The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel)

by Jeremy Bishop

  My gaze flicks from face to face. They’re torn, decayed, and beaten. Not a one of them is uninjured. When my shock over the horde’s sudden appearance fades, I remember our urgency. Just fifteen Draugar occupy the lowest floor, spread out around the enclosed bar.

  Sword in hand, I charge down the steps. “Move!”

  The first Draugr I reach—a man dressed for a night of fine dining—recovers from the horde’s mass surprise a moment too late. I see the tiny black speck eyes of the parasite worms filling his eyes shift toward my sword’s blade. I played softball in college, and I put all those years of practice to good use. Step in. Swing hard. Keep your eye on the…head. The blade connects with the undead man’s temple. I feel the impact, but it’s far less than I expected. The strong, sharp blade severs skin, bone, and brain with equal efficiency. I follow through, completing the arc, and watch the top of his skull and brain flip to the floor, where it lands alongside his collapsed body.

  With a shout, Willem brings his ax down on a Draugr who has just started moving. The sound of the strike reminds me of a coconut being split. The heavy metal chops through the man’s head and stops in his neck. Willem kicks out hard, striking the man’s solar plexus, and sends him flying, freeing the ax, which he quickly brings to bear on a woman who’s charging him.

  The horde is in motion now. Those on the bottom floor move in to attack. The group on the third floor charges down the dual staircases, though charge is a generous word. It’s really more of a hobble. One of the bunch, whose foot is twisted to the side at a sick angle, topples forward and plows through the Draugar in front of him. It’s like watching a Looney Tunes snowball grow larger as it rolls down a hill, enveloping people on the way.

  A fast-moving zombie lumbers toward me, arms outstretched and fingers hooked. Ducking low, I swing hard and remove his legs. He falls hard to the side but barely breaks stride as he starts pulling himself forward with his hands. He sticks out his parasite-laden tongue. I can see each one of the maggoty monsters wriggling, eager to find my flesh and take my mind. A quick sword thrust to the top of his head takes the fight out of him.

  Jakob appears by my side. I haven’t seen him take on a zombie yet, but the gore dripping from his sword says otherwise. “Keep moving,” he says, stepping over the man I’ve just dropped and hacking at the first Draugr to reach the bottom of the stairs.

  I look for Willem and find him already on the other side of the atrium, clearing the Draugar blocking our path to the stairs with wide, powerful swings of the double-bladed ax. His attacks aren’t exactly precision, but the flying gore and limbs leave no doubt as to his effectiveness. Dead or incapacitated, it doesn’t matter. We just want to get through.

  A flash of color pulls my attention to the bar. Steven leaps over the side. The zombie pursuing him slams into the bar, stymied by the polished hardwood wall. Steven stands up and looks at the thing, and his eyes widen. As do mine when I see what he’s looking at.

  The zombie trying to reach him is wearing a white uniform. His cap is missing, but the blue shoulder board with three gold bands and a fourth looped band identify the man as the Poseidon Adventure’s captain.

  A chain dangles from his neck and disappears beneath his heavily bloodstained reefer jacket.

  The keycard.

  I change course, heading for the bar, but only make it two steps. A blur passes in front of me, falling from above. A wet thud forces me back. When I look down, I see a stream of parasites crawling from the ruined head of a twisted Draugr. I take another step back.

  Whack!

  I spin around and find a second Draugr in a similar state.

  What the—whack!

  This time I see it. The Draugr came from above. I look up in time to see a fourth man leap from the eighth floor like a BASE jumper.

  “Look out!” I shout to Jakob. In the three seconds it takes the dive-bombing zombie to reach the floor, Jakob ducks to the side. He narrowly avoids being crushed but has no time to think about the close call.

  The glass elevators are descending. The wave of zombies reaching the bottom floor will soon be joined by their more resourceful counterparts.

  “Keep toward the center,” I shout to anyone who’s listening. Then I take my own advice, leaping over the suicidal zombies and heading for the bar.

