It was four in the afternoon. Damp, cool winds blew over the city, and occasional rumbles of thunder rolled off the North Atlantic like the workings of a vast and terrible machine. On a truck radio, the National Weather Service reported a warm, high-energy nor’easter. After last month’s historic blizzard, meteorologists spoke with relative relief about torrential rains and storm surges. Boston was already drenched, and the waves in Long Island Sound were crashing over the rocks. In a little more than an hour, lightning would strike Queens.
If the Soviets wanted to fly ahead of the storm, they’d need to take off on schedule. For good and evil, they must arrive at LaGuardia within half an hour.
The Baron laid on his stomach in the bed of a panel truck. His head was tipped to one side, using a folded jacket for a pillow. The Zombie sat in the open rear door, watching the airport to the east. Phyllis was several steps away from them both, sitting on the only bench in the park and chatting with the landscapers she’d hired to supply their mobile hiding place.
“Park” was the only designation on the plaque by the road. It was a crescent of grass at the end of a rarely used loop of 96th Street that crossed the top of a steep wooded hill overlooking Ditmars Avenue. Here, between the sparse trees, one could spy a grand view of the terminal and the airfields and all the exercises of war therein. A concentration of black cars, olive jeeps and heavy antiaircraft positions surrounded the recently decommissioned Marine Air Terminal. It was the temporary headquarters of Langley and the National Guard.
Across the airfields themselves, all four runways were in heavy use for a mixture of both military and civilian flights. C130s were circling around in the afternoon sky, rushing to disgorge jeeps and troops flown in from locations all along the coast. The state’s armories were already deployed, a hundred vehicles lined up neatly across the grass and backed by sturdy, waterproof tents—logistics for the motorised infantry. Armored vehicles were scarce; most were already in the field or deployed into the city as soon as a fuel truck finished filling them up.
Personnel moved endlessly, shifting between preparations and reconsiderations. In the aggregate, they gave the impression of aimlessly milling ants.
At any given moment, at least a couple hundred men were streaming from the main terminals to the airfields to the Marine Air Terminal and back again. Others marched slowly in ragged clumps, creating patrols and boundaries that followed no geographical sense and seemed to move arbitrarily from one landmark to another.
Altogether, they created an endless shifting field of observation that covered all the buildings, tents, and vehicles with fresh eyes, but the execution was imperfect. It seemed like the whims of an insane general, not a patrol plan. It was difficult to tell how the chain of command would function this close to chaos. It likely wasn’t meant to work.
When the Baron first saw it, he said it was an invitation and a challenge from Heckhaus. The CIA was giving the impression of maximized security while slowing any response until the Guard could collect itself and assert a command structure. If there were violence, there’d be a short delay before the full force of the military could collapse on any trespassers.
The Zombie speculated that Heckhaus wanted the Baron to win, even as his superiors required him to oppose the Baron’s actions. Heckhaus, a true Cold War spook, followed orders without question but never failed to push his personal agenda at the same time. He wouldn’t be a world-class operative if he couldn’t satisfy several contradictory demands at once.
Or maybe Heckhaus was just neurotic, Phyllis suggested.
Regardless, the Baron and the Zombie saw a slim opportunity here, which they had to take. The stakes were too high to hold back and risk failure. Soon, they’d deploy to the trees below the hillside, next to the terminal roads.
But first, the Baron would finish waiting for the molten heat of the Cat to repair his shattered spine. “How’s my temperature?” he asked his friend.
The Zombie grabbed onto the doorframe and carefully leaned over the Baron, putting a hand just above the healing lump of tissue that’d filled in the hole in his back. “You’re cooling down. Doesn’t even smell like cooked meat. Just blood and fat.”
“I can feel the bone growing,” the Baron said. “It’s like someone shoving hot knives into me. Also, I can feel my legs again. For real.”
The Zombie grinned. “What’s that like?”
“If I tell you, does it mean anything?” the Baron asked, half-joking.
“I like the similes, assuming a soulless man can like things at all.”
“Ha! It’s like I hung myself upside down by shoving meat hooks through my thighs.” The Cat’s puppetry was rapid and graceless. It would’ve done a lot of damage to him, if he weren’t abnormally resilient. He was glad he’d had some time to recover.
“You think you’ll be ready to go soon?” the Zombie asked.
“I’m probably ready to go now.” d’Holbach wiggled his feet. “See? All nerves, no Cat.”
“Good. Have you thought about how you’re going to get the Cat out?”
“Ah—about that. I’d like for you to cut it out.”
“I can do that.”
The Baron licked his lips nervously. “Do you still have that pocket knife? The one I saw earlier?”
“Yep. I stole it from Tammany. I’ve sliced a few throats with it. It’s sharp.”
“That’s comforting,” the Baron replied. He couldn’t wait to have the Cat removed. Its occult presence in his stomach was distracting, even domineering at times, defining both experience and life. He was a robot when he died, an occult machine programmed by his brain and clumsily manipulated by its engines of fire, but he wasn’t spared any pain.
He’d had it a little easier than Marco of course. His will was stronger because he was far older, and his pain tolerance was greater because of the wish that kept him alive. Even so, carrying the Cat was physically stressful, eventually crippling. Clearly, he was supposed to recover through occult means; the entire artifact seemed to be designed with the assumption that he could wish offhand for knowledge and good health, things which were impossible to acquire by prestige or at least incredibly expensive in the modern world.
“I’m going to take a brief nap,” the Baron said. “Wake me up if anything happens.”
“Can do.” The Zombie slid off the back of the truck. “Phyllis, you got a minute?” he asked, even while he closed the back doors and left the Baron to rest.
Wind buffeted the truck, gently rocking it. The Baron couldn’t really sleep, but he needed some time to concentrate and think alone. How was he going to assault the airport? What would he do if all plans went to hell, as they inevitably would? What were his resources?
He considered the Cat o’ Nine Lives. What were his deaths? He’d perished when the Browning machine gun had clipped his neck. That was the first and most painful death. He’d been shot twice when fighting broke out on the Queensboro Bridge, once to the large intestine, and once to a rib and kidney. One or both of those wounds might not count as deaths, but he couldn’t rely on good luck. For now, he assumed the worst. Three deaths. He’d been punctured through the right lung during a firefight—large, bloody wounds. Four deaths. He’d been plugged with a .30-06, damaging his heart. Was that only one death or two? The exit wound had ruined a lung as well. Call it two, just to be safe. Six deaths so far. He’d been shot in the calf. That one probably didn’t count. The bullet to his arm was only a wound as well. The last clear fatality was the shot to his spine. It’d paralyzed his lungs, maybe stopped his heart.
Seven deaths altogether. He could only die twice more, barring incredibly good fortune. If the gods were lenient, some of those deaths might’ve been nonfatal injuries, but he couldn’t know for certain until he was shot too many times and still survived.
Then there was the Zombie. Invincibility was a powerful resource. In an ideal world, he would’ve handed the Cat over to his friend and sent it in for delivery, but there was a clear flaw in that plan. The Zombie technically wasn’t a man. With deep pools of prestige, the Bolsheviks could wish against him, potentially disabling him on sight and at a great distance. They could probably wish his grasp open; not easily, but with time and ingenuity they could bend him.
Even if they couldn’t change him, they could throw him into the sea alongside the Cat, leave with Denisov, and win the security from the Orthodox faction. Make no mistake, entering LaGuardia was incredibly dangerous, but the Zombie couldn’t go alone. Maybe with time the Baron could’ve devised a solution, but he couldn’t think it up on the spot, so if they were going to place the Cat in Denisov’s hands—if they were going to win—then the Baron would have to go down to LaGuardia in person, risking death, with the Zombie as his shield.
The sharp pains of bone growth slowly receded to a dull ache. That must be the end of the Cat’s regeneration. He’d waited long enough; the Cat’s normal rate was about an inch of flesh an hour, it seemed. More than enough time had passed to close the wound.
He got up slowly and opened the rear doors, pushing them out against a blustering wind. Emerging into the day, he looked towards the storm, then paused in the door, gawking.
The nor’easter dominated the atmosphere. After two hours of approach, it’d become a squall line stretching across the horizon—a wall of clouds swallowing half the visible world. Spilling forth from their crowns, a thin dark sheet raced ahead to blot out the sun. Billowing out from their bases, tattered storm fragments burst over the Atlantic, casting ghostly, dark ribbons of rain over the ocean. Hidden forks of lightning illuminated them from behind—brief glows of ethereal light refracted by the rain. The city of New York now lay in the shadow of a steel grey sky.
Nor’easters weren’t like regular thunderstorms. They weren’t just one line of clouds; they were massive galaxies of storms, dozens of dense fronts rotating over the ocean and continent in distinct arms, thousands upon thousands of square miles of rain conveyed in dreadful bursts for days and days. The city would be miserable and damp, huddled down while tallying up damage to the coast. The wall before them was only the beginning; hidden behind it was a storm so large that it defied imagination and found comparison only among hurricanes. Tomorrow and for the foreseeable future, the forecast was nothing but rain unending.
How much longer until the nor’easter hit? Thirty minutes? An hour? It was insane to imagine anyone flying a plane before the grand, sweeping force of the Earth, but the Baron doubted that the Soviets would accept a delay or grounding. They’d risk it, and technically their planes had an altitude ceiling nearing 20,000 feet. They could fly above the cyclone.
The Baron hopped out and stretched his back and arms. His joints were stiff but serviceable. His spine was whole again; his legs were his own. Everything he wore was crusted with blood, but they had a plan for that. They’d change one more time, buying the clothes of the landscapers right off their backs. It’d cost Phyllis quite a bit extra, but her help had agreed ahead of time to strip down and hand over their shirts and jackets.
“Let’s get ready,” the Baron said to Phyllis and the Zombie.
She was staring at him from the bench. The Zombie was standing beside her idly. They must’ve been watching the storm as well, waiting for him to emerge.
“What time is it?” the Zombie asked.
The Baron checked his watch. “Four ten. We have a few minutes at minimum.”
Phyllis called to the Italian boys collecting branches. “Swap ‘em out!”
They dropped their bags of lawn clippings and started stripping rapidly. They were down to undershirts within seconds. The Baron stripped off his own ruined shirt and jacket. He didn’t have an undershirt. Black flakes of clotted blood stuck to his skin. His scars were large, pale, and thicker than the surrounding flesh. It’d take a while for them to disappear.
“Were you in the war?” asked the boy handing over his loose shirt.
“Not World War II,” the Baron said, “but I was shot.”
“No wonder they got you working for the docks. You’re tough.”
The Baron shook his head. “Just lucky.” He donned the shirt and the pale brown wool jacket. He still wore bloodstained pants and socks, but they were dyed black. They didn’t look bloody so much as filthy, which was acceptable at a glance.
The Zombie was taller than anyone else here. The shirt he put on was clearly too small, but the jacket still reached his waist, and he didn’t seem to mind stretching the cloth over himself. He looked ridiculous, but it was better than bloodsoaked cuffs.
“You won’t look like a crime scene,” Phyllis said.
“Should be a crime to dress like that,” the Baron muttered.
The Zombie was tugging at the hem of his shirt to keep it at his belt. “I don’t care,” he said airily. “It’ll all be ruined soon enough.”
Phyllis dismissed the landscapers. They packed up the Baron’s and the Zombie’s bloody clothes into sacks with clippings and branches, then drove off in their truck. Once they were gone, she waved the Baron on over to the bench. “We need to talk. You need prestige.”
The Baron sat down and gazed at the airport. The scattered march of armed men was intimidating. His stomach sank a little whenever he tried to count their numbers.
“Yes,” he said.
“How much?” Phyllis asked.
He couldn’t beat ten soldiers in a straight firefight, let alone one hundred. Phyllis’s offer was a tremendous relief. She was their only friend with any prestige left, at least in New York State. Nobody else would sell to him here and now. He needed her prestige.
Still, he felt compelled to offer her a way out. Artemisians largely had to snipe tasks, and the cultist she’d worked for was dead. Every day of prestige she’d earned was infinitely more precious and rare. “I already owe you a lot,” he said.
She shrugged. “How much?”
The Baron scratched his eyebrows, one, then the other. “Two years?”
That was a significant amount of prestige, twice what’d been spent on Marco that morning. Phyllis wasn’t surprised, but she still asked, “And you’ve got a plan this time?”
“Let’s say I need to remove the Cat, but I’m mortally wounded.”
“A likely outcome.”
“If I pulled it out before I regenerated, I’d die.”
“So you’d need to heal first.”
“Right, but I could eke out a heavy discount here. I’d wish for the gods to heal me in a way that assisted the Cat. I’d recover in seconds what usually takes two hours.”
The Zombie walked up behind them and carefully placed his hands on the bench. “You could actually afford it then, assuming that works.”
The Baron continued, “There are other ways too. How about this? While the Cat is in me, it’s not truly a fatal wound. It should be cheaper to recover then.”
“What about the stomach wound?” Phyllis asked. “Think you’ll survive that?”
“Yeah. So long as I don’t bleed out, I’ll be fine. I can’t develop sepsis.”
“Have you put that to the test yet?”
“I’ve been sewn together after some heavy hits. No infections. No inflammation.”
“Böhme built him to last.” The Zombie grinned. “I’ve seen him lose more blood than a man should, and I know what a man can lose. He’s never died until today.”
“It’s the Diviner’s advantage,” the Baron explained. “Böhme was close to the system, deeply aware of how the occult worked. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he had an obscene amount of prestige to spend. It was like engineering—superefficient wishing. Elizabeth modeled her agelessness after mine. Nobody has found a tougher condition.”
“I’ll buy that,” Phyllis said. “Is all the prestige for your health then?”
“No, that’s just part of the cost. If I’m right, it’s the smallest.”
“Good. What else?”
“I need to be able to release the Zombie if they find some way to bind him.”
Phyllis frowned. “That’s right. The Commies put him in the water yesterday, didn’t they?”
The Zombie drummed his hands on the back of the bench. “I don’t have a soul, so I’m not a man. They can target me with wishes.”
“Can they change your mind?” Phyllis asked.
“Nope, I’m still invincible.”
“Schuler fouled him up too,” the Baron said. “It’s not common, it’s not cheap, but this is a secret battle in the Cold War. They’ll dig deep for any advantage.”
Phyllis meditated on the notion. “So you can’t send him alone.”
The Zombie hummed thoughtfully. “It never occurred to me that we weren’t both going.”
The Baron took a deep breath. “It’s not just the Zombie that needs help. I’ll likely spend some of the pool on small, tactical wishes. Guns, vehicles, who knows?”
“Guns?” Phyllis turned to look at him. “Are you going to kill people?”
“Yes,” the Baron admitted. “I won’t risk it again. Not today.”
“Good.” Phyllis stood up. “Do you think you’re going to win?”
The Baron stood also. “I don’t know. I hate to use the word, but that’s an army down there.”
“Malik will have his occult Spetsnaz,” the Zombie noted.
The Baron frowned. “Miracles don’t happen, but I might need something better than good luck. I might need an intervention—from them, whatever they are.”
“The gods?” Phyllis asked.
“They’re not gods,” the Baron said vaguely. “They’re just powerful.”
“What exactly do you believe in, Baron?”
“I believe they’re related to humans, but aren’t human themselves. Sorry, I don’t think we have enough time to explain it all right now.”
Phyllis furrowed her brow. “You all but admitted that you might die down there. If you go without telling me first, it’ll drive me insane.”
“It’s complicated—”
“Give me the highlights then. It’s part of the price for my prestige.”
The Baron sighed loudly. “Fine, but it’s just a story. It’s the latest one, but I’ve had a whole series of stories, you understand?”
Phyllis crossed her arms. “Go on.”
“So, when I first learned about prestige, I imagined the gods were natural philosophers. Powerful ones, somewhere far away. They’d reasoned out the clockwork of the world, mastered it somehow, and all of this so-called magic was a kind of sublime science. I couldn’t figure out why though. In the end, I thought they just wanted to be powerful.”
“You don’t think that now?” Phyllis asked.
The Baron shook his head. “No, but bear with me a moment. When I started, sanctuaries weren’t treated like time travel. They were just days you lived by yourself, like insertions in the calendar, or a thirteenth hour on the clock.”
“That’s in Apostasy,” Phyllis noted.
“Because Elizabeth wrote it a half-century too early. When H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, that’s when people started saying the sanctuaries were time travel.”
“That’s when the new stories started!” the Zombie said gleefully.
The Baron snapped his fingers and pointed at his friend. “Yes. I had a bunch of ideas then, things I scribbled into letters. I thought the gods were like the time traveller from Wells’ book, but I still couldn’t explain their motivations. It wasn’t a complete story. The explanation didn’t compel their behavior.”
“Then there was Heinlein!” the Zombie continued, grinning like a dog.
d’Holbach shrugged. “He showed me a novella in a magazine, ‘By His Bootstraps.’ In the story, a man time travels, interacting with himself again and again. It’s a bunch of half-accidents, a mess of coincidences, but bit by bit, the protagonist builds up the history in which he becomes the dictator of a future tribe. But the weird part—the compelling part—was this notebook in the story. It helped the main character translate between English and a future language. He finds that notebook in the future, steals it from his future self, and uses it until the pages are about to fall out. Then he copies all of the text into the same notebook, which he bought in the past—and loses it to his past self! In short, he fills the notebook with information from the notebook, and he wonders—where did the notes come from? He didn’t invent them. Nobody did. He only copied them. In some sense, it was like the notes made themselves.”
