Necropolis (48 page)

It got quiet. Just the rain. Water turned by gravity into a weapon. It kept me conscious, smacking me in the face. Lying there in the grave, I was too tired to laugh at the absurdity of it.
 

The sky lightened a little bit, dark blue struggling against black.
 

A foot planted itself at the edge and Nicole peered down at me. “Damn, can’t stay away from holes in the ground, can ya?”

She squatted closer. My heart was spasming in violent arrhythmia. It would fail soon. Couldn’t pull out the blade—I’d bleed to death. My hand fumbled at my sides, searching.

She looked out at the offline Blister. “You really screwed things up,” she said with a sigh. “But don’t think I can’t get out of this. By morning, my spinsters will have made me the hero of Necropolis, and you, the worst terrorist of the last fifty years. How does that sound?”

Sense of touch was almost gone. Muscle control nonexistent. Hands like slabs of meat. Darkness. Crowding. My. Vision.
 

Hang on… hang…
 

“First I’m going back to the house,” she said. “Anyone who’s still alive, I’m going to kill. Then I’m going to crush that smarty’s globe into fucking dust. What do you think about that?”

Dead fingers smacked. Against a shaft. Hanging from left pocket. Hadn’t. Lost it.
 

Get it out, get it out…
 

“Sorry about your wife,” she said. “I’ll bury her next to you.”

My arm flopped back over my head. Nicole saw the glint. “What’ve you got there?”

Please, guide my hand
.

I threw. The pneumatic syringe sailed up through the rain. Straight into Nicole’s neck. Before she could bat it away, it had autoinjected its entire ampoule of Retrozine C.

She yanked it out of her flesh and stared at it. “What the fuck?”

Then she realized what it was. Dropped the syringe. Spasmed as she felt it begin.

She turned and ran. I was forgotten.
 

Run all you want.

Nowhere to go.

70

MAGGIE

M
aggie watched Nicole stagger through the tombstones.
 

She crashed into one, leaning over its cement cross, gasping, twenty-five years old now, her face young and gorgeous and filled with mortal terror. She pushed back, kept staggering forward.

Twenty years old now.

Cursing, screaming, as the rain abruptly stopped and the skies softened. A strong wind began herding the storm front away from them.
 

Nicole stumbled against a tree, clinging to a low branch, her hands thinning, shortening until the branch was too thick to hold onto.
 

Now sixteen, now twelve, her clothes falling away as she shrank, her face dissolving and reforming, then dissolving again.

She saw Maggie. She ran toward her, begging in a voice strangled by shrinking vocal chords. A gold ring dropped from her too-tiny hands into too-large shoes. She stumbled out of them. Her stockings swam around skinny pre-adolescent legs.

Her knife sheathes slipped off her forearms into a tangle of weeds. Her veil fell to the earth, forever discarded.

Four years old, naked, Nicole finally dropped to her knees, threw her head back and screamed at the sky. But it was a child’s scream, without power, without even understanding anymore.

Then she disappeared behind a low monument.

Maggie walked over. A tiny fetus lay in a puddle of rainwater. It twitched, its pathetic limbs grasping, moving, its bird-eye blinking against the last drops of rain.

Maggie turned away in revulsion. When she looked back a moment later, all that was left was a glob of indistinct cells, a wad of flesh, shrinking, shrinking…
 

Dissolving…
 

Then nothing but the sound of wind.

***

Struldbrug landed the chopper in the street beyond the fence. The mansion was burning, casting a wicked yellow light down the embankment. Three dark forms climbed from the vehicle.

The moon slinked out, full and bright. Where it had been hiding during the storm, she didn’t know. But now it added its preternatural glow to the sky, sparking off the wet marble like angel fire.

In the distance, she could hear more choppers coming, probably tactical dragonflies ordered up by the President.

The figures were clear now. Struldbrug. Max, a long coat thrown around his shoulders, teeth gritted in pain.

And then Armitage, his hat on his head and that damned pipe in his mouth, his hair a fluorescent white, his eyes golden.

She uttered a bleat of astonishment and ran to him. Her hands drifted over the craggy surface of his face. He gave her a wry frown. “A funny thing happened on the way to the morgue.”

She threw herself into his arms.

***

Maggie slipped into the grave next to Donner.

There was a piece of paper clasped in his hand.
 

She was about to tell him they’d get him out of there, he’d be okay, they’d radio for paramedics, but before the first syllable had passed her lips, he said, “Shh.”

She clamped her mouth shut, eyes brimming with tears. She leaned forward and he whispered into her ear.

