Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘Were they trained fighters?’

‘Henry was a recon Marine and he worked out at the gym. He was the one who taught Little Henry and me to box. Little Henry was special forces.’

‘Two big men – six-five.’

‘Little Henry was taller – six-seven.’

‘Okay, two very big guys, both trained to fight. There’s no person, or zombie, that I know of that could take them both out so quick that neither had time to shout for help or shout a warning.’

Travers seemed to think about it. ‘No, they wouldn’t go quiet. They’d both fight. Little Henry was different when he got out of the military. He never talked about it, but something bad happened and he didn’t like people so much. I think that’s why he went into business with his dad. Fewer people and a lot of time out here; they both loved being out in the woods, on the mountain.’ I wondered if he realized he’d used past tense for his friend; probably not.

‘Then why did they go with the monsters?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know!’ He yelled it at me and came close enough to loom over me. At six-five to my five-three he loomed good, but I’d been the smallest kid in class all my life; I was used to being loomed over.

I did have my hands loose to my sides and had put one foot ahead of the other. It wasn’t enough of a stance to give Travers a reason to up the violence, but I was ready to move if I had to. He was a cop, but he was also a big guy, and he was processing the loss of the man on the ground and his missing friend. Grief fucks with you; it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do, like take a swing at a coworker.

Horton stepped up. ‘Officer Travers, let’s take a walk.’

‘No, Blake is supposed to be the monster expert. She hasn’t told us anything. She’s asked questions, fucking questions, and Henry’s lying there … like that.’ He turned away and started walking so we wouldn’t see the tears.

Horton started to follow him, but Al said, ‘Let him go.’ Horton looked like he’d argue and go after him, but in the end he let the older man’s advice stand.

Ares asked, ‘How did you know he wouldn’t take a swing at you?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said.

Ares raised eyebrows at me again and gave me the look the comment deserved. ‘You know, it’s hard to protect you if you order me off every time large, angry men start getting up in your face.’

‘This is the first time I’ve done that.’

‘To me, but I’ve heard stories from the other guards who do your detail more.’

‘Yeah, I’m a pain in the ass.’

‘No, well, yes.’ He smiled, shook his head, frowned. ‘Anyway, you are a bad mark.’

‘Yeah, I am.’

‘This has to be our killer zombies,’ Al said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because if it’s not the zombies that hurt the sheriff we’ve got a whole new problem, and I just can’t believe we have two different kinds of flesh-eating monsters up here. It’s an isolated area. Don’t you need a population to turn into your monsters?’

‘If they started out human, yes.’

‘Are you saying that something nonhuman, as in never been human, did this?’

‘No.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that I don’t know what did this. If it’s a zombie it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The only flesh eater I ever personally took out ate bodies almost completely, much messier and more complete eating than this, more like shapeshifter kills. This looks almost human.’

‘You mean a person did this?’ Horton asked.

I shrugged. ‘I mean people.’

‘People did not do this, only monsters could do this,’ Al said.

‘You know that human rapists and serial killers bite chunks out of people sometimes.’

‘Yes, a bite mark, maybe two, but not like this.’

‘Some serial killers take enough to cook later,’ I said.

‘Yes, but not one bite at a time. When they cook their victims’ flesh they butcher the meat off the body.’

‘You’ve done your research, so you know that human beings do horrible shit to each other all the time.’

‘I’m not saying people couldn’t do this; I’m saying I don’t think they did.’

‘Why, because you don’t want it to be people?’

‘No, because human beings couldn’t make the Crawfords leave the search for the hikers and go off with them. It has to be something supernatural to have taken them totally quietly and so fast. There were members of the search party who were only yards away from them, Marshal. I don’t believe that human beings could have done that.’

I nodded. ‘Zombies are just walking corpses, Deputy. They have no special abilities other than being harder to kill, and some flesh eaters are super-fast, and they’re all stronger than human-normal.’

‘Why is that?’ Horton asked.

‘Why is what?’

‘Why are all the human undead stronger than living humans? I mean, they start out as us; why does being undead make them stronger than we are?’

It was an excellent question. ‘Great question, wish I had a great answer, but I honestly don’t know. They just all are.’

‘I don’t mean to complain, but you are supposed to be the expert and so far I’m not hearing a lot of expertise.’

‘The attack isn’t like anything I’ve seen. It’s not even like the bodies in the morgue, except for the bite marks, but even there it’s not the same. Those bodies had one bite apiece. They both died of an infection, a weird infection, but still that’s what killed them. Henry Crawford didn’t die of a disease, not even a supernatural one. I can tell you it wasn’t shapeshifters because the bite marks aren’t animal teeth; they look human. A flesh-eating zombie could take chunks, but they eat the body, too. I’m seeing at least two different bite radiuses, and that’s without getting down close to the bites. Flesh-eating zombies are solitary. They don’t work together.’

‘Don’t ghouls run in packs?’ Horton asked.

I nodded. ‘Yeah, but they are tied to the cemetery that contains their graves. It’s very rare for them to be able to go outside those boundaries and usually requires some sort of necromancy, or spell, something.’

‘But if ghouls could travel out this far, could they do this?’ Al asked it.

I looked back at the body and thought about it. ‘They could, but again, they usually eat the body. It’s food for them just like for the flesh eater. This wasn’t done for food.’

‘How do you know that?’ Al asked.

‘Because they didn’t eat enough of him.’

‘What if they ate the other Henry and just tortured Henry senior?’ Horton asked.

I thought about it and finally said, ‘Ghouls have no gaze or mind control of any kind. How did they kidnap or lure away the two men without giving them time to call out?’

‘Vampires have mind control,’ Horton said.

‘Yes, but they don’t eat flesh. At a glance I don’t see fangs, just human teeth marks, or humanlike teeth.’

‘What has humanlike teeth and could do this?’

I sighed, and it was too deep a breath. I could smell that the body was already beginning to smell bad, like meat that’s gone past its expiration date. I shouldn’t have been able to smell it that strongly yet. Had my bonding with Nathaniel’s leopard given me better sensitivity to smells? I sort of hoped not, because I wasn’t sure it would be an asset in my job.

‘There are a lot of things that are more folklore-based that have humanlike teeth and attack people,’ Horton suggested.

‘Like what?’ Al asked.

I shook my head. ‘Honestly, this doesn’t remind me of anything in myth or folklore. If I think of something that would kill like this I’ll share, but nothing springs to mind. I’m sorry, I really am, and I’m not used to coming up this empty.’