“I could have, and maybe I should have, but let me explain something to you. Every day children go missing. Milk Cartons show them. Amber Alerts broadcast them. Television asks for our help. Most of the time it's some deranged neighbor, or a relative, or a teacher who's the culprit. Most of the time they're able to save the kid. Sure, the rescued kids are doomed to a life of therapy and crime, but they're saved nonetheless…but then there are those few who are never found, never saved, and never seen again. No one knows where they go. No one seems to want to know. But we've discovered where they go, Dick. Me and my friends know where the children are taken. The Black Bishop has them. They're in the place we want you to go. We need you there to help us save them. We need you there to keep them alive.”
“You need me?” The voice was older still, this one with the promising timbre of a young man.
“We need you,” replied Blane.
“What's going to happen?”
“You're going to be a zombie for a while. One of our people is going to drive you, using your body, but leaving your mind alone. You'll be able to see and feel everything that's happening, but you won't be in control.”
“I won't be able to do anything.”
“Exactly.”
“For how long?” asked Dick the man.
“One year.”
“What about my family?”
“They're taken care of.”
“But they're going to miss me,” stated Dick.
“That'll be taken care of too. If you agree to help, we'll send someone who will tell her that you are working for us and we'll take care of all of her bills. We'll handle everything. And in the event of your death, well, Dick, we'll take care of her forever.”
“Sounds like you've thought of everything,” said Dick, anger coloring his words. Sometime during the conversation the huddling man had found his feet and now stood tall in front of Blane.
“We have.”
“Except you need my agreement,” Dick said, now with the voice of a confident man, realizing the reason for the conversation.
“We do,” Blane sighed.
Blane remembered the last zombie who'd agreed. His name had been Jeff Dunn and he'd lasted four days until one of the League's drivers had shown up for shift drunk and caused Jeff to make a suicidal run at the grotto. The man's death had been noisy and unnecessary. Blane remembered promising Jeff that he'd do his best. If his best got people killed, he needed to get better.
“I'll do it on one condition,” Dick said, barely containing his rage.
There was always a condition. “What is it?”
“When this is all done I want to meet you again.”
And it was always the same condition.
“Well?” asked the Dick the Zombie. “Is it a deal?”
“Yeah. It's a deal. I'll be waiting,” said Blane.
“All right then. Now, get the fuck out of my head.”
The thing about saints is they all knew what was right. The thing about zombies is they all knew what was wrong. Between the two of them, the League of the Red Palm had the perfect creation to defeat the Black Bishop. Now all they had to do was not mess it up.
Chapter Six
Palm Springs. The clock on the nightstand read three thirty in the morning. The witching hour if one believed in witches. Jennifer Karen Schriener, or Jenkies on her social media and her sole friend BlueZ, couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that her arm throbbed. No, that was what helped her sleep. It was her dreams that scared her, especially the psychotic mermaids that kept chasing her until she couldn’t run any longer. They hadn’t caught her yet, but she was afraid what would happen if they did.
To make matters worse, BlueZ had convinced her to watch a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon. The very idea that reality wasn’t reality both terrified her and excited her. She didn’t want to be caught in a dream exactly, but the chance to exit a place without even knowing it, the idea of extracting oneself to a better reality fascinated her.
But then those things were just movies. There wasn’t anything supernatural or outstanding about living, it just was. She’d even tried to summon the Bell Witch once and chanted Light as a feather, stiff as a board, but it hadn’t worked. The only time she’d ever really been scared was when she and some other friends from her old school were playing with Ouija board and it started answering their questions. But it turned out it was Marc, moving the planchette just to mess with everyone’s minds.
That was back when she was fat.
Back when no one liked her.
Back when she was forced to wear her hair in a ponytail because her mother thought it was beautiful instead of the shaved right side, flop-over-left-side-goth-fuck-you hair cut she preferred. That was way back before BlueZ showed her how to release… how to feel something other than the suck assedness of her life. She brought her right hand up to caress her necklace. It was a dog tag that hid within it a razor blade. She called the blade Kris and they spoke often. Just like they had right before bed.
“Can you make it better, Kris?” she’d whispered.
The answer had been an exquisite fine line on the inside of her left arm.
Jenkies felt her eyes slide closed and forced them open. Four ten. Had it been that long? Damn it. She must have fallen asleep. She pinched the inside of her left elbow and twisted until she was wide awake. Whatever happened, she didn’t want to sleep… she didn’t want the nightmares to return.
Think of something terrible.
Think of the most gross thing she’d ever seen.
Justin Bieber playing Elvis Presley in the upcoming biopic. She remembered the trailer and how—Elvis now going on eighty years old—praised Bieber for his singing and dancing. She couldn’t help but giggle. No, she wanted something gross and disgusting, not something ridiculous and revolting. Although she did like the old video of Elvis and Madonna from that movie they did back in the late Eighties—what was it called? Whatever it was it was her mother’s favorite and Jenkies had to admit that even as an old dude, Elvis had a certain charisma.
A crash came from downstairs.
She waited for the sound of her father getting up, but nothing came.
Another crash sounded.
Still no Dad.
What the hell?
