“Why? Afraid I’ll die before my time?” said Buffy, trying to maneuver close enough for an effective attack.
“Doesn’t matter when you die, so long as you do. In fact, should you die before the ceremony, so much the better. Reduces the chance of a complication.”
“Hmm. It’s nice to know you’re afraid of complications.”
Mather growled and hurled the flash camera at Buffy. She dodged it with ease and it shattered on the sidewalk, exposing the film. It appeared MacGovern’s luck would be consistent, in the short-term at least. Buffy couldn’t help but laugh.
Mather’s reaction was unexpected. Mainly because it was MacGovern’s reaction. “Hey, what’s so funny?” he asked indignantly. His imperious posture momentarily deflated, only to resume its unnatural height as he said aloud, “Leave me alone. Stay suppressed like you’re supposed to, and you might live through this night. You on the other hand”—now he looked at Buffy—“haven’t got a prayer.”
“Other hand? Sounds to me like you’re having trouble keeping the upper hand.”
Mather, again firmly in control, looked around at the sleek, modern buildings, then glared directly at Buffy. “We knew how to handle smart-mouthed young vixens in my day.”
“Burned them at the stake?”
“We were kinder, gentler executioners; we merely hanged them. The barbarians in Europe, they burned the witches!”
“I knew that. I just wanted to hear you deny it.” She bent at the knees, bringing forward a branch the size of her arm she’d picked up in the park.
Mather stepped back. Way back. “I deny anything if it’s a lie.” Lightning flashed behind him, and his shadow cut across the road.
A few blocks down, a Hummer came to a stop and turned out its lights. Then it came forward.
“Deny this!” said Buffy. Taking advantage of the distraction, she broke the branch in half—into two pointed stakes—and rolled straight at him, shooting with the force of a bowling ball. Her legs got a little tangled in the raincoat, but otherwise the maneuver went all right.
Mather laughed. She sprang at him, cocking her right arm to drive the stake into his heart.
Or where a heart should be.
Mather dodged the stake with ease. “I once possessed a martial arts master,” he explained, while he kicked her in the stomach.
Buffy managed to deflect most of the blow, but it still delivered quite an impact. She landed on her back, in a manhole up to its rim with water. She rolled out of the way a second before Mather landed on top of her feet-first. She hit him with the bottom of her foot, at the kneecap. His leg crumbled out from under him, and she kicked him in the face.
He grabbed her leg, twisted it—thus twisting her—and sent her flying headfirst into the door of a parked Honda. Luckily the door bent easily.
But she was in the process of standing before she even touched the ground. She turned and threw an underhand stake toward his eye.
He avoided it, knocking it straight down to the ground, but he fell down, which definitely hadn’t been part of his plan. He grabbed the stake and threw it back at her.
She caught it.
“Slay me and you slay MacGovern,” Mather said. “Possession isn’t permanent. Sooner or later I’ll have to return control to MacGovern.”
Buffy raised her eyebrows. MacGovern/Mather was right. She would have to be more careful.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” she asked.
“Maybe my journalist-half is talking!” He turned and ran directly toward the gallery.
Buffy could have caught up with him easily—possessed though he might be, he still had the legs of an old man—but she was momentarily stymied. How should she proceed?
Her mind was made up when Mather, trying to avoid a huge puddle, brazenly climbed over the hood of Joyce Summers’s parked car.
Buffy dashed toward him with murderous intent, but she came to an abrupt stop and slipped and fell onto another car the moment she saw her mother coming out of the gallery.
Mom wasn’t alone. With her was the cleaning lady, Pat, who held a bucket filled with cleaning tools in one hand, and with her other hand balanced a mop over her shoulder. Pat was about four-and-a-half-feet tall and weighed nearly 150 pounds; she resembled a fire hydrant.
“Why, Mrs. Summers, how good it is to make your acquaintance,” said Mather with a definitely smarmy air. He offered to shake her hand.
