by Tim Waggoner
The lykes pacing us on both sides of the road weren't simply out for a bit of exercise. The wrecked and abandoned vehicles we passed every few miles were testament to that. The lykes chased cars in the hope that they'd blow a tire or throw a rod and be forced to pull over, in which case it was snack time. Of course, few people are foolish enough to travel the Obsidian Way unless their vehicles are in tiptop shape and they're well armed. Which means that the lykes need to take matters in their own claws. The law forbids them from stepping onto the Obsidian Way to attack a vehicle, but if a driver just happens to encounter an obstacle…
Lazlo gazed out the windshield. "Aw, dammit! I hate lykes!"
"What's wrong?" I couldn't see, so Devona lifted me up and propped me on the back of Lazlo's seat so I could look over his shoulder and out the windshield.
"Spike strip," Lazlo said. "A lyke just tossed one onto the road ahead of us. Hold on."
I'd just managed to catch a glimpse of the gleaming metal of the spike strip illuminated in the wash of the cab's headlights when the vehicle suddenly lurched upward. I almost fell, but Devona grabbed hold of my head with both hands to steady me, though my body slumped over against her. We would've strapped my headless form in when we first put it in the cab but Lazlo doesn't believe in seatbelts. He says they show a serious lack of faith in a driver.
I have no idea how something that at least outwardly resembled an earthly cab managed to jump into the air, but that's exactly what Lazlo's vehicle did, sailing over the spike strip and landing on the other side with a jarring impact. No damage was done, though – or at least, none the cab couldn't contend with – and we kept going. The lykes keeping pace with us snarled with frustration, eyes wild, tongues lolling, jaws flecked with froth, but they continued flanking us, no doubt looking forward to their next attempt to force us to stop.
The snarls and growls gave way to full-fledged howls, and Lazlo grimaced. "I've had enough of this shit." He thumbed a switch on the dash and in response the cab's hood retracted into the main body of the vehicle with a moist sliding sound. A mottled discolored organ rose forth from the vehicle's cavity, flesh coated with slimy mucus and shot through with swollen purple veins. I recognized the cab's tongue, but as I watched it thickened and swelled, lengthened and extended, until it had assumed a very different shape, one reminiscent of a mounted machine gun. The fleshy weapon began firing – or perhaps spitting is a more appropriate term – swiveling back and forth, spraying silvery gobs of organic material as if they were bullets with accompanying chuff-chuff-chuff sounds. The silver sputum hit the lykes on both sides of the road as we passed and the werebeasts howled and screamed in agony as the ammunition struck them. From the severity of their reaction I knew that the mucusbullets Lazlo's cab produced somehow contained actual silver. A dozen lykes fell to the barrage from the flesh-gun, while the others decided that this night discretion really was the better part of valor and fled, slipping silently away into the shadowy woods.
Once the lykes were driven off the fleshgun stopped firing, descended into the vehicle's cavity – returning to its normal tongue shape in the process – and the hood slid back into place.
Lazlo then turned to look over his shoulder and gave us a grin.
"Nothing like a few hundred rounds of silver to make a lyke think twice, eh?"
The cab swerved alarmingly to the right while Lazlo said this and both Devona and I shouted for the demon to turn back around before his haphazard driving accomplished what the lykes couldn't and caused us to wreck. Lazlo faced forward again, seemingly unconcerned that we were heading straight for a huge oak tree, and he managed to bring the cab back under control in time to avoid a collision.
Lazlo continued driving and Devona and I were silent for several moments while we adjusted to the fact that we'd barely just avoided becoming weremonster kibble. When I had my nerves under control, I said, "That's a new feature, Lazlo. When did you have it installed?"
"What do you mean?"
I was used to Lazlo being, shall we say, of generally vague disposition, but I had a hard time believing he didn't understand my question.
"The gun. I saw you hit the switch to activate it."
"Switch?" Then Lazlo laughed. "Naw, I was just trying to turn up the radio to drown out the sound of the lykes. All that howling and snarling is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me."
"But the gun…" I insisted.
"I have no idea where that came from," Lazlo said. "My little baby is just full of surprises, isn't she?"
He patted the dash lovingly and the cab's engine made a noise that sounded surprisingly like a purr.
Evidently word that Lazlo's cab spit silver had preceded us for we saw no further sign of lykes as we passed through the rest of the Wyldwood. As we approached the Dominion's border we saw the green light cast by the flames of Phlegethon flickering against the grayish-black sky and soon we crossed the Bridge of Silent Screams and entered the Boneyard. The Dominion of the Darklord Edrigu, the Boneyard is the realm of the dead, and it fit the part perfectly. The buildings were rundown and always on the verge of collapse. Stone pitted and chipped, wood warped, glass smudged and cracked, mold and mildew clinging to every surface as if they were varieties of paint. Sounds are muffled in the Boneyard and refuse to travel as if the air itself is dead. And while I don't breathe and thus can't personally attest to it I'm told the air smells of must and slow decay, like an ancient tomb that's been sealed for a thousand years or more.
