Agency 13 # 5
Rejuvenate Attack
Picture if you will a very tall, thin man with pale blonde hair in a fine tuxedo and tophat, holding a magician's wand as he stalks dark alleyways. He appears to be looking for something, though it seems that someone - or several folks - are instead looking upon him from the shadows. They're all pale, dressed in spiky black leather outfits, and seem very, very violently disposed. In fact, things look bad for our finely dressed friend.
(That should do for a 'cover', shouldn't it?)
Notice: for those of you that are faint of heart, the following tale is not at all G-rated. It may include foul language, excessive violence, sexual innuendo, and other things that would get this story burned, were it in a printed form, by the more fanatical elements of every religion on earth. In other words, if these things offend you, you may want to stop reading now.
(That should do for a 'disclaimer', shouldn't it?)
***
It took six police officers to subdue the girl.
She wasn't unconscious, mind you, in that she was still struggling within her handcuffs. The police had chased her, on foot, for several miles, stopping only after she'd been run over by three different vehicles while crossing a busy street. Even then, she fought the men off with uncanny strength and fury. Forty seconds later, they'd pummeled her with nightsticks long enough to get her into the cuffs, but she didn't like it.
Not one bit.
"I'll kill you! Kill you all! Arrrgh!" It took another minute and a half to pry the girl into police car, her kicking and screaming (and an iron grip on the door frame) preventing her from being deposited within easily. "That's my money! Mine!" She was, of course, referring to the twin bags of money that the police were taking as evidence, bags she'd just pilfered from a bank vault before her little run through downtown Chicago.
As the police car drove off, you could hear her scream. "Die! Die!! Die!!!"
***
The next morning, Sir Tophat arrived in town. He was wearing his trademark tuxedo, with accompanying foot-high top hat. He looked like something out of a circus, being about six foot six, and maybe one hundred and eighty pounds. The hat only added to the bizarre appearance, making him seem even larger, a feat enhanced by his strangely stretched-looking face. Of course, he was constantly grinning, which only helped to scare small children.
He smiled as he walked towards the police station in question, the one holding the girl. He'd been called by a local contact, one who told him a so-called 'zombie girl' had robbed a bank. With Agency 13's blessing, came to check out this odd story. After all, he knew a thing or two about zombies, and he was sure that they normally didn't rob banks; at least, not before leading police on a heart attack inducing run through the city streets.
Once he arrived, he found the place was crawling with reporters, and by simply listening in on the questions being asked, had found out the girl had already managed to escape the authorities. To him, the mystery was getting more and more intriguing by the second, and Sir Tophat loves mysteries. That was what caused him to become a Voodoo Houngan in the first place - he wanted to find out about the world that lurks beyond mere optical vision.
When a beat cop attempted to bar his way, Tophat merely stated "I am here to see Captain Zachary. My card." Presenting him the card, the officer stared at it blankly for a few seconds.
"Ah. Cap'n said you'd be coming. Follow me." Sir Tophat did. After ascending four flights of stairs and various greasy hallways, the two-fisted investigator finally met his contact, Captain Jacob Zachary, an old buddy from Way Back When. After informal greetings and several 'how've you been's', the two old friends got down to business.
"So, Jake, what caused you to call me? You can't really think this girl, this simple bank robber, is actually a zombie. Do you?" The police officer sighed, pulling out a cigar. Normally, such a thing would help him to relax, but there was no such release to be had today. After what he'd seen, it would take more than his usual vice to make him feel right again.
"You don't believe me, eh? Heh. I'll tell you what, you smug bastard, follow me." Sir Tophat did, winding back down the filthy halls and several flights of stairs to the station's holding cells. There, the two men beheld a scene of utter horror. The cell where this would-be bank robber was being held was covered in blood and gore, and there was bits of flesh and two severed hands lying in the miasma of former human matter.
The unshakable Houngan looked at the mess of biological matter, and shrugged. "This proves nothing, friend. I assume, by looking at the skin on the bars, that a guard was pulled through them, but that could mean a lot of things. A super-strong mutant, maybe, or a possible cyborg..." The policeman looked at his friend, sort of confused.
"Mutant? Cyborg? I don't know what you're talking about, but I know that this girl is a zombie. She was dead three days ago."
Back in the Chief's office, Sir Tophat looked at the pertinent morgue data, reading how the girl did, in fact, die three days ago. It was an unremarkable death, really, the result of an armed robbery that went awry. She got the usual murder victim treatment, an autopsy, and that should've been the end of it, save for a funeral and, of course, a trial for the perpetrator, who was caught trying to pawn her jewelry several hours later.
