by Jody Wallace
Her sword was in the T-Rex’s snout. To use her dagger, she’d have to stash the penlight, reducing visibility. The spider’s radiance didn’t penetrate the room deeply enough to help her avoid becoming brain food. Literally.
When she’d signed on with the Somnium, she’d never expected to become a zombie expert. How was she going to take this thing out?
Sidestepping debris, Maggie dodged right, dodged left. Thank God she was only facing a zombie, not a Whedon or that banshee thing. The zombie shambled in a circle after her, the stupidest game of follow the leader ever.
She leapt onto the bunk ramp, confusing the zombie, and harried the curator. “I’ve got company, sir. Is there room for me yet?”
Was the zombie tall enough to reach into the escape tunnel and drag her down? She was pretty sure it couldn’t climb. It tramped unsteadily on the bottom of the ramp, slipped, and fell to one knee.
The ramp clattered as the zombie landed on it.
“Not quite yet,” the curator said, voice weak. She risked a glanced with the penlight.
Four rungs beneath him. Two to go before she could ascend. Good Lord. If he couldn’t manage a ladder, what the hell had he been thinking, flying to the United States all by himself?
With its one arm, the zombie crawled up the ramp toward her. Maggie slipped off the high side, the weight transferal causing the bunk to jangle again.
Which inspired an idea.
She gave the zombie a second to realize she’d changed locations. Its decaying eyes glared at her, and it rolled to its feet in a weird sideways lurch due to the missing arm. As soon as it stood, she threw herself at it with as much speed as she could muster in the small room.
She tackled it in the direction of the ramp. Its head struck the ground beside the bunk. Maggie jumped up before it could wrap its arm around her. She cranked up the bottom of the ramp with the lever Zeke had used, waited until the zombie began that sideways lurch to its feet, and slammed the sharp edge of the ramp on the zombie’s head.
The blow flattened the wraith. The zombie struggled, reaching up through the corrugated slats with dead fingers. The mass of the metal bunk wasn’t enough to crush its skull, but Maggie knew where she could get more mass, quick. She jumped onto the ramp with both feet.
Wham!
The zombie’s head squashed like a half-baked potato. It wasn’t enough. It continued to wriggle. Eventually it would get lucky. Her teeth clenched, Maggie pogoed up and down until its skull turned to mashed potatoes—and the zombie turned to dust.
The gnarly fingers pinching her shoulder disappeared.
“Hurry up,” she snapped at the curator one last time before slinking into the hallway, despite her fear of the dinosaur. Zeke needed to know she and the curator were all right—and that he should join them in the tube.
The trick would be how fast and high they’d have to climb to escape Karen and the T-Rex. Plus any climbers Zeke hadn’t dusted or new climbers that arrived. Plus any wraiths aboveground or inside the tube, lurking and salivating.
The T-Rex’s back remained toward Maggie. Karen was still trying to convince the angry dinosaur to eat Maggie instead of Zeke, but apparently she’d lost her power over it. The T-Rex assaulted the door of the bunkroom Zeke had apparently taken refuge in with great determination.
Did Karen’s inability to control the wraith mean Adi’s vigil-block was still in place? If Adi was alive, she’d be doing everything she could to save the curator. Would Adi think to check the exit of the escape hatch?
Wary, Maggie searched for monsters. No yowls from the banshee. Legless the Spider vibrated and hissed. A single zombie lay beneath concrete, kicking its legs, but it sounded like more were about to reach the original cave-in at the intersection.
A lot more. Escalating moans resonated down the hallway, a backdrop for the T-Rex’s coughing and snarling.
The remainder of Karen’s horde had found their mistress.
For a moment Maggie fantasized about tight-roping up the T-Rex’s lashing tail like a ninja and plunging her dagger into Karen’s back, but she wasn’t that coordinated. God, was there anything she could do to help Zeke? Sneak attack? Trickery? Miracle?
Hell, staving off the heart attack of terror that threatened would be her biggest accomplishment. Taking out a T-Rex? Only Zeke could do that.
