The Zombie tossed the bowler up and caught it on his brow before tugging it down by the brim. He was glad the hat had survived the blast, though he doubted it’d make it through the afternoon. His invincibility didn’t extend to his clothes, but they were often incidentally preserved through the same miracles that protected his body. If a bullet phased through him, it often phased through his suit without damaging it.
The question was—how would his shirt or pants stand up to the Green Dragon Crescent Blade? That rainbow-slash was thoroughly destructive, and he didn’t want to loot another dead body. He planned to dodge the cuts as best as he could, if only because that was a fun game, but if he were lucky, his clothes might survive one or two incidental blows.
If they didn’t? Well, he’d just steal what he needed so he could walk the streets without drawing attention from the cops. Nudity was extremely funny, but it was uncivilized and caused too many problems for the Baron. Under these occult circumstances, it’d probably be easier to get away with murder than walking shirtless along a Manhattan road.
With the Cat in his left hand and General Osman’s orders at his back, it was time to sweep the rest of the floor. Given the dead merc’s position, it was probable that CPUSA had used magical silence to infiltrate the temple itself. When High Oracle Gagliano had declared its desecration, a New York cultist had already died. A shot in the dark? Maybe a slit throat. Only the Zombie could safely scout forward now and flush out a well-prepared enemy.
He smiled and trotted a little further down the hall, stopping at each door to look far into each lounge, office, and sitting room. Across three rooms, nothing happened; no sounds emerged, and nothing interesting was discovered beyond scattered debris.
“Is it clear?” Osman called from beyond the edge of the door.
“Not yet!” the Zombie yelled.
“Hurry up! We’re ready to move!”
The Zombie approached the fourth room on the left side, which had already been struck through by the previous slash, and he found another corpse, headless and missing an arm. The Zombie stopped and whistled, marveling at the victim’s bad luck. This merc had crouched down into cover, just inside the open door, and that’d been a perfect angle to catch the rainbow-arc right below his throat, cleanly severing through neck and collarbone.
“Zed, sighting left again,” Mr. Roach called faintly, still lying down in the main hall and watching events over the iron sights of his rifle. The man must have excellent vision, to deduce that much from the Zombie’s body language alone.
The invincible man grabbed the damaged door jamb with his right hand and leaned into the room, curious if the merc’s loose head had struck the back wall. The result was better than expected—the head, arm, and most of a shoulder had sailed clean across the break room and landed in a steel sink, where they’d mixed with debris from a shattered cabinet. But that detail was quickly forgotten, as something far more interesting moved in the dim.
Two living CPUSA mercs were crouching behind an upturned table, yelling in complete silence into a radio, as if pantomiming terrified shouts.
The Zombie grinned. They’d wished for their own special silence, which nobody else could hear. “That’s expensive,” he noted pleasantly, interrupting their hidden report.
Both mercs jerked and swiveled towards him, mouths hanging open in inaudible screams. One of them pointed a gun at the Zombie, and then their wish for silence ran out of time.
The other one was yelling into a hand radio, “Zed detected! We need orders! We need—”
“Left, full room!” Mr. Roach declared, quite a bit louder.
“—help! Fuck!” the merc finished yelling, then dropped to the floor.
The armed merc pushed to his feet, sprinting for the door. Right at the Zombie.
The invincible man grinned and tightened his grip on the jamb. “Brave,” he judged, as the running merc desperately threw himself at the scant gap between the Zombie’s left arm and the damaged door.
A distant martial cry heralded a fresh arc of violet light, cutting across the break room from wall to wall.
The running merc jammed his body into the space between the Zombie and the door—and the Zombie simply thrust his body leftwards using his right arm, pinning the merc between his invincible shoulder and the doorjamb. Ribs instantly creaked, popping then snapping like overcooked wishbones. This crush prevented any escape.
“No!” the man shrieked in agony, as the world flashed cannon-blast green just behind him. The break room split along a fresh shockwave, wrecking walls and cabinets, destroying the overturned tabletop, and severing off a heavy slab of door with enough force to clip the back of the trapped merc’s head and leave his neck bent at a dead angle. Eyes instantly lost focus. Dead as a nail, even after dodging the rainbow-slash.
Red light faded away, and jade confetti rained over the second merc in the room. He’d lived, diving beneath the slash, but he was half-trapped beneath a fallen slab of hardwood tabletop. Groans of pain were audible despite the general crumbling and clattering of debris.