The Zombie shouted with delight: “That’s sci-fi, baby!”
The Baron ignored his friend’s joy. “Fiction writers call it the bootstrap paradox in honor of Heinlein, and it’s the bit that completes my story.”
“Which is?” Phyllis pressed.
The Baron finally smiled, allowing himself a small measure of pride in his story. “Sometime in the future, I think our descendants create time travel, and the first thing they do is look at their past. They discover all the ways they’ve already interfered in history, and they realize they’re trapped. Maybe they don’t have a choice because they’ve already done it, or maybe they just want to preserve the history that gave them time travel. Either way, they do everything exactly as they already have. They complete history as they see it.”
“What, they… repeat what they saw themselves do?” Phyllis asked.
“Basically, yes. They already used time travel to alter the past, so they do what they’ve already done, no matter what.”
“How?”
“They insert things into the past, or swap them out, or alter them—I don’t know the methods exactly—but for them, it’s a science. They see every so-called miracle they’ve ever done, every task they’ve ever offered for good or evil, and they set about doing all of it. In this story, the whole system of prestige is like the contents of that man’s notebook. It’s a translation medium between the goals of time travelers and the motivations of their entire past, all bootstrapped into being by time travel alone. That’s why it’s so random, so accidentally cruel. It’s noise in the flow of human history, the exact static needed to complete the future.”
Phyllis stared at him like he’d grown a second head.
He pushed on, knowing he sounded as mad as a hatter. “Maybe all of this is necessary before time travel can even exist. Maybe they’re just learning to become better time travelers, and all the little painful moments are acceptable costs. I don’t know. It’s a story, and none of it really matters. The point is that science can become the whole explanation. Even the motivation! And to me, that story is more convincing than any argument from faith. Any claims about souls or free will. It explains the time travel in the system itself.”
Phyllis released an awestruck chuckle. “Baron, that is the most overwrought, overcomplicated, and insane story I’ve ever heard about prestige. I can explain everything by saying there are gods, there’s magic, and there are souls. It’s that easy.”
“I just don’t believe any of that exists,” the Baron replied. “None of it is strictly necessary.”
“What about the afterlife then?” Phyllis asked. “What about all the little ways the gods prove themselves? What’s it all for, according to your story?”
The Baron folded his hands at his waist. “I think the wish for the afterlife means you get to participate in the future of this history—to become a time traveler, if you want. This ties into my eschatology, my end-of-days. I think they’re going to become excellent time travelers, maybe even perfect, and everyone who wishes to go to them will get to experience their process. Then, when they’re finished, they’ll collect everyone else from the past.”
“Collect? How?”
“They might copy us from the moment of our deaths, or maybe swap our bodies with dead meat. I don’t know. I’m just trying to explain Elizabeth’s behavior.”
“Wait—what does the Apostate have to do with anything?”
“She thinks life is worth living, but she also thinks the afterlife is good. That feels like a contradiction unless the gods are fundamentally kind.”
“You believe in universal salvation because of Apostasy, but you don’t believe in divinity?”
“Yes. Salvation doesn’t require divinity, only virtue. I think the gods will save us and give us a better world. Because that’s the moral thing to do if you have power. Money, time travel, the Zombie himself—in a narrow sense, it’s all the same. If you exert influence over the world, you should strive to save everyone from its evils. To make a better one.” He gestured towards LaGuardia airport, teeming with the potential violence of a secular superpower. “That’s why I’m going down there. That’s why I’m risking my life, and it’s why I tell people to refuse evil tasks. I won’t just say these things. I’ll do them with everything I have. I’ll make things better.”
“The virtuous atheist,” the Zombie concluded, putting a capstone on the conversation. “He wrote a letter to Tweed about this stuff after the Fall of France. He wanted New York to help fight the Thule cult in Europe.”
“It only made Tweed crazier,” the Baron lamented.
“Schuler seems to believe,” the Zombie noted.
“And he’s also crazy,” d’Holbach finished. “Listen, Phyllis, you don’t have to believe what I believe. I just don’t think they’re gods.”
“Point taken, even if I think you’re crazy.” She held out a hand to him. He took it. His fingers were cold and clammy, but she was warm and dry.
“I’m almost certainly crazy,” he admitted.
“I don’t scare him,” the Zombie quipped. “Does that sound sane?”
Phyllis chuckled—her entire answer.
The Baron smiled. “Exactly.”
Phyllis shook his hand firmly. “Baron, I wish you had two years of my prestige.”
The Baron felt his sinuses open; his joints loosened a bit. The aches and pains dulled against a pleasant high. No matter how stale the prestige might be, earning years of it always felt great. He checked his watch again. “The Soviets can’t wait much longer. Let’s head down to the airport and get in position. We’ll stop Denisov’s car, if we can.”
The Zombie pointed towards the roads in front of the terminal. “Denisov should be willing to threaten Malik with his Apple. We just need to get close enough. He’ll stop the car.”
“They won’t shoot him?” Phyllis asked.
“No, he’s wearing the Lazy Woman. They’d have to shoot him 9 or 10 times.”
“Hit him with a cannon,” the Baron suggested.
The Zombie grinned. “He’d launch his Apple and wipe them out.”
The Baron scratched his scalp. “We’re talking about a serious incident though, the deaths of Soviet diplomats on American soil. They’ll want to avoid infighting, and throwing the Apple is practically a declaration of occult war.”
“Makes sense,” Phyllis said. “About my role. I’m going to prepare an escape hatch for you two. Some kind of secular excuse to leave the airfield, no matter what happens.”
The Baron buttoned up the front of his brown jacket. “Do you have a plan?”
“See those ambulances in the motor pool?” She pointed towards LaGuardia.
He traced her arm. “Where?”
“Western airfield. See that road just after the low berm surrounding the airport? That’s Runway Drive. Look at the left end of the main terminal, just by the road.”
The Baron could see a single ambulance peeking out from the edge, a Superior Cadillac hearse, painted red. “They’re parking behind the terminal?” he asked.
“I think the civvie vehicles are there. Busses, shuttles, whatever. Once you guys go in, I’m going to flag down a Guard unit, tell them I’m with the Astoria Volunteer Firefighters and need help getting my ambulance. I can unlock and hotwire it with prestige.”
“Do you have any firefighter ID?”
“Nope. That’s why I’m a volunteer. I’ll flash them some keys. When I unlock the doors and start the car, they’ll buy it.”
The Baron trusted Phyllis could make that work. “We’ll split up here then. Phyllis, keep watch however you can, but don’t approach until it’s clear. I’ll try playing dead after I’ve handed over the Cat. The Zombie can join me on the ground or cover me and then run out.”
“Don’t even consider losing,” Phyllis said, “and don’t die.”
Author’s Note:
We enter the final arc!
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
Officer Grenham met Byrne’s gaze. “Richard, what’s Thorn doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s holding a candlestick.”
“I see it.”
They were coming to question the Baron, arrest him, and eventually beat the truth out of him. Once they’d assuaged their doubts, they would either hand him over to Malik or kill him.
He looked at the cigar in his hand. It was the only tool he had left in his arsenal, but it wasn’t totally useless. They wouldn’t see it coming, even though it was clearly a dangerous improvised weapon. He lifted it to his lips, pulled out the lighter and started cooking the end. No draw needed.
“Don’t smoke in here,” Officer Byrne said. Richard. His first name was Richard.
Goddamnit. “I’ll roll down a window,” the Baron muttered.
“Something’s really wrong,” said Grenham, squirming around in the back seat.
“Open your doors,” the Baron commanded, “let’s get out and help them.” The cigar was clearly beyond smoking now. It was burned. The car was beginning to smell of ash, not tobacco. The end was a quarter inch of cherry coals. He closed the lighter and put it away.
Officer Byrne followed the suggestion mindlessly. He cracked open the door and grabbed the frame to stand. His head was turned away.
Richard, poor fucking Richard.
Hate to stab you in the back.
The Baron reached over with his left arm and jammed the burning cigar into Richard’s neck. Simultaneously, he reached down with his right, unbuttoned the man’s holster, and got a finger under the handle before everything slammed into a confusion of motion and noise.
Richard shrieked and jerked forward and fell out of the squad car at once, popping the Colt out of its holster. It landed on the seat. The Baron scrambled for it.
The approaching CPUSA trio started running for the car. “Baron!” the lead shouted, throwing back his lapel and struggling to pull a 1911.
The Baron got the gun, saw Richard on his ass. He ought to shoot the man. Instead, he aimed and hesitated. The officer rolled aside uselessly, still an easy shot, but the Baron cocked the hammer and blasted the sidewalk. Then he grabbed the dash and hopped the gear stick into the driver’s seat, keeping his head down.
The armed CPUSA member stopped at the gunshot. The street was filled with screaming, running civvies. Then he steeled himself for the inevitable breach of peace, lifted the 1911, and blasted twice at the Baron, hitting the trunk and the back windshield.
The Baron returned fire over his left shoulder, hitting the cage. Officer Grenham was in the back, shouting obscenities. “Cunt! You fucking asshole!”
The Baron slammed the clutch, turned the keys in the ignition, half-depressed the accelerator, and jammed the starter. The car roared into life. “Out!” he bellowed and shot another two times over his shoulder, aiming well past the man in the back.
Another man he should’ve shot. Another person he couldn’t shoot.
“It’s the cage!” Grenham shouted.
Locked in for the ride. The Baron pulled the driver’s door shut and shifted into first gear, then slammed on the gas. The wheels peeled out. Another 1911 shot, this one slamming into the back of his seat but stopping short. A shiver up his spine. He pulled into the street, heard the engine whining, jammed the clutch, and shifted again.
Civvie vehicles were pulling to the curbs, avoiding the speeding patrol car. The sun was ahead; he was going west. At the end of the block, three Willys MBs flew into the intersection and slammed their brakes, leaving curved trails of smoking rubber. Rifles were raised from the seats, an instant response to gunfire on the streets of Queens.
“Get down!” the Baron roared.
He jammed the handbrake and clutch, slewed around, and jumped the median in the middle of the street. For one stomach-lurching second, it felt like he’d roll the whole damn car up and over, trapping them both in a tumble of glass and steel. Then the front wheels hit the far lane with a metallic grind, and the bumper rammed asphalt.
He let off the clutch; the engine shuddered and nearly stalled, but he downshifted, then touched the gas to accelerate faster and peeled out again. The world could hear his poor driving. The side of the patrol car caught the volley in a series of bullet thunks. The side window shattered, scattering glass over Grenham.
The National Guard must’ve been watching the temple. Shots had triggered their ambush. “You alright?” the Baron shouted.
“Fuck you!”
A 20mm anti-aircraft halftrack rumbled into the intersection at the other end of the block. The mounted gun began the slow swing down to the street. “Fuck off!” the Baron roared, permitting himself to cuss freely at the absurdity of this new threat.
“Flushing armory—” the cop said, peeking through the cage.
One shot from an ack-ack would obliterate the squad car. Ten or so would leave a smoldering wreck. The Baron swung the wheel, pulling a U-turn in lane. He’d rather go west anyways.
With his windshield facing the Guardsmen, they opened fire again, and the glass exploded in his face. He couldn’t help but close his eyes, shield his head. His left arm caught a round in the bone and he ignored the brilliant arc of pain, its baleful light shivering up and down ruined tendons. An instant later, the Cat seized the cables to help him pull. He hadn’t died, but it still helped him in battle. Against such petty wounds, he could move!
At this angle, the halftrack couldn’t fire without hitting the Willys Jeeps. There weren’t enough vehicles to block the road. The Baron slewed through the gunfire, pulled left around them, and kept going in the oncoming lane, fortunately empty.
As he cleared the jeeps, he glanced in the rearview mirror. More vehicles were rushing past the halftrack. Gunfire strafed the front of the theater, showering prone CPUSA fighters in a hail of rounds.
It was a story repeated throughout the city. Communist insurgents could hide in the nooks and crannies of New York City, but they couldn’t fight against secular forces of that scale. They would be locked in the temples until New York could organize and arrest them, or they’d lose their lives in open battle with veterans from WWII.
“Were you shot?” the cop shouted over the wind howling through the vehicle.
The Baron pressed his left arm to the cage; the entry wound visible and bleeding before the mesh. “No rest for the weary,” the Baron shouted. “Keep low, don’t die!”
“Are you the Baron?”
“You’re not sure?” Bullets thumped the trunk of the squad car. They were halfway down the block. The Baron leaned into the horn, trying to scare off traffic. “How do I turn on the siren?”
“Were you planning to steal the car?”
“No! I wanted a ride!” He glanced back. “I need the siren or I might ram someone.”
“Hit the master switch on the console. Then the foot pedal. Deep left.”
The Baron flipped a red switch, then found the pedal with his toes. It was a Q2B, the same siren found on ambulances, fire trucks, and air raid poles. He turned it on, listened to it warm up through a low growl to a deafening howl, and ran the red light at the next intersection, pulling right sharply to change lanes. All around him, civvie cars slammed on the brakes.
The Baron pressed the pedal again, and the siren cut off. “You know the trick to running?” He shifted gears, then pushed on the accelerator.
“What trick?”
“Break line of sight, and there’s a good chance of getting away.”
Grenham sat up a little and stared at the Baron like he was a madman. “What about radios?”
“That’s why it’s hard to break line of sight! But we’ve got to try!”
The Baron accelerated further, glancing occasionally in the door mirror. Two jeeps were keeping pace about half a mile behind.
RKO Keith’s Theater was on the narrower, eastern stretch of Northern Boulevard. Only two blocks up, it kept level while the land dropped away and became a short bridge over the Flushing River, then followed the Flushing Promenade along the bay.
d’Holbach was hitting seventy when the bridge dipped down suddenly, and he nearly bottomed out on the soft suspension after the drop. Flushing Bay was a crescent of dark silver water to his right, like dirty mercury glittering in the afternoon light. Like much of the East River, rainbow streaks of oil and pads of shimmering dark algae mottled its surface.
The storm clouds loomed barely any closer, but at this speed without a windshield, the nor’easter seemed to bear down on them, battering the Baron’s cheeks and lips, drying his squinted eyes.
“Where are you going?” Grenham shouted over the wind.
“You shouldn’t know! For your safety!”
The road cut left slowly, aiming down the heart of Jackson Heights. There was a diminutive Guard checkpoint far ahead, maybe two miles distant, where Northern crossed Broadway. There weren’t any closer checkpoints because there weren’t any points of military interest this far from the bridges or LaGuardia airport. The only reason he could see for Langley to position them here was to cover people leaving the Railyard Temple—just in case.
Along a smooth stretch of road, the Baron took a second to buckle up while the squad car cruised. The officer in the back followed suit. With judicious taps of the horn, he kept the lane mostly clear of slower traffic.
The buildings around them were dense, short, and visually busy, a true urban corridor, a booming stretch of glass-fronted businesses and brownstone low-rise apartments. Even the side roads felt small and incidental to the straight thoroughfare, the artery of commerce and residence.
The checkpoint neared to within half a mile, when the Baron scouted his way through. He pedaled on the siren and picked up speed. The Guard would’ve radioed ahead, but their assumptions were almost certainly flawed. The Baron should be avoiding them. There was plenty of warning, plenty of distance where the Baron could see two more jeeps waiting. They would expect him to break off at any moment, avoiding the checkpoint, but beyond their jeeps, they’d only blocked the lanes with a line of orange sawhorses.
They realized about ten seconds too late that he wasn’t slowing down. Guardsmen waved weapons at him. One fired into the air.
Then the squad car smashed the symbolic blockade by striking the gap between two sawhorses, knocking both to the side with sprays of splinters while nearly ripping off the patrol car’s bumper. Its hood bent up but kept its latch to the car frame, and he shot past the checkpoint, pulling a brief wave of loose splinters in his wake.
Something rattled beneath the patrol car. Steering drifted left. Was that alignment? It hardly mattered. This vehicle wouldn’t last much longer.
It’d been decades since the Baron’s last visit, but it was hard to forget the trainyard. The place was a rusted blight in the center of Queens, historically visible for two miles along Northern Boulevard. The city had recently hidden it behind new construction and lines of trees, but the trains were still there. The main rail loop was about a half mile away.
The Railyard Temple temple—his destination—was at the far north end of this blighted space, hidden in a warehouse near the sunken trainyard’s retaining walls.
Two more jeeps joined the chase behind him, upping the count to four.
The patrol siren cleared the path. When it was time to corner, he swerved onto the largest street south, 43rd. Sure enough, as he pulled away from the main boulevard and rattled down a shallow hill at speed, he spotted familiar terrain, almost unchanged after decades. The road curved right over a long trench, briefly taking a tiny bridge over 4 sets of rail tracks.
The gate to the broader yard was open during the day. He shot through it and into the parking lot like it was an open road, but the end of the lot was hemmed in by 4-inch parking bumpers, long bars of concrete bolted to the asphalt.
“Stop!” Grenham shouted.
The Guard practically nipped at their rear bumper. The only way out was through.
The Baron leaned back against the seat, tight, as if he could pull the front of the squad car up, and pushed harder on the gas. Let momentum carry them forward; let suspension take the shock of impact.
He shot between two cars at the western end of the half-mile long lot, smashed through the parking bumper, and heard a metallic bang. The jerk on the seatbelt was like being slapped across the chest with a crowbar. His stomach ran for his spine; his sinuses emptied like he’d been socked in the face. The siren was instantly dead; a screeching fraction of a second, grinding metal; then the car was off the lot, back end popped up from impact, and it felt as if they were falling or flipping, even though they were just sailing over the surface of a shallow hill, down to the gravel and asphalt of the trainyard.
