“What America needs is a good zombie apocalypse.”
–An actual person I know, who shall remain nameless.–
With a lead-in like that, I couldn’t help but write this story! Zombie Walks are actually a Thing, in which hipsters use zombies—an anti-conformist anti-commercialist icon—to dress alike and buy t-shirts. They’re fun, so I can’t complain. This story also offers a nice opportunity to lay out some of the rules about necromancy in this series, and exactly what a vampire or zombie’s role is.
TIMELINE: Approximately three weeks after Blood Hound.
Usually I enjoyed Halloween, but I really wasn’t feeling it this year. It might have had something to do with the murder demon that rampaged around town recently. That kind of thing puts a damper on all the holidays. So as soon as night fell, I went to the best vampire bar in town. This was because I am a vampire. I’m also a private detective. And a Jew. And a brunette. And a Sagittarius. And a mom, or at least I was a long time ago, before my life turned into a strange, immortal blur. It’s a long story.
The Front Line was a blues club. It had been a speakeasy during prohibition, and a saloon before then. A place of hardwood floors, smoke in the air, spool tables, loud blues music, and more damn atmosphere than a gothy rave. This was because vampires were cool. Also the owner was a friend. That was nice.
“Now, I don’t usually pry,” Cole Spade said as he handed me my drink. “But I kinda miss the sparkle in your eyes. What’s bugging you, Little Lady?”
A tall, lanky man with silvery hair, Cole was one part rock star and two points cowboy, with a voice like a Texan Leonard Cohen. He was also one of the most dangerous and powerful vampires on the continent, but he was pretty chill about it. I was used to his pet name for me—lots of people teased me about my height, and at least he meant well.
“Nah, I’m fine,” I said.
“Sure y’are.” Spade took off his sunglasses and polished them on his shirt.
“Cole? May I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“Why did you hire Meg? You know what she is.”
He smiled. “Why not? Megaera asked me if she could test her new Glamour, and she wanted to find you. Looks to me like she did.”
“She could’ve just looked up my number.”
Cole winked and put his shades back on. “Seems like it was more fun this way. Sure got your attention.”
“Yeah.” I smiled a little at the thought. “You’ve got a point.”
“Is that what was bringing you down?” he asked. “Hanging out with your old flame again?”
“I’m not down. I’m just not feeling the holiday.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Y’know, if you want some advice, I’ve got an idea.”
I sighed. “Call Megaera, see what she’s doing for Halloween, and join in?”
Cole gave me that amazingly annoying finger-guns gesture, which he had somehow managed to make charming. “You got it.”
“Woo, eight hundred years old and I still need a wingman,” I joked as I hopped off the barstool to call Meg.
She answered on the first ring.
“Lucy!” came Meg’s overly cheerful voice. “I was just about to call you. I had the phone in my hand, I had dialed 415, but then you called and saved me having to remember the rest of it. Thanks for enabling my laziness!”
“You’re totally welcome, Meg. Hey, are you doing anything for Halloween?”
She laughed. Meg’s laugh was normally light, cheerful, and delightful. This was a full comic book evil laugh.
“Do I have plans? Oh, do I ever have plans. I have plans so devious that—hey, just come and meet me on Guerrero and 19th Street.”
“What’s on Guerrero & 19th?” I asked.
“Something awesome. Just trust me. See you in a few?”
I smiled. “I’ll be there.”
My car was in the shop—again—so I took an Uber.
Megaera was a beautiful, cheerful, witty, flirty little ray of sunshine who also happened to be a blood-soaked celestial executioner. The Furies, agents of cosmic justice, have existed since ancient Greece. So if this cute li’l redhead was actually a winged bloody-eyed bronze-taloned nightmare, who was I to judge?
We had long fallen out of touch. My fault? Hers? It didn’t matter. By the time I began to regret it, she was gone, and years of loneliness had been my penalty. But Meg had reached out to me recently during a major case, and we had picked up the pieces as if nothing had happened. Maybe Cole had a point. I could do much worse than spending Halloween with my old BFF.
I sensed the necromancy in the air before I had even reached the Mission District. It wouldn’t have been noticeable to many, but since a form of the same energy kept me alive, I knew it when I smelled it. And it was thick tonight.
Three things were illegal in San Francisco: Plastic bags, foie gras, and practicing necromancy without a license. Seriously. It was really on the books. The law was passed at around the same time that San Francisco dug up all its graves, smashed the gravestones to use as pavement, and sent the corpses away to Colma. You know, totally normal behavior.
Sometimes people tried, though. Piddly little would-be necromancers would occasionally pop up, do something dumb, and someone would stop them before they could do any real damage. Sometimes they stopped themselves, too. But what I had felt this evening was unlike anything I had sensed in a long time. I was a private detective, and although my job was usually equal measures boring and lurid, there was another side to it. Bad things happened in the supernatural community, and it dropped into my lap a hell of a lot of the time. I could feel the energies of death coursing through the air, pregnant with potentiality, and I wondered if Meg felt it as well. She could sense things better than I— even tell a man’s sins just by looking at him. But general occult issues were rarely on her list, so although she could chase a target to the ends of the earth over a trivial sin, something like a mass-murder demon hound was out of her pay grade.
The Uber ride ended early.
“Guerrero’s blocked off,” the driver said. “You’ve got about two more blocks. You okay with that?”
“It’s cool.” I added a tip and left the car, calling Meg as I started my walk. Partly to find her and meet up but also to see if she knew anything.
“Hey, Meg.” I answered the phone. “What’s up? Where are you?”
“I’m almost there!” she replied. “I’m just getting some coffee. I’ll be there in a few.”
“Cool. See you in a few. Hey, I wanted to know if you felt anything—I think something’s up.”
“Really? Up like what? Good up or bad up?”
“It felt like necromancy. Can you feel it?”
“Honey, it’s Halloween,” she answered. “This is the time of year when dumb kids try anything because it looks spooky. I’ll keep an eye out, though.”
“Yeah, I think maybe we should both look carefully.” Necromancy in the air? Streets blocked off? I noticed a thick crowd gathered—another reason to be worried—and shoved through. Nobody seemed to notice me or feel that anything was off, which set off even more warning lights in my brain. There was a pattern in places where supernatural evil gathered. Normal people just sort of didn’t want to be there. It wasn’t a specific urge or a feeling, but folks tended not to stick around when something bad was building. And again, this was a crowd. Meg, what did you get me into?
