The radio alarm clock in the safehouse buzzed at 4AM. The Baron was already up, but Marco and Phyllis were still asleep, even after ten hours of uninterrupted rest.
Last night, conversation had been kept to a minimum, and dinner had been a miserable affair of cold canned goods. No plans had been broached, nothing discussed. While the CIA bugs hidden in the room could only take recordings, they hadn’t risked any information leaks. Heckhaus was permitting them a lot of freedom, and if the Cat appeared on record, Langley would mobilize long before the Baron was ready to deliver the artifact to Denisov.
Suffused with the fog of exhaustion, they’d turned in early.
But before succumbing to sleep, the Baron had thought a little about Elizabeth, the Apostate. What was she doing with eternity? Did she risk losing it for a cause, like the Baron did? Was she still a practicing cultist somewhere outside of the West, thriving in the wider world? Or did she persist in some secular role, biding her time until she could re-emerge under a new name?
Questions had fluttered around his head like black moths. Did she want to meet him, just on principle? Was she curious about the Zombie? Did she dream of the true nature of the gods? In private places, did the gods’ secrets make her smile or bring her to tears? Did the knowledge bring her purpose or rob reality of any meaning? Could she tell him why she’d kept the secret? Was it selfishness and safety that motivated her, or had the knowledge been too destructive for mankind to accept? Had the knowledge threatened something more fundamental about prestige, or about reality itself?
Such questions had soon died for a lack of answers. Then nature had taken its natural course, and the Baron had slept.
Awake again, he rolled off his cot, turned on the closest lamp, and shut off the alarm clock. There was only one thing on his mind after almost eleven hours in a storage room underground. He needed to use the restroom terribly, and while there was a bucket and toilet paper in the safehouse, Marco had protested against their use. Thus, they’d all waited.
“I’m awake,” Phyllis declared.
“Me too,” Marco echoed.
The Baron was pulling on his socks and tying his shoes. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Phyllis was sore and slow, but she rose inexorably like Frankenstein’s monster revived. “I need to pee,” she complained. “Marco, hurry up. I can’t hold it in any longer.”
Marco raised one arm and winced. “Oh Christ. That hurts.”
“What hurts?” The Baron pushed off his cot and wandered over to the teen. In the Baron’s experience, impact injuries caused a great deal of soft tissue damage, and severe inflammation was often delayed by at least a few hours. By now, Marco ought to be suffering the full effects of the car crash—anything and everything that the Cat hadn’t fixed.
“My ribs. My left shoulder.” He tried to bend a leg. A sharp breath. “My knees.”
“Not your back?”
“I don’t think so. My neck is really stiff.”
“Were you hit on your side?”
“My left side.”
Phyllis sorted over a shelf and pulled a couple of pill bottles. “Give him some Saridon?”
“Yes.” The Cat would’ve handled any dangerous internal hemorrhaging already. An A.P.C. painkiller might help him walk under these conditions.
“Are you up?” a man shouted through the safehouse door.
The Baron felt a spike of panic, then a delayed recognition. “Zombie?” he shouted back.
Phyllis gave Marco a couple of pills. “Swallow these.”
d’Holbach turned the knob by the dim light of a single lamp, and the press-button lock popped open. The Zombie was standing outside in the gloom, wearing a royal purple cardigan and other finery. “Good morning, friend,” the Baron said. “Been waiting long?”
“Only about five hours.” The Zombie glanced into the safehouse. “All persons accounted for? Heckhaus sent me this way last night.”
The Baron raised a hand for silence. “Can’t talk here. Heckhaus arrived before us.”
The Zombie grinned and gave him a big thumbs up.
Phyllis lifted Marco up into a sitting position with his right hand. Marco made a pained squealing sound.
The Zombie’s face was a question.
The Baron answered, “Car.”
“Not gooshed?” the Zombie asked pleasantly.
“Not gooshed,” the Baron agreed.
The Zombie sniffed the air. “You haven’t used the restroom in here?”
“Don’t be a creep,” Phyllis said from within the room.
“You expected that?” the Baron asked his friend.
The Zombie smirked. “How many times have you and I been forced to lay low?”
The Baron looked back at the Artemisian. “You learn to ignore the smell.”
“It was the Napoleonic Wars!” the Zombie said cheerily.
“We need to use the restroom,” the Baron said.
The Zombie peered out into the dark tunnel beyond the safehouse. “Then let’s get going. I learned some things last night. Details later.”
The Baron called to Marco. “Can you stand?”
