Sons of Darkness

by Gail Z. Martin

  Brent let Travis take the lead heading up the walk. They stood on the porch, waiting for someone to answer the doorbell. “Mrs. Anderson?” Travis asked in what Brent had come to think of as his “priest voice.”

  The woman in the doorway was probably in her late thirties, but worry and loss made her look at least a decade older. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the rumpled sweats and lack of makeup told Brent the woman was too consumed by grief to care about anything as trivial as appearance.

  “You’re the one who called. I recognize your voice.” She eyed Brent as if wondering how he factored into whatever story Travis had given to win them access. “You’re not a reporter, are you?” she asked.

  Brent shook his head. “No ma’am,” he replied, with a little more drawl than usual. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Come on in.” Shelby Anderson led the way into a cluttered living room. The couch and end tables were covered with newspaper clippings and printed-out screenshots from TV news, all of them about the black truck disappearances. She cleared room for them to sit and took the recliner opposite the couch.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police,” she said, tucking a strand of stray hair behind one ear. “Aisha liked working at the QuickMart. Her co-workers were nice, and she said there wasn’t as much drama as there had been at the last place she worked.”

  “Which was?” Brent prompted.

  “Aisha wanted to go to college when she graduated,” Shelby said. “She’d been working since she was fifteen to save money. And none of that money has been touched, so I know she didn’t run off with some boy like the police suggested.” She took a deep breath. “She waited tables, flipped burgers, cleaned houses, and babysat. My Aisha’s a good worker,” she added, slipping into using the present tense.

  “So she hadn’t fought with anyone recently? A boyfriend, a girlfriend, someone from a former job?” Travis asked.

  Shelby shook her head. “People like Aisha. She’s the one who brings everyone together. The whole town’s been upset.” Shelby sniffed back tears and pulled a tissue from a pocket to dab her eyes. “It’s got everyone up in arms,” she went on. “There’ve been search parties and roadblocks looking for that truck, and people chipped in on a reward. Aisha was everyone’s friend. It’s been hard.”

  Travis frowned like he picked up something Brent hadn’t. “I’m sure it’s been awful for everyone,” he murmured. “I know you’ve had your mind on other things, but have you noticed anything else unusual going on lately? People reacting strangely?”

  Shelby blew her nose, then wiped away tears. “It just seems like the whole world’s gone crazy, if you want to know the truth,” she confessed. “Mr. Van Patten hanged himself last Tuesday, and no one had a clue things weren’t good with him. Then my neighbor’s uncle fell inside a silo on his farm, and the methane gas killed him before they could get him out. Ted O’Connell got mad at his boss and shot up the hardware store, and the church youth group got into a bad bus accident.” She looked overwhelmed. “And my Aisha is gone. I don’t know what this world is coming to.”

  From the glint in Travis’s eyes, Brent figured his new partner had a theory to tie all the horrible events together. That much bad luck couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. More like a big city-sized package of awful crammed into a teeny-tiny town. Something’s wrong, Brent thought.

  “Would you mind if we took a look at her room?” he asked.

  Shelby sniffled, then nodded. “Go ahead. The police already went through her things. It was…intrusive. But if it brings her back—”

  “I promise we’ll be respectful.” Brent led the way, with Travis a few steps behind. He opened drawers, looked through her closet, checked under the bed, the way he had been trained by the cops. Nothing looked even slightly suspicious. He glanced at Travis and shook his head.

  “We’ve taken enough of your time,” Travis said, in the well-rehearsed tone Brent associated with pastors. It didn’t mean the clergy were insincere, it just meant they had a lot of practice soothing people on the verge of freaking out. Yet another reason to work together. I suck at those kinds of conversations.

  Shelby walked them to the door, and Travis assured her that they would continue to explore every lead on the black truck abductions. Brent held his tongue until they were back in the Crown Vic.

  “Spill. You’ve figured something out.”