The officer shrieked in momentary freefall.
Then they landed on a terrace of rails. The Baron’s jaw clapped shut; blood taste. Both front tires burst, and rubber flaps and steel belts whipped into the air at sixty miles per hour. The rims made a horrible noise, scarring the rails and ground, but the patrol car had too much speed to stop. The skidded off the rails, bumping down a final slope towards pavement. The engine whined viciously, but he hadn’t killed the vehicle, and the wheels still turned.
The car drifted sharply left when it caught the road, and the Baron wrenched on the steering to force it straight. This was the car’s final run. The trainyard, his destination. The National Guard wouldn’t follow a suicide jump. They’d have to circle around.
The cop in the backseat was pale. His lip was bleeding.
The Baron shouted into the dusty wind, “We’re almost there!” Ahead, the road opened into a small warehouse district, no more than a dozen metal buildings intended for storage of freight and cargo coming off the rails. They were eternally dusty and tinged with corrosion, moldering in the shadow of a high bridge passing over the yard at street level.
d’Holbach couldn’t reasonably escape his pursuers here, so he hoped to take advantage of occult feelings about sacred ground. If any cultists wanted to keep the Railyard Temple, they’d have to win a fight against the Guard, and that might just be possible.
If the temple’s Oracle was on site with a coterie of his cultists, it’d be easy. If Langley had embedded any cultists in this group of Guards, it’d become difficult again.
Either way, he hoped that Phyllis and the Zombie would find him there. Geographically, it really was the most likely place for the Baron to have dodged.
None of this was a well-formed plan, of course. It was all risks blended with a heady mix of desperation and hope, but it was better than being captured alone at the RKO Keith’s Theater.
The trainyard was about a mile long, east to west, and in a constant state of construction. Gravel piles of various hues shed plumes of thick, choking dust in the heavy winds. Creosote slathered railway ties were stacked in tarry piles. Cranes, bulldozers, backhoes and other mud-crusted monsters of moving earth and stone were corralled in a chain-link pen.
The ramps and silos of a diminutive concrete plant stood like sentinels to the north, stalwart before a storm-crowned horizon. To the south and the middle of the rail loop, the afternoon sun shone across the polished silver skins of trains in storage. The rail cars were lined by the dozens, thin and long like chain-linked bread boxes. Several were in a state of disassembly, some in disrepair, with unfolded sides and gutted interiors accumulating grime, as if they were features of the landscape.
It was a barren, blasted industrial park, sunk a dozen feet into an artificial hole and surrounded by berms and trenches. It was defended by its inaccessibility and its gloom. It wasn’t even beautifully bleak.
The Baron could spot workers in trucks, watching with awe. He could see foremen and accountants standing outside warehouse doors, ties flapping like dark flags over white shirts. There were witnesses. So many had seen him jump, or at least heard it and come running.
He urged the car on, even as the wheels slowed with a squeal, even as the mechanical elements reached the edges of failure. He was driving the vehicle the way he’d been driving his body all afternoon—like he’d stolen it. In a fit of imagination, he wished the Cat could extend its battleready properties to this metal steed, preventing the vehicle’s demise.
He was no more than a hundred feet from the temple when the engine threw something, and after a few half-hearted bangs, the machine stopped. Over twenty feet, the vehicle ceased rolling on the pavement.
The Baron slipped off his seatbelt and shoved the Colt revolver into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “You back there?”
“I’m alive,” Grenham said gruffly.
“How do I unlock the back doors?”
The officer shook his head and started crawling out of the empty side window, crunching harmless safety glass beneath him. That was fine.
The Baron shouldered open his own door, then turned back to look for the National Guard jeeps. No more than half a mile away, dust blowing off their tires. Thirty seconds out. “Are you running?” the Baron shouted to the officer—to a CPUSA fighter. The man dropped to his knees, sick, and shook his head. He waved the Baron to go on without him.
“No, fuck that.” The Baron sprinted around the vehicle, grabbed Officer Grenham by the shoulder and pulled him onto his feet. “Run you bastard!” He shoved the man forward. “Run!”
The temple wasn’t far ahead—it was the first warehouse on the north side of this road. There was someone sitting on a plastic chair just inside its rolling door, a blue sheet metal affair. He wore glasses that reflected the sky, making his eyes appear as bright as searchlights.
The Baron sprinted. Ten seconds counted off by heartbeats.
The man with glasses stood. “Baron d’Holbach?” he called in an incredulous voice.
It wasn’t anyone the Baron recognized. He was certain they’d never met. Balding, bearded, dressed like an army chaplain but stripped of all insignia. “Who?” the Baron asked, stumbling to a stop, controlling his breathing. “How many of you are here?”
“I’m Dr. Albee, the Oracle of the Railyard Temple. I’m the only one here during this mess. You—”
“Yes, I’m me!” the Baron shouted, “I need armed men!” He gestured. The jeeps were slowing at the squad car. Someone raised a rifle and fired it once into the air.
“Surrender!” came the shout.
“I don’t have a gun,” Dr. Albee exclaimed.
“Get inside!” The Baron grabbed the doctor and ushered him through the door and behind the cover of the walls. Officer Grenham ran after them. A second later, bullets drummed the warehouse walls like someone beating a metal pan with a hammer. Dr. Albee stopped in terror, hands up to protect himself, feet practically under the Baron’s shoes.
“We’re in cover! Just keep going!” the Baron shouted, trying to inspire action, motion, anything. Dr. Albee simply quivered at the shout, unmoving.
d’Holbach darted around the doctor, taking stock of the space. The chamber was lit only by the open door. It was a closed hangar room with no other doors visible. A few large shipping crates were crammed together on the cold concrete, their paintjobs appearing absolutely new. They formed the sanctuaries, inviolable and immovable without destroying the sanctity of holy ground—and that was it. This rented corner, sectioned off, was the entire temple, with none of its usual staff.
Dr. Albee finally assembled himself well enough to ask Grenham, “What’s happening?”
“The Baron dodged to the Theater,” said the officer.
They needed options. “Is there another way out?” the Baron asked, facing Dr. Albee.
“Uh—you could squeeze past the left crate. There’s a small door behind it.” The doctor was pointing to the leftmost crate, running close and parallel to a warehouse wall.
The Baron went for the gap, then paused. “Unlocked?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s right up against the sanctuary.”
“Don’t fight the Guard. Hide, or surrender if you have to.” The Baron fished the Colt from his inner pocket and opened the cylinder. Two rounds left. “I’m going to run.”
“There are six men out there,” Grenham said. “Where are you going?”
The Baron closed the cylinder. “Anywhere. Doc, in case either of you are arrested, pass the officer some prestige. Otherwise, try to hide, and I’ll draw them around the warehouse. Once they’re moving, you might be able to run.”
“What? Why?” Dr. Albee asked.
“Because I don’t have any better ideas!”
Dr. Albee offered his hand to Grenham, and they shook. “Half a day,” he wished.
“Thanks,” Grenham said, mystified that he’d been offered this freedom.
“You’d better be ready to dodge—” The Baron hitched as he glanced at Grenham. “And don’t throw your life away. If I win, Malik won’t be a problem. Okay?”
“Sure,” the officer replied softly.
“Good.” d’Holbach breathed out and jammed himself into the gap between the crate and the warehouse wall. It was a sideways shimmy, slow but easy. The door was only six or seven feet back, and the hinges weren’t visible. That meant it’d open outwards, around the corner from the soldiers.
Nobody would fight here. There’d be no defense against the Guard, nor any fighting to cover his escape. No mass violence, faceless and easy to forget as a statistic. Just a couple of people who couldn’t fight back. Now he was about to run into the open for their sake.
He didn’t even bother to ask for another half-day of prestige for himself. If he dodged, he’d either end up back in the Railyard and under arrest by the Guard, or he’d arrive far away from this probable meetup point, and he’d have to rush back here again.
His hand reached the door handle, and he cracked it open.
“Wait, one more second,” called Officer Grenham. He was at the end of the gap behind the Baron, speaking urgently.
The Baron couldn’t see the officer, and the squeeze was too tight to turn his head.
Grenham continued, “You don’t want me dead?”
“I don’t want anyone dead,” d’Holbach answered.
“But you’re trying to help me? Help us?
“Yes!”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Honestly? Sympathy. You didn’t deserve this. You joined a labor movement. You wanted a better life. None of you signed up to be disposable pawns.”
“No, I mean, why… everything?”
“This whole mess? I’m trying to prevent an occult war.”
The officer laughed sadly. He waited a moment; the Baron waited too. “Good luck, I guess.”
“Thank you.” The Baron slid forward through the open door, pushing out into the wind and sun. When he glanced back at the gap between the wall and the shipping crate, Officer Grenham had already fled. He shut the door quietly and started jogging directly away from the building, keeping it between him and the parked jeeps.
To the northeast, a narrow, high street bridge crossed over the width of the trainyard. It junctioned to another street, maybe forty-feet up, which followed the curve of the yard’s reinforced north wall.
Then and there, the Baron decided that was his next destination. It was the highest barrier surrounding the railyard, nearly forty feet of sheer concrete. He could see a scant rebar ladder built into it, just beside the bridge. It gave access to the railway signaling lights but doubled as a way up to the roads. There was no better way out.
An empty passenger train was making its slow roll along a rail loop, maybe half a mile out. The rumble of the rails would cover his sprint. As it neared the space between the warehouses and the northern wall of the yard, he picked up the pace.
“I surrender!” Officer Grenham bellowed somewhere outside. He hadn’t hidden himself; he’d gone out to sacrifice himself for the Baron’s cause, a small hero.
A myriad of angry voices. “Lie down! Spread your hands!”
The Baron stopped and hesitated. He looked back at the warehouse.
“I’m the Baron d’Holbach!” Grenham shouted.
“The hell you are!”
“I am—”
There were animal shouts. “On the ground! Spread your hands!”
The Baron sprinted full speed. The Guard’s search wouldn’t take long. He could only hope that the sanctity of the little temple survived their incursion. He wasn’t a fan of the New York cult, but losing holy sites hurt everyone in the system of prestige, good or evil.
The oncoming train drowned out any further words. It was fortunate that no guns were fired. Not that the Baron believed the officer was safe, but he understood what’d happened. He’d hoped someone else’s zealotry would waylay the Guard, and it had. The CPUSA had demonstrated a willingness to die, for they had the afterlife guaranteed, and their survival only endangered the things they held dear in this world.
The Baron had saved the officer, and he’d helped the Baron. It was a genuine surprise, and better than anything d’Holbach had hoped for.
Whipping up a bundle of New York soldiers in defense of a temple was an ugly plan; one man, lying about his identity, seeded equal confusion without a bunch of deaths.
Nevertheless, random acts of kindness only bought them time.
The Baron reached the rails beside the retaining wall and waited. The train was only a dozen cars long; the last one would pass in seconds. Then he’d have to rush a climb up forty feet. Five seconds. Three. Two. One. Run!
He darted for the rebar ladder, built into the concrete retaining wall itself. His left arm was injured; his grip felt weak. He shifted the Colt revolver to that hand, then took a good grip with his right arm and started climbing.
He was no more than ten feet up when the first shot was taken. The bullet ricocheted a few feet to the side; the crack of a rifle reached him the instant after. No surrender for him. He glanced back briefly; there were two soldiers at the corner of the warehouse. One was sighting with binoculars—the other a Springfield with a scope.
The Baron scrambled up the retaining wall, climbed faster, trying to hit the rungs with his toes while leaning his chest in close, to favor falling into the wall.
Another shot, this round cracking concrete a foot from his ear. He flinched but held tight. They’d hit him before they reloaded the gun. Five shots in a Springfield.
He had to dissuade them. Holding on strong with his right, he leaned out—body twenty feet over air—and held out the revolver in his shaking left hand. The hammer back with his thumb. He fired and the recoil kicked the pistol out of his hand. It clattered down to the track below.
The soldiers flinched back for only a moment, then settled into place. Sighting. Aiming to kill. The Baron willed all his strength into his left hand and began to climb as if the fractured bone wasn’t there.
He was moving fast. The third round cracked overhead, overadjustment.
There wouldn’t be another miss. Anticipation warmed the Cat in his belly. Lines of fire prepared themselves. They filled his marrow like molten lead. Amazing, what the so-called gods had made in the ancient world. He didn’t stop climbing, but he made every grip deliberate. Every step, direct.
There was a weird punch in his lower back, a puff of slight sensation that disappeared like fog. The crack of the rifle filled his ears. Then his spine exploded into wracking pain; he experienced the shot—but only from the wound on up through his shoulders. His legs didn’t twitch. They were soft, buckling, resting against the concrete.
The world felt as if it was falling away. His wrists snapped tight, filling his arms and hands with ice cold needles and deep ache of soft tissue damage.
He’d known it was coming, and even in the spasm of severe injury, his hands gripped the rebar tighter. His body hung under him, dead weight. None of it felt like him anymore. It was all becoming puppetry under his command. The Cat was a nova of heat and energy, as if it was burning a hole straight out of his body, but he ignored it. He willed his legs to move, and the fire filled them. He pushed up, and his paralyzed body was dragged after him. The fifth shot followed, hasty and sloppy, a confused response. Blood was streaming down the back of his pants. The entry wound must be visible. The Cat ignored the fatal wound.
Ten feet. Five feet of wall remained. He could see the road bordering the pit. Buildings rose on the far side, hiding this place, this sore in the earth.
He reached up with injured hands, grabbed the road’s concrete railing, and hauled his near-corpse over it, spilling down onto pavement in a bloody heap. A couple of futile shots pinged off the concrete, but d’Holbach was completely in cover.
A handful of cars were passing at the moment, all going east. When they saw him flop over the concrete barrier, most accelerated, but one slowed. It pulled onto the narrow shoulder and stopped. The doors opened up.
The Baron turned his head, trying to force himself to move.
“Holy shit, he climbed up.” It was Phyllis.
“Where are they?” the Zombie said flatly, getting out of the vehicle.
“Those gunshots,” Phyllis said, kneeling in d’Holbach’s field of vision, “for gods’ sake, Baron. You dodged into a half-empty temple and still got into a fight?”
The Baron didn’t answer. He didn’t have much breath. He hardly breathed at all.
“I’ll kill them,” the Zombie said without a trace of humor. He was a pair of shoes in the corner of the Baron’s eye. “Tell me. It’ll be fast. I’ll hop the wall and be back in five.”
“Help me pick him up.” Phyllis stood.
“No, I can’t touch him.”
“Just don’t squeeze him or move fast.”
“I could break him. No.”
The Baron pushed himself onto his knees in slow jerks, like a meat marionette half-drained of blood. He had chills sweeping up and down his body. “I got it,” he said in a quiet, raspy voice. The Cat could only push so much air with a paralyzed diaphragm.
“Gods,” Phyllis said.
“I’ll kill them,” the Zombie muttered quietly, now staring the Baron in the face. “I’ll kill all of them. Just tell me and I’ll do it. You know I will.”
The Baron wasn’t sure if he was being offered a choice, but he couldn’t command indiscriminate murder. It wasn’t in his nature. “I can’t,” he said.
The Zombie glowered. “But your back! Your arm!”
The Baron leaned into the concrete barrier for support. “I’ll be okay—”
“Those aren’t accidents!” the Zombie shouted. “They’re attempted murders!”
The Zombie’s rage was an echo out of the 19th century—a time when he still remembered living as the wild stalker of Europe’s forests. It was an echo of the murderous rage he’d felt earlier that afternoon outside of Tammany.
“We’re not here to kill people,” the Baron said, wishing for a better world.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“This isn’t about the fun of killing. Does it look like I’m having fun?”
“No.”
“You rarely ask me to kill. I kill for you anyways. It’s necessary—you know it’s necessary.”
“I know.”
“I’m saving your life!”
“I’ll never stop being thankful for that. I won’t ever complain.”
“You won’t complain, but you won’t ask me to kill!”
The Baron took a deep breath with the help of the Cat. “I know—”
“They’re killing you!” the Zombie interrupted, his voice earnest.
“I’m not good at pulling the trigger.”
“That’s why you have me!” the Zombie shouted.
The Baron breathed slowly. “I’m sorry. I like saving people. I know it’s a flaw.”
The Zombie threw up his hands. “Fine, you know what? I won’t kill this lot, but they can’t shoot a man without repercussions.”
The Baron closed his eyes. “Okay.”
“One injury per person. An arm or a leg.”
“Yes,” the Baron said, not wanting to say it but knowing he couldn’t refuse. He’d fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He knew how he should feel. War could scar your humanity if you didn’t lock your emotions away. You needed a utilitarian discipline to kill and survive. He opened his eyes. “I approve, my friend. Leave their prisoners alone. For the rest, do what you think is right.”
The Zombie frowned. “They say you’re supposed to be my moral guide.”
“Sometimes, people are idiots. Look at me, too weak to pull the trigger.”
The Zombie peered over the edge of the road. No shots came. “It’s been a long time since you last fought in a war. You’ll find it in you again.” He looked over at the Baron. “You can’t just die for a principle. Too much rides on your back.”
“I know.”
“Good.” The Zombie vaulted the railing and fell forty feet to the tracks below. He landed as softly as a man who’d fallen forty inches, then sprinted for the warehouse and the milling Guardsmen. The Baron pushed up to his knees, peeking over the edge of the concrete railing. Soldiers were standing around their new prisoners, chatting.
