Jailbait Zombie Read online

  Jailbait Zombie

  Mario Acevedo

  To the memory of author Jerry Rodriguez and artist John Berkey

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  “Felix, drop your pants.”

  Chapter 2

  I recognized the smells. Ditch water. Smoke. The stink from…

  Chapter 3

  Mel called. He asked me to meet him in Aurora…

  Chapter 4

  I lay on my back, blind with pain. Every bone…

  Chapter 5

  Time to cover my tracks and find another way home.

  Chapter 6

  I bought a new cell phone. My first call was…

  Chapter 7

  The replies from my hacker came back in a series…

  Chapter 8

  Zombies. Psychic signals. The astral plane. All had something to…

  Chapter 9

  The psychotronic diviner sat on the front passenger’s seat. A…

  Chapter 10

  Adrianna lived south of Abundance Boulevard. Here the roads were…

  Chapter 11

  One moment this case was a dark closet and the…

  Chapter 12

  Hard drops of rain splashed on my face.

  Chapter 13

  What woke me was the sensation of having a hot…

  Chapter 14

  When the Araneum learned that I had lost the diviner,…

  Chapter 15

  Humphrey’s Kountry Kitchen was on the west end of town,…

  Chapter 16

  My body screamed: Danger, get away. This…girl…woman…whatever…was poison. My legs…

  Chapter 17

  The girl’s words lanced through me.

  Chapter 18

  Phaedra was dying? And she needed my help?

  Chapter 19

  Was Phaedra talking about zombies? Now we’re making progress. “What…

  Chapter 20

  The tendrils withdrew into the sheath of Phaedra’s aura. Her…

  Chapter 21

  I charged the door and kicked it off the hinges.

  Chapter 22

  If the echo started, blam, Phaedra would eat a .45…

  Chapter 23

  As a vampire I have supernatural powers. The Toyota doesn’t.

  Chapter 24

  Our parade convoyed back into Morada, the black pickup leading,…

  Chapter 25

  Cleto froze. The sawed-off shotgun remained close to his leg.

  Chapter 26

  My hypnosis hit him like the lash of an electric…

  Chapter 27

  I needed something with more detail of the area than…

  Chapter 28

  We got into my Toyota and headed east a block…

  Chapter 29

  Shawna lay on the bed. The penumbra of her aura…

  Chapter 30

  I would go out through the bathroom window. The bars…

  Chapter 31

  I drove west to the town of South Fork. I…

  Chapter 32

  Phaedra looked strained and shrunken as if she were caught…

  Chapter 33

  The sketch Phaedra held was a caricature, but the rendering…

  Chapter 34

  The afternoon sun retreated and cold, dark shadows claimed the…

  Chapter 35

  Cavagnolo and I stepped from behind the trees and back…

  Chapter 36

  The trail I’d been looking for disappeared into a flat…

  Chapter 37

  The zombies carried me around the house. They climbed the…

  Chapter 38

  If I had no way to escape as a wolf,…

  Chapter 39

  I turned to the man. “Take me inside.”

  Chapter 40

  Zombies slipped poles through the wire grid of the cage…

  Chapter 41

  Hennison rattled through a pan of tools on the workbench…

  Chapter 42

  My mind put everything in vampire speed.

  Chapter 43

  I don’t know what time Dr. Hennison returned. For me,…

  Chapter 44

  I came to with my face and the front of…

  Chapter 45

  Tendrils squirmed from Phaedra’s aura, signaling her terror. Spots of…

  Chapter 46

  Gino lead the zombies in a stiff-legged march. A red…

  Chapter 47

  Hitting Gino’s arm was like smacking a girder. It barely…

  Chapter 48

  I took gliding strides and let my knees absorb the…

  Chapter 49

  I pulled Phaedra close. I smoothed her hair. It was…

  Chapter 50

  Phaedra convulsed. She stared at me, then through me. Her…

  Chapter 51

  I gave Jolie the rundown on Cavagnolo. He’d supply me…

  Chapter 52

  I laughed, said okay, and continued. Jolie turned around and…

  Chapter 53

  I left Eric’s place. Cavagnolo had to get his own…

  Chapter 54

  I landed on top of the zombies, not levitating so…

  Chapter 55

  Reginald was hunched over a small cart. Sonia shoved clothes…

  Chapter 56

  Time hovered like the big clock of the universe had…

  Chapter 57

  Were Nguyen and Phaedra safe? I knew he would take…

  Chapter 58

  Jolie zipped the front and the sleeves of her motorcycle…

  Chapter 59

  I was back in my office in the Oriental Theater.

  Chapter 60

  I returned to my apartment. I needed a drink. I…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mario Acevedo

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  “Felix, drop your pants.”

  The last time I heard those words, they were from a topless stripper.

  Tonight was different, but the wound on my leg hurt too much for me to protest Mel’s words.

