Necropolis PD

by Nathan Sumsion

  Marsh turns to the others and says something to them. There is a low hum at the edge of my hearing that drowns out their whispered conversation. I don’t know exactly what he says to them, but they leave. Leaving me alone with Marsh.

  He is looking at me strangely.

  “You’re not going to eat me, are you?” I ask, but I’m confident now. Certain. I’m not sure if it is this question that saves me. It keeps me alive, sure, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. But when I knew Marsh was lying, when I confessed to him I knew he was lying, I knew right then I wasn’t going to die.

  Not that day, anyway.

  Chapter 11

  Lie to me,” I say.

  I’m standing in the middle of another group of animated corpses, these looking no friendlier than the last group. At least Marsh isn’t going to work me over with those sledgehammers he calls arms. This group of dead detectives surrounds me, irritated and unimpressed. The only noise I hear from inside the office is the crackle of tobacco burning as Burchard uses a cigar like a snorkel. Hard eyes stare back at me, measuring and assessing. Not a lot of forgiveness in those eyes, not a lot of patience either.

  I was able to tell that Marsh was lying. Will I be able to do it here? Can I read dead nervous tics and expressions as well as living ones? My limited experience with cops before now has taught me they are also good at figuring out when people are lying. My little talent might not be so impressive to these guys. I’m not sure what it is supposed to prove, but if I don’t blow it, maybe it will help me fit in.

  Finnegan snorts derisively. “Seriously? We’re going to play a game with the mortal now? What is he, our mascot?”

  “I’ll start,” Burchard says, ignoring the other detective. His expression doesn’t change a bit. He pulls his cigar away from his lips and waves it absently.

  Burchard’s voice is strong, one of those voices that carry no matter how quietly he speaks. I can detect a subtle accent, British maybe? “Tell me if I’m lying. I’ve been reprimanded for excessive use of force more times than anyone else here.”

  His gaze doesn’t waver; he stares me right in the eyes as he says it. His face doesn’t change expression, even the cigar smoke slowly trickling out of his nostrils partially hides his face. But I’m pretty sure he’s lying. Lying, and also still hiding something. I’m not positive, but I’ll go with my gut here.

  “That’s a lie.” I try to sound confident when I say it. I don’t mention my other observation. I’ve found people don’t like it when you know more about them than they want you to.

  Burchard scowls but nods that I am correct. “Yeah. Marsh has me beat.”

  That information doesn’t surprise me at all. Silence in the room. Finally, Marsh says, “Finnegan, you next.”

  “Fine,” Finnegan says. He smiles thinly. His voice is strong, menacing. “I’d like to carve you apart one layer of skin at a time and see how long you last.”

  I shiver. I don’t even have to think about this one. “Truth,” I say. It’s not the expression on his face that makes me sure of my answer; it’s the unwavering attention in his eyes. Finnegan shrugs, dismissively waves an affirmative, and turns back to the papers on his desk.

  Kim speaks up next. “If you are feeling confused about anything, feel free to ask me questions any time you want.”

  No flinch, no conscious indication he’s lying, but what he’s saying just doesn’t sit right with me.

  “Lie.”

  The corner of Kim’s mouth turns up in a hint of a smile. He nods in acknowledgment. The room stays silent for a few moments before someone clears their throat.

  Detective Meints is looking at me differently than all the others. Most are looking at me like they want to scrape me off the bottom of their shoes, but Meints is looking at me with fascination. He seems very intrigued with me.

  “Marsh . . . how does one say it? Marsh ‘scores’ with more women than anyone in this room,” Meints says. His voice is heavily accented. Eastern European somewhere, I can’t quite place it. Each word is precisely enunciated and clear.

  I look nervously at Marsh, then back. My brain is metaphorically gouging my eyes out at the thought of any of them getting intimate. I hesitate, not wanting to answer. I’m not sure what Marsh will do.

  “Lie,” I say.

  Chuckles from around the room. Mock outrage from Marsh. I’ve questioned the standards of beauty here before, but I don’t believe there is any world where Marsh’s mug would attract anything. And his personality isn’t doing him any favors either.

  Clark pipes up. “A dog licked my testicles once. I licked his back.” Groans from around the room. Clark has his feet up on his desk and looks to all the world like this is the most exciting thing he could possibly be doing.

  “Dear God, please let that be a lie,” Meints says, covering his eyes with his hand. Even Finnegan smiles.

  “Lie,” I confirm.

  “OK, I didn’t, but I thought about it.”

  “Uh, I’ll pass on that one,” I say, trying to keep my face blank.

  Marsh looks around. “Armstrong! Join the party.”

  Armstrong looks up from behind black curly bangs falling into his face. “This is a waste of time, Marsh. I have important things to be doing.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I confirm, but this just earns me a deeper frown from Armstrong.

  Marsh smiles. “Six for six. I told you, boys. The kid’s a keeper.”

  “Marsh?” Meints asks, his eyes locked on to me as he speaks. “This is most unprecedented. We haven’t seen something like this for at least two centuries by my count.”

  “Stow that crap, Meints. He’s not some science project. The captain wants his help. We’ll keep him alive long enough to give it.”