More still than air in a sealed tomb, more wasted than the ash after a flame. Fossils, not bones. Necrotic energy felt wrong in a way that defied description. Not the power of death, but of the void between life and the afterlife, deathly stillness charged with crackling, numbing energy.
I felt the comforting weight of my handgun as I ducked into an alley. I had a concealed-carry license, grandfathered from the days when California still handed them out. And I abused the hell out of it, which was perfectly fine because I used my weapons to abuse Hell. One of the best ways to fight supernatural evil was to shoot it in the face. Sometimes twice. Silver worked as well, and I had special bullets for that.
So I hunkered down and got ready. There could be anything in the air, anything ready to show its face. Holy hell, this city had just weathered an attack by the hellhound father of murder. What was next?
A walking corpse shambled into the alley. Tattered, bloody, its skin a corpse-gray pallor. Usually I had to go looking for these sorts odd things. This one was right in front of me. I slipped the gun out of my holster, careful not to attract its attention or spook it. But then it spoke.
“Braaaaains,” the zombie moaned.
“Wait, what?” I frowned. “Zombies don’t talk.”
“They do in Return of the Living Dead,” replied the zombie.
“Oh, for crying out loud.” I hit myself on the forehead. Unfortunately, that was the hand holding the pistol. “Ow!”
“Woah, is that thing real?” the not-zombie asked. I should have noticed it immediately. The blood was too symmetrical. The gray skin was stage makeup.
I stowed the gun without answering. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you really shouldn’t sneak up on people like that. Dark alley, fake blood. Rising urban crime rate.”
Meg’s sweetly cheerful tone called from the alley entrance.
“Lucy, please tell me you weren’t just about to shoot Todd.”
Todd. His name was Todd. George Carlin had a whole routine about people named Todd.
“Meg.” I didn’t answer her about Todd. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a zombie walk, silly.” Meg winked. She had on zombie makeup, too, only hers looked way more convincing than Todd’s. Meg still managed to be a total knockout, even when done up to look like a corpse. Not that I was jealous, or anything.
“Wanna join in?” Meg asked. She was carrying three lattes in a cardboard tray.
“Meg.”
“Come on, it’s fun! Just think, Lucy. You can pretend to be undead!”
“Meg.”
“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.” She handed me a latte.
“Meg!” I took the coffee anyway.
“Look, I know you’ve been down lately,” she said, dropping her volume to a don’t-let-the-normals-hear level. “But the demon’s gone. You kicked his ass. You can relax now.”
“Meg, there’s necromancy in the air,” I whispered. “Can’t you feel it?”
She frowned and shrugged. “Like I said, there’s always a little bit of something on Halloween.”
I shook my head. “This seems big.”
She glanced over her shoulder. More people had begun to join us in the alley, probably friends of Todd.
“Let me check.” Meg began to concentrate, stretching out the senses that she often held in check so she could enjoy life in public without seeing everybody’s sins. Her eyes lit up for a moment, but then she shook her head.
“There’s definitely something going on—I can’t put a finger on it. Maybe you’re right, or maybe you’re overreacting. I still think you should still join us. C’mon, Lucy. We can put some zombie makeup on you, or you can be a victim or one of the fake army guys or something.”
“Fake army guys?” I asked.
“Some people with toy guns pretending to shoot at the zombies. Just how out of touch are you? Zombie walks were really big like a decade ago, so I thought you’d have caught on by now.”
I muttered something about young whippersnappers that made Meg giggle, even though her age was in the four-digit range.
“That’s nice.” She turned to the rest of the hipsters. “Hey, guys! This is Lucy. She’s an old friend.”
“Hi, Lucy,” Todd said, and we began walking. “Jenna and I were just arguing about the best weapon for a zombie apocalypse. She says a machete, but I say it’s the monk’s spade. What do you think?”
“What’s a monk’s spade?” I asked Todd.
“It’s a Shaolin weapon,” he said. “It’s got this crescent on one end and a big, flat blade on the other. It’s in the Survival Guide.”
“Do you know any Shaolin monks?”
He seemed to have trouble answering that question.
“There’s a monastery on Geary,” I said. “Maybe you could get one from them, but I don’t know if they’d have any. I mean, where would you get something like that?”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” he said.
I drank some coffee.
“But what do you have in your kit?” Todd asked.
“My kit?” I sipped some more coffee. Sweet, sweet, caffeine goodness. Meg was a saint for bringing it. Positively celestial.
“Your zombie survival kit. In case there’s an apocalypse.”
“A zombie apocalypse is impossible,” I stated.
“But there’s fungus that turns bugs into zombies, and there’s like a real rage virus they’re making in labs, and GMOs, and stuff.”
Suddenly I had a headache. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and decided to just spill secrets of the supernatural, because why not? “Real zombies are animated through necromancy. And can’t spread without further expenditure of–”
Meg jumped in between us both, slinging her arms around our shoulders. I almost spilled my coffee.
“Friends!” she declared. “Great discussion, isn’t it? So, let’s do a head count. Do we have everybody?”
Todd frowned at me, but then looked around. “Okay, there’s me, Meg, Jenna, Carlos, Matt, Heather, the new girl, and, uh, what’s your name? New guy?”
The extra person limped along with us but didn’t say anything.
Todd stepped away from Meg to the edge of the group and tapped the new shambler on the shoulder.
“Dude? Do we know you?”
The newcomer turned his head, and his makeup looked just a little too realistic. I smelled blood in the air.
“Look out!” I shouted. Todd gave me a confused look just before the real zombie lunged for him and grabbed him around the shoulders. He didn’t seem to register the action as dangerous until the zombie bit him, sinking teeth into the base of his neck. Jenna—or maybe Heather—screamed loudly, and the little knot of friends broke into pandemonium. Blood began to spread, staining Todd’s shirt on the shoulder.
Shoving past the others, I threw my coffee at the zombie. I missed, instead it hit Todd square in the face and splattered all over him. He stumbled back, coughing and sputtering—but away from the zombie’s teeth. I clotheslined the undead thing, hooking my arm around its neck. It snapped at me as I shoved it again, sending it crashing to the ground. It hit its head at an odd angle, breaking its neck with an audible, wet snap as it crumpled.
“What happened?” Carlos asked. “Todd! Are you okay?”
The walking corpse stood, its head flopping uselessly from its visibly broken neck.
“Are you okay?” Carlos asked the zombie. It lunged at him.
