2

“SORRY, AGENTS, BUT that’s not new. It’s sick, but it’s not new.”

Brent hit the screen and froze the dark cemetery scene in midmotion. It was shaky and dark, and there were no zombies or anyone else in sight yet. The two agents looked at me as if I’d said something bad.

“Did we pick the wrong animator?” Manning asked her partner.

“Maybe,” he said.

“I’ve been approached for years to help people make sex tapes with zombies. Dead celebrities bring out the creeps the most.” I shivered, because the whole thought of it was just so wrong.

“My favorite of your sickos like that are the ones who want you to raise their high school crush,” Zerbrowski said.

“Yeah, now that they have money and success they want one more go at the girl who rejected them in high school, or college.” I shook my head.

“That’s sick, as in seek-a-therapist sick,” Manning said.

“Agreed, and I honestly think they don’t really believe it’s going to be a zombie. Somewhere in their minds they think she’ll rise from the grave and they’ll be able to prove they’re worthy and live happily ever after.”

“Wow, Anita, that’s a romantic take on the sick bastards that just want to boff the girl that rejected them in high school.” Zerbrowski actually looked surprised.

I shrugged, fought off a scowl, and finally said, “Yeah, yeah, one epic proposal and I go all girly on you.”

“Boff,” Agent Brent said. “I didn’t know people used that word anymore.”

“You young whippersnappers just don’t know a good piece of slang when you hear it,” Zerbrowski said.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s not that old. His hair just went all salt-and-pepper early.”

“It’s the last couple of cases, they scared me so bad my hair went white.” He delivered it without a grin, deadpan, which he never did. If they’d known him, they would have understood he was lying, but they didn’t know him.

“Hair doesn’t actually do that from fear,” Brent said, but not like he completely believed it.

Manning looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

I waved her back to Zerbrowski. “It’s his story, not mine.”

Zerbrowski grinned at me, and then at the agents. “Just trying to lighten the mood. That’s part of my charm.”

“It is actually,” I said, smiling back at him.

“The sergeant is here because he’s your partner when you work with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad. Everybody calls it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, but officially it’s not,” Manning said.

“It’s the nickname,” I said. “They call us RIPIT, both for the Rest in Peace, and because most of the crimes are violent, things get ripped apart. Other cops and even the media have used RIPIT for so long that people want the T in the actual name of the squad.”

“Are we letting ourselves get sidetracked on purpose?” Brent asked.

Manning nodded and sipped her coffee. “I think we are, so back on target. One of the reasons that we’re talking to you is that you have more official complaints turned in to the police than any other animator about illegal or morally questionable zombie-raising requests. Once you had a badge of your own and were officially an officer, too, the complaints went down. I’m assuming that people didn’t want to bring their illegal activities to a U.S. Marshal.”

“You’d be surprised how many people think that just because I raise the dead I have to be evil, with a capital E, but yeah, the requests for zombie one-nighters and zombie sex slaves went down once I could do my own arresting.”

“Disturbance of a corpse was a misdemeanor for years,” Manning said.

“That’s one of the reasons that there are tapes of this shit out there, because even if they were caught it was a slap on the wrist. The money they could make from the tape, because it was a tape back when it started, was worth the risk even if they were caught,” I said.

“The penalties are stiffer now, but still not the same as if a real human was involved,” she said.

I shrugged. “I don’t make the laws, just help enforce them.”

“You have done your best to enforce the laws as written, and suggested changes in the laws based on your experience, which is one of the reasons we picked you to bring into our little problem,” Manning said.

“We all know it’s out there, Agent, so what’s the big secret? All the other zombie porn has been either people in good makeup, with no real zombies involved, or one of the zombies that’s been raised for fieldwork in California or in other countries. The zombies in those films are little better than actual corpses.”

“These are different,” Manning said.

“Show us,” I said, and tacked on, “please.” I added the “please” because what I really wanted to say was either You’re being all wimpy for FBI, or something more sarcastic. I’d been a little grumpy lately, even for me, so I was trying to monitor myself and only aim the grumpiness at bad guys.

Brent hit the screen again and the shaky camerawork continued to be shaky so that you could see it was a cemetery at night, but that was about it. It was like the opening to an amateur horror flick where someone had gotten a new camera for Christmas, and then it steadied. I wondered if someone new was holding the camera, or if the holder had just gotten a handle on it. The answer to that question was the difference between one bad guy or two.