Though he wasn’t having much luck with this one. The dino bashed through the wall and shoved its head into the exposed bunkroom. Karen went into some kind of convulsive fit, beating on the T-Rex, kicking it, cursing it. She pulled a dagger out of its body and stabbed it over and over.
“Goddamn you, let him go,” she screeched. “Obey me or I will send you to the dust.”
After a long, horrifying moment, Zeke emerged. He staggered under the T-Rex’s neck. His arm bled freely, and he clutched it to his chest. He’d lost his sword, his Kevlar vest. His vitality. He hopped along, dragging a leg. His thigh bled in a matched pattern to the wound on his arm.
Like a giant beast had snatched him up in its mouth.
“Faster!” she cried.
He stared across the rubble at her, eyes widening. “Get out of here!”
The T-Rex whirled to chase him. Too enthusiastically. It slid, bounced off a wall. The ground shook. A Kevlar vest fell out of its mouth to the ground.
“The curator’s safe.” She had no idea if that were true. “I told you. I’m with you.”
She hurried to him, caught him with her good arm. What a pair they were. The smell of his blood was pure copper, cleansing the stench of wraith from her sinuses. They staggered together.
He tried to shove her toward the bunkroom. “Leave me.”
“You’re not getting out of this relationship that easy. We both climb.” She shouldered most of his weight, gritted her teeth, and dragged him along.
“I can’t.” Pallor and grimness leached his face of confidence. “Fucker bit me. Something’s broken.”
The ground continued to jounce. The T-Rex was closing in on them.
Shit, shit, shit.
They’d nearly reached the bunkroom. Zombies poured through the intersection, along with another radioactive spider. Its venomous, green light turned the zombies into… Hell, into moldier, scarier zombies.
Spiders could definitely climb.
“Oh, God.” That spider would be up the tube in seconds to take them out.
“Get her,” Karen chanted. “Get her, get her. Leave him alone.”
Something huge and hard pounded Maggie in the back. She flew through the air and landed in a graceless sprawl against a solid wall. Her breath exited stage left as her entire body thumped with pain.
The T-Rex butted Zeke with its skull. That must have been what hit her. Zeke staggered forward, barely keeping his balance. Incongruously, Maggie noticed her sword bristling out of the dinosaur’s snout.
The dinosaur opened its maw. Blood discolored its jagged teeth. Zeke’s blood. It snatched at its prey.
He dodged—by falling to his knee. Karen’s sharp sob of dismay upset the advancing zombies. They moaned in a symphony of bassoon, oboe and death.
Maggie found herself crawling into danger, crawling to be with Zeke. They met in the middle of the hallway, several yards from the one-legged spider, and embraced.
They would die in each other’s arms, like Romeo and Juliet, except they’d be eaten by a dinosaur instead of drinking poison like emo idiots.
“I love you so much.” She stroked his face and kissed him. “We did everything we could.”
“Dammit, Maggie.” He rested his cheek against hers. “I failed you.”
“You love me. That’s not a failure.”
The T-Rex roared over them, and Maggie couldn’t resist a glance.
So. Many. Teeth.
It lowered its head slowly, as if savoring the best meal of its life. Its sc
aly nostrils huffed. Drool dripped between its teeth, landing on Zeke’s bloody leg.
Great. The T-Rex was a dinosaur gourmand.
A shadow fell across them, a wavering figure between them and the spider’s glow. Had the zombies already arrived?
No. Not zombies. Karen inserted herself between Zeke and the T-Rex.
“You will not touch him.” She spread her arms. “I forbid it.”
“I think we’re already dead,” Maggie said, stunned.
Zeke held her tight. “Can’t be. I hurt too much.”
She considered burying her face in Zeke’s neck and praying, but the face-off between the T-Rex and its mistress was too compelling. The monster rolled its head—not telling Karen no, but resisting her. It roared.
Then it chomped her up like beef jerky.
She screamed. Maggie watched in horror as the T-Rex whipped Karen’s body back and forth like a chew toy. Karen’s thin arms and legs flailed. Blood sprayed.