Phyllis had been silently watching the argument. She spoke up. “Why is this hard for you?”
“I don’t know,” the Baron said. “It’s been a long time since we fought.”
“Fought each other or other people?”
“Both. Mostly each other though. It’s different when it’s like this. Normally he wants to be restrained. He wants me to be his conscience. Now it’s pissing him off.”
Phyllis stood by the Baron. “To be honest, it pissed me off a little bit. Scared me too. You hesitated when I offered you a gun.”
“Yeah,” the Baron muttered, looking out towards the Zombie. “You made the right call. Helping me.” The Baron saw the Zombie reach the nearest soldier, who was shouting for him to halt. The Zombie tackled the man, grabbed his arm and twisted it back. When it broke, the man’s screech was ear-piercing. d’Holbach hissed sympathetically.
A Guardsman opened fire on the Zombie, but only for a second. The invincible man rushed him, kicking his legs with invincible toes until one femur cracked open like a rotten log, cutting the soldier down.
The Baron couldn’t stand to watch the rest. He sat down against the concrete railing and took another deep breath. It was easier now. The action of the Cat was becoming refined. Even if he was technically paralyzed and bleeding to death, it almost felt like he was completely alive.
Phyllis knelt before him. “Will you at least kill for your own goals? For other people’s lives?”
“Yes. I’ll have to do it.”
“All right then.”
“I’m not completely innocent,” the Baron admitted.
“The Zombie?” Phyllis asked.
“Yes. He sees me as his conscience, but for me, the Zombie is my gun, my weapon. I pull the trigger by putting myself in danger, and others die. That’s been the case for a long time.” He suddenly felt very thirsty. Strange how the body demanded attention at inopportune times. He ignored it. “That’s why I try to minimize the damage.”
“You can’t do that anymore. Not today.”
“I know.”
“The Zombie was terrifying, after you dodged. Screaming. Killing people with his fists. I left him behind, and ran down to Welfare Island. He jumped off the bridge and caught up to me a little later, and I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Why?”
“I was there when you nearly died. Instead, he wanted my help finding you. He needed my prestige. I hotwired a boat with a wish, then a car. We checked this temple first, and here you were.” She smirked. “For a moment, I thought the Zombie was going to cry.”
“He never does,” the Baron said.
“Right, he only kills when he’s mourning. Baron, you cannot allow yourself to die. More important than this stupid struggle for the Cat, you cannot die. I know—it’s civilization, nuclear war—the stakes are high. But if you die, that’s just as bad as a nuclear bomb. An invincible man will kill and kill until he can’t remember your name anymore.”
The Baron couldn’t answer her challenge, but a question came to mind, a search for a final crack in her logic, irrational and pointless but there just the same. He could be defensive sometimes, he knew it. “What would killing have done to save my life today?”
“These people no longer think of you as threatening. They don’t think of the Zombie’s Pact as meaningful. You’ve been wounded repeatedly, and all they’ve seen is your fleeing back. It wouldn’t have been this way if you would eliminate, if you would terrorize. I think that’s why he held men to the fire in Salem. So they’d fear touching you.” She turned and looked over the railing. “He’s on his way back. Thank him for saving your life, and keep this in mind. Sometimes, you have to be the bully, Baron, and bullies get in fights.”
“That’s grim, but… thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For arguing with me when the Zombie couldn’t.”
After half a minute, the Zombie clambered over the wall. He looked relieved. His left hand was coated in fresh blood. His right hand was only crusted with dry. “Only one died,” he said, not at all sorry.
“Thank you,” the Baron said, “you’ve done me a favor. That’ll put some fear into the National Guard. They’ll know about you—what did they call you on the bridge?”
“Bulletproof,” the Zombie said, with an inkling of a smile.
“The bulletproof man,” the Baron said. “You’re right. This had to be done.”
The Zombie walked up to the Baron, spread the fingers on his right hand very wide, and with his bloodless palm, he very carefully patted the Baron on the scalp. It didn’t hurt. The Zombie grinned and walked towards the idling car. “We need to get moving.”
Phyllis helped the Baron to his feet. “We’re in Queens now, so I’ll call my contacts, and we’ll get in position to prepare for LaGuardia. Alright?”
The Baron nodded. “Thank you. For all your people. For your help.” He put his arm around her shoulder and looked at the storm, brewing on the horizon. “It’s almost time.”
Author’s Note:
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
Sanctuary sleep was a well-known but rare phenomenon. Torpor stole away time and sustained the body, but it never brought genuine rest. On occasion, when the mind was exhausted and all the detritus of thought needed sorting, a cultist would pass from hibernation into dreams, sleeping through their final hours in the domain of the gods.
Fragments of the surreal flowed through d’Holbach’s head, failing to produce complete stories but successfully echoing recent traumas. Images of the Zombie strung themselves together like beads on a narrative thread. The invincible man was coming to save him, both in this dire era and long ago in Enlightenment France.
d’Holbach only had to wait until this argument was over. Phyllis was shouting at the philosophers in his salon, speaking snatches of English mixed with centuries-old French. They were threatening him for being an atheist, for denying Meister Schuler’s arguments. She was defending the Baron from Voltaire, who complained loudly in English about the Zombie.
It was a strange dream with a simple truth at its heart. Alone, the Baron was at the mercy of a world that would cheerily dispense with his rebellions. Together with the Zombie, the world was forced to respect him and his inconvenient philosophies.
Days ago and hours in the future, the Baron had dodged, leaving friends behind. Fear rummaged through these images, selecting the juiciest anxieties. Everything reminded him of the isolation he’d face in the hours to come, Baron versus the world.
Still, dreams helped him recover from the pains of death.
The Baron’s first meeting with the Zombie was at rue Royale, butte Saint-Roche, about twenty-five years before the Fall of Trust. He wasn’t even a cultist then, nor wished upon. He was merely a man with a position of extreme wealth and high intellectual prominence.
His home boasted a library of more than three thousand volumes, and his chefs served the most expensive food and wine of any salon in Paris. His radical atheist philosophy and vitriolic anti-Church rhetoric drew a subversive element, and regular attendees were a who’s who of French and British Enlightenment thinkers.
That afternoon, the primary guest list was brief but rich. Hume was visiting, Diderot was working on his Encyclopédie, and Voltaire was arguing with the Baron about determinism while sharing a plate of greek olives and expensive cheese in the dining hall.
Other men were spread about the salon, having come to write, study, or argue, but not to interfere with the Baron’s circle of friends. In general, the Baron’s servants kept track of the guests, and everyone tended to account for their companions, so it was a surprise when a servant interrupted the Baron’s conversation with a warning.
“Baron, Marquis de Condorcet has arrived with an Oriental guest.”
Voltaire seemed irritated by the message, but the Baron poured him another glass of wine and asked his servant, “Does Condorcet vouch for him?”
“Yes.” The servant’s manner was plainly nervous.
“We welcome intellectuals of every race,” the Baron said firmly. At least, that was the plan. So far this year, his servants had turned away a Mexican-Spaniard and two Moors, but the Baron had corrected them each time, and since then, most foreigners had been allowed to enter.
“Baron,” said the servant, “the Oriental gentleman refuses to give his name.”
“Then take it from the Marquis,” Voltaire snapped.
“He doesn’t know it,” the servant answered.
Baron d’Holbach stood, opting to solve this himself before someone gave up and threw out Condorcet’s guest. “Where is the man?”
“Paul-Henri,” Voltaire said. “Just kick him out!”
The servant took a step back, lowering his head as if waiting for a punishing blow. “The Marquis won’t let anyone touch him, Baron. My deepest apologies.”
The Baron waved the servant onward. “I’ll speak with him.”
“T’sch!” Voltaire took the bottle of wine and topped off his glass.
The servant led the Baron to the southern anteroom, a small chamber of warm, wood-paneled walls and well-swept brick floors, lined with hooks and shelf space for dozens of coats and shoes. “In here, Baron,” he offered, stopping at the entrance.
“Marquis de Condorcet,” d’Holbach said when he saw his friend, leaning against the front wall beside a tall, handsome man, whom the Baron guessed was Chinese. They’d been camping near the entrance table with its open guest-book, waiting for the servants to return with the master of the house.
Condorcet righted himself, stepping forward to meet d’Holbach with a forced smile. “Baron, thank God. Please, let us in. We’ve had a long morning.”
“You look hounded,” the Baron agreed. Condorcet powdered his own hair and shaved his own face, but the powder was thinning and his stubble was dark. “I see you have a shadow,” he joked, tapping his own chin.
Condorcet was a young mathematician and political philosopher, and it took him a long moment before he touched his cheek and smiled. “Ah, apologies! I’ve been entertaining my guest. There’s been little time for such things, if you’ll forgive me.”
“I’ll always forgive you, Condorcet.” The Baron glanced at the guest-book, looking for the Chinese man’s signature. The Marquis had elegantly written his name across the page. Above him, Voltaire’s tight signature followed an imaginary straight edge. No other names sat below theirs.
The tall man noticed his behavior and grinned broadly. Unlike Condorcet, who wore dark conservative coats and traditionally ornamented white shirts, the Chinese man was dressed in red and crimson with an aggressively simple cut. His wig was low and severe, and if he hadn’t worn it with immaculate style, the Baron would’ve assumed that he was mocking French nobility. As it was, the Baron could only imagine he was a Canton merchant, touring Europe.
“I haven’t been introduced to your friend yet,” the Baron said. “What’s your name?” he asked the tall man directly.
Condorcet tried to answer for him. “It’s hard to pronounce.”
“Ah, you’ve made me curious,” the Baron said, locking eyes with Condorcet’s guest.
“Truthfully, I don’t have a name,” the Chinese man said in fluent French.
Condorcet flicked his gaze nervously from one man to the other. “Baron, I vouch for him. He came to see the library.”
“Three thousand volumes,” the tall man said. “One of the best in Europe, I’ve heard.”
“What do you call him, Condorcet?” the Baron asked. He didn’t break his gaze with the Chinese man.
“I don’t name…” Condorcet said weakly.
“He’s afraid of me,” the man muttered.
“I see.” The Baron cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if I offend, but have you threatened him?”
“I have,” the man admitted. “But only indirectly. I have a reputation.”
“Yet you don’t have a name.”
“He had one for me.”
Condorcet tittered with a desperation that belied fear. “He jokes. He hasn’t threatened anybody.”
“Marquis, you don’t need to lie. He’s an honest man, even if he’s a scoundrel.” The Baron offered his hand to the Chinese man. “What should I call you, sir?”
The man shook his hand gently. “Depends on the legend.”
“What does Condorcet call you?”
“What would you call me if I said that I was the oldest man alive?”
“Methuselah,” the Baron answered, “or the Wandering Jew. Tithonus, if you weren’t so young.”
“I’ve never been called Tithonus. I like it.” He tapped his finger on his thin beard. “What would you call me if I said that I was invincible?”
“Achilles.”
“No, I have nothing like his heel.”
The Baron spent a moment thinking. “Invincible men always have a weakness. Myths often teach a lesson about pride.”
“I don’t have a weakness.”
“Then I have no name for you.”
“They called me the Golem in many places. They were afraid that I’d rampage in the temple. What would my name be if I didn’t have a human soul?”
“Golem is good,” the Baron said. “Homonculus… Doppleganger? I’m afraid I don’t have many names. Condorcet, do you know any word for the reanimated dead?”
No response. Both Condorcet and the Baron’s servant seemed mortified by this strange game, and the “Golem” was not going to volunteer all the answers.
“I know a few,” the man said, “and I’ve been called them all. Here, one more try. Which legend would I be, if I committed the first sin?”
“Pandora, if you were a woman. Adam, the first man. How about Cain?” He glanced at Condorcet. “First murderer. The Serpent. Prometheus.” He was counting on his fingers now. “Azazel, thief of fire. Loki. Cronus or Zeus, depending on which the author identifies as the traitor. Any traitor of the gods, really. I’m sure there are others.”
“Many others,” the man said. “You missed one, but for today, call me Cain.”
The Baron laughed. “Fine, you are the first murderer. I only have one question. Will you murder Condorcet if I don’t let you in?”
“No. He’s afraid of me, but I only want to see your library.” The newly-minted Cain pulled out a closed folding knife. “Do you want to see the trick that scared him?”
“No, I trust it was impressive.” The Baron stepped aside and waved him in. “Welcome to my salon. Condorcet, go to the hall and find Voltaire. He’ll pour you some wine. Monsieur Cain, if you come with me, I’ll show you the library.”
“May I borrow something?” Cain asked. “There’s a book.”
“Is it valuable?” the Baron asked. “What is it?”
“It’s in print, but there’s a reason I don’t want to tell you.”
The Baron smiled. “Is this part of the game? You can keep it.”
“It is, and I appreciate the radical trust. I rarely receive it.”
The Baron left Cain in the library and returned to his friends in the dining hall. By sunset, the man had left without a further word, and if he’d taken a book, the Baron couldn’t see where it’d gone missing. All the truly valuable tomes remained.
It was almost a year later, long after Condorcet had declined to tell the Baron anything about Cain, that he found the empty spot on a shelf of his personally annotated volumes.
The Baron laughed out loud in a library full of friends. “Tricky bastard.” People looked at him. By way of answer he said, “I was trying too hard.”
The missing book was Paradise Lost.
Twenty four years later, in the fall of 1788, the gods assigned a great task. Every Oracle in Europe and many in Asia and North Africa received the order and spread it to their flocks.
Convince Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach to believe in the divine, and everyone who contributes will be rewarded a portion of prestige from a pool of one millennium, scaled to the significance of their influence.
This triggered a year-long deluge of letters to d’Holbach’s home in Paris. Men of all stations, from barely literate peasants to the highest Cardinals of Rome, sent page after page of rational argument and emotional appeal. In waves of paper and ink, they begged, pleaded, and demanded change. Altogether, they asked the Baron to renounce atheism, choose death, and go to the gods. They would’ve drowned him in discussion.
He argued with the first few correspondents on principle, ran out of time to argue further, and ignored the rest. When increasingly desperate Vatican cultists came to visit him personally, he considered whether he could continue to live, ageless, under his birth name.
In January of 1790, about a year into the French Revolution, he gave up and faked his death with the assistance of Marquis de Condorcet, one of three members in his coterie that’d been inducted into the occult mysteries. This was supposed to be an escape from the eyes of occult power—instead, it directly triggered the Fall of Trust.
The gods issued a second task to kill the Baron before the end of the year. He didn’t learn this from any normal messenger or letter. On the day that the Fall of Trust began, he was sitting in Condorcet’s parlor, reading a volume on ethics, when the Cain of his youth entered the room, shouting, “Good afternoon, Baron d’Holbach!”
“Afternoon,” the Baron replied, looking up from a book spread on the table in front of him. “I recognize you. The Golem, right? The man I called Cain in my ignorance?”
“Ha, yes! The Marquis knew me as Golem. I’m sure he’ll be terrified to see me again.”
The Baron glanced down at the man’s hands. They had a deep, dark, wine-stain color, and glimmers of sunshine, sneaking in through the curtained windows, reflected off the wet textures of his hands. “Is that blood?” the Baron asked.
The Golem grinned, clapping his damp hands together. Slap, slap, slap. “Yes, I’m happy to inform you, blood has already been spilled.”
“On what grounds, Golem?”
The Golem pulled a chair over and set it behind the table where the Baron sat. “The Marquis signed your death certificate this morning. Now, the gods have insisted on its accuracy.”
The Baron stared at the fresh blood smeared over the lacquer of the armrests beneath the Golem’s hands. “Are you here to kill me?”
“No. I killed the first man who came to kill you. There will be many, many more, and I might kill them too. How well do you remember me?”
“With crystal clarity.” The Baron smiled at the absurdity of having this legendary murderer in Condorcet’s home. “The Marquis only taught me about you this year, but I remember the book you stole from me. Did you want me to call you Satan?”
The invincible man laughed. “No. I wanted you to know that I inspired Satan, but he lives in hell, and this is the Earth. We’re in my domain, forever and ever.”
“And what does such a worldly king want in his domain?”
The Golem pointed. “A perfect question. I like you, Baron. I like what you’ve done to the world, denying its occult foundations. You’re interesting, and—” He spread his hands wide like red flags. “You aren’t afraid of me. You weren’t the last time we met either.”
“Call me mad if you like, but you strike me as an honest man,” the Baron said. It was the truth. There was something earnest about the Golem, which made him easy to trust.
The invincible man laughed pleasantly. “It’s the honesty of murderers. Don’t worry about yourself though. I’m here, and for today, you’re safe.”
“Because you’re here?”
“Mm. Exactly. I cannot die, but other men always can.” The Golem took a deep breath. “So let’s get to know each other. Talk. Maybe we’ll be friends, and come to an arrangement?”
The Baron couldn’t yet grapple with the full weight of what was happening—that the so-called gods had ordered his demise for daring to hide from their servants—but he knew what was in front of him. A unique man, born of strange philosophies, wanted to deliver him out of a year of madness. d’Holbach leaned back, forcing himself to accept this situation.
What’d begun as a deluge of letters was about to become a storm of knives, and the aid of an invincible murderer might cut the difference between life and death.
“What kind of arrangement?” the Baron probed.
“Costs and causes. We can hash out specifics later, but here’s the gist. If you’ll always hurt powerful people like this, then I’ll always want to protect you.”
“Are you talking about my ageless properties?”
The Golem wove his bloody hands together on his lap. “And your atheism, and all other things besides. You are a thorn in the Pope’s ass, Baron. I like that. And if you like it, then when the Marquis comes home, he can bear witness.”
