Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

I told the zombie what I’d told MacDougal, that the restaurant would be closed down and fined if anyone found out he’d been inside. “But Miss Blake, surely such laws are meant for those poor creatures that look like rotting corpses.”

“How do you know what other zombies look like?” I asked.

He flinched a little, as if the way I’d phrased it bothered him. Justine stepped closer to him. “My new friends showed me images on their handheld devices.”

I looked at Justine and Warrington, and Bob the tech guy.

“One of us said he didn’t look like a zombie and he wanted to know what we meant,” Bob said, shrugging.

“But look at me, Miss Blake.” The zombie held out his hand toward me. “I am not like those poor creatures.”

“You are a very lifelike zombie, if I do say so myself.”

He frowned. “If the pictures and movies online are what I am supposed to be, then I am something else, Miss Blake.”

It was really hard to argue with him as he looked at me, his face alight with force and emotion.

“However lifelike you appear now,” Manny said, “it won’t last.”

“What do you mean, it won’t last?”

Manny gave the zombie his best I’m-sorry-you’re-grieving face. “No matter how alive you look and feel right now, you will begin to . . . rot, just like the zombies you saw on the Internet.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Of course you don’t,” I said.

“It is still true,” Manny said.

The zombie frowned, and squeezed Justine’s hand. “No zombie we saw on the . . . computer looked like me.”

“Anita is a very, very powerful necromancer. I don’t believe that anyone else could have brought you back in this state of completeness.”

“Completeness,” the zombie said, “yes, that’s a good word. I feel complete and whole, and quite myself. Why am I not simply alive, rather than dead?”

“You’re undead,” I said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“You are engaged to marry a vampire, Ms. Blake. Is he any more alive than I am?”

I frowned at MacDougal.

“He had questions for us about how he got here, Ms. Blake. The Internet was the easiest way to explain, and when your name is typed in, the engagement story is the first thing to come up in the feed.”

I sighed. “Of course it is.”

“I ask you again, why am I not as alive as this Jean-Claude you love?”

Staring up into his so-alive face, I didn’t have a good answer. Saying Because you’re not didn’t sound good enough, as he stood there holding hands with Justine.

“Because Anita isn’t Jesus,” Manny said.

“I don’t understand what you mean by invoking our Lord and Savior,” Warrington said.

“Jesus brought the dead back to life, but we can only raise zombies,” Manny said.

The zombie shook his head. “Blasphemy isn’t going to convince me that I am not alive.”

“Isn’t it blasphemy to think that I can raise the dead just like Jesus?” I asked.

“Lazarus was dead only a few days. You’ve been dead a lot longer than that, Mr. Warrington. Do you truly believe that Anita can do what our Lord and Savior never dared?”

Warrington, I mean the zombie, didn’t have a comeback for that, but he was thinking of one when a funny look came over his face. He went pale, and then a little green, and then he stumbled to the bushes and started throwing up. He fell to his hands and knees, still puking up all the food and drink he’d consumed. Justine held his hair back for him, which meant maybe it wasn’t just lust. You usually have to love someone to do that.

“Should have started with something lighter, like broth,” Nicky said.

“What?” I asked.

“His digestive system couldn’t take the heavy food.”

“That’s like treating his being dead for hundreds of years like he had the flu, or something,” Domino said.

Nicky shrugged as much as the development of his shoulders would let him. “Why not?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I turned to MacDougal. “And if he’d started doing that inside the restaurant, that would have been bad.”

He looked very serious, and a little pale. “I see your point.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Bob asked.

“He’s been dead for a few centuries,” I said.

The vomiting had slowed down, and was into that dry-heaving phase. Justine asked Bob to go get some napkins from inside.

Warrington muttered, “What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re dead,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“The dead can’t eat solid food,” Manny said.

“I don’t feel dead.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that,” I said.

He blinked up at me. “Why are you sorry? This is a gift.”

“Because it will make other things harder.”

Bob came back out with napkins and the zombie wiped his mouth clean. Justine wiped the sweat from his forehead. Zombies didn’t sweat. “What other things?” she asked, staring at me.

I debated on what to say, and how to say it.

Manny helped me out. “You’ve just seen his body reacting to food, but without being able to consume something he will begin to rot, Justine.”

She shook her head over and over as if denying it enough would make it untrue. Warrington stood up and swayed. She reached out to steady him, and MacDougal came closer in case he was needed. It wasn’t just Justine who was bonding with the zombie. Apparently Warrington was a very likable guy. This all would have been so much easier if he’d been a mean bastard.

“Is that what happened to all the zombies you have raised, Ms. Blake?” Warrington turned his now-pale face to me as he asked.

“All the ones that I’ve seen aboveground long enough have rotted, Mr. Warrington. Not just my zombies, but everyone’s. There is no known way to keep the body intact once we raise a zombie from the grave. I’m sorry.”

“I will end like one of those poor souls we saw images of?”

I nodded. In my head I thought about the female zombies in the FBI videos. They never looked this alive, though the soul capture was a way of preserving the body. But since I didn’t have Warrington’s soul in a magical container somewhere, that wouldn’t help him. That thought led to one other: If it wasn’t his “soul” staring back at me from his eyes, then what was it? My magic animated him, but was that what filled him with personality? I’d expected him to be able to answer questions about historical events, but this level of aliveness . . . I’d never seen anything like it. The zombies that Dominga Salvador had shown me years ago had looked alive, but the shell had been the most lifelike thing about them. They had still been zombies, standing around waiting for her to order them to do something. None of them had this level of . . . personhood.

“I would not want . . . Justine to see me like that.”

She clung to his hand with both of hers again. “No, Tom, no.”

He put his big hand against the side of her face and gazed down into her eyes with a look as real as any I’d ever seen. Shit, he was in there, really, truly in there. What the fuck had I done?

“I would not want to see this look in your eyes turn to horror as I fell away, piece by piece.”

“I would never look at you that way.”

“I have seen friends turned into horrors just by battle injuries, so that their sweethearts could not bear to look upon them. I would not have my last glimpse of you on this side of the grave be you turning away from me like that. I would rather remember you gazing up at me as you are now.”

Justine turned to me. “How long?”

“How long what?” I asked.

“How long would he look like this?”

“It varies.”

“What does that mean, it varies? Hours, days, what?” She came to stand next to me, her body nearly vibrating with emotion.