‘What if I say no?’ Colm asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
The Ghost gently laid the shield against the security system console and pressed a button on the control panel. Two of the computer screens flickered to life. When the images appeared Colm gasped. Each screen showed a picture of one of the shops in the shopping centre and even though the lights weren’t on in there, the cameras were on night vision. The images were clear enough for Colm to recognise the people locked inside. His mother was in one shop, his father in another. And outside each one he could see shadowy figures at the shop door. Pawing at the glass, pounding in some cases. Trying to break in and devour the people inside.
‘You’re a monster,’ Colm shouted.
‘The glass is strong, but my army of the undead is strong too. Within minutes they will have broken in and your parents will not be strong enough to fight them off. They will die. Unpleasantly.’
He looked down at the control panel and flicked the switches for another couple of screens. As they flickered on Colm saw The Brute and Lauryn, or some people who looked very like them, running along the hallway. The Ghost hadn’t looked up, but as soon as he did he would see the two escapees. I can’t let that happen, Colm thought, I have to distract him.
He picked up a manual from the desk beside him and threw it at The Ghost. The man easily batted it away, but it was enough to draw his attention away from the monitors. ‘Enough, we have no time for your childish temper tantrums.’
‘Why are you doing this to my parents? It’s me you want.’
‘Your parents are nothing to me, but as long as I have them you’ll do what I tell you. You know of the Abbatage ceremony?’
Upon hearing the word Abbatage Colm pretended to faint. It was the oldest trick in the book. He collapsed theatrically, knocking the shield from where it lay against the security console. The Ghost caught it before it hit the ground.
‘Stop playing games, boy,’ he growled. ‘Get up.’
Colm opened his eyes and did his best to feign embarrassment at being caught out. He grabbed the console and hauled himself to his feet. As The Ghost was examining the shield carefully for damage, Colm hit the microphone switch with his elbow.
‘We’re never going to find him,’ The Brute panted as they jogged up the stairs.
‘You don’t believe in positive thinking, do you?’ Lauryn said.
‘I’m Irish. Most of us prefer to grumble and we love to expect the worst.’
They reached the top of the stairs. Lauryn stopped and unzipped the schoolbag. She reached in and produced a torch.
‘Man, that bag has everything we need,’ The Brute said, impressed.
Lauryn switched on the torch. They took a couple of steps forward and leaned over the railing, which gave them a view of the black and white tiled floor below. There were plenty of people moving down there. Unfortunately, they were all citizens of the country of Undead.
‘Where are they all coming from?’ Lauryn wondered.
‘I’m more concerned with where they’re going.’
‘Huh?’
‘They seem to be heading this way.’
‘We can outrun them,’ Lauryn said.
‘We can for now. But we’re going to tire eventually,’ The Brute replied. ‘Maybe he’s not here. Colm, I mean. Just ’cos The Ghost locked us up in a shopping centre with a load of freaky creatures doesn’t mean that Colm’s here. He could have other plans for him.’
Lauryn thought that The Brute had a point. That didn’t mean she was going to admit it, though. She had to believe that Colm was here somewhere, that they were going to rescue him and defeat The Ghost.
‘No one has ever performed that ceremony successfully,’ boomed a voice on the public address system. The speakers in the shopping centre crackled, distorting the voice slightly, but The Brute would have recognised that nasally whine anywhere. It was his cousin.
‘Well, it seems Colm is here,’ he said.
‘And he’s still alive,’ Lauryn said in an I-told-you-so tone.
But then they heard another voice, a cold, even voice.
‘You have a choice,’ The Ghost said. ‘Either help me with the Abbatage or watch everyone you care about die in a slow and horrible manner.’
His words gave The Brute and Lauryn the creeps.
‘He doesn’t mean me. Colm doesn’t care about me that much. That means I won’t be one of the ones dying in a slow and horrible manner,’ said The Brute.
‘It doesn’t mean that at all,’ Lauryn replied.
‘I know, I was just trying to think positively.’