“Mister, are you all right?” Buffy’s mom asked, peering out from under her umbrella. “You look a fright!”
Buffy watched what happened next in a car mirror. The moment Mather made a false move, the stakes would start to fly!
“Look a fright?” exclaimed Mather. “I am a fright!”
He grabbed Mrs. Summers by the wrist and yanked her toward him. She spun into his arms and he held her in a bear hug. It had taken only a second.
But it was long enough for Buffy to expose herself and cock back her right arm. She had her eye on the nape of his neck.
Joyce had hers on his foot. She stamped it with the point of her high heel.
Mather yelled and released her, thus giving Pat the cleaning lady a clear shot with her mop. She caught Mather upside the head and he staggered away from them, toward the stairs leading to the gallery.
“The gallery is closed, sir,” said Joyce Summers, who had already gotten her cell phone from her pocketbook and was dialing 911.
“That depends on your perspective,” Mather replied. He had steadied himself by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs, and when he turned toward the front door he broke out into a full run, giving the others the distinct impression he would try to run straight through it. Instead, he veered at the last possible instant and ran straight into a window. No iron bars! Glass and wood shattered, as he disappeared into the gallery. A slew of alarms went off, but Mather obviously didn’t care.
No respect for the human body whatsoever, thought Buffy, moving down the line of parked cars. She had to follow Mather, regardless of whether or not her mother spotted her. Besides, if I live through tonight I can be grounded forever, for all I care. In fact, I could use the rest. But it would be better if her mother didn’t see her. She pulled the hood closer.
“Shouldn’t we go after him?” asked Pat, raising her voice to be heard.
“No, leave the heroics to the professionals,” Joyce replied. “Hello? 911? I’d like to report a break-in.”
Thanks, Mom, thought Buffy as she took advantage of the moment, the darkness and all the alarms and dashed across the sidewalk with the fleetness of a cat in hunting mode. She realized her dilemma had gotten worse, if that was possible. Now she was faced with the choice of either stopping Mather before the police came or letting him be arrested for attempting to steal the Vivaldi Moonman. Either way, Darryl MacGovern, streetwise but unlucky reporter, would take the rap.
Buffy found the upraised path along the side of the gallery so narrow she had no choice but to walk directly under the rain that rolled off the rooftop like a waterfall. It was like getting hit in the head with a succession of buckets of water. But at least it enabled her to see inside.
Most businesses leave at least half the lights on after closing to discourage unwelcome visitors. The gallery was no exception. Buffy saw through a window, and through an open door beyond, into a room where a drenched Mather was examining the podium upon which stood the Moonman statue. Naturally it looked just like the statue on Buffy’s dream notebook. Like a standing jigsaw puzzle of a man with a broken face.
Buffy broke the window with her elbow, reached inside and opened it. Normally she wasn’t so up front about breaking and entering, but she figured tonight she could make an exception because the alarms already made it sound like the whole city had been struck by a giant earthquake.
But by the time she reached the podium, Mather had already knocked it over and taken the statue. She looked down the hall just in time to see him closing the back door behind him.
Then she
looked up the hall just in time to see the first policeman coming in.
He had a flashlight. She could almost feel the beam hitting the back of her head as she pulled up her hood and ran toward the back door. He called out for her to stop.
He fired one shot into the air—at least she hoped it was in the air—so she zoomed from the gallery rear exit with an extra burst of speed. Mather was nowhere to be seen, which was a problem, but she had to make sure the same thing could be said about her before the policeman’s backup arrived.
Near the fence in the rear were two bushes just far enough apart to provide her with cover for a few moments while she thought of her next move. She dove in.
And landed right on top of Mather. They bumped heads so hard she saw stars.
By the time Buffy recovered enough to think straight, Mather was already gone—he’d probably climbed over the fence—and the rear of the gallery was now crawling with police.
Actually, there were only two who were inspecting the grounds—two too many under the circumstances. Buffy had no choice but to lay low, hugging the mud while the rain poured down. Her only consolation was that she was behind enough cover so the cops couldn’t see her when the lightning flashed.
