Norman Hopewell’s shovel clinked against the grave’s concrete vault. With a sigh of relief, he tossed it down, then wiped the sweat from his gaunt face, leaving a smear of dirt. He then lifted a hand and performed a well-practiced series of convoluted movements, pushing his energy into the concrete. Whispers chorused in his mind before the burial vault yawned open, pushing the dirt beside it away and leaving a large hole that widened across the concrete. This is what happened, however in truth he had pushed magical energy into the space between a cluster of molecules and then widened it. Norm smiled, then reached in and pulled the casket with all his strength…
Which was not much. The damned thing did not budge. He sighed, then cast the Enlarge Space spell again, creating an opening in the casket itself. He then gently pulled the corpse free and cast another spell, this one opening a pulsating green and purple portal. The portal was a disk in the air, and extreme heat poured from its purple depths as green lightning sizzled across its surface. He pushed the body through, and the portal snapped closed once it had made it disappear. Norm smiled again, then grabbed his discarded shovel and tossed it up out of the hole. He followed it up, scurrying up the side and into the night above.
People in uniforms were waiting for him, flashlights and guns aimed at him. He froze once he had taken his feet, and they cuffed him, reading his rights as they leaned away from his stench. In his occupation, bathing was a luxury that was mostly more trouble than it was worth. His patron offered him resistance to bodily malfunction as long as he continued his work, so he needn’t worry about infection or illness. He sighed as he was pushed into the police car. Being a necromancer, silence had long been an ally of his. It was prudent, he decided, to continue to exercise this value.
They took him to the county jail in silence. Norm watched the pair of officers as they travelled to the next town over. They seemed uncomfortable. One had asked him where the body was, after they had placed him in the car. He did not answer, as they would not have believed him anyway. He had, unfortunately, chuckled, and he was aware of how bad that looked for him.
The police drove into a garage door at the station and left him for a long time. Finally, some officers collected him and placed him in a holding cell. He sat in the bright fluorescent light and studied the graffiti scratched out of the paint on the walls and door. He could feel the boredom in all the racial slurs and gang gratifications. Nowhere did he see any indication that his patron might have arranged this. He sighed, then chuckled when he thought of his failsafe. Things in the next town over were soon going to get ugly, if he did not check in.
There was another person in holding. Drunk and raving, Norm recognized one word in four. Usually it was “Pig.” Norman began to shiver.
“Excuse me, sir? You didn’t have any identification, I need to book you. What’s your name?” Norm looked over at the officer crouched at his chuckhole. She was pretty, and small. Norm thought that she probably should have chosen a different career, but no one ever took his advice, so he looked away, holding his tongue.
“Don’t worry about that. Move his creepy ass to Interrogation 1. Now.” Came a voice that Norm recognized. It was one of the arresting officers. The man was tall and Caucasian with a clean-shaven face and close-cropped graying hair.
A buzz sounded at the door, and then the electric lock popped with an abrasive clang. Norm rose and moved to the door, allowed himself to be cuffed again, and allowed the pretty young officer to guide him to the interrogation room, which was unfortunately just like the movies. Drab and boring. He found, however, that the light was much easier to avoid than the ones in the holding cell. He was left here for a long time as well, cuffed to the table. Finally, the officer that had ordered his movement to this room appeared, slamming the door behind him. Norm assumed that it was an intimidation tactic, or perhaps that the man was frustrated.
“Alright. Where’s the body?” The man said, flopping into the chair across the table from the necromancer.
“May I have a cup of coffee?” Norm asked, mentally setting his feet. The coffee was the line. They would get no answers without it.
“No. You realize that there hasn’t been a case of graverobbing in this county in over a century? Did you realize that in Illinois, it is a Class 3 Felony to desecrate a grave?”
“But about that coffee…?”
“I told you no. This is-”
“Then we have nothing to discuss, officer.” Norm’s voice suddenly seethed with steely rage. He had practically barked the words, and the officer was taken aback. He rose and moved to the door, knocked. The man turned back, with what looked like an intention to speak, but he did not. Norm was glaring at him, and honestly considering casting a spell on him. However, the clang of the opening of the electronic lock saved them both.
“Book him. Straight into population. John Doe with no records if he won’t cooperate.” The officer yelled down the hall as the door swung closed behind him. Norm chuckled, once again considering his failsafe. Things were about to get ugly indeed.
The booking process was quick, and then he was “dressed down.” He lost a lot of hair in the shower and came out with skin flushed from the heat that blasted forth at the midpoint of the shower. He toweled dry and dressed in the orange and white clothes he was provided. He then collected his sleeping mat and was placed in a cell. The door clanged shut behind him, and he smiled to himself as he set about preparing his new accommodations. The place was a vast improvement to the cellar he had been loitering in.
His mat and blankets set out and prepared, he sat cross-legged on the mat and meditated. He had found that it was easiest to contact his patron from a state akin to sleep, as Neville Goddard would have called it.
