Necropolis PD

by Nathan Sumsion

  He lands on top of me, one hand on my throat, the other pinning my left wrist painfully to the ground.

  He leans in close, and I know, I just know he is some dead creature. A living thing can’t look like he does: a corpse that hasn’t received the message it’s supposed to be dead.

  I stare into the vacant, sunken eyes of a cadaver’s face, inches from my own. The viscous eyes, fogged over and yellow, reflect my own gaze blurrily back at me. The corpse pins me down, the full weight of it crushing me into the cold ground. The face looms closer as I struggle to push the body away from me. The eyes, they grow nearer still. And then they blink.

  The dead eyes blink at me, the mouth below smiles with split lips, a foul stench wafts out from the blackness behind jagged yellow teeth inching closer to me. A fluid thicker than drool drips from the mouth onto my face.

  “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, child?” it says, a whisper slipping from a dead face. “Such a long way to come to die.”

  I feel cold, rubbery skin brush my face, it reeks of blood and death. His nose presses up against mine, horribly intimate. I struggle frantically to keep him away, pushing him with one arm while the other searches blindly in the refuse beneath me for something, anything to use against him.

  My hand finds something—a chunk of wood from a broken pallet. I feel slivers bite painfully into my palm as I grab it and shove it at the thing on top of me.

  It howls, loud and long, ringing painfully in my ears. He falls against me, his teeth brushing against my throat.

  Several seconds go by before I realize nothing is happening. I am not being bitten. I’m not being killed. I look at my hand, holding tight around a chunk of wood. The wood is lodged in this monster’s chest, buried deep into the ribcage. My hand is bloody, both from him and from several large splinters stuck into my skin. I look at the face of my attacker but see only a rotting corpse long dead. The eyes that glowed with fury seconds ago are shriveled, sightless. Blood pours out of its open mouth onto my neck, down my shirt.

  I wrestle in horror trying to get the thing off of me. I toss it to the side and scramble backward away from it. My lungs are gasping for air. My throat hurts where he grabbed me.

  What just happened?

  To my side, I hear the grate slowly squeal as it is peeled back further from the wall. The temperature drops several degrees, and I feel my terror grow.

  A shadow looms in the tunnel entrance, blocking out all lights behind it. Small glowing red eyes peer out from the dark, and a hunched, balding figure calmly walks out.

  The shadows move unnaturally, independent of this new person’s movements. My throat is dry. He stands, surveying the scene. He looks at the dead man at my feet, at me, at the pile of bodies on the other side of the room. A tear falls down my cheek.

  “Tsk. Et alors. This won’t do at all,” he says, looking at me thoughtfully. Curiously. He points at the bodies. “Et voici, you see all this?”

  I nod numbly.

  In a blink, the man is beside me. He grabs me by the throat, pinching my windpipe closed effortlessly. He is so much stronger than the other man! He slams me into the pile of corpses. I can feel them at my back, my shirt starting to dampen from the fluids oozing out of them.

  “Celui-ci? These corpses right here?” He points at the bodies beneath me. The stench of the bodies beneath me is overpowering.

  I try to speak, can’t, so weakly I nod again. I try clawing at his hand, but it feels like rock.

  “Ah, c’est dommage. Very unfortunate. For you, obviously. For me, that remains to be seen.”

  He smiles then, and I’m pretty sure I feel warm piss begin trickling down my leg. “Allons-y. Let’s take you to Marsh.”

  The shadows somehow lunge at me, enveloping me in darkness beneath his red gaze, and I black out.

  Chapter 5

  The sound from the crowd in Warner’s cuts to merciful silence as the door closes behind me. I step to the side and lean against the stone wall, the bricks at my back giving me a small sense of security. People move past on the sidewalk, pretending to ignore me.

  Warner’s is on the ground floor of some featureless, five-story, nondescript building, one of any countless number churned out around the country after the Second World War. But it seems older than that, ancient, a temple from some bygone time with security bars over picture windows and red brick walls. Unlike many buildings I’ve seen here, this one has all its windows and doors intact on the main floor, while the upper floors look ready to collapse. Whole walls are missing, bricks crumbling and littering the ground where they have fallen over the years. Paint is flaking off. It could be any forgettable building from any run-down neighborhood in any large city.

  Gaslights burn on street corners, dimly lit even during what passes for daytime. They throw a glow up on the underside of the clouds that blanket the town, and they provide beacons of light in the continuous thin fog. I’d never encountered fog in the heat before, but it appears natural here. The buildings crowd together in this downtown area, brushing up against each other, looming over their neighbors, leaning together over alleyways and courtyards. An Art Deco building stands across the street, some buildings with bamboo shingles are a block down, and there’s rusted metal next to adobe, mid-century frames beside centuries-old brick. All around fences are falling down from neglect, roofs are missing from exposure, holes gape in walls, windows are broken, entire floors have collapsed, debris is scattered, and garbage piles up. It’s like someone flung discarded structures from around the world at random into one big dreary dump.

  I have no idea how big this place is. I can’t see more than a block or two in any direction, thanks to the fog. How many of the undead live here? A couple thousand? Ten thousand? It’s at least that much based on what I’ve seen so far. Well, the ones with bodies, anyway. I have no idea how many it is when counting the ghosts.

