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dochermesRESURRECTION EMPIRE III - Life In the Morgue
(2/21/2015)
I.
The explosion that destroyed the foyer happened just after noon.
Jocelyn Garimara had been alone in the office, just sitting on the couch and mulling over recent developments. Some of the team were catching up on sleep, some were in the conference room on the second floor discussing the campaign against the Resurrector's zombie empire, but she had felt the need to get away for a few minutes. It annoyed her more than she expected to find that Galvan and Demrak Jin were sleeping together. She didn't feel hurt, exactly... there had been nothing between her and Galvan but two sexual experiences which had certainly been fun but which had contained no emotional content. She did feel unreasonably irritated that he and Jin were so blatant about their liaison, perhaps. It seemed crass.
Standing up, she began to pace. At just thirty, Jocelyn was a thin woman not much over five feet tall. She had the rich dark skin of her tribe, the thick straight hair and distinctive Aborigine facial bone structure, but she had lost her accent over a lifetime of travel. To be honest, she felt as alienated from her own people as she felt ill at ease here in Manhattan living with Americans. Ever since the Red Spectre had manifested from her body at puberty, Jocelyn had not felt she belonged anywhere. At least here she had purpose.
The front doorbell rang, which gave her a start. Then she smiled at her jumpiness. Jocelyn strode quickly out of the office and across the hall to the inner front door. There was a wooden panel set in the wall at face height, which she slid open to reveal a monitor screen and bank of controls. Pressing the button for the outside speaker, she said in as pleasant a voice as she could muster, "Just a minute, I'll be right with you." As she spoke, the monitor lit up to reveal what the outside camera showed.
A spare, almost frail blond man in his mid-seventies was leaning on a cane. He held a briefcase in one hand and was peering up at the camera lens in a distracted way. Jocelyn had only met Bleak once before, and then only for a few minutes, but she recognized him immediately. A major fighter in the Midnight War himself a generation earlier, he had long been the most reliable source of information on new menaces and developments that the KDF had. Bleak seemed to have contacts everywhere from offices in City Hall to the most secretive mystic cults in the metropolitan area.
"Hi, Bleak," she said and unlocked the outer door to admit him into the foyer while security checked him out. That area was just big enough for two or three people to stand in at the same time, and it had contained just a bench, a shelf with a lamp, and an oil portrait of Kenneth Dred on the wall for decades now.
As the advanced Trom sensors analyzed Bleak more thoroughly than the best MRI would, Jocelyn frowned. He seemed so listless, so disinterested. Odd that he hadn't spoken. Maybe it was just advancing years. Then she glanced over at the green readout figures on the monitor screen. Positive ID for Henry Wilson Cross AKA 'Bleak,' seventy-four years old, five feet nine, one hundred and sixty pounds. Body temperature fifty-three Fahrenheit, heartbeat four per minute, respiration six breaths per minute, blood pressure no reading...
Jocelyn punched the red alert button on the control panel and a klaxon sounded throughout the building. Through the PA system, she began, "Sable! Get down here-" but that was as far as she got before the blast knocked her down.
The next few minutes were a dazed blur. Someone was helping her up. Acrid stinging smoke in the air was being rapidly cleared out by the purifiers. Jocelyn got up on her feet, bracing herself and feeling her head ring. The inner door bulged in the center but it had held. Some of the mahogany paneling had come off the walls facing the foyer to reveal steel plates beneath.
Sable was suddenly in front of her, peering anxiously into her eyes. "Jocelyn, can you hear me? Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous?"
"Oh.. no, captain. I think I'm all right. More surprised than anything else."
"Your heartbeat is solid. Pulse elevated, but that's to be expected." Sable was using her enhanced perception for diagnosis. "Close one eye for a few seconds. Now open it, good. Your pupils are reacting normally."
"I don't feel harmed at all, captain," the Australian woman interrupted. "Listen! That was Bleak out there. You know, Bleak.. Jeremy's friend, our investigator. And he was a zombie."
"Really. Bleak? Oh, this is bad." Sable spoke over Jocelyn's shoulder. "Josef, go out the back and circle around. The police and probably an ambulance will be out there in a few minutes. Don't volunteer information except the obvious that someone set off a bomb in our lobby."
"I'm on it," answered the Blind Archer.
Jocelyn felt someone turning her. Unicorn had brought a chair from the office and was gently urging her to sit. Suddenly aware that her knees were in fact a bit wobbly, she complied. Unicorn was a pretty platinum-blonde the same height and build as Jocelyn, and she had sometimes joked that the two of them looked like a yin-yang symbol when they stood together.
"Thanks, Ashley," she said, taking a deep slow breath to calm down. "Sable, I suppose it's obvious that this is the Resurrector striking back at us? We took down some of his operations, that fast house in Corona and the undead farm in Pennsylvania. So he killed Bleak and immediately.. well, revived him and sent him here."
"Yes. That's clear." Lauren Sable Reilly finally seemed satisfied that Jocelyn was not in immediate danger and stepped back. She was a few years older than the other teammates, very serious and disciplined at the best of times and now her demeanour seemed more intense than ever. "I don't think he expected to kill any of us. This was a warning."
"Some warning," Ashley Whitaker muttered. She was standing behind Jocelyn with a reassuring hand on each of the seated woman's shoulders. "Someone has to call Jeremy about Bleak," the Unicorn added. "Not that I want to do it. It's gonna be tough. They knew each other for ages. This is going to hurt Jeremy really bad."
