by Marty Chan
“Who started the fire in Bandit’s Roost?” he asked the five teens.
Charlie stiffened. “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Farrier shook his head. “Tarnation! No games. I want to know who started the fire in the Bowery. Immediately.”
“No one we would know of, sir. None of my hunters were in Bandit’s Roost.”
Ehrich cast a sideways glance at Margaret and Wilhelm, but they stared straight ahead, refusing to contradict their squad leader. Gino’s lazy eye wandered to Charlie.
“We patrolled Fifth Avenue when we made first contact,” their squad leader recounted. “We followed the creature to the Bowery. We didn’t go anywhere near Bandit’s Roost.”
Farrier drummed his fingers on his desk. “Really? That’s your story?”
“Yes, commander,” Charlie answered.
The old man turned to the others. “Do you concur?”
Margaret and Gino nodded. Wilhelm snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”
Ehrich stared straight ahead, but he could sense Farrier watching him.
“Mr. Weisz, do you concur?”
Ehrich hesitated.
Charlie came to the rescue. “He does.”
“I’d like to hear from Mr. Weisz.”
“Sir, we caught an illegal and shut down his portal. We did our job,” Ehrich said. He wasn’t about to let Farrier push him around, even if he was the head of Demon Watch.
Farrier narrowed his gaze. “Were you or were you not near Bandit’s Roost?”
“No.”
The commander cocked his head to one side. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then help me reconcile the fact that the police found an electro-dart in one of the burned-out buildings. Your squad was the only one in the area at the time of the fire. Furthermore, five witnesses reported seeing a hunter matching your description, Mr. Weisz, firing this dart through a window.”
“The people in Bandit’s Roost are thieves and murderers,” Ehrich said. “Lying wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.”
“Didn’t we recruit you from that area?”
Ehrich fell silent.
Farrier held up the newspaper. “The mayor’s office has been swamped with complaints about the Bowery episode. He’s even worried the World may send Nellie Bly to write an exposé like the one she did on Blackwell’s Island.”
“They say any press is good press,” Gino said.
Margaret and Wilhelm elbowed their comrade in the ribs to shut him up.
“If the people saw what the demon did to the boy’s mother, they’d be down on their knees thanking us,” Charlie insisted. “She’s lucky that creature only took her eyes and not her life.”
“Tarnation. So much like Nicholas…” Farrier mumbled, shaking his head.
“Sir?”
The bearded commander stood up and limped to the window behind his desk. His peg leg was another memento of the Civil War. He placed his hands behind his back and stared out at the grave markers littering the field. His silence weighed heavily on the hunters, forcing their shoulders to sag.
After several moments, Farrier spoke, his voice low. “I’ve dug my share of graves. One for my best friend. Two for my brothers. Seventeen for my fellow soldiers. Some of them just knee high to a cricket... the damn war.”
This dimension’s Civil War was one of the bloodiest in the country’s history and had resulted in the fundamental difference between the two worlds Ehrich straddled. During the battles, inter-dimensional gateways had opened up and allowed a stream of Dimensionals to descend on America. Some of the early beings’ grotesque appearances inspired the offensive nickname they had been given—demons. Soon, fear of an invasion gripped the nation. Soldiers set aside their allegiances to the North or South and banded together to put down the demons. The hunt took many years and cost countless humans and Dimensionals their lives.
Farrier stepped away from the window, limped on his wooden leg to Charlie, and pulled him aside. “I’ve taken a cotton to you, Charlie. You have a mind like a steel trap and the instincts to match, so you know what must be done. The Watch needs a scapegoat.”
Charlie stiffened. “Balderdash. Sir, if the mayor really wants to put people’s minds at ease, he should shut down Demon Gate and kick out the demons.”
Farrier corrected the angry teen. “Dimensionals. You may call them whatever you wish when you’re not wearing the uniform, but on duty, you shall refer to them as Dimensionals.”
Charlie nodded. “But we’ve taken a dangerous one off the street. If one of my men started the fire, it was an accident.”
