Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Just drunk,” I lied. I was still pissed, but now there was a greater problem: incoming zombies. I couldn’t let Mina catch on to that part of my life. “Let’s just get inside before they cause a scene.”

This late at night, there was little crosstown traffic by the museum, and even the cars that passed seemed to be paying very little mind to what was going on. To them, the zombies were a pack of guys who’d been out too late drinking and were stumbling home.

I dropped to my knees in front of the outer door and examined the lock. It looked simple enough, if I had the time to do it right, but the approaching zombies really put the pressure on. Lock-picking wasn’t easy when I was shaking with nerves and a horde of zombies was approaching.

“I don’t think those guys are drunk,” Mina said, her toughness disappearing for a second, “but whatever they are, they seem to be coming for us.”

They’re coming for me, I thought to myself, but I couldn’t very likely tell Mina that without exposing what I did these days for a living. The Sectarians had used zombies as muscle—and for administrative work. Could they have something to do with this? Either way, I had to get us inside the museum. I slotted one of the tension wrenches and two picks into the lock.

“Can you work a little faster?” Mina said, still managing to fill her voice with condescension despite the nervousness in it.

“I’m sorry my breaking and entering isn’t to your liking,” I said. “Now, shut up and let me do this.”

I didn’t dare chance a look to my left or right while I concentrated on the lock. The sound of shuffling and dragging feet was enough to tell me that I needed to tumble it, and fast. I took a deep breath and pushed the pick in against the last pin, gently letting it slip up to the shear line. I felt the pin give and twisted the tension wrench. The lock turned and the glass door clicked open. Behind me the air was suddenly putrid, and I felt familiar cold wafts of it against my neck. The zombies were upon us.

Mina pushed through the open door and I rolled into the vestibule. I turned over and reached for the door. Mina threw her weight against it and slammed it shut just as the zombies stumbled against it, decaying bits of their hands and faces streaking the glass.

When I was sure Mina had her weight pressed firmly against the door, I pushed myself away from it to examine the secondary door that led to MoMA’s actual lobby.

Getting into the vestibule had been relatively easy, thank God. The exterior glass door’s lock had been pretty standard, probably hadn’t been changed in years, but the interior lock was another story. It was electronic.

“Hurry up and get us in there,” Mina shouted.

The sound of the undead against the glass was making my nerves twitch as they pounded at it with their decaying hands, making a squishing sort of sound with each thump.

“Uh, I think we’re kinda stuck here, Mina,” I said, standing back up. I continued examining the electronic box built into the glass door. “Lock picks don’t work on this kind of lock.” I slid the rest of my lock pick set out of my sleeve and unfolded the case. “I thought you said you cased this joint? You can’t pick an electronic lock. Maybe you should have thought this through better, picked a better ex-con to help you out.”

“No,” Mina said from behind me. “I picked the right one. But don’t you think you really ought to try using that little psychic thing of yours on that lock right about now?”

My skin went cold and I froze where I stood. How the hell did Mina know about my power? How could she? All my years of working alongside her on crimes, I had done my best to hide my wild talent. As far as she and the other miscreants from my past knew, I simply had an eye for finding extremely lucrative scores.

I turned around to question her, only to find myself face-to-face with the barrel of a gun.

“I think it’s in both our interests if you get that door open,” she said, shoving the gun even closer to my face, “and fast.”

I had always wondered what could be worse than being trapped by a brain-thirsty pack of zombies. Now I knew.

“How do you know about my power?” I said, trying to ignore the gun.

Like most other D.E.A. agents, I was more nervous about being on the receiving end of a gun than encountering anything supernatural. Sure, we dealt with terrors and other things that were beyond the normal, but when faced with the blunt brutality of a gun, its very finite and real nature freaked me out in a way I wasn’t used to.

Behind Mina, the zombies continued to pound on the glass of the door, smudges of blood and grime streaking the apparently shatterproof glass. Only her continued weight against it kept them from pushing their way in. Mina rolled her eyes, but didn’t lower the gun.

“Oh, please ,” she said. “You think you could keep something like that secret? Now use your damn power and open the door.”

The zombies struggling behind her gave the whole scene a surreal aquarium effect.

“Just touch the lock,” she continued. “Read the entry code off the last person who used it.”

Whoa, I thought. That was far more articulate a summary of how my powers worked than I would have expected out of her. Something didn’t quite seem right about that, but there was no time to think about it with her shoving a gun in my face and giving me orders.

“Yeah, about that . . .” I said. “Thing is, I don’t really have those powers at my disposal right now.”

“Yeah, right,” Mina said, and cocked the gun. “Just hurry up. Do you want to be stuck here when the guards come back through?”

“I’m serious,” I shouted. “There were these gypsies . . .”

Mina wasn’t buying any of it, despite the fact that I was telling the truth.

“If you had been stalking me properly,” I continued, “you’d know that. They cursed me. My powers don’t work.”

“Sucks for you,” she said, her finger ready on the trigger. The door behind her pushed in just enough for one of the zombies to wiggle its hand in through the opening. To my relief, she uncocked the gun, slid it into her waist, and pushed back on the door with all her might. I ran up to her side to help, and the door slammed shut underneath our combined weight, but not before several rotting fingers snapped off of the hand and fell to the floor. The smell coming from them was putrid, but the severed fingers continued to move, rolling back and forth on the floor of the foyer.

“You shoot me,” I said, “and then you’re just stuck in this little glass box with a bunch of zombies pouring in on top of you.”

“Then it’s really in our best interest that you get that second lock open, isn’t it?” she said, some of the venom gone from her voice. Mina was scared. One of the fingers rolled onto her shoe and, with a nervous jump, she flicked it away.

“You’ve got the door by yourself?” I asked. Mina nodded. I turned and looked into the actual lobby, on the other side of the glass doors, with its large, gray tiles on the floor, its open atrium, and the tiny squares of color all over the wall. It looked like freedom and I wanted it bad.

I changed my focus to the lock that kept me from all that. There was a screen at the top of it and it prompted me for a five digit pass code. I wrapped both my hands around it. I braced myself, hopeful for something to happen . . . anything.

“Well?” Mina shouted over the low moaning coming through the glass.

I kept my hands firm on the lock, but it was no use. “Nothing.”

I turned to face her. Maybe there was a way to get my psychometry back. Stress had always been a trigger back when I couldn’t control it, so maybe . . .