"To be honest," Sable replied, "I have not been able to reach him. He hasn't been at the Dire Wolf agency for a week, and he's not at his apartment on 44th Street. Knowing Jeremy Bane, he could be anywhere in the world or in any of the adjacent realms."
"You'd think he'd let us know where he is, just in case," Unicorn grumbled.
"Well, we're not going to get anything done today against the enemy. The CSI team will be taking the lobby apart." Sable made a disgusted noise and turned to look at the ruined wall behind her. "Poor Bleak. We'll be answering questions about him all day and I know he would have hated that."
II.
On a bare porcelain table in the morgue beneath the Abernethy Medical Research facility, a small gaunt figure sat upright and swung his legs over the side to stand up. Neatly dressed in charcoal grey slacks and a long-sleeved white dress shirt with a lab smock over it, Wesley Gorsline was not an intimidating sight. Well under average height, narrow-shouldered, with small hands and feet, he had a meek studious face under a mop of cornsilk-colored hair. At first, he looked like a student still in his twenties but, when seen under bright light, his face showed a layer of shallow fine-textured wrinkles that revealed his true nature.
His assistant Marlena had been standing motionless at the foot of the table, waiting for him to rouse. Since his resurrection a century earlier, Gorsline never slept in any real sense but every few days he did go into a torpor where he lay unresponsive and seemingly was actually dead again. Perhaps this was when his mind rested and got in some dreams to clear away unneeded memories.
"Master," she said in her subdued tone, "You could rest in luxury. You have great wealth. I do not understand why you insist on remaining here so much of your time."
The Resurrector tugged down his smock and adjusted his shirt collar. Three of the walls were taken up by drawers which slid out on rollers to reveal their occupants. The fourth had been made into a sort of office, with a filing cabinet, desktop computer and two landline phones. The desk itself was covered with loose papers, manila folders and a few medical reference books. Gorsline's gaze swept over the chilly room and he came as close to smiling as he ever did.
"Life in the morgue is the proper way for me," he told his assistant. "It keeps me from forgetting what I am... it reminds me of my state."
Marlena took a second to respond. She had been a good-looking woman about thirty, tall and busty with long dark brown hair, when he had murdered her and then waited six minutes to revive her with his reagent. Over the decades, he had learned how much brain damage occurred depending on how long he waited before reviving his subjects. At six minutes, there was some memory loss and a pliable personality that responded to orders; after that, the subjects quickly became little more than flesh automatons who could follow simple routines but no more than that.
After turning his statement over in her foggy mind, Marlena nodded. "As you wish, Master. We have reports from your agents in Manhattan. The one called Bleak delivered the explosive device as intended. From what our observers saw, he was destroyed but none of the enemy were hurt. The police have spent hours on the scene."
The Resurrector went over to his desk, picked up a clipboard and skimmed through the papers attached. "This is just the beginning. I know it must be the Kenneth Dred Foundation who destroyed my brothel in Queens and my barracks of hit men for hire. They also rendered useless over a hundred new subjects still settling in the Pennsylvania farm. These are serious blows, Marlena. Now I will dispatch more bombers and snipers from rooftops. People coming to them for help will actually be my subjects with poison in hand. Some I will revive as soon as they die to be my slaves."
There was no anger in his voice. After a century of mass murder and fighting with law enforcement, most emotion had left Gorsline's personality. He might have been discussing plans to go shopping for new clothes. The Resurrector swayed for a second, seeming to be a bit unsteady on his feet before he caught himself.
"Master, are you well?"
"Do not worry, Marlena. I just need more of the reagent. The effects do wear off in time. Let us check with Dr Scafidi." With that, he opened the thick door of the morgue and stepped out onto a walkway that overlooked a lab below them. The tubing of colored liquids flowing from one container to another, the retorts of bubbling fluids over bunsen burners, the bulky electronic consoles all seemed old-fashioned and not up to current technology but it was what worked for him. Just as important was the shelf holding massive ancient leather-bound books, a row of labeled human skulls on a counter, niches and cubbyholes containing dozens of jars of varied-colored powders and decanters of neon-yellow liquids. For it was Alchemy more than science which brought the dead back to their different semblances of life.
In the center of the lab stood a plexiglass cylinder that reached to chest height. Through its clear sides could be seen gallons of the fluorescent yellow fluid. A dozen tubes and pipes ran into the cylinder, three gauges on its lid showed pressure and temperature and acidity.
Standing on duty by the cylinder was a man about six feet tall, lean in one of the smocks. His head was shaven. When he glanced up at the appearance of Gorsline, the man's face was revealed to have been half destroyed at some point. Much of the left side and half the jaw had patched up with the flesh-colored putty Gorsline used. One eye was covered with the substance, the remaining one was dark brown and watchful.
"Dr Scafidi? I trust everything is going well," the Resurrector called down.
The figure in the smock inclined his head in almost a bow, then returned to watching the gauges.
"Twenty degrees Celsius, no higher!" Gorsline yelled. "Everything depends on that reagent being ready within twenty-four hours." After Scafidi made another respectful head bob, Gorsline turned to the waiting Marlena. "I have tried to find a way to produce the reagent more quickly and with less exotic ingredients. But no luck. If only my old teacher Vitarius was still available..."
There was no use waiting for a comment from Marlena, the Resurrector had realized. Her damaged brain did not function quite well enough to produce original thoughts without a long period of preparation. He started around the walkway to another room with a door that had a frosted glass panel which read RECORDS, and he put his hand upon the knob for a second but then moved on to a stairwell leading up to ground level.
