Chapter 4

All over town for the last week or so, people had suddenly started to act strangely, as if they were seeing and hearing things that no one else around them could detect. Some began muttering in strange unknown languages and others just went barking insane mad. Mass dementia, some at BMA were calling it.

There had been a peak of this outbreak last weekend, but so far this week things had been relatively quiet with only a few new cases every day. Still, this was much too dangerous to be ignored.

We ate a second bowl of frozen custard and sat down to review the case files to look for a common denominator or event, but we couldn't find one. The victims varied by age, sex and economics; the lawyers, students, housewives, construction workers, carpet layers apparently all did their normal weekend routines. Not all of their past steps could be traced but no single activity or restaurant could be pin-pointed as the root cause.

If someone was drugging bottles of cola, they were covering their steps very thoroughly.

We read more case files that afternoon at the Austin PD and called it a day. We'd try and examine the new cases with a fresh eye starting tomorrow.

Friday we examined six new cases that had broken out over night but again couldn't find any common thread. Two of the victims had been discovered walking aimless around Town Lake Park late at night. Other similar victims had been found this week late at night at Auditorium Shoals, Zilker Park and wandering on Barton Springs Rd. This strongly suggested the southern side of Colorado River 'Town Lake' downtown area as a possible locus. Well, I was certainly very familiar with this area, being next to Sandy's!

Their pocket contents were all non-magical and entirely appropriate for an evening on the town. Various restaurant receipts (different places), a gas station receipt, a movie theater ticket. No smoking gun here.

We chased a few more red herrings and were about to quit for the evening when we got the word that several of our new addled victims had suddenly gone into cardiac arrest and had been taken to the city morgue. As we were out of other more practical ideas, we decided to give these unfortunates a final look over, and I was very glad we did. Also so was the city morgue staff, which was not used to zombies thrashing about in their nice quiet offices.

They weren't kidding. Four very animated but confused nude corpses with toe tags were slowly shuffling about and trying to push their way through a solid wall towards freedom, entirely ignoring the door. Good luck with that, at least they weren't going to be too hard to corral. Zombie wrangling is strictly Magic 101 level stuff and even the weakest Adept knows how to stun a zombie. It's not like they have any brains, unless they're eating the brains of one of the assistants to the Coroner, which one was.

Damn, more paperwork!

It didn't take a moment to stun and subdue each of the undead onto a gurney cart that could be strapped down tight. From the sounds of banging in the several of the closed and locked morgue vaults, it sounded like several more zombies were trying to get out. They weren't likely to escape but we decided that they really couldn't stay there, so we rounded up a few more gurneys, stunned the released zombies and strapped them down good and tight to join their friends.

Now we had some time to figure out exactly what the hell was going on!

Two of the victims seemed to be new, unreported cases that might match our weird dementia epidemic. Both had died in the back of a police patrol car shortly after pickup. According to the paperwork, both victims were alive but confused and unresponsive when first encountered, again in the Barton Creek/Town Lake area, and suffered terminal seizures within minutes after being taken away for medical examination.

Searching their clothing, which was labeled and neatly sorted into a bag, we found more dinner receipts and two more sets of movie ticket stubs that matched the one I'd seen earlier. I suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. I had a theory, but I needed some proof.

I asked for Harriet to find me a good Wizard map of Austin, showing all of the charted Ley lines, color depicted by type and strength. Theories of alien retroviruses excluded, it takes power and specific intent to create a zombie ... usually. There are exceptions but they're rare. They don't suddenly self-create themselves, unless they've been in a heck of a magical shit storm beforehand. The people were ill, but alive until their ride in a police car when they suddenly died ... and stayed dead until they arrived here and suddenly with little warning reanimated.

It didn't usually work that way, unless there was a new power source to give them another kick start. I looked over Harriet's map (no good Wizard goes around without one) and found the second power source, a geologic fault that channeled a moderately powerful Earth Ley line that ran underground right next to this building.

Our confused and demented victims were fine until they were removed from the range of their original Ley line, and were reanimated when taken within range of another one. This confirmed that whatever had caused this problem involved massively powerful magical energies, with a crossing of a pair of Ley lines at a bare minimum. And a nearby movie theater in the Barton Creek/Town Lake area.

Duh ... the famous El Marvelo fit this bill to a perfect 'T'.

I asked Harriet, as the ranking Wizard in charge, to request some minor assistance from Austin PD and EMS for a small experiment, and to get BMA on 'standby'. Friday night was another very bad night to need emergency assistance, again with just a single team of Wizards on the emergency 'on call' roster.

Whitaker's gripes about a manpower shortage weren't entirely just idle complaints. Once again, the cavalry was very likely to be late arriving at the party.

The test drive worked like a charm. Sandwiched in-between a pair of police cars, we took one of the strapped down zombies with us for a ride in the back of an ambulance and as soon as we travelled about a block away from the morgue Ley line the zombie de-animated. Once we arrived within about two blocks away from the El Marvelo they once again perked up back to life.

No one was the slightest bit surprised when after we released the zombie from its restraints it began to shamble directly towards the open doors of the theater as fast as its feet could shuffle and it disappeared inside. We noticed numerous other people now wandering towards the theater, all apparently new dementia cases and we tried to stop them but we were seriously outnumbered. Looking around we could see more new addled folks arriving each minute.

Harriet and the police officers looked like they had the situation under control for the moment so I ran back to the nearest squad car to call in some more Austin PD. Our two lone officers most certainly needed assistance handling the steady flow of befuddled and demented people, seemingly not in their own minds that were trying to enter the theater in an ever increasing number.

Once I'd put APD on alert, I next gave the BMA another phone call, telling the clerk on duty to forget about the duty roster and just order a full alert and to start phoning everyone, telling them to get their asses down to the El Marvelo before all Hell broke loose!

It wasn't much of an exaggeration. The top spire of the theater was now glowing a soft malevolent yellow color all on its own.

Returning to help the poor beleaguered patrol officers I asked them where Harriet and Henrietta had gone off to and I now didn't see them out in front where they had been just a few minutes ago.

"I think I saw them go inside about a minute ago," one said, "but I'm not entirely sure. I was too busy to notice." The other officer had seen even less.

I took a fast run around the entire building to double-check that they weren't there and didn't see a trace of either of them. When I returned out in front even the two police patrolmen were now gone as well. Even the last confused bewitched arrivals were all now inside apparently as well. In fact I was now quite alone. Sometimes I thought I could hear a voice calling me inside as well, but it was muted as if lost in the static of the power I could feel coursing through me, being so close to the building that was actively feeding now off of the two Ley lines that crossed this site. My right bracer was surging with the power, throbbing now with a life of its own as well.