The Zombie released the dead man from his shoulder check and strode through the wreckage of the break room, angling towards the survivor. “Hey, asshole! Alive down there?”
The living merc yelled beneath the remains of the breakroom table, wordless and defiant.
The Zombie kicked the heavy wooden plank with the tip of his leather shoe. The toe box crushed instantly, but his invincible foot launched the damaged tabletop with a spray of splinters. Once freed, his next victim started squirming, clawing away from the inevitable danger with one bloodied hand.
This CPUSA merc was younger than most, somewhere in his late thirties—probably a recent acquisition of the Worker’s Party, inducted right before the Smith Act trials.
“Some die young,” the Zombie judged, kneeling down beside the squirming man. “But not as young as the children your boys killed yesterday.”
“What?” the merc rasped.
The Zombie bunched up the back of the man’s collar in his fist, twisting it up tight until the merc groaned, and then he lifted him bodily from the debris and damaged wood, shaking off a light clatter of jade fragments amidst bits of plaster and lath. “Your comrades killed children,” he repeated. “And nobody is asking me to spare your life.”
Blood was running down the merc’s limp right arm. He gurgled, not quite choking because the top button of his uniform was open. After the last slash, he could still move, but he was weak, almost floppy. Injured back, perhaps? But not yet dead. “Fuck you,” he spat, disrespecting the Zombie moments before his demise.
“You don’t think you’re responsible,” the Zombie observed, dragging the merc bodily out of the open door and into the main hall. “I’ll have to make an example.”
“Fuck you,” the merc repeated, even as his boots dragged across the carpet.
The Zombie lifted the man’s collar, holding him at arm’s length, like a dangling, freshly-butchered side of beef. “Armies don’t operate on responsibility. Do they?”
“Fuck… you,” the merc whimpered a third time.
The Zombie snickered, waving to Mr. Roach with his left arm, holding the Cat. Then he shouted loudly, so that all the floor could hear him: “Armies are killed, one bloody soldier at a time! If you don’t run, you will die today! Like this! General, center hall! Sever the body!”
A vertical arc of violet light surged out from the side of the hallway at an oblique angle, travelling as fast as an arrow’s flight while leaving behind vast bands of sapphire blue and sky-bright cyan. For an instant, colors flowed smoothly towards the standing edge of the slash, some meters behind the Zombie. A near miss, so the Zombie dodged towards the slash, dragging his dangling victim into its vertical plane. The merc screamed, intersecting the rainbow.
Loudly bright, the color of spring exploded through the air—the slash tickled the Zombie’s palm—and an unrecognizable wash of pulped flesh was torn from the Zombie’s grip and thrown loosely back onto the hallway floor.
Hat gone again. Shirt hem fluttering on the shockwave. The Zombie roared with laughter, shaking the gore off his right hand and looking around for the corpse. He found only scattered limbs on either side of the fading red arc, nearly unrecognizable as anything other than leaky meat and chipped bone. The rainbow vanished, and jade fragments fluttered through the empty air in mute celebration. Most of the magical force had gone into a single human body, folding it vertically in half. Instant death for the killers of children and their comrades. “You should see this!” he shouted at any remaining mercenaries. “He’s hamburger!”
The Zombie threatened his enemies for two reasons. First and foremost, it was fun, but second, fear had tactical significance. He hoped to pin the mercs in place or force a retreat.
For a full second, no response came.
Then all at once, eleven CPUSA mercenaries swarmed out of various lounges and rooms, converging into a single mass while running at full sprint towards the Zombie. No orders were passed between the mercs. Occult silence had obscured any prior coordination. Boots hammered across carpets, heads angled down, and desperate eyes peered forward—towards victory or death. They clutched a variety of guns to their bellies.
Instead of falling one after another to a magical superweapon, they’d chosen to launch a final assault on a superior foe.
“Incoming!” the Zombie bellowed.
“Pierce!” Mr. Roach yelled in turn, almost certainly applying a second or two of altered properties to the rifle cartridges in his Garand.
The Zombie tried to throw himself in front of the bulk of the group, arms wide, but there wasn’t anything to grab onto with his right hand. He couldn’t secure his footing.