He paused with one foot on the lowermost step. "None of the Living have been down here?"
"No, Master. The regular staff is too terrified to enter your domain."
"Excellent," he said. "Working for the John Grim Institute, they are already used to keeping secrets and ignoring uncomfortable truths. Come with me. I must confer with the Director of this facility. There are other projects under way."
He started up the stairs and Marlena stayed close behind him, one undead creature following another.
III.
Well after six o'clock, the last of the CSI vans pulled away. Lt Montez finally got in his own car and left, with an armful of signed notarized statements from all the KDF members present. The sidewalk had been cleared of broken glass and wood panels were nailed over the two shattered windows, with the street door replaced and locked. Emotionally drained, everyone gathered at the long oak table in the second floor conference room. As they took their seats, Demrak Jin and Galvan entered the room last, with the Gelydra woman hanging on the big Melgar's arm and pressing her head against his shoulder.
"You two need to knock that stuff off!" Haley Lawson snapped. "Today is not a day for mushy googie-eyes."
"Settle down, everyone," said Sable at the head of the table. "We're all tired and upset. Let's get our bearings."
As she spoke, Megan Salenger appeared in the doorway with the seldom-used serving cart. Its wide top was covered with the white cardboard containers that meant Chinese take-out. On the shelf beneath that was a stack of plates, silverware and a mug holding a dozen chopsticks. Everyone sat up straighter at the tempting aromas.
"I know no one has eaten today," Sable said. "I want everyone to start digging in. I've ordered everything from lemon chicken to Mu Shu pork. It's from our favorite place, Wok and Roll on Third Avenue."
The Trom Girl started passing out containers according to requests, the members chatting among themselves with fresh enthusiasm. "Just so no one is worried," she announced, "I have spent the past ten minutes scanning this food with sensors down to the molecular level. It contains no foreign contaminants.. well, no more than take-out food normally does. I mean it has not been poisoned."
"That's a smart precaution," Unicorn commented incoherently through a full mouthful of beef fried rice. "Excuse me," she added after she swallowed.
"Too right," added Jocelyn Garimara. "I was just thinking of grabbing some tucker."
Before she sat down herself, Megan added a steaming coffee pot, pitchers of ice tea and cold water to the serving cart and brought it over. Then she snatched the chow har kew for herself and dropped down into her chair.
The meal broke the tension that had been gathering between the over-tired KDF members. They began discussing the day's events in a much more positive mood.
"As interminable as everything seemed, I thought Montez actually sped things up for us," Josef Jubliec put in. "He could have brought a few of us to police headquarters as material witnesses for even more questioning. Deep down, he wants us to get started on this case."
"Oh, we WILL," said Jocelyn grimly. "That bomb could have easily killed me as well as poor Bleak. When I unleash the Red Spectre, my Gammon will tear the Resurrection Empire apart!"
In the captain's chair at the head of the table, Lauren Sable Reilly gazed sadly out over the nine unique individuals assembled before her. She unexpectedly stood up. "My friends and teammates, my brothers and sisters, I do not remember the last time we were all brought together at once. It is only a pity that it takes a tragedy and a menace like this to gather us."
No one spoke. Sable raised her coffee mug. "A toast, then. To the greatest gathering of heroes of our time. To the knights of Tel Shai, to the members of the Kenneth Dred Foundation, to all of us here. Long may we fight the good fight!"
Everyone cheered and several clinked glasses together with their neighbors. For a few minutes there was a low buzz of conversation, then Unicorn spoke up again, "I only wish Jeremy was here, too. No one has been able to reach him? I'm getting a little worried."
"It's not unusual with him, he's used to coming and going without telling anyone," Sable answered as she sat down again. "But seriously, if anyone can take care of himself, it's Jeremy Bane. Let's get back to the mission on hand. I have figured out four most likely places where the Resurrector would have his headquarters. Tonight we will divide into teams and investigate them simultaneously. Even the dead ends will lead to breaking up some of his rackets."
"I'm ready!" Jocelyn muttered, shoving her food aside.
"We'll finish eating and then take two hours for rest and to prepare for a full combat situation," Sable said. "I have a good feeling that tonight will mark the end of the Resurrector."
IV.
Returning to the morgue section of the facility, Gorsline read a few pages of the administration budget for his operation and then tucked it away under one arm. He was moving more slowly than before. Seeing two of his undead personal guards nearby, he waved them aside. "Go stand in a dark corner," he said, "Use up as little reagent as possible."
"Master..." began his assistant uncertainly. "I feel weak."
The Resurrector glanced at her with unconcealed annoyance. "I know, Marlena. It is bad judgement on my part. I have spread the supply of the serum too thin, over too many subjects. There is a danger of running out."
Standing at the top of the steps leading down to where the reagent was being prepared, the Resurrector called down, "Dr Scafidi! I trust everything is proceeding well?"
The grotesque figure in the lab smock, most of his face built up with the flesh-colored putty, bent from the waist in a bow and then nodded. He held up a thin hand in a reassuring gesture.
"Good, good. I expect it to congeal within two hours. There will be enough for everyone. Keep the temperature and pressure steady, doctor. I will be back." Gorsline turned away and headed for the door marked MORGUE. Behind him, Marlena followed and asked, "Will you rest until the reagent is ready, Master?"
