I looked around anxiously, trying not to pay attention to the bursting graves around us. "Excuse me, I don't mean to nag or anything, but where's your car?"
Just ahead of us a grave erupted, splattering us with dirt.
"On the other side of the graveyard. Come on, this way," Danielle yanked me off the worn path and we found ourselves running across the rich green grass, surrounded by continually exploding graves.
"Just for the record," I shouted, immediately regretting it. Dirt flew into my open mouth, "I'm not having fun yet!"
Danielle let go of my arm long enough to slap me.
Through the flying dirt I was able to make out the bright red of Danielle's car up ahead.
Then a bony hand caught my foot and I fell face down into the grass. I looked over my shoulder and saw—according to the grave marking—Angelina Incubas, still half in her grave, clawing at me like a half-crazy, hormone enraged teenager at a Jonas Brothers concert. And damn if her grip on my ankle wasn’t pretty firm.
Oh, great. I was going to die. I saw the Cliff Notes version of my life flash before my eyes.
Where the heck was Dani?
Another corpse appeared and started clawing at my face.
I tried to scream, but gave up when bits of rotting flesh fell into my mouth.
A third corpse appeared and tried to tear open my chest with its bare hands.
I briefly wondered if this was how orgies were done in a graveyard.
Then, suddenly, I heard the sound of my salvation. I wasn't going to die after all.
The corpse in my face exploded a brief second after I heard the boom of a shotgun.
Then the corpse by my chest exploded.
And finally, Ms. Angelina Incubas, who really wasn't all that bad looking, now that I think about it. She was kind of a paler version of Angelina Jolie, only without the puffy lips and hair on her head.
I rolled to my knees, brushing the dead body parts off of me. Danielle stood a foot away, holding her shotgun, which was of the pump action variety, and gave me a coy smile.
"What the hell took you so long?" I asked, with just a touch of irritation. Just a touch, mind you.
"Dramatic effect," she replied. "Besides, the way you were writhing, it kind of looked like you were enjoying yourself."
Shooting her a glare, I replied, "I won't even dignify that with a response."
She giggled and said, "Duck."
"Wha-?" I began, but dropped to the ground I when saw her chamber another round.
I heard the boom of the shotgun followed by the short, brief agonizing scream of a newly exploding corpse.
Danielle gave me a hand up. "Come on, we're almost there." She tossed me her car keys. "You drive, I’ll play." She grinned and chambered another round.
"RRRight," I said and bolted for the car. When this was all over, we were going to have to have a long talk about our relationship. Mainly about my growing realization that I was sane and she was not.
Behind me I heard a cacophony of shots and exploding corpses. It was oddly soothing, in a Charles Manson meets Metallica sort of way.
"Uh, Dani, face forward please," I said, as a corpse leapt onto the front of her red Toyota Paso.
I heard Danielle chamber another round and then saw the corpse's chest explode, sending the rest of its body parts flying.
I leapt over the hood of the car and quickly yanked open the driver's side door. After dropping the key twice, I managed to finally get the car started and slam it into reverse. I looked over at the passenger seat, but Dani wasn't there.
Through the windshield I could see her still shooting corpses.
I stuck my head out of the car and screamed, "Danielle Betty Widgon, get your skinny little butt in the damn car!!"
Danielle continued to get off a few more shots until it became apparent that she was out of ammo.
She got into the car and I hit the gas pedal. The tires squealed and the car sped backwards down the path.
Danielle popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a box of shotgun shells. She began to reload. When this was over we really needed to discuss why she had her car stocked like she was Mad Max.
Two corpses appeared in my rearview mirrors, looking like they were going to stop us barehanded.
The car bounced a little as I ran over their decomposing asses.
Dani rolled open her window and leaned out. She chambered a round and blew off the heads of two corpses that had been chasing us in the front.
She settled back in and gave me a smile. "Almost there."
"Not quite," I said, pointing over my shoulder.
Danielle gave me a puzzled look and leaned out the window to look behind us. Dozens of corpses had lined up, guarding the entrance to the cemetery and blocking our only exit.
She leaned back into the car. "What do we do?"
"Put the big hurt on them." I replied as I switched my foot from the gas pedal to the brake, causing the car to skid and spin around hundred and eighty degrees. Our headlights now illuminated the barrier of corpses.
With one foot still on the brake, I gunned the car. I looked over at Danielle and asked, "Ready?"
Dani chambered another round and gave me a dangerous-looking smile. "Bring it."
6
I gripped the steering wheel tightly, my knuckles almost going white. The tiny engine in the Toyota Paso roared as I gunned the engine.
I let go of the brake and the car bolted forward.
Dani leaned out the window and began to pick off the corpses one by one.
Through the windshield I watched as they exploded. Not one of them flinched or ran off. These guys would make some great mindless soldiers—oh wait, they already were.
At the last second, I yanked Danielle back into the car and we barreled through the barrier of remaining corpses like they were toothpicks.
With that, we were out.
I slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt, screeching across the asphalt. Dani chambered another round. I kept the engine running. We waited for almost a full thirty seconds, but it looked like Wolfe was right after all. Danielle got out of the car and I followed.