The merc at the head of the charge lowered his shoulder and rammed bodily into the Zombie, a suicidal tackle. With a wet crunch, both skull and shoulder folded against the Zombie’s chest, but dead weight swept into him, carrying him off his feet and onto his back. The floor itself cracked open to catch him in a fold of torn carpeting and broken planks, only stopping his momentum against the creaking joists below. The dead body sprawled on him, twitching.
Then ten surviving mercs swarmed past the Zombie, and gunfire erupted.
The Baron was well-clear of the sightlines when he heard the telltale crunch of the Zombie smashing through copious amounts of wood.
Meister Schuler took one step left, then squatted, and the first shots of the battle sailed past and above him, peppering the back of the main hall.
Lt. Sadgrove frowned, positioning himself to the left of the Diviner.
Mr. Roach fired his Garand. The crack of ignition was clearly supersonic, and the kick of the rifle was hard enough to punch Mr. Roach’s shoulder back like he’d fired a buffalo round. A pair of heavy crashes signalled bodies stumbling mid-run and falling to the floor.
More gunfire returned in earnest, peppering in through the open doors, and Mr. Roach simply stared into the fusillade, fearlessly adjusting his aim on the ironsights. “Pierce!” he barked again, pulling the trigger. Another explosive shot signalled another pair of falling bodies.
“Four down!” Sadgrove declared. Then a moment later, “Grenade!”
A Mk II fragmentation grenade—a genuine WWII pineapple, green-grey cast iron—flew in through the doors and bounced exactly once off the carpet before the Baron finished turning to dive to the ground. He landed, hands behind his head, a reaction that’d saved his life twice before.
“Away!” Schuler shouted. It was the last word audible before the thunder crack of the grenade’s explosion and the sharp hailstorm of scattering shrapnel.
“Get up, Baron!” Osman shouted.
“A pleasure to see our wizard at work,” Lt. Sadgrove muttered.
d’Holbach raised his head. There was no sign of any damage to the room. Nobody else had moved, though Sgt. Wade had flinched away from the main doors.
“What?” the Baron asked, turning over to look at the others. Mr. Roach was still lying in plain view, watching the hall with his rifle. Schuler was squatting, and Lt. Sadgrove was alongside him, staring into the hall. Sgt. Wade was cringing, clutching his Tommy with his back to the right wall. General Osman was posing again, preparing another magic slash—this one would have the angles of a horizontal arc.
Sadgrove met the Baron’s gaze. “Schuler handled it.”
“How?” the Baron asked.
“It bounced back into the hall.”
General Osman shouted a war cry, then swung twice, releasing two horizontal rainbows in quick succession—one at chest height and one angled down towards distant knees, sweeping out both sides of the hall at two elevations. Claps of green-thunder echoed as portions of the building were slashed inwards, irreparably cutting loose vast sheets of plaster and lath. Secondary cracks followed even as the first booms echoed; these were the glassy implosions of cathode ray tubes. Two dozen falling televisions had just shattered against the floor.
“Holy shit! Holy shit!” Wade yelled as the rolling blastwaves cleared, leaving behind the hideous sound of crumbling walls deeper into the building.
“A fair price for a clear floor!” Osman replied heartily.
Schuler grunted. “One survivor. Lieutenant, may I puppet you?”
“Yes, Diviner,” Lt. Sadgrove replied.
Schuler wobbled into place beside the old soldier, then grabbed his wrist behind the Luger and aimed him at a stretch of crumbling lath planks. For a moment, they showed the combined grace of a drunk trying to adjust the arm of a marionette, but whenever Schuler briefly released him, Sadgrove’s hand locked steadily in place.
After a few more tweaks, the Diviner paused arbitrarily. “There! Last on the floor, whispering miracles. Fire at will.” He released Sadgrove’s wrist.
The Lieutenant sniffed airily. “Walls as spacious as air,” he said, and he fired the Luger. The shot seemed to go nowhere, hitting no visible surface, but a heartbeat later, Baron could hear a soft thud. After a moment, he realized that he’d heard a body falling.
“You’ve perfected shooting people through walls?” the Baron asked.
“My specialty, Baron,” Lt. Sadgrove murmured proudly. “A technique, inspired by the Rutherford model, spread to the public by science-fiction. I’ll use it while people believe.”
Schuler wobbled backwards a couple of steps, losing focus. “Dead in seconds.”