"Yes. I think that would be wise. It will not be long now." He flicked on the blue overhead fluorescent lights to reveal the chilly quiet room. The Resurrector glanced over all the closed drawers in the walls. Those occupants had been dead too long to be revived as useful servants, he realized. They would have to be disposed of.
Dropping the administration reports on his desk, Gorsline went over and stretched out on the bare porcelain table which never held pillow or blankets. As he lowered his head, he sighed and closed his eyes. Marlena stood by.
"Life in the morgue," he said out loud. "Generations of men are born and die, yet I still lie here and persevere. Marlena, I-" His voice broke off.
"Master?"
"Something is wrong," Gorsline mumbled. "I can sense it. I don't know what it is..." He got shakily back up on his feet again and left the morgue with his undead assistant on his heels. Out on the walkway, he glared down at the cylinder where the reagent was being prepared but Dr Scafidi still stood there with one hand on the dials. The Resurrector swung around and faced the door which said RECORDS. Earlier that night, he had started to open that door and now he went ahead. He reached inside and flipped the lights on.
Lying in one corner, propped up against the wall, was the stiff cold body of Dr Walter Scafidi. The single brown eye was clouded. Wesley Gorsline staggered back as if he had been shot and only having Marlena right behind kept him from falling. "Scafidi...but..."
Wheeling about, the Resurrector strode from the room out onto the walkway and jabbing an accusing finger at the smocked figure by the reagent cylinder. "You!" he shrieked. "Who ARE you?!"
Looking up, the man reached up to painfully peel away the hardened putty from the lower part of his face. There was no scarring on that face. "I've got bad news for you, zombie kingpin!" he yelled. "This goop here has been boiling for hours and I poured in lots of coffee from the machine in the hall outside. It's ruined. Your reagent is worthless."
Gorsline screamed the hollow sepulachral scream of the damned. "What! Who are you? What have you done?"
By this point, the figure by the cylinder had bent his face to pop out a tinted contact lense and had scraped the rest of the putty off his skin. Two cold grey eyes in a narrow feral face glared up at the Resurrector in triumph. Even with his head shaven, there was no mistaking Jeremy Bane.
Rushing down the metal stairs toward the cylinder where the corrupted reagent was visibly bubbling, Wesley Gorsline charged at the Dire Wolf with both small fists clenched.
"Oh, don't tell me you're going to take a swing at me," Bane said. As the Resurrector came within reach, the Dire Wolf shot out a simple direct side kick to the chest that hurled Gorsline back in a loose tumble. If the man had not been undead and sustained by Alchemy, that impact alone would have killed him.
Shrugging out of the white lab smock and tossing it away, Bane walked closer. "I don't think you can have long before the last of the reagent wears off in your system, my friend. And all your zombie hit men and prostitutes and spies and thieves will soon drop where they stand as well. It was worth posing as your stooge the past forty-eight hours. The worst part was waiting until you left the building so I could use the bathroom."
Wriggling, unable to rise without help, the Resurrector could only manage to get into a seated position. "Bane! You.. bastard..!"
"The world will be a better place without you and your Resurrected Empire," the Dire Wolf said. "If I did nothing else in my life, this would justify my existence."
Marlena suddenly sagged to the floor up on the catwalk where she had remained. The last breath left her body in a rasp. Bane glanced up at her. "Poor woman. I know you killed her just so you could enslave her as an assistant. Sometimes I hope there really is a Hell after this life for people like you."
As Gorsline struggled ineffectually to rise, the Dire Wolf watched him without the slightest sympathy. Then an explosion detonated upon the catwalk and the steel door to the upper levels flew inward off its hinges. A dark red shape of crackling gralic force swooped in through the opening to circle the morgue area. Appearing in the forced-open doorway was Unicorn in a black field suit, half supporting the weakened Jocelyn Garimara.
The Red Spectre hovered over the scene for an instant. Its featureless dark head cocked to one side quizzically and then the apparition wheeled around to dive back into the body of its host. With the Gammon restored, Jocelyn stood up straight again.
"Well, hi you two," said Bane. "I didn't know you were working on this case as well."
Unicorn hurtled down the stairs and leaped forward to tackle him with a zeal that almost knocked the Dire Wolf down. She wrapped both her arms and legs around him so he supported her weight and she yelled, "You rat! I was so worried about you!"
"Good to see you again, Ashley," Bane answered as the little blonde hung on him. "Jocelyn, come over here too. Listen. I destroyed the serum that was keeping the zombies active. In the next hour or two, they will begin to collapse into true death."
The Australian gralist knelt for a moment beside Gorsline. "He's gone," she announced. "Just a regular corpse now and not a minute too soon."
"Captain... Jeremy... I'm afraid I have bad news," Ashley told him as she reluctantly disentangled herself. "I hate to be the one to tell you."
"About Bleak? It's okay. I overheard what happened when the Resurrector was on the phone with his agents." Bane shook his head. "There really hasn't been time to let it sink in. I know he had no family. We'll have to arrange services."
"I haven't said how glad I am to see you okay, as well," Jocelyn said. "I feel so relieved. It all worked out well. But I'm sorry about Bleak, too."
Bane reached out to squeeze her shoulder, a rare comforting gesture for him. "I hadn't told you guys before," he said in a strangely tight voice. "But Bleak told me once how proud he was of all you new Tel Shai knights. He said to me, 'You and me aren't going to be around forever. But I think we're leaving the Midnight War in good hands." At this, both Unicorn and Jocelyn rushed in to embrace him in relief and they stood huddled that way for a while.
