“Those. Them. They must be stopped.”
In his last moments as an independent living being, Jack smiled.
It will be my pleasure.
Then Jack Smith was washed away.
* * *
John grimaced and clenched his teeth as Marisol wrapped an Ace bandage around his midsection. She’d already re-dressed his wound with fresh gauze pads and several layers of cloth bandaging.
“That’s too tight,” John said.
“It needs to be tight,” Marisol countered, using strips of white medical tape to hold everything in place. “Otherwise it will come loose while you’re being an idiot.”
John made no comment about that, something Cory was grateful for. They’d already argued enough since arriving at Marisol’s house. Despite their protests, John insisted on accompanying them.
When they’d disagreed, saying his injuries would be a potential hindrance, he’d reminded them that Marisol was hurt too, and she was going.
In the end they’d given in. It was impossible to deny the fact that they needed him; the numbers were already stacked against them. Plus, it seemed important somehow that as many members of the Cemetery Club as possible should be there.
Superstition? Cory wondered, as he made coffee and breakfast. Or perhaps intuition?
But if that was the case, did it mean Todd’s absence would make their job that much harder?
Or even impossible?
Cory tried not to think too much about that possibility. Freddy Alou was on his way over. Maybe his presence would make up for Todd’s. The plan was for them to hit the zombies and Shades at their source - the burial ground under the old hospital.
The doorbell rang. “That’s Freddy,” Marisol said. “I’ll get it.”
A moment later she led Freddy to the kitchen table, just as Cory set down a steaming bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of whole wheat toast.
“Eat up,” Cory said, after greeting Freddy. “It’s gonna be a long day.”
Freddy accepted a cup of coffee and looked around the table. “I assume that means you’ve made up your minds.”
“Yes.” Marisol passed the eggs to him. “We talked it over and it seems that our best—”
“Only,” John interrupted.
“—chance,” Marisol continued, “is to find their daytime hiding place and kill as many of them as we can. Todd was able to take them on by himself the last time and it kept them under control until now.”
“If we can diminish their numbers enough,” Cory took up the explanation, “then we’ll have months or years to find a permanent solution. But at least the town will be safe in the meantime.”
“Maybe there’s a better way.” Freddy paused to swallow some food.
“Like what?”
“Bury the diablos under the ground for good.”
Cory nearly choked. “What? How?”
Freddy smiled. “I can get us enough explosives to bring the roof down on them. That should be safer than trying to fight them with squirt guns and baseball bats, eh chica?” He gave Marisol a nudge with his elbow.
“You can get explosives?” Cory asked.
“Yes. My cousin owns a small demolition company in Manhattan. Sometimes, we go into the woods and we blow something up. Great fun. Not too often. Explosives are controlled by the government and he has to account for them. But if a tiny bit goes missing, it’s usually not a problem.”
“How soon can you get it?” John asked.
Freddy made a show of considering the question, furrowing his brow in an exaggerated look of heavy contemplation. Then his grin returned. “Perhaps, three hours? I took the liberty of calling my cousin yesterday. He is meeting me at my house later this morning.”
“Oh my God!” Marisol threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Freddy, you’re the best!”
“I am chica. I am.” He stood up. “Where will we meet?”
“Here,” Cory said. “We’re going to Todd’s house to get the rest of the Holy water. We’ll meet back here. Then we’ll go right to the source.”
Freddy nodded and looked at his watch. “It is almost nine now. I’ll be back at noon.”
“Freddy?”
“Yes?”
“Please be careful. I don’t need you blowing yourself up.”
“Okay chica. I agree. That would be a bad thing.” With a laugh, he waved goodbye.
“We should get going too,” John said.
Cory and Marisol nodded but no one moved. It was as if John’s statement had sucked all the good feelings out of the room, and Cory knew exactly why. Going to Todd’s house meant accepting his death. Or worse, that he’d become one of the things they were trying to kill. The downcast expression on John’s face showed he knew the effect of his words, had, in fact, known it before he said them.
And yet he said it anyhow. In a way he was the strongest of them all. He accepted his place as the voice of gloom and doom, the person for whom the glass was always half empty. He embraced it, even to the point of voicing bad news first so the rest of them didn’t have to.
“You guys get ready. I’ll clean up.” As Cory walked past John he made it a point to give his shoulder a quick squeeze. “Thanks, man.”
He didn’t expect a smile in return, but John’s startled look of understanding was enough to let him know he’d done the right thing. Everyone needed acknowledgement, even if they didn’t want to admit it to themselves.
Standing in front of Todd’s house turned out to be rather anticlimactic for Cory. In his mind he knew it had only been two days since they’d last been there but emotionally it felt as if it had been ages, as if there should have been piles of newspapers and mail outside the door and cobwebs and vines covering the entrance.
They entered through the back door and were already halfway across the kitchen before it struck Cory that something was wrong.
A radio was playing.
Marisol heard it at the same time. “I don’t think zombies listen to music,” she whispered.
“Follow me.”
