Death Warmed Over

Death Warmed Over

For an undead detective every case is a cold case

By Kevin J. Anderson (excerpt)

The Metropolitan Natural History Museum was a grand, ancient structure that belonged in an even larger museum itself. Strung across giant Corinthian columns, a fabric banner advertised Special Necronomicon Exhibition, Limited Time Only: The Original Book and Its influence Throughout the Ages.

On either side of the stone steps, two immense pedestals held fearsome gargoyle statues. Real gargoyles loved to stand next to the statues, making faces and mugging for the cameras so that their friends could take souvenir photos. Robin drove recklessly through the streets and pulled up in front of the museum, stopping so abruptly that the old Maverick shed more shards of rust. Her desperation to intervene with Ramen Ho-Tep became even more apparent when she parked the Pro Bono Mobile illegally close to a fire hydrant and didn’t even seem concerned about it. We ran up the steps, swimming upstream against a flood of evacuating patrons. A harried teacher herded an unruly class of fourth graders out of the museum.

The kids looked fascinated. “Why can’t we stay and watch?” cried one little girl. “That was interesting.”

“It’s not supposed to be interesting. This is an educational field trip.” The teacher ushered them along. “Go on, move.”

Robin and I ran through the front door, where an alarmed-looking cashier tried to charge us admission. I took command, “No time. This is a crisis.” I didn’t know if the mummy had threatened anyone; we just knew it was an emergency, something that was life or death… or other.” “Where’s the Egyptian wing?”

Renaissance. Death Warmed Over. Photo by Elena

“South hall,” the cashier blurted. “But it’s being evacuated.”

“We know.” Robin pulled out her pocketbook, flashed her bar card from the Board of Professional Responsibility. “I’m the attorney representing Ramen Ho-Tep. I need to see him before the situation gets our of hand.”

“You’re a little late for that,” the cashier said.

Robin and I were already running through the security scanner. Since we hadn’t paid admission – and also because I was carrying my .38 – an alarm went off, but the museum guards were otherwise occupied. Robin seemed very upset to be breaking the rules, so I said to her, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay before we leave.”

Oddly enough, that mollified her.

We ran past the arachnid display, then the Sorcery and Alchemy Hall on our way to Ancient Egypt. In the central hall, we encountered the ambitious Necronomicon exhibit. The Metropolitan Museum had pulled strings and fought challenges in court for the right to display the thick tome. Two lawsuits claimed the book posed a danger to the human public, although the time to worry about danger had already passed.

Though we needed to get to Ramen Ho-Tep, I hesitated, feeling an eerie connection to the magical book. This very copy of the Necronomicon, bound in leather made from the cured skin of infants and penned in human blood, was the reason I had come back from the dead – the reason all the unnaturals were now alive and abroad.

More than ten years ago, every rational person would have laughed at the possibility. Not anymore.

The planets had aligned in some sort of pattern that only astrologers considered significant. The original copy of the Necronomicon had inadvertently been left out under the light of a full moon, and a virgin woman (fifty-eight years old but a virgin nevertheless) had cut her finger (a paper cut, but a cut nevertheless) and spilled blood on the pages – which activated some buried spell and caused a fundamental shift in the natural order of things, unleashing ghosts and goblins, vampires and werewolves, zombies, ghouls, and all manner of monsters. Even the previously existing ones had come out of the closet.

The Big Uneasy.

Any further explanation, scientific or otherwise, was above my pay grade. The world had been dealing with the repercussions ever since.

Credit photo: Megan Jorgensen