by Tim Waggoner
Unfortunately, there was one type of dead creature more aggressive than all the others, and as we turned a corner, we saw a group of them coming down the street toward us, walking with stiff, spastic movements and groaning softly.
"Are those… zombies?" Devona asked.
There were eight of them – nine if you counted the partially decayed dog carrying a severed hand in its mouth. Three women, five men, aged anywhere from twenty to sixty at the time of their demise. Their clothes were torn and stained with patches of blood, some of it relatively fresh. Their flesh was a mottled grayish-green color, and their bodies displayed various types of damage: cuts, gouges, tears, and bite marks. A couple were missing arms – I couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy toward them – and one was missing a good portion of his scalp. It took the zombie horde, such as it was, a moment to realize we were there, but as soon as they did, they began moaning, "Braaaaiiiinssss…" and started heading toward us as fast as their dead bodies would permit.
"Idiots," Lazlo said. "Why are they always obsessed with brains? Don't they know how hard it is to bite through a skull?"
"I do not want to know how you came by that knowledge," I said.
As the zombies – dead doggie included – shuffled closer, Devona stepped closer and grabbed hold of my arm, as if seeking my protection. I wanted to put my arm around her and hold her closer, but I didn't. I told myself this wasn't the right time, and anyway, it wouldn't be professional. But in truth, I was afraid if I tried, she might pull away from me in disgust. After all, right then I didn't look, or smell, any better than the walking corpses slowly coming toward us.
"What's wrong with them?" Devona asked. "I've seen zombies before – normal ones, not self-aware ones like you, Matt – and they don't act like that. For the most part, they just stand around and wait for someone to give them an order."
"You're thinking of voodoo zombies," I said. "Those are corpses resurrected by a voodoo priest or priestess for the purpose of being a servant. Those zombies–" I nodded toward the moaners – "are a more recent breed."
"Not to mention more annoying," Lazlo out in. "They're always wandering out of the Boneyard and into the other Dominions, staggering around and trying to feast on the flesh of the living. The only good thing about them is that you have to shoot them in the head to kill them. Makes them good target practice."
"Where did they come from?" Devona asked. "And more to the point, why are we just standing here if they want to crack open our skulls and slurp up our brains?"
The zombies had crossed half the distance to us in the time we'd been talking, and they were becoming more excited the closer they got, moving with more urgency, and all of them were loudly moaning, "Braaaaiiiinssss…"
I decided to ignore Devona's second question and answer her first. "No one's sure where they originated from. Some say they're the result of voodoo zombies mutating after exposure to some kind of supernatural or science-based power source. Others think that one mad scientist or another got hold of an old Earth flesh-eating zombie movie on DVD, saw it, and decided to see if he could actually make them."
The zombies were almost upon us by then.
"Wherever they came from" Lazlo said, "I'd wish they'd go back and stay there." He glanced at me. "No offense, Matt. You're in a way different league than these moaners."
"No offense taken," I reassured him.
The first of the zombies was just about within arm's reach now, and she stretched a trembling hand toward us that was more bone than flesh. Her milk-white eyes stared hungrily at us, her leathery lips moving as if she were anticipating the meal to come.
"Brains…" she whispered softly in an eerie, hollow voice.
Devona was pressed against me so tight now that I feared she might break a few more of my ribs.
"Guys…" She sounded on the verge of panic, but before she could do or say anything else, the zombie woman paused.
Her dead nostrils flared as they took in our scents, and I was jealous. I couldn't smell, but then I didn't need to hunt down brains to devour, either. The zombie's features twisted into a mask of pained disgust, and she stuck out a slimy black tongue.
"Yuck," she spat, then turned to face her fellow zombies.
She said or did nothing obvious to communicate with the others, but they stopped and gazed at her with their dead eyes. And then as one the entire group, zombie-dog included, slowly turned and began shuffling away.
Devona relaxed a bit, but she made no move to step away from me. Not that I was complaining.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"That breed of zombie only feasts on living human flesh," I explained. "Not demon, not half-vampire, and certainly not another zombie."
Lazlo shook his head as he watched the zombies slowly depart. "That's the other thing I hate about them: they're picky eaters."
Devona ignored the demon and gave me an irritated look. "You could've told me that sooner."
I smiled. "What, and spoil the surprise?"
She hauled off and punched me in the arm using her full strength. It might have been my imagination, but I thought it actually hurt a little.
We resumed walking and eventually came to an open field containing the bent, broken, and rusted hulks of hundreds of cars, with a faded, weather-beaten sign proclaiming the place to be Riffraff's Revenants. A junkyard. It made sense, I suppose. After all, this Dominion was reserved for the dead, right? And what was a junkyard other than a cemetery for machines?
