Imagine my delight, returning home around twelve-thirty, after my shift at the safe house, to find Nonnie and the terrible twins, Headbutt and Kulu, waiting for me at the door. Nonnie handed me her shoe—at least, I think that’s what it had been, before Headbutt turned it into a leather chew toy. To an uneducated eye, Headbutt, who lay prostrate on the kitchen floor, might have appeared to be wallowing in shame. But I knew this dog. He was laying low, waiting for the Payless Shoes storm to pass.
Kulu, roosting on Nonnie’s shoulder, cast him an unsympathetic eye, ruffled her feathers, and muttered, “Bad golem. Bad. Bad. Bad.”
That bird had her head stuck so far up Nonnie’s ass, we were going to need a headlamp and barbecue tongs to pull it out.
And as for Headbutt, it’s a good thing he had a nose for deadheads. That stubborn, fur-covered basketball was stretching my non-existent patience.
I pulled thirty bucks, the last of my money, out of my wallet. “Ah, geez, I’m sorry, Nonnie. Will this cover it?”
She pushed my hand away and shook her finger at Headbutt. “Bad Golem. Bad. Bad. Bad.”
Was Kulu learning from Nonnie, or was Nonnie learning from Kulu?
“Is okay, Miss Allie. Keep your money,” Nonnie said, shooting Headbutt the evil eye. “He will learn. I make him learn.”
Headbutt moaned and rolled his sad brown eyes toward me.
“Nice try, you four-legged doorstop. Don’t give me that poor little puppy crap. You do the crime, you do the time.”
I thanked Nonnie and sent her home with a spare copy of my house key, telling her I’d be leaving early again, in the morning.
When I finally turned out the lights, deadheads filled my dreams.
Something invisible pinned me to the ground. An army of deadheads stretched as far as I could see, shuffling, crawling, dragging themselves closer and closer still, until they nearly covered me.
The rotters snapped their mossy teeth in my face and clawed at my skin. Their stink flooded my nose, and their raspy growls rumbled in my ears.
A tall hooded figure commanded the battalion of biters, urging them on. The zombies weren’t randomly attacking like they usually do. They were organized and following the hooded man’s direction.
Headbutt fought the horde, trying to protect me. The deadheads took him down, biting him again and again, tearing the flesh from his bones and drinking the blood from his veins.
I watched, powerless to save him.
His high-pitched cries morphed into screams, and I sprung awake to find that the screams were actually mine. Headbutt, who had been sleeping at my feet, now stood over me, head held high, nose to the air, peering into the darkness.
“Good boy,” I murmured, kissing his muzzle.
He might be a shoe-chewing, fur-covered basketball, but he’d give his life for me in a heartbeat.
I lay back in bed, closed my eyes, and wondered who the hooded commander of my dreams had been. But part of me, the part I keep buried deep inside, was afraid to accept the truth.
Little Allie whispered a name. It whirred like a fly through the darkness, into my ear. And as I drifted off to sleep, there came a dark, familiar laugh. The hooded man had returned.
In that soft gray space between sleep and wakefulness, I wondered if he’d ever really been away.
I arrived at the M.E.’s office bright and early. Nothing like dreams of being devoured by an army of deadheads to get the blood pumping. The lobby door was already unlocked.
I walked down the hall, around the corner, and dipped into Doc Blanchard’s conversation. He was having a hissy.
“No disrespect, Cap, but I’ll strap myself to an ant hill, covered with honey, before I let Nighthawk raise that gangster in here. It’s not going to happen. Did you see pictures of what she did to my morgue when she took Miriam down? I thought she was supposed to be good at this shit.”
Ouch. Low blow. But I had to have some sympathy for the guy. This really hadn’t been his week.
I opened Doc’s office door and his jaw dropped. “She’s already here, Cap. I’ll let you talk to her.”
I took the phone with a smile. “Good morning, Captain Sunshine. How’re you today?”
Cap was short and not all that sweet. “Do what you need to do, but give Doc a break. You’ve pissed in his Wheaties enough this week. Is that clear?”
The call disconnected.
Rico walked in the door with Lloyd on his heels.
“I’ve got shit to do,” Rico said. “Let’s get this party started.” He threw his jacket across Doc’s guest chair. “How we gonna do this?”
Doc’s quiet tone made me nervous. “I lost two day’s work after that mess with Miriam. You can’t do that to me again, Nighthawk.”
“Doc, we can argue about who’s fault that was later. But you’re right. We need to think this through.” I spun toward Rico. “Remember all those stupid rules of mine about who gets raised? Keep in mind that if putting down mild-mannered Miriam made a big-ass mess, raising and putting down Funky Fingers Fingerello—a freaking mobster—will be like spitting into a tornado and hoping you don’t get F5’d all the way to Kansas. Get my drift?”
