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  Life Among the Tombstones

  An Allie Nighthawk Mystery Prequel

  H.R. Boldwood

  Life Among the Tombstones:

  An Allie Nighthawk Mystery

  by

  H.R. Boldwood

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  Copyright © 2020

  H.R. Boldwood

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  Third Street Press publication date:

  October 2020

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  Cover Design: Kristin Bryant

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  All Rights Are Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948142-53-3 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948142-54-0 (e-book)

  Praise for H.R. Boldwood

  “If Anita Blake and Stephanie Plum had a lovechild, it would be Allie Nighthawk. One of the funniest and freshest takes on the zombie genre I've read, with genuine heart at the core of the humor and gore.”

  Dana Fredsti, author of the Ashley Parker series and the Spawn of Lilith series

  “Anita Blake and October Daye, scoot over to make room for Allie Nighthawk, the fiercest and funniest heroine to hit the streets since Buffy first quipped while laying the undead to rest. The Corpse Whisperer is smart, witty, and so much fun you may just start it again as soon as you finish it.”

  Lisa Morton, Six-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author and co-editor of Haunted Nights

  “The Corpse Whisperer redefines the zombie genre. Allie Nighthawk is the hero we all need more of.”

  Tom Deady, Bram Stoker award-winning author

  “H.R. Boldwood is the Janet Evanovich of zombie hunters. She’s fierce and funny and smart, just like her heroine. She’s rejuvenated the zombie genre with her fresh new take, in a kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, balls-to-the-wall series you’re going to want to read, time and again.”

  Christiana Miller, author of Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She’s Dead

  Summary

  Life Among the Tombstones

  In this prequel to The Corpse Whisperer series, financially challenged zombie hunter, Allie Nighthawk, returns to her hometown of Cincinnati and finds herself knee-deep in murder, mayhem, and zombies. Can she solve not one but two murders, and get away unscathed — when the good guys might not be so good, and a presence from her past returns for revenge?

  Contents

  1. Flat Broke and Busted

  2. My Kingdom for a Ketchup Packet

  3. Turn Right at the South Pacific

  4. Headbutt

  5. More of a Shudder, Really

  6. Who’s Going to Mop the Floor?

  7. Opie Does Battle

  8. News Flash

  9. Damn You, Harry Delk

  10. So, You’re the Asshole?

  11. The Tip of the Iceberg

  12. Nani Nani Boo Boo

  13. How Many Zombies in a Horde?

  14. Well, Don’t You Have Some Big-Ass Balls?

  15. Nobody Likes Ankle-Biters

  16. Run This Up the Old Flagpole

  17. Never Walk Away

  18. No, No, No

  19. Disturbing Visuals

  20. Big Ol’ Asshat

  21. Jesus Wept

  22. Not Exactly Batting a Thousand

  23. Game on, Baby!

  24. I’m Just Wild About Harry

  25. Life Among the Tombstones

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also By H.R. Boldwood

  This book is affectionately dedicated to Lisa Morton, friend and mentor, without whose unfailing support and encouragement The Corpse Whisperer series would not exist.

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  It’s also dedicated to my husband Pete, beta reader extraordinaire, as well as Joe, Katie, Tim, Alicia, Isabelle, Ava, and Colette. Love you all to the moon and back.

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  Last but not least, it’s dedicated to the memory of two of Allie Nighthawk’s biggest fans:

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  Rick Burdick who faithfully served as my law enforcement and weaponry expert, and Barbara Kuroff, a wonderfully gifted writer and delightful friend. I wish both of you were here to read the rest of the series as it unfolds. But I know you’re up there smiling.

  1

  Flat Broke and Busted

  Zombie hunting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when you’re down to forty bucks for gas, a half-pint of Jack, two packs of Ramen Noodles and a freakish skill that comes in handy sometimes — a skill like raising the dead. Most days that’s as useful as tits on a bull. But on a good day, I get paid for it.

  Corpse whisperers like me don’t grow on trees. We don’t hang out shingles or advertise BOGO deals or offer 90 days same as cash. Ours is what you’d call a niche market, and frankly, some of us are less diligent than others about putting down the corpses we’ve raised. That’s where the hunting part of zombie hunting comes in handy.

  Is this a morbid and occasionally sketchy way to pay the bills? Maybe. But I’m Allie Nighthawk, the best of the badass zombie hunters, and that’s how I roll. Unfortunately, after ringing in the New Year, I was also rolling broke.

  You’d think that saving the world from deadhead-ageddon would pay well. Think again. I work for myself, subcontracting my talents to local law enforcement agencies. So, when the last moth deserted my wallet, I emptied my bank account and paid for my weapons arsenal to be delivered to a new destination. Shipping munitions costs more than a black market kidney, not to mention there’s a shit ton of applicable rules, so I did what any cash poor arms aficionado would do. I hired Three Men and a Truck and lied my ass off. I told them they were shipping golf clubs. Lots and lots of golf clubs — and a fifty-gallon drum of something marked ‘golf balls.’