Lazlo stopped and stared, a beatific expression on his hideous face. He looked like a demon who had died and, much to his surprise, gone to heaven.
"Look." He pointed to a crumpled hunk of yellow metal that had once been a taxicab and grinned. "I thought I'd never see it again."
"Surely you don't think that's yours," Devona said.
"Look at the tires on the passenger side," I said. "They've been melted."
She shook her head. "It's not possible."
"Maybe this is where cars go when they die," Lazlo said in wonder.
"Or maybe it's part of the deal I made with Lord Edrigu. Whichever, it sure looks like your cab."
"I'm going to check it out, see if anything's salvageable. Maybe, with enough work, I can even get the poor thing running again. You guys go on ahead." He started forward.
"We can't just leave you here," I said.
Lazlo stopped. "Why not? What can happen to me in the Boneyard? Everything's dead here."
I thought of the E emblazoned on my palm. "This is Nekropolis, Lazlo. Just because something's dead doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."
He chuckled. "You worry too much."
"We almost died in Glamere," Devona pointed out.
"We didn't, though, did we?" Lazlo countered. "But my cab did. Maybe now I have chance to get it back. You two take care, and good luck." And with that he shuffled toward the remains of his pride and joy.
"Let's go, Devona."
"But–"
"Lazlo's cab is his whole life. And you've seen him drive. Once he starts, he doesn't slow down, and he doesn't listen to anyone telling him to stop. He's like that about everything. He'll probably mess around with the cab for a few hours, realize it's no use, mourn his loss, and then head on back to the Sprawl. Eventually, he'll either find another cab, or he'll be forced to go into a new line of work and the pedestrians of Nekropolis will be able to breathe a little easier."
Devona looked at Lazlo – who was walking around the wreckage of his cab, shaking his head and muttering – one last time, and then together we continued down the street toward Gregor's.
The streets in the Boneyard had no names, and there were no particular landmarks, just block after block of decay and dissolution, so finding Gregor's place wasn't easy. Eventually we passed a large factory that looked something like a medieval castle with three towering smoke stacks pumping black clouds into the already ebon sky. An intricate lattice of metal beams and wires stretched upward from the roof of the building, and e
lectricity sizzled as it swept through the lattice, bolts cracking like thunder as they leaped from one connection point to another. A high wrought-iron fence surrounded the facility, tipped with sharp spear points to prevent any curiosity-seekers from being tempted to climb over.
Devona gazed upon the factory with wonder. "Is that–"
I nodded. "The Foundry. Home, laboratory, and production facility of Victor Baron, otherwise known as Frankenstein's Monster."
"It's bigger than I imagined," she said.
"Baron lives to create things, and that includes his facility. He's been expanding it for over two hundred years, and he shows no signs of stopping anytime soon."
"Do you know him?" she asked.
"Only by reputation. From what I understand, he doesn't leave the Foundry much."
For the last two centuries, Victor Baron had been Nekropolis's prime supplier of what he terms reanimation technology but which most people call meatwork. Baron is responsible for the city's Mind's Eye technology, handvoxes, flesh computers, and anything other tech based on resurrecting the dead. Just look for the label, often tattooed into the flesh of your device: Another Victor Baron Creation. From time to time I'd toyed with the idea of making an appointment with Baron to see if he could anything to stabilize my zombie state or, better yet, return me to the living, but Papa Chatha counseled caution.
Magic and science don't always get along as well as they could, Papa once warned me. Baron's technology would be as likely to destroy you as help you.
I sometimes wonder if Papa feels more than a little professional jealousy toward Baron, but since my houngan has kept me going for years, I've decided to trust his advice.
Devona and I kept walking. Gregor's place wasn't far from the Foundry, and I soon recognized a broken beam here and a shattered wall there, and before much longer we stood before the ruins of a stone building: roof collapsed, walls fallen, columns broken and time-worn.
"This is it," I pronounced. "Good thing Gregor has the columns, or I'd never be able to find this place."
"Who is Gregor, precisely?"
"Gregor is probably Nekropolis's best kept secret. He's an information broker on a par with Waldemar. But where Waldemar specializes in the past, Gregor deals in the present." I smiled. "If he doesn't know something, it's because it hasn't happened yet."
"Then why didn't we come here in the first place?"
"Because to do so we had to go through either Glamere or the Wyldwood. It's suicide for anyone but a lyke to travel the Wyldwood – and you experienced Talaith's hospitality. Gregor may be the best source of information in the city, but he's not exactly the most accessible."
"I understand." She surveyed the ruins. "How do we get in?"
I led the way up the cracked and broken steps and we walked carefully through the rubble of Gregor's building until we came to a shiny black rectangle set into the ground.
