Last Call: A TempleVerse Anthology Book 1 (TempleVerse Anthologies)

by Shayne Silvers

  But when the cop finally did draw the gun, I had to admit even my wild imagination hadn’t anticipated what had been lurking in the dark. The cop whirled, his gun lit by the sirens, blazing red one moment, burning blue the next. His hands shook, but his arms were steady. He was yelling something, probably a warning, but what came lurching out of the darkness didn’t seem to hear him.

  Of course, it’s hard to hear without ears.

  And this thing didn’t have any.

  What it did have were vaguely human characteristics. The creature was bipedal, shambling forward on two feet with the grace of a toddler on painkillers; it bumped into squad cars so frequently it seemed almost like a game. It wore no clothes, merely scraps wound around swathes of exposed bone. Something made me think female, even though there was no skin to speak of, no hair, and no distinguishable features. The hips maybe—too wide to be male. The first word that came to mind was the one you’d expect when you see an animated corpse: zombie. But it felt inadequate somehow, or perhaps inappropriate. I’d always thought zombies were fleshy things, covered in ichor, wearing clothes we wouldn’t be caught dead in.

  Pun intended.

  Frankly, when I thought of zombies I pictured grotesque, fumbling things I used to cringe away from like Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus, Tar Man in Return of the Living Dead, or Michael Jackson in Thriller. Part of what had made them so horrifying was how human they looked, as if each were a walking, groaning reminder of what we all eventually become. But this creature wasn’t horrifying, or at least not in that way. There was no flesh hanging in clumps on her skeletal remains like meat packed along the corners of a tuna can. In fact, she came forward on bones so dry and brittle I wondered what connected them; without cartilage, tendons, and flesh to hold them all together, bones alone should not have allowed for successful perambulation. Of course, compared to her very existence, the question seemed a bit silly.

  The officer raised his gun, still shouting as the creature closed the distance between them. When she didn’t move, he fired. The bullet tore through her sternum, blowing away a few ribs, sending shards of bone flying. But she didn’t stop walking. The cop shouted again, but this time it sounded more like a curse than a warning, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Still, he held his ground, sighting down the barrel once more.

  Another shot.

  This time, he took out the leg, blowing the knee off at the joint. The skeleton’s shin bone and foot went flying, soaring off into the night. She collapsed and, for a moment, I thought that would be it. But then she started to crawl. It was almost comical in a way—so cliche I wasn’t sure it was even real. Maybe I’d waited for Jimmy for so long I’d fallen asleep and was tucked away in my own private nightmare.

  But it was real, because even in my nightmares, I’d have been able to run. I jerked the handle a few times to no avail, screaming, hoping the cop would see me and let me out. But the uniformed cop had already begun backpedaling, keeping his distance from the crawling skeleton, which is probably why he never saw the second skeleton come up behind him.

  This one was freakishly tall and, unlike its counterpart, wore clothes—a faded red jacket and black leather boots, both littered with gaping holes. If the creature had been wearing pants when he died, he wasn’t now. Of course, that didn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around the officer, winding them around from behind like a lover. The officer jumped, startled, and glanced back at the skeleton with eyes full of primal terror. At first, I wondered why the cop didn’t simply tear the thing off; skeletons had no muscle, after all. Bone was sturdy shit, but it wasn’t like the creature could yank him down with force. Hell, without muscles lining the jaw, the thing couldn’t even bite. At worst, the ossified creature was a disconcerting accessory, like a fanny pack or a man purse.

  “Get him off ye!” I yelled, hoping he might hear me and stop staring. But then I realized what the creature was doing as the very flesh I’d been so fixated on began to knit along the creature’s bones. Tendons sprung up like rubber bands, winding around muscles that glistened red like uncooked steak. The officer shrieked as his body began to shrink in direct proportion to the creature’s growth, that beer gut sliding away like a punctured balloon, his broad, sloped shoulders squaring off to the point where his uniform hung off him the way it might a coat hanger. It was awful to watch, but I couldn’t look away. Not until his eyes went; the sight of those fleshy orbs being swallowed back into their sockets like a flower curling in on itself made me want to throw up.

