Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,147

times do you have a coworker, maybe a friend, eaten by zombies? Besides, once he got sick he calmed down. I’d been the rookie once, too. Everyone throws up at least once.

Have you ever wondered why there are windows in the doors of most morgues? It’s so attendants can look in first and make sure nothing has risen from the dead and is waiting to eat them. Whoever had put the windows in these doors must have a been a tall motherfucker, because Edward had to stretch to see in the windows and he had me by five inches, plus the two inches of his cowboy boots.

‘Tell me what you see,’ I said.

‘It’s like Nicky described from the zombies in the mountains; they’re just huddled down over the bodies like vultures.’

‘They’ll be safe-ish until there’s nothing left to eat; then they’ll try to get out and find something fresh. What kind of zombie can take out a vampire?’

‘This kind,’ Edward said.

‘Are they eating the other dead bodies, or just the vampires?’ I asked.

‘There are no bodies on any of the slabs.’

‘Shit, I need to see them,’ I said.

Edward looked down at me and smiled; even with the sounds coming through the doors, he smiled that Ted smile. ‘Need a boost so you can see for yourself?’

I scowled at him.

‘How can you smile looking at that?’ Al asked; he looked a little green.

‘I can smile looking at a lot of things,’ he said, and this time it was more Edward looking out at the deputy. He let his inner sociopath show through more than he ever did on a case, which was a sign of just how much he was bothered by what he was seeing.

To distract Edward from terrifying Deputy Al, I distracted them by saying, ‘Yeah, I need a boost.’

Edward moved toward me, but it was Nicky who went down on one knee and made a stirrup of his hands before my fellow marshal could get started.

‘You could have picked her up and been all romantic,’ Dev said.

‘It’s only romantic if Anita thinks it’s romantic,’ Dev said, ‘and right now she wouldn’t think so.’

‘That’s more insight than I’d have credited you with, son,’ an older uniformed officer said. He was about Edward’s height, but the way he carried his weight made him look shorter. He was mostly bald with a fringe of white hair that looked like it would be soft to touch like baby duck fluff. His eyes were a clear, brilliant blue, like an echo back to when the rest of him was as vibrant.

‘I’m not your son,’ Nicky said.

‘No offense meant … just giving you a compliment.’

‘A backhanded one.’ Gonzales looked at Nicky. ‘Don’t let Jenkins here get your goat. He calls everyone son, and he doesn’t know how to give anything but backhanded compliments,’ Gonzales said. The big sergeant had been upstairs when Al had called for volunteers. I had a feeling he was spending most of his time near Rush Callahan’s rooms.

Nicky didn’t respond, just stayed waiting to give me a boost. I didn’t know what to say, because Nicky’s dislike of being called son, or boy, probably had something to do with his abusive family background, and that was no one’s business. I ignored it all and put one foot in Nicky’s hand. He trusted me to be able to hold myself steady enough for him to lift me up, and I trusted him enough to lift me smoothly so I could see. The only concession I made was to put my fingertips against the cool wood of the door as he lifted, and that was for balance. He lifted me until I said, ‘That’s great.’

It was great, sort of, in that I could now see into the room for myself, but what I had to see was awful enough that I wished I hadn’t. I get that a lot in both of my jobs. Like most truly awful sights it took my mind a moment to process it; at first it was just images, shapes, that didn’t want to make sense. I knew what I was supposed to be seeing; the fact that my eyes refused to ‘see’ it meant it was going to be bad. It was the brain’s way of giving you a chance to look away, to not see the awful thing, but it was my job to look when everyone looked away. So I kept looking, and suddenly all the jumbled shapes snapped into focus.

It looked like every