried to sit up. Dolph was there supporting me. He had my gun in his hand. I drew one ragged breath after another and coughed hard enough to make my throat raw. Or maybe the zombie had done that.

Something the size of a man was rolling over the summer grass. It burned. It flamed with a clean orange light that sent the darkness shattering in fire shadows like the sun on water.

Two exterminators in their fire suits stood by it, covering it in napalm, as if it were a ghoul. The thing screamed high in its throat, over and over, one loud ragged shriek after another.

“Jesus, why won’t it die?” Zerbrowski was standing nearby. His face was orange in the firelight.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to say it out loud. The zombie wouldn’t die because it had been an animator when alive. That much I knew about animator zombies. What I hadn’t known was that they came out of the grave craving flesh. That they remembered only when they ate flesh.

That I hadn’t known. Didn’t want to know.

John Burke stumbled into the firelight. He was cradling one arm to his chest. Blood stained his clothing. Had the zombie whispered to John? Did he know why the thing wouldn’t die?

The zombie whirled, the fire roaring around it. The body was like the wick of a candle. It took one shaking step towards us. Its flaming hand reached out to me. To me.

Then it fell forward, slowly, into the grass. It fell like a tree in slow motion, fighting for life. If that was the word. The exterminators stayed ready, taking no chances. I didn’t blame them.

It had been a necromancer once upon a time. That burning hulk, slowly catching the grass on fire, had been what I was. Would I be a monster if raised from the grave? Would I? Better not to find out. My will said cremation because I didn’t want someone raising me just for kicks. Now I had another reason to do it. One had been enough.

I watched the flesh blacken, curl, peel away. Muscles and bone popped in miniature explosions, tiny pops of sparks.

I watched the zombie die and made a promise to myself. I’d see Dominga Salvador burned in hell for what she’d done. There are fires that last for all eternity. Fires that make napalm look like a temporary inconvenience. She’d burn for all eternity, and it wouldn’t be half long enough.

Chapter 33

I was lying on my back in the emergency room. A white curtain hid me from view. The noises on the other side of the curtain were loud and unfriendly. I liked my curtain. The pillow was flat, the examining table was hard. It felt white and clean and wonderful. It hurt to swallow. It even hurt a little bit just to breathe. But breathing was important. It was nice to be able to do it.

I lay there very quietly. Doing what I was told for once. I listened to my breathing, the beating of my own heart. After nearly dying, I am always very interested in my body. I notice all sorts of things that go u

I was alive. The zombie was dead. Dominga Salvador was in jail. Life was good.

Dolph pushed the curtain back. He closed the curtain like you’d close a door to a room. We both pretended we had privacy even though we could see people’s feet passing under the hem of the curtain.

I smiled up at him. He smiled back. “Nice to see you up and around.”

“I don’t know about the up part,” I said. My voice had a husky edge to it. I coughed, tried to clear it, but it didn’t really help.

“What’d the doc say about your voice?” Dolph asked.

“I’m a temporary tenor.” At the look on his face, I added, “It’ll pass.”

“Good.”

“How’s Burke?” I asked.

“Stitches, no permanent damage.”

I had figured as much after seeing him last night, but it was good to know.

“And Roberts?”

“She’ll live.”

“But will she be alright?” I had to swallow hard. It hurt to talk.

“She’ll be alright. Ki was cut up, too, on the arm. Did you know?”

I shook my head and stopped in mid-motion. That hurt, too. “Didn’t see it.”

“Just a few stitches. He’ll be fine.” Dolph plunged his hands in his pants pockets. “We lost three officers. One hurt worse than Roberts, but he’ll make it.”

I stared up at him. “My fault.”

He frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“I should have guessed,” I had to swallow, “it wasn’t an ordinary zombie.”

“It was a zombie, Anita. You were right. You were the one who figured out it was hiding in one of those damn trash cans.” He gri