Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"This is becoming tiresome," Clay muttered to himself.

With all of the zombies on the ground, trying to grab at the watchman, he waded into them, kicking and stomping. The axe was idle in his hand as he crushed the spine of the nearest creature. He swung his heavy boot and kicked the head off of a second. Clay stomped another skull to powder, but by then they were rising and he stood back, brandishing the axe.

"Oh, my Lord," the watchman whispered as Clay went at the withered corpse of a woman in a blue cocktail dress, hacking off her head. "Is this real? Is it the End Times? I… I thought I'd be saved. I've been faithful."

The axe fell, cleaving a skull in two, then Clay swung it low and cut the corpse of a uniformed soldier in half at the midsection.

"Good for you," Clay said.

He finished off the last of the zombies in the museum, their moldering corpses sliding to the ground with the thunk of bone and the rustle of autumn leaves. One of them continued to moan, its voice like storm winds raging outside a lonely cottage. Clay stamped a foot upon its head, cutting off the eerie sound, and freeing the soul within.

The watchman flinched when he looked up.

Clay raised both hands, including the one with the axe. "I just saved your life, friend. A little gratitude."

The man's jaw dropped and he nodded quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Th-thank you so much. But… you didn't answer me. Is this it? The End Times?"

The shapeshifter studied the man for a moment and then shook his head. "Not if I have anything to say about it. Look, you couldn't have been the only one on duty."

The watchman shook his head. He pulled himself out of his hiding place and stood. With a shaky hand he pointed into the darkness on the far side of the massive hall. Clay frowned as he followed the man's trembling finger. Sprawled on the floor beside a statue of a man and a woman locked in a romantic embrace, with a child seated at their feet, was another figure. This one was as unmoving as those in the statue, but it was flesh, not stone.

"Hank, you idiot," the watchman whispered, grief in his voice. "You idiot."

"What happened?" Clay asked, studying the man intently. "Tell me exactly what happened."

The watchman was not a small man, but he trembled as he spoke, and he shook his head, still not quite believing what he had just survived.

"We… we were trapped in here. With that fog and the power out and, well, we were arguing. He didn't want to leave his post. I wanted to go home, be with my wife, if this was really it. When we saw… when we saw them coming…" His eyes went wide and he laughed, more than a little hysterical. "Zombies! When we saw them coming, we hid behind the counter."

Clay glanced over. It was a long marble counter where visitors could get information and buy tickets. He had passed it on his way in. The watchmen must have been hiding behind it even then. If he had known…

"It got quiet for a bit, but I made Hank sit tight. Then… we heard them coming out. The moaning, the sounds they made, I felt like I couldn't breathe just listening to them. But Hank, he had to look, had to raise his head, see what they were up to. Idiot.

"'Dave,' he says, 'I think they're stealing something.' And he starts to get up! Can you believe that? He starts to get up. I drag him back down, practically wetting myself. I'm a good Christian. I never thought I'd still be here when the Beast took hold of the Earth. 'Who cares?' I say. 'Let 'em take whatever they want! These are the Last Days.' But Hank's not going for that. His eyes got all crazy. He always took the job too seriously, like it was an honor, working here, like the exhibits were the Shroud of Turin. He loved all this stuff. He started shaking, just out of control, and then he was gone before I could stop him. At first there were only five or six of them, and maybe he thought he could take them, they didn't look real fast. He grabbed the nightstick off his belt and went in swinging.

"The fool."

Clay nodded, putting it all together. Time was wasting. He couldn't spare another minute with the watchman. Not if he was going to stop Morrigan from getting the Eye. He grabbed the watchman by the wrist and pulled him toward his friend's corpse, but when the man held back, not wanting to see what had become of his friend, Clay relented and continued on his own.

Hank had been torn apart. His nightstick was fifteen feet away, droplets of blood all around it. The dead man had been eviscerated. He was so badly damaged that he would not be coming back from the dead. If Clay looked closely enough he knew he would find that there were things, organs, missing. Eaten by the dead. But he did not care to investigate. He turned quickly back to the survivor.

"The thing that the dead were taking. What was it?"

The man looked as though he might collapse at any moment. His flesh was as pale as that of the dead. "That's the thing. It was a head. This preserved thing, from a bog. I don't… I don't know more than that. Hank could have told you. He knew every piece in every exhibit. Lord, he loved this place."

"Yes," Clay whispered, and he knelt by the ravaged corpse and put his hand on the man's chest. He twitched several times and his eyes fluttered and for just a moment his features might have blurred.

"Hey!" the watchman called. "Hey, what are you doing to him? He's dead! He's — "

His words stopped short. Clay assumed it was because he had just remembered the battle axe, and what it was capable of.

When Clay stood, he could see a trail of ectoplasm, a pale stream of spirit energy, a tendril of smoke that extruded from the body of the dead man, off into the darkness on the far side of the museum. The zombies who had killed this man were also the ones who had the Eye of Eogain. And the trail of ectoplasm that linked a corpse to its killer would lead Clay right to them.

"Stay here," Clay told the watchman. "I doubt they'll be back, but it's not safe outside. Stay until the mist is gone."

"Or until the devil calls my name," the watchman muttered.

Clay shook his head. "It's not the end, my friend. Just a taste of it. A sneak preview. You just stay here until it's over."

"How long do you think that'll be?" the man ventured, his moment of swagger gone and his horror and grief returning.

"Hours. A day. If not by then, then maybe never."

The watchman stared at him. Obviously the man had been expecting some words of comfort. But Clay had none to give.

Axe gripped tightly in his hand he plunged into the shadows of that grand entry hall, heading off into the far corner, away from the front doors, following the tendril of ectoplasm as though it were a leash at the end of which he would find his goal. At a wall the trail turned left, and ahead he saw damp, luminescent crimson mist clouding inside, rising up toward the high ceiling. There were tall windows there. Shattered.

Shattered outward. The soul-tether led him out through the broken windows, glass crunching under his boots.

An instant later, there were no boots. In the space between one footfall and another, he dropped to all fours and his hands and feet had become massive paws. His flesh flowed, bones shifted, and now his head was heavy and he shook his lion's mane as he raced after Morrigan's undead servants.

Clay threw back his head, felt his chest expand, and he roared, the sound echoing off the faces of buildings and sliding through the bloody fog. He roared a second time and a third, and then he paused to glance back at the museum.

The ghost of Dr. Graves appeared in the red mist beside him as though grown from the darkness. Graves stared at him, nodding in approval.

"Remarkable," the ghost said.

Clay swung his massive head toward Graves. "Eve?" he growled.