  “But—”

  Marsh leans forward in his chair. Ominously. Detective Meints relents, but not before dissecting me with his gaze. He starts writing some notes on a notepad.

  Grumbles of assent clutter the air, and they all turn back to their work. Marsh turns to me, fixing me with a stare. “OK then. Let’s put that talent to work and get you started on your first case.”

  I don’t like the smile that forms on his face at all.

  Chapter 12

  I learn one thing quickly on my first night of work: to the undead here, one’s body is more important than anything else. For me, I’ve taken my body for granted my whole life. I don’t mean just my physical appearance, how tall I am, how much I weigh, the color of my hair, that kind of thing. I’m talking about the fact that my heart beats continually, for years without pause. My lungs, inflating, pulling oxygen into my body, pushing carbon dioxide out of my body. Things grow on my body: hair, nails. If I get hurt, my body will heal that damage.

  Not so for the majority of the residents that live here.

  I’ve noticed that less importance is placed on their material possessions. They left it all behind once when they died. They can always get more stuff. You steal someone’s wallet or their horse, there are hard feelings, sure. But mess with someone’s body and people come unhinged. It doesn’t matter that the body is rotting, falling apart, if it stinks to high heaven, or if it is missing tissue, limbs or organs. Never mind the state of decay of the skin, what color of green or yellow or pale the pus and fluids that are leaking and oozing in various places. The people here have survived death with their bodies more or less intact, and they won’t risk any threat to the integrity of what they have left.

  Which brings me to my current predicament.

  The corpse sitting in the chair opposite me now, propping itself against my desk, is stinking up the entire room. And that’s saying something sitting in proximity to Marsh. I don’t think the funk is ever getting out of that chair.

  I appear to be the only one who notices.

  Typewriters clack away, and voices curse in the
background. Cigarette and cigar smoke come from all corners of the office. Marsh has kept up a steady stream of profanity since we started, smashing keys on his typewriter, slamming drawers in his desk and he shows no signs of letting up. I’ve no idea what set him off or where exactly his ire is directed. It appears to be focused on wherever his attention happens to go. The other detectives give both of us a wide berth, no one wanting to risk being the target of Marsh’s temper or getting pulled into a conversation with me.

  I cough, almost gag. How can no one else notice? Maybe they do and don’t care. I can’t ignore it, but I do my best to power through, my stomach whimpering at the back of my throat in abject misery. I concentrate on the typewriter in front of me. The first thing I realized this morning is that I had never actually used one before and just stared at it in confusion. I’ve seen them, sure. I know what a typewriter is. But feeding the ribbon, using the carriage return, paying attention to where you get to the end of the page, feeding paper, and carbon copies? Carbon copies! I don’t even know how they work. It all baffles me. God help me if I have to use the office mimeograph.

  Something that takes getting used to is how much feedback a typewriter gives while I’m typing. Every clack of the keys causes a small tremor across my desk. Stacks of papers flutter each time I return the carriage. If I strike the keys too quickly or with too much force, a pile of papers will tip over, spilling across my desk onto the floor. The pencils on my desktop dance with each keystroke. How did anyone use these things?

  I’m used to listening to music when I work. I use it to block out all the background noise. It allows me to concentrate on the task at hand with little interruption. If I’m trying to write, I’ll put on something fast and hard, waves of power chords, or something industrial measured in beats per minute. If I’m working on art, modeling or animating something, I’ll tend to something more gothic, mellow. But here, without electricity, the closest I can get to music is Finnegan’s incessant humming or the various squeaks of gasses escaping dead bodies around me. It’s only been a couple hours, and I’m just about out of my mind.

  A fly buzzes lazily around the room, passes in front of my face. It hovers for a bit before I swat it away. That’s one thing at least, I haven’t seen any fast flies here. No need for speed evidently. It flies slowly over to the corpse in front of me and lands on its face, crawling across the bridge of the nose. It walks across the staring, unblinking eye. That’s when I realize I’m staring, and this guy wasn’t winning any beauty contests before he died.

  Grumbling I turn back to the typewriter. My first crime report. I want to be excited, but just can’t quite muster it. How many times have you tried to concentrate on something with a dead body staring across at you?

  “What’s the problem?” the corpse asks me indignantly. “You gonna write down my statement or what?”

  “Mmm? What?”

  The corpse scowls, flicks the fly off his face, and leans forward. Fluid oozes out of his hands onto the surface of my desk.

  “You deaf, all of a sudden? You gonna write down my statement, I said.”

  I struggle to recall his name. It takes me a couple seconds.

  “Mr. D . . . uh . . . Davenport! Mr. Davenport, if you want to file a complaint, then I’ll take your statement. That’s my job,” I say.

  “I have to tell you, though, I don’t see the seriousness of the situation.”

  “Not serious?” Davenport yells. Other cold eyes glance up at us for a second before glancing away again. “Maybe because you’re still breathin’ it don’t seem like a big deal to you. You still heal. That idiot put a staple in me! I still have the holes as proof! I got holes!”

  He shoves his hand under my nose. I lurch back. My desk doesn’t seem nearly big enough to use as a barrier. His hand is putrid; I can almost see the waves of stink rising from it. And sure enough, I can see two little staple holes on the back of his hand.

