by Anton Strout
Connor turned to look at Jane. “She okay, kid?”
I took Jane’s hand in mine and squeezed it. There was little response at first, but then she squeezed back, her grip strong.
She nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice weak. “I just need a minute to sit and catch my breath. Everything out on the water took the wind out of me.”
Connor backed down the aisle. “I’m going to sit a couple rows in front of you two lovebirds,” he said. “Give you a little breathing room.”
Connor settled down into the middle of the row three ahead of us. I tripped my way down ours as the credits wrapped up on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Despite a small volley of swearing during the changeover of the films, the Inspectre managed to get the professor’s film up and running within a few minutes. Mason Redfield’s The Gates of Hell: Water’s End came up on the screen. The footage was documentary-style, covering the long history of the location and the years of unfortunate incidents that plagued those waters. Hundreds of ships had sunk there over the years, supposedly due to treacherous currents and rock formations that took seventy years of blasting and removal to finally clear. Professor Redfield even had a touch of the horror element in its approach, given the macabre subject matter, lending the film an eerie quality that transcended most documentaries. I found myself actually enjoying it, if enjoyment could be taken in such dark subject matter. Human suffering was always fascinating, no matter what form it came in.
The film cut abruptly to a different-looking style all together. Apparently, the professor was a better film teacher than he was an editor because he had spliced in an entire section of the wrong footage. The image on the screen looked straight out of a B-grade horror flick showing a thick, billowing fog on the edge of a graveyard at night. It was so poorly done that even the gravestones looked like they might blow away if a weak wind hit during the filming. The low, guttural sound of zombies off in the darkness came over the sound system.
“How does this tie in?” Jane asked, almost as confused as I was.
“Bad splice,” I said. “Guess the professor was a better teacher than doer.”
“I don’t think so, kid,” Connor said, turning his head back to us. “Something about this seems. . .deliberate.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Just a feeling.” He looked up to the booth over our heads and called out, “Inspectre?”
The light from the projector flickered, almost going out as the film skipped on the screen. A churning din of metal and an unhealthy grind of the film equipment filled the theater as the light from the glow off the screen began to strobe erratically.
“That doesn’t sound or look good,” Jane said, finally perking up once more. “If we had paid to see this, I’d definitely want my money back.”
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
Connor stood. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I mean to find out.” He looked up at the projection booth. “Inspectre, shut it down!”
“I’m trying, blast it!” the Inspectre called out.
“Try harder,” Connor shouted.
A loud commotion came from the tiny open panel at the back of the theater, followed by a string of profanity that I didn’t know the Inspectre had in him. “It’s no use,” he said. “I can’t kill the power to the machine. It won’t stop running, damn it all!”
Thick smoke filled the air. At first I thought it must be coming from the machine up in the projection booth, but then I realized it wasn’t from there. In fact, it wasn’t smoke at all.
It was fog, and it was coming out of the movie screen. Jane grabbed onto my arm, squeezing.
“Connor!” I shouted, pointing down in front. “Look!”
“I see it, kid,” he said, keeping his calm. “Don’t get all freaked-out marveling at it. Just be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” I asked, but I was already pulling out my bat. I had a pretty good idea forming in my head. If the fog from the movie could pour out into our world, I wondered what else could come through.
All three of us stood transfixed by what was happening on the screen. There was little we could do but watch as the movie flashed through several scenes in rapid sequence. Clips from a whole host of B-grade zombie flicks came up one after another. With each new one, creatures from each remained on the screen, pressing against it. Like swimmers coming to the surface, the figures pushed through the two-dimensional world and into ours.
“Did they—?” Jane started, but I cut her off.
“Yep,” I said and started off down our row to the aisle.
As the floor in front of the screen filled with cinematically manifested undead that kept pouring off the screen, the film changed images once again, this time coming to one steady setting. This time the film had more of an amateur home-video quality.
A field of green grass stretched along a horizon against a backdrop of cloudless blue sky. A lone figure came into the frame—young, dashing, and one that I had seen before thanks to my psychometry. Mason Redfield looked a lot better this way than when I had originally met him—old, dead, and filled with water.
He turned to the screen as if noticing it, and walked toward us in the type of tweed suit he had fancied in his youth. Like all the rest of the creatures manifesting in the theater, he pushed at the screen, but met more resistance from it than the others had. Mason reeled back from it, shocked, but I could tell from the expression of determination on his face that he wasn’t even close to giving up. He ran forward, slamming between film and reality like that old video for “Take on Me.” Sparks flew from the screen, raining down onto the assembled zombie army below. Several agents in the theater snapped into action and charged the horde down by the screen, but Connor, Jane, and I kept watching Mason Redfield up above.
Movement off to my left caught my eye and I looked over. Inspectre Quimbley had joined us, out of breath from running down from the projection booth. His eyes were also transfixed on the screen.
“Is that the Mason Redfield?” I asked him.
“Back from the grave, I believe,” the Inspectre said. “Trying to return to his youth, from the looks of it.”