However, that wasn't the end of it, after all. About thirty hours ago, her body vanished from the morgue, and soon after, the murderer of the girl, the late Franky Gray, was also dead. Someone managed to sneak into his cell, within a busy police station, and hang him with his own intestines. Then, shortly thereafter, the bank hit took place, and police were stunned to find out that this supposedly dead girl was walking around and causing trouble.
They were awfully surprised by this, especially when she proved to be remarkably strong and fast. Now that she's broken out of jail, well, they were even more worried, which was why the Chief called his old friend in - he was supposedly an expert in such matters, being a Voodoo priest and all. Thinking for a few minutes, Sir Tophat made up his mind. "Take me back to the cell. I must examine the remains in greater detail."
Once the two friends were back in the cell, Sir Tophat picked at the hands laying in the cell.
"These aren't your guard's. They were the girls - she chewed them off." The rather calm way in that he said that unnerved the police Chief, as the mere prospect of doing such a thing gave him chills. "I'll need to study these", Tophat said, "As well as this... goo." He was referring to a clear gel running out of the hand.
Up in the Chief's office, the two set up a special, ceremonial altar on the Chief's desk, and Sir Tophat began to incant over the hands, performing what could only be called magic over them. The whole process took over fifteen minutes, and by the time he was done, the Agency 13 man look exhausted. "I know where they are." Zachary looked at his friend with some concern, and asked the fifty thousand dollar question.
"They?"
Sir Tophat then left the police station, though not before taking a sample of that transparent ooze for future research. He was holding a lit candle, and could follow the magical trail of the girl that belonged to those hands as long as it was lit. Walking the streets of Chicago for an hour, he had almost made his way to Lake Michigan when he abruptly stopped at a sewer access, lifted the lid, and ducked inside.
Using the candle as illumination, Sir Tophat made his way into the drainage tunnels under the city, which were close to their terminating point at the Lake, a mere mile away. Soon enough, his patience was rewarded with an ambush at the junction of three tunnels - by three pale individuals, all of which were wearing spiky, incomplete leather outfits. The first two came at him bare-handed, but the third, the girl, hung back with a baseball bat.
Looking on calmly as the two pale goons rushed him, Sir Tophat deftly dodged a punch thrown at him without skill, and kicked goon number two in the knee - sideways - bringing him down crying in agony. The first thug, showing new found respect for this opponent, stepped back as Sir Tophat hoped. He then pulled a tiny bag of dust from one of dozens of pockets, and scattered it at his foe, who started sneezing uncontrollably.
While he sneezed, Sir Tophat brought his foot up over his head, and stomped down on the sneezing man's skull. Knocked out cold, the thug fell to the sewer floor with a gurgling sploosh, leaving the Agency man face to face with Franky Gray, and the girl regarded him with some amusement. "You're good, circus man. What're you doing here?" Tophat preened with that.
"Ahh... a lady with common sense. Excellent. I wish to speak with your creator."
Franky thought about that for a second, and smiled back. "Sure thing, pops, but he doesn't like visitors, you should know." She then turned around and walked off into the tunnels, followed by the smiling priest. After about fifteen twists and turns, the two travelers came to a heavy iron door, which the girl opened with ease, and they walked through the portal into what appeared to be a mad scientist's laboratory!
There were seething cauldrons of unknown and unknowable fluids, various blinking doo-dads and whatchamacallits, each equipped with sparking devices and vacuum tubes - for good measure, of course. And the centerpiece of the lab was a big stone slab table, one that had some sort of swivel-arm and a motive light table mounted on top. Hovering around the table like the epitome of Igors everywhere was a leering man in a lab coat.
Sir Tophat regarded the hunched over figure as he looked upon his gore-covered work table, and tried not to frown. "So, you are the man behind these so-called zombie attacks, then?" The scientist with the sagging backbone sniveled in rage at Sir Tophat at that, apparently angry at the specific wording involved.
"Fool! These are no mere zombies, but they are the result of my master research! Behold - my rejuvenates!"
Tophat did indeed behold the three pale, former humans before him. In addition to Franky, those other two flunkies he felled in the tunnels stood before him, and he noted with some discomfort the one whose knee he'd crushed was walking again, albeit with a limp. Regeneration, he thought. He was in trouble. "These are no mere remote controlled corpses, my good man. These are living, breathing humans brought back from the dead - enhanced, even!"
"And they do my bidding!" Sir Tophat shrugged at that, hoping he wouldn't betray the worry he was feeling. He could easily defeat these three fools, but keeping them down would be incredibly difficult.
"Indeed, good sir. I am most impressed by the process in which you have created these... servants. However did you accomplish this thing?" The man brightened with this praise, but suspicion instantly overcame his ego.
