CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

The Baron was standing with Phyllis along the front wall near the window, where they’d listened to both the Zombie and Malik swaying the hearts of men. He held the Zombie’s bowler over his own chest, hiding his thundering pulse behind its shield.

Relief and disgust mixed within him. The Pact would be respected, but Malik was unwilling to bend on the fundamental conceit of his occult campaign. Everyone else could die, even his own mercenaries. If the Baron wanted Phyllis, Barilla, Martin, and the street gang to survive, then they still needed help from the Anastasia boys.

How long had it been since they’d made the call? Likely mere minutes had passed, but the exact passage of time was lost to him. Violence distorted everything. Dread pulled every second taut, until they seemed to fill the length of an hour.

“Jesus Christ,” Phyllis muttered. “Who is Malik?”

“A Soviet cultist,” the Baron answered. “That’s their idea of a mercy killing.”

She gave him a look as if he were a disgusting man.

“It’s what they’re thinking,” he noted.

“That’s monstrous.”

“If you can’t imagine the desperation that makes monsters…”

“I can, but that’s men like Jacono.”

Jacono the psychopath. The Baron knew these people were different. They were victims of blackmail and felt death was better than a lifetime of shame and castigation. It was Malik who shaped their psychopathic behavior. His orders and threats drove them to commit atrocities, because he took the choice out of their hands and claimed the responsibility for himself.

The Zombie jogged over from the front door. He offered the radio to the Baron, and the Baron offered the bowler to the Zombie. As they exchanged these tools, he said quietly, “It won’t be long now. Schuler, CPUSA. They’re out of options. Almost out of time.”

“Are you certain?” the Baron asked.

“No, but they must know there’s a limited window to get this done.”

Phyllis scowled. “I was hoping they’d back off after hearing from the Zombie.”

“They’re former Communists,” the Baron reminded Phyllis. “They don’t have a choice. They’re being blackmailed by a Bolshevik.”

“Why though?” she asked.

“I told you, they want Barilla. He knows secrets.”

“What does he know?”

“I shouldn’t say—”

“What do you know, boss?” she asked Barilla.

Barilla grunted, standing with his street gang. “Where this artifact is, a little stone cat.”

Phyllis squinted for a moment, trying to imagine why the Soviets would bring a veritable platoon of native soldiers to exterminate Americans over “a little stone cat.” Then it struck her right in the adrenal gland, a flush of fear and eyes widened with stress.

The Cat o’ Nine Lives was listed in Apostasy as one of the great ancient artifacts of the world. It had played an instrumental role in the eventual destruction of the London Cult, keeping multiple Russian cultists alive through a pitched occult battle.

“The Cat o’ Nine Lives?” she asked quietly.

Barilla shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Everyone, listen up,” the Baron addressed the gangsters. “If you repeat what we’ve said here, you’ll make yourself a target. Don’t repeat a word of this to anyone.”

“He’s telling the truth boys,” Phyllis added. “Mum is the word. I don’t want you to end up like Bobby or Stubs.” She pointed at the boy whose throat had been shot open. He was pale. “Someone cover his face, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the youngest gangster, who removed his dress shirt and handed it to another boy. They quickly veiled the miserable gaze of the recently dead. It was a mixed expression, appearing angry and envious of the living.

“What do we do next?” Barilla asked the Baron, not seeking advice but criticizing the leader by asking unanswerable questions.

The Baron never shied away from these challenges. “Nothing has changed. We wait here until the rest of Anastasia’s crew arrives. It’s the best option.”

“It really is,” the Zombie agreed.

“So you’re saying we’re fucked?” Barilla asked. “Because I know what I heard, and I’m with the Zombie. They’ll attack soon. They’ll sweep this place out, everyone but you.”

“I still have prestige,” the Baron replied, “and the Zombie is invincible. We can wait it out.”

“We can try,” the Zombie muttered softly.

Barilla huffed. “Sure, you’re protected, but me, Martin, Phyllis, the boys? We’re fucked hard. The only thing you have to risk is our lives.”

“That’s not true,” the Baron said.

“Convince me.”

The Baron played for time. “What do you mean?” he asked, even though he knew exactly what Barilla meant. Why should the Baron care about their lives? What could he say to a cynical man to make him believe in the Baron’s leadership?

“Why do we matter?” Barilla pressed.

The Baron sighed. “For a practical man, you need a practical answer.”

“Spit it out.”

“You know where your son is, Barilla.”

“His son?” Phyllis asked. “What does… did he feed—” Her words rose nearly to a shout, but the woman stopped just before revealing the truth to everyone present.

“That’s right,” Barilla said, “the only valuable thing in this entire equation is me.”

Somewhere on the street outside, a vehicle engine rumbled into life.

“All the more reason to stay in cover and wait for backup,” the Baron said. “If we’re going to fight, we’ll need firepower. It can’t be long, can it?” he asked Phyllis.

“They’re not police,” Phyllis said to the Baron. “They aren’t waiting on patrol. They have to collect men, weapons. They’ve got to group up before coming here.”

“So we got two options,” Barilla said. “We wait, or I bargain for everyone’s release.”

“We can’t bargain with Malik, not without the threat of mutually assured destruction, and the Zombie won’t lift a finger for anyone but me,” the Baron said.

“Baron,” the Zombie called.

“He’ll at least help you to help us, won’t he?” Barilla asked.

d’Holbach held up a hand to finish his thought. “He can’t guarantee your safety.”

“Baron!” the Zombie repeated, louder.

He glanced at his friend. “Yes?”

“It’s that panel truck down the street—” the Zombie began.

Somewhere in the distance, a patrol of fully automatic guns ripped into the air. If the Baron didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn they were strings of firecrackers on the 4th of July. A moment later, rifles snapped like shattering stones, and the truck’s engine roared above the din like an ascendant lion, bursting from the brush, an ambush. Tires screamed as they left rubber on pavement. Louder, rushing the building.

The Baron didn’t have time to think, but intuition cried out for action. He bolted for the side wall, roaring at the top of his lungs, “Move!” The volume of his voice and his burst of motion argued convincingly. Everyone but the Zombie moved, and barely in time.

There was a tremendous bang, two tires bottoming as the half-ton panel truck struck the curb exactly one heartbeat before it crashed into the building, and the front brick wall erupted into a calamity and a spectacle. Mortar failed, windows vanished into glimmers, debris flowed into a clay-red plume of dust, and a hundred bricks clapped together in a violent ovation, tumbling, pouring, spilling off the long curved hood of the panel truck like a wave crashing over the prow of a battleship. One of the factory tables was swept away, swallowed by the sudden onslaught of momentum. Children screamed, covering their heads. Adults shouted.

The Zombie, still too close, whooped with joy as a shockwave of bricks threw him backwards onto the floor. The Baron’s mind focused on that detail. His champion was out of commission for the next breath, and he wasn’t the only figure moving in the plume.

Stones fell. Dust thinned enough to see. “Strength!” shouted a man, and out of a pile of collapsing bricks, a clay-red arm jutted, casting aside a layer of fresh wreckage like a blanket. That was enough to tell the Baron everything he needed to know. Meister Schuler, the Diviner of New York, the Wizard of the East, had been literally driven back on the cattle guard of a heavy panel truck and rammed into a brick wall, and he’d survived.

The Zombie recognized it too. “Schuler!” he yelled joyously, flailing to shed his own layer of wreckage. His bowler was in his hand, waving away clouds of choking particulates.

“Zombie!” the Baron yelled, slapping the bare wall beside him. “Break us out! Here!”

Figures stirred in the panel truck, barely visible behind the shattered windshield and bent truck doors. A driver unbuckled. A passenger threw aside a damaged hunting rifle and pulled a sidearm from a holster. Somewhere in the back, the rear doors of the truck were banged open. Troops were unloading. An assault was underway, a pitched battle against a legendary enemy.

With his back to the ground, Meister Schuler whipped up his legs above the rubble, folding them back over his head and flexing his spine like a professional gymnast. It was an absurd sight for an older man in a damaged cassock, whose chest and belly were painted with inhuman quantities of dark blood and bright clay dust.

Then throwing his legs forward, Schuler kipped up onto his feet and landed with his hands against his knees. Chunks of brick threatened to undermine his footing, only to crumble beneath his shoes like they’d vanished beneath the treads of a tank.

The passenger aimed his sidearm expertly.

“Bullets!” Schuler wished, implying everything else with a wave of his hand. Heedless of any further danger, he leaned down, searching around his feet as the man in the truck unloaded a 1911 pistol from one end of the magazine to the other, eight bullets singing an ode to wild panic. Rounds punched through a wrecked windshield and bit into the bricks on the ground behind Schuler. Little puffs of red dust celebrated each improbably missed shot.

Children shrieked again. Phyllis was yelling something at the Baron, but his brain couldn’t process it. He could only understand Schuler’s unfair strength. Skilled Diviners were capable of envisioning the world with intentions sharp enough to cut concepts out of thought alone. Meister Schuler didn’t need to vocalize his desires. He was able to convene with the gods in silence, though he famously preferred to wish with a gesture and a word.

“Baron!” Phyllis roared. “We need a way out!”

Shocked back to life, the Baron yelled again: “Zombie! Now!”

The Zombie pushed to his feet, following orders without question. Instantly sprinting, he arced towards the wall next to the Baron, who leaned away, expecting another crash.

The Zombie struck the brick—and stopped dead.

It’s sometimes said that comedy is time multiplied by distance, but everyone was seconds away from death, and no one was laughing. In general, everyone’s sense of humor had died five minutes ago along with two children.

Schuler finally bent down, picked up the distorted mess of his crushed bifocals, and said simply, “Glasses.” With a shake of his hand—in that moment where human vision couldn’t trace any motion—his bifocals were restored. Lenses glimmered in lustrous copper frames, and with open eyes, Schuler stood, set his glasses on his dust-caked nose, and frowned at the man who’d shot at him. The man who’d just finished reloading his pistol.

Schuler scooped up a whole brick, saying, “Strength.” Then he whipped his arm in an overhead pitch with enough speed to audibly cut the air. The brick tore through the glittering angles and cracks of the safety windshield, finding them no more substantial than a gossamer web, and it buried itself in the passenger’s sinuses like a stone in thick mud. Thock. A human being was reduced to a second-rate Dick Tracy villain. Nothing resembling a face remained. A ruddy complexion of cracked brick and fresh blood slumped forward onto the dashboard.

The Baron could hardly understand it. Had Schuler made both himself and the brick strong enough to crush a human skull?

The Zombie took three steps back, then threw himself at full force into the wall again. Bricks shifted and mortar shattered to prevent injury, but the wall itself only bent far enough to catch his displaced mass with a pillow soft impact. “Fuck!” the Zombie yelled with frustration, bouncing back from his own crater.

“Get us out of here!” Barilla roared at the Zombie.

“Get ready!” Phyllis yelled, waving the boys forward. She expected the Zombie to break through. The Baron ought to turn away, to be ready, to think of what they’d do next. Where they should go. Out of the alley? Into the building next door? He ought to think.

Instead, he watched the greatest occult threat on the continent, killing secular soldiers.

Schuler calmly wished, “Rifle,” and he gestured towards the driver, who was lifting up a Garand. The rifle dutifully launched out of the merc’s hands with enough force to break fingers, knocked down the remains of the windshield, and lazily flipped through the air to Schuler, who darted forward onto one foot and caught the weapon by its stock.

The driver shrieked, clutching mangled hands to his belly.

“Crush,” Schuler added, closing one eye and lowering his free hand like he was visually squishing the truck’s cabin beneath his palm. The vehicle’s frame groaned under sudden pressure, then snapped with a series of tremendous bangs. Unsupported, the roof collapsed like the weight of the truck itself was coming down on the cabin, and the driver screamed as the falling metal folded him over with all the lethal contortions that implied.

Phyllis touched the Baron’s elbow, staring at Schuler alongside him. She quoted from Apostasy in awe: “Lost in madness, a divine innocent can act and forget in the same breath.”

The Baron understood. That murder was a Diviner special. It was impossible to directly wish harm on a living soul, but it was technically allowed for a wish to accidentally hurt someone. Of course, the average person could never do the mental gymnastics necessary to crush a man inside a vehicle while forgetting their own intent to do so, but Schuler wasn’t an ordinary man.

The Zombie launched forward again. Bricks cracked again but didn’t fall.

Schuler handled the Garand swiftly, putting its stock to his shoulder. At that moment, a merc with a Thompson poked his weapon around the near edge of the panel truck.

“Collapse,” Schuler said with a tip of his head, and hundreds of pounds of brick wall suddenly slipped free and slumped against the side of the panel truck, burying the man with a single gush of red dust. As the rubble settled, the Diviner inspected the Garand’s safety, then the magazine. A smile danced across his face like he’d met an old friend. Then he rolled his neck to loosen it, swept the rifle around the room for targets, and spotted the Baron.

That smile upgraded to a friendly grin, and the barrel of the weapon tipped towards the rubble at his feet. “Baron!” he cried jovially. “Good to see you again!”

“Good to see you too,” the Baron muttered.

“Friends, friends!” Schuler yelled happily. “Don’t stand there! Run for your lives!”

“Of course,” the Baron said, as if he were receiving mere advice.

“See you later!” the Zombie called to Schuler.

“Later, devils!” the Diviner  cried back.

The Zombie threw himself into the wall one final time. Bricks crumbled beside the Baron, spilling the Zombie onto the alley road. “I’m through!” he yelled triumphantly.

Meister Schuler sloughed through the brick piled near the front of the truck, wishing aloud, “Strength, thunder, and neutral gears!” Something clunked in the vehicle’s machinery, and the tires settled, already rolling. Schuler planted one foot on the cattle-guard of the half-ton panel truck, and with only a little strain, he shoved the entire vehicle back through the gap in the wall. Then he shouted, and his voice was painfully loud, echoing out over the whole neighborhood. “Gentleman, prepare your souls! Today, you meet the gods!”

“Now!” Phyllis urged the Baron.

Schuler ran out after the rolling vehicle, and the twinned bonds of fear and fascination were finally broken. The Baron turned to look through the hole in the wall.

The Zombie was standing in the alley, peering along a limestone gravel path between the factory wall and the dusty brick facade of the neighboring cannery. He put his hat back on his head, then smiled at the Baron. “I see Malik’s car. Sea green windows. Instructions?”

“We don’t have time to chase him,” the Baron said.

The Zombie shrugged. “I can always find him later.”

The Baron leaned out through the hole in the wall, glancing towards the waterfront. It was clear all the way to the dockside pavement. He pulled back in, waving at the others clustering near him. “Everyone, out! Run to the waterfront! Single file, keep the Zombie at your back! Go, go, go!”

Barilla ran out first, holding the 1911 in hand. Martin went second, bearing his pilfered Garand, and the street gang rushed out on the guard’s heels. Phyllis went out directly behind them, and the Baron last, emerging into the sunshine on a cool spring day. The sounds of gunfire behind them were obscene, better suited to a World War than a half-empty wharf district.

The Baron glanced past the Zombie’s shoulder. At the front end of the alley there was a sedan, four doors opened, with men in suits prone beneath them and one laid out against the rear window, holding his rifle across the trunk lid and firing towards the front of the factory—presumably towards Meister Schuler’s battle.

The windshield and window glass were a pale sea-green. There weren’t any plates on the vehicle, but there were clean rectangles where they’d been recently removed.

The Zombie idled in front of the Baron, standing bow-legged and loose-armed to increase his surface area. That really was Malik’s vehicle, though the Soviet wasn’t visible. He must’ve moved to a more secure location, given the dangers of the firefight.

“It’s good that I’m taller,” the Zombie said casually.

“Yes,” the Baron agreed.

“Handsomer too. Didn’t you hear that they always shoot handsome men first?”

Even at a time like this, the Baron couldn’t help himself. “You’re not much of a comfort.”

“What?”

“I don’t need to be told I’ll die first.”

“You won’t die at all,” the Zombie insisted, jerking a thumb towards the back of the alley. “Time to move. I’ll walk on your heels, keep you in cover.”

The Baron turned away, putting the thunder of battle at his back. Phyllis was a few steps ahead, scowling at him. He’d been going slowly; they both knew it. Maybe it was a flaw in him, a bad habit learned over decades. The Baron was used to his own safety. Barilla, Martin, and the street gang were halfway down the alley, nearly at the empty steel dumpster that’d been pushed up against the factory’s wall. The Baron jogged to catch up to Phyllis, and the Zombie dutifully matched his pace. Dress shoes crushed old limestone gravel underfoot.

Barilla called back at them. “I know this area! At the corner, go left. Then we can duck into the cannery, hold up in the front office till the boys roll up.”

“Yes, sir,” said one of the gangsters.

“Got it boss!” Martin added with a little more verve.

Beyond the battle at their backs, they could hear another sound rising, a deep rumble like gunning engines. If those were the Anastasia gangsters, then their vehicles were about a minute out. “Backup is almost here!” Phyllis called.

As if responding to her voice, three CPUSA mercenaries jogged around the corner at the end of the alley, weapons in hand, expecting a clear path and finding two armed men with a column of people behind them.

For a long instant, everyone stopped—Baron d’Holbach included. The exchange of bullets, far behind them, was the only active conversation. Yet there was a common understanding in their own silence, a wordless desire to survive. Barilla and Martin were close to escaping the battlefield; the mercs were far from the meatgrinder of Schuler’s magic. Here, on the edge, everyone still lived. Still, a hand twitched on a merc’s Tommy. Barilla twitched too.

“Calm!” the Baron shouted, even as the Zombie darted around to stand in front of him. “Remain calm, and stay where you are!”

Hands jerked down, lowering barrels. Gunfire continued behind them, the birdsong of mass death, but everyone listened to the Baron’s cry.

“Clear the alley!” Phyllis hissed, waving the boys towards the factory wall.

The Baron followed her logic, moving towards the shadow of the dumpster. The riflemen at the front of the alley were still firing towards Schuler’s battlefield, and while it was unlikely for anyone to take a shot at the Baron, it wasn’t impossible. He ducked down with his back to the steel dumpster, waving Phyllis and the kids into place. The Zombie side-stepped to keep himself roughly between the new mercs and d’Holbach’s position.

Paranoid eyes followed their movements, but nobody complained. For the mercs, all that mattered were the men in front of them, the guns in their hands, and the invincible monster in the alley.

“I command the Zombie!” the Baron reminded them. “If you fight, he will kill you! Remain calm, and you will live! I can promise that!”

The Zombie let out a disappointed chuckle, then stage-whispered to the Baron, “I don’t like being anybody else’s shield, but…” A sigh. “You are my conscience. Orders?”

“Go forward, get their guns,” the Baron said quietly. “Then they can walk.”

If the Zombie had feelings, he would’ve been upset. These orders would require him to open some distance between himself and his friend. Nevertheless, if a firefight started in this alley, they might end up with shots coming from both sides, and the Zombie didn’t want to try busting through another wall, only to randomly fail when it mattered most.

He had to follow through. He marched forward in a straight line, approaching the gangsters and the mercs where they all stood, facing each other down in terrified silence. One errant twitch, and both sides might open fire with nowhere to run. The Zombie expected none of them to remain calm, but he trusted in their shared fear of death.

Then he passed between Barilla and Martin, and he stood in front of them, smiling genially. “Mercenaries.” He tipped the brim of his bowler towards them. “Your lives will cost you two things. First, I need to know if there are any more of your men along the waterfront.”

“Get them to surrender too,” Barilla whispered behind him.

He held up a hand for silence. Barilla let out a small snort of frustration but didn’t speak further. Then the Zombie spoke calmly to the mercenaries: “Second, I need your guns. Then you may go where you like, so long as it’s away from my people.”

One of the mercs with a Tommy glanced sidelong at his peers. “Can we talk first? Come to, uh, an understanding?”

The Zombie grinned. “About what? There’s no negotiation.”

“There’s conditions on our services,” the merc said softly. “Our families.”

“Christ!” Barilla stepped forward, pushing his chest out and arraying himself beside the Zombie. He waved the 1911 around vaguely, not quite at the mercs but with a degree of carelessness that ratcheted up everyone’s nerves. “You comply, or you die. Simple!”

The Zombie put out a hand in front of Barilla. “Please, Barilla—”

“Lower your hand, freak.”

“I almost never say this, but your life matters—”

“Lower it!”

The Zombie lowered his hand but didn’t stop speaking. “Stand behind me. These men are afraid, and I am cover.”

“No, you’re listening to them, and they’re wasting time.” Barilla waved the pistol past them like he was swatting away flies. “They need to surrender now.”

There was a beep on all the radios in the alley. One in the Baron’s hands. Three on the hips of these mercenaries. Malik’s voice emerged, quavering but forceful. “All bands emergency broadcast. Spotters place Cosa Nostra backup at thirty seconds, so these will be your final orders. Kill everyone but Baron d’Holbach and the Zombie, or die trying. If anyone survives a lost battle, then I guarantee the complete ruin of their families. It’s victory or death—these are your only options. Good hunting, comrades. Over and out.”

The Zombie’s smile fell away. The mercenaries stared back at his impassive face. Malik had put an impossible amount of pressure on them. Their survival instincts were fighting against their love for their families. In their hearts, death was becoming a gift to their wives. To their children. Yet the Zombie was truly terrifying; he’d carved a bloody lesson only minutes ago, and transmitted by screams, it’d taken hold in their hearts. They hesitated in front of him.

“Put down your guns!” Barilla shouted at the mercs, raising his pistol.

The merc with the Tommy winced, and in that single motion, the Zombie knew that negotiations had failed. Barilla’s machismo had ruined them. “Don’t, gods damn it!” the Zombie barked, even as the merc raised his weapon and made his final, miserable choice.

A finger on the trigger; thunder between brick walls. Bullets danced across the Zombie’s chest as he lunged forward, throwing ricochets around the alley—one bullet flicked right into Barilla’s temple, knocking him a half-inch sideways—and the Zombie’s punch landed with sledgehammer force, knocking the merc’s head back hard enough to instantly break his neck and throw him off his feet. Two bodies thudded on the gravel at once.

The other mercs turned tail, sprinting out of the alley because they were about to die. The Zombie glanced back towards the Baron, past the fallen Barilla, beyond a shocked Martin and a gaggle of horrified women and children.

“After me!” he roared.

Then he sprinted as swiftly as death itself, giving chase to his enemies.

Heedless of any possible threat at the front of the factory, the Baron burst up and into a sprint, shouting loudly, “Run!”

Phyllis and the children leapt up after him, following down the alley.

Ahead, Barilla was as good as dead. Muscles were seizing; blood was spurting out of the hole in the side of his skull, leaving spattered lines across the white gravel. Likely, he was unaware of how he’d died, only feeling that his body had suddenly lost control, dragging him down into darkness.

Martin was staring down at his boss, dumbstruck. He’d failed to protect him.

The Baron slapped the guard on the shoulder as he passed, yelling again, “Run!”

Martin threw himself into motion, following orders.

The Baron wished that the Zombie could clear the way for their escape, but no amount of prestige could fill that desire. Only chance and violence could change what laid ahead.

The Zombie sprinted up a tarry ramp onto pavement and shot out of the alley, angling to the right. The waterfront spread open before him, breezy and bright. A dockside road bordered itself with the debris of dying waterside industries, blue skies swept over dark water, and gulls circled in flight. Parked in the middle of it all, the enemy readied for a final battle. Three CPUSA vehicles bristled with mercenaries, all standing in open doors while loading firearms.

The two running mercs were approaching a sedan, screaming, “Zombie! Zombie!” The car’s engine roared into life, and the Zombie accelerated, grinding away shoe soles as he propelled himself across the pavement like a reckless driver. His hat flew loose, forgotten. He jumped, throwing his body into the air and twisting around ballistically, and he struck the hood of the revving car with his spine in poor form.

By the will of the gods, he became a meteor plunging into a sea of shrapnel. Metal collapsed beneath him, crushing the entire front of the vehicle into itself, only to have the material bounce back and explode up and around him like someone splashing a gelatin dessert with a baseball bat. The roaring engine flew to pieces, tossing rods and pistons like shotgun slugs. The running mercs went down, swept over by shrapnel.

The Zombie’s momentum had been multiplied many times over, expressed through the evacuation of ripping, exploding metal. By the time he came to a stop, the remnants of the engine block, sputtering and smoking, were thrusting through the dashboard, crushing the driver in his seat. A tire—freed in the impact—rolled past the Zombie’s view, just beyond a man-wide trench of metal and smoke. One vehicle of three, incapacitated.

He struck the engine block with his elbows, bouncing up and out. A tattered sleeve snagged on something, tearing off cleanly, and he was stumbling onto his feet, coming out of the wreckage of his landing. Mercs were scattering in every direction like cockroaches in the light; some were already opening fire, thudding rounds through the Zombie’s clothes.

The Zombie ignored them for the span of a victim’s racing heartbeat. Two blocks down, a pair of trucks roared out of a distant alley and onto the waterfront road. Half dozen people were loaded up in each bed. At the sight of armed mercs, they lifted weapons and leaned out, two vehicles suddenly bristling with firearms. A second later, the Zombie recognized dock workers, laborers, and other criminal elements. The Anastasia crew was rolling in to make war.

The Zombie chose to help. He turned away and sprinted towards the next CPUSA vehicle, the next merc that wasn’t already fleeing for safety. A man screamed, firing uselessly as the Zombie tackled him into the side of a panel truck, crushing all of the man’s ribs at once. So satisfying. The Zombie would murder his enemies, again and again, until there were none.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach burst out of the alley himself, glancing right and seeing the wreckage of a vehicle and the Zombie colliding with another man, crushing him to death against a panel truck; then immediately, the Baron cut left, heading across the cannery’s facade towards the open warehouse doors that Barilla had mentioned earlier.

Phyllis, Martin, and the kids hesitated when he changed directions, but they quickly adjusted and followed him out. Gunfire blindly urged them forward, heedless of anything but a desperate need to reach the safety of cover.

Ahead, two trucks bristled with dock workers holding Tommy guns, Berettas, and revolvers. Several barrels turned to face them. The Baron threw up his hands and waved, even as he darted for the cover of the cannery’s open warehouse doors.

Martin was their saving grace. He saw the oncoming vehicles and stepped out further, throwing down his Garand and roaring, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Women and children!”

The children hesitated, unsure if they should follow Phyllis or join Martin in the road. The guard noticed a fraction of a second later. “Get to cover!” he roared to the pausing gangsters. “With Phyllis! Get out of the road!”

 The Baron paused just inside the cannery doors, waving Phyllis and the children in. Outside, both vehicles shot past Martin, mafioso looking grim as they prepared to deploy at the back of the factory. The battle was entering its final, most violent stage.

There was a sound like someone blowing up a bomb some distance away. Martin flinched, shouting, “Mother of Christ!” Then he charged for the safety of the cannery.

“What happened?” the Baron yelled.

“They dynamited the Zombie?” Martin reported, unsure of whatever he’d seen. He stumbled to a stop next to Phyllis, breathing heavily. “Jesus. He really is invincible.”

“He is,” the Baron said.

Out on the waterfront, the Anastasia crew opened fire. It was one long burst—not the sound of a battlefield, but of a firing squad, gunning down targets for five long seconds.

Silence followed. No mercs were shooting back.

A couple of shots pierced the silence like questions.

“I’m with you!” roared the Zombie some distance away, answering them.

No further shots followed on this side of the block, but the sounds of the firefight on the far side were intensifying.

“What’s happening out there?” Phyllis asked the Baron, just a few feet further into the shadows of the cannery warehouse. He turned to face her, standing protectively in front of a whimpering pile of street gangsters, leaning in against the cannery wall. Martin was amongst them, hugging the youngest boy against his chest and whispering something comforting.

“Everyone is dying,” the Baron answered truthfully.

“Except for us,” Phyllis noted.

“Yes. Mostly thanks to the Zombie.”

An instant later, said Zombie sprinted into view outside the cannery, one sleeve of his dress shirt missing from the shoulder down. He fell over on purpose, flipped over once in a tumble of limbs, and landed on his ass, laughing. “What a day!”

The Baron frowned at him. This wasn’t the time for cheer.

“How can you celebrate? Barilla is dead!” Phyllis shouted, treating the Zombie’s gaiety like he was embarrassing himself at a funeral.

“Yes, yes he is!” the Zombie roared with mirth. “I told him to get back!”

“What?” Phyllis gawked. “What does that mean?”

The Zombie scrambled up onto his feet, passing beneath the shadow of the cannery to join them in cover. “I told him to stay behind me! He chose otherwise. That’s his fault!”

Phyllis squinted up at the tall man. “Don’t you care?”

“Not really?” The Zombie shrugged. “I cared a little when I could still save him. Now? Not so much.”

She sighed and faced the Baron instead, dismissing the madman for a slighter saner figure. “Earlier, you told me you’d tell me something about Barilla’s son. Is it the Cat? Does he have it?” Worry was etched into the folds of her face. Gray hairs were beginning to unwind from her beehive hairdo, but she didn’t look out of control or disheveled. She only looked pissed.

The Baron grunted. He’d promised to tell her if they survived, and now that Barilla was dead, they might need her help—especially if she knew where Barilla’s son lived. He waved her closer, and after a long moment, she sighed and stepped into his personal space.

The Baron leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “Yes, he has it.”

She couldn’t help but shout, “That ignorant asshole!”

The Baron agreed, but he didn’t say that out loud. He didn’t know Barilla well enough to feel comfortable badmouthing the recently deceased. Instead, he gave the conclusion. “You need to lead us to him as soon as possible. The fate of the free world depends on it.”

Phyllis closed her eyes in frustration. “Apostate, fuckin’ save me.”

Author’s Note:

Apostate, save us all. We’ve reached the end of some truly hectic violence, but the case beckons us forward.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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July 4, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warning.

“Baron!” Barilla called shakily, kneeling alongside his child soldier.

The Baron turned to face him. What a sad figure he carved, clutching his revolver for safety. He wasn’t even injured. At least Martin, that meat slab of a man, had put an arm behind Stubs’ shoulders, offering human comfort and a mote of rest.

It struck d’Holbach that if he hadn’t grabbed the dock boss and thrown him forward, Barilla might’ve hesitated until the sniper ventilated him, a second victim.

Tears were already on Barilla’s cheeks. “It’s Stubs, they shot Stubs!”

“I’m sorry,” the Baron answered, and it was an honest apology. He’d wanted to escape without casualties. Now, blood pulsed out of Stubs’ wound with the regularity of a short clock, running down the last minutes at the end of a short life.

“Can you lay hands on him?” Barilla asked, nearly begging.

“Not with my current prestige,” the Baron replied, stepping further into the safety of the shadows. He held the Zombie’s hat at his waistline, bowing his own head. “I’m truly sorry.”

The boss fixed him with an indignant glare. “What do you mean, you’re sorry? You promised healing for my son, didn’t you?”

“When I had more prestige, yes—”

“He’s shot!” Barilla yelled, as if raising his voice could change the facts of the matter, the little quirks of history and the costs of magic that were conspiring to seal this young man’s fate.

Phyllis swept around from where she was comforting one of the younger boys, knelt by her boss, and grabbed his upper arm with her thin fingers. “He can’t help!” she said sharply, gritting her teeth with barely restrained frustration. “Stop yelling!”

“Stay calm,” Martin whispered to Stubs, pulling him in a little closer.

Barilla twitched like he’d been slapped, staring into her eyes. “Phyllis?”

“Listen to me!” She shook her boss’s arm once, barely shifting his mass. “We need to defend ourselves! Either we get out, or the Anastasia boys bail us out. Either way, you don’t help Stubs by yelling at the Baron. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” Barilla said breathily.

“Good.” She let go of him, standing up. “Everyone, keep an eye on the inside doors! I don’t want anyone coming in here without a gun barking an answer!”

Barilla nodded, catching onto her meaning and rising up himself. “Arm up, boys! You heard the woman! Anyone comes through a door, we drive ‘em back!”

His gang echoed his command with a half-hearted cry of bravery, all while retreating to the darkest, safest corner of this room. The Baron slouched after them with Phyllis at his side, watching as this would-be Red Hook gang armed itself at Barilla’s command.

