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Not the most inspiring words to hear from the man who was supposed to know everything. “How can you not know?” An edge of hysterics snuck into my voice, and I didn’t speak again for fear I might start shouting unintelligibly.
“It’s not that I don’t know anything,” he went on. “But I don’t know all the details yet. Certainly not enough to come up with any kind of workable plan.”
“Do you know what those things are?”
“Of course. Animated corpses. I thought that was apparent. Or didn’t you see any on your way over here?”
Offended, I replied with an embittered, haughty tone. “I did see them, and yes I know they’re animated corpses. But, I mean…they look like…” I drifted off, too embarrassed to continue.
“They look like zombies.”
“Yes.”
“But you know there is no such creature as a zombie.”
“That’s what I thought until I had to hide from a half-dozen bodies who were moving around of their own free will.”
Keaty clucked his tongue at me. “Therein lies the problem with your assessment. They are not moving of their own free will. They’re dead. They have no free will. Someone else is dictating their actions.”
“Someone is controlling them?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“But this many? There must be thousands. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. The cop I talked to said the bridges are all blocked off because of the bodies. We’re talking about a lot of animated dead, here.”
“We are.”
For a moment we stared across the desk at each other, and neither of us spoke. I’m not sure if he was trying to psychically give me the answers I wanted, but it wasn’t helping.
“A necromancer,” I said at last, though I wasn’t sure it was the right response. Certainly, a necromancer could raise the dead. And there was historical precedence for their existence. But in those records a powerful necro could raise a dozen corpses, perhaps a small cemetery at best. There was nothing in the histories I’d been forced to read in my youth that could account for thousands and thousands of dead rising under the command of one person.
“Yes, as far as I can tell this is the work of a necromancer, though admittedly I don’t think we can pin it all on one individual.”
“So, multiple necromancers.”
“That seems the most likely conclusion.”
“Have you ever heard of necros teaming up?” It was a genuine question, since none of the material I’d read covered anything about an ability to combine powers.
Keaty sat back in his chair, loosening his light blue tie. “I’ve heard about two or three getting together, usually doing some kind of experimentation. Nothing has ever been mentioned on a scale this large. At least not on North American soil. And records in Europe and Asia where necromancers are more active are a lot harder to come by. Especially with no Internet. So, to answer your question, no, there is no historical precedence for this.”
“But necromancers are human. Humans with powerful magic, but they’re mortal. If we find them and kill them, we cut the head off the proverbial beast, right? The necro dies and the magic dies with them?”
“In theory.”
“In theory?”
“Yes, they’re human. And under normal circumstances if you kill them, their risen dead will fall as well. But the trouble here is, with a number of them working together, we don’t know how their power is divided. And chances are there isn’t just one we can target, we’d need to find them all.”
“And we don’t even know where to start looking.”
“Exactly.”
“Awesome.”
“It’s less than ideal. Did you come up with anything useful on your way over?”
I tried not to read too much into his words, though Keaty often came across in the disapproving-father role, making it hard for me not to be offended and hurt by his insinuation. “The more recent dead have been processed by funeral homes, so there’s a low risk of bites for the time being. Not to mention the only harm to come from the bites would be a nasty bacterial infection. Undead mouth germs, ew.”
