Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  I motioned for Jane to give me a moment alone with Connor. After kissing me on the cheek, she stepped out of earshot.

  “You sure you don’t want to come inside instead of Jane?” I asked. “I’m sure no one in New York would bat an eye at two men walking into a runway show together. It is Fashion Week, after all.”

  Connor shook his head.

  “After all the juvenile jealous crap you’ve put her through to alleviate your own guilt over working with Mina? I think you two need the on-the-job bonding time more than you and I do.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a pal.”

  I walked over to Jane and took her arm on mine.

  “Hey, kid,” Connor called out behind us. We turned. His face was deadpan. “Try not to die on any of the gowns, okay?”

  “Will do,” I said.

  “That goes for both of you,” he shouted as we crossed the street and left him behind.

  The line to get in snailed along forever, but it gave us time to locate mayoral office liaison David Davidson in the crowd. Camera flashes were going off left and right. I waved him over to us.

  “Nice to see you under more pleasant circumstances,” he said, flashing that winning smile of his. His tuxedo was impeccable, but then again, he always was.

  I thought back. The last time I had seen David Davidson was over the body of late Dr. Kolb in Central Park.

  “Well, more pleasant for now,” I said, shaking his hand. “You remember Jane?”

  Davidson took Jane’s hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. “Of course I do,” he said. “Charmed. May I say you look lovely tonight?”

  “Thank you,” Jane said with a toothy smile. “And, yes, you may.”

  Davidson reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a handful of identical envelopes. He thumbed through them. “Mr. . . . Canderous, there you are . . . annnnd . . . Ms. Clayton-Forrester.”

  He held them out and I took both of them.

  “I just want you to know,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “tickets to this were harder to arrange than setting up a visit for the president to the United Nations.”

  “We appreciate it,” I said. “The whole Department does.”

  “Should anything actually happen here, though,” Davidson continued, “the mayor would appreciate your discretion in handling the matter. He would prefer there not be as public a display as that last one back at the Met, especially given the media coverage here.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Jane said, surprising me with the return of that boundless optimism and cheer that had been lacking these past few days.

  “Exactly,” I said, “but I don’t know how subtle we’ll be. It’s hard to deal with extraordinary affairs by ordinary means. But like the lady said, we’ll try our best.”

  Davidson gave a nervous smile. “I guess that’s as good as we can hope for,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “I suppose I’d better have emergency services at the ready just in case . . .”

  With that, he wandered off into the crowd, his cell phone already at his ear.

  I looked over at Jane, only to find her looking back at me, smiling. Dressed as we were, it was hard not to relish in the strange fantasy of it all. I could feel the electricity in the air, and for once it wasn’t my power . . . or Jane casting spells through a junction box. It almost made me wish we were a normal couple out for a night on the town, rather than out to stomp the forces of evil.

  The fashion plate bouncers manning the entrance to the giant tent stopped us when we arrived. After having our tickets examined to the nth degree, we were finally allowed inside. The interior of the tent was lit with a wash of cool colors that complemented the clean, crisp look of the whole Fashion Week affair. A white runner stretched down the center of the main aisle, presumably the catwalk for the show. It was flanked by hundreds of black wooden folding chairs that were quickly filling with the cream of the New York fashionista crop.

  As we made our way across the transformed park, more of the staff checked our tickets and led us to our seats. We sat in two of the four unoccupied seats at the end of our row, and I looked over at Jane, who was still beaming. She squeezed my arm, and for a split second it felt like an actual date.

  After a moment, I turned and looked out over the arriving crowd.

  “Let me know if you see anything,” I said.

  The two of us looked around the tent, which was filling up. I recognized a few of the faces in the crowd from television or film, but I was more interested in the camera crews that were busy setting up their equipment. I pointed them out to Jane.

  “So it looks like tonight’s going to be televised,” she said. “Good thing I spent some time on my makeup.”

  “You look beautiful,” I said without hesitation, “no question about that, but with those cameras here, it pretty much means that if anything paranormal goes down, we’re screwed. That’s not just local news. It’s national television. And Cyrus Mandalay wants to go large scale with evil.”

  Jane’s eyes danced as the lights went down and the music rose. The fashion show started, and all we could do was keep vigilant while ignoring the pageantry before us. My head pounded from all the lights and from peering into the darkened crowd for signs of anything paranormal. My phone, my third one in as many days, vibrated to life in my pocket. I discreetly pulled it out and checked the display.

  The Inspectre.

  I tapped Jane on the shoulder before flipping it open. I held the phone up between the two of us and we leaned our heads in.

  “Anything out there yet, sir?” I whispered into it.