One member was pulling out loose .22 cartridges from his pants pocket, fumbling, dropping them on the floor. He had a hollow aerial antenna shoved through a rubber golf handle for a barrel. The round was jammed into the hole, set to be fired by a strip of medical tubing punctured by a screw. The other boys saw what he was doing and scrambled to pick up the fallen rounds for themselves. Zip guns of all shapes and sizes were unfolded and loaded. Tubes ripped out of old coffee percolators were just the right size for a barrel. Soft chunks of pine, normally used for whittling, were already shaped into crude handles with clothespin triggers.

“Don’t fire unless you have to,” the Baron commanded them. What he really wanted to say was, don’t use zip guns, but there wasn’t much of a choice here. Barilla was waiting for his youngest soldiers to arm themselves in the approved way. Despite supporting and exploiting youth gangs, the Cosa Nostra never supplied them with real guns. Illegal firearms were too expensive to waste on scads of volatile children who’d rarely pay the mob back.

“We’re ready,” Barilla said, when the last and youngest boy had armed himself.

The Zombie turned away from the open window, coming over to meet them in the corner. He glanced over the armed children, scowled for an instant, and then met his friend’s questioning eyes.

The Baron’s raised eyebrow was a silent question: see anything out there?

The Zombie answered promptly, “It’s a powder keg. I think Schuler is crawling on his belly behind a row of steel mailboxes, dragging his ass like a slug. Gutshot—for now.”

“How do you know?” Phyllis asked, huddling in closer to speak with them.

The Zombie glanced back towards the shattered window. “Fresh blood was smeared across twenty feet of sidewalk. I don’t know why he hasn’t healed himself already.”

“He’s a madman,” the Baron said plainly. There was no easier answer.

“Gods,” Phyllis muttered.

“Where’s he going?” the Baron asked, clutching the Zombie’s hat at his waistline.

The invincible man took a deep breath—this time for the emotional expression of it. “I think he’s heading for the panel truck parked about a block away from here.”

“Panel truck? How big?”

“A half-ton Chevy. The kind you’d use to carry people.”

“Any other signs of the enemy?” the Baron asked.

A curt nod. “There’s at least ten men on that side alone, twitching for a target. Shouldn’t be long till the whole thing explodes.”

“How do you know?” Phyllis asked him.

“It’s been loud,” the Zombie said plainly. “They need to finish up here before anyone arrives. My guess is they’re here to kill everyone.”

“But why?” Phyllis asked, still struggling to fully understand.

The Zombie shrugged. He couldn’t provide the obvious answer, if only because it’d give away the truth of the whole scenario in front of many witnesses. If someone had swallowed the Cat, the easiest way to discover its location was to shoot its bearer and see that they survived. Everyone else could just die, conveniently eliminating all other witnesses.

“At least they’re afraid of you, right?” Phyllis asked the Zombie.

He smirked but didn’t answer the question.

“Are you telling me they’re not?” she pressed. “But you have the Pact! They should be terrified!”

“I know,” the Zombie said softly. “I’ll just have to be more terrifying.”

She paused, frowning doubtfully. After a second, her mind seemed to change along with her expression. Eyes opened wider in fearful recognition. “You really mean that?”

“He does,” the Baron whispered. “Zombie, change of plans. We can’t move our casualties, so I’ll need you to secure the building. Assume there are enemies inside with us.” A quick flick of the Zombie’s hat indicated the rooms toward the waterfront, including the quadrant of the building they’d originally avoided because of an open garage door. “Sweep the place, close any open doors, and make an example or two.”

“An example,” Phyllis whispered, scowling. “You mean to be cruel.”

The Baron rubbed his bald head with a sweaty palm. “I hate it, but it might be the only way these boys make it out alive. Unless you have a better idea, because I’ll entertain it.”

“It’s not my choice,” Phyllis whispered. “I’m not invincible.”

The Zombie let a sly smile spread across his face. He reached into a pocket and removed the penny knife, unfolding it and showing Phyllis the cheap blade. “If it’ll make you happy, I can make an example or two without making it too painful. How’s that sound?”

Phyllis recoiled the tiniest iota. “I’m not making that decision.”

The Zombie laughed softly, truly joyful. “Then I’ll choose it for myself. It’ll hurt, and then it won’t. A kind murder.” He gestured with the knife, splitting their little huddle apart, and he marched for the back of the building, laughing at his own words. “So very, very kind!”

The soulless and invincible man stalked towards the back of the room, aware of the Baron’s gaze resting on his shoulders. He was proud of himself; the most moral, godless man alive was letting him off the leash, approving of his vanity and power.

This diminutive, fragile knife would retrace the lines of his legend, carving men into corpses, and each one would become a unique word in a primeval language. It was a method of communication, more compelling than ephemeral words of breath and tongue. To predators, it was a crimson triumph. To their prey, it was a single word. Run.

Each interior wall had two sets of swinging doors, set some distance apart. He chose the doors on the left, closer to the outer wall, angling to cut off any escape. He couldn’t make an easy example out of someone who died alone in an alley, and after a child had caught a bullet with a kidney, the Zombie was starving for some public vengeance.

He stopped at the final moment, peering through the gap between the swinging doors. One man was standing near the open garage door, waving someone in. He was late 30s, white with buzzed brown hair, holding a pitted Garand rifle and wearing old WW2 fatigues—sensible, since the combat uniform was all wool. Ex-soldiers, American, which jarred with the Zombie’s expectations. Weren’t these Soviet-aligned mercenaries?

The man coming inside stopped to whisper to his colleague. This one was in his forties, black and grey hair, holding an M3A1 submachinegun—a Grease Gun.

Two people were guaranteed indoors now. Almost certainly three. The Zombie raised two fingers back towards the Baron, then raised a third and waggled his hand for uncertainty. No need to check if the Baron understood. Soon, there’d be far, far fewer people.

The Zombie pushed shoulder-first through the swinging doors, letting them close across his trailing arm before catching them shut behind his back.

Two mercs snapped to attention, vaguely pointing their weapons. A third merc was in fact on the right side of the room, holding an M1 Thompson SMG and peering through the doors that they’d avoided only minutes before. So three examples to make—Garand, Grease Gun, and Thompson.

“Gentlemen,” the Zombie said warmly, brandishing the penny knife.

Thompson swept around, keeping his barrel towards the ground.

The man with the Garand suddenly flinched. Did he know?

Grease Gun already had the dust cover flipped up—effectively, the safety was off. He rushed to finger-cock the bolt.

The Zombie smiled broadly and took big, friendly strides into the middle of the room, arms wide as if he intended to hug an old, dear friend. “I’m glad to see you!”

Grease Gun crammed the wire stock against his shoulder and shouted, “Get on the ground!” Ironsights wavered for only a moment as he took aim, center of mass.

“Wait!” Thompson yelled.

The Zombie strode towards Grease Gun, staring down the barrel. “Three guesses who I am—” he began.

Grease Gun pulled the trigger for almost a full second. The first shot went low, tearing into the belly of the Zombie’s shirt. The next one jumped high, ricocheting off his sternum. Then the soldier had control, and the last five shots all grouped tightly on the Zombie’s chest, peppering him. Flecks of wool and cotton fluttered like confetti.

Most rounds had shattered or ricocheted, but one came to a stop and rolled off the Zombie’s chest. He caught it with his spare hand and paused, holding up the pristine bullet to the daylight streaming in through the garage door. The echoes of gunfire faded into horrible silence. Three sets of eyes stared at that tiny piece of proof.

The Zombie smiled, flicking the bullet away, and raised the knife in a hammer grip. “That’s one guess,” he declared. Then he rushed Grease Gun.

The merc with the Garand tried to shout something, but Grease Gun guessed again with a second salvo, holding down the trigger until the Zombie rammed into him bodily, knocking the SMG loose at the same moment that he slashed the side of the man’s neck with the penny knife. It felt fluid, the controlled stroke of an artist painting his masterpiece in the middle of a car crash. Flesh parted, and a bright merry jet of arterial red shot through the sunlight. Grease Gun stumbled backwards, howling in terror like an animal unleashed, spinning around and already bolting for safety, even as another two heartbeats of blood jetted out in smooth flows.

“That’s two!” the Zombie yelled, turning away from an already dead man. Grease Gun blacked out from immediate blood loss and collapsed behind him, a tumble of limbs.

Thompson was yelling into a walkie-talkie, “Zombie in the back!”

Garand sprinted for the door past Thompson, fleeing deeper into the building. Dangerous, but a rifle wasn’t an SMG.

The Zombie charged Thompson, who smashed his radio into the floor, dropped his weapon, and raised his hands just before the Zombie drove the small knife into his chest, right into his heart. One last spasm of muscle, felt through the handle. Then a wet gasp of surprise.

“I surrender,” Thompson croaked. Last breath. Last words.

“Too late.” The Zombie gripped the wooden handle and turned away from the man, yanking up like he wanted to pitch the knife overhand. For a mortal, this would’ve torn the handle out of his grip or hyperextended his shoulder. For the Zombie, all possible injuries were prevented by generating immense forces. Tight in his grip, the blade jumped explosively upwards, slashing through lung and heart until the leading edge bit into a rib, literally jerking Thompson a half inch up while snapping the blade off at the handle.

The merc collapsed backwards onto the floor, gurgling and thrashing as blood poured from his new chest wound like a tapped maple tree. Would-be killers of children deserved no less, and Garand was still in the building. One last threat.

The Zombie threw the knife handle aside and sprinted past Thompson, already running faster than most cars on city streets. When he hit the swinging doors, one flung open with a thunderous bang, and the other tore off its hinges with a calamitous roar of metal screws tearing loose. Debris tumbled ahead of his charge, a tremendous spectacle, but he’d made the wrong choice. The room was empty, and a set of doors on the right were swinging closed.

Garand was circling through the building, but the Zombie was moving too fast to turn. He gave up, going limp, and slammed belly first into one of the old factory tables, folding over the edge before stopping dead without any transfer of momentum. Good enough.

“Baron!” the Zombie bellowed, all the warning he had time to give.

Bedlam and a shout were all that was needed.

The Baron took a knee and waved the Zombie’s bowler like a commander’s flag, indicating the doors they’d entered through. “Over there!”

Like a flock of birds taking flight, Martin ducked next, then Phyllis. Barilla and his street gang knelt last, bringing up their weapons in quivering hands.

The tables between them and the far doors wouldn’t provide any real cover, but even a moment of obfuscation might save them, the Baron’s life, and the lives of many more.

A mercenary in military fatigues shoved through the swinging doors, already aiming his Garand. He twitched at the sudden sight of a line of kneeling men, then pulled the rifle towards a target and pulled the trigger. A round bit into wood, spraying lacquered splinters. 

Barilla answered with a crack of his revolver, a powerful shot flying wide left of the merc’s head. Chips of brick scattered, while the merc made a wish.

“Jammed!” he roared, freezing the cylinder of Barilla’s revolver in place, even as the mob boss still pulled the revolver’s trigger twice more, uselessly.

“Miss!” the Baron wished, not for his sake but Barilla’s. It was only a second of blessed protection, but even as the word was shouted, Garand fired again, blowing a hole into the brick just past the dock boss. A little prestige drained away; it’d only been a slight modification of trajectory, practically a coincidence, but it’d been a miracle all the same.

Six zip-guns went off like a string of firecrackers; two bullets punctured the merc, once in the arm, once in the stomach. There was screaming from both kids and men. One kid dropped his wooden handle; the tips of his fingers on his left hand were gone. The Garand rifle struck the floor a moment later—the merc’s left arm had fallen slack, but he wasn’t stopped. Riding a wave of adrenaline, he pulled a 1911 from a quick-release holster, fired twice while trying to account for the tables, hit the floor, then a street gangster’s throat.

Then the door burst open behind him, and the Zombie tackled him bodily onto the floor, slamming him into the concrete. The 1911 skittered across the concrete; the merc yelped.

The Baron saw an opportunity, unexpected but valuable. “Keep him alive!” he ordered.

The Zombie rolled off the fallen man and sprung to his feet with marionette strength—twitching strangely, launching his body up and around with divine forces, protecting fingers and ankles from twisting and bending till they broke. He kicked the Garand across the floor towards Martin and picked up the dropped 1911. A momentary glance was spared for the fallen mercenary. The merc was rolling over onto his back, holding both hands over his gut wound and glaring daggers at the Zombie.

“He’s alive!” the Zombie called cheerily. “For now!”

Martin scooped up the rifle, just inches away from the long stretches of sunlight cast by the windows, and he darted back, fearful of who might spot him through the gap.

Two of the kids were crouching over their collapsing brother. Phyllis joined them, trying to assert some adult sanity onto tragedy. The others were shushing the teen with freshly ruined fingers, saying that he’d be just like Stubs, and they all loved Stubs. Stubs who was still dying against the wall, shivering with a hand clutching at his kidney.

The Baron didn’t hesitate. “Zombie! Grab his ankles. Drag him past the windows.”

The Zombie snapped his fingers and saluted. The 1911 was carefully tucked into his belt; everything else was merely a matter of strength. The groaning mercenary slid with his shoulders against the floor, until he was pulled into the safety of the shadows and the glaring attention of Baron d’Holbach. The Zombie dropped his legs with a thud of boots. The mercenary twitched miserably, teeth-gritted. The pain must be growing.

“Pistol?” the invincible man asked the crowd, offering the merc’s 1911.

Barilla holstered his revolver and took the weapon gladly.

“I’m going to shut the garage door,” the Zombie said.

The Baron waved him off with his hat, a silent agreement. Then he knelt alongside the wounded man and stripped his radio. It was intact. “You can’t dodge and live,” he told the wounded man, “and I know your friends won’t take you back. Just this morning, they shot one of you after he surrendered to us. So if you want to live, you’ll follow my orders.”

The merc muttered, “Radio serial bullshit.”

“What?” the Baron asked.

“He had a family.” The merc’s eyes closed, wincing. “That’s all.”

That was a curious assertion, more personal than expected. “You know who got shot?”

“Yeah, he was shot because he had a family.” The merc coughed. “It was a favor. Dead men get funerals. Losers get outed as Commies.”

Martin was standing by them, watching the doors alertly. He glanced at the merc but didn’t see a man, just a dying enemy. The Baron had seen soldiers and murderers with that empty expression. “Fuckin reds,” he muttered.

As Commies. The truth began to assemble itself in the Baron’s mind. “Your employers are blackmailing you?” he asked.

“Of course,” the merc replied. “They paid us to fight Pinkertons in the 40s. They have our names, receipts, records. We were muscle for the CPUSA.”

“You’re the dregs of the Communist Party,” the Baron concluded, hearing all his suspicions confirmed in five letters. CPUSA. Until today, they were an entirely unknown occult resource. Now, the Baron began to grasp the scale of the enemy arrayed against them.

The garage door in the other room clattered on its rails, shutting.

The merc laughed, a hacking sound. “It’s enough to ruin lives.” He frowned. ”Who’d want to hire the wife of a Communist? Who’d hire his son? Better dead.”

Before the Foley Square Trials in 1949, the Communist Party USA had been a significant secular power in America—mixing organized crime, anti-war movements, and unionizing labor under one crimson banner. Like all radical organizations, they’d collected a goon squad of hitmen and militia members, some of them soldiers back from the war, others covertly trained by the KGB. Whether or not they’d been part of a true fifth column was unknown, but in criminal circles they were widely known for opposing union-busters and government plants.

In another context, they might’ve been heroes for the working man. Here and now, they were utterly compromised, dying for the sake of families that’d be better off without them.

“Are you working for Malik?” the Baron asked.

“Just some Russian,” the merc said. “They’re all fucking insane.”

“Stop chewing the fat,” Barilla said bitterly.

“We need to interrogate—”

“He’s a fucking dog!” Barilla shouted. When the Baron failed to snap back, he seemed surprised by his own anger, as if he was offended because nobody fought with him. “Nothing to say, you piece of shit?” It was hard to tell if he was talking to the Baron or the mercenary.

“They shot a child,” the Baron replied, “so, yes, I’m pissed too.”

The Zombie shouldered through the doors. “Shut and locked!” His eyes darted around the room, and all semblances of a smile died on his face. “How’s the kid-killer?”

The Baron waved him over. “They’re CPUSA goons. Suicidal, more or less.”

“Bobby is dead,” Phyllis declared, standing up from the kid who was shot in the neck.

“Fuck!” Barilla checked the safety on the 1911.

“Want me to kill him?” the Zombie asked the Baron.

The Baron’s impulse was to say yes; he’d watched the shooting. But his mind overruled his heart. “Stay your hand. We can use him.”

“Fuck this!” Barilla said, aiming the weapon.

“Put that down!” the Baron shouted at Barilla. “We need him!”

“He’s dead!” Barilla shouted, nevertheless lowering the pistol.

“Boss!” Stubs called to Barilla. The sorrow in that voice was so sharp, so desperate that every adult in the room—even the Zombie—turned to face it. “I want to go, Boss.”

Barilla’s anger was snuffed. “Stubs, buddy, I’m sorry.”

“I’m cold,” Stubs said bitterly. “Tired.” His hands were clenched over his kidney wound, but there was still blood seeping from the ragged hole. At a glance, his missing fingers appeared like a fresh amputation. “I want to see a doctor.”

“A doctor can’t help,” Phyllis said sadly.

“I mean a surgeon,” Stubs muttered. “At the hospital.”

“How?” the Baron asked, jumping on this point before Barilla or anyone else could complicate the reality. “You want to surrender?”

Stubs nodded rapidly. “Just me, yeah. Only me.”

Shit. The last minutes had been dominated by chaos. From the first gunshots until Stubs’ last, sad words, too many people had been talking at once. Emotions were running high—blood inflamed both fear and rage—but the word surrender was stronger still. It dropped the dead weight of gloom across the gangsters.

For the first time, they seemed to notice that they were in a factory line, crouched in the shadows. Long ago, sawdust had been poured out and swept away, leaving oily crusts of it in the corners, browning and pushed against the brick. A flattened cardboard box laid under a table. Dust had traced their motions, their violence. Blood smelled like it was everywhere, appeared like it was on everything. So bright and arresting, the thinnest layer implied landscapes of gore and injury, drowning beneath sanguine seas.

Outside the shattered windows, a spring wind blew half-heartedly. Gulls could be heard by the distant water. Whenever a kiss of outside air passed over them, it carried the chalky stench of limestone gravel roads.

It didn’t seem like a warzone. It wasn’t the kind of place where a boy like Stubs, hardly a man, should have to surrender to save his life. Yet unbidden, the Baron had offered it, and Stubs had accepted the suggestion. There was no other way out, at least for Stubs. Either he surrendered or he died. He was fatally wounded and couldn’t possibly run.

“Are you sure?” Phyllis asked Stubs.

“I want to live,” Stubs said.

“Then you have to try,” Phyllis replied. She squinted at the Baron. “Any ideas?”

The Baron was holding the merc’s walkie-talkie in one hand, the Zombie’s hat in the other. These were his only tools, and he’d have to use them both. He pointed the stubby radio antenna at the wounded merc. “Is this tuned in?”

The merc closed his eyes. “Press to send.”

The Baron held his thumb over the button. He needed to tell the CPUSA mercs that Stubs wanted to surrender, but if the walkie-talkies were part of a tightly-controlled radio network, they would only receive extremely important traffic. By keeping the radios a secret from the enemy, the Baron might learn something valuable, something that might save multiple lives. He needed a way to send a message without communicating their casualties in the factory. Only one person in this room could really manage that.

He kneeled by the merc’s head. “I need you to say something on the radio. I want you to tell your boss that a kid they shot wants to surrender.”

“You think you can trust him?” Phyllis asked.

The Zombie fielded that question. “Nothing to lose by trying.”

The merc grimaced. “I can’t report a surrender.”

“Is it no quarter then?” the Baron asked.

“No, we just can’t use the radio like that. Everything is code or shorthand. They didn’t give us a word for surrender.”

“What are the radios for then?” the Baron asked.

“Orders and intel.”

Stubs reached up with a hand, implicitly asking for someone, anyone to help him rise. “Please. I’ll just go out the door then. I’ve got to try. Got to.”

The Zombie was the only one unafraid of harming Stubs; he was the first to respond to that gesture of desire. Very carefully, he lowered his arm, letting Stubs grab hold of the cloth around his wrist. Then together, they rose. Once Stubs had his feet under him, legs shaking, he looked back to the Baron. “Front door?”

The Baron frowned. “Can you get him past the windows?”

The Zombie nodded curtly.

“Take him then,” the Baron agreed, waving the bowler towards the door. “Open it.”

“Are you sure?” Phyllis asked loudly.

Stubs spoke up, voice shuddering like his limbs. “I die here, out there, or I live. Please.”

“He’s sure,” the Zombie said. “He gets to choose.”

Phyllis exchanged glances with Barilla, Martin, and then the Baron. Every adult in the room came to a silent agreement that this tragedy had no solution; that a desperate prayer, traced in footsteps through a sniper’s line of fire, was the only way forward for Stubs.

The Zombie supported the young man, standing to his right, shielding his skinny frame from the windows. “Come on,” he urged. Together, they hobbled; twice, Stubs’ legs tried to give up, but he only sagged onto the strength of an invincible arm. The Zombie walked like Stubs’ was a paper thin thing, resting on a surface as steady and patient as stone.

Then they reached the front door, and the Zombie quickly leaned Stubs’ against the wall. “Keys?” he called.

Martin reached into his pockets and pitched his keyring across the space. The Zombie snatched them like a frog picking an insect from the air, then knelt before the door and unlocked the padlock. Chains rattled aside, and the door opened. Light and air flooded over the Zombie’s form, and he stood, facing the young man’s precipice. Out there, the light.

The Zombie peered out towards the sniper positions, towards where Schuler must still be crawling. No signs of motion. All waiting for the final act. If the Baron had asked to walk this path, the Zombie would’ve refused to open the door. But for Stubs, death was omnipresent, both in here and out there. At least somewhere in that brilliant sunlight, there might be a ray of hope, hiding.

He turned back towards the young man, letting the mechanisms of the body feel sympathy for the dying child. “Stubs,” he said kindly. “Before you walk out, I need to know that you know what’s out there.”

Stubs was holding onto his wound, leaning against the brick wall. “Know what?”

The Zombie glanced meaningfully towards the world outside. “They’ve shot men all morning. Shot each other. If you’re afraid, you can still die on the floor. With friends.”

“I don’t want to,” Stubs replied.

“So you’re gambling on another bullet, hoping for mercy?”

Stubs nodded tightly. “Yes.”

The Zombie stepped back, gesturing at the path to the sidewalk. “Then go. Be brave, kid. This ends on your terms, or it keeps going on theirs.”

Stubs pushed off the wall, stepping out into the light of day. He paused there, squinting at the painfully bright sky. “I am brave,” he said. Maybe he didn’t believe it, but there was a strength in his voice. He pulled his hands away from the wound, unbuttoned his white dress shirt with his good fingers, and gingerly peeled the clotted cloth away from his matted body hair.

“Do you want help?” the Zombie asked.

“No.” Stubs finished removing his shirt by pulling the left sleeve inside out. He grabbed ahold of the blood-soaked mass in his good hand, letting the rest of the shirt hang from his fist like a white flag. His wound was a rough pit in his gut, weeping blood. Then he raised his arm, and without a final word, he marched out into the sun and started waving towards the snipers that’d already killed him.

There was a click and a voice on the walkie-talkie. “Common vehicle spotted.”

The Zombie glanced back into the dim safety of the factory.

The Baron held the radio near the merc. “Translate,” he ordered.

“That’s a non-essential civilian,” the merc explained.

The Zombie looked back outside. The radio channel would be open to anyone scanning the waves. Their lingo disguised their intentions against the average eavesdropper.

“I give up!” Stubs shouted towards the street ahead. “I give up!”

The radio crackled. “Common vehicle, in the lane. Over.”

“Someone has him in their line of fire,” the merc said.

“He’s not a threat,” the Baron said.

The Zombie had seen too many battlefields to expect mercy now. He’d already raged once about the unfairness of Stubs’ impending death. Surely, all those snipers could see him again, staring out at them. If they shot Stubs again, there’d be no need to scream a second time. In the Zombie’s heart, he’d simply schedule their deaths in due time.

Even if it took him years, he’d find them and kill them all.

Another voice on the radio: “Requesting permit to invent. Over.”

A third voice, “Affirmative. Permit issued. Over.”

“The common vehicle wants to… park. Do we open our lot?”

“Traffic administration will decide. Over.”

“Copy, traffic admin, the common vehicle is in limbo. Over.”

Through the radio’s static, most of the voices sounded incredibly similar. They were all clearly American, all clearly New England. The merc wasn’t even bothering to translate now; the intention was clear. The mercs were considering how to handle Stubs.

“I’m wounded!” Stubs shouted loud enough to crack his voice, stumbled a little further into the day, and whipped his bloody shirt sleeves like a flag. “I need a hospital!”

The radio said, “Affirmative. The vehicle is leaking oil. No aftermarket features either. I repeat, no aftermarket features. Please advise.”

Stubs’s good hand dropped. He was anemic, tired, dying. He didn’t have the energy to keep waving and shouting. He simply stared at something only he could see; a yawning future, reaching out to take him. On the shores of some eternity, the Zombie hoped.

“Traffic admin here,” said a man with a thick Russian accent, “clear the lane. Head on collision. Make it clean.”

“Malik?” the Baron asked the Zombie.

The Zombie sighed. “Goodbye, Stubs.”

There was a distant crack of gunfire, and Stubs grunted and slapped the missing digits over a penny-sized hole in his chest. His last words were audible. “My heart,” he uttered. It wasn’t a painless noise. It was sorrow and agony, squeezed out of emptying lungs. The CPUSA were merciless, and they’d taken his life. His legs shook. His limbs gave out from shock. He didn’t exactly pass out, but he collapsed and began fading into unconsciousness and death.

The response was sudden and loud behind the Zombie. Cusswords, shouts of disbelief, and more animal sounds emerged—moans, gasps, a young boy screaming.

The Zombie pulled the front door shut. The safety of the Baron was his first priority, but somewhere on his list of needs, he quietly added the eradication of CPUSA, the death of Malik, and whatever pains he could inflict on child-murderers. In the soulless theater of the mind, in the darkness that had no light nor any true perception, the invincible man swore to kill.

After a long moment of bleak fury, the Baron pressed to talk on the radio. “Monsters!” he shouted into the walkie-talkie. “You knew he was surrendering. I heard you—you chose to murder him. You are murderers of children!”

“Who is this?” the Russian asked. “Identify yourself please.”

“You as well!” the Baron shouted. “You gave the order. The blood is on your hands!”

“Is that the Baron d’Holbach?” the Russian asked.

“Of course it is,” the Baron said bitterly.

Barilla leaned in. “Who are you speaking with?”

“Shut up,” the Zombie said, trotting back across the room.

“It’s an honest question—”

“Shut your mouth before I break it!” the Zombie shouted.

Barilla shrank back. If the Baron was angry, the Zombie multiplied that mood tenfold.

“Is this Andrey Malik?” the Baron asked.

“You’re not sure?” Malik asked.

“Denisov will hear about this,” the Baron said, “he’ll know about your crimes.”

Malik laughed, the volume of his voice turning the sound to static. “He already knows! But this is no longer a question of knowledge. It’s a question of power—manpower, firepower, prestige—and I have it all here. I told you, we Bolsheviks can work alone.”

“If knowledge doesn’t matter, why did you murder that young man? Was it because he was a witness? Or are you just killing people for the hell of it?”

“I didn’t say that. Knowledge is a kind of power, and I’m not going to risk anything. You and I both know how important this search is. We understand the need for… discretion. Dead people don’t tell tales, Baron. You’ve heard the saying, I’m sure.”

“He didn’t know anything,” the Baron said, his lips practically pressed to the radio. “Nobody had to die here. Malik, innocent people don’t have to die for a well-kept secret.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Baron, but the only guarantee is death, and the easiest search happens to be the same method. You may think I’m a monster, but I’m a practical man. I won’t have New York crawling down my throat.”

“What are you going to do? Kill all of us?” He asked the question because only a fool would say yes in front of the Zombie, and he was pushing Malik to consider other options.

“Ah, well, about that,” Malik muttered, “you said it first, Baron. Not I.”

The Zombie narrowed his eyes at the voice on the radio.

“No!” the Baron shouted into the receiver, “Don’t throw their lives away!”

The Zombie stepped closer. “Friend,” he said, his hand extended. “Give me the radio.”

“Don’t kill them,” the Baron pleaded.

“Let me handle this,” the Zombie whispered.

The Baron held the radio in his hand. He didn’t know what would happen if he handed it over. He didn’t know if this would be another massacre like Salem. He couldn’t know.

“Trust me,” the Zombie said.

The Baron reached out and dropped the radio into the Zombie’s hand.

The Zombie caught it, spun around, and caught the eyes of Martin, who was leaning against the back wall with the Garand in hand. “Pick up the merc,” the Zombie commanded. “Help me put him on my shoulder. If I try, I might break him.”

Martin looked at Barilla and Phyllis.

“Go on,” Barilla said.

Phyllis nodded silently. There was no debating the Zombie at a moment like this.

The injured merc groaned and gritted his teeth when Martin lifted him up by his armpits. He let out a cry of pain when his wounded stomach was dropped over the Zombie’s shoulder. The Zombie wrapped him up in his arm like a sack of grain. “Hold still or you’ll shatter your ribs.” He shook the man lightly. “Try to stay up. The blood will rush to your head.”

“What’s he going to do?” Phyllis asked the Baron.

“No idea,” the Baron said.

The Zombie marched to the front door, kicked it open, and strode out into the sunshine. Stubs’ corpse was lying on the sidewalk outside Barilla’s Shoes, soaking in a pool of blood. It seeped through all the little cracks and grains of the concrete.

He lifted up the walkie-talkie and yelled into the receiver, “Attention assholes, this is the invincible man speaking! Have you heard of my Pact? Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach named me the Zombie. He is the only creature on Earth that can give me an order without any risk of dying. If you kill him, there’ll be nobody left to control me. I won’t be stopped. I won’t tire. While I may appear bored, I am dead inside. I have the patience of death. I have its focus. My dear assholes, I could become your personal Grim Reaper. If the Baron dies, I won’t stop with your deaths. I’ll kill everyone who has known you, everyone related to you. I’ll kill the people you admire. I’ll destroy the organization that sponsored you. I’ll tear the world apart until nobody can remember you. I have sworn this pact before, many thousands of years ago, and you haven’t heard the story because nobody survived to tell it.” He let off the radio for a moment and pointed towards the spot where he believed the sniper was camping, near a hedge in front of a building down the block. Then he spoke again, “You there, behind the bushes. I have a survivor here. If you want him, he’s yours. All you have to do is swear that you won’t kill the Baron. Now, now, don’t ask your boss for permission. You aren’t swearing to him—you’re swearing to me! Go ahead and tell me on the radio. Say you won’t kill the Baron.”

He waited. There was a long moment of silence. No answer.

He pressed to talk: “Say it!”

“I won’t kill the Baron,” droned a half-dozen voices at once.

“Very effective,” Malik said over the channel.

The Zombie knelt, setting the injured merc onto his feet. The CPUSA goon wobbled and shivered, drunk and flushed from blood pooling in his brain, but otherwise well enough to not fall. “Go on,” the Zombie said into the microphone, “Go back to your comrades.”

The merc stepped forward, going around Stubs’ body. For several seconds, there was no response. Only wind, birds, and distant traffic. A boat motor, elsewhere.

Malik suddenly spoke on the radio: “All agents, instructions follow. We’ll uphold the Zombie’s pact. However, this protection doesn’t extend to anyone else. You will retire all expendable personnel you encounter. Further instructions will follow on the backup channel, as needed. Otherwise, remain radio silent until ordered to speak. Over and out.”

“All expendable personnel?” the Zombie muttered curiously.

The question was answered immediately. There were four shots fired, coming from locations all up and down the street. The injured merc twitched once, then fell down only a few feet away from Stubs. On his back, a couple of exit wounds began to blossom almost black across the grey of his fatigues. A major artery had been punctured, but even so he shouldn’t be dead that quickly. Someone must’ve shot him in the head.

