The Laughing Corpse (Vampire Hunter 2)

I poked the smaller glob with one gloved finger. I had remembered my surgical gloves this time. Goody for me. The glob was wet and heavy and solid. I swallowed hard, but I was no closer to knowing what it was. The two scraps were like morsels dropped from a cat's mouth. Crumbs from the table. Jesus.

I stood. "Next." My voice sounded steady, ordinary. Amazing.

It took all four men lifting from different corners to peel the sheet back from the bed. Merlioni cursed and dropped his corner, "Dammit!"

Blood had run down his arm onto the white shirt. "Did um's get his shirt messy?" Zerbrowski asked.

"Fuck yes. This place is a mess."

"I guess the lady of the house didn't have time to clean up before you came, Merlioni," I said. My eyes flicked down to the bed and the remains of the lady of the house. But I looked back up at Merlioni instead. "Or can't the dago cop take it?"

"I can take anything you can dish out, little lady," he said.

I frowned and shook my head. "Betcha can't."

"I'll take some of that action," Zerbrowski said.

Dolph didn't stop us, tell us this was a crime scene, not a betting parlor. He knew we needed it to stay sane. I could not stare down at the remains and not make jokes. I couldn't. I'd go crazy. Cops have the weirdest sense of humor, because they have to.

"How much you bet?" Merlioni said.

"A dinner for two at Tony's," I said.

Zerbrowski whistled. "Steep, very steep."

"I can afford to foot the bill. Is it a deal?"

Merlioni nodded. "My wife and I haven't been out in ages." He offered his blood-soaked hand. I took it. The cool blood clung to the outside of my surgical gloves. It felt wet, like it had soaked through to the skin, but it hadn't. It was a sensory illusion. I knew that when I took off the gloves my hands would be powder dry. It was still unnerving.

"How we prove who's toughest?" Merlioni asked.

"This scene, here and now," I said.

"Deal."

I turned my attention back to the carnage with renewed determination. I would win the bet. I wouldn't let Merlioni have the satisfaction. It gave me something to concentrate on rather than the mess on the bed.

The left half of a rib cage lay on the bed. A na**d breast was still attached to it. The lady of the house? Everything was brilliant scarlet red, like someone had poured buckets of red paint on the bed. It was hard to pick out the pieces. There a left arm, small, female.

I picked up the fingers and they were limp, no rigor mortis. There was a wedding band set on the third finger. I moved the fingers back and forth. "No rigor mortis. What do you think, Merlioni?"

He squinted down at the arm. He couldn't let me outdo him so he fiddled with the hand, turning it at the wrist. "Could be rigor came and went. You know the first rigor doesn't last."

"You really think nearly two days have passed?" I shook my head. "The blood's too fresh for that. Rigor hasn't set in. The crime isn't eight hours old yet."

He nodded. "Not bad, Blake. But what do you make of this?" He poked the rib cage enough to make the breast jiggle.

I swallowed hard. I would win this bet. "I don't know. Let's see. Help me roll it over." I stared into his face while I asked. Did he pale just a bit? Maybe.

"Sure."

The three others were standing at the side of the room, watching the show. Let them. It was a lot more diverting than thinking of this as work.

Merlioni and I moved the rib cage over on its side. I made sure to give him the fleshy parts, so he ended up groping the dead body. Was breast tissue breast tissue? Did it matter that it was bloody and cold? Merlioni looked just a little green. I guess it mattered.

The insides of the rib cage were snatched clean like Mr. Reynolds's rib cage. Clean and bloody smooth. We let the rib cage fall back on the bed. It splattered blood in a faint spray onto us. His white shirt showed it worse than my blue polo shirt did. Point for me.

He grimaced and brushed at the blood specks. He smeared blood from his gloves down the shirt. Merlioni closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Are you alright, Merlioni?" I asked. "I wouldn't want you to continue if it's upsetting you."