Marco wobbled up onto his legs, hand on Phyllis’s shoulder. “Yeah.” But he wasn’t spry. He was stiff and awkward on his feet, and his tentative first steps were slow and pained. He stumbled over to the Baron and laid his arm over the philosopher’s shoulders.
Phyllis quickly folded up the cots and bedspreads and collected their garbage in a paper bag—crusted tins and bloodstained shirts and jackets. The night before, they’d found a four-pack of white cotton t-shirts along with a first aid kit and medical supplies, and they’d changed into them. The Baron fit into his tee snugly; Marco and Phyllis were draped in their own. The Baron felt especially undignified now, having no opportunities to shave his face or scalp. He’d look more like a muscled dock worker than a noble.
“Ready? Lights out.” Phyllis raised the switch and cut the circuit to the safehouse. Everything plunged into darkness, the kind that excites the eye with a lack of stimulus, filling one’s visual field with purpling afterimages and noisy textures.
They shut the door behind them, and with their hands on the wall, they felt their way through the darkness back to a short tunnel, which led to the train platform. The last maintenance door opened out onto a stretch of darkness reflecting the slightest tint of green. The signal light lay beyond.
“What if we’d been locked in by the CIA?” Marco asked.
“There are plenty of tunnels we could take,” Phyllis said.
“Why bother?” the Zombie asked. “I’d just kick the door down.”
They reached the platform only a handful of minutes past 4AM. Nobody was around to notice them sneaking through the maintenance gate, and the last overnight train had already passed according to the schedules spread on the walls. Until the 5AM business crowd arrived, it was briefly an empty space. Phyllis trashed the cans and clothes, and they climbed out of the station. Unfortunately, there weren’t any restrooms installed at Canal and Braodway.
“Are we good to talk?” the Zombie asked. Overhead, the clouds from last night’s cold front were breaking up, and the brightest stars were visible in the gaps, just a few dotted here or there. The moon was down and only street lights were shining. A few cars slipped past, tires hissing against pavement, headlights bright and shied away from.
“Yes, but we need to hurry and get back off the street,” the Baron said.
“You have no idea.” The Zombie looked around, but there were no pedestrians standing at watch yet. “By dawn, I’m betting every station will have a New York cultist guarding it.”
“There should be a few bakeries just north of here on Broadway,” Phyllis said. “One or two will be open this early. We can buy something and use the facilities.”
When they reached the nearest open bakery, the teenager was ready to stop. It was almost four-thirty by the Baron’s watch, and the shop was unlocking doors to serve muffins and scones with butter and jelly. They greeted the middle-aged owner and his sons, then sat down at a table and drank cold water and ate a hot breakfast while they took turns using the toilet.
“You a family?” the owner asked Phyllis after she returned.
“Co-workers,” Phyllis explained, “It’ll be a long day.”
“Can’t say I approve,” the owner said idly, “now that the war is over.”
So he didn’t approve of a woman co-worker. Phyllis didn’t argue with it. When that kind of judgement was considered idle chatter, what could she say without starting a fight?
“She’s my boss,” the Baron said, needling the baker. “Pays an honest wage.”
The Zombie chuckled. “Got to make money somehow,” he muttered.
The baker frowned, clearly offended but unable to pinpoint exactly what had been said to insult him. He left the table without another word, and they finished eating in peace. After everyone had relieved themselves, eaten a meal, and drank water, the Baron paid and tipped heavily with some coins, and they returned to the night-shaded streets.
“Where to now?” asked Phyllis.
“We need to review the situation,” the Zombie said.
“Foley Square is just a few blocks from here,” Phyllis suggested. “If there are a lot of spotters at the subway stations, we’ll be safer there on the benches. At least until sunrise.”
Foley Square’s central plaza was sparsely lit before dawn, but the edges were flooded with streetlights and high mounted lamps. They sat on benches circling the shallows of a former fountain. Some years before, that spot had been occupied with marble walls and copper statues, dribbling water like piss. The depression in the concrete suggested plans to install another fountain, if social and economic conditions finally turned in Foley Square’s favor.
Public works had recently ground to a halt there. The endowments and funds that filled public spaces with art were avoiding this park, avoiding the protests that’d haunted the trial on its periphery. This was in some sense the civic center of Manhattan, and Foley Square’s borders were defined by its municipal and federal buildings. They were towers of pale grey stone dressed with colonnades and entablatures, wrapped with fancy cornices and rakes, altogether dressed in the stereotypical costumes of Roman and Grecian temples.
