Zombies! Episode 1 - Shawn of the Dead (2 page)

"What's his name?"

"Shawn Rudd. He's seventeen years old."

"Has he been read his rights?"

She nodded.

Anthony turned back to the squad car and
addressed the suspect. "Shawn, my name is Detective Heron and this
is Detective Stemmy…"

"What kind of a name is
Stemmy
?"

Anthony suppressed a chuckle. "Not really
sure. You know that you don't have to talk to us if you don't want
to."

Shawn shrugged. "I'll talk to you. I din't do
nothin' wrong."

"Four eye witnesses say you killed two people
with a metal pipe. That sounds pretty wrong to me." That was the
bit Stemmy couldn't do. He would never have been able to leave the
venom out of his voice. This Shawn Rudd punk would be able to read
just how disgusted he was. But Anthony's tone of voice was fluid,
almost sweet. Even a street kid like Shawn Rudd wouldn't have felt
disrespected.

"That guy was already dead when I hit
him."

"Was he already dead when he attacked the
woman?"

Shawn smiled then. It wasn't a grin, not
sheepish or cunning. It was a wide and genuine smile showing two
rows of healthy white teeth.

"Why the woman, then?" Stemmy asked. He
couldn't help himself.

Shawn looked up at the older detective.
Stemmy could see that he looked at the two cops differently.

"She was bit. 'S only a matter of time after
that."

Stemmy looked at Anthony and they walked
away. This interview was finished.

"What do you think?" Anthony said, rubbing
his beard.

"I think the kid's seen one too many monster
movies," Stemmy answered.

Anthony nodded. "That's what they say in all
those monster movies."

Stemmy laughed at that, couldn't help
himself. They walked together over to where the two body bags lay.
The coroner handed each of them a pair of latex gloves and stepped
away.

Kneeling down, Anthony pulled a corner away
from the first victim. It was the woman. Her name was Allison
Ciccio and she was forty nine years old, the same age as Stemmy. As
a detective, it was tough to see victims who were young, but it was
tougher when they were the same age. You begin to wonder if she
lived enough of her life. You begin to wonder if you have. Ciccio
worked for the Department of Labor in a building two blocks away.
She was married with three grown children.

The coroner looked sadly down at her. "The
cause of death was clearly the blunt trauma to her head and the
time of death was about an hour ago."

"
I
could've told you that," Stemmy
blurted.

Anthony pulled the corner away from the other
bag. The body inside was much different from the first. Allison
Ciccio still had some color in her cheeks. If the two detectives
hadn't seen so many dead people over the years they might have
thought she was just passed out. This guy looked dead. His skin was
taught and wrinkly, the color a grayish blue. His eyes and mouth
were open, a piece of flesh still sticking out from between his
teeth.

"John Doe," the coroner said. "He's got no ID
on him. Cause of death is unknown and time of death is between ten
and twelve hours ago." He looked squarely at Stemmy. "Could you
have to me
that
, hotshot?"

Stemmy seemed unfazed. "I could tell you that
he'd got a bashed in skull and that seems like a pretty obvious
cause of death to me."

The coroner shook his head. "The tissue was
already dead when the wound was sustained. The same goes for the
puncture wound in the belly."

Anthony pulled the bag further down to
inspect the belly. The hole was clear but there was very little
blood surrounding it.

Stemmy looked back over at Shawn Rudd, just
sitting the squad car, his eyes on nothing at all. Despite
everything he'd ever come to know, he shivered a bit.

***

IT
was getting close to six o'clock by
the time they wrapped up the preliminary paperwork on this case and
Stemmy was itching to go home. The medical examiner's report
wouldn't be in until the next morning and there were no other
pieces of the puzzle presenting themselves right away. That report
was the key. As much as he hated to admit it, Stemmy was beginning
to think about monsters. If the coroner put the time of death about
ten hours before the attack then that was consistent with Shawn's
testimony that the guy was a zombie. Stemmy had talked with two of
the witnesses. The first was a little old Chinese man who hardly
spoke a word of English. The second was young girl who worked in
the shop just around the corner. She'd been grabbing a hot dog from
the corner vendor; Stemmy would catch up with the vendor in the
morning. Both witnesses confirmed that the alleged zombie certainly
looked and smelled awful. The girl had laughed when she said
he
looked like a zombie
.

And he had bitten Allison Ciccio.

When all was said and done, Johan Stemmy was
just glad to get back to his five women. The clock on his dashboard
read 7:03 making him later than usual. He had missed dinner and
Eileen would have had to put the kids to bed by herself. Well, that
wasn't so bad anymore. Emma, at four years old, was still
difficult. Eileen had to bathe her and make sure she brushed her
teeth. She'd never outgrown the nighttime milk but at least it came
in a sippy cup now instead of a bottle. She'd been a surprise,
Emma. Her youngest older sister was twelve. That was Marisol. She
was every bit of the troublesome teen in the making. Stemmy feared
the next five years with Marisol. It wouldn't be like Lucia, who
was now fifteen. Lucia was a little wild but too smart to get into
too much trouble. If anyone should have scared him it was
Antoinette. She was a classically beautiful girl. Lucia said that
every boy at school turned his head to look at her when she went
by. She said it often because it annoyed Antoinette. Lucia, pretty
but not gorgeous, was jealous and resentful of her older sister.
They didn't get along particularly well, Lucia pushing for a fight
every five minutes. But Antoinette was as sharp as she was
beautiful. She never took the bait. Stemmy always thought that if
she would allow herself to be lured into an argument, just once,
that it would do a world of good for Lucia.

