Funeral Spooks

The rain didn’t fall in sheets; it misted, a miserable grey shroud that clung to the marble headstones of Oakridge Cemetery.

As a veteran mortician, Arthur Vance had buried billionaires, politicians, and killers. He wasn't afraid of the dead. It was the living that made his spine prickle. But today, standing at the graveside of Julian Cross—a disgraced tech mogul who had allegedly died in a fiery car crash—Arthur felt a cold sweat breaking under his heavy wool coat.

The service was small. Only three people attended. But it wasn't the sparse crowd that bothered Arthur. It was the Funeral Spooks.

In the underground transit of the wealthy, "Spooks" were freelance intelligence operatives. They didn't attend funerals to mourn; they attended to observe who else showed up, who was crying too hard, and who was secretly relieved. Arthur recognized the man in the charcoal suit standing by the old willow tree. It was Victor Vance (no relation), a notorious cleaner for the city's elite.

As the priest murmured the final commendation, Victor didn’t look at the casket. He looked directly at Arthur. And he smiled.

The trouble had started the night before during the embalming. Julian Cross’s body had arrived under heavy security. When Arthur drew the sheet back, his professional eye noticed the discrepancies immediately. The dental work matched Cross's records, and the facial trauma was consistent with a high-speed impact. But the surgical scars on the abdomen were wrong. They were fresh, precise, and identical to a highly experimental organ-harvesting procedure Arthur had seen only once before on a black-market autopsy report.

Julian Cross hadn't died in an accident. He had been disassembled. And judging by the encryption flash drive Arthur found stitched inside the lining of the decedent's stomach during the cavity fluid injection, Cross had left a parting gift.

"Earth to earth, dust to dust," the priest droned.

The casket was lowered. The three mourners dispersed without a word. Arthur walked back toward the administrative building, his leather shoes squelching in the mud. He could feel Victor’s eyes burning into his back.

He locked the heavy oak doors of the mortuary behind him and headed straight to the prep room. The air smelled of formaldehyde and ozone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the blood-stained flash drive he had hidden in a sterile specimen jar.

Suddenly, the lights flickered and died.

The backup generator kicked in with a low, mechanical groan, bathing the room in an eerie, pulsing red emergency glow. From the hallway, the heavy click of a deadbolt sliding open echoed through the quiet facility.

"Arthur," a voice called out. It wasn't Victor’s sharp, reedy tone. It was deeper. Smoother.

Arthur’s heart hammered against his ribs. He grabbed a heavy post-mortem trocar—a long, sharp metal instrument used for aspiration—and backed into the shadow of the refrigeration units.

Footsteps approached, unhurried and precise. A figure stepped into the red light of the prep room.

It was Julian Cross.

His face was pale, mapped with fresh surgical stitches along the hairline, but he was undeniably alive.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Arthur," Cross said, glancing at the empty stainless-steel table where his "body" had rested just hours ago. "But the Spooks are thorough. A synthetic clone, a bribed medical examiner, and a tragic car fire buy a man a lot of freedom."

"The drive," Arthur whispered, tightening his grip on the trocar.

"The drive contains the routing numbers for three billion dollars in untraceable offshore accounts," Cross said, stepping closer. "My former partners hired Victor to ensure I stayed dead, and to find that drive. But you found it first. Give it to me, and you live to bury another day."

Before Arthur could answer, the frosted glass window of the prep room shattered.

A flashbang grenade bounced across the tile floor.

Arthur threw himself behind a heavy porcelain embalming table just as a blinding light and a deafening roar tore through the room. Smoke filled the air, acrid and thick.

Through the haze, suppressed gunfire coughed. Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.

Arthur peered over the edge of the table. Victor and two other armed operatives in tactical gear had breached the room. They weren't arresting anyone; they were cleaning house. Julian Cross was already diving behind a row of metal supply cabinets, firing a compact pistol into the dark.

"Secure the mortician!" Victor shouted over the din. "He has the drive!"

Arthur didn't hesitate. He knew the layout of the mortuary better than anyone alive. Crawling on his stomach, he slipped through the low, rectangular door of the crematorium loading bay.

Behind him, the firefight raged. He heard Cross scream in agony as a bullet found its mark.

Arthur scrambled to his feet in the dark crematorium annex. He needed to get to his truck, but the main exit was likely covered. He looked down at the flash drive in his hand. If he kept it, he was a dead man. If he destroyed it, he lost his only leverage.

He ran to the primary retorts—the massive concrete and steel furnaces used for cremation. He turned the gas valve of Retort #1, striking the ignition. The furnace roared to life, a wall of brilliant, blinding orange flame dancing behind the thick glass viewport.

The heavy steel door to the annex burst open. Victor stepped through, his silenced pistol raised. Blood splattered his charcoal lapel, suggesting Julian Cross had finally met his permanent end.

"End of the line, Arthur," Victor said, his voice deadly calm. "Hand over the drive. Don't make me get messy."

Arthur stood right in front of the open furnace door, the intense heat baking the back of his neck. He held the flash drive over the roaring flame.

"You shoot me, it drops in," Arthur said, his voice surprisingly steady. "Three billion dollars, vaporized in ten seconds."

Victor lowered the gun a fraction of an inch, his eyes narrowing. "You don't have the stomach to die for a piece of plastic, old man."

"I've spent forty years with the dead, Victor. I'm not afraid of joining them," Arthur lied, his knuckles white. "But I know your clients. If you come back empty-handed, they won't just kill you. They’ll make it hurt."

The standoff stretched, measured by the mechanical roar of the furnace.

"What do you want?" Victor hissed.

"A head start. Ten minutes. And you take Cross's real body out of here with you. I don't want the paperwork," Arthur demanded.

Victor stared at him for a long, agonizing moment, calculating the odds. Finally, he nodded. "Ten minutes. If I see you in this city tomorrow, I’ll bury you myself. Without a casket."

Victor backed out of the room, keeping his weapon trained on Arthur until the door clicked shut.

Arthur waited exactly thirty seconds. Then, he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a second, identical black flash drive—a decoy he kept for storing music—and tossed it into the furnace. It melted instantly.

He slipped the real drive, still hidden in the specimen jar, deep into his breast pocket.

He didn't take his truck. He walked out the back emergency exit, disappearing into the grey cemetery mist and the safety of the shadows, leaving the funeral spooks to chase a ghost.