Deader Still sc-2

by Anton Strout

  The N’s turned out to be along the wall facing Bryant Park and, lo and behold, when I entered the aisle, I could make out the silhouette of Cyrus Mandalay standing on the ledge of one of the high-arched windows up ahead. His attention was focused outside, and given the noise, we didn’t need to be especially careful in sneaking up on him.

  About two-thirds of the way down the aisle, I motioned for Jane to stop and wait while I continued ahead. All I needed was to get close enough to knock his legs out from under him with my bat as he stood on the window ledge. The backs of his calves were about eye level, perfect for my natural swing.

  Winding up behind Cyrus’s back, I caught his face in the reflection of the glass. It was a mask of concentration as he stared down into the park. The thought occurred to me that if I could see Cyrus’s face in the reflection, then he could probably see mine, which explained why his reflection shifted from the park to me in that instant. Before I could swing, his foot lashed out and caught me in my temple. A flash of blinding whiteness hit my eyes and I couldn’t help but drop my bat and clutch my head as I reeled backward.

  Cyrus jumped down from the window ledge and landed in front of me. Even without the added height, he still towered above me at well over six feet. He grinned, his facial tattoos warping as his sharklike smile spread wide.

  “See?” Jane cried out from behind me. “I told you he’d be under N for necromancer!”

  Cyrus grabbed me by the hair, wrapped his arm across my throat, and held me there. “What?” he said. “Is this really the N section?”

  I nodded, my chin digging into the taut muscles in Cyrus’s arm.

  Cyrus chuckled, and the sound echoed throughout the quiet hush of the library. “Nice detective work, Ms. Clayton-Forrester, but I’m afraid you’re wrong. It’s just a coincidence that you found me in this section of the library. It simply had the best view that I needed for today’s theatrics.”

  I pushed against Cyrus’s arm, but it was no use. He had been an imposing fellow when he had been the owner of Tome, Sweet Tome, but cultish crazy had pushed him into the realm of unearthly strength, and there was no way I was breaking free.

  “Jane, run,” I shouted.

  Part of me half hoped she had some kind of ace up her sleeve, but she smartly turned back and ran up the aisle, which was impressive given the heels she was wearing.

  That was, she ran for about ten feet, before a new obstacle presented itself. A column of zombies had started working its way down the aisle toward us and Jane ran smack-dab into them. She spun swiftly to escape, but decaying hands latched on to her and held her in place. In a last-ditch effort, she dug into her sequined clutch and pulled her phone free, but Cyrus made a gesture and one of the zombies knocked it free from her hand. The rest of them grabbed both her arms and pressed her up against one side of the shelves.

  “Bad girl, Jane.” Cyrus tsked. “You were such a promising Sectarian, too. I saw you when you went all Tesla coil on that double-crosser Mina back at the Guggenheim, my dear. We won’t have any repeats of that. I think we’ll just keep you pinned right there against those books like a butterfly on a specimen board, far from anything electrical.”

  Cyrus grabbed my head like he was palming a basketball and turned me so I looked up at him. “And as for you,” he said, “I think I have an exciting little surprise to share with you.”

  Holding me in his viselike grip, Cyrus helped himself back onto the window ledge and then lifted me up to join him, my bat still lying useless on the library floor.

  With his free hand, he pointed down into the crowd through the hidden slit in the roof of the tent. He was pointing at Argyle Quimbley, who was earnestly protecting a pack of supermodels from a horde of zombies using a folding chair, quite adeptly, I thought. No wonder F.O.G. had appointed him to teach me Unorthodox Fighting Techniques. Still, the odds were against him. Zombies never tired.

  “Lucky you,” Cyrus said. “For all the trouble you’ve caused me, you’re getting ringside seats to watch as I tear your precious Inspectre apart, limb by limb.”

  “For all the trouble I’ve caused you?” I said, laughing. “Are you kidding me? I’ve just been trying to protect my city.”

