“There was a sister at the funeral,” Puma said. “From Chicago. I got the impression they weren’t close. Otherwise, the attendees were mostly people from the foundation and from his golf league.”
“He played
golf
.” There was contemptuous dismissal in Biko’s tone.
“We can’t all carry a sword, D’Artagnan,” I said. “Did Catherine seem very upset at the funeral?”
“That’s hard to say,” said Jeff. “Well, you’ve met her, you saw what she’s like. She plays her cards pretty close to her chest.”
“Cold, is more like it,” said Biko. “Mr. Phelps was kind of a cold fish, too.”
“Biko.” His sister’s tone warned him not to speak ill of the dead.
“Being deceased doesn’t make someone more likeable, Puma,” he said with some exasperation. “And the dead can feel free to listen to me say so, if they want.”
“Honestly, I always thought Darius was a pompous ass. And I’m not surprised to learn he was also an opportunist.” Seeing my inquisitive look, as I shoveled potatoes into my mouth, Jeff said, “Sleeping with the boss, I mean.”
I swallowed my mouthful and said, “Come on, it could have been plain old attraction. Lots of romances start in the workplace, and she’s a good-looking woman.”
“
I
don’t think so,” said Biko. “She’s all . . . stiff and chilly.”
“Oh, color me shocked that an eighteen- year-old boy doesn’t see what’s attractive about an intellectual woman in her forties,” I said. “But Darius might have.”
Biko shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Anyhow, even though I’d much rather not have met Darius’ zombie,” I said, “better me than her, I guess.”
Puma gasped. “Oh, yes! I mean, can you
imagine?
Having relations with a man . . . and then meeting his walking corpse? How awful!”
“Which brings me back to my original question,” Jeff said. “Why raise the dead? And why Darius? If, for a minute, we go with this crazy theory that you’re all stuck on, and say that Darius is a zombie now . . . Why him?”
“Excellent question.” Max patted his mouth with a paper napkin. “Why Darius, indeed?”
“Opportunity?” Puma suggested. “He had a nondenominational funeral.”
“Does that make a difference?” I asked.
Max nodded. “Without the inclusion of Vodou rituals, his corpse presumably was not prepared with any of the usual precautions against zombiism.”
Jeff froze in the middle of reaching for more green vegetables. I noticed that he was eating grilled salmon and avoiding the fried food and starches that I was gobbling. It occurred to me that his gladiator outfit was probably skimpy.
“There are usual precautions against zombiism?” he asked.
“Oh, indeed!” Max said with enthusiasm. “Traditionally, for example, the family of the deceased often kills the corpse a second time, in order to protect it from being raised by a bokor and enslaved as a zombie.”
“How do you kill a corpse?” Jeff asked in appalled fascination.
“Oh, usually you would plunge a knife into the heart of the cadaver,” Max said. “Alternately, you might behead the corpse in its coffin.”
Puma made a sound of assent and nodded.
“I just
had
to ask.” Jeff set down his fork. “I think I’m done eating.”
“You could also shoot the body,” Puma said. “Or inject it with poison.”
“Or strangle it,” said Max.
“It’s a whole buffet of choices,” said Jeff.
“You shouldn’t let that salmon go to waste,” I said. “It looks good.” After the things I had experienced lately, I didn’t see any point getting squeamish over methods of killing a body that was
already
dead.
Jeff said to me, “Be my guest.”
“Thanks.” I took a bite of the fish. It was tasty, so I lifted the filet onto my plate. “I have a question, Max. I was alone in the dark with Darius last night. If he’s a zombie, then why didn’t he try to eat my brains or something? Isn’t that what zombies do?”
Biko gave me a wan look, and paused in his eating.
“Oh, not at all!” said Puma. “People just get that idea from the movies.”
“Sure, blame the entertainment industry,” Jeff muttered. “It’s all some actor’s fault that Esther’s wondering why no one has ripped open her skull and consumed her brains.”
Biko sighed and pushed his plate away.
“Zombies aren’t villains,” Puma said emphatically. “They’re victims.”
“But they can be dangerous,” Max interjected.
“Yes, that’s true,” Puma agreed. “More mashed potatoes, Dr. Zadok?”
“Oh, yes, thank you. Just a small amount, please.”
“Zombies don’t eat brains,” Puma said. “They don’t eat at all. They’re not human anymore.”
“Ah. I get it.” I nodded. “Which is why they also don’t bleed, sweat, cry, and so on. But even if Darius wasn’t, er, hungry last night, why didn’t he attack me? Was it just because he was disoriented and weak after
being
attacked?”
“He would only have attacked you if commanded to do so. Which clearly was not the case,” Max said. “Zombies aren’t evil, they’re just the living dead. They can, of course, be used for evil purposes by their master, but they are inherently neither good nor bad. They are just tools and have no will of their own.”
“And
that’s
why someone raises the dead,” Puma said to Jeff. “To have a docile, obedient slave.”
“A person no one will search for,” Max added, “because they’re not missing. They are no longer part of this life.”
Puma explained to me, “A zombie is not a demon or monster, it’s a dead body whose soul the bokor steals and whose body the bokor reanimates with black magic.”
“After exhuming it from the grave?” I said, finishing Jeff’s salmon.
“
Robbing
the grave is more like it,” said Biko.
“Ah, and that suggests a possible answer to Jeffrey’s question of why Mr. Phelps was chosen as a victim,” Max said, looking pleased with the realization. “Darius’ death was recent, and a bokor needs a fresh corpse when he raises a zombie from the grave.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Puma said. “A zombie should be raised within a few days of burial. After all, decomposition would make it so . . .
messy
. Body parts dropping off, teeth falling out, skin rotting away. And the stench of decay would be hard to conceal.”
