Better Off Undead

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Archie licked his lips. All he had were the coins he had managed to scrabble together. But—he owed this man his life. “I’ll make sure there’s enough.’’

  “Excellent—yehz!’’

  They entered the bar. Though well-lit, it was deserted and silent save for the clink of glasses as the bartender cleaned and stacked. He eyed Archie briefly, then smiled at the older man, who was obviously a regular.

  “What’ll it be tonight, Bill?’’

  “Something celebratory, yehz, to wish this young man well. Whiskey, as good as you can muster. In other words, dispensed from a bottle with a label.’’ Beaming behind a bulbous nose that Archie could now see was rosy as the blush on a Catholic high school girl’s cheeks, the man set his cigar aside. “And you, m’boy—what’ll you have to celebrate your survival to drink another day?’’

  “Whiskey also. Straight up.’’ Digging into a pocket of his worn jeans, Archie pulled out a handful of coins and dumped them on the counter. The alert bartender kept any from fleeing.

  There were a lot of quarters this time, and by the tail end of the third shot Archie felt comfortable enough with his savior to put an arm around him. Luckily he was by now too tired and too drunk to freak when instead of being halted by the expected bone and muscle his lowering arm passed completely through his new friend to emerge in the vicinity of his portly but decidedly insubstantial waist. Archie was not so inebriated that his eyes failed to widen slightly.

  “Ah, c’mon—c’mon now! Don’t go telling me you’re a gheest—a ghost, too?’’

  Raising his half-full shot glass high, his savior offered a salute. “William Dukenfield’s the name, m’boy, and I can’t deny that I’m little more than a shade of my true self. How else d’you think I succeeded in deterring the homicidal shadow that pursed you? Takes one to persuade one, yehz.’’ He gestured at their surroundings. “This present existence is my blessing and my curse, you see, because it’s nothing less than the very one I repeatedly asked for when I dwelt among the living. It was just a recurrent joke then. Well, the joke’s been on me ever since, yehz, but to its credit I have to confess it’s not been a bad one.’’ He downed the remaining contents of the glass in a single swig.

  “Another one, Bill?’’ the bartender asked quietly.

  W. C. Dukenfield studied the counter. “Alas, my noble dispenser of aged and purified grains, I fear that our young visitor here has at last exhausted his night’s takings.’’

  “This one’s on the house,’’ the bartender responded, smiling. He eyed Archie. “You too, son.’’

  Wavering slightly, Archie started to respond instinctively, pushing his shot glass forward—and hesitated. “Two ghosts in one neat—in one night. Tha’s two too many. Maybe—maybe I ought to cut back a little, y’know? I mean, the next time it might not turn out so well for me, y’know?’’

  “Ah, my boy,’’ Dukenfield declared brassily, “it would be a shame to lose you to that stolid whore sobriety. Conversely, you’re a bit too young to be following in such footsteps as mine. Take it from one who knows, you really might consider drying out for a bit. Get a life first, so to speak, and then decide at your leisure how much cleansing lubrication it really requires.’’

  Archie stared at his empty shot glass for a few seconds, then released it and took a step back from the bar. “I—I’ll do it! I’ll go to the shelter tomorrow and sign up for counseling. I’ve been meaning to, for months. All I needed was a reason.’’ He shook his head, as if trying to return to reality. “Ghosts—two ghosts. No more for me. No more. I need to . . .’’ his eyes came up to meet those of his savior, “I need to get a life, yes.’’

  “An occupation much overrated, in my opinion,’’ his spectral and slightly sloshed friend declared with conviction, “but then no one ever paid much attention to my opinion. Only to my jokes, yehz. Good luck to you then, m’boy, and if you should ever find yourself in the neighborhood again, be sure to drop by to share a tipple. You’re buying.’’ He turned away as the barkeep set a freshly filled shot glass down in front of him.