The Ghost grabbed the microphone from Colm’s hand and wrenched it from its socket, knocking over a computer screen, sending it crashing to the ground. Shards of monitor glass spilled across the floor.
‘What did you hope to achieve by broadcasting our conversation?’
‘That’s not your concern,’ said Colm, as bravely as he could while backing away from The Ghost. He didn’t feel brave any longer.
The man stared at him. He threw the microphone at Colm. It caught him on the side of the head. The blow stung, but he tried not to show it. He didn’t even flinch.
‘Anyway, you can’t perform the ceremony. You need three Lazarus Keys and only two still exist,’ Colm said. ‘We destroyed the third one last year.’ On that night, which now seemed like it was centuries ago, Colm had tricked the rat-faced man into swallowing the third key and it had dissolved in the acid in his stomach.
The Ghost turned away for a moment, seemingly unconcerned by Colm’s statement. Then he played his hand. He held out a velvet bag. He pulled open the drawstring and Colm saw a small, sparkly object fall into The Ghost’s palm, quickly followed by a second one. The keys began to glow. For a moment, despite his certainty that only two remained, he expected the worst. But then his heart leaped. There were two keys. Only two. He almost wept with relief. Then, ‘Look closer,’ the man said, holding the bag open.
Colm took a step towards him and peered in. There at the bottom of the bag was the third key. It looked smaller than he remembered, pitted and worn, but it was still unmistakably a Lazarus Key.
‘But how?’ he stammered. ‘We destroyed …’ he trailed off, horrified.
‘I cut this from your enemy’s stomach after his death,’ said The Ghost.
‘But Drake said it would have been destroyed in seconds.’
‘Drake isn’t as smart as he likes to think he is.’
‘You’re sick.’
‘More than you know.’
‘It won’t work,’ Colm said. ‘It can’t work. The keys have to be complete to work,’ he cried, desperation creeping into his voice.
‘It is not the keys that need to be complete, it’s the energy they contain. I may only have part of the key, but that is enough. Now all I need is the last energy that flowed into it.’
In a flash, Colm saw what he meant. The last life force to enter the key. The last person to hold it in his hand before it was partly destroyed. In other words – him. Now he understood why the key had become such an obsession. As long as the key survived, even if it was damaged, he was still part of it. His was the energy it had tasted last and on some level he had retained a link to it because of this.
‘I won’t do it, whatever it is you want me to do. I may have come willingly up to now, but you can’t force me to play my part in the ritual,’ he cried defiantly. ‘I won’t allow you to become immortal and carry on doing all the horrible things …’
‘Then I will die,’ said The Ghost. ‘But so will you. And before you do, you will watch this. Look.’
The Ghost pointed a long, slim finger at one of the screens. A hand had broken through the glass in the front door of the shop his mother was in. Colm watched with growing horror as one of the slavering creatures smashed its hands repeatedly against the glass, chipping away more and more each time. That was his mother in there. Terrified. His mother.
‘NO,’ screamed Colm at the screen, b
ut she couldn’t hear him.
Twenty-Four
‘Where’s the control room?’ Lauryn asked, as they set off running again. They had to find it. The one with all the CCTV cameras and microphones and stuff like that. That’s where the PA system would be, wouldn’t it?
‘I haven’t a clue,’ The Brute replied.
They rushed past shop after shop – Jack McD’s DVDs; Austin Flowers – Lauryn’s boots click-clacking on the floor. In the distance, far behind them, they could hear the wailing of the undead as they continued their slow, steady pursuit of the teenagers.
‘Stop,’ The Brute called out, as he skidded to a halt. ‘Look.’
There was a floor plan of the shopping centre stuck to the wall behind some perspex glass. A map detailing where all the shops, toilets and car parks were. It was colour-coded and easy to read. Lauryn looked up and down, left and right, letting her eyes drift over every part of the map.
‘I can’t see the control room anywhere on this,’ she said.
The Brute ran his finger over the listings: card shop, toy shop, clothes shops, toilets, newsagents. If he’d wanted to buy a book or a bar of chocolate or pay a visit to the bathroom he’d have no problem finding the right place, but there was nothing to let them know the location of any security or control centre.
