by R. L. King
The caretaker pulled a box from the pocket of his robe. “Yes, sir. Just the one box, though. Twenty rounds.”
“What about the truck?” Verity asked. “Can we get in there and run them over?”
“It won’t fit all of us,” Ian said. He’d joined the others in the workshop and was now holding a saw in one hand and a crowbar in the other. “But if we need to get out, that might be the way to do it.”
More hands crashed through the garage doors. Stone pictured all the skeletons lined up along the front of the structure, battering away until they broke through. With that many of them, it wouldn’t take long before they did. They had to do something.
He looked around again, and spotted a stack of stout two-by-fours on the far side near the workbench. “Jason, how good are you with a rifle?”
“Pretty good. Better with a pistol, but I’ve practiced.”
“Sir—” Aubrey began.
Stone knew where he was going—he didn’t want to give up his weapon. “I know, Aubrey,” he said gently. “But I’ve got a more important—and safer—job for you, at least until we get up on the roof.” He nodded to the truck. “Get in. We can fit three in the cab, so Verity, you’re in the middle and Ian, you’ll be on the other side.”
“What are you thinking, Al?” Jason asked.
“Why am I in the middle?” Verity protested.
“Just do it.” Stone levitated the stack of two-by-fours into the truck’s bed. There were five of them, each one six feet long. “We don’t have much time. Grab whatever other weapons you want and hurry.” He talked fast, explaining his plan, but he had to cut it off when the section of garage door in front of the convertible splintered. Two skeletons poked their heads and upper bodies through, their long fingers ripping at the wood to make a larger hole.
“Go!” Jason yelled, grabbing the rifle and box of ammo from Aubrey and leaping into the bed.
Aubrey and Verity clambered into the truck. Ian fired up the chainsaw he’d taken from Jason and got in last, slamming the door shut and hanging the running saw out through the open window.
“Now, Verity!” Stone yelled.
She grabbed two of the two-by-fours with her magic and hovered them over the front of the truck, as more skeletal hands poked through in front of them.
“Three…two…one…” Stone called. “Go!”
He gathered magic and sent it out in a punishing wave, blowing the wooden garage door outward in splinters of fast-moving shrapnel. Several of the skeletons, caught by surprise, staggered backward and fell.
At the same moment, Aubrey gunned the accelerator. The truck erupted out of the garage bay, slamming into several more skeletons with hard thumps. The impact hit harder than Stone would have expected—how much could a human skeleton weigh?—jerking both him and Jason to the side. Still, he managed to grab a magical hold on the pair of two-by-fours. He sent them out in front of the truck, one at approximately neck height on the creatures and the other at pelvis height. They acted as battering rams, driving more of the things back and tumbling.
Meanwhile, two of the skeletons had skittered around the truck’s side, seeking Ian’s open window. With a roar, Ian swept the growling chainsaw in a downward angle, taking the head off the first skeleton and slicing the second’s spine. Both collapsed soundlessly to the ground and dropped away. Ian whooped in triumph.
Following the plan, Aubrey drove the truck only twenty feet or so into the yard, then stopped. “Now, sir!” he called.
Jason, standing in the truck’s bed, concentrated on picking off any skeletons getting too near Aubrey’s side of the truck. Ian seemed to have things well in hand with his chainsaw, which the creatures on his side were avoiding. Verity had taken hold of another two-by-four from the back and was now using magic to swing it like an oversized baseball bat, bowling over skeletons in twos and threes.
“We’re not killing them!” Ian yelled. “They keep getting back up!”
Stone had both noticed and expected that. Of all the creatures they’d taken down on their escape from the garage, only two seemed to be permanently down: the one Ian had cut the head off, and one Jason had beaned between the eye sockets with a rifle shot. “Come on,” he yelled. “Let’s get out and get to the roof. We need to destroy their heads to take them out!”