  Suffused with unexpected resolve, Archie turned away. He needed no stiff-necked counselor to tell him that if he found himself being pursued by a ghost, much less spending a convivial evening with one, it was time to get off the bottle. His life hadn’t always been like this. He just needed something to kick-start conviction again. Something as elemental and convincing as being chased down dark streets by an angry ghost, and then finding himself sharing drinks with one.

  At the door he paused to look back. “You said—you said that this existence was one that you asked for.’’ Raising a wavering but slowly steadying hand, he gestured at the interior of the establishment. It struck him then that the décor was—period. 30s or maybe 40s, he decided. “How does—how does one die and end up in a place like this? In a bar.’’

  “A bar?’’ Taking a short slug from his freshly-filled glass, Archie’s rescuer focused beady but intense eyes on the younger man standing in the doorway. “Why, it’s not just the bar, m’boy! I roam where and when I please. Otherwise I’d not have known your intemperate pursuer. There are quite a lot of us in this town, you know. After a while one gets to know many of one’s own kind. Franklin now, he tends to keep to himself. Taking apart a computer, I understand. But on the right nights some of the rest of us often get together and have a little party, yehz.

  “What happened to me, not that you need or deserve to know, was that for years people kept asking how I felt about death and dying, so in a little piece I wrote for Vanity Fair back in ’25 I declared, more or less, that on the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. Yehz.” For a second time he raised his glass in salute.

  “And do you know what? When I shuffled off this immoral mortal coil on Christmas Day back in ’46, I found myself not in heaven, not in hell, not even in Los Angeles, where they interred the sodden remains of yours truly. And it’s here I’ve been ever since. Good luck to you now, m’boy, and remember one thing always: keep well clear of children and dogs.’’

  “I’ll do that, sir, and—thanks.’’

  With that, Archie went out of the bar. But not into the Wilderness. And he was forever thereafter a happy man for never forgetting the advice.

  GAMMA RAY VERSUS DEATH

  Carrie Vaughn

  Ray paced along the computer banks and sensor readouts, around the steel table that formed the centerpiece of the Command Room, passing the wide double doors to the hangar and returning to where he started. Something on that last mission had gone wrong, but he didn’t know what. He should have known—he’d been in the middle of it—but his memory went fuzzy right at the good part. He still didn’t feel right, like he was drifting. Like his mind wasn’t all here. His feet were numb against the floor. The fact that the team wasn’t back for the debriefing increased his worry. Where were they?

  And what had happened?

  Hours seemed to pass before the doors to the hangar opened and the team filed in.

  “Finally,’’ Ray muttered, but his worry didn’t diminish. He’d never seen his teammates like this. The five of them wore civilian clothes, nice suits and dresses. Even Gadgeteer wore a skirt, and Ray had never seen her in anything but jeans and T-shirts when she was off duty. Heads bowed, shoulders slumped, they moved slowly, like they were sleepwalking. One by one, they found their seats around the table. They didn’t say a word.

  And no one looked at him. No one saw him. Ray swallowed and tried to quell a fluttering in his stomach. Experimenting, he waved a hand in front of Mr. Steel’s face. Not even a flinch, and Steel had super reflexes to go with his super strength.

  Then Gadgeteer, the spunky young woman who maintained the team’s equipment and did amazing things with copper wire and chewing gum, said, “I can’t believe he’s gone.’’ She was staring at the one empty chair around the table. Ray’s chair.

  “Oh, no,’’ he said. “No no no, that can’t be right. Guys, I’m right here, I’ve been waiting for
you—’’

  But no one heard him. He looked at his hands—they were solid. But when he grabbed the back of the empty chair to pull it away from the table, nothing happened. He couldn’t feel the stainless steel frame and padded back. His hands skittered off the surface and it didn’t budge. He could walk, but couldn’t feel the floor—because he drifted an inch or two above it and only made the motions of walking.

  They’d been a team for five years. They’d been through everything together, every kind of scrape, trouble, disaster, supervillain, and alien invasion. They’d had some close calls. But they’d never lost anyone. Until now, apparently.

