Necropolis PD

by Nathan Sumsion

  Calhoun huffs.

  Dean raises a knuckle to his forehead in farewell. “Good day, Detectives. I’ll wait below for some officers to take me home.” He levels a smirk in my direction, and I want so badly to hit him in his smug face. Or let Marsh do it for me. “I’ll be in touch when I require your services.”

  Marsh makes no further objections, so Mr. Dean steps around us and out the front door. Marsh and I look at Calhoun.

  “What?” the actor protests. “I certainly won’t tell anyone. Demons? Seers? Please, I’d be laughed off every stage in town.”

  The bedroom door opens, and Jessica returns, Greystone following behind her. Jessica’s eyes are downcast, and she dabs at them with a handkerchief. She walks up to me, about an arm’s length away, and stops. She darts a glance at me, her expression miserable. “All this time, you could see me. What I really look like. And you never said anything.”

  “I didn’t know,” I say as gently as I can. “I didn’t know any different.”

  She nods. “I know. I know. I just couldn’t understand why you weren’t interested.”

  I raise my hand to stall her. “Jessica, please. It’s not that I’m not interested. You’re one of the few friends I have here. You’re not my friend because of how you look. You’re my friend because of who you are. All of you are. Except for Marsh.”

  “My looks get me places,” Marsh says without changing expression.

  Jessica has regained her composure a bit. She meets my gaze now and smiles bashfully.

  “Well,” she says, wiping the last tear out of her eye. “You came over for my help. What do you need?”

  “Yes!” I say. I’d kind of forgotten the reason for our visit. “We were hoping you could disguise me again. I need to follow someone, and none of us can get close.”

  “Sure, why not?” she agrees, a rueful smile on her lips. She has me sit at one of the bar stools and gets out her kit of supplies. She performs her magic again, putting makeup and whatever glamour on my face. Mercifully, she doesn’t straddle me this time while doing it.

  Marsh whistles. “Damn, Green. This is the best you’ve looked in all the time I’ve known you.”

  “Thanks, Marsh.”

  “Wow, you even sound different. Less whiny and pathetic. You should really think about having her make this permanent.”

  We review our hastily made plan again. I’ll follow Clark around to see if he’s up to anything. The rest will follow several blocks behind, Greystone keeping tabs on me through our link. We’ll keep Calhoun and Jessica with us for now, for their own safety.

  Greystone flies over to the precinct, gets Clark’s location from the captain, and fills him in on what’s been going on. Unfortunately, Clark hasn’t been at the precinct for hours.

  After some further digging, we learn that Clark is following up some leads over in an underground club not far from us. The four of us walk over there in silence. Jessica has no great interest in speaking to me right now, and Calhoun is so confused and bewildered he doesn’t know what to say. Marsh just scowls. It’s the longest twenty-minute walk I’ve had in a while.

  We meet Greystone at the entrance. The place is in the basement of an old packing plant. The thumping of music in the ground vibrates my bones. Every once and a while, the door will open, and the music will blast out. I hear horns, an upright bass, drums, but my brain can’t put any melody to it.

  The streets leading here are dark, narrow and twisted. You can’t see far in any direction. One lane just merges into another at all different angles. The buildings that loom over me blend from one to the other as well. It’s not that they are built next to each other; it’s like they have been slammed together and patched up. There is a light fog on the ground, and the air is damp and chill. The bright lights of Jessica’s building are far behind us.

  Greystone verifies Clark is inside, so I wait out on the street with Jessica and Calhoun while Marsh and Greystone go farther down the street, out of sight. I’m glad not to go into the club. It’s small, sparsely populated, and I’m afraid I’ll stand out too much. I don’t know if this glamour can stand up to close scrutiny from a crowd. And if Clark is questioning people in there, he may work his way to me. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait too long. He comes up the stairs after we’ve been there for about twenty minutes. He’s leafing through a small notebook, barely looking up as he walks down the street away from me.