  “You want to file an assault charge. On your boss. For stapling your hand. As you reached to snag a piece of paper from his desk. While he was trying to staple it.”

  “He should have been more careful!” Davenport says indignantly.

  “The paper he was trying to staple was a written warning for your insubordination.”

  “Hey, that’s neither here nor there! He shouldn’t have stapled my hand. That’s all there is to it.”

  And so it goes. It doesn’t take me long to figure out that Davenport is in here about once a month with some complaint or another, some reason to bemoan his continuing existence. His neighbor’s horse carriage is always parked in his spot. His other neighbor is making too much noise. His coffee is too cold. Even death couldn’t bring an end to his bitching. You would think that dying would bring sweet release to a life filled with ever-present misfortune and unfairness. But evidently, the desire to complain about it overrides the promise of an end.

  It’s clear where I rank on the pecking order here. I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of Davenport in the future. All the crap cases are going to come rolling downhill to me.

  “Calm down, Mr. Davenport. I’ll take your statement. I’ll fill out your complaint. But I have to tell you, it’s going to be hard to prove he intended you harm.”

  I tune out the rest of his ranting as I peck away at typewriter keys.

  The rest of the time is more of the same. All the complaints boil down to personal injury. You level someone’s building, maybe you’ll get a week in the slammer. But break someone’s nose, and you’re in trouble.

  Marsh explains it to me after I finish typing. As much as he can.

  “Why do you think we’re still alive, Green? Why is my body still moving around after I’m dead? It’s about will. Pure, bull-headed determination. Refusing to let even death bring you to an end.

  “For some, it’s unfinished business that they can’t allow to remain behind. Or it’s a wrong that needs to be made right, some bastard that can’t live without getting what’s coming to him. Or it’s something you wanted so bad that you never had in life, and you can’t bear the thought of never getting it.”

  He pauses, gathering his thoughts, and I don’t interrupt. “Sure, some of it can be called supernatural. Maybe a ritual or a curse yanks you back from whatever hereafter you managed to make it to. Maybe some vamp or some were-animal chows down on you, and you end up here. But even then, it’s will that keeps you hanging around,” he says.

  “The majority of you living assholes, you die, and that’s it. Off you go to wherever. But a very small number of us, we have reasons to stick around.”

  “So, you’re saying people who die are quitters?” I ask skeptically.

  He shrugs and lets that stand as his answer.

  “What I don’t get,” I say casually, trying not to derail a surprisingly talkative Marsh, “is the different kinds of you. Ghosts, zombies, vampires, I don’t know what else—”

  “Stop calling us zombies, kid, or I’ll beat the snot out of you and make you eat your teeth.”

  “Right. Not zombies. Um . . .” I trail off.

  Marsh finally fills in the silence. “Revenants. Use that word. People will know what you mean.”

  “So most of you that come back are revenants?”

  Marsh shakes his head, exasperated at my questions. “No. Most of those that do come back can only manage to keep their spirit around. Keeping your body together requires more grit.”

  “Ghosts,” I say, thinking of Ms. Greystone and the others I see floating through the precinct.

  Marsh nods. “Yeah. Most of them don’t remember why they’re sticking around. I guess without physical brains, most of them don’t keep a hold of their memories so good. They keep going back to where they lived, back in the real world, and we have to send teams to haul ’em back. We don’t want any ghost hunters following them back.”

  “Who ya gonna call?” I quip, smiling.<
br />
  Marsh scowls at me. “What?”

  My smile fades. “Ghostbusters. Who ya gonna call?”

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  Right. No TV or movies here. I wave away his question with a disappointed sigh and let him continue.

  “So those that won’t stay here where you folks can’t find ’em, those we have to drag back here. If they keep going back to your world, we stuff ’em down in a place we got for them. Not all are like that though. A small portion of them retains enough sense of self to stick around and be useful.”

  “Like Ms. Greystone.”

  “Right again.”

  “If you come back as a ghost, you end up here?” I interrupt him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Not automatically. Ghosts like to haunt a place that’s familiar to them. But they’re too easy to find there. We like to stay hidden. Safer that way for everyone. So when we find a ghost, we bring them back here, give them a place to hang out.”

  I nod. Makes sense I suppose. Probably why we only hear about ghosts haunting abandoned and out-of-the-way places. Not in areas with a lot of people. Ghosts are evidently removed from those spaces and brought here.

  “So how many are ghosts compared to everyone else?”

  Marsh shrugs. “Bout ninety percent, I suppose.”

  I raise my eyebrows at this. The majority of residents I’ve seen here have been these revenants. If that’s true, where are all the ghosts?

  “Ghosts are about ninety percent of you?”

  “Right,” Marsh says, forging ahead. “Now, those other ten percent, their will is stronger. They can pull together enough form, enough matter, that they can keep their body with them. They can reanimate their body and keep it more-or-less intact. Sure, a vampire virus or zombie bite might help someone cling to their body for a while, but it’s only a short-term thing.

  “It’s a constant struggle. If you lose too much of your body and don’t have enough will to put it back together, you lose it.