“Mind you, we did not say we would set the people free,” said MacGovern/Mather. “The zombies will still guard them, and a few will remain behind to guard us.”
Reduction of odds. A good thing. Buffy decided. She was fairly positive no one noticed her bumping against a table as the zombie approached.
Other zombies, making weird growling noises that sent Billy Bob’s customers down a spiral of terror, gestured with their weapons indicating the course the good citizens should take. Naturally the good citizens took it, some practically falling all over one another in their attempts to get out.
They all marched past Buffy while her hands were being tied behind her back. Everyone, whether they be fearful, stoic, altruistic or among the injured, looked her in the eye. The zombies escorting them out did not encourage communication, but Edith was brave enough to muster a “Thanks, I won’t forget this.”
“You probably will,” Buffy replied.
“Bet you a steak dinner I don’t,” said Edith.
“You’re on,” said Buffy.
“Silence!” said Rick/Danforth. “You, my young Slayer, are in no position to do anything.”
“In fact,” said Lora/Heather in conspiratorial tones, “we could ensure you won’t be around to commit your treachery a second time by taking advantage of whatever instruments of torture the kitchen may provide.”
“Slay them!” said Xander/Sarah desperately, turning to Buffy. “Why don’t you slay them?”
“My hands are tied,” replied Buffy. “And I try—whenever possible—not to kill my friends’ bodies.”
“You’re not like Samantha Kane!” Sarah exclaimed.
“I’ll take “Duh” for two hundred.” said Buffy dryly.
“I think the Master would rather devour this Slayer personally,” advised Frank/Corwin. “I believe they have a history.”
“So do we,” said MacGovern/Mather, “in our fashion. Come here.”
That order was directed at Buffy, but she did not respond until the zombie behind her pushed her with its rifle. “Keep your head on. I’m moving,” said Buffy testily.
“And just how would you slay us, young Slayer, in the unlikely event you ever have a chance?” inquired Rick/Danforth as he walked around his prisoner, inspecting her.
“I would drive a stake through your heart.” She could not help glancing at Xander/Sarah who, though still cowering, had managed to slink to a chair.
“That wouldn’t work on us,” said Frank/Corwin with a laugh. “We’re already dead.”
“It would work on Eric Frank, though,” pointed out MacGovern/Mather. “And that would seriously delay us.”
Xander/Sarah nodded, as if she understood something. Buffy immediately got a bad feeling. While Buffy was reluctant to slay the living bodies of innocent people in order to thwart the heinous spirits of the dead, Sarah Dinsdale operated under no such personal restriction.
“Time for the ceremony,” said Rick/Danforth.
“I think we need to fix the decor first,” suggested Lora/Heather as she hefted a table over the bar.
“You got that right, woman! We need some ceremony room!” said Frank/Corwin as he kicked the table Sarah was sitting at with great gusto. The table smashed into other tables, sending them in different directions.
One of the remaining zombies happened to be in the way of a flying chair. The chair crashed into the zombie’s putrid leg, which buckled and bent the wrong way, throwing the zombie off balance.
No one seemed to notice, not even the zombie.
“I need some more ceremony room!” Corwin shouted in delight. “Some ceremony room for the enlightened!” And he threw another table into the counter.
Xander/Sarah yelped as if bitten, then withdrew into herself as the three other possessed bodies commenced to tear up everything still standing in the steak house. Buffy couldn’t blame her. This type of violence was so much more irrational than the kind found in the fight of good against evil.
The others threw themselves into the wanton destruction by ripping down those few things that had been left standing—jukebox, pinball machine, serving cart. And when everything was on the floor, the four of them worked together and threw everything up again. Maybe just to see how it fell into place.
“This is not enough ceremony room!” exclaimed Corwin in frustration.
Then they threw the stuff in the air again. Within a few moments Buffy realized there was some method to their madness. They were piling the debris with a definite pattern Buffy had seen before—in her dreams.