  I let him get about a block away, and then I start after him, Jessica at my side. We leave Calhoun behind to meet up with Marsh. Greystone will follow a little behind me. I’m worried the whole group of us would attract too much attention, so we have to spread out like this. There are a few people out on the streets, but it’s not empty enough that I worry about him spotting me. He’s not walking particularly quickly, so I don’t have a hard time keeping him close. But the way these streets twist and turn, I can’t let him get too far ahead, or I will lose track of him.

  Clark turns a corner up ahead, stepping around a broken carriage in the gutter. I make the turn and see him further up, still leafing through his notebook. He makes an abrupt left, skirting the outside of an empty store-front.

  I hold onto Jessica’s hand and pull her along with me. We get to the edge of the street and peek around the store to see him taking another turn ahead of us, his shoes echoing on the cobblestones. We reach the corner and make the same turn, but I don’t see him any longer. I can’t even hear his steps anymore. I let go of Jessica’s hand and take a few steps away from her.

  Nothing.

  I jog down the road, closing the space to the next road. At the intersection, I take a look down each of the alleys. It’s hard to see anything in the darkness, but I think I see him to my left, so I go that way. Jessica jogs after me, struggling to keep up.

  But at the next intersection, I don’t see him again. If it was even him I was following in the first place. He’s gone.

  Dammit. I lost him.

  “I relayed that to Marsh. I will spare you his response,” Greystone replies.

  I’m clearly not good at this. I wait pointlessly at the corner with Jessica for a few minutes. I have no idea where we are, exactly. The streets here are barely wide enough to be considered alleys. There are gas lampposts at each corner, but they barely provide enough light to see something directly underneath them.

  I see Marsh’s shadow loom out of the fog, followed by Greystone’s glow, and then Calhoun closely behind her. We’re going to have to start all over again and try and find Clark.

  “Smooth, Green,” Marsh growls. He looks back over his shoulder to make sure the others are all with him.

  “Sorry about that—” I start to say more, but as Marsh turns back to me, his eyes widen in surprise.

  “Hey, Green,” a voice whispers in my ear from behind me.

  A shotgun blast louder than God goes off next to me. A hole the size of my head erupts in Marsh’s chest, and he drops so hard I almost feel the earth shake.

  My ears ring so loud I can barely hear his screamed curses. There’s movement to my right, and suddenly Clark is standing next to me, a shotgun smoking in his hands. It’s double-barreled, but each barrel is about six inches wide. He’s smiling his same mischievous grin.

  “What’s going on, you guys?” his grin widens as he cocks back the hammer of his gun.

  Chapter 38

  I reach for the gun at my waist. I don’t know why I’m trying, Clark has his shotgun pointed right at me. But it’s all I can think to do. He looks even more amused; I can hear his chuckle over the ringing in my ears. Greystone screams my name as Clark raises his gun to point it right in my face. The barrels are dark and endlessly deep. But instead of pulling the trigger, he slams the end of the barrel straight into my nose.

  My vision explodes into bright colors. Pain blinds me, and I drop to the ground. My right wrist suddenly erupts in agony,
but my brain can’t process why. Tears flood my eyes, and once I manage to open them, I can hardly make sense of what I’m seeing. My gun is in my right hand. But . . . Yes, I think I’m lying on the street. Clark is standing on my wrist, grinding it into the ground as he’s casually reloading his weapon. My fingers spasm from the pain; the gun falls out of my hand and Clark kicks it away.

  “Wow, Green. If you’d have lived long enough, you would have made a hell of a detective. Who would have thought it? I didn’t expect to get caught for a couple more years at least.” He slams the shotgun shut. The tears from my eyes mingle with the blood that is running freely from my nose. Shaking my head, I try to clear my vision and focus on my surroundings.

  There is someone else here. To my side, I see Jessica being restrained by another officer. I don’t know him; he doesn’t look familiar to me at all. He’s behind her, holding her arms together. She’s struggling fiercely, trying to shake him off, but he’s got her elbows pinned behind her back, and for all her efforts, he doesn’t appear particularly stressed. Greystone is floating over Marsh, trying to determine how badly he is hurt. I can see some twitching in his limbs, but nothing coordinated. Clark is looking at Calhoun. The actor is swallowing nervously, looking back and forth between Clark and the other officer.