  Problem solved.

  After that, I threw the noodles and my clothes into a duffel, donned my thermal gear, and climbed onto my Harley Lowrider, vowing to make the most of an unexpected warm snap. Then I lit out of St. Louis and headed back to my hometown, Cincinnati.

  There were more exciting places on earth, but I owned an empty house there — the house on Pitty Pat Lane that my father had left me when he died three years earlier. The house where I was born some twenty-six years ago. I hadn’t been back since Dad’s funeral.

  Once I hit the outskirts of town, I made a point of scouting out my business prospects beneath the underpasses and railroad trestles, where biters tend to lurk. It was almost midnight — the perfect time for a recon mission since biters come out at night.

  Knowing that I’d have a rent-free roof over my head was a great start, but if there weren’t enough zombies to wrangle in Cincinnati, I’d be rationing noodles and swiping ketchup packets from street vendors to make tomato soup. I’d seen lean times before, and I could get as creative as the next guy tracking down dinner. But I had limits. Dumpster diving was out of the question. Nobody knows better than a zombie hunter what comes out of dumpsters.

  Something caught my eye in the glow of a streetlight. Two uniforms were rousting a skel beneath the Third Street viaduc
t. I veered off the exit ramp, stopped about thirty feet away, and turned off my bike to watch the show.

  One of the officers caught me from the corner of his eye and waved me off. “Police business, ma’am. Back off, for your own safety.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, not moving a muscle.

  The suspect spun toward the sound of my voice. In the yellow glare of the halogen street lights, his face — pale and shadowed with several day’s growth — gave off a flat effect. But it was his vacant stare that made me look twice. To an uneducated eye, he could have almost passed for one of the city’s homeless.

  Almost.

  The string of drool that dangled from his lower lip and the tremor in his limbs suggested something else. Well, that and the way he twitched. He didn’t shiver. He didn’t shudder. He did the full-on undead boogaloo.

  Only one thing twitches like that. Freshies — zombies infected within the last seven days. They come across as almost normal except for the whole drooling, twitching thing and the funky, ‘south of cheese’ smell they give off.

  Target acquired, baby.

  There were rotters in Over the Rhine. How many remained to be seen. With any luck, I’d be able to afford crackers for my ketchup soup.

  Officers TweedleDee and TweedleDum clearly had no idea what they were dealing with. They mollycoddled the meatbag, trying to shoo him down the road like some hapless drifter. A dangerous mistake, expecting a freshie to cooperate — especially a twitcher.

  TweedleDee hustled the rotter across the pavement. “Shelterhouse is over on Gest Street, sir. You can sleep it off there. Move along, now.”

  The biter snarled, bared its teeth and twitched again. This had ugly written all over it. I climbed off my Harley and planted my feet shoulder-width apart.

  “No need to get nasty, sir,” TweedleDum said, pulling his taser. “Just move along.”

  The rotter lunged. TweedleDum fired.

  That freshie twitched like frog legs on a hot plate. But it kept coming. After a second useless burst from the officer’s taser, I moved in, slipped my Ka-Bar knife from its sheath and plunged it into the brain stem of the biter. Right in the apricot, baby. Bogie down. Then I got arrested and hauled into the 51st Precinct. I hadn’t even been in town for ten minutes. A record, even for me.

  “Murder?” The word shot from my mouth like a 9mm slug. “Say that again?”

  TweedleDum shook his bulbous head. “Where’d I lose you? When you bury a seven-inch blade into a person’s head, they call it murder.”

  Little Allie, the judgmental voice that squats in the back of my brain, took one of her typical cheap shots. Well, well, well. Look who fell into a steaming pile of shit.

  Freaking brain bitch. Somedays it’s all I can do to not scrape her out with a melon baller. I brushed her off with a quiet, “Shut up.”

  TweedleDee leaned across the table. “You want to repeat that?”

  “Look. You’ve got it all wrong.” I said, wiping the perspiration from my forehead. “Your perp was no innocent homeless guy. That thing was a biter.”

  The Tweedle brothers stared at me slack-jawed, as if I’d explained the calculation of pi. Time stood still. Crickets chirped. Tumbleweeds drifted through the room. I could have bought them both a vowel and they still would have come up empty.

  “Rotter? Meatbag? You know…the undead?” A sweat ball rolled off the tip of my nose and plinked against the table. “Oh, for shit’s sake. That skel was a fucking zombie!”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  I’d like to say I kept my cool. But anyone who knows me would never believe that. I’ll admit, it doesn’t take much to rile me. But sweet baby Jebus, what a couple of dimwitted douche-nozzles. When I called them that under my breath, they read me my rights and led me down the hallway in cuffs, to a room marked ‘Holding.’ An electronic buzzer beeped, and the door popped open.

