Tim Marquitz - Resurrection

“It’s not funny, homie,” Javier complained, getting animated.

“Nah, I know. I feel ya.” I raised my hands to pacify him. His funk was starting to creep as he jumped around and I didn’t want to catch too big a whiff. “I’ll help you guys. Tell me what’s going on.”

McConnell shook his head. He looked like he was enjoying the show. Graveyard TV: Two Vatos and a Hole.

Carlos stepped in. “Marvin, our night watering guy, noticed the dug up graves about a week ago. He was setting the sprinklers when he fell into one of the damn things. After he got out, took him four hours he said-”

“That’s because he’s fat,” Javier explained, apparently feeling left out of the conversation.

“Yeah, he is,” Carlos agreed without missing a beat. “Anyway, he found a bunch more empty graves and even saw a couple of the corpses walking off into the desert out back. He knew then something was up.”

You think?

“How many bodies have taken off?”

“Man, it’s hard to keep track, but I’d say maybe two hundred, maybe more.”

I looked to McConnell, his face no doubt mirroring my own surprise. That was a lot of zombies. Either George Romero was shooting a movie in town, or something big and sinister was going down.

“Have you reported them missing?” The Gray asked, clearly not used to being on the interrogator side of the equation.

Carlos looked at him like the wizard had spilled his last beer. “Yeah, to you, cabron. What am I going to do, tell everyone that their dead mamas y abuelitas went to stretch their legs?” He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Of course we didn’t tell nobody, fool. I need my job. If I go blabbing that people’s familias aren’t being taken care of here, they’ll shut this place down.” He glanced over at me. “Besides, not all them vatos that got up and walked away are on the books, you know what I’m saying?”

I did. I headed Carlos off before he could say anymore. I’d already agreed to help him so the less of my extracurricular activities he let McConnell know about, the better. The wizard might one day be among my collection. I didn’t want Carlos to spoil the surprise.

“Did any of the corpses come back, that you noticed?”

Carlos turned to Javier, who shook his head. “Not that we’ve seen. None of the holes we filled have been messed with, or anything.”

“Has there been anything else weird, besides the bodies?”

Javier answered. “There were some flashing lights upstairs in the crypts.” He pointed off to the mausoleum.

Painted in an earthy pink, with a red-tiled roof, the mausoleum stood at the center of the cemetery, framed by a wall of towering Firs. A little over two stories tall, the building housed concrete crypts, set into the walls. Hundreds of embalmed bodies were stored inside, separated from the living by only an inch-thick marble slab and a thin piece of plastic held in place with window caulking.

“Marvin didn’t see nothing else up there. Course he didn’t have the huevos to really look, but with the lights and all that shit, it’s probably a good place to go looking,” Carlos added.

“We’ll do that. Thanks.” I waved to the guys, glad to put some distance between me and Javier’s stink. Give me a dead body any day. “I’ll handle this.” They nodded as I nudged McConnell into motion.

We walked in silence to the mausoleum, Javier and Carlos’s eyes on us the entire way. Still during business hours, we strolled through the front doors like we belonged there. A wave of subtle, permeating decay met us at the entrance. McConnell covered his nose, his eyes narrowing. I drew in a deep breath. No matter how bad it smelled, it wasn’t Javier. That was an improvement.

I led the way down the quiet, carpeted halls, passing the closed chapel on the way. The bronze placards stood out against the marbled white faces of the occupied crypts. Their sparse memorials were a far cry from the grandiose decorations that surrounded the graves outside. With little more than a few brass rings holding small, brown vases filled with wilted flowers, there wasn’t much to be seen. The mausoleum had an air of solemnness to it.

Unlike the rest of the cemetery where nature worked to reclaim what it lost, life springing up all around, the crypts were barren and cold. No matter how many corpses were raised to traipse about, there would never be life here.

Bummed out by the mausoleum, I hurried and found the stairs to the upper level. Taking them two at a time, I arrived to find the same, somber arrangement as below. If nothing else, death was consistent around here.

While not a massive area to search, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was looking for. However, after a moment surveying the floor, it became pretty obvious that whatever we were looking for, it had to involve the crypts if we were gonna find anything at all.

The deep red, carpeted floor was mostly clear and pristine. There were a couple of neutral-colored couches that sat at opposite ends of the room, but nothing else to block the thoroughfare. On the walls behind each was a large, stained glass window. Motes of dust floated in the gentle light that filtered through their colored faces.

At a loss, I gestured to the marbled squares which ran five high, almost to the ceiling. The bottom crypt was doubled, the lower half sunk into the floor.

“Let’s check out the crypts and see what we can find.”

McConnell shrugged and started imitating me as I ran my hands across the smooth marble aimlessly. Monkey see, monkey do.

I moved off in the opposite direction from the wizard, assuming I was wasting my time. It’s not like I could pop open the crypts and look inside-at least not during the day. As such, it was a half-assed search at best. Frustrated, I moved through the halls speeding up as I got further along. My eyes glazed over at the sameness of everything, the whitewash of marble and gold. The monotony was only broken by the rare picture of a loved one taped to the crypt face, and the occasional crucifix or two. Figuring the night guy had too much to drink to know what the hell he was talking about, I felt I was sure this was turning out to be a snipe hunt. To counter the humdrum sameness, I paused and glanced out the window. As I looked out over the sprawling cemetery, I saw Carlos and Javier. They were back at work, continuing to dig the same hole. From my vantage point, I could see a large number of graves the zombies must have risen from. Patches of brown dirt marred the green fields, way too many to have been recent burials.

I shook my head at the amount and drew in a deep breath. The air by the window was sour, fetid, damp even. I worked my tongue around a bit, trying to build up some saliva to wash away the taste. It wasn’t leaving. I ran my hand around the edges of the window, thinking maybe it was just a draft stirring the smell up, but I didn’t feel anything. Out of nowhere, another thick wave wafted up and dusted my nose, the scent way thicker where I was standing than it had been anywhere else in the mausoleum. It caught my attention.

I spun in a slow circle, taking in everything. That’s when I noticed a scrap of something dark caught between the crimson carpet and the one of the bottom crypt faces. I bent down and snatched it up. When I did, an even thicker wave of decay assaulted my nose without mercy. I covered my mouth and examined the scrap, realizing it was a piece of rotten flesh, dead so long it had shriveled and blackened. Discarding the skin, then continuing my examination, I saw the thick carpet had been pressed down somewhat, right in front of the crypt.

If there was something to find here, this was it.

Quietly, my eyes on the crypt face, I went down the hall and called out for McConnell. After a moment of what seemed like obvious hesitation, he wandered over. I put my finger to my lips and motioned I’d found something. His eyes narrowed and he followed me back in silence. A shimmering gray energy flickered at his fingertips.