The Memory Agent

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  The three crossed out of the great ballroom and into the lobby of the hotel. The floor was carpeted in burgundy and peach, stained with streaks of long-dried blood. The front reception desk was vacant and dust-covered. Another glass chandelier hung partially torn from the ceiling, the layers of crystal dangling like broken branches. The front doors were sealed shut from the outside by heavy boards. A grand staircase curved up from the main floor to the terraced second floor. Beneath the stairs, two more revenants stood. They both faced the wall, their chins against their chest as if sleeping while standing. Their clothes were shredded almost completely off their bodies. One of them had dried stab wounds covering his back.

  Quietly, Blake led the team up the stairs toward the second floor. She pulled them inside a bathroom and quietly shut the door. “Their sense of sight isn’t great,” she whispered, “but their sense of movement is excellent. If you see one, stand still. They might not know you’re there.”

  “How do we kill these things?” Clayton said.

  “Only way to truly kill them is to cut off the head.”

  “What did you say earlier, they can smell the dead?” Parker said.

  “If one of them dies, they emit this odor. I think. Anyway, other revenants seem to be able to sense it and they come running. So try not to kill one unless you absolutely have to. And if you do, get away as quick as you can.”

  “How’s their hearing?”

  “Good. Like ours.”

  “What were they doing down there? Sleeping?”

  “Something like that. They seem to sort of shut down after a while. But if they see a living human like us, they wake up pretty quick. Like, instantly. And you do not want one of these things getting ahold of you.”

  “So this is pretty much the most awful place I’ve ever been,” Parker said. “And where is Bobby Chan in this whole mess?”

  “The guy you want is on the top floor, penthouse. But like I said, nobody has actually seen him in years. I don’t know anything more than that.”

  “Why would he stay here?”

  “Doesn’t like people, I guess. I mean, the revenants are a good security system. Nobody is going to come bother you.”

  “Except us.”

  “Well, nobody smart anyway,” Blake said.

  They reloaded their weapons, then quietly left the bathroom, returning to the second-floor hallway. The hall was empty. In the reception lobby below, Parker saw that the two revenants beneath the stairs had vanished. He wondered if they had gone into the grand ballroom to look after their fallen.

  The hallway was carpeted with intricate designs and the trio’s feet moved silently along. Ahead, a fire alarm was fixed to the wall, beneath it a red glass-and-metal case that housed a long axe. Quietly, Parker pulled open the door to the case and eased out the fire axe. He hefted it with one hand. The axe had a heavy, wood handle that ended in a wicked-looking steel blade.

  They passed through an open doorway into a smoking room. Shelves of books lined the walls, the jackets molding and yellowed. Big game heads were mounted on the wall, elks with massive antlers, a grizzly bear and a giant moose over a fireplace littered with trash. The skin on the animals was peeling off, revealing taxidermy stuffing beneath. Several leather chairs faced each other. Empty snifter glasses stood at the ready on small glass tables. Tiffany-style floor lamps cast a yellowish glow across the room.

  From somewhere in the hotel came a long, inhuman shriek. The same sound that thing had made in the ballroom below. Parker spun around, expecting to see one of the revenants, its face torn apart by bullet wounds, racing toward him down the hallway.

  Nothing.

  “They do that sometimes,” Blake said. “I think it’s a way they communicate with one another.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody has fucking spent the time to study these things. Usually you go the other way when they’re around.”

  Parker sighed. “Where do we go now?”

  “I don’t know, man, I’ve never been here before,” Blake said.

  The floor lamps flickered twice, then cut off. Enshrouded by darkness, Parker felt his heart accelerate, threatening to pump its way out of his chest. In the lobby below, he could hear the shuffle of feet. The slow creek of old joints, like bones wearing against each other.

  “What the hell is going on?” Clayton’s voice whispered.

  “The place is powered by generators,” Blake said. “I’m sure they cut out sometimes. Just give it a moment.”

  They stood in the shadows, too afraid to move. After a minute, the lights flickered back to life. Parker swung up the axe, ready to defend himself against an attack, but the room was empty.

  “Let’s go find an elevator.”

  Outside the smoking room, the hallway cut back around, the lobby visible one story below. One of the revenants shuffled out of the ballroom, its head cocked to the side. Blake froze immediately, holding her hand up to Clayton and Parker.

  “Don’t move.”

  The three went completely still. Below, the single revenant moved aimlessly across the lobby floor, wearing the same cargo pants as the rover militia from Grand Central. It had on no shoes, its feet filthy, the nails black and long. It shuffled beneath them and out of sight, never once looking up.

  Without a word, the trio continued forward. Parker thought of his wife, trapped in a place like this. She had been away for years. And Parker had possibly been in a system with her. These were entire worlds populated with hundreds of thousands of souls. He could wander them for decades and never find her. To imagine her in some awful place like this was more than he could take. He had to find her.

  Blake reached the elevator and pushed the call button. The elevator door was leafed with gold, an image of a woman in a long, flowing dress molded onto the front. The three waited as the car descended toward them.

  “What happens when we find your guy?” Blake asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Parker said. “How did you get in here?” he asked, wondering if Blake had recovered any of her real-world memories.

