Determined, he set off. Time to bust butt.
Chapter 24
Scarlett Lewis fought back the waves of nausea. She could not open her eyes. She could not move her arms and legs. She was trapped in the reoccurring dream that had plagued her during her journey to Last State, the terrifying premonition she could not save Twila. Only this time it seemed—real.
She reassured herself, knowing any minute she would wake up in her bed with Twila curled next to her. And so, it was the image she inserted into the cosmic void of darkness as she patiently waited for dawn’s light to dissipate the darkness daunting her soul.
***
Moans and groans penetrated her inner sanctuary. A thousand thoughts bombarded her. Quickly, Scarlett shielded herself. The last time she had been overwhelmed by so many thoughts had been at the flea market. Concentrating, she pulled in her auric field and swathed it in white light. The dark force penetrated her shield, eating through it like a malicious entity.
I must be tired. She gathered all her inner strength, building and building it. She hurdled the dark cloud into the depths of space. It bounced off the darkness and then descended back upon her with a raging force. That’s when she knew it wasn’t a dream. She was imprisoned.
Think! Think! The first thing that came to mind was the undeniable knowing Twila and Ella needed her. An image of Onyx galloping like a mad racehorse flitted by. And Shari . . . no longer existed? What?
Was Scarlett bound by fear or physical restraints? If only she could open her eyes; they were matted shut. She squinted and squeezed her eyes, fluttering her lids. Bits of caked dirt flaked off into her mouth. She spat it out. How had her eyes become coated with dried mud? Jeez, she was dying of thirst.
Gradually, she grew accustomed to the flickering candlelight illuminating the room. Her back was against a cool wall of dirt. Her arms and hands bound by chains embedded in the dirt walls. She was in a cave, more like a den, which had been dug out of the cave’s wall.
Memories flooded in, skeletal hands grabbing and clawing her, scuttling her across the tunnel’s ceiling. A horde had taken her! Am I dead? Is this what it feels like to be a creeper trapped inside a human shell? Stuck in a between state.
“Silver Lady, I need you!” She screamed it so loudly, the dirt walls vibrated, or had it been her imagination? Her perception of reality lost, she turned down the roaring waterfall of thoughts until they babbled in the back of her mind like a rock-covered creek, allowing her to think. At least there had not been any probing. Apparently, the Ancient Bloodlines had not kidnapped her.
She twisted her head from side to side. Her solar plexus revolted at the sight of three human skeletons in chains. A gut-wrenching realization made her want to puke. Skeletal-lined walls of human bones shored the den’s walls. More than she could ever count.
“What happened—where am I?” she shouted internally to the Silver Lady.
No response.
“You can’t leave me here like this! What about Twila—” And the tears came, creating a muddy paste as they trickled down her cheeks onto her lips.
A faint whisper. Was it the Silver Lady? Scarlett listened. Waited.
“We did not anticipate the Lost Souls of Hu acquiring a Collective Consciousness so quickly,” a faraway voice whispered into Scarlett’s mind.
“Collective Consciousness?” Scarlett blurted aloud.
“Silently. They have learned to listen to each other’s thoughts. However, they cannot hear our cloaked thoughts at this time.”
“Please explain what’s happening?” Scarlett implored.
“Ah, my brave one, so many lost souls in one place. They created their own consciousness. They think and live as one entity, as did early Man-kind. The Galactic Council speculated we would have more time.”
“You knew this would happen!” It was too bizarre to comprehend.
“My dear one, a collective consciousness is inevitable with any species. A particular mindset is created based on the environment. The thousands of souls ensnared in the place they call Zoat has enabled them to evolve rapidly. They think as one group: a collective.”
“How?”
“How is not the question. Why, is the question. And the answer is, like any being, they wish to go beyond surviving—to thriving. To perpetuate their kind,” the Silver Lady explained.
“Why don’t creepers just die? Then they can continue their journey through eternity.” That was what Scarlett had learned from Shari’s teachings.