To one side, the United States District Courthouse; to the other, the New York County Courthouse. Across the way, the New York Municipal Building. Most notoriously, at their back stood the Foley Square Courthouse, where the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York was held and the Foley Square Trial was conducted.
The lights were brightest there, beams crossing like interlocking fields of fire, casting kill zones onto the plaza ground. If guards had manned the gaps between the columns, rifles laid against their shoulders in silent threat, nobody would’ve questioned the image.
The central tower of the Courthouse rose over its surroundings like a standing castle, and its broad base imposed itself on the urban landscape like earthworks, covering more ground than any other building in the square. This was the court where an FBI case five years in the making had ended with the successful prosecution of twelve CPUSA leaders.
It’d been the longest federal court case in the history of the United States, starting in November of 1948 and continuing until October of 1949. The CPUSA leadership had been secular to the man; only a small portion of it had even been in direct contact with members of the Soviet Union. Most occult infiltration and KGB training had happened at lower levels within the party, where small time workers could be easily placed in war-critical industries and slipped the prestige to covertly sabotage industrial equipment and supplies.
Thus, the Baron had considered this trial ironically ineffective. The leaders under indictment were on record, favoring peaceful transitions to socialism, but they were charged under the Smith Act for “advocating the violent overthrow of the government.” Meanwhile, the actual fifth column threat had been armed and readied without interruption, mostly through the vehicles of existing criminal enterprises and small-time radical advocacy groups.
Three years had passed since the initial trials and its massive picketed protests, those thrumming thousands in the square. The foregone conclusion was to convict the CPUSA defendants, and the convictions were held up as constitutional in every court of appeals, including the Supreme Court of the United States. After that, many CPUSA chapters had dissolved and destroyed their membership rosters in order to avoid prosecution on a state-by-state basis, and the occult fifth column had scattered to the winds. Without a path for Soviet funding and support, it’d been the natural course.
Yet today, that column was easily pressed back into service because of these federal buildings and courtrooms. The greatest threat to rank-and-file CPUSA mercs wasn’t KGB blackmail; it was the raw, endless pressure of American authority, which brought its weight to bear to smother and suffocate communism and socialism in all its forms. They fought like mad zealots because they were afraid of being outed to their own nation.
This was the Cold War after all, and everyone knew the stakes were bigger than the planet itself. This was a pivot point for futurity; only one superpower could become a global hegemon, not both, and only if the whole thing weren’t put to the fire and scattered like ash.
The Baron rested upon the benches between Phyllis and Marco, and together, they listened to the Zombie, who laid out the details as he knew them.
Denisov was leaving through LaGuardia airport, so they’d have to reach him by 5PM that day, or they’d have to give up entirely. A little more than twelve hours remained until the deadline. Meanwhile, New York would be searching with overwhelming force. The violence and death surrounding the Baron had passed a critical threshold, and Schuler was being deployed to bring them back to Tammany. If they were caught as a group, Phyllis’s and Marco’s fates would be short, nasty, and brutish.
Two bullets would be spent, but there’d be only one body for the Cosa Nostra to bury. If Marco still had enough lives remaining, they’d know that he held the Cat, and they’d take him back to Tammany before killing him again and again. His corpse would cough up the ikon.
“We could flee,” Phyllis suggested. “There’s still time to get out of the city.”
“I’m not sure it’s worth risking it,” the Baron said. “We wouldn’t just evade New York. We’d piss off Heckhaus, giving up any chance at getting the cat to Denisov. Langley would probably start a secular manhunt, and they’d have enough firepower and organization to catch us. Once in custody, they’d gut Marco and lock the rest of us up for years.”
Marco squinted in fear. “We couldn’t dodge them like we did yesterday?”
“They’d siege any temple until you starved,” the Zombie said.
“You’re injured as well,” the Baron said. “It’ll be hard for you to run.”
“I still have a few lives left,” Marco said.
“How many?” The Baron counted them off on his fingers. “At minimum, you’ve been shot in the back, poisoned, and maybe asphyxiated on top of those two deaths. Then you were killed twice on the train, and one of those shots pulped a kidney. Egregious wounds can take multiple lives to heal. Say it healed the initial wound, the ruined organ, and the exit wound separately. It’s possible. Finally, you were hit by a car, and I honestly couldn’t tell if you died there. That’s between four and eight deaths by my count.” He folded and unfolded fingers uncertainly. “You have between six and two lives left, so the Cat might only save you once more. We just don’t know, and frankly, I don’t want to find out. I want to finish this without risking your life.”