‘Do you hear something?’ Lauryn asked suddenly.
The Brute turned. She was right. There was a banging noise coming from somewhere, like someone pounding on glass. He took off. Three shops farther down he found the source of the noise.
‘Shine the light here,’ he said, pointing at Murphy’s Paw, a pet shop.
On the other side of the front door, amongst the squawking parrots and the more silent snakes and goldfish, were some familiar faces.
‘Mom!’ Lauryn cried. She grabbed the large silver handle and tried to wrench the door open. It wouldn’t budge.
Her mother beamed at her. She looked like a wreck, but she was alive and that was all Lauryn cared about. She wasn’t alone – Professor Peter Drake was just behind her.
‘Lauryn, what are you doing here? Are you OK?’ Lauryn’s mother, Marie, shouted through the glass.
‘I’m fine, Mom,’ Lauryn shouted back, still tugging at the door.
‘Thank goodness it’s you. We saw the flashlight beam when you were farther down the hallway and we decided to take a calculated risk to attract your attention. Can you get us out of here?’
‘Sure! Why didn’t you pick the lock, Prof?’
The professor held his hands up in front of him. They were swathed in bandages. ‘Our captor must have suspected I had such a talent.’
‘Broken?’
‘They’ll heal, but they’re pretty useless right now. Is it …’
Lauryn knew him so well she didn’t have to wait for him to finish the question.
‘Yep, The Ghost. He’s got us good this time, but we’re not beaten yet.’
Two others who had been hiding in the back of the shop came forward when they heard the discussion going on – The Brute’s mum and his stepfather, Seanie.
‘Ma,’ he shouted in delight.
His mother ran to the door. She pressed her face up against the glass. ‘My lovely, lovely boy. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, Ma. You?’
Lauryn saw that The Brute bore a startling resemblance to his mother. If you put a brown curly wig and a dress on the boy, they could have been the same person. She was slightly less muscly and a good deal less orange, but otherwise …
‘I’m fine, Michael. What are you doing in Dublin and why are you out in the middle of the night in a t-shirt? You’ll catch your death of cold.’
‘I’m fine the way I am,’ The Brute replied. He nodded curtly to Seanie, who nodded back.
Lauryn pulled an elasticated headlamp from the schoolbag, put it on, and in seconds was on her knees picking at the lock.
‘Lauryn,’ The Brute said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll have your mom out of there in a second.’
‘No, it’s not that, it’s just that those zombies or undead or whatever you call them are getting far too close for my liking.’ The Brute shone the torch down the hallway. The light scanned the empty faces of at least ten of the undead. They were no more than forty metres away, slowly closing in on them.
‘I’ll be quick,’ she said.
The Brute wasn’t convinced. Even though the creatures were shuffling forward slowly, he didn’t think Lauryn was going to be quick enough. The creatures’ progress was like that of a tortoise heading towards a rock – interminably slow, but the tortoise was inevitably going to make it because the rock was going nowhere.
‘I’m going to check we’re all clear in the other direction,’ The Brute said.
‘Huh?’
‘This level we’re on – inside the railing, it’s like a running track. It runs in a loop. If the undead dudes get closer we’ll run away and they’ll follow us. We’ll do a complete circuit until we end up back here again. I’m guessing they’re too thick to realise they could turn around, so it’ll take them ages to catch up with us.’
‘Good thinking,’ Lauryn said, working away on the lock. ‘Rats. This one ain’t easy. Who’d have thought a pet store needed such heavy security?’
‘Michael, where do you think you’re going? It’s dangerous out there. I’ve seen those zombie yokes,’ The Brute’s mother roared through the glass. ‘I’m telling you to stay here with me unless you want to be … grounded.’
‘Listen to your mother,’ Seanie shouted.
‘Don’t tell me what to do, you’re not my father,’ The Brute shouted back. ‘And Ma, grounded? You learned that off the telly. Anyway, they’re not exactly zombies, they’re …’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll be fine. Please just stay quiet so we can focus and let Lauryn and me sort it out.’