“Dude.” I drew my gun and shot it twice in the chest. Okay, now everybody screamed at the gunfire, and even louder when the now-completely-obvious-zombie refused to die. Mentally kicked myself for forgetting to aim for the head, I shot it in the face point-blank. What exploded out from its skull was more green and yellow than the expected blood, and the zombie continued to wobble forward with a visible hole through its skull, taking one more wild swing before toppling over.
Okay. Now everybody screamed. Not that I could blame them, really. The rest of the friends joined in like a Greek chorus as realization dawned on them all.
“A real zombie!”
“She has a gun! It’s a mass shooting!”
“It’s not a mass shooting!” I protested, but they were already running away out of the alley in a panic.
Meg jumped into action, putting pressure on Todd’s wound as she tried to calm him down.
“Hey,” she said. “Hey. It’s all right. You’ll be okay.”
“Oh no oh no oh no,” Todd started repeating. “It’s real it’s real it’s real zombies are real I’m gonna turn!”
“You’re not going to turn into anything.” I looked down at the zombie corpse. It was done moving. “Zombie bites aren’t contagious. The worst you could get is an infection, because that shit ain’t sanitary, man.”
“I’m going to die!”
“You’ll be okay,” Meg said. “Calm down, Todd.”
Todd did not calm down.
“But zombies can’t be real!” he yelled. “Zombies aren’t real!”
“Actually, they totally are,” I said. “Take a look.”
Todd, who was hyperventilating and bleeding from his neck, managed to compose himself enough to look at the corpse, which was actively decomposing and crumbling like dirt.
“What?” His voice cracked. “What’s it doing? What’s going on?”
“From dust you came, and to dust you shall return,” I explained. “The type of necrotic energy used to animate a zombie puts so much strain on a body that when it fails, the whole thing collapses back into its component parts. Instant topsoil.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” he said. As Meg continued to dab at the wound.
“We need to get this guy some better care,” Meg commented. “That was a nasty bite. Looks like it could get infected.”
I nodded in agreement and looked back to Todd. “Look, Todd, I promise that this all makes sense, but right now we need you to take a few deep breaths and calm down. Meg and I know what we’re doing. We are here to help.”
“How do you know any of this? I got bit! I just got bit by a zombie! It’s real!”
“Todd, please calm down. You’ll be okay. Take a deep breath and relax. We can handle this.”
“How can you handle anything?” he asked. “I’m going to turn into a zombie! I can feel it! Everything’s going cold! Someone help me! Help me! Help!”
Meg grabbed him by his good shoulder and wrenched him around to face her. Her eyes changed into bloody pools, and the voice that came from her lips was not human.
“You are going to shut up and let us think,” she snarled. “You will trust us. We know what we are talking about. There are scarier things than zombies.”
Todd moved his mouth in silent terror, but Meg instantly turned back into the same bouncy redhead as before, her voice cute and normal again.
“We’re gonna keep you safe and sound. Okay?” She winked at him. “Just relax, Todd. You’re in good hands.”
Meg let Todd go, and he swayed a little on his feet, clearly about to faint like a Victorian lady. I moved into intercept, catching him with my arm under his shoulders.
“Okay,” I said. “The blood loss isn’t as bad as it could be, but you’ll probably need stitches. Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“It’s thataway,” Meg pointed. “Traffic sucks because of the zombie walk, so we might as well start walking. Todd, if you feel weak, just lean on us, all right? We’ll get you there.”
“Okay,” he squeaked, leaning away from Meg and against me.
“Don’t worry, Todd. She’s safe.” I let my fangs extend. “We both are. I’m a monster, too.”
It took way too long to calm him down after that one. I probably could have phrased it better.
“You’re cruel,” Meg said after he finally got a handle on himself, and we began to walk toward the mouth of the alley.
“Says the pot to the kettle,” I responded. “I’m not the one with the fiery blood-eyes, babe.”
She shook her head, letting those red curls of hers bounce with the movement. Todd took a deep breath, slowly composing himself little by little. I kept explaining to help him calm down.
“It’s what I said earlier. Zombies are created one by one. There’s no apocalypse or plague or anything like that.”
“Lucy,” Meg said.
“And it takes a lot of effort and energy to make a zombie,” I continued. “And you have to concentrate, or they’ll start falling apart, and it gets harder the more there are. So when you make a lot of zombies, each individual one will be weaker. The smartest thing that a necromancer could do is just stop after one or two, but there’s just something about them that compels people to create whole hordes of weak, shambling undead. But the problem with that is, you need a lot of raw power to sustain a zombie horde, and most would-be necromancers can’t manage that.”
“Lucy,” Meg said, a little louder.
“And even if you can make them, where are you going to find the corpses?” Todd nodded along. “The human body decomposes pretty fast, and it’s hard to find specimens that are in good shape for a zombie. So you’d have to get creative or risk having a horde that’s even weaker.”
“Lucy!”
“What?” I looked at Meg.
“Look.”
She pointed. I looked.
“Holy Hell, Meg, what are we going to do?”
The walking dead filled the streets as they shambled past us. The zombie walk was real tonight.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
“Are those all zombies?” Todd asked. “Real zombies?
“I . . . I think so.”
“I thought they were supposed to be really inefficient,” he said.
“Meg?”
“This is huge,” she said. “And I didn’t even sense it.”
The zombie mob hadn’t noticed us yet—or at least, none of them behaved like that one straggler we had dealt with. There was a lack of screams as well, indicating that they weren’t chomping on anybody else. I could see Todd’s friends just barely as they continued to run, blindly avoiding certain death by sheer luck. Or perhaps the zombies were under a strong directive when in their group.
“Meg?” I asked. “They’re all going in the same direction. What’s that way?”
Her eyes widened. “The zombie walk. They’re heading to where it starts.”
Todd spoke up. “So there’ll be real zombies in the zombie walk?”
Meg nodded.
“And if they reach them?” he asked.
“It’ll be a regular hipster holocaust,” she said.
I elbowed her.
“Ow!” Meg rolled her eyes. “All right, all right. It’ll be a regular hipsterpocalypse. Does that sound better, Lucy?”
I elbowed her again before getting back to business. “Can you find the necromancer? Or necromancers?”
“I’m not sure. This is huge. I think if I saw the perpetrator—if I had line of sight—I could tell who it was, and maybe track him or her. But this is insane.”
“What am I going to do?” Todd asked.
