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  SHADOWMAN: THE RED SASH

  By Barry Reese

  This story is respectfully dedicated to Bob Hall, who made Shadowman live and breathe for me. It is also dedicated to my wife and son, who make every day a wonderful adventure.

  New Orleans

  Palmer Harrison could barely breathe. A government-issued breath mask covered his nose and mouth but the smoke was so thick that it stung his eyes and made him feel like he was in a furnace. “What the hell happened here?” he asked.

  The commanding officer on the scene, a uniformed cop with a bad moustache and a nametag that read Smith, turned towards him with a sheepish grin.

  “I’ve never seen nothing like it,” Smith said. He coughed and rubbed at his watery eyes. Palmer fished around in the pocket of his black coat and retrieved a spare breath mask. He tossed it to Smith, who fumbled the catch and then picked it up. “Thanks.”

  Palmer ignored him, having already sized him up and come to the conclusion that Smith wasn’t going to have any useful information. He adjusted the mirrored sunglasses he wore and studied the scene. It looked like the same M.O. as Kansas City and San Fran, which justified the FBI’s expense in flying him out here.

  Palmer’s partner, a fit young woman named Margo Grace, stepped up beside him. She was fifteen years his junior, with a pageboy haircut and the shiniest green eyes that he’d ever seen. Their relationship was strictly professional, if you ignored the fact that they slept together on almost every trip. “According to the report, there were fifteen this time.”

  As always, her words were spoken with a faint hint of exasperation.

  Palmer noticed that Margo wasn’t wearing a breath mask but he didn’t comment on it. She seemed unaffected by such trivialities as lack of oxygen. “Chinese again?”

  “Looks that way. Most of them are too badly burned for identification but they’ve found a number of items that tie them to the Yih King organization.”

  Yih King. Those words had become far too familiar ones in Palmer’s mind. Taking from the original concept of Yin and Yang, the group considered themselves the ultimate melding of the positive and negative principles of life. Their symbol was elegant in its simplicity: a single line, representing the Yang, depicted next to a line split in two, which reflected The Yih, or Ying.

  Despite their philosophical trappings, The Yih King was nothing more than criminals, dealing in a wide range of illicit activities. They mixed occult ritual with the more standard prostitution and drug running but as far as Palmer was concerned, that just made them all the worse.

  Palmer reached up and removed his sunglasses. He rubbed the spot between his eyes, feeling a tension headache begin to build. At forty years of age, he was one of the Bureau’s top stars, with a dozen high-profile successes under his belt. But this current case was stretching into its third year, with no end in sight.

  He noticed Margo’s appraising stare and forced a smile. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “You still taking your meds?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  Margo’s face darkened dangerously but Officer Smith saved Palmer by stepping forward at that moment. “What is it, Smith?”

  “We found some graffiti, just like you guys were looking for.”

  Palmer gestured for him to lead the way. Margo touched his arm lightly, whispering, “The fire was reported less than two hours ago. The bodies are fresh, if a bit toasty. He’s got to still be in the area. Shouldn’t we…?”

  “He’s long gone,” Palmer countered. He sounded weary and more than a little bit angry. “Even if he’s not, we won’t find him. He could be standing directly in front of us and we’d just look right past him.”

  Margo sighed. “You still believe that crap? This is a human being, Palmer. He’s not some… comic book hero.”

  “Not comic books,” Palmer muttered under his breath. “Pulp. He was a pulp hero.”

  “Whatever. He might be a fanboy but he’s not the real thing. That’s impossible. He’d be an invalid by now.”

  Palmer didn’t bother replying. They’d had this argument before. Hell, he’d had this argument with his superiors, as well.

  The consensus was that The Red Sash was nothing more than an old pulp character that had achieved moderate success via a nationally syndicated radio program in the 1930s.

  Delivering harsh justice through a pair of automatics, The Red Sash had infested the dreams of young men all over the world before finally fading into obscurity.

  According to the old stories, The Red Sash was actually a wealthy man-about-town who had somehow gained the ability to mentally confuse his opponents. He appeared and disappeared from the shadows like a wraith, aided by a squad of informants who scoured the underworld for clues to crimes yet to be committed.

  Palmer had watched the serials based on the character as a young boy. His father had collected old VHS tapes in the same way that others hoarded newspapers. It didn’t matter the subject matter, Palmer’s father would bring them home and stick them on a shelf, most of them never to be watched.

  Margo spotted the words first, spray painted on the exterior back wall of the building. In the pulp stories, The Red Sash had used a paint mixture of his own devising: one that could never be painted over or washed away. Over the past three years, Palmer had seen the stuff again and again. The lab boys at the Bureau had tested it with every known chemical and were stymied: this was the stuff from the stories, in every detail. Only when Palmer brought this up, when he tried to draw the obvious connection to the old stories and radio programs, he was met with skeptical – and sometimes concerned – glances from his peers.

  “Same old, same old,” Margo said, reaching into a pocket to pull out a stick of gum. “You’d think he’d vary the message every once in awhile.”

  “It’s like a mantra,” Palmer replied. He strode up to the scrawled letters, stark white trimmed in black: GOD HELP THE GUILTY.