  I’ve never reached the edge of town. Marsh let me try, once, while I was under his care. He just urged me on, shooing me with his hands, a smile on his face. I tried. The fog didn’t let me go far. I wandered aimlessly in the dark, the temperature dropping enough during the night that I started to shiver. I don’t know if I even made it close the town’s edge. I was pathetically eager to see the glow from Marsh’s lantern when he came to get me.

  If I do ever reach the edge of this place, will I be allowed to leave?

  Clopping approaches from close by, and I ensure I’m as far from the street as I can be. Horses are common here, and they are cold-hearted bastards. The occasional horse-drawn carriage moves through the streets, and they are nearly as dangerous as Marsh. They don’t stop for anything. I give those things plenty of room.

  A massive black apparition with glowing red eyes materializes out of the fog, trotting past me. The woman riding it ignores me completely, half her face gone but for the skull underneath, her hair a halo almost crackling with energy. She is something out of a nightmare, but it is what she is riding that concerns me most. The horse returns my glance with a hungry crimson stare. Like all the horses I’ve seen here, its ribs protrude starkly from under its skin, its breath blowing like steam, visible against the fog. It whinnies and lunges my way, but a flick of the rider’s wrist pulls it back on track. I don’t move, I’ve learned my lesson. I stay clear of them ever since getting nipped the one time I wandered too close. For all I know, they get fed chumps like me.

  I haven’t seen a car here. I haven’t seen anything that runs on electricity. I still hope to hear a motor running somewhere, but every day I’m disappointed.

  Necropolis, Marsh calls it. He says it like a title rather than a description. It’s not the real name, though no one has bothered to tell me what the name is. It doesn’t appear on any map. It’s hidden from the rest of the world. How I managed to find my way here is as much a mystery to me as it is to them. It’s one city, but it somehow exists in more than on
e place. It makes my head hurt thinking about it.

  I look at the dead walking up and down the streets. They are dressed in suits and ties, dresses, overalls, and hats. Most of it is a few decades out of date. Occasionally, I see someone with bell-bottoms or corduroys, a top hat or Victorian blouse, something stylish from some bygone age. But they carry briefcases, bags, and go about business like I’d see anywhere else in the world. What are they doing? Do they still have jobs? Doesn’t death mean you no longer have to work? None of them appear to be in any hurry, though. I don’t sense urgency from anyone.

  Do I know any of them? Somewhere out there in the mass of shuffling corpses, do I have an ancestor? A friend?

  My home is only two blocks away, so I slowly make my way there, moving with the flow. It’s nothing to brag about, rather it’s something I actively avoid. I had no choice in it; it’s where I was placed. I arrive all too quickly.

  It feels darker here. The brick and dirt on the ground are wet with a slimy, persistent leak from somewhere inside the building. Gray walls lean out dangerously, with gaping holes and blocks crumbling to dust exposing support beams and disintegrating insulation. Only a few of the dark windows still contain glass or even boards covering the gaping holes. I’m on top, four stories up. I enter through an open doorway, the doors themselves long gone. There is a dark foyer with cracked checkerboard tile, a wall of unused empty mailboxes to my left. Breathing through my mouth, I struggle as the stench is enough to make me gag.

  A flight of stairs winds up on my right, lit only by the dim ambient light shining through windows spaced every story. I climb the empty stairs, one hand steadying me against the wall, ready to catch myself if I stumble on something. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. There should be noises. I have neighbors. There should be the sounds of people here. But I can’t hear anything inside, just the horses and people moving slowly outside. This place might as well be abandoned. Tattered strips of wallpaper hang in the hallways, and the carpets are worn through and torn on the floor, neglect piling up in corners. There are gas lights on each landing, enough to light patches of the hallways and see the cluster of eight doors on each floor.

  I reach the top landing and walk down the hall, hugging the wall because I don’t like the way the floor sags in the center near my apartment. There is my door at the end of the hall, #412. It looks like it would fold under a gentle breeze. I carefully enter, wincing at the loud creak as I swing it open. It protests again as I close it behind me. I haven’t bothered locking it since I’ve been here. I’m not worried about my possessions walking away. I look at everything I own: a musty chair, an uneven card table, an ancient clay pot stove, an oil lamp, and a cot. They don’t even fill the single room. The stains and mold on the walls and floors add a little extra flair to the place. I won’t even talk about the bathroom.

  Flopping down in the chair, I ignore the groan of protest it makes at my weight. If I try not to move too much, I should be fine. Sometimes, if I angle myself just right, I can even avoid a spring digging into my back.

  Normally, back in the sane world, I would be getting home from work or late classes. I would pop some frozen meal into the microwave, something devoid of nutrition or taste that would just fill my stomach. Or if I were lucky, Amber would help me cook something.

  Amber had started staying over more and more frequently. For the first time, things were starting to get serious with someone. Was there going to be something there? How long will she wait for me to get back before she moves on? Did she even try and look for me?

  I dismiss that train of thought before it can depress me further and look at the empty room I’m in. I’m used to living by myself, but this is definitely different than before.

