The Wrong Dead Guy

  “Our bargain is at an end,” Harkhuf said. “As is your miserable existence.” He raised a linen-wrapped foot and brought it down hard, aiming for Nelson’s head.

  Nelson rolled away and staggered to his feet. “We had a deal, you used-paper-towel-looking piece of shit.”

  “Your book is just there, vile thing. Retrieve it yourself.”

  “I can’t!” he said. Then, “Give me back my book.”

  “Begone, cretin, or I will have my other thralls hunt you down and feed you to my beasts.”

  Nelson ran for the elevator. I just cannot catch a fucking break, he thought. First Coop and then the book. Now I’ve got Boris Karloff on my ass and even McCloud is gone. I am so fucking fucked.

  The elevator pinged and the doors slid open.

  Nothing to do now but get really ugly.

  Instead of hitting a button to go up, he hit one to go down.

  By the time Harkhuf returned to thaumaturgic antiquities, the remaining thralls had found Shemetet and laid her out on one of the big examination tables. He set down the cookbook and went to her. Touching her desiccated face tenderly, he ran his fingers down her cheek to her noble chin. “My beloved,” he said. Turning to his cowering thralls, he said, “Who here is your master?”

  “You are,” they said to him.

  “That’s not what I mean, dogs. Forget it. You are worse than my previous thralls.” He pointed to a short man in the front. He had a boyish face and wore round red glasses. “You. Come to me.”

  The thrall crept forward, but kept more than an arm’s length of distance between Harkhuf and himself. He spoke barely above a whisper. “Yes, Master?”

  “Shemetet must be in robes befitting a queen. You have raiment here?”

  “Yes. In the back.”

  “Bring her the finest you have.”

  “Yes, of course, Master. Is there anything else?”

  “You have weapons?”

  “A few swords and knives from some of the tombs.”

  “Bring them all,” said Harkhuf.

  “Right away, Your Awesomeness. Anything more?”

  “The other thralls will release all the other dead beasts and humans that exist here.”

  “Release, Your Vastness?”

  “Remove them from whatever cases, chambers, or sarcophagi in which they now dwell. I will have need of them. Tell the others to do this while you clothe your new queen.”

  “Naturally, Your Enormity. I’m happy to oblige. My name is Kevin, by the way. If you need anything at all, just—”

  “Be gone, Kevin.”

  “Yes, Your Noble Immensity.”

  “‘Master’ will do.”

  “Wonderful, O Master of Masters.”

  Harkhuf took Kevin by the throat. “Just ‘Master.’”

  “Just Master,” he croaked.

  Harkhuf released him.

  While Kevin scuttled off to tell the other slaves their various tasks, Harkhuf opened the book he had taken from the other dead man. However, when he looked for the spells he required, the markings on the book’s pages were unfamiliar to him.

  “Kevin,” he said.

  Kevin ran over. “Yes, Your Colossalness.”

  “What did we just talk about?”

  “Sorry, Master.”

  “Good,” Harkhuf said. He laid his hand on an open page of the book. “Can you read these markings?”

  “Easily, Master. What are you looking for?”

  “I wish to bring life back to Shemetet. Find this for me.”

  “With pleasure, Master. Let your unworthy servant just check the table of contents.” With a trembling finger, Kevin scanned down a page in Enigmatic Confections. “Excuse me, Master, but it says it’s a cookbook.”

  “This cannot be. I sensed the power within.”

  “Naturally, you’re right, Master, but this whole section is about blueberry tarts.”

  Harkhuf put a finger on the page. “And that?”

  “Oatmeal raisin cookies.”

  “And that?”

  “Gugelhupf.”

  “What it Gugelhupf?”

  “It seems to be a kind of German marble cake.”

  “And there is nothing about—”

  “Wait,” said Kevin. “Here it is, right between Raspberry Grunt and Rum Platz. Revivification of the Departed. Does that sound right?”

  “Indeed. Read me what is there.”

  “With pleasure, Master of Masters.”

  Harkhuf gave him a hard look.

