The Down Home Zombie Blues Read online

  “Well?” Zeke looked at him expectantly. “Weird, right?”

  Theo shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and nodded mutely in answer. He wasn’t sure weird was sufficiently descriptive of the dead, withered body of the man sprawled faceup on the floor. His skin looked like crisp parchment that had been shrink-wrapped over his bones. His T-shirt lay loosely on his frame; his sweatpants seemed overlarge. His red hair, though, was thick, full, and healthy. Not sparse, like the mummy the dead man resembled.

  Worse, his eyeballs were still moist. They bulged from his face like two large, wet, dimpleless golf balls.

  Theo had never heard of a mummy with wet eyeballs. But then, this man was no mummy. Mummification of a body took at least a couple of months under normal circumstances in Florida’s warmer temperatures. Yet the landlord had last seen the deceased—one Dan J. Wayne, according to the documents Detectives Zeke Martinez and Amy Holloway had found in a kitchen drawer—alive and well two days ago.

  Theo had heard of spontaneous combustion. But spontaneous mummification?

  He made a mental note to make sure Zeke checked the Centers for Disease Control database. Judging from comments by the crime-scene techs, they were puzzled too.

  They couldn’t even definitely say that this was a murder.

  All they did know was what the landlord—an affable, ruddy-faced French-Canadian who lived next door—had told Zeke and Amy: he was walking his rat terrier after the six o’clock news when he noticed the broken front window on his rental property. He peered in. Then, voice shaking, Monsieur Lafleur had called the police on his cell phone. The first officers to arrive on the scene found clear signs of a struggle in the overturned, broken furniture and torn draperies.

  But the struggle didn’t seem to leave any corresponding injuries to the dead man on the floor. And there was no evidence of who—or what—he struggled with. If anything.

  For all Theo could tell, the dead man had run around like a whirling dervish, demolishing his own living room before falling to the floor in a mummified state.

  That would fit with the pattern of shattered glass from the window. The window hadn’t been broken by someone coming in but by something—which included a portion of a wooden end table, from all appearances—going out.

  Theo hunkered down on his heels next to the body and snagged a pair of protective gloves from a nearby evidence kit. Carefully, he plucked at the neck of the man’s T-shirt, then the sleeves.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t get too close to Mr. Crunchy.” Zeke leaned back as if Theo’s touching the corpse might cause it to burst, sending lethal chunks splattering against the guayabera shirt that was Zeke’s trademark outfit. Tonight’s selection was navy blue with a wide white strip up the front. “Might be some kind of virus. Contagious. A new SARS strain or something.”

  In the fifteen years that he and Zeke had worked for the Bahia Vista Police Department, Theo had seen the wiry man fearlessly dodge any number of flying fists, speeding cars, and even, a few times, bullets. Diseases, however, were another issue entirely. Zeke was probably the sole reason local vitamin stores made any profits. How he stayed married to a doctor was a source of continual speculation.

  Theo continued his examination. “SARS is respiratory, not dermatological.”

  “So what do we got?” Zeke asked. “Some Satanic cult that thinks the Christmas holidays are Halloween, killing people by draining their blood?”

  Zeke might think of Halloween, but Theo’s upbringing resurrected another image: the Kalikantzri, evil goblins who appeared during the twelve days before Christmas, according to Greek legends. But this was Bahia Vista, not Athens. Theo frowned, then looked up. “Not sure. Hey, Liza, you see this?”

  The stocky blond crime-scene photographer squatted down next to him with a grunt. “You mean those marks on the side of his head?” she asked. “Yeah. Got those when Amy rolled him.”

  “They line up. Almost like a large pronged vise grabbed him.”

  “Like this?” She pulled off her hair clip and clicked it in his face. It was a plastic half-moon curve, spring-loaded with rows of teeth.

  He took it, turning it over in his hand. “Like this, but big enough to cover his head.”

  “Saw that happen on a construction site once.” She retrieved the clip, twisted her long hair into a bun at the back of her head, and clamped the clip over it. “Guy’s skull was crushed. Lots of blood, gray matter. Don’t have that here.”

  No, they didn’t. Not even a puncture. Just some barely discernible bruises.