When she took into account the mess they were also making in the kitchen at the same time, she realized the piles were pale, smaller imitations of the stone slabs which had formed the boundaries the last time the ceremony had occurred.
“Hey, guys,” said Buffy, “if the site in New England was a Pilgrim’s Stonehenge, then is this a redneck Stonehenge?”
The possessed ones ignored her. Windows broke and the hokey sawdust that “flavored” the floor of Billy Bob’s was stirred up. The rain began falling inside the steak house.
“Now is it time for the ceremony?” demanded Frank/Corwin.
“It is time,” said Rick/Danforth. He walked into the kitchen. Or what was left of it.
The others followed, as did Xander/Sarah, meekly, and Buffy—but only because Frank/Corwin was pushing her.
They gathered around the grill. MacGovern/Mather carefully placed V.V. Vivaldi’s Moonman sculpture on it, and the rock sizzled at once, filling the immediate vicinity with a terrible black smoke.
The four possessed ones chanted and danced. The moonrock glowed red-hot like a coal, only it remained whole; it did not, perhaps could not, burn. Even the heat generated by the grill was not enough to melt it.
“This is it,” said Xander/Sarah. “He is coming! The Master is coming!”
Buffy thought she’d seen everything by now, but she’d never seen a mystical rupture in the spacetime continuum before, where the boundaries between here and there vanished.
An altogether different kind of heat and smoke began to fill the room. The smoke curled out through the huge hole in the ceiling, while within a matter of moments the heat became suffocating.
“I’d forgotten what it was like to be human,” said Rick/Danforth, trying to catch his breath.
“Quiet!” said Frank/Corwin. “The Master is coming!”
Indeed. A white hand whose skin combined the worst features of worms and reptiles rose up from the nothingness, followed by an arm wearing the sleeve of a dapper black jacket.
“How trendy,” said Buffy. “Pale skin.”
“Silence, insipid knave!” said Rick/Danforth.
“Have you no respect for your betters?” asked the Master. His head and torso had emerged. Both his hands were on the hot grill, no worse for the wear. He looked about wearing an expression of ecstasy. “I see you fixed the place up for me. How thoughtful.”
“Would you care for a snack?” asked Rick/Danforth. “We thought you’d like to start with these two.”
The Master looked at Buffy with a toothy grin. Buffy grinned back. He was the key to this whole nightmare.
At last the time to act had arrived. In the next few seconds she would know if she would live or die. One thing is for certain, she resolved. Regardless of my fate, the Master will die. Again and again. Now I just need a distraction. . . .
Buffy caught an unexpected movement from the corner of her eye. She turned to see Xander/Sarah holding an object while he/she rushed toward the Master with murderous intentions. “No!” Buffy exclaimed. “Use a stake! Not a steak!”
Sarah stopped in front of the grill and struck the Master several times on the chest and shoulders with the piece of meat.
The Master, halted in his emergence by this pesky human, took the steak from Sarah and held it gingerly between both fingers; he was clearly disgusted. “Do you realize how many nutrients were lost when they ruined this meat by cooking it?”
“Really? Looks a
little rare to me!” said Buffy. Her hands were free—she had cut her bonds with the knife she had palmed earlier, when she’d bumped, seemingly accidentally, into a table. “Let’s cut it.”
She hurled the knife.
She was vaguely aware of Xander/Sarah showing a distinct lack of faith in her abilities by ducking, even though Buffy had planned on the knife missing him/her by a good half-inch.
Indeed. The knife spun right on course and thrust deep in the Master’s chest.
“That’s what I call a real steak knife!” said Buffy. “Game over.”
The Master looked down in abject horror at the knife protruding from his body, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. The sudden action broke the spell of the four chanters as they stopped in shock. The malevolent equilibrium dispersed and the gate between the here and the there began to disappear.
