Free Resurrection by Tim Marquitz, Kim Richards, Jessica Lucero

surprised. “There were, however, zombies missing,” I added.
    Their eyes widened. “What do you mean by missing ?”
    “Somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred bodies have disappeared from Rest Land in the last week, or so.” I kept the source of my information to myself. “I estimated there were around seventy in the hole. Now add in the ones I killed at the strip club and we’re only looking at about a hundred accounted for. Where are the rest of them?”
    Abraham wrung his hands, the knuckles turning white. “We’ve had reports from other cemeteries that they, too, are missing bodies. All told, we’re looking at another two to three hundred.”
    I whistled. “So we’ve got four hundred zombies, give or take, still running amok?” There was some major undead mischief afoot.
    “Something in that range, yes.” Abraham nodded. “We need to find Reven and ascertain what he is up to.”
    Captain Obvious to the rescue. I wondered if he needed a cape. “If bodies are missing from all sides of town, we need to get some eyes on the cemeteries, maybe even the morgue.”
    “Already done,” Rahim told me. “Though I’m not sure it’ll do us any good. Reven would have to be pretty stupid to make it so easy, especially now that he knows someone is looking.”
    Having spent five hundred years mingling with humanity, I couldn’t rule the possibility out. Magic didn’t make people smarter. “What about the mausoleum chamber?”
    “We’ll send Katon to examine it. Maybe he can find a clue there.”
    “And me?”
    “Do what you do best, Frank.” Rahim smiled, his eyes teasing.
    “There are laws against that now.”
    Abraham sighed, choosing not to reply, and returned his attention to his computer. Rahim only chuckled. I got up, said my goodbyes, and headed out the door.
    Rahim always said I stumbled my way through life, getting by on dumb luck and brass balls. The sad part was he was probably right. That being the case, I figured why fight it. Trouble would find me when it was good and ready.
    Until it did, I was gonna have a beer.
     
    Chapter Seven
     
    A couple of beers and a sip of my uncle’s blood later, the night having crept past the witching hour, I wandered down to Fiesta Street. Relegated to the butt-end of Old Town, the street was home to the seediest, the most questionably legal, and by far the most immoral of night-life establishments to be found above ground. If you were looking for a good time that truly defined the word taboo, this was the place to be. I came here often.
    Pun intended.
    Just off the desert, like the majority of the fun parts of Old Town, this was as good a place as any to expect zombie trouble. While DRAC watched the cemeteries, I figured I’d try another angle. With Reven already claiming upwards of four hundred zombies, it didn’t make any sense to me that he’d bother to raise any more. Unless he was planning on taking over the world with an army of slow-moving corpses, he had to have enough for his plans, whatever they may be. Though it didn’t hurt to keep an eye out, I couldn’t picture him puttering around the graveyards waiting to be caught. That’s the first place anyone looks when they’re trying to find a necromancer. So, thinking along those lines, I decided to go fishing where the most appetizing bait could be found.
    On any given night, Fiesta Street was ripe for the plucking. Scores of horny partiers wandered drunkenly, splitting their time and crumpled money between the raunchy bars, strip clubs, and porn stores. Always busy, yet saddled with a clientele as disposable as paper plates, the street might as well have had a target painted on it.
    Dressed way down in a stained sweatshirt and ratty jeans, I weaved my way down the cracked and bulging sidewalk, my eyes taking it all in from under the shadows of my hood. After dodging an affectionate drunk and sloughing off an insistent panhandler who felt the world owed him something, I slipped into a dark