By the time the police were gone and it was safe for Buffy to climb over the rear fence, Mather was nowhere to be seen. Any trail he might have left behind was by now washed away. To make matters worse, neither the Hummer nor the van were visible. One would have thought that Eric Frank’s face would be everywhere, looking for angles on the theft of the infamous Moonman statue.
Buffy refused to give up, however, and she trotted down the street looking for a sign.
CHAPTER 9
But first, a phone call. When she found a phone booth, Buffy discovered she had no change, so she had to call the library collect. She just hoped Giles was still conscious enough to accept the charges.
Buffy’s heart sank when Willow answered. At least she accepted the call.
“Giles is so hot he’s practically steaming,” Willow said. “But he’s not getting any worse. According to the slayer histories, Robert Erwin didn’t die until a few days after Sarah Dinsdale’s escape, so we think Giles will be okay until . . . after . . . well, you know. . . .”
“Believe me. You haven’t mentioned Xander.”
“That’s because he went looking for you.”
“I thought he was supposed to—”
“Buffy, he’s as much tied up in this as you are. No one wants you to face this alone.”
“Yes, but I’m hoping to keep Xander and myself separated, to change the equation so to speak.”
“Oh. I take it he hasn’t found you yet.”
“Well, if he went to the gallery, he might have been distracted by all the police running about. Have you found anything yet?”
“No. I’ve been racking my brains, but I have no idea where a ceremony with a false Stonehenge setting can take place in the Sunnydale area. At the moment I’m stuck in a chatroom with some British witches who claimed to have erected the original Stonehenge in a previous life. They’re a little confused, though, on which of the three major building periods they were involved with—”
“And the weather?”
“All the weather sites are confused. There was no indication anywhere in the atmosphere that the Pacific Coast was going to be hit by a storm this large and fierce. Flash-flood warnings are in effect from Seattle to San Diego.”
“Get me some cold medicine. I’ll be back eventually.” Buffy sneezed. “See you.”
“Ciao,” Willow said weakly, and then they both hung up.
Buffy figured she might as well stay in the phone booth while she tried to think of what to do next. She was tired and cold and worried, and she was barely able to hold in check her anxieties about her role in the prophecy. Were Slayers supposed to die until one of them finally got it right, or did they always die? Perhaps the best thing for her and Xander to do would be to screw things up completely by leaving town, where they couldn’t possibly be affected or drawn in.
But then again, maybe things would be even worse if they did. That was the trouble with fate. You never knew when you had reached another fork in the road.
The phone booth was on the perimeter of a parking lot of a convenience store that recently went out of business. Next to the phone booth was the only shining lamppost for two hundred yards. On the other side of the street were two empty lots that despite being prime land had gone unused for Sunnydale’s entire history. The rain showed no sign of easing up.
Buffy thought seriously about giving up and just going back to the library. She didn’t even know where to head first.
A car passed, splashing up so much water that a huge wave struck the side of the phone booth. Unfortunately, this phone booth was open at the bottom. Until that moment, Buffy’s knees had been dry.
She made up her mind and strode out of the booth. She didn’t put up her hood; there was no point. She was halfway across the road when she came to a dead stop.
For a few seconds she had no idea why. Her survival instincts occasionally compelled her to do things without knowing why. Usually in retrospect her senses had picked up on something her conscious mind hadn’t noticed. Such as the moving mound in the mud in one of the empty lots.
Another car approached, forcing Buffy to finish crossing the street. She veered in the direction of the mound. She twirled the stake in her right hand. No doubt about it—something underground was approaching her. It couldn’t be good.
Whatever senses it possessed, however, were severely limited. It went right under the sidewalk and disappeared for several moments. She imagined it—a giant, carnivorous worm? a deadly multi-bladed machine?—hitting the underside of the asphalt several times in an effort to break through and restore whatever dim bead it had on her.
