CHAPTER 2
Zombie Cop
"Driscal! In my office!" bellowed Lieutenant Brigs. For a moment most activity in the room came to a stop as other detectives glanced at Frank Driscal and several of them snickered. The Precinct Captain had visited Brigs a short time ago, and when he left, the old man hadn't been smiling. The entire office sensed that something was coming down, something big and probably in some way very bad. Even the victims, punks and perps involuntarily visiting the office sensed that something was up and also glanced at Frank, the apparent focus for whatever was happening. They saw only a slightly pudgy past-middle aged cop. But the other cops surmised that something serious was up: something nasty for Detective Sargent Frank Driscal the zombie to worry about. They all breathed sighs of relief once they finally realized that they weren't the ones being summoned by Brigs.
"Shit!" Frank muttered, as he stood and walked away from his desk and computer workstation. What now? He was already over his eyeballs in cases: special cases that involved his special skills, most of them off the books. Brigs knew that and so did the Captain. Generally they let him and his little silent partners alone to pursue whatever cases they wanted to pursue and they usually liked the results. They actually appreciated Frank's detective work even more since his death.
That hadn't always been the case. His bosses had actually tried to fire him two years ago, when they finally noticed that he was dead and a zombie. The Police Union didn't seem to give a damn that he was a zombie, though anti-zombie prejudice in the Police-Force and in society in general was still high. Of course now there were laws on the books to protect zombie rights, and the police were supposed to help enforce those, but to most people human bodies controlled by intelligent ants through use of three-inch long ticks attached to their spines was never going to be anything but repugnant and cause for discrimination. Frank would have been fired for one reason or another, but unknown powers from on-high had forced the NYPD to keep him on. The powers were unknown to most humans, but Frank knew that it had to be jant political influence. The jant Eastern Consortium wanted Frank Driscal on the job.
The NYPD hadn't been sorry that they kept him on, for the most part. It turns out that Frank could solve cases that ordinary human cops couldn't. The City was full of new kinds of crimes, crimes never dreamt of in earlier times - many of them jant related. Not all American jant colonies belonged to the relatively stable jant Eastern Consortium. A sizable percentage of colonies went rogue, and often that involved zombies and jant/human conflict. Frank helped maintain order over rogue jants as well as rogue humans. He was a very busy cop.
But that was the big picture view that Frank didn't really give-a-shit about. Mostly Frank and the jant colony that he was partnered with simply went after local bad guys and didn't think about any big pictures. Collectively Frank and his jant colony partners didn't have the time or mental resources for big picture issues. Too much 'small picture' crap was going on in the City; far too much for a tired old literally dead-on-his feet cop controlled by a small semi-rogue jant colony to worry about. Frank 'lived' life one case at a time; everything else was needless distraction.
Frank walked into Brig's little office and closed the door behind him. "What's up Boss?" he asked. Mark Brigs, a huge middle-aged hulk of a black man, looked up from behind his desk and smiled at his star weirdo detective. Brigs wore a med-tick, Frank noticed from the silent telepathic jant/tick chatter. Well that was something new! There was a small portable cooler next to the desk that held a hundred or so jants - a link in the line of telepathic communications between Brigs and the Consortium-aligned jant colony in the trunk of the man's car.
However Driscal's own jant colony informed him that the jant chatter directed to and from Brigs was to cure cancer in the man, not to control most of his life functions and actions. Brigs wasn't a zombie; not yet anyway. Brigs was simply a patient being cured of disease by a med-tick and jants, like millions of other humans world-wide. The jants didn't have enough resources to control very many zombie humans; Brigs would very likely never be a zombie.
"Your jants say that all your cancer will be completely gone within a week, Lieutenant," Frank noted.
"Good!" said Brigs. "I can't wait to get this damn tick thing off and out of my back. Ugly damned thing! But I didn't call you in here for that, Driscal. I've got a new case for you; something right up your bug-brained alley."
"I already have a case, Brigs: that big jant-run sex ring in South Manhattan." Some jant colonies went hyper-rogue when through med-tick treatments of humans they experienced strong instances of human pain or pleasure. In that way human addictions could be passed on to jant colonies in a second-hand sort of way. In this case three big neighboring jant colonies had become addicted to human sex and drugs. Two dozen humans, half of them zombies and the other half significantly influenced by med-ticks that were also treating their less serious medical conditions, were perpetually engaged in sex and drugs to satisfy the insatiable need for pleasure of the associated rogue jant colonies. These jants had become addicted to human sex and drug responses. That was not as bad as becoming addicted to serial killings of humans, but it wasn't good. It was an incurable disease, from the jant perspective, with destruction of the addicted jant colonies the only currently known remedy.
