Carole Douglas - Silver Zombie

His words left me speechless. My tough FBI guy didn’t know it, but I may have done exactly that with him.

“I really understand,” I said in a serious tone that slipped past him. His mind was still on the wandering zombies.

“The rest have scattered pretty far,” he said, “but I won’t need you and Quicksilver for roundups after this. Didn’t know if Cayuse here”—he slapped the Ranger’s sand-blasted engine cover—“would work to round up stray Zobos. It sure does. They shy like horses at unnatural sounds.”

“Jeez, Ric. A man and his wheels. You’ve named that mobile mechanical monster of overbearing tires and sheer ruckus?”

“You’ve got Dolly.”

He nodded at the barely visible black bulk of my ’56 Caddy convertible. Her full name was Dolly Parton, and she had the awesome chrome “bumper bullets” to prove it. She was parked on the dirt road that was way too far from the highway asphalt for my taste and her black-satin finish.

“Come inside.” Ric dismounted easily in his spandex race driver jumpsuit. “I’ll show you the setup. We need to get these Zobos tucked away for the night and the next few weeks. Now that they’ve got horses to tend and guard— and are safe behind silver wire—they’re ready for rehab.”

“Rehabilitation for what? Basket weaving?”

“I don’t know yet. I just can’t leave any known dead wandering around to be meat for the Immortality Mob.”

I followed him inside the rambling barbed wire, shaking my head and muttering “Cayuse?”

Quicksilver couldn’t trot away from the parked Ranger fast enough. We were two of a kind, urban creatures, especially when that citified outpost was Las Vegas, the capital city of all things spectacular and supernatural in 2013.

Inside the fence I saw the usual barn, horse corral, and bunkhouse.

The three rag-suited Zobos were being tended by four of their ilk, this set wearing Lee jeans, work boots, and plaid cotton shirts with pearlized buttons.

Quicksilver whined behind me, whether from confusion or outraged fashion sense, I couldn’t tell.

The brown leathery look of the Zobos’ visible skin evoked human cowhands who worked outdoors in the desert. Ric could even open a dude ranch with these guys. The Lazy Z.

“This place looks like the Louisiana Hayride TV show set,” I commented. “What do feral zombies eat? I suppose these guys haven’t worked their way up to brains.”

“That’s a bad rap. They eat nothing … yet. Right now they just feed and water the horses. These are the sleepwalking dead. Since drops of my blood animated them, they have to obey me. I don’t know if the Immortality Mob exists, but I do know somebody ’s learned to exploit zombies.”

“We need a word out of earshot, Montoya,” I told him. How sharp were Zobo senses, or brains, anyway?

We moved to lean against the crossbars of the corral fence, watching the half-moon reflected in the darks of large equine eyes. As a coyote howled in the distance, the horses did an uneasy soft-shoe over the desert floor.

“Other than your obsession to leave no zombie wandering unclaimed,” I told Ric, “what’s the point of collecting the ones you raised at the werewolf mob’s Starlight Lodge? They were all likely other gangsters who got in Cesar Cicereau’s hair.”

“To find dead bodies, I simply have to dowse for them with a forked piece of wood or wire, like dowsers do for water. To raise them, drops of my blood have to ‘baptize’ the dowsing rod. In a sense, those zombies are my blood brothers now.”

“Despite being hoodlums and criminals in life?”

“The werewolf mob also ran down and killed a lot of unlucky innocent bystanders over the decades. Even you were on their menu just a couple months ago.”

“True. I guess whoever the Zobos were, they’re blank slates now.”

“Right,” Ric said. “And anybody can round them up … to use and abuse them.”

“Especially the mysterious Immortality Mob you and Hector Nightwine obsess over.”

“People talk about the Immortality Mob, but nobody knows what or who they really are. That’s worth an obsessive interest.”

“Somebody has to handle leasing the CinSims to the Vegas attractions.”

“Human lawyers,” Ric said. “And technicians go public to service the CinSims’ location chips if any wander off their prescribed territory, but they’re mere hirees. Whoever masterminded the process of overlaying the Hollywood personas on zombie bodies remains a mystery. No one knows if it’s weird science, or magic, or the intervention of some as-yet-unknown paranormal entity.”

“Brrr,” I said, as the night wind riffled the horses’ manes and chilled my spine. “I doubt Vegas or me can stand any more ‘unknown paranormal entities.’ The Karnak Hotel’s ancient vampire empire is evil enough under the ground. Don’t you have a way to de-raise these Zobos?”

“Doesn’t work like that, Delilah.” Ric watched a palomino colt side-dance toward us. “There’s no easy way to kill a zombie. The reanimated dead can’t die again. That’s what is so evil about raising them in the first place.”

“Then why were you born with that gift?”

“Because it’s a curse? Every paranormal ‘gift’ is a power waiting to be corrupted.”

“My mirror-walking too?”

“Look what it’s brought you. You’re afraid to use mirrors now that you’ve imprisoned Cicereau’s ghostly daughter in that mirror-world.”

“Point taken.”

Mirror-world seemed to work like a fey origami box. It could stretch in all directions or take a quirky left turn and have you suddenly facing your worst enemy. I wasn’t going there again—unless forced—until I figured out its rules and regulations.

“Where did the bodies you raised years ago end up,” I asked Ric, “with the Immortality Mob?”

“There wasn’t one yet. They went where the live illegal aliens went. They were smuggled across the border as cheap labor on ranches and in factories. CinSims came later.”

“Why raise only Mexicans for CinSims?”

“Maybe because border crossings are myriad, and expected. My native country is full of people yearning for a better life in the U.S.”

“Los desperados y los desaparecidos,” I said in his native Spanish. “The outlaws and the disappeared.”

I’d been studying my English-Spanish dictionary since meeting Ric, particularly the slanguage edition for any naughty words he might use in the heat of lovemaking. Of course, Spanish is a Romance language. Its musical lilt to an Anglo ear can make even a whispered obscenity sound sweet, not that I’d caught Ric using anything but impassioned prose on the flattering level of, oh, the Song of Solomon, say.

His Latin blood made him muy expressive. A night with him was a better self-esteem enhancer for a girl than winning the Miss Universe contest.

Um-mm, Irma seconded me. Although I’d always locked her down during the main event, she still had a front-row seat for the warm-up rounds, like now.

“Excellent pronunciation, paloma. ” Ric nuzzled my cheek as the palomino whinnied approval. His lips whispered against mine between a string of soft kisses interspersed with nips. “You know your mouth drives me loco when it speaks my native tongue.”

That one sentence had taken a full minute to articulate between the lip-lock action, and it drove any sense of night chill from my bones. Ric’s mouth pulled back to let me speak against the caressing pad of his thumb, which only prolonged the dizzy desire.

I was melted Velveeta cheese in deep need of a … breadstick. Men love to prove they can drive every thought out of even the most coolheaded woman. They had a point.