The Inspectre’s old friend leapt at the screen, the screen erupting in sound and fury with a prismatic spray of color. The rejuvenated professor passed through it and landed along the tops of the front row of seats, very much alive and looking even younger than me. “Protect me, my beautiful monsters,” he shouted. “At all costs.” At his command, the aggression among the zombies rose, especially those who fell into a close, protective ring around the reborn professor.
The Inspectre continued down the aisle toward him. “Mason!”
Redfield was too busy staring at his own limbs to notice the Inspectre. He stood there balanced on top of the seats, flexing his arms and fingers around like they were unfamiliar to him. Eventually, he took notice of the Inspectre advancing on him and did a double take.
“Argyle?” he said with an astonished smile. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Mason.”
The Inspectre’s old partner’s eyes widened. “You’re so. . . old. . .”
“I think the salient point,” the Inspectre said, “is the fact that you’re so young.”
Mason Redfield looked around. “Where are we? Where are my students? This isn’t where I was supposed to be.”
“We beat them to it, I guess,” I said.
“They were supposed to retrieve the film,” he said, angry, but then he gave a dark laugh. “Students can be so unreliable.”
“What have you done, Mason?” the Inspectre asked. “What dark bargain have you struck . . . and why?”
Mason turned his attention back to the Inspectre. “Why?” Mason said, scoffing at him. “Have you looked in the mirror lately? Tell me, which way would you rather be? A doddering old film professor or a man in his prime? I had to die, to be reborn.”
“What you are, what you have become, is unnatural,” the Inspe
ctre said, “and in the name of the Fraternal Order of Goodness, I—”
“The Order?” he said, laughing. “Are you telling me that there are still living members out there, other than you?”
“The Order will still be here long after you’re gone, Mason, trust me.” The Inspectre lunged for Mason on top of the seats, but the now-young professor batted him away with an awkward swipe of his arm. Clumsy as it was, it was enough to knock the Inspectre over onto one of the theater seats. He grunted as he went down.
“Gone?” Mason said, parroting the Inspectre’s British accent. “Why, yes. . . I do believe it is time I was going.” At his gestures, the circle of zombies around him pressed out into the crowd.
I came out of the row and stepped down the aisle, Jane at my heels. I pulled out my bat, extended it, and slapped it down into my hand. “You’re not going anywhere,” I said.
“Oh, no?” Mason said, looking amused. “I beg to differ.” He gestured again at his assembled army, which was already squaring off against the rest of the agents. “Attack!”
“Good,” I said, charging him. “That’s what I was hoping you were going to say.”
I had seen Mason Redfield’s fighting techniques before, but that psychometric vision had been from years ago when he was still an active member of the Fraternal Order of Goodness. As I closed in on him, Mason must have noticed the intent in my eyes. He dropped down off the top of the seats, wobbling on his new legs like a newborn animal taking its first steps. A look of fear filled his bright young eyes and he pressed his way back into the sea of zombies, more of which fell from the screen every second.
“That’s right,” I said, raising my bat as I hit the first wave of the undead. “You’d better run!”
Connor fell in beside me and used the shamblers’ own slow lurching to help pull them out of my way. For every one he moved, another one fell from the screen to take its place.
“I’m going try to stop the projector,” Jane called out from somewhere behind me, her voice fading as she ran off. “I think that should kill the magic at work here.”
The door in the lower-right corner of the theater leading off to the Department opened. Wesker came walking out of it unassumingly with a coffee mug in hand, but dropped it as he took in the chaos of the room. He looked shocked and not a little pissed off. His hands flew into a series of arcane movements directed at the zombies nearest him, but nothing happened. Panic rose up in my chest, causing me to redouble my efforts. Wesker’s magic had failed against them, but I was happy to see that the blunt-force trauma my bat was delivering still worked just fine.
Connor was off holding his own nearby. Each zombie he knocked down got a quick boot stomp to its head, filling the air with a fleshy crunch.
“This is the most active I’ve been in a movie theater since The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” he said exuberantly.
“If you start singing ‘The Time Warp,’ the next notch on my bat is for you.”
“Fair enough,” he said, grabbing another of the zombies out of my path. “Just get over to Mason Redfield. . .and hurry.”
I pressed harder through the crowd of shuffling undead mayhem, but it was no use. Mason Redfield was always a step ahead of me in the crowd as he backed away, putting more distance between us every second. Shoving through the crowd was no good. There was only one thing I could think of as an alternative.
I collapsed my bat and sheathed it before climbing up onto the front row of seats themselves, putting me half a body length higher than everyone around me. Compared to jumping off the high-rise balcony the other night, my new idea seemed only slightly less insane, but if I gave myself time to come to my senses, I’d talk myself out of it. I stopped analyzing and threw myself out over the battle.
I hadn’t gone crowd surfing since they closed CBGB a few years back, but my body remembered the strange elation that came with giving yourself over to the energy of the crowd and the hands supporting you. For a moment it all felt familiar. . . until the raking claw of fingers caused me to snap to and got me moving. I rolled into motion across the sea of heads and arms, gunning for Mason Redfield.