“Eat shit,” the Zombie muttered. He’d exploded two birds with one impossibly well-pitched stone. The Baron would be safe, and that merc had been thrown to the wolves. Satisfied, he stepped back inside and shut the door behind him.

Author’s Note:

Whew! The fighting gets fiercer, but we’re not clear yet!

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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July 3, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

There was a long moment of silence, which imperceptibly morphed into the quiet and insistent sniggering of the Zombie. The Baron cast him a fierce glare, but that only made the Zombie snort once, loudly, a laugh suppressed. He looked again at the gangster. Barilla was embarrassed by the Baron’s reaction, but like all leading mafioso, he turned shame into aggression. He looked about as angry as he must be worried.

“How old is he?” the Baron asked.

“Seventeen.”

It was clear Barilla hadn’t asked Phyllis anything. She wouldn’t have let him put the Cat o’ Nine Lives in anyone so young. “A child,” the Baron said aloud, forcing a calm voice and failing. “You fed an unknown occult object to a child. Why’d you think that was a good idea?”

Barilla was fierce, ready to snap at criticism. “He’s seventeen, he’s a man—”

The Baron raised his voice to match. “Did he decide to swallow it? Did you make him?”

“I asked him!” Barilla shouted. “He chose—”

“Are you blaming your son?”

“Fuck you!”

“Was he informed? Is he a cultist?”

“I told him everything I knew.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“I don’t have to, prick! I knew enough!”

“Tell me what the Cat does!”

“It makes you tougher. Makes you stronger.”

“Fuck!” The Baron waved his arm in one swift arc, dismissing the entire thing. “We have to go now. If we don’t cut the Cat out of your son, he’ll be the primary target.”

“Target?” Barilla was exasperated. “You want to cut him open?”

“People are looking for you—for the Cat. Once they figure out that you don’t have it, they’ll be all over your home, your businesses, your family. They’ll tear everything apart.”

“You can’t cut my son open!”

The Baron was thinking quickly. He had to get Barilla on his side long enough to reach the kid and cut out the Cat—where? They’d need a doctor. “We can heal him with prestige, we just need enough. Our client—the original owner of the Cat—he’ll have enough.”

“You can heal people? Like layin’ on hands?”

“Something like that.”

There was a loud pop outside the building, like someone setting off a firecracker in the street. A common twitch, shoulders tensing and heads lowered—except for the Zombie, who grinned broadly. That was the sound of modern violence, defined and redefined by television and movies. It was a manifest threat, and a sign that the Baron and the Zombie were too late to easily extract Barilla. Gunfire signaled that enemy mercenaries were already here.

“Who’s shooting?” Barilla shouted at Martin, as if his guard would know.

“It’s Schuler,” the Baron suggested, “the priest you saw outside.” The Diviner had talked about keeping people safe; if someone waved a gun at him, he’d fight on principle.

The Zombie was irrepressibly happy. “Or that’s someone Schuler just hurt. Either way, we’ve got the Diviner on our side.”

“For now,” the Baron said sharply. “We can’t trust him.”

Tires screeched on the pavement. The noise was followed by a fusillade of firepower, fired not at the building but away from it.

Phyllis threw open the door to the hall. “Barilla!” she roared at her boss. “Make calls! Get someone on the line. Get men! Get armed men!”

“Phyllis?” he asked, dazed by the sudden shift.

“Get on the phone!” she demanded.

Barilla ran for the door, everyone else trailing behind. Just inside the door, Barilla’s street gang could be seen lying flat on the carpet, minimizing the chance of intercepting a stray shot. Phyllis put a hand out to stop the Baron and pushed him back out into the hall. She stopped in front of the Zombie but deliberately avoided touching him. “A word.”

“Yes?” the Baron asked.

“I heard your shouting. What do you need?”

The Baron didn’t have time to consider or reconsider who could be trusted and who’d make a good ally. They were probably seconds away from being sieged. He went with the bare minimum. “Barilla’s son. We’ll need him next.”

“Why?” she asked.

“We’ll talk if we survive.”

She squeezed her lips tight, making her subtle wrinkles stand out around the edges of her mouth. She exuded authority, but the Baron and Zombie weren’t followers. She’d have to forgo control of the situation or be left out. “I’ll survive,” she said. “I’ll hold you to your word.”

Barilla was shouting into the handset. “Send everyone! Tommies, dynamite, rifles—whatever you’ve got. I don’t know… no, I don’t fucking know. Just hurry!” He slammed the phone on the receiver. “Jesus, like twenty questions… of all the goddamn times.”

Phyllis entered the room. “Make another call.”

“Who? I don’t know that many numbers.”

She paused. The Baron thought that the right answer would’ve been Tammany Hall, but Phyllis couldn’t risk bringing New York into this situation. They’d persecute her as an Artemisian. “The police,” she said lamely, realizing there were no other good options.

Barilla furrowed his brow. “I just called in the boys. I ain’t calling the heat on ‘em.”

The Baron and the Zombie were still standing at the door. “Is there a back entrance?” the Baron asked.

“What? Why?” Barilla asked.

“Listen!” the Zombie commanded.

Everyone paused, listening.

The Zombie pointed down the hall, towards the front of the building and the rising sounds of gunfire. Schuler wasn’t in a fight with only a few weapons; multiple automatic firearms clattered and banged like typewriters, straining to write the final bloody sentences of Schuler’s story. A moment later, a sextet of bullets struck the outer brick wall with low cracks, like someone breaking thick curls of dried mud under heavy boots.

“Point taken,” Barilla muttered, wiping his mouth with a sweaty hand. “There’re six entrances. Only the front door is open.”

“Padlocked the rest?” the Baron asked.

“Yeah, with chains.”

“They’ll have enough prestige to unlock them. There’s multiple men fighting Schuler—”

“A small platoon,” the Zombie judged.

“—so I’d say they’ll have most of the doors covered.”

“What the hell do we do then?” Barilla asked.

The Baron took a deep breath. There were two options. Stay, defend this office, and hope that the enemy wasn’t willing to bring down the structure with ordinance or prestige. The other was to find a weak point in the enemy perimeter, probably on the opposite side from Schuler’s pitched battle. He preferred that one, but it only worked if they moved fast. “We’re surrounded,” he announced, “but we still have the element of surprise.”

“What surprise?” Barilla asked. “They know we’re here.”

“They know you’re here. If your bodyguard drives you, they know he’s here, but they don’t know if we’re here yet, and they definitely don’t know about Phyllis or your street gang.” The Baron looked over the crowd. “This building is too easy to search. It’s line rooms and tables, nowhere to hide the kids. We need to pick a way out and move, now.”

“Nobody goes towards the front entrance,” the Zombie said. “Nobody but me.”

The Baron continued issuing orders: “Just stick close. The enemy will spread out, try to enter the building. Let’s head for one of the doors on the far side. Make a break for it.”

Phyllis squared her shoulders. “Baron, with all respect, that won’t work. If they want to surround us, they can just park at the corners and sit with rifles. We’ll have to wait for the Anastasia boys. They can break us out.”

The Baron grimaced. Of course, the other natural leader in the room had adopted the alternative strategy without hesitation, and they didn’t have time for an extended argument. “How about a compromise? Once we reach a door, we scout the situation. The Zombie clears the space ahead of us, and we go where he goes. Even through a wall.”

“As long as we’re careful, I’d consider it,” Phyllis said.

“Sounds stupid,” whispered the young man with the missing fingers.

Barilla scowled. “Yeah, you want us running across open rooms.”

The Baron cast his hands outwards at the office around them, a flimsy, wooden structure. “I don’t like the alternative. These men have prestige, a great deal of it. They could bring these walls down on our heads, start fires, disorient and disarm.”

Phyllis’s brows raised about as high as they could go. “That much?”

“They silenced two gunfights this morning alone,” the Zombie said.

Phyllis’s eyes went wide. “Who are we facing?”

“I don’t know,” the Baron said, a half-truth. He knew the enemy cult and their motivations, but not the specific source of the men or their weapons. The Soviets couldn’t just summon an army from thin air. Was this a true mercenary force, or some kind of genuine fifth column that’d been hiding inside New York territory? Either way, it was a frightening amount of power to wield on American soil. Wars had been started over less.

 Phyllis faced her boss with a grim glare. “Sir, we should go.”

As Phyllis spoke, the dreadful shadow of belief eclipsed Barrila’s face. A lowered brow darkened his small eyes. “Fine, fuck me for staying in cover.”

“They really can collapse the ceiling,” Phyllis added.

Barilla raised a hand in frustrated surrender. “I know, I know. Jesus, fuck.” His eyes darted around, meeting the looks of his miserable crew—practically a band of child soldiers. “Listen to the man, boys. We’re going.” A deep breath. “Shit.”

“All right!” The Baron clapped his hands together once, calling the room to attention. Boys were already rising at the conversation, but they jumped to their feet like they’d heard a drill instructor. “Here’s the brief. Behind the offices is the waterfront. Nowhere to run, open terrain. On the other side, in front of the building, it’s a war zone. We’ll take a side exit.”

Even now, there were sounds of gunfire coming from out front, though at a much lower frequency. People had metaphorically dug into positions, taking cover. Schuler was still clearly alive, likely holding a gun himself, given the back and forth barks of smokeless powder. The Baron didn’t know how long that stability would last. Once Schuler found an opportunity—or once the enemy decided to press Schuler’s position—their fighting would reach a crescendo, and given what he’d seen of Diviner combat over the centuries, this would almost certainly entail a tremendous amount of property destruction.

In truth, this escape would only be possible because Schuler was drawing a great deal of enemy attention towards himself. The Baron made a mental note to thank him later, assuming they made it out of here alive and without capture.

“I know the way,” Barilla said, gesturing towards the wall with the door in it. “Fully across the building, near the back corner. We used to take shipments there.”

The Baron nodded. “Any cover along that side? Dumpsters, barricades?”

“There’s a Dempster,” Barilla said.

The Baron recognized the brandname—a small truck-loaded dumpster. “Good. There’s a fair chance they’ll have some forces on all sides, so we’re going to cross the factory along the waterfront side, close to the outer wall itself. That gives them the worst firing angles through any windows. Any complaints?”

Phyllis sighed. “No complaints, but there’s not much complexity here, Baron. It’s four workfloors in a square grid. If anyone gets inside, it’s a shooting gallery, and we only have one revolver and some zip-guns.”

The Baron understood. “We’ll have the Zombie scout the area first. Barilla, what’s the door like at the exit?”

“It’s a fold-up garage door. We used it to move machines before the war.”

The Baron feared it’d be something like that. “It’s the kind of thing the enemy might open before we even get there. Zombie, move quickly, draw attention. Fake an injury if you get shot, and make them question your identity. You can clear the path once we know where we’re going.”

The Zombie laughed under his breath, grinning. “This will be fun.”

The Baron quickly pointed to each of the kids in turn. “Once we’re moving, you’ll fall in behind Phyllis and in front of Barilla. Martin and I will follow the Zombie directly.”

“What’s happening?” asked the youngest member of the street gang, a boy who’d only begun to grow a dirt lip mustache.

“Bunch of goons are trying to swipe the boss,” said the boy missing fingers.

“We going to rumble?”

“No man, we’re cutting it. We tussle? That’s the end.”

The Baron clapped again. “We’re out of time. Zombie, make it fast.”

The Zombie gave the Baron a smart salute, opened the door to the office, and looked in both directions along the little hall. Then he slipped out, vanishing for a couple minutes.

About a minute into the wait, Barilla said, “Where is he?”

The Baron scowled. “He’s scouting. He’ll be back.”

Another thirty seconds passed. Barilla started speaking: “How long—”

“Boss,” Phyllis interrupted.

“What?”

“He’s invincible, and he always comes for the Baron. Just wait.”

Barilla turned away, frustrated.

Thank you, the Baron mouthed to Phyllis. She cast him a discreet thumbs up.

A sudden knock at the door. Everyone twitched, and then the Zombie’s voice came through, soft and low, “I’m back.”

“Come in,” the Baron said.

The Zombie slipped inside. “That far garage door? It’s open.”

“Shit,” Barilla whispered.

“Did someone come inside?” the Baron asked.

“Yeah, I’m guessing they’re in the back room on the other side of the building. For now, they’re still grouping up. Nobody has breached any of the other rooms.”

“You checked?”

“Yeah. I scouted the other quarters. The front of the building is clear, though Martin left the front propped open, so I shut it quietly.”

“You locked it?” Martin asked.

The Zombie nodded curtly. “Chain and padlock. Baron, we can circle around the middle, then cross over to the far corner. There’s another shutter door there, facing the same alley. I think we can sneak out without a gunfight. We just have to crawl under the front windows.”

Passing by windows was a frightening notion. “Nobody shot at you?” the Baron asked.

“Nothing. No motion, but I know why you’re worried. Do you want to risk it?”

“We have to,” the Baron said. “We can’t stay here. Lead the way.”

“Can do.”

The Zombie waved them out into the hallway, heading towards the exit at the back of the hall, closest to the waterfront. Martin came up behind him, close and low, treating the Zombie like a shield. The Baron followed, and Phyllis squeezed into the space next to him. Behind them stalked the kids—the young man with the missing fingers first in line—and Barilla was standing at the back with a small revolver, watching the front end of the hall.

“Where we going?” whispered a kid. Someone put a hand on his mouth, and Phyllis gave him a look as fierce as a slap. He shut his trap too tight to apologize.

The Baron breathed out, squeezing his diaphragm to squelch frustration. Children. They’d reviewed the plan only minutes ago, but this one clearly hadn’t listened. He admired school teachers for handling impulsive and inattentive children across an entire career.

The Zombie paused at the swinging doors at the end of the hall, kneeled quietly, and looked underneath. Then he rose and pushed through, peeking out as if his body were at risk. When nothing happened, he stalked forward into the empty factory floor, glancing around furtively.

The windows here were nailed over with pressed boards, ill-fitting. Sunlight leaked in around the edges, casting everything in a sad gloom. There was no other sign of ventilation, and no suggestion that the windows could be opened. It must’ve been miserably hot when the room was full of sewing machines and underpaid workers. Even now it stank a little like sweat and tanned leather.

The Zombie stopped in the middle of the space, visibly relaxing. It must be clear, with all doors accounted for and closed. He waved the group forward.

Martin caught up with the Zombie first; the Baron and the rest followed in his steps. Barilla slowed the hall door while it swung shut, keeping the hinges from squeaking. They stalked through the dim factory floor, listening to both primary sounds and their soft echoes bouncing off broad walls. It was a crowd of shuffling footsteps; a mob of heavy breathing; a funeral parade, complete with distant twenty-one gun salutes. Schuler was still fighting. The percussion of racing hearts overlaid everything.

The invincible man walked along the inner brick wall, listening carefully until he reached the inside corner of the factory floor. He stopped in front of a pair of swinging doors close to the inside of the building—the kind that a materials cart could push aside—and he peered through the central gap with an eye. A thumbs up, all clear.

The Baron silently signalled for him to proceed.

The Zombie pushed the doors open as if he were afraid of making a sound, squinting towards distant, clear windows. The Baron could see sunlight, reflecting in a long streak across the coated concrete, interrupted by some strips of black anti-slip tape. There was a flicker of motion somewhere outside; a figure in black was running away from the building, ducking out of view behind a distant, parked vehicle. A moment later, there was a clear pop of rifle fire out there. Schuler was still drawing attention away from the front.

The Zombie hesitated, moving his head from side to side to check the firing angles that faced into the factory’s windows. Then he turned and waved everyone to follow.

The Baron and Phyllis entered the empty room first, hugging close to the right wall; the kids came after. Martin rushed in next, and finally Barilla, shuddering as if every step was already pushing his limits. He was openly afraid, and that wasn’t helping his street gang. When they looked at their boss, wide eyes sought hope or strength and found little of either.

The Zombie checked the closest swinging doors along the right wall, aiming to minimize the time they spent passing through this room. Schuler’s fighting was beginning to lull. People were dying, or they were backing off. He waved to the Baron, whispering. “See the windows?”

The Baron stepped into place beside the door, peering through the gap and trying to scout the angles. There were two windows facing the front street, both on a strip of wall near the front door. One of them had a panel knocked out; glittering shards traced an impact angle across the concrete. The other half of the factory quadrant laid in a deeper gloom. Unless you were up against a window, you couldn’t see into the corner.

Another fold-up garage door was on the outside wall there, facing the same alley. Still closed. “You’re right.” He stepped back. “You first. I’ll move everyone afterwards.”

The Zombie nodded, pushed the doors open very slowly, and slid through sideways, dropping low along the inside wall of the floor. The Baron leaned into the door to keep it from swinging shut, and watched the Zombie’s progress with a single eye.

The Zombie crawled forward, peering constantly into the sunlight streaming from the windows. He paused at one point, held up two fingers back to the Baron, then subtly mimed a steering wheel. After that, he kept moving until he was in position. The pops of bullets were getting distant now.

The Baron turned back towards Phyllis, who was just behind him. “At least two cars,” he whispered to her.

“Eight people?”

“Minimum. Gunfire suggests more.”

The Zombie stopped against the front wall, effectively in cover. From there, he could crawl under the windows as necessary. He waved, signalling the Baron to follow.

The Baron pulled the swinging door fully open, using himself as a stop. “On the count of three,” he whispered to the crowd behind him, “everyone crosses the room along the left wall, heading for the front. Quiet and quick. Barilla and I will bring up the rear.”

The Zombie was standing in the middle of the shadowed region, keeping watch over all the other doors to the room. Another thumbs-up. This was the time.

The Baron counted with his fingers. “Three. Two. One. Go.”

Martin ran out, half-crouched, and went fast along the left wall. Phyllis went second, wearing work boots and wool pants, not women’s shoes and a dress. She might’ve been a factory worker before she took over Barilla’s occult enterprise. She was in shape regardless, and simply ran, catching up to Martin. The street gang came out behind her in a rough band, huddled down and moving but not as quickly as they could. There was a bit of hesitation, as if they were afraid of stepping on each other’s heels. For a long moment, no reactions from outside, or from any other doors. Barilla paused beside the Baron.

“Do you think—”

Then crack of a rifle, thunderously loud, instantly followed by the glassy crinkling of a window panel, already shattered, now spilling out onto the floor. The Baron flinched, but his immediate reaction was regret. It was an ambush after all. The kids were half-crouched, pausing, unsure if they should hit the ground, looking to see if anyone was hurt.

“Run!” the Baron roared. Barilla was still beside him. He grabbed the old gangster by the lapel of his expensive suit, yanked hard enough to rip a button off the jacket and threw him forward, then charged after him right into the mass of kids. The shout seemed to set them moving; the next two shots taken made them sprint. Someone was already screaming. The Baron nearly tripped over the gangster with missing fingers. He was grabbing his side below the ribs. The stubs of his knuckles were drenched in pulsing gushes of dark blood.

There was no time to stop. If anyone fell, the Zombie could retrieve them.

Barilla practically rammed into the younger kids as they stumbled into the safety of the brick wall, rushing for an angle that got them away from the windows. Two of them tripped up and fell, hitting the concrete floor with heavy thuds. The Baron himself had too much momentum to stop; he leaped over a fallen street gangster before Martin arrested his motion, already coming back to help the fallen. Barilla and him grabbed one of the two stumbling boys, maybe fifteen, and together, they yanked him by the arms into safety. The other one kicked forward until he was up and running again, joining the rest along the wall just behind the locked front door.

“Stubs!” one of the boys cried out.

The Baron looked back. Stubs wasn’t standing, but he was still on his knees in a long, yellow band of sunlight, clasping his belly with two hands and gasping, failing to breathe. More heavy pulses of blood over his hands. The shot had knocked the air out of him.

Before anyone could bark another order, the Zombie vaulted a production line and openly sprinted across the factory floor towards Stubs. A fourth round came through the windows, catching the invincible man in the flank with a burst of wool, fluttering his open jacket. The Zombie barely noticed. In one fluid motion, he grabbed Stubs under the legs and back, swept him up, and hauled him bodily to safety across open ground, shielding the kid with his own back turned to the windows.

A fifth and final shot shattered across the Zombie’s spine; the Baron could see fragments of a smashed bullet flying up like the contents of a party popper, surreally metallic in the last slice of sunlight before the Zombie ran their casualty to the destination.

Phyllis grabbed the Baron’s sleeve. “Sniper?” she hissed.

“Hunting rifle,” the Baron guessed.

“Crawl!” the Zombie rasped, a half-whisper and a half-yell, a single strained cry. He knelt to gently set Stubs down against the outer wall. The young man gasped in his first full breath, squeaking with growing agony.

Phyllis followed instructions, quickly ducking beneath the front windows while carefully avoiding any of the patches of shattered glass. The rest of the street gang followed her lead, and Martin and Barilla trailed right after them, passing in cover. The Baron brought up the rear, grimacing at the rising sounds of human suffering.

Once they were clear of the windows, Martin and Barilla both ran over to Stubs in the corner, reaching tentatively towards him with their hands. What could they even do?

The Zombie came back to meet the Baron, pulling off his cheap bowler and handing it over. The Baron took it without question, nodding. The Zombie was about to smash something or scream, probably both.

The invincible man stopped in front of the damaged window, staring through the remaining panes in the direction of the sniper that’d shot Stubs.

Shouts filtered in from somewhere outside: “It’s Zed! Zed! Hold your fire!”

The Zombie took a deep breath, and he hollered at a volume that would’ve harmed a man, unleashing a feral bellow that could only erupt from invincible lungs and an unbreakable larynx. Still screaming, he threw his head forward into the multi-pane window, headbutting the crossbar, shattering another two panes and knocking out the bottom half of the window in a crash of shards and metal. Glass scattered off his head and clothes like water, and he leaned out the collapsing window as his roar became words, “Fuck off or die motherfuckers!” While he yelled, he pounded on the sides of the windowsill with his fists, knocking off chunks of metal with loud pangs, an inhuman display of violent intent.

Then he fell silent, waiting for an answer. He didn’t even take a followup breath. He froze and waited, half-leaning out the window with a furious stare. No response came. Wind blew, traffic rumbled, and Stubs whimpered.

Everyone inside the factory had flinched except for the Baron himself. He knew that fury well. Someone had shot at them and hit an adolescent, and the Zombie couldn’t leave the room to retaliate. For the next few minutes, until things inevitably changed, they were effectively trapped, and the Zombie’s presence was the only clear shield against a full assault. He might be the only reason they weren’t already dead on the cold factory floor.

The silence around them was itself a terrible new truth. If Schuler was still fighting out there, there was no further sign of it. The Diviner had disappeared, or at least gone to ground for a moment, leaving them all alone in the false peace of hesitation. The Baron didn’t trust that it would last. Someone had already taken a shot at them. They’d try again soon.

It was a gut feeling. After the fighting at the Belmont-Sutter Homes, the Baron knew there was something strange about these mercs, likely hired and armed by Bolshevik factionalists. In the moment that one killer shot another, horror had seeded itself in the Baron’s heart, only now bearing its bitter fruit. In spite of the Pact, these men fought like they wanted to die, and what threat could the Zombie muster against a principled murder-suicide?

Absolutely none. Any zealot was a critical threat.

Author’s Note:

Lives are on the line. Youth is cut short.

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!

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July 2, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

Martin walked out into the hall. Barilla came around his desk, patted Phyllis on the shoulder as he passed, and went out the door. “Come along, Baron!”

“It’ll have to do,” the Baron whispered to the Zombie.

The Zombie nodded and went out the door first. Barilla and Martin were standing just a few feet down the hall. The Baron paused behind the Zombie, physically shielded.

“Miles!” Barilla shouted at the kid stopping the door. “Get inside, shut the door, and don’t come out unless I say so. Grown men are talking.”

“Sir!” The kid nearly jumped. The door slammed shut in his wake.

Once it was clear from their relaxed stances that neither side planned violence, at least not immediately, Barilla stepped in front of Martin and the Baron stepped in front of the Zombie. Their human weapons were behind them. It was time to talk.

The Baron lobbied one more time for privacy. “Anyone can be a risk, especially if they have a criminal history. They’ll have skeletons in their closet—potential leverage.”

“Sure, sometimes,” Barilla said, “but Martin here is in my pocket. I know where the bodies are buried.” He jabbed a thumb at the man behind him. “Nobody can squeeze this guy. Not some made up goon you’re pissing and moaning about. This ain’t a spy flick.”

The Baron didn’t respond to the paltry insult. Barilla was naturally aggressive, and neither antagonism nor appeasement would help. The only path out was disengagement, which would eventually drive Barilla to ask him to speak—to give up momentum to the Baron.

Barilla continued. “You think you’re clever, but you drop hints like Martin here takes a shit. It’s loud, it’s noisy, it stinks down the hall.”

“Hints for what?” the Baron said flatly.

“You want me alone for something, fine, but then you start giving Phyllis the evil eye and everything but the kiss of death, and I have to wonder, who is this man? What does he know about my second-in-command?”

“Even I could tell you were threatening the lady,” Martin said.

“Shut it!” Barilla said, “Baron? Baron and Zombie? What kind of titles are those? If it weren’t for Phyllis, I’d think you were a pair of idiots like the priest out front.”

“He’s not an idiot,” the Zombie said matter of factly.

“Shut it!” Barilla shouted. “Jesus Christ, don’t you know when you’re being talked at? Were you raised by the circus? If you don’t have manners, at least pay attention. Do you see where you are? Do you see who you’re alone with?”

“The boss of the docks,” the Baron said idly.

“You’re alone with us.” He indicated Martin and himself with a broad, heavy hand. “We’ve got two hundred pounds on you, and nancy suits like you aren’t armed.”

The Baron raised an eyebrow. Barilla would have it out of his system soon, but that was an irresistible prompt. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Phyllis thinks you’re important. That means you think you’re important. You’re used to getting your way because of a reputation, but look at those hands. You work out in a gym, like all fucking nancies. You think you’re hard, but you ain’t. You ain’t hard.”

“We do get our way often,” the Baron agreed.

“Not with me, asshole,” Barilla said. “Now fess up before Martin knocks out your teeth. What do you have on Phyllis? What don’t I know?”

The Baron didn’t hesitate to answer, “Nothing.” While he could certainly gain a little of Barilla’s trust by throwing Phyllis under the bus, he’d never do it. The woman had a long occult career ahead of her, especially if she’d made it to her 40s in New York City. He could preserve her secret and still win Barilla over. It’d only take time, and while they probably didn’t have much to spend, he’d spend whatever he needed on keeping an Artemisian safe.

“Bullshit!” Barilla snorted and spat at the Baron’s feet. “Don’t make me ask again.”

The Baron looked down. At least the man hadn’t actually spat on his shoes. He picked at the corner of his eye, body language signaling a mix of exhaustion and boredom. “I think you misunderstand. Phyllis wanted to listen in. I wanted Phyllis to understand why she couldn’t. If it’d been your bodyguard speaking up, we would’ve argued with him instead.”

Barilla closed his eyes like he was getting a headache. “For God’s sake, do you hear yourself? Why do you think these people have a choice in the matter? Why do you think you have a choice?” His voice was rising. “I’m the boss here—this is my fucking wharf!” He thumped his own chest. “Tomorrow, my son is going to lead my street gang into Cougar territory, and they’re going to beat a man halfway to death, not because he did anything but just to make a bloody point. We’re not to be fucked with! We own this slice of Red Hook, and I’m in charge!” Three thumps to the sternum marked the last three words, loud enough to make it sound like Barilla was punching himself. It would’ve been intimidating to almost anyone else.

The Zombie burst into laughter instead.

Barilla shouted, “You think this is a joke?”

“He’s invincible,” the Baron said.

“What?” Barilla glanced at Martin, who was blank-faced in order to maintain an air of competency instead of confusion. “What the hell does that mean?” Barilla asked the Baron.

Now this was an opportunity. Barilla was handing him the reins. He had to gently lead him without making him feel like he’d lost control. First, a feint. “I’ll explain later,” he said dismissively. This would encourage Barilla to reask the question, to double down on his demand to be educated.

Barilla sucked in his breath, trying to control his anger. “Later?”

“You want to know now?”

“You’re fucking with me,” Barilla said.

“I’m not. The Zombie is truly invincible.” The Baron took a deep breath. “I think this requires a little explanation. You’re in charge, Barilla, I’m not challenging that—not even he’s challenging that. But I’m two hundred years old, and he’s literally invincible. Phyllis knows us because we’re famous. All that supernatural bullshit you leave to her? We drowned in it long ago.”

Barilla’s nose twisted up like he didn’t like the smell of what the Baron gave him. “You expecting me to believe that? Phyllis ain’t mentioned you before.”

“Our last visit to New York was in the 20s. Phyllis would’ve been a teenager.”

Barilla was confused. He couldn’t figure out why the Baron was making wild claims about unnatural age. “You’re half my age,” he said incredulously.

“I haven’t aged for two hundred years,” the Baron said.

Barilla turned to Martin and whispered a short, fierce phrase. The Baron couldn’t make out what was said, but he firmly believed it didn’t matter. The core problem was fast becoming clear. Barilla wasn’t as stupid as imagined. He was willfully ignorant, yes, but while that was foolish, it was also focused, and this man was knee-deep in violence and death. He didn’t have time for something as abstract as religion, even if it had practical effects. All that mattered was the scramble to stay on top of his little corner of the underworld, and to him, the Baron’s messages weren’t about killers or tasks from the gods. They were about trust. The seeds of mistrust were planted, but he couldn’t dispose of the perceived threat. Barilla needed Phyllis terribly, and he knew it. Even as she skimmed off the top of his ignorance, she also relieved him of all obligations to the occult world. He needed to believe the Baron was a liar or a scoundrel, or his natural paranoia would overwhelm him. “Fuck me,” he said to the Baron.

The Baron didn’t blame him for this reaction. Barilla was only doing what was best for his survival under normal, secular circumstances. Unfortunately, an occult force would be coming for him soon. There was no doubt about that. The only questions were of scale and purpose. Who was coming, and how many men would they bring? How much prestige?

“Look, I can prove that I’m telling the truth. You saw that the Zombie took the knife from the boy Miles. You know it isn’t a trick blade.”

“I know he tricked the kid into handing it over,” Barilla said.

The Zombie opened the penny knife. “Do you want to see another trick?”

“No need to be that aggressive,” the Baron said promptly. “Barilla, please take the knife from the Zombie and attempt to cut his hand.”

“I’m not stepping near a man with a blade.”

“Would you rather that Martin did it?”

Barilla glanced at his man. Gave him a nod of command.

Martin circled around his boss, walked by the Baron close enough to bury him in the shadow of his bulk, and then reached the Zombie with a fat palm open to accept the knife. “How do you want me to cut you?” Martin asked.

“Do it however you like,” the Zombie said, short and curt. “Just don’t cut the shirt. I want to look nice until lunch.”

Martin wrapped his fist around the handle, took the Zombie’s hand in his own, and lightly ran the edge of the knife across the Zombie’s palm. When it didn’t cut, he glanced up at Zombie’s grin, then ran the blade across his invincible skin again. “Why aren’t you cut?” Martin asked.

The Zombie laughed lightly. “I’m invincible. Go ahead, stab down at my palm.”

Martin didn’t immediately follow directions. He sliced a third time, much harder, visibly straining like a man pressing on an iron anvil. The Zombie’s skin bent around the blade, but it did not break. Martin looked the Zombie in the eyes. The Baron could see what Martin saw. There was only joy there. It was more terrifying than confidence. It was enough to make the gangster cringe, but he turned the point down and aimed it at the Zombie’s palm.

“You might want to let my hand go. For your own safety.”

Martin released him without question, but he glanced at the Baron. “If I put this through his palm, would he go to the hospital?”

“I’d pay for anyone injured,” the Baron said.

Martin stabbed down. The blade struck the Zombie’s palm and deflected, as if he were jamming it into an immovable, friction-free surface. Martin’s arm kept going down, blade sliding between the Zombie’s fingers, his sense of balance thrown.

“Steady!” the Baron shouted.

Martin jerked back as if he were about to fall, though he wasn’t. The blade fell from his hand and clattered on the floor. “Oh, fuck,” he murmured.

The Zombie leaned over to pick up the knife, close it, and return it to his pocket. 