  Palmer took a deep breath and felt the pain in his skull beginning to build once more. His blood pressure was going sky high these days and he was on such high-powered meds that he’d begun to experience embarrassing side effects. Margo claimed it didn’t affect their relationship – she didn’t use those words, of course, since neither of them claimed they had anything approaching a “relationship” – but Palmer was enough of a man to feel uncomfortable with even of a hint of sexual dysfunction. As a result, he didn’t take them regularly.

  “What the hell does this mean?” Smith asked. He scratched his belly and pulled an idiotic face. “We got some kinda religious nut?”

  Palmer began speaking, not really talking to Smith. His mind was running through the words of an old radio program, etched into the fabric of his consciousness: “Who can sense the darkness that rests in the hearts of men? The Red Sash can!”

  Smith blinked in confusion and Margo touched his shoulder, making him jump. He was obviously awed by her attractiveness and broke into sweats every time she was near. “Officer - thanks so much for all the help you’ve given but we’ll handle the crime scene from here. If we need anything else, I’ll be sure to contact your office.”

  Smith blushed, sensing that he was being dismissed. He muttered something incoherent and backed away, his eyes dipping down to Margo’s chest and
then away.

  Margo waited until he was gone before turning back to her partner. “God save me from redneck cops,” she muttered with a laugh. “You want to go grab a bite to eat? The tech boys will be taking samples for the next few hours.”

  “They won’t find anything new,” Palmer said. “Same with the autopsies. We’ve seen it all before.”

  “The guy’s not superhuman. He’ll make a mistake eventually. They always do.”

  “Not this guy,” Palmer said with a sigh. “He never does and he never will.”

  JACK BONIFACE crouched low on the rooftop, letting his senses take over. It was strange how quickly all of this had become almost second nature… just a few months ago, he was drifting from one job to the next, with as many questions about his own past as he had answers.

  And now here he was… The Shadowman, the warrior who guarded the living from the depredations of the dead.

  Before the almost skull-like mask he wore, a grin spread across his face. They were here, he could smell the rot drifting off their shambling forms.

  A two-bit sorcerer had managed to raise the dead a few nights prior, summoning from the grave three men who were meant to be his slaves. Unfortunately, he’d been unable to control them and they’d ripped him to pieces within minutes. Since then, the zombies had adopted a pattern of sleeping through the day and then attacking random people at night.

  For a moment, Jack thought about how he should attack them. He held a Sengese blade in his right hand, its sickle-like blade sharp enough to slice through bone. He could go in hard and fast, decapitating them. Or maybe he should use the pistol he’d strapped around his waist – he didn’t normally use guns but with zombies, a bullet to the head was sometimes the quickest way of ending a battle.

  Too much thinking, he mused. I’ll just wing it… Treat it like jazz music. Free-form improvisation in the dark. I like that.

  Down below, three figures moved into view. They were only a few blocks away from Bourbon Street and the raucous sounds of partying nearly obscured the low moans coming from the throats of the undead.

  Shadowman tensed, waiting until they were directly beneath him… and then he threw himself into the air, his body twisting with the grace of an Olympic athlete. He landed right behind the biggest of them, a dark-skinned figure that wore bloodied rags and tattered pants. The other two were dressed in their funeral best, though the clothing had seen much better days.

  As a kid, Jack had read enough comic books to know that the hero was supposed to engage in some sort of witty repartee during combat. He wasn’t able to think quick enough to pull that off, though – and, besides, it wasn’t like the zombies would appreciate it, anyway.

  Rather than crack a joke, Shadowman opted to crack a skull. He whirled his blade through the air, liking the sound it made, and then embedded it right into the top of the closest undead’s skull. He yanked back on the handle, freeing the blade so that he could follow up with a swipe that parked the figure’s head from his neck.

  The other two zombies whirled about and lunged for him, moving a big quicker than Jack had anticipated. One of them grabbed hold of the arm that held his weapon while the other clawed at his facemask.

  Realizing suddenly that Dox and Alyssa hadn’t told him if it was possible to catch something from these guys, Shadowman decided that he’d try and avoid letting them open up any wounds on him.

  Raising one foot, he drove it hard into the midsection of the one who was going for his face. It was enough to send the zombie stumbling backward, where it tripped over a rock and went sprawling.

  Shadowman saw that the other was trying to bite his arm so he drove his free hand against the creature’s head, seizing its hair and pulling the monster’s head back. His stomach churned when he felt head and flesh give way, letting a chunk of the zombie’s head come off in his hand.

  For a moment, both the zombie and Jack stared at the ugly mass in his hand. Then the moment passed and Jack tossed the gory clump away as the zombie resumed its attempt to eat him.

  Shadowman reached down and unclasped the holster that held his gun. A second later, the weapon was in his hand and pressed tightly to the side of the zombie’s head. Jack turned away and pulled the trigger, spraying brain matter all over the ground. Some of it ended up on Shadowman’s uniform but he knew from experience that it would come out in the wash.

  The last of the undead was on his knees now, unsteadily trying to rise.