  “Sorry. Wow. There’s a lot more kinds of raising the dead than I thought. It says you can bring them back with a mind or without a mind. With a soul or without a soul. And there’s a whole section here about egg whites. No. That’s about resurrecting a soufflé.”

  “I grow weary of your prattle, cur.”

  “Royalty. Revivification of Royalty. Is that it, Master?”

  “Good, thrall.”

  “It says it’s just like a Rejuvenation of an Aristocrat spell, but with . . . huh.”

  “Yes?”

  “It wants an offering of grains, milk, salt, the sweetest honey, butter, and the fruit of the cacao tree.”

  “Do you have those things, thrall?”

  Kevin read the rest of the list. Twice. “I think . . . I think . . . it wants you to raise the dead with a chocolate brownie,” he said uneasily.

  “Answer me quickly, cur. Do you have this chocolate brownie?”

  “Give me one minute, Master.”

  Kevin stood in the middle of the room and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Did anyone bring back any brownies from lunch?”

  A woman raised her hand. “I did.”

  “Susan? What kind?”

  “Butterscotch.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I’ve heard this word before, Kevin. It is a word of defeat,” said Harkhuf. “I promise you eternal torment if you do not deliver to me a chocolate brownie.”

  Kevin thought for a minute.

  “I grow weary, Kevin,” said Harkhuf.

  “I got it!” Kevin said, and ran to where he left his briefcase. When he got back to Harkhuf, he was panting. He had a bar in his hand. “This is what we call a jumbo Snickers. It has chocolate. Maybe I can microwave the Snickers bar and the brownie together. Do you think a chocolate butterscotch brownie would work, O Great, Merciful, Even-Tempered Master?”

  Harkhuf looked from Kevin to Shemetet. “If that is all there is, we will have to make do. Bring to me the chocolate butterscotch brownie.”

  “Right away, Master.” Kevin ran to Susan. However, halfway there he stopped. “Snickers also has peanuts. In or out?”

  “Shemetet has a nut allergy,” said Harkhuf.

  “Peanuts out. Give me just a couple of minutes, Your Immeasurable Hugeness.”

  Harkhuf started to say something, but he let it go. There would be plenty of time to kill Kevin later.

  Just a few minutes later, with a much-too-hot chocolate butterscotch brownie burning his fingers, Kevin began reciting the strange words in the even stranger cookbook. As he spoke, the room dimmed and a single light glowed from above the area where Shemetet lay in repose. The more and the faster Kevin read, the brighter the light became. He felt possessed by the words and they came faster and louder until, just as his voice reached a crescendo, some of the brownie dripped onto Shemetet’s linen wrappings. Harkhuf grabbed Kevin and was about to snap his neck, when light exploded into the room and the two of them were knocked back. Both Harkhuf and his thralls were blinded for a few seconds, but when they could see, they were amazed.

  “My beloved,” said Harkhuf.

  “My beloved,” said Shemetet.

  He helped her down from the table. Like Harkhuf, she was still in her linen wrappings, but she moved with grace and ease. A couple of the thralls that had been in the back came running forward and draped a finely wrought dress around Shemetet’s body. Another thrall brought knives and swords and laid them out on the table from which she’d rise
n. She ran a hand over all of the weapons, finally selecting a curved khopesh. Weighing the blade in her hand, she addressed the thrall that had brought them.

  “What is your name?”

  “My name is Terry.”

  With the barest flick of her wrist, she cut off his head.

  “The proper answer was ‘My name is Terry, my queen.’ Do you all understand that?”

  “Yes, my queen,” said the thralls in various states of shock. She turned to Harkhuf. “Have you assembled my army, dear Harkhuf?”

  “It is being gathered now, my love.” He went to Kevin. “Take me to the other dead. And bring the book.”

  They went into thaumaturgic antiquities’ back room, and when they emerged just a few minutes later, they were followed by almost a legion of other mummies, skeletal horses, lions, bears, and other wild things.

  “It is a beginning,” said Shemetet. “But it is not enough.”

  “Not nearly. But soon there will be more. Kevin, bring in the witches.”

  “Witches, Master?”