(2/21/2015)
I.
The explosion that destroyed the foyer happened just after noon.
Jocelyn Garimara had been alone in the office, just sitting on the couch and mulling over recent developments. Some of the team were catching up on sleep, some were in the conference room on the second floor discussing the campaign against the Resurrector's zombie empire, but she had felt the need to get away for a few minutes. It annoyed her more than she expected to find that Galvan and Demrak Jin were sleeping together. She didn't feel hurt, exactly... there had been nothing between her and Galvan but two sexual experiences which had certainly been fun but which had contained no emotional content. She did feel unreasonably irritated that he and Jin were so blatant about their liaison, perhaps. It seemed crass.
Standing up, she began to pace. At just thirty, Jocelyn was a thin woman not much over five feet tall. She had the rich dark skin of her tribe, the thick straight hair and distinctive Aborigine facial bone structure, but she had lost her accent over a lifetime of travel. To be honest, she felt as alienated from her own people as she felt ill at ease here in Manhattan living with Americans. Ever since the Red Spectre had manifested from her body at puberty, Jocelyn had not felt she belonged anywhere. At least here she had purpose.
The front doorbell rang, which gave her a start. Then she smiled at her jumpiness. Jocelyn strode quickly out of the office and across the hall to the inner front door. There was a wooden panel set in the wall at face height, which she slid open to reveal a monitor screen and bank of controls. Pressing the button for the outside speaker, she said in as pleasant a voice as she could muster, "Just a minute, I'll be right with you." As she spoke, the monitor lit up to reveal what the outside camera showed.
A spare, almost frail blond man in his mid-seventies was leaning on a cane. He held a briefcase in one hand and was peering up at the camera lens in a distracted way. Jocelyn had only met Bleak once before, and then only for a few minutes, but she recognized him immediately. A major fighter in the Midnight War himself a generation earlier, he had long been the most reliable source of information on new menaces and developments that the KDF had. Bleak seemed to have contacts everywhere from offices in City Hall to the most secretive mystic cults in the metropolitan area.
"Hi, Bleak," she said and unlocked the outer door to admit him into the foyer while security checked him out. That area was just big enough for two or three people to stand in at the same time, and it had contained just a bench, a shelf with a lamp, and an oil portrait of Kenneth Dred on the wall for decades now.
As the advanced Trom sensors analyzed Bleak more thoroughly than the best MRI would, Jocelyn frowned. He seemed so listless, so disinterested. Odd that he hadn't spoken. Maybe it was just advancing years. Then she glanced over at the green readout figures on the monitor screen. Positive ID for Henry Wilson Cross AKA 'Bleak,' seventy-four years old, five feet nine, one hundred and sixty pounds. Body temperature fifty-three Fahrenheit, heartbeat four per minute, respiration six breaths per minute, blood pressure no reading...
Jocelyn punched the red alert button on the control panel and a klaxon sounded throughout the building. Through the PA system, she began, "Sable! Get down here-" but that was as far as she got before the blast knocked her down.
The next few minutes were a dazed blur. Someone was helping her up. Acrid stinging smoke in the air was being rapidly cleared out by the purifiers. Jocelyn got up on her feet, bracing herself and feeling her head ring. The inner door bulged in the center but it had held. Some of the mahogany paneling had come off the walls facing the foyer to reveal steel plates beneath.
Sable was suddenly in front of her, peering anxiously into her eyes. "Jocelyn, can you hear me? Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous?"
"Oh.. no, captain. I think I'm all right. More surprised than anything else."
"Your heartbeat is solid. Pulse elevated, but that's to be expected." Sable was using her enhanced perception for diagnosis. "Close one eye for a few seconds. Now open it, good. Your pupils are reacting normally."
"I don't feel harmed at all, captain," the Australian woman interrupted. "Listen! That was Bleak out there. You know, Bleak.. Jeremy's friend, our investigator. And he was a zombie."
"Really. Bleak? Oh, this is bad." Sable spoke over Jocelyn's shoulder. "Josef, go out the back and circle around. The police and probably an ambulance will be out there in a few minutes. Don't volunteer information except the obvious that someone set off a bomb in our lobby."
"I'm on it," answered the Blind Archer.
Jocelyn felt someone turning her. Unicorn had brought a chair from the office and was gently urging her to sit. Suddenly aware that her knees were in fact a bit wobbly, she complied. Unicorn was a pretty platinum-blonde the same height and build as Jocelyn, and she had sometimes joked that the two of them looked like a yin-yang symbol when they stood together.
"Thanks, Ashley," she said, taking a deep slow breath to calm down. "Sable, I suppose it's obvious that this is the Resurrector striking back at us? We took down some of his operations, that fast house in Corona and the undead farm in Pennsylvania. So he killed Bleak and immediately.. well, revived him and sent him here."
"Yes. That's clear." Lauren Sable Reilly finally seemed satisfied that Jocelyn was not in immediate danger and stepped back. She was a few years older than the other teammates, very serious and disciplined at the best of times and now her demeanour seemed more intense than ever. "I don't think he expected to kill any of us. This was a warning."
"Some warning," Ashley Whitaker muttered. She was standing behind Jocelyn with a reassuring hand on each of the seated woman's shoulders. "Someone has to call Jeremy about Bleak," the Unicorn added. "Not that I want to do it. It's gonna be tough. They knew each other for ages. This is going to hurt Jeremy really bad."