Deirdre loved her son with every last fibre of her being, but even she found it hard to believe he could sort this out. She’d seen his bedroom. He couldn’t even sort out putting underpants and socks into a laundry basket.
‘OK, I’m just going to take a quick recce in this direction to make sure the coast is clear,’ The Brute said, disappearing into the semi-darkness.
‘You do that,’ Lauryn said.
‘Perhaps the boy could just try and escape from the mall and raise the alarm,’ the professor shouted.
‘Nah,’ Lauryn said, her eyes still on the lock. ‘He’s trying to find his cousin. Remember that kid Colm? We’ve got to rescue him too.’
‘My nephew’s out there?’ Deirdre asked, but no one paid any attention to her.
‘Those creatures are getting very close, Lauryn,’ her mother said nervously.
Lauryn looked up again. Twenty metres away.
‘I’ve still got a few seconds. Hey Prof, ever heard of something called Agg … Add … Abb–’
Professor Drake’s face fell. ‘Abbatage?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘It couldn’t be. He’d have to have the three Lazarus Keys to perform …’ he said muttering to himself. ‘Where did you hear that word?’
‘Abba-whatsit? We caught a snippet of a conversation between Colm and the guy we think is The Ghost. What does it mean?’
‘If The Ghost performs Abbatage he will become immortal. He’ll be the most powerful man who has ever existed.’
‘Since he’s pretty much pure evil, I guess that’d be a bad thing, huh?’
‘He’ll make Vlad the Impaler and Attila the Hun look like errant schoolboys,’ Drake said. ‘Oh, this is bad. Very, very bad. Worse than bad. It’s apocalyptic.’
‘Lauryn! The zombies! They’re getting closer.’
‘Relax, Mom, I got it. How do we stop this Abbatage thing?’
‘We have to stop the ceremony. From what I’ve read, if the ceremony is interrupted then the Abbatage cannot be completed. There’s not a whole lot on it. As far as I can ascertain it’s only been tried on a handful of occasions many, many centuries a
go. I can’t say if it worked, but I don’t recall meeting any immortals recently.’
‘I’ll get you guys out of here, then we’ll find The Ghost and stop the ceremony,’ Lauryn said.
‘I admire your optimism, but it’s not that simple. The interrupter has to be extremely strong. Mentally, I mean. And there’s more.’ Professor Drake absent-mindedly stroked his chin, then let out a yelp of pain. When you have broken hands, chin stroking is not something you should indulge in.
‘What about my Michael? He’s not going to try and stop this weirdness, is he?’ The Brute’s mother asked. Seanie wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly.
‘Prof, what’s the “more” you mentioned?’
‘I can’t be one hundred percent certain …’
‘Prof!’
‘The interrupter stops the transfer of immortality. When the keys don’t work as one the power is too much for anyone to take. The person performing the ceremony dies.’
‘And the interrupter dies too?’ Lauryn said.
‘No, worse than that. He or she will drift into a living death, slowly becoming a thing rather than a person. A monster of the night.’
A macaw squawked and began to throw itself against the bars of its cage. The other birds joined in.
‘Lauryn,’ Marie shouted. She thumped her fists against the glass to warn her daughter.
‘I said it’s OK, Mom. I got it,’ Lauryn snapped.
She glanced in the direction of the creatures, the LED headlamp illuminating their open, slavering jaws. Fifteen, twenty of them. They were right on top of her.
Lauryn’s face drained of colour. ‘Looks like I haven’t got it after all.’
The Brute waved the torch left and right, moving as quietly and carefully as he could. The last thing he needed was to accidentally sneak up on one of the undead. He could outrun them certainly, but if one of them appeared out of the darkness and grabbed him … he shuddered at the thought.
Lauryn’s voice had grown distant until it was mixed with the wailing of the undead creatures and it was impossible to tell the two sounds apart. Hurry up with that lock, girl, he muttered to himself.