Here Lazlo's insane kamikaze driving was less of a hazard than usual. Few living people had reason to visit the Boneyard and those who did pass through stuck to the Obsidian Way. So the streets were deserted, giving Lazlo fewer targets to hit. The sidewalks were deserted too, but if you stare long enough and allowed your eyes to go out of focus, you begin to see ghostly images of pedestrians garbed in fashions spanning the course of human history, and you get the sense that, far from being deserted, the Boneyard is as full as any major metropolitan area on Earth, and in its own macabre way just as alive. As someone with more than one foot in the grave myself I'm able to see more of the Boneyard's true nature than most, but even I sometimes feel that I'm only catching a glimpse of a larger and more complex picture.
The longer we drove the more we began to see the suggestion of ghostly vehicles sharing the road with us. As with the spectral pedestrians, various ages were represented by the traffic – horsedrawn carriages, model Ts, stagecoaches, Roman chariots, ultra-modern sports cars… For the most part the insubstantial vehicles gave us a wide berth, but every now and then one would pass right through us, and even I felt a cold chill of ectoplasm as for the briefest of instants we shared the same space.
"Lousy ghost drivers," Lazlo muttered after a spectral double decker bus drove through us. "Where's a ghost cop when you need one?"
The drivers never acknowledged our existence, didn't so much as shoot us a single glance. They just stared forward, faces expressionless as they drove. I wondered if they were even aware we were present or if, having crossed all the way from one state of existence to the other, they were no longer interested in having anything to do with a mundane corporeal world that was now beneath their notice.
"You're a dead guy, Matt," Lazlo said. "Maybe you can help me understand something I've always wondered about."
He took a hand off the steering wheel – never a confidence building move considering how he drove – and gestured at the ghostly traffic surging silently around us.
"Where do all these ghosts come from? They can't all have migrated here during the Descension. That was almost four hundred years ago and many of these ghosts are more modern than that. Some of them are probably ghosts of people who died in other Dominions and eventually drifted to the Boneyard, but they can't account for this many spirits. I mean, there must be thousands of them."
"Just because I'm a zombie doesn't mean I'm an expert on everything to do with life after death," I told him, "but as I understand it, when the Darkfolk left Earth
for Nekropolis, Lord Edrigu gathered up the world's ghosts – those spirits who for whatever reason remained earthbound after their death – and brought them with him, just as the other Darklords brought their subjects with them. Galm brought the vampires, Amon brought the shapeshifters, and so on. But Edrigu knew that people would keep dying on Earth, creating new ghosts, so he left servants behind whose job it is to scour the world, find earthbound spirits, capture them and then bring them to Nekropolis to live in the Boneyard."
"Kind of like a wildlife preserve for the dead, eh?" Lazlo said thoughtfully. "So that's it? The ghosts just stay here, going about their ghostly business, for the rest of eternity?"
Devona jumped into the conversation then. "Yes, although there are rumors that Lord Edrigu's dark mirror doesn't only open a portal to Earth. Supposedly it can open a doorway into… well, whatever comes next. After life, I mean."
Each of the city's five Darklords – as well as Father Dis – possesses a magic mirror that allows them to create a passageway to and from Earth whenever they wish. To be technical, the Lords possess two mirrors: a personal one and a second, much larger one that can be used to transport large object such as freight-laden vehicles back and forth between dimensions. The Darklords need some way of importing necessary materials and supplies. After all, Nekropolis couldn't function if it was an entirely closed system.
Lazlo drove in silence for several moments as he digested what we'd just told him. Eventually, he said, "What about you, Matt?"
"What do you mean?"
"You ever been tempted to go through Edrigu's mirror? I mean, you are dead, so you could pass through if you wanted to, right?"
"I don't know."
The thought had never occurred to me. I may be dead but I don't think of myself as a ghost. I still have a physical body after all. But physical objects can pass through a Darklord's mirror. That's how I originally came to Nekropolis. But I'd never thought that I might be able to physically pass from Nekropolis's dimension to… what? Heaven? Nirvana? Or maybe what lay on the other side of Edrigu's mirror was a hellish place worse than Nekropolis. Or – and in some ways this was an even more frightening thought to me – what if there was nothing on the other side? What if a spirit simply ceased to exist once it entered the mirror and instead of another world all that waited for those unfortunate spirits was final, everlasting oblivion?
Devona stroked the back of my head. "You know, Matt, if you ever want to…" She allowed the thought to trail off, unfinished.
"Thanks," I said, "but I'm content with remaining a living dead man in a city of monsters." I glanced toward my headless body propped on the seat next to us. "At least I will be if we can manage to make me whole again."
At that moment we entered a section of the Boneyard that looked as if it had been bombed into rubble. The buildings here lay in ruins and the streets were strewn with rubble. Lazlo was forced to slow down and detour around the chunks of stone, brick and mortar in the road and the lack of intact buildings around us provided an unobstructed view for miles. In fact we could see all the way to the far east of the Dominion where Edrigu's stronghold lay, situated precisely on his point of the pentagram that formed the city's borders. Edrigu's home was called the Reliquary and it lay housed deep inside a gigantic prehistoric burial mound that looked something like a gently rounded mountain off in the distance. I'd never been there before – this was the first clear view I'd ever had of the place, as a matter of fact – but I had to admit it was something to see. I've visited other Darklord strongholds, and while each is impressive in its own way, there's an ancient grandeur to Edrigu's home, a primal simplicity as if it had been physically shaped from bygone millennia and set in place to stand for all eternity, as basic and uncompromising as Death itself.
