Deader Still sc-2

by Anton Strout

  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 celebrity. “Don’t think about the crazy sh
it 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.”

  “Well, if he’s not here,” Jane said, “how is he doing this?”

  “He is here,” I said, “we’re just not looking in the right place.”

  I looked above the crowd, and there was my answer. The one spot that overlooked the whole interior of the tent from the far end of the room, a well-concealed slit that gave the perfect view into the tent from the New York Public Library.

  I glanced around the room. The cavalry had arrived and a dozen or so D.E.A. agents were working their way through the crowd now. I spied Director Wesker and Inspectre Quimbley pulling a zombie off one of the stick-thin models and throwing it to the ground. It was nice to see the divisions getting along for once. Zombies always brought people together.

  “He must be in the library. The Fashion Week tent is in good hands,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” Jane said. She had Godfrey by the arm and dragged him along behind us as we picked our way through the crowd.

  “We can stay here doing damage control,” I said, “or we can get to the root of the problem and take care of it.”

  “No more making with the squishy brains?” Jane said.

  “Please don’t talk about that right now,” Godfrey said, his voice weaker than usual. “Trying not to throw up here.”

  I looked behind me, and sure enough, Godfrey looked a little gray in the face. Not as gray as some of the leathery corpses shambling through the crowd, but close enough that I stopped talking about it.

  “Fine,” I said, leading the two of them off toward the main branch of the New York Public Library. “Let’s go check out some books.”

  39

  Jane held her own, weaving through the crowd, but Godfrey was more or less stunned by the chaos erupting around us and Jane pulled him along behind. When we emerged from the tent, she let go.

  “Go on, Godfrey, get out of here,” I said, and looked up at the architectural marvel that was the library.

  “I can help,” he said, all meek, still looking rather shell-shocked.

  “You can help by not dying,” I said. I turned to him and shook him until he looked directly at me. “Don’t be a fool. Those things are vicious and there’re way too many of them.”

  “Yes,” Jane added, “and they’re icky.”

  “That, too,” I said, nodding. “Go across the street and keep an eye out for the Inspectre until the police arrive.”

  Godfrey nodded, adjusted his glasses, and headed off across the street through traffic. Several cars slammed on their brakes and honked, but by then Godfrey had made it across safely.

  “Come on,” I said to Jane, and set off in search of a way into the library.

  As long as I had lived in New York, I had never really taken stock of the library, but running around the foot of it while we searched for an entrance, I was impressed by its old-world grandeur and the sheer size of it. The library ran an entire two blocks from Fortieth to Forty-second streets, and was massive. We circled the building hand in hand and came around to the main entrance on Fifth Avenue, its many stairs and two stone lions gated off from the regular sidewalk.

  “If those lions come to life or anything,” Jane said, “I may just pee on myself.”

  “Sexy,” I said. I started climbing over one of the police barriers. I held my hand out to help her over. “It’s okay. I think I already did earlier.”

  “And that’s why we make such a perfect couple,” she said.

  Since Jane was still in her full-length evening gown, she sat sidesaddle on top of the barrier as I steadied her and threw her legs over it. Taking our time, we made our way up the steps, looking for any sign of movement, especially from those menacing-looking lions.

  “You know, this would be terribly romantic if it weren’t for all the undead stuff,” she said.

  Most of the doors to the library were revolving ones, but all the way toward the right side was a set of standard doors. I retracted my bat, reholstered it at my side, and fished around inside my tuxedo pocket for my lock picks.

  I hesitated as I recalled pulling them out to use for Mina’s breakin. Then I looked Jane square in the eyes and pulled the leather case out. I unrolled it, exposing the pick sets.

  I gulped. Though things had been much better between us lately, the stuff Jane had said about being more open in our relationship was something I really needed to work on. “Jane,” I said. “You’re not the only one with a dark past around here. I haven’t been honest about everything lately …”

  She glanced down at the lock picks, eyebrows raised, then stopped me by putting her hand on my arm.

