Hellfire

by Lisa Manifold

  We’d been doing checks of all the cemeteries. Nothing. Nada. Whoever it was had his or her own stash of dead folks because they weren’t lifting ours.

  Zane didn’t answer right away. When I looked over at him, he was gazing thoughtfully at the brick wall. I’d learned, over the past month or so that I’d known him, that when he stared off into the distance, he was sorting things out. Even though it killed me, I kept quiet and let him sort.

  Finally, he said, “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “We keep rounding up the zombies. Maybe we need to let them shuffle around for a bit, see where they’re going. They all bang themselves on the bars once we get them in there,” he nodded at the shop.

  “Yeah, and usually end up offing themselves,” I said, wincing. We’d just finished cleaning up one who had tried to wiggle through the bars of the cage. Gross didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “So the next one we hear about, we need to let it go.” He was calm as he spoke.

  I felt anything but calm. I threw up my hands. “Zane! That’s not the answer!”

  He gave me a mild look, not at all bothered by my response. “Why not?”

  “We cannot have zombies traipsing through Deadwood! They bite, remember? Cats, dogs, babies, whatever’s in the way. And no, the good people of Deadwood don’t need to know that zombies actually exist! It’s a miracle that we’ve gotten all of them out of sight before someone got a good look at them.” I shook my head.

  “Can’t we spell them? I mean, can’t you?”

  “To do what?”

  “So that regular people don’t see them as zombies? Maybe they see them as homeless people, or hitchhikers, or something like that.”

  I opened my mouth to object and then closed it. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. “I bet we could do it.”

  “Now we just have to sell it at Pearl Street,” Zane said with a grin.

  Over dinner that night, after everyone had returned from the shop, and Zane and I had done another round of checking the graveyards, I brought the subject up.

  The reactions were as expected. As I’d initially reacted, in all fairness.

  “Wait,” I held up a hand. “I’d like to take credit for this, but this line of thinking was Zane’s.”

  Deirdre made a scoffing noise. “Well, necromancers have different ideas about zombies, don’t they?”

  Before I could cut her off, Zane answered.

  “Well, yes. We don’t see them like the rest of the magical community does.”

  “Yes, because necromancers see them as free labor, right?” Dee asked.

  “Most do, yes. My point was,” Zane said, “That necromancers aren’t bothered by zombies like the rest of the world. So they would see nothing wrong with using a zombie to accomplish something. We keep spotting them, and picking them up. Maybe that’s where we’re going wrong. I think if we let one get through, we might have a better idea of who is creating them.”

  There was silence after he spoke. In our house, that meant people were mulling it over.

  Or thinking of a cutting response. But since Zane wasn’t a Nightingale, he didn’t have that finely tuned sense of argument. Even the Deanas had it.

  “How would we keep it from being seen by everyone else?” DeAnna asked.

  “We’d charm it, or cast a spell over it,” Daniella said. “We could spell the entire town, but that’s a lot of work.”

  “Nobody needs that kind of work,” Deirdre rolled her eyes. “Not with managing the shop, keeping up with the lessons, feeding the zombies we do have, and making unnecessary trips to the graveyard.” She glared at me as she spoke.

  “Hey,” I held up my hands. “The one time we don’t check is the one time the necro will pull from one of our graveyards.”

  “And the whole need to find a century old hedge witch,” DeAnna continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “I agree that we really don’t need more work.”

  “Okay, so we spell the zombie,” Dee said. “How?”

  “Granny,” Dee yelled.

  I wondered if I needed to be concerned at how comfortable the Ds were getting here at Pearl Street. We were going to ruin them for anything else.

  “And there’s something up with Deana,” Dee said.

  “Did she call?” Doc asked.

  Dee shook her head. “I can just tell. Something’s up. She will call, and it won’t be good.”

  “Are you a seer?” Daniella asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dee smiled, but it was a tired smile. “I’m a mother. Whatever it is, she’s going to need us.”

  “All right, let’s add that to the list,” Deirdre threw up her hands.

  “Zane, you studied with a witch, didn’t you say that?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Can you help me, then? That way, it doesn’t add to anyone else’s to do list. We’re usually on zombie clean up anyway.”

  “I might need to practice. It’s been a while,” Zane said.

  Once more, I wondered what it was that had brought him here. Not that I was upset he was here –if anything, I was probably too damn happy about it.

  We split up after lunch, everyone needing a break. Zane and I agreed to meet later to decide what spell we’d use, and give him a chance to practice.

  As he walked down the street back to his place, I watched him go, my arms crossed. I felt, rather than saw, my sisters join me, one on either side.

  “So,” Daniella said, leaning into me, “What’s up with the necro?”

  “Nothing,” I pulled my arms closer.

  “Liar,” Deirdre said.

  “You like him,” Daniella said.

  “Which is good. One of us should finally get some action,” Deirdre said.

  “One, I don’t know that I want action—”

  Daniella snorted in disbelief.

  “And two, I’m the one most likely to die, or have the person I care about die, remember? I’m the worst one to find any sort of romance,” I said, a glum feeling creeping over me.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Deirdre said. That surprised me, as Deirdre often took what she called the realistic point of view of things.