  “How are your holidays so far, Theo?” Liza was still squatting next to him.

  “Fine,” he lied. “Yours?”

  “Kids are up to their eyes in toys they don’t need, as usual. And they can’t even get to the ones under the tree until Christmas.” She nudged him with her elbow and grinned. “My husband’s cousin Bonnie is in town. She’s a couple years younger than you, thirty-four or thirty-five, single. Real cute. Like you.” She winked. “You’re clocking out for vacation, right?”

  He nodded reluctantly. He’d wondered why she asked about his schedule when he ran into her at the courthouse yesterday. Now he had a feeling he knew.

  “Why don’t you come by the house tomorrow night, say hi to Mark and the kids, meet Bonnie?”

  He rose. She stood with him. Liza Walters was, as his aunt Tootie liked to say, good people. But ever since he’d divorced Camille last year, Liza had joined the ranks of friends and coworkers trying to make sure Theo Petrakos didn’t spend his nights alone.

  “Thanks. I mean that. But I’ve got some things to do.”

  “How about next week, then? I’m sure you’ll like her. You could come with us to the New Year’s concert and fireworks at Pass Pointe Beach.” She raised her chin toward Zeke. “You too, Zeke. Unless Suzanne has other plans?”

  “New Year’s Eve is always at her sister’s house.” Zeke splayed his hands outward in a gesture of helplessness. “Suzy doesn’t give me a choice.”

  Liza briefly laid her hand on Theo’s arm. “Think about it. You need to have some fun. Forget about the bitch.”

  He smiled grimly. Forgetting about the bitch wasn’t the problem. Trusting another woman was. “I’ll let you know, but I’m probably scheduled on call out.”

  “That Bonnie sounds real nice,” Zeke intoned innocently as Liza went back to photographing a splintered bookcase. “Thirty-five’s not too young for you. I mean, you’re not even fifty.”

  Theo shot a narrow-eyed glance at the shorter man. “Forty-three. And don’t you start on me too.”

  Zeke grinned affably. “So what are your plans for tomorrow night, old man?”

  “I’m restringing my guitar.”

  “Alone?”

  Theo only glared at him.

  Zeke shook his head. “Still singing The Down Home Divorced Guy Blues? Man, you gotta change your tune.”

  “I like my life just the way it is.”

  “When’s the last time you got laid?”

  “If you focus that fine investigative mind of yours on our dead friend’s problems, not mine, we just might get out of here by midnight.”

  “That long ago, eh?”

  “I’m going to go see what I can find in the bedroom,” he said, ignoring Zeke’s leering grin at his choice of destination. “You take the kitchen.”

  Zeke’s good-natured snort of laughter sounded behind him as he left.

  “Nice work, Trenat.” Jorie laid both hands on the vehicle’s guidance wheel and, looking over her shoulder, offered the young ensign an appreciative smile. He had done very nice work locating a well-concealed storage area of land vehicles and using a combination of mechanical and technical skills to override a series of locks and security devices. All in under ten minutes. Hopefully, determining Danjay’s status and returning him and his critical T-MOD unit to the ship would go as smoothly.

  Trenat all but beamed at her from the rear seat, most of his earlier unease gone. “This power p
ack,” he said, holding out a thin box slightly smaller than her hand, “will create an ignition sequence and activate the engine.”

  She followed his instructions as to placement and tabbed on the power. The vehicle vibrated to life, a grumbling noise sounding from its front. “No aft propulsion?”

  “No, sir.”

  No antigravs either. Well, damn. But when in Vekris, one must do as the Vekrisians do. She draped the headset around her neck and studied the control panel with its round numbered gauges. Other gauges had symbols like those she’d seen on signs as they walked the short distance to A-1 Rental Cars. Danjay’s reports noted that the local language was similar to Vekran, which Jorie spoke along with three other galactic tongues. The two languages shared a similar—though not identical—alphabet, which explained why many of the signs she saw didn’t made sense.

  As to why the local language was similar to Vekran, she had no idea. That was out of her area of expertise, and Danjay’s. His report had noted it and had been forwarded to the scholars in the Galactic Comparative-Cultures Division of the Guardian Force.