“Stick with us,” I said. “You’re bleeding, so if you run off alone into the crowd of zombies, they’ll probably smell the blood and maul you. At least with us, you’ve got a chance to get out of here. And Meg can we get this guy somewhere safe? Get him some medical attention?”
“I think so. it’s not that far,” she shook her head. “But Lucy, we need to find whoever’s behind this and stop them. More lives are at stake than just one.”
Todd grimaced.
“You’re still going to be okay, Todd,” she added. “If the zombie had bitten an artery or something, you’d already have bled out by now.”
Todd grimaced some more.
“Hey, just think,” I said. “If we find a monk’s spade, you’ve totally got dibs.”
Nobody liked my joke.
“Less talk, more investigating,” Meg said. “The necromancer has to be nearby to control a horde this big, so keep an eye out.”
“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Todd asked.
“We’re not a threat at the moment,” I explained. “Or they’re under orders. The one that got you probably broke off from a lapse in concentration. If they have a mission—a specific target—then they’ll leave it be until the time comes to strike.”
He gave me a terrified look. I responded with a friendly smile.
“We’ve got a problem,” Meg said.
“Yeah,” I looked around and agreed. More undead had begun to shamble up behind us, effectively closing us into the alley. “If we get their attention, we’re dead.”
“And that includes trying to take them out before they reach the crowd,” Meg added.
“I think it’s too late for that,” Todd said.
“Yeah, I know.” I noticed some bystanders milling around, either ready to watch or join in the zombie walk. A small knot of college students dressed in badly-faked military uniforms—complete with orange toy guns—ran past. They waved, and the three of us waved back.
“This is going to suck,” I said through a fake smile. “Meg, can you get a reading on anybody?”
“Not yet.” A small knot of made-up fake zombies pointed to our group, and joined in. “Well, one of those kids is a shoplifter, but that doesn’t help us much.”
“Huh? What are you doing?” Todd asked.
I looked at Todd and thought about how, even after the bleeding eyes, he hadn’t just run away from Meg.
“Meg’s special.”
“It’s a long story, Todd,” she said to him. “I’ll fill you in afterward, okay?”
“O–okay,” he stammered.
“Be strong, kid,” I said. “And look for something to use as a weapon. Some zombie rules are true, and you need to aim for the head to bring one down. It might not even take that much strength if they’re a weak crowd.”
He didn’t look reassured.
“We’re coming up to actual people,” Meg said.
“Yeah, I know.” I looked ahead of us and saw a crowd of made-up zombies chilling and waiting for the walk to begin. “Got any ideas?”
“I’m not sure . . . No, wait.” Meg’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Todd asked.
She grabbed us both by our collars and hauled us out of the mob, into an alley near a dumpster. Todd tripped, but I got an arm underneath him to steady him as he clutched at the bite wound.
“Meg? What is it?”
“My sinner sense is tingling,” Megaera said.
“What? Where?” I demanded.
A lone zombie broke off from the horde and began shambling into the alley.
“Guys,” Todd said.
“Wait, wait, give me a second,” Meg said. “I’m getting a picture. A direction, kind of.”
The zombie shambled closer.
“Uh, guys,” Todd repeated louder.
“Let me see if I can find something.” I opened the dumpster, looking for possible weapons. Unfortunately, it was empty.
“Okay, getting a better idea of where to look,” Meg said.
The zombie stepped up behind her and began to reach for her.
“Guys!” Todd almost shouted.
Meg backhanded the zombie without even turning around. Its head bounced off the wall and landed in the dumpster.
“Okay, I think I know where to go.” Meg said without skipping a beat. She stepped to the mouth of the alley and pointed. “That way.”
I followed, drawing my gun again. “What does he look like?”
“He’s right at the front of the crowd, straight ahead. Short, portly guy. Looks like 1990s Jack Black but with glasses and a soul patch. He’s been planning this for weeks—He’s going to let the zombies go wild when the walk reaches its midpoint. That’s disgusting—now wait, wait, I’m figuring it out. He’s based in—wow, he’s based in the hospital.”
“What?” I asked, scanning the crowd for a man fitting her description.
“Dude works in the morgue. That’s where he got all the bodies. He’s got some sort of ritual setup in there. I can’t see further than that yet.”
I frowned as I scanned the crowd before spotting the guy, more because I could feel the necrotic energy radiating from his position than by appearance—he looked like any number of reddit-fed people in the crowd. Completely casual, the same as the rest—he was even cheering for the zombie walk alongside his potential victims. I honestly considered taking aim from across the street.
“I can’t shoot,” I said. “I’ll hit the crowd.”
“Were you seriously considering firing into the crowd?” Meg asked.
“Only maybe?”
Meg rolled her eyes and then took a deep breath as she watched the zombies in the crowd. “Lucy, give me your gun.”
“What?” I looked at her.
“Give me your gun,” she repeated. “Look, somebody needs to start taking out those zombies and drawing them away from the crowd. There is absolutely no way to do this safely, and no matter how it turns out, whoever does this is going to end up on the news. You can’t do it. Todd’s bleeding out. At least I can change my face.”
“You’re going to give yourself up like this?” I asked.
“You can wear faces?” Todd asked, confused.
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “New Glamour, Lucy. Remember? I spent months building it from the ground up, and now I’ve gotta throw it in the trash.”
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be hailed as a hero.”
“Yeah, they’ll totally be generous and positive as they throw around words like ‘mass shooting’ and ‘terrorist,’” she said as her form became indistinct for a moment, her true shape showing through for a split second as she changed over. Todd couldn’t seem to find it in him to panic anymore, and just took the impossible sight at face value.
“Are you the devil?” he asked Meg.
Meg, who was now wearing a bustier black-haired body, gave him a weird look. “No, now I’m a punk bartender. What do you think?”
“I think it’s the same Glamour that almost fooled me,” Lucy said. “But I still don’t like this idea. Are you going to be okay?”
“Hon, I’m fine. It’s just mortal stuff. But I need you to listen. Try to run the guy down out here, but if you can’t he’ll probably flee back to his home base. If he runs or drives or whatever and you lose him, head to UCSF Mission Bay Hospital, and get in through the morgue entrance at the back. If you see regular staff and patients running around, try to stay out of sight. And Todd?”
“Yes? What do I do?”
“Try not to bleed to death,” she said. “I don’t want you to die. Go find a place to hide or something.”
“Shouldn’t I go to the hospital? I guess I’ll be following Lacy here.”
“Lucy,” I corrected.
“Then I guess that’s where I’m going,” he continued.
