Nekropolis n-1

by Tim Waggoner

  I raised my hands to the heavens. “Lord Edrigu! Hear me! You are Master of the Dead; I am a zombie! Will you allow Talaith to insult you by attacking one of your own subjects? I ask you to help us, if for no other reason than to spite her!”

  I waited, but nothing happened.

  Nice try, zombie. Talaith’s thought-voice was smug. But Edrigu would never da-

  And then, as if Talaith’s comment was a cue, the air near us shimmered and a shadowy coach appeared.

  It was Silent Jack’s Black Rig.

  We didn’t have time to think about it.

  “C’mon!” I shouted, grabbing both Devona’s and Lazlo’s arms and pulling them toward Jack’s coach.

  “I’m not going to ride in a ghost hack!” Lazlo protested. “I’m a real cabby! Besides, I’m not going to leave my cab. We have to go back and-”

  Talaith was close enough now for us to hear her voice, and she shrieked, furious at Jack’s sudden appearance. She gestured and a bolt of lightning crashed to the ground less than three yards from where we stood.

  “I’m going to shut my mouth and get inside,” Lazlo finished.

  The door of the coach sprung open of its own accord, and we climbed in: Devona first, Lazlo second, me last. I pulled the door closed after us, and it shut with a muffled click. The interior of the coach was dark and the wood looked…insubstantial, somehow, as if you could put your finger through it if you pressed hard enough. But what else could you expect from a ghost coach? At least it was solid enough to keep the rain out.

  I thumped on the roof to get the driver’s attention. “Let’s go, Jack!”

  Silent Jack, true to his name, didn’t reply. His whip cracked soundlessly, Malice and Misery let out a pair of inaudible whinnies, and we began to move. But the horses didn’t pull us, at least not in the usual way. The entire coach, horses, slid forward as if on a conveyer belt, slowly at first, but with increasing speed. There was no bouncing or juddering; the ride was eerily smooth.

  I pushed aside the curtain over the rear window and saw Talaith pursuing us, eyes flashing with mystic energy and blazing bright with anger and frustration. The Witch Queen poured on the speed, but inch by inch, we began to outdistance her.

  Damn you, Richter! a furious voice thundered in my head. This isn’t over!

  It is for now, I responded, and settled back in my seat. I’d survived another encounter with the mistress of Glamere.

  I looked up at the ceiling and thought of Jack sitting atop the coach, driving the horses onward in silence. We’d gotten away, but, I wondered, at what price?

  FOURTEEN

  The coach neared the border between Glamere and the Boneyard, but instead of heading for the Bridge of Lost Souls, it aimed straight for Phlegethon. Before we could protest, the coach had passed through the wrought iron fence at the side of the road-somehow allowing us to pass through as well-and continued through the air as if the road had never ended, bearing us easily across the river of green fire. I wonder if any Lesk, the giant serpents that plied the flaming waters of the river, were looking up, disappointed we hadn’t fallen in. But I didn’t look out the window to check. Some things are better left a mystery.

  Now that we had crossed over into Edrigu’s Dominion, Talaith no longer pursued us. But that didn’t necessarily mean we were safe. Nekropolis doesn’t do safe.

  As soon as we reached the other side, the Black Rig glided to a stop on the Obsidian Way.

  “It wasn’t as much fun as a car,” Lazlo said, “but I have to admit it was a pretty decent ride.” He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Hey, it’s locked!” Lazlo gripped the handle tighter and shook it for all he was worth, but despite his demonic strength, the door remained closed. “What gives?”

  “I believe it’s time to settle the matter of our fare,” Devona said.

  I remembered the rumors about Silent Jack, about how much he liked the ladies. And from the look on Devona’s face, she was thinking the same thing.

  “I’ll get this one, Jack,” I said loudly.

  The door sprung open.

  “Matt, no!” Devona protested. “You shouldn’t pay for all three of us!”

  “She’s right,” Lazlo agreed. “We all three rode; we all should pay.”

  I shook my head. “I’m the one who requested Lord Edrigu’s assistance, so I’ll be the one to settle the tab. Now go ahead and get out, both of you.”

  Devona refused, so I looked to Lazlo. The demon sighed. “All right, Matt; if that’s the way you want it. Let’s go, Devona.” He took her hand and pulled her struggling from the coach. As strong as Devona was, Lazlo was stronger. As soon as they were both out, the door snicked shut once more, and Silent Jack appeared on the seat opposite me. This was the closest I’d ever been to him, but I couldn’t make out any facial features. It was as if he were formed entirely out of shadow, just like his cab and the horses that drew it.