“What the hell?” Barilla asked Martin. “Did you stab him?”

“I did, boss. Yeah.”

“You hit him dead in the palm?”

“I really did, boss.”

“Are you telling me his hand can deflect a knife?” Barilla’s tone was angry, but Martin was too smart to lie. Repeating the question wouldn’t make the truth change.

Martin nodded, stepping back. “Boss, I think he’s really invincible.”

“He is,” the Baron said. “Absolutely so.”

The Zombie took off his hat, spinning the edge of the bowler across his palm. “They once threw me into a volcano.” He tossed it up and caught it on his head. “I twitched until the stone shattered around me, and I ripped my way out of granite.”

That was a legend, not a provable historical event, but the Baron wasn’t going to undermine his friend’s message on a technicality. Instead, he moved to seal the truth in Barilla’s mind. “The Zombie is unstoppable. He’s the only reason I’m alive, and he’s proof.”

“Of what?” Barilla asked.

“Of everything! The occult, the reason I’m here to talk with you. I’m old, he’s invincible, and there are two questions I must ask before we leave.”

Martin slowly walked back behind Barilla.

The boss gave the Baron an appraising look. “That supernatural stuff ain’t right,” Barilla said. “Honest, I ain’t questioning God’s angels, but there shouldn’t be a man that nobody can kill. It just ain’t good.”

That was a Catholic interpretation for the system of prestige—that the gods were just angels directing the daily grind of ineffable purpose and divine intervention. The Baron wondered if Barilla had learned what little he knew from a Vatican cultist. If so, that’d explain his ignorance. They tended to provide little to no education for their neophytes and associates, preferring to assign tasks on authority alone. Vatican chapters were rare in New York, but a couple of them operated freely. They just paid the same tariffs as any other vassal cult.

“I agree more than you might imagine,” the Baron said. “If I even believed in the gods, I wouldn’t call them angels. They don’t care about moral good. Only men do that.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve been here longer than I wanted. Barilla, do you know what an artifact is?”

“It’s a supernatural thing; does things for you?” Barilla asked.

“Yes.” The Baron hesitated. Barilla had no clue about the importance or rarity of artifacts. The key here was to speak in a way that simplified the picture for the man, that made it easier for him to process. “Jacono gave you an artifact, yes?”

Barilla frowned. “Sure he did. Said he wanted to wash his hands of the deal, get out.”

That made sense. Jacono would’ve realized that Nagy was someone important, and being associated with his death would’ve had dangerous repercussions. Keeping the artifact would’ve been like drawing a target on his chest. Of course, trying to pawn the artifact off to Barilla hadn’t worked either. Someone still shot him dead in the street.

“New York doesn’t have it,” the Baron said, “so what happened to it?”

“I kept it. I figured if Jacono didn’t want it around, I’d just keep it hidden.”

“Did Jacono tell you how to use it?”

“He said to swallow it in an emergency and it’d protect me.”

The Baron felt a cold twinge of dread anticipation. He didn’t want to hear the answer, but he had to ask, “Did you swallow it?”

“No,” Barilla said.

d’Holbach felt relief. They wouldn’t have to cut it out of a gangster.

“Why?” Barilla asked, “It would’ve been fine if I did, right?”

The Baron rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “Yes and no. Swallowing it wouldn’t hurt you, but you’d have made a lot of enemies. Where is it now?”

“I fed it to my son,” Barilla said.

Author’s Note:

AAAAAAAA – the Baron’s thought process at this very moment.

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!

July 1, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

Smoking a green cigar with the window down changed the flavor, mellowed it without becoming smoky. The wind pulled at the burning leaf, and the Baron faced the open air to keep the ash from scattering onto his lap with every draw. In another time and place, it would’ve bothered the Baron to smoke under these conditions, but he only wanted enough nicotine to soothe, not to excite his nerves. With the central partition up and the window down, the cabbie permitted the vices of a man with taste and wealth. The dollar tip didn’t hurt either.

The Zombie was inspecting his dress shirt for drops of blood. There weren’t any, but despite his careless attitude about damaging clothes, he preferred to leave a sharp impression.

“That’s vain of you,” the Baron noted.

“Clothes are like tissues,” the Zombie responded primly. “They’re disposable, but you’d rather use something clean, even if it doesn’t truly matter.” He smoothed his sleeves and grinned. “Why are you smoking in a car?”

“I’m feeling… bothered. Also, I might stink of gunpowder.”

“You’re bothered?”

“Men died.”

“You saw a lot of dead people during the Fall of Trust,” the Zombie said. He’d killed a lot of people in front of the Baron during that decade in Europe.

“That bothered me too, but that’s not the problem here. Well, not the primary problem. That mafioso with the thick lips and mustache? He wanted revenge, and I told him he could have it.” He drew on the double claro, held the flavor—like herbs with a hint of grass and fruit, all burning—and blew the smoke out over the open road, gone in the wind.

The Zombie chuckled. “You’re going to need to explain that one.”

With his free hand, the Baron scratched the side of his nose. “Am I really the virtuous atheist? After all that?”

“I’d say so.”

The Baron grunted with dissatisfaction. “I promised one man to the dogs, and I probably killed the other while shooting to wound him. Not because it was good or bad either. Only because it was convenient.” He took a brief draw.

They were passing into the Red Hook area. Small brick homes stood between empty office buildings. The low rooftops and endless grimy alleys reminded the Baron of missing teeth in an old soldier’s mouth. Most of the war industry in this neighborhood had been abandoned within days of the German surrender, and few of their factories had produced for the Pacific Theatre. All that remained were the stevedores working the mouth of the Hudson. This place formed the first stage of the Erie Canal and essentially controlled shipping north to the Great Lakes. It was also a hotbed of secular Cosa Nostra activity, with almost every laborer paying dues to a mob-controlled union boss while playing deaf and dumb to murder and theft.

“Seems like you cared more about the results,” the Zombie replied after some time. “The stakes could be the world. No half-measures, right?”

“I don’t know? Maybe, probably even. At that moment, I just knew I wasn’t going to scrap with gangsters for the right to hand the man over to the police. It wasn’t moral.”

The Zombie reached out with a hand, then hesitated. No reason to risk a touch when there wasn’t much need for it. “Listen, you’re not wrong. You’ve changed, but for the better.”

The Baron glanced out the crack of the open window. Smoke and ashes fluttered off the tip of his cigar like butterfly wings, caught in a high spring breeze. “You think so?”

“I know it. In 1800, even after ten years of running in my bloody footprints, you wouldn’t have given that man to the Cosa Nostra. You might’ve risked your life to save your enemy. Now, you recognize that a murderer is worth less than the people you’ll help ”

“Mm. Times have changed.” The Baron drew briefly on the cigar, just to keep the tobacco burning. “Maybe I have a little too. Everything feels different after the atomic bomb.” He looked over at the Zombie. “What makes you so confident in your philosophy?”

“I’ve killed a lot of people, all kinds, and they’ve left all kinds of holes in the world. Some of them make the world better only by leaving it.”

The Baron frowned. “Could you ever tell which was which?”

The Zombie laughed. “I’d love to lie and say yes, but truthfully, I’ve never cared. I just noticed how things change. I’ve learned what killing means.”

The Baron shrugged. “I still haven’t figured it out—even after a world war or two. Or three, if you count the Napoleonic Wars.”

The Zombie smirked with such smug bravado that it nearly broke the Baron’s somber mood. Then he followed it up with equally absurd rhetoric: “If you need a lesson in applied ethics, just watch me. I’m sure I can show you a thing or two.”

The Baron grinned. “Maybe one or two dead bodies.”

“Just saying, dead people don’t fight. That’s pragmatism.”

The Baron shook his head, then returned his attention to the passing architecture, the crunching gravel of the streets, and the chill bluster of the morning wind. “All I can learn from you is how to drink a bottle of bleach without looking like an idiot.”

“That’s a trick you can only do once,” the Zombie said.

The Baron took one more draw and knocked the ash off his cigar. He had enough left to save for the end of the ride. He’d need to clip the burned end first though. “It’s too bad. You look so refreshed after a cup of someone else’s household cleaners.”

“That’s just style,” the Zombie said with exaggerated swagger.

The Baron removed the guillotine cutter from his case and snipped the cigar short, then packed everything away for safekeeping. The driver turned onto Clinton Wharf and slowly rolled down the empty road towards an emptier cruise terminal. To the right, there were chained lots with cars in them, slowly cooking their interiors until they cracked like lakebed mud. It must’ve been mixed parking for guests and American employees on the cruise.

To the left, there were brick and tin Dutch-style factories, row after row, with empty-socket streetlights and barren trees standing at the corners like sentinels of winter or something worse. The Baron could imagine a time, as yet unseen, when nobody lit the streets or patched up the broken windows, and on dark nights, animals crawled over the sills to hide in deeper shadows.

Where the road came up against the river, Governors Island was clearly visible. In contrast with this barren stretch of Red Hook, the trees across the water were a bright spring green, and before manila-colored houses were stretches of lawn marked irregularly with docks and motor-pools circled in chain link fencing. Technically the island was a US Army base, but from here it looked like a high-class residential district, isolated from the darker world all around.

Further out, Manhattan’s skyline and the lacy pattern of the Brooklyn Bridge stood visible through the light-blue haze of pollution, appearing as flat as a painting.

The Baron knocked on the partition between them and the cabbie. A moment later, a little glass door was opened to receive instructions. “Barilla’s Shoes, over there,” he said. There was a factory half a block from the water with light blue letters bolted to the facade.

The cabbie pulled up outside the factory and stopped. They’d paid ahead of time, no need to pay now, and they got out.

“Atheist!” a man shouted at them. “Devils!”

The warm, almost joyous tone was a pistol shot, shattering the Baron’s renewed calm, and his pulse raced away like a champion horse. He felt as tight-chested as he had after smoking his first pipe of tobacco as a young man. They’d been beaten to their destination by the most powerful man on the continent after the Zombie himself.

Meister Schuler was watching them from the shadow of recessed double doors. He wore an Anglican cassock and fine Franklin-style bifocals with thin, brightly polished copper rims. He smiled warmly at the Baron and the Zombie, his dirty blonde hair all mussed, like an old uncle back from the funny farm to greet his favorite nephews.

The Baron’s response was more than polite. It was friendly, and genuinely so, because the Baron preferred friendship over whatever this man could do to his enemies. “Meister Schuler,” the Baron greeted the Diviner. It was time to button up his nerves and steel himself for a possible confrontation. In his heart, he was ready to fight back. To survive.

Meister Schuler’s smile turned into a happy grin. “My boys! Welcome!”

The cabbie waited, looking through the window at the exchange. He was probably wondering if he should hang around for the return fare and another fat tip, but the Baron waved him off. After a three-point turn, the cab left with a little too much speed, as if Clinton Wharf were a hostile place or a badlands, inimical to life or good health.

The air had the smell of dust, brick, and the ancient sourness of rancid, acidic motor oil. It definitely felt like dead Earth. It was easy on the eyes like cool ashes.

“Are you waiting for us?” the Zombie asked Schuler sweetly.

“No, no!” Schuler replied. “But I am glad to see you here. It’s a complicated Sunday, and I’ve had a lot to do. A lot on foot, you see, to walk to. A future to walk to.”

The Baron nodded, guessing that the Diviner was talking about the microtasks that usually called to him around the city. While this conversation was innately risky, the Baron needed to understand what they were up against, so he opted to push a little further: “Are your minders helping you today?” This question cut an important difference in the world. If New York sent Schuler, his minders would be close by. If he wandered off alone, then nobody would’ve known to chase after him.

The Diviner seemed briefly hurt by the question. “My friends? No. They had other things to do today, and this is business, real business, oh no. I came here, I walked, I listened with the gods. You understand. The future… the little things that I will do. To earn.”

“Prestige,” the Zombie offered.

“Exactly!” the Diviner yelled with delight.

The Baron weighed his next words carefully. They were almost certainly acting in indirect opposition to Schuler’s personal goals, so any moves made here had to be elegant, almost threatless. “We need to go inside,” he said, opting for the simplest tactic, utterly free of any connections to any other concepts. Even with this friendly atmosphere growing between them, he didn’t dare ask for permission. That might remind Schuler of any orders coming down from the New York cult—like a blanket request to deny them access to any more cultists.

Meister Schuler closed his eyes and silently repeated something to himself. He reached up with shaking fingers and touched the rims of his glasses, then let them drop. “Oh, oh, I don’t know. I was here to speak with someone important, but a very large man told me to wait outside, even after I told him my name, and everyone listens to my name, d’Holbach, everyone listens, but he didn’t. Oh no, no.” Schuler opened his eyes. “If you could hear the gods, they said to wait outside, and I don’t mind waiting because I know people are safe while I’m here!”

The Baron exchanged glances with the Zombie, who shrugged. He didn’t know how to play this. The Baron was the diplomat. The Zombie just frightened people, but Schuler wouldn’t be scared. The Baron said, “Did Barilla ask you to stand outside?”

“He asked his friend to ask me to wait. He is busy, and I’m busier.” Schuler looked up at the roof of the alcove. “Yes, I can hear it.”

This was a relief. Schuler either hadn’t been told, didn’t remember, or simply didn’t care about the Zombie’s assault on Tammany Hall last night. He seemed happy to be where he was, as if everything was already under control. It was time to extend a harmless olive branch. “Do you want me to ask Barilla to let you come speak with him?”

Schuler’s smile grew wider, revealing a child-like impishness that echoed a touch of the Zombie’s manic nature. “I’d love that. You’ll help, not hinder. It’s good that you would.”

The Zombie very, very carefully tapped the Baron on the shoulder and whispered into his ear, “How did he find this place?”

The Baron nodded. “We’ll talk about this inside,” he said loudly.

“No need!” Schuler bowed. “I’m here to help Barilla. Someone is unhappy about his work, yes sir. I…” He paused and looked distracted. Then he slowly stumbled back against the wall.

“Are you okay?” the Baron asked honestly.

“So much to do in the Congo Basin,” Schuler said quietly.

Without asking for elaboration, they opened the front door to Barilla’s Shoes and left one of New York’s most important figures idling on the doorstep like a messenger boy.

Throughout history, powerful cults had accepted and nurtured their Diviners because they demonstrably defied common sense. They couldn’t predict the future, not exactly, but when they weren’t debilitated or distracted by their condition, they seemed preternaturally aware of their surroundings. Worse, the capable ones were swimming in vast oceans of prestige. A perfect awareness of all tasks meant constant awareness of all opportunities, and it was claimed that they could sense and complete ancient tasks, assigned and forgotten hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

If it wasn’t for their incredible mental instability, cults would’ve demanded the creation of pet Diviners. Depending on one’s perspective, it was fortunate that someone like Schuler only came along once every few decades. It seemed to be something in their character or their nature that set them apart from the rest of the human species. It might be a specific, helpful madness, or maybe a technique that only a few stumbled across while trying to cope with the mental strain. Who knew? No Diviner had ever explained their supernatural stability, at least not in a way that led to reproducible results. In fact, most of the failed Diviners reversed the wish or eventually died in a gutter, choking on their own tongue in some horrible fit of neurological disease. Few were like Schuler, and few should want to be.

It still surprised the Baron that people risked the wish to hear everything the gods had to say. If an Oracle was sensitive to a local signal, a Diviner was an Oracle tuned into every channel on Earth, including stations that nobody else could hear. It was the crash of every ocean against every continent, funneled down into your ears like thunder, deafening.

How could a man keep such sharp hearing in a hurricane of thought? The Baron wished he knew; the answer might explain much about the true mechanisms of the world.

The shoe factory engulfed them, a voided sepulchre of wartime industry. Dusty streaks of waxed concrete floor spread between bare production tables, arrayed in lines for a process that’d been torn out years ago. Looking at the thin daylight, diffusing long and low across the factory from distant windows, the texture of the floor changed, revealing footpaths cut through time’s patient dusting. Boots had passed from door to door and nowhere else.

During World War 2, this shoe factory had been running on a government contract to produce footwear for soldiers in the Pacific. Hundreds of women had staffed these long, isolated lines, each with a single rote purpose. There hadn’t been any professional cobblers in the building—only seamstresses, cutters, stampers, and punchers, summing up to the raw human intelligence behind single-purpose machines. Manipulation was required to move part of a shoe from one skilled tool to another, professional cogs in a process. There was no art to shoemaking in a place like this. There was only an imitation of someone else’s original design.

Then the contracts had stopped, but the money wasn’t returned to the public wallet for spending on social or economic issues. They’d simply shifted from industry to R&D, putting their defense dollars to use on the next generation of Cold War technology while leaving industries like Barilla’s Shoes to starve.

It’d finally failed in the last couple years, the Baron guessed. Upon closer inspection of the nearest table, still-greasy boltholes and squares of freshly exposed lacquer suggested a relatively recent change.

The room itself was one long hall. It must’ve been filled from end to end with people doing the exact same job at once. To the left and right were suspended double doors much like a hospital. They swung both ways and would’ve allowed heavy carts to pass in either direction. Presumably there were other line rooms that’d served another purpose in the boot-crafting process. What they needed was to find Barilla’s office.

“Which way?” the Baron asked aloud. Maybe the Zombie had a guess.

In answer, a large man pushed through the right door, a meat slab dressed in black wool pants and a starch-white wool shirt. He had a newsie set high on his receding hairline.

“That way,” the Zombie answered.

“This is private property,” the large man said, as if that explained everything and put the matter to rest. When the Baron didn’t immediately respond, he added, “Scram.”

“We’re here to speak with Federico Barilla immediately.”

“Yeah, that’s too bad. Why don’t you go outside and get in line behind Mister Crackers with the glasses, and Barilla will call for you when he’s good and ready.”

“It’s a Sunday,” the Zombie said, implying that Barilla shouldn’t have much work.

The large man sneered. “Yeah, well, Barilla is so busy, he’s workin’ instead of prayin’ with his mother at the church. Now get before I call the police.”

“You don’t want to do that,” the Baron said.

A derisive snort. “Really? Barilla’s talking up a troupe of boys with zip-guns who might say otherwise. Now, do I want to call the police, or do I want to call the boys in here?”

“You don’t want to do either,” the Baron repeated. “We just helped the Ozone Park Boys with a shootout at the Belmont-Sutter Homes. They’d be unhappy if we were delayed.”

The man hesitated as he processed the facts. The Baron had dropped a lot of relevant names in one sentence. “Did someone send you here?”

“Bettino Lucci was murdered, but we managed to save Rufino Piazzi.”

The slab looked alarmed beneath his newsie.

The Baron decided to press for closure. “You’ll know him as the frog man who sank the Paines. We need to talk with Barilla.”

The Zombie let the thinnest crescent of a grin crack on his face. It was eerie to imagine how calm and well-behaved he was so shortly after a man’s death. It was a strange mixture of reservation and satisfaction, and the Baron had spent decades learning to recognize and handle it. It was almost too quiet for comfort, like a volcano stilled by sacrifice.

“Can I ask you a question,” the Baron said to the slab.

“Sure?”

“What is prestige?”

The man was nonplussed. “What, you mean fame?”

“Nevermind,” the Baron said, “show us to Barilla.” At least part of the staff was fully secular, which boded poorly for an open conversation with the boss.

They were led through several sets of doors to the far end of the factory, where cheap wood framing and dry walls sliced offices out of an unused production room. There was an office door, fancier than the others, which had been propped open with a surly looking child for a doorstop. The kid had a penny knife, blade out, and was threatening to scratch the soft wood.

A shout came out of the door, “Miles!”

The kid pointed the knife at the Zombie. “Mr. Barilla! Martin is bringin’ heat.”

“They ain’t fuzz,” said the slab, as he ducked into the office. The Baron followed him quickly, while the Zombie paused by the kid with the naked blade.

There were six more kids ranging from early teens to nearly twenty, each of them wearing the same mix of tight pants and short-sleeve dress shirts, their hair greased up into disaffected duck’s arses, just as shiny and water-resistant as the real thing.

One of the youngest boys had an arm in a cast slung to his chest. The eldest one next to him was rubbing the well-healed stumps of his right ring and middle fingers against the fabric of his pants. Likely the victim of a failed zip-gun, he nevertheless had a fresh chunk of wood with a hollow car antenna dangling off a belt loop, secured by a frayed shoestring.

Against the quality of his dress and the neatness of his hair, the improvised firearm was shockingly primitive. The firing pin appeared to be a tack taped to a huge rubber band, the kind used to clamp lumber together. One misfire and the car antenna barrel could pop, pulping more digits for a surgeon to amputate.

Next to him stood a very small, studious looking woman in her mid-40s. Her plain light blue blouse, makeup-free face and mousy beehive hairdo reminded the Baron of a high school teacher, but her sharp glare and shifting gaze suggested a keen attitude. The fact that she was standing in a small office with a street gang spoke volumes about her true skillset.

Behind her, seated behind a heavy wooden desk, there was Barilla, sweating profusely from sheer agitation. He was a large man, top-heavy from a youth of dock work and generally heavy in his late middle age. His hair was white and tidy, and he dressed like he starred in a Marlon Brando film. Unlike the rest of the Cosa Nostra, he didn’t enjoy the functional and dignified clothes of a laborer. He proudly donned the entirely fictional style that Hollywood had invented whole cloth, and he’d retroactively fooled himself—and his new subordinates—into believing that an expensive black suit gave you class.

“Martin,” Barilla snapped, glancing at his door guard. “What the fuck?”

“I know they’re tresspassing, boss—”

“Yes, they are—”

At that point, they started talking over each other so thoroughly that it wasn’t even a conversation, it was a verbal fistfight. The meat slab of a man “Martin” tried and failed to explain why he was leading the trespassers into some kind of war meeting, but Barilla wasn’t having it.

“Why are these men in my office?” he said repeatedly, coming back around to say it louder and louder whenever Martin failed to apologize and escort the Baron out of the building. Martin’s problem wasn’t a lack of loyalty. He was simply too smart to shut up and follow orders. He reasoned with an angry man. He argued common sense against territorial instinct.

It was stupid in its own special way.

“Get them out of here!” Barilla finally shouted, losing any last scrap of dignity in the process. “Get them the fuck out!”

“I’m sorry,” Martin said to the Baron.

“Federico Barilla,” the Baron said loudly, “what is prestige?”

Barilla stiffened, sitting up. “Wait, what?”

Martin hesitated. Was this an opportunity to ignore Barilla’s bad orders?

With that one question, the Baron knew that Barilla was not a particularly active cultist. Most neophytes memorized the London Password because it made them feel important. Barilla must’ve learned and forgotten it years ago.

“It’s God, right?” Barilla asked, filling the silence.

The woman with the beehive hairdo looked the Baron over. “Who are you?” she asked, taking the position of authority when Barilla was nominally in charge.

It struck the Baron that she might, in fact, be in charge somehow. “I’m Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach,” he answered, wondering if she’d recognize him. He hoped so.

“Then the man behind you is the Zombie?” she asked.

The Baron carefully avoided reacting, even though his urge was to shout with surprise. A woman cultist was rarer than a fist-sized diamond, and they were almost universally persecuted and driven to the margins of the system of prestige. Either Barilla was implicitly fighting against centuries of occult tradition in the west, or he was starkly ignorant, and a real honest to goodness member of the Cult of Artemis was using him to surreptitiously participate in New York occult society. Her question signaled the Baron clearly—I’m here, I recognize you, and this man doesn’t understand what’s happening. Keep my secret safe.

The Baron turned to face the Zombie, if only to hide his shock. “That’s him,” he said.

The Zombie grinned, immediately aware of the eyes on him. The kid at the door was holding the knife out at him for inspection. “Watch this,” he said. He reached out slowly and wrapped his hand around the naked blade of the teenager’s knife. The kid gawped. Then the Zombie gently yanked the knife away, fingers squeezed across cutting edges.

The teenager yelped, then smiled. This wasn’t frightening; this was machismo. “You ain’t hurt?” the kid asked.

“Nah, kiddo. I’m cool.” Like many of the criminals that the Baron had met, the Zombie treated children as strictly off limits, even if they were old enough to believe they were men. He never chose to frighten them or intimidate them, let alone hurt them. “How much for the penny knife?” he asked.

“It’s yours man,” the kid said proudly.

The Zombie folded up the knife and opened his palm for everyone to view. “No blood.”

“A magician?” Barilla asked the woman.

“He’s the Baron’s bodyguard,” she answered promptly.

The Cult of Artemis wasn’t actually a cohesive cult, didn’t worship Artemis, and had no connections to the original Cult that’d been nurtured in ancient Greece. It was more like a loose political alliance between female cultists. Since most of them worked alone by necessity, a codified set of rules obligated them to help and support each other whenever they met.

“Are they important?” Barilla asked her.

“Very,” she said, and she offered her hand to the Baron. “My name is Phyllis.”

He took her hand and shook once, briefly. “It’s good to meet you.”

The Cult of Artemis was a recent invention. Shortly after the Fall of Truth, Elizabeth—the Apostate—had penned a short bible of useful knowledge and important commandments about the system of prestige. Her book, Apostasy, was designed to be copied by hand and distributed to other women cultists. It outlined a cultic network, structurally ignorant of its full membership, which would allow female cultists to operate inside Christendom in opposition to the dominant religious institutions. Soon after printing the work, her immediate allies were captured or slaughtered and she was driven into hiding, but the change was irreversible. The book survived and multiplied along with the growing female cultic population, ensuring that the Cult of Artemis remained long after its original practitioners were scattered or hung till dead.

The Baron was confident that Phyllis had only revealed herself because he was an outsider of a different kind, though his position was uniquely easier. He was a man protected by the Zombie, and he had a reputation for peace. This made him a sleeping giant, and instead of increasing the threat of violence by having power at his back, his presence decreased it.

However, she also represented a risk. The Baron and Zombie couldn’t question Barilla about the Cat with Phyllis listening. She might try to take the Cat for herself, or worse, she might already have it and would make herself scarce the moment she knew they were looking for it.

“What’re you here for?” Barilla asked. “Make it quick. I’ve got the boys here for a pow-wow about the Cougars.”

“They been all over the north end of the wharf,” said the older boy with missing fingers.

“Don’t bother the man!” Barilla berated the gangster. “Let’s talk, Mr. Baron.”

“It’s just Baron d’Holbach, like a landed noble. The man outside—” He looked at Phyllis directly “—do either of you know him?”

“He’s some nutbar preacher from Manhattan,” Barilla said. “You here for him?”

“No, but he’s important to Tammany. After we’re done here, you should let him in.”

Barilla frowned skeptically. “And when will you be done here, exactly?”

“We just have a few questions. You set up the job to scuttle the SS John G Paines. Tammany Hall contract, right?”

“Sure, I helped Emanuele with my contacts in the Anastasia family. He had money, I had men. He didn’t make it back though. Man named Jacono had to sort everything out.”

“I know Jacono. So this Emanuele landed the job?”

“Of course he did, I don’t have time for this secret society bullshit. I would’ve had Phyllis do the work, but she’s just a woman and Anastasia’s boys got the blood of Sicily in them, real mafioso. You need a strong personality, and Emanuele wasn’t any muscle either. I had to take care of organizing everyone, to make sure they were a real team.”

Barilla seemed proud of his responsibilities in scuttling the ship, which was deeply odd, considering the result. Four of the seven on the task had died outright, and two more had died afterwards—or did Barilla not know? Regardless, the mission was a failure by almost all accounts. That’s why Schuler was waiting outside to talk with him.

“Jacono and Lucci were shot by someone looking for you.” The Baron waited for Barilla’s reaction.

The man seemed slow to understand. “Psycho boy got murdered?” he asked skeptically.

“Because he wouldn’t rat you out. Apparently his killers knew a little about who was on the ship, but they didn’t know who you were, or at least where to find you. They questioned Lucci this morning though, before they executed him. That’s why I’m here, Barilla. The enemy was slowed down after a couple of theirs died, but we need to move you before they catch up.”

Phyllis took one step in front of the desk, almost physically intervening to get the Baron’s attention. “Wait, who is after him?”

“Mercenaries of some kind. Can you think of anyone who’d want Barilla?”

Barilla answered, “Nobody should know I’m part of the ship deal unless one of the boys told them, and they’re all loyal members of the family.”

“Well, six of the seven are dead and I don’t think Piazzi hired these killers. We won’t know who gave you up unless we get a chance to question them.”

Phyllis interrupted again. “Any idea why they’d want to kill Barilla?”

The Baron was pleased, though he couldn’t say much in this company. She’d asked the questions that Barilla should’ve, acting as the brains behind Barilla’s cultic operations. It was unfortunate that he couldn’t answer her, not before he knew where the Cat o’ Nine Lives had gone. “We’re not sure, but Jacono was in some kind of shootout on the Paines. A third-party was on the ship.” He omitted the rest of the tale, waiting to measure their responses.

Phyllis stepped back to her faux-subordinate position at Barilla’s right hand. “Jacono told Mr. Barilla that much,” she admitted. “There was some kind of assassin on board.”

“We don’t know much either,” the Baron said, “but I must be blunt. There isn’t much time for discussion, Barilla, and there are a few sensitive questions we need to ask before we move. Mostly about the ship task, maybe a little about Emanuele.” In truth, he wanted just enough time to identify the Cat and its whereabouts. He suspected it would be in Barilla’s personal belongings, vastly undervalued in every sense of the word. If he knew what he was doing, he would’ve already handed it to New York and gone into hiding.

“Go ahead and ask,” Barilla said.

“They’re for your ears only,” the Baron said. “Step out into the hall?”

Phyllis didn’t hesitate. “If this is about occult matters, you’d do better to ask me, Baron. Mr. Barilla leaves most of the work in my hands.”

The Baron frowned, affecting an image of exhausted disapproval. “I’m afraid these questions are just for him.” He hated to adopt this tone, but he needed to push her out of the conversation, if only for a minute. “If he needs a woman’s input, he can ask for it.”

She squinted. The book Apostasy mentioned the Baron by name, both for his role in cultic history and for his social attitudes. He was a well-known progressive who’d written explicitly about women in favorable terms. Even in New York’s records, the Baron was listed as a Hound of Artemis, a term for an ally of the Cult of Artemis. In most mouths, it was an insult born from an era when calling someone a “dog” would end in bloodshed, but to a woman cultist, it meant that the Baron could be relied upon to provide support. To hear him say “woman” with such distaste was a strange sign, one she was obviously struggling to read.

Barilla scratched his cheek. “I don’t mind her listening. My people are loyal.”

“My presence is necessary,” Phyllis added carefully. “Mr. Barilla delegates the details. He’s a fine boss, but he won’t know much about the ship task.”

“It’s true,” Barilla said with pride, as if delegation were a talent.

The Baron shook his head slightly. “Everyone has secrets they need to keep.” He glanced once at Phyllis. “That makes them vulnerable, exploitable. They could be compromised.”

Barilla waved the idea away like a pesky fly. “No, not my people.” 

“This matter is too important to risk it,” the Baron pressed. “These are exceptional circumstances. I hate to be insistent, but there isn’t much of a choice here. Trust me.”

The subtext would be clear to Phyllis. The look of steel on her face suggested that she knew what was being threatened and resented it, but the very fact that they hadn’t ratted her out implied that they wanted to be on her side—as long as she stepped out of their way.

After a long pause, she finally relented: “Fine.”

And instantly, Barilla stood up with a huff of frustration. “Yes, fine, Baron, fine. I understand. We’ll have a conversation without Phyllis.” He whistled and snapped his fingers. “Martin, come with me and the Baron. This will all be fucking fine!”

The Zombie sidled up beside Baron d’Holbach. His bored expression was actually mild worry, but he was very good at hiding his concern.

The Baron knew why he was upset. Barilla was fighting with them through malicious compliance, wasting precious time. ”I meant that I’d talk to you alone,” the Baron said. “This isn’t about Phyllis. Anyone could be a security risk.”

“Just talk to him,” Phyllis said, barely containing her own frustration. Then she side-eyed Barilla. “If you need me, boss, you’ll call for me?”

Barilla sniffed airily. “If I need you,” he agreed. “Are you game, Baron?”