“Thank you, Diviner.” Lt. Sadgrove holstered his Luger at his waist.
Schuler waved at Osman, wrinkling his nose to keep his bifocals adjusted. “Send the Zombie ahead to be sure, but we can move at will, General.”
General Osman planted the gold counterweight against the floor. “Zombie!” he shouted, cupping a hand over his mouth. “Scout us to the stairs!”
There was a thud. “Got it!”
Osman grinned, enjoying this degree of cooperation from the invincible man. “If you find anyone still living, bring them here! I’ll make ‘em squeal!”
“Can do!” yelled the Zombie, audibly shedding a portion of shattered wood like someone dumping damaged lumber onto a burn pile.
The Baron grimaced, standing up and brushing off his pants. “Are you asking him to bring you torture victims?”
General Osman faced the Baron with disbelief. “Are you complaining about my protection, kraut?”
“Torture doesn’t teach anything,” the Baron argued.
General Osman scowled. “You’re not in any position to order me around. You’re a prisoner, and damn lucky one. Without me, these dogs would have you.”
The Baron scowled right back at one of the most influential leaders on the continent. “People lie to stop the pain, you know. Torture misleads men.”
“I’m not interested in your mad theories, philosopher.”
“You’re asking my Zombie to commit horrible crimes. I’m telling you to stop.”
General Osman released a cough-laugh, a sound of sheer disbelief. “That devil?” he asked. “The one who burned my men in Salem, laughing while they screamed?”
The Baron felt a surge of indignant rage. Salem had haunted him for decades; this cult had held him responsible throughout New England, making him beg for letters of passage while demanding that he check in with every vassal cult before they worked. A flurry of barbed words swept through him, but only one phrase found its way through the wall of his willpower. He couldn’t help himself. “Do you think I liked Salem?” he asked bitterly.
“What?” Osman replied.
“Do you think I wanted him to hold men to the fire?”
“You let him loose—”
“A mistake!” the Baron shouted. “Do not ask my man to torture people for you! Call him back for my defense, and use your own men!”
The General sneered. “Absolutely not, Baron. I’m not giving you any tools, nor bringing your devil to me. You will not be trusted so readily.”
“Agreed,” Lt. Sadgrove murmured.
The General gestured with his free hand at the folded wreckage of the double doors, now twice split by the broad slashes that’d cleared the entire second floor. The hall ahead offered the only navigable route. “This arrangement continues, both for your safety and ours. Now walk, Baron, and tell your Zombie to check the dead. For your safety.”
The Baron glowered, but he knew he had no power to alter events. “Zombie!” he called out into the hall, seeing only scattered corpses and debris and nothing of his invincible friend. “Be thorough! We’re walking out now!”
The Zombie stepped out of a side room, kicking over a load of wooden debris onto the collapsed torso of a mercenary, recently separated from its legs. He cast them a thumbs up, grinning. “I’ve counted the dead! You’re clear!”
Osman leered. “Did you match their parts?”
“I counted heads!” the Zombie replied.
“Haha! He is a good soldier, I’ll give him that!” Osman cheered. “Go on then, Baron. Move, before the enemy bars our way again.”
Pops of gunfire could be heard softly through the outer walls. Even if they’d slain a squad or two on this floor, the broader battle was still growing. New York’s soldiers would be returning to the area, CPUSA would be fighting them in the park, and the National Guard were certain to make a move soon. Time was genuinely scarce.
Without further complaint, the Baron strode forward into the hall. The first thing he noted was a couple of dead CPUSA mercs, face down on the carpeting, which was wicking up their blood. The walls, floor, and ceiling around them were pockmarked with grenade shrapnel. Even at a glance, the Baron could see that the Mk 2 had exploded unevenly upon return—a known flaw in the grenade’s design—but not a single fragment had flown back towards Schuler or his allies. The unlikely coincidence suggested this was another Diviner special.
“Elegant wishing,” the Baron judged darkly.
“Thank you!” Schuler called from behind.
Further down the hall, pairs of mercenaries had fallen to each shot from Mr. Roach. His rounds, imbued with the strength to pierce, had punched fist-sized exit wounds out of their backs—severing spines, shattering ribs, and shredding lungs.