Emma was already curled up on the couch in
front of the television as he walked in. Stemmy lived in an old
Brooklyn brownstone. His was long and thin, four floors with a
basement apartment. He'd inherited it from an uncle who'd never
married just two years after he'd married Eileen. They'd been
living in a Manhattan studio before that, just the two of them…with
Antoinette on the way.

Uncle Albert's death had been one of the best
things ever to happen to Stemmy.

He put away his coat to the tune of Dora and
Boots singing about where it was they had go. Over and over. Emma
looked up once, saw it was just plain old daddy, and went back to
her show. No one else seemed to be on the ground floor. Upstairs he
heard shouting.

"Lucia?" he asked.

Emma nodded. It wasn't like an actual
response but at least she was acknowledging his presence today.

A moment later, Eileen came down the stairs.
Three years older than Stemmy, the missus was starting to look her
age. She'd given up coloring her hair so the white was beginning to
come through. There were wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She
always wore a smile but it had lately become a tired smile. Stemmy
felt bad. She worked, too, albeit part time, and yet she was
constantly saddled with the kids' problems. As a detective, his
work often kept him extra hours and odd hours. He'd considered
retiring a number of times. His twenty years had come and gone a
long time before. He just didn't think he had the stomach for
retirement. Stemmy wasn't prone to hobbies and he hated to sit and
watch TV. If he was home during the day Eileen would besiege him
with list after list of chores. Chores were for children.

"Rough day?" Eileen asked as she came up to
give him a hug and a kiss. He put his arms around her, trying to
ignore the fact that she'd put on weight (more trying to ignore the
fact that he noticed that she'd put on weight). He chided himself
for his silent criticism. Nineteen years before he had chosen
Eileen as his companion. He'd said an oath which he took very
seriously and didn't regret for an instant. Besides which, he
wasn't exactly too much to look at.

"How can you tell?"

"It's that look on your face."

"Yeah," he said. "I guess."

The day had actually gone by pretty easily.
But that last case was preying on his psyche. He couldn't get the
image of the guy in the body bag out of his head. The word
zombie
played at the corner of his mind like some teasing
shadow. He was not a superstitious man, not prone to a belief in
the supernatural. He didn't care for horror or science fiction
movies. Comedies were really all that he watched. Stemmy liked to
laugh. But that didn't mean he'd never seen a zombie flick. Those
pathetic sons of guns always seemed to take over the world in the
middle of the night. Would he awaken tomorrow to find some undead
thing chewing on his leg?

"…tomorrow night…" Eileen was saying.

He looked at her blankly. "What? What did you
say?"

She pouted, walking off to the kitchen. He
followed her and sat down when she sat down.

"Okay," she said. "You'd better tell me about
it."

So he did.

She laughed at first. It was all so
ridiculous. There had been a mistake. Dead people don't walk around
biting live people. There were no such things as zombies. But the
sober look on his face dispelled her attempt at gaiety.

"You think it's possible," she said.

"Huh? No.
No way.
"

She shook her head at him.

"Really," he said. "It's just been a long
time since I've seen anything for the first time. The rest of it is
just a bunch of sensationalist crap made up by people who've seen
too many monster movies."

"Uh huh," she agreed dubiously. "That's what
they say in all of the monster movies."

This time, Stemmy didn't laugh.

***

THE
night yielded a couple of leads.
The report from the medical examiner confirmed the John Doe's time
of death. The man's prints didn't produce an identity and without
ID they'd have to pound the pavement looking for someone who knew
him. Prior to his death, he'd been in pretty good shape, well
toned. While there was no way to know how far he'd traveled before
and
after
his death, Stemmy and Anthony agreed that checking
out the local gyms seemed a good place to start. So with a belly
full of coffee, donuts, and sickening dread they got to it.

Most of the morning was unproductive. With
the help of the world wide web, they compiled a list of thirty gyms
within a feasible radius. Graphic artists and their software were
able to produce what looked like a decent picture of the John Doe
before his death. Maybe the shape of the eyes was off. Maybe the
mouth, too. But most of the features were intact, even in death and
it was mostly a matter of color.

Their last stop before lunch was a small gym
called
Push Ups
. It was a local place, not part of any
chain, and it was situated in Fulton in between stores that were
twice its size. When they walked in they could smell the sweat. A
small reception desk was off to the left just past the doors.
Beyond that was an open area that was packed in with weight
benches, treadmills, elliptical, and all other sorts of exercise
equipment. To Stemmy lunchtime didn't seem like the best time for a
workout but the place seemed crowded. The five treadmills were
occupied and there was one very well toned woman working with some
of the lighter weights in the corner. Steam rolled out of a doorway
in the back indicating showers.

Behind the reception desk was a middle aged
woman. She had dark hair that was worn in a way that indicated that
she just didn't know what to do with it. Stemmy's first observation
was that she didn't seem to be in particularly good shape. She
wasn't fat or ugly but she didn't have that
workout
look.
She was pouring over a ledger, an unidentifiable sandwich sitting
on the desk next to a can of iced tea. A nametag pinned to her
shirt read
Abby
.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Anthony said as he
pulled out his badge. "I'm Detective Heron and this is Detective
Stemmy."

She looked up from the ledger, closing it
slowly as she took in the two officers. They were quite a pair,
Heron and Stemmy. The weather was warm today so neither wore a
coat, but Heron was dressed well in a casual suit with a jacket.
Stemmy wore what looked like it had been a suit at one time but the
jacket was absent.

"What can I do for you, detectives?"

"We're trying to find the identity of this
man." Anthony produced the picture and laid it on the counter in
front of her.

She looked at it a moment, then again. "The
picture's a bit off," she said.