Lazlo glanced out the window at the ruins surrounding us. "Man, Edrigu really isn't into urban renewal, is he?"
"He's the King of the Dead, not the King of Architecture," I said. I wondered if the ruined condition of this neighborhood wasn't the reason Victor Baron had chosen to locate the Foundry here. Baron began his life as the original Frankenstein monster, a creature made from the assembled parts of dead bodies and for this reason it made sense that he lived and worked in the Boneyard, a realm of the dead, and this unnamed blight of a neighborhood was among the most desolate of locations in this Dominion. Perfect for a being who was, essentially, a scientific version of a zombie.
Because it was the only intact structure for several miles in all directions, the Foundry loomed large against the surrounding landscape, a dark mass of gray stone that resembled a cross between a medieval keep and a factory built during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Towering smokestacks rose into the sky, fouling the air with black clouds of pollutants. But considering the inhabitants of this Dominion were already dead, the environmental impact was negligible. Perhaps another reason Baron had set up shop here: no need to worry about where and how he dumped his plant's waste products. Rising from the roof of the Foundry and stretching between the smokestacks was an intricate metal lattice containing thick tangled coils of rubber coated cable. Blue-white bolts of electrical energy coruscated across the lattice in a constant ebb and flow like ocean waves. I couldn't smell the sharp tang of ozone in the air, but Devona later told me it permeated the whole area, but even through the cab's closed windows I could hear the constant crackle, pop and hiss of the lattice's electrical discharge, as well as the deep thrumming sound of power so massive it could barely be contained, like the perpetual rushing of a huge waterfall.
Now that I was this close to the Foundry I wondered if Lord Edrigu – or maybe even Father Dis – had insisted Baron build his factory here because of the desolation, since it wouldn't matter if Baron's facility experienced an "industrial accident" that might affect the surrounding area. This was immediately followed by a more disturbing thought: considering that the Foundry had been there for over two centuries maybe Baron's facility had somehow been the cause of the surrounding devastation.
As you might imagine this thought did little to inspire confidence in the man's ability to help me get my head on straight, so to speak.
As we drew closer to the Foundry we began seeing vehicles in the road – not ghost vehicles, but physical, three dimensional ones. Dark semi trucks with the stylized VB of the Victor Baron logo on their trailers passed by, hulking creatures with patchwork faces behind the wheel, carrying the latest shipments of Baron's creations to customers throughout the city. Vehicles resembling hearses glided through the street as well, also bearing Baron's logo on their doors. They belonged to the Bonegetters, employees of Baron's who traveled throughout Nekropolis on an endless quest to locate dead bodies – or cast-off body parts – and bring them to the Foundry to be used as raw material for Baron's work. Considering the savage nature of the Darkfolk, violence occurs on an all-too-regular basis, and when deadly mayhem results, the Bonegetters do their best to make sure they're on the scene to recover any useful bits and pieces when the bloodshed is over.
The Foundry grounds were surrounded by a twenty-five foot wrought iron fence and Lazlo sniffed when he saw it.
"That thing might look impressive to tourists," he said, "but it wouldn't keep out a fly, let alone a…"
Lazlo trailed off as a large black gorecrow approached the fence. The bird flew high enough to pass over the bars, but the instant it crossed the fence's perimeter, there was a blue flash and the bird burst into flames and plummeted to the ground.
"Like I said, Baron's got himself a hell of a security system," Lazlo said, his voice sounding a bit weak. "Good thing we're expected."
"A force field of some kind," Devona said. "Impressive. I wonder if it only prevents physical objects from entering or if it can stop magical intrusions as well."
"If we don't get flash-fried trying to get inside, you can ask Baron yourself," I said.
"I'd love to pick his brain," Devona said. "No pun intended. Along with everything else his factory produces, Baron manuf
actures a number of security products. Reanimated guards, both canine and humanoid, as well as living, organic alarm systems. The Midnight Watch is just small potatoes to someone like him, but if we can learn something from him, or better yet, enter into some kind of partnership, even if only on a small scale…"
Even though I knew it was childish of me, I was irritated by Devona's words.
"We didn't come here to network. We came to get me put back together, remember?"
Devona's eyes narrowed, an expression I knew meant she was struggling to contain her anger.
"Of course," she said, trying to sound as if she weren't upset and succeeding for the most part. "I was just thinking out loud."
If my head had been attached to my body right then I'd have kicked myself for being such an idiot. What was it with me and Devona's business? I'd criticized her employees earlier in the evening and now I'd complained when she recognized a potential opportunity in talking with Victor Baron. Why was I finding it so hard to be supportive? I had no answer, and not wishing to make matters worse, for a change I did the smart thing and kept my mouth shut as Lazlo turned off the road and stopped before the Foundry's main gate.