“You failed me!” he said to Rick/Danforth, the Master’s voice rising in pitch. “I should have known. You’re coming back with me! You’re all coming back with me!” He held out his hand and closed it in a fist as if grabbing the four internal essences from thin air.
Then he fell back through the gateway.
The bodies of Rick and Lora Church, Darryl MacGovern, and Eric Frank fainted, collapsing into heaps.
“It’s over,” said Xander/Sarah. “Now I can leave this realm secure in the knowledge that I have made up for the evil I helped cause three hundred years ago.”
“What about my friend Giles?” Buffy demanded. “Is he going to be okay?”
“His fever is already beginning to break, of that I am certain,” said Sarah. “Farewell.”
And Xander fainted, too, adding his body to the heap made by the other four on the floor.
The “living rerun” part of the night of the living rerun was over.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
“Thank goodness,” said Buffy. “Now maybe I can get out of this stupid outfit.”
CHAPTER 12
The rain ceased and the skies grew quiet. The wind still blew, but what came through the demolished steak house was warm and comfortable. After she had seen to it that everyone who hadn’t started the evening as a corpse was still, Buffy rushed to the ladies’ dressing room, which thankfully was still intact, pulled her clothes from the drier and changed. Then she returned to the kitchen and knelt beside Xander.
“Xander!” she hissed. When he didn’t respond, she slapped him once.
His eyes opened immediately and he sat up. “Hey! That hurt!”
“Sorry, I had to make sure you were Xander. Are you okay?”
“Apart from a hot flash here and there, I think I’m fine.”
“Phew!” exclaimed Darryl MacGovern, as he rolled into a sitting position. “Where did all these dead bodies come from? They sure do stink!”
“What happened?” asked Eric Frank with a groan. His hair looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket.
“How did we did get here?” asked Rick Church.
“Oh my gosh! I look a fright!” exclaimed Lora Church, checking herself out in the reflection of a napkin dispenser.
Buffy guided Xander to what remained of one of the walls.
“What do you remember?”
“Everything,” he said. “Up to a point. I still don’t know what happened to Sarah Dinsdale after Kane put the kibosh on the Master. I’m afraid we both know what happened to Kane, though.”
“But they don’t seem to remember anything,” said Buffy. “I guess when the Master yanked Mather and company from them, he took their memories too.”
“The Master didn’t want anything to do with Sarah,” said Xander. “I know that. She went of her own accord. But where?”
“Phew!” said MacGovern behind them, as the wind shifted and a certain potent stench from outside wafted in like the aftermath of a stampede of skunks.
“What are they doing with those assault rifles?” asked Eric Frank, pointing at pieces of zombies. He and MacGovern looked one another in the eye. “I smell a story here.”
MacGovern, deep in thought, rubbed his chin. “You know, I think something paranormal happened here. I’d bet my reputation on it.”
“You have no reputation,” said Frank.
“Where’s your crew?” asked Lora. “Shouldn’t they be getting this on film?”
“Maybe they’re in the van!” said Frank. “Let’s find out!”
Let’s go, mouthed Buffy to Xander, pulling him out the back door by his shirt sleeve. Then, once they were outside, “I think Eric Frank is going to have a difficult time explaining things to his crew.”
“Really?” said Xander.
“Yeah, we’ll probably read in the papers about how Billy Bob’s was struck by a freak lightning storm,” said Buffy.
“How will people explain all the dead . . . bodies?” Xander asked.
Buffy shrugged. “Mad corpse disease?”
* * *
Buffy and Xander found Giles and Willow sitting on the couch in his office.
“You made it, Buffy,” said Giles, pleased, “but I hoped all along the Prince’s prophecy was just an educated guess. I knew if anyone could untangle the complex web of fate, it would be you.”
“Now you tell us,” said Xander. “Oh, and thanks for being glad to see me.”
“Well, I am,” said Giles, not understanding the reason for Xander’s sarcasm. “It’s just that Willow and I were having a conversation about what you would call ‘stuff.’ ”
“You mean ‘things,’ ” said Buffy.