The Baron suppressed a frown. At this rate, someone outside of their control would hear about the Cat, but if the Baron could at least get ahead of everyone—or if the Zombie could run ahead and attempt to capture the artifact—then they might be able to recover it without starting an occult war. As it was, this conversation was the only way forward, so he gave up on strict control. Luck would shape events, and then he’d react to them. “After you. Let’s talk.”

Author’s Note:

I really enjoy writing Phyllis.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 30, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

The Baron still remembered the summer of 1790. It was about five months since the Fall of Trust began. The Zombie had already made his appearance in Paris, but he’d left the Baron behind in order to hunt a Vatican bishop on the Continent. A Scottish moral philosopher, now in his final days, had invited d’Holbach to hide on his estate, and while that’d offered no more than a few months of respite, the opportunity had been gladly received.

The moral philosopher was named Adam Smith, and in his later years he’d taken an interest in what he’d labeled “political economy,” a philosophical theory explaining how the wealth of nations was born and how a political body might encourage its growth. This excursion had at first been a hobby pursued in the shadow of ethics, but over time it’d grown until it’d become Smith’s primary interest, even his obsession. He’d seen the petty struggles of mercantilism, the monopolies and cruel exploitations, the pained heartbeat of the British Empire, and in the patterns, he’d perceived how all men might be carefully led through a mixture of free market and government to promote the greater good for all.

The Baron had read a copy of Smith’s book shortly after its publication. It’d impressed him with its depth and perception, but nowadays he felt there were two inevitable flaws in it. First, it was a theory implicitly about the growing British Empire, yet it scarcely mentioned the wealth of direct conquest and colonization. Second, it failed to account for how that secular power had been multiplied or focused with the judicious application of prestige. Smith wasn’t ignorant either. By then, the London cult was already the world’s leading occult superpower, and he’d been an iconoclastic member of the inner circle before his retirement.

Better than anyone, he’d understood how cultic espionage gave momentum to existing secular authority and propped up shaky colonial claims with crucial wishes for knowledge. The British remained one step ahead of enemy resistance, and their advantage was snowballing. With every city captured and a new colonial cult forced into slavery before the barrel of a gun, London was able to spend more and more prestige on extravagant intelligence missions, thereby enabling even riskier conquests with overextended forces. Not once was this vital element even hinted at. No metaphor nodded to other cultists and said, yes, our Empire had an iron fist over the resources of others, and its grip was almost absolute.

The Baron hadn’t even known that much about the system of prestige at the time. It’d been introduced to him by way of the Fall, and while he’d instantly doubted most of its metaphysics, he’d understood most of its practical applications. He outlined his ignorance to Smith, explaining the three things he knew with certainty.

First, no wish could impede or alter man’s free will. Since the Baron didn’t believe in free will, he took this to mean that wishes couldn’t be used to harm or change other people, even indirectly. A wish could change the world, but it wasn’t itself a weapon.

Second, no wish could be made about wishes or the system of prestige, though the outcomes were always fair game. Some of history’s most important wishes had unmade the work of others during the Fall of Curses.

Third, wishes for knowledge were priced based on the gap of ignorance. The further your current state of knowledge stood from the truth you wanted to learn, the more expensive it was to purchase. This was the rule that moderated the London cult’s activities and demanded most of its prestige. This was also the rule that prevented people from simply wishing to know where the Baron had fled. Smith’s home was a terribly unlikely safe haven.

Of these rules, the first and second were always applicable, but the third rule would become obsolete during the Fall of Truth almost sixty years after this meeting, when the Apostate would gain her agelessness and all further wishes for knowledge would be banned. But around the time the Baron was seated by Smith’s death bed, the very notion of the Apostate and her Fall were beyond their imagination. They were limited by assumptions about the occult.

Coming back to the moment when the Baron laid out the bare minimum of his knowledge, Smith listened carefully and offered to explain the system of prestige in terms of his theory. The Baron was interested in seeing where Smith might find common ground between the occult and Wealth of Nations, and he waited patiently while Smith spoke:

“The fundamental economic activity of all things, occult or otherwise, is labor. Much like a farmer reaps his harvest or a glassier casts windows, a cultist collects prestige. Thus the gods offer us a selection of tasks, we labor at them for prestige, and that prestige is either spent on altering the world or traded for wealth and services.

“The fundamental mistake of cultic religion is to believe that tasks are valuable for any other reason. It’s commonly said that man imposes the gods’ good will on the world—I say nonsense! The gods’ tasks are arbitrary. Their agenda is ineffable. Mankind cannot recognize what the gods intend, nor even judge if it is good. Not that I’m advocating the heresy that some tasks are evil; I’m merely making a point of humility. We are not equipped to understand and only delude ourselves if we claim to interpret and impose the divine will on the clay of civilization.

“The whole economic structure of the occult is eerily empty of any other purpose. The tasks offered are difficult, obscure, often disgusting labors with no other reward than the prestige itself. After handing over this prestige, the gods offer to take it back in exchange for intervention, but the prices they set for their favors are excessively expensive. Cultists are scarce but prestige is scarcer, and there’s never enough to go around. The only way to ensure a useful concentration of power is to create cults, to form a company with the sole purpose of dominating a region and driving out all others. They monopolize the resource of tasks, rapidly produce and concentrate prestige at a density that allows the cult to act, usually in the interest of maintaining or expanding its dominion over the land.

“I played an important role in the development of the growing British Empire, Baron, and I regret it, because I have encouraged the worst elements of mercantilism in an environment which is naturally hostile to cooperation and well-regulated markets. Gods give tasks, tasks give prestige, prestige creates wishes, and I watched the company of my peers turn this simple exchange into a blood feud stretching across the entire globe.

“But I can’t blame them. Try how I might, the gods deserve the greater responsibility. They set the prices. Small changes cost us great volumes of labor. Baron, you aren’t wrong to distrust the occult system. It’s cruel, artificially so, and maybe more so than any other market. It’s as if the gods must entertain our desires, but they would rather not.”

The cruelty of the system could be seen in Piazzi’s stark apartment. There were indents in the carpet where furniture had settled with the weight of years. Dust traced patterns on the wallpaper; the shadows of lamps and couches cast outwards in clean lines. There was a single pot on the kitchen stove beside a wooden spoon and a tin of beans. It was barren beyond aesthetic minimalism. Piazzi had removed everything except for himself, a sleeping pad, and two guns.

Reading their open expressions, Piazzi said, “I sold it all.”

“Did you sell your dishes?” the Baron asked. “You’re eating out of a pot.”

“Eh. I sold the furniture for money, but when I saw the apartment, it felt right. I just kept going, and the pawn shop cleaned it out.”

Piazzi was in his mid-50s, with a stubble-streaked babyface and a thin patch of short greying hair—a military cut maintained since the war. He had heft to him. He wasn’t exactly out of shape, but he was large and seemed to move his gut before the rest of him followed. Only three years ago, he must’ve been fit to fight, not for the Allies but for the Italian military. The US wouldn’t have drafted someone so old. Since then, he’d stopped exercising, which made his spartan accommodations all the stranger. This wasn’t a place for an old man to relax and eat rich food. This was the home of a zealous soldier ready to deploy.

The Zombie had kicked down the door less than a minute ago, and Piazzi’s first words to him had been, “Please, don’t kill me. Not today.”

It’d only taken a moment and a shout from Lips outside to convince Piazzi that they were working with the Ozone Park Boys. After that, they’d introduced themselves as the legendary Baron and Zombie, and they’d glanced over the room and Piazzi himself, checking for any additional threats. In that brief search, the Baron had continued to feel out the gap in this scenario, like a tongue probing a lost tooth. The empty apartment stank of desperation.

“What did you need the money for?” he asked.

“Prestige,” Piazzi answered. “I was buying it from Tammany. We did this boat task on Thursday. It was a big deal and I got a big share, but I was still short a few years, and my health isn’t so good these days. After making my wish, I was stuck in the Sanctuary for six months. Before my debt was paid off.”

“We’ll need to leave soon,” the Zombie reminded the Baron.

The Baron offered Piazzi a hand. He’d been sitting on the floor when they came in. “What did you wish for?”

Piazzi smiled wanly and stood. He balanced briefly on his left foot. No difficulty there—he was still physically strong. “Look at that. This leg was lame yesterday. Couldn’t hold half my weight. Fixing it was my first wish.” He hopped once. “Good, huh?”

The Baron suppressed the urge to frown. Piazzi would’ve mistaken it for disapproval, but d’Holbach’s frustration was with Tammany Hall. Piazzi’s only wish was to heal himself, and he still hadn’t earned enough after scuttling a boat? His share must’ve been minuscule. That task was unquestionably worth many times the needed prestige. “Did you make the wish yesterday?” the Baron asked.

“Yeah, nearly got me killed. I’ve got no prestige; couldn’t dodge the men outside.”

“They were picking your lock when we arrived. Why didn’t you shoot them through the door?” Piazzi had both a Beretta and a pump-action shotgun on the floor.

“Oh!” Piazza barked once he realized what the Baron was looking at. “They wished them broken before I was anywhere near them. They knew how many I had, what I had. Some man shouted right through the door and woke me up.”

“Did you recognize any accent?”

“No. He was just loud.”

“Someone sell him that knowledge, you think?”

“I honestly don’t know, Baron. Not many people come here.”

That was deeply worrying. It suggested someone had already been watching the place long before they arrived. Someone was a full step ahead of them. There wasn’t any need to inform Piazzi however. They’d be shipping him out of town. Only one detail still needed clarification: “How’d you fire the slug anyways?”

Piazzi knelt to pick up the shotgun. “The sear and magazine spring were broken, so it was like the trigger was always pulled and the gun was unloaded. I put a shell in the ejection port and slam-fired it, like a trench-sweeper. Smart, huh? Like the Great War!”

The Baron looked meaningfully at the Zombie. The killers hadn’t disabled the shotgun in a reliable manner. Instead, they’d treated it like a rifle and attempted to cover for an incomplete disable by making sure it couldn’t load shells. However, once the magazine was effectively disengaged, most guns could be loaded through the ejection port, bypassing the problem. The person making the wish hadn’t been familiar with firearms, that much was clear. “Did both of those men seem like competent shooters to you?” he asked his partner.

“Both of them,” the Zombie agreed.

“The third man is a civilian then,” the Baron said. “He made a shitty wish to break that shotgun, and he either hired the other two or is the underling of the man who hired them.”

The Zombie nodded. “Either that or he’s an idiot.”

The Baron looked around the room. “Piazzi, we need to go. Do you want to keep any of this stuff? Anything you don’t carry, the cops will take it as evidence.”

“Do you think they’ll find me?” Piazzi asked.

“They’ll probably stop the investigation once Tammany is done talking to the NYPD. From their point of view, it’ll be a gang shootout without any bodies.”

“Yeah,” Piazzi said, “only one person would miss me anyways.”

There was something heartbreaking to hear the man admit this so readily. “Come on,” he said to Piazzi. They stepped outside, leaving everything else behind.

Lips and No-Chin were working together on the balcony to lift the dead killer. “No wallet, no ID,” No-Chin said.

Piazzi looked over the Baron’s shoulder at the corpse.

“Know him?” the Baron asked.

“Sure don’t,” Piazzi said. “I still don’t understand why they were here.”

“Wait—they didn’t say anything about what they wanted?”

Piazzi shook his head.

The Baron frowned. Why wouldn’t they ask for something? Who’d told them everything they’d needed to know. “It’s Lucci,” the Baron realized, thinking of the man that’d died earlier that morning. “They figured out everything they needed from Lucci.”

“They’re far ahead of us then,” the Zombie said.

“Not too far ahead. They just lost a man, maybe two. They’ll regroup to lick their wounds.”

“Are you talking about Bettino?” Piazzi asked.

“Yes, Bettino Lucci is dead,” the Baron said. “They were going to kill you too.”

“Fuck me,” Piazzi muttered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Did anyone else die?”

“Jacono yesterday. A man they called Dug died trying to save you a few minutes ago.”

“Marcus!” Piazzi was visibly distressed. He quickly looked over the balcony and saw the blood-stain on the road. “They fucking shot Marcus?”

Lips spat on the corpse in front of him. “This is the fucker who did it.” He started to descend the stairs with No-Chin, quickly spiralling down with the body hanging between them like a hammock.

Piazzi put a hand over his eyes and groaned. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“We really need to go,” the Zombie said. “The cops will come soon.”

“Oh, fuck me.” Piazzi took his hand away, and he was crying silently. Tears came without any other expression, and then words, just as small and freely given. “Yeah, fuck it. Let’s go. Come on. Let’s go.” He rubbed his eyes again. “Fuck me.”

The Baron started walking ahead, and the Zombie fell in line behind him. He wouldn’t dictate feelings to Piazzi either, but he did stop when he realized that Piazzi wasn’t following. “Need something before we go?” he asked the old soldier.

“No,” Piazzi said, blinking rapidly. “No. He just, uh, he used to come here a lot.”

“Is seeing his body going to bother you? They’re about to put the other man in the trunk.”

Piazzi swallowed. “Yeah, um, let me get in the car first. I’ll—I’ll ride shotgun.” He moved, then nearly ran ahead of them down the stairs. His legs were fine now. This neophyte had gotten everything he wanted from the system of prestige in less than a year, but the Baron had the painful suspicion that Piazzi wouldn’t be sharing his newfound health with anyone he cared about.

The Zombie sniffed the air, as if he smelled the mood. He didn’t make fun of Piazzi. “Blood and gunpowder. For the free world,” he whispered to the Baron, who immediately cast him a scowl. “Hey, don’t look like that. You saved Piazzi’s life.”

“For the low price of three more.” The Baron shook his head, dismayed at the exchange rate. “On top of that we’ve learned almost nothing we didn’t already know. What a bargain.”

After Piazzi sat down in the Packard, Lips and No-Chin opened the trunk and laid the killer’s corpse over Dug behind the back seat bench. There’d be blood in the carpets, but Dug’s vehicle wouldn’t see the streets after today. It’d be pulled off into some garage in a junkyard by Jamaica Bay, where four or five men with power tools and a lot of muscle would break it down and throw the incriminating parts into a trash compactor with the rest of the detritus. They shut the trunk with a slam and locked it. The suspension creaked, a full load.

The Baron sat behind the driver’s seat with the center console between him and Piazzi. No-Chin took the wheel, and the Zombie sat between the Baron and Lips on the back bench. “We should set up Piazzi’s ride out of town as soon as possible,” he said.

No-Chin started the vehicle. “We’ll drop this baby off where we can dispose of it.” He shifted into gear, pulled out onto the street, and aimed for the first alley on the right, pulling through the block and out of sight of anyone along the main street.

“What’s our alibi?” the Baron asked.

No-Chin glanced in the rearview mirror. “If any of you meet a cop asking questions, you were with the crowd at Lucci’s all morning. I’ll put a call in, they’ll spread the alibi.”

“Can I make a suggestion?” the Baron asked.

“Shoot,” No-Chin replied.

“Don’t tell stories. If you need specifics, talk about each other. I was a private investigator brought in for Lucci. The Zombie here was my partner. You didn’t catch our names, and we didn’t catch yours. It was just the neighborhood crowd, just worrying about Lucci. If they ask for details, they want you to say something incriminating. Tell them to check the police report. Plead the fifth.”

“How many witnesses were at the building?” the Zombie asked.

“Dozens, all peering out of windows,” Lips said. “Enough to pick us all out of a lineup.”

“The Zombie is right. We need to get off the streets soon,” the Baron said. “Do you have a garage where we can lock the Packard up for the week?”

No-Chin pulled out onto a quiet street. “Yeah, it’s about three blocks from here. Don’t worry, the police station is in the other direction and most patrols are on foot. We’ll make it.”

“Good.” The Baron pivoted back to the subject of interest. “Piazzi, we need a couple of pieces of information, and it’s important. The killers were there to keep us from meeting you.”

He had red streaks under his eyes. “Sure, what do you need to know?” He wasn’t questioning their motives. Showing up with members of the Ozone Park Boys had paid off. The Baron was confident that Piazzi would tell the truth.

“You were there for the scuttling of the SS John G. Paines?”

“The liberty ship? Yeah, I prepped the charges, helped wire them up. It was a goddamn disaster though. I heard gunshots, then Jacono showed up on the deck. He told me the rest were dead but me and Lucci, and Lucci was already down at the launch. I wanted to look for them, but with my lame leg—where was I going? Jacono armed the timer, we got out of Dodge.”

“Did Jacono tell you what happened?”

“He said there was a killer down below. A stone-cold murderer, worse than Jacono himself. Jacono told me the parable of the hungry tiger, you know that one?”

The Zombie laughed harshly. “You don’t have to be the fastest. You just have to be faster than your slowest friend. He used one of the others as bait.”

“He used all of the others,” Piazzi said, “and it still took him five or six minutes to finish the guy off. Jacono was cross with Barilla, about as mad as someone like him can get.”

“Federico Barilla?” the Baron asked, recalling Piazzi’s induction on the record.

“That’s him. He’s the dock boss who signed me up. Emanuele was our leader though—just some guy with contacts, but he could pull money for the job in exchange for some of the prestige. I don’t know which one of them actually convinced New York to let us scuttle the boat. Still, nobody in charge told us there’d be someone defending the task or sniping it.”

“Poor intel?” the Baron guessed.

“None. That’s what got Jacono pissed. He thought there was a reason that Barilla should’ve known. He found something down in the hold, something on the guy’s body.”

That didn’t quite sound right to the Baron’s ears, but he couldn’t identify why, and he didn’t want to interrupt Piazzi’s explanation. “Did Jacono tell you what it was or show you?”

“No. He took the evidence to Barilla. I thought he was going to kill the man.”

“And Lucci knew this?”

“Yeah, he was driving the boat, but we left Jacono at the docks that night. I think he knew as much as I did. They wanted to kill me over this stuff?”

The Baron glanced at the Zombie, who was vaguely scowling at the air. Something about this interview was rubbing him the wrong way as well, but it wasn’t clear to either of them yet what was wrong. The Baron answered Piazzi’s question to the best of his ability: “No. They must’ve broken Lucci. They got the stories, the guns—everything they needed. Killing you was just about hiding any evidence pointing to Barilla.”

The Zombie’s scowl became sharp. The Baron’s friend had come to a realization, and he didn’t like the flavor of it.

“Something wrong?” the Baron asked.

“Later,” the Zombie said curtly.

The Baron suspected that the Zombie had just figured out what was wrong with this conversation, but if he wasn’t interrupting it, then these answers were good enough. He pivoted to wrapping up the business at hand: “Piazzi, you’ll need to get out of town before lunch. Even if you didn’t see them, you’re dealing with the kind of men who don’t want any witnesses. Do you know anyone? Is there a relative you can stay with?”

“I have an old war buddy in Atlantic City,” he answered reluctantly, but he didn’t explicitly argue with the Baron. He was only implying that he wanted another solution, but implications could be steamrolled in the right setting.

“Good, the strong New York presence there will keep you safe. I’ll give you twenty dollars.” He opened up his wallet. “You stink of gunfire, so wash yourself at the garage, buy some new clothes, and be on a train in less than an hour. The NYPD will start looking for you once they’ve figured out who lived in your apartment.” He pressed a crisp bill in Piazzi’s hand and balled his hand around it into a fist. “If they catch you, assume these killers will find you.”

“Okay,” Piazzi said, a little shocked.

“You didn’t survive today to die tomorrow. Understand me?”

A memory of Dug must’ve come sweeping back like a thick wave. Piazzi was suddenly very tired. “I get it,” he said quietly. They were pulling up to a car garage at the end of the street. “Thank you.” It was an automatic thanks, but it meant the man was still functioning.

No-Chin pulled them into a dimly lit garage with men standing all around. Behind them, the door remained open. He rolled down his window and shouted, “Got a couple warm ones in the trunk. Shut her down.” Someone palmed a button, and behind them the garage door slowly shut, bringing down the light until the dim bulbs seemed bright. Before they were out of the car, they heard police sirens yowling in the distance. Cities were complex though, hard to search.

If the cops even found the bodies, it’d be long after and in a far distant place.

“Piazzi needs a cleanup,” No-Chin told a man in navy-blue overalls.

After getting out of the car, someone handed Piazzi a bar of soap and told him to strip down. They refilled batteries in this garage, and an emergency shower was set over a drain for eye and body washing. A young man with a hook nose, probably once broken, pulled the release and shouted, “Three minutes.” Naked and cold, genitals shrinking under the icy wash, Piazzi ran the soap over his body as quickly as possible, legs bouncing and muscles shivering.

“Does anyone else need a clean-up?” No-Chin asked.

“If I need it, I’ll clean myself with prestige,” the Baron said. “Zed can’t keep his jacket though.”

The Zombie removed the grey wool jacket and grinned. “Ruined already.” He folded it over twice, outside in, and handed it to No-Chin. “Too bad.”

“We’ll wash up after we clean the car,” Lips said.

“What’s the news?” asked the man in the mechanic’s overalls.

The Baron answered, “Marcus was killed, but his killer is dead. We’ve got them both in the trunk. Get someone on the line for disposal of one, funeral home for the other.”

At that command, men scattered, making calls. For the moment, this was no longer an automotive business opening early on a Sunday. It was a Cosa Nostra base of operations, phoning home for support.

The mechanic was immediately worried. “What happened?”

“Shootout a few blocks from here,” Lips said.

“Is that what that fucking was?”

“Yeah, but we got ‘em.”

“I’m a private investigator,” the Baron said, “one of the mafioso was killed yesterday across the river. I came here on a lead looking for his killers. Did you hear about Bettino Lucci?”

“Killed just this morning, I heard,” the man said.

“They were going to kill Piazzi too. Marcus died saving his life.”

“Mary, mother of Christ.” The mechanic crossed himself. “Today is a bad morning. I should’ve gone to church.” He looked at an old nickel watch. “Still time, I guess.”

The Baron briefly inspected his clothes and shoes. Clean enough, the classic appearance of a man who’d stood in the back and commanded the fight. He addressed the mafioso. “We need to talk with Federico Barilla. Is he in a safe place?”

Someone cracked open the trunk behind him. He paused. An arm flopped out, dark red smears on pale skin. Men balked. The Baron stopped breathing through his nose. The garage immediately filled with the sibling stenches of blood, urine, and shit.

“Good God,” No-Chin said.

“The smell of the battlefield!” the Zombie shouted, “Bring me horses and steel!”

A bystander moved away from the Zombie. The Baron put a hand out to quiet him down. While he understood the Zombie’s nostalgia, he didn’t share it, and a token amount of discipline would encourage the crowd’s trust. Here and now, he couldn’t afford the Zombie’s natural intimidation. At least for the next few minutes, these men were strict allies.

“What the hell?” the mechanic asked.

The Zombie laughed.

“One of them must’ve relaxed after death,” the Baron said, choosing to ignore the possibility that the mafioso was asking about the Zombie’s reaction. “You’ll want to wash them before you move them. I hate to be crass, but where is Barilla? Time is essential.” He gestured back at the dead. “His life may be in danger, and I need to see him in person.”

“He’s at his office,” the mechanic said.

The corpse was putting him off guard. Now was the time to strike for vital info. “Where?” the Baron asked. “We needed to be in a cab half an hour ago.”

“Alright,” the man said, “alright. Jesus. He’s in Red Hook somewhere, in an old Dutch factory. They made shoes or something, I don’t go there. Joey?”

The hook-nosed boy helping Piazzi wash shouted, “Clinton Wharf, in the shadow of the cruise terminal. You can see Governor’s Island, and Barilla’s name over on the door.” He shut off the water and tossed a clean cloth wipe at Piazzi. “Squeegee down,” he said.

Piazzi was shaking. “What am I, a goddamn window?”

The mechanic was gagging even as he breathed through his mouth.

“Thanks for your help,” the Baron said, “can you send us out the back?”

“These guys good to go?” the mechanic asked No-Chin.

“Yeah!” No-Chin shouted. He was pinching his nose over the killer’s corpse.

The Baron and the Zombie last saw Piazzi covering his chilled penis with a scrap of sopping, ice-cold cotton. The mechanic waved them out, and the door to the back of the garage was shut behind them, a lock dropping into place.

They were alone in a tarmac-lined alley with a rusting dumpster and scraps of newspaper dried like paper mache over the grill of a drain. One end was blocked with a high fence. The other end opened out onto a blank brick wall. Grass sprouted beneath the spouts of gutters. It was a barren and unused strip of road, abandoned to the point that ancient, fragile garbage was evenly spread over the gravel. Neither tire nor footstep had ground them down, and only the blasting gales of an autumn storm could’ve so casually strewn these plastic scraps through the narrow gap.

“I’m surprised nobody comes back here to drink themselves stupid,” the Zombie said.

“It’s too lonely for depressed people,” the Baron replied.

“When did you become an expert on depression?”

“I’m not. I just know that people go where people go.”

They walked to the end of the alley, where it junctioned into its orthogonal twin, dividing the block into four parts. Picking a direction away from the apartment building, they walked south towards the next road. The Baron glanced back at the Zombie, who was literally staring up at the rising sun with both eyes wide open. “What bothered you in the car?”

“Hmm?” the Zombie asked, with sunshine plainly reflecting off the wet whites of his eyes.

“I asked if there was something wrong, you said, ‘Later.’”

The Zombie looked down, shading his eyes beneath the brim of his bowler. “Oh, I was thinking about what Piazzi said about Jacono. The whole thing felt wrong, but I finally figured out why.”

“I had the same feeling,” the Baron said. “The man in the ship must’ve been Nagy, and Jacono must’ve killed him and taken the Cat o’ Nine Lives to Barilla the next morning. At least, that’s the only theory that fits Piazzi’s testimony. Still, Denisov will be glad to know that Nagy’s killer is dead.”

“Right, but yesterday, what did you say that Jacono knew?”

“Outside the temple? I said he knew about the Cat.” The Baron paused—that wasn’t right. “No, I said he didn’t know what the Cat was—wait.” He tried to recall exactly what thoughts Jacono had inserted into his head during their conversation in the Greenwich Temple.

“Yeah, now you’re getting it,” the Zombie said. “You said Jacono didn’t know where the Cat was, but Piazzi suggested that Jacono had taken something to Barilla.”

The Baron snapped his fingers. The exact thought was still there, finally recalled. “I asked him what the killers were looking for. He said there was an artifact called the Cat o’ Nine Lives. He hadn’t heard of it before, but his killer had expected it to be on the boat.”

“Exactly. He hadn’t heard the name, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t found the artifact. Jacono knew everything important, but you only asked for the identity of the other survivors, and that led us here, into a shootout. Now I’m a fan of bloodshed, but if you’d only asked—”

“Wait, wait!” the Baron said.

“What?” the Zombie asked.

“Yes, you’re right. If I’d asked Jacono for more information about the Cat, he could’ve told us about Barilla, but I couldn’t ask him squat. The Greenwich Oracle was right there, taking notes. If I’d mentioned the Cat—if I’d even described the shape of it—New York would’ve raised an army before sunset.”

The Zombie frowned. “True…”

“I couldn’t risk exploring the situation beyond what Jacono volunteered, and he was playing the Cat close to his chest. Think about it. He definitely didn’t tell the killers anything.”

“Right,” the Zombie said, “so they went looking for Lucci and Piazzi. I’d wager Jacono gave those names to them yesterday?”

The Baron smiled. “Sure, to see if they’d go away, maybe save his own life. Look, my point is—I asked everything I could, and I didn’t have any reason to believe Jacono had left something out. We were that close—” the Baron pinched his fingers together “—to learning everything yesterday, but it couldn’t be done. My hands were tied by Maurice and his pen.”

The Zombie chuckled. “Well, shit.”

The Baron finished his point: “Only Lucci or Piazzi could tell us what we needed to know, and now we have a name and an address.” They reached the street. It was mostly empty, but they could see the information booth for a subway stop a few blocks west. A handful of Checker taxis were parked beside the stairway descending into the earth.

“Federico Barilla, the man who has the Cat o’ Nine Lives,” the Zombie said.

“He did on Friday,” the Baron noted, “but a lot can change in three days.”

Author’s Note:

Through strange ways, we’ve found the artifact… probably.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 29, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

After finishing his food, the Baron set his payment by his plate and picked up the file folders. He didn’t bother to wait for the check; the bill he dropped was more than enough to cover costs and an oversized tip. “Bettino Lucci and Rufino Piazzi,” he said. “The last survivors of the SS John G. Paines.”

The Zombie closed his novel. “Tell me about them.”

The Baron flipped through Lucci’s file. There was a lot of junk related to expenses and lines of credit. “Receipts for food, firearms—here we go. His cultic record is brief, inducted by Anastasia himself in ‘48. Jesus, Anastasia.”

“The Mad Hatter was a cultist?” The Zombie was surprised. Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia was the Cosa Nostra boss who’d run Murder, Inc., one of the largest hitmen services in America during the interwar period. By raw chance, the Baron and the Zombie had met their victims at least a dozen times—just a small sample of the thousand or more that Murder, Inc. had killed and disposed of.

“A minor cultist, but yes.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“High Oracle Gagliano once told me that all the bosses in the Commission know about the gods, just most aren’t practicing. Now Anastasia?” He closed his eyes to think. “I remember the news about him. He joined the Navy to avoid prosecution in ‘47. Lucci’s induction must’ve been right after the war.” His eyes opened. He remembered Jacono’s Navy Reserve tattoos. “I bet he served with Jacono under Anastasia. Both of them must’ve become cultists around then.”

“That’s our connection to the Ozone Park Boys. The cultist yesterday said they were an Anastasia crew.” The Zombie tapped the hardcover of his book. “Was he a made man?”

“No. His primary record ends with induction. He hasn’t even picked up a task of his own.” The Baron flipped through the handful of pages and found a list of months and years. “He’s got calendar marks for constant participation. An active supporter for other cultists?”

“Most people are,” the Zombie agreed.

“So that’s Lucci, the man who brought in Jacono.” He closed the folder and opened up the other one, Rufino Piazzi’s file. “Oh my, look at that.” He picked up the first page. There was a sheet of yellow pad with a single word scribbled in heavy black marker. “DEMOLITIONS”

“Piazzi has a skillset?”

The Baron flipped through the remaining papers. “Induction by… I don’t know this man. Federico Barilla? Last year. No sign of being a made man. No receipts, no big operations.”

“So your survivors are a man who’d been trained by the leader of Murder, Inc. and a neophyte who knows how to make a bomb. Want to bet Piazzi was a frogman?”

“A combat diver would be essential if your aim was to covertly scuttle a ship.” The Baron tapped the page with a fingertip. “This explains why the job went to a vassal cult in the first place. Expertise and ruthlessness.” He closed the second file. “They didn’t have to cut a deal with Langley when they could contract with their own.”

“Were there any addresses?”

“I saw apartments in Brooklyn, right near Euclid Avenue. We can take the train and transfer to the C line at Times Square.”

The Zombie picked up his briefcase. “We should hurry. I’ll run my books to the hotel.”

“You think Jacono’s killer will know where to find them? He found Jacono.”

“Yeah, he’s one step ahead,” the Zombie said. “Meet you here in ten.”

While waiting, the Baron stopped by a hattery to purchase a pre-fit bowler for the Zombie. The black hat he chose was cheaply made, but it wouldn’t bother his friend, and the Zombie was bound to lose it again soon. They met up on the way to the shuttle train platform.

“Thank you.” The Zombie spun the bowler on its edge a couple of times, found its balance, and then tossed it onto his head, where it landed neatly. Then he pulled it down tight. “Good fit for showing off,” he said cheerily.

They purchased subway tickets, stood behind the only other two people riding this direction at this hour, and got on the train a few minutes ahead of schedule. After a brief transfer through a half-empty Times Square Station, they took the C line heading east. The subway was already deep underground when it left the island of Manhattan. It passed beneath the East River sediment at a depth of more than 30 feet, and despite the solid stone overhead and constant maintenance on the tunnel walls, discreet water pumps were required to draw away a constant dribble of water coming down from the tidal strait.

The Baron checked his watch. “That’s sunrise,” he said. “Churches won’t start until nine.”

In a subway, the only subjective measure of time was the movement of the train, and the major divisions were the terminal stops. They looked at the maps mounted on panels over the seats and counted off the permanently lit station signs.