  “By the emergency exit. An old woman and a fat man. If you are too blind to see them, kill yourself with this because I will not be so kind.” He handed Kevin a dagger.

  Kevin stared at it. “Okay,” he said. Then, “Master.”

  To his immense relief, he found Minerva and Kellar huddled together by the exit, jumpy and edgy.

  “He wants to see you,” Kevin told them.

  “What kind of mood is he in?” said Kellar.

  “Mood?”

  “Are things going his way?” said Minerva.

  “If you mean did he just wake up his girlfriend, yes.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Then she killed Terry.”

  “Oh,” said Kellar.

  “He was my ride home.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Anyway, come on. He wants to see you both.”

  They went into the front room, where the thralls and the royals were assembled. Minerva and Kellar tried not to look startled by the skeleton army or by the dead body by Shemetet’s feet. When they reached Harkhuf and Shemetet, they made a big show of bowing so low that Kellar thought his vertebrae were going to blast out of his back like popcorn.

  “It’s wonderful to meet you, my queen,” said Minerva.

  “Me, too, my queen,” said Kellar.

  Shemetet looked from them to Harkhuf. “These are the ones who led you here so that you might revive me?”

  “Yes, my dear.”

  “Then, as worthless as they appear, they may continue to serve.”

  “Thank you, my queen,” said Minerva.

  “I know where we should go next,” blurted Kellar. Minerva gave him a look and he turned red.

  Shemetet reached for her blade, but Harkhuf laid a hand on her arm. “Tell me, witch man. Where is it you would take us?”

  “The natural history museum. You think this place is full of cool dead stuff? Wait until you see a T. rex skeleton.”

  “This is a beast of war?”

  “A magnificent killer,” said Kellar adding, “Master.”

  “Bring us to the T. rex,” said Shemetet. “I will be the judge of its worthiness.”

  Minerva set the grimoire on the table. “Kellar found a spell he says should transport all of us right to the museum. Then you can double your army, my queen.”

  “That will still not be enough. I require fighters who will die and whose numbers stretch from here to the horizon.”

  “To the horizon, huh?” Minerva mumbled.

  “Forest Lawn,” said Kellar. “After the museum. We can go to Forest Lawn cemetery. The dead things here? Wait until you wake up all the stiffs in Forest Lawn, my queen.”

  “Then we shall go to Forest Lawn.”

  “And Hollywood Forever. That’s another cemetery,” Kellar said.

  “Why Hollywood Forever?” said Minerva. “It’s full of show-business douche bags.”

  Kellar looked at the grimoire. “I always wanted to meet Maila Nurmi.”

  “Who?”

  “Vampira. I had the biggest crush on her as a kid.”

  “Oh, for fuck sake.”

  “Are there vast numbers to be had at Hollywood Forever?” said Harkhuf.

  “Not as vast as Forest Lawn, but these are high-quality people. And there are lots of other cemeteries in L.A. We printed out a map.” Kellar held up a Google map of L.A. County covered in red circles.

  “We shall go to all these places of the dead and begin amassing our forces,” said Shemetet. “But tell me, witch—and your life depends on your answer—where shall we gather the army away from the prying eyes of the unworthy?”

  Minerva and Kellar smiled at each other. She said, “Fear not, my queen. I have just the place.”

  40

  Coop and Phil’s debriefing was long and thorough, with more than a little shouting. Mostly from Coop, and mostly about how the DOPS was run by a lot of idiots who couldn’t even make a radio that worked. Even with all the screaming, they kept Coop all afternoon, and even after the L Wing got the all clear, they didn’t let him go. They let Phil leave, but kept Coop a little longer. All his internal alarm bells went off, but he played it cool. In fact, it turned out to be nothing. The security department just asked him if he could identify either of the strangers they’d picked up on the surveillance system.

  The first photo was of a heavyset man with a comb-over.

  “Never seen him before,” said Coop.

  They showed him a shot of an older woman who looked like Stevie Nicks’s stunt double.

  “Minerva Soleil,” he said. “What the hell is Minerva doing downstairs?”

