by M. R. Forbes
“Neither did we. Innocent or not, they aren’t our problem.”
“We’re standing right here,” the man said.
“Who in the bloody hell are you people?” the woman said.
“Nobody,” Amos replied. “Trust me; it’s better for you if you pretend we don’t exist.”
“I’d rather pretend those zombies don’t exist,” the man said. “I’ve never known the virus to spread so quickly.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “It can’t. This isn’t that.”
“Yeah,” Amos said, laughing. “It’s worse. Much worse.”
“Not helping,” Frank said.
“What do you mean worse?” the woman asked.
“It’s Samedi,” I said. “He’s controlling them.”
“All of them?” Dannie asked, surprised.
“Yes. I don’t know how. His dark magic is in the death magic. Across all of it. I don’t know how.”
“Is he here?” Amos asked. “Because if he’s here, I want to be somewhere else.”
“No. He isn’t here, at least not physically. But he knows I’m here. He tried to take my soul through the fields. He’s that powerful.”
“Great,” Amos said. “Just fucking great. I knew I didn’t want to come along with you losers.”
“Think about how I feel,” Cecil said.
“Nobody gives a shit how you feel,” Amos said.
A door slammed at the top of the stairwell. Shuffling feet followed.
“Samedi’s pretty fixated on making sure we don’t get out of London alive,” I said.
“Then we should get out while the getting’s good,” Amos said. “Ash?”
Ashiira nodded, but I held up my hand. “Wait,” I said. “He also knows what we’re trying to do. What we’re looking for.”
“So?” Cecil said.
“So, he might be trying to scare us away.”
“It’s working,” the man said. “Can we go now?”
“We?” Amos said. “What’s this we? You aren’t even supposed to be here. You should be deadie food by now.”
“Deadie?” the woman asked.
“Look, lady, this walking skeleton over here is trouble with a capital fucking T. Your best option is to get as far away from us as you can. Get yourself somewhere safe.”
“There is nowhere safe,” Frank said.
“Can we argue about this later?” Dannie asked. “They have a point.”
The sound of the deadies was increasing as more of them entered the stairwell.
“Can you walk?” Dannie asked.
I nodded, letting her help me up. The stab wound hurt, but not nearly as much as having my soul nearly ripped from my body.
At least it would make my magic stronger.
“Let’s go,” Amos said, taking the lead down the stairs. We filed in behind him, descending as quickly as we could.
We made it to the lobby without any trouble.
It was too bad that was as far as we made it.
Amos pushed through the stairwell door, before backing up.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, looking back at us.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone must have sent out invites to the dead asshole convention,” he said. “Guess where it’s being held.”
I moved past Ashiira and Amos, pushing the door open to get a look. There were a hundred corpses moving into the lobby, heading right for us.
“We have to go through them one way or another,” Frank said from the rear. “They’re on the stairs, too.”
The woman started to cry.
“Oh, geez,” Amos said. “Bad to worse.”
I dug into my pocket and pulled out my spellbook. I started flipping through it.
“Maybe you should have studied that thing sooner?” Amos said.
“Maybe if Death had given me a chance to,” I replied, finding the page I wanted.
I already knew I could destroy magic when my power was strong enough, but that was regular magic, not death magic. I wasn’t sure I had the strength for the spell I had stopped on, but what other choice did we have?
“Cecil, I need your help,” I said.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Make us look like them. Dead limeys.”
“Okay.”
I started gathering the death magic to me, taking it in but not exposing myself to it.
“You guys aren’t going to like this,” I said. “Amos, I’m not sure if this is even going to work on you.”
“What are you planning, Baldie?”
“I’m going to stop your hearts.”
“What?” the woman said.
“It’s temporary. You’ll have about thirty seconds to get through the lobby and out into the street. Hopefully, they’ll think we’re all like them.”
“I hate this plan,” Cecil said.
“Seconded,” Ashiira said.
“It’s the only way,” Dannie said. “Do it.”
I held my hand out toward them, the death magic stretching invisibly from it, reaching to their chests and taking hold of their hearts. I felt oddly elated by the use of the power, and when I closed my fist and stopped their most important muscle from contracting, it gave me a near high. Was this why Samedi had gone sour?
They stared at me, mouths open, most of them looking frightened, at least until Cecil’s magic took hold and they appeared as normal, dead brits to me. I was sure I looked the same. I pushed open the door to the stairs and entered the lobby. The other deadies saw us, but they didn’t attack.
It was working.
We moved through the center of them, hurrying toward the street. There were more coming from both ends of the road, ordered here by Samedi. We weren’t going to get all the way out so easily, but at least we weren’t pinned down anymore.
We made it outside by the thirty-second mark, and I released my hold on the death magic that was killing them, allowing their hearts to beat once more.
They all gasped in turn, all except Amos. He looked at me and winked. The magic hadn’t gotten through to his heart.
“Proof that you don’t have one,” I said.