  Steven looks unsure of how to handle the captain.

  I doubt he has the gumption to stab his commanding officer in the head, so I offer him an alternative as I hop over the bar. “Taser him!”

  Steven looks at the Taser in his hand like he’d forgotten it was there. He pushes the trigger, activating the blue arc of electricity, and shoves the two metal electrodes against the captain’s outstretched arms.

  The zombie twitches, frozen in place. The parasites are unable to control the host body while fifty thousand volts course through it.

  “Hold it there!” I shout, running up beside him. Without thinking, I reach out and snatch the chain. The resulting shock flings me backward. I fall to the floor, stunned but conscious. And when I look down, I see the chain gripped in my hand, along with a keycard.

  To my great surprise, Steven jabs the captain in the side of the head before turning to help me up.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Look out!” I say, pulling him down.

  A zombie crashes down on the bar with a crack, his back folding over. Sonofabitch must have got a running start.

  When I stand back up, the situation has gone from shitty to fucked. The elevators are opening. The stairs leading to the bottom floor are thick with undead, many of whom have spilled out into the atrium. And the Draugr projectiles continue to rain down from above as they sacrifice themselves for the protection of the hive.

  “Jane!” Willem shouts from the descending staircase. “Hurry up!”

  Even if we make it to the stairs, we’re going to have an angry horde hot on our heels. We might be faster, but we’re also still human, and eventually our bodies will betray us. The Draugar have no such concerns. I’m about to tell Jakob and Willem to carry on without us when I remember the keycard. They might make it all the way to maintenance only to find the door locked.

  Glass shatters. “Help me!” Steven shouts.

  He’s tossing bottles of liquor at the floor around the bar, saturating rug and zombies alike. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s up to, so I grab as many bottles as I can, whipping them at the floor and distant stairs. When I’m satisfied with the job, I dump two bottles on the bar and down its outside edge.

  I take the Taser from Steven and hand him the keycard. “Go!” I shout. “Get them to the fuel tanks.”

  “But—”

  “Now, damnit!”

  Steve springs into action, leaping over the far side of the bar, where Willem and Jakob await.

  Jakob separates a Draugr’s head from its shoulders and turns to face Steven. He nearly cuts the man down, but the brightly colored outfit makes him easy to identify. The blade stops short of Steven’s neck.

  Jakob looks from the keycard to me. I hold up the Taser, indicating what I’m about to do. “Make him go,” I say.

  Giving me a look that’s part regret, part respect, and one of his patented Viking nods, he turns for the stairs, grabbing Willem’s arm to pull him along, not giving him a chance to look back. The trio disappears down the stairs.

  A few Draugar give chase, but the rest are stopped when I trigger the Taser and place the electrodes down on the alcohol-soaked bar. Flames erupt, nearly singeing my hand. The blaze rockets across the bar, down the side, and across the rug. The lowest floor of the atrium is quickly transformed into the lowest level of hell.

  And I’m caught in the middle of it.

  40

  The burst of heat from the conflagration makes me duck back behind the bar. There’s a steady, rising whoosh as the fire spreads across the atrium floor. The flames quickly move beyond the alcohol, eating through the rug and carried farther beyond by burning Draugar. They don�
�t normally react to physical pain, but the parasites inside the flaming hosts must know they can’t escape, because they’re flailing around, rolling on the floor and slapping their bodies. The revolting scent of melting flesh and popping hot body fat mixes with the strong odor of alcohol, twisting my stomach. As screams rise, I wonder if that small part of humanity that resides in each undead is brought forward by the intense pain.

  God, I hope not.

  The thought is too much to bear, so I push it from my mind and focus on not becoming another human torch.

  The flames rise up the staircases, burning through rug and Draugar, but the fire isn’t everywhere. There are still some clear paths, especially by the elevator nearest the casino—the area we didn’t douse with booze.

