Secret of the Corpse Eater

by Ty Drago

  “I remember being young and confused about the opposite sex.”

  Oh … jeez.

  “Thirty seconds,” I said, studying my watch with laser-like intensity.

  “You children are courageous, and capable. There’s no denying that. But you’re still children. And growing up is never easy. This situation with Helene is not something you want to simply ignore.”

  “Twenty seconds,” I said, maybe a little desperately. Please … shut up.

  She didn’t.

  “I imagine your mother must be very proud of you.”

  “She’s scared for me,” I said.

  “No reason she can’t be both. That’s how I was with Jacob.” Then, after a thoughtful pause, she added, “If you were my son … I’d be proud of you.”

  That was kind of nice.

  “Ten seconds,” I told her. “You ready?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  As I opened the big door, a familiar voice echoed from the floor of the Senate Chamber. “My fellow lawmakers, I stand before you at a personal and professional crossroads …”

  Corpse Micha had begun her announcement.

  “For years now, I’ve watched this great nation being spoiled by the narrow-minded greed of self-interest groups and lobbyists. America calls for a brave new vision, a new leader.”

  This was only my second visit to the Senate Chamber, and it was way more crowded this time. Corpse Micha’s announcement had drawn a lot of attention; people in suits—senators presumably—filled the desks down on the floor below. Still others crowded the gallery, and some of these looked up curiously as Lindsay and I slipped inside and stood near the back.

  Helene, Dave, and Jillian had already taken positions at carefully picked points around the gallery—all standing, all watchful. In their page uniforms, no one took any special notice of them, which was good.

  Since the dead were everywhere.

  Dozens of them. Most were Capitol cops, standing guard at each of the Senate floor entrances as well as around Corpse Micha, herself, who occupied the rostrum.

  She was in a different body this time, and not a particularly fresh one—a Type Three, bloated with trapped gases. These gases had stretched her skin, making it ripple hideously when she spoke. Her entourage took no notice. The Corpses, after all, knew the score. And the humans couldn’t See it.

  “For that reason, I have spent the last few months away from the cameras and away from this august body. A self-imposed exile of sorts, a time to reflect, to decide what my heart compels me to do.”

  Standing beside me just inside the chamber entrance, Lindsay trembled.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  She nodded.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  She nodded again. Then, as we’d rehearsed, she raised one arm and pointed an accusing finger at her Xerox.

  The Senate Chamber is not that big a place. After all, it was built to accommodate just a hundred senators and a modest audience. If you’re on the rostrum, then a person standing in the gallery is pretty easy to see—especially if that person looks just like you, or your Mask, anyway.

  And especially if you’ve been dreading the sight of her for days.

  Sure enough, the fake senator spotted the real one and tripped over her words. “This … wasn’t … an … easy … um …”

  Her stolen body began to shake.

  Within moments, the least living of her cronies saw what she saw. They swapped nervous, uncertain looks, trapped between flight and defending their boss. Duty won out, barely. After receiving some scalding glares from Corpse Micha, these deaders hurried for the main floor doors…

  …making their way up toward us.

  Our little show was starting to have its effect on the human senators, too. Many were reacting to the phony Micha’s obvious distress. A few craned their necks, searching the gallery.

  “Now,” I said.

  Lindsay yelled, “That woman is an imposter!”

  The Senate erupted in noise. Every head turned our way.

  A couple of Corpse cops, stationed on either end of the upper section, headed for us. Helene stepped up behind the first and, in a seriously smooth move, squirted saltwater into his ear. The guy spasmed and dropped like a sack of sand. The Burgermeister’s method was even simpler. He just stepped into the deader’s path—and stayed there. The guy tried to go around him, but the aisle was way too narrow. It was either attack the huge kid, or climb on top of the other VIPs in the gallery, neither of which the deader policeman was willing to risk.

  Below, Corpse Micha’s voice had failed. She stood frozen behind the podium, clutching its edges tight enough to splinter the wood. Her seemingly sightless expression was one of obvious, mounting horror.