He flipped me the bird. Then he pulled a sawed-off from under his coat and fired it into the deadie that was coming at him, knocking the corpse to the ground.
“It’s on,” he said. “So fucking on.”
20
Son of a lich.
Amos swung around, reloading the shotgun in a smooth motion, pulling the trigger and knocking another deadie on their ass.
“Yeah, baby,” he said. “Matilda goes boom! How do you like that shit?”
“There are too many of them,” Dannie said, scanning the street.
More of Samedi’s corpses were coming our way. From my position, it seemed like half the damn city.
“Where is Control, anyway?” Frank said.
“Over there, I think,” Ashiira said, pointing to a corpse in a dark uniform.
He was right. Control had lost control.
“They’ve got to be ready to send in the military,” Amos said. “They can’t let the city fall apart like this.”
“The Houses will be holding the military back,” Dannie said. “They don’t like when regular people get involved in this kind of stuff. It’s bad for morale.”
“What about my morale?” Amos said, slamming another deadie in the head with the butt of the shotgun. “They should at least drop a kill team or two.”
“Yellow said this was our game.”
“I hate that guy.”
“Frank, where does it look like the biggest group is coming from?” I asked. He had a better perspective at his height than I did.
He turned a quick circle and then pointed. “That way. Why?”
“Samedi’s looking for something. It stands to reason he sent his corpse army to find it.”
“Good thinking, boss.”
“You want to go into them?” Amos said. “I’d ask you if you’re nuts, but I already know you are.” What
are we supposed to do with the Cleavers over here?”
I looked over at the pair Frank had rescued. They were huddled together next to a car, trying to stay away from the deadies.
“They’re Frank’s problem,” I said.
I felt bad about it, but I knew something like this was going to happen the moment he went rushing into the apartment building. We could barely manage keeping ourselves alive, never mind a pair of frightened people who had no idea how the world had changed with the reversal beyond what the nightly news told them.
“Come on,” I said, starting down the straight.
I was walking right toward the deadies, unarmed and single-handed. I pulled in the death magic, grabbing my spellbook and flipping through it while I approached them. Somehow, almost losing my soul to Samedi had made me bold.
“Damn it, Conor,” Dannie said, running to get in front of me, ducking an awkward swipe by one of the undead and jamming her knife into one eye, and then the other. It fell back, blind and unsure, coming to a standstill. “You could at least try to stay away from them.”
I didn’t listen, continuing forward. Amos caught up with us, using his guns and his strength to push the deadies back. Ash stayed near the back, grabbing the undead who tried to come in from the rear, his touch causing them to smolder and burn. Cecil created copies of us all around the street, using his magic to fool the deadies, sending them scattering.
Frank fell further behind, fighting a mass of them as he tried to defend the couple he had rescued, who were refusing to move.
“Conor,” he shouted. “I need some help.”
I looked back. My heart sank. Frank was almost a real friend. He had cared when I was in trouble. He had already taken my back more times than I could count. But there was only one way to stop Samedi, and that was to get through his army to try to figure out what he was looking for here. Maybe he knew where the original portal spell could be found, and he was trying to get it before I did? Maybe it was something else of value? Either way, if he wanted it, we didn’t want him to have it. It worked both ways.
He slammed another deadie in the face, grabbed a second and tossed it away. A third managed to bite him, and he flung it off, his pustules healing the wound in seconds. The number of undead against him was growing. We were moving further away.
“Conor,” he said again. “Come on, man.”
I held up my arms, spreading them wide as if to say, “what the fuck did you expect?”
He looked back at the couple, and then back at me. Two more deadies grabbed at him, and he shook them off and tossed them aside. A third made it past him, grabbing the man. He cried out as the undead bit his throat, ripping at his flesh.
“No,” the woman screamed.
Frank turned and wrapped his hand around the deadie’s throat, ripping it away from the man. He bent down and reached for the woman, moving to pick her up.
She swiveled away from him, finally getting up the courage to run. She dashed from behind the car, making it a dozen steps before the undead got her, too.
“Damn it,” Frank shouted, his voice echoing through the street. He starting running toward us, bashing any of the deadies that got in his way, crushing the opposition like a linebacker.
He made it to us, tears in his eyes and furious. He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder, squeezing hard enough that I groaned in pain.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You could have helped me.”
“For how long?” I replied. “How long, Frank? Look around. If we all die, then what?”
He glanced around. More of the zombies were coming, building numbers while we stayed in one place.
“Fuck,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, letting me go. “I’m going to pop that asshole’s head off and crush it under my boots.”
“Good thought,” I said, adjusting my suddenly sore shoulder. “Let’s get there first.”
“Wherever there is,” Amos said. “Hey, Baldie, I’ve got a new one.”
“New one what?” I asked.
“Son of a lich,” he replied. “Get it?”
I did.
Son of a lich.
21
Dead tired.
“Geez, I’m fucking exhausted,” Amos said, dropping his ass onto the floor and leaning against a cement column. “I don’t think I’ve killed this many of anything in my whole life.”