~
Norm had left his cellar at 10 pm. When he had not returned by 10 am, his experiments and assistants and pets were given a magical signal, triggered by his absence. His main assistant, a disturbing little homunculus that he affectionately called Jimmy, began to unlock all the doors in the magically enlarged space. The zombies and golems began to shuffle out of the cellar, and a fleet of homunculi began their preparations for the work ahead.
~
Norm’s cellar was beneath a general store in a small town. Across the street was a barber shop where an elderly man trimmed a middle-aged man’s hair while sneaking peeks at the TV in the corner. The Cubs were playing… and losing. He sucked at his dentures as he turned his attention back to his patient… er, customer.
“The fuck is that!” The customer cried, jerking back in his seat and losing a large chunk of his hair.
“Hey!” The barber said, pointing at the swear jar. Even so, he peered through the storefront window. A horrific creature, easily ten feet in height, bulbous yet man-shaped, with no head but sensory organs on the upper part of its chest, was stomping down the middle of the street. Its skin looked like a scab, and a random assortment of organs and pieces of human bodies stuck out of its body. Blood flopped on the asphalt behind it in half-congealed globs. As the pair in the barber shop watched, a car screeched to a stop before it and it brought a heavy fist down on the hood, denting it and splattering the area around it in ruddy-brown… fluid? The driver threw open the door and made a run for it, but the young lady only made it two running strides before the monster had grasped her leg and lifted her aloft. She shrieked and sprayed it with pepper spray. This had no effect, it seemed, as it slammed her down on her head. The barber began to shake as his bladder let go.
Seemingly from the same direction that the coagulating blood monster had come from, a stream of shambling, discolored humans came into the shop window’s view. All were nude, and most had terrible lacerations or burns upon their skin. Some even had the clinically tedious slits of autopsy examinations.
“No way.” The customer breathed, trying to squeeze himself into the barber’s chair.
“What-“
“Zombies. But that’s crazy.” The man in the chair stood then, emboldened by his denials.
“Like the Romero flicks?”
“Yeah, Jerry. Just like Dawn of the Dead.” Jerry shuddered as one of the zombies spotted them and moved to the window to beat upon it. Others were drawn to the noise, and soon the pair faced a wall of walking corpses.
~
Jimmy was a disgusting little monster. Norman had grown him by injecting his own semen into an unfertilized chicken egg, then kept him in an aquarium filled with water dosed with magnesium and nitrogen. Jimmy had grown to the height of the tank before almost drowning when his lungs came in. Now, the homunculus stood 3’2” and weighed 29 lbs. It had one large eye centered above a spastic little proboscis, and sixteen other eyes at the ends of stalks growing from all over its body. It had three legs, each with seven knees, the bottom four of which were armored into a sort of bone spike that Jimmy had often used as tools. Between the three legs, pointing straight down, a large penis dragged along the ground behind him, disproportionate and non-functional. Its two arms were the right size for its body, however, and even had a human amount of digits and functioned fully. They came off its body beside the enormous eye.
The homunculus was powering up the machines in Norm’s lair, awaiting the influx of material that the other homunculi were soon to bring. Once the machines were either in standby or completing their startup routines, he laid a map out on a table and held an amethyst pendulum aloft, attempting to scry for Norman’s location, from which he would be taken alive.
~
Norm awoke in the late afternoon, having fallen asleep during his meditation. The other guests at the jail were screaming and banging on things, and the necromancer smiled. It seemed that his failsafe had triggered, and that the police were very busy. He wondered if they had discovered the great lie of the zombie movies: bullets were useless. Knives were useless. Only magic could kill the monsters that he had unleashed upon rural Illinois. He wondered if they had tried to shoot any of the flesh golems yet. He cackled, wishing he could see them change, adapt.
~
Officer Riggs and his partner, Officer Terry, responded to the Main Street Barber Shoppe with their siren and lights blazing. Not only did none of the other drivers pull over, Riggs theorized that they were exceeding the speed limit. He did not have time to slow down before he struck the first couple zombies, but he missed the flesh golem.
“What the fuck is that?” Terry asked, drawing his gun.
“I-” Riggs started, but did not finish. There were not adequate words. He popped open the trunk and leapt out of the car. Glen Terry jumped up and fired a volley of bullets at the golem. Each shot hit home, but only served to draw the creature’s attention. Riggs rushed to the back of the car and took out the tactical, pistol-gripped shotgun that waited. He cocked it back, chambering a shell, and pointed it at the center of mass, just like his father had taught him. The shot erupted from the barrel, dozens of pieces of lead finding a home in the disgusting monster before them. It recoiled a step, then placed a hand on its chest as if wounded. Tremors and ripples moved through its body. Terry screamed, then fired his gun up into the air. Riggs turned in time to see a zombie clamp down on the officer’s neck with its teeth. Blood spurted out over the car.