  The ghostly coachman held out a gloved hand, but I was fairly certain he wasn’t asking for darkgems.

  “Name your price, Jack.”

  He put his hand in his lap, held it out again, and then pointed to me. The message was clear-he wanted me to hold out my hand. I extended my left hand palm up. Jack reached out and with the sharp ebon nail of his index finger traced four lines on my palm. When he removed his finger, my flesh puckered and scar tissue formed in the shape of a letter E. E for Edrigu. What did it mean?

  I started to pull back my hand, but Jack gripped my wrist, and with his other hand got hold of my pinkie and yanked. There was a snapping, tearing sound, and my finger came loose in his hand. He inserted the finger in his vest pocket, tipped his hat to me, and then vanished.

  The door opened.

  I climbed out and stood next to Devona and Lazlo. We watched as Silent Jack-who sat once more atop the coach-and his Black Rig faded from sight.

  “What was his price?” Devona asked.

  I showed them the mark on my palm.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Devona said. “Perhaps merely that you are in Lord Edrigu’s debt. Or perhaps that you now have a new master.”

  A master. I couldn’t deal with all the implications of what that might mean. I’d always been my own man, even when I was on the force in Cleveland. And now I had a master?

  Edrigu was Lord of the Dead-had he perhaps repaired the damage to my body? I took a quick inventory. No, my face was still scratched, my ear still missing, my right arm and left leg still damaged. Edrigu hadn’t bothered to fix me, which meant that I was still in the process of decomposing for the final time. It didn’t make any sense. Why would Edigru have Jack put his mark on me if he wasn’t going to bother preserving me?

  And then I felt an echo of a chill run along my dead spine. What if Edrigu wasn’t interested in my undead body? What if he wanted my soul?

  Well, if that was the price I had to pay to save my friends, it was worth it. But I wasn’t about to give up on Devona’s case or on trying to find a way to keep my body intact. Lord Edrigu might have a lien on my soul, but that didn’t mean I had to make it easy for him to collect.

  Devona noticed my pinkie was missing. I told her what had happened to it.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, puzzled. “Why would Jack take your finger if you’d already paid Lord Edrigu’s price?”

  “For his tip,” Lazlo said, “what else?”

  Bereft of transportation, we had no choice but to hoof it. We left the Obsidian Way and began walking along the Boneyard’s cramped, narrow streets. But foot travel wasn’t a problem in this Dominion, even during the Descension celebration. With the exception of the occasional shade drifting across our path, the streets were deserted. Everything was in a state of arrested decay: the roadways buckled and bulged, bricks cracked and crumbling; the buildings covered with dead, dry ivy, shutters hanging by one hinge, roofs full of holes or collapsed entirely; the trees and bushes lining the streets twisted, gray, and ba
rren. And, according to Devona and Lazlo, the air was still, stagnant, and stale.

  We caught glimpses of movement out of the corner of our eyes, flashes of darting wraith-like shapes that disappeared when you tried to look at them directly. I seemed to be more aware of them than either Devona or Lazlo, maybe because I was dead myself. Not for the first time I wondered just how many spirits inhabited the Boneyard. If we could see them clearly, would we find the streets full of people, perhaps celebrating the Descension along with the rest of the city? Were we even now walking among-walking through-throngs of laughing, shouting merrymakers, oblivious to their presence?

  The Boneyard isn’t strictly the Dominion of the dead, though. Many living beings-warm ones, as the dead refer to them-also live there. Those who for whatever reasons feel more comfortable living in the presence of death. Some simply like the quiet and solitude, while others go there only for the sake of morbid fashion. And then there are those disturbed individuals who are drawn to death like moths to a cold dark flame, such as the Suicide King and Overkill, who can only truly feel alive when they come as close to death as possible.

  Me, I feel more alive around the living. Weird, huh?

  Ghosts aren’t the only supernatural inhabitants of the Boneyard. Anything dead falls under the rule of Lord Edrigu: poltergeists, skeletons, liches, mummies, wights, wraiths, and others dwelled within his Dominion. Most of these creatures preferred keeping to the shadows or haunting their lairs, waiting for those curious or foolish enough to seek them out or stumble blindly across them. As the three of us walked, we caught the occasional glimpse of a shambling thing lurking in an alley or dark eyes peering through broken shutters in an abandoned building, but we made sure not to disturb them and they in turn didn’t seek to devour our souls. A good arrangement all the way around, as far as I was concerned.

  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 flesheating 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 zom-bie’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, zombiedog 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 shufled 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 electricity 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.