“What are we going to ask them?” The Zombie was balancing in the aisle of the subway train, wobbling heavily whenever the car shuddered over a flaw in the tracks.

“Ask them about Nagy, the Cat, and whoever might be trying to kill them.” The Baron frowned at his friend. “Don’t fall over. You might damage the train.”

The Zombie grabbed an overhead bar. “We’ll tell them to get out of town?”

“New York would hold it against us if we didn’t.”

The subway rose towards a shallow terminal deeper into Brooklyn, heading northeast towards Queens. The last time they were here, Ozone Park was almost the countryside, ending in the Aqueduct Racetrack for thoroughbred horses. Since then, it’d expanded along the rails and Liberty Avenue, growing into a full community that spread down to the Brooklyn border. It also represented the easternmost territory of the gangster, Albert Anastasia. The addresses for Lucci and Piazzi were both in Brooklyn county; they’d be on the southwest side of the county line, a few blocks into the neighborhood of East New York. They were active members of the Ozone Park Boys, probably assigned to work chop shops in Howard Beach, Ozone Park itself, and across every rich neighborhood smashed up against Jamaica Bay.

Euclid Avenue station was a cramped, busy hole in the earth, patterned strangely with mismatched tiling and an air of desperate construction. It’d been half-finished during WWII, when material shortages were sharp. Afterwards, it hadn’t been so much completed as it had been patched up. They departed through narrow aisles and rose immediately to the street above, exiting into East New York. The sun was still low over the horizon and cast an orange light between the low residential buildings that lined the neighborhood’s broad streets. This luxurious use of space wasn’t a sign of wealth. Back when East New York was new, it’d been set on the lip of marshy lowlands, and the poverty-stricken residents hadn’t put much value on the land. The real measure of wealth could be seen in the old facades of whitewashed bricks, whose chalky surfaces costumed splotchy or mismatched materials and unified the otherwise aesthetically inconsistent homes, apartments, and businesses into a single community.

Lucci lived in public housing on Cypress Hill, a spot which hadn’t seen either a hill or a stand of cypress since glaciers ground down over the land during the last Ice Age. It was only about three blocks from the Euclid Avenue Station, so the Baron and the Zombie walked rather than call for a cab. It was about 6:30AM when the Cypress Hill Houses came into view.

“We’re too late for Lucci,” the Zombie said almost immediately.

The Baron paused beside him, grimacing at the sad sight. There were at least five police cars lining the walk in front of the houses, and despite the early hour on a Sunday, dozens of Italian immigrants were standing around, families banding together and watching the lack of visible activity with dreadful expectations. There were a group of pissed young men standing outside one house, forming an impatient locus for the neighborhood. They passed around cigarettes and shouted in Italian at the open door to a particular home.

“Think that’s Lucci’s place?” the Baron asked.

“Yes, and those are the Ozone Park Boys.”

“Some of them,” the Baron said. “Let’s see what we can learn, but fast.” They had to worry about Rufino Piazzi. If Lucci was dead, Piazzi’s fate might hang in the balance.

Before they were halfway down the street, they saw police officers streaming out en masse from the house, leading a sobbing young woman down to a squad car. They locked the door for her; the boys shouted in Italian at her, not in anger but encouragement. She was going to give a statement down at the station. Standard stuff, the Baron thought. Later, the crime scene would be searched and documented by trained investigators.

“I wish I could remember more Italian,” the Baron muttered.

They waited for the police to clear the street, then approached the pack of Ozone Street Boys. The Cosa Nostra thugs knew by instinct when someone thought they were important and purposeful. They all straightened up and quieted down, staring at the Baron and Zombie until they were within earshot. “Hey actor, you with the heat?” yelled one of the youngest, a scrawny kid who barely needed to shave and thus had the most to prove about manliness.

“We’re not police!” the Baron called out. He pulled out his wallet and a business card, then handed it to the first man who stepped forward, a large figure with a lantern jaw and a sports jacket. “I’m Paul-Henri Thiry, the Baron d’Holbach. Are you part of the Anastasia crew?”

“You talk like a cop,” said the scrawny kid.

“Shut it, Mike,” said the big man holding the Baron’s card. “Who’re you calling for?”

The Zombie stood quietly behind the Baron. This wasn’t a moment for his brand of intimidation. Simply by showing up, the Baron was putting the thugs on edge. “There was a man with a sedan, green glass windows, who killed Jacono on the East River yesterday. We were going to warn Lucci about it.”

“Jacono?” asked the big man.

“Lucci’s friend from the Navy Reserve.”

The big man nodded slowly. “Lucci got shot.” He handed the card back to the Baron. “Once in the chest, then once in the back of the head.”

“Did anyone see the killer?”

“No, but we’ll find him. We’ll put him in the dirt.”

“It may be three killers, or an organization.” The Baron looked over the crew. Ten men, probably everyone who lived on the block and also worked in the chop shops. It was hard to say how many of them would be cultists. “Lucci’s wife didn’t see anything?”

“She was asleep. Didn’t see nothing, didn’t hear nothing.”

“Was she in a different room from the shooting?”

“That’s right.”

The Baron glanced back at the Zombie. The Zombie shrugged. The Baron knew there was no secular way to suppress a gun so thoroughly that a person sleeping in another room wouldn’t wake up. Not unless they were drugged. Secular mafioso would probably be wondering if she were responsible for the killing, but they’d seemed supportive instead of accusatory when she left. Only the police would be suspicious of her—that must be why she’d been taken to the station. This lantern-jawed fellow was the natural leader, and he’d made no implications about her guilt or innocence. The only certain way to know was to ask.

“What’s your name? It doesn’t have to be real, just something to call you by.”

“Dug,” said the man, “like I dug a hole.”

“Dug, what is prestige?”

“Eh, one second.” Dug turned to the scrawny man, Mike, and shouted in Italian. Mike was confused, but he patted two of the others on their shoulders, and the three walked away from the group. Then Dug said to the Baron, “It’s the favor of the gods. What are our tasks?”

“The will of the gods,” the Baron said. That exchange was the London Password used to identify mutual awareness of the occult. Since the British Empire had touched every continent, the formula had been adopted in one form or another almost everywhere on Earth. Only very remote, isolated cults in Africa, South America, and Central Asia remained unaware of it.

“Are you the Baron, the one from the storybook that chick wrote?” Dug asked.

“Yes. I’m not your enemy, but you may have heard some things. If you haven’t, it’s better you hear them from me first. We assaulted a Luciano vassal cult under Boss Tomasso on the East River yesterday. Then the man behind me broke into Tammany Hall overnight and pulled the records so we’d know where to find Lucci. He’s the Zombie.”

“You assaulted us, but you came to help Lucci?”

“Blame it on poor communication.” The Baron said flatly. It was a dismissal, but he’d already given enough respect to Dug’s authority to deserve some in return.

Dug scratched the stubble on the edges of his jaw. The noise was like rubbing sandpaper on wood. “Okay,” he finally said, “but you’re too late to help.”

They were too late to save Lucci, but maybe they weren’t late for Piazzi. “Let’s share information,” the Baron said. “I’ll tell you what I think, full and honest, and if it’s useful, you can answer a question. We need to be fast though.”

Dug’s expression didn’t change. “Go ahead.”

The Baron lifted up one finger. “There’s only one way to fire a gun without alerting anyone. You wish for silence.” A second finger. “This means the killers are cultists.” He lifted a third finger. “Depending on the duration, the wish could’ve been fairly expensive, but there’s no guarantee on a high price. Nobody had any expectation of hearing anything, and there’s always a discount on subtlety.” A fourth. “Only a well-established cult would pay for a silent execution when the body would be discovered quickly. Hiding the murder for even a few minutes was a luxury.” His thumb, for the fifth point. “Jacono was shot because he was going to warn Lucci and Rufino Piazzi about the killers. Lucci must’ve been shot to keep him from warning Piazzi.”

Some of the men behind Dug began talking in Italian, muttering to each other quickly. The best the Baron could make out was the word boat. Dug scowled.

The Baron said, “Piazzi is the last survivor from the task to sink the liberty ship.”

“We know,” Dug replied flatly.

“We need to call him,” said one of the men.

“Quiet!” Dug shouted. Then calmly, “What’s your question, Baron?”

“Can you show us where Piazzi lives? He needs protection, and the Zombie is invincible.”

Dug’s scowl became a sneer. “We can protect him.”

“I believe it—and I wouldn’t take Piazzi away from your protection—but I need to talk with him. If he’s under siege, the Zombie is an advantage that you can’t turn down.” The Baron watched Dug’s tremendous jaw chewing over the problem. Clenched, unclenched cheeks. He needed a push. “Make up your mind now. We have his address, but you can get us there faster. Time matters. This might be happening right now.”

Dug’s face finally settled into a decision. “We’ll load up a car.” He shouted two more names, men who wore rough leather over wifebeaters at six-thirty in the morning. “Down the street,” he told the Baron, “we’ll take mine.”

His car was a mid-30s Packard Sedan with a lustrous cobalt blue paint job. Unlike modern cars with their artillery-shell styling elements, the Packard was a throwback to Ford’s Model-T design, long and slender with deep running boards and jutting wheel wells, split halfway up the body into two sections, the engine in front and the cab in back. It was the kind of toy a rich person would travel two states to buy at auction, not a car owned by a career criminal living in public housing. Certainly the local police would’ve checked into it, but it was probably assembled out of hundreds of parts coming out of chop shops all over New York, refurbished and hung on a steel frame with a VIN showing it’d been bought at a junkyard.

Dug took the driver’s seat. The Baron took the seat behind him, with Dug’s two friends taking the other two spots. “There’s a handle. Stand on the running board,” Dug said to the Zombie. The Zombie grinned and hopped up onto the car next to the Baron. The vehicle had modern ignition but manual transmission. Dug started it up, dropped the emergency brake, and shifted it into gear. The accelerator must’ve been sensitive. The Packard nearly peeled out, and the Zombie shouted gleefully as he was nearly thrown from the vehicle.

“Have you brought guns?” the Baron asked.

“We’re the Ozone Park Boys,” said the man next to the Baron, who was easily identified by his thick lips and mustache. Lips pulled his jacket back to show his Beretta firearm holstered at his flank. It was seated with the grip facing forwards. He would reach across, grab and pull. Not very fast, but secure and fairly well hidden.

“What about prestige?”

“Only Dug,” Lips said.

“Only a little,” Dug muttered.

“I have a significant pool,” the Baron said. “If we need wishes on the ground, I’m paying. Now this is important. If there’s someone at Piazzi’s home, try to take them alive. We need to question them. Who wanted to take out survivors of the liberty ship? Who killed Lucci? Whatever I learn, you’ll know too.”

“They try to kill me, I kill them,” Lips said.

“Keep a chill head,” rasped the man across from Dug, who had a receded chin that swept into his throat. No-Chin looked back at the Baron. “Are you armed?”

“Only with the Zombie.”

They pulled a corner, tires hissing on the pavement as they swerved around a pothole patch in the road. Dug pointed vaguely towards a three-story building further down the street. “There’s the Belmont-Sutter. Piazzi lives on the third floor. Recognize any cars?”

The Baron leaned over. There were a handful of autos, though most people here parked in a garage or didn’t own a vehicle. He checked the windows on everything he could see. They were all clear glass, nothing green. “Nothing obvious,” he said.

“Fuck it then.” Dug pulled the wheel into a tight swerve, rolled right up the curb, and parked on the far side of the street. “We’re here.”

The Belmont-Sutter apartments were three freestanding, three-story apartment complexes connected together by outside walkways, wrapping around the faces of the buildings and threading through the spaces between them. Each walkway had a solid concrete railing about two feet high with embedded metal fencing reaching up another two feet. These formed an open hallway around the perimeter of the complex, a circular path for people to reach the apartments facing out towards the street. Each floor on each building was further divided internally by a single open hallway, which gave quick passage to the far side of the building. It was impossible to tell from here, but there was a strong chance these also provided access to utility rooms, common areas, laundry rooms, and vending machines for soda and cigarettes. Metal stairwells rose up through the street-facing corners of the block and up through the spaces between the buildings.

A cursory glance revealed no activity, which was alarming enough. It was a Sunday morning. At least some of the residents should be early birds with doors open to enjoy the fine weather. Had something driven them indoors? Suspicious men or activities?

“Nothing moving,” the Baron said to Dug. “Be careful.”

“I noticed,” Dug said.

The Baron rapped on his window. “Zombie!” he called through the glass. “Take point!”

The Zombie gave the thumbs up and hopped off the running board. He stood in the street, scanning the building. He gave a subtle wave of his hand. Come.

“Out,” the Baron said.

Everyone bailed out of the vehicle in one swift motion. Dug hit the sidewalk with No-Chin beside him, and the Baron rose onto open pavement with Lips to his right, eyeing the Zombie’s back. The Baron eased his door shut, while the rest slammed theirs, announcing all across the quiet block that several men had arrived in a single car.

The Zombie glanced back, putting a finger over his lips. Silence, he mouthed.

The Baron belatedly realized that he could’ve planned a better approach. He could’ve taken clear command, encouraged stealth, and silenced the car’s engine with prestige. The urge to rush, to ease conflicts by recruiting the locals and deferring to their authority—it’d all pressured him into a riskier scenario, and now it was too late to be careful.

Dug frowned at the Zombie and stormed past him, arms back and chest forward while he crossed the street. If anyone were watching them from a hidden corner, they’d know Dug was here for violence. His body language said “enemy combatant,” not someone you could dissuade with words or threats. The other two Ozone Park Boys followed slowly.

The Baron stayed in place, watching the balconies. Each one had a concrete lip tall enough to hide a man, yet offered enough gaps to let someone peer down at the road.

The Zombie must’ve realized the same threats. He gave up on stealth and said aloud: “Dug, where is he?” If Dug died, at least they’d know where to go.

Dug paused, glancing back at the Zombie. “Up the stairs, center building. Room 232.”

Meanwhile, the Baron scanned the environment for the nearest cover. He could easily hide behind Dug’s car, but it was isolated. If he were pinned back there by enemy sightlines, he couldn’t move. The concrete stairwells on the apartments also worked, but they’d only cover shots coming from above—not from anyone hiding on the bottom floor or posting up along the street itself. Altogether, this was a poor place for a gunfight.

“Are you coming or what?” Dug asked the group.

“One moment,” the Zombie muttered, looking over the Belmont-Sutter apartments one last time. “Something is wrong.”

No-Chin and Lips both stopped beside the Zombie, waiting for his appraisal.

In the Baron’s heart, an intuitive clock was ticking down. Only seconds remained to understand the terrain, the possibilities of conflict. The Zombie seemed to understand this too. The silence, the open road—the Baron’s instincts were warning him of disaster.

“Boys, get to cover,” the Baron said softly, finally answering Dug’s question.

“What?” Dug asked him.

Everything was suddenly, absolutely quiet. There were many things d’Holbach didn’t notice until they were gone. Wind, birds, distant cars, train wheels, blood rushing behind his ears, the slight tinnitus all people suffered like an endlessly ringing chime—gone, gone, gone. Silence wasn’t really a state of the world; ears were always listening and the air always moved. Silence was truly a state of the mind, induced so subtly that only the observant even noticed.

On the third floor walkway, center building, near the door to 232—a handsome man in a business suit rolled up onto one knee from a prone position, strong hand forward, weak hand stabilizing his arm, 1911 pistol already at the natural point of aim.

The Baron was shouting from the moment his eye caught motion, but it was useless. No sound came out. He could feel his throat making the noises, but there was nothing to be heard. Silence had been wished upon the area.

When conscious thought caught up with reaction, he threw up an arm to indicate direction, then swept about, head down, and shouted into the emptiness, “I wish to be heard!”

A little prestige drained away, and his voice was cracked and terrible to hear, isolated from the soft cushion of environmental white noise. “Shooter!” he bellowed, scrambling for cover around Dug’s car.

There wasn’t any sound, only the twitch of the 1911 in the killer’s hands and two twirling brass cartridges. Everyone saw him. The Zombie broke into a full sprint towards the stairwell, No-Chin and Lips pulled their pistols, and Dug only looked down at himself—at two holes on his shirt, haloed with growing bloodstains. First he was shocked, then grief-stricken. His head twitched left, his legs relaxed, and he collapsed sideways onto the pavement, suffering the twin agonies of mortality and fatal injury. His lantern jaw hung open in a silent scream.

“Suppress that position!” The Baron was nearly behind the Packard now.

There was no need for suppression. No-Chin’s firing posture was pristine, aiming like the professional he was. He pulled off three quick shots in absolute silence, striking Dug’s shooter in the center of mass. The killer shuddered as bullets tore into him, and he fell away from the lip of the walkway, collapsing into cover behind the concrete barrier.

If the assassin had brought any prestige for dodging, he wouldn’t try it now. It’d be a death sentence—if he wasn’t already doomed to perish in the next minute or two.

No-Chin and Lips started yelling something, at each other or at Dug. No sound.

The Zombie reached the stairwell, sprinting rapidly upwards.

“Don’t kill!” the Baron shouted to him.

Dug’s body relaxed, and he flopped onto his back, chest up to the sky. Across his white shirt, two giant blossoms of blood-red meshed together into a growing field of crimson, warmly lit by the rising sun. One shot had punctured a lung. The other must’ve hit dead center and damaged his spine from the front. Both wounds gushed blood in time to Dug’s slowing heartbeat. A tidier wound in the right side of his head was draining blood over the pavement, like a spring spilling out of stones.

No-Chin stood in the street for an instant, mouthing incomprehensible hate. His friend was already dead.

The Baron’s brain finally recognized the facts. The assassin with the 1911 and the dum-dums had fired twice, but there was a headshot on Dug’s corpse.

“Second gunman! To my right!” the Baron roared. “Get to cover!”

No-Chin snapped out of his fury and ran for the closest street-level hallway between the apartment buildings. He hit the low fence on the property boundary with his stomach and let momentum roll him over the fence in a controlled half-flip, scuttling beneath the enemy position.

Lips ran backwards towards the Baron, aiming his pistol at the third story walkway, looking for that second shooter. The Baron pulled back, making room behind the cab, and Lips collapsed down next to him in cover, leaning into the car to steady himself.

“Shoot him if he moves!” the Baron shouted at Lips, both for Lips and the second shooter to hear. It was basically a bluff—the Baron had no clear idea where the second shooter was, but they only needed a few more seconds to close the distance, and these words might keep the shooter in place until the Zombie or No-Chin could ascend the building and find him.

The Zombie was practically leaping up the steps, taking them three or four at a time, pulling himself upwards with yanks on the railing, and No-Chin was already sprinting up towards the second story. 

Fifteen seconds after all sound had disappeared, it returned suddenly. Wind blustered. Birds screeched at one another, fearing the force that had smothered their song. The thunder of blood and adrenaline filled the Baron’s ears. There was one bang of the Zombie’s shoe slamming a step, and then he caught himself, shifting to a stealthy prowl for the last few feet.

No-Chin followed suit about a floor below the Zombie, immediately slowing down, even as he continued his own climb to the third floor.

“Dug is dead!” Lips shouted to No-Chin. There was rage in his voice. The world was one Ozone Park Boy less, and these gangs were like family. Dug was their brother.

No-Chin acknowledged with a raised fist and continued climbing.

“We’ll get them both,” the Baron murmured, trying to keep Lips from making any unnecessary moves. “Soon, you’ll have them. Just stay with me. Stay in cover, and watch the balconies. I want that second shooter.”

“Fuckers shot Dug,” Lips said bitterly, peering over the Packard as instructed. “I’m going to kill them. Both of them.”

“I know,” the Baron said. “We need to interrogate first. Find all the bastards that did this. Then they’re yours. Understand me?”

“Yeah—”

“Good. We’ll get them.”

Lips brushed his mustache on his sleeve, then adjusted his firing stance. “Damn right we will. Fuckers got Dug…”

“Be patient,” the Baron urged him.

The Zombie finally reached the top of the stairs, opening out onto the walkway where the first shooter was hidden. “There you are!” he shouted, facing the injured man.

There was an answering shot from a pistol, striking the brick wall to the Zombie’s left with a puff of red dust. The recall echoed off the buildings, painful to hear, and the birds on the rooftops scattered, wings cutting audibly through the air. 

The Zombie grinned, glancing over his clothes. “Are you trying to ruin my suit before seven in the morning? Good gods, man, this costs money!”

“Fuck off!” rasped the injured killer.

“That’s the Zombie!” the Baron yelled. “Throw your gun over the railing, stand up, and raise your arms! He’ll take you into custody! We’ll get you to a hospital!”

“Bullshit,” Lips whispered beside the Baron.

d’Holbach shushed him. “It’s a necessary lie.”

“He’s nodding!” the Zombie called down to the Baron. He took off his new bowler and dropped it at his feet. “Just stay calm,” he assured the killer.

No-Chin was nearly at the third story himself.

There was a sudden beep, a brief bite of static, and the killer shouted in a hoarse, half-drowned American accent, “Confirmed Zed, back out now!” Then a burst of coughing.

“Radio!” the Zombie shouted, leaping into a sprint.

The injured killer launched himself bodily against the walkway railing, throwing a large walkie-talkie and a pistol down onto the pavement below.

The walkie-talkie cracked open like a plastic gourd on the asphalt, stopping dead, and made a noise like a popped glass balloon. The pistol rattled near it.

The Zombie slowed to a stop in front of their quarry. “Fucking idiot!” he bellowed at the injured killer. He’d wanted that radio, but he knew better than to take his revenge.

Then the killer levered himself onto his feet in obvious agony and raised his hands over his head. “I surrender!” he yelled, quivering in pain. The glistening on his clothes suggested that No-Chin had gutshot him three times, a tight grouping.

The Zombie scowled. “Don’t move again, or I will break you.”

“I’m done!” the killer cried. “I give up!”

No-Chin stopped on the last step of the stairwell, leaning out to glance over the Zombie and Dug’s killer alike. He was staying in cover, likely watching for the same second shooter.

The Zombie very, very carefully started patting Dug’s killer on the shoulders and down his flanks. A brief pause. Then he pulled aside the man’s jacket and reached in to pull the quick release strap on a snub revolver.

The Baron caught sight of movement on the third story walkway of the building to their right. Someone in the intersecting hall moved out of the shadows cast by the morning sun, slipped down to one knee at the corner, and sighted down an M1 Garand in one smooth motion.

“Rifle!” the Baron barked. “Mid-hall, right building!”

Three things happened at once.

Lips stepped back from the Packard to get line of sight and emptied his revolver at the walkway. Unlike No-Chin, his firing stance was terrible, and four shots of questionable value peppered the concrete and ricocheted down the street. Somewhere distant, a window shattered.

No-Chin dropped onto one knee, aiming along the walkway, but he hesitated because the Zombie and the wounded killer were in his line of fire.

The second shooter fired in the opposite direction with his rifle—two shots in the back of the injured killer and the third in the back of his head, spritzing blood onto the Zombie. Dug’s killer collapsed instantly, thumping his head against the railing on the way down.

The Zombie jumped over the fallen body into a full sprint. “Ruined by seven in the morning!” he yelled. There was a visible smattering of blood on his suit, not a bloodbath, but enough to guarantee that the jacket would hit a dumpster before anyone could ask questions.

On the third floor, No-Chin took the opportunity to open fire, but the second shooter was already pulling back around the corner. The Baron could see him, clutching the rifle against his chest, looking around in a panic. There’d be no escape now, so the next move was obvious. In a moment, he would dodge, and they’d lose their last living lead on Jacono’s killers.

The Baron made a tactical decision. He ran out into the street, hoping there wasn’t a third shooter, and he grabbed the M1911 off the pavement where it’d fallen. He needed just one wound to stop the second shooter from dodging. He lifted the weapon and the slide drifted loosely back. He didn’t dare look at the muzzle head on, but he tapped beneath the barrel with a finger. The bushing was broken, and the spring cap must’ve jumped with the recoil spring.

“Fix it!” the Baron wished. A quarter of his remaining prestige vanished like instant regret, and the pistol snapped into shape as he took aim. An instant later, he pulled the trigger repeatedly, and the pistol barked, jumping in a tightly controlled firing stance.

Intuition said he was hitting the target, shooting the man’s legs—

But the second shooter roared without hesitation: “I wish my radio was broken!”

And the rifleman was cut from the world. Everyone heard the crack of the vacuum imploding where he’d been standing. A rifle, a pistol, and a walkie-talked rattled where they fell. One detail about the rules of debt was that a wish couldn’t be used to transport implements of war into a temple. Apparently, a walkie-talkie counted.

The Baron felt a pang of frustration. It was a goddamn waste of prestige if the second shooter didn’t stay in place. He flicked the safety on, pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket, and immediately wiped the 1911 down. They’d have to ditch this damn thing—it was Dug’s murder weapon—and he didn’t want to leave any prints.

Somewhere on the far side of the block, a car peeled out and accelerated away. “I’d bet that’s our third man!” the Baron shouted. It was probably the leader from the docks, the man who’d ordered Jacono’s shooting, watching the dirty work from down the street.

The Zombie leaned out over the railing. “What do we do now?” he shouted back.

The Baron waved. “Check the dying man!”

The Zombie shrugged and turned back towards Dug’s killer. No-Chin was standing up, approaching the same fallen body. Their eyes met. This was pointless, and they knew it.

The fallen man was still breathing in that strange automatic way, but it didn’t change a thing. Blood loss would stop his heart within the minute, and nobody here was remotely prestigious enough to heal the mortal wound before he technically died.

For that matter, the Baron wouldn’t even have the prestige to clean up the blood.

“He’s dead,” No-Chin judged.

“I think both are,” the Zombie replied.

No-Chin raised an eyebrow. “The rifleman?”

The Zombie knelt to pick up his bowler. “The Baron shot him in the thighs.”

“You sure?”

“I saw blood on the wall.” The Zombie set his hat on his head neatly, no juggling or flair.

No-Chin nodded. “Good.” He turned towards the walkway, looking out towards Lips. “Leone! We got ‘em both!”

“Fuck ‘em!” Lips shouted from behind the Packard.

The Zombie nodded. This was a failure for him and the Baron, but it would be best seen as a success for the Ozone Park Boys. He nodded solemnly to the fellow killer, and he agreed with satisfaction. “We got ‘em both.”

The Baron tossed the 1911 by Dug’s corpse and shoved the handkerchief back in his jacket pocket. It’d be easy to dwell on regrets, but it’d be more useful if they moved forward, checked on Piazzi, and generally kept moving before the police arrived.

First, what did this situation teach him? Each shooter had come with enough prestige to make one major wish and one minor one to dodge. Both had spent most of their power blanketing an area in silence. Even at a major discount, that was lavish behavior.

The cult sponsoring the killers was one of the major powers, that much was obvious. As for the killers themselves, they must’ve been contractors from separate cults. They had absolutely no loyalty to one another, and they’d ruthlessly cut their losses, assassinating their own once he was an information risk. It was disgusting behavior, and the leader who’d given the order was twice as responsible as the man who’d pulled the trigger.

Lips wandered over to Dug’s body. The big man would never move again, never talk again, because a cultic killer thought surprise was enough of an advantage to wipe out a group of four. It wasn’t. Now they were both probably dead, along with the man they killed.

“Fuckin’ Marcus,” Lips said. His face wrenched up, but there was a quiver of resistance, the strength of will being applied to keep his expression blank.

“We got revenge,” the Baron said. “His killers are dead.”

Lips was tearing up regardless, droplets rolling down the mafioso mask. “Why’d he have to die like that?”

“I’m sorry,” the Baron said. He didn’t elaborate. The worst thing he could do was force them to think about Dug’s death in a certain way. If they were going to believe Dug was an inevitable casualty, they had to come to that conclusion on their own. If they were going to believe Dug was murdered, that was their prerogative.

“We need to get these bodies out of here.” Lips paused to look around, seemed to listen for a moment. “We’ll only have a few minutes before the police come.”

“Where’s Piazzi?” the Baron asked.

“In his room?” Lips guessed, “232, if he isn’t dead.”

“I’ll check it out.” The Baron glanced towards the Belmont-Sutter buildings. No-Chin was jogging down the stairs to come check on his comrades. “You two move the bodies to the Packard. The Zombie and I will check on Piazzi.”

“Yeah,” Lips said. “I’ll get the keys.” He knelt down and started rummaging through Dug’s pockets, taking his wallet and keyring.

The Baron jogged up the stairwell to meet the Zombie on the walkway. The Zombie gestured at a door. 232 was written out with white waterproof tape. The original numbers must’ve been lost or never installed. At the Zombie’s feet were a couple of stamped steel picks, the kind used by locksmiths to open cars. They’d been trying to break in.

“If Dug didn’t drive us, we wouldn’t have made it,” the Baron noted.

The Zombie grunted. “Maybe. If I was Piazzi, I would’ve dodged a long time ago.”

“You think we brawled over an empty room?”

“I don’t know. As I said, maybe.”

The Baron took a deep breath. “Well, maybe he didn’t have any prestige. Think about it—why open a door if you don’t think there’s a man inside? They must’ve known something we don’t.” He stood by the door and reached out to knock. He didn’t want to be standing in front of it, in case the man had ideas about blasting someone through a doorway. He hesitated. For that matter, Piazzi was good with explosives. He shouldn’t knock when the Zombie could do it.

“What’s the wait?” the Zombie asked.

The Baron mimed an explosion, hands fluttering for the shockwaves. Then he walked down to the next door and gave the thumbs up. Go ahead. Knock on the door. If Piazzi were inside, they might learn where to find the Cat. If Piazzi wasn’t, they’d have nothing to show for it. If Piazzi were dead, they’d collect new questions without any answers. This was like the fable of the knight. A lion behind one door, the princess behind the other, and nothing they could do would influence what had occurred inside. If the Baron had been anyone else, the impulse might’ve come to pray for good luck. As it was, he simply wanted to know.

The Zombie knocked, and someone fired a shotgun slug through the door and into his stomach. The Baron flinched. A shotgun in a small room was louder than a jet engine. Even with a door and a wall to muffle the shot, it hurt.

Lips and No-Chin shouted from the street, “What the hell?”

The slug had stopped, and the Zombie reflexively caught it and grinned, holding it up like a prize. “Gods damn lucky!” he roared, letting the sun shine off that metal confirmation of killer intent. There was someone in the apartment. Piazzi was alive.

Author’s Note:

We found our boy! There’s hope yet for the free world.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 29, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

There’s a moment of brief, period-accurate bigotry from an unnamed character, including a single period-accurate slur against the Vietnamese.

Before the invention of the light bulb, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach had kept an oil lamp on the nightstand by his bed. Winter mornings had stretched across the tilted Earth, casting a long, deep shadow of night over the French countryside. He’d risen a little after 4AM, being a natural morning person, and he’d always ignited the lamp to read by. There’d been little else to do hours before dawn, but he’d always been full of energy and intelligence, as if vitality had accumulated in him while he slept. Books had been stacked on the lower shelf of the nightstand, along with a restocked fountain pen. In the style of the times, he’d annotated whatever he read, taking notes for future essays and books. He’d been a writer, a true philosopher whose only task was to think and communicate the truths he’d apprehended.

Now when he awoke, he pulled the cord on a shaded lamp and filled the hotel bedroom with pale yellow light. There weren’t any philosophical tracts to read or notes to take. He wasn’t a writer anymore. Technically he was preparing a manuscript in his downtime, but The Nature of the System would never see publication. It wouldn’t even be read by anyone except the Zombie. d’Holbach was a philosopher in mind alone, retired in a sense because the world had demanded action for nearly one hundred and fifty years, and philosophy was best crafted with idle hands. Whenever he did read, he preferred fiction’s newest child, the well-adapted mutation born of fanciful faerie tales and adventure serials: science-fiction, though little of it was scientific. What mattered was the message. Science was ascendant, and everything could be understood by reason and observation. It was an attitude the cults should’ve adopted during the Enlightenment, but even today they remained stubbornly anachronistic, clinging to a theological metaphysics that would’ve embarrassed St. Thomas Aquinas with its simplicity.