  Ray looked at the five of them. Their leader, Mr. Steel, was hunched over and silent; Tessa sat rigid and frowning; Cheetah, the super-fast woman with flame-colored hair, bit her lip and crossed her arms stiffly; and Gadgeteer. Even Jetstream, the team’s loner, sat with them for this moment. They hadn’t just lost someone. They’d lost their invincibility. They were mortal again. They were falling apart before his eyes. Because of him.

  “God, Ray,’’ he murmured. “What are you going to do?’’

  “It was good of the city to put up the plaque,’’ Tessa said. The athletic black woman sat at Mr. Steel’s right. Usually, the telekinetic was the one rallying the team, shouting directions and encouragement. The team’s second-in-command, she had the enthusiasm to carry them all. Ray had never seen her so subdued.

  “He’d have hated it,’’ Gadgeteer said, sniffing. “He wasn’t engraved marble and lilies, he was neon and cheap beer. None of that service was about him!’’ She put her hands over her face, and the room was silent but for her stifled crying.

  Somehow, his heart broke, even though he was dead and shouldn’t have felt anything. He knew she had feelings for him, and he’d always liked her. He’d never known what to do about it except laugh it off. They were always so busy, fighting one crisis after another. And now—

  This had all become one big, stupid cliché.

  He slunk to the corner, crossed his arms, hunched in on himself, and watched. He was still in his fighting suit, the specially designed heat-resistant, gray-toned body glove that could withstand his radiation blasts. He was ready for action. Would always be ready for action. If he had to die, why couldn’t he just . . . stop? Vanish out of the universe. Why couldn’t it be over? That would have been far better than watching his team—his friends, the best friends he’d ever had—go through this.

  “He would have wanted us to get back to normal,’’ Tessa said. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to sit around moping.’’

  “I don’t care,’’ Gadgeteer said. “I don’t care anymore what he’d have wanted. It’s been over a week and it hurts worse now than it did when it happened. I just keep thinking about everything . . . everything that I miss. I keep finding his things, I keep—’’ Her face was red. Her dark hair was loose, but ruffled. Like she’d been standing in a breeze at a funeral. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.’’

  “Annie—’’ Mr. Steel said, but she stood and left, almost running out of the room to the door that led to the living quarters.

  “Let her go,’’ Tessa predictably said, laying a hand on Mr. Steel’s arm as he stood to run after her.

  Jetstream, the raven-haired hotshot flier, scowled. “It shouldn’t have happened. If I had gotten to him sooner—’’

  Steel shook his head. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. There was nothing any of us could have done.’’

  “But if I hadn’t—’’

  “It wasn’t your fault,’’ Steel said.

  Jetstream slouched over the table and quickly wiped his eyes.

  One by one, they drifted away to grieve privately. Tessa rose, second to last. Touching Steel’s shoulder, she said, “Are you all right?’’

  He pursed his lips in a wry smile. “I will be, eventually.’’

  “It wasn’t your fault, either,’’ she said, and walked away.

  When he was alone, Steel stood before the giant monitor over the computer bank. “Retrieve archive footage,’’ he spoke the command. “Gamma Ray. File dated May first.’’

  He’d been over it a hundred times, but went over it again. Ray stood nearby, watching the video screen with Steel.

  The footage must have come from a TV news crew, maybe one that had found a vantage on a building opposite the park where the battle had taken place. The angle looked down on the clearing between the City Museum and the wooded bike paths to the south.

  Professor Terrible’s killer machine emerged from behind the museum building. The thing had been huge, as big as the building itself, and made of nearly indestructible titanaloid steel. Built like a tank, it moved on treads that could mow under any obstacles, climb stairs, rumble through water, and adhere to the sides of buildings. It had a dozen appendages bearing blades, laser guns, cannons, rocket launchers, microwave emitters, and sensor and communication arrays. They had assumed that Terrible himself was inside the armored core of the machine, operating it like a tank.

  They’d been wrong. Terrible wasn’t anywhere near the place. The thing was a robot, set to its most destructive capabilities and let loose in the middle of the city.