  Before Travis could answer, his phone rang. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the name “Derek” on the screen and thumbed the call to put it on speakerphone. “I’ve got you on speaker so my partner, Brent, can hear you. What’s up?”

  “Zombies,” a man’s voice replied. “I heard from Erin, over in Milesburg. She’s been getting calls about people who should be dead showing up along Route 150. Several sightings called in, but when the cops show up, the zombies are gone.”

  “Shit,” Travis muttered. “Is Erin picking up anything on her own?” he asked, and Brent wondered what necessitated the code.

  “Yeah, but you know how it is with her,” Derek replied, “she gets the message, but not the address. She’s sure this isn’t a hoax.”

  “No, I’m sure it’s not. Okay,” Travis said, pinning the phone between his chin and shoulder as he started the car. “I’m about forty minutes away from Milesburg. Any idea of where on Route 150 I should be looking?”

  “Cemeteries, for starters,” Derek replied. “Churchyards, family plots. Where else would zombies come from?”

  “Morgues?”

  “Not mine, and I think it would be on the news already if people were popping up at the County Hospital morgue.”

  “You’ve got a point.” Travis put the phone down as he pulled away from the curb and headed for I-80. “Any idea why those particular zombies are on the move?”

  “Nope. But Benjamin might.”

  “Fuck. I hadn’t thought about that,” Travis said. “We’ll swing by on the way and see if he knows something. Thanks for the tip.”

  “I’ve asked off for the rest of the day,” Derek replied. “I’m leaving now, so I’ll meet you at the abandoned convenience store on 150. I figure maybe I can help. And I need to know what’s going on, in case any of my corpses decide to go walkabout.”

  Travis ended the call, and they rode in silence for a few minutes until they merged into highway traffic. “You want to decode any of that?” Brent asked. It was clear that Travis had a relationship with the caller, one that included knowing exactly what sort of “side gig” kept Travis busy. “Was that part of your Night Vigil?”

  Travis blew out a breath. “Yeah. Derek is the Jefferson County head coroner. He’s also got some extra abilities that come in handy, like being able to talk to the dead.”

  “Not sure that’s a good thing, in his line of work.” Brent frowned. “How is that different from what you can do?”

  Travis shrugged. “I’m a medium. I can hear and speak to ghosts, but I can’t compel them. Derek is a necromancer. So if someone’s raising the dead, he’s going to take that personally. As for the rest, if he can get tips that help the cops catch the killer, he passes them along. It doesn’t always succeed, but he tries to make the best of what he’s got to work with.”

  “And the Night Vigil?”

  “They’re people like you and me…and others with a variety of psychic and magical abilities…who have made mistakes and want to do better,” he answered quietly, keeping his eyes on the highway as if glancing at Brent would reveal too much. “Sometimes, pretty spectacular mistakes, since they’ve got power but no training, and human beings can make very bad choices.”

  “Pretty sure I have a gold medal in fuck-ups,” Brent replied. “And other than being a demon magnet, I don’t even know if I have any abilities.”

  “So the Night Vigil are the people I’ve gotten to know, all across the area, who have talents they can’t admit, but they want to do some good with them, maybe make amends. One way or ano
ther, they found me, and I introduced them to each other, and they’re sort of a first-responder network for the supernatural,” Travis said. “A lot of them work nights because they’d rather sleep when it’s light out.”

  “I totally understand,” Brent answered, having his own dread of the dark. He felt an odd pang of jealousy. All the years he had struggled with what he learned the hard way about fighting off demons and talking to ghosts in his dreams, and there had been no one to confide in who wouldn’t think he was crazy. Maybe Danny was onto something when he pushed him together with Travis.

  “I figured you would,” Travis said with a rueful smile. “Anyhow, when they see or sense something weird, they let me know. Erin is a 911 operator, but she’s also a clairaudio—she can hear cries for help from a distance.”

  “That must come in handy.”

  “Not when she has no idea where the person is or why they are calling,” Travis responded.

  “Ouch.”

