“That’s the part we haven’t figured out yet,” said Lowell. “We haven’t identified the cause. We’re not even sure how to go about looking for it.”
“Not for lack of trying,” said Granato.
I glanced at him and narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?”
Lowell drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We felt the only way to identify the cause was to observe subjects at the moment of death…”
“You didn’t.”
“We have, yes. Hospice patients. Their estates receive sizable settlements and they’re all volunteers. By the time we make contact, many of them have already pursued illegal end-of-life options.”
“Do you at least warn them they’ll turn into fucking zombies?”
“Not exactly,” Lowell said. “But we’re hopeful we can resolve this crisis and give them the rest they deserve.”
“They were going Zed, anyway,” Granato said. “At least this way we might learn something from it.”
“And did you?”
“Not yet,” said Lowell. “The fact is, it’s hard to observe a negative. At the moment of death, we observe all the physical changes we’d expect-cessation of life functions, basically. But neither Granato nor I can identify anything supernatural happening. Clearly, something is supposed to happen and it’s not.”
“So how is your little shop of horrors supposed to help me solve the zombie problem, Lowell?” I couldn’t see I’d learned much, and what I had learned didn’t seem all that useful.
“We’re sharing the information we have, Ms. Riley,” Lowell said.
“We’ve also modeled the contagion mathematically,” Cindy said. “We looked at multiple scenarios-unconstrained outbreak, quarantine, eradication. The scenarios are complicated by the fact that we don’t know why the phenomenon is localized-limited to the Greater Los Angeles area-or whether it will remain so. However, none of the scenarios produced markedly different results.” She tapped the screen on the tablet and brought up a graph. A green line showed human population and a red line represented zombies. The green line sloped downward, sharply, from left to right; the red line sloped upward, just as sharply. “As you can see,” Cindy said, flipping through multiple screens, “all scenarios end the same way.”
“Zero human population,” I said.
Cindy nodded and tapped the screen again, displaying rows of mathematical equations that meant absolutely nothing to me. “Since all the eigenvalues are nonpositive, the apocalyptic equilibrium is asymptotically stable. At least within the affected environment.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We’re fucked,” Cindy said, and shrugged. “The biggest problem will be population clusters.”
“It will spread fastest in the most densely populated parts of the city,” I said.
“That’s right,” Cindy said. “The models depend on assumptions, and one of those assumptions is the reproductive efficiency of the zombies.”
“How quickly they turn humans into zombies.”
Cindy nodded. “This isn’t a normal outbreak scenario. A human cannot be infected. Only fatalities will produce more zombies, so we have to estimate the number of fatalities each zombie will cause each day. The bad news is that any fatality produces a zombie, even humans not directly killed by them. It includes death by natural causes and those indirectly caused by the zombies. The bottom line is that reproductive efficiency could be quite high. It will begin in the population centers, as you said, but even in the suburbs there are population clusters.”
“Like what?”
“Stay away from the shopping mall and multiplex,” Granato said.
“This scenario is actually good news,” Lowell said. “Even eradication doesn’t work-it just creates more zombies.”
“That depends on the protocol,” Granato argued. “Eradication works if there aren’t any bodies left.”
“You’re talking about fucking nukes again,” I said.
“Probably,” Lowell said. “Chemical and biological agents don’t work. It’s possible you could get the desired effect with conventional weapons-fuel-air explosives, for instance-but we’re still talking about total annihilation. You just don’t have the radiation to deal with in the aftermath.”
“I can’t believe you’re even considering this,” I said.
“It’s almost unthinkable,” Lowell said. “And that’s the point. The lack of less radical protocols buys us a little time. Our containment efforts-your efforts-buy us a little more. We can neutralize the zombies with magic.”
“Even with outside help,” I said, thinking of the fairies, “I’ve got Adan Rashan rallying the troops, but I don’t have enough manpower to stay ahead of this thing. I’m outnumbered and the zombies create more zombies faster than my people can put them down.”