  Clark is still laughing. “What?” he asks Calhoun. When the actor doesn’t respond, he turns to the officer with him. “What do you think, Abayomi? Should I just let this guy go?”

  I recognize the name from one of Greystone’s stories. What is his name? Charles?

  The officer shrugs. “Give him a chance, at least. Might be fun.”

  Clark nods and turns back to Calhoun. “Off you go then.”

  The actor stares at him in confusion, his mouth opening and closing without making any noise.

  “You’re not even going to try to run?”

  Calhoun takes a tentative step back. Smiling, Clark waves him along. “Go on.”

  With a look at Officer Abayomi, Calhoun turns and starts to run. He’s not particularly graceful. It looks like more of a waddle than a sprint. Clark lets him get about ten paces before firing. The shot shears the actor’s right leg off at the knee. Calhoun spins and hits the ground, howling in as much surprise as pain.

  “What do you want?” Calhoun wails as Clark approaches him. Clark isn’t in a hurry, he takes his time. He gets right up next to him. Calhoun continues his pleas. “What do you want? I can give you money. I won’t tell anyone about this. I promise!”

  “Oh, I know you won’t,” Clark says, pulling the trigger. Calhoun’s head evaporates in a spray of chunks and fluid. He cracks open the shotgun again, ejects the spent shells, and starts loading in two new ones. “Man, you’d think an actor would have more memorable last words.”

  “Detective Clark, you can’t possibly think you’ll get away with this!” Greystone yells, furious.

  “What, are you going to haunt me? Oh, wait, I have something here for you,” he says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a small, gray stone that fits into the palm of his hand.

  “Detective Green, you’ve got to get out of here!”

  What..? I’m useless; I can barely stand. Dizzy.

  “NO!”

  He tosses it at the ground underneath Greystone. It sparks when it hits the stone street, and light blasts out of it, enveloping Greystone. She screams in pain and fear as the light glows brighter. In another second, the light explodes. I shade my eyes and try and blink away the afterimage of Greystone.

  As my vision clears, Greystone is gone.

  “What—?” I say out loud this time.

  “Banishment Stone. She’ll be gone for a while. Jesus, don’t they tell you anything, Green? You never really stood a chance here, did you? We should have killed you when we found you, but you were just so damned hilarious. If I’d have known sooner that you were a Seer, I would have. What a pain in the ass.”

  “Hey, Clark,” Abayomi says, slapping cuffs on Jessica. “Marsh is starting to move around some more. We really don’t want him coming after us. He heals pretty fast.”

  Clark considers Marsh, laughing as my partner struggles on the ground. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. We’ll have to come back for him, though. It’ll take both of us to lug him back to the precinct.”

  Clark walks over to Marsh, staying just out of arm’s reach, and levels the shotgun at Marsh’s head.

  “Clark, no!” I yell uselessly. A twin explosion and Marsh’s head just vaporizes above his jaw. The twitching stops.

  “How long you think that will keep him down?” Abayomi asks.

  Clark shrugs. “Dunno. A day at least. He’s never come back from missing a head before, no matter how small a brain he carries around.”

  I realize about two steps into it that I’m on my feet and staggering over to Clark. He turns to me in surprise, still grinning. “You asshole!” I yell, but he just sidesteps the punch I throw at him. He sticks a foot out, and I go sprawling in the gore on the street. Will Marsh become a ghost now? Will Calhoun? I don’t see them appearing yet.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, trying to get my bearings enough to stand up.

  “Because it’s funny, Green,” he says, looking at me intently, smiling. Studying me. “A demon possessing dead bodies. How crazy is that? The total and complete denial of everyone in this place—they think they beat death somehow because we’re all still here. It’s hilarious.”

  “Clark, you’re killing people. And who knows what the demon wants,” I say, pretty sure my words are coming out slurred.

  “Jake!” Jessica struggles, but the officer holding her spins her around and drives his fist into the side of her face. She falls to the ground, and I see Abayomi start kicking her for all he’s worth.