"To be honest," Sable replied, "I have not been able to reach him. He hasn't been at the Dire Wolf agency for a week, and he's not at his apartment on 44th Street. Knowing Jeremy Bane, he could be anywhere in the world or in any of the adjacent realms."
"You'd think he'd let us know where he is, just in case," Unicorn grumbled.
"Well, we're not going to get anything done today against the enemy. The CSI team will be taking the lobby apart." Sable made a disgusted noise and turned to look at the ruined wall behind her. "Poor Bleak. We'll be answering questions about him all day and I know he would have hated that."
II.
On a bare porcelain table in the morgue beneath the Abernethy Medical Research facility, a small gaunt figure sat upright and swung his legs over the side to stand up. Neatly dressed in charcoal grey slacks and a long-sleeved white dress shirt with a lab smock over it, Wesley Gorsline was not an intimidating sight. Well under average height, narrow-shouldered, with small hands and feet, he had a meek studious face under a mop of cornsilk-colored hair. At first, he looked like a student still in his twenties but, when seen under bright light, his face showed a layer of shallow fine-textured wrinkles that revealed his true nature.
His assistant Marlena had been standing motionless at the foot of the table, waiting for him to rouse. Since his resurrection a century earlier, Gorsline never slept in any real sense but every few days he did go into a torpor where he lay unresponsive and seemingly was actually dead again. Perhaps this was when his mind rested and got in some dreams to clear away unneeded memories.
"Master," she said in her subdued tone, "You could rest in luxury. You have great wealth. I do not understand why you insist on remaining here so much of your time."
The Resurrector tugged down his smock and adjusted his shirt collar. Three of the walls were taken up by drawers which slid out on rollers to reveal their occupants. The fourth had been made into a sort of office, with a filing cabinet, desktop computer and two landline phones. The desk itself was covered with loose papers, manila folders and a few medical reference books. Gorsline's gaze swept over the chilly room and he came as close to smiling as he ever did.
"Life in the morgue is the proper way for me," he told his assistant. "It keeps me from forgetting what I am... it reminds me of my state."
Marlena took a second to respond. She had been a good-looking woman about thirty, tall and busty with long dark brown hair, when he had murdered her and then waited six minutes to revive her with his reagent. Over the decades, he had learned how much brain damage occurred depending on how long he waited before reviving his subjects. At six minutes, there was some memory loss and a pliable personality that responded to orders; after that, the subjects quickly became little more than flesh automatons who could follow simple routines but no more than that.
After turning his statement over in her foggy mind, Marlena nodded. "As you wish, Master. We have reports from your agents in Manhattan. The one called Bleak delivered the explosive device as intended. From what our observers saw, he was destroyed but none of the enemy were hurt. The police have spent hours on the scene."
The Resurrector went over to his desk, picked up a clipboard and skimmed through the papers attached. "This is just the beginning. I know it must be the Kenneth Dred Foundation who destroyed my brothel in Queens and my barracks of hit men for hire. They also rendered useless over a hundred new subjects still settling in the Pennsylvania farm. These are serious blows, Marlena. Now I will dispatch more bombers and snipers from rooftops. People coming to them for help will actually be my subjects with poison in hand. Some I will revive as soon as they die to be my slaves."
There was no anger in his voice. After a century of mass murder and fighting with law enforcement, most emotion had left Gorsline's personality. He might have been discussing plans to go shopping for new clothes. The Resurrector swayed for a second, seeming to be a bit unsteady on his feet before he caught himself.
"Master, are you well?"
"Do not worry, Marlena. I just need more of the reagent. The effects do wear off in time. Let us check with Dr Scafidi." With that, he opened the thick door of the morgue and stepped out onto a walkway that overlooked a lab below them. The tubing of colored liquids flowing from one container to another, the retorts of bubbling fluids over bunsen burners, the bulky electronic consoles all seemed old-fashioned and not up to current technology but it was what worked for him. Just as important was the shelf holding massive ancient leather-bound books, a row of labeled human skulls on a counter, niches and cubbyholes containing dozens of jars of varied-colored powders and decanters of neon-yellow liquids. For it was Alchemy more than science which brought the dead back to their different semblances of life.
In the center of the lab stood a plexiglass cylinder that reached to chest height. Through its clear sides could be seen gallons of the fluorescent yellow fluid. A dozen tubes and pipes ran into the cylinder, three gauges on its lid showed pressure and temperature and acidity.
Standing on duty by the cylinder was a man about six feet tall, lean in one of the smocks. His head was shaven. When he glanced up at the appearance of Gorsline, the man's face was revealed to have been half destroyed at some point. Much of the left side and half the jaw had patched up with the flesh-colored putty Gorsline used. One eye was covered with the substance, the remaining one was dark brown and watchful.
"Dr Scafidi? I trust everything is going well," the Resurrector called down.
The figure in the smock inclined his head in almost a bow, then returned to watching the gauges.
"Twenty degrees Celsius, no higher!" Gorsline yelled. "Everything depends on that reagent being ready within twenty-four hours." After Scafidi made another respectful head bob, Gorsline turned to the waiting Marlena. "I have tried to find a way to produce the reagent more quickly and with less exotic ingredients. But no luck. If only my old teacher Vitarius was still available..."
There was no use waiting for a comment from Marlena, the Resurrector had realized. Her damaged brain did not function quite well enough to produce original thoughts without a long period of preparation. He started around the walkway to another room with a door that had a frosted glass panel which read RECORDS, and he put his hand upon the knob for a second but then moved on to a stairwell leading up to ground level.