"Oh? Give away my secrets so you can destroy me and use them yourself? I think not! Servants - destroy him!" Suddenly, the three so-called rejuvenates, all recovered from any injury recently caused to their persons, moved on Sir Tophat again.
"Oh, bugger," he said, "I guess I must do this again." However, the two men he'd defeated before were wary of him this time, and didn't just charge him right off. He'd have to really work for this victory.
The previously kneecapped thug circled clockwise while the second, the one who lost due to a sneezing fit, went counterclockwise around him. Franky, as if waiting for something, covered him from the front, but made no hostile moves. Goon Number One feinted forward while Number Two made his move, but Sir Tophat was ready; a lot of his combat drills with his fellow Agency 13 investigators prepared him for situations like this.
Basically, the idea was that most untrained combatants aren't used to fighting as a team, so he simply grabbed the fist of Goon Number Two and pulled hard, throwing him right into Number One, and the both of them flew into their creator's equipment. Upon smashing several unnecessarily protruding vacuum tubes, the goons found themselves subject to an impressive electrical shock, and the lights in this underground warren dimmed suddenly.
"You fool! You'll destroy everything! I cannot be ruined so easily, you circus buffoon! If these cretins cannot kill you, I will do so myself!!" Before Franky made a move to strike, the man who raised her from the dead pulled a gun on Sir Tophat, and prepared to fire. Sir Tophat then pulled a handful of dust from another pocket, and waved it in front of himself before the gun fired, and when it did, the bullet stopped as it hit the cloud of magical powder.
"Who's the fool now, madman? I simply wished to investigate the nature of your creations, but now I must stop you and your work - at all costs!" Enraged by this scientist's actions, Sir Tophat then waved his magician's cane in circles at him, and a cloud of vermin appeared from the subterranean tunnels, biting, clawing, and choking him as he screamed in terror. After about a minute of struggle, the man sank to the floor, covered in a sheet of insects.
As the bugs wandered off, Franky looked at Sir Tophat in amazement. "What... what are you?! Bugs... bugs..." The two-fisted Houngan then scoured the lab, looking for any details on how this madman created his life-restoring process as, though it was put to dark purposes, could nonetheless be quite valuable in the future - for him or the Agency.
"I am what I am, ma'am, as are you." He wasn't too amused; there was nothing present to help him. "What can you tell me about this man that raised you from the dead?" She looked at him somewhat sheepishly, and then replied.
"I'll tell you if you don't turn me into the cops afterwards. I'm lucky enough to be alive, but I don't want to spend the rest of my time in prison." Tophat looked at her, cocked his head, and then nodded in the affirmative. "His name was Helmut Sanchez. He used to work for the government, researching biological enhancements on human soldiers."
"Apparently, though, he went too far off the beaten path in his researches, and they canned him. He then came to Chicago, and started working out his process to create us, his rejuvenates, as he called us. Once he'd resurrected us, he told us we would stay alive as long as we did his bidding, which is why he had me robbing banks while these other two," she motioned to the other two of Sanchez's goons, "Acquired things he needed for his work.
"I didn't believe it, though, and was about to leave on my own when you showed up. Since he's dead, and I'm not, I'm willing to guess that he was lying through his teeth. So, can I go, now?" Sir Tophat looked at the girl, trying to figure out just what was going through her head. He had to admit that he was having a hard time at it, since he himself hadn't been deceased for a time, so he figured he could forgive her little escapades.
Even if the police couldn't.
"Sure thing, girl. But first, I wish to get a sample of your blood, so I can try to determine what Sanchez did to make you live again." She agreed, and when he had secured the sample, Franky split for parts unknown. Of course, in addition to distilling a sample of the fluids used to resurrect her, Sir Tophat could use her blood to track her in the future, should he need to. He then shrugged, and set about destroying this laboratory utterly.
Hours later, once he was done, Sir Tophat penned a long note to his friend in the local police force, explaining what had happened, more or less, and why he should let Franky get on with her life. He knew it wouldn't work, but it made him feel better. With his work done, then, Sir Tophat, two-fisted Voodoo Houngan and Agency 13 investigator extraordinare, made his way back to Rock, Nebraska, where he would rest before taking on another assignment.
***
Next time, tune in as Seņor Barnett and Sir Tophat move in on a macabre alien super-carnivore that has landed in a major metropolitan area, and is sampling the local cuisine. Can the investigative duo deal with this monstrosity all by themselves, or will even these two experts in the bizarre need assistance? Come back next month to find out, already (unless you are, of course, chicken...?)! No, really!
***
Agency 13 # 5 - Rejuvenate Attack
Copyright 1999, 2004, 2012, 2023 Denny Hill 2
All rights reserved and so forth.
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