  The elevator doors open and belch out a dozen ragged-looking tourists. Two of them, a man and woman, wear bathrobes. A matching set. Another woman is wearing just her underwear, a cute matching set of black lace accented by bits of whoever it was that she devoured. A few are well dressed, ready for a day of gambling or lounge hopping. And the rest are wearing the jackets needed for spending time in the Arctic Ocean air.

  What a shitty way to end a vacation.

  The group heads for the stairwell, shielding their faces and the parasites behind their eyes from the flames. But they’re not fleeing the fire; they’re chasing the others. As Nate probably would have said, this is unacceptabru.

  I pick up a bottle and whip it at the group before jumping over the side of the bar not engulfed in flames. I land on the opposite side about the same time the bottle clocks the underwear model in the back of the head.

  She turns and sees me, which means they’ve all seen me.

  The group, which is halfway down the stairs, pauses and turns toward me.

  Whack!

  A kamakazombie lands right next to me, its ample belly splitting open and loosing its contents as a red-and-white marbleized smear.

  If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m dead. But I can’t let this group follow the others. Not because Willem and Jakob couldn’t handle them, but because they might figure out what we’re up to.

  When the tall brunette turns, I see the injury that has her thrown in with this gnarly lot. Her stomach is torn open. While a lot of her guts are missing and likely eaten, what remains crawls with parasites, each working to coat her insides with their gooey preservative.

  She’d be easy to cut down. The long katana ensures that the Draugar won’t be able to get too close—that is, when I face them one at a time. But I don’t want to kill her yet. Facing off against these twelve is not only dangerous but too slow. Sooner or later, more of these bastards will find a way past the wall of fire. If I’m still here when that happens, I’m screwed. Story of my recent life. Move or die.

  The woman is a good foot taller than me, and that hole in her stomach kind of puts a monkey wrench in my plan. So instead of kicking her hard in the stomach, I leap up and jam my foot against her chest. The blow stumbles her back. She collides with the others, but the group catches her and props her up again.

  So much for the bowling-ball plan.

  Time for plan B.

  I draw my spare pistol and fire it seven times before the ammo runs out.

  Five zombies, including hottie-bo-bottie and four of the winter-clad gang, drop to the floor. There are still seven undead closing in, but I’ve blazed a trail of bodies straight down the middle of the pack. I waste no time dashing forward, stepping on the dead as I run through the group. I swing out with my sword. It’s a random swing, but it manages to eviscerate the bathrobed man. He trips on his insides and pitches forward.

  With the stairs just ahead, I think I’m home free when something snags my ankle. My forward momentum snaps to a stop, and I flop to the floor like I’ve been lassoed. I look back and see the bathrobed man. He managed to grab hold of my ankle when he fell forward.

  His grip tightens with inhuman strength. I feel my scabbed-over leg wound reopen as the skin below it is compressed. A scream of pain bursts from my mouth, but it’s coupled with action. I bring the sword down, severing the arm and the tendons pulling the fingers tight.

  The hand falls away, but the pain remains. I channel my inner Jesse the Body Ventura, tell myself, I ain’t got time to bleed, and roll backward. The roll takes me away from the six remaining Draugr but over the side of the top step.

  As I fall back, I have the presence of mind to fling the sword down ahead of me. It’s not that I don’t need the weapon anymore—I do—but falling down stairs with a razor-sharp sword is akin to walking into a doctor’s office with a paper cut and shouting, “Take the arm!”

  Without the sword hacking off my limbs or taking my attention, I manage to partially control my descent and keep myself from being knocked silly. I’ll probably be covered in purple polka-dot bruises if I live to see another day, but I make it down the steps in record time, recover the sword, and still have time to taunt the nearest Draugr.

  “Hurry up, Suzy-Q!” I shout as I separate the bathrobed woman’s legs at the shin. She topples to the side, catching herself on the next step down. But the well-dressed man beside her steps on her head, twists his already shredded ankle, and falls. He rolls down the stairs far less gracefully than I did. When he reaches my feet, I put him out of his misery.