“You didn’t actually kill anything,” Ashiira said. “They’re already dead.”
“Fuck your technicalities,” Amos said. “It still counts.”
Dannie peered out through the crack at the bottom of the parking garage’s roll up gate.
“I think we lost them,” she said.
“Finally,” Amos said. “Great idea, Baldie. Let’s walk right into them, and maybe we’ll find out what Samedi is looking for. Yeah, right. The only thing we found was more deadies.”
“We’re getting closer,” I said. “I wish I had a map of the city.”
“I can tell you where we are,” Cecil said. “About two blocks from the Tower of London. I can’t believe the Houses are letting Samedi run rampant in the heart of the city.”
“I wonder what happened to the wizard-moot?” Ashiira said. “It’s been hours. They should have decided something by now.”
“They’re probably arguing amongst themselves while the world burns,” Dannie said. “They might not even notice until it’s gone.”
“Yeah,” Amos agreed. “They’ll pass it off as part of the outbreak, say it took a few days to get it under control. When you’re the most powerful human beings on the planet, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want, pissants be damned.”
“Mr. Yellow isn’t a bad guy, once you get to know him,” Cecil said. “Being the Head of a House is a huge burden.”
“Don’t make excuses for them,” Dannie said. “They might have had good intentions once, but it goes to their heads. They lose touch with reality.”
“Are you even Sensitive?” Cecil said. “How do you know what the Houses are like?”
“Uh-oh,” Amos said.
“I know exactly what the Houses are like,” Dannie said, getting angry. “They use people like toys and throw them away when they break, or don’t work the way they expect them to. They treat the pain and suffering of others like an inconvenience while they play their games. They ignore the innocent and let them die while they argue over whether or not to do anything about it. They hide from the world, sometimes miles beneath the ocean, because our problems are so worthless to them that they can’t bring themselves to care.”
She was practically growling, and I had to put a finger to my lips to get her to quiet down.
“You can say Yellow is a good guy, and maybe he’s not a total asshole like my father was, but he’s not good. Whatever he does, he does for himself. All of the Houses are like that.”
“Who’s your father?” Cecil asked. His face was red, and he looked uncomfortable.
“Mr. Black,” Dannie spat. “May he rot in Hell.”
“Aww, come on, Dannie,” Amos said. “That’s not fair.”
She turned on him. “Fuck you, too, Amos. Just because he had you watching out for me doesn’t mean a thing. He disowned me because I didn’t have magic. How screwed up is that?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Don’t.”
Amos clammed up. So did Cecil. I looked over at Frank. He was still pouting over the deaths of the couple he had tried to save and hadn’t spoken a word all afternoon. I imagined he would get over it. He was too positive to let it get him down for long.
I found my own cement to sit against, lowering myself and putting my head on it. My lungs hurt. My stump hurt. My stabbed stomach hurt. We had covered nearly a dozen blocks through downtown London and managed to make our way through a few thousand deadies. Thankfully, Control had managed to evacuate the area before too many had died. That was the biggest bitch about dealing with the lich. Every single loss was his gain.
&nbs
p; How were we supposed to stop it?
We had snuck into the garage because we were exhausted. All of us. Dannie was damp with sweat, Frank stunk like a sewer, and Amos could wring out his duster if he wanted. Compared to the shape I had started in, I was doing pretty well, but compared to the others, I was still the closest to dropping dead.
“Hey, Death,” I said out loud, wondering if he might be able to hear me. “If you’re out there, we need to talk.”
The others got tense and quiet at the sound of my voice. They weren’t sure whether or not he would make an appearance either. When he didn’t show after a couple of minutes, they relaxed again.
“The Tower of London,” Amos said thirty minutes or so later. “Didn’t that used to be a prison?”
“Yes,” Cecil said. “Although it wasn’t always intended to be. The English Monarchy put a lot of people they believed threats to national security there. There are stories, a lot of stories, about people who were tortured in the dungeons.” He shrugged. “Most of them are exaggerations.”
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“I did a tour there once.”
Amos laughed. “A tour? I can picture you walking around the city with your shorts on and your socks up to your knees, snapping selfies with your tablet.”
“What some people don’t realize is that the magical fields beneath the tower are incredibly strong. Mr. Yellow has speculated that the tower was built there for that very reason.”
“Built there before the reversal?” I said. “How would they know it was magical?”
“I don’t know. How did they know where to build Stonehenge? The fields may have been weak, but some people were still able to sense them. That’s my theory.”
“You’re talking about Merlin?” Frank said, the mention of magic bringing him back to the present. “King Arthur. Camelot.”
“You never know,” Cecil said. “Maybe Merlin was sensitive. Maybe he was a wizard when there weren’t supposed to be any wizards.”
“Or maybe he was just a myth,” I said.
“I’m going with that,” Amos agreed.
“Be that as it may, the density of zombies seems to be the highest near the Tower. Coincidence?”
