“They’re very nice. The man I’m looking for can tell the future.”
“Ah, the Fortune Teller. Yes. I know of him. He moved to the top floor of the Fenstermacher building down the street.”
“Really? Which one is that?”
“It is not far from here. It is the one the Kaiser had a radio tower built on top of… I went there once. All of the notable members of high society in Berlin did. An actual Fortune Teller. How marvelous, I thought. I wished to know if there was any chance the Kaiser’s forces could turn this run of bad luck… Alas, there was not.”
“Thank you, Field Marshal. You’ve been a big help.”
The zombie sounded very sad. “Not so many of us visit the Fortune Teller anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think he is a charlatan. Our fortunes were all the same. I do not remember mine exactly.” His dried features seemed to scrunch up in confusion. “It was very… depressing.” He shuffled around to his table and picked up his empty bottle. “Please, please don’t go. Stay and have a drink.” He poured an imaginary drink into the dry glass. “I could use some company for a bit.”
She was rather impatient to go, but she felt bad for the old dead soldier. She took the proffered empty glass. “Okay, but just one.”
One imaginary drink had turned into five, and then ten, and the field marshal had told her stories about where every one of his medals had come from, and then he’d talked about his lovely wife, and their twin babies, who were probably her age by now, but the undead didn’t seem to have a real good grasp on time. It was funny how that worked out, but it wasn’t like imaginary booze was going to befuddle her or the empty bottle was going to run out of anything except for dust, so Faye had sat their pretending to sip air while an old zombie held a conversation.
It was the least she could do for the good advice, and she figured an hour spent like that had probably saved her ten times that long searching the city, assuming the field marshal had given her the right address, of course. She’d made her apologies, said she had other commitments, and Traveled through the ceiling.
Faye had to dodge between two groups of particularly aggressive undead who seemed to be having a turf war over the main boulevard, and then she nearly got her head blown off when it turned out one of them still had a working rifle and was a fairly good shot with it. That neighborhood turned out to be a real pain since there were other snipers up on the roofs, so it forced her back through the building interiors and torn-up streets. A sleeper had scratched her boot with his bony fingers and a few minutes later a different one had ripped a chunk of fabric from her blouse. That one had made her angry enough that she’d shot it a few times with the old Mauser pistol, just to make a point, but the gunfire had merely drawn more attention, so she’d had to Travel fast.
She reached the Fenstermacher building. It had probably been a big factory of some kind before it had started falling apart. The radio tower the field marshal had told her about had rusted badly and was leaning over. The next time there was a strong wind, it would probably end up in the street, and she supposed any zombies that got squished underneath it would just be stuck and angry forever.
Faye picked a spot in what appeared to be a large, empty room. So far, avoiding corners seemed to be the safest method. She popped into existence, dropped softly to the floor, and looked around for any dusty lumps that could be angry dead folks. Clear. At least there was quite a bit of sunshine for once. Then she realized that her gentle landing hadn’t disturbed any dust, because the floor had been swept.
“Hello? Zachary?” But she knew right away she’d found the right place, because pinned to the nearest wall was a sheet of paper with a picture drawn on it, a quick and simple ink drawing like you’d see in the pulp magazines.
The word Spellbound had been scrawled across the top.
The picture was of her.
It was a good likeness, not like looking in a mirror or anything, but she could easily tell it was supposed to be her. That was nice. Nobody had ever drawn her portrait before.
There were more pictures pinned up, lots and lots of them. The drawings were of people mostly, but also places, and things, and machines, and events, and demons, and even stuff she didn’t recognize. There were hundreds of them, and when she took a few steps, she realized that all of the other walls in the room, from floor to ceiling, had paper stuck on them too.
Faye whistled. “That sure is something.”
She showed up as the subject often, probably more than anybody else, but she recognized many of her friends; Francis, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Garrett, Lance, Delilah, Jane, Black Jack Pershing; there was Heinrich hitting a demon with a pickax, and even Mr. Browning showing off some new gun. Then there were her enemies, the Chairman screaming at her to give back his hands, and Isaiah Rawls and Mr. Harkeness plotting away, and Mr. Crow both as a man and as a demon, and Mr. Madi fighting on the Tokugawa. Then there were people who were sometimes both, like the one of Toru beating somebody’s head in with his spiky club, and J. Edgar Hoover bossing folks around.
It went on and on, so many faces. So many scenes from her life. Some of the papers were yellowed and crispy with age, like they’d been drawn years ago, but they showed recent events, like Mr. Bolander calling down the Oklahoma lightning, or Faye’s fight with Toshiko the ninja girl, or Whisper right before she ended her life in Washington D.C.
She froze at one that showed Madi standing over the fallen form of her grandpa, massive revolver pointing down to finish him off, and then at another of haystacks burning while a poor, scared, injured girl hid under a cow trough to carve a beetle out of her foot.
Then there was page after page after page of folks she just plain didn’t know and places she’d never seen. Thousands of them, and it wasn’t like they were sorted into groups. One person she recognized would be squished onto a wall among dozens she didn’t. The only reason she could take it all in so quick was because it only took her a fraction of a second to scan over each one, record them with her grey eyes, and sort them out with her head map. There was a stranger who could create sucking black wounds in the world like the thing that had eaten Mason Island, and a mechanical man that looked just like a real man, and an old samurai with a big shadow living inside his head.
Were these all things that had actually happened? No… There was one of her and Francis, holding hands up on a tall bridge, but she didn’t recognize the moment. There was a fancy UBF dirigible going up in flames over some foreign city with Captain Southunder still bravely manning the controls. A Peace Ray firing and a skyline she recognized as New York crumbling into ashes. Mr. Sullivan and Toru about to duel to the death on a rocky beach. A little boy crying as he was carried away by a monster without skin, while behind them a whole city was getting cleaned out of people, skinless monsters picking them like fruit.
The details weren’t always right. Like the artist had only seen part of the picture and then guessed the rest, or maybe he only caught a quick glimpse and then had to recreate them from memory, but they were close enough to know that Zachary’s magic was real.
“Hello, Faye.”
It was rare somebody could sneak up on her, but she was awfully preoccupied. “Zachary?”
“What’s left of me.” He came around the corner. Dead, but in much better shape than anyone else she’d seen in the city. It made sense, she supposed, since he hadn’t been dead near as long. If it had been darker, she might’ve even mistook him for an alive person. He’d probably stayed out of the weather. “I’ve been expecting you.”