“To what?” the Baron asked.
“To a Pact, sworn by the oldest man in the world. I won’t let you die.”
Dreams eased. Sleep ended.
The Baron opened his eyes to see a brief burst of flame. The end of the cigar burned to ash all at once, and the hot peppery tobacco smoke filled his nostrils. He peeled his back off a sanctuary carpet and sat up, body well-rested, mind recovering, and patted his jacket pocket.
The lighter and guillotine cutter were still there. He pulled out the cutter and snipped the end of the cigar for his mouth, then took a long draw. Smoke rolled around his tongue and palate. The tobacco had dried out a bit over the last few days, but the burn was perfect.
He blew a smoke ring and pinched the cloth of his stiff dress shirt. The sanctuary door cracked open on its own, letting in a soft pale light.
He was swamped in dry, clotted blood. No wonder he’d peeled off the carpet. There was a dry lakebed surrounding him, a sure sign of death. The Cat in his belly was cool. There were no lashes of fire holding him together. A knot of scar tissue bound together the left side of his chest. His aorta must’ve been lightly ruptured when he was shot.
All the bullet wounds were closed up and stiff, no longer aching but certainly uncomfortable. His conditional agelessness would restore him fully in time, but the Cat had rushed these primitive repairs, and he’d feel the scars for weeks.
He drew again on his dry cigar. There was a lesson here. He needed to be prepared with even more prestige in the future. He needed to break guns and heal wounds aggressively. He couldn’t reproduce Schuler’s skills or resources, but he could afford to spend more money on more wishes. For the sake of the world, he should.
Few people found the opportunity to learn from their near demise. The Cat had given him a chance to gauge the danger of modern urban combat. The Baron wouldn’t pretend that everything would be alright in a scrap, not after this. People really were willing to risk the Zombie’s Pact in order to kill him. That recklessness implied things about human nature—and about the future of the Cold War—that sent chills down the Baron’s spine.
For now, he’d have to make do with the Cat’s multiple lives, keep his wits about him, and find out where he’d teleported in the city. He got to his feet. The blood on his clothes would be a problem, and he couldn’t afford to wish it away—cleanups were surprisingly expensive, and he could only afford a maximum of one week of debt.
At least the room he was in would never be found again. It was impossible to tell whether the gods generated the sanctuaries for each individual debtor or cleaned the rooms after each use. Marks in a sanctuary disappeared when the door closed.
He put the guillotine cutter away and pulled out the lighter to keep the cigar burning. He felt grooves under his fingers. He raised them to the door’s light and read an engraving, “The Improved Order of Red Men.” Below it, a machine had stamped the simple image of a man in Delaware tribe headdress. Enzu had stolen it from some New York noble for the Baron’s cigar.
The Baron turned it about, watching the light play over its finger-polished surface. This racist trinket could be useful as a prop. The Red Men were the original mixed colonial and Native American cult that founded the first of the secular Tammany societies. The Tammany Hall of today knew nothing of the customs and rituals that’d defined the old American cults, but engraved lighters like these were clear tokens of a “rich heritage.”
With this, the Baron could pretend to have a connection to New York’s nobility.
He pocketed the lighter and walked to the door, peering out of the gap. The hall outside was simple but obviously historied; last-century wooden floors sagged between sheets of pale purple wallpaper, and most of the doors sat askew in their frames, marked with brass stars. Dressing rooms?
At this angle, he could just barely spy two police officers standing guard in this temple hallway, waiting for people to emerge. For a moment, they were turned away, talking quietly together. He doubted they were here on secular business, but they probably weren’t on guard for him either.
At this point, there were two options. He could run, immediately marking him as someone worth chasing down and interrogating, or he could try to talk his way out of the temple.
So long as he was on temple grounds, nobody would be eager to manhandle him, let alone assault him, and enough fast talk might get him out the door before anyone could ask the right questions. Once he was on the streets, the conditions would favor him immensely. It was the middle of the afternoon, with both the National Guard and the secular public wandering the neighborhoods. He could try to hail a cab, steal a vehicle, or simply beg for a ride to… somewhere. He needed to discover his location before he could make better plans.
As it was, he ought to step outside, get his bearings, and start working the crowd until he could escape the building. He nudged open the door with his toe and slid out into the hall.
The sanctuary door closed itself behind him.
The cops twitched, turning to face the sound. First they noticed him. Then they noticed his blood, and their eyebrows jumped towards their peaked caps.
“Oy, what’s this mess about, sir?” one of them asked. The older one, it seemed.
The Baron sucked on his cigar, drawing in smoke. “Thank the fucking gods.” The forced relief bought him a second to think. They might be affiliated with New York. They might not. “Have you been looking for the Baron d’Holbach?” he asked angrily.
“Aye,” the officer replied.
Best guess then—these were idle CPUSA and not New York vassals. After all, New York’s men were marching the streets, not sitting around inside temples. “Fuck those Russian bastards for dragging me in,” d’Holbach muttered, releasing puffs of smoke. He glanced down at his shirt. “It’s a goddamn bloodbath out there. I just came from the bridge.”
The cops glanced at each other. The younger one squinted at the Baron and asked, “Why did traffic administration order the workers to salt the roads?”
Traffic administration? Reusing that code name was lazy security on the part of Malik. These were definitely CPUSA insurgents, either stationed here or waiting for orders after dodging to this location. “Fuck this code crap,” the Baron grumbled, “I’m not working for Malik anymore. This is about revenge, you understand me?”
“Malik?”
“The fucking Russian can’t keep his trap shut. His real name is getting around.”
“Jesus,” the younger cop said.
“Yeah, Jesus—” The Baron scoffed. “What the fuck is this?”
“What is what, sir?”
The Baron gestured to the double doors at the end of the hall. “Why are you here when the Baron is out there?”
The officer hooked his thumbs to his belt, shrugging. “I was running from the spooks and had to dodge here. The CIA’s gotten a list of our names somehow. They must’ve stolen ‘em from the Soviets.”
“Right, but what are you doing in this borough?”
The older officer answered this time: “Administration sent some of us to Queens, in case the Baron snuck over the East River.”
The Baron was relieved. He’d dodged to a temple in Queens, probably the largest one in this slice of town. He glanced down at his bloody clothes, taking the initiative before the cops could bring it up again. “I had to spend all my prestige on these goddamn wounds.” He shook his head sadly and looked them in the eyes. “How can a man afford an afterlife like this?”
The cops were briefly confused. “Didn’t they give it to you during your induction?”
The Baron covered for his surprise by rolling his eyes. That explained why the CPUSA members were so ready to die. Every last one of them had a ticket punched for eternity. “For fuck’s sake, not me. I have a new wife—you know what, nevermind. We’ve got to get ready.”
“Get ready?” One of them stepped into the Baron’s path. “Sir, who are you?”
The Baron fished his wallet out of his pockets and pulled out his driver’s license. “Ray Dufraine.”
The cop took it and held it out to his companion. “This is a Massachusetts license.”
“You’re damn right it is. When the Smith Act trials got rolling, I skipped town.”
“Why’d you come back?” the other cop asked.
“I didn’t. Some asshole in Barilla’s crew ratted me out to Malik.”
“Barilla?”
“Jesus Christ, really? We killed him on Sunday.” d’Holbach took back his license with a little more force than needed. He antagonized them so they’d know that he had no reason to fear antagonizing them. “Can we get moving?”
“Uh—”
“What’s your name?” the Baron asked the older cop.
“Officer Byrne. My partner is Grenham.”
“Byrne, Grenham. Glad to meet you. If you’ll follow me?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed past them and beelined for the double doors at the end of the hall. When they didn’t immediately follow, he turned back to glare at them, nearly demanding their assistance. “The Baron might be coming, gods damnit. Let’s get ready to jump him.”
“The Baron might be here?” Byrne asked skeptically.
“If I’m here, then he’ll be here, cause I think the other temples are full. Now, come on, we need to tell the rest.” The Baron clenched the cigar between his teeth and pushed open the doors. There was an auditorium spread out before him, black velvet walls, black carpet floor, and bright stage lights. It was filled with chairs, a 19th century theater with an orchestra pit, boarded over like a broken window.
A tired audience stirred to meet him—at least two dozen cultists, waiting for something.
The Baron understood the precarious balance of the situation. Push too hard, and people would stop to examine his anxious behavior. Wait too long, let the momentum flag, and people would find the time to test their suspicions. He’d already pushed too hard and failed earlier with the Guard. He’d have to try again with CPUSA and do a better job. Or else.
As it was, someone in the room probably recognized him as the Baron d’Holbach, but there was a confusing detail—the NYPD officers, both CPUSA, were following him as if he belonged. Their presence muddied his identity.
“CPUSA soldiers, New York vassals. There’s a mix in here, and I doubt everyone knows who is who, but it doesn’t matter.” The Baron swung the smoking cigar around to emphasize his words. “My name is Ray Dufraine. You’re all going to help.”
“Who the fuck are you?” someone shouted from the back.
The Baron dug into his pocket, casually relit the tip of his cigar, and lobbed the lighter into the audience. “Catch!”
Someone caught it and passed it towards the back of the auditorium.
“Look at the engraving. I’m an officer in the Boston junta, operating under the authority of General Osman. Before that, I beat Pinkertons for cash and signed up with the Commies because I was poor, young, and stupid. That’s come back to bite me in the ass. Now give me back my goddamn lighter.” It was passed back down to the front row and lobbed up. The Baron caught it and took center stage. “Before I dodged here, I was up on the Queensboro Bridge. You assholes heard the shooting? The blasts?”
There were murmurs of assent and several clear ayes.
The cops assumed a subordinate position behind the Baron. It strengthened his image, but it meant that his back was turned to two potential enemies.
“It’s a bloodbath. I was caught out in a car with a couple of others.” d’Holbach took a draw on his cigar. He was talking fast, rolling over his own words to create a sense of urgency. “The National Guard caught the devil trying to cross the strait. Of course, the dipshits opened fire before we were ready, and I got shot for my trouble. Now I’ve healed up and dodged, and I’m looking to get the jump on the Baron, but we don’t have much time.”
There was a confused litany of follow-up questions, some of them asking about the Boston junta. He knew enough occult politics to answer, but acknowledging individual questions would’ve brought disaster by opening the floor to close scrutiny.
“There were hundreds of soldiers on that bridge!” he yelled over the crowd. “Do you understand? Sooner or later, the Atheist is going to dodge here, and I’m going to kill him. We’ve just got to catch him when he comes outside.”
“Kill him?” someone shouted. Probably a New York vassal, scared about the Pact.
“For fucking with the crazy ass Russian instead of surrendering.” The Baron shielded his eyes, as if searching for his interlocutor. He dropped his hand and waved any responses away. “Forget it. I’m not looking to break this down, and I’m not looking to win this bullshit for the Reds. I just want my revenge. If you’ve got a reason to see Baron d’Holbach dead—or at least whipped—then let’s go. We’ll set up in the streets, just bring what you’ve got.”
He hopped down and marched up the center aisle like he was in charge. Officers Byrne and Grenham fell in behind him, and the rest of the cultists stirred from their seats into a rising, murmuring mass. Momentum favored d’Holbach for now.
He barged out of the plain theater and into a larger foyer, a vast and incredibly ornate lobby of rococo architecture, gold trim, and red carpets. It was bright, even without windows. Hanging chandeliers glittered two or three stories above, and large, elaborate sconces lined the high walls, each as wide and curved as Venus’s hips. Balconies were flanked by columns spiralling up like carved unicorn’s horns, jutting out over arches of polished stone and doors paneled in bronze. Stairwells circled up the sides of the foyer to the balcony level of the main theater, each step cut from creamy limestone and lined with fine red carpets.
“Jesus Christ,” the Baron murmured, channeling his awe at Gilded Age art into a kind of macho spite. Vanity mirrors hung in frames more ostentatious than a Baroque palace. A stone cherub spat water into the bronze bowl of a fountain, which then fell in two soft waterfalls to a crystal clear pool formed out of grey granite and lined with sea-green tiling.
There was a billboard at the Baron’s right hand. The theater he’d been in was marked the Smalls Concert Hall, reserved for private parties only. The temple was only one part of a larger building, left bare and forever-rented to cover for the sanctuaries operating out of the back. The broader building was a fever dream of endless wealth, an echo of an explosion of prewar prosperity.
After a few moments, rusty memories finally shook loose, and he recognized this absurd place. He was in Flushing, in Queens. This was the RKO Keith’s Theater. A few employees were idling in uniform, bright red like bellboys, sweeping or brushing carpets. They paid the Baron no attention; he supposed the Smalls Concert Hall was locked at night and busy during the day. Like all temples, it was hopelessly normal and uninteresting if viewed by its secular face.
The cops came out behind him. The Baron glanced at them. They appeared worried. There was probably another way to leave the theater without going through the public foyer. “I know, I know,” he murmured.“I had to check. Someone, tell the rest to take the regular exit.”
“Yes, sir,” Grenham said, clearly relieved.
“I’ll scout out front. Byrne, come with me?”
The cop nodded; by the better light of the main theater, the Baron could tell Byrne was a clean cut Irish-Catholic man with a flinty stare. “Sure, Mr. Dufraine. After you.”
The Baron crossed the foyer, finally grabbing attention with his bloody clothes.
“Jet,” said a boy, just old enough to work, “swell costume, man.”
“It’s a frightening play,” the Baron said as he passed.
d’Holbach opened the front door and stepped outside. Officer Byrne would give him legitimacy and put witnesses at ease, even while he was covered in horrendous bloodstains. Warm air washed over him, filled with spring smells and the first hints of cooler air on the wind. He must be near another park, though the exact layout wasn’t certain. Several pedestrians stared at his clothes, but Byrne smiled and nodded, and they kept walking—only a little faster.
“It’s not very busy,” the Baron said. There were maybe twenty people in view, most of them heading east with the sun at their backs, overdressed in upper middle class clothing, pieces made of the finest cloth but just one pay grade short of fully tailored suits and dresses. This must be close to Broadway-Flushing. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he could ask. “Any National Guard armories around here?”
“The Flushing Armory is a half a mile south, on this side of the meadows.”
The Baron was unhappy with the location. He’d ended up on the east side of LaGuardia, much further away from any of the temples close to Manhattan. This was the largest one in Queens by far, but geographically, he was miles away from the Queensboro Bridge.
If his memory served him well, the best location for his arrival would’ve been a small temple near the Queens approach to the bridge—the Railyard Temple. It was snuggled in a warehouse between a trainyard and an industrial park, near the junction of Queens Boulevard and Northern Boulevard. Assuming Phyllis and the Zombie made it off the bridge and across the eastern channel, they’d check there first. He needed to get there quickly and find a stable hiding spot.
“We can’t stay on the street long. Not so close to the armory,” the Baron said. “Do you have a patrol car here? Assuming you didn’t dodge, or called in some help?”
“Grenham dodged. I drove here to help him out.”
“Keeping it in the back?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring it out front. You, Grenham, myself—we’ll keep watch on the street.” He gestured around the side of the building. With some luck, he might be able to talk the cops into driving him to the Railyard Temple on the assumption that the Baron hadn’t dodged to this one. Otherwise, he’d see if it was possible to steal the car. Failing that, he’d just bail on them and walk away. Maybe.
They left the shadow of the marquee. The theater was advertising a final showing of The Greatest Show On Earth, that very evening. That was too bad. The Baron hadn’t found a chance to see the movie, mainly because his friend wasn’t interested in it.
In general, it was difficult to keep the Zombie’s attention on a film unless the concept was deeply grotesque, esoteric, or sci-fi. He preferred to concentrate over a book, if only because their fantasies were grander, bolder.
Three hundred years of memories, of hard living and violence—they could make mundane dramas and romances seem pale and lifeless. The Baron didn’t share the feeling, of course, but he understood his friend, his monster.
The back alley was narrow, only wide enough for one vehicle. The Baron followed Officer Byrne, eyeing the man’s holster—he had a Colt Official Police, a .38 special revolver. If this place was similar to the 8th Street Temple, that was one of the only firearms still on site. Any armory would’ve been emptied while New York deployed their borough militia, and everyone else who’d dodged here was forced to leave their weapons and radios behind.
It was disappointing to see the pistol, but he’d expected to run into some firearms. Mobs of violent people accumulated weapons naturally, like static charge around bits of lint and paper. In the end, snatching that Colt could give the Baron a decisive advantage, so he paid attention to how Byrne wore it and measured how closely the Officer was guarding his gun.
They passed through the alley into a broader space behind the theater. A patrol car and a couple of other vehicles were parked in an unpainted patch beside the theater’s oversized dumpster. Maybe fifty feet away, a small band of people were exiting through a fire door, but no bells rang when it opened. That must be the temple’s standard entrance.
The Baron carefully relit the end of his cigar and puffed. The prop calmed him, gave him something to occupy his hands, and soothed the savage nicotine craving. Unlike most addicts, he could cure himself by simply waiting, but only because addictions were regarded as diseases in the eyes of the so-called gods.
Oddly enough, torpor and debt didn’t count as time spent without smoking. The addiction that he’d indulged once that morning was just as fresh this afternoon.
The Baron raised his hand to the approaching men, coming out of the back of the theater. “How many of you got fucked by the Russians?”
No response from the bunch. There were well over a dozen of them.
“Show of hands?” the Baron asked.
Reluctantly, a couple raised their hands, men near the back. Once someone moved, the rest of the mob followed suit, and all hands rocketed high. Mob mentality ruled them.