He paused with one foot on the lowermost step. "None of the Living have been down here?"
"No, Master. The regular staff is too terrified to enter your domain."
"Excellent," he said. "Working for the John Grim Institute, they are already used to keeping secrets and ignoring uncomfortable truths. Come with me. I must confer with the Director of this facility. There are other projects under way."
He started up the stairs and Marlena stayed close behind him, one undead creature following another.
III.
Well after six o'clock, the last of the CSI vans pulled away. Lt Montez finally got in his own car and left, with an armful of signed notarized statements from all the KDF members present. The sidewalk had been cleared of broken glass and wood panels were nailed over the two shattered windows, with the street door replaced and locked. Emotionally drained, everyone gathered at the long oak table in the second floor conference room. As they took their seats, Demrak Jin and Galvan entered the room last, with the Gelydra woman hanging on the big Melgar's arm and pressing her head against his shoulder.
"You two need to knock that stuff off!" Haley Lawson snapped. "Today is not a day for mushy googie-eyes."
"Settle down, everyone," said Sable at the head of the table. "We're all tired and upset. Let's get our bearings."
As she spoke, Megan Salenger appeared in the doorway with the seldom-used serving cart. Its wide top was covered with the white cardboard containers that meant Chinese take-out. On the shelf beneath that was a stack of plates, silverware and a mug holding a dozen chopsticks. Everyone sat up straighter at the tempting aromas.
"I know no one has eaten today," Sable said. "I want everyone to start digging in. I've ordered everything from lemon chicken to Mu Shu pork. It's from our favorite place, Wok and Roll on Third Avenue."
The Trom Girl started passing out containers according to requests, the members chatting among themselves with fresh enthusiasm. "Just so no one is worried," she announced, "I have spent the past ten minutes scanning this food with sensors down to the molecular level. It contains no foreign contaminants.. well, no more than take-out food normally does. I mean it has not been poisoned."
"That's a smart precaution," Unicorn commented incoherently through a full mouthful of beef fried rice. "Excuse me," she added after she swallowed.
"Too right," added Jocelyn Garimara. "I was just thinking of grabbing some tucker."
Before she sat down herself, Megan added a steaming coffee pot, pitchers of ice tea and cold water to the serving cart and brought it over. Then she snatched the chow har kew for herself and dropped down into her chair.
The meal broke the tension that had been gathering between the over-tired KDF members. They began discussing the day's events in a much more positive mood.
"As interminable as everything seemed, I thought Montez actually sped things up for us," Josef Jubliec put in. "He could have brought a few of us to police headquarters as material witnesses for even more questioning. Deep down, he wants us to get started on this case."
"Oh, we WILL," said Jocelyn grimly. "That bomb could have easily killed me as well as poor Bleak. When I unleash the Red Spectre, my Gammon will tear the Resurrection Empire apart!"
In the captain's chair at the head of the table, Lauren Sable Reilly gazed sadly out over the nine unique individuals assembled before her. She unexpectedly stood up. "My friends and teammates, my brothers and sisters, I do not remember the last time we were all brought together at once. It is only a pity that it takes a tragedy and a menace like this to gather us."
No one spoke. Sable raised her coffee mug. "A toast, then. To the greatest gathering of heroes of our time. To the knights of Tel Shai, to the members of the Kenneth Dred Foundation, to all of us here. Long may we fight the good fight!"
Everyone cheered and several clinked glasses together with their neighbors. For a few minutes there was a low buzz of conversation, then Unicorn spoke up again, "I only wish Jeremy was here, too. No one has been able to reach him? I'm getting a little worried."
"It's not unusual with him, he's used to coming and going without telling anyone," Sable answered as she sat down again. "But seriously, if anyone can take care of himself, it's Jeremy Bane. Let's get back to the mission on hand. I have figured out four most likely places where the Resurrector would have his headquarters. Tonight we will divide into teams and investigate them simultaneously. Even the dead ends will lead to breaking up some of his rackets."
"I'm ready!" Jocelyn muttered, shoving her food aside.
"We'll finish eating and then take two hours for rest and to prepare for a full combat situation," Sable said. "I have a good feeling that tonight will mark the end of the Resurrector."
IV.
Returning to the morgue section of the facility, Gorsline read a few pages of the administration budget for his operation and then tucked it away under one arm. He was moving more slowly than before. Seeing two of his undead personal guards nearby, he waved them aside. "Go stand in a dark corner," he said, "Use up as little reagent as possible."
"Master..." began his assistant uncertainly. "I feel weak."
The Resurrector glanced at her with unconcealed annoyance. "I know, Marlena. It is bad judgement on my part. I have spread the supply of the serum too thin, over too many subjects. There is a danger of running out."
Standing at the top of the steps leading down to where the reagent was being prepared, the Resurrector called down, "Dr Scafidi! I trust everything is proceeding well?"
The grotesque figure in the lab smock, most of his face built up with the flesh-colored putty, bent from the waist in a bow and then nodded. He held up a thin hand in a reassuring gesture.
"Good, good. I expect it to congeal within two hours. There will be enough for everyone. Keep the temperature and pressure steady, doctor. I will be back." Gorsline turned away and headed for the door marked MORGUE. Behind him, Marlena followed and asked, "Will you rest until the reagent is ready, Master?"