The commander held up the paper. “Tell that to the press. They’re having a field day, calling my Demon Watch irresponsible. I need to give them someone. I gave you the opportunity to control your squad’s fate, but it seems I must handle this myself. A leader has to take responsibility for his squad’s actions.”
Ehrich couldn’t let his friend lose his job over this. He inched forward.
Charlie stopped him. “It was Louis.”
Ehrich’s eyes widened but he kept quiet. Farrier leaned forward.
“You sure it was Louis?”
Guilt slapped Ehrich on both cheeks, making them hot and flushed. He could make things right just by speaking up, but his lips felt like they had been nailed shut.
Charlie continued. “Tell the mayor Louis went rogue. Whatever you want to tell him. Louis might not even make it to the end of the day, so he won’t argue.”
Farrier crossed his arms over his chest, exposing the scars along his forearms. “Tarnation, I’m impressed. You are a genuine politician.”
“What happened in the Bowery was a tragedy, but it was Louis’s fault, and Louis’s alone.” Charlie stood at attention.
“Do you concur with your squad leader?” Farrier asked of the others.
They nodded.
Farrier looked directly into Ehrich’s eyes. “Well, Mr. Weisz?”
“Doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Charlie jumped in. “I’m the squad leader and that’s exactly what happened.”
The commander stroked his beard, considering the angles. Finally, he nodded. “That should do.”
“Then is my squad off the hook, sir?” Charlie asked.
“Not quite,” Farrier answered. He fixed his gaze on Ehrich and smiled.
Burial Duty
The shovel blade bit into the hard earth. Ehrich grunted as he loosened the dirt. Wooden crosses pockmarked the emerald lawn in front of the looming six-story brick structure that housed the Demon Gate facilities. Just beyond the ivy-covered building were the staff dormitories, the training facilities, and the short building that was the entrance to Ninth Circle, the underground prison.
“We wouldn’t be here if you had just given the commander the answer he wanted,” the reedy Wilhelm complained.
“What answer is that?” Charlie asked, leaning on his shovel.
“You know.” Wilhelm wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded at Ehrich. “Even a trainee would be a better hunter than Ehrich.”
“You all agree?” Charlie asked.
Margaret kept digging. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”
Gino shrugged. “Wilhelm gripes as soon as the sun rises, and then when sun sets, he complains there’s not enough time to do his work.”
“Quiet, Gino,” Wilhelm growled. “Farrier knew Ehrich was in Bandit’s Roost. That’s why he gave us burial duty.”
“Could be worse,” Ehrich pointed out. “At least we’re not human guinea pigs for the mad scientist.” He nodded to the island north of Devil’s Island, where the peak of a round tower was clearly visible.
Wilhelm jammed his shovel into the dirt. “It’s because of you that my friend is fighting for his life right now.”
“Enough,” Charlie barked. “Back to work.”
Wilhelm yanked his shovel out of the earth. “Louis deserves better.”
Margaret grunted. “Hey! I’d like
to get these pine boxes into the ground before the stench makes me puke.” She motioned at the two coffins perched on top of each other on a large wooden wagon.
The squad resumed digging.
Ehrich leaned over to Charlie and whispered, “I still say that you could have handed me over to Farrier. Might have made your life easier.”
“Wilhelm could have, too, but the squad comes first. Ride this out. If Louis lives, Wilhelm will get off your back.”
Ehrich felt the heat of the sun on his nape, but that was nothing compared to the intensity of Wilhelm’s glare. He turned his back on the German boy and redoubled his efforts to dig the grave.
j
A ship’s horn tooted in the distance. Ehrich peered in the direction of the sound. To the east of the island, a fleet of ships was moored at the docks on the Brooklyn side of the East River. Their masts rose high in the air like a forest of barren trees. A vessel laden with goods floated along the briny water, passing a steam-powered barge. Billows of black smoke filled the air as the flat craft rolled against the wake of the larger ship, then chugged toward Devil’s Island.
“Death barge,” Charlie announced. “Guess we’ve got more bodies to bury.”