  Mel was the acting head of the local nidus, Latin for “nest,” in this case the community of Denver vampires. Tendrils of anxiety writhed from his orange aura, a bright contrast against the gloom of an autumn night. With a greasy gray mane combed back to his shoulders and scraggly white muttonchops, Mel projected none of the glamour associated with Hollywood vampires.

  We were on a deserted construction site in Aurora, a suburb east of Denver. Though Aurora’s the second-largest city in Colorado, it’s the Fresno of the Front Range: square mile after square mile of strip malls and cheap rents that run together to create an asphalt grid of nothing.

  I rested against the foreman’s trailer, unbuckled my trousers, and slid them to my knees. Smoke and blood trickled from the teeth marks on the inside of my left thigh.

  “Smoke?” Mel asked, astonished. “That damn zombie must have left silver fillings when he bit you.”

  Silver. No wonder this hurt so much.

  Mel’s right index fingernail extended into a talon. “Hold still.”

  I gripped the muscle around the wound to distend the punctures. Mel crouched and slid the razor-sharp nail into an opening where the smoke puffed out. A fresh jolt of pain coursed up my spine and out my arms. He flicked his wrist and a tiny piece of smoking goo spun to the dirt.

  He spit into his palm and pressed it over the wound. “This is as close to a hand job as you’ll get from me. Doesn’t mean we’re in love or anything. In fact, please don’t call me in the morning.”

  I massaged the injured muscle. “How about a card on Valentine�
�s?” The vampire enzymes in his saliva dulled the pain and accelerated my supernatural healing. By this time tomorrow, all I’d have is another battle scar to add to my collection.

  I put weight on the leg and it finally felt like I wouldn’t collapse from the pain. I fastened my trousers and limped to the edge of a hole excavated for the basement of a large building. Concrete slabs formed two sides of the hole but the rest was still packed dirt.

  The zombie shambled within the hole where we’d chased it. He—obviously once a man—cradled his head under one arm and used his other to grope along the concrete. His mottled, waxy complexion and the clumps of trash stuck to his grimy clothes made it look like he’d been rotting in a shallow grave for a week.

  I had removed the special contacts that masked my tapetum lucidum, the mirror-like retinas at the back of my eyes. The contacts were part of my cover to hide from humans, but wearing them kept me from using night vision or seeing psychic auras.

  I didn’t know if zombies had night vision; I had no idea about any of their powers other than they were supposed to be hard as hell to destroy. Tonight I had discovered an important fact: they had no auras, which made them a bitch to track in the dark.

  The zombie clawed the dirt wall, climbing up a foot before stumbling backward. He dropped his head. It plopped against the dirt and rolled like a lopsided melon. The animated corpse sank to its knees and crawled along the ground, one arm searching in a wide arc.

  The head worked its mouth and turned onto its face, where it used its nose and chin to inch toward the body. I was more disgusted than fascinated. Yes, zombies are undead, as we vampires are. But comparing them to us was like comparing turds to eagles.

  The Araneum, the worldwide network of vampires, has one standing order: Destroy all zombies.

  The reason?

  We must ruthlessly protect the Great Secret—the existence of the supernatural world—from humans. Their disbelief in the supernatural was what kept us vampires safe.

  We’ve seen what humans have done to one another.

  War.

  Genocide.

  Walmart.

  Against their growing technical prowess and corporate savagery, what chance did we the undead have? Our best hope for survival was to remain cloaked by superstition and fable.

  Zombies have no regard for keeping the Great Secret. They materialize (from where? I don’t know) and begin their rampage for mortal flesh, literally mindless of the consequences. Vampires have been able to disguise zombie attacks as examples of deranged cannibals—Jeffrey Dahmer copycats. But eventually the zombies would make one attack too obvious to hide, and then humans would be on to all of us supernatural creatures. After that, we could only expect the methodical obliteration of the undead.

  Therefore, all zombies must be exterminated.

  Protecting the Great Secret is what I do for the Araneum. My day job is private detective. My real job is the pro bono work I do as a vampire enforcer.

  “This your first zombie?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d he get the drop on you?”

  “I was stupid,” I replied. “After I laid him out with a shovel, I was going through his pockets.”

  “Why didn’t you decapitate him?”

  “I did. Right after that he shot from the ground, head in hands, and clamped onto me. Don’t let that walking corpse routine fool you, he’s got moves.”

  The zombie found his head, picked it up, and stood. Strands of muddy drool hung from the lips and the neck stump. The dull eyes swiveled left and right and fixed upon a wooden surveyor’s stake pounded into the dirt. The zombie approached the stake and yanked it free. He worked the square end of the stake into the raw meat of the neck opening in his torso. Using both hands, he fit his head over the sharp end of the stake. He gave himself a rap on the top of his skull and the head squished tight into the collar of his shirt.

  Looking at this repugnant creature was like watching an abscess ooze pus.

  Where did the zombie come from?