When the third crash sounded she jumped from her bed and ran to the door, closing and locking it.
She stood with her back against the wall, staring at the doorknob. If anyone was trying to get through it would be that which moved first. She realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out slowly.
“Easy now, Jenkies. Easy now,” she whispered to herself.
She glanced occasionally at her bedside clock. Once twenty minutes passed, she let out a sigh. There was no doubt that she’d heard noise, so then why hadn’t her dad awoken… or her mom for that matter?
She put her ear to the door and heard nothing.
She got down on all fours and peered at the thin space between the door and the carpet. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the upstairs hallway.
She stood, silently unlocked the door, then opened it ever so slowly. She was well aware that this would be the time that Freddy Krueger would slash her clean through with his blades and was almost ready for it, but the hall was really and truly empty.
Jenkies padded quickly down to her parents room, turned the knob and wrenched open the door. What she saw there floored her. She couldn’t process it. She opened her mouth to call their names but her voice failed her. Her parents were where they should have been—on the bed with her father nearest the door and facing her, mother on the other side, facing the window. But her gaze was drawn to her father’s eyes, which bulged open, his mouth curled into never heard screams because the entire room wasn’t filled with air, but rather water. But the water remained in the room when she opened the door. She reached out a fingertip and felt the warm wetness of the liquid. It was water and her parents were inside of it… drowned.
She reached out towards t
he liquid once more, but this time when she touched it the surface tension shattered, shoving her to the ground as the water volume of her parents’ bedroom roared past her and then down the stairs. She tried to stand, but was carried with the water first to the stair rail, where she grabbed on, then halfway down the stairs before she was able stop her plummet the rest of the way with a last desperate grab at one of the railing posts.
She hung on as water surged past her along with detritus from her parents’ bedroom:
A book about lost dogs her mother kept on her side table.
An odd assortment of her mother’s and father’s shoes.
A lampshade with a cowboy roping a horse.
The dirty clothes basket.
A vest her father loved to wear while fishing.
And then her father.
Headfirst down the stairs behind her, his body slack with death.
She screamed and found herself slipping from her grip. She tried to regain it, but was washed away, alongside her father who stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
They separated when they hit the first floor. Her father continued to float free, sliding into the corner near the front door, while she was able to stop her movement by grabbing the heavy entry table at the base of the stairs. She fought her way to her feet, slipping twice, staggered to the door, then flung it open.
She ran out onto the porch and screamed for help. The shadowy, tree lined street was empty, lit only by pools of light from street lamps. Cars were parked in driveways. Lights were on in some of the houses.
She ran down her front porch and onto the sidewalk. She glanced down at her bare feet with black painted toenails. She wore only a sodden two piece pair of black pajamas and was only barely aware how it clung to her.
She screamed again. “Help me! Isn’t anyone there?”
But there was no response. Not even the flickering of a light.
She spun back to her house. The front door gaped open. She could see her father’s feet amidst a pile of clothes and other items that had washed down the stairs with them. Then she glanced up to her window and whatever breath she still claimed caught in her throat. For there in the window, staring down at her was one of the mermaids. Its face was human, but that’s all that was. White skull woth prominent facial features held wild red eyes and a sucker for a mouth. The skull tapered to a slender armless body that ran a dozen or more feet to a wide tail. Probably more eel than mermaid, it was the feminine features of the face that made her identify it with the latter.
And there it was staring at her from her window, the eyes gazing madly at her, the sucker moving as if kissing the air, the entire being somehow floating inside of her room.
Then it disappeared in a swirl of tail.
Jenkies stood there for a moment, then realizing what was happening, turned and began to run down the center of the street. She pumped her arms and legs but it was like running in slow motion. She turned her head just in time to see it shoot out the front door and angle for her.
She screamed into the night, “No no no no no!”
She didn’t dare turn. She’d already seen that it was moving faster than she was. She felt it coming. She suddenly juked to the right, turning down the Johnson’s driveway, racing by their Town and Country minivan, and into their backyard.
As she ran, she searched for an advantage, knowing that the nightmare was behind her. A shed stood directly in front of her. She dismissed it, knowing that it was a dead end, but then so was the yard, surrounded by a six foot wooden fence. She had no choice but to try and climb it. She ran and leaped, scrabbling her arm and elbow over the top lip.
She risked a glance back and saw the nightmare as it peeled into the back yard, swimming through the air five feet off the ground, its long tail whipping back and forth. Its metallic skin was constantly switching through a kaleidoscope of colors. When it saw her, it paused, and whispered, “The Black Bishop wants you. Come to me and I will set you free.”
Jenkies felt her arm burn. She stared down at it and watched as blood trails ran into her palm. Somehow, some way, this thing had opened her wounds.
“Leave me alone,” she screamed. “Leave me alone!”
“Come to me and I will set you free.”
She reached up with her other hand and pulled herself up and over. She fell hard to the ground, the air leaving her in a terrible rush. She gasped as she struggled to her feet. But try as she might, she couldn’t stand. So instead she crawled, at first slowly because she couldn’t breathe, but then savagely as her hands gripped and clawed at the ground.