Wilhelm groaned. Margaret shook her head. Gino chuckled. “Most people are itching to get off this island, but the dead can’t seem to stay away.”
“Ehrich, you’re with me,” said Charlie. “We’ll collect the new bodies. You three, finish digging. I want the boxes in the ground by the time I get back.”
Charlie and Ehrich hauled the remaining coffins off the wagon and placed them near the gravesites. Then they pushed the large cart toward the pier. By the time they arrived at the dock, the death barge had arrived. A young man with a hint of facial hair greeted them. He motioned to the crewmen who were hoisting a pine box on to the pier.
“Get it on, quick,” he ordered.
The crewmen grunted as they hauled the casket toward the wagon. The teen stroked his thin moustache.
“Got a fresh body for you fellas. Better get a move on. Rush order.”
Charlie waved him off. “Man alive, what’s the rush? He’s as cold as a wagon tire, isn’t he? He’ll still be as cold tomorrow when we bury him.”
“Ain’t a he. It’s a she. And she ain’t for the ground.”
“What do you mean?” Ehrich asked. “What else are we going to do with a body?”
His friend stiffened. “Oh no. Double check the log.”
“Sorry, guys. The paperwork’s right.”
Ehrich glanced at his friend. “Where do we have to take the body?”
“Demon Gate.”
An Unlikely Reunion
Demon Gate stood six floors above ground. The top floor was home to Farrier’s administration offices while the floors below were where the bulk of the action took place. The dormitories for Dimensionals awaiting approval to enter New York took up the space of two floors. Divided by female and male, the living quarters here made the Lower East Side tenements look like palaces. In dank open areas, people sat on suitcases and slept on saggy cots. Below the dormitories, on the facility’s second and third floors, Demon Watch doctors monitored the new arrivals in the quarantine section. Newcomers spent their first two weeks in New York in these cramped quarters, while doctors tested them for communicable diseases.
Ehrich and Charlie headed to the facility’s ground floor, the Dimensionals’ entry point—Demon Gate. He and Charlie pushed the wagon through the wide corridor leading to the central processing area.
Charlie sniffed the air. “I don’t know how the guys down here get used to the stench.”
Ehrich winced at the rank odour of decaying bodies. He spotted a fog of his own breath. “Why is it so cold?” he asked.
“Bodies decay slower when it’s chilly,” Charlie said, releasing steam from his mouth.
Arc lamps lit the corridor. As the teens rolled the wagon ahead, Ehrich heard faint whispers. A chorus of inaudible voices echoed up and down the hall.
“Who’s doing that?” Ehrich asked, looking up. “Doesn’t sound like it’s coming from quarantine.”
Charlie shook his head. “Some say they’re coming from the Dimensionals waiting to come through Demon Gate. Others say they’re the voices of the dead. No one knows for sure. Sometimes we can catch glimpses of them. You can hear them and some of the guards have seen one or two.”
“Like spirits?”
“Yeah. I never got used to it.”
“Charlie, you had to work here? When?”
“If you want to lead a squad, you have to get up close and personal with the Dimensionals. Maybe someday you’ll have a chance to do this.”
Ehrich shook his head. “Not if Farrier has his way.”
Charlie laughed. “Yeah, he hasn’t taken a shine to you.”
“I guess I should have ‘concurred’ with him.”
They both shared a laugh. Ehrich forced himself to laugh a little louder so he could drown out the incessant whispering.
At the end of the corridor stood two guards stationed outside Demon Gate’s entry. Each one wore an elephant gas mask with an accordion hose attached to an air pack on their hip. The breathing masks filtered the stench of the dead. The guards tipped their teslatron rifles up at the approaching pair, greeting their arrival. They pushed open the double doors leading into Demon Gate’s chamber.
Ehrich stiffened when he entered. Throughout the cavernous room, he spotted ghostly figures wafting between the electrical towers. In the centre of the room loomed a giant Faraday Cage constructed of non-conductive mesh walls. This cage was designed to nullify any weapon technology that Dimensionals might bring with them. A bored clerk sat at a massive oak desk in front of the cage. He had cotton wads stuffed up his nose.