Rico nodded, but Doc squished his eyebrows together and frowned.
“Think of it this way, Doc. This guy was a bad-ass mobster. When I bring him back, he’ll be a bad-ass freshy. And a bad-ass freshy is a corpse on crack.”
“That’s exactly why,” Doc said, “you cannot do this in my morgue.”
“What’s in the basement?” Rico asked.
“Supplies—body bags, sterilized trays, surgical gowns, embalming fluid. Why?”
Rico glanced at me. “We could raise him down there.”
“For God’s sake,” Doc said. “Embalming fluid is flammable. Let me move it upstairs, before you light the building up like the Fourth of July.”
The thought of Jade Chen reading that headline on the five o’clock news raced a shiver up my spine.
Together, we reconfigured the basement as best we could for a one-man zombie apocalypse. Doc and Lloyd brought Joey ‘Fingers’ Fingerello down in the elevator and wheeled him into the center of the room.
“Here, sign this,” Doc said, handing me a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a release. I took pictures of the basement as it is now. This statement says that you are raising this corpse, against my express consent, with the intention of extracting certain information and further, that you intend to put the corpse back down, once your objective has been accomplished. You will be held responsible for any and all damages that may occur in the process. On behalf of the Coroner’s Office, I refuse to be held accountable or financially responsible.”
“Sure, Doc.”
I took his pen and laid the form on the counter behind me, to sign it. With my back to Doc, I crossed out my name and scrawled The City of Cincinnati in its place. Then I signed it Genghis Khan.
“There. Happy?” I handed it back to Doc, folded in half.
“Now go away,” I said, and walked him back to the elevator. “Igor. You stay here. We might need you.”
“It’s Lloyd,” he said, sliding his black-framed glasses up his nose.
“Whatever.” I pushed the elevator button and sent Doc back upstairs to the morgue.
The basement measured around twenty by thirty—large enough for Rico, Lloyd and me to maneuver, but throwing a freshy into that mix made it feel more like a linen closet. Overhead pipes ran across the ceiling lengthwise. There were a couple of support beams, some stationary tubs, shelving units and a floor drain. Not a lot to work with.
It was show time, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was forgetting something. I turned to find Rico holding out a family-size bag of Doritos.
“I brought them from home,” he said. “It’s all I had.”
Junk food for the freshy. That’s what we were missing. What a waste of perfectly good Doritos.
Joey Fingers, snug inside a black body bag, lay on a gurney in the center of the basement.
I put my fingers on the zipper and set the stage. “Rico, you stand across the gurney from me. Lloyd, you stand in front of the steps and block Joey if he tries to escape. Tackle him if you have to. Everybody ready?”
I eased the zipper down and got my first peak at Joey ‘Fingers’ Fingerello. He was a short, stout, fireplug of a guy, with curly black hair and a small jagged scar on his chin. Dollars to donuts, raising this guy was going to be a real treat.
Every corpse is different. Take Cephus, the kiddie-diddler, for example. He jumped out of his casket, ate a couple of chips, answered my questions, and then lit off like a bottle rocket across the cemetery, confused and fearful. But Fingerello, being a gangster, might wake up a lot more aggressive.
I shrugged and put my hands over Joey. “You know the drill, De Palma. This is always a crapshoot, but I’m not expecting Al Capone here to come back with flowers and a bottle of wine. You feel me?”
Rico raised his eyebrows. “Hold on, I’ve got an idea.”
He rolled the gurney alongside a metal shelving unit anchored to the wall, and handcuffed Joey’s left wrist to the support bar. “There. That’s better.”
I closed my eyes, placed my hands back over Joey’s body, and felt the familiar, searing heat rush from my chest, through my arms, and into my palms.
Ribbons of light streamed from my fingertips, calling Joey from his eternal rest.
When the energy blazed in a solid arc, I raised my head and called upon a higher power. “Rise, Joseph Fingerello. In the name of God, I command you to rise.”
His eyelids flickered.
“Joseph, hear me. You will rise.”
He didn’t budge.
My palms were on fire, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes. I pushed myself harder, generating more energy and transferring it into him, but he absorbed it like a sponge.
“Nighthawk,” Rico whispered, “Your nose is bleeding.”
I sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “Joseph Fingerello, you cannot resist. You will rise, now!”
Joey’s body began to smoke. The unzipped body bag melted against his sides. His eyes snapped open and he flew straight off that gurney like a galvanized Pop-Tart.