  Jorie was just happy the locals didn’t speak Tresh.

  Tam Herryck, rummaging through the vehicle’s small storage compartment on the control panel, produced a short paper-bound book. “Aw-nortz Min-o-al,” she read in the narrow beam of her wristbeam on her technosleeve.

  Jorie leaned toward her. Tam Herryck’s Vekran was, at best, rudimentary. “Ow-ner’s Min-u-al,” she corrected. She took the book, tapped on her wristbeam, and scanned the first few pages. It would be too much to ask, she supposed, that the entire universe be civilized enough—and considerate enough—to speak Alarsh. “Operating instructions for the vehicle’s pilot.” As the engine chugged quietly, she found a page depicting the gauges and read in silence for a few moments. “I think I have the basics.” She tapped off her wristbeam, then caught Trenat’s smile in the rectangular mirror over her head. “Never met a ship I couldn’t fly, Ensign. That’s what six years in the marines will teach you.”

  The vehicle’s control stick was between the two front seats. She depressed the small button, eased it until it clicked once.

  The vehicle lurched backward, crashing into one parked behind it.

  “Damn!” She shoved the stick again and missed a head-on impact with another parked vehicle only because she grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the left.

  Herryck bounced against the door. “Sir!”

  “I have it, I have it. It’s okay.” Damn, damn. Give her a nice antigrav hopper any day.

  Her feet played with the two pedals, the vehicle seesawing as it jerked toward the open gate.

  “I think,” Herryck said, bracing herself with her right hand against the front control panel, “those are some kind of throttle and braking system. Sir.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. I know that. I’m just trying to determine their sensitivity ranges.”

  “Of course, sir.” Herryck’s head jerked back and forth, but whether she was nodding or reacting to the vehicle’s movement, Jorie didn’t know. “Good idea.”

  By the time they exited onto the street, Jorie felt she had the nil-tech land vehicle under control. “Which direction?”

  “We need to take a heading of 240.8, sir.” Herryck glanced from her scanner over at the gauges in front of Jorie, none of which functioned as guidance or directional. “Oh.” She pulled her palm off the control panel and pointed out the window. “That way.”

  They went that way, this way, then that way again. Jorie noticed that Trenat had found some kind of safety webbing and flattened himself against the cushions of the rear seat.

  “What do you think those colored lights on their structures mean?” Herryck asked as Jorie was again forced to swerve to avoid an impact with another vehicle, whose driver was obviously not adept at proper usage of airspace.

  Jorie shrugged. “A religious custom. Wain mentioned that locals hang colored lights on their residences and even on the foliage this time of the year. Nil-techs can be very supersti—hey!” A dark land vehicle appeared on her right, seemingly out of nowhere. Jorie pushed her foot down on the throttle, barely escaping being rammed broadside. There was a loud screeching noise, then the discordant blare of a horn. A pair of oncoming vehicles added their horns to the noise as she sped by them.

  “Another religious custom,” she told Herryck, who sank down in her seat and planted her boots against the front console. “Their vehicles play music as they pass. And they’re blessing us.”

  “Blessing us?”

  Jorie nodded as she negotiated her vehicle between two others that seemed to want to travel at an unreasonably slow rate of speed. “They put one hand out the window, middle finger pointing upward. Wain’s reports stated many natives worship a god they believe lives in the sky. So I think that raised finger is a gesture of blessing.”

  “How kind of them. We need to go that way again, sir.”

  “I’m coming up to an intersection now. How much farther?”

  “We should be within walking distance in a few minutes.”

  “Praise be,” Trenat croaked from the rear seat.

  Jorie snickered softly. “You’d never survive in the marines, Ensign.”

  Zeke Martinez let out a low whistle as Theo led him and Liza into the bedroom. “Damn. Looks like some kind of computer you’d find in a sci-fi flick. It was behind that dresser?”

  “The dresser’s a fake.” Theo shoved the chest-high piece of furniture farther away from the wall. Liza moved in front of him, digital camera whirring. “Drawer fronts are glued on. Inside’s hollow.”

  “Looks like Mr. Wayne didn’t want just anyone to find this,” Liza said, adjusting the camera’s telephoto, zooming in on the object on the floor. The blinking unit resembled an overlarge black metallic mouse pad with a thin lime-green monitor.

