Rise of the Evening Star

Seth wondered if it was about to break. Through the gate

Seth could see the wall of the elevator shaft scrolling by.

Then the wall of the shaft disappeared. With a final squeal the ride came to an abrupt halt.

Without opening the gate, and keeping one hand near the elevator buttons, Seth shone the flashlight around the room. The last thing he wanted was to get cornered by zombies inside of an elevator.

It appeared to be the room where the bodies were prepared.

It was much less fancy than the parlor above. He saw a worktable, and a table with wheels that had a casket on it.

There were multiple storage cabinets and a big sink. Seth estimated that the casket would barely fit inside the elevator.

One side of the room had what appeared to be a large refrigeration unit. He tried not to dwell upon what was kept in there.43 He saw no statues, toadlike or otherwise. There was adoor marked Private on the wall opposite the elevator.

Satisfied that the room was zombie-free, Seth slid the gate open. He stepped out, tense, ready to leap back into the elevator at the slightest provocation.

The room remained silent. Walking between the worktable and the casket, Seth tried the private door. It was locked. The knob had a keyhole.

The door looked neither particularly strong nor unusually flimsy. It was built to open into the next room. Seth tried kicking it near the knob. It shuddered a bit. He tried a few more times, but, despite the repeated shuddering, the door showed no sign of weakening.

Seth supposed he could use the wheeled table to ram the door with the casket. But he doubted he could generate enough speed to strike the door much harder than he could kick it. And he could picture knocking the casket off the table and creating a huge mess. The casket might not be empty!

Another door, this one unmarked, also led out of the room. It was against the same wall as the elevator, so Seth had not seen it until after he had stepped into the room.

Seth found that door unlocked. Behind it was a bare hall with doors along one side and an open doorway at the end.

Seth cautiously ventured down the hall. He realized that if zombies came at him from behind, he could become pinned in the basement, so he listened very carefully. The large room at the end of the hall was crammed almost from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. Seth hurried through44 the narrow aisles that granted access to the room, scanningfor the statue. All he found was more boxes.

Back in the hall, Seth tried the other doors. One led to a bathroom. Behind the other door was a large storage closet full of cleaning supplies and various tools. One object among the mops and brooms and hammers caught his attention: an ax.

Seth returned with the ax to the private door. So much for stealth. If the garage door and elevator had not alerted the zombies, this should do the job. The ax was fairly heavy, but, choking up a little, he gave it a solid swing, and the bit crunched into the wood about a foot away from the doorknob.

He wrenched it free and attacked the door again. A

few more strokes and he had chopped a hole in the door large enough to reach his hand through. Seth wiped the handle of the ax with his shirt before setting it aside, just in case vampires knew how to check for fingerprints.

Chapter Three

Seth shone his flashlight through the hole in the door.

He could not see any reanimated corpses, but a zombie could easily be standing off to the side, out of view, waiting for his hand to appear. Reaching into the splintery hole, worried that clammy fingers might close around his wrist at any second,

Seth felt the doorknob on the far side and unlocked it.

Twisting the knob, he pushed the door open. Seth used the flashlight to examine the room. It was large and L-shaped, so the entirety was not in view at once. Funeral paraphernalia littered the room: nameless headstones, caskets lying horizontal or upended, easels with colorful wreaths of fake’

flowers. A long desk with a rolling chair and a computer was45 covered with a mess of papers. Beside the desk stood a rowof tall filing cabinets.

Half-expecting slobbering zombies to burst from the caskets at any moment, Seth wove through the cluttered room until he could see around the corner of the L. He found a red felt pool table underneath a ceiling fan. Inside an arched niche beyond the table, a statuette squatted atop a variegated block of marble.

Seth rushed to the recess in the wall. The statue was not on all fours like a toad. Rather, it sat upright on two legs with a pair of short arms folded across its chest. The figurine looked like a pagan idol with froglike features. A polished dark green, it appeared to be carved out of speckled jade, and stood about six or seven inches tall. Above the statue a sign read:

Do NOT Feed the Frog

The brief message filled Seth with foreboding. What exactly would happen once he fed the frog? Errol had made it sound like it would simply enable him to carry the statue out of the mortuary.

The statue did not look too heavy. Seth tried to pick it up. The figurine would not budge. It felt welded to the block47 of marble, which in turn felt firmly anchored to the base ofthe niche. Seth could not even slide the statuette or slightly tip it- Maybe Errol knew what he was talking about after all.

Not wanting to spend more time than necessary inside the funeral home, Seth held out the remaining half of the dog biscuit. Would the statuette actually eat it? Seth inched the treat forward. When the biscuit was almost touching the mouth, the froglike lips began to twitch. He moved the treat back, and the lips stopped moving. Holding the biscuit closer than ever, he saw the lips pucker outward, quivering.

Apparently it was going to work! Seth slid the biscuit into the eager jade mouth, careful not to let the figurine nip his fingertip. The statue gulped down the food, and once again sat motionless.

Nothing seemed to have changed, except that when

Seth tried to pick up the statuette, it lifted off the marble block easily. Without warning, the statue squirmed and bit the side of his thumb. Yelling in surprise, Seth dropped the figurine and the flashlight onto the carpeted floor. The sensation of a jade statue wriggling like a living thing was extremely unnerving. Retrieving the flashlight, Seth checked the side of his thumb and found a row of tiny puncture wounds. The frog had teeth.

Seth nudged the fallen figurine with his foot. It did not twitch. Warily he picked it up, holding it near the base so if it tried to bite him again he could avoid the tiny fangs. The statue did not move. He tapped it on the head. The statuette was once again inanimate.48 Seth hurriedly backtracked, exiting the room. There wasnothing he could do to hide the damage to the door, so he opened the accordion gate and entered the elevator. It squealed up one floor and rattled to a stop. He opened the gate and stepped out.