dochermes

RESURRECTION EMPIRE II: Pimping Out Zombies In Corona

2/19-2/20/2015


I.

Josef Jubilec found a parking spot and eased the Toyota Matrix into it before anyone else could claim the opening. The Blind Archer was wearing black slacks and suit jacket, with a white dress shirt but no tie. Even his leather shoes were highly polished. Tall and fit-looking, with short sandy hair over a freshly shaven if weathered face, he seemed to be a perfect example of an office-dwelling executive. Behind the wheel, he glared over at the two-story building they had come to find. It was old, the bricks were chipped and stained, the sidewalk in front of it was cracked and had a few strands of weed starting to grow up through the openings. Most of the windows were lit and curtains drawn.

Seated next to him, Haley shook her head. She herself was wearing a KDF field suit, complete with the waist-length jacket that had its own inner layer of armor. "It's just weird to see you without a bow within reach. It bothers me. Not even that folding contraption you hate to use."

Josef shrugged. "No choice. Our captain has sent us here to investigate and I am certain to be patted down for weapons. A longbow is slightly conspicuous. For that matter, you seem uneasy without your Windcatcher costume. No cloak? No white pullover and blue shorts?"

"Same here," she replied. Haley Lawson normally stayed insolent and slightly brash no matter what, but tonight she seemed subdued. Under the dark brown bangs, her green eyes were thoughtful. "Of course I am still wearing the Gem of Air under my collar. I can summon wind from a hurricane or Death Valley if I choose, so I'm not really disarmed."

"I'll be fine."

"I guess." Haley looked over at the rundown building herself, seeing it sat next to a bodega that was still open at this hour. "I don't think I've ever been in Corona before. Where are we? Roosevelt Avenue and 91st Street. Looks overwhelmingly Hispanic to me, even the signs are mostly in Spanish."

"Yes," Josef said, unbuckling his seat belt. "This isn't a bad part of Queens. You can buy some fresh produce here at a reasonable price. Tonight, of course, we are shopping for something more gruesome."

She stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a gagging noise. "Ugh, ick. A brothel. I can't believe places like this still exist in this day and age."

"This is called a 'fast house,'" the Blind Archer told her. "Very common in a lot of Latina neighborhoods. Forty or fifty dollars gets you fifteen minutes with a young chica. Then they toss you back out on the street."

"I think it's disgusting. Even with living prostitutes."

Josef got out of the car and leaned back in before closing the door. "I can't even bring my Link in with me. Just cash. But Megan has rigged a button on my belt buckle. When I press it, your Link will buzz and that's when you charge in to the rescue."

"If you really want to be rescued, ha hah."

"This is just a mission like any other," he said and closed the door. Josef Jubilec straightened up, looking around at the night, and his perception caught that he was being watched from a window of the fast house. He did not glance in that direction. The Blind Archer walked up to the front door with its simple tacked-on number 553 and pressed the white doorbell for a single long ring.

A short stocky man who had not shaven for a few days answered without opening the door more than a crack. In Spanish, he asked if his visitor needed help.

Josef answered in Spanish fluent enough that it seemed completely natural. Before joining Tel Shai, he had worked around the world as a bodyguard and counter-assassin, and he spoke several languages as if he had grown up with them. He replied that he needed the usual help a man requires, and held up two twenties and a ten. The man snatched the bills quickly and let him in.

In a long front hallway, with doors on either side, beneath a ceiling light in a grimy glass ball, the man asked him if he had any girl in mind. Josef managed a smile and answered that of course he wanted the youngest and prettiest in the building. This seemed to amuse the papi. He led the Blind Archer down the hall a ways and opened the fifth door they came to, then said "Only fifteen minutes, remember, then we knock."

At the end of the hall, another man was sitting in a plain wooden chair, studying a newspaper. He was bigger, tougher-looking and he had just stubbed out a cigarette on the arm of the chair. Reading their lifeforce with his gralic perception, the Blind Archer decided at once that these were normal living people even if not in the best of health. It was the ability to fix on a being's lifeforce without using sight that made the Blind Archers so feared. In darkness or rain or fog, their arrows never missed.

Thanking the papi, Josef went through the door into a hot, stuffy room lit by a single ceramic lamp on the wall. There was a chair and an empty nightstand, and aside from that only a Queen-sized bed with dingy sheets. Standing next to that bed was a tall, slightly chunky young woman with long curly black hair. She was wearing a yellow sundress and was barefoot. The vague smile on her face did not waver as she saw him.

Instantly, Josef knew that she was not fully alive. Her aura was faint and unsteady. He decided the room was kept overheated so that customers would not notice her flesh was not warm by itself. As Josef closed the door, she automatically drew the sundress up over her head to stand naked in front of him. There was a deep scar in her left ribcage that they had tried to mask with some sort of flesh-colored putty.

That must be the wound that had killed her, he thought. He asked her what her name was and she promptly replied it was Inez. Then he asked what day of the week it might be and she did not answer for a long moment before telling him he had better hurry and get undressed.

Josef felt a great weariness come over him. This was not a situation he wanted to be in any longer than necessary. In Spanish, he asked the woman if she remembered her family and if she realized what had happened to her. There was no reaction in her eyes at all. She walked closer and reached up to start unbuttoning his shirt.

The sooner the zombies were revived after dying, the more awareness and consciousness they retained. If they had been dead too long, they were mere automatons. Josef saw the stretch marks on her belly and decided to try one more question. He asked her if she remembered her children. There was not even a flicker of response in the blank cloudy eyes. Not anger, not bewilderment, not sorrow. She was acting out a limited choice of responses that had been drilled into her.

"I'm so sorry," he said. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he spun her around and brought down the rigid edge of his hand sharply down at the base of her neck. She dropped as limply as if she had never been resurrected at all, not trying to break her fall as her face hit the bare wooden floor. It was as if she had been eager to go into true death.

Moving slowly, Josef picked her up, tugged her sundress back onto her and stretched her out on the bed. He folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes, giving her what little dignity she could have at that point. Where was this woman's family, he wondered. Were they still looking for her? Was her face up on home-made posters in some city, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? And would they really want to know what her horrific fate had been? With a face taut as stone, he opened the hall door to leave that room of horrors.

( the rest of the story )