Meg glared at him. “You realize that this isn’t a movie, right? And that you’re probably going to die if you do something stupid like that?”
He looked at the blood staining his shirt and shook his head. “That thing was going to kill me. What if it had bitten Jenna instead? What about everybody else here? I’ve got to do something!”
“Todd, honey, this isn’t a movie,” Meg said.
“If I have to make a break for the hospital, I’m running,” I stated. “Can you run in your condition?”
“I can try,” he insisted.
Meg shook her head. “We’re out of time. Lucy, gun. Todd, do whatever you want, but don’t get yourself killed.”
I handed Megaera my gun. “All right. Here you go.”
“He’s bound to have zombies stationed between here and Mission Bay,” Meg said. “Be on the lookout.”
“You need to hide if things get dangerous,” I told Todd. “Period. If it’s a matter of who takes a hit, I can heal way better than you. got it?”
“But . . .”
“No more time to argue. Listen to the vampire,” Meg said.
“You’re a vampire?” Todd asked.
I ignored him for now. “Stay safe, Meg. Let’s go.”
“See you on the other side.” She winked, blew us both kisses, and then ran into the crowd.
“What are you two?” Todd asked.
“We’ll explain later. Now stick with me. Run if it gets bad. Hide if you need to. Just stay safe. Now, you see that guy over there? We’re aiming for him. Run in, tackle the bad guy, and break his concentration before he spots us in the crowd. If we do this right, we can break the zombies before Meg has to do anything drastic. I’ll aim for him, you try to cut him off if he runs. Now let’s go: Three. Two. One. Now!”
We ran through the crowd. We were completely unarmed, but I had vampire strength and lifetimes of fighting experience. Todd had blood loss and naivete.
The necromancer spotted us from halfway across the street. No idea how he had figured us out in the sea of costumed partygoers, but the moment his eyes fell on the two of us, he turned and ran.
“He’s getting away!” Todd said.
I buckled down and turned up the speed, charging as fast as my tiny legs could take me. The necromancer grabbed a scooter, of all things, and took off.
“I can see that.” I tried to shove through the crowd. “’Scuse me. Zombie hunters, coming through. Bite victim, don’t get near.”
People laughed at our realistic costumes—especially Todd’s blood—and let me use him as a human shield to get through.
We chased the necromancer for another block and a half before he turned a corner on his scooter. We ducked in after him and nearly ran directly into a knot of three zombies—real ones, not costumed partiers. I shoved Todd behind me and kicked the nearest zombie, sending it stumbling back and giving us some space.
Todd tripped, wobbled and crashed into a trash can, only keeping himself from completely collapsing when he grabbed another dumpster.
“That’s good,” I said to him. “Check in there for weapons.”
The zombies jumped me, and I fought back, trying the best I could against enemies who couldn’t feel pain. I managed to land one punch before they grabbed me. They bit. I bit. They clawed. I clawed. I was fresh and healthy enough that my wounds healed almost as soon as they were inflicted, but damage was still damage.
Even with their superior size, weight, and numbers, I managed to grab one and roll, flipping the zombie off me and slamming it into another one. The third pounced and bit into my neck, which would have been hilariously ironic if it hadn’t been so painful.
Todd swung something blunt at the zombie, hitting it on the head. Its jaw clenched in one last painful bite before it fell off me, rolling limply onto the pavement.
Meanwhile, the necromancer putt-putted away on his little scooter.
“This is the best I could find!” Todd held a up broken hockey stick. “Catch!”
He tossed a yardstick at me, which felt hilariously light and weak in my hands. Because it was a yardstick. The kind of tool that couldn’t seriously hurt a child.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said just as the other two zombies lunged at us.
I swung the yardstick as hard as I could and lightly thwapped a zombie on the head. My second swing broke it, splintering the cheap pinewood in my hands.
“Dammit!” I shouted as I switched tactics, thrusting the broken edge into a zombie’s eye. This was slightly more effective as it stopped the undead creature’s lunge in mid-move, though it still snapped its teeth and flailed its arms at me. I pushed, shoving it all the way back into the wall with one final charge, slamming the zombie back with a horrible sucking sound as I drove the broken yardstick deeper into its eye socket. Its brain seemed to realize how much damage it had taken, and the zombie collapsed in a heap.
I didn’t have time to celebrate before I heard Todd yelp, “Help!” as the other two zombies crowded him. He was holding them off by wildly swinging his hockey stick, but it would only work for so long.
I ran over and launched at a zombie, wrapping my arm around its neck and slamming it face-first into the pavement with a bulldog headlock. I got half-up and then fell again into an elbow drop, smashing its skull against the curb.
Todd managed to find his second wind as he landed a genuine hit on the zombie attacking him, busting its skull open and sending it to the ground. He struck it again and again, screaming wildly as the hockey stick splintered and broke long after the zombie’s head did the same.
“Hey, man, it’s dead.” I got back to my feet. “I mean it’s dead-dead. Hold up.”
He backed away dropping the broken stick. “It’s gonna get up again!”
“No it won’t. You’ve done enough.”
The zombies began to crumble, and Todd fell to his knees, hiding his face as he was trying not to cry. I knelt by him.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“It used to be a person,” he said, his voice shaking. “That was someone’s brother, or son, or husband. Every single one of those shambling messes used to be somebody. I just broke his skull open with a stick.”
“The guy who really did this is getting away,” I said softly to him. “It’s okay. You can stay behind if you need to. But I need to keep running.”
Muffled sounds of gunfire rang out from the streets behind us, followed by screams.
“Meg,” I said, breathing in sharply.
“No, it’s okay. I can go,” he sighed and stood up. “Let’s get that bastard.”
“Hospital’s this way.” I led him onward and upward.
Despite what a certain song may tell you, running up that hill was not easy. Not even for a vampire. Since neither Todd nor I had the benefit of a motor scooter, we were both out of breath by the time we crested the hill. I briefly considered turning into a bat, but that would have left Todd behind alone in the city, and I didn’t quite trust him on his own yet. Not with the mood he was in.
“No more running,” he said. “Got to catch my breath.”
I stopped and checked the wound on his shoulder. It had started bleeding again, which wasn’t good.
“Keep pressure on this.”
Screams came from behind us and to the left, interrupting us. I turned to see several costumed people run by—two redneck survivalists, a couple of blood-stained yuppies, and a one-handed sheriff. Shambling disturbingly near them was another knot of zombies.