  Then she screamed.

  But it wasn’t a human scream; not anything like a human scream. This sound was alien, unearthly, and sent a chain of razor-sharp chills down my back.

  Every senator was on his or her feet now, as if trying to take charge of … something. A few of them approached Corpse Micha, only to be roughly shoved back by deader cronies.

  “Get. Me. Away,” I heard the imposter say in Deadspeak. “Protect. Me.”

  That’s it! Make a break for it. Head for the car you’ve got idling out front … where Sharyn’s waiting with Aunt Sally.

  That’s when things went south.

  Beside me, Lindsay growled. Yep, she actually growled—and I knew we were in trouble. Turning, I saw that her eyes, still locked on the doppelgänger, were flashing.

  Red. Green. Yellow. Blue. Red. Green. Yellow. Blue.

  “Lindsay,” I whispered. “Hold on.”

  My gaze found Helene’s. Now she looked more than worried; she looked terrified—for me.

  I was playing monster-tamer.

  Except she isn’t a monster. At least, that’s not all she is. There’s a good person in there, bouncing around inside her fractured mind. If she can just hold on a little while longer …

  “It’s hard, Will,” she whispered in a throaty, animalistic voice. “I see the Third. And I have to be whole. I … must … be whole!”

  “Hang on,” I said. Then, against my every instinct, I took her hand. “You’re strong. You can keep it under control … just a little while longer.”

  She nodded, though sweat beaded up on her forehead. Her gaze remained glued on Corpse Micha, and she seemed to be straining—like a beast on a flimsy chain.

  Around us, people in the gallery had jumped to their feet and were retreating. Could they tell what was happening? Could they see her flashing eyes? Could they sense what was coming?

  “Dude!” the Burgermeister called to me. “Watch it!”

  But I’ve got this! I’m not going to let her change. I’ve got this!

  I didn’t.

  As Corpse Micha and her deader entourage pushed through the wall of legislators, desperate to escape, something inside Lindsay snapped. “She’s getting away!” she screamed, a sound every bit as terrifying and unearthly has the one her Malum counterpart had uttered.

  Then she moved.

  Yanking her hand from mine, she loped down the steps toward the gallery railing. Any spectators who got in her way were tossed aside as if they were rag dolls.

  More screams, human this time.

  Without thinking, I started after her. I didn’t look at Helene. I didn’t look at Jillian or Dave. If I had, I know what I would have seen in their faces: a whole chorus of, “Don’t do it!”

  “Lindsay!” I cried. “Wait!”

  But she didn’t wait, not even a little bit. With a wail of desperate need, she vaulted over the railing—her body already changing. The clothes exploded off of her, sending torn bits of cloth and loose threads raining down.

  Then the Corpse Eater disappeared from my view.

  It was twelve, maybe fifteen feet from the gallery to the Senate floor. Not a jumpable height, unless you’re Jillian and can parkour it. Bottom line: you’d have to be a
first-class lunatic to go over that railing without so much as a glance down at whatever lay below.

  Hello. Have we met?

  Someone yelled my name. Helene, maybe. I never found out.

  I swung myself over, the air opening up beneath me as I fell. I glimpsed the senators’ desks in their semicircle, looking like rocks at the base of a cliff. I glimpsed the faces of lawmakers staring in mute horror at the creature that had just landed in their midst. I glimpsed Corpse Micha, nearly at the chamber door, surrounded by her deader entourage, her swollen, stolen face a twisted mask of hatred and fear.

  Then I landed on Lindsay’s back. Or maybe she caught me. Another thing I’ll never know for sure.

  Two of her ten strong legs bent backward and enveloped me as they had atop the Capitol dome—pinning me against the hard, scaly skin of her back. Almost without thinking—heck, why start now?—I grabbed what passed for her shoulder blades and held on.

  Lindsay leaped skyward, easily clearing the heads of more than a dozen panicked senators. I heard a sound like chalk breaking. Then I felt something whiz past my ear. Somebody was shooting!