I suddenly felt very full.
“I suppose you could wait longer if the body was embalmed,” Puma added doubtfully. “But a bokor’s rituals are bound to be based on rural Haitian practices, where most buried bodies rot and start being consumed by parasites quickly.”
“I think I’m done eating,” I said faintly, feeling a tad queasy.
“Are you sure?” Jeff said to me. “Because we can always go out and sacrifice a goat for you, if you’re still feeling a bit peckish. The night is young.”
I laid down my fork and pushed my plate away as a strong memory assailed me.
“Are you all right?” Puma asked me. “You suddenly look a little . . . green.”
“Darius smelled funny,” I blurted.
Jeff made a sound. “That’s a little too much information, Esther. I don’t really want sensory detail on the experience.”
“He
was
dead at the time,” Biko said charitably. “He didn’t have a body odor problem in life.”
“Hmm. Yes, even with a relatively prompt post-burial exhumation, thus allowing very little time for decomposition before the bokor’s magic would halt—or substantially decelerate—nature’s progress . . .” Max nodded with a thoughtful expression. “Yes, I think a certain amount of odor should be expected, even so. The zombie is no longer a living being, after all, and dead tissue does smell . . . different.”
Biko said, “So if they smell funny, don’t breathe, don’t sweat or bleed, and so on, they should be easy to identify, right?”
“Oh, yes,” Max said. “Under normal circumstances, I would think so. Keep in mind that Esther’s brief encounter with the zombie last night occurred in very frightening and confusing conditions. If, by contrast, the creature simply walked into this room right now . . .”
We all looked toward the door, as if afraid of seeing the late Darius Phelps suddenly enter it.
“It would be much more obvious that Darius is no longer a normal man,” Max said. “As is often the case with reanimation of the dead—”
“Often?” Jeff repeated. “How
often
do you meet dead people, Max?”
“Not now, Jeff,” I said.
Max continued, “His skin would probably be sunken and dull, his eyes glassy and unblinking, his expression blank. His movements would be clumsy and unnatural, his speech slow and slurred.”
“Since zombies have no thoughts or will, they don’t speak unless spoken to, and they don’t move or do anything unless ordered to,” Puma added. “And if you try to talk with a zombie, it will seem confused and disoriented, because it has no memory and no normal cognitive functions.”
“Most of that describes the, uh, individual that I met last night,” I said. “I thought his disorientation was because, you know, he had just lost a
hand
.”
“Okay, time out. I believe that you saw something really weird last night, but it’s time to get off this zombie train to nowhere,” Jeff said to me. “How about this theory instead? You did see Darius on the street last night, but he wasn’t a zombie. He was reanimated by technology, not by voodoo.”
“What sort of technology animates a three- week-old corpse?” I said with a frown.
“Let’s say someone dug up his body and installed robot parts inside him.”
“But how did he answer my questions when I spoke to him?”
“Computer programming.”
“And how did he manage to struggle against the baka?”
“Remote control.”
“And what
about
the baka?” I said. “What were
they?
Robots with bad breath, drool, and dirty claws?”
He thought it over. “They were mutant dogs.”
“Good God, Jeff,” I said. “Were all your brains in your
hair
when they shaved it off?”
He looked self-conscious and ran a hand over his bald head. “You don’t think this look works, do you?”
I said to Max and Puma, “Okay, now there’s something else I don’t get. If zombies are just tools, serving the will of the bokor, then what was Darius doing wandering the streets by himself?”
“That is a puzzle,” Max agreed.
“It’s also kind of surprising that he could tell you his name,” Puma said with a frown. “Zombies are supposed to be empty inside, with no . . . Oh, wait! I’ve got it!” In her excitement, she leaped out of her chair, startling us all. She looked at Max, “When is a zombie most dangerous?”
“When its bokor commands it to commit violence or mayhem,” Max said promptly.
“No, I mean, when is it most
unpredictable?
”
Max looked puzzled for a moment, then his expression cleared and he rose to his feet, too. “When it is awakened!”
“Yes!”
“Whoa! How do you
awaken
a zombie?” I asked. “You’ve just said they’re the living dead, with no will or soul.”
“There are various ways to awaken one, in theory,” said Max. “If the zombie tastes salt or meat, for example.”
“But I thought they don’t eat or feel hunger?” I said.
“If it makes them unpredictable,” said Biko, “I’d say that’s a good reason not to feed a zombie, hungry or not.”
“Another way a zombie may awaken is if it hears someone it knew in life calling it by name. But again, that’s a theory,” said Max. “I have never actually seen a zombie or studied with a bokor.”
“The essence of it is,” Puma said, “that the zombie has an experience that reminds it of being alive. And so it awakens.”
“In much the way that a specific taste or smell can evoke a powerful memory within a living person, so that the person feels transported back to the place or event in question,” Max said. “Alternately, something may go wrong with the bokor’s spell, and so the zombie begins to slip free of the sorcerer’s control. All magic is notoriously unpredictable, after all, and dark magic especially so, because it is governed by such mercurial influences.”
I said, “So you think Darius, er, woke up?”
“Quite possibly,” said Max.
“I don’t like to hear myself asking this,” Jeff said, “but what’s so dangerous and unpredictable about an awakened zombie?”
“Well, instead of an empty vessel just serving the bokor’s will,” Puma said, “now you have a soulless creature trying to exercise its own will, without morality, self-control, or memory. And there’s no telling what it’ll do or what might happen.”
“So now that he’s awake, Darius won’t just go back to his apartment and open a bottle of wine?” Jeff asked.