  Smeared gore on the ground causes me to slip as I try to sit up, and I fall to my elbows. “C’mon, Green. Let’s go. Time to wrap this up. You should have been dead a long time ago.”

  His grinning face is the last thing I see before the butt of his shotgun slams down into the back of my head, and everything goes black.

  I’ve gone deaf and blind. Colors flicker in darkness. A rushing roar of noise drowns out all thought. My teeth are rattling, and there is a metallic taste in my mouth. I blink a few times and try to move, but everything hurts. Even turning my head makes me nauseous.

  It takes me a few seconds after fluttering my eyelids, but things start to come into focus. My cheek is lying against a metal grate. A maelstrom of color is being sucked into a hole in the air, and I realize where I am.

  We’re at the Pit, inside the precinct.

  “You’re awake!” Clark says, pleased. He’s leaning against the railing at the edge of the grate, next to the gate that opens out into the Pit. Even one step past the threshold is a one-way trip to oblivion. It is uncomfortably close; I’m lying about six feet from the opening.

  “You can’t even begin to guess how many bodies I’ve tossed into this place,” Clark says casually. “I found a back way in here almost no one remembers, and it’s been a bitch keeping the glamour up to hide it. Totally worth it though. It’s easy to just drag people in here and toss them away. Like you, Green. No one will even know what happened to you.”

  I feel movement on the grate, and slowly turn my head to look behind me. Jessica is lying face down near me, and Calhoun is draped over the top of her. His leg and head are still missing. Officer Abayomi has closed the door up above and is walking back to us.

  “What?” I mumble, my brain working furiously to make sense of what he is saying.

  “The demon needed me to dispose of the bodies,” Clark answers. He’s looking over his shoulder at the energies being pulled into the Pit. “I mean, you saw how the captain’s hackles raised when we were finding a couple of bodies. If he’d have seen dozens or hundreds piling up, he would have looked into it a lot sooner.”

/>   “Why are you helping it?” I ask.

  “Hey, I’m not running around killing people! At least, not much. Do I look like a psycho to you?” He grins at me again. “I’m just cleaning up the mess. I mean, this demon, he burns through the bodies so fast. They don’t last long; he’s got to find more.”

  Clark stands up and stretches then walks, stepping over me, to Calhoun. He and the other officer each take an arm and drag him back over to the railing. I see a ghostly shape of a head forming where the actual skull should be. It looks like the ghost of Calhoun is frantically trying to pull free of his body.

  “At least they’re lasting a lot longer now. This demon, it’s almost got the hang of it, I’m betting.”

  Calhoun’s struggles are in vain. Clark and the officer count to three and then hurl Calhoun’s body out over the edge. The force of the Pit grabs it and sucks it hungrily into the vortex of energy. And just like that, Calhoun is gone.

  “They last a lot longer in human bodies, I’m told. But the living are harder to control. Now that the demon has figured out a way to kick the spirit out of the dead body it inhabits, it has a body with no one else fighting to take charge.”

  He chuckles. “A demon with an immortal body. Now, that’s something I can’t wait to see.”

  Clark turns to Abayomi. “What do you think, Chuck? Girl next?”

  “Aw,” he says, disappointed. “I was hoping we could spend a little more time with her.”

  Clark shakes his head. “I wish you could too, man. You have a real talent in that area, but we’ve got to get back to Marsh before that big lug comes around.”

  “You think he can heal a missing head? I never seen that before. But I suppose you’re right.” They both walk over me to grab Jessica. She’s starting to come around as they lift her arms like they did Calhoun’s. I’m still groggy; every movement causes me more misery and nausea, but no way in hell I’m just going to sit here.

  “Jake . . . ?” she slurs.

  I start to sit up, but Chuck knees me in the face. My head slams back against the grate, rebounding off the metal. Both he and Clark laugh and step over me. I can barely twitch a finger right now, much less fight off two officers. I’m fighting to stay conscious, willing my body to move and trying to shut out the sudden shrill noise that’s getting louder by the second. But then I notice Clark and Abayomi both pause and look around in confusion, like they can hear it too.