Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,30

to Rush I’d take any help we could get,’ Al said.

‘Help on what?’ I asked.

‘Killer zombies,’ he said.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘We’ve had zombie attacks.’

‘You have a rogue zombie?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Not just one zombie. That’s what’s weird: It’s not the same one. I mean, Sheriff Callahan talks about a flesh-eating zombie they had back in the seventies here, but they trapped it in a house and burned it, end of problem.’

‘A flesh eater is incredibly rare; I’ve only seen one. You don’t get herds of them, no matter what the movies and TV shows put out there.’ To myself, I amended that I’d seen only one rogue zombie at a time. I had used cemeteries full of zombies that I had raised as defensive weapons against bad guys who were trying to kill me, three times. I carefully did not look behind me at Nicky. He’d been present for one of those moments.

‘So it was just the same zombie-eating people when you had to deal with one, right?’ Al asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘This is different ones. We’ve got at least three different descriptions.’

‘Descriptions never match; you could still just have one,’ I said.

‘One man, one woman, and one child; we think they’re a family that disappeared in the mountains about a month ago.’

I shook my head. ‘No way, no one would raise a family like that as zombies; no one would do that unless you’ve got an animator who had a grudge against the family. But it would have to be a hell of a grudge to raise a whole family from the dead, and if they were murdered, then raised from the dead, they’d kill their murderer. It would be their one driving purpose and they would attack people who got in their way, but it wouldn’t turn them into flesh eaters necessarily. Were any of the family psychically gifted?’

‘Not that we know, why?’

‘The only cases I’ve heard of flesh eaters were animators or voodoo practitioners who had been raised from the dead.’

Al raised eyebrows. ‘You mean if you …’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘It’s okay; there’s a reason my will states I’m to be cremated, Deputy Truman.’

‘You’re afraid you’d turn into a flesh-eating zombie?’ he asked.

‘Why take the chance?’ I said.

‘Can we not talk about the woman I love dying just as we walk into the hospital to see my dying father?’ Micah asked.

‘Oh, geez,’ Al said. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just someone mentioned calling in the Preternatural Branch, and Marshal Blake was mentioned specifically, before we knew she was with you. I’m sorry, I was being a cop. I’m just … sorry, Mike, really.’

‘I’m sorry, too,’ I said.

Micah squeezed my hand. ‘I forgive you, but for the next little bit can you just be my fiancée and not be Marshal Blake?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, and I was ashamed for forgetting that this wasn’t a case, this was Micah’s dad. But I had a thought. ‘Can I ask one more cop question? Just one more while Al is with us?’

Micah sighed. ‘One more.’

‘Micah’s mom said that Sheriff Callahan had been bitten by something preternatural. What was it?’

‘One of the flesh-eating zombies,’ Al said.

‘She said that it was contagious, that he was rotting— Are you saying that the people bitten by the zombies are turning into zombies?’

‘No, they just rot and die.’

‘But zombies aren’t contagious,’ I said.

‘These are,’ Al said.

‘How many victims?’

‘Five, but we’ve had witnesses to the last three attacks, so we know what’s doing it now.’

‘Now?’ I asked.

‘The first two victims died pretty quick, until Dr Rogers found some cases back east that sounded similar. He used some of the information that they published about it and was able to slow down the spread in the vic before the sheriff.’

‘That’s more than one question,’ Nathaniel said softly.

‘No, it’s all right, Nathaniel,’ Micah said. ‘Anita can’t be anything other than what she is, who she is, and my dad doesn’t have cancer, he has something … preternatural, and no one is better at that than she is.’

‘Are you saying I can treat this like a crime?’

‘You’ve taught me that zombies don’t rise spontaneously from the ground, so someone had to raise these, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘People have already died, so isn’t it at least negligent homicide?’

‘Potentially, that’s really for a court to decide, but someone raised the zombies and there has to be a reason they’re out of control and attacking people, so it’s either someone bit off more than they could chew and now doesn’t