  “What with you foiling my plans twice, I’m a pariah with every cultist in the tristate area,” Cyrus shouted, his anger increasing along with the pressure of his arm around my neck. “You and that partner of yours made a laughingstock out of my grand plans that night at the Met. Now you’ve ruined Paralyzed.”

  “Sorry …’bout … that …” I said, gasping for breath.

  “So first you get to watch the old man die,” Cyrus said, delighted with himself, “and then the girl.”

  At the mention of the Inspectre and Jane, I started to panic. Well, panic more than I already was. Unfortunately, the more I struggled to free myself, the more air I used. Stars began to pop and burst before my eyes as darkness started to take over.

  “Um, excuse me,” a familiar voice called out. It was meek and nervous and 100 percent Godfrey’s. Cyrus relaxed his grip a little and turned us toward where it had come from. Godfrey stood farther along the bank of windows. He looked fantastic in his tux, yet nervous as hell, but he stood there, unmoving. “I think you should let go of him … now.”

  The nerves in his voice kept his threat from seeming anything more than silly, and even I wanted to join Cyrus when he laughed out loud. He jumped down from the windowsill and started walking us toward Godfrey.

  I was worried about slipping on my bat, but I didn’t have the best lines of sight from my chokehold position, and I couldn’t see it anywhere.

  Cyrus gestured and a few zombies broke from the pack and also headed toward Godfrey. Godfrey started backing away, but Cyrus closed the distance in a flash and smashed him in the face, breaking his glasses. They tumbled to the floor and Godfrey clutched his face, blood running through his fingers.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “I think I’m about to throw up.”

  “I’ve got it from here, Godfrey,” another familiar voice said from behind me. Connor. “Thanks.”

  There was the unmistakable dull, metallic thud of my bat, and I felt Cyrus’s arm release me as he toppled over and hit the floor hard. I spun around and, sure enough, there was Connor, holding my bat. He was covered head to toe in bits of rotting flesh, and he twirled my bat around in his hands.

  “That felt good, kid,” he said. “Maybe I oughta get me one of these.”

  “Oh, boys,” Jane called out. “A little help here?”

  The zombies still had her, but with Cyrus unconscious, they seemed a little less focused on holding her now. In fact, they looked far more intent on trying to eat her.

  “I thought if we neutralized the necromancer, the zombies would drop,” I said to Connor.

  “That seemed like the likeliest of scenarios,” he said, handing my bat back to me. “This is the other, I guess. The dead have been raised, but now they’re just not in anyone’s control anymore. Let’s have at ’em, kid.”

  Connor dashed off into the sea of undead. Already many of them were just wandering around aimlessly, while others suddenly became focused on the two of us as we joined the fray.

  Jane had already broken free of her captors and backed to the other side of the book aisle. Her hands flew like lightning as she reached onto the shelves, pulling book after book free and tossing them right between the eyes of every zombie she targeted. She was cool, calculated, and unremorseful—all things that for once made me thankful for her bouts with the dark side of herself. It meant she could do something like this in survival mode without really scarring all that was good in her at the same time.

  Connor and I made short work of the rest. Slow and unfocused zombies were much easier to contend with than when Cyrus had been controlling them. Godfrey had already pulled out a pocket-sized notebook that was covered in his own blood and was taking notes, although he had to hold the notebook an inch from his face to do so without his glasses.

  �
�Jesus, Jane,” Connor said with a whistle. “That was some impressive book throwing.”

  Jane curtsied in her evening gown, which had remained relatively intact despite our fight.

  “I’ve got mad shelving skillz,” she said. “All that time in the Black Stacks at Tome, Sweet Tome. A book doesn’t have to be all dark and arcane to do some damage, you know.”

  “How did you know to come here?” I said to Connor.

  “Ah,” Godfrey said, looking up from his notebook. “That would be my doing.”

  “Godfrey?” I said, turning to him.