That was good and bad. If the Baron could pretend to lead, things would be safe. If they’d all silently concluded that he was suspicious, there’d be no persuading them.
The Baron quickly decided to split them up, relying on the old instinct to divide and conquer when it came to wheeling and dealing. He shouted to them, “Hurry up now! Split into groups and assign yourselves to the exits. Grenham,” he pointed to the second cop, bringing up the rear of that dangerous dozen. “You’re with me and your partner. We’ll be heading out front.” To Office Byrne, “You got the keys?”
Byrne pulled out a keyring and shook his keys at the Baron. “What’s the plan?”
“We park on the street and wait. If he comes out front, we run him down.”
The officer nodded. Grenham joined them. Nobody else approached, but the remainder of the mob was huddled, chatting amongst themselves. They were forming a hierarchy without the Baron sitting at the top, but he couldn’t justify interfering any further. Damnit.
He needed more time away. Time to direct his marks. He knocked off the ash and went for the passenger’s door on the car. “Take me around the front.”
“Sure can.” Officer Byrne opened the driver’s side, leaned over the interior of the car, and unlocked the passenger’s side for the Baron. They got in, with the second cop taking the back bench behind the cage. Byrne started the car and rolled them towards the street.
“What’s your beef with the Baron?” Grenham asked from the backseat.
The Baron wasn’t paying much attention to the unarmed police officer. He was trying his damndest to dehumanize them both, to ensure that he had no sympathy for the people he might harm. It was a deliberate act to make it possible to pull the trigger of a gun when facing someone he didn’t hate and hadn’t attempted to take his life yet.
It wasn’t working. Grenham was young and curly-haired, mid-20s, and clearly the rookie assigned to Byrne’s veteran position. He must’ve been a teen when he got sucked into Communist circles for good reasons—labor reasons—only for the States and the Soviets to ruin his life from two directions at once. Now he might die, working for Malik.
“I already told you,” d’Holbach muttered. “New wife in Boston, new life. Now it’s all shot because the Baron wouldn’t give up yesterday.” He shook his head. “Fucking Langley.”
“Where were you yesterday anyways?” asked Grenham.
“Red Hook,” the Baron said.
“You were there when they had the shootout with the mobster?”
“I used to fucking work for the man,” the Baron answered ambiguously, implying nothing about his location or his actions. Ambiguity was his last solid defense.
Officer Byrne parked the car out front but left the engine running.
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Officer Grenham.
The Baron glanced in the rearview mirror. The cop was squinting at him. It’d been a mistake to call him along, but Officer Byrne would’ve been suspicious if the Baron hadn’t explicitly invited them both on this farcical stakeout. One of the cultists must’ve identified the Baron already, but best guess? There’d been an argument. Nobody had been able to prove he was the Baron. Now Grenham was trying to determine it for himself.
“I was spotting for the traffic admin, checking if our boys fought to the bitter end. I saw Barilla’s corpse in an alley. It was strange. I worked for him on the docks.” The Baron sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Fuckin’ Russian sent us up against Schuler himself. Miserable shit.”
“I didn’t see you at any of the meetups,” Grenham noted.
“When? Back in the bad old days or leading up to this disaster?”
“Both.”
“Were you a stevedore?” the Baron asked.
“No.”
“I was. Beating people was a better job.”
“Where were you when the traffic administrator was briefing us?”
“Did he do that?” the Baron asked grimly. “Stupid to show his face to a bunch of people that hate him. I was approached a while back. A Soviet cultist came to my work. He said they could activate me at any time. Just wait for the call or we’ll tell your wife.”
The cop smiled a little. “Nah, he wasn’t—nevermind.”
The Baron felt a flood of relief. Grenham had asked a trick question, and d’Holbach had anticipated it correctly. As it was, the officer in the back almost certainly wanted to trust him. Otherwise, he would’ve flaunted his suspicions instead of accepting the Baron’s answers.
Fortunately, it’d been easy to guess how the Soviets were activating their fifth column insurgency. The Baron wasn’t going to be tripped up with bland references to a recent, unreal past.
“I don’t hate the guy,” said Officer Byrne. “I just made a mistake.”
“Joining the Pinkos?” the Baron asked.
“It was a labor movement. I wanted more money. Now, I just want my life back.”
The Baron almost suppressed his frown, but not quite. He didn’t want to know this kind of thing. He didn’t want to know about the people he’d hurt simply by resisting. No more details, he hoped, and no more stories. Hurting people was psychotic. Hurting enemy combatants was, until the modern era, a gentleman’s profession, made easy by class divisions and prejudices.
Now, in a more egalitarian era, it felt like violence was everyone’s duty.
Officer Byrne killed the engine but left the keys in the ignition. Now, there’d be nothing but time until the Baron made his move. It couldn’t happen instantly. d’Holbach needed to wait long enough for these men to get impatient. Then he could suggest checking on another temple.
Alas, time wasn’t free, and the balance here was precarious. The Baron felt confident that he’d taken control of these two officers for the short-term, but these kinds of false identities failed quickly in practice, and someone might come over to question him soon. He watched the mirrors for more CPUSA on the approach.
Grenham leaned forward. “Hey, Ray, did you ever read that book, by that lady?”
“A book?” the Baron asked.
“The one about the occult. She wrote it.”
“The Apostate?”
“Yeah, that’s the one, Apostasy. You read it?”
“What’s an apostate?” Byrne asked.
“It’s someone who renounces their religion,” the Baron said. “Yeah, I read it.”
“She stopped being a cultist?” Byrne asked.
“No, she stepped outside, kinda. You know, refused to play ball? Bartered with the gods.”
“Ah, trade!”
“Yeah. That was enough for the people who named her.”
Grenham piped up, “She wrote good things about the Baron.”
“Not much though,” the Baron replied.
“Still, you’ve read it. He keeps that monster under control. Are you sure you want to kill him?”
The Baron shrugged. “I don’t know, officer. A man can live a good life and still do something bad. I’d know. I’ve been that man for years.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking death here. And there’s that Pact, right?”
The Baron shrugged. “I don’t think about it too much.”
“We’ve at least got to catch him, or we’re dead anyways,” Officer Byrne said. “I don’t like it though.”
“I’m with you. Shit. I guess we can try to capture him, if we can isolate him.” The Baron caught a flicker of motion in the rearview mirror, and he turned around to look back. Officer Grenham was confused, then turned with him.
A trio of men in business suits was leaving the back alley. They spotted the squad car, pointed. The man at the lead was tugging on his jacket lapel, showing a strap from a shoulder holster. He was getting ready to pull his pistol. The two men behind him were carrying improvised clubs. One was a solid copper candlestick. The other was a wooden rod, slapped like a drumbeat against his palm.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Officer Grenham asked.
Byrne stared into the rearview mirror. “Huh. I know them.”
The Baron grunted, pretending calm even as his heart began to race. These men were advertising their aggression, but they weren’t trying to warn the Baron or scare him off. They were working themselves up to a confrontation. They were psyching themselves into believing they were innately violent.
Who else could their target be, but the Baron himself?
Author’s Note:
Skullduggery!
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
A short run remained between the Baron and the first pier of Welfare Island. By the power of the Cat o’ Nine lives, he was literally heating up. Whether it was chemistry, magic, or some combination of the two, it hardly mattered. Sweat was running from the hatband down into his eyes.
With the wounds on his gut, there was no more point to the fiction. He pulled off his hard hat and threw it over the railing. It tumbled out of sight, objectively over a hundred feet to the water, subjectively lost to an endless fall.
“Keep yours!” Phyllis called to the men behind her.
“Yes, ma’am!” came a chorus of cries.
“Baron!” the Zombie yelled. “Let me pass!”
The Baron slowed to a halt, grabbing onto one of the vertical suspension bars that hung from the trusses above. He leaned right, and the Zombie darted left around him, sprinting towards the pier. The entire catwalk shook from his long strides, making it hard for the Baron to let go, but he had to trust in himself, in the Zombie, and in the Cat. He had to keep moving.
d’holbach released the pole and ran. The water shimmered and wavered below him, but as long as both motion and will were clean, he would not fall.
The Zombie had made the correct tactical call. A member of the National Guard with thick glasses, a man like an athletic office worker, stepped out onto the catwalk where it circled around the right side of the pier, holding a Springfield rifle in his hands. He casually lifted the weapon and peered down its scope, aiming at the invincible man. Then he yelled something. The word was inaudible over the sounds of traffic, heavy breathing, and heavier footfalls, but they all understood what it meant. Stop.
The Zombie pulled off his hardhat and waved it towards the Guardsman, yelling at the top of his lungs, “We need help! We need help!”
“Halt!” the Guardsman repeated, finally loud enough to be understood. Another soldier stepped out onto the catwalk behind Springfield, holding a Thompson. There’d be more in the next few seconds. Given enough time, there’d be a whole platoon.
“Clear the path!” the Baron roared at the Zombie.
They needed to push the Guard out of the pier’s hallway and send Phyllis’s crew down the stairwells to Welfare Island. If those men didn’t leave the combat zone immediately, they’d become a part of this madness and almost certainly die or go to jail for a long, long time. The Baron wouldn’t let that happen. He’d failed to keep the peace. He wouldn’t fail these men again.
“Help!” the Zombie shouted in mid-sprint, waving the hardhat.
The man with the Springfield moved a few steps forward on the catwalk, taking aim around the corner of the pier. “Last chance! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
“Help me, god damn you!” The Zombie waved the hardhat with his left hand, caught a support bar at the corner with his right, and swung ninety degrees onto the stretch of catwalk that wrapped around the pier, keeping almost all of his wild momentum in front of the limestone face.
Springfield pulled the trigger, and the bullet apparently passed through the Zombie, spattering against the stretch of catwalk behind him. The Baron refused to flinch and kept running. They were about twenty feet out from the pier now. Welfare Island was rising out of the water beneath them.
A second shot, and the bullet caught in the Zombie’s eyesocket, stopping perfectly dead before rolling off like a dropped bauble.
Springfield hesitated, uncertain of what he’d seen.
The Zombie dropped his hardhat over his splayed fingers, closed the gap, and swung the hat under the rifle’s barrel, up towards Springfield’s chest. The attack should’ve shattered the Zombie’s fingers. Instead, the hardhat exploded outwards like a handgrenade. Shards punched Springfield’s rib-cage inward like a collapsing building, destroyed the rifle’s stock, and sent the victim’s body up and back with enough force to hit the rail behind him, flip foot-over-head backwards, and tumble away into thin air, already dead.
“Fucking Christ!” bellowed one of Phyllis’s men.
The Zombie caught a flying chunk of the ruined Springfield rifle, swept around the pier’s corner, and swung it sideways into the man with the Thompson. A short trigger pull was interrupted by a normal blow, striking the man’s firing arm; three bullets must’ve spattered across the Zombie’s chest, damaging his shirt. The Zombie tossed the impromptu club, grabbed the staggering man with two handfuls of dress uniform, and heaved up and out with an awkward twist of his back; the gods obliged, launching Thompson over the railing with supernatural ease. This man lived for three more seconds, screaming until he stopped.
“Keep going!” Phyllis roared.
The Baron hit the outside of the pier with his body weight, slamming hands and collapsing elbows up against the limestone. Then he pushed off, leaving a bloody smear on the white stone, and he ran for the corner, past wood splinters and bent guard rails.
Screams erupted in the hallway around the corner. The Zombie was going in.
“Give me that!” the invincible man shouted.
Then more gunshots, and the scrapes and claps of boots sprinting away.
The Baron had to trust the room was clear. He ran to the narrow gap where the cladding had been removed for catwalk access, grabbed hold of the edges, and looked inside.
The Zombie was standing beneath the old sodium lights, holding an 1911 pistol over three dead Guardsmen. A fourth man was crawling slowly up the stairs to the trolley platform. “It’s clear!” he shouted, before he turned, aimed, and killed the final living target.
“Go up, keep the room clear until the men go down!” the Baron yelled.
Phyllis caught up to him a second later, catching onto the cladding beside him. “What’s happening?” she shouted.
“I’ll run along the underside!” the Baron ordered the Zombie, informing everyone of his plans. “Once the union boys are out, go east on the bridge! Meet me at the next pier!”
The Zombie saluted with a lazy swing of the pistol barrel, then sprinted up the short stairwell and into the dim sunlight above the roadbed. Instantly, several men opened fire with automatic weapons, making the Zombie’s jacket flutter and dance like he’d emerged into a hurricane. He aimed the 1911, shouting at the top of his lungs, “I’m bulletproof!” Then he fired.
“Go!” Phyllis yelled, pulling the Baron back and waving her boys into the hallway. “Take the stairs down! Find some Guard! Report what’s happening! You’re victims, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am!” they all shouted.
“Blame Communists! Go!” she roared.
Her union workers ducked into the room and darted for the steps that ran parallel to the elevator system. No more words were exchanged. They simply fled into the spiralling stairwell like their lives depended on it, and the door slammed shut behind them.
“You too?” the Baron asked, offering to let her flee.
She waved the revolver. “Will you use it? Will you kill?”
The Baron hesitated. The answer should be yes, but he hadn’t really readied his heart, had he? He fucking hesitated.
“Then I’m with you!” she yelled. “Come on!”
They bolted around the exterior of the pier, to the next stretch of catwalk. This span of the bridge was nearly six hundred feet long, about half the previous length. It crossed most of Welfare Island before reaching the eastern pier.
At a strong run, it’d take forty seconds to a minute. That felt like too goddamn long, but the Baron willed it, and he ran.
Somewhere overhead, the shouts of men transformed to panicked screaming. The Zombie was punishing the people on the trolley platform around the entrance. A limp body fell over the road’s edge behind them, dropping past the catwalk. Small arms fire attempted to rebuke the threat, failing almost instantly as the Zombie fought eastward across the lower deck of the Queensboro Bridge. A second later, lumbering vehicles roared into life, diesel engines snarling. The bridge shuddered as heavy equipment moved overhead.
“Gods!” Phyllis yelled, keeping close behind the Baron. “What’s he doing?”
“Drawing attention!” the Baron yelled. Head down, he ignored the blood loss, and crossed two hundred feet in a solid twenty-second run. Already, his body was complaining, but he couldn’t stop now.
1400 feet of bridge remained before they could take a stairwell down to Queens. The Baron was capable of that distance while healthy, so he’d trust the Cat to maintain his strength and care for his wounds.
A thunderous boom blossomed somewhere behind them, only partially muffled by the roadbed. The sound wasn’t merely heard. Its force was felt in the back of the Baron’s brain, and an ancient memory leapt to mind, a fearful flash of a 12-pounder Napoleon cannon firing in the dark. A century ago, shots and shells flew with equal ease, obliterating earthworks before showering cowered ranks of soldiers with shrapnel. It was a nightmare, a trauma flashback. d’Holbach gritted his teeth and jerked his shoulders but didn’t stumble.
Tanks would give the National Guard momentary hope, but they wouldn’t stop the Zombie. They wouldn’t even deliver enough force to throw him over the side of the bridge, though they might knock him down.
If only they weren’t secular, they might’ve known better. The best strategy here was to drop arms and rush the Zombie as a group. Against bare hands, he was no stronger than any other man, and constrained, he couldn’t always force a divine intervention. Lives would be lost, but they could carry him to the side and throw him off the bridge.
Instead, they fired at the invincible man. They gave him the freedom to move, to build up speed and attack hardened targets with his would-be-soft body.
Even though the Zombie was his friend, the Baron regretted permitting this kind of asymmetric fight. So many people would die, and so many vehicles would be destroyed on an important bridge. Yet the fire in the Baron’s belly was stolen. It was meant for other hands. Lo, Prometheus, titan whose head was light from blood loss. This artifact was a gift of fire, peace stolen out of the hands of warmakers—
“Keep running!” Phyllis urged.
Shit. He was losing it, slowing down. He concentrated on thinking straight, and warmth rushed up the arteries in his neck. The lightness became heavy again. The Cat handled the blood loss and cleared his head. Speed returned to his limbs.
While they ran, the sounds of gunfire receded into the distance behind them. Wherever the Zombie stood untouchable, people were dying.
Another twenty seconds passed.
There was a deafening thump that threatened to pull the world out from under their feet. The closest thing the Baron could compare it to was the explosion of a gunpowder dump, a punch in every direction, throwing the catwalk down a half inch. It rose back instantly and slapped his feet, causing him to fall forward and land on his chest. A snowfall of rust and flaking paint showered over his bare, sweat-streaked scalp. The bridge swayed lightly like it was made of string and paper, but it didn’t break. It was meant to withstand the fury and might of a hurricane, and whatever had exploded had taken most of the direct damage.
“What the fuck?” Phyllis was down on her knees, clutching the revolver like a talisman against evil. She pushed to her feet, keeping the weapon at hand.
“I don’t know!” The Baron pushed to his feet and ran again. There was no other choice.
Welfare Island stretched out below like a mottled finger, a patchy mixture of empty barren lots, newly rising tenements, and derelict prison facilities. To the south, one could glimpse a 19th century city in ruins, an abandoned complex of fences and gutted buildings rotting in the sun. North was a cleared flatland, a texture rubbed out by machinery.
Directly underneath the bridge, the island population bloomed like brown mold. There was a nine-story elevator building just north of the eastern pier, known as the Elevator Storehouse. It connected vehicle and pedestrian traffic from the lower deck of the Queensboro Bridge to the island below. New buildings and facilities clustered around this terminal connection point—steepled churches, towering white hospitals, and a well-kept baseball diamond.