He jerked his handcuffed arm against the shelving unit and roared, then threw a right uppercut into Rico’s jaw with the opposite fist, sending him sprawling ten-feet back.
I cleared Hawk from my holster, but Joey thrashed his free arm back around, smashing into my elbow as I squeezed the trigger. The bullet went wide, striking what turned out to be the water pipe that fed the sprinkler system. Water gushed from the rusty old pipe onto the floor and the fire alarm sounded.
Miraculously, Joey was still handcuffed to the shelving unit.
“Did you have Miriam killed?” I yelled over the blaring alarm.
“No.” He growled and stared at me, eyes glazed.
He lunged forward, nearly pulling the shelves over. I didn’t have much time. And damned if Rico hadn’t fallen on top of the Doritos.
“Why were you in town?”
Joey pulled against the handcuffs, rocking the shelving unit back and forth. “Scare her. Find Leo.”
Holy Shit. Did the mob know where Leo was?
“Joey,” I shouted above the rushing water. “Did Miriam tell you where Leo is?”
“No,” he snapped. “She dead. Dead. Already dead.”
Sirens from the approaching fire trucks grew louder. I sloshed through the pooling water toward Rico. He stirred as I grabbed the picture of BOLO Guy from his pocket.
Holding it up, I asked Joey. “Do you recognize this man?”
Joey heaved forward with a shriek, straining against the handcuffs. “Killed me! He. Killed. Me!”
The shelving unit teetered on its front legs, and my brain shifted into overdrive. BOLO Guy killed mob guy? Who the hell was BOLO Guy, and who did he work for?
The brain bitch blew her top, screaming a name over and over again, a name I’d tried hard to forget, for a very long time. Joey yanked the shelving unit one last time, and brought it down with a crash. I saw it coming and backed up, but not fast enough. The corner of the unit knocked Hawk out of my hand and into the drink.
“Joey,” I yelled, stumbling backward through the rising water. “Is the man who killed you with the mob?”
“No!” he bellowed. “Not mob. Kill him. Kill him. Now!” He dragged the shelving unit across the floor behind him, on his way toward me.
With my Ka-Bar knife in hand, I squared off to battle one seriously pissed-off freshy.
The sound of feet pounding down the steps caught my ear. It wasn’t likely Lloyd. He’d disappeared once Joey went airborne off the gurney.
A blue uniform popped into view. “Stop! Police,” he yelled.
Not that Joey cared.
“Just shoot!” I screamed.
One shot to the head and Joey went down. Now, there was an officer who knew how to take out a biter.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks for the assist, man. Good job.”
“No problem, Nighthawk.”
I knew that voice. The cop joined me at Rico’s side, and I finally realized who he was.
“Holy shit! D-D-Donald—from the training session at City Hall. It’s you!”
His face turned crimson. “Please. I just saved your life. Can you let that shit go?”
I threw him a wink. “No problem, Donald. Nice shooting. Let’s get my partner to his feet.”
I fished Hawk out of the water, and then Donald and I grabbed Rico by his shoulders and helped him up the steps, water running off us, as if we’d taken a dip in a swimming hole.
Rico, with a massive bruise on his chin and possibly a broken jaw, did his best to get his feet back beneath him.
Doc threw open the basement door as we neared the top of the stairs and came out with both barrels blazing.
“Damn it, Nighthawk! How could you possibly inflict this much damage from the freaking basement? You’re a human wrecking ball. A one-man demolition service.”
Firemen poured through the door.
Doc stepped out of their way and sneered at me. “Well, at least I was smart enough to have you sign that release. Thank God this clusterfuck won’t be coming out of my budget.”
I let that go. Low-hanging fruit’s just too easy to pick.
Doc took a deep cleansing breath and calmed himself. “You should know, Miriam’s killer, BOLO Guy, wasn’t bitten. And I didn’t find any injection site on his body, either.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. How the hell did he turn?
I tried to sound nonchalant. “Since I haven’t heard from Sweden yet, why don’t you send a tissue sample from BOLO Guy to the CDC? Maybe they can figure out what’s going on.”
Doc walked away, but turned and called over his shoulder, “Oh. Remember the rush order on Miriam’s test results? They’re back. She had the Z-virus in her system, but she didn’t have the genetic marker for turning.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I don’t get it, either.” Doc scratched his head. “What the hell’s going on? BOLO Guy wasn’t bitten or injected, but he turns, and Miriam was injected—didn’t have the genetic marker—and turned anyway. What do you make of all that?”
Little Allie moaned, and my heart thrummed in my chest. “I don’t know, Doc. But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”