  If I were back home, I would sit down at my desk to draw or paint, or at my computer and work on some project or other. Or more likely, I’d fire up whatever MMO I was playing that week. I wonder what my guild is up to these days? Do any of them even miss me? Did they even notice? None of them knew my real name, so it’s not like they could go looking for me. Anyway, none of these options are possible here.

  I laugh again at the thought of being forced to become an officer of some kind, that they think my skills will somehow help them solve this problem of theirs.

  My skills? I’m an artist! Put whatever modifier you want on that: aspiring, starving, struggling. None of that will help me find a killer. During the last couple of years at school, I’ve focused on developing skills in digital arts. I don’t think the people here have ever seen a computer, so what few talents I do have are useless. Years of school and tens of thousands of dollars down the drain.

  Even if I had a computer, it wouldn’t work. There is no power here. No microwaves, phones, light switches, TV, radio. What the hell did people do to pass the time before electricity came around?

  I close my eyes.

  I’ve got another night of staring at the wall ahead of me, and I want to ration it out. That lasts about thirty seconds before I’m already bored. Some bottles of the weakest beer I could get from Warner’s take up a shelf in the icebox, which is still enough to get me hammered after about half a dozen swallows.

  When I open my eyes, a disembodied green, semi-transparent face is staring back at me from through the wall right in front of me. It blinks at me curiously. My scream would have woken the dead—if they weren’t already awake.

  Chapter 6

  That will be quite enough of that!” the face announces primly as the rest of her floats through the wall and into my apartment. A real, physical chill radiates from her, so cold my bones ache.

  I jump up and run to the other side of the chair. “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

  A transparent woman is hovering in the air above the floor of my apartment. A ghost. I’ve had encounters with ghosts here, and they haven’t been pleasant.

  She stops floating towards me, bobbing slightly in place. Her eyebrow arches and the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile. “Are you trying to put that chair between us? After you just saw me float through the wall?”

  I straighten and scowl, trying to act casual. “It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

  “Good, then you understood me clearly,” she says. I take a closer look at her. Her hair is pulled tight in a bun, and I guess she’s in her late thirties. Well, thirties if she were alive. She is dressed modestly in a long plain skirt, checkered blazer over a plain blouse buttoned at the neck, a brooch of some kind on her lapel. She has a small mole above her lip, just above the corner of her mouth. It’s strange, seeing a person that doesn’t have an actual body. If I reached out to her, my hand would pass through her. Everything about her, from clothes to skin to hair, is transparent green and blue, swirling from one color to the other in a mélange, like two plumes of smoke chasing each other in a windstorm. One striking difference between her and the more corporeal residents here is that her face and body look healthy, and she’s got no gaping holes or rotting wounds. She looks like she must have when she was alive, except not glowing and being see-through.

  She floats in the air, just shy of meeting me eye-to-eye. I have no idea how tall she is since her feet aren’t visible. Her body just kind of fades out below the knees, like she forgot about completing the rest of her body. My eyes don’t know where to rest; I keep glancing down where her feet should be, expecting them to fade into view. Then I glance back at her face, at her disapproving scowl. I want to avoid that, so I glance at her body again, realize it could look like I’m checking her out, and then go through the cycle again. Resigned, I settle on staring at her nose—not her mole!—so I don’t quite meet her gaze.

  “My name is Elizabeth Greystone. You will refer to me as Ms. Greystone. I am your liaison with the Police Department. We will—”

  “Hi. I’m Jacob Green. Jake. Pleasure.”

  I extend my hand then realize my error. It’s not like she can ac
tually shake my hand. Her mouth is a pinched, straight line, her smile definitely long gone.

  I wait.

  I lower my hand.

  “If you are quite through interrupting me, I am attempting to explain my expectations and outline the working parameters of our partnership.”

  A sigh escapes my lips. I’m failing spectacularly at this first impression so far. Since this woman is the first person here that appears to be talking to me willingly without hurting me first, I’d like to make nice. I’d like to think she’s not going to inflict massive pain somehow or haunt me to death. I’m not quite sure what she can do to me, or how much authority she has over me, but it’s becoming clear she doesn’t like me much. And partnership? What is this about?

  She floats there, staring at me. Waiting. The chill in the air is definitely something real and not just something I’m imagining based on her personality. There is a barely-audible static that seems to come from her vicinity.

  “Yes? Please continue,” I say uncertainly, concentrating on her and trying to ignore the noise and cold radiating from her. I shuffle from foot to foot awkwardly.

  Her scowl deepens. Her eyes literally blaze more intensely. “Ms. Greystone.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “‘Please continue, Ms. Greystone.’ You will address me properly and with respect. I will not tolerate oafish behavior or failure in social decorum.”

  For crying out loud.

  I had a friend back in high school whose mom would scowl withering glances at me any time I put a foot up on a chair or used the wrong fork at dinner or skipped any minor bit of etiquette. Even my best behavior wasn’t enough to satisfy her, as my breeding was evidently lacking. I would never reach whatever bar she set for acceptable manners, and eventually, I just stopped trying. Which is probably why my friend stopped inviting me over, and we never spoke again after graduation.