  Blake shook her head. “I can’t remember. I don’t know. I remember before everything fell apart, I worked in a bank. Village Credit Union on the Lower East Side. I was a teller. We all had jobs. And at night we went to classes. I was taking Spanish.”

  “Where were you living?”

  “I had an apartment. A studio on Eleventh Street. I lived there with my boyfriend. Then one day I came home and he was gone.”

  “Like he broke up with you?” Clayton said.

  “No, idiot.” Blake rolled her eyes. “Like, he just vanished. A lot of people started vanishing. It was strange. Every day the streets getting more and more quiet. People started putting up flyers for the missing. At first, there were just a handful. Then there were hundreds. Then one day, all the police vanished. That’s when it started to get really bad. There were weapons everywhere. Not enough supplies. Fear. People started rioting. Forming up into these militia groups that became the rovers. But you know what’s really crazy?”

  “What?”

  “Everybody was scrambling to stockpile food and water. And we realized, nobody was even hungry anymore. It was like the people that were left stopped needing food. That was when a lot of us started questioning things. Like how come nobody could ever leave the island? And when the killing started, people would just reappear. And so did the revenants. That’s when it was all over. Total chaos,” Blake said. “But you know what? We had everything we needed. I mean, after the disappearance, we had the city to ourselves. Any apartment you wanted. We didn’t even need food. We wanted for nothing. And yet we still destroyed ourselves. Still destroyed this city. It was like it was in our nature. Which makes you wonder who we were before all this.”

  “You don’t remember anything outside of this world?”

  Blake shook her head. “No matter how hard I try. This is all I got.”

  The hallway lights flickered again. Then went out. Th
ey stood in the dark hallway, listening to the shuffling of the revenants below them. The elevator continued to move. Parker realized different portions of the building must have separate generators.

  The elevator chimed and the doors slid open. The car was completely dark. Parker felt a flicker of unease at that, but he was ready to get off the floor. Completely blind, he reached forward and touched the frame of the elevator, then stepped into the car.

  “Should we wait until the lights come on again?” Blake asked.

  “I don’t think we should wait,” Parker said.

  He could hear Blake and Clayton join him in the elevator, then the wheeze of the elevator door as it slid shut.

  “I can’t even see the number panel,” Clayton said.

  “Hang on, let me get my light,” Blake said. Parker could hear the rustle of fabric, then the rattle of metal. A click, and Blake’s flashlight came to life, emitting a narrow beam that revealed the button panel on the wall near the door. Blake pushed the top floor button, and the elevator began a creaking ascent.

  Then they heard the sound behind them. A low wheezing, like the death rattle of a dying man, the sound of something breathing. Slowly Parker turned. Behind them in the elevator car stood a revenant, facing the corner, swaying back and forth. Slowly, the creature turned toward them, its milky dead eye seeming to see through Parker. Its skin was pale white, the color of bone, and peeled away in places. It opened its mouth and the rank smell of rot filled the air as it shrieked. Its hands came up fast and Parker had a glimpse of nails caked black with dirt before fingers encircled his throat. He felt a crushing pressure on his windpipe, the flow of oxygen gone in an instant.

  Clayton charged forward and smashed an elbow across the bridge of the revenant’s nose. The grip on Parker’s neck barely loosened. He kicked upward, his foot buried into the soft flesh of the thing’s stomach, but with no effect. Blake hit the thing with the butt of her machine gun, the beam of her flashlight swinging wildly around the elevator car. Blackness began to encroach from the corners of Parker’s vision.

  He felt Clayton’s hand pull the axe from his grip. Parker could feel himself beginning to pass out. The world swirled in darkness, and in the void, he heard the whistle of the axe and the sickening wet thump of metal hitting flesh over and over again.

  The pressure lifted from his neck, and Parker collapsed to the ground, beautiful oxygen rushing into his lungs. The revenant lay on the floor of the car, leaning against the closed doors of the elevator, head disconnected from its body and staring with vacant eyes at the ceiling. Blake moved the flashlight over the scene and said, “You okay?”

  Parker nodded and slowly stood while rubbing this throat. His head began to clear. He could still feel that creature’s hands around his neck. The thing’s strength was amazing. Clayton held the fire axe in his hand. “Close one, buddy.”

  “Yeah. Thank you,” Parker replied. “Let’s find our guy and get the fuck out of this place.”

  The doors opened and the revenant flopped out onto the floor beyond. They stepped over the creature as they exited the elevator onto a carpeted hallway, which led to a closed set of double doors. The doors were constructed of solid oak, with faded brass handles, at least six inches in thickness. Parker pulled hard on one of the handles. The door refused to move.

  “What if this guy doesn’t want to come with us?” Clayton asked.

  “I’m not going to give him a choice,” Parker said. “We’ll give him the hard sell.”

  Parker pounded on the closed door with his fist. No response. Above the door was a silver closed circuit camera the size of a shoe box, pointing down. They were being watched.

  “You think there’s another way into this place?” Clayton asked.

  “Doubt it,” said Blake. “This guy created a fortress here. There’s not going to be another way in.”