"The SWAT team juiced-dead those rogue jant colonies last night, Frank," said Brigs. "Nothing left now but some clean up. Most of the humans involved are weirded out but will survive, maybe even a couple of the more prominent dead ones. This new case involves the disassembly of a Stone-Coat in Brooklyn."
"I don't do Brooklyn cases and I don't work Stone-Coat disassembly cases," said Frank.
"You'll work this one," said Brigs. "This one has VIP interest; interest so high on the food chain that even the Captain don't know who's interested. A VIP living in Brooklyn claims some kind of connection to the new Stone-Coat disassembly case that popped up this morning. He says two kids were kidnapped in the incident: one daughter nineteen and the other five years old that he is also related to. Guy's name is Ed Rumsfeld. You ever hear of him?"
Frank didn't recall the name, but his silent jant partners did. "Caucasian Mohawk Chief, right?"
"And himself some kind of VIP from human, jant, and Stone-Coat standpoints," said Brigs. "His name triggered automatic alarms that apparently notified city, state, and federal officials. Never seen anything like it! Then all kinds of shit came down on the Captain from high-on-high, he came down on me, and now I'm coming down on you. This case is big, really big, at least politically."
"Sure," said Frank. "So it's VIPs that are involved, and you know how fucking politically correct I am with VIPs. Usually I tell them to go fuck themselves when I meet them. So how am I the right guy for this case?"
"They want you for the little buddies linked into your fat head, Discal: they want a zombie detective! Look around the office, Frank; you're the only damn zombie cop we've got! Work hand in hand with Rumsfeld on this. Follow his lead, as long as what he wants to do is reasonable. Stick with him like glue. Protect him and help him get back his kidnapped kin safely. That's the job in a nutshell."
"I work alone," said Driscal, "just me and my little bug buddies. I don't work with anyone else and I don't babysit nobody, not even VIPs."
"You'll do it this time," said Brigs. "Now get your lazy jant-whipped ass and your little bug-buddies across the river to Brooklyn pronto. The Greenpoint area just across the river. Set up to meet with Rumsfeld and then stick with him 24-7 until the case is solved."
Frank would have argued more but oddly his little bug buddies weren't supporting him. They were busy communicating with other jant colonies about the case, he realized, something they vary rarely did. They were so busy yapping with other colonies that Frank experienced some difficulty walking. Hopefully the little buggers would remember to keep his heart going.
It was devilishly cold out, especially for frostbite-prone zombies, and before stepping out of the nice warm precinct office space, Fran
k awkwardly zipped on his hooded winter coat that was lined with Stone-Coat manufactured thermal material, and pulled on his leggings and calf-high boots.
Not for the first time, he thought about moving south to warmer weather before he was dead-dead. The cold of New England was no damned place for a zombie and his warmth-loving jant colony. On the other hand, the South was overrun with invasive and mutant critters. Giant snakes and birds. Weird fish and insects. Parasitic worms that would try to eat his poor already challenged legally dead body! OK, on reflection maybe the City wasn't so bad!
In the cold unheated Precinct Police garage, he unplugged the electric and hydrogen fuel hook-ups that kept his all-wheel drive Humvee warm and ready to go, and kept the jant colony in the back of the vehicle comfortably warm and active. The Humvee was charged up for several days of operation; hopefully this new case would be long over before recharging became necessary. The Humvee was also well-stocked with types of jant foods that had a long shelf-life, though some fresh food would have to be obtained during the case for both man and insects.
Once inside his big ancient Humvee Frank had to unzip his heavy coat, even though the cabin was considerably cooler than the rear enclosed compartment that helped to comfortably house his jant colony. "Take us to the corner of Manhattan Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint, in Brooklyn," he told the ancient Humvee control computer, as the hydrogen-fueled engine roared to life.
He preferred manual control, but knew that his sluggish jant-controlled reflexes weren't up to the task of driving on slick winter roads. Motor control had been partly lost from his brain when he died two years ago in the drug-bust shoot-out; a nine-millimeter slug to the brain will sometimes do that. However most of his 'higher' cognitive brain functions survived. He had been very lucky; or so they told him when he woke up a month later in the hospital with three med-ticks attached to his spine. Right. Lucky. That was the story of his life all right: one fucking lucky break after another.
