Locked
“The geography of the nether world is complicated,” Isabel explains. “It’s governed not by distance and space but by the spiritual and conceptual relationship of one place to another.”
Not one of the words in her second sentence makes any sense to Berend. It must be evident on his face, because she looks at him and continues, “My point is that there are a lot of places in the world beyond that haven’t been discovered, and no one knows what might be lurking there.”
“Like the place with the eyes,” Berend says. He still can’t shake the feeling that the next time he looks out a window, they’ll be there again, filling the sky and staring down at him with malevolent, predatory intentions. “Or was that a thing? A creature as big as the world?”
Isabel shrugs. “There isn’t much of a useful distinction. Ondir is the gate, and the gate is Ondir. He is the realm of the dead and its lord.”
There’s a reason Berend never even entertained the thought of joining the clergy as a young man. He rubs at his own eyes, hoping they don’t look as dry and crusty as they feel. His borrowed coffee is wearing off. “Right. So you’re saying that there’s a place, or a person, or a…thing that eats souls like a fire eats wood. Nobody’s heard of it before, because it just appeared out of nowhere, but that happens sometimes.” He blinks, willing himself to stay awake and coherent a little longer. “Do I have that right?”
He looks at Warder, who glances expectantly up at Isabel.
She holds up two empty hands. “It’s more complicated than that, but yes. More or less.”
Berend decides that his least favorite word is now complicated, and if he never hears it again, he’ll be a much happier man. “Let’s say you’re right,” he says. “What do we do now? How do we fix Mikhail and Bessa?”
“I don’t know if we can,” Isabel says. “I suppose it might be possible, but I don’t think anyone alive has that kind of knowledge.”
“There’s a lot of people alive right now.” He can hear panic edging into his voice, though the fear is distant. He feels calm. Maybe he’s just too tired to be afraid. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”
Isabel stands and moves toward the door. “The important thing is to restore Ondir’s realm. Without that, the dead have no place to go. There’s no point in restoring the spirits damaged by the device if they’re only going to wander.”
“There is a point.” Berend gets up and goes after her, catching his foot around the rickety leg of the chair and dragging it with him. “They’re suffering. And I can’t use Bessa as a witness until she’s able to talk to a magistrate.”
He frees himself from the chair at the foot of Warder’s bed. “Thanks for your time, Professor. Don’t go anywhere,” he adds, emphasizing it with a finger jabbed in Warder’s direction.
Warder just looks at him. He’s a long way from being able to stand, much less leave town.
In the hallway, Isabel has taken up a brisk pace in the direction of the staircase. The nurse, alerted by the sound of the door, sticks her head around the corner. Satisfied that Warder’s suspicious guests are leaving, she disappears again.
“Where are you going?” Berend calls after Isabel. He could catch up to her on a normal day, but his legs weigh him down as if they’re filled with lead shot.
“The temple,” Isabel says over her shoulder. “I have to tell the high priest.”
“What about the Belisias?” Berend asks.
She stops and turns to face him, giving him a chance to close the distance between them. Her tired eyes find his. “I know. The church will give you shelter, at least long enough to find another way to prove the murder. I just have to explain everything—”
Berend cuts her off. “Explain everything? To the man who wanted to have you committed not even a full day ago? Do you hear what you’re saying?”
“Things are different now.”
“Are they?” Berend asks.
Isabel presses both palms into her eyes. “By now Father Pereth will have tried to banish the ghost in the morgue and found out that he can’t. He has to believe me now.”
Slowly, Berend reaches out and holds both her wrists in his fingertips. He tugs her hands away from her face. “I’m sorry, but he really, really doesn’t. He’ll believe whatever he wants to believe.” He’s seen the type before—rich men, usually, the kind that can afford his fee but do everything in their power to haggle him down. The kind who take unnecessary risks because they believe they’re untouchable in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Lord Belisia might be one of them; his son, surely, was well on his way to becoming another.
The muffled sound of a high, brassy bell comes down the hall before being abruptly silenced.
“You don’t know that,” Isabel says. Her hands hang limp and cold in his. She needs something to eat and a warm coat, and then somewhere safe to sleep. No wonder she’s running back to the church. If only Berend could provide those things for her, she’d maybe have a little more sense about it.
The staccato rhythm of the nurse’s shoes approaches them, echoing down the hallway. Berend lets go of Isabel and turns around. She’s found us out. I suspect we’re about to be asked to leave and never come back.
What she says is, “This floor is to be locked. Stay here until you’re given further directions.”
“What’s going on?” asks Berend.
She shakes her head, dislodging a corner of her folded white cap. “I don’t have any information now. Sit down and stay out of the way.”
Without waiting for them to comply, she goes to the door to the stairs and turns the lock with a heavy iron key. At the opposite end of the hall, another uniformed nurse does the same at the other door.
“Well,” Berend says. “That’s unusual.”