  Parker did a quick inspection of the space. Opposite them, the headless body of the revenant lay on the floor. Farther on were two large, stuffed leather chairs, and behind them, a set of three windows facing a commercial building across the street. The building was occupied by a half-dozen men seated on an overturned filing cabinet playing cards on a desk. Around them, the office was a mess. Papers and old furniture littered the floor. The windows were broken and laundry was hung to dry from the frame.

  Something made Parker uneasy about the whole scene. Something nagged his brain, like a piece of grit inside his skull.

  “Put me in that building across the way with a sniper rifle and a silver bullet, I’ll take out our man,” Clayton said.

  “I was thinking that,” Parker said. “That’s about a two hundred yard shot.”

  “No problem. Just get Selberg to get me the right equipment and it’s a wrap.”

  There was a slight cough behind them. Parker turned and saw Blake standing behind them, her eyes wide. “Uh, guys, I think we have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got a dead revenant up here,” Blake said.

  “So . . .”

  “I told you, the revenants know when one of their own is killed,” Blake said. “They’re going to come.”

  With a flash of clarity, Parker realized that’s what had been bothering him. The body of the revenant. How could he have been that stupid? Every system had its own rules. And Blake had told him.

  “In everything that happened,” Blake said, “I totally forgot.”

  Parker ran to the stairwell, opened the door, and looked down. He could see them below, scores of revenants moving fast up the stairs in their terrible, lurching walk. Dozens of them, with their rotted skin, some of them missing limbs, and their gunshot and stab wounds. Each of them having been through death in some horrible way, but now stuck in the system. Refusing to pass on.

  Parker slammed the door shut. “They’re coming up. A lot of them.”

  Clayton grabbed one of the leather chairs, pulled it across the hall, and pushed it up against the door. Parker and Blake grabbed the other. The chairs were heavy but would barely slow the things down. Parker had felt the strength of just one of them—he couldn’t imagine a whole legion.

  The trio piled the two chairs on top of each other, both braced against the stairwell door. The barrier wasn’t going to be enough.

  “We get rid of the body,” Parker said. “Out the window.”

  “It’s too late,” said Blake. “Dead revenants leave a scent behind. The others will still come.”

  “We’ll go to another floor,” Parker said.

  Something pounded on the door and the metal impacted the chairs with a heavy thud. Parker reached for the call button on the elevator. Blake grabbed his hand and pulled it away. “No. There could be more inside. We left this thing’s head in the elevator.”

  She was right. The car could be filled with revenants. The elevator would carry them right up to their floor. Outside, something pounded again on the door. The chairs pushed back a few inches. The door opened a crack and long fingers reached around the edge of the frame. Clayton braced his back against the door, his feet planted into the carpet. With a frantic intensity, the revenants began beating on the door. Throwing their body weight against the metal, the entire frame vibrated. The chairs slid back another inch.

  “I don’t know how long I can hold them,” Clayton said. Beads of sweat ran down his cheeks, his legs beginning to shake.

  Parker looked wildly around the area. The only exit was the locked set of doors. He thought for a moment about smashing the window, trying to lower themselves down to another floor. But they were twenty-eight stories up and he saw nothing they could use to climb down. They were going to have to make a stand here. They were going to have to fight.

  Parker turned to Blake. “I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

  “Don’t,” Blake said. “Wasn’t doing anything today anyway. Not like I haven’t died before.”

  Clayton looked at them. “Alamo time?”

  “The last stand.”

 
Clayton moved away from the door and joined them at the far end of the room, and hefted up the axe. Outside, the impacts grew louder. A revenant let out a shriek. They could hear the scuffling feet of hundreds of them, packing the stairwell landing, crawling over each other to get inside, like a pile of maggots on decaying flesh.

  “Selberg, you there?” Parker said.

  “I’m here.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to make this one, buddy. When we get spit out somewhere, try and find us.”

  “Good luck.”

  There was a final crack, the two heavy chairs fell backward, and the door swung open. A revenant with only one eye, the other gouged out and missing, stood in the doorway, his teeth chattering and clicking together. Behind him were others, faces pale and ghostly. Parker felt an almost paralyzing fear take hold of him like he had never experienced before. His hands began to shake. He gripped the Sten, ready to fire.

  A dozen of the creatures spread across the floor. Slowly they shuffled forward, lurching, the stench of death heavy in the air. They formed a line as they came closer, stepping together. Parker’s finger tightened on the trigger of the Sten.

  The line of revenants stopped. From two large speakers set on the wall, loud music began to play. An iconic rhythm Parker recognized immediately.

  The revenants stared forward, then their heads jerked in one swift motion to the right as their right shoulders shrugged up in time with the bass of the music. In perfect synchrony, the dozen revenants pivoted to the side . . . then shuffled forward . . . then back.

  Their feet slid together and they all clapped overhead.

  “Uh . . . guys, what is happening?” Blake said.

  “My God . . .” Parker said. “I don’t believe it. ‘Thriller.’”

  “What the hell is Thriller?”

  Clayton looked at her like she’d lost her mind, then said, “I forgot, you haven’t reached the 1980s yet.”

  “But someone obviously has,” Parker whispered.