  “Negative,” he said. “There’s been nothing reported on our end. How are things in there, boy? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Other than anorexics walking up and down the runway in flamboyant outfits? No, sir.”

  “Damn and blast,” the Inspectre swore. “If Cyrus was going to do something, I would have expected him to make his move by now. There’s simply no activity out here, so keep your eyes sharp . . . and keep an eye on the girl, too, my boy.”

  The fatherly concern in his voice nearly broke my heart.

  “Will do, Inspectre.”

  As I flipped my phone shut, a couple approached and I assumed it was for the two unoccupied seats next to us. I rose to let them in.

  “I’m sorry . . .” I started, but stopped when I saw who it was. “Godfrey?”

  It was Godfrey and he nodded curtly, shushing me.

  Gone were his pristine suit and tie. He was dressed in a tuxedo far more fashionable than mine, and he looked nervous. When I saw the woman on his arm, I could see why. She was dark-haired and gorgeous. I definitely knew her from somewhere, but I couldn’t place her.

  “Hello, Simon,” he said. “Hello, Jane.”

  The two of us were speechless and all we could do was nod hello.

  Godfrey seated the woman with him and then sat down next to me, the nervous look still on his face.

  “Godfrey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  He looked a little breathless, but gave me a thumbs-up. “Just . . . nerves . . .” he said between breaths.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  I had already gotten myself into a little bit of heat with Connor over the poor guy, and now he was here in potential harm’s way.

  Godfrey pulled off his glasses and cleaned them. This seemed to calm him a little. He slid them back on his nose. “It’s funny. The other day in the café, there was a Village Voice open on one of the coffee tables when I sat down. This one personal ad caught my eye and I responded to it, and well, turns out that Mandi here was looking for an escort to this event at Fashion Week. She was in last year’s show but her modeling shoot in Thailand conflicted with the week leading up to it so she couldn’t participate this year.”

  “So you answered a personal ad in the Voice and you ended up with a supermodel on your arm?” I said. No wonder she looked familiar. I had proba
bly seen her on a cover somewhere.

  Godfrey nodded, smiling. “What are the odds on that?”

  Pretty good, actually, I thought, considering what I knew about his power. He truly was the luckiest man in the world.

  “Excuse us,” I said to his date, and grabbed Godfrey and Jane, dragging them off behind our seating area.

  “Godfrey, you’ve got to get you and your date out of here now,” I said. “The Inspectre will kill me if he finds you in here. They don’t want you anywhere near this type of field work. Something weird’s going down.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “We don’t know,” Jane chimed in.

  “Maybe I can help,” he offered. He looked like a big sad-eyed puppy who just wanted to do good.

  Realizing that arguing with Godfrey wasn’t going to work, I caved. Maybe if I threw him a bone it would get him out of here faster. “Fine. Um, can you think of anything supernatural about Bryant Park?”

  Godfrey’s eyes rolled back into his head as he searched through his vast array of mental records. Twenty seconds later, the pupils rolled back into place. Godfrey shook his head.

  “Nothing supernatural,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Dammit,” I said.

  “I do remember something creepy, though,” Godfrey said.

  “I’m sorry?” Jane said.

  “There’s this one fact about Bryant Park . . . like I just said, it’s actually a bit more creepy than anything. Nothing supernatural has been documented about Bryant Park.”

  “But . . . ?” I said, urging him on. Somewhere off behind me the tone of the room shifted and a low murmur began to spread through the crowd. “But what?”

  “Well, before the Crystal Palace fire that happened here around 1858, the park had actually been used as a potter’s field from 1823 to 1840.”

  “Potter’s field . . . ?” Jane said. “Is that some sort of quidditch thing?”

  Godfrey shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “You know. A potter’s field . . . a graveyard for the indigent, the poor.”

  I was already redialing the Inspectre. From across the tent, several screams erupted from the crowd.

  “You mean to tell me,” I said to Godfrey, “that we’ve been looking all over the place for a psychotic necromancer and we’re sitting on top of a graveyard full of bodies?”

  “Well, when you put it like that . . .” Godfrey started. “Still, we’re talking seventeen years of that mass grave filling up. So that puts the number in the thousands, but you have to figure there’s only about a ten percent viability of corpses in any shape to be reanimated.”

  Godfrey whistled.

  “Still,” he continued, “that’s going to be an impressive number of raised undead.”

  When the Inspectre answered his phone, I held up my hand for Godfrey to stop.

  “Cyrus isn’t going to be attacking from the outside,” I shouted into the phone. “His army is already in here, inside. The tent is set up over a graveyard!”