“There’s a shooter! Run!” one of them called out to us as they ran past, completely unaware of the threat almost on top of them.
Todd pointed at the zombies. “Are those—?”
“They absolutely are,” I answered as I ducked in, trying to separate them from the hapless partygoers. This left me facing the zombies head-on, still unarmed. I held eye contact with them, forcing them to focus on me and not the innocents running away. In that moment before violence broke out again, I saw some weapon-shaped objects in my peripheral vision lying in the street. Hoping that I was right, I blindly reached for one just as the zombies lunged for me. My fingers wrapped around a heavy wooden object and I swung.
I smacked a zombie across the jaw with enough force to spin its head around on its neck before I took a proper look at what I had. A big, flat, heavy wooden paddle that felt familiar for some reason.
“Is that a cricket bat?” Todd asked. “Just like in Shaun of the Dead?”
“I’ve seen that movie,” I muttered as I swung the bat at the Zombies again, catching one hard enough in the temple to create splatter. Zombie skulls were less durable than living skulls, but these ones seemed especially fragile. The more zombies, the weaker they were. So how many were there?
With two down, the other three zombies jumped me at once. They slammed into me hard and grabbed me before I could get the leverage to swing the bat at them again. They pulled me to the ground, clawing and tearing at me, though I let my overcoat take most of the damage. I still had to get away from them before they actually hurt me, and squishy skulls or not they were strong.
One of them lost its head. Suddenly. As the decapitated corpse flopped helplessly on top of me, I kicked at the two living zombies and forced them to give me some space, rolling away and swinging the cricket bat as I moved.
Todd stood there, holding a strange weapon—some sort of weird double-bladed polearm with a crescent on one end and a large wedge-shaped blade on the other.
“Look!” he declared. “A monk’s spade! Just like in the Survival Guide!”
I facepalmed as I realized how we had gotten our weapons. Other cosplay props laid discarded in the street, dropped by fleeing partiers.
“Absolutely nothing about this zombie walk was safe,” I muttered as I swung at the remaining two zombies, bashing their skulls into the pavement.
“We’ve lost him!” Todd said. He was still posing with the monk’s spade as he said this.
“Don’t worry. We know where he was going. Are you sure you can wield a big weapon like that?”
“I feel all right,” he protested.
“Then let’s go. It’ll be easier once we start going downhill.”
The early-night air was punctuated by sounds of screaming and panic far behind us. I could only hope that Megaera was successful in her horrible, horrible task. As for us, we had a break from the zombies, giving us a chance to pace ourselves the rest of the way up the hill.
Todd began to flag when we reached the top. He leaned against his weapon, clutching that bad bite wound, which had begun to bleed again. I could see the medical center in front of us, though it would be a long downhill sprint.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
He looked at me. “If I turn into one of them, will you put me out of my misery?”
I flicked him on the forehead.
“Ow!”
“I’ve told you, you won’t turn into a zombie,” I stated. “Okay? Got it? You’re fine. We’re both fine. We just need to make it downhill, catch up with the bad guy, and bop him on the head. You’ll be fine. We haven’t even seen any zombies in a while.”
I shouldn’t have tested fate like that, because the sound of groaning corpses behind us immediately proved me wrong.
“Todd? Do you think you have it in you to run down that hill?”
He looked back at the gathering horde behind us. “I think I have to.”
Just how many zombies were there? Even accounting for their individual weakness, the numbers were too many. It didn’t make sense—not with a rookie necromancer. He was throwing way too much power around.
Meg, if you could finish shooting zombies and come join us, any time would be nice. Thanks.
We raced down the hill toward the medical center, running as fast as we could without tripping or falling. Since the zombies weren’t zoombies, we outran them with ease.
So, there was this one strange aspect about supernatural evil. When bad things were in the air, people tended to get lost. It didn’t always happen that way—after all, the zombies had found their way into the zombie walk—but very often a place that was eerily quiet was actually eerie. The hospital parking lot was eerily quiet. Filled with cars, but the expected amount of people milling around just weren’t there. It felt even more obvious as we circled around toward the back entrance Meg had told us about. By the time we found it, the city felt quiet enough for a real zombie movie.
Todd finally stumbled, collapsed and leaned against a car as he clutched his bite wound.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“Yes, you can. You can keep moving.”
“I’m not some superhero like you two. I’m a barista. All I’m doing is slowing you down. And what if he’s infected the whole hospital?”
“I don’t want to think about that. But if we stop the necromancer, all the zombies should collapse. Dust to dust, got it?”
He cringed. “Got it.”
“But for now, we’ve got to keep going because if that mob closes in, we’re done for. And besides, when all your friends ran off you were the one who stayed around to help. You’ve got this.”
“I didn’t run because I was bleeding and panicking.”
“I said you’ve got this.”
“I don’t even know how to use a monk’s spade.”
“Todd. You’ve got this. We’ll find that guy and beat him over the head with his own scooter. It’s cool.”
“Scooter!”
“Yes! That’s the idea!”
“Look out! Scooter!”
I turned around just in time to see the airborne scooter before it crashed into me. It smashed me against a car and continued to flip and crash, setting off a few alarms before it hit the ground and skidded across the parking lot. The biggest ghoul I had ever seen came into view.
Zombies were easy to create, but weak and came with a lot of drawbacks. Ghouls were the exact opposite. If a zombie was a little clay ashtray made at summer camp, then a ghoul was the pieta. Created by using the human body as a canvas, the necrotic energy that powered them stretched and distorted them into freakish, inhuman shapes. Unlike zombies, ghouls did not require a necromancer’s concentration to function. Some were mindless monsters, others remembered enough of their lives to beg for death, but all were dangerous. This particular ghoul was over seven feet tall and had fingers long and pointed enough to be like spears. The tattered remains of its clothing hung from its stretched, skeletal frame.
While I tried to recover, catching my breath and trying not to see stars, Todd was smart enough to make a run for it. The ghoul watched him go, stretching its jaw open wide enough to dislocate it as it began to stomp after him.
“Nope. Not gonna do that.” I shook the cobwebs out of my head and charged at the ghoul. “Hey! Wrong target!”
I hopped onto the hood of a car and used it as a springboard to leap for the ghoul, cricket bat held high above my head. It turned as I sailed through the air, looking up at me as I brought the cricket bat down on its head.
It just shattered. The bat, not the ghoul’s skull. Its thick, armored skull. Man, my gun would have been really useful right about now.
