Talon called Reilly and asked him to see what he could do about beefing up animal control efforts on stray cats in certain areas of the city.
    Scott headed for the shop where "Shovels" Stevie worked, taking care not to be seen; he didn't want to get the man in any trouble.
    "That's it, it's Miller Time," the old sidekick sighed, laying down his welding torch. "Oh hi, Scott."
    "How you doing, Stevie?"
    "I'm pretty good, you?"
    "All right. You got someplace we can talk?"
    "Sure, we can head into the back room. You don't drink, I know, but I'd offer you one," he gestured with a freshly uncapped bottle. "What can I do for you?"
    "Do you have any of Gravedigger's files?"
    "Maybe," Stevie said slowly, his eyes narrowing a bit. "Why? What's up?"
    "I don't think you were really paying attention at the last card game when this came up...."
    He grinned. "What a polite way of saying 'I think you were stinkin' blitzed.'"
    "But we were talking about somebody that you two used to run into called Victor?"
    "Victor?" His expression grew serious. "You're not telling me the Resurrectionist is up and around?"
    "Might be."
    "Holy fuck."
    "I was wondering if you had any of his files," Scott explained.
    "He can't be up and around," Stevie said flatly. "You know the whole missing presumed dead thing? There was one point where we actually caught the Resurrectionist and we had a body. And we handed it over to the police, 'cause Gravedigger knew that he was going to get another look at it anyway. And it got up and walked out of the morgue, like he wasn't really dead. So after the whole event at the castle—I wasn't there for the end of it 'cause I'd gotten wounded—the castle collapsed, and it was on the side of the waterfall, and Gravedigger managed to get out. He had the Resurrectionist with him. He cremated the body, which is why no one ever knew what happened to him. Trust me,he's ashes. He can't be back."
    "Well, maybe." Scott wasn't about to state anything so categoric after some of the things he'd seen in his brief life, and the many more he'd read about.
    "Have you turned up bodies? Cut into twenty-eight pieces?"
    "Nothing like that. We found some identical reproduced bodies, though."
    "Zombies?"
    "M-hm. Exactly identical to each other, like the same guy four or five times? In this case three times each."
    "Yeah," Stevie breathed, obviously in the grip of unpleasant memories. "He was gone!"
    "Maybe it's not him, maybe it's somebody that got his stuff," Scott shrugged.
    "That's almost as bad."
    "Apparently you two were the only ones who ever had anything on this guy."
    "Nobody else wanted to touch him! And besides, this is the type of thing that just hacked Gravedigger off."
    "That's why I was wondering if you had files on this guy."
    Stevie slumped a bit. "Yeah, the Digger left files. I'll go dig 'em out. It's gonna be a couple days.
    You are not making my day, Scott," he warned. "I'm gonna have to go to New York."
    "How you getting' there?"
    "Bus. I always take the bus."
    "Get receipts, turn 'em in to K. Robeson," Scott told him. "You're doing this for me, I'll reimburse you."
    "You're a good man, Scott. Aw, hell," he muttered. "I'll have to close up the shop for a couple of days... all right."
    "Save yourself some time and money, take the train down."
    "I'll call you when I get back."
    He called Reilly on his way out, but no one had run across any bodies cut into twenty-eight pieces lately, and the only serial killer sorts the Revolution had run across were still under observation. He suggested that the police pull up records from New York in the early forties, just in case the zombies were just the beginning. Twenty-eight pieces sounded bad.

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