Spinning, I kept my eyes focused on the professor. I was actually gaining on him this way and the look of panic on his face told me he knew it. He turned away from me as I closed the distance and he burst into a full run through the fighting crowd, but despite his efforts, I was still closing in on him. My hands brushed against the back collar of his suit coat, but didn’t find enough to grab at. One more revolution, however, and the reborn Mason Redfield was mine.
I came out of my next roll with my hand coming down for the grab, but the professor made a swift change in direction and was no longer in my path. Before my mind could even process the thought, I saw why. I had rolled with such determination that I had lost all sense of direction and was inches away from a collision with Director Wesker. Our eyes met, surprise registering on both of our faces, but it was far too late to stop rolling. My knee came up fast on his face and smashed into his temple, knocking him back and sending him toppling to the floor of the theater. A space opened up as he fell in the fray and I aimed myself for it. I grabbed ahold of two zombies as I shot past them in the hopes of slinging myself into the space, then flipped myself into the spot, careful to avoid stepping on Wesker. Jane’s boss looked like he was out cold.
Mason Redfield was already gone and making his way up the aisle toward the exit out to the café. I could maybe still nab him if I ran off after him now, but there was Wesker to think about. I couldn’t just leave him there to be torn apart by zombies, even if he was a dick most of the time. Besides, Jane actually got along with her boss and would never let me hear the end of it if I left him to become all zombified.
I stood my ground protectively over the prone Wesker, knocking back zombies in whatever direction they came from. Worry set in as my arms tired, yet the hordes still came, even more of them still pouring from the screen.
“Jane!” I shouted up to the projection booth. “Any luck?”
“No,” she called back.
“Can’t you, I don’t know, talk to the projector or something ?”
“I tried,” she said, sounding panicked. “It won’t listen. I even asked politely.”
“Screw politeness,” I said. “The time for manners is kind of passed. Go with aggressive!”
The electric hum of Jane’s technomantic voice boomed out loud over the battle sounds in the theater. The pitch of the projector changed to a metallic whine, followed by a dull, explosive thwump.
All of the lights went out and everything electronic went dead.
The sound of the movie died with it, leaving me in the pitch black surrounded by the sound of struggle and the low, guttural moans of the undead all around me.
“Oops,” Jane said.
I spun myself around in a continuous circle, swinging blindly into the darkness to keep every last creature away from me. I didn’t have a clue who might be attacking or from which direction, and I was rewarded with a few satisfying hits. I could only pray none of them were my coworkers.
The dull red glow of emergency exit lights kicking on filled the theater, giving just enough for me to make out my surroundings once more. The professor was gone from the aisle now, but his zombie horde was still scattered all around.
“Steady!” the Inspectre called out from somewhere across the theater. “Keep them contained. I want zero zombies walking out of here. Is that understood?”
His words gave me hope, especially since the screen was no longer producing any more enemies. I started swinging, thinning their ranks. The job became easier when several of them lost their shape even before I struck them, melting instead into a goo that fell from their bones and coated the floor of the theater.
Jane came down from the projection booth and walked over to me through the last bits of fighting, the reel of film held in her hands at arm’s length. She clearly wanted nothing to do with it. Connor walked over to me when he finished dispatchin
g the remaining zombies next to him. He looked down at the growing film of goo on the floor. “You think that happened to the professor, too?” he asked.
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
“Doubtful,” the Inspectre added as he joined us, winded and huffing. “Very doubtful.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The Mason I knew was resourceful, a careful thinker, and this newly reborn Mason seems to still have it. He wouldn’t have planned this out only to suffer the same fate as these celluloid minions. You heard what he expected. He thought he would be with some of his students at another location, not here in our movie theater. The zombies were a mere distraction.”
Director Wesker put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing down on it hard. “Speaking of distractions,” Wesker said. “I want a word with Mr. Canderous and Mr. Christos in my office now.” He reached over to Jane and snatched the film from her hands.
“Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said. “There’s too much to do. Redfield’s on the loose and we need to keep searching for the water woman who killed him, despite the fact that he is alive once more. She may have had a hand in his rebirth. Some strange connection exists between these two incidents and we need to know what it is.”
“That may be,” said Director Wesker, unmoved, “but clearly your lapdogs are stirring up trouble on your behalf and I’d like a moment with them by myself.”
I looked over to the Inspectre with a pained expression. “Sir. . .?”
The Inspectre sighed. “Go, both of you,” he said, still catching his breath. “I’ll be along soon.”
Wesker pushed Connor and me both toward the doorway to the offices, waving us toward it with the film reel.
“You’d better hurry, then,” Wesker said. “I can’t promise they’re going to live that long.”
Professor Redfield’s attack had been brutal, but it was Thaddeus Wesker’s string of expletives on our way back to Greater & Lesser Arcana that really stung. It might have had something to do with most of his comments being aimed directly at me more than Connor for allowing Jane to get marked.