“Ahh, life is precious no matter what the state. They cling to each breath, waiting for humanity to find them again.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“My dear impatient one, the Galactic Council is debating upon a solution as we speak.”
“Great, take your time; meanwhile I’m chained—” Scarlett ranted.
“They are coming—” the Silver Lady’s voice drifted away.
The Silver Lady had abandoned her. Terror calcified Scarlett’s veins, her bones, her heart . . .
A guttural “Gaggghhh” as if coughing up a hairball with a miserable cold approached along with shuffling footsteps.
Scarlett twisted her head from side to side, waiting for the inevitable. Would they eat her alive? Or worse, would she turn into one of them? Ominous shadows lumbered in the wavering candlelight. And then, she shut her eyes. With quivering eyelids, she tensed, awaiting the first piercing bite into inhumanity.
They were there. Beside her. Their foul odor overwhelmed her. A symphony of sniffings started. Something brushed against her skin, sending her nerves into overdrive. Just get it over with, she screamed internally. Excruciating silence took over. Or had she escaped into that faraway place. A place where only her mind was safe.
“Gaggghhh!” One of the creepers shouted above the others.
She tugged at the chains. Why weren’t they attacking her? Scarlett squinted through reluctant lashes. It, stood before her. Her head pressed farther against the cave’s wall as the creature inched closer. Its blackish-red-rimmed eyes locked onto hers. It covered its ears with blood-stained hands as if expecting her to scream. But, she held the scream in her throat, saving it for later.
Its skin was taut over a hairless head, prominent cheekbones, and angular nose. Surprisingly, the skin was ashen-gray and smooth, unlike the grotesque molten skin of most creepers. It sniffed her mouth. Sniffed her armpits. Sniffed her groin. A thin-lipped smile widened across the most perfect set of teeth she had ever seen.
Her ears heard “Myyy qnnn wknsss,” but beyond that, her inner hearing translated, “My queen awakens!”
Scarlett’s stomach roiled. She should have passed out. Maybe she already had. Maybe she was merely lost in a nightmare, waiting to wake up, and the Super Summer flu had never existed. Simple. She was crazy. A gnarled finger traced her trembling lips. Her head jolted back, slamming into the dirt wall. Panic took hold.
“I demand you—let me go!” Her voice cracked, belying her bravery. She kept her head up and her eyes steady, staring down all six of them while they stared back in what looked to be wide-eyed awe.
The leader went into a bout of snickering-hissing laughter. The rest of its friends joined in. Their hideous laughing sent a wave of revolting energy shooting from her groin out her crown chakra.
“Myyy qnnn sss spnkyyy.” “My queen is spunky.”
“What?” She gasped. It said “queen” again. She thought she had misunderstood. “I’m not your, your stupid queen,” she fumed through rigid jaws.
“He-he-he-he.” Its repulsive snickering laughter gouged her like jagged points of rusted barbed wire.
Scarlett yanked at the chains in a feeble attempt to escape. It was useless, of course. “Silver Lady, please help me. What about Twila, Ella, and the baby? Did you bring us all this way for me to-to—” To what? What did these horrid creatures want with her?
“My brave one, you are saving her. For Twila is their Queen. Their Savior. Healer. Only, she is not ready.
”
A wave of calmness befell Scarlett. She hadn’t come all this way escaping hordes and Ravers and the Ancient Ones to be trapped under Zoat by half-human creepers. I will find a way, she swore.
“Remember, the warrior-dragon energy is in your etheric blueprint,” the Silver Lady’s voice whispered. “You have more power than you know. Use it wisely!”
Scarlett retaliated. “And this, this is how you treat your queen? Enslaved,” she denounced in the commanding voice of a queen.
The other creepers went into a hissing fit, flailing about. Their bulging eyes darted from her to their smooth-skinned leader and back to her. She had definitely hit a chord of surprise. Perhaps she shouldn’t antagonize. After all, if they thought she was their queen, she was safe. For a while.
“Slnccc,” it shouted. “Silence,” was what she heard.
“Release these chains!” Scarlett demanded, playing the role of a queen. “I need food and water.” Her voice stayed firm.