"It's me, Gregor. And I brought a friend."
Nothing happened for a moment, and then the rectangle parted as the tiny black shapes which comprised it scurried off.
Devona took in a hiss of air. "Insects!"
"Gregor's little friends – and his informants."
As the roach-like bugs retreated, they revealed stone stairs leading down into the earth.
"Try not to make any sudden moves," I told Devona. "Gregor and his friends tend to be on the skittish side."
I took out a pocket flashlight, thumbed the switch to low, and shined its beam down the steps, sending more insects fleeing, thousands of hair-thin segmented legs whispering across stone. Gregor didn't keep his underground lair lit, so the flashlight was a necessity for me – one which he tolerated. And even though I had no reason to fear Gregor, none that I could name, anyway, I always felt better visiting him with flashlight in hand.
We started down into the darkness, roaches scuttling away from the steps and walls as we descended. I'd been here only a handful of times since coming to Nekropolis, but I'd never gotten used to seeing so many of Gregor's friends in one place. My dead nerve endings didn't work anymore, but I still felt itchy when I visited.
When we reached the bottom of the steps, Devona turned around.
"The insects have closed up behind us." Her voice was steady, but I detected a hint of nervousness beneath her words.
"They always do that; don't worry about it."
We were in a large, empty basement which seemed cloaked in tangible darkness, except for the small circle of gray stone around us illuminated by my flashlight.
"Is this place… filled with them too?" Devona asked me in a whisper.
"Try not to think about it," I whispered back, and then in a normal voice I said, "Thank you for seeing us, Gregor."
A faint clicking sound emerged from the darkness where the opposite wall should be.
"Always a pleasure, Matthew." The voice was soft and the words rustled like insect carapaces sliding against one another. "Ms. Kanti, it's quite an honor to meet you."
"The honor is, uh, all mine." As a half-vampire, Devona's eyesight was far better than mine, and I was sure she could see through the basement's gloom to Gregor.
"Please, both of you, come closer. But keep your flashlight pointed downward, if you don't mind, Matthew."
"Not at all," I replied, and we walked forward, the carpet of insects which blanketed the floor flowing out of our path like living oil. We stopped about nine feet from the gigantic insect huddled against the basement wall. He leaned back like a humanoid, though his body wasn't really built for it: he looked as if he might topple over any second. I wondered, as I had before, whether this was a natural position for him, or if he assumed it to seem more humanlike. If the latter, the attempt was a dismal failure.
Gregor was a gigantic version of the far smaller insects which served as his spies throughout the city. Somewhat like a roach, but his head was too large, his legs too many, and his eyes… they didn't resemble a human's, but then they didn't look all that much like an insect's, either. They looked more like obsidian gems set into the hard shell of his carapace.
A constant stream of the smaller Gregors ran up his body, over his head, and touched their antennae to the tips of his far larger feelers. They then scuttled back down as another took their place, and then another, and another. The flow of information from his spies never stopped, even when he was involved in a conversation.
"You'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit distracted today," Gregor said. "But the Descension celebration is the busiest time of the year for us – so much happens around the city – and the sheer tidal wave of information my children bring me can be a bit overwhelming at times. Please bear with me."
"No problem," I said. "So I don't waste your time or ours, Gregor, why don't you tell us how much you know about why we've come? I assume you at least know a little. After all, I did see one of your children in my apartment when I first spoke with Ms. Kanti, and I saw another in the alley where we found Varma's body."
Gregor made a high-pitched chittering sound which I took for laughter. "Very observant, Matthew. Suffice it say I have a fair grasp of your basic situation."
I knew that was all we would get out of him on the subject. Gregor never gave away more information than he had to.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Of course you do. Why else would you be here?" More chittering. Then he folded his legs across his abdomen – a sign he was preparing to listen closely.
"First off, do you know who stole the Dawnstone?"
"Regrettably, no. My children have a very difficult time penetrating the Darklords' strongholds. Their protections are too strong, too intricate."
"Are you aware of anyone trying to fence the Dawnstone?"
"Again, no."
I was certain Gregor's children had every fence in town "bugged." If he didn't know of anyone trying to sell the Dawnstone, then no one had.
"Do you know who killed Varma?"
"My child happened late upon the scene, but
arrived in time to see three members of the Red Tide departing."
The Red Tide. And three of them. When it came to believing in coincidences, I was an atheist. "Are you aware we had a runin with some Red Tiders?"
"I am."
"Were the three who left the alley the same three who attacked us?"
"As I said, my child only saw them leave the alley, but I believe it was them, yes."
It was beginning to look like our encounter with the gang members in Gothtown hadn't been just random bad luck after all.
"Do you know where they went?"
"Alas, no. My children lost them in the confusion of the festival."