  He nodded, then gave his nonexistent glasses a phantom push up onto his nose. “After you dragged me out of the tent, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I had to do something. So I sought out Mr. Christos here because I thought you might need backup.”

  “And you did, kid,” Connor added. “And this is why we don’t leave our partners out of our lives, understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said, reaching into his own coat pocket. He pulled out a short length of rope and knelt down. He flipped Cyrus over and the rope sprung to life, tying itself tight around Cyrus’s wrists.

  “Godfrey here finds me and drags me in after you, convinced you were on to something. So I get him to play decoy while I secured your bat.” Connor slapped Godfrey on the back. “Sorry I didn’t get my swing in sooner. You feel okay after that punch of his?”

  Godfrey nodded with a big smile on his face, the blood forming an evil clown smile on his lips. “I believe that might be my first Departmental injury, unless you count paper cuts down in the Gauntlet. Or the time I twisted my ankle on the stone steps down there.”

  I waggled a finger at Connor. “Whatever happened to what you said about keeping Godfrey out of all this?” I asked.

  Connor shrugged. “Jesus, kid, did you see the way things were going down there? We needed every man we could get our hands on. Don’t take everything I say to heart, okay?”

  I paused for a minute, kicking myself for being so literal-minded at times. I was so focused on my own issues that I had not really paid attention to the rest of the things around me.

  “If you hadn’t shown up to save the day …” I started, then stopped with a shiver. Jane put her arm around me.

  “That’s the great thing about being me, kid,” Connor said. “Even if you haven’t been looking out for me, I’m still always looking out for you. I’m a good partner like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Connor said. “Just be a better partner.”

  This softer side of Connor confused me. What was going on in his life that suddenly gave him this deeper appreciation of me? Just the other day he was ready to cut me loose if I didn’t get my act together. Now he was all Walton’s Mountain.

  Now was not the time to think about it. Zombieriffic things were still happening out in the tent, and then there was the matter of keeping this whole incident contained. Since a good portion of this evening’s events was taped for television, we’d have to secure all the equipment and pray that none of the footage had been broadcast live. First, we had to clear the library of Cyrus Mandalay, then the zombies.

  It took all four of us to carry Cyrus out of there, but by the time we regrouped with the rest of the Department, it was like we were one big, happy family in an ocean of undead body parts.

  And now we had another prison barge friend for Faisal Bane to play with.

  40

  No one escaped cleanup duty later that night. Some Other Division and Greater & Lesser Arcana employees headed back uptown to take on the bulk of the workload under the Guggenheim while several other divisions stayed to work on cleaning up Bryant Park. I was thankful that we hadn’t been stuck with that task—sure, the zombie menace had been quelled, but there were bodies all over the inside of the tent. The Guggenheim was just fine with me. Even Godfrey Candella had come along, still in his fashion show outfit, furiously taking notes on the remains of the Paralyzed exhibit.

  Worn down as I was, the powers that be took mercy on me and I was spared the task of zombie body removal. Instead, I concentrated my efforts on going through boxes and boxes of invites Cyrus has stashed into one of the crates for his freak show when David Davidson arrived. Everyone looked up from what they were doing.

  Davidson looked a little rough around the edges after all the spin he must have had to work tonight, and he loosened his tie.

  “Well?” the Inspectre said. “How stands the situation?”

  Davidson said, “Well, the good news is that most of what happened was contained to the big tent behind the library. The bad part is that there were a lot of celebrities who witnessed it, and part of it was being broadcast live.”

  I crossed over to him.

  “So the cat’s out of the bag,” I said, pissed off that we had done so poorly at containment. “We’re public.”

  Connor came over to me and patted me on the shoulder. “Easy, kid. Let’s hear what the man has to say.”

  Davidson gave me a stern look, then turned to Connor and smiled. “Thank you, Connor. The last thing Cyrus said before the people from the Thaniel Graydon took him away was a resounding “Even if you arrest me, you’re still going to have to deal with all the media.” A pretty weak parting threat, if you ask me.”