  “That’s the problem with a lot of ‘gifts.’ They don’t come with instruction manuals, most people can’t get anyone to believe them or don’t dare ask until they’re an adult and have lived with these abilities they can’t control for years. If it doesn’t destroy them—or they don’t fuck up fantastically—they try to figure out how to make the best of it.”

  Brent had the very clear impression Travis included himself in that description.

  “And Benjamin?”

  Travis was silent as he maneuvered around a slow car, shifted into the passing lane, and accelerated. “Benjamin’s brother, Tom, was dying. Rare disease. He researched every doctor, every treatment, no matter how unproven. When science didn’t help, he turned to magic. Then Tom died, and Benjamin couldn’t deal with that, so he found a way to raise Tom from the dead—as a zombie. Kept him alive for years on the brains of two-bit pimps and low-level drug dealers, until Tom finally put a bullet through his own brain to end it all.”

  Brent’s throat tightened, and he turned to look out the window. He could understand and identify with Benjamin’s obsession all too well.

  “Back at the house, with Shelby Anderson, you looked like you figured something out,” Brent said after a long silence.

  “I’m not sure,” Travis admitted. “But when she said that everyone in town took Aisha’s disappearance hard, it made me think about the people you and I have already run across who’ve been affected. They’ve all been grieving.”

  Brent thought about the suicides in the ruins of the mining town, and the stories he and Travis had shared about the spike in demonic activity. “Yeah. Maybe that has something to do with it,” he mused. “Grief makes people vulnerable. Willing to do anything to fix what went wrong or stop the pain.”

  Travis nodded. “I don’t think that’s all of it. But I think the grief is involved with what’s happening. And the shootings and suicides and accidents create more people who have lost someone, generating more grief.”

  Brent felt a spike of anger that went right to his gut at the idea of someone—human or demonic—using grief as a weapon. Despite the years that had passed, his own losses burned brightly in his dreams, wounds that might scar but would never completely heal. He remembered just how raw he had been in the days after his family’s deaths, and in the weeks after his squad’s encounter with Mavet. If he hadn’t already vowed to hunt down whatever was causing the violence near Cooper City, Brent was fully on board now.

  “Can Derek stop the zombies?” Brent asked. “I’ve run into demons and vengeful ghosts and shifters, plus a few ghouls, but I haven’t fought zombies.”

  “We can stop the zombies, even without Derek,” Travis replied. “Regular bullet to the head, or decapitation. Burn the bodies. I can send their souls on with Last Rites. But,” he said, weaving through traffic to avoid a slow semi, “Derek can figure out what magic raised them. And if he can withdraw that magic, we might not have to fight at all.”

  Brent cleared his throat. “So…are they like on TV?”

  Travis took his eyes off the road long enough to meet his gaze. “No. They’re worse.”

  They drove into Milesburg, a tiny town kept alive by Social Security and the visitors to the nearby state game lands. A budget hotel sat near the highway exit, along with a gas station and a couple of fast food chain restaurants. Not far away, the State Store occupied one storefront in a seventies’ era plaza. Travis angled the Crown Vic into a parking space.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s talk to Benjamin.”

  Brent looked around the state-run liquor store when they entered, and figured it told him a lot about the area. Unlike the Pittsburgh stores, this one had no wall of flavored vodkas and high-end scotch. The small store carried the basics—rum, vodka, and whiskey—without the trendy specialty items or expensive upscale brands. All someone would need to numb the pain, no frills required.

  “Can I help you?” A man called from behind the counter. Brent guessed that the clerk was in his late forties, but he had the look about him of someone who’d had a rough life, and the reddened flush and sallow skin of a hard drinker. His face fell as he recognized Travis. “Oh. It’s you. What’s going on?”

  Travis looked around as if to assure they were alone in the store with the clerk Brent guessed was Benjamin. Brent took up a spot near the door where he could hear their conversation while watching for incoming customers.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” Travis picked up a bottle of Jack Daniels and walked to the register. “I got a call about zombies out on route 150.”