He glared at me, then smiled. A most unpleasant smile. "You ain't seen it all, girlie. I have."

"But have you touched it all?"

A trickle of sweat slid down his face. "You won't want to touch it all."

I shrugged. "We'll see." There was a leg on the bed, from the hair and the one remaining tennis shoe it looked male. The round, wet mound of the ball socket gleamed out at us. The zombie had just torn the leg off, tearing flesh without tearing bone.

"That must have hurt like a son of a bitch," I said.

"You think he was alive when the leg was pulled off?"

I nodded. "Yeah." I wasn't a hundred percent sure. There was too much blood to tell who had died when, but Merlioni looked a little paler.

The rest of the pieces were just bloody entrails, globs of flesh, bits of bone. Merlioni picked up a handful of entrails. "Catch."

"Jesus, Merlioni, that isn't funny." My stomach was one tight knot.

"No, but the look on your face is," he said.

I glared at him and said, "Throw it or don't, Merlioni, no teasing."

He blinked at me for a minute, then nodded. He tossed the string of entrails. They were awkward to throw but I managed to catch them. They were wet, heavy, flaccid, squeeshy, and altogether disgusting, like touching raw calf's liver but more so.

Dolph made an exasperated sound. "While you two are playing gross out, can you tell me something useful?"

I dropped the flesh back on the bed. "Sure. The zombie came in through the sliding glass door like last time. It chased the man or woman back in here and got them both." I stopped talking. I just froze.

Merlioni was holding up a baby blanket. Some trick had left a corner of it clean. It was edged in satiny pink with tiny balloons and clowns all over it. Blood dripped heavily from the other end of it.

I stared at the tiny balloons and clowns while they danced in useless circles. "You bastard," I whispered.

"Are you referring to me?" Merlioni asked.

I shook my head. I didn't want to touch the blanket. But I reached out for it. Merlioni made sure that the bloody edge slapped my bare arm. "Dago bastard," I said.

"You referring to me, bitch?"

I nodded and tried to smile but didn't really manage it. We had to keep pretending that this was alright. That this was doable. It was obscene. If the bet hadn't held me I'd have run screaming from the room.

I stared at the blanket. "How old?"

"Family portrait out front, I'd guess three, four months."

I was finally on the other side of the bed. There was another sheet-draped spot. It was just as bloody, just as small. There was nothing whole under the sheet. I wanted to call the bet off. If they wouldn't make me look I'd take them all to Tony's. Just don't make me lift that last sheet. Please, please.

But I had to look, bet or no bet, I had to see what there was to see. Might as well see it and win, as run and lose.

I handed the blanket back to Merlioni. He took it and laid it back on the bed, up high so the clean corner would stay clean.

I knelt on one side of the sheet. He knelt on the other. Our eyes met. It was a challenge then, to the gruesome end. We peeled back the sheet.

There were only two things under the sheet. Only two. My stomach contracted so hard I had to swallow vomit. I coughed and almost lost it there, but I held on. I held on.

I'd thought the blood-soaked form was the baby, but it wasn't. It was a doll. So blood-soaked I couldn't tell what color its hair had been, but it was just a doll. A doll too old for a four-month-old baby.

A tiny hand lay on the carpet, covered in gore like everything else, but it was a hand. A tiny hand. The hand of a child, not a baby. I spread my hand just above it to size it. Three, maybe four. About the same age as Benjamin Reynolds. Was that coincidence? Had to be. Zombies weren't that choosy.

"I'm breast-feeding the baby, maybe, when I hear a loud noise. Husband goes to check. Noise wakes the little girl, she comes out of her room to see what's the matter. Husband sees the monster, grabs the child, runs for the bedroom. The zombie takes them here. Kills them all, here." My voice sounded distant, clinical. Bully for me.

I tried to wipe some of the blood off the tiny hand. She was wearing a ring like Mommy. One of those plastic rings you get out of bubble gum machines.