  I ducked low, trying to catch my breath. What the fuck was going on? I drew my own gun, no longer the least bit concerned whether a cop saw it out or not; I doubted they’d be inclined to disarm a living, breathing woman when there were dead things out there to be, well, killed. I steeled myself and glanced up. The officer’s clothes lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. Nothing, not even his bones, seemed to have survived. The zombies, or skeletons, or whatever they’d been, were nowhere in sight.

  Not good.

  Something clipped the window behind me and I spun, sighting down the line of my arm, worried that if I shot at something within the tight confines of the car I might not hear out of my ear for at least a week. But all I saw was darkness beyond the haphazard line of cop cars. I stared for a moment longer, then released the breath I’d been holding. Still, I knew better than to let my guard down. Something was out there, lurking. Waiting for something warm and fleshy to engorge itself upon, like a tick which swallowed bone as well as blood. I wondered what my clothes would look like in a pile on the ground and shivered, then gritted my teeth.

  Not going to happen, I told myself.

  If I was going to go out like that, I wasn’t going to do it in a damn pantsuit.

  A girl has to have some standards.

  “Quinn!” Jimmy shouted. I spun back around, finger riding the trigger, safety off. Jimmy’s face was pressed against the window, eyes so wide his dark pupils swam in pools of white. “Jesus, put the gun away!” Jimmy hissed and rose, shielding me from view with his body, which put his crotch in plain view through the window.

  I lowered the gun, but didn’t holster it. “Jimmy, ye need to be careful!” I yelled. “They’re out there, and they got one of your people.”

  Jimmy sunk down again, staring at me. “What are you babbling about?” he asked.

  I pointed past him, finger thudding into the window hard enough it made me wince. “Look!” I insisted. I could still see the cop’s clothes in a pile. Jimmy followed my gaze and frowned. He held up a hand, the other clutching his gun.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “The fuck ye will,” I said. “Let me the fuck out of this car, Jimmy Collins, or I will kill ye meself!” I probably sounded hysterical, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like tight spaces and hated being locked up. Add flesh-sucking zombies, and I deserved to have a meltdown. Jimmy flicked his eyes at me, then pulled on the handle from his side. The door opened, and I spilled out onto the pavement, pressing my back against the cruiser, prepared to shoot anything that came shambling out from the darkness beyond the streetlights.

  “What is it, Quinn?” Jimmy asked, his voice a hushed whisper. Now that I was outside the car, I could hear other voices in the distance as more cops returned to their cars. The commotion, whatever it had been, seemed to have ended. I glanced at the much larger man still squatted beside me and realized I must have looked more than a little off; Jimmy’s eyes spotted the gun and narrowed. “Something’s got you spooked,” he said. “But if you don’t put that away, I’ll have to take it from you.”

  “They sucked him dry,” I muttered. I realized I didn’t want to put the gun away, that I’d rather Jimmy try to take it from me than put it away. Which meant I was more scared than I thought.

  “What did?” Jimmy asked, touching my arm lightly.

  I jumped, surveyed our immediate surroundings, then holstered my gun. Jimmy was right. If I was this jumpy, there was no telling what would happe
n once more cops showed up. I wasn’t sure if I could take the monsters without the gun, but I was damn sure I wouldn’t be able to take the cops with one. I’d just have to pray the monsters were gone and had no plans of coming back. Of course, I wasn’t sure my gun made me any safer, regardless.

  It hadn’t helped Wyatt Derp.

  I waved Jimmy off. “Go look for yourself,” I said. Jimmy searched my face then nodded and headed for the discarded uniform. He picked it up in pieces, raising the trousers with a look of concern, then the shirt. The pants hung awkwardly in places, weighed down by the cop’s holster and belt. The top by his walkie. Jimmy held the material up as if unsure what to do with the mess. He finally tossed the clothes onto a nearby cruiser and gazed at the ground, and at last his puzzled expression gave way to something I recognized: worry. Jimmy stared down at the officer’s boots, socks crumpled and lying half out like limp tongues. But what he picked up wasn’t the boots.