  “Well, none of us seem to have much luck. It’s not just us, either. None of the D’s kept a relationship. We’re doomed to each other,” I finished.

  “That’s not such a bad thing,” Daniella put her arm around my waist, and leaned her head on my shoulder.

  “Most of the time,” Deirdre said. “Come on. Mooning over some hot necro guy isn’t going to get anything done.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. I turned and we went down into our basement. We kept our herbal counter there, and it was where we mixed up our spells. It was also where we held lessons for Dee and DeAnna.

  As I tried not to think about Zane, I realized that Deirdre was right. It didn’t have to be this way. We’d gotten rid of one curse. We could get rid of another one.

  After all, Mariah Conners, although a witch, was also human.

  How hard could it be?

  Chapter Five

  I should have known better.

  Dee and DeAnna got to work on tracking down Mariah Connors, and so far, had turned up nothing. People were easily lost in the late 1800’s. And so many people were moving around. Without knowing about her family, or what happened to her after her daughter Rebecca died, we were literally seeking out a needle in a haystack. It was frustrating. I was glad that Dee and DeAnna had taken on that task.

  Although I wasn’t as busy as I hoped. The next two days brought no new zombies. I guessed that was a good thing. My sisters and I worked with Zane to perfect a warding spell for a zombie. If our theory was incorrect, and the zombies weren’t headed somewhere in particular, it wouldn’t be good for normal folks to see him.

  I went to the shop and straight to the basement. Our smelly friends were still bumping around in the cage. I noted, after watching them a for a time over the past couple of days, that
they were all trying to go in the direction where we’d found the lone shuffler in the middle of the day. So I argued for keeping them alive a little longer. I wanted to see what happened when we let one loose. But I was tired of waiting, and I made a decision. The spell was as good as it was going to get. After all, it wasn’t like we were new to this business of spells. I called Zane.

  “Hey, let’s spell a zombie, and see where he goes,” I said. All of our current basement dwellers were male.

  “All right. You at the shop?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Be right there.”

  Within fifteen minutes, he walked down the stairs, Deirdre and Daniella with him.

  “We finally going to put this plan into motion?” Daniella asked.

  I nodded.

  “Which one is the freshest?” Deirdre asked.

  The one that Zane and I had found near Deadwood Gulch was the slowest. He’d been slowing down more each day. He also still had the damn note pinned to him, and I was getting worried. Eventually, something gross would happen, and we wouldn’t be able to read it when we finally got hold of it. Maybe now we could grab it.

  All the zombies here, and Granny and all her issues cluttering the house—my desire for order and tidiness was being tested. Everything around me was in chaos and disorder.

  “Who did we catch last?” I asked Zane.

  He studied all our zombies, and then pointed to one who was leaning against the bars. “That one.”

  “All righty, that one it is,” Deirdre said. “We’re going to need a lot of chicken.” She went back upstairs and came down with an armful of bags.

  “We need to get the lively one to the door,” Daniella said, walking around the cage. “Without letting anyone else out.”

  “That’s the kicker, right?” I asked, looking over the cage. Besides the one we wanted to get loose, there were four other zombies. Our first guy wouldn’t be a problem. He was, as previously mentioned, moving really slowly.

  “A broomstick,” I said.

  “What, you’re going to try to teach him to fly?” Daniella asked.

  We all burst into laughter.

  “No,” I got out finally. “We can use a broomstick, probably two, to hold off the other four so we can stop them. They’re all moving more slowly—have you noticed that?” I asked.

  Deirdre nodded. “Like their batteries are running down or something.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “We can use that to make it easier to separate the one.”

  I grabbed one broomstick, and Daniella went upstairs to get the one out of the shop.

  “Lock the door!” I yelled up to her. Our customers were used to us putting an ‘Out to Lunch’ sign in the door occasionally.

  After a few moments, she came back down into the basement.

  “Can you two handle this?” I asked Deirdre and Zane. “Zane, you hold the bait, so Deirdre can stop him if we need to.”

  “I could just tackle him,” Zane said.

  “Ew,” Deirdre, Daniella, and I said together.

  “No,” I said. “Let Deirdre hit him with magic if she needs to.”

  “What are we going to do with him once he’s out?” Daniella asked.

  “Put the spell on him and let him go.”

  “Someone needs to follow him,” Zane said.

  “I will,” I said. “Let’s get him out, first.”

  Daniella and I moved to the sides of the cage, and carefully slid the broomsticks in. They overlapped about six inches in the middle of the cage. Hopefully, the zombies wouldn’t be all revved up when they smelled chicken. Hopefully, their batteries were run down. Otherwise, we’d have a hard time holding them back.

  Zane and Deirdre went to the side with the door.

  “Ready?” asked Zane.

  “Ready,” everyone else said.

  He opened the door, and waved the chicken breast inside the cage. All five zombies looked up, although some were slower. The one we wanted moved toward the chicken, and two of the other four did as well. The two of them bumped into our broomsticks and pushed against them.