Apparently, without anyone available to chase, the corpses just wandered around aimlessly, occasionally singing out one of those famous groans of the dead.
Danielle un-chambered the round and turned to me with a sweet smile. "See," she said, giving me a little kiss on the cheek, "I told you we'd have fun."
"Oh yeah," I replied, rubbing the back of my neck, I just knew it was going to be stiff tomorrow. "We just had a barrel of laughs. Maybe next time we can visit Transylvania and say hi to Dracula. I hear he throws killer karaoke parties."
Dani laughed and picked something from my hair. I didn't want to think about what it was. She winked at me. "No, next time we'll go visit the haunted tombs of Egypt."
I groaned and shook my head.
Danielle and I walked arm in arm with the rising sun behind us, casting its golden rays across our backs. Already, the memories of our nighttime adventure through the cemetery were fading and becoming distant after thoughts. With any luck, I would be able to get over the whole incident with a minimal amount of psychological therapy.
All in all, I was feeling pretty good. I was alive. I had a great girlfriend; questions of her sanity aside. And, did I mention I was alive? Yes, I was feeling good. No, I was feeling swell! I liked that word, swell; nobody ever uses it anymore. It's such a great word.
And then, I noticed something glittering in Dani's back pocket of her jeans.
I stopped walking.
Dani turned to me. "What's the matter?" she asked. We were only a foot or so away from her Toyota Paso.
I didn't say anything. I couldn’t. For some reason I thought that if I tried to talk it would come out in some kind insane, unintelligible, gibberish. I simply reached into her back pocket.
"Ooh," she smiled, flipping her brown hair, "getting a little feisty there, Mikey."
I
felt my heart skip a beat, and it wasn't because I was horny.
I pulled my hand out of her pocket and saw that I was holding a large ruby that looked suspiciously like the one Wolfe had been waving around in the cemetery.
"Danielle Widgon," I said slowly, not taking my eyes off the ruby. I held it up and the ruby glittered brilliantly against the golden rays of the rising sun. "Please, oh, please tell me I'm not looking at what I think I'm looking at."
Dani paused. Not a good sign.
Chewing on her lower lip she asked, "What do you think you're looking at?"
"I think," I paused, turning the ruby around in my hands, "I think that I'm looking at the ruby that Wolfe had during his rants about gods, sacrificing us and other things that currently escape me at the moment. That's what I think it is, and sincerely hope it isn't."
Dani didn't respond.
I looked past the ruby at my skinny, brown haired girlfriend who was still wearing my over shirt. Suddenly, I wasn't feeling very swell anymore.
She shrugged. "It was pretty and since you managed to lose the weapons, I thought this would make a nice alternate souvenir."
"A souvenir?" I repeated. I lowered my head into my hands. I wanted to cry so badly. "Dani, did it ever occur to you that it might not be a good idea to steal something from an undead guy who wanted to sacrifice us, so that he and his equally undead buddies could roam the world at their discretion?"
"What? It's just a ruby."
"Dani," I said with a sigh, "we need to have a serious talk."
I turned back to the cemetery. I was going to get rid of the damn thing before anything else could happen. But, of course, I was too slow.
Part 2
Rubies are My Girlfriend’s Best Friend
1
I pulled my arm back to toss the ruby into the cemetery, when suddenly the ruby transformed into some kind glittering ooze and slipped through my fingers. It slid around my wrist and solidified into a tacky ruby bracelet I tugged at it with my left hand.
The ruby didn't budge.
I tugged again really hard.
It still didn't move.
I poked at it with my finger.
It was stuck.
I should have been mad, upset, crazy with rage, nervous and scared, but instead I was oddly calm. No anxiety, fear, trepidation, or anything like that. Quite frankly, the idea that a simple ruby had just attached itself to my wrist paled in comparison to being chased through a cemetery by a bunch of dead guys who wanted to sacrifice me.
Or maybe it was just all the video games I'd been playing.
"This," I said finally, after several seconds of carefully staring at the ruby, as though I could just will it off with my gaze, "is not good."
And then, suddenly, the ground began to shake violently.
"Oh, great! Now what?!" I exclaimed. Sooner or later I was gonna have to start watching what I said.
The ground swelled upward, cracking the asphalt into jagged spikes that shot up around us. In front of us, Dani's car disappeared as the earth swallowed it whole.
I flailed my arms around trying desperately to avoid following the Paso's untimely fate.
Something behind us, presumably the ground, exploded sharply, knocking both Dani and I to our knees. The earth pitched us back and forth until somehow Dani landed in the awkward position of being on top of me.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the ground stopped shaking, rattling and rolling.
I glared at Dani. "I'm not very happy."
She gave a meek little shrug. "Sorry."
I pushed Dani off me. "Sorry," I began, pausing to unleash a grunt of pain as I got to my feet, "does not even begin to cover this. I swear, if I die today, I'm taking you with me."
"Hey! Gimme a break here," she replied, getting to her feet as well. "I did just lose my car, you know."
"Oh, please," I rolled my eyes. "You wanted something bigger anyway."
There was a grumbling noise behind us. Dani and I shared an uneasy look and slowly turned around.