It had snowed another ten inches last night, and the streets though already plowed were ice-lined and slick and difficult even with computer-aided four-wheel drive. And it was starting to snow yet again! It was only mid-December and already snow was pilled all around the cleared streets and sidewalks to man-height and higher, even though human and Stone-Coat crews worked 24-7 to cart it off to be dumped into the already swollen rivers. And it was still officially Fall! Too bad Global Warming involved so damn much snow!
Traffic was ridiculous even though the morning rush hour was long past and the mid-day mini-rush hadn't started yet. Most New Yorkers of course walked and/or used the subways and Sky Rails and but still managed to clog most ground-level roads with vehicles: mostly under-sized and underpowered fully electric cars and trucks that inched along anemically along City streets. When he was a kid Frank used to collect holographic videos of old-time gasoline-powered cars that could out-speed even the hydrogen-fuel aided cop-cars of today.
For a while Frank found himself in traffic that was slowed by the passage of a sixty-foot tall Ice Giant that walked ponderously down the middle of the street in front of the Humvee. Most City sewers and other underground utilities had fortunately been reinforced to accommodate the behemoths, and Frank hoped that this one didn't inadvertently create any impassible yard-deep potholes with its eight-foot long diamond-clawed feet. The massive stone critter had to weigh at least a couple-hundred tons, Frank knew. Even on a dull snowy day it's 'stone coat' of diamonds glittered and glowed dully, as did the gigantic solid diamond claws of its feet and hands. Fortunately it was only twenty degrees Fahrenheit and the giant could efficiently freeze and melt water to drive his hydraulic locomotion and move it over eight miles an hour, which was almost as fast as the normal traffic flow anyway.
Stone-Coats had it easy compared to zombies, Frank figured. Of all the forms that Stone-Coats could assume, the Ice Giants such as this one spooked out him and his jants the most: so much size and power and computer-like alien intelligence! Worst of all they were always so damned calm, patient, and logical! This one made a right turn that took it out of Frank's path, but it turned its SUV-sized head to stare with its red-glowing, saucer-sized eyes at Frank and his Humvee as they drove past it. It could probably read the EM signature of the Humvee and knew it was a cop car.
As the Humvee drove itself, Frank returned the stare of the Giant. It looked something like a gigantic deformed white bear that walked on its hind-legs, except its arms, diamond claws, and beaver-like diamond incisors were proportionally far too big. He could well imagine such a creature chewing down trees and carrying them off.
Frank's jant colony told him more about Ed Rumsfeld. It turned out that the lucky guy was married to none-other than Ann Richards, who was essentially the leading figure in the UN and even at over fifty years old was still quite a dish of a woman, in Frank's human half's opinion. Frank remembered seeing her in person once, over a decade ago when he was still alive, walking for exercise in Central Park near where the old zoo used to be. She still turned heads and turned on male hormones.
Frank's male hormones could now only be turned on through his jants, and that only very rarely happened nowadays. It was too dangerous to the jants for their zombie to get involved with sex or drugs or anything else good that might lead to their addiction. Abstinence was the safest though dullest course. Frank's current zombie lifestyle was even more dull and empty than his pre-death human lifestyle had been. Maybe it was a good thing that he lacked both the hormones and synapses to worry about that.
His jants continued to acquire intel on Rumsfeld. Ed Rumsfeld's jant and Stone-Coat connections were even more interesting than his human connections. He was said to be a Mohawk Chief for both the local City Mohawks and that famous tribe up-north where the Stone-Coats originally came from. Plus he was telepathic! Plus he was said to be Clan Leader for the Mohawk Jant Clan, whatever the hells that meant. Most strangely of all his jants said that Rumsfeld was a close friend of the Creator. Now what the hell did that mean? Creator? The ignorant rogue jant colony that supported his life didn't know.
Whatever it all meant the jant colony that he always carried with him in the trunk of his unmarked Humvee squad car to keep his dead body animated was all atwitter and in touch with other jant colonies: something that his little rogue colony usually avoided. In general the less rogue contact with the jant Eastern Consortium the better for any rogue. But in this case the Consortium, Stone-Coats, the Government, powerful VIPs, and even the UN might be involved. This was big all right, and Frank didn't like it. Another nice straight-forward case of jant colony sex and drug addiction via zombie proxies would have been much more comfortable.
Besides that, the recent rash of Stone-Coat disassembles had everyone spooked, including the Stone-Coats themselves. Something super powerful and deadly was trashing New York City Stone-Coats! Frank didn't want to personally confront who/what was doing that! But a job was a job.