“Oh, come on!” I dove to the side as the thing slashed at me, its claws scraped over pavement. The broken handle bounced harmlessly off the ghoul’s face failing to slow it as I tried to get enough distance to escape its claws. Its next swipe caught me in the hip just as I began to get to my feet. As I stumbled, the other hand speared me through the shoulder and chest with two of its fingers.
Even though I could heal, impalement hurt like a bitch. It slammed me into a car, pinning me like a bug. I tried to push the bone claws out of my body, but without any leverage I couldn’t overcome the ghoul’s strength.
Just as the ghoul lifted its other clawed hand to slash at my head, Todd charged in screaming as he swung the monk’s spade at its wrist. The weapon’s shovel-like blade struck against desiccated flesh, chopping off the ghoul’s hand.
The ghoul shrieked, its remaining hand striking Todd and sending him tumbling across the parking lot. I shouted and wrenched the severed hand out of my body, throwing it at the ghoul to get its attention again. In spite of the monstrous pain I forced myself to move, diving to the ground to grab the dropped spade.
The ghoul followed my dive and tried to impale me again. As its hand swung in I managed to bring the crescent blade up between its fingers, splitting its palm in half. Heavily injured, it began to back away. I rose to my feet and twirled the weapon, thrusting the larger spade-shaped blade into its shoulder. It nearly tore its own arm off when it tried to pull away from me. I used the opening to slash it with the crescent blade and followed through with the main spade blade jammed under the undead creature’s chin. It finally toppled over. I made sure it stayed down by stomping on the shovel, driving the blade through its neck to sever its head.
“Wow, whaddaya know. This thing really is useful. Todd! Are you okay?”
“Ow.” he pulled himself to his feet, leaning on a car. Blood dripped from a head wound, but scalp wounds bled profusely even when shallow. “I don’t know. I think I’m okay. What about you?”
I shrugged and handed him back his weapon. “I heal really fast. Look, Todd, this is going to get more dangerous.”
“I’ve saved you twice,” he said. “That was a big zombie.”
“It was worse than a zombie,” I answered. “Come on. Let’s get inside and end this before things get any worse.”
“How could it get worse?” he asked.
I didn’t elaborate. Finding the actual morgue took some work—it was in a separate building just off from one of the hospital wings and away from most foot traffic. We would have been alone even without the way-clearing effect of all the dark magic.
“So, you work at Peet’s?” I asked.
“Starbucks.”
“Heathen.”
“It all comes from the same place.”
“No, no, regional brand loyalty is important.” We approached the door. “All right, here goes.”
The average morgue was a fairly sterile, orderly part of any hospital. But this one had been ransacked. Drawers broken open, gurneys overturned, lights flickering. Blood on the walls.
“Well, at least we know that bad stuff has happened here.” I looked around for anything resembling a weapon. I couldn’t even find a spare scalpel.
There it was, at the end of the hall: the computer lab. If this was where the scooter-riding necromancer performed his ritual, then that was where we would have our showdown. I nodded to Todd but took point, charging through the doors just in case there were any surprises that I could tank.
The room was dominated by a massive computer tower and three connected monitors. Desks covered in equipment, both occult and technological, filled most of the space. A silvery circle surrounded the perimeter of the room, crisscrossed with designs that seemed vaguely familiar in a let-me-look-this-up kind of way.
Standing in the middle was one very familiar guy who looked like jack black with a soul patch.
“Okay,” I declared. “It’s over. Shut down the zombies or I put your head through one of those monitors.”
The necromancer pointed a gun at us. At Todd specifically, which complicated things. I could take a bullet, but he couldn’t.
“Not so fast,” he said. “I don’t know who you are or how you made it in here, but you’re not going to stop me.”
“Lucy, he’s got a gun!” Todd helpfully pointed out.
“Look, whoever you ar . . .” I began, but he interrupted.
“Shut up,” the necromancer said and looked at Todd again. “You may think you’re some kind of hero, don’t you? But you don’t understand.”
Aw hell, he thought Todd was the one doing all the zombie-fighting. The tall, bloody guy with an exotic weapon. It sort of made sense in a stupid way, but this also meant that the necromancer’s attention was not on me. I began to inch closer to him.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “What America needs is a good zombie apocalypse.”
I facepalmed as he continued his rant, and continued to carefully, carefully make my way nearer to him.
“Everything’s commercialism these days. Big business squashes the little man, corrupt politicians make democracy a sham, and there’s no justice. When the zombies strike, everybody will finally be equal.”
“Dude,” I said. “Tone down the reddit a little.”
The Necromancer frowned. “Shut up!” He brandished the gun at Todd. “You’re gonna die now! You and your girlfriend!”
I grabbed a keyboard from the desk and swung it at the necromancer, smashing it in his face. Plastic keys scattered everywhere as he slipped and fell, firing his gun wildly into the room. Todd ducked and covered, a bullet barely missing him and embedding itself in the wall.
He took a swing and hit me in the chin, but after being impaled by a ghoul I really didn’t care. I managed to wrap my arms around the necromancer as he struggled and swung at me in an attempt to shove me off.
“Get off me! Who are you?” he shouted just as I managed to get a good hold on him and flip backwards, suplexing him into the tile floor.
“Wow!” Todd said. “You got him!”
“Okay. You’re out,” I said to the necromancer. “Get rid of the zombies and give up.”
He kept wrestling. Most people lost their will to fight after being slammed headfirst into tile, but this guy was determined. Our fight went from flashy professional wrestling to messy ordinary wrestling. He had size and weight, while I had skill and knowledge of how to hurt people. So while I got him in a joint lock, he started shooting wildly around the room. Todd ducked for cover again while I let go to try to take the gun out of his hand. Shots rang out in a deafening thunder until it finally went dry, the gun uselessly clicking now that he ran out of ammo. I wrenched it out of his grip and swung it at his face, pistol-whipping him and breaking his nose.
“Excuse me—I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Meg stood at the door. Cute, cheerful, and without zombie makeup.
The necromancer threw me off while I was distracted, and I hit my head on a computer desk. He clumsily ran toward Meg, grabbing her and holding her in front of him as a human shield.
“Don’t anyone move or the girl gets it!” He gripped one hand on her throat. “Did you hear me?”
Todd brandished his weapon but backed off.
“Hi, Todd.” Meg winked.
I pulled myself up to my feet and brushed myself off. “Oh hey, Meg. How did it go out there?’
“Did any of you hear me?” the necromancer asked. “I’ll crush her throat! I mean it!”