  “Hit them with a stasis spell, Des,” Daniella said. “But not too hard.”

  “What? Oh, right,” I said. I braced the broomstick under my arm, getting one hand up. I wiggled my fingers carefully, and the two zombies that were pushing against the broomsticks stilled. I stopped, not wanting to blow them to bits.

  “Wave it more in his face, Zane,” I heard Deirdre say.

  The zombie we wanted out had stopped. The whole basement got quiet, and then there was a shuffle as the zombie started moving again. It made it out of the cage, and reached for the chicken Zane held.

  Just as the zombie reached out, Deirdre hit him with a stasis spell, and he stopped, arms outstretched. Daniella and I pulled the broomsticks out of the cage as Zane shut the door behind the now free zombie.

  “That was smooth,” Zane said.

  “Shut up,” Deirdre said. “Don’t jinx us.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Zane asked, looking to the three of us.

  “Nope,” Daniella said. “Sure way to send things into a pickle is to talk about how well they’re going.”

  Zane snickered, but didn’t say anything more.

  “All right, let’s get the cloaking spell on him,” Deirdre said.

  Together, the three of us cast the spell.

  “How do we know if it works?” Zane asked.

  “Well, let’s feed him, and see what happens.”

  “We’re just going to let him loose?” Zane’s eyebrows were high.

  “Wasn’t that your idea?” I asked.

  “I guess it was,” Zane said.

  “Little different when you have to put the ideas into practice, isn’t it?” Deirdre asked, a grin on her face. “Don’t worry, necro boy. You and Desi get Shuffles here out the back door, and Daniella and I will go out front and make sure he isn’t harassing the populace.” She and Daniella went up the stairs.

  The zombie, released from the stasis spell, reached for the chicken Zane still held. Zane jumped, and let the chicken go.

  “We should feed the rest,” I said, lifting the stasis spell off the four left in the cage. I tossed chicken from two more bags into the cage, and for a time, the only sound was the chewing of the zombies.

  Which was all sorts of gross. That’s all I’ll say.

  “You think this will work?” Zane asked.

  “You’re having doubts?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. More like seeing all the things that could wrong.”

  “Welcome to our world,” I said cheerfully. I hadn’t operated in the realm of better than fifty-fifty odds in years.

  The freed zombie finished the chicken and took a few steps toward us.

  “Wake up,” I said, poking at Zane. “Let’s get him out of here.”

  We held chicken out of in front of us, luring the zombie along through the garage. “Hold him there for a sec,” I said. I darted outside to look around. There was no one in the alley, thank Goddess. Running back in, I opened the garage door wider, and let the zombie out. We tossed the chicken out away from the building, and went back inside, shutting the garage door behind us. Then we both stood at the back door, watching to see what the zombie did.

  For the longest minutes ever, it stood there, chewing. How the hell were they so hungry? They didn’t have any sort of digestion. It baffled me.

  “Where does all the food go?” I whispered to Zane.

  He shrugged. “I was always taught it gave them energy to keep going. I didn’t inquire.”

  “Like, are there zombie bathrooms?”

  Both of us started laughing, trying to be quiet, but not succeeding. We leaned against the door, laughing.

  Thankfully, the zombie paid us no mind. It—he—finished the chicken, and then the head swiveled back and forth.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “What?” Zane asked. His cheeks were pink from our laughin
g.

  “If he’s headed down where we’ve been finding these guys, it’s going to take all day to follow him.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Zane looked out the window at the zombie, who’d shuffled past the door, heading out toward Shine Street. We were in the corner building on Main and Shine Streets, and he was on track to run right into tourists in a few minutes.

  “It might stop our experiment before it ever gets started if the zombie comes off like a drunken weirdo.” I opened the door. “Hey!”

  The zombie kept going.

  “We have to get him, and bring him down the CanAm,” I said, looking at Zane. “Go tell Deirdre and Daniella where we’re going, and I’ll get the truck. Meet me on the corner.”

  He nodded and went toward the front of the shop.

  I ran to the truck, got it going and followed the zombie out to Shine, and then Main Street.

  “Shit,” I swore. Why didn’t we think of this before? I’d forgotten how far away we’d been finding the zombies. They didn’t need to shuffle through a couple of miles of tourists and the general public.

  As I pulled out onto Shine Street, Zane came around the corner. Deirdre and Daniella were with him. They came to my door. “Now you want to toss him in the truck?” Daniella’s nose was wrinkled, no doubt with disgust.

  “Yes. It’s nearly two miles down the CanAm,” I said.

  “That’s if that’s where they’re going,” Deirdre said.

  “It’s where he’s going,” I said. “Quick! Get him in the back!” The zombie had come around the corner, and was walking down Shine.

  “Oh, crap,” Daniella whispered.

  Two ladies were walking up Shine, and the zombie was going to have to go right past them. We couldn’t grab him and just toss him in the truck if he looked like anyone else—I was betting I wasn’t the only one who was holding my breath as the women walked by the zombie.

  One said something to him, and he didn’t respond.