"Yes. I think that would be wise. It will not be long now." He flicked on the blue overhead fluorescent lights to reveal the chilly quiet room. The Resurrector glanced over all the closed drawers in the walls. Those occupants had been dead too long to be revived as useful servants, he realized. They would have to be disposed of.
Dropping the administration reports on his desk, Gorsline went over and stretched out on the bare porcelain table which never held pillow or blankets. As he lowered his head, he sighed and closed his eyes. Marlena stood by.
"Life in the morgue," he said out loud. "Generations of men are born and die, yet I still lie here and persevere. Marlena, I-" His voice broke off.
"Master?"
"Something is wrong," Gorsline mumbled. "I can sense it. I don't know what it is..." He got shakily back up on his feet again and left the morgue with his undead assistant on his heels. Out on the walkway, he glared down at the cylinder where the reagent was being prepared but Dr Scafidi still stood there with one hand on the dials. The Resurrector swung around and faced the door which said RECORDS. Earlier that night, he had started to open that door and now he went ahead. He reached inside and flipped the lights on.
Lying in one corner, propped up against the wall, was the stiff cold body of Dr Walter Scafidi. The single brown eye was clouded. Wesley Gorsline staggered back as if he had been shot and only having Marlena right behind kept him from falling. "Scafidi...but..."
Wheeling about, the Resurrector strode from the room out onto the walkway and jabbing an accusing finger at the smocked figure by the reagent cylinder. "You!" he shrieked. "Who ARE you?!"
Looking up, the man reached up to painfully peel away the hardened putty from the lower part of his face. There was no scarring on that face. "I've got bad news for you, zombie kingpin!" he yelled. "This goop here has been boiling for hours and I poured in lots of coffee from the machine in the hall outside. It's ruined. Your reagent is worthless."
Gorsline screamed the hollow sepulachral scream of the damned. "What! Who are you? What have you done?"
By this point, the figure by the cylinder had bent his face to pop out a tinted contact lense and had scraped the rest of the putty off his skin. Two cold grey eyes in a narrow feral face glared up at the Resurrector in triumph. Even with his head shaven, there was no mistaking Jeremy Bane.
Rushing down the metal stairs toward the cylinder where the corrupted reagent was visibly bubbling, Wesley Gorsline charged at the Dire Wolf with both small fists clenched.
"Oh, don't tell me you're going to take a swing at me," Bane said. As the Resurrector came within reach, the Dire Wolf shot out a simple direct side kick to the chest that hurled Gorsline back in a loose tumble. If the man had not been undead and sustained by Alchemy, that impact alone would have killed him.
Shrugging out of the white lab smock and tossing it away, Bane walked closer. "I don't think you can have long before the last of the reagent wears off in your system, my friend. And all your zombie hit men and prostitutes and spies and thieves will soon drop where they stand as well. It was worth posing as your stooge the past forty-eight hours. The worst part was waiting until you left the building so I could use the bathroom."
Wriggling, unable to rise without help, the Resurrector could only manage to get into a seated position. "Bane! You.. bastard..!"
"The world will be a better place without you and your Resurrected Empire," the Dire Wolf said. "If I did nothing else in my life, this would justify my existence."
Marlena suddenly sagged to the floor up on the catwalk where she had remained. The last breath left her body in a rasp. Bane glanced up at her. "Poor woman. I know you killed her just so you could enslave her as an assistant. Sometimes I hope there really is a Hell after this life for people like you."
As Gorsline struggled ineffectually to rise, the Dire Wolf watched him without the slightest sympathy. Then an explosion detonated upon the catwalk and the steel door to the upper levels flew inward off its hinges. A dark red shape of crackling gralic force swooped in through the opening to circle the morgue area. Appearing in the forced-open doorway was Unicorn in a black field suit, half supporting the weakened Jocelyn Garimara.
The Red Spectre hovered over the scene for an instant. Its featureless dark head cocked to one side quizzically and then the apparition wheeled around to dive back into the body of its host. With the Gammon restored, Jocelyn stood up straight again.
"Well, hi you two," said Bane. "I didn't know you were working on this case as well."
Unicorn hurtled down the stairs and leaped forward to tackle him with a zeal that almost knocked the Dire Wolf down. She wrapped both her arms and legs around him so he supported her weight and she yelled, "You rat! I was so worried about you!"
"Good to see you again, Ashley," Bane answered as the little blonde hung on him. "Jocelyn, come over here too. Listen. I destroyed the serum that was keeping the zombies active. In the next hour or two, they will begin to collapse into true death."
The Australian gralist knelt for a moment beside Gorsline. "He's gone," she announced. "Just a regular corpse now and not a minute too soon."
"Captain... Jeremy... I'm afraid I have bad news," Ashley told him as she reluctantly disentangled herself. "I hate to be the one to tell you."
"About Bleak? It's okay. I overheard what happened when the Resurrector was on the phone with his agents." Bane shook his head. "There really hasn't been time to let it sink in. I know he had no family. We'll have to arrange services."
"I haven't said how glad I am to see you okay, as well," Jocelyn said. "I feel so relieved. It all worked out well. But I'm sorry about Bleak, too."
Bane reached out to squeeze her shoulder, a rare comforting gesture for him. "I hadn't told you guys before," he said in a strangely tight voice. "But Bleak told me once how proud he was of all you new Tel Shai knights. He said to me, 'You and me aren't going to be around forever. But I think we're leaving the Midnight War in good hands." At this, both Unicorn and Jocelyn rushed in to embrace him in relief and they stood huddled that way for a while.