Around the room, Demon Gate guards stood along the walls. They all wore elephant gas masks. Ehrich wished he had one right now. On the other side of the Faraday Cage, two operators stood behind control panels. Thick cables snaked across the stone ground and connected with the twelve tepee-shaped towers. These were Demon Gate’s generators, but on closer inspection, Ehrich realized they were not electrical transformers; they were powered by something else. A corpse stood in a sarcophagus within the heart of each tower. Eleven of the towers glowed with necro energy, the energy that corpses produced, but the twelfth flickered, dimmer than the rest. Inside the tower, a skeleton threatened to disintegrate into dust.
Within the Faraday Cage, an emaciated green-skinned immigrant stood with an overstuffed leather valise in one hand. His grey hair was barely visible under a black toque. He wore an ankle-length brown robe with a yellowed paper pinned to his breast. The paper was his entry visa. The clerk skimmed the note.
“What’s the name of your sponsor again?”
“Name? He Mr. Siren-tee.”
“The note says ‘Serenity’. How do you say his name?”
“Siren-tee. Mr. Siren-tee.”
“Send him to quarantine,” the nasally voiced clerk ordered.
One of the operators punched a button on the console. The gate on the cage swung open. Unsure, the newcomer slowly stepped out. The bewildered man tapped the page on his chest. “My paper. I have. I Piotravisk. My name Piotravisk.”
“They will deal with that in processing. Out that way.” The agent over-enunciated every word in a condescending tone.
“My friend. She here. She with Piotravisk.” The man in the brown robe glanced at the Faraday Cage.
“Yeah, yeah. If we can get to her, she’ll join you soon. If not, you’ll see her in general quarters in two weeks.”
“My friend. She come soon?”
The clerk simply waved to one of the guards who escorted Piotravisk through a door that lead to the stairs up to the quarantine level.
The clerk smoothed his thinning hair as he stepped around the desk to greet Ehrich and Charlie. He pulled out his cotton nose plugs and shook Charlie’s hand with the hand holding the plugs.
“About time. We put i
n the request a week ago.”
Charlie wiped his hand on his trousers. “We just move the bodies. We don’t round them up.”
“Smells pretty fresh,” the clerk said. “Load it up there.”
“I’m pulling rank, Ehrich,” Charlie said.
“It’s a two-man job,” Ehrich protested.
“And you’re just the two men to do it.” He flashed a flirtatious smile at one of the masked guards with long, frizzy, brown hair.
“Pray tell, what are you going to do?”
“I’m a bit busy talking with… with…” Charlie nodded at the guard with the elephant mask.
“Frank,” he answered, his voice muffled.
“Oh. Sorry. I thought you were… Never mind. Just get to work, Ehrich.”
“Okay, okay.” Ehrich rolled the corpse wagon toward the tower in question. As he moved past the other towers, he noticed each corpse was in a different state of decomposition. They all wore unisex gowns. Most of the bodies were still intact while some appeared as if their rotting flesh were falling off the bone.
He opened the standing coffin’s glass lid. If possible, the sickly sweet stench from the skeleton grew even worse. Ehrich grabbed the arm, and the fragile bone broke off in his hands. He covered his mouth to keep from vomiting. He cursed his friend as he unloaded the rest of the bones and used the smock to gather the detritus at the bottom of the sarcophagus.
He opened the pine box and his brow furrowed at the sight of the female corpse inside. She reeked of heavy perfume and decay. The gash across her throat and her empty eye sockets were unmistakeable—Ole Lukoje’s reanimated corpse. An unlikely reunion, Ehrich wondered if there was a mother or father, even a sister or brother, to mourn this woman. Did her family know the horrible way she died? Did they know her body was to be used as a fuel cell? Or did the coroner conveniently neglect to inform them? He knew the answer and he didn’t like it. He gently slipped his hands under her armpits and pulled her out.
“What’s taking so long?” Charlie asked.
Moving the corpse was no easy task; her stiff body had a slippery sheen.
Charlie turned to the others and said, “If you want to dance with the dead, she has to face you.”