Maggie teetered to her feet and tried to pull Zeke with her. Could they escape while the T-Rex devoured its grisly appetizer?
Not if they were surrounded by an ocean of zombies.
Stepping anywhere and everywhere, the zombies jogged relentlessly toward the dino. They knocked Maggie back to the floor. They walked on her and Zeke, stumbling and moaning. Zeke grabbed her, rolled them across painful rocks, through zombie legs, to huddle as close to the wall as they could.
The zombies took no notice of the humans. They growled and surrounded the dinosaur, batting it with decomposing but powerful hands. The new spider skittered along the ceiling and sprayed the dino with webbing.
The T-Rex, reluctant to give up its snack, used its head as a battering ram to send zombies hurtling in every direction. Still they attacked. Maggie couldn’t see much besides the T-Rex and wraith legs. A forest of legs. A concert of moans.
Finally, the T-Rex had had enough. It released Karen’s body with a roar and went after the zombies. The war, the real war, was on.
Karen’s body walloped the wall near Zeke and Maggie and landed beside them with a thump.
The zombies didn’t step on her.
“If you can’t climb,” Maggie whispered to Zeke, “we can limp out the front. They’re distracted.”
With an unzombielike groan, Zeke backed himself into a sitting position against the wall. The zombies veered around their little island of suffering humanity as they avenged their mistress. The T-Rex snapped necks, tore off limbs, and tried to eat the zombies, but they turned to dust when it savaged them.
The dinosaur surged through the horde and back toward the intersection. The spider launched itself onto the dino’s head. The T-Rex promptly crashed into a wall.
The entire complex juddered from the impact.
Karen’s eyelids fluttered. Opened. She noticed Zeke and Maggie huddled against the wall. Maggie gulped and tried not to look at Karen’s ghastly lower half, the part of her that had been in the T-Rex’s powerful jaws.
“Zeke,” Karen croaked. She coughed, and blood trickled from her mouth. “I tried to stop it from hurting you. The vigil-block disappeared. But the T-Rex was too far gone. Too big to control.”
“Where’s your Master?” Zeke asked. In the semi-lull, he fixed a garrote as a tourniquet around his leg.
“I don’t know.” Tears trickled from Karen’s eyes like the blood trickled from her mouth. “I did everything he told me, but I…I couldn’t bear for you to die.”
The small, weak admission struck Maggie somewhere deep. She felt unexpected sympathy for Karen join the aches, pains and fears whirling through her body.
“We’re all going to die because of you,” Zeke told her, his gaze so hard Maggie shivered. “If Hell exists, you’re going there.”
“I know. But I love you the way you love her.” Karen gagged, and this time a larger gush of blood flowed down her cheek. “I only wanted to be with you, but he wanted you for his collection.”
“Collection?”
Karen convulsed instead of answering. Zeke lurched to her side, peering into her face. “What collection?”
Maggie tottered to her feet. The zombies pursued the T-Rex, which cleared the area temporarily, but not even a thousand zombies had a chance against the thunder lizard. It would finish off the other wraiths and be back—for them. “Let’s go, Zeke.”
Karen’s open eyes stared up at them—still blue despite the green pall of the one-legged spider. Her jaw worked a few more times, spilling blood, before she grew still.
Her eyes remained open.
“Good riddance.” Without another glance at the dead woman, Zeke hobbled to the bunkroom, one hand on the wall to balance himself.
Maggie stooped, closed Karen’s unseeing eyes, and followed Zeke to the metal ramp. They had a T-Rex to survive, a curator to save, a ladder to climb…and a life to live.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lill rappelled down the escape hatch in the nick of time. Between Zeke’s blood loss and broken leg, Maggie’s wrist, and the curator’s frailty, they hadn’t clambered far enough up the tube to avoid the T-Rex much longer. When Lill had clipped them into harnesses and hauled them to the surface, the gigantic wraith had been one infuriated bash from shaking them out of the tube like the last squirt of ketchup.
