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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