Lowell nodded. “Like I said, it just buys us a little time. It’s not a solution.”
“You guys are the spooks,” I said. “You’re supposed to find out what’s going on. It would be really great if you could figure it out before it’s too fucking late, but maybe that’s too much to ask. I’d settle for something-anything-that would help me clean up the mess.”
Lowell and Granato shared a glance. “We have one more thing to show you, Ms. Riley.”
Building Three was a large Quonset hut that might have once been used as a motor pool. It was tucked away at the back of the compound and security was tight. There were armed patrols-more soldiers in black, unmarked fatigues-and there were security cameras and magical wards all over the grounds. Lowell and Granato claimed they were the only sorcerers in their outfit, so I assumed they’d been out there laying down the protections and defensive spells.
We went in through the front door and I found myself in a control room. I was starting to wonder if Stag had gotten all their control rooms off a studio lot in Hollywood. This one was larger and more sophisticated than the observation room in the cottage. There was a long row of computer workstations, with technicians tapping frenetically at keyboards or studying LCD displays. There was another long, rectangular window but the view through this one was blocked by a closed panel.
When we walked in, a short, round man in the mandatory lab coat looked up from one of the computer terminals and grinned. He stood and approached us with his hand extended. He seemed excited. He was almost skipping. “You must be Domino Riley,” he said, nodding his head rapidly. The grin widened. “I’ve heard all about how you contained the MIE, killing the changeling and foiling the fairy king’s diabolical scheme!”
I squeezed his hand and twitched one side of my face at him. I didn’t really feel like smiling. “Well, I gave him Hollywood.”
“I know! Brilliant!” He nodded and grinned some more. “I’m Dr. Tyler Niles.”
“Okay,” I said, and looked at Lowell. “Why am I here?”
Lowell nodded to the scientist and was about to say something but Dr. Niles started talking first. “Okay,” said the scientist, “you’re a sorcerer, so you already know ectoplasm flows through the earth’s crust. Arcane energy, magic, juice-call it whatever you want. There’s certainly no scientific name for it. We call it ectoplasm. It’s funny.” He bobbed his head and grinned.
“Hilarious,” I agreed.
“Right, so the ectoplasmic flow is concentrated in ley lines. This building is constructed on the site of a major convergence of two ley lines-the trunk lines that follow the Santa Ana River and the San Andreas Fault.” He crossed his forearms and giggled. “X marks the spot.”
“There’s a ley line on the San Andreas Fault?” Dr. Niles nodded. “The largest in North America.”
“That doesn’t concern you, though, because…”
“Why should it? There’s no evidence the ley line interacts with the tectonics of the region, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“So it’s a coincidence that this huge flow of…ectoplasm…in the earth’s crust follows the same course as this huge seam in the earth’s crust?”
Dr. Niles shrugged. “Okay, like you, we’ve been thinking about ways to empirically measure-and monitor-the ectoplasmic flow.”
“I haven’t really been thinking about that,” I said.
“Early warning,” said Lowell. “Magic is returning to the world. If we can measure and localize it, we might be able to predict the instabilities and other events it produces.”
“Right,” said Dr. Niles. “There’s just one problem.” I waited. He bobbed his head and grinned some more. “Ectoplasm doesn’t interact at all with machines. Our technology can’t detect it, can’t measure it, can’t do anything with it. As far as the machines are concerned, ectoplasm doesn’t exist.”
I frowned. “That’s not right. I have spells that affect machines.”
Dr. Niles thrust an index finger in the air. “Precisely! Spells can affect machines, but raw ectoplasm cannot. Magic can only interact with a machine through a medium.”
“A sorcerer,” I said.
“A human, or at least a sentient mind. As we discovered, the medium doesn’t have to be a sorcerer.” The scientist leaned down and tapped on the keyboard in front of him. The panel in front of the viewing window retracted into the ceiling with an electric hum.