  “Damn and blast,” the Inspectre shouted, and I could already hear him moving away from the phone. “Everyone move in.”

  My line went dead as Inspectre Quimbley disconnected, still shouting out orders.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket as the inside of the tent erupted into chaos, and I turned to inspect all the sudden shouting and screaming. People were jumping up from their seats everywhere, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to run from an unseen enemy for the exits at the far end of the runway. Fear filled the air.

  “Simon,” Jane screamed. “Look out!”

  What felt like a leather glove wrapped itself around my leg, and I looked down. A corpse was pulling its body up from under the ground with one free hand and digging into my leg with the other. The skin was dry and taut like scratchy leather but hung in strips from the body through its tattered remains of clothing.

  I reached inside my tuxedo coat and pulled out the retractable bat, extending it. “Good thing I brought my dress bat,” I said, and swung it down at the poor reanimated soul clawing at me. The head came free with a dry snap and the body slumped over, releasing me. I shook my leg to get the hand free and resisted the willies in front of my girlfriend.

  “C’mon, Jane,” I said. I grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward the highest concentration of people freaking out in the crowd.

  “Wait,” she pleaded. “Simon, what about Godfrey?”

  I stopped and looked back. Godfrey had frozen in his tracks because two zombies covered in fresh dirt had him pressed up against the side of the tent.

  “Shit,” I said, angry with myself for leaving him. Connor was right. I had already put Godfrey in harm’s way more than once so far, and his life and safety were my responsibility now. I ran over to him with Jane hot on my heels.

  Godfrey looked on at the creatures with fascination, studying them and making no move to get away. Maybe it was the archivist in him, but if I didn’t do something, he’d die with that same curious look on his face.

  I sped up to a run, raising my bat up over my head and swinging it down hard on one of the zombies. I heard its skull crack and split, and then my bat continued down into the area between its shoulders. And stuck.

  I tugged to get my bat out of the remains of the still-twitching creature as Godfrey’s face finally fell to horror, but my bat wouldn’t come free. The bony fingers of the other zombie started clawing at me while I was still struggling with the first, but I needed my weapon if I was going to stop it.

  “Watch your head, sweetie,” Jane called out from behind me, and I turned, then ducked, as I saw her swinging one of the wooden chairs at the other zombie. The chair hit the creature with surprising force and shattered, all of it falling away except for one lone, jagged piece that stuck out of the creature’s head like it was some kind of zombified unicorn. “See, I did learn something from your little “Shufflers and Shamblers” talk at the bookstore!”

  The jagged point swung dangerously close to my cheek and I spun myself away while still holding on to the bat lodged in the other one, causing the second creature to swing into the protrusion’s path. Something inside the impaled zombie popped, and the air was filled with a mixture of mold and the rotten stench of ancient putrification.

  Holding my breath so I wouldn’t throw up on my tuxedo, I finally pulled my bat free and knocked the creatures to the floor, where they both stopped moving.

  “Go take care of your date,” I said. Godfrey nodded, but when we spotted her, she was already long gone from her seat and safely pushing her way out of one of the tent flaps. If anyone was capable of making a hasty escape in high heels, it was definitely a supermodel. “Fine, then. You and Jane stick with me.”

  Jane put her hand on my arm. “I love it when you get all authoritative, but maybe we should hold up a second before we go leaping into action? Mind if I take a look around?”

  I smiled and followed Jane as she pushed her way through the crowd and ran over to the nearest camera. She took a deep breath and raised both hands up to it.

  “Oh,” she said, and turned suddenly back to me. “You might want to catch me if this knocks me out or something.”

  She leaned toward me and I kissed her, our mouths pressing hard together.

  Jane put her hands on the side of the camera and started muttering in that technobabble sound that I didn’t understand. Godfrey stepped closer to me.

  “What is she doing?”

  “Not really sure,” I said with a shrug. “She’s cute when she gets all magical, though.”

  “I can still hear you,” she said. “Just because I’m patching into the camera feed doesn’t mean I’m not still here in front of you.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jane said. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up before you said something about my butt in front of Godfrey.”

  Godfrey looked shocked.

  I took a swipe at a zombie chasing after a passing B-list ce
lebrity. “Don’t think about the crazy shit going on around you.”

  “Guys,” Jane called out after several seconds, and I turned back to see if she needed help. She looked a little drained, but she was able to stand by leaning against the camera rig. “I checked the entire room by patching into all the camera feeds. I don’t see any signs of Cyrus in the crowd, but he has to be here, right?”

  Godfrey nodded. “According to Gauntlet research, a raising like this requires the close proximity of the necromancer responsible for it.”