  There had to be at least one human cop in the chamber. Corpses, no matter what was happening, never used guns.

  “Don’t shoot!” someone yelled. “The boy! It’s got the boy!”

  The Corpse Eater landed in an open area right in front of the rostrum, her head rolling around and focusing on the chamber’s main exit. The fake Micha was there, pushing her way through, her minions knocking aside anyone who came close. One of them, a Type Two, steeled his courage and charged back down the center aisle in defense of his boss.

  Lindsay absently cut him in half.

  Then, together, we launched ourselves after the fleeing imposter.

  The best-laid plans … I remember thinking.

  From the Senate Chamber’s main doors it’s a straight shot down a series of ornate, high-ceilinged corridors to the Rotunda. And Corpse Micha took that route, running with the weird, impossible agility that seemed reserved for the Malum royal family. All the while, she kept Deadspeaking to her toadies. It was a language that didn’t lend itself to expressing emotion.

  But she managed it anyhow.

  “Protect. Me. Order. You. Protect. Me.”

  And her cronies obeyed, or tried to. Instead of running beside their boss, four of them—there were six in all—turned and spread out, blocking our pursuit.

  Bad move, Dead Dudes!

  With me still fastened to her back, Lindsay leaped sideways and hit the left-hand wall, shredding a big painting of some dead guy in old clothes. Then she bounced clear across the corridor, careened off the opposite wall, and somehow reached the ceiling, where she flipped over and latched on with eight of her legs.

  Once there, she skittered forward, spiderlike and cat-quick, until we were directly over the four deaders, all of whom looked like they were facing down their worst nightmare.

  And what was I doing during all this?

  Fighting motion sickness and hanging on for dear life.

  “Abomination!” one of the Corpses called in English.

  “Yeah?” I said, looking down at him. “Look who’s talking!” It probably would’ve come off a little cooler if I hadn’t then puked in his face.

  We dropped.

  The first two she simply decapitated with savage swipes of her front legs. The third she cut in half—vertically—I mean, head to toe.

  I still see that one in my dreams.

  The fourth she ate. As the deader crony was engulfed by Lindsay’s monstrous toothy maul and consumed, his scream of terror, inhuman as it was, twisted my already aching guts.

  A moment later we loped forward again, clearing the length of the corridor and skidding halfway across the polished tile floor of the Rotunda.

  Sometime during the day, the heart of the Capitol had been reopened to the public. There were people here—normal, living people—and the instant we appeared among them they scattered. Shrieks filled the huge, domed chamber and, for one horrible second, Lindsay seemed to pause, eyeing the mass of fleeing humanity. Her head rolled around me, going front to back and back to front again, her red eye studying the panicked, running figures—hungrily.

  “Lindsay,” I begged. “Don’t.”

  She hesitated.

  I heard something then. Not a word—more like a regurgitated idea. No, less than that. An urge.

  Feed.

  “Not on people,” I said, hoping I sounded firm. I mean, how authoritative can you be when you’re straddling a ten-legged creature from another dimension? “You can’t eat living people. Just the dead.”

  Feed.

  A balding man in jeans and a Redskins sweatshirt had stumbled a dozen steps away. He lay on the tile, crying and curled up into a tight ball, too terrified even to stand. Lindsay fixed on him the way a lion might fix on a crippled zebra.

  “You are Senator Lindsay Micha!” I said, talking as fast and as loud as I could. “You will not do this!”

  The Corpse Eater skittered toward the cringing man. Her terrible jaws opened.

  “Lindsay!” I screamed. Panicked tears stung my eyes. “If you kill him, you’ll never be human again!”

  She paused.

  Moments ticked by. The red eye swiveled around and glared at me, only inches from my face—so close that I could feel the heat of it.

  I glared right back.

  Then, with a frustrated grunt, she leaped over the man in the Redskins sweatshirt and bounded out through the eastern archway. There was no sign of Corpse Micha or her remaining two thugs, but that didn’t slow her down. She turned sharply and hurtled down two long flights of stairs, before charging headlong into the great space directly beneath the Rotunda.