The mound revealed itself again. It moved away from the sidewalk in a different direction; the two lines in the dirt formed a “V.”
Buffy hurled a stake at the moving mound. The stake spun like an axis, glistening in a lightning flash, and stuck straight up in the dirt. It quivered for a few moments, then rose straight up in the air. At least that’s what it looked like.
Until the zombie’s head rose out of the ground, quickly followed by the rest of its body. At that moment Buffy would have gladly traded all the stakes in creation for one good minute with a surface-to-air missile launcher.
The zombie turned to face her. Its own face was pretty rank: most of the skin had been scraped off underground. It wore buckskins and its putrefying hair was tied in ponytails; once it had been a warrior. When it growled, a strip of rotten skin fluttered where its Adam’s apple should have been.
Once the warrior had lost an arm at the elbow. With that lost arm he’d held a hatchet. The zombie held that same arm, which was holding that same hatchet, right now.
It advanced.
Buffy sighed. That missile launcher sure would have saved a lot of time. As it was now, dispatching this zombie would take a few minutes longer.
So she became the missile, launching herself at it feet first. She was betting that it couldn’t move very fast without accelerating its decay, and she was about half-right.
It grabbed her feet with its remaining hand, but it had to drop the forearm with the hatchet to do so.
It still couldn’t stop her, really. She buried both her feet into its chest up to her ankles. Bone cracked big-time and Buffy winced; the experience was like jumping from a diving board onto a giant snail.
They both went down in a heap, with Buffy on top. The zombie fell badly, breaking apart under the combined impact of Buffy and the sidewalk. Buffy fell almost as badly, hurting the small of her back. But that didn’t stop her from rolling away from the pieces of the zombie as quickly as possible.
A putrefied hand clung to her raincoat. Buffy broke its fingers in half one by one, and then stamped her foot on the hand until it was mush. The fingers still crawled toward her like worms. The rest
of the zombie was attempting the same. A shoulder scooted, the head rolled and the one standing leg hopped. Their intentions did not look good.
Buffy knew she couldn’t just leave them because that head was bound to bite somebody before it got itself kicked in, but as she waited for a car—and its startled driver!—to pass by, she got the distinct impression somebody else was growling at her.
She turned to face a fieldful of zombies rising from the earth.
They seemed to have no leader and no mind, group or otherwise. They simply shambled toward her, apparently with no other intention than just killing her.
This was bad, more than just a tough jam. Buffy remembered the dream of Samantha Kane being menaced by parts of a zombie, not to mention Sarah Dinsdale’s story of what happened to the men trying to recapture her. They had been set upon by a horde of zombies. Like a gaggle of geese, Buffy thought grimly.
She got ready, stooping to a fighting stance. It might take a while, but she was sure she could eradicate them, with or without the stake she’d dropped. She changed her mind when four zombies scooped up the parts of their fallen comrade along the way and ate them. (The one without a lower jaw stuffed pieces of the foot, including a shoe, down his throat.) She had decided to look for the nearest bulldozer or any other piece of equipment that would help her mash these things as flat as possible, as quickly as possible.
Seeing nothing of potential help in the immediate vicinity, she took off into the alley between the empty store and a deserted office building and climbed over a wire-mesh fence into a dark, wet grade school lot and ran as fast as she could.
On the other side of the lot she slowed down and saw the zombies still following her, though they had no hope of maintaining her pace, much less overtaking her.
Buffy waited until most of them were halfway across the lot, then she climbed over the fence and landed on the sidewalk. Across the street lay Sunnydale Central Park.
She had an idea. It was risky and broke every Slayer rule in the book, but that had never stopped her before. So that there would be absolutely no chance they’d lose sight of her, she sauntered into the park as if on a Sunday stroll. Now she was entering well-lit territory. The sidewalks and open spaces were so bright the rain glistened like sunlight on the sea, and even the tops of the pines were lit. Luckily the weather was so bad even the delinquents who usually hung out there had gone home.
Night of the Living Rerun Page 9
