"So it's a pretty basic scene. Looks like our unknown vic here OD'd on heroin. There's a trace amount of it on his clothes and works. Once you get it back to the lab you'll be able to tell how pure it is but dude here was a long time user. Lots of tracks. Guess he just shot up one time too many…" Nick rubbed the back of his neck as he talked them through the scene. "Decomp is pretty advanced. Even though the house is abandoned and used by transients now and then, body wasn't found for a while."
That much was obvious. The gassy stench of advanced decay filled the basement despite the propped open windows. The pitiful corpse lay beside a crust of dried vomit; stick thin arms and legs had started to slough off skin. Sara framed a shot in her camera and took another photo. The flash lit up the basement. The two men from the coroner's office stood patiently to one side waiting for her to finish so they could remove the body.
"I appreciate you guys picking this one up for me. Catherine needs me to go over some testimony with her, we have court tomorrow." Nick said.
"Uh-huh. No worries." Sara didn't even look up, so focused was she on her work. It never mattered who the vic was, rich or poor, junkie or king. Once she was on a scene the world dropped away.
"Okay I'm done." She stepped back and motioned to the waiting men that they could take the body.
"See ya later." Nick turned for the stairs.
"Later." Greg called. Sara didn't reply. She had tweezed up a stray fiber and was slipping it into a bindle.
"Right, Sara's patented silent treatment. Nice." Nick muttered as he started up the stairs. He froze when the coroner's assistant let out a tiny scream and jumped backwards.
"He's still alive!"
"What!" Nick pounded back down the stairs.
"He just moved; he's still alive." The man's eyes were huge and he'd backed away from the body as far as he could.
"Impossible!" Sara started forward but Nick reached out and grabbed her arm, stilling her. In the sudden silence a low groan was heard. There was no doubt it came from the body lying on the concrete floor. A leg twitched.
"Fuck me…" Greg breathed.
The coroner crouched next to the body and leaned over it.
"I'm going to attempt first aid! Call for an ambulance!" Frantically he started chest compressions. There was a crack, then his hands punched through the junkie's rib cage, plunging his forearms into the soupy mess of the junkie's chest.
"What the…?" Repulsed, the coroner pulled his hands out and stared at them, baffled.
The junkie sat up, noisome fluids dribbling out of the hole in his chest. His eyes opened, they were sunken and clouded with a milky film. The junkie opened his mouth wide and with a bubbling growl clamped his teeth into the side of the unfortunate coroner's neck. The man's scream rang in the confines of the basement. He struggled madly to free himself from the junkie's grip. But the creature hung on, shaking his head like a dog and working his jaws deeper. Blood welled up and started to rain down on the dirty concrete floor. Then with a savage rip, the junkie pulled free a large chunk of flesh and swallowed it, blood fountained from the gaping wound in the neck of the unfortunate coroner. He feebly tried to crawl away, screams dying down as his blood poured out of him onto the floor until he finally lay still.
Everyone started yelling at once.
"Jesusjesusjesus!" The coroner' assistant gibbered in terror. The corpse of the junkie struggled upright and started tottering towards him. The man froze when his back pressed up against the far wall and watched as helplessly as a rabbit will when it's caught in the high beams of a tractor-trailer roaring down on it.
"Run! Run!—fucking run!" Greg hopped up and down and yelled at the man. He was unaware of how bizarrely funny he looked but it was enough that Sara started giggling wildly. High screamy laughs that only trailed off when she felt Nick's fingers digging into her arms.
"Sara! Sara! That guy was dead. He was fucking dead! What's happening?" Underneath the fear his voice sounded worried, as if somehow he'd be blamed for all of this eventually. Her giggles trailed off and she wiped at the sudden tears on her cheeks. What's happening? Good question…evidence indicates I've lost my mind…
The junkie staggered forward and still the poor assistant didn't move. Sara saw very clearly when he finally raised his hands and covered his eyes. As a child will when the movie is too scary. She longed to do the same, just sit down and cover her eyes until all of this was over. But she couldn't look away. Not even when the wet crunching noises started as the corpse started to feed.
"Shoot it! Shoot it!" Greg pounded on Nick's arm. "You have to kill it!"
"It's already dead!" Nick yelled back at him but he'd unholstered his gun and pointed it at the creature. He fired; Sara jumped, the report was loud. She'd forgotten how loud a gunshot was in a small space. The bullet thudded into the corpse's back. It growled and dropped the body of the assistant and started for them. Nick fired again as Sara backed up almost tripping over Greg. She didn't protest when he grabbed her tightly.