“Exactly. ‘Stuff.’ ”
Xander waved his hand above his head.
“Ah,” said Giles. “I’m talking over your head.” He grinned. “A momentous occasion. If the two of you must know, I was telling Willow of the flashes I had of Robert Erwin’s life before he died of that mystical fever. And we were wondering how much free will we really have—how free we are to make the choices that matter to us.”
“You’re always telling me I should forget about my private life and concentrate on my destiny and duty as Slayer,” said Buffy.
“It’s true that destiny has selected you,” said Giles, “yet I would hope in the coming years you will find more freedom of choice than even you could have imagined possible.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I have a hot date,” Buffy replied. “Or any date.”
“Willow, you’re awfully quiet,” Xander observed.
Willow was surprised to have everyone’s attention suddenly turn to her. “I was thinking. And wondering.”
“About?” prompted Xander.
“Well, it’s just that sometimes people choose their own destiny, you know, as in I’ve chosen to assist you two”—she pointed at Buffy and Giles—“in saving the world from various despicable creatures. But you two believe that destiny has more or less selected you.”
“Yes,” said Giles, nodding gravely.
“So what’s your point?” asked Xander.
“How do you really tell? What if you two have made some massive mistake and you’re not really the chosen Watcher and Slayer, and that I haven’t been fated to make the same mistake with you?”
“I think you’re reading too much into current events,” Buffy advised.
Willow pouted. “Maybe. I’ve felt like such a fifth wheel this whole time.”
The others immediately tried to buoy her confidence, pointing out how invaluable her assistance had been so many times in the past. If that wasn’t destiny, Xander asked, then what else could it be?
“Better a fifth wheel than someone walking around in your skin. Yeesh!” Xander shivered. “I’m glad she’s gone. Is my hair all right?”
* * *
After everyone had said good night and Willow walked home, her spirits plummeted again. This whole adventure confused her. It indicated bonds between the souls involved, but no love. To make matters worse, her soul, apparently, was not involved. And if there was anything Willow desired
in this world, it was a bond between her and Xander even deeper, stronger than the one they now shared.
That, however, was not in the cards. Willow arrived home seriously bummed, a solitary person apparently for all time.
After staying up to watch a movie on the Romance Channel, Willow fell asleep with tears in her eyes. To say she felt lonely and depressed would be like saying the night is dark, or outer space is big, or there are too many reruns on TV in the summer.
Even so, her sleep was deep, and it wasn’t long before she dreamed.
She dreamed of running through a heavily wooded forest—thicker, more teeming with life than any she’d ever seen—during a frightening thunderstorm of a strength almost as great as the storm that had struck Sunnydale while she’d been awake.
In this dream Willow felt older, heavier and distressed. She experienced a heartsickness so intense it was almost crippling. And yet some dread she could barely fathom propelled her through the woods, through the storm, toward a mysterious distant light that arced over the trees like a dome.
Whenever she noticed her clothing, though, she got the funny feeling she was no longer a she. For she wore a man’s boots and a man’s pants. The sleeves of the man’s white cotton shirt were bloodied and tattered. Her breathing was labored, her every muscle ached, and her heart pounded at top speed.
A silent explosion, so odd its origin was surely evil, knocked Willow the man to the ground. When he got up the storm had diminished and the distant glow was fading. By now the glow wasn’t so distant—only a few hundred yards away—but the man was stricken with spiritual agony. He had a hunger that would never be satisfied, a thirst that would never be quenched. He felt as if his life was over, though he was still young and strong.
Then he saw Sarah Dinsdale—also dirty and disheveled—running through the wood. He called out for her to wait, but she paid him no heed. He ran after her. He did not catch up to her until they had left the wood and were running down the beach, and even when he was able to touch her she did not stop.
So he tackled her. He landed on top of her and they struggled until he had both her hands in his grip and she was unable to fight back.
Night of the Living Rerun Page 12