  It was a gun.

  Jimmy swiveled his head around as if he might find the missing cop out there, prowling the edges of the barricade, buck naked and unarmed. Yet another prank. Another hoax to dismiss. Our eyes met, and for a moment I wondered if I could lie well enough to make Jimmy think that was all it was. But then I shook my head, feeling a little like a surgeon telling a family member that their loved one didn’t make it. Except you could blame God for awful crap like that.

  Being sucked into oblivion by a corpse like you were a fucking ramen noodle?

  Let’s just say I doubted God had anything to do with it.

  Chapter 5

  Wyatt Derp’s real name was William O’Bannon. Bill to his friends, of which he seemed to have many. Bill had been one of those dependable lifers who rarely get the recognition they deserve, a cop good enough to stay in and survive it all—drug wars, gang violence, budget cuts—but not quite clever enough to make detective. I’d learned all this within only a few minutes after the rest of the cops showed up. A few of the younger officers joked that O’Bannon had run off with his mistress, in such a hurry he’d left everything behind, including his boxers. But the veterans were having none of it; Bill wasn’t the kind of guy to leave his gun lying around for just anyone to find, no matter the circumstances.

  In the end, they’d turned to me. Which was too bad, considering I had nothing to say. Now that my nerves had calmed down a little, I knew to keep my mouth shut; if I started raving about how they’d lost one of their own to flesh-sucking zombies, they’d probably toss me back into the squad car—with jewelry this time. If it had just been Jimmy and me, I might have said something. He hadn’t believed me when I’d mentioned the dragonskin gloves, but at least he’d listened. Unfortunately, perhaps sensing I had more to say than I was letting on, Detective Machado had sent the man to go get her coffee while she interrogated me.

  “What did you see?” Machado asked, probably for the third or fourth time. I tend to lose track of things when I’m ignoring someone.

  “I didn’t see anythin’,” I replied, arms folded across my stomach. I wasn’t as well endowed as some, but folding my arms over my chest usually meant hiking them up near my shoulders, which would have put my elbows directly in Machado’s suspicious face. Of course, if she kept snapping at me, I’d do that anyway.

  Another uniform approached from the darkness on the other side of the street, following a path which led past Marine Park towards Fort Independence. He flipped through the pages of a notebook, spotted us, and hurried over. I caught a bright, eager smile from him which might have been flirtatious, but reminded me more of a puppy wagging its tail. Some men, especially young men, were like that around women—as if you could ask them to do just about anything and expect to see it done. Machado noticed and grunted.

  “What is it, Cassidy?” she barked.

  Cassidy’s smile disappeared so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it. “Reports from witnesses said they saw things coming from the Fort.”

  “Things?”

  He thumbed through the notebook again. “Yeah, detective. Things. I asked them to tell me more, but most either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give me a description.”

  “Wouldn’t? Why not?” Machado asked, exasperated.

  He glanced up, looking embarrassed. “Well, because they saw zombies, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Cassidy cleared his throat and read from the notebook. “One guy said, and I quote ‘I know it’s crazy, but I swear I saw skeletons come out of the fucking ground.’ Another, ‘they moved like they weren’t human, and they didn’t have any skin.’ It goes on like that. What do you think, detective? A prank, maybe? College theater kids trying to scare the locals?”

  Not likely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what it got chalked up to. While Machado mulled that over, I surreptitiously glanced at Cassidy’s notebook, wondering how he’d managed to quote the witnesses verbatim. I saw a series of odd squiggles and lines. Shorthand, like what secretaries used for dictation. Nifty trick.

  “If it was, we’d have found them.” Machado shook her head. “What about Lukas Reynolds? Did anyone see him? Or a kid who could have matched his description?”

  “Everyone I talked to said they were too busy running to notice,” Cassidy admitted.