Cory led the way upstairs. He paused at the top, trying to locate the source. It seemed to originate from Todd’s mother’s room. He pointed at the doorway, then motioned the others to stay behind him.
Cory crept down the hall, ears and eyes alert for any sudden attacks coming from one of the other rooms. Five steps from his goal, he stopped again. From where he stood he had a clear look into the room.
Todd sat next to his mother’s bed, holding her hand while the radio droned on.
Although Cory didn’t make a sound, something alerted Todd to their presence and he glanced up, his frightened expression quickly changing to resigned depression.
“Oh, it’s you.” Todd turned back to his mother. “I suppose you’ve come for the Holy water. It’s downstairs. Take it and anything else you need.”
“Todd...” Cory’s voice trailed off. He had no idea what to say.
“You’re wondering how I got here. I guess insomnia has its benefits. I was staring out the window and saw the first zombies approaching the hospital. I knew we had to get away. I rolled her to the transport elevator and then we left through the ambulance bay. I was parked close to there.”
“We went looking for you. John called us. He’s safe at Marisol’s. But we thought you...”
“We thought you were dead and eaten. Or worse.” Marisol’s voice held no joy at seeing Todd, only anger for his selfish actions. “You could have called. Or answered your damn phone.”
“Sorry.” Todd’s tone indicated he wasn’t. “But you know how I feel. I want nothing more to do with any of it. We just want to be left alone.”
“We’re going into the tunnels today,” Cory said. “With explosives. Gonna bury the fuckers and then take care of any that weren’t down there.”
“Good luck.” This time he sounded sincere. “Come see me after, if you can.”
“We will.” Marisol nodded to him, her face still devoid of expressio
n. She turned and walked down the hall.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Cory said. He hoped Todd understood he meant for everything, going all the way back to high school.
Todd shrugged and Cory decided it was a lost cause. He said goodbye and followed Marisol to the car.
“It’s nearly eleven.” Marisol pointed at the dashboard clock. “Let’s get home. I don’t feel safe on the streets.”
Cory didn’t say anything. There was no need. The destruction they’d seen on the way to Todd’s was more than enough evidence that the whole town was about to collapse.
God help us if this doesn’t work.
Chapter 7
Todd listened to Cory’s car pull away and then put his old friends out of his mind. He looked at his mother and sighed.
“I wish I knew if you could hear me. There’s so much I want to say to you, so many things I never had the chance to tell you.”
He knew he could say them anyway, tell her how it was her love that had gotten him through the dark days at Wood Hill, long after he’d written his father off. How he’d hoped to repay her by taking care of her in her old age. But it seemed like a wasted effort, talking to someone who was unconscious and never going to wake up.
Todd leaned back, let his body slide down a bit in the chair. God, he was so tired. Between what had happened in the cave and then finding his mother, and then the hospital - he’d barely slept at all in the last forty-eight hours.
Can’t sleep, he told himself. Time enough for that later. I need to be here when—
“When what Todd?”
He sprang up at the unexpected voice. Heart pounding, he glanced around the room to see who’d spoken.
They were alone.
“Todd, it’s me. Your mother.”
His heart went into overdrive. It was unbelievable but true. Her eyes were open and there was a smile on her dry, cracked lips.
“M...Ma? How...?” A miracle! There was no other way to explain it. She’d woken from her coma with no brain damage at all.
“Todd, listen to me. We need to talk.” Her face grew serious.
“I know. There’s so much I want to—”
“Hush. I’m well aware of how you feel about me and how you wish things had been different. You’ve always been a good son. Your father and I never forgot that.”
“Father?” Todd frowned. “But...but I thought he hated me. He never visited. Never wrote.”
Mrs. Randolph nodded. “And it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. But your father was hard man Todd. A good man - like you - but a hard one. When you had your troubles, he buried his feelings down deep so they wouldn’t cripple him. He’d have been a wreck otherwise. But he read all your letters and he sat next to me when I wrote to you. Always said to give you his love.”
Todd brushed away a stray tear. “I thought...I figured you just said that to make me feel better. I never believed it.”
“Well, now you know. He knew you were innocent of what they accused you of. We both did.”
“We did something bad,” Todd said. “We brought something back that should have stayed buried.”
“The Shadows. Your father’s family had a long history of dealing with them. That’s why I’m talking to you now. It’s the last time I’m gonna be able to, so I need you to listen close.”
“Last time? What do you—”
“Darn it Todd! I said listen. You’ve got important things to do. Your friends, they mean well but they’re going about it all wrong. There’s only one way to get rid of those things for good. You got to go into the old church. Your father’s office. Behind the desk, inside the wall. You’ll find everything you need.”
“No!” Todd surprised himself with his vehemence. “I’m not leaving you. Not now, not when you just came back.”
She placed a hand on his arm. Her skin was colder than human flesh should be, cold as winter ice in the river.
“Todd, my time here is done. I’m off to a better place. Your father is waiting.” She leaned forward, placed a soft, frigid kiss on his cheek. “I’ll tell him you said hello. He’ll be so proud.”