“Is there a way to figure out the count?” Phyllis asked.
“No. The artifact was designed when you could just wish to know,” the Baron replied.
“I ain’t that hurt,” Marco said. “I ain’t crippled.”
“Yesterday was just CPUSA irregular forces,” the Baron said. “Today it’s Schuler and the New York cult that’ll come for us, and you’ve already died this many times. We have to cut you out of the equation, literally. Your life depends upon it.”
“So what? Do we go to this Russian guy right now?” Marco asked.
“Mm. No. The Zombie saw Russian special forces napping in the Secretariat building, and I can guarantee we’re not the only people who know about them. From a secular perspective, there’s already a minor crisis at hand, and the US government will be prepared to start—or end—an international incident at the drop of a hat. We couldn’t get close to the UN without tripping over their surveillance, and frankly I don’t want to show up in their reports. One mistake, and we could end up on a most wanted list for decades. The Zombie and I would have to flee the country.”
“Excuses,” Phyllis muttered.
“I’m just thinking about the facts. That’s all. They’re sending Schuler out to find me. Do you understand how bad that is? There’s no greater threat in the New York arsenal.”
“I was there,” Phyllis said gruffly. “I saw his bullshit.”
The Baron rubbed his palms together in the cold air. “If he even drives by, say a mile or so away, he’ll find us, and he’ll know the Cat is here.”
“Do you really believe in that awareness story?” Phyllis asked.
“I’ve seen it with two other Diviners,” the Baron said. “On the island of St. Helena. Kaiser Abbas used to tell everyone that the Zombie burned like a torch in the dark. He was aware of everything, just a little bit, but he was intensely aware of occult activity, and the Zombie was one constant miracle.”
“There were party tricks.” The Zombie grinned, eyes glassy and nostalgic. “I’d stand outside and he’d tell everyone which direction I was in, which hand I was holding up, and how many fingers I was showing. He was never wrong.”
“Napoleon thought the whole thing was a gag, a circus illusion.” The Baron shrugged. “It was proof for us. Kaiser Abbas was tapping into some kind of divine awareness.”
“You’re acting like we’ve already lost,” Phyllis said. “Schuler is just one man.”
“We haven’t lost, but we have to make realistic plans. Soon, New York is going to capture us. There’ll be nowhere to run to, and they’ve got the living occult equivalent of a mine detector. In our current state, we can’t stand up to them without risking your lives.”
“I can handle the risk,” Marco said.
Phyllis nudged the Baron with an elbow. “Stop dooming and just give us some gods-damned decisions. Or ask me to plan. Something other than worrying, please.”
“Fine. It may be time to go back to our original plan,” the Baron said.
“What’s that?”
“The Zombie and I take care of this alone.”
Phyllis gawked. “Do you remember the reason I came along?”
“I do,” the Baron said.
“You said I’d be safer following both of you around.”
“That was true yesterday.”
“What’s changed?” Phyllis got up off the bench and stood in front of the men. “Tell me, what’s different now, that you think it’s better for two instead of four to take on the world’s largest cult?” The Baron looked up at her in silence. “Don’t tell me it’s about stealth. That’s bullshit. Radio drama bullshit, and I know you’re thinking about it.”
He had been thinking about it, but it wasn’t the main reason. “I said you’d be a valuable target for CPUSA, and that’s not going to change until we’re done.”
“Then why go alone?”
“What’s changed is why you’re valuable.”
“What’s changed is your attitude!”
“Yes!” the Baron cried. “It’s true, and that’s the point. Yesterday, I thought we were going to win. Today, I think we’re going to lose, but only this battle, not the war. What the Zombie and I have that you don’t is privilege. You said it yourself yesterday. He’s invincible, and I’m protected by a death pact. More than any other cult, New York will respect that—but strictly!”
“Only the Baron is protected,” the Zombie said.
“Exactly, and I can’t extend the privilege. They’ll kill you without hesitation.”
“You wouldn’t try to save our lives?” Phyllis asked darkly.
“That’s not what I mean. The Pact is enforceable because it’s specific. It’s a compromise that nobody can deny because it’s absolute and clear. I don’t want you or Marco to die. If we’re captured as a group, they’ll use you both as leverage against our privilege. Alone, we can push back. With either of you around, we’ll have to listen to their demands. That, or they’ll take your lives.“
Phyllis huffed. Her silvered hair was blowing in her face, but she hadn’t kept any supplies in the safehouse to pin or shape it. She ignored a lock whipping along her nose and stared the Baron down. He looked back, capable as always of accepting silence without anxiety or fear. “You don’t look old,” she said harshly, “you look like a young idiot.”