But Zeke couldn’t regret not ascending the tube as a group the first time they’d discussed it. The Somnium reinforcements wouldn’t have been up top to clear the remnants of the horde, which had indeed been waiting for them. The spiders would have dragged them out of the tube to their deaths. If not the spiders, then the Nosferatus, the banshee, or whatever else Karen had conjured after the vigil-block dissolved.
And he wouldn’t have gotten the chance to see Karen Kingsbury die.
He, Maggie and the curator were retrieved from the shaft and transported to the coma station, which had weathered the horde better than the outbunker. Though many alucinators and Somnium employees had been lost, in the end they’d destroyed the monsters aboveground and hidden the evidence of the encounter from the human populace. Which hadn’t been hard, considering how remote an area they’d chosen for their facility.
Still lingering in the terra firma and causing trouble, however, was the T-Rex, trapped in the outbunker and the subject of much debate the past week between the surviving members of the coma station leadership and another individual who’d arrived in the midst of the chaos and seemed disinclined to leave.
The younger curator, the one who’d dealt with Harrisburg. The one who’d met with Maggie’s brother, Hayden, to evaluate the computer model the guy had been developing to map the dreamsphere.
The one the elderly curator had called Moody.
The one who was currently ringing a peal over the old guy’s head as if he were nothing but a disobedient neonati.
“What you did was against all protocol and common sense.” The tall, dark and glowering curator frowned at the old man in the hospital bed. “Not only did we vote that you be relieved of field duties due to your health issues, but we also voted that you’d take on no more students. Your staff is at capacity.”
“My health is wonderful, for my age,” the old curator said, quirking an eyebrow at his irate colleague. “And who but I could adopt two bellatorix? I know more than the rest of you pups put together.”
While this was as close to an inside look that Zeke had gotten into the workings of the mysterious Orbis, he’d be more reassured if the curators weren’t both behaving like jackasses.
Well, they were as human as he was. They were just a shitload sneakier.
“None of us know how to train a bellatorix,” Moody barked at the old man. “It’s been too long since any have erupted. Ms. Mackey and Mr. Garrett will be forced to train themselves. I trust they’ll keep us informed.”
“Of course we will.” Zeke discreetly checked his watch. When wa
s lunch? Maggie usually ate with him, the best thirty minutes of his day. Otherwise, as a nearly-able-bodied person, the coma station leadership had kept her busy all week. “You saw us in action. You know it’s not a problem if there’s no psycho on the loose, mucking shit up.”
“Indeed.” Moody cast Zeke a skeptical glance. After assessing Maggie and Zeke in the dreamsphere, the younger curator had formally matriculated Maggie with flying colors. He’d also had them demonstrate their bellatorix abilities. “I believe we’ll establish a series of routine appointments.”
Granted, it should have been Adi doing Maggie’s matriculation, but the former vigil had disappeared. Word was that she was officially suspended from duty for obstruction and conspiracy to commit fraud. The curators wouldn’t tell them more, only that they were lucky they weren’t all suspended. Hiding the abnormalities in the manifestations—such as the existence of physical corpses—had impeded the Orbis’s understanding of the situation.
Nobody had mentioned Adi’s suspicions about curator healing abilities, which had inspired Adi’s misdeeds in the first place. Zeke saw no reason to. The senior curator’s injuries and ill health trashed Adi’s theory. If the old man had possessed the ability to fix his body, would he be at high risk for heart attacks?
Doubtful.
“I’d be happy to meet with Margaret and Ezekiel and monitor their progress,” the old curator offered. The mechanical hospital bed whirred as he worked the lever to raise his head. “I’ve grown fond of those two crazy kids. They saved my life.”
“A life that shouldn’t have been threatened in the first place.” The curator paced to the monitor that beeped steadily beside the old man’s bed. “Do we have to put a damn ankle bracelet on you?”
The old man winked at Zeke behind the other curator’s back. “Will it have bling?”
“You try me, old man. You try me.”
“Because you lack perspective. We only live once, son, and I like to keep in touch with the rest of the world. Staying cooped up in the Orb all the time makes you a little…” The curator swirled his finger beside his temple. “Kooky.”