With a smile, she closed her eyes and lay back against her pillow.
“Ma!” Tears blurred Todd’s vision. When he wiped them away, she was still as stone, as if she’d never woken up.
Had she? Todd looked at his watch. Only a few minutes had passed since Cory left. Had he fallen asleep? Dreamed it all? Had he failed her again, not been there when she left the world of the living?
He felt ready to cry and then he noticed something. On his arm, the one she’d touched with her cold fingers, were four perfect ovals of white.
They matched her fingertips exactly.
Lord help me, it was a miracle, just not the kind I’d thought. Asleep or not, God had let his mother deliver a final message to him.
And this time he wouldn’t let her down.
He placed a final kiss on her forehead and headed for the church.
* * *
“It may not look like much but it’s more than enough to do the trick.”
The four of them - Marisol, Cory, John and Freddy - were at Marisol’s kitchen table, looking at the package Freddy had brought over. The two red-colored sticks, hardly larger than the emergency road flares in Cory’s trunk, didn’t seem capable of the type of destruction they were looking for.
“Trust me,” Freddy continued, seeing their skeptical looks. “this is gonna blow them to hell. There won’t be nothing left but zombie fertilizer.”
Cory stared at the two unimposing sticks another moment and then snapped his fingers as a dormant memory returned. “Explosives! Todd had that M80 with him in the tunnel. He dipped it in Holy water, said it was his holy hand grenade. That must have been the explosion we heard, the one that caused the cave in.”
“So we know burying them will stop them, at least temporarily,” John said.
“Do you know how to find the burial ground?” Freddy asked. He was sprinkling Holy water on the dynamite as he spoke.
“Sort of. We’ll go in through the main doors and then head down to the basement. From there, we find the tunnel that leads to the old building.”
On the table, flashlights and squirt rifles were stacked in piles. As Cory started to divvy them up, a loud thumping noise, followed by an equally loud crash, came from the front porch.
“What the hell’s that?” John asked.
Marisol moved towards the door, but Cory stopped her. “Hold it.” He picked up one of the squirt guns and grabbed a long knife from the rack. “Wait here.”
Cory slowly made his way to the door. When there were no further sounds, he opened it just enough so he could see out.
The porch was empty. But something had knocked over one of Marisol’s flower pots.
Turning back towards the others, Cory said, “There’s nothing—”
Five figures came crashing through the sliding doors in Marisol’s kitchen. Glass flew in all directions as the intruders immediately attacked. For a split second, Cory froze, unable to believe his eyes.
Is that the Mayor? And Marisol’s ex-husband? What the hell are they doing?
Then he caught sight of their dead eyes and pale skin and understood all too well what had happened.
Jack Smith separated himself from the tangle of bodies and grabbed Marisol. She screamed and kicked but he didn’t let go. That was enough to get Cory moving again. He charged forward with the knife, slammed the blade right into the Deputy Mayor’s chest.
Smith didn’t flinch.
Before Cory could do anything else, one of the other zombies hit him from the side, knocking him into a set of cabinets. His head struck one of the brass knobs and the room exploded into a myriad of colored lights. When his vision cleared, the zombies were gone and so was Marisol.
“Marisol!” Cory got up, fought through a dizzy spell, and then ran to the back doors. There was no sign of the attackers. Returning to the kitchen, he helped John to his feet.
>
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” John had a bruise forming on his cheek but otherwise seemed fine. “All they did was knock me down. I thought one of them was gonna bite me but then it ran away.”
“Same with me. But they took Marisol with them.”
“Did you see who it was?” John asked. From his tone, he’d recognized the assailants as well.
“Yeah. Jack fucking Smith. Maybe fresh zombies still retain memories of their old selves and he wanted revenge.”
John put a hand on Cory’s shoulder. “We know where they probably took her. Let’s stick to the plan. Is Freddy hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
They found the Town Clerk on the other side of the counter, lying in a pool of blood, his neck torn open.
“Dammit.” Cory slammed his palm on the counter. “That just leaves the two of us.”
Before John could say anything, the phone rang. Although he had no intention of answering it, Cory’s hand was already moving towards the phone. When he saw the number on the caller ID, he clicked the talk button.
“Todd?”
“I’ve found the answer Cory! I know how to stop the Shades for good!”
“The zombies have Marisol. They just took her.” The words were out of Cory’s mouth before he even knew what he was going to say. It struck him that Marisol’s abduction had left him in a kind of shock.
Todd paused before speaking again. “I’m sorry. But if you want to stop them, and maybe get Marisol back, get over to my father’s church as fast as you can.”
“Screw that. We’re gonna blow the fuckers up.”
“That won’t work. But I know what will. Hurry!”
The line went dead.
“That was Todd?” John asked.
Cory nodded. “He said he’s discovered how to get rid of the Shades for good.”
“He doesn’t think the explosives will work.”
From his statement, Cory couldn’t tell if John had overheard or just guessed.
“That’s what he says. But I don’t have time to waste. I’ve got to find Marisol.”
Cemetery Club Page 26