With a damaged shoe, the Zombie shoved one mangled body into a hole in the floorboards, letting it come to rest on the joists underneath. He saw the Baron coming, waved, and then jogged on ahead, glancing into the empty and ruined rooms.
“Keep going!” Osman called.
d’Holbach glanced back. Everyone else was lined up behind him, using him as an indirect hostage against any possible threat from the Zombie. Schuler was closest and calmest, peering through his lustrous copper frames at all the ruined gaps in the walls.
The Zombie gave another thumbs up and jogged on further, flicking his head from side to side, scanning for threats with sharp eyes. “If anyone sees my hat, grab it!”
The Baron didn’t search for the bowler, but he studied the damage from the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. Those last two slashes had cut across the story in two broad swathes, freeing vast sheets of the walls before knocking them down. Beyond the ubiquitous slabs of plaster and lath, time-yellowed wall studs gaped like old teeth, split water pipes gushed freely into dusty gaps, and smaller steel crossbars bent outwards, tracing the force of the attacks. The stairwell—distant as it was—was just visible, running alongside a vertical support beam.
The illusion of distinct rooms had vanished; this was all a single floor, separated by artificial barriers. Many of the indoor lights were broken, but thin sunshine streamed through the dusty gaps from distant second story windows, and enough lamps and fixtures had survived to illuminate the gloom. Countless offices now laid in ruins. Shattered books, destroyed hardwood desks, and folded paintings presented themselves as recognizable losses. So much else was returned to raw materials, debris jutting with splinters or settling with gushes of powder.
If that magic guandao was used on the streets of New York, it could inflict unimaginable property damage and take many, many lives. Running from its range would require more than simple sprinting. The Baron would need the element of surprise, somehow.
Up ahead, the Zombie followed the once serpentine turns of the temple hall in an obvious zig-zag motion, stopping at the damaged stairwell door. The Baron followed quickly, following the old hallway while skirting around the occasional CPUSA corpse. The angle of the lower slash dug down, opening the gaps in the walls wider and wider, but the damage stopped right before it touched the carpet on the landing beyond the split stairwell door.
The Zombie whistled appreciatively. “Your building is still whole!”
“Good control,” Sgt. Wade praised his General.
“Always, Sergeant,” Osman purred with pride.
The Baron guessed that the General had some ability to alter the range of the attack. There was no obvious damage to the concrete outer walls, and he’d only cut through a few main steel beams, which Schuler had instantly restored.
The Zombie kicked the remains of the stairwell door through the damaged jamb, knocking them into the still-whole railing. Idly, he nudged a shattered piece of door around with his foot, guiding it between two black iron railing posts. It slid between the gaps and over the edge, tumbling down the open air shaft in the middle of the stairwell before clapping lightly against the ground floor. “Should I go down?” he called, glancing back at everyone.
“Wait there!” Osman replied.
Underfoot, there were occasional bursts of gunfire. The Baron recalled Lt. Sadgrove’s appraisal of the situation. Some enforcers were fighting against Soviet mercs, and Enzu was among them. Right now, the Zombie wanted to descend and join the battle, but he wouldn’t have a choice, not while the Baron was so close to Schuler, the enforcers, or Osman himself.
As they approached, an intuition scratched at the back of the Baron’s mind. He’d heard a light clap of impact, not a hard thud. A full floor drop was survivable for any athletic person with training, but it was far easier if the surface was softened in any way, like soil or carpeting.
He stared at the Zombie, opening his eyes as wide as possible, a signal to communicate. The Zombie met his gaze, then flickered away, looking around like a bored cat tracing a particularly interesting mote of dust. Then he turned back and yelled, “Osman? You don’t need me to scout?” He cast another thumbs up towards them, meaningless positivity to everyone but the Baron himself. It was a signal that he was paying attention to d’Holbach now.
“Wait a moment!” Osman called. “I’m going to sight first!”
The Baron set his right hand in front of his stomach, flattened out like a barrier. Then using his left hand, he “jumped” a finger over the barrier and whipped the finger down, suggesting acceleration. Then he casually slipped his hands into his pockets. Hopefully, the pantomime communicated the idea clearly enough.
The Zombie gave another thumbs up. “Understood, Osman!” It was an imperfect plan, but the Zombie approved of the escape attempt. Good enough.
d’Holbach looked back over his shoulder briefly, actively disengaging from his destination for a few seconds. “What are we looking for?”