  Benjamin’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit!” He reddened. “Sorry.” Travis shrugged to excuse the language. “I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

  Travis took out a credit card to pay for the whiskey. “I didn’t think you did. But I wondered if you’ve heard anything…sensed anything…that might be connected.”

  Benjamin paused, staring off into space as he thought. “Been busier this month than I ever remember, and I’ve worked here for close to ten years,” he said. Brent had the feeling that Benjamin might be one of the store’s best customers, a radar that came from shared abuse. “People just seem down on their luck, you know? Like they can’t catch a break. Couple of house fires, some hikers got killed out in the state park, and from what people say at the diner, a slew of unfortunate diagnoses. People have a bad turn, they stop by here to get comfortably numb,” he said with a shrug. “And there’s been some crazy talk, about seeing dead people who’ve come back, but so far, no one’s hauled one into town to show everybody.”

  “The zombies have been showing up on Route 150, going toward Mount Eagle.”

  “Fuck. You mean those stories are real?”

  Travis nodded. “Afraid so. Can you think of anything out that way that might be where the zombies are coming from?”

  Benjamin pondered the question while he rang up Travis’s purchase. “There are a few churches that have graveyards,” he said. “Used to be a funeral home on that road, too, but it closed down a while ago.”

  “Any local legends? Scary stories about that stretch of road that kids tell around the campfire?” Travis fished.

  “About zombies?” Benjamin shook his head. “No. That’s one of the things I liked about this town.”

  “Keep an ear open, okay?” Travis asked as he took his bottle and stuck his credit card back in his wallet. “I have the feeling we’re going to see a lot more weirdness before everything’s said and done.”

  The sour look on Benjamin’s face suggested that he really didn’t want to know, but he nodded. Travis headed out the door, with Brent a few steps behind him, and put the bottle in the trunk.

  “You think he was telling the truth?” Brent asked as he slid into the front seat.

  “Yeah. Benjamin was a one-shot problem,” Travis replied. “He did what he did because he couldn’t stand losing his brother. And that went so horrifically wrong that I don’t think he’s going to be tempted to go into business raising othe
r people’s dead relatives.”

  Brent repressed a shudder. “Good to know.” As much as he missed Danny—and sometimes his absence felt like an amputated limb—he’d been content with memories and dreams. Raising him from the dead had never crossed Brent’s mind, and it made him nauseous that he now apparently knew two people who could have made that happen.

  “Derek should be waiting for us,” Travis said, and if he noted Brent’s reaction, he was tactful enough not to mention it. “Let’s see if we can stop this party.”

  Derek sat in his gray Audi sedan in the gravel parking lot of a tumbledown empty convenience store. Travis pulled up beside him, and Derek got out, locked up, and slid into the back seat of the Crown Vic. “I figure the car’ll be safer here than anywhere we’re going,” he said.

  “You bring any weapons?” Brent asked, aware of the gun in his shoulder rig, and the weapons bag in the trunk.

  “Don’t need them.” Derek tapped his temple. “It’s all up here.”

  “Benjamin doesn’t know anything about the incidents,” Travis reported.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?” Derek questioned.

  Travis shrugged, then eased the Crown Vic out of the gravel lot. “Not really. I get the feeling he keeps to himself. I doubt he goes looking for that kind of news.” He glanced into the rearview mirror to make eye contact with Derek. “Can you sense anything?”

  Brent caught a glimpse of Derek in the side mirror. The coroner took a deep breath, then closed his eyes. He remained still, eyes shut, for so long that Brent thought the man might have fallen asleep. As Travis neared a side road, Derek’s eyes flew open.

  “I feel the power,” he said. “It’s…all wrong. Not like it usually is. The power feels twisted, tainted.”

  “Is it natural?” Travis asked, splitting his attention between the GPS on his phone and the road ahead as he turned the car down a side road that led between forest and empty fields. A small white clapboard church sat on the left, and Brent saw a brick fence around a graveyard beside it. Travis pulled into the parking lot and turned the car, so it was ready for a quick escape.