  Shadowman spun the Sengese blade and allowed the creature to face him. It would have been the perfect time to snap off some quip that would have endeared him to the imaginary audience following his adventures… but nothing came readily to mind.

  He broke into a run, pressing the stud on the side of the blade’s handle that allowed it to telescope out into a hand-handed length. He wielded it thus, using all his strength to slice right through the zombie’s head. The upper half of the thing’s head flew away, revealing its desiccated brain.

  A half second later, the thing’s unnatural second life came to an end and it fell down at Shadowman’s feet.

  He watched the creatures’ remains vanish from sight, transforming into the smoky stuff that belonged more to the Deadside than the world of the living. It was because of things like this that the rest of the world didn’t know more about the supernatural… the dark things had a way of not leaving behind any evidence.

  The musical notes of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines brought a sigh to Jack’s lips. He usually remembered to put his cell phone on vibrate while out hunting but in this case, it had slipped his mind. Even worse, Alyssa had been up to her old tricks again, swapping out his usual ringtone for one of her choosing.

  Sliding his gloved finger across the touch screen, he held it up to his ear and asked, “Yeah?”

  It was Dox, the man who had become Jack’s trainer and companion. If Jack and Alyssa had been Angels, Dox was their Bosley. Or maybe it should be Charlie? Jack wasn’t sure.

  “Jack, as soon as you’re done, please come back quickly. We have a situation.”

  LESTER GIBSON closed the crumbling pages of the pulp magazine and set it down on the table. He was having his traditional breakfast of two eggs, sunny side up; three strips of bacon; and orange juice. He’d dined on basically the same fare for nearly eighty years.

  He picked up the remote and turned up the volume on the TV. It was Fox and Friends, which he normally couldn’t stand. He remembered a time when Edward R. Murrow and his journalistic ilk were men worthy of respect, even if their ideals sometimes blinded them to the truth of the world.

  A perky blonde newscaster with fake breasts was flashing a megawatt smile. “Reports indicate that over a dozen members of an obscure Chinese occult organization were found dead in New Orleans several days ago. The FBI has not confirmed a connection to the so-called Red Sash Murders that have plagued the nation off-and-on since the Thirties.”

  Gibson hit the mute button. He finished his breakfast with a sour expression on his face and then tossed the plate into the sink. Lois would be coming by soon to clean the place up and Gibson had long ago discovered that if he kept his penthouse spotless, she’d pout the entire morning about not having anything to do. As such, he left his shoes tossed carelessly near the door, had a stack of dishes in the sink and he hadn’t even bothered cleaning up the bloodstains in the spare room. The only reason he’d disposed of the crook’s body after the interrogation had ended was because he knew he’d never abide the stink of death until Lois’ visit.

  Gibson’s living arrangements could only be described as lavish: a penthouse in Manhattan, with a big screen television set in every room, including the bathroom; a huge heart-shaped bed that could be rotated with a flick of a switch; a personal helicopter pad on the roof; and a medicine cabinet that was better stocked than most pharmacies. Gibson kept a wide range of painkillers on hand but he also had the equivalent of a barrel drum full of Viagra. Nothing relieved the tension of his work like sex and at his age, he sometim
es needed a little extra help to recapture the magic.

  Stepping into the walk-in closet in his bedroom, Gibson stripped down to his briefs and began to get dressed. He was lithe and hard, despite the effects of age. Exercising for upward of three hours a day did that to a man. After he’d slipped into his favorite navy suit and adjusted his tie, he examined himself in the mirror and smiled. If not for the wrinkles and the thinness of his silver hair, he hadn’t changed all that much from his glory days.

  He passed Lois in the hallway as she arrived for work, ignoring her fawning attentiveness. Like most of his agents, she addressed him as Master at all times. Since he’d rescued her from a life of drugs and prostitution eight years ago, she’d thrown herself at him in every way possible.

  In the early days, he’d occasionally rewarded her with lovemaking sessions. But his skills had only further augmented her ardor and finally he’d had to cut her off completely. Loyalty was one thing; blind obedience was another. He expected his agents to be on-call seven days a week but he needed them to have clear heads and give him fair warning if he was making a mistake. Lois was too enamored of him to do that.

  Anthony was waiting for him on the rooftop. The pilot was nearly seven feet tall, with chocolate-colored skin and a shaved head that gleamed in the morning sun. He wore a jumpsuit emblazoned with the Gibson Corporation logo. The helicopter was only one of an arsenal of vehicles that The Red Sash used on occasion and this one was raven-black with the logo on each side.

  “Where we goin’, boss?” Anthony inquired, his Southern drawl more pronounced than usual this morning. Even in this day and age, there were people who looked at the color of Anthony’s skin and the way he talked and dismissed him as someone lesser than them. But Gibson knew better: Anthony had spent eight years in the military and possessed an MBA. He was as smart as he was strong – and that was a potent combination.

  “Take me home,” Gibson said and the he saw the surprise writ large on Anthony’s face. ‘Home’ could only mean one place, after all: the Gibson family estate in New Orleans. Gibson didn’t go there very often: the memories were just too raw. In fact, in all the years that Anthony had worked for him, he’d traveled there only three times.