The control room looked out onto an open space that must have occupied most of the building. A massive green wheel pattern was etched into the concrete floor, and three glass and steel cylinders were positioned at the center of the wheel. The cylinders were filled with liquid and a woman hung suspended in each of them. The women wore respirators but were otherwise naked. Tubes snaked from their arms, and electrodes spotted their bodies.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. “Who are they?”
Dr. Niles glanced at Lowell. The agent frowned and cleared his throat. “They’re indefinite detainees. Another agency sent them to us from Pakistan. They’re sisters. They’re all widows and they were being trained as suicide bombers.”
“This is disgusting.”
“I agree,” said Dr. Niles. “It’s fucking fascist. If it makes you feel any better, the Sisters volunteered.” I could hear the capitalization in his almost reverent tone.
“Why?”
“Because we promised to keep them together,” Lowell said. “Their other life options were blowing themselves up or detention in separate cells at Bagram.”
“What’s the green shit in the floor?”
“Algae growing in nutrient solution,” said Dr. Niles. “Organic matter is the most efficient conductor of ectoplasm. The ectoplasmic flow is concentrated in the ley lines but it diffuses through the crust. Agents Lowell and Granato created the pattern you see to channel the flow.”
“And the women are your mediums?”
“Yes. All three are sensitives-the strongest we’ve ever documented. And…do you hear it?”
Now that he mentioned it, I did hear something. Whispering, multiple voices-I went out on a limb and guessed three, to be exact. There was nothing ordinary about the sound. It wasn’t really sound at all. The whispering was inside my head.
I nodded. “How are they doing it?”
Dr. Niles shrugged. “Telepathy? We can all hear it. It’s pretty damned distracting at times but you learn to tune it out. It’s not a spell, though. It’s a projection.”
I shook my head. “I’m not following you.”
“Okay, so you know ectoplasmic energy flows through the earth,” he said. “But did you know there’s an intelligence in the flow?”
“A what?”
“A sentience. A mind.” He nodded at the women suspended in the cylinders. “Can you understand what they’re saying?”
“It’s Greek to me.”
“Exactly. A proto-Greek language, to be precise. Pre-Thracian, a dead-end branch of the Indo-European tree.”
“So what are they saying?”
Dr. Niles frowned and shook his head. “We brought in a team of linguists from UCLA,” he said, nodding to one of the researchers sitting at a computer workstation. “They work in shifts around the clock. We can translate the language but we can’t interpret it. It’s poetry.”
“Maybe you can’t interpret it because it’s gibberish,” I suggested.
“No, it’s poetry. It has pattern and structure. It is metaphorical language and we need observable phenomena to match it to. We need referents.”
“And you think this…intelligence…in the flow is projecting this telepathic poetry through your prisoners?”
“We’re sure of it.”
“Okay, so what is it?”
“We don’t really know what it is,” the scientist said. “We call her Hecate.”
“The goddess?”
Dr. Niles nodded. “Of magic and the crossroads. Other names are Chthonia, of the earth or underworld. Enodia, on the way, and Propulaia, before the gate. Triodia, she who visits the crossroads, and Trimorphe, three-formed.”
“Wikipedia?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you…find her?”
“By accident!” he said, and snorted charmingly. “Our working hypothesis was that we couldn’t measure ectoplasmic energy directly but we could measure its effect on the mediums. So we basically immersed them in the convergence and began monitoring their physical responses to the stimuli. We discovered Hecate even before the projections started. Think of her as a signal. She’s fragmented and lost in the background noise but every once in a while we’re able to pull a little bit of the signal out of the ectoplasmic soup.”
“She’s fragmented?”
“Yeah, but we’re putting her back together, bits and pieces of the signal at a time. Or she’s doing it herself. We’re not really sure what’s causing it.”