"It's not working!" Panic edged Nick's voice and they retreated to the stairs.
"In the head! Shoot it in the head!" Greg's voice was loud in her ear. But that was fine—good even—because it kept the swarming black dots that were fuzzing her vision at bay.
Nick aimed again and fired, blowing the top of the junkie's head off in a spray of blood and bone. It took one more lurching step, then sagged to its knees and fell face forward onto the floor. Silence reigned once more.
"…the fuck…what the fuck…what the fuck…?" Nick leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees, repeating this over and over again. Then he took a step forward and vomited. He retched once more, a thin stream of bile drooling from his lips as he straightened.
Heat flooded his face and he wiped his mouth. "Sorry. It's just—fuck…"
"Don't be." Greg's face was white except for two spots of color high on his cheeks. He patted Nick's back absently. "I would've lost my cookies too." He looked over at the bloody mess that was the remains of the coroner. "I may yet. Still, nice shooting there, Tex."
Nick smiled wryly and holstered his gun. He saw Sara,
"Hey…Sara are you going to be okay? Sara honey?
Sara was trembling violently. Huge shudders ripped through her frame and she hugged herself tightly to try and stop them. She was shaking her head back and forth. She swayed on her feet.
Nick jumped forward and caught her in time. Steadying her in his arms, he pushed her to sit, his hand resting on the back of her neck. She hung her head and concentrated on breathing, willing herself not to faint.
"You okay?" Greg knelt by her and rubbed her knee.
"No. No, I am not okay. I am having the world's worst fucking day! First, I'm late for work, then I ruined my new blouse, I fought with Grissom, I fought with you and now corpses at crime scenes are sitting up and eating people. Which is impossible. So no! I am most definitely not okay!" Her voice had grown louder and louder until she was practically yelling. But that was better than the wheezy weakness of earlier.
"Sorry Sara. I'm fresh out of brownies…but I'll let you punch Nick if you want…" Greg squeezed her hand.
"Wha—" she said.
"Punch me?" Nick said. "Why not you?"
"I bruise easy. Besides you scared us earlier. You owe us."
"I told you I wasn't scared…" Sara groused, but Greg's teasing had worked, she could deal with this; she was a scientist, there had to be a logical explanation. All she had to do was find it. She scrubbed her hands over her face and stood up.
"So. Question one. What in the fuck is going on here?"
"Yeah. Good question." Nick's normally open face wore a haunted look. "This is messed up. I keep thinking of reasons, like toxic waste, or some kind of new virus, even a secret government experiment… and they all seem so—so stupid."
"Well we're investigators. Let's investigate." Briskly Sara stepped forward and reached for her case.
"I don't believe you two." Greg was incredulous. "The answer is right there in front of you and you don't see it."
"Care to share then, Greggo?" Nick's voice was tight.
"Duh. They're zombies."
A beat of silence.
"Zombies?" Sara planted her hands on her hips. "There's no such thing. It's scientifically impossible."
"Well then, by all means let's stay here and "investigate" and once those two…" Greg pointed at the bodies of the coroner and his assistant "zombify or whatever, you'll find out what's scientifically impossible or not."
"I plan to." Sara snapped. "And there will be a perfectly logical reason for this. Zombies." Sara made a rude noise. « I told you, you watch too many movies."
"Oh, so this is about me now? Would it kill you to admit you were wrong and I was right for once, Sidle?"
"No. It hasn't before." Sara crossed her arms and glared at Greg, "It's just that—today—in this instance you are so wrong. The dead stay dead. Case closed."
"Oh they do. The dead stay dead, do they?" Greg mirrored her stance and glared back. "Tell that to them." Greg jerked his head at the bodies. "Goddamned junkie looked pretty fucking dead to me, Sara."
"There's got to be a reason!" Sara was getting loud again.
"Okay maybe y'all need to cool down—" Nick tried to interrupt but Greg overrode him.
"Yeah! The reason is they're fucking zombies!"
"There's no such thing!" She shouted.
"Why not?" Greg shouted back at her.
"Because it's wrong!" She dragged her hands through her hair, forgetting in her frustration that she was wearing gloves. "Everything we do, everything we are, is about the evidence. Evidence doesn't lie. Science doesn't lie! And science tells me that this is impossible. That it's wrong. It just is!" Sara looked over at the corpses littering the basement floor, "You of all people should know that…science doesn't lie…it can't." She finished lamely and looked pleadingly at Greg.