  “Maybe it’s a new kind of laptop?” Zeke asked.

  “Not sure,” Theo answered honestly. “The screen’s a strange color. And the keyboard”—if that’s what that long dark area was—“doesn’t have keys.”

  “Touch-pad system?” Liza ventured.

  Theo shook his head. “Maybe.” He knelt in front of the greenish-yellow screen, pointed to the symbols splattered across it. “That’s not ASCII and it’s not HTML. But it looks somewhat like both.”

  Zeke squinted. “Hey, it’s all Greek to me.” He smacked Theo playfully on his shoulder. “Get it, Petrakos? Greek?”

  “It’s not Greek. You know damned well I can speak—”

  “I know, I know. I just thought it was a good line.”

  “Suzanne can’t possibly love you for your personality.”

  Zeke arched one eyebrow. “Actually, I’ll tell you what my little Suzy loves about me.”

  “Spare me.” Theo shoved himself to his feet as Liza headed back to the living room to ask Sam Kasparov to dust the unit for prints. “I put a call in to the techno squad. One of their geeks should be here in about,” he glanced at his watch, “thirty minutes to pick this up. Maybe there are e-mails or documents, an Internet trail. Something that will tell us what happened to Mr. Wayne out there.” Noises behind him made him turn toward the living room. The body snatchers had arrived with gurney and body bag.

  “Come on.” He tapped Zeke on the arm. “Let’s go see what the ME has to say.”

  Jorie hunkered down in the thick foliage bordering the structure, with Herryck on her left and Trenat on her right. A cool breeze now and then ruffled the leaves, tickling the sweat dripping down her neck. The ground under her boots smelled musty. If the blossoms poking through the branches had a scent, she couldn’t detect it. They were tightly closed, drooping slightly in the darkness.

  Two dark-colored land vehicles sat, power off, at the edge of the street. Two more green-and-white ones—POLICE in gold letters on their flanks—were on a short graveled stretch of yard, a larger boxy vehicle parked at an angle behind them.

  Humanoids, some wearing identical green pants and whit
e shirts that were obviously a uniform, moved between the vehicles and the structure. But none of the humanoids appeared to be Danjay Wain.

  “Any sign of Agent Wain?” Jorie asked Tam Herryck in a hushed tone.

  “Scanning, sir. I’m picking up our tech, but there is some distortion. It’s even jamming our PMaT signal. I’m trying to pinpoint the source.”

  That was not good news. Without access to the PMaT they were essentially stranded. And this was supposed to be a nil-tech world, without the expertise to jam the frequencies the Guardians used.

  “It’s very localized,” Herryck said, as if reading Jorie’s concerns about transporting back to the ship. “But I get a clear signal twenty-five maxmeters from here. This can’t be the reason why Agent Wain ceased contact.”

  No, it couldn’t. Danjay, like Jorie, had been trained to work around dead zones, natural and artificial ones.

  Jorie studied the structure again. There were far too many nils coming and going. That—along with Danjay’s silence—did not portend well. Perhaps he’d been seized, removed to a security compound by nils ever-fearful of the unknown.

  That would explain his silence. It would also require her to assemble an assault-and-infiltration team, further eating into the time and resources they had to deal with the zombie problem.

  Captain Pietr would not be happy.

  A shaft of light cut into the night as the front door of the structure opened. Personnel in unisuits appeared, flanking something on a wheeled gurney. Jorie felt Herryck tense beside her. Trenat’s hand moved to the G-1 on his hip.

  Data suddenly danced across Herryck’s screen. “Sir, I’ve a lock on a biosignature. But it’s…damn. Negative state, sir.”

  She knew, but she had to ask. “It’s Wain, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Herryck’s voice was still a whisper. “Signature discharge indicates death by zombie attack.”

  Hell and damn. She’d hoped—prayed—there would be some other explanation for his silence. She liked Danjay. Just before his latest mission, she and Herryck had shared a pitcher of ale with him in the crew lounge. Danjay always had such wild stories…. She watched his body as it was trundled into the boxy land vehicle, her heart sinking.