  “Jesus, Cassidy, is that all you got?” Machado asked. She sounded pissed. I couldn’t blame her. Despite copious evidence to the contrary, Regulars around the world refused to believe in the existence of the supernatural. According to them, magic amounted to sleight-of-hand tricks played on unsuspecting victims. Shapeshifters were exotic animals which had thus far avoided classification. Zombies were actors in gory makeup. The idea that the monsters out there were real wasn’t something Machado could present to her superiors, not if she wanted to keep her job.

  Cassidy shook his head, looking uncertain, then finally produced something from his back pocket. It was in a plastic evidence bag and took me a moment to identify. When I finally did, I took a step back, eyes wide. It was a hand. A skeletal hand so small and dainty it had to belong to a child.

  Machado stared at me, gauging my reaction. “The hell is the matter with you?” she asked. “And what the hell is that, Cassidy?”

  I answered before I could stop myself, too horrified to consider how crazy I’d sound. “The necromancer must have pulled them all up. The whole fort. Even the kids.” My voice sounded breathy, and I realized I was babbling.

  But it was true.

  The only flavor of Freak I knew who could raise the dead were necromancers. Although I’d never met one, I knew what they were capable of, at least theoretically. Closer to witches than wizards, they used rituals to summon the undead to do their bidding. From what I understood, they formed a sort of contract with the souls they summoned, offering something in return. I had no idea what this necromancer had offered, but it must have been awfully tempting—raising as many zombies as this would have cost. A lot.

  “Did you say necromancer?” Machado’s voice was hushed but intense, which should have worried me, but at the moment she scared me a hell of a lot less than the idea that there were more skeletons out there waiting to drain us all dry.

  I nodded.

  Machado had her gun out and pointed at the ground before I could say more. “Cassidy, cuff this woman. She’s coming with me.”

  The earnest beat cop hesitated, searching my face. I must have looked as surprised as he did, though, because he seemed poised to ask her to repeat herself. But Machado didn’t give him that chance. “Now, Cassidy,” she barked. “She’s got a gun holstered at her lower back. Take it, hand it to me, and then cuff her.”

  The officer did as she asked. I kept my hands out to my sides, looking as non-threatening as possible. Part of me, a big part of me, considered drawing my gun and making a break for it. But I was surrounded by cops, and Machado had her gun out already, as if looking for an excuse to use it. If I so much as twitched, I knew she’d drop me. Of course, I still didn’t know why. I frowned, but decided not
to struggle; it wasn’t often I got held at gunpoint and felt the warm glow of righteous indignation, after all.

  “What the fuck am I bein’ arrested for?” I asked.

  Jimmy stepped through a growing crowd of onlookers gripping a styrofoam cup. He took in the scene with wide eyes. Not for the first time that night, I wished I’d never run into the bastard; I might have been in my comfy ass bed by now. Suddenly, it looked like I might be sleeping in a cell.

  “You’re being taken into custody for your insider knowledge regarding the Reynolds’ case,” Machado replied, holstering her gun the instant she held mine in her hands. Cassidy drew my hand back and latched a cuff into place, then the other. They pinched.

  “Me what?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  “Detective—” Jimmy began, stepping closer to us.

  “Officer Collins, you’re coming, too,” Machado interjected. “You both need to answer some questions.”

  I glanced out at the pitch black darkness from whence Cassidy had come and cursed my shitty luck. I’d managed to seal a lucrative deal with a drug lord, avoid getting caught up in a police raid, and survived a run-in with flesh-sucking zombies, only to get hauled in for something I didn’t do.

  Figured.

  Chapter 6

  My lawyer was especially good at his job. But then, you get what you pay for, and Walter Sloan wasn’t cheap. Although I was pretty sure Sloan represented the vast majority of Boston’s lingering mob bosses, I’d graciously looked the other way and paid his hefty retainer without complaint. It was Sloan I’d asked for the minute Machado put me in the back of her car. And pretty much every minute after that; by the time they parked me in an interrogation room, it had practically become a game.