It was 4AM on Sunday morning, and thank Edison for electrical power—the world would come awake quickly, and the Baron’s day could begin soon. He took his shaving kit into the bathroom, lathered up his scalp and face, and shaved with a straight edge. He preferred to visit a barber, but he was in a hurry and didn’t want his skin to look dirty. The trick for intimidation was to look the part. He appeared like landed nobility torn out of the 18th century, someone who expected orders to be followed and got his way. It often worked.

He washed the blade, stripped naked and showered quickly. Lathering up a cascade of soap, he felt a little pride about the quality of his physique. Exercise and time had improved his health to a peak never achieved in his first one hundred years of life, and he’d endured yesterday’s injuries well. The bruise on his arm was black, and there was a triangle of yellow on his stomach where Enzu’s boot had struck—with every breath, there was a soreness deep in his punished intestines—but still, he was already recovering, and nothing was too tender to move. Back when the Zombie had led him out of Europe, similar blows had put him down for a day.

He dried with the complimentary towel, dumped it into the hamper for room service, and dressed fully for the morning. Everything was finished neatly with a routine honed over decades. It was only a few minutes after 4:30 when he knocked on the bedroom door.

“Zombie?” he asked.

“It’s safe,” the Zombie called.

The Baron opened the door. The living room was dark, lights out, curtains and window open to the chill air. The Zombie was standing in front of a chair facing the open sky.

“See anything interesting?” the Baron asked.

“The clouds cleared around three,” the Zombie said, “so I’ve been watching the stars and imagining, at least as much as this body still imagines.”

The Baron hesitated to turn on a light, and he shut the bedroom door behind him. The darkness was almost complete. The moon was down, and the city was dim at this hour. The stars weren’t completely hidden, just dim. Their scant lights were scattered across the horizon like specks of quartz in black sand. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Spaceships,” the Zombie said. “I wish they were real.” He turned to look at the Baron, but his expression was hard to discern. Only the slight paleness of his eyes even indicated the direction of his face. “It’d be nice to know that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe.”

“Did you spend all night reading sci-fi?” the Baron asked.

The Zombie turned on the lamp in the corner of the room, flooding it with more warm soft yellow. “If space was somewhere they could go, the gods would have to be obsessed to stay here.”

That wasn’t an answer to the Baron’s question. He shielded his eyes, even though they weren’t that far adjusted yet. He guessed the Zombie was being slightly evasive for a reason. “You cook that thought out of Foundation?” he asked, again trying to verify if the Zombie spent all night reading.

“No. I haven’t been thinking about fiction.”

That was a half-answer, the kind that the Zombie used whenever he’d done something to make the Baron upset. “Did you go out last night then?”

The Zombie nodded towards the open window. “I took a walk.”

Ah, so that’s what his friend had been dancing around. A walk could be good or bad, depending on what the Zombie had done. “How was it?”

“Very enthusiastic.” The Zombie grinned, but only to himself. “I met some people.”

The Baron recognized that cheer. He forced his voice to remain neutral. “Did you kill anybody? Or hurt anyone?”

“I dragged a man by his collar and gave him a few bruises and lumps.”

The Baron waited for elaboration, but none was immediately delivered. If there was a murder, the Zombie would’ve been more serious. Despite appearances, he cared about the consequences, at least when it came to the Baron’s well-being. “Okay. We’ll talk about it over breakfast.” Some of the restaurants in the terminal would be open to feed Saturday’s drunks and Sunday’s workers. He’d debrief the Zombie over coffee.

The Zombie picked up his briefcase from the table. “I need another bowler.”

“We’ll buy one before we ride to Brooklyn.”

He chose a trio of double claro cigars from a humidor he’d brought with him from Boston, packed them into a fine cigar case with a guillotine cutter, and pocketed the lot. He’d smoke them sparingly, less for the tobacco and more for the habit.

On the elevator ride down to the lobby, he asked, “Did you make any enemies?”

“They already were our enemies. I made sure before I kicked in any doors.”

The Baron understood. The Zombie had taken a risk and collected secure information, which would’ve been difficult to retrieve by any other method. Still, only the Zombie could think that breaking-and-entering, trespassing, and assault were reasonable actions, and the Baron knew the Zombie’s history all too well. At least one if not all of those crimes had been committed in his name. No use crying over spilled milk, as the saying goes. The Baron felt confident that he had the diplomacy to deal with it, or at least to turn it to his advantage.

Once they were in the lobby, they went to the front desk and the Baron asked the night clerk for a room change. After a few minutes of checking schedules, the exhausted man at the front desk agreed that they could move after 6PM to the next room down the hall. The Baron said that he’d turn in his keys after dinner that evening, barring any important events or meetings keeping him in Brooklyn overnight.

“You expect we’ll be caught over there?” the Zombie asked.

“Just being prepared,” the Baron said.

They stepped out onto the sidewalk a little before 5AM. They were passing into nautical twilight, when a distant sun painted the horizon in faint glowing shades of deep-sea blue and royal purple, but they were still at least half an hour from sunrise. The streetlights were on, and the cars were shining their headlights; despite the sky’s rich colors, it was useless to see by.

“This time of day reminds me of the poles in winter,” the Zombie said.

The Baron laughed. “When was the last time you went to a pole?”

“Before I met you.”

“Come off it, you don’t remember that long ago.”

The Zombie had his hands behind his back. “That’s not true. I fell into an ice chasm and swam out through the ocean under the ice cap. You don’t forget an experience like that.”

“Oh? Why haven’t you told me about it before?”

“It didn’t occur to me until now.”

The Baron grinned. “Ha! Liar.” The started towards an entrance to Grand Central Terminal on the far corner of the intersection.

“I’ve been to both poles,” the Zombie said, “I’m serious.”

“I believe it, I just don’t believe you went there in the 17th century. You were busy torturing rich people in Central Europe.”

“It’s not a long way,” the Zombie said, “it only takes three years to circle the world.”

Now that was a number that the Baron believed. The Zombie was recognized clearly in Mesoamerican, Inuit, North American, and South American cultic lore. He’d crossed the oceans so many times that it was impossible to count. What surprised the Baron is that it’d never occurred to the Zombie that the New World was a strange place, since every place in the world but one was covered in people, and they’d all seemed equally ignorant of one another.

When the whole world was yours to explore, it was hard to remember the barriers that kept everyone else apart were nearly insurmountable, and that whole cosmologies were defined by these natural divisions. An ocean to an unprepared man might as well be an eternity of time and an infinity of space, and the people on the far side weren’t any more real than the gods in the sky or the dead under the earth. They were myths until you saw them—or in the case of the current gods of prestige, they were comfortable explanations for the unknown.

They spiraled down to the lower concourse where restaurants were opening their doors to travelers. Every Sunday, hundreds of businessmen prepared for 36-hour outbound rides to the old South, where their mining companies, plantations, and textile factories leeched off the hot, poverty-stricken countryside for cheap resources and cheaper labor. Virginian and Georgian accents were dominant, and the laughs of powerful men were rich and cruel. The jokes they told were either bawdy or awfully racist, and they seemed to make a point of telling them louder and laughing harder when the black and Italian waiters were trying to bus nearby tables. If a woman took their order, the facade of humor was pulled away to reveal naked harassment.

The Baron and the Zombie took a table outside the diner, away from the indoor crowd. A young couple—stoned, still awake, and downing raw coffee to reach the dawn—argued about how many people would die in a nuclear strike. She said millions and he said tens of millions, as if that were the difference between mere war and the end of civilization.

“It doesn’t matter how many people die,” the Baron interrupted them. “This civilization ends if the bombs fall. Even if you survive, your lives as they are now? They’re over, and the world that comes afterwards won’t be yours. You won’t be ready for it.”

“Yeah, man, of course,” said the girl, and then they started vehemently agreeing with one another, almost fighting to see whose cynicism came first, who was the leader and the follower in the prophesying of apocalypse.

“You shouldn’t be cynical,” the Baron interrupted again, “It’s dangerous. You’ll start to think that bad things are inevitable. You won’t stop them from happening.”

“Sure, sure, we get it,” said the man. He looked harassed, spent. The Baron could tell that they weren’t really listening. The waiter came by with the couple’s check.

The Baron flagged the waiter down and ordered coffee with cream, a soft boiled egg with soldiers, and hot grits. The Zombie only wanted coffee, his own portion, freshly brewed and almost boiling. The young couple left before the waiter delivered the Baron’s food. The Zombie had his book out on the table, but he wasn’t reading yet.

“Why’d you say that to those kids?” the Zombie asked.

“Their argument was ridiculous. You can prevent a man-made disaster.”

“I disagree. You often can’t.” The Zombie drained his tiny cup of scalding coffee like it was ice cold water. Then he put his mouth on the spigot of his coffee pot and took a long draught.

“That’s awful.”

“My opinion or the coffee?”

“Your choice.” The Baron took his bite. The grits were wonderful while hot, but he had to finish them quickly. Like all warm cereals, they became foul when chilled. His favorite word for the texture was clotted. Grits clotted after a few minutes, leaving a corn-and-butter scab.

“You can’t expect people to act like us. We have an unfair advantage.”

“This isn’t Kantian morality. I’m not universalizing our behavior.”

“I’m invincible. You’re infamous. We don’t rule the world, but we have influence.”

“I’m saying that we shouldn’t put on blinders. We have opportunities to do good.”

The Zombie downed more coffee, wiped his lips and gasped like he’d been refreshed. It was a deliberately annoying little sound, entirely artificial since he usually forgot to breathe unless he was talking. The Baron’s theory for this breathlessness was rather dark. At one time or another, the Zombie must’ve drowned long enough to unlearn the involuntary reflex of breathing. It was fortunate that the Zombie couldn’t remember any such events.

“I take opportunities whenever I can,” the Zombie said.

The Baron ate more grits, then sipped his own cooling coffee and sliced off the top of his pre-cracked egg. The runny yolk was steaming. He took a strip of dry toast—a “soldier”—and dipped it, British-style. “I’m not talking about you,” he said, before taking a bite.

The Zombie watched the yolk drip from the bread and grimaced. “And you call my behavior awful?” Of all the things in the world, he somehow hated raw eggs. It was doubly confusing since the Baron had once seen the Zombie eating elemental sulphur with a spoon.

“You’re really not messing with me?” the Baron asked for what must be the hundredth time. It was almost an impulse at this point—it always made no sense.

“Messing with you how?” the Zombie asked seriously.

“Eggs?”

“They’re foul.”

“I saw you drink bleach last week.”

“What does that have to do with eggs?”

The Baron dipped and ate another strip. They’d never resolve this strange little conflict, and there were more important matters than repeating a personal comedy about yolks. “Nevermind. You went on an enthusiastic walk?”

“Very enthusiastic.”

“Who did you visit?” The Baron hurried to eat as much of his breakfast as possible while the Zombie talked.

“I went down to Tammany Hall.”

The Baron nearly choked on a spoonful of grits. “Really?” he said around a mouthful.

“A door guard admitted that Schuler was cutting us off—without coercion.”

The Baron swallowed and frowned. “Did we make enemies?”

“No more than we had before. We also gained a little respect. Pailthorpe was there.”

“Who?” The name was only vaguely familiar.

“The archivist from our last visit. He’s very old now, but he shouted down six guards without any of them calling my bluff.” The Zombie wasn’t planning on killing anyone at Tammany, that went without question, though it was similarly unquestionable that he would have slaughtered the full complement if it’d been absolutely necessary.

“We can’t press them too far,” the Baron noted. “They’ll push back.”

The Zombie drained his coffee pot and set it on the table with a thud. “One moment.” He popped the briefcase on the table, opened it up and pulled out two file folders. “These are New York’s records on the survivors Jacono identified.” He threw them on the table. “For you.”

The Baron left them where they were. He was eating. “Does Schuler have a copy?”

“They were on a copy desk, but I didn’t see any papers.”

“We’ll need to be careful that we don’t meet Schuler in the street.”

“He wouldn’t try anything in the open. Not when we’re helping them.”

“Never say never. He’s the current Diviner. By definition, he’s insane.”

“You called him lucid.”

“It’s directed insanity.”

The Zombie closed the briefcase. “You aren’t angry with me?”

The Baron laughed under his breath. “Were you trying to piss me off?”

“You’ve yelled at me about this kind of thing before.”

The Baron scooped up more grits and shoveled them down. He felt that sense of weight, the density of the grain settling in his stomach. They’d feel a little leaden for the next hour, but they’d stick with him until lunch. He pointed the spoon at the Zombie. “That’s the key word—before. Could I have stopped you last night?”

“Honestly? No, I wasn’t going to wait for New York to screw us.”

“I don’t like it, I wouldn’t have done it myself, but there you go—two folders that we need.”

The Zombie grinned. “That sounds like approval to me.”

“It’s neutral. Let’s hope Boss Tweed and Oracle Gagliano are in a forgiving mood.”

“What about General Osman?”

“He’ll hate us regardless, though I’m hoping his son gives us a good word.” The Baron glanced through the concourse window into the diner. “We must be coming up on the hour. The racists are paying their checks. If they say anything, I’ll handle them.”

The Zombie opened Foundation and Empire again. “Fine.”

“You didn’t finish reading that last night?” the Baron asked.

“It was a long walk.”

The Baron polished off his breakfast while the Zombie kept his eyes on the page. A couple of businessmen lingered outside the door. One of them finally gestured towards the Baron. He was a lanky fellow in a white suit and a ridiculous cowboy hat. “Look at Ivy League.” His accent was thick. “How much did he pay for that slope?”

His friend laughed. “Too much.”

The Baron looked up, turned in his chair, and smiled at the man. Aggression was common in these places, at these hours, but he was used to it. “Excuse me, sir? Do you have a chaw of tobacco jammed in your mouth?”

Lanky Suit was a little lost, but he was a well-practiced bully. “Aww, look at that. Ivy League tried hurting my feelings.”

The Baron grimaced. “Either it’s a chaw, or that’s your accent.”

The Zombie looked up from his book before the man could retort. “That’s an accent?”

“I know!” the Baron said. “I guess he wanted to sound ridiculous.”

Lanky nudged his hat down towards his eyes. “Rich man’s got a mouth.”

The Baron smirked. “You think you’re a threat?”

Lanky’s hefty friend spoke up: “We could kick you around the block.”

“No, I get it now. You think I’m not a threat. You think, he’s sitting around, he’ll back off like the others, but I can see the police report now, can’t you?” He held out his hands, as if he were reading an invisible sheet of paper. “‘After starting a fight with other customers, Dixie and Clyde were boxed into submission by an athlete and a Korean-American soldier acting in self-defense. They declined to press charges, stating that the beating was punishment enough.’”

“Jeeeesus—” Lanky began.

The Baron slammed the side of his fist on the top of the table. All the silverware and plates rattled violently. He hadn’t even bothered to stand yet. “Are we fighting, or is this stupid?”

“You’re crazy,” Lanky said. “We were only joking.”

“You’re a goddamn menace,” his friend agreed.

The Baron watched them in silence. Saying anything would only prompt them to respond. Letting them have the last word would give them the confidence to leave with their dignity intact, which is all they wanted to salvage at this point. They were businessmen, ultimately, and with the macho games coming to a sudden end, they shook their heads as if they were the sane ones, as if they were the voice of reason in a violent world, and they walked away.

After they vanished into the concourse tunnels, the Baron laughed under his breath. “That was fun.”

“You haven’t cut loose in a while,” the Zombie noted.

“I can only justify it against people who deserve it.”

Verbal jousting was an old skillset for the Baron, one that’d been a necessary evil in the first few decades of his life. In 18th century Paris, two talents had been valued among the nobility above all others. The first and lesser was cunning, especially in financial matters, though it’d been widely believed that any articulate and educated gentleman was worthy of his title. The second and greater skill was wit, used almost exclusively to mock, belittle, and ultimately conquer others. Someone with a stutter might’ve been the most intelligent administrator in Europe, but there’d been little hope that the king would grant him an audience. If the throne had recognized a social pariah, he would’ve tainted his reputation through association.

The Baron was born German but naturalized in France. As a “foreigner” and a philosopher, he’d been allowed certain eccentricities by the Parisian nobility, and he’d never done anything to disguise his disapproval of such a ridiculous system. He’d relied primarily on his authority as a man of letters and a contributing author to the Encyclopédie to garner respect. Only when someone pressed him had he resorted to a harsh word, and while he hadn’t compared with the sharks that swam in the royal court, he’d bit hard enough to avoid being ostracized for its own sake—a fate that had sometimes befallen other natural philosophers.

Of course, money and reputation had kept their places at the table despite the lamentable focus on sharp-tongued dueling, and the Baron had been rich with both. The d’Holbach estate had paid for opening and maintaining the largest salon in Paris with one of the most extensive libraries on the continent. The philosophers Diderot and d’Alembert had conceived, prepared, and compiled the first encyclopedia of the Enlightenment there. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had traveled from Geneva often, and in his writings he’d coined the phrase d’Holbach’s Coterie, referring to the group of radical Enlightenment thinkers that’d regularly stayed in the Baron’s home.

It’d been a decadent place, practically a palace. They’d dined on luxurious and rare foods literally fit for kings and drank vintages of wine so expensive that one bottle could’ve been sold to pay a servant’s wages for a year. Women had been barred entry, even d’Holbach’s first and second wives—a fact that the Baron now regretted—and participation had been on an invite-only basis. Powerful radicals had frequented the salon and opined political, religious, and philosophical views that could’ve put them in a noose. They’d collected power, ambition, and intelligence, and all of them had drunk deep from the twin wells of revolution and change. The Enlightenment had been their time. They’d have made an incredibly powerful cult if any of them had known about the gods.

Such times were long past, though, and after two centuries a man changed. The Baron’s French was poor and vastly antiquated. He didn’t understand modern German. All he really had was English and a smattering of Italian—not enough to speak, just enough to listen. It was only through enduring practice that he’d kept his sharp wit and critical mind.

Thoughts of the past would occasionally crest over him, like gentle waves of nostalgia, but it was always brief. Those years were remote, consigned to the ocean of time, and despite contemporary theories that old minds were ossified, he found that to be absolutely false. Being this old merely meant well-practiced, but it didn’t stop the world from changing to the point where one adapted or died.

Author’s Note:

A wise man once said, fix your hearts or die.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 29, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

Abstract descriptions of torture.

After Heckhaus left, they flipped the tables and chairs, tapped the sink pipes, pulled out the icebox, disassembled the phone receiver, disposed of the night light, inspected the bulbs, checked the toilet lid, emptied out and inventoried their entire set of luggage, pored over the radio for signs of tampering, probed the window sills, and surveyed the bottom of the balcony while standing in the Italian Garden with a pair of binoculars. They found no surveillance bugs, assumed the worst, and decided to change rooms in the morning. As it stood, the Baron and the Zombie could spend one night at the Biltmore under probable observation.

They’d simply have to review the case somewhere else.

The Baron left, rode the elevators down to the ground floor restaurants, and took his dinner at the Madison Room, facing the windows on Madison Avenue. After changing clothes into a fresh rental suit, the Zombie joined him at the table with a briefcase full of books. While the Baron slowly ate a plate of beef medallions, the Zombie slowly read a hardcover copy of Foundation and Empire. They were relaxing, enjoying a bit of quiet after the day.

The only commentary the Baron gave was, “I like the notion behind psychohistory—you can predict the future with advanced enough science.”

“Don’t spoil it,” the Zombie said.

“I mean it’s fiction, but I like the message. Science has answers.”

The Zombie finished the chapter and put the book back in his briefcase. “I have a question. Earlier, you were worrying about Schuler. What’s the worst case in your mind?”

The Baron paused with a piece of rare beef, dripping on the end of a fork. “Well, he won’t want us investigating the boat for third parties, especially after a made man was slain. At best, it’s only a matter of time until he drives us out of the city.” He ate his meat, chewed thoroughly to buy himself time to think, and then finished his answer after swallowing. “The deciding factor is whether or not he hears about us tonight. If we’re lucky, we get the info we need before he decides we’re too much trouble.”

“We’ll find out in the morning?”

“Yes, we will. Hopefully, getting up early will make a difference.” The Baron sliced into his last beef medallion. “Want some?”

The Zombie shook his head. His pica was calming down, and he wasn’t a fan of real food unless it was particularly strong or rotten. There wasn’t anything truly fun about fresh ingredients if you weren’t one of the assholes in a magazine ad, and they got painfully excited about flavorless crap like vegetable shortening and cookies made with sour-tasting milk chocolate. He’d already chewed up and swallowed the night light, and the earthy flavor of the white kaolinite coating in the bulb had been more memorable than any meat he’d tasted this week.

After dinner, they retired to their hotel room. It was technically a one bedroom suite, but it was more than enough for the pair since the Zombie never slept and generally spent the night hours reading or walking around. Between 8PM and 4AM was his time, a period of Circadian selfishness when most of the world went to sleep. Time for everyone else was discrete, broken up into clear periods with narrative structure—a dreadful beginning with peace interrupted, a conflicted journey into the future, and an almost inescapable end. Wake, work, sleep.

The Zombie lived with the reality of time. It was a smooth continuum of existence, overlapping spirals of rhythm both repeating and iterating towards distant changes, moving so imperceptibly slow that one barely registered the difference without clocks and calendars. The Baron would wake up on Sunday, look at his watch and comment on the day, month, season, maybe even the year; none of it would mean much to the Zombie except that the Baron had rejoined him for another brief leg on the journey across eternity.

A little after seven, they tuned the radio until they found a Mutual station on an AM band and listened to a rebroadcast of the BBC news from that morning. One of the founders of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had given a phone interview to the correspondent. They were talking about the Doomsday Clock, set at 3 minutes to midnight in 1949, and the potential need to move it up further following recent “secret” tests by the American government.

“We’ve witnessed the detonation of five ‘peacetime’ bombs since the conclusion of the war.” The founder was an American citizen by the name of Rabinowitch who’d worked on the Manhattan Project, but he had a Russian accent as clear as high-quality vodka. “Each test reaffirms my fears. Global powers wish to create and deploy atomic weaponry on a massive scale. The Doomsday Clock reflects how close we’ve skirted the edge of global disaster.”

“There are only a few minutes left on the clock,” said the correspondent, “How much closer can we get? Is there a difference between three and two minutes? Three and one?”

“When you’re near the end, when all eyes are on a deadline for Armageddon—” Rabinowitch cleared his throat. “—things you watch take more time to pass. The last minutes before midnight are as significant as the half hour preceding it. Nuclear war will be on our minds. It’ll be in our newspapers, our books, our television shows. If we move the hand another minute towards midnight, we’ll have already anticipated our demise.”

The interviewer responded with a practiced ease: “Nuclear war is already a popular subject. People fear a conflict with Soviet forces here in Europe and in Central Asia.” Fear was emphasized, the man’s voice stretching out the syllable.

Rabinowitch spoke with fervor. “Then the time is wrong, and we’re effectively two minutes to midnight, maybe worse—but the Bulletin can’t adjust the clock on a feeling. If we are to maintain our objectivity, there must be an event that justifies it, like a benchmark or litmus test for the times.”

“Another nuclear test maybe?”

“Possibly, or another test of another kind.”

The interview rolled on from there, dwelling a little longer on the Bulletin’s purpose before reaching a vague conclusion. The correspondent soon thanked Rabinowitch for his time, specifically for not sleeping. It’d been three in the morning in Chicago when the call was made. The interview was over.

The Baron shut off the radio. “That’s a litmus test right there.”

“I don’t see why,” said the Zombie, who was sporadically reading his book.

“If the BBC wants to talk about your Doomsday metaphor, that means that the average person wants to hear about the end of the world.”

“Justified fears, justified relief?”

“It’s in the public consciousness. They want to talk about it.”

“Sounds like hysteria. Doesn’t mean the end of the world is coming.”

The Baron chuckled darkly. “I hope you’re right.”

They spent a little more time idling and chatting until a few minutes before eight, when the Baron was ready to prepare for bed.

“Are you going to stay in or head out?” he asked the Zombie.

At home in Boston, the Zombie spent his nights wandering around his floor while reading his books. On the road, he had to follow the demands of the situation. “I’m going to read for now.” The suite’s bedroom and bathroom were separate rooms from the living area and kitchen. The Baron could sleep safely behind closed doors, but first a security sweep—the Zombie went into the room and made sure the blinds were pulled and the locks were functional on both windows and doors. “Keep the door locked until the alarm goes off.”

“As always,” said the Baron. He took a small bag of toiletries into the room with him, so that he could use the bathroom to wash before bed and shave after rising. The door clicked shut and the lock was turned. “Good night,” the Baron called.

“See you tomorrow,” the Zombie said.

He kept the lamp by the radio on and stood near the window with a book in hand. Illumination was an easy reminder for observers that he was always standing guard.

Two more chapters were devoured before the hour was up. Around 9PM, the Baron was well asleep and the suite was beginning to cool. The Zombie hardly noticed the change. Temperature was the least interesting sensation left.

He put down his book, went to the windows, and shut the blinds one by one. He read for another hour. When 10PM approached, he briefly opened each curtain and scanned the windows of the Biltmore’s towers for peeping spooks. Then, having reaffirmed his vigilance, he’d closed them again. The point was to establish a pattern—to lull with a routine.

At 11PM, he repeated the same pattern. Each curtain was opened, his face was presented in the light, and then the curtains were closed.

At 11:05, he quietly packed his book into his heavy briefcase, picked the apartment key off the dining table, and left to go on a walk. He’d have until midnight before anyone suspected he’d left—a little less than one hour to see what he could do on his own. If Meister Schuler was the kind of problem that they couldn’t directly confront, then he’d do his best to avoid the Diviner’s wrath.

He locked the door tight, looked both ways down the hall, and went to the elevators. Skipping the lobby was advisable, given the hour. There’d be nobody else around but witnesses with nothing better to do than watch.

Instead, he hit the button to go down into the “Kissing Room,” which was the Biltmore’s dedicated train platform. It was meant for tourists unloading baggage, but it was a remote connection with few trains scheduled to stop. It hadn’t been popular since before the war, and most people disembarked there by mistake. When they did, they either went to the hotel or walked almost a thousand feet along an isolated concrete path, following the tracks back to the lower concourse of Grand Central Terminal.

The doors opened and the Zombie stepped out into the so-called Kissing Room. There were dozens of empty benches where couples used to sit and make out. They were arranged on a field of well-cleaned, crimson carpet in the middle of the bleak, damp New York underground. The air was chilly, and the indistinct concrete surfaces were lit by lamps so washed and grey that they almost appeared blue. The weight of the stone felt oppressive. There wasn’t a sound, not even the deep echo of distant subways, and the return path to Grand Central followed the train tracks like a lip on the abyss.

In such desolation, even he could pass unnoticed. The Zombie hopped down off the platform onto the tunnel floor and started running. In the shadows of the path, people might hear him, but none would see him.

He sprinted past a drunk homeless man who shouted incoherently after his footsteps. There weren’t any words, but the noises were obscene and furious. The Zombie imagined himself as an auditory hallucination, a torturous presence for a man who’d fled here to be alone with his booze. The thought made him smile.

When he reached the west edge of the lower concourse, he found the rail switch routing to the Biltmore terminal loop, and he turned to follow the main rails south. About two hundred feet along the way, where the lights were in better condition and human voices could be heard echoing down from the floor above, he found a shallow metal maintenance ladder and climbed it up onto a steel mesh maintenance ledge, mounted a few feet higher than an empty train platform. There was an iron bar gate with a lock to prevent people from going out this way, but it was more symbol than security. Since it couldn’t extend into the air without potentially clipping a train, the Zombie grabbed the frame bar and swung around the outside of it, dropping towards the platform below.

He landed on two feet without any attempt to cushion the blow and stopped—no damage to the concrete. No sound at all. What a delightful result!

He checked himself. His briefcase was in his off-hand. The wool suit he was wearing was standard rental fare, not quite fit to his shoulders and a dull ash grey. Without a hat, he’d pass for an Asian businessman lost in Lower Manhattan. A drunk businessman, he decided, in case the police stopped him on the street.

He wound his way up several stairwells to the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal. About half of the lights were off, but dozens of people could be seen packed into tight little knots, chatting and laughing as if the others didn’t exist and the whole terminal was empty. It reminded the Zombie of a direct memory, not a memory of a memory, of a military camp with hundreds of cooking fires. They were spread out beneath him at the foot of a snow-covered hill. Men’s faces were highlighted, their bodies crowded around the flames, their shouted stories rising out of the valley high enough for the Zombie to hear from his perch. Nobody seemed to care about the open ears of others. They were too busy enjoying themselves in the dead of night. Circadian selfishness, the Zombie thought.

Here and now, he walked among the people in the Terminal, climbed up a grand staircase to the southern entrance, and exited out onto the street. Even now, taxicabs waited for passengers. He grinned. This truly was the city that never sleeps.

The Zombie signaled one of the idling cabbies, spoke to him with a painfully fake Japanese accent, and overpaid for a ride to 18th and Park Avenue, which was one block north of Tammany Hall. On the ride, he whistled Camptown Races tunelessly and very loud. The cabbie glanced at him meaningfully over and over again, but the Zombie pretended to be oblivious, as if he were smiling at the music and not the irritation of the man who was “fleecing” him.

The cabbie predictably urged him to get out once they were at the stop, but the Zombie thanked him repeatedly for his help and didn’t even open the passenger door. The exasperated man got out of his car and ran around to help the Zombie up. The Zombie suddenly opened his door and swung it out to block the cabbie, who thumped into it, stopped, and glared.

“Good night,” the Zombie said, bowing repeatedly after he got out.

The cabbie slammed both doors and accelerated away without even buckling up.

The Zombie laughed to himself and walked south towards Tammany Hall. Technically this location was a temple, but only the top floor was isolated from the public, and only part of it. Most of Tammany was still caught up in the secular political machine, offering a location for criminal leadership to meet with corrupt officials. Together, these unlikely allies could cooperate against the spirit of democracy, all for the sakes of power and profit.

The nearby 8th Street Bookstore was a larger temple and served the more common occult needs of the neighborhood. This place was the center of cultic power by tradition alone. The original bureaucracy, their cultic nobility, and secular might of the New York cult were headquartered there under the secret leadership of Boss Tweed. He was almost one hundred and thirty years old and counting, and it’d been more than seventy years since he faked his death and left the public eye. He’d already moved locations once. He’d publicly sworn he’d die before the New York cult changed locations again. The Zombie knew it for a fact. He’d been there to hear Tweed’s raspy speech in 1929.

It’d been almost that long since he’d last visited the city. During the war, Tammany had been nearly impenetrable to outsiders. While the temple was neutral ground, the surrounding building wasn’t, and New York had been ready to defend itself at the first sign of danger. The Zombie could’ve broken in at any time, but wanton violence had consequences—at least for the Baron—and there hadn’t been much reason to go.

He approached the east entrance to the Hall off Park Avenue South with the absolute confidence of the invincible. There was a young guard standing in the arched alcove in front of the door, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The Zombie called out: “Oi chum!”

The security guard’s uniform was almost indistinguishable from a police officer’s. It was finely tailored, all black-dyed wool, and paired with a five-point cap. Silver badges shone on both breast and hat. The guard was maybe twenty and sported a thin blonde mustache in a vain attempt to look older.

“Yeah?” the guard asked in a thick Brooklyn accent. He was rightfully suspicious of anyone who approached him at this hour, pinched out his cigarette and set it behind his ear.

The Zombie was close now. “Did you hear about the fuckin’ Atheist?”

Recognition was disarming. The Zombie could see the thoughts unwinding behind the guard’s relaxing expression, the worried lines fading to a youthful smirk. The enemy of his enemy must be a friend, and cultists often thought they were part of the most important club on Earth. “Bastard is staying north of here,” the guard said.

The Zombie smirked. “You think Schuler pissed himself when he heard the news?”

The guard was grinning now, sharing the mood. “Schuler was ranting about it when they brought him home. I’m glad I’m not one of his minders right now.”

The Zombie was only a couple of steps away from the guard. “Are they using cult resources then? I heard the Atheist blackmailed the High Oracle.”

“Shit, I don’t know about that, but you know Schuler.”

“We’re cutting them off then? No more help for him and his freak?”

“Well, yeah.” The guard was confused by the question. It was too obvious; Schuler wouldn’t do anything else, the Zombie supposed. It didn’t matter.

He was close enough to make his entrance.