The freakish smooth-skinned leader nuzzled its lips to her ear. She struggled to shake off the shivers threatening to take hold. He didn’t say anything this time, but she heard him loud and clear. “Is my queen worthy of our agenda? Imposters die a tantalizingly painful death.” His eyes scanned the skeletal remains lining the walls. “They—he-he-he—were not worthy!”
Their hissing-snickering laughter echoed off the cave’s walls and into her soul as the leader and its followers shuffled out of the den. Scarlett tried to make sense of the macabre twist of events. First of all, they hadn’t eaten her. Second, they could think. Third, they wanted her to be their queen?
Shari had mentioned encounters with Thinkers. It seemed impossible. What if a small percentage of people who had been infected with the Super Summer flu had never fully crossed over to the zombified state? Perhaps these people had retained their mental abilities but had lost motor skills, unable to communicate.
Scarlett analyzed her own experiences with the many creepers she had dealt with. There had been the mother creeper in Southern California. All it had wanted was to save the infant creeper strapped in the car seat before the wildfire swept through. She had never forgotten the glimpse of compassion in the mother creeper’s eyes after Scarlett had cut away the car seat’s restraints.
Then there had been the hellish creeper who had climbed the ladder to the gas station’s roof near Last Chance where Twila and Scarlett had been stranded. It had definitely been a Thinker. The awful disbelief and fury on its face when she had hacked off its hands still haunted her dreams.
Wait a minute. What about Katie? Twila’s imaginary friend at the bugged-out treehouse in California, who turned out to be real. Scarlett had never quite figured out if Katie had been a homeless child or a creeper. Things were starting to make a bit of sense. The creeper-child could have been a Thinker, a benevolent creeper who hadn’t understood what had happened to her, and merely wanted companionship.
And now, this delusional smooth-skinned creeper, who apparently thought he was a king. She had to play along with the idea of being his queen if she wanted to continue her role as Twila’s protector. Only, she had better find a way to be a worthy queen without betraying her own humanity. Or, her bones would be lining the walls along with the other failures.
Chapter 25
Ella Vasquez-Chen patrolled the cabin room by room, checking the boarded-over windows when the unmistakable cracking of wood sent her into a hobbling run to the cabin’s front door.
The front door appeared to be fine. Ping! The tiny sound made the back of her neck crawl. Her eyes frantically tracked the sound to the metal shoe rack next to the front door. A thin metal pin had bounced off the rack. It rolled toward her feet—the pin to the door’s top hinge. Her heart leaped to her throat when the top hinge of the old wooden door ripped from the frame.
“O-M-G, this isn’t happening!” All she could do was stare at the door as the doorframe splintered from the top hinge to the second hinge. Not the bottom hinge! She had used all the doors to the bedrooms and closets. There was only one door left: the bathroom’s.
In record time, she removed the bathroom’s doorknob and the pins to the hinges. She had to hurry. The pains in her lower belly reminded her the baby wanted the tea, and mijo didn’t like waiting.
“Twila, time to wake up. I need you to put water on for my tea!”
Twila hadn’t moved for several hours. She lay on the couch with her crystal Merkaba balanced on her forehead in what looked like a freaky meditative-comatose state. This was not the time to meditate. It was the time for action.
Ella dragged the door to the front room. She leaned the door horizontally against the front door. She would attach it diagonally. That way it would support the upper portion where the hinge had given way as well as the lower portion of the doorframe, supporting both sides of the door. Well, what did she know?
“Papa, is this okay?” Ella uttered as if he were standing next to her. After all, Scarlett and Twila heard from their spirit guides. Why not her? Papa could be her spirit guide: he had known how to do everything.
She pounded in the nails. A crash in the kitchen! The back door? She had forgotten about that door. It was old; even she could break it down. She hobbled into the kitchen. A demon-Z had punched a hole through the center of the door with a brick from the flowerbed. Its hand twisted around, stuck in the door. It didn’t seem to know it needed to drop the brick. One thing was sure: the door wasn’t going to last much longer. And she was out of doors . . .
