Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

He was a middle-aged man with bad skin. He wasn’t very bright and tended to say stupid things that annoyed his master. His master was a great and terrible man. His master was the Killer Supreme. His master was the Zombie King.

      Thrasher opened the rear door and Vaurien Scapegrace, the Zombie King, stood there majestically, blinking against the cold afternoon sunlight.

      “We have arrived?” he asked imperiously.

      “We’re here,” Thrasher said, nodding his idiot head. “We got lost for a little bit. I took a wrong turn, had to stop and ask for directions. I had a map with me, but it’s pretty old, and with all these new one-way systems it’s pretty hard to …”

      And he prattled on, annoying the Zombie King with mind-numbingly boring detail. Not for the first time, Scapegrace wished he’d picked someone else to be his first zombie recruit. Every recruit after Thrasher decayed at the normal speed for a dead body, but Thrasher had – unfortunately – inherited some of Scapegrace’s longevity.

      But even the great Zombie King was looking poorly these days. Months earlier, his face had been badly burned by Valkyrie Cain. He had tried to peel the burnt skin off in giant flakes, but that only made things worse. His body would not repair itself, and so the disfigurement stayed, and occasionally another bit of him would fall off or stop working. Survival had become his only ambition. He went everywhere in this refrigerated van, he stayed out of the sun as much as possible, and he covered himself in car fresheners that struggled to mask the stench of rotting meat with sickly wafts of pine.

      Survival. That’s what it was all about. And that’s why he was here today. Scapegrace stepped out of the van, on to the road.

      “What do you need me to do, Master?” Thrasher asked, eagerness ripening his features.

      “Stay here,” Scapegrace replied, “and don’t annoy me. How is my face?”

      Thrasher hesitated. “It’s … good. Fine. The make-up is … it really hides the, uh, the worst of the scarring.”

      “And my suit? Do I have any bits on it?” His ear had fallen off the day before. He’d stuck it back on with glue.

      “It looks clean, sir.”

      “Excellent. Back in the van you go, Thrasher.”

      “Yes, sir … only …”

      Scapegrace sighed. “What?”

      “Don’t you think I should be the one to talk to these people, Master? They are civilians, and I don’t have the … distinguishing features that may alarm them …”

      “Nonsense. I have it all worked out. I have my plan, and I’ve accounted for every single possibility. Every question they are likely, or even not so likely, to ask, I have prepared an answer for. My backstory is rock solid. My lies are intricate and one hundred per cent infallible. You’d only mess it all up.”

      “Yes, Master.”

      “Back in the van, moron.”

      Thrasher bowed, and did as he was bid. Scapegrace adjusted his tie, then strode purposefully along the pavement. The road was a cul-de-sac, with only three buildings on it – a funeral parlour on either side, and a large house at the end with a car outside.

      Scapegrace entered the first funeral parlour. A man in a sombre suit hurried up to him, took one look at his face and faltered.

      “It looks worse than it is,” Scapegrace chuckled good-naturedly.

      “I … see,” said the man.

      “It was the same accident that killed my brother,” Scapegrace continued, realising that he should probably stop chuckling. “It’s a tragic shock. We’re all very saddened by his loss.”

      The funeral director shook Scapegrace’s hand, and gave him a sad smile. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked gently.

      “I would, yes. I’m feeling quite faint, because of the loss of my dead brother.”

      The funeral director showed him to a comfortable chair, then sat behind his big desk and solemnly opened a ledger. He picked up what looked to be an expensive pen, and raised his eyes to Scapegrace. “May I ask your name?”

      Scapegrace had rehearsed this part a dozen times, coming up with answers for every possible question. This was an easy one. “Elvis O’Carroll.”

      The funeral director hesitated, then nodded, and wrote it down. “And your brother’s?”

      “I’m sorry?”

      “Your brother’s name?”

      Scapegrace froze. It had all been going so well. “My brother’s name,” he managed, “is … a name that makes me cry every time I hear it. His name, my brother’s name, my dead brother, is …” His mind raced, careered off walls and stumbled over hurdles. A name. A simple name. All he needed was a simple name to get to the next stage of the conversation, and he could not think of one. Aware that he was staring at the funeral director with a perplexed look on his face, Scapegrace seized a random name from history. “Adolf,” he blurted.

      The funeral director stared at him. “I’m sorry?”

      “Adolf O’Carroll,” Scapegrace continued, trying to be as calm as possible. “That’s with two L’s at the end.”

      “Your brother’s name was Adolf?”

      “Yes. Do you find something wrong with that? It’s a common name in my family. I had an uncle Adolf, and a great-aunt Adolf.”

      “A great-aunt? You realise, of course, that Adolf is traditionally a man’s name …?”

      “Well, that makes sense, as my great-aunt was traditionally a man.”

      “You do seem to have an interesting family, Mr O’Carroll,” the funeral director said politely as he scribbled notes.

      “Please,” Scapegrace said. “Call me Elvis.”

      “Indeed. May I inquire as to what service you wish us to provide for you, during this trying time? The funeral, of course, is what we specialise in, but we also—”

      “Embalming,” Scapegrace said. “Do you do your own embalming?”

      “We prepare the departed for their final resting place, yes.”

      “And you do that here?”

      “On the premises, yes. We have a staff of professionals who take care to treat each individual with the utmost respect. We have found there to be dignity in death, as there is in life.”

      “How long does it take?”

      “The embalming process?”

      “How long does it take to stop the decomposition?”

      “I’m not sure I understand … What exactly are you asking us to do?”

      “I want him preserved.”

      The funeral director put down his pen, and interlaced his fingers. “Are you … Are you asking us to perform taxidermy?”

      “Am I? What’s that? Is that when an animal is stuffed and mounted?”

      “It is.”

      “That’s it!” Scapegrace said happily. “That’s what I want! Can you do that?”

      “No.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because the actual animal body is not used in taxidermy. The animal is skinned, and the skin is stretched over a replica animal body. Note, I keep saying animal. That is because taxidermy is not done to humans. It might be seen as somewhat barbaric.”

      “Wouldn’t suit me anyway,” Scapegrace murmured. “It needs to be the original body. So can you embalm it and just give it to me?”