  Who made it?

  And why?

  Mel propped himself against a length of pipe that he’d used to club the zombie. He handed me a wallet. “Your zombie dropped this.”

  The wallet looked—and smelled—as if it had been recovered from a Bourbon Street gutter. I opened the wallet and sorted through a Colorado driver’s license, supermarket cards, and a debit card. The money bills and business cards were scraps of wet, dirty pulp.

  I read aloud, “Name on the driver’s license is Barrett Chambers. From Morada.” That was in the San Luis Valley, over two hundred miles away. How did he get here?

  I slid the wallet and cards into my coat pocket. I brushed my hands across my trousers to wipe away the slime.

  The zombie made noises like he was gargling sludge. The smell hit us. Make that sewer sludge.

  “This guy doesn’t seem much for conversation,” Mel said. “Wouldn’t do any good to question him.”

  A young vampire named Dagger appeared from behind an excavator and walked to the edge of the hole. Mel had brought Dagger because the newbie bloodsucker wanted to prove himself as an undead terror.

  Trouble was, Dagger was a high school dropout and a punk. Once undead, he had changed his name from Bartholomew, said it lacked vampiric panache. Must’ve taken him all day to find that word in the dictionary.

  Dagger carried a metal garden sprayer. He set the sprayer between his feet. “I filled this with super unleaded. It’s gonna make one hell of a flamethrower.” He waved the sprayer nozzle at the zombie. “Hey, smelly boy, feeling cold dressed in those rags? Let me warm you up.”

  The zombie turned toward Dagger. He stopped at the bottom of the wall, raised his arms, and emitted a guttural moan.

  Dagger laughed, kicked dirt into the zombie’s face, and aimed the nozzle. Gasoline splattered on the zombie’s head and soaked his clothes. He waved his arms to block the spray.

  Dagger took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and set the butt between his lips. He dug a plastic lighter from his pocket and held it to the cigarette.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I warned.

  Dagger dismissed me with a fanged sneer. “Hey, I got it, Pops. Anything happens, I got my vampire reflexes.” He bobbed side to side.

  I wanted to find the vampire who had turned Dagger and slap her. She hadn’t done our bloodsucking tribe any favors by converting this arrogant dumb ass.

  Dagger thumbed the lighter. It sparked and the gas fumes went whoosh. His clothes on fire, Dagger screamed and tripped over the sprayer, tumbling him and the sprayer on top of the zombie. They tangled together, their flailing bodies sandwiching the sprayer. Flames jetted from the pile, followed by a roaring fireball that mushroomed into a column of black smoke.

  The heat slapped Mel and me and we were surrounded by the stink of burning compost. We stepped back. Mel covered his sideburns and said, “Awesome. I would’ve paid good money to see this.”

  The charred bodies settled in a burning heap.

  We experienced vampires have a mandate to protect the newly turned, to protect them against everything except their own stupidity.

  “That Dagger,” Mel said, “what a dumbass.”

  “At least he took one with him.”

  Mel ambled toward the excavator and climbed over the treads to get into the cab. “Gotta make sure the zombie is history.” He fumbled in the cab and tossed a padlock to the ground. A minute later the diesel engine grunted to life. The excavator boom lurched up and jerked left and right.

  I hobbled out of the way.

  The bucket on the end of the boom swiveled outward until its claws pointed down. The boom dropped and the bucket cleaved the bodies. Mel raised the boom and the bodies fell apart in halves. Smoking embers of flesh and clothes fluttered to the ground. He lifted and dropped the boom again and again, hacking the bodies into smoldering pieces. He yelled out the cab: “Hey, I oughta get a job at Benihana.”

  After Mel had choppe
d Dagger and the zombie into hash, he pulled the boom up and away. He climbed down from the excavator and stood beside me.

  The pile of dirt looked like a lumpy mass of rancid bread dough. “Good job, Mel, but we can’t leave evidence.”

  “No problem. I’ll make some calls.”

  This wasn’t all we had to worry about. “There’s a more pressing issue, I’m afraid.”

  “What’s that?” Mel asked.

  “Where did this zombie come from?”

  CHAPTER 2

  I recognized the smells. Ditch water. Smoke. The stink from under my uniform and body armor.

  I was back where my private hell had begun.

  Iraq.

  Four shadows moved cautiously through the evening gloom. They lurked toward me along the bank of the canal. Only I knew they approached annihilation.

  I was certain they were insurgents sneaking to attack my soldiers and me. Only later would I discover the gruesome truth. They weren’t insurgents: they were civilians.

  A man, two women, and a little girl.

  The family I helped slaughter years ago.

  I didn’t want to see this again. Once in a lifetime, even an immortal lifetime, was more than enough.

  My kundalini noir—that black serpent of energy that animates my form instead of a beating heart—wrestled and beat against my ribs like it wanted to escape.

  The Iraqis took timid steps, moving like hunted deer.