The Zombie’s arm snapped out like a viper, seized the guard by his collar, and yanked him forward, tripping him over the Zombie’s planted foot. The guard fell straight onto his hands and knees with a yelp, catching himself, and the Zombie raised the briefcase like a hammer and dropped it onto the back of the guard’s skull with a teeth-chattering thud. It wasn’t a particularly powerful strike, but the guard jerked bodily like a shot man, then collapsed solidly onto the pavement. Dazed, but not unconscious. Easily manipulated.

The Zombie leaned down with his empty hand, grabbed the back of the man’s collar, and yanked him up and backwards, twisting the cloth into a gripped fist until he could hear the man’s choking coughs. “Is the door unlocked?” the Zombie asked.

The guard responded with a furious gurgle, so the Zombie yanked him about like a second briefcase, kicking and squirming to get his feet under him. Then he hit the swinging door with his knee. It banged like someone struck it with a thrown anvil, swinging open on a well-lit lobby room and two seated security guards, before the springs of the door closer caught it and swung it shut again.

“Good enough,” the Zombie judged. He lifted a foot and kicked the door with the flat of his shoe, this time putting a tremendous amount of force into the blow. Springs squealed and hinges screeched as the door jumped wide open, and the Zombie marched straight into the lobby of Tammany Hall, dragging along the dead weight of a half-choking guard.

The room was deceptively simple—walls covered in white paint, a secretary’s desk, and two guards kneeling behind it with service revolvers loaded, cocked, and sighted.

The Zombie lifted the guard’s jacket collar and jiggled the man bodily like he was shaking bait worms for fish. “Don’t make this messy. Which way to the archives?”

The armed guards were hesitating. They didn’t know what to make of the Zombie’s nonchalant attitude. The guard being dragged was struggling to undo his jacket buttons, but the Zombie’s shaking made it nearly impossible to work them out of their holes.

The Zombie quickly glanced both ways and asked, “Over there?”

Both guards glanced left.

“Good enough.” The Zombie dragged his captive guard towards the hall at the south end of the lobby. The armed guards reached for a telephone, spinning the rotary dial hard enough to make the ringer rattle in the base. Tammany had an internal phone system. That was impressive.

“Intruder!” one shouted.

The Zombie paused to listen for confirmation.

“He’s heading to the archives!” yelled the guard.

The Zombie dragged his hostage with him and looked at the various doors branching off the hallway. This area was mostly administrative; the titular hall must be on the north end of the building, probably underneath the section dedicated to the High Oracle’s temple. The offices they passed were marked with various placards displaying names and positions.

“I bet every one of these assholes hasn’t completed a task in years,” the Zombie said.

The guard gurgled with fury.

“I bet they earned more prestige this month than you’ll make all year.”

The guard gave up on freeing himself and started scratching at the Zombie’s arm.

“Stop that.”

The guard punched him twice on the wrist.

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

The guard tried to dig into the skin on the back of the Zombie’s hand, then scratched down. There was a sensation like someone peeling the skin off an orange, of stiff material separating from the soft against the Zombie’s skin. The guard managed to exhale enough air to scream. The Zombie looked down at him. The man had separated his pinky nail almost halfway to the cuticle, and bright red blood was already seeping out.

“Told you,” the Zombie said. He jerked his arm violently, threatening self-harm, and in turn, his invincibility generated enough force to yank the guard to his feet in front of him. “Walk.”

The guard gasped, then dry heaved because his throat had been compressed shut. The Zombie shook him once, and the guard stumbled forward, standing mostly because the Zombie kept him on his feet.

“Archives!” the Zombie said.

The guard pointed at a door further down the hall. It was marked RECORDS on a copper plate. “You won’t get out of here alive,” he whispered between coughs.

The Zombie laughed boisterously. The irony of that threat was richer than the thickest, rustiest pan broken between his immaculate teeth. He glanced behind him. The two guards were following him about thirty feet back. There were running footsteps. The Zombie looked ahead and saw a guard rounding the far end of the hall holding a service rifle. With one last squeal of delight, the Zombie asked his hostage: “Think you’re expendable?”

The guard stumbled forward, saying nothing. They reached the door to the archives, and the Zombie pulled the man aside and tried the handle. Locked. He knocked gently. “Yoo-hoo!” he yelled through the wood.

No response.

Another laugh burst from the Zombie’s throat. “Here’s a riddle for a scholar. Who stares down three armed men, holds a hostage only to keep them from firing guns indoors, and can break down this door with his head?”

The click and clatter of a tumble lock answered his question. Someone knew who the Zombie was and feared what might happen next.

“We’re going inside!” the Zombie shouted to the armed guards.

The door cracked open—

The Zombie shoved his hostage through the door, thumping him hard against the wood paneling. An old man behind the door nearly ate a faceful of oak. Momentum carried everything in, and the Zombie released his hostage to fall forward onto his hands and knees. An instant passed in shocked confusion, and then the guard scrambled away.

The Zombie stepped in after him. “Thank you,” he said.

“Just don’t kill anyone,” the old man said. “Please!”

“You did the right thing. I’m calm for now.” The Zombie looked around the room. The guard with a bleeding finger was now seated with his back against a tall filing cabinet. He had his own revolver in his hand, but he was aiming it from the hip and puffing like he’d sprinted a mile. The best he’d do was pop the wall. The worst he’d do was shoot one of the other cultists. Behind him and to either side were other rows of standing shelves, each loaded down and sagging with heavy bins. Each bin was overflowing with aging manila folders and paperclipped slabs of old documents. Letters had been painted on with acrylic, roughly identifying whose files might be found in each bin. The dust and general disorder of the shelves suggested that no other order prevailed.

“I’m Pailthorpe, the archivist,” said the old man. “I was here during your last visit.” He was a tweed-and-pipe figure without either accessory, wearing instead the same grey business suit endemic to the conservative fashion of political figures and orators.

The bleeding-finger guard was trying to aim his pistol with shaky hands. The Zombie scoffed. “Is this security guard a cultist?”

“Sam, put down the gun,” said Pailthorpe.

Sam lowered the barrel. “Fuck off, PT.”

“He doesn’t know who I am?” the Zombie asked, genuinely surprised. Then to Sam: “After everything I’ve done today—after what I did just now, you don’t know?”

There was the squeak of shoes on varnished wood. “Hold it right there!” another guard shouted through the open door. The Zombie looked back. The man barking orders was just out of view. Nobody was making a move, not until they had a clear idea of the situation.

“You didn’t have to kick any doors,” Pailthorpe said.

The Zombie smirked. “I didn’t? Have you seen the men in the hall?”

“If you’d called ahead, nobody would’ve stopped you.”

The Zombie laughed derisively. “Don’t bullshit me. Your guard said Schuler wanted to cut us off. You would’ve burned the files if I’d called ahead.”

Pailthorpe said nothing, but he didn’t react either. He was better trained than most, or at least more experienced with handling questions that he couldn’t or didn’t want to answer.

“I’m not here to kill anyone,” the Zombie added. “Just answer my questions—did Schuler give orders to cut us off?”

Pailthorpe sighed very subtly, just blowing air out of his nose, but the Zombie picked up on it. “Yes, Schuler gave orders.”

The Zombie needed more specifics than that. “Did he tell you to withhold any information about the survivors of the boat task?”

“Explicitly. He forbade us from helping you with the scuttled boat.”

Now that was a satisfying answer. “Where are the files?”

Pailthorpe was grim. “Over there.” He indicated a clerk’s table against the wall by the doorway. There were a couple of thin folders leaned against an empty bin. “I found them about thirty minutes ago. I was copying down the addresses when you came in.”

“I’m taking them.” The Zombie walked over to the table.

“Get down on the ground!” The guard in the hall was standing at a shallow angle to the open door. He aimed his service rifle at the Zombie through the narrow gap.

“Don’t shoot!” Pailthorpe shouted at the guards. “Make this peaceful!”

The Zombie opened his briefcase, put both folders on top of his collection of heavy books, and forced the briefcase closed with its metal latches creaking.

“Get down! Get down!” the hall guard roared, ignoring PT’s complaints.

The Zombie ignored the rifle, returning his attention to Pailthorpe. “Would you swear on your life that these are the files? Correct and complete?”

The old man swallowed saliva, grimacing. “They’re everything.”

“I’ll be leaving then.”

“Jesus Christ—PT, what are you doing?” asked Sam, the guard with the bleeding finger.

Pailthorpe spun on him. “I’m saving us—”

“There’s five of us!” Sam yelled over him. “Fuck this!” He raised his revolver.

Pailthorpe was earnest. “It’s not enough. He’s the Zombie.”

“Don’t let him walk out,” Sam shouted to the people in the hall.

“I said he’s the Zombie! The invincible man!”

The Zombie poked his head through the door into the hallway. There were now six guards outside, several of them startled to see him, all armed and ready. They shouted meaningless orders at him, which he hardly bothered to acknowledge.  “Do they know me?” he called back to Pailthorpe. He pulled back into the room. “I’ll beat my way out if you don’t get them clear.”

Sam was getting to his feet. There was a band of purple around his neck where his collar had dug in deep. “I’ll give you five seconds to surrender, Nip.”

Sometimes, it felt like adrenaline made men deaf. “I’m not even Japanese,” the Zombie complained.

Two men came rushing through the door and plowed into the Zombie with the stocks of their rifles like clubs. The first rifle smashed open like a balsa wood model, spraying splinters and dumping free metal gunparts all over his shoulders. The second blow knocked the Zombie over like a bowling pin. He dropped the briefcase and fell like a tree, stiff and graceless. When he hit the floor, he stopped cold with his entire upper body resting on his nose.

“What the fuck?” Sam yelled.

“No gunfire!” Pailthorpe roared.

The Zombie wasn’t supposed to leave any corpses. He needed a neutral New York, not an enemy. Still, this aggression couldn’t go unanswered. The Zombie relaxed, rolled over, grabbed his briefcase, and then sat up with the full force of his abdominal muscles while swinging his briefcase like a hammer, right into the hip of one guard. The blow was solid and deep. The guard staggered back, his leg shuddering violently as it gave out from under him, a total collapse of muscle control. Nothing was broken, but the bruise would be deep.

Still sitting on the floor, the Zombie yelled, “Do you want to die?”

Another guard was coming through the hall door, with three more crowded behind him, when Pailthorpe stepped over the Zombie and threw himself at the guards with his arms outstretched. “Stop!” he bellowed, putting his weight into them. “As your senior, I order you, stop!” Even though he was thin and old, the weight of his authority was enough push against their shove. They rolled back a couple steps into the hall, protesting with the messy voices of a crowd—PT, PT, why are you doing this PT?

“This is the fucking Zombie!” the archivist yelled in their faces.

“Who?” one of them blubbered.

“The Golem! Cain! He traded his soul for invincibility, then tricked the gods so they couldn’t trade it back! He is Prometheus. He’s older than civilization!”

As a series of names flew past them, recognition to various cultic myths finally brought the truth home. They were facing the living devil, the greatest shame of their gods.

Pailthorpe received a frightened silence and thought it was ignorance. With a rasp, he rambled on, trying to convince the choir to believe what was already obviously true. “Listen to me! He’s older than the Fall of Prestige! He predates the system—he’s the reason that we have a system. He is a murderer, and you’re provoking him! Please, back down!”

The Zombie stood behind Pailthorpe and brushed the wrinkles out of his suit. This was the education that New York needed. It’d been too long since his last visit. “Tell them about Salem,” the Zombie prompted, guessing that the archivist was old enough to remember.

Pailthorpe’s tone was dark and frustrated. “When I was a boy, the gods set a great task to burn Salem to the ground. Nothing was spared. We set off firebombs in the Korn Leather factory. Over two hundred cultists went from block to block, helping the fire along, sabotaging the fire brigades, misdirecting the emergency response. We even killed a few men, but the gods wanted it badly, you understand? The reward they offered was immense. It was the biggest task of the new century, and we’d fought a secret war over the right to finish it. Do you know what happened? Do you know how much we earned? Nothing, gentleman. We earned nothing.”

The Zombie gestured at the guard, Sam. “Hand it over.” He held out his hand to take the pistol. Slowly, unsure, Sam handed him the firearm. “Good boy.”

Pailthorpe hadn’t even paused. “The atheist Baron d’Holbach decided that burning down a city was evil, even if the gods wanted it. He came to Salem with only one other person, and that’s all it took to stop us. Two hundred veterans were thwarted by two men. At City Hall, the Baron saved one building, and that was enough to waste our hard work. People’s lives and homes were destroyed in vain, but he didn’t care. It was about the principle, and on that same goddamn principle, he let the Zombie loose to save as much Salem as he could.” Pailthorpe pointed—the Zombie was right there, in front of them all.

“It was fun,” the Zombie said. He checked the cylinder of the revolver. Six shots were loaded.

“Fifty New York men tried burning down Chestnut Street, and fourteen died. A whole row of buildings survived. When this monster spotted a cultist, he picked them up and carried them into the fire, and he held them there until they were dead. Friends and relatives could hear their brothers screaming, but there wasn’t anything they could do. This was the Zombie. He was invincible, and we weren’t ready to fight him.” He pointed to each guard in order. “Not one of you, not you, not you. Nobody here is ready, so you will let this man go. You will not throw away your lives to defend a pair of file folders. Do you understand me?”

“But Schuler—” Sam began.

“Can fight for himself, if he requires it,” Pailthorpe finished.

The Zombie pulled the hammer back, put his mouth over the barrel of the revolver, and pulled the trigger six times. The gunshots were painfully loud in a small room, even if muffled by the Zombie’s invincible cheeks. The guards stared in horror when the Zombie pulled the barrel out of his mouth and blew out gunsmoke like a drag from a cigarette. Then he stuck out his tongue and drooled out six smashed bullets onto the hardwood floor. He dropped the gun at his feet, a clatter of useless metal against wood.

“Someone go ring up the boss,” Pailthorpe said drearily. “Keep him calm.”

“I think they understand,” the Zombie said. He grinned and started walking forward as if the guards weren’t there. “Coming through!” he said cheerily.

They started running ahead of him, shouting for others to make way. More guards would be closing in, and they all needed to know what invincible monster walked their halls.

Author’s Note:

Time is a smooth spectrum for a man who never sleeps. He experiences the passage of days much like the city itself, an endless cycle.

Also, he killed people by holding them to the fire. Ouch.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 29, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

The Zombie raised his hands in mock surrender. “It’s your call, Baron. I’m the violence. You’re the conscience. Just don’t back down unless it’s necessary. I’m invincible.”

“I know. I know. Set aside Schuler for now.” The Baron glanced around; nobody was paying them much attention, but he stepped in closer and talked quieter. “I learned some things about the case in there, which you couldn’t hear. The man who killed Jacono wanted to find the Cat o’ Nine Lives.”

The Zombie patted the rolled up magazine in his palm like a club. “So this was helpful?”

“Very.”

“Did Jacono know anything about the Cat’s location then?”

“No. When the killer asked, that was the first time Jacono had heard about the Cat, but I think the killer expected Jacono to know. Now think—only a few people in New York know it’s here. Which of them would go around shooting folks, looking for the Cat?”

“Malik,” the Zombie replied. His face twisted up around the Bolshevik’s name like it had an unpleasant texture.

“Exactly! The killer was described as pale, and he didn’t speak directly to Jacono. He might’ve been hiding a Russian accent. Plus if Malik is in the field, he could’ve executed Jacono just to prevent anyone else from learning about the Cat’s arrival in New York.”

“That’d be stupid,” the Zombie judged. “Foreigners shouldn’t be shooting native cultists in the streets. That’s how wars start.”

“Yeah, well, what frightens me is that the man who killed Jacono was not smart. He shot Jacono without warning his subordinates. If that’s Malik, then he will bring hell down on all our heads sooner or later.”

“It means Denisov is basically powerless too.”

“Yes, and the Orthodox half of the cult too. They’re relying on us for a reason. Regardless, Jacono was a dead end, but if Nagy was on the ship, one of the other two survivors might know what happened to the Cat. They’ll be the next targets.”

“There are too many ifs here,” the Zombie said unhappily, “too much uncertainty.”

“I know. The killer might just be someone working for Malik, but I’m doubtful.” The Baron rubbed his eyebrows. “We just don’t know enough yet. We need to find those other survivors tomorrow morning.”

“Think there’s a faster way than asking New York?” the Zombie asked.

“No, but they won’t be rushing to help us either, so let’s plan to hit the streets, maybe see a few temples near the harbor. We have that Anastasia crew at least.”

“The Ozone Park Boys?” the Zombie recalled.

“Yes, they scuttled the ship. They might know our survivors. That’s the best we can do.”

“You really want to give Gagliano that time?”

“If we don’t give him that time, then he’s more than capable of taking all of ours. We’ll be cut off and encouraged to leave the city.”

“Even though I’m here?”

“We’ve stepped on his toes twice already as is, first by going to the Soviet mission before checking in at the Temple, and then a second time with the mafioso mix-up. All within a few hours, no less. If we rammed our heads through a third obstacle, we’d end up looking so dogged that New York might start asking more pointed questions and send Schuler down for a chat.” The Baron checked his watch. Nearly one in the afternoon. “I want to eat lunch and digest for a while. Let’s head back to the Biltmore, and pray we haven’t upset the locals so much that the Diviner is already pointed in our direction.” They needed to exploit New York’s resources for as long as possible without actually alerting them to the importance or exact nature of their work for Denisov, and if Meister Schuler suspected anything was afoot, he would fearlessly drive the Baron and Zombie off. He might be the one person in North America who could.

The Zombie rubbed his light beard. “Pray? You, the Atheist, praying?”

“Ha, ha, ha.” The Baron stepped off the curb and started searching for a red and yellow cab coming down 8th Street. There wasn’t a trace of humor in his voice. “Sometimes I hate language.”

“Heh. Either you’ll use the vernacular, or you’ll talk like an idiot. Your choice.” The Zombie grinned. “I once met a man trying to teach third century Christianity to the Romans. He kept trying to make up new words to describe his God.”

“How were they?”

“Terrible. Nobody listened because he refused to speak like a Roman.”

The Baron smiled. “You once told me you were in China in the 200s.”

The Zombie cast his friend an innocent, even questioning look. How could the Baron accuse him of such confusion and lies? “I don’t remember doing that.”

“You don’t remember the 3rd century either.”

The Biltmore was one of the three palatial Terminal hotels, each built to room and board the rich and famous passing through Grand Central on their journey up and down the eastern seaboard and into New England. It was accessible from the terminal itself, with its own arrival station and an elevator to the grand lobby. These were rarely used except by celebrities avoiding the public eye, but the decadence they represented was immense. A city as powerful and prosperous as New York submitted to constructing and maintaining a public train station for a private hotel. Thinking about it sometimes made the Baron’s brain hurt. Money could be more powerful than political will, especially in times of peace.

The exterior of the Biltmore was assembled in the plain and serviceable style of pre-WWI America, whose idea of a palace was stately arched windows and a decorative cornice on an otherwise boxy, almost featureless piece of grey stone architecture. The interior was livelier, richly decorated with wine-ruddy carpets, fine tiles, and dark, lustrous woods. The first floor was lined with small lounges instead of storefronts, a pre-Prohibition design. It rose as a unified structure almost six stories, a shell of cheap rooms surrounding a commercial core. There was the tremendous lobby—three stories tall—the broad Madison Room, the Men’s Bar, and a pair of the world’s only indoor pools. From the seventh story on up, it was divided into two towers, the north and south, which were connected at the back by a wall of especially expensive suites. Nestled between the towers was the Italian Garden, a rooftop park hosting an almost constant population of young, amorous couples. Perilously small iron balconies gave a commanding view over the trees and people, allowing wealthy guests to observe nature without participating in it.

The Baron had sent their luggage ahead that morning, to be delivered and deposited in their room on the 22nd floor. They were only now checking in.

d’Holbach stopped at the front desk with the Zombie standing behind him. The woman running reception was finely-dressed and very pretty, with her hair curled and pinned up with graceful efficiency. The Baron smiled at her, stood easily, and waited while she reviewed a list for his reservation; he exuded an air of well-practiced confidence, and while he wasn’t the tallest man, he knew his face was fine and his build was strong. He was handsome. He expected her to flirt, or to at least acknowledge his presence with a smile.

She didn’t. Instead, she kept looking beyond him with a slightly worried expression, slowing her search through the reservations. He glanced back—only the Zombie was there, reading his magazine idly. There were staff and residents all around the lobby, but no other customers were waiting in line with them.

Was she offended because of his Asian features? They’d witnessed a great deal of unjust resentment since the war, though the Zombie usually took it as an opportunity to intimidate someone back. She caught that he’d been looking at the Zombie; he smiled again, and her worried expression deepened to a frown.

“Is something wrong?” the Baron asked lightly.

“Do you know that man?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s my business partner. Name of Zed. He should be on the list.”

She swallowed. “Mr. Dufraine…”

“Call me Ray.” His cover name, Ray Dufraine, was the owner of the bank accounts and properties that funded his current activities since 1939.

“Mr. Ray, is your partner okay?”

The Baron blinked in confusion. “He’s fine.” The Zombie was always healthy.

“Is that a costume?”

“What?” The Baron glanced back at the Zombie again. He took stock—suit, pants, shoes, bowler was lost at the docks—oh, right. There were bullet holes on his chest, shoulder and stomach, and two flaps of jacket hung from one wrist. “Yes, a costume.” The Baron laughed softly, authentically entertained. “He plays the villain in an off-off-Broadway production about the Pacific Theater.” It was an easy riff on a believable cover story.

She seemed immediately relieved. “Is he Japanese?”

“No,” the Baron said. “But audiences never seem to know better.”

The Zombie looked up and grinned. “My accent is as American as anyone else’s.” It was in fact warmly gruff, an affectation he’d been cultivating ever since the advent of radio.

The woman couldn’t help but grin with him. “You said 2209?” She flipped through the pages and finally found their entry. “Here’s your key. Do you need someone to see you to your room?” Around the periphery of the lobby, bellhops were waiting in brightly colored uniforms.

“We’ll be fine on our own,” the Baron said. “Thank you…” He tilted his head.

“You’re welcome,” she said, either not picking up or ignoring the cue to offer her name. No surprise, since she was probably hit on by every man who passed the desk. Her resistance made the Baron feel better about the Biltmore. It meant that the clerk’s boss wasn’t coming down on her to be more flirtatious, or if he was, she wasn’t folding to his demands.

They took the elevator at the rear of the lobby, about as far away from the Biltmore’s famous clock as they could manage. Young couples were already gathering beneath its face, readying to dine out along Madison Avenue. The Baron understood why the hotel was a dating locus; it was large, easily accessible, had a public space that was rarely cleared, and had poorly enforced rules about affection. Even making out was tolerated during certain times of the day. It was still strange to see them there however. Few young adults could afford a room in the hotel since the Biltmore charged a minimum of six dollars a night and often much more.

Their room was in the back of the U-shaped connection between the north and south towers, with one of those thin balconies overlooking the garden. There was little on these back floors but empty, carpeted halls with windows facing the street on one side and costly rooms on the other. Services, maintenance and other sundry functions were housed in the towers themselves, and each tower was mostly self-contained, so foot traffic was low. Staying in the back suites gave them peace and quiet in an otherwise busy hotel, so it was doubly surprising then that their room door was wide open.

The Baron froze the moment he saw it. It was lucky that they hadn’t been talking. Nobody would know they were coming.

The Zombie noticed his pause and slowed, looking to him for direction. The Baron pointed and nodded towards the open door. The Zombie passed him the abused magazine, stepped in front of him, and walked towards their room in near silence.

“I heard your elevator open,” called out a young man, already inside with their bags.

The Zombie paused, furrowing his brow.

“I can guess you’re out there. Zombie, come in first. You’ll see I’m not armed.”

The Zombie turned to the Baron and mouthed—no windows. It meant that he should avoid uncovered windows and lines of sight to the outside.

Baron d’Holbach nodded.

The Zombie went to the open door and paused, looking over their guest. “No visible gun,” he called to the Baron. “Do you know the Pact?” he asked the person inside.

“I do,” said the young man. “Mutually assured destruction.”

The Zombie waved the Baron over. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Robert Heckhaus, Special Operations Group.”

The Baron reached the door. Heckhaus was seated in a chair by a low wooden table; the hotel room appeared untouched, though d’Holbach was sure that he’d have to pick this place over for the next few hours to find a bug—Langley operatives left them behind like droppings wherever they went.

The Special Operations Group was the paramilitary branch of the CIA, technically a secular organization, but its current incarnation encysted the Langley cult—the Order of the Cincinnati—which was the cultic inner circle of the Society of the Cincinnati. Whatever one called them, they were jingoistic and disproportionately influential. Even without much prestige, a Langley cultist represented a tremendous threat. A single SOG officer was by definition proven capable of completing an operation in hostile territory on sea, air, or ground with almost no support—and they generally could call in a great deal of support. In a government organization mostly full of imposters and money-maddened ideologues, these SOG cultists were maybe some of the only truly competent people, and only because occult conflict was constantly honing them against worthy foes.

Robert Heckhaus fit the type. He was tall, broad-jawed, and built like a world-class athlete, with short black hair cropped in a military style and a civvy suit pressed and creased so sharply that his shins could’ve been used as a straight edge. He had the intimidating presence of a heavyweight boxer without the punch-drunk dullness, and his eyes constantly shifted back and forth to gauge the reaction of both the Baron and the Zombie. His smile—while appearing authentic to a less experienced person—was eerily constant and emotionally empty. He was calculating and calm, and he knew exactly who he was dealing with.

The Baron realized that this man knew he might die and didn’t care.

“You’re a very dangerous man,” the Baron concluded.

Heckhaus didn’t reply. He was watching the Zombie.

So the Baron pressed on: “Why did you break into my room?”

Heckhaus chuckled. “The Zombie is thinking of killing me,” he said.

The Baron looked at the Zombie, who was standing very still. “He’s certainly unhappy, but he won’t kill you unless you threaten me.”

“Yes, and I’m threatening you,” Heckhaus replied.

The Zombie took one step forward and raised a hand.

“We’re being watched,” Heckhaus said quickly.

The Zombie stopped again. There were several windows on the far side of the room, and they could all sight one of the Biltmore’s two towers. “They can watch you die,” he offered.

Heckhaus stopped smiling. “They could, but consider this. Right now, you have a tactical advantage. Nobody has any reliable data about you. However, Langley is aware that while you are invincible, you can be temporarily disabled, and for the purposes of a wish, you aren’t a man. If you choose to kill me, I’ve been instructed to complete a series of carefully worded wishes as quickly as possible. We’d learn what could and couldn’t affect you, and for the price of one operative, Langley might learn to disarm the Baron’s nuclear threat.” Heckhaus leaned forward a little. “The data collected would be worth my life. So you can kill me now, or you can keep your advantage a little longer and settle down.”

The Zombie appraised Heckhaus with a stare. The SOG agent didn’t treat the Zombie like a berserker and was making an appeal to his reason as a fellow killer. It was a rare attitude.

“Let’s hear him out,” the Baron said. “You know what they say, don’t kill the messenger? We aren’t here to start a war with Langley.” This pulled the responsibility of sparing Heckhaus’s life out of the Zombie’s hands and into his own. The Zombie wouldn’t be compelled to kill the man in order to maintain a reputation. The Baron was reigning him in.

“Fine,” the Zombie said.

Heckhaus cracked his knuckles against his palm. “Excellent. Tell me, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach. What year is this?”

“1952,” the Baron said.

“Exactly one hundred and one years since the Fall of Truth. They used to say that when we lost the ability to wish for knowledge, the era of occult espionage was over. They were only half right. Nobody can use prestige to fill in the gaps in intelligence, but they can still use prestige to improve the spy. Do you follow me?”

“I hate canned speeches,” the Baron said.

“I’ll skip to the end then. The Order of the Cincinnati understands that prestige can still decide the fate of nations, and this is the Cold War! At any given moment, we are one gunshot away from a nuclear exchange—the end of civilization.” Heckhaus snapped his fingers. “Like that. So when we get intel saying that you’ve come to New York, we have to wonder—what’s this occult mover and shaker doing out of his box in Boston? What effect will he have on the world stage?” He blew out his breath. “It was a tremendous disappointment to all of us when you were seen entering the Soviet Mission for a meeting with the Reds.”

“Were you watching the Russians or tailing us?”

Heckhaus pretended that he hadn’t heard the question. “Once I heard the news, I decided to handle this myself. You’re lucky I was here. I should’ve been in South America yesterday, but I was pulled to plant a bomb on a plane—did you hear about that task?”

“A domestic terrorist breaks into our hotel room,” the Zombie muttered, “wonderful luck.”

“I’m more flexible than most operatives. I know you’re a principled man, Baron. You don’t act without a higher reason, so here I am, a devil’s advocate asking the Devil—why the Reds?”

The Baron considered his answer for a moment. Lying to Langley was a quick way to turn the secular world against you. The effects ranged widely. Some were merely irritating, like mistakes with the utility companies. Some were financially crippling, like an IRS audit. The worst were the frame jobs, where documents were produced implicating the victim as a socialist sympathizer with connections to the Communist Party and foreign intelligence agencies.

The CIA could easily destroy a man without harming a hair on his head.

“I can’t tell you everything,” d’Holbach said flatly.

Heckhaus shrugged and smiled again. He knew that he was getting his way, and he genuinely liked that. “Tell me everything you can.”

“We’re working against Bolshevik cultic interests. If I complete this job successfully, the Soviet cult will be paralyzed by internal conflict. We’ll maintain the status quo.”

Heckhaus weaved his fingers together and waited. When the Baron didn’t elaborate further, he asked, “Is that all you can say?”

“I have a reputation to consider. I’ll keep my secrets.”

Heckhaus stared at the Baron. He stared back. Seconds passed in silence. The Zombie looked at each of them but said nothing. The Baron wanted to react to Heckhaus’s complaints. Heckhaus was probably trying to wait him out. So many people talked just to fill the silence, and that instinct was a powerful interrogation tool.

The Zombie carefully plucked the magazine from the Baron’s idle hand, loudly flipped through the pages and started reading.

Heckhaus must’ve realized that the Baron wasn’t going to crack because of a little quiet. “What if the status quo isn’t good enough? What if the status quo is that we’re losing this war?”

“The status quo is that we’re still worrying about doomsday, and that’s better than picking through the rubble and wondering where all the people went.” The Baron moved from his place at the door, marching forward into his own room. This brought him closer to the windows, but at this point he was confident that Heckhaus wasn’t here to order a hit. Their luggage stood in a pile of trunks and suitcases in the middle of the suite’s “living room.” On top of the whole bunch was a steel-reinforced briefcase which he knew was full of books.

“Zombie!” he called, readying to throw the heavy case.

The Zombie threw down his magazine just in time to catch the briefcase with a loud thud—two invincible hands, beating on steel-reinforced canvas. The weight of it was instantly obvious. Once the briefcase was in hand, he hefted it and grinned. “I can beat people without killing them,” he told Heckhaus. “Not that I’m threatening anything.”

“Of course not,” Heckhaus said.

“Is there anything else you want to tell us?” asked the Baron.

The threat was clear. The Zombie would start cracking skulls if he overstayed his welcome. “Only one thing,” said Heckhaus. “It’s the official position of the Langley cult, the Special Operations Group, the CIA, the State Department, and President Truman himself that cooperation with Communist forces is tantamount to treason against the people of the United States. What you’ve done so far would be grounds for a full investigation, and it’s only under my authority that you’ve remained free to operate after leaving the Soviet Mission.” He stood, rising above the Baron and the Zombie both—maybe six and a half feet tall. “However, I believe that no principle is more important than the ends achieved. If your work will aid American interests, we’ll stand aside, but we won’t turn a blind eye. We will be watching.”

“As will I!” the Zombie called cheerily.

Robert Heckhaus nodded at his enemy, then went for the open door.

“We never needed your permission,” the Baron said as he passed.

Heckhaus paused in the jamb. “I’ve decided that you’re not our enemy today. That’s better than permission. That’s peace. Good evening, Baron d’Holbach.”

Author’s Note:

We meet one of our antagonists, a murderous patriot with a very fun name!

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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June 29, 2026