  “Wait! Don’t I get a phone call? A cigarette…blindfold…anything?” The door slammed behind me. I closed my eyes and listened to the echo of their footsteps fade.

  The brain bitch couldn’t contain herself. You screwed the pooch this time. Even you don’t look good in prison stripes.

  “Fuck you,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, I know you ain’t talking to me, bitch.”

  When I opened my eyes, an Amazon warrior towered over me, with her fist cocked above her head, ready to take me all the way downtown. Our eyes locked. Hers had crazy bitch written all over them.

  She swung. I ducked and rolled. Her knuckles smashed into the steel door. “Son of a bitch!”

  I scuttled across the room, tripping over a third set of feet. After a quick grab at the wall to steady myself, I spun around to find a tiny, prune-faced woman, with gray hair and gunboat feet, seated on a bench along the wall. I darted my eyes back to the Amazon and got my first good look at her. Some things you can’t unsee.

  She was six-feet at least, wearing a gold lamé bustier with fuchsia hot pants, black fishnet hose and four-inch ‘fuck me’ red stilettos. Shoulder-length hoop earrings gleamed through her poufy, bottle-blonde hair. A wide swath of dark roots ran along either side of her part, giving her head a weird, reverse skunk stripe.

  The Amazon cradled her wounded right hand and tossed me a reluctant nod. “Nice move.”

  “Helluva punch,” I said, staring at the metallic paint chips on her knuckles.

  “Fucking A.” She opened her fingers with a wince and extended her hand. “Tiffany Swarovski.”

  Hardcore gangsta girl, this hoochie mama. I glanced at the blossoming bruise on her hand and opted for a friendly tap to her shoulder instead. “Allie Nighthawk. Let’s see if we can get you some ice.”

  Granny Gunboats from the bench joined the klatch. “Alma Rhineheart, ladies.” Her high-pitched voice, soft and sweet, floated through the room. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  I knew why I was there. And given her outfit, you didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to figure out why Tiffany Swarovski was there. But Alma had me puzzled. Shoplifting? Unpaid parking tickets? Curiosity got the best of me.

  “What’re you in for, Alma?”

  “Body-packing twenty pounds of herb. Who the hell does a cavity search on an old lady? Dirty bastids.”

  Tiffany and I exchanged silent glances.

  We were an impressive bunch of bitches, if I say so myself. The good, the bad, and the ugly — all in one cell. Although I wouldn’t speculate out loud which one of us was which.

  Tiffany checked her watch and stomped her foot. “Shit. Hope I get an early bond hearing. Come noon, I gotta meet a client at The Blue Note.”

  Alma snorted. “Talk about a dump.”

  “Best be watching what you say, sista.” Tiffany circled a long, curved fingernail at Alma. “You might be old, but that don’t make no never mind to me. You bleed like anybody else — maybe more if you taking one of them…anticaligula…anticalugula. One of them pills that makes you bleed like a stuck pig.”

  Tiffany plopped on the bench beside Alma and kicked off her heels with a sigh. “The Blue Note’s not so bad. They got a steady clientele. Long as I’m discreet and don’t hustle the customers, the owner lets the interested customers hustle me. The food’s good. The service, too. Least it was ’til this week, when the bartender got fired for skimming from the till. There’s worse places around.”

  A buzzer rang and the door popped open.

  A paunchy, middle-aged officer stuck his head inside. “Nighthawk? Follow me.”

  Tiffany snatched her stilettos off the floor, then put her hands on her hips. “How’d she get sprung so quick?”

  “Magic,” the officer deadpanned.

  I pointed to Tiffany’s bruised hand. “Can you bring her a bag of ice?”

  “In a minute. After I take you to Cap.”

  I nodded sayonara to the ladies and walked out the door, wondering: Who the hell is Cap? And why does he want to see me?

  2

  My Kingdom for a
Ketchup Packet

  The officer escorted me from the basement holding cells to the first floor. Then he led me through a double row of solid oak desks toward the first office on the right, which bore the nameplate: Captain Philip Dorsey. Outside of the office, a sour-faced woman, sporting ruby-red lipstick, wire-rims and a varnished topknot, perched behind her desk like a Kabuki warrior. She looked wily.

  I’m always up for a challenge.

  The battle axe stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her suit, then opened the door to Captain Dorsey’s office and stepped inside to turn on the light.

  When I followed her, she spun on her heel, flapped her batwings and shooed me back. “No one is allowed in Captain Dorsey’s office without his permission.”

  Freakin’ fussbudget. “You’re in his office.”

  “That’s different. I work here. I’ve been Captain Dorsey’s secretary for some twenty-five years.” She pointed to a worn, formerly-red vinyl chair by her desk. “Sit. Wait. And be quiet.”