“Guerra and Cecil will try to cover both stairwells!” General Osman called back to him from the end of the line. “If they’re close, I don’t want your devil punching my enforcers to death!”
So Osman was willing to risk a brief approach to the Zombie, hoping to avoid any out-of-view violence against New York’s finest fighters. The goal must be to keep everyone in view of Schuler, since he arguably was the most influential occult threat in the building.
Lt. Sadgrove, Sgt. Wade, and Mr. Roach were shuffling around each other to get a good look past Meister Schuler. Some were watching the Baron. Others were watching the Zombie. All of them were cautious, inspecting their prisoners closely, but they probably wouldn’t expect d’Holbach to open some distance with gravity’s help.
The Baron resumed his walk, turning the final corner towards the Zombie. If he sprinted at the last moment, there wouldn’t be enough time for anyone to react, to aim a weapon or finish a command. He’d simply vault the railing, land below, and run.
The Zombie pushed away from the cast iron railing and stepped back through the damaged door jamb. “I don’t see anybody on the bottom floor,” he said, taking two steps towards the Baron. “What do you think—”
The Baron launched into a full sprint at the Zombie.
The Zombie darted left, barely clearing a collision with his friend, then bounced right to cover him against gunfire while charging Schuler directly.
Among New York’s enforcers, the fastest amongst them was surprisingly Lt. Sadgrove. “Through!” he shouted, audibly unholstering his Luger with a metal click and scraping leather.
On intuition alone, the Baron jumped early, diving horizontally onto the railing’s handbar. Crack—a gunshot, intended for a calf or thigh, passed through both Schuler and the Zombie, missing beneath the Baron, all in the instant before his belly folded over the bar and momentum carried him into a tumble. Feet went over his head, like he was a child rolling over the top of a fence. A flash of the stairwell blurred around him, and then he was falling.
Vertigo greeted him for three racing heartbeats, suggesting panicked flailing or locked limbs, but he was a man conditioned by old wars. Practice demanded readied legs and spread arms, enforcing a sense of balance. A breathless acceleration. Less than a second later, he landed on his feet, absorbing the impact by folding up, flexing against deceleration like he was squatting, until he struck the carpet with his hands and fell forward onto his knees, half-rolling to a stop. The carpeting prevented some bad bruises on his kneecaps.
“Baron!” General Osman roared, somewhere above. Two more gunshots.
The impact had strained every bit of d’Holbach, but he was too fit to stop. There was a wall in front of him, a door behind him. He twisted away, leaping up towards the exit.
Overhead, the metal railing shattered with an explosive bang, and the Zombie’s body sailed backwards over the gap—still gripping the Cat—and slammed into the back wall of the stairwell, bouncing off the concrete superstructure and ragdolling onto the mid-story landing.
The Baron didn’t have to guess. Schuler was defending his General and the enforcers. Nothing to do but run.
d’Holbach pulled open the exit in front of him to reveal a confused man in front of a hallway full of corpses. All at a glance—a short salt and pepper beard, a plaster cast on one arm, and the other raised high and holding a Saturday night special in full view. This was the best possible result for the worst possible moment.
“Baron?” Enzu Guerra asked with alarm. There were six CPUSA corpses here and a great deal of blood. Had he killed all six men with a shitty revolver?
“Enzu!” the Baron shouted. “Move!”
Enzu spluttered uncertainly. “What are you doing here?”
Before the Baron could answer, there was a strange click in the revolver, as if some tiny part had snapped. The enforcer’s eyes darted up, a moment of recognition.
Far behind Enzu, a uniformed figure slid out of a door and into the hall full of dead bodies, holding a 12-gauge break action shotgun in his hands.
The Baron’s eyes opened wide.
Enzu roared, “Dud!” Somehow, without seeing, he’d known what to wish for.
A pull on a shotgun’s trigger. A murderous click, striking a dead primer.
Enzu tossed the wish-ruined revolver, spun around on one foot, and in a single smooth motion, he proved why he was an elite enforcer for New York. He reached into his jacket, drew a Beretta from a shoulder holster, and hipfired the pistol like a trickshot at a carnival. One shot, loud but controlled, with utter confidence. By the time the revolver hit the floor, there was a tidy hole between the merc’s eyes, and a pink mist drifting through the air behind him.