She rubbed the rosary around her neck in desperation. Archangel Michael, please tell me what to do! Exhausted and out of ideas, she eyed the two-bedroom cabin. The loft! They could wait for Shari and Scarlett in the playroom. But she needed the tea. Twila hadn’t moved. How in God’s angels could she carry Twila up the loft’s narrow ladder?
She nudged Twila. “Time to wake up.” Nothing, no movement. She yelled, “Twi-la!” How could anyone meditate or sleep through that? Out of panicked-frustration, she snatched the star-like crystal from the child’s head. Its heat burned her skin.
Twila jolted up like a possessed child in a horror movie.
“We’ve got to go to the playroom. Now!” Ella shouted, not waiting for Twila to argue.
Twila had the saddest expression on her face. “I don’t understand. They used to love my singing.”
Ella didn’t know what Twila was talking about.
“Don’t you understand, I’m supposed to heal them. The scary thing is”—Twila looked deep into Ella’s eyes and whispered—“they don’t want my help anymore.” Tears drenched the girl’s cheeks.
“Okay, uh, you can sing to them when we’re in the playroom,” Ella said, thinking of everything they needed. “Go.”
Twila held out her hand.
“I’ll give you the crystal after you’re in the loft,” Ella said firmly. She loved the child, but Twila didn’t like to listen.
“Jeez Louise, you’re as tough as Mommy,” Twila exclaimed.
It made Ella smile, but only for a second. “Andale! Andale!”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ll be right behind you. I need the tea.” Don’t forget Scarlett’s gun, water, and food, she reminded herself.
A splintering-crackle stopped her dead in her tracks. The kitchen door’s hinge protruded from the frame. And that stupid Z was still trying to figure how to pull its hand through the door. It wouldn’t be long before they broke down the door.
She grabbed Twila’s pack from the bedroom and tossed it to the loft. Then Ella stuffed the hammer, nails, and Scarlett’s handgun into her go-bag. She dashed to the kitchen. It was still trying to pull its hand out. She pried her eyes from the door and added the tin of tea to her go-bag. She stuffed the jar of nuts on the counter into the bag.
More crackling . . . A hand reached through the gap in the upper edge of the doorframe. Its disgusting head squeezed through as it pulled the door farther from the frame. Their eyes met. Caught between the frame
and the door, it stood there gurgling and drooling. Scarlett’s bat was next to the door. She snatched it just as the Z finally dropped the brick. It was probably afraid the other Z would get her first.
“I’m forgetting something.” Water. She grabbed the plastic water jug from the counter.
With the pack over her left shoulder, bat under her left arm, and left hand holding the water jug, she heaved herself up the ladder with her right hand. The kitchen’s door crashed to the floor. She turned around long enough to see Zs jumbling into the kitchen.
By the time Ella made it to the loft, a gang of Zs had reached the base of the ladder. They jumped and snarled and banged their heads into the ladder, slapping the rungs. Howling took over.
Twila went into a screaming fit. “I can’t save these ones. They’re different!”
“It’s okay. Try your singing thing,” Ella muttered, looking around the loft. It didn’t have any doors. She should block the entrance with something. Sorry, mijo. I’ll give you the tea as soon as I can.
Ella stood in front of the large metal desk. “Help me move this.” Twila sat there, pouting. “Twila, Look at me. I’m serious. If you don’t help me—we all die. Even the baby!”
Twila looked up with sad eyes. “I’ll never let them hurt your baby!”
They shoved the heavy metal desk to the edge of the loft’s entrance. How long would it hold? But then again, Zs couldn’t climb ladders. She had overreacted and felt like a jerk for treating Twila so harshly.
Twila held out her hand. Ella gave her the crystal.
“I’m sorry. We’re safe now. Shari and Scarlett will help us soon.” Ella could just see them, driving around the cabin in the truck and shooting all the demon-Zs in the head. Gross!
Only The Dead Don't Die (Book 3): Last State Page 22