  “But what about all the media?”

  David Davidson actually let out a chuckle. “If there’s one thing that’s easy to do, it’s spin something in the fashion industry,” he said. “With all the witnesses and footage leaking out, to deny what was going on would be foolish. So why not play into it?”

  Despite his confidence in Davidson, the Inspectre looked worried. “Meaning what, exactly, my boy?” he said.

  Jane came up to me and put her hand in mine, squeezing it. The pain in my wrists from earlier still rang out, but I continued holding her hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Davidson said with a flourish. “I give you the fashion industry’s newest marketing stunt—a high-fashion zombie walk!”

  “Zombie walk?” Jane asked.

  Davidson nodded. “Yeah, I hadn’t really heard of it either, but there’s an underground movement on the Internet of these flash mobs that show up costumed as zombies. Mostly they’re fans of zombie movies and the like, but they get together, usually in urban areas, and wander around in character for several hours. Anyway, we had a few down by NYU a while back, and I thought it might be a good idea to start funding some of their events … you know, so they’d gain more popularity and just in case I ever needed a plausible cover story for a real zombie outbreak. Like, say, at Bryant Park.”

  “And you expect people to buy this?” I asked.

  Davidson nodded again. “People will believe almost anything they can Google. You should look it up. Besides, who can tell the difference between brainless, emaciated supermodels and gaunt, brain-hungry zombies? It’s fashion … People are far more likely to buy into a flash zombie walk than they are the harsh supernatural reality that the dead were rising and walking the land, consuming the living.”

  All of the agents erupted into applause.

  “That’s what passes for genius?” Jane whispered to me.

  “I guess,” I said, joining in the applause. “Seems to be working.”

  I turned to look for Connor, only to see him standing alone over by the invitation boxes I had been working on, stock-still as everyone around him clapped. I went over to him, but he took no notice.

  His face was stoic and his hand was clutching one of the invitation envelopes. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the letter I had seen in my psychometric flash of his desk. He clutched it in his other hand.

  “Connor,” I said, “you okay?”

  “You know how I’ve been a little distant lately? Wanting you to keep out of my business?”

  I nodded.

  He unfolded the letter from his pocket and handed it to me. The page was blank except for one single message in the
center of it. No address, no signature, nothing.

  It read: AIDAN CHRISTOS IS OURS. STOP LOOKING OR HE DIES.

  “Aidan?” I asked. “Your brother?”

  “How many Aidan Christoses do you know of? Someone sent it to me a little while ago, kid.”

  “I accidentally got a psychometric reading off your desk,” I said, sheepish. “I know. I’m sorry. But whoever sent it to you knew I might see it, and they somehow blocked it from my power. It knocked me out. But why now? Why send something after all this time?”

  Connor was silent, assessing the information I’d given him. “Because whoever they are, they must know I work with you. And now that your control over your power is growing, they know it’s only a matter of time before I use you to help me track him down.”

  “But if you were going to keep that letter from me to keep him safe, why tell me now?”

  He held up one of the invitations. The name on it read only Aidan, and it had an address. Right here. In New York City.

  “What are the odds, kid?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think it’s time to find out.”

  Connor nodded. “Let’s find him.”

  The two of us headed back toward the exit. When the Inspectre saw us leaving, he must have seen our determination, and didn’t say a word. And I knew why: You could never get away with stopping people with the kind of hope we had on our faces.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANTON STROUT was born in the Berkshire Hills mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. He currently lives in historic Jackson Heights, New York (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you).

  His short story “The Lady in Red” can be found in the DAW Books anthology Pandora’s Closet, and a tie-in story to Dead to Me entitled “The Fourteenth Virtue” can be found in DAW’s The Dimension Next Door.

  He is the cocreator of the faux folk musical Sneezin’ Jeff & Blue Raccoon: The Loose Gravel Tour, winner of the Best Storytelling Award at the first annual New York International Fringe Festival.