A strange ground fog hugged the earth near the corner of the house. She hurried to it, thinking that maybe it would hide her. But as she touched it, she felt its pull. She’d been moving so fast that she was unable to slow in time and soon found herself falling. She waved her arms and cycled her feet, but they couldn’t touch anything in this new white universe.
And then she was still.
The whiteness of the fog disappeared.
She was laying on her back at the corner of a strange house, staring back at the fence, waiting for the thing to come get her.
Come to me and I will set you free, slithered through her mind.
Jenkies couldn’t be sure how long she’d stayed there, but it wasn’t until a little boy walked up to her that she moved, and when he did, she literally jumped to her feet.
“What are you doing in our yard?” he said. He wore an L.A. Dodgers baseball hat, a white t-shirt, shorts and worn tennis shoes.
She noticed that it was no longer early morning. The sky was still lit.
When she stood, she asked, “What time is it?”
“About six. Mom wants me home at six to eat.” He regarded her. “Why are you in your pajamas? Why are you wet?”
She glanced down, suddenly feeling self-conscious at her waterlogged pajamas that clung to her skin. She wanted nothing more than to cover herself, but she was already aware that she looked crazy, laying in the leaves of someone’s home for almost a full day in her nightclothes. My god, what had happened?
She ducked her head and walked away as proudly as she could. Going back over the fence wasn’t in the cards, so she found the driveway, walked down it and hit the sidewalk. She was roughly on the other side of her block.
She passed a man walking a Chihuahua, who turned and stared at her.
She turned the corner, then remembered her father and mother. The door was wide open so someone had to have found them by now. The police were already at her house. They were probably looking for her. She broke into a jog, eager to get back, eager to tell the police everything she knew. But then she slowed. What exactly would she tell them? That her parents drowned in their room because it was filled with water? That a mermaid swam through the air and chased her, beseeching her to join someone called the Black Bishop?
When she reached the corner of her street, she glanced towards her house. No police cars. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
She walked woodenly down the sidewalk until she got to her home. The door was closed. The cars were in the driveway. She glanced up at her window, half expecting to see that thing, but once again, everything was normal.
Had she imagined the whole thing?
Had she sleepwalked?
Was it possible that she’d been gone for more than fifteen hours, laying in a stranger’s back yard? If it was she couldn’t wait to tell BlueZ.
She stepped up her porch. Instead of opening the door, she glanced through the window.
Her father was already at the dining table, hale and healthy.
Her mother came in and placed a casserole in the middle of the table.
Jenkies felt joy at seeing them alive. She couldn’t help the hand of thankfulness that came to her chest.
Then her mother called out for her.
“Jennifer, time to eat.”
God how she hated that name. But at that moment she didn’t care. She opened her mouth to answer�
�
But it was answered from inside. “You know I hate that, mom.”
A girl came into view and slouched into the chair Jenkies normally used. She did so because she looked exactly like Jenkies, right down to the dog tag necklace she wore around her neck which most assuredly held a razor blade.
“You can call me Jenks or even Jenkies,” came her voice from the girl’s mouth. “Please don’t call me Jennifer. I mean, do I look like a Jennifer to you?”
Her dad glanced at her and shook his head.
Her mother sighed. “Oh, Jennifer.”
Out on the porch, Jenkies aka Jenks aka Jennifer Karen Schreiner felt a great vacuum open in her chest that so desperately needed to be filled with an understanding of what was going on. But none was coming. Instead, she watched herself eat and live her life, while she stood helplessly out on what used to be her porch in pajamas that might or might not be hers.
Chapter Seven
Berdoo Canyon. Hide Site.
CODENAME: TRAVESTY
Flight Sequence 20171335b
CLASSIFIED TALENT KEYHOLE
UAV Narration: Sgt Frank Spann
UAV Mode: Multiple High Surveil
…6 fly 2200 meters, overview of Cathedral City. Cannot acquire target through biometrics.
…2 fly 1700 meters, overview of Cathedral City. Cannot acquire target through biometrics.
…6 fly 200 meters, overview of Cathedral City. Cannot acquire target through biometrics.
…3 fly 70 meters, overview of Cathedral City. Target acquired. Leaving school bus and walking home. Target entering residence. Leaving one UAV on station to monitor.
Frank tensed as an email pinged on his console. If they knew he was using assets for personal use, he’d have his ass in a sling for sure. He selected the email, noting it was from S1, personnel division. He held his breath as he read the email. He exhaled and reread it. As was often the case in the military, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. It was exponential in his case. He was part of a Special Mission Unit hidden behind special access programs that only a few people knew about. Certainly not the admin weenie who wanted him to show up at Fort Irwin on Tuesday for a PT Test. The last time he did a PT Test he’d had to bribe the grader, promising that he’d use his UAV assets to follow his wife to see who she was screwing, if she was screwing. As it turned out, she was screwing the grader’s first sergeant. Frank had gone to him instead, laid it out that he knew about the sex with the wife of one of his subordinates and promised not the tell anyone. For that he not only didn’t have to do PT anymore, but he didn’t really have to show up for work. So when the opportunity came to get Frank as far away as possible with the SMU mission, the first sergeant volunteered Frank for the position.
Red Palm Page 4