Welfare Island was poor, condensed, and yet somehow growing because the broader middle class couldn’t be bothered to reach it. Ferries and elevator buildings were thin roads for exploitation, and prior to World War II, developers had layered the island with asylums and institutions. Now, cheap homes and apartments filled the gaps.
They ran onwards. Gunfire petered off to a trickle. Car engines were sparse now, fleeing this span of the bridge. Violence was muted after that blast, and wouldn’t recover for some seconds. “It’s too quiet,” the Baron said, jogging doggedly onward.
“Yeah,” Phyllis muttered, recognizing the same eerie shift.
Approaching the next architectural pier, the Baron spotted something new—a set of pedestrian stairs, connecting the lower deck of the bridge to the Elevator Storage roof. The steps branched off the south edge of the bridge, ran maybe twenty feet past the pier, and sloped down to the east. They then cut left, running north through a series of dangling steel trusses that spread out below the maintenance catwalks. Finally, the steps jumped the open air to the rooftop walkway, completing a path off the bridge and onto the island below.
The only other route to the Elevator Storage building was a vehicle elevator hooked to the north side of the pier, which rose up high enough to collect cars directly off the lower deck.
“The Guard is still up there,” Phyllis noted. “Should we take those stairs?
The Baron shook his head, panting. “Only if we can’t get to Queens.”
There were only three paths to those stairs, and all of them were dangerous. They could ascend to the trolley platform above and take the intended path down, passing through the Guard directly; they could jump more than two stories from the catwalks, risking injury; or they could climb down the narrow support trusses which held up the stairs, hazarding a fall. In every case, they’d be more than a hundred feet over the streets and buildings of Welfare Island.
“Keep it in mind,” Phyllis huffed, jogging behind him. “Do you hear the Zombie?”
The Baron put out a hand. “Listen for a sec.” They slowed until their footsteps no longer rang through the metal. They tilted their ears up to the roadbed, listening keenly. Even gunshots had finally paused, leaving only the idle chatter of diesel engines.
“Nothing?” Phyllis asked.
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” the Baron whispered.
“Let’s move then.”
His heartbeat throbbed along the lines of fire, the lashings of the Cat. He resumed jogging, looking towards their destination. No threats were visible; if Guardsmen were close, they were hunkered down instead of stalking the underbelly of the bridge.
“Check the entrance?” Phyllis asked quietly, gesturing towards the connection between the catwalk and the hallway inside the next pier.
“I’ll do it.” The Baron had the Cat. It only made sense for him to risk his life first.
They reached the connection point where the walk bound itself to the exterior of the pier, and they slowed to a walk, mirroring the strange peace around them. The indifferent wind sang, diesel engines rumbled, and lightning flickered on the horizon, but nothing more.
“Did somebody wish for silence?” Phyllis asked softly
“I don’t think so.” The Baron stalked twenty feet to the corner of the pier, then put both hands against the limestone cladding and leaned around, checking with one eye. Nobody was there. “Clear,” he whispered, pulling himself around and towards the gap in the cladding.
Phyllis followed close behind, angling the revolver’s barrel towards the roadbed above. The Baron placed one hand on the edge of the cladding, exchanged nods with Phyllis to affirm readiness, and then leaned out to see if anyone was hiding in the hall.
Nobody. The stairwell up to the lower deck was bounded with sandbags, but there were no people in view. There was a hint of a parked vehicle at the top of the stairs, and the Baron could just make out the distinct shudder of an idling engine, but nothing else was noticeable.
Was someone ordering the Guard to wait strategically? Was the Zombie gone altogether, tossed over the bridge’s edge without them noticing?
The Baron simply walked past the open gap to the next corner and checked it, looking for anyone hiding against the back of the architectural pier. Clear again.
He waved Phyllis over, and she scurried forward, catching up to him.
“Suspicious,” she whispered.
“Just keep going,” he said quietly.
They left the pier behind, stalking out onto the final stretches of catwalk. As the world opened out beneath their feet again, the dizzying height was a relief. Only a hundred feet ahead, the island ended and the open waters of the eastern channel began.
Far ahead, they could already see the banks of Queens.
Somewhere to the northeast, towards those dark clouds, LaGuardia waited.
“The Zombie will catch up,” the Baron explained. “We need to get off this bridge immediately. Are you ready?”
“I’ll keep up,” Phyllis said.
d’Holbach picked up the pace, running like he was on the last mile of a marathon, breathing deep and steady. Phyllis followed closely, looking back every so often.
Somewhere distant and somehow omnipresent, diesel engines roared into life all at once. Shifting, grumbling, they moved in all directions. “Is that ahead of us?” he asked.
“Behind too,” Phyllis said.
With coordination, the National Guard was starting to move all up and down the bridge. Where was the Zombie? Was he reacting to the deployment?
The Baron and Phyllis were reaching the connection point between the island’s span and the cantilever arm sloping down towards Queens. Here, the whole roadbed vibrated sympathetically to the rumble of tracks on pavement. The Guard’s vehicles weren’t directly overhead, but the bridge was alive with the sounds of machinery.
They paused at the cusp of the curve in the slope, at the edge of the internal horizon where the bridge began to roll down towards Queens, and the Baron spotted men at the distant waterside pier. He squinted, recognizing the color. National Guardsmen were crawling out of the cladding, out onto the distant catwalks. “Uniforms,” he said. “From Queens.”
Phyllis stopped right behind him. “Jesus.”
It wasn’t much, maybe half a dozen soldiers with rifles, but without the Zombie, they were an unstoppable threat. They were almost a thousand feet away, but there was no hiding from them. Fingers were pointing. Binoculars were already raised.
“We can’t go forward,” the Baron said. He turned to look at Phyllis, ready to say we have to go back, but then he spotted something worse. Men in uniforms were exiting onto the catwalks on both sides of the Welfare Island pier—two per side so far. After they’d passed, someone must’ve signalled it, maybe from Welfare Island itself. “Behind us too.”
“I’ll jam them if they raise guns,” Phyllis said. “Let’s start back. Now.”
“If anyone shoots—” the Baron began.
He felt it before he heard it, a shot in his back from the direction of Queens, plunging inwards. He released a wet cough, then a wheeze.
“What’s wrong?” Phyllis asked, glancing back at him.
The sound caught up, a distant rifle crack, and with ill-timing, pain finally reported the damage to his right lung. One of the riflemen had struck him from all the way down at the Queens pier. The entry wound was just below the Baron’s right armpit. The entire lung was seizing, punctured, ready to collapse.
He didn’t allow himself to fall. He chose to drop flat.
Phyllis dropped with him, lying flat on the catwalk to minimize their silhouette. “Fuck!” she yelled. “We need the Zombie!”
The Baron demanded his body to breathe. There was no choice in the matter. He needed the oxygen. Even the fluid-filled lung must work, if the Cat required it. He gritted his jaw until he thought his teeth would break; then his nostrils hissed as fire gripped his lungs and pulled them open, and the Baron felt the sharp pain of the rifle wound gurgling on his flank, bringing in air. “Breathe!” he shouted into the catwalk with his new, blistering hot breath. The flavor of roasted blood spread over his tongue, thick and metallic.
Phyllis aimed her revolver towards Welfare Island, then fired once. The men at the pier darted back for cover, and she squinted at them, trying to spot their weapons. “Broken! Broken! Broken! Broken?” she wished loudly. “That’s them! Up! We have to go, or we’re fucked!”
“Yes. One… Yes.” In, out, the Baron breathed. Easier now, because the hole in his flank was sewing shut. He was dizzy, then clear, then dizzy again, as if he was hypoxic for one second, then breathing pure oxygen for the next. The world was oversaturated, colors ran full of rainbows, and the sky was glimmering like pearls.
“Bulletproof!” came the shout at Welfare Island. “Bulletproof! Bulletproof!”
The Baron tilted his head up in time to see the Zombie tackle a fifth Guardsman out of the pier hallway and into a support bar for the catwalk, smashing his victim’s face against a steel tube. One of the Guardsmen twisted towards the ruckus, pulling the trigger on a dead gun. The Zombie released his first victim to land in a heap, then darted into the second victim fingers-first, plunging them into the man’s lungs and holding him there by the ribs, gurgling.
On the far side of the pier, the last two soldiers rose out of cover, running away from the Zombie and towards the Baron and Phyllis
Phyllis aimed, then fired twice. Both men tumbled down, either dead or injured and disarmed, and the path was temporarily open for them to run back towards Welfare island.
The Zombie pulled out his knife, thumbing it open with his free hand. His captured victim unholstered a 1911 and started emptying it into the Zombie’s stomach, groin, and thighs. With devilish delight, the Zombie cut the soldier’s throat open from one side to another, then dropped him to die.
One remaining soldier was backed up to a corner of the catwalk, screaming hysterically. The Zombie took two steps forward and kicked him in the chest. He fell back over the railing, hit the sloped side of the tower no more than fifteen feet down with the back of his head, and died, painting a red streak down the stone. The body tumbled out of view, and the Zombie looked up, finally aware of his surroundings.
The Baron pushed up onto his arms and waved.
The Zombie waved back. His clothes were filled with bullet holes, and there were a couple of fist sized patches missing, but the seams were holding together. He still wore shoes.
“He’s your friend,” Phyllis murmured sadly, grieving that truth while the Zombie wiped blood across his tattered shirt.
“He is,” the Baron said.
“I already knew he was dangerous, but… you really can’t die here.”
The Baron stood up and breathed deeply. “I know.”
“Baron!” the Zombie shouted. “Come!”
“Coming!” The Baron jogged.
The Zombie heard something and turned towards the hole in the cladding. A pineapple grenade landed neatly on the catwalk. No time to throw it back, so he scooped it up and cupped his hand away from the bridge.
The explosion was directed out in a silvery-black puff of shrapnel and smoke.
Then the Zombie stepped back towards the entrance to the pier, flipping the bird while enduring a sudden rain of gunfire. Men must be standing inside the hallway, armed and ready.
The Zombie stepped back briefly, cupping his hands to his mouth. “I’ll have to clear the deck!” he shouted. Then he slipped back into the line of fire like a child diving into a sprinkler, laughed under the patter of bullets, and waded in to fight the enemy.
Phyllis was close behind the Baron. “We can’t follow him! We have to take the stairs!”
The Baron felt a sweep of dread, but Phyllis was right. There was no way out—only down to Welfare Island—and they’d have to reach the stairwell without passing through the National Guard. “We’ll climb the trusses, drop down!” he shouted.
“Alright!”
Somewhere above, shouts were mixing with the screech of jeep tires. The rumble of tanks redoubled, shifting gears to change notes in a diesel melody. Forces weren’t fleeing the Zombie; they were congealing around him like a blood clot.
Ignoring the lashings of pain up and down his ribs, the Baron sprinted for a stretch of catwalk about twenty feet from the pier on this side, suspended high over the stairs to the Elevator Storage building. Metal trusses connected the lower deck to these free-floating stairs like a spider’s web, securing them like a fly in thin air.
As they reached it, the Zombie ducked back out onto the catwalks, now slinging fresh blood from hands soaked up to the wrists, cuffs sopping wet and dark. He pointed left. “It’s a mess up there!” The sound of tanks was almost directly overhead.
“We’re climbing down!” the Baron shouted, pointing to the stairs below the catwalks.
The Zombie cast him a thumbs up. “Don’t die!”
“I won’t!”
“I’ll cover you!” The invincible man scooped up a rifle off of one of the corpses, then backed out onto the corner of the walk and aimed at the opposite side of the pier, just in case someone decided to sneak around the outside.
The Baron looked over the waist high railing. Below them, there was over a hundred feet of spring air, the shade of the bridge, two rows of tenement buildings fifty-feet tall, and a street laid across the land like a blacktop valley. If he fell, three seconds separated him from failure. The Cat wasn’t guaranteed to save him here. A high fall might count as multiple deaths.
Phyllis clapped a hand to the Baron’s shoulder. “Are you scared?”
He felt the bridge shift beneath him. Whether that was the wind, the armored units, or just a sudden surge of fear breaking its leash, he couldn’t tell. “Yeah.”
“I can go first.”
“Okay. Quick though.”
The Zombie’s aim was rock steady. When a Guardsman peeked the opposite corner, he fired, clipping a man’s brow just beneath the lip of his helmet. It wasn’t a fatal shot, but the man reeled back, screaming in terror. They’d just gained a few seconds to climb.
Phyllis stepped over the railing, spread her arms out slightly, and dropped a half a foot down onto the slope of the nearest truss. For a moment, she wavered, but there was no fear in her eyes, and she won her balance instantly. The steel trusses laced the bridge’s structure in a broad X, crossing at a node about fifteen feet over the suspended stairs. If she hung from there, she could drop down maybe nine or ten feet more and land on metal steps.
He crouched down, almost dizzy from watching her climb.
She reached the node, squatted, grabbed the edges of the beams, and lowered her body down. Here, she hesitated, looking repeatedly to make sure the stairs were underfoot. Then she dropped, slammed into the metal with a bang, and fell forward onto her hands and knees.
“Phyllis,” the Baron hissed sympathetically.
She was shaking slightly, but she pushed up onto her feet and grabbed the stair’s railings. “Come on,” she cried. “You too!”
He slid under the catwalk railing instead of going over it, trying to lower his right foot onto the truss. The steel beam seemed to wobble underfoot, but that was just the wavering strength of the leg beneath his wounds. He willed the Cat’s fire to hold him steady and set his weight on that thin strip of metal over the void. Then he followed with his left foot, keeping his arms loose but close to his body. He didn’t throw them wide, he didn’t panic, because he was already balanced. No matter what his instincts said, his rational mind insisted on what was true.
The truss was nine inches wide. If he could’ve wished his fears away, he could’ve run on it. Instead, he mechanically arranged one foot in front of the other. Round, button-shaped bolts were smooth underfoot. He ignored the fear that they’d foul his footing. They’d only foul if he overreacted. If his leg jerked away. If he reacted.
One foot. Then another.
One foot after another.
Phyllis was saying over the wind, “You’re halfway there.”
He could see the node approaching.
“You’re almost there.” She didn’t tell him to hurry. He was hurrying.
Ten steps distant. He wished he could go faster. Nine. Eight.
“Baron!” Phyllis shouted, looking past him. “Broken! Broken!” she wished desperately.
d’Holbach planted both feet on the slope of the truss and half-turned towards the enemy, looking up and out towards Queens.
At the connection between spans, the assaulting party reached the top of their hill and found him as an easy target, some hundred yards away but vulnerable. Their binoculars were in hand. Springfields with scopes were being lifted. But they were broken, weren’t they?
One Guardsman said something, tapped a rifle.
A cold jolt of fear ran through the Baron. Was that a Langley cultist, fixing guns?
He turned, ready to run down the truss. There were several sharp barks of rifle fire, and his body jerked involuntarily. Numb for a moment, he nevertheless knew he’d been shot. The world reeled; his arms spiraled. Pain lanced through his back and chest, revealing an entry wound just beneath his shoulder blade and an exit wound beside his heart.
He wanted to cry out, to express his panic to Phyllis. How absurd.
The Earth turned to spin out from under him, but he dropped down towards the beam, grabbed onto it with his hands, and held on tight, even as his entire left lung collapsed and the Cat forced it full again, a now familiar repair.
The Zombie threw the corpse of a fresh victim off the bridge, turned and sprinted at a speed that was damaging the catwalks, like sledgehammers on thin steel sheeting. “Baron!” he roared.
“Broken!” Phyllis shouted uselessly.
The Baron let go and pushed up. He ran at full speed for the node, aiming to jump to the stairs. Instead, his calf burst open, timed by the crack of another volley, and failed him.
He fell left over the truss, over open air. The screeching adrenaline seized him, and he fell out of his pain; it seemed to remain behind him, a ghost of sensation feeling fatal wounds, haunting the shadows among the trusses of the bridge.
He tumbled over, passing so close to Phyllis. The first second was the slowest. Then the world accelerated, and he was in the terrible sunlight. There were no second chances. No resurrection. “No pain—” he began to wish, but he felt the gods’ denial, for he already felt nothing. Oh, tumbling corpse to be, have you left the world already?
The bridge accelerated away, Phyllis already small.
He reached for his pocket as the Earth orbited around him in a sickening tumble. No penny. A wallet, and something else. In the corner of one eye, buildings scraped the sky.
He grabbed the object. The last cigar from Tammany Hall, still kept. Words spilled out of him quickly; adrenaline stretched out what little remained. Have time! Have time!
“This—”
Into the final shadow of buildings, no longer under the sun.
“—is—”
The valley of high-rise tenements, the passage of floors.
“—lit!”
Glimpses of windows, arches. Even doors.
Thunder. He landed in the Stygian darkness of debt, then fell out of his torpor at full speed, body seizing in one solid jerk. Up half a foot, then slamming down hard into the floor, like a dream of falling awoken with a hypnagogic jerk. He’d dodged.
A croak of pain rose out of him, but the darkness responded instantly, shushing him. Torpor was insistent. It’d only leave if he chose to be aware, and he didn’t choose the pain. He refused to feel his artery, severed alongside his still-beating heart. He refused to feel warm blood, spilling onto the carpet. He refused to feel himself die yet again.
Thoughtless sleep was better than any suffering.
This was the past, five days ago, in a sanctuary. While his body bled out and filled up with the energy of the Cat, he was also outside, earnestly rushing forward through time and space to nearly die and end up here.
