Jailbait Zombie

by Acevedo, Mario

• ISBN13: 9780061567148
• ISBN10: 0061567140
• Edition: Original
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Vampires versus Zombies, round one . . .Vampire detective Felix Gomez has seen a lot of weird things since becoming one of the undead-nymphomaniacs, aliens, and X-rated bloodsuckers, just to name a few-but now he comes face-to-face with the worst sort of undead.To stop a ravenous army of zombies, Gomez must team up with a precocious teen with clairvoyant powers whose cooperation comes at a price: she won't help unless Felix makes her a vampire . . . if the zombies don't get her first.

Excerpts

Jailbait Zombie

Chapter One

"Felix, drop your pants."

The last time I heard those words, they were from a topless stripper.

Tonight was different, but the wound on my leg hurt too much for me to protest Mel's words.

Mel was the acting head of the local nidus, Latin for "nest," in this case the community of Denver vampires. Tendrils of anxiety writhed from his orange aura, a bright contrast against the gloom of an autumn night. With a greasy gray mane combed back to his shoulders and scraggly white muttonchops, Mel projected none of the glamour associated with Hollywood vampires.

We were on a deserted construction site in Aurora, a suburb east of Denver. Though Aurora's the second-largest city in Colorado, it's the Fresno of the Front Range: square mile after square mile of strip malls and cheap rents that run together to create an asphalt grid of nothing.

I rested against the foreman's trailer, unbuckled my trousers, and slid them to my knees. Smoke and blood trickled from the teeth marks on the inside of my left thigh.

"Smoke?" Mel asked, astonished. "That damn zombie must have left silver fillings when he bit you."

Silver. No wonder this hurt so much.

Mel's right index fingernail extended into a talon. "Hold still."

I gripped the muscle around the wound to distend the punctures. Mel crouched and slid the razor-sharp nail into an opening where the smoke puffed out. A fresh jolt of pain coursed up my spine and out my arms. He flicked his wrist and a tiny piece of smoking goo spun to the dirt.

He spit into his palm and pressed it over the wound. "This is as close to a hand job as you'll get from me. Doesn't mean we're in love or anything. In fact, please don't call me in the morning."

I massaged the injured muscle. "How about a card on Valentine's?" The vampire enzymes in his saliva dulled the pain and accelerated my supernatural healing. By this time tomorrow, all I'd have is another battle scar to add to my collection.

I put weight on the leg and it finally felt like I wouldn't collapse from the pain. I fastened my trousers and limped to the edge of a hole excavated for the basement of a large building. Concrete slabs formed two sides of the hole but the rest was still packed dirt.

The zombie shambled within the hole where we'd chased it. He—obviously once a man—cradled his head under one arm and used his other to grope along the concrete. His mottled, waxy complexion and the clumps of trash stuck to his grimy clothes made it look like he'd been rotting in a shallow grave for a week.

I had removed the special contacts that masked my tapetum lucidum, the mirror-like retinas at the back of my eyes. The contacts were part of my cover to hide from humans, but wearing them kept me from using night vision or seeing psychic auras.

I didn't know if zombies had night vision; I had no idea about any of their powers other than they were supposed to be hard as hell to destroy. Tonight I had discovered an important fact: they had no auras, which made them a bitch to track in the dark.

The zombie clawed the dirt wall, climbing up a foot before stumbling backward. He dropped his head. It plopped against the dirt and rolled like a lopsided melon. The animated corpse sank to its knees and crawled along the ground, one arm searching in a wide arc.

The head worked its mouth and turned onto its face, where it used its nose and chin to inch toward the body. I was more disgusted than fascinated. Yes, zombies are undead, as we vampires are. But comparing them to us was like comparing turds to eagles.

The Araneum, the worldwide network of vampires, has one standing order: Destroy all zombies.

The reason?

We must ruthlessly protect the Great Secret—the existence of the supernatural world—from humans. Their disbelief in the supernatural was what kept us vampires safe.

We've seen what humans have done to one another.

War.

Genocide.

Walmart.

Against their growing technical prowess and corporate savagery, what chance did we the undead have? Our best hope for survival was to remain cloaked by superstition and fable.

Zombies have no regard for keeping the Great Secret. They materialize (from where? I don't know) and begin their rampage for mortal flesh, literally mindless of the consequences. Vampires have been able to disguise zombie attacks as examples of deranged cannibals—Jeffrey Dahmer copycats. But eventually the zombies would make one attack too obvious to hide, and then humans would be on to all of us supernatural creatures. After that, we could only expect the methodical obliteration of the undead.

Therefore, all zombies must be exterminated.

Protecting the Great Secret is what I do for the Araneum. My day job is private detective. My real job is the pro bono work I do as a vampire enforcer.

"This your first zombie?" Mel asked.

"Yeah."

"How'd he get the drop on you?"

"I was stupid," I replied. "After I laid him out with a shovel, I was going through his pockets."

"Why didn't you decapitate him?"

"I did. Right after that he shot from the ground, head in hands, and clamped onto me. Don't let that walking corpse routine fool you, he's got moves."

The zombie found his head, picked it up, and stood. Strands of muddy drool hung from the lips and the neck stump. The dull eyes swiveled left and right and fixed upon a wooden surveyor's stake pounded into the dirt. The zombie approached the stake and yanked it free. He worked the square end of the stake into the raw meat of the neck opening in his torso. Using both hands, he fit his head over the sharp end of the stake. He gave himself a rap on the top of his skull and the head squished tight into the collar of his shirt.

Jailbait Zombie. Copyright © by Mario Acevedo. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Jailbait Zombie by Mario Acevedo
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.