  Ray—Gamma Ray as he was known and loved by the public—arrived on the scene first. They’d known Terrible was on the move, and he’d happened to be the one investigating the warehouse from which the robot emerged. When he understood the machine’s power and the gravity of the situation, Steel had radioed Ray to fall back and wait for support. Ray had disobeyed the order. He didn’t want to see the robot trash the museum, as it had seemed bent on doing. Firing blasts of energy from his hands, he managed to distract it. All its sensor dishes and receptors swiveled to focus on him, and Ray led it to the clearing. That was the image Steel watched now: Ray, a tiny bug next to the monster, bracing for an attack.

  Ray remembered thinking that if he could just hit a weak spot—find a key sensor, a video receptor, a control antenna—and destroy it with a well-placed blast, the fight would be over. He never doubted that he could beat the thing singlehanded.

  Then—something had happened. He didn’t remember what. The world had gone fuzzy, like bad TV reception. Then, a moment later, he was pacing the Command Room, trying to remember what had happened. He watched the video replay, intensely curious.

  On screen, he blasted the thing. Standing braced, visible energy beams—white light, searing with intensity and difficult to look at—blasted from his hands. But they didn’t strike the robot’s metal skin. The machine had a force field, and the beams deflected, putting a hole in a nearby building and setting a tree on fire. Ray had apparently been ready for this, because he danced out of the way and tried again. The shield seemed automatic, and it had no weaknesses.

  In the video, Ray could be seen speaking into his headset, relaying information to Steel. Steel had the audio recording cued up.

  “—can keep it distracted, it won’t do as much damage!’’

  Steel’s recorded voice shot back angrily, “No, Ray, get out of there. We need to set up a trap. You can’t take this thing by yourself!’’

  “I know that, I’m not going to! I’m just going to keep it busy!’’

  “Jetstream’s on his way, wait for him—’’

  “Too late!’’

  The robot brought to bear an appendage that looked like a post-hole digger, something designed to drive into the ground, dig, or smash an opponent to dust. Ray was fit, athletic, tough. He dodged the crushing blow when it pounded toward him and kept firing beams at the thing. The monster actually became flustered, flailing its limbs, pivoting to keep Ray in its sights. Jetstream flew into the frame then and became a second insect harassing the metal beast.

  Ray moved behind it and blasted the joint of an appendage with one of his beams, hoping to catch him off guard. But the monster was ready for him, and swiveled one of its gadgets into place to block the beam.

  It didn’t just block the beam. Ray could imagine�
�could almost remember, even though the memory of this scene had been erased from his mind—the feeling of surprise as the robot collected his own energy beam in a parabolic dish, and fired it back at him.

  The beam of radiation caught Gamma Ray directly. He shivered for a moment, his arms flung out, limned in an aura of glowing, white-hot energy. Then, his skin and hair charred and smoking, he flew back, smashed hard against the street, bounced, and rolled, coming to a rest with his back twisted, his limbs wrenched at unnatural angles.

  Watching, what was left of Ray observed with detached satisfaction that the suit seemed to hold up to the blast just fine. It wasn’t the radiation that killed him, but the force of the fall onto the road. Broken back at least, probably neck as well, and limbs, skull—everything broken.

  Mr. Steel leaned on the table, his head bowed, and listened to the rest of the radio chatter. Jetstream reported the whole thing, shouting that Ray was down. Steel kept yelling at him to get Ray out of there, and Jetstream kept saying that it was too late. The panic and desperation in their voices made Ray’s heart ache. The others arrived in moments and battled the thing into submission. Gadgeteer struck the final blow by rigging a localized EMP that froze it.

  But Ray was already gone.

  He considered: maybe his reflected blast had converted his body to some form of conscious energy, that he was somehow still alive and they only had to figure out a way to convert him back to his physical form. But it was right there on screen: he’d left a body. A scorched, shattered, dead body. They’d buried that body.

  So now what?

  After dark, after everyone had gone to bed and the computers were left humming and processing surveillance data from all over the world, ready to sound the alarm if need be, Ray tried an experiment.