The gods claimed he had a choice, but what choice was there in that? He couldn’t leave to warn himself. His debt locked the door, and it would open at the very moment that he made his wish. The cigar would be grasped for days in a clammy, still palm.
The Cat knitted him while his mind faded to hibernation.
Time was lost.
Author’s Note:
A/N goes here.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
The Queensboro bridge was about seven thousand feet in length by car, including long approaches up to the spans. They’d skipped a couple thousand feet at the start by coming up through the old trolley station, then passed over another five hundred feet between the two architectural piers on Manhattan. From there to the western pier on Welfare Island, it was over a thousand feet of catwalk, suspended high over the west channel of the East River.
The Baron started towards the catwalk on the south edge of the pier, calling for people to follow. “This way! We’ll climb down at the second pier!”
Private Clark and Sergeant Yearwood fell in behind him, followed by the Zombie, Phyllis, and the rest of the work crew. Shimmying one by one through the narrow gap, they stepped out onto a layer of steel, separating them from the yawning void. The Baron put a hand on the railing and walked briskly, ignoring a wavering vertigo.
The catwalk wrapped around the back of the pier and connected up to the trusses on the underside of the lower deck. The Baron strode forward, hearing footsteps behind him, feeling the weight of all these people on a single stretch of suspended metal.
Ahead, the next span of the bridge reached a thousand feet to its first connection on Welfare Island. That distant pier was about a hundred and twenty five feet tall, but it looked much smaller than a fist at arm’s length. The Baron’s brain couldn’t quite comprehend the distances or scales. With the blankness of sunshine on water, the long shadow of the bridge, and the narrowing perspective, their destination seemed much further away. Miles and miles.
He took a few steps out and turned back to check on the progress of the men following him. Yearwood and Clark were moving slower than expected—equally afraid of the heights—but free to show their fears. The Baron grinned, projecting confidence. “High up, I know!” He gestured idly over one shoulder, as if the yawning air and thin metal walkway were as sturdy as the mountains. “I can move on ahead, come back with the IDs, if it helps?”
“Can’t!” Clark yelled over the wind. “Captain wanted us to go!”
“Orders are orders!” Yearwood agreed.
The Baron knew these excuses were thin. Clark had requested to come along; he could easily lie and insist that they’d done their duty, and nobody would know any better. The guards were following him because they suspected him of genuine treachery and wished to stop him. There was no other reason to follow him out onto this perilous walk.
“Fine with me!” d’Holbach called regardless.
The Zombie stood behind Clark, waving towards the Baron. Both Guardsmen were facing forward, unable to see the gesture. When he recognized the Baron’s attention, the Zombie mimed a swipe to the left. He could easily knock one of the soldiers off the walk.
Beyond him, Phyllis and her workers formed a receding tableau of aghast figures. The Baron shook his head very slightly. Those workers had asked for no deaths. He’d try to win this situation through words before they tossed anyone off the bridge.
“What is it?” Yearwood asked, noticing the subtle gesture.
“Just grab the railings if you need ‘em!” the Baron called. “Keep the pace, and we’ll get you back here in less than twenty minutes.” He turned towards the distant pier, keeping his own hands free of the railings, and he strode out into the airy reaches, pretending that he couldn’t feel the catwalk quivering and shimmying under his weight.
In silence, he maintained this confident stride for nearly two hundred feet, until Private Clark finally shouted, “Mr. Davila! Sir! Mr. Davila, stop!”
The Baron stopped, grabbing a railing and looking back across the heady heights. The Guards were hurrying to catch up, suspended with the Baron over the silvery reaches of the river. The Zombie, Phyllis, and the crew were easily keeping pace behind them.
“What’s wrong?” he asked them.
Yearwood answered first. “You’re going too fast!”
The Baron sighed, stressing the sound until it rose over the wind. “We’re on a tight clock! I told you before, I can go grab our stuff and come back up. It wouldn’t take ten minutes.”
“No, sir!” Yearwood yelled. “You might run.”
“Why would I run, goddamnit? I want to inspect the bridge.”
Private Clark fielded the question with a glare. “We can’t prove you’re an inspector! We just can’t!” He stumbled further forward, grabbing at the railing as they finished closing the gap to the Baron. “If you keep pressing, we’ll have to hold you! Arrest you!”
“He’s right,” Yearwood said, striding up to d’Holbach. “It’s our job, Mr. Davila.”
The Baron huffed with real indignation. “It’s interfering with my job.” That was the plain truth. The more they fought with him, the more likely they were to die.
Yearwood stopped in front of him, squinting bleakly. “Every one of those Commie bastards looks, sounds, and works as an American citizen. You understand?”
“So what? What does an ID matter?”
“Records, sir. And prophylaxis. If you’re one of them, we’ll know who you were, where you live. If you don’t have an ID, we’ll hold you until this is over. Simple safety.”
“Why would you think I’m not me? I’m working with a crew.”
“Who don’t know you, sir. They have IDs. You don’t.”
Private Clark, the Zombie, and everyone else finally connected up into a cluster of humanity, dangling beneath the rumbling pavement. “You’ve been acting weird since we met you,” Clark added. “Pushing to go free. Arguing. Bitching.”
“I have to finish work today,” the Baron said.
“It’s not as important as catching those pinkos.” Clark pointed towards the distant pier. “Go on, now. Just don’t rush. We’ll get this done. Then you can get to work.”
The Baron started walking, even as he continued to complain. “You’re really going to slow me down?”
“If you go fast, we’ll arrest you,” Clark said.
“For that matter, if you keep complaining, we’ll arrest you,” Yearwood said.
“Being angry makes him a Communist?” the Zombie asked cheerily.
Clark glanced back. “It makes him suspicious. You’re no better.”
The Zombie laughed, and it was a harsh sound, almost mocking in its cruelty. “Why? Because of my skin color?”
“You said it, not me,” Clark replied.
The Baron felt hairs rising on his arms. This was a dangerous line of conversation, and if one of those soldiers acted surly, he might ride that attitude down to the water. “Don’t talk like that now. Mr. Le is a league boxer, and we’re on a catwalk.”
“So what?” Yearwood asked.
“So I throw a mean punch,” the Zombie replied.
“Are you threatening me?” the Sergeant asked, flashing anger like lightning.
The Zombie laughed even louder.
The Baron jumped on the answer: “I’m asking you to not poke a man with a temper worse than mine. I don’t want any fighting under the bridge. I want to work.”
“You’re the one pickin’ fights,” Yearwood replied.
“Because I know when to end them. Mr. Le doesn’t.”
Phyllis shouted from the back, “Can you stop arguing and walk? I want this inspection done before sunset!”
“What about overtime?” asked the Irishman.
“Stuff your overtime,” Phyllis replied gruffly.
With her words, the tension momentarily abated, though the clouds of conflict hadn’t vanished. They were a little over a third of the way across now, and in about 600 feet, they’d reach Welfare Island’s western pier. By then, they’d either have to convince these men to back down, or they’d have to disable or kill them. The union crew didn’t want anything to do with dead soldiers, so if the worst happened, they’d have to be separated from the Zombie before he did the deed.
It sickened the Baron to know that they might end up killing two men who were just trying to serve their country, but there was little else he could do if they insisted on arresting him. Saving Marco had been a luxury, and at times it’d been a foolish one. In contrast, saving these two would be a liability. For the sake of the world, disposing of them might be best.
They passed another four hundred feet over the western channel. Fresh, heavy winds picked up around them, whistling over the catwalk and through the trusses. Everyone but the Zombie adjusted their clothes, tightening their postures. The Zombie breathed deep, enjoying the sensation of high open air. The Baron looked into the wind from time to time, seeking the horizon past the city skyline. Eventually, the angle of the East River curved just so, revealing a slate barrier peeking over the horizon from the North Atlantic.
This morning’s dry cold front had blown out over the Gulf stream and concentrated the scattered strength of the warm current. Now it was returning to land, first as foreboding clouds, but by sunset as a vicious nor’easter storm. Even at this incredible distance, even in the light of the afternoon, the Baron could see dim wreaths of lightning dancing across their crowns, violence on the edge of the sky. “Storm coming,” he called.
“So there is,” Yearwood replied behind him.
“We really have to be done by sunset!” Phyllis yelled.
At her insistence, the Baron chose to launch one final attempt at deception. “Sergeant,” he said aloud. “Is there anything I can say? Anything I can do that’ll let us get to work faster than heading down to the island?” He chose Yearwood, not Clark, hoping that the man with more authority and less suspicion would offer some final glimpse of hope, away from death.
“Not after a question like that,” Yearwood said.
“You heard the woman.”
“I heard her complain, but you’re the desperate one.”
“Huh.” The Baron sniffed. “What does desperation mean to you, exactly?”
“You’re guilty of something. Hiding something.”
“I’m betting there’s no ID,” Clark said.
“I’m not an insurgent,” the Baron said sharply.
“Still no ID,” Clark insisted.
“Believe what you want,” the Baron replied. “I really am in a hurry. These catwalks will be hellish when they’re wet.”
“We’re not far,” Yearwood said, pointing past the Baron towards the pier, a mere two hundred feet away from them. “It won’t take much longer.”
“Friend?” the Zombie asked.
“Yes?” the Baron replied.
“They aren’t letting us go.”
“I know.”
“What does that mean?” Private Clark asked the Zombie.
“Sounds bad,” Yearwood said bitterly.
The Baron started forward, raising a hand for their attention. The others followed closely, watching him as he announced, “If you want to know the truth, don’t touch your radios. Don’t touch your guns. That’s my request.”
Clark spoke up quickly, letting his voice crack so very slightly. “We’ll radio if we please.”
“I understand,” the Baron said, continuing to march toward the distant pier. “But if you want the truth, you’ll listen before you make that call. All right?”
“I’d do it,” the Zombie said. “I’d listen!”
“Fine,” the Private uttered. “Talk then.”
The Baron glanced back over one shoulder, loosely touching the railing as he kept walking forward. “My name isn’t Davila. And that’s not Le. We’re agents of the ASA. That’s the US Army Security Agency. We’re codebreakers.”
“Bullshit,” Yearwood said sharply.
“We’re delivering a coded message to our CIA contact in Queens. You’ve probably heard his name kicked around today’s operation. Robert Heckhaus.”
“I ain’t heard of him,” Clark replied.
“I might’ve heard something,” Yearwood corrected. “But I still think it’s bullshit. If you were our boys, they’d be waving you through.”
“And flagging us to every Soviet spy in the Guard? I think not,” the Baron continued. “We hired that work crew to walk us over to Queens. Turns out the Guard is doing a better job than our contacts expected.”
Clark turned to Phyllis, peering past the Zombie. “Is that true, ma’am?”
“We were told to start the inspection in Queens,” Phyllis replied, lying easily.
“We don’t know shit about the army,” said a union boy. “This is a job.”
“They don’t know,” the Baron finished, “because they shouldn’t know, but I’m making an exception. You’re good soldiers—good patriots—but I can’t let you get in the way. So please. Write down that we showed ID, and send us on our way. I can supply real addresses, real phone numbers, everything you need, but I can’t let you hold us.”
“Wait, stop,” Yearwood said curtly.
The Baron stopped, and everyone drew to halt behind him. They were maybe a hundred feet from the western pier on Welfare Island. The Zombie was standing behind Clark, carefully watching the man’s hand in case he went for his radio. Phyllis was glaring directly at the Baron with very real disapproval. He’d gone far off the rails with this plan. She had to pretend ignorance. Her men idled behind her, looking down at the shimmering, wind-tossed water beyond their feet. Despite the vertigo, it was easier to behold a deadly height than it was to look upon this confrontation and remain calm.
“Show me the message,” Yearwood said.
“That’s not how this works,” the Baron replied.
“It’s coded, right? You can show me.”
“I can’t. If I open it, our contacts can’t trust it. It has to arrive sealed. They have to know nobody could change it en route.”
“Show me the letter.”
“I can’t—”
“The envelope then!” Yearwood yelled. “Show it to me!”
“I can’t!”
“Show something! A sealed envelope!”
“It’s not an envelope!”
“What is it then? Jesus Christ, just show some proof!”
“I can’t! It’s hidden so nobody can steal it!”
“Fuck this,” Clark said, grabbing the radio at his belt.
The Zombie’s hand shot out like a viper, biting down on the private’s wrist with clenching, pointed fingers. Invincible anatomy compressed Clark’s forearm like it’d been stuffed into the gears of an industrial machine. The twin crunches of ulna and radius came on top of each other, high above the wind. Clark shrieked, dropping the radio with a clang and a bounce, before it tumbled away into the desolate reaches of air, and Clark lurched sideways into the railing with a thud.
The Baron flinched, grabbing hold of the railing himself. Everyone else had the same reaction, instinctually reacting to the awful shake of that thin layer of steel separating everyone from three seconds of plummeting life before instant death.
Everyone except Sergeant Yearwood. He heard Clark’s scream, pulled the revolver out of his waist holster, and aimed it point blank at the Baron. Finger on the trigger.
Before d’Holbach could dodge, or Phyllis could wish to break it, or the Zombie could switch targets, Yearwood showed an immense bravery and an even greater cowardice, and he fired the revolver twice into the unarmed Baron. Wrathful thunder.
“Jammed!” Phyllis finished, but too late.
The Baron’s gut was blasted open above his hip bone in two places. A rib fractured. Fresh novas of pain shone brighter than his force of will. He lost his footing, fell back and to the right over his injured side, and slammed hard onto the railing, wrenching his shoulder in his socket and making the entire arm sear with fire. He slid down, right leg going out over the abyss, but he clawed at the walk with his left arm and yanked back over solid metal, slamming onto his back with a bloody thud. The skin was peeled on his fingertips, but they hardly mattered.
Gunshot wounds were becoming his world. Sharp pain rushed through him, cold, but the Cat burned hot. His vision was filled with swarms of fireflies. He squinted, clearing them.
Facing his killer, he saw Phyllis draw a revolver, aim past the Zombie, and open fire into the backs of the National Guard. Six rounds blazed, lighting the shadows of the bridge with muzzle flashes, until every round was spent. Their genuine hero, Phyllis.
Sergeant Clark jerked twice, slumping loosely to one side before the Zombie dropped him. He rolled off the catwalk and into the open air. Sergeant Yearwood died slower, clasping at his chest and curling up as some part of his nervous system failed. Then his legs gave out from under him, his head banged once on a railing as he went down, and he tumbled forward onto the catwalk, fully flaccid. Another second passed. Clark finally hit the distant water like a rock dropped into a creek, a hollow ka-sploosh from far away and two lifetimes ago.
“Get up!” Phyllis roared, popping the cylinder and pulling a handful of bullets from a jacket pocket. She reloaded her revolver with the dexterity of a woman who’d nervously practiced that motion for months or even years.
Anyone at the pier ahead would hear the gunshots and come looking. The Baron’s mind raced, seeking to make the best of this sudden disaster. They had to cross a hundred feet, eliminate anyone looking into the violence, and get the union boys to safety. Phyllis too, if she would. Only he and the Zombie ought to run. Only they should risk what was coming together.
The Zombie kicked Yearwood’s corpse over the edge of the walk, then offered an arm for the Baron to grab. “Friend! Stand up!”
d’Holbach concentrated on the heat of the Cat in his belly. He could’ve swallowed boiling hot coffee and felt less discomfort, but he knew the effect was temporary. Users acclimated to the artifact; they grew used to its integral role in their survival. The Orthodox faction, unlike most cults of the western world, followed the Eastern tradition of heavy recordkeeping, and the properties of the Cat were well-understood. Having witnessed its effect on Marco first hand, the Baron knew he only had to force it. He had to will his body to work, even when it wouldn’t.
One hand reached up, the one made of cobwebs wrapped around static, then the other, fingers throbbing. He grabbed hold of the Zombie, pulling his body weight off the metal. Then up on one knee, beneath the wound. He’d been shot in the large intestine. He was only glad he hadn’t crapped himself, though he’d shit blood later. The other round had shattered the end of his rib right over the kidney. There was a lot of blood coming out of that hole. An artery might’ve been punctured. By any normal standard, these were deaths.
“We have to go!” yelled the Irishman at the back.
“We’ll clear the way!” the Baron shouted to him. “Trust me!” He forced his right leg to move as it should. A muscle was seized by a string of fire. He was the puppeteer grabbing the puppet, and with the Cat inside of him, mind ruled over body. “Trust me!” he shouted with twice the force. He was turning, facing towards the pier. No time to worry.
“Trust him!” Phyllis called.
The Baron burst into a run, a human mechanism, a pattern built through concentration.
“Go, go, go!” the Zombie yelled, running closely behind the Baron.
An instant later, everyone else ran after them, charging towards the polarizing promises of safety and the threat of an enemy response. “Like your lives depend on it!” Phyllis cried.
The Baron felt blood streaming out of his wounds and down his right leg. The Cat gave him heat in his heart and bones. His lungs were hot. He was being sustained, recreated, even while running aggravated both wounds.
The Cat was meant for warriors. The legends were clear. After taking a sword through the sternum, Ilya Muromets had pulled out the blade and stabbed his assailant without hesitation. Some of the assassins who’d assaulted London had been witnessed showing particular resilience while bearing the Cat. They’d treated it like an occult combat suite, a whole set of survival functions for winning a fatal fight.
The Baron could feel it now, as Marco had felt it with a bullet through the brain. You were dying, but you were not allowed to die, and forward you ran.
Author’s Note:
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
Unlock with Patreon