Riggs looked back at the golem in time to see a series of lead spikes erupt from its back, arms, and legs. He fired again and again, cocking the gun even after he’d run out of shells. The beast rushed him then, bisecting him with a single slash. The last thing he saw before he bled to death was an army of tiny little monsters running toward the car. They were flesh colored, but so pale he could see their blue veins pulsing. Their bodies were so inhuman that his mind accepted his death before accepting their existence. They began to drag Glen Terry down the street. Riggs turned away and closed his eyes, never to open them again. Despite the repurposing of his body, his quick death was rather fortunate for him.
~
Riggs and Terry may have been the first of the responders to perish, but within an hour every First Responder in the county flocked to the little town as the monsters and zombies moved toward the larger one next door. Ambulances and fire engines pulled into the little town, setting up little mobile outposts behind police chokepoints. The firefighters were not sure what exactly they should be doing, but there were plenty of wounded to keep the EMTs busy.
The flashing lights and sirens drove the monsters wild. A dozen flesh golems moved down Main Street, decimating the populace and any vehicles, trees, or buildings in their path. Behind them rolled a tide of undead, the sickly green of their skin indicating the beginnings of rot, or worse. The police officers fired their weapons dry before desperately calling for aid. Dispatch was overwhelmed, and finally the call to muster the National Guard came. Within the hour a helicopter took to the sky.
~
The trees whipped in the violent winds put off by the helicopter’s rotors. The pilot was trained in reconnaissance, so he flew in a loop to the center of the town and followed the blood to the frontline. He was almost sick as he watched the lead golem shred through a group of police with riot gear. Behind him, another soldier shouldered the heavy machine gun, taking aim below. Unfortunately for them, they had also been targeted.
A golem had watched them from the alley where it had stomped a couple homeless men to death. The walls were slick with their blood, but the beast did not slide as it leapt, bouncing between the alley walls, to take the high ground of the apartment building roof. From there it leapt again, crashing into the helicopter as it lowered to give the gunner a better vantage. The golem smashed into the side of the vehicle, the rotors grinding to a stop within its chest. The helicopter crashed to the ground and exploded. Turned to shrapnel by the explosion, smoke obscured the view as dozens of fleshy tendrils darted from the golem’s wounds to take hold of as much material as it could. The line of monstrosities continued in their shambling march, guided telepathically by Jimmy’s scrying.
~
The smoke cleared from the center of Main Street and the golem stood as rotors grew from its back. They were the same size and shape as the helicopter’s had been, but the titanium and fiber glass ran through with pulsing veins. An LMG slid from its armpit, swiveling and firing at fleeing people. The golem took to the sky and returned to collect Jimmy. At the same time, the lead golem climbed to wait on a building.
Also at the same time, the zombies and golems stopped marching toward the County Jail. Instead, they began to hunt. Anything organic, from families to family pets, was slain. Houses were torn into, blood was spilled, and the First Responders more or less gave up. Most fled, desperately trying to phone their loved ones as the monstrous creatures descended upon them, slew them, and dragged them back to the necromancer’s lair.
~
Norm had grown hungry by late afternoon. He did not know how long it would take his menagerie of monsters to slay their way to him. They must have been on their way, however. He could not imagine any other reason for the police to starve an entire jail full of people. There was not time to dwell on it, however. A lead spike suddenly ripped through the secure wall behind him, then another. The two blades shredded the wall and he beheld with loving awe the mutations that his golems had undergone. One seemed to be a helicopter, and another looked like… well, it had grown a bunch of metal spikes from its body. Jimmy strolled through the rubble and Norm greeted him affectionately, making a fatal mistake: he did not notice that for once, Jimmy’s penis did not drag behind him. Rather, it curled forward, off the ground, and a needle-like spine now stuck out of the homunculus’s urethra. Norman began to walk through the shattered bricks and rubble but stopped as the spine bit into his calf. A paralytic toxin was administered, and he collapsed.
~
The necromancer awoke as a golem dragged him into his cellar. Jimmy walked before them, chittering and seeming to direct the other creatures. Homunculi moved about in teams, delivering corpses to the machines, and dragging husks of used people out to be mulched and used as poisonous fertilizer, to ‘salt the Earth.’ Norm sighed, and then called out to Jimmy.
“What are you doin’ mate? This wasn’t the plan.”
Jimmy ignored him but turned an eye stalk to behold him. He stopped before a large machine and directed the golem with a birdlike caw sound. Norm was deposited beside the machine that had not been there before. “Shit, Jimmy. You’ve been busy.” Jimmy nodded as best he could with no neck and began to attach Norm to the machine. As the needles pierced him, it came to life with a sound between a grind and the whir of a circular saw.
~
The county collapsed. Where there had never been a sinkhole, nor so much as a fault line, the surface of the area dropped half a mile, straight down. The dust blocked out the sun for three weeks. When finally, aircraft could investigate the hole, they were grabbed out of the air by giant, hellish vines. Nothing human moved within the pit. In fact, that three weeks had seen the reduction of human life to only one instance, and he, the necromancer Norman Hopewell, was merely fuel.
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