"I don't need science to tell me what I saw with my own eyes, Sara." Greg said quietly. He saw her mouth open and he held up a hand stilling her, "And spare me the rant about eyewitness accounts. I know all of that. I also know I saw a dead man. A rotting dead man sit up and kill two other men today. And that thing would've killed us if Nick hadn't shot it. And you saw it too. You just won't—or can't—admit it."
"I'm sorry Greg but—"
"Yeah me too." Greg turned his back on her and began throwing his equipment into his kit. The stiff line of his back a silent rebuke to Sara.
"Occam's razor…" Nick said slowly.
Sara and Greg both looked over at him.
"We're standing around here arguing about the existence of zombies, when Occam's razor tells us that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one."
"Thank you!" Sara said triumphantly. "I told you there was a—"
"No Sara. I'm with Greg."
Sara looked stunned.
"He's right. I saw a corpse kill two men today. We all saw that today, and until I get more information about this phenomenon, I'm all for calling a spade a spade, or in this case a zombie, a zombie. I'm not saying that science won't provide a logical explanation for this later, but right now I'd feel a whole lot safer and a whole lot saner acting as if these guys are zombies.
"I don't believe you." Sara's eyes were full of reproach. "I don't believe you'd throw away all your training in favor of this crazy idea. It's stupid and I'll prove how stupid it is. Watch."
Sara knelt by the corpse of the dead coroner; carefully she turned him over and felt for a pulse. Wholly unnecessary, due to the volume of blood soaking into the floor, it was pretty obvious he was dead. But she wasn't sure how else to prove a corpse was dead than to check for signs of life.
"No pulse." She peeled back one eyelid and shone her flashlight into his eye. "Pupils are non-reactive." She frowned and leaned closer. The eye was glazing over faster than a corpse's eye usually did. Almost the entire surface had turned a milky white.
"Hmm, that's interesting." Neither Nick nor Greg said anything but she continued on as if their silence wasn't damming. "Pupils appear to be coated with a film. It might be a sign of toxicity. You may want to get a photo of this." They didn't move.
Sighing Sara turned to face them. "Look I'm sorry but this is a crime scene and we may as well investiga—"
The cool hand of the coroner grabbed her wrist. She shrieked and attempted to pull free, astonished at the brute strength of the thing. It bared its teeth and tried to bite her. Its teeth were inches from her skin, she screamed louder, squealing in fear.
Nick and Greg both scrambled to help her. Greg wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled. Nick trained his gun on the corpse.
"I can't get a clear shot! Sara, hit it! Hit it!"
Belatedly, Sara realized she was holding her heavy Maglite. She began clubbing the corpse in the head. Snarling she beat the creature as hard as she could.
"Evilmotherfuckerletmego!" Curses fell from her lips. Blood and bone fragments sprayed everywhere. The grip on her wrist slackened and she felt the arm of the thing fall away, she kept on bludgeoning it. Gripping the flashlight two-handed now, she swung again and again. "Hateyouhateyouhateyoufuckingimpossiblething!" She felt the skull cave in under her assault. DiejustfuckingDIE!" Something was trying to pull her away and she struggled to get free. She needed to pound the skull to a powder. Erase the obscenity under her, from Earth. "I!" she swung, "am having!" she swung again, " a really!" once again "Bad!" one final swing "DAY!"
Panting, she straightened. She winced, her shoulders were screaming from the exertion of the past few minutes. She looked up to find Nick and Greg staring at her in trepidation. "What?" She wiped at the blood spotting her shirt, smearing it across her front. Her hands were coated with gore, but on the plus side the ink stain wasn't as noticeable.
"Nothing." Greg said hastily. "Nothing at all."
"Sara" Nick's voice was gentle "Can I have the flashlight?" He held out his hand.
Absently, she handed it over noting as she did so the blood splattered on Nick's shirt.
"You've got some on you…I think I'm going to go get some fresh air, okay?"
"Sure thing." Nick said, gingerly holding the gruesome flashlight between two fingers. "Greg and I will be right up okay, honey?"
"Mmm-hmm…" She wandered away.
"Jesus American!" Greg said. "I've never seen Sara lose it like that…"
"Yeah. I know. She's almost scarier than a zombie."
"Note to self: never make Sara question the assumptions she builds her world on. Can lead to homicidal rage…"
"C'mon let's go before we have to sic Mad Dog Sidle on this other poor bastard."
"Yeah and we need to get her sorted before she puts two and two together and realizes that if this is happening here…
"It's probably happening everywhere. Including headquarters…where we have an ample supply of dead bodies." Nick finished.
The two men shared a grim look and left the cellar.