“You’re experimenting on something you call a god in a laboratory built on top of the San Andreas Fault and not one but two massive ley lines…and you’re not really sure what’s going on. Is that about right?”
“This is science, damn it, not a knitting circle.”
“I like your style.”
“Thanks.”
“So what do you hope to get out of this nightmarish excursion into mad-scientist territory?”
“We’re flying blind,” Dr. Niles said, nodding to Lowell and Granato. “We speculate about the events that are coming but we don’t really know. We can’t predict them. We can’t even really identify them after the fact with any precision or rigor, except by studying the shit on the fan.”
“And you think Hecate can tell you.”
“We think she already is, but we can’t understand what she’s saying.” He tapped a few more keys and the screen displayed the text the linguist was transcribing in real-time. I read some of it as it scrolled across the LCD. smoke at the green circumference the invisible man jumps and swallows nothing ripe coffins like swans on the floor a sluggish place for some to fill ants on the tongue meager hopes in glass, screaming away beneath life and leaf sallow jewels and opulent flesh bells bleed in the watchtower animal skin at canyon fields blossoms of hunger and blue falls under the tree of swords silence calling loose light in palaces of white mountains phosphorous machinery touch the gradient naked night in tiger dreams
I looked from the screen to Dr. Niles. “You’ve definitely ruled out gibberish?”
“You’re reading a fragment out of context,” he said, frowning. “It almost starts to make sense when you look at it long enough.”
“I’m sure. So can you tell me what’s causing the zombie problem?”
“Not exactly.”
I glanced at Lowell. “Remind me why I’m here again?”
“We don’t know what’s causing the Zed problem,” Dr. Niles said. “But Hecate has been talking about it.”
“How do you know? I didn’t get that from ‘phosphorous machinery touch the gradient.’ It’s not even good grammar.”
“She spiked just before we started getting reports of Zed on the loose.”
“She spiked?”
“Yeah, both the intensity of the signal a
nd the strength of the projections. We’re pretty sure she knew what was happening before it actually happened.”
“How do you figure?”
Dr. Niles went to the keyboard again and pulled up another fragment of text. claimant and messenger, lost stone circle, grasping the harmonic motion fire-lit shell on darkened shore madness sings the red song
“We have no idea what the first two lines mean, so don’t ask. But we think the last two are about Zed.”
I squinted at the words on the screen. “‘Darkened shore’ sounds like death, if you’re in a high-school poetry class. ‘Fire-lit shell’ means the zombies?”
“Right, a corpse is a shell on the shores of death.”
“But ‘fire-lit?’ The shell’s on fire?”
The scientist shook his head. “What’s unusual about these particular shells, Ms. Riley?”
“They’re walking around trying to eat people.” I saw it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “Wait, they’re lit from within. They’re dead, but they still have their souls…their divine spark. Fire-lit shells on the shores of death.”
“A-plus!” said Dr. Niles, grinning. “Now, this kind of interpretation isn’t exactly scientific, of course. But given the timing and the instability in the ectoplasmic flow…well, we think we may have found the first of our referents.”
“And ‘madness sings the red song’?”
“That’s the walking-around-trying-to-eat-people part. We think the ‘red song’ is a metaphor for hunting.”
“So these shells go mad and then they go hunting.”
“Yeah. We figure the first two lines might indicate a cause but we can’t decode them.”
I shook my head and chuckled. “It’s fucking obvious. The claimant and messenger is lost. When people die, they don’t just catch the next bus to the afterlife. They need psychopomps to guide them.”
Dr. Niles frowned. “What are psychopomps?”
“Reapers.”
“Oh. What about the second line?”
“I have no idea. What the hell is harmonic motion?”
“It’s a mathematical term. Simple harmonic motion is like the movement of a pendulum. Complex harmonic motion is what you get when you combine simple harmonic motions, such as in musical chords. It could describe planetary motion or the music of the spheres. Or it could just be a metaphor that has nothing to do with modern mathematics.”
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