Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Potter’s field . . . ?” Jane said. “Is that some sort of quidditch thing?”

Godfrey shook his head.

“No,” he said. “You know. A potter’s field . . . a graveyard for the indigent, the poor.”

I was already redialing the Inspectre. From across the tent, several screams erupted from the crowd.

“You mean to tell me,” I said to Godfrey, “that we’ve been looking all over the place for a psychotic necromancer and we’re sitting on top of a graveyard full of bodies ?”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .” Godfrey started. “Still, we’re talking seventeen years of that mass grave filling up. So that puts the number in the thousands, but you have to figure there’s only about a ten percent viability of corpses in any shape to be reanimated.”

Godfrey whistled.

“Still,” he continued, “that’s going to be an impressive number of raised undead.”

When the Inspectre answered his phone, I held up my hand for Godfrey to stop.

“Cyrus isn’t going to be attacking from the outside,” I shouted into the phone. “His army is already in here, inside. The tent is set up over a graveyard !”

“Damn and blast,” the Inspectre shouted, and I could already hear him moving away from the phone. “Everyone move in.”

My line went dead as Inspectre Quimbley disconnected, still shouting out orders.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket as the inside of the tent erupted into chaos, and I turned to inspect all the sudden shouting and screaming. People were jumping up from their seats everywhere, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to run from an unseen enemy for the exits at the far end of the runway. Fear filled the air.

“Simon,” Jane screamed. “Look out!”

What felt like a leather glove wrapped itself around my leg, and I looked down. A corpse was pulling its body up from under the ground with one free hand and digging into my leg with the other. The skin was dry and taut like scratchy leather but hung in strips from the body through its tattered remains of clothing.

I reached inside my tuxedo coat and pulled out the retractable bat, extending it. “Good thing I brought my dress bat,” I said, and swung it down at the poor reanimated soul clawing at me. The head came free with a dry snap and the body slumped over, releasing me. I shook my leg to get the hand free and resisted the willies in front of my girlfriend.

“C’mon, Jane,” I said. I grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward the highest concentration of people freaking out in the crowd.

“Wait,” she pleaded. “Simon, what about Godfrey?”

I stopped and looked back. Godfrey had frozen in his tracks because two zombies covered in fresh dirt had him pressed up against the side of the tent.

“Shit,” I said, angry with myself for leaving him. Connor was right. I had already put Godfrey in harm’s way more than once so far, and his life and safety were my responsibility now. I ran over to him with Jane hot on my heels.

Godfrey looked on at the creatures with fascination, studying them and making no move to get away. Maybe it was the archivist in him, but if I didn’t do something, he’d die with that same curious look on his face.

I sped up to a run, raising my bat up over my head and swinging it down hard on one of the zombies. I heard its skull crack and split, and then my bat continued down into the area between its shoulders. And stuck.

I tugged to get my bat out of the remains of the still-twitching creature as Godfrey’s face finally fell to horror, but my bat wouldn’t come free. The bony fingers of the other zombie started clawing at me while I was still struggling with the first, but I needed my weapon if I was going to stop it.

“Watch your head, sweetie,” Jane called out from behind me, and I turned, then ducked, as I saw her swinging one of the wooden chairs at the other zombie. The chair hit the creature with surprising force and shattered, all of it falling away except for one lone, jagged piece that stuck out of the creature’s head like it was some kind of zombified unicorn. “See, I did learn something from your little “Shufflers and Shamblers” talk at the bookstore!”

The jagged point swung dangerously close to my cheek and I spun myself away while still holding on to the bat lodged in the other one, causing the second creature to swing into the protrusion’s path. Something inside the impaled zombie popped, and the air was filled with a mixture of mold and the rotten stench of ancient putrification.

Holding my breath so I wouldn’t throw up on my tuxedo, I finally pulled my bat free and knocked the creatures to the floor, where they both stopped moving.

“Go take care of your date,” I said. Godfrey nodded, but when we spotted her, she was already long gone from her seat and safely pushing her way out of one of the tent flaps. If anyone was capable of making a hasty escape in high heels, it was definitely a supermodel. “Fine, then. You and Jane stick with me.”

Jane put her hand on my arm. “I love it when you get all authoritative, but maybe we should hold up a second before we go leaping into action? Mind if I take a look around?”

I smiled and followed Jane as she pushed her way through the crowd and ran over to the nearest camera. She took a deep breath and raised both hands up to it.

“Oh,” she said, and turned suddenly back to me. “You might want to catch me if this knocks me out or something.”

She leaned toward me and I kissed her, our mouths pressing hard together.

Jane put her hands on the side of the camera and started muttering in that technobabble sound that I didn’t understand. Godfrey stepped closer to me.

“What is she doing?”

“Not really sure,” I said with a shrug. “She’s cute when she gets all magical, though.”

“I can still hear you,” she said. “Just because I’m patching into the camera feed doesn’t mean I’m not still here in front of you.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jane said. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up before you said something about my butt in front of Godfrey.”

Godfrey looked shocked.

I took a swipe at a zombie chasing after a passing B-list celebrity. “Don’t think about the crazy shit going on around you.”

“Guys,” Jane called out after several seconds, and I turned back to see if she needed help. She looked a little drained, but she was able to stand by leaning against the camera rig. “I checked the entire room by patching into all the camera feeds. I don’t see any signs of Cyrus in the crowd, but he has to be here, right?”

Godfrey nodded. “According to Gauntlet research, a raising like this requires the close proximity of the necromancer responsible for it.”

“Well, if he’s not here,” Jane said, “how is he doing this?”

“He is here,” I said, “we’re just not looking in the right place.”

I looked above the crowd, and there was my answer. The one spot that overlooked the whole interior of the tent from the far end of the room, a well-concealed slit that gave the perfect view into the tent from the New York Public Library.

I glanced around the room. The cavalry had arrived and a dozen or so D.E.A. agents were working their way through the crowd now. I spied Director Wesker and Inspectre Quimbley pulling a zombie off one of the stick-thin models and throwing it to the ground. It was nice to see the divisions getting along for once. Zombies always brought people together.

“He must be in the library. The Fashion Week tent is in good hands,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Jane said. She had Godfrey by the arm and dragged him along behind us as we picked our way through the crowd.