“Oh, my sweet summer child, you have no idea how much trouble you’re in.”
“What?” he asked.
Meg transformed. A bloody-eyed nightmare with wings and talons of bronze, a harpy from Hell out of mankind’s worst nightmares. The Erinyes, judge of mankind’s sins.
The necromancer responded reasonably—he screamed and let go of her. Megaera turned and dug her razor talons into his shoulders, forcing him down to his knees.
“Timothy Dell,” Megaera hissed. “You are guilty of murder. You have defiled corpses. Your necromancy has called up beings from the darkness. Your punishment will be just.”
“Help me!” the necromancer screamed. None of us lifted a finger to help. “Please! You don’t understand! I did everything to help people! To fix society! I’m overthrowing the system!”
Flames began to spring up around their feet.
“I will take you to a judgment that will never end. Your soul shall suffer for every sin and crime you have committed—oh wait, Lucy, here you go.”
She interrupted herself to lightly toss my gun back to me. I caught it and checked the magazine. It had one bullet left.
“You don’t understand!” the necromancer pleaded. “Society needs to be torn apart! We have to get rid of the—”
Megaera and the necromancer disappeared in a plume of flame that enveloped them both. His voice faded, distant and tinny, as if being carried far, far away. And then the morgue fell silent.
“Well,” I sighed. “That’s that.”
“Is it over?” Todd asked. “What just happened?”
“Meg just got very scary,” I said. “The zombies should all start collapsing now. You did really great there. How are you feeling? I’m sure we can get some decent bandages on that shoulder now.”
I stopped, I felt something new. Necrotic energy still filled the air, just as strong as before. Removing the necromancer seemed to have done absolutely nothing, but now there was a different presence building behind it. Something very, very familiar.
Demonic energy.
“Todd, run.”
“What?”
“Get out! Now!”
I shoved him out of the room, pushing him through the door just as the infernal circle on the floor flared to life, bathing the lab in a silvery glow. I finally remembered where I had seen the symbol on the floor before, and who it belonged to.
The computers came on, and faces filled all three monitors: Human, gryphon, and wolf. They spoke in unison.
“I am Bune, Duke of Hell. The Triune Dragon. He who moves the dead. And who are you?”
The last time I had faced a goetic demon, I had come prepared and armed to the teeth, and still only won by luck. This time all I had was one bullet and a lot of questions.
“Bune.” I pronounced both syllables carefully. “You’re behind this? That explains how that man could draw up so much power. So what did he do? Summon you into a computer?”
The demon laughed through the monitor. “He was a willing pawn, capable of breaking my imprisonment to allow me to stretch out my hand over the earth again. The dead shall walk in hunger and terror, all in my name.”
“Then I guess I’m going to have to kick your ass just like I did to Caacrinolaas.” I put as much confidence in my voice as I could.
The three faces laughed, and I tried to hold my composure.
“You?” the demon asked. “You are nothing. Woman. Vampire. Jew. Inferior. Defiled. Corrupt. The dead shall tear you to pieces.”
“And yet I can still kick your ass,” I declared.
“I control the dead,” Bune said. “And what, pray tell, are you?”
Pain struck in my skull, like knives piercing behind my eyes. I fell to my knees in agony, forced down by the sheer pressure.
“What shall I do to your body?” Bune asked. “Shall I freeze your blood cold? Shall I burst your brain? Shall I control you like a puppet?”
“I’m not dead,” I gasped.
Bune laughed again.
“Not dead,” I repeated again as I forced myself to my feet, finding my strength through the pain. “Cursed. Death has rejected me, but it hasn’t claimed me. I’m not one of your puppets!”
He had said it himself. Woman. Vampire. Jew. Corrupted and cursed, but not a corpse.
“And what do you think you can do against me?” Bune asked as a sudden surge of power emanated from the computers and the circle, and three walking corpses materialized in the room.
“That’s just not fair.” I smashed one in the head by pistol-whipping it and whirled around, elbowing another in the face. The third grabbed me and shoved me against one of the computer desks. I kicked at its ankle to trip it and stomped on its head when it fell.
“I offer you knowledge,” Bune said. “I grant wisdom, riches, honor, and the respect of others. They are yours to take.”
“But people already call me a smartass.”
The one zombie whose head was still intact jerked in a spasm, its body twisting as bone spikes burst from its spine and ribs. I had never seen a ghoul actually being created before, and I stared at this one for a moment. But I also saw something else. Bune wasn’t just using the computer out of convenience. All the necrotic energy came from it—he was using it as a vessel. Trapped inside just as if he had been possessing a body. Or, more accurately, a brass urn.
“Devour her,” Bune commanded the ghoul.
The ghoul jumped to its feet and pounced at me, claws and fangs lengthening as it threatened to tear me to shreds. It caught me and pinned me, but I pulled away enough to aim my handgun and fire once, burying my last shot in the computer tower.
The tower rocked on top of the desk, smoke pouring from the bullet hole. The monitors flickered as the images scrambled, Bune’s yell sounding distorted and broken. The ghoul jerked back as if injured and I shoved it off me, rushing to grab the monitor and rip it out from the cables plugging it in.
“That’s the problem with computers.” I heaved it high above my head. “They crash.”
I threw it as hard as I could to the floor. The plastic casing shattered as bits and pieces of hardware scattered, broken. A loud pop and a spark presaged the acrid smell of ozone and smoke. The monitors, now dark, shattered with a final burst of necrotic energy as the demon’s presence left the morgue.
I still stomped on the computer anyway.
Todd limped into the room. “What just happened?”
I stopped jumping up and down on the broken computer. “Windows crashed.”
He looked at the dissolving ghoul on the floor and then back to me. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Meg re-entered the room, back to being cute again. “Hey, guys. Sorry I took so long. Had to process him and everything and—wow, Lucy, what happened? Linux troubles?”
I stepped away from the smashed computer. “It’s a long story. Let’s get Todd to a real doctor and I’ll tell you.”
She laughed and gave Todd a look over.
“Yeah, let’s get you patched up. So how did it feel to survive your first zombie apocalypse?”
“I’d rather do the zombie walk,” he said.
We left to get him fixed up and enjoy some coffee afterward. The morgue was trashed. The zombie walk had ended in newsworthy disaster. Meg probably had to get rid of her newest Glamour. But we saved people and stopped another demon. And most of all, we were alive.
And to think, I usually enjoyed Halloween.