The Baron ran his fingers over the stubble on his scalp. “I sometimes do.”
“Always,” the Zombie said lightly.
Their eyes remained locked until Phyllis snorted and suppressed a chuckle. “Did you practice staring with the Zombie?”
The Baron blinked when she called him out, and he finally broke his gaze away from hers, looking down at his feet instead. “Actually, yes,” he answered, after a moment of uncharacteristic embarrassment.
“That’s what he did,” the Zombie said. “We argued a lot in our early days.”
What the Zombie didn’t say was, he’d killed a lot of people back in Europe—more than the Baron had ever wanted to admit or acknowledge. It’d taken everything d’Holbach could muster to stare down his savior repeatedly and demand that he stop murdering for his sake. Often, the Zombie had said nothing, simply becoming angry and destructive. The only way the Baron could win those silent struggles was by failing to react, by refusing to budge. He’d once practiced his poker face on an invincible man tearing down the walls of a log cabin.
Marco spoke up. “So I can’t help you anymore?”
The Baron turned to the young man next to him. “You’ve already taken bullets for me.” He gave Marco’s shoulder a squeeze. “Not anyone could just do that, and I mean it. You’ve pushed through the pain of death by force of will. You’ve got willpower!”
“Yeah,” Marco said, his tone flat and unconvincing.
“No, really. You made a wish to dodge because you pushed your dead body to move. You endured the Cat o’ Nine Lives, and I was free to act. It’s never easy to admit, but I don’t think this would’ve played out nearly this well without your assistance.” The Baron looked up at Phyllis. “We’re running out of time though, and we have to adapt.”
“What’s the new plan then?” Phyllis asked. “Not just you—what should I do? What does Marco do? We can’t just walk away, not if we’re as important as you say.”
“You can’t,” the Baron agreed, “but we don’t have to wait around to be captured. We can dictate the location, the conditions—we can direct their attention wherever we choose.”
“What—we can lose in a controlled manner?” Phyllis speculated.
“Exactly. Lose the battle, win the war,” the Baron said. “There are only two crucial steps, really. We need someone to remove the Cat from Marco in a controlled setting. We need him healed and ready to go. Then the second step is for the Zombie to draw attention to the Cat.”
“All eyes on you?” Phyllis asked the Zombie.
The Zombie grinned. “I can protect anything.” He wiggled his fingers by the dim light of the street lamps. “Invincible hands.”
The Baron finished his argument to Phyllis: “Once New York is aware that I have the Cat, they won’t care about you or Marco. You could sneak him out, get him to his mother, and get them on the road. His life would be saved.”
“I’m not leaving the city,” Phyllis said.
The Baron raised his hands, then let them fall to his sides. This wasn’t an argument he could win, and even though he wanted her to flee the state rather than return to New York territory, his head overruled his heart. She’d survived a long time alone. She wouldn’t be doomed just because she stayed in the city. “Fine. Once Marco is with his mother, you can do what you want. I wouldn’t refuse your help, and I trust you to be careful.”
Phyllis finally smiled. “So you’ve squelched your pride.”
“This wasn’t about pride.”
She shook her head. “Don’t argue about it. You’ve reasoned it out haven’t you.”
“I have. If anyone can help, you can, and you’re a survivor.”
“But you’re unhappy.”
“I am.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Why’s that?”
“This is what the Apostate would’ve wanted her cultists to do.”
“Her book doesn’t ask you to risk your life.”
“It doesn’t have to. I wouldn’t be a cultist if I wasn’t willing to risk it.”
The Baron felt a little weight lift off his brow. “Yeah. Elizabeth didn’t really define the purpose of the Cult of Artemis. I think she just wanted to make a little space for women.”
“Well, this is what I’m doing with my space. For the world, and for the principle of the thing.” She rubbed her nose. “To avoid nuclear fire.”
Marco nodded very slowly. “I just want Malik to die.”
“Then I think we have a plan to make a plan,” the Zombie said. “Baron?”
The Baron sighed. “Fine.” And for the next fifteen minutes, they sat together, hashing out the steps between here and Marco’s survival, between this moment and the hopeful delivery of the Cat to Denisov’s hands, between events beginning today and a long future.
Author’s Note:
Went up on an off day due to a bonus chapter over on RR. Thanks for reading! <3
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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