  I consider taking care of the others and following after Willem and Jakob, but that idea is quickly squelched by the sound of an alarm, which is followed quickly by the sound of spraying water. The ship’s computer system is smart enough to trigger the sprinklers where the fire is without saturating the entire ship, but not smart enough to realize those flames were the only thing keeping the Draugar at bay.

  Running feet and loud moans drown out the hissing spray. They’re coming for me. And since I’ve managed to kill another few thousand of their kind, I have a feeling my end will be slow and painful.

  I turn and run but don’t follow the next flight of stairs down. Instead, I enter the casino. Flashing lights, dinging bells, and mechanical voices surround me. “Howdy, partner,” says a slot machine as I pass. “Give me a whirl!”

  Rows of slots stretch down the center of the casino. Pews for the Church of the Almighty Dollar. Toward the end of the slots, I see a gray-haired woman sitting at one of the machines. Her head is dipped forward, but her hand is raised and clutching a quarter that’s halfway in the slot. I prepare to strike her down with the sword, but there’s something different about her. She looks…dead. Like dead dead, rather than living dead. When I step up next to her, I see her eyes. The color is faded, but I can still see the brown of her eyes. Not a Draugr. Never a Draugr. She died playing slots while the ship around her went to hell. Old bag went out the way she wanted to, I guess.

  I duck behind the old woman’s machine as the horde reaches the bottom of the stairs. I’m not sure if out of sight, out of mind will stumble them up, but I need to catch my breath.

  The motion-sensitive slot machines near the entrance start jabbering. The electronic solicitations are greeted with angry grunts. The sound of smashing machinery follows. Are they angry at the machines or my disappearance?

  Whatever the cause, it seems to have slowed them down long enough for me to suck in a few breaths. But there are more voices joining the chorus. The sound of awkward footfalls grows louder. They’re congregating at the entrance.

  I look to my left. The wall of slots will hide me from them if I stay low. If I can make it to the side of the room, I might be able to reach the far side before they spot me heading for the exit.

  Committing to the plan, I carefully slip the sword into the scabbard still slung over my back. I’m going to need both hands free to crawl. I push off the slot machine and onto my knees.

  A metallic cling freezes me in place. The sound of a coin making its way through the inside of the slot machine feels like gunshot. I cringe, knowing it was my motion that knocked the woman’s hand loose.

  The din at the entrance quiets in response to the s
ound. But nothing moves.

  Well, nothing except the old woman. I can almost see her ghost hovering above her corpse, saying, “One more game!” and then shoving her old body forward. I hear a bang, which can only be the woman’s face striking the glass. Then her hand falls and strikes the lever just hard enough to trigger the digital slot machine.

  The thing ticks loudly. I can’t see the images scrolling by, but I know they are. Then one by one, they stop.

  An alarm blares.

  A spinning red light flashes.

  Coins rattle into the metal tray.

  Granny Smith is a winner. Which makes me the world’s biggest loser.

  The horde and I burst into motion at the same time. A quick look back as I leap out of my hiding place reveals at least fifty of the mangled monsters.

  The space beyond the slots is more spaced out, with roulette, card, and craps tables. While the tables aren’t a problem, the chairs that surrounded them are now strewn about the room, forming a chaotic maze. I leap, twist, and hop my way through rather than clearing a path. The Draugar will have a harder time with the obstacles than I do.

  I’m close to the far side exit when a single zombie stumbles into view, blocking my path. He’s an average-size man in a casual jacket. Part of his leg is missing, as are several of his teeth.

  They’re moving to cut me off, I think. A second man stumbles into the entrance, this one dressed as a waiter except the arm that might normally hold a tray of food is missing at the shoulder.

  There must be a staircase beyond the doors. Knowing that more could arrive at any moment, I rush toward the open arms and maws of my nightmares made real.

  41

  With just twenty feet between me and the two Draugar blocking my path, I reach for my sword but then decide against it. Using the blade will mean stopping to swing, parry, and swing again. It’s a delay that could allow the horde at my heels time to close the gap.