She nodded. “The scientists are dead. I’ll make sure their research disappears, too. I’ll make sure it ends.”

He smiled that crooked smile at her. The one only he could make work.
 

He tried to say something else, but death took him first.

***

She knew what he’d been trying to say, so it was alright. Three little words, words that transformed a cold cosmos into a place of hope.
 

She climbed out and opened the paper. She read what he’d written. Max and Struldbrug walked over to her.

“My daughter?” said the immortal.

She shook her head. He wavered, but then nodded. It was as though he’d always known, despite his best efforts, the inevitability of this outcome.
 

“I’ve flooded the Conch with the news,” he said. “The origins of the Shift, and its inevitable end now that Nicole is gone. There will be some revivals for a while, but Shift will fade of its own accord. The reborns alive now will be the last. There will be a generation, not very long from now, that will read about them like creatures from a fairy tale.”

Armitage looked like he couldn’t quite believe it.

Max eyed the paper. “What’s that?” he asked Maggie.

“A newspaper clipping Donner pulled off the Conch.” She cleared her throat. “From the
Long Island Democrat
, September 30, 1890: ‘Frule Eklund, a Frenchman, aged 52 years, who has been engaged as grave digger and general assistant in the Maple Grove Cemetery, dug a grave in one of the rear plots last Thursday, unbeknown to his keeper. It was not discovered until Saturday morning, and not until after Eklund had been found sick with fever in his bed in the barn. He died on Saturday night, but just before he breathed his last told of the grave which he opened for the receptacle of his own body, in which he was buried yesterday, as desired.’”

Max chewed it over for few seconds. “What’s it mean?”

“Donner’s telling us he dug his own grave. He doesn’t want us to bring him back,” said Struldbrug.
 

Manhattan’s aeries were glowing red with the rising sun. The day would be its own color now, not enhanced by the Blister. It would be cold but clear.
 

Maggie was staring at Armitage’s fedora. She snatched it from his head put it on her own. “Hey,” he said, surprised.
 

She fished the cigarette—the one she’d snatched out of Nicole’s hands in the parlor—out of her pocket.

“Damn shame,” said Max solemnly, looking at the grave. “I was starting to like the guy.”

“Not to worry,” Maggie said. They looked at her in a triple take of surprise.
 

She pulled the brim down aslant over one eye and grinned. They were all gaping now. She lit the cigarette with a burst of plasma from her fingertip. She drew in the smoke and held it in her holographic lungs, relishing its feel. She released it into the rain-fresh air and treated them to a perfectly arched eyebrow.
 

“After all—”
 

She raised the syringe that had fallen from Nicole, and twirled it.

“—You can’t keep a good man dead.”

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, thanks to my friend Scott Fishkind, who had a seriously cool idea that started me down the long road to this book.
 
I am deeply indebted to him.

To my agent, Sandy Lu of L. Perkins Agency, for rescuing me from the slush pile.

To Dina Waters, Eric Kibler, Craig Snay, Mark Frost, Hilda Speicher and Xavier Amador for their active support and insightful comments on this manuscript. To Scott Sutton, who read this book on his tiny Blackberry screen at least ten times (and counting), and always managed to find a new typo.

Thanks also to fellow Youngstown natives Greg Smith and Chris Barzak (a talented novelist—check him out!); and especially TV writer/producer Jack LoGiudice, who took me under his wing in the wilds of LA and helped me become a professional TV writer. To my former TV agents Nancy Jones and Sue Naegle, to Peter Tolan, and to comedy titan Chuck Lorre, for taking a chance on a green NY playwright.

To Tracee Patterson, for her love and support. You too, Nathan and Lindsay!

Special heartfelt thanks to my brother, John, for the countless hours we spent in the basement creating worlds out of teddy bears, cardboard and imagination, setting us both on the path to writing careers. And for his support and advice, in good times and bad. We may not share the same genes, but you could not be more my brother, John.

To the fifth-grade teacher (I wish I could remember her name) who was my first publisher. She took my short story, typed and bound it, and put it in the class library next to all the other books.
 
That was all it took to make me writer. Teachers are more precious than gold. It’s a shame we don’t treat them that way.

And finally, to the memory of Michael Bennahum, my first manager and agent, who never gave up on me, even when I screwed up. I still miss you, Michael.
 

About the Author

Michael Dempsey is a novelist, actor, playwright and theatre director. Michael wrote for network television in the mid-’90s.
 
Necropolis
is his first novel and the result of a lifetime’s passion for crime and speculative fiction. He lives in northeastern Ohio with his family, where he is working on his next novel.