A Woman of the Swamp

Part III

Apocalypse Now

Three Days Later

1. Lessons in Covering Up a Catastrophe

Marie looked at Nick, peacefully asleep in his makeshift hospital bed. Wires and tubes snaked out of him to a series of intravenous drips and monitors Shirley had set up around the room. A real hospital was apparently out of the question. Not only were they trying to keep a low profile, but Nick had put enchantments on himself to fool most medical machinery. According to James, it had been part of a drunken bet with a New York warlock. In the end, Nick won, but the spells were permanent. Every so often, his pulse spiked in a peak that looked suspiciously like a middle finger, and Marie had to laugh.

Her head still hurt from her fall, but otherwise, she was ok. Nick hadn’t been closest to the abomination, but the concussive force mixed with smacking his head against a marble tomb proved difficult to come back from. It had been three days, and Nick still showed no signs of waking up. The machinery said he was stable, but Marie was wondering if he would ever return. She took small comfort in the fact that the hourglass on Nick’s wrist still had plenty of sand in the top half.

James walked in, glum and drunk, the usual since the accident. “Any change?” he asked.

“Nothing. Still sleeping the days away.”

“Well, he’ll be glad to miss this. Have you seen the latest?”

Marie shook her head.

“You might want to come take a look.” James left the room and motioned for her to follow.

Reluctantly, Marie left the monster hunter to sleep off his near-mortal wounds. The suite took on a new air of permanence as the days passed. Lopsang and James were already seated on a couch before a large flat-screen television. A newscaster talked animatedly while a red banner beneath her read: Quarantine perimeter extended to six blocks as the government works to clear nerve agent.

Marie scoffed. “They’re still calling it a terrorist attack?”

“As well they should be,” said Shirley, mixing herself a drink behind the bar. The action was all habit, as they had all learned. As Shirley put the finishing touches on a neat gin mix, she poured it all into the sink, letting out a wistful sigh as she did so.

“You could have given that to me.” Lopsang shook an empty glass and slurred his words heavily.

Shirley didn’t take the bait and shook her head silently. “We paid good money to get that terrorist theory off the ground. So long as people are off blaming another unknown force for the attack, no one is panicking about a zombie infection.”

“You think your goons would be a little more efficient at this point.”

“It’s not my fault the attack centered on a cemetery. We keep finding new shamblers coming out of old graves. If it were up to me, we’d firebomb the whole damned thing, but apparently that would piss off the local government.”

“Never piss off local government officials. They have way too much to gain and too little to lose.” James smiled. “Pretty sure Nick put that in his manual.”

Lopsang chuckled. “For someone with so many rules, he doesn’t ever seem to follow them, does he?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“We’re being told now that six blocks will be closed off indefinitely, and at this time, no one is thought to have survived the blast,” said the news anchor, never breaking concentration. “We go now to the chief investigative officer on the scene.”

“This should be good.” Shirley sighed.

A trim man with a cropped haircut and a fresh suit came on the screen. “We’re doing everything we can to ensure there are no traces of the neural agent left—”

“Fucking Larry.”

“Larry?” asked Marie.

“Larry, another member of the Sixth Side, always gets to do PR outreach. It’s a mite easier than wrangling drunken monster hunters to go after rogue necromancers.”

Marie nodded. The television showed another aerial image of the blast on the day it had happened. Somehow, it was difficult to tell through the plume of acrid black smoke that a massive conglomeration of corpses was at the center. People never see what they’re not looking for. Global conflict on a small scale was a much easier story for people to stomach, so they went with it.

Tension permeated the room as the death tolls were read out once more. Lopsang got up and walked to his adjoining room, shutting the door with a loud bang. They all knew none of them could be held responsible, but that didn’t change the fact that Lopsang had thrown the grenade. It saved a lot of people in the long term, but in the short, it had put his best friend in a coma and killed a score of others.

James took up Nick’s pattern of heavy drinking and sarcasm to keep him out of a suicidal spiral. The young man was looking more like his grizzled master by the day. “Sorry, Marie, I thought they were going to say something interesting.” The kid drained his tumbler and set it down heavily on the table. “But it’s the same old bullshit. Deny the story, keep everyone locked down until they have a way to fix it.”

“What did you expect? Mission accomplished?” Shirley sat down in a chair opposite him. “We royally fucked up and we’re all lucky to be on this side of a black site.”

“I think we did the best we could under the circumstances.” James’s tone was flat, dead.

Marie spoke before the argument had a chance to turn into a full-blown fight. “Do we have any more leads on who Red Death is?” They had come so close to finding out, and Shirley’s itchy trigger finger had stopped it.

“No, they’re a ghost as far as I can tell.” Shirley’s voice was ice.

“Look, if you’ve got a problem with me—”

“Six square blocks are currently on lockdown with most residents presumed dead because of a botched mission that I led. I don’t have a problem with you, I’m just a little stressed.” Shirley went back to the bar to mix another sacrificial drink. “Believe me, I want to leave this place and get answers as much as you do, but The Sixth Side is investigating our mission, and until they clear us, we’re not going anywhere. Keeping us in the finer comforts of life is more than I expected.”

Marie couldn’t escape the irony that she was once more in a cage, albeit a nicer one. Never make a deal with the devil… Or corpo-government entities. The amendment felt necessary after her brief experience with The Sixth Side. Marie never responded to Shirley and instead went back to Nick’s bedside. Despite the man’s brash demeanor and general lack of empathy, she missed him. Without him, the team devolved into picking fights and drinking for sport. Nick was their punching bag, and without him, they used each other.

The monitors at Nick’s bedside beeped steadily. The sound gave Marie some comfort even if the readings didn’t mean anything. According to James, the enchantments in Nick’s blood would only wear off when he died. It made the medical equipment a binary measure in every sense of the word. “Come on you stubborn bastard, it’s time to get up and help fix the mess we’re in.”

“Alright, fine, but someone’s going to need to get me something for my head.” The words came out dry and dusty, but clear.

Marie yelped and jumped back from the bedside.

“And stop making so much noise. Did you not hear me say my head is killing me? Have Shirley fetch me a drink. Or better yet, put it in one of those IV bags, I’m clearly in withdrawal.”

“I don’t think that’s the best idea.” Marie reapproached the bedside, recovering from the shock of Nick’s sudden waking.

“Of course, it’s not.” He lifted his arm, trailing wires and tubes behind it. “Christ, I was out long enough they had to do all this?”

The pulse monitor blinked an image of the middle finger once more.

“Can’t believe that enchantment is still working.” He chuckled and immediately winced.

“You’ve been out for three days, a lot happened.”

Nick nodded and smacked his lips. “Judging by the desert in my throat, I’d say that’s about right.”

“Let me get you some water.” Marie turned to head out of the room, but Nick’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

“No, wait, Marie. Are we alone?”

She turned to face him, and a chill ran through her. Why? Why did she feel that? “The others are in the main room. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you awake.”

“Before they do, there’s something you need to know.”

Marie’s throat went dry. The level of pity that had already found its way into Nick’s eyes was enough to convey the seriousness of whatever secret he was holding. “Who died?” she asked, trying to break the tension a little.

Nick didn’t even crack a smile. “It’s not so much who died, as who didn’t.”