  “Nothing,” said the head security officer. “She and all the rest of the freak show vanished into thin air. Do you have any idea where they would have gone?”

  “Have you checked out Minerva’s reading parlor?”

  “We have a team there now.”

  “Then I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  As Coop started to leave, the security officer said, “How is it you know the Soleil woman?”

  Coop thought fast. The last thing he wanted to admit was that he’d gone to her with a pocketful of stolen Egyptian artifacts and that, in fact, he was wearing a piece of the evidence around his neck right now. All he wanted to do was get out of there.

  “I used to work with her on a séance swindle. She’d make like she’d contacted dead Aunt Tessie or someone’s favorite pet and I’d do the voices. Mostly we’d scam widows and orphans. They were the easiest.”

  The security officer gave him a look of utter disgust. “You make me sick. Get out of my office before I have to fumigate it.”

  “Whatever you say, Chief. Tell Mr. Woolrich that I’ll see him bright and early tomorrow. Also, that your equipment sucks.”

  “Get out.”

  Even though he wasn’t in trouble with the DOPS anymore, Coop knew he was right where he was before with Harkhuf. The mummy was out there somewhere, and now he had the beginnings of a small army. Whatever he was up to, Coop was sure that sooner or later, Harkhuf would swing back around to him.

  The question is: Do I trust Woolrich to really have my back even though I signed the contract?

  The answer to that remained “no.” Coop now had firsthand experience of the DOPS body garbage disposal and knew how easy it would be for him to end up as Soylent Green. That meant that while he now had a retirement plan to fall back on in his old age, it looked increasingly unlikely that he’d have old age, arthritis, bad knees, and senility to look forward to.

  If I’m ever going to be clear of Harkhuf, I’m going to have to do it myself. But I don’t know where he’s holed up, and if I did, I couldn’t do anything about it myself.

  A moment later, Nelson and the Auditors popped into his head. That was three more assholes to worry about.

  His head hurt. Rather than think his way into a mood that wouldn’t let him sleep and would have Giselle tell
ing him to go see a shrink, he decided to go with Plan B.

  Circus Liquor was on Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood. Out front was a thirty-two-foot-high neon clown so terrifying that over the years it had shocked drunks sober, and sober people into a bourbon spiral just trying to get the glowing image out of their minds. Coop planned on joining that latter group that night.

  Inside the store, his mind swam with Phil’s endless screams, and visions of monsters and ice-skating elves and monsters eating ice-skating elves. He was distracted enough that he couldn’t make any hard decisions. In the end, he made an easy one. He wandered the aisles and secured an armful of Elmer T. Lee, 1792, Barrell, and Angel’s Envy before heading to the register up front. His logic was simple and impeccable: Why have only one kind of hangover when you can have four?

  There was a television on at the checkout area. He managed to ignore it until one of Sheriff Wayne Jr.’s car commercials came on.

  Crap. Can’t you people leave me alone long enough to pickle my brain?

  The sky behind the Sheriff crackled with storm clouds and lightning. It looked like an ad from last Halloween. Cheap bastard, thought Coop. No wonder Donna is having second thoughts about your horse-puncher act.

  The shot widened until the Sheriff filled half of the screen and an old woman dressed like a late-night infomercial fortune-teller filled the other half.

  “What do you see in your crystal ball, gypsy queen?” said the Sheriff.

  “I predict the lowest prices and the highest values in the San Fernando Valley.”

  “You’re a spooky woman, Minerva, but you know your business . . .”

  Coop’s mind went crystal clear. He looked up just in time to see Minerva Soleil winking at him. “Come on down and see Sheriff Wayne Jr. If you’re looking for something special, you just know he has it.”

  The guy in line behind Coop bumped him with his cart. “Hey, Einstein, fix the universe on your own time.” He patted a twenty-four-pack of Pabst like a prize poodle. “I have things to do.”

  “Me, too,” said Coop. He dropped his bottles into the guy’s cart and ran outside to his car. By the time he time made it home, his headache was gone and he had a whole new plan, the worst one he’d ever come up with.