  The Crypt.

  But this wasn’t a crypt like in Tales from the Crypt. Instead, it was a brightly lit room with a polished, stone floor and four big, Greek-style columns—Doric, I think they’re called—which held up the Rotunda. A starting place for most Capitol tours, the Crypt’s circular walls hosted various busts and statues, all donated from different states. There was scale model of the Capitol here, as well as a copy of the English Magna Carta.

  And maybe a few deaders, too.

  Lindsay and I screeched to a halt directly atop the compass in the floor that was supposed to represent the physical center of the Capitol and—perhaps—all of DC.

  Nobody was around. Maybe it was closed this time of day, or maybe any tourists had cleared out in the panic that we’d started upstairs. Either way, the chamber was as silent and empty as its name implied. Nevertheless, I’d been an Undertaker too long to believe we were safe. There were tons of places to hide.

  Every alarm bell I had was ringing like crazy.

  Lindsay released me. I slid off her back and stood up, dismayed at how stiff I felt. My long-suffering stomach seemed totally empty, as if I had a genuine hole in my gut.

  Lindsay fixed her yellow eye on me. If there was some kind of message, I didn’t get it. Then her head rolled to her opposite end and she jumped away, disappearing down one of the nearby corridors.

  I reached inside my jacket for my water pistol. My hand came away wet.

  Broken. Figures.

  Why had Lindsay left me, alone and unarmed?

  Then I got it.

  I was bait. She’d use me to draw out Corpse Micha and her cronies. If they were here, then they’d just seen the abomination leave. Once their fear fizzled, that old Corpse hunger would reappear and they’d show themselves.

  A solid plan, though I couldn’t say I liked it much.

  Long minutes passed. No movement. No sound. I stood atop the compass, turning in a slow circle. My heart pounded.

  Finally, a sticky voice said, “Looks like you’re all alone, little boy.”

  A Type Four emerged from behind a column. At the same moment, a Type Three stepped around the Capitol model, effectively boxing me in. Both were male. Both wore power suits—the DC uniform.

 
; “Hey guys,” I said, managing a smile. Neither was particularly fresh—definitely not Corpse Micha’s “A-Team.” But they were still plenty dangerous, especially considering I had nothing but my bare hands.

  They approached slowly, their purple-gray fists opening and closing, their rotting teeth chattering and clacking inside their skulls. But the eyes were the worst—milky and apparently sightless. They looked blind, though I knew with terrible certainty that they weren’t.

  My already sore stomach clenched even tighter.

  Then the lights went out.

  It was so abrupt and the darkness left behind so complete, that my vision needed a few seconds to adjust. Something hurtled toward me—just a flicker of movement in the blackness—and I ducked. A forearm cut the air where my head had been, the deader equivalent of a baseball bat.

  The Type Four had made his move.

  I couldn’t see him. But I could smell him, a sickly sweet odor, kind of like rotting meat—exactly like rotting meat, now that I think about it. And when he moved, the stench grew stronger. Sharyn had trained us to fight in the dark. When you don’t have your eyes, use your other senses.

  I did that now.

  Instead of retreating, I weaved around the spot where I smelled him, stepped in and gave a blind shove, causing him to stumble. He growled and clawed at me, a shape in the dark. But I slipped around him again, careful to slide my feet rather than take steps. I smelled him charge and then slam right into one of the columns, uttering a furious grunt…

  …which told me right where to hit.

  I drove my fist at the spot where I hoped the base of his skull would be. And I nailed it. The deader stiffened, his arms clamping spasmodically around the Doric column as he slumped. I hadn’t killed him, but I had incapacitated him for a bit.

  Better than nothing.

  There was a loud thunk as the emergency lights came on, soft and red, showering the Crypt with an unworldly glow. I had just enough time to turn around before the other one, the Type Three, was on me. His rotting hands scrambled for my face as we crashed to the stone floor together.

  I shoved my forearm under his chin to keep his snapping mouth away from me. Corpse juice dribbled down onto my cheek.