Isabel shakes her head, a quick, shuddering motion. “We can’t stay here. I can’t stay here,” she corrects herself.
On the one hand, her sudden willingness to separate herself from him gives Berend pause. After all they’ve been through together, and with the Belisias still hounding him, now she’s going to run back to the temple and leave him on his own? On the other, he can’t blame her for wanting ecclesiastical help in circumstances like these. If he could tell his tale to a sympathetic priest and wash his hands of the whole thing, he would do it in an instant.
“It looks like you’re stuck with me for a little while longer,” he says, trying not to sound bitter. “Why don’t you rest for a minute, and I’ll see if I can find us something to eat.”
Isabel doesn’t say anything, and her eyes are unfocused, but when Berend starts back up the hall she follows. He leaves her in the ugly little chair by Warder’s door, where she stares at the wall and worries at her lower lip with her front teeth.
Now Berend understands: this is the breakdown he’s been trying to avoid for the past day and a half. It’s quieter than he expected, but he’s seen the signs before. New recruits would get up and run after their first artillery barrage, providing convenient targets for the next round. Some would dash in the first clear direction, but others would wander, turning in dazed circles until someone tackled them to the ground. Worse were the ones with a delayed response, who would wait until nightfall to leave their beds and go somewhere, anywhere else. Berend had spent a very long night, once, sitting on an eighteen-year-old boy’s back to keep him from getting up again. He hopes he won’t have to do the same for Isabel. He’s heavier now, and she’s much less robust than the young men the Sons of Galaser tended to recruit.
She’s still in her chair when Berend turns the corner, breaking line of sight. A second hall of private rooms lies perpendicular to the main corridor, ending in a supply closet and a cluster of three white-uniformed nurses.
“Sir,” one calls out, a young woman with several strands of shiny black hair escaping her cap. “Do you need something, sir?”
Berend smiles, stopping halfway down the hall so as not to appear threatening. “I just wanted to ask when the doors will be opened. We haven’t had the chance to break our fast yet, we were in such a hurry to see our cousin.”
The nurse who saw to Warder exchanges a dubious look with both her companions. “The entire hospital is locked down,” she says.
“Can you tell me why?” asks Berend.
“It’s just a minor breach in the cold rooms,” the black-haired nurse says. “We’ve sent for a priest of Ondir. Everything is perfectly safe. You’ll just have to wait for a while.”
Berend’s heart turns to ice at the mention of the god of the dead. If there is in fact a priest on his way—Berend assumes even odds on that, given the state the temple was in when last he saw it—he won’t be able to do anything. Cold rooms means bodies. It’s not a term Berend is familiar with, but he can guess. In a hospital this size, the number of dead in the cellar might be in the dozens, if not a couple hundred. One angry ghost, like, for example, the ghost of the murderer attached to Isabel, could set them all to walking and trying to tear the building down with their hands.
“Thank you for your help, ladies,” Berend says. He tries to smile again and turns on his heel back toward the main corridor. He won’t run; he doesn’t need any more suspicion on him than there already is. His shoes are still too loud in the empty hall as he hurries back to Isabel.
“Where’s Geray?” he asks.
She looks up at him, and her eyes come into focus. She still sounds far away when she says, “He’s here.”
“Where exactly?”
Isabel lifts an arm and points at a stretch of empty wall across the corridor. A man-sized hint of a shadow hovers in the sterile white space, but it’s gone as soon as Berend blinks.
Now I’m seeing things. Fantastic.
“Has he been here the whole time?” he asks.
“Yes. Why?”
Of course Geray isn’t the only ghost in a place full of the sick and dying. Berend takes a breath and lowers his voice. “We have a slight problem.”
Isabel gives him a blank look.
“The hospital keeps their dead in some kind of cold storage,” he says. “Apparently they’ve started getting up. Hence the doors being locked.”
He can see Isabel’s thoughts on her face, from surprise to a determination that almost gets her up out of her chair, to the realization that despite this being the exact situation she trained her whole life to deal with, she can’t do anything. Her shoulders curl inward, and she looks at the floor.
“They’ve sent a message to the temple,” Berend continues. “Seeing as things aren’t going well there, either, I think we’re going to be stuck here for a while.”
“How many?” Isabel asks.
“I don’t know. This place is as big as the Temple of Isra. I’d imagine there’s quite a few.”
Isabel swallows, and her next breath is a shaky gasp. She rubs at her eyes with both hands. “All right,” she says, her voice hard and cold. “Are the dead contained?”
“I should think so. They’ve locked every door.”
“All right.” Isabel gets to her feet. “We have some time, then. We should make contact with the temple, and—”
A heavy, fleshy thump against the nearer door cuts her off. Another one follows, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of breaking bone. The door creaks, and the hinges shake.
They’re out of time. The dead have come knocking.
Forward to Chapter Twenty-Three
It is indeed time for zombies. Thanks for reading!
Space Whales Press 
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