  “There will be time for all that later,” she said, “but right now, I think we have a problem.”

  “That’s the understatement of the evening,” I said, almost laughing and feeling relieved just for having opened up and owning a small part of my past.

  Jane rolled her eyes, then pointed toward the door. “A more immediate one,” she said. “Are you sure those picks are going to work?”

  I looked where she was pointing, only to realize that the door had an electronic lock. I slid the lock picks back into my pocket and started feeling around in my jacket.

  “Crap,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t pick it, but I can use my power on it.” I thought about the last time I had done this. Mina had put a gun to my head that time at the Museum of Modern Art, but I figured I could read the lock the same way, and without that kind of pressure on me this time. “Thing is, I’m out of Life Savers, and if I use my power, I don’t want to pass out once we get in there.”

  “You’re out?” she asked. “You always have them on you!”

  “They’re in my regular jacket,” I said. “Sheesh, when you switch out purses, haven’t you ever left something in the old one by mistake?”

  Jane turned away and looked toward the street. I thought she was pissed at me. We really didn’t have time for this.

  “Will a pretzel do?”

  “What?” I said. I turned and looked. One of New York’s thousands of street vendors was set up at the corner of Fifth and Forty-second.

  I nodded and knelt down in front of the lock. “Umm, sure. The carbs in it should convert to sugar. I’ll get working on the lock if you go get me one.”

  I handed her a five.

  “Keep the change,” I said. “And thanks.”

  “What change?” she said. “When’s the last time you bought street food?”

  Jane hiked up her dress and ran down the steps toward the vendor cart. I turned back to the door and grabbed the electronic keypad in both hands. This time I felt an immediate connection with it, and my mind slipped into the psychometric past of the object.

  It was nighttime in my vision, and I was in the head of a guard. He was at the door, punching his code in, and quick as that, I had what I needed. I pulled myself out of the vision to find that Jane had returned and was holding out a pretzel.

  “You look kinda creepy when you do that whole thing, hon,” she said.

  Feeling shaky, I stayed on my knees and took the pretzel from her.

  “Your face kinda glazes over and your eyes go all dull.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll work on that.”

  Jane shrugged. “No big. Just thought you might want to know.”

  I wolfed down the pretzel and waited several minutes until I started to feel better before pulling on my gloves and punching in the code for the door. Anything I could do to keep my power in check under the
craziness that was tonight helped. The little light on the electronic lock turned green. I pushed the door open and stepped into the spooky darkness of the library.

  I eased in, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness. Jane followed right behind me, clutching my hand.

  “You sure this is where Cyrus is?” she whispered.

  I spied something off to the left of the interior doors. It was the unconscious body of the guard I had just seen in my psychometric flash.

  “Pretty sure,” I said.

  We had to be brief, but we took the time to check him to see how badly he was injured. Aside from a lump on the back of his head, the guard looked like he was in good enough condition to leave there for now.

  “Well, if we just follow the trail of bodies, we’ll be okay,” I said. I grabbed Jane by the hand and the two of us headed farther into the library.

  The sound of the battle outside in Bryant Park was hard to miss as we entered the library’s main room. Books ringed the room behind rails that led down to a sunken research area filled with long wooden tables and hooded lamps. The ceiling rose several stories above us, marble walls and vaulted windows to either side. Four-tiered chandeliers hung from a faux blue sky with fluffy white clouds on it. It was a calming scene, given the circumstances. I thought maybe I should start using my library card after all this was over.

  Jane and I stopped when we reached the center of the cavernous room.

  “Where do you think he is?” Jane whispered, continuing to look around.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I listened for any sign of him, but all I could hear was the sound of continuing chaos outside the library in the big Fashion Week tent. “But we’ve got to start somewhere. Any suggestions?”

  Jane thought a minute. “How about we start with the N’s?”

  “Why there?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s where I’d keep a necromancer,” Jane said, giving a wan smile. “Under the N’s.”

  Her logic made as much sense as anything else tonight, so we set off toward the shelves around the edge of the room.