This was the most dangerous part of the plan. They were surrounded now; even though many of the skeletons were still struggling back to their feet, they moved fast and their single-minded devotion to reaching the group hadn’t abated in the slightest. Stone and the others could use magical shields to protect themselves, but they were tricky to maintain around more than one person, especially when they were moving around as much as they were. The best option was to drive the skeletons back, scramble out of the truck as fast as possible, and levitate to the roof before they could recover. From there, they’d have a better angle to take them out one at a time. Forty-one was a big number, but it was a finite number. If the skeletons couldn’t reach them, all his group had to do was pick them off. Time would be on their side.
But first they had to get up there.
“All right,” Stone called. “Just like we planned it. Three…two…one…go!”
As one they lifted off the ground, with Stone levitating Aubrey and Verity lifting Jason. The levitation spell wasn’t fast, but once they got out of range they should be safe for a while. Even if the skeletons were agile enough to climb up on the roof, between the five of them they should be able to keep them under control on all four sides of the two-story structure.
They’d made it halfway up when two of the skeletons surged out of the crowd and leaped upward, extending their arms. One missed and fell back to the ground, but the other one’s grasping fingers closed around Verity’s ankle. She yelped in surprise and pain, and for a second she bobbled her levitation spell. Jason dropped a couple of feet in the air, and more skeletons scrambled forward.
“Verity!” Stone yelled. Without conscious thought he split his concentration, lifting Aubrey up and dropping him on the roof while simultaneously using the two-by-four he’d carried with him to pulverize the dangling skeleton’s pelvis.
It lost its precarious hold on Verity’s leg and dropped back, but already others were leaping upward. Ian barely managed to jerk his legs up to avoid a lunge from another one. A moment later, he too dropped onto the roof, followed by a panting Verity and Jason.
Stone landed last, keeping an eye on the skeletons from higher up until he was sure his friends were safely in place. He took a fast look around at their perch: the roof was more steeply pitched than he remembered, meaning they’d have to stay near the edges or risk losing their balance and tumbling down, especially since everyone but Aubrey was barefoot. “Are you all right, Verity?”
“Yeah.” Her voice sounded shaky from the other end of the roof. “Mostly freaked out, but at least that thing didn’t mess up my ankle.”
Two more skeletons leaped up, catching the edge of the roof, and tried to scramble onto it. Ian darted over and sliced one of them with the chainsaw, and Jason took aim and pulverized the other’s head with a rifle shot.
“Al,” he said between panting breaths. “They’re gonna get up here. Did you see how high they jumped?”
He was right. So far, the one thing working in their favor was that the things seemed mostly mindless—if they started coordinating attacks, Stone and his friends would be in trouble.
“I think we can hold them off,” he said. “Everyone pick a side of the roof. Aubrey, take your rifle back and go with Jason.” He levitated the second two-by-four to Verity. “We’ve already taken down three of them permanently. Even if there are thirty-eight left, we know how to deal with them now, and we’ve got the high ground. Aubrey, make those twenty rounds count.”
“It’s like a damn real-life zombie movie,” Jason muttered, hefting his baseball bat. Another skeleton caught hold of the roof edge; he smashed its hands and it fell.
“How are they doing this?�
� Ian demanded. “Are the echoes controlling them?”
“Lousy way to leave us alone until sunrise if they are,” Verity said.
“Is it that thing from the basement?” Jason asked.
Stone crouched near the edge and looked down, taking careful aim with his two-by-four and forcing five of the skeletons across the yard. Their questions were good ones; he’d been turning over the same ones in the back of his mind since they left the house.
The skeletons didn’t have auras, but they did glow on magical sight with the same sickly green light that filled the house—the same green that formed the flames in their eyes. He didn’t think the echoes were driving them, though. For one thing, a group of echoes that large, even one this single-minded of purpose, wouldn’t all suddenly decide to take control of their decaying bodies and attack. Even back at the house, they’d chosen different ways to show their anger: some threw objects, some created illusions, some screamed curses. For all of them to simultaneously possess their skeletons, break free of their prisons, and form into a mob implied either that something or someone was controlling them, or that it wasn’t them at all, but rather some other force.
Stone’s money was on the thing from the basement chamber. But who—or what—was it? He couldn’t begin to stop it if he didn’t know that.
He looked at his watch again. Four-thirty. The sun would be up soon, not that it would matter. He didn’t intend to go back to the house again, at least not until he figured out more of this puzzle. Maybe Eddie and Ward would come up with something, but that wouldn’t be until later today at least. They were probably fast asleep now.
From the other side of the roof came the crack of a rifle shot, followed by a whoop of triumph from Aubrey. “Got one!” the old man shouted. He seemed more confident now that he had an effective weapon in his hands. Around the corner, Ian stood, feet braced confidently on the roof’s uneven surface, holding the chainsaw in front of him.
Stone shivered in the early-morning cold. Now that the skeletons seemed to be exercising more caution about attacking and his surging adrenaline had begun to fade, he had a moment to consider his surroundings. With faint amusement, he imagined the conversation that might take place when he rolled in to the Stanford department office before his upcoming seminar.
“What have you been doing with your summer, Dr. Stone?” Laura the admin aide would ask him.
“Not much, really—just holding off murderous animated skeletons trying to take over my house, along with a pack of vengeful ghosts that hated my ancestors for burying them alive in our basement.”
“Oh, that’s nice—I had a fun cookout on the Fourth…”
Another rifle shot broke the silence, startling Stone from his absurd reverie. Almost idly, he smacked a skeleton trying to clamber over the edge and carefully moved down to get a look at what Verity was up to, glancing down as he did. Too many of the things still milled around down there—his efforts and those of his friends were doing the job of keeping them off the roof, but they were largely ineffectual in taking them down permanently. It was too hard to get a solid shot on them from this angle. Only Aubrey’s precise rifle shots seemed to be doing any good, and they only had twenty rounds of ammo—less, now. What would they do when they ran out? They couldn’t very well ring up 999 and have the police around to mop up.
Verity seemed to be holding her own with her swinging two-by-four, so Stone sidled back the other way to check on Ian. He could still hear the roar of the chainsaw, and wondered how long it would go before it ran out of gas. They hadn’t brought any extra with them. Would fire take the skeletons out? It didn’t matter, unless he wanted to destroy the garage and Aubrey’s apartment as well.
Just as he rounded the corner, Ian lunged forward with the saw, swinging it with graceful confidence at a skeleton that had poked its head too far up while trying to climb onto the roof. The blade sliced neatly through its neck, sending head and body crashing back to the ground. It was weird how soundlessly they “died”—no screams or shouts of pain. Did animated skeletons even feel pain?
“Nice one!” Stone called. “You’ve got—” His blood chilled. “Ian! Behind you!”
Ian spun, but not fast enough. Another skeleton, possibly smarter than its companions or more likely just luckier, had been hanging on just below the roof line beyond where Ian stood. When he’d moved forward to slice the first one, the second one flung itself upward, grabbed hold of Ian’s ankle, and yanked.
For a moment, Stone saw the world in slow motion as his son teetered on the edge, flailing his arms in a desperate attempt to regain his balance. Before he could react, Ian disappeared into the darkness. Unlike the skeletons, his descent was not silent—his scream echoed through the night air until a crash stilled it, and then came the scramble of bony bodies as they rushed in to claim their prize.
Stone didn’t hesitate, nor did he consider the consequences of his actions. “Ian!” he screamed. His mind filled with images of the skeletal hands ripping his only son apart, he leaped from the roof, using magic to slow his descent, and dropped down in the middle of the growing crowd of scrambling, grasping creatures.
“Al!” Jason cried from somewhere up above, but he barely heard it. Before he even touched down he was already gathering magic, sending out a punishing wave of concussive energy, blowing the skeletons out in all directions and back nearly fifty feet.
He didn’t check to see whether he’d taken them down, stunned them, or barely affected them at all. His gaze was focused wholly on the sprawled form on the ground in front of him. “Ian!” he yelled, shaking the boy’s shoulder. “Ian! Wake up!”
Ian must have gotten his shield up at the last second, because Stone didn’t see any blood and none of his limbs were bent at odd angles, but his eyes were closed and his face was pale. Stunned? The chainsaw lay a few feet away, still growling but the chain on its blade no longer spinning.
“Al! Look out!” Above him, Jason had moved around to the closest side of the roof and now crouched there, looking down in horror. “Aubrey! Bring that rifle over here!”
Ian moaned. His eyes fluttered open, but no awareness showed in them yet.
Stone rose to his feet, standing over his son, only now noticing the scene around him.
The skeletons had recovered and moved fast. They surrounded Stone and Ian now in a loose circle, crowding in. The spaces between them grew smaller and smaller until the bony bodies nearly blocked them completely.
“Doc!” Verity yelled. “Get out of there!”
Stone thought fast, knowing he had time for only one action before they were upon him. He could raise his shield around himself and Ian, letting them pile on to buy time. He could grab Ian and try to levitate back to the roof before the skeletons leaped up and dragged them back down. Or he could send out another concussive wave to blow them back again. All three choices had their downsides, but he didn’t have time to consider them.
He chose the shield, erecting a bubble around the two of them. It would allow them time—with his Calanarian power he could hold it for a while, long enough to make sure Ian hadn’t been badly hurt. If he could get the boy awake, they could—
Bony bodies piled on top of the shield, pressing against it, climbing over each other. Stone felt an odd psychic pressure, as if the physical act of pushing the barrier created a corresponding push in his mind.
A skeletal hand punched through the barrier, reaching for him.
Bloody hell! They’re getting through! They shouldn’t be able to do that!
“Doc!” Verity screamed again. He heard her, but couldn’t see her past the writhing bodies.
The shield didn’t pop like a balloon. That was normally how it happened when something was strong enough to get through it: it would vanish, sending painful psychic backlash into the caster. This time, though, it was more as if the thing were suddenly made of a thick membrane instead of a solid surface. More hands pushed through, tearing holes until big chunks of it simply tore away, revealing st
ained, grinning, burning-eyed faces.
Aubrey and Jason both yelled something.
The cracks of rifle shots filled the air.
The bodies bulled their way forward, grasping, grabbing, pounding—
Skeletal fingers closed around Stone’s throat—
And then a shrieking, unearthly scream rose into the air.
The skeletons staggered backward, jerking, their single-minded movements suddenly disoriented and unfocused. Their bony hands fell away from Stone, from Ian.
And then, with a loud whoosh like dropping a lit match into a massive bundle of oily rags, every last one of the writhing creatures vanished.
What the hell—?
For a moment, Stone was disoriented too, crouched over Ian, trying to protect his son from attack long enough to give his friends time to come up with a solution. But when nothing did attack—when he could no longer hear the clicking and clattering of bony bodies crowding against each other—he stood and looked around.
He and the still-stunned Ian were the only things remaining in the area in front of the garage. Except for his friends’ yells from above, nothing made a sound.
Verity landed next to him, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Doc! Are you all right? They disappeared! Is Ian—”
Jason, not waiting for Verity to levitate him, clambered over the edge of the roof and dropped down, scanning the area. “Where’d they go? They were just there, and then—”
Ian sat up, panting, his gaze still a little unfocused but more coherent. “Shit,” he said. “I slipped off, and—”
Stone wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he stared out across the yard. “Bloody hell…” he murmured.
“What?” Jason gave Ian a hand up, and stood with him and Verity, confused. “Where are they?”
“Sunrise,” Stone said. He pointed to the east, where the faint rays of the dawn sun rose over the horizon. “They’re still here.”
“Where?” Verity demanded.
He pointed down. “There. All around us.”
And indeed they were: numerous small piles of gray-brown dust mingled with the damp, dew-soaked ground, already seeping through the gravel driveway. The rusty manacles lay in heaps near them.