Shot through the head, into the brainstem. Instant death. The merc collapsed.
“Shit!” Enzu cussed. “Got lucky!”
“Lucky?” the Baron asked, still hesitating.
“Gun broke,” Enzu huffed. “It’s a good warning!”
“Schuler!” the Zombie roared on the landing above them. “You ruined my shirt!”
“I have to go!” the Baron shouted, rushing past Enzu, trusting that the man wouldn’t shoot him in the back.
“Wait!” Enzu yelled. “Baron d’Holbach, stop!”
The Baron didn’t answer. He was already nearing the corner, just past the fresh CPUSA corpse. He’d give it a glance, and if there was a window in view, he’d sprint for it.
Instead of finding a clear hall or any path forward, he discovered a man in a grey business suit, kneeling with a Thompson sighted. “Surrender—”
The Baron’s heart leapt up through his throat, and his running momentum became another panicked dive to the carpet, clearing the hallway and scrambling into cover against the wall. “Enzu! Help!” he roared.
“Ey, what?” yelled the man in the hall. “En-zu, it’s me! I’m comin’ in!” His voice was slightly nasal, and he hit the “zu” with a sharp z and a long vowel.
“Cecil!” Enzu called. “Be careful! That’s the Baron!”
d’Holbach rolled over onto his ass, looking down the hall. Enzu was holding his Beretta towards the floor, keeping his fingers out of the trigger guard.
“The fuckin’ legend?” Cecil came out of the hall, facing towards the Baron and gripping his Thompson in his hands. He had short black hair and a young-looking face with a shallow chin, but his hairline was receding. “Fuck me, that’s the Salem guy, right? Isn’t he a prisoner?”
“Yeah?” Enzu replied, and it was definitely a question.
“I need a way out!” the Baron cried, pushing to his feet. “Schuler and the Zombie are fighting!” he shouted, hoping that an apocalyptic potential for property destruction would make his entire case for him.
Cecil glanced halfway back at Enzu, then focused back on d’Holbach again, lifting the Tommy’s barrel to track the Baron. “Should we arrest him? Or something?”
The Baron cringed. He’d have to argue his case. “You need to understand—”
His voice was drowned out by the voice of a stern father, wrathful and damning with every booming word. General Osman, amplified by wishes, could be heard through all the floors and walls, as if he were yelling into a bullhorn. “Enforcers! The Baron d’Holbach is on the ground floor! If you find him, secure him until Meister Schuler or myself can collect him!”
Cecil lifted his Thompson, aiming it dead at the Baron’s chest but keeping his finger out of the trigger guard. “Answers that. Surrender, Mr. Baron. General’s orders.”
“I can’t!” the Baron shouted. “I have to run! The world might depend on it!”
“Not much of a story.” Cecil wiggled the barrel expertly down towards the Baron’s thighs. “Just stand still for a second.” Without moving his head or his weapon, he raised his voice. “Enzu, you got your cuffs?”
Enzu was approaching quickly, head on a swivel in case more CPUSA members came running after the General’s universal declaration.
The Baron did his best to explain everything in one panicked speech. “The Russians are warring with themselves! One side hired me to force a stalemate! Stalin’s side hired these mercs to stop me! If I don’t escape now, Stalin wins, and then it spills out from there! It will end in nukes!”
Cecil shrugged, tapping a finger on the outside of the trigger guard. “It’s orders, Mr. Baron. Tell the General—”
“I already have!” the Baron roared. “The nobles don’t care! Ask Enzu!”
Cecil turned his head halfway, keeping the Baron in the corner of one eye and sighting Enzu in the corner of the other. “En-zu?” he asked.
The older enforcer winced, stopping behind Cecil. “It’s true. Every word. Keeping him is stupid. I just thought the old boys would let him go.”
There was a series of three wrecking-ball slams, as if someone was repeatedly ramming a car into a concrete wall. The enforcers glanced up, but the Baron ignored the sound; nothing was crashing down around him yet.
“Just stand down,” he begged. “Lie if you have to, but let me go!”
Cecil sighed, resighting his weapon. A ringed finger ran up and down the outside of the trigger guard. “I don’t know, man. My job is orders, not decisions.”
Enzu shrugged. “Nah, forget it. We’re paid by the body, not the prisoner. He’s not our problem if we didn’t see him. I say, let the Baron go.”