Our day went from bad to worse.
A tall grey monstrosity stood behind us. Its skin seemed to be alive with millions of tiny little maggot-like things that scurried every which way. Its arms were long and wiry and capped off with thick, sharp-looking talons. Its head was a weird triangle design that had erratic bones extending out from it in various directions. The grey monster, who, for some reason, reminded me of a young Marilyn Manson, stood at least eight feet tall.
And then it roared.
I mean, this monster let out an earsplitting roar. A roar so powerful it even whipped my hair around. Not a simple feat, mind you, considering the amount of gel I use.
Its mouth was a chasm of darkness surrounded by teeth that were so sharp that their points had points.
"Oh, poop ," we said in unison.
The grey monster raised its arm and pointed one of its talons at us.
"Give me the nebulous," it said in a painfully gravely, uneven and, quite frankly, very scary voice.
"I think it's talking to you," I said.
"No, I'm pretty it was directing that command towards you," Dani replied.
"I beg to differ," I countered.
It roared again.
I got the impression that this was not the response it was used to.
"Give me the nebulous, you little mortal dipsticks, or I'll rip your spleens out and shove them down your throats!"
I held up a finger. "Did you just call us 'little mortal dipsticks'?"
The grey monster nodded its head. "What are you gonna do 'bout it, punk?" it roared again, as if to prove a point. "Give me the nebulous!"
All right, that was it. No way was this thing gonna get off calling me a ‘mortal dipstick.’
"Dani, where's the shotgun?"
"In the car."
"Would that be the same car that was just swallowed up by the ground only minutes ago?"
"Yep."
Awkward time to grow a spine.
The grey monster's large black eyes shrunk to narrow slits. It was. . .very intimidating.
"The nebulous. Now."
I held up my hands. "Look, I'm not going to argue with you. You want the nebulous, it's all yours, baby, except for one teensy, weensy problem: I don't have it."
"Oh yes, you do."
I turned to Dani. "Do you have any idea what its talking about?"
She shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'm just as clueless as you."
The monster sighed. At least, I think it was a sigh. It sounded more like some kind of small creature gagging on something. "It's right there on your wrist, you moron."
My wrist?
I looked down at my hands.
Oh, right, the ruby. I had forgotten all about it.
I pointed to the red gemstone. "Is this what you want?"
"Yes."
"Buddy, pal, you can have it. Knock yourself out. Only one problem: it's kinda stuck to my wrist and ain't coming off."
The grey monster's mouth pulled back in twisted grin. "No problem. I'll just rip it from your lifeless body."
"Oh," was all I could think of to say. There was a moment a silence between the three of us. I turned to Dani. "I just want you to know, I blame you for all of this."
She rolled her eyes. "Don't you sing any other tunes? A little gratitude would be nice, you know. I mean, I did save your butt back there in the cemetery."
I nodded. "That's right. And then, you damned it again when you stole this stupid ruby!"
"Picky, picky, picky. You're never satisfied, are you?"
"Hey!"
"Shut up!" We snapped at the monster together.
For a brief moment, the grey monster seemed to be taken aback.
But that moment passed.
The monster threw its head back and roared again. In the distance I heard glass shatter.
"Time to go!" Dani said.
We turned and began sprinting across the now treacherous landscape.
&nb
sp; "Um, not to be nosey or anything," I said, jumping over an uprooted tree, "but did you happen to have a particular destination in mind?"
"Well, no not exactly."
I looked at her. "What do you mean ‘not exactly?’"
The ground shook violently beneath my feet. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the grey monster was closing in behind us.
"Uh, Dani . . ."
"I'm working on it. Don't rush me!"
"Easy for you to say," I replied, "you're not the one with a nebulous stuck to his wrist!"
"You know, you can be a real sissy boy at times.”
"Oh no you don’t this goes way beyond the sissy boy stuff!"
Suddenly, I was flung forward as I felt the monster's hand slam against my back. I must have flown almost thirteen feet through the air before hitting a stretch of unbroken asphalt.
I was going to be so sore tomorrow, assuming I lived through this.
I rolled onto my stomach and lifted my head just in time to see Dani go on the offensive.
"Hey, that's my boyfriend you're kicking around!" She picked up a metal pole that lay nearby on the ground and swung at the beast.
The pole broke in half.
The monster growled and smacked Dani aside with the back of its hand. With my girlfriend out of the way, it turned its attention back to me.
"Hey," I muttered, trying to get to my feet, "can't we talk about this?"
The grey monster stood right in front of me. It lowered its triangular head down to mine. I could smell its breath, which, for the record, conjured up images of rotting cheese.
"No."
On my knees, I gave a little shrug. "Just thought I'd ask."
It opened its mouth wide, giving me a very close look at its teeth. I couldn't help but notice that they seemed to be clear of plaque, and were extremely white. I couldn't say for sure, but I thought it was going to bite my head off.
I squeezed my eyes closed and hoped it wasn't going to hurt much.
Then I heard the bloodthirsty scream of a half-crazed woman, followed by the sound of something hitting the ground. After that I felt something splatter all over me.
Graveyard Romance Page 3