“Well—” Cecil began, only to be interrupted by a deep thud, followed by an acute shattering of wood, crunchy and splintering.
“The fuck?” Enzu asked.
Somewhere else in the building, a floor gave way, dropping glass and wooden wreckage down a story in a tremendous pour. No single note of that chaos was loud, but the sum of it drummed out of the walls like the rumble of a crashing wave, echoing in their chests.
The Baron regrettably recognized the sound. The Zombie had just fallen through the second story floor, dropping down the contents of a room and a tree’s worth of ruined joists.
“Fuck you, Schuler!” roared the Zombie, barely audible through the walls.
With dreadful anxiety, the Baron understood what he’d already heard. Like Kaiser Abbas before him, the Diviner had thrown the Zombie through multiple walls—those three rapid slams—and then he’d smote him down to the ground floor. It wasn’t hard; the Zombie was an object. He couldn’t be hurt, but he could be thrown around to keep him away from his enemies.
Somewhere in the building, Schuler had finally earned the space to operate independently of the Zombie’s threats. The moment the Baron did anything at all to draw attention, Schuler would know where to find him.
“Just point me toward a window!” he pleaded, a strained whisper-shout. “For the world!”
Cecil scowled. “Nah, fuck that, Mr. Baron. I know Salem. We got to cuff you to control the Zombie, or he’ll kill everyone here.”
“No, he won’t! I command him!”
“Yeah, sure you do. Just like Salem.” Cecil waved behind himself with a hand. “Cuffs?”
Enzu scowled, holstered his pistol, and set his shoulders back. The Baron saw a transformation in the old enforcer, a practiced relaxation dropped like a robe to reveal the underlying instincts. Enzu had shot seven men with a kind of gormless confidence, but now he displayed the long-practiced anger of a bloodthirstier man. He gritted his jaw. “Cecil? Look at me, boy,” he commanded.
Cecil waved Enzu off. “Cuffs first, man.”
Enzu tightened his free hand into a fist, flexing it a couple of times. “He ain’t running. That’s why he’s begging. Now, look at me.”
“Jesus, En-zu, fine.” Cecil didn’t change his grip on the Thompson, but he turned his head sideways to spot the elder enforcer.
“Jammed,” wished Enzu Guerra, and he threw a punch into Cecil’s temple with all of his weight behind it, following through. Cecil’s head whipped about half a foot, jaw slacked by momentum. Yet somehow, in that instant, Cecil got his finger into the trigger guard before he blacked out. Click.
“Fuck!” the Baron cursed at the sound, even as Cecil toppled over sideways onto the carpet, completely unconscious for a full second or two. “Holy shit, Enzu!”
“He ain’t dead,” Enzu declared.
Immediately, Cecil regained consciousness, groaning loudly. A hand reached out, grabbed the jammed Thompson, and cradled it to his chest like a teddy bear as he struggled to recover. “What the fuck, man!” he yelled, blinking rapidly.
Enzu took one step forward, shouting, “Stay down! Don’t squeal!”
Cecil flipped him the bird. “Fuck you, man!”
“You crossing me?”
“No, but—”
“I was with Murder Inc!”
Cecil raised a hand in surrender. “I ain’t! I ain’t crossin’! You just… you fuckin’ punched me!”
“You‘re damn right, you aren’t crossing me!” Enzu snapped his fingers, then waved the Baron off like someone dismissing an errand boy. “End of the hall, to the left. Office is open. Take the window. And if Schuler finds you, tell him I sent you. Maybe he’ll fuck off for a friend.”
The Baron looked down at Cecil, rubbing the side of his head. “What about him?”
Enzu shrugged. “You spared me, so I’ll spare him. So shines a good deed, yeah?”
“Yeah. In a weary world.”
“Good,” Enzu said. “Cecil won’t say shit, so run, gods damnit.” He pointed towards the empty side hall, with all its closed doors and unknown threats, all the terrors of a potential battlefield. “Before ol’ Schuler gets here! Run!”
The Baron nodded, pivoted around the corner, and sprinted down the empty hall. CPUSA was still out there, in the building and beyond. Schuler would surely find him, and the Zombie might not catch up in time. Yet the Baron must try. He must run.
Enzu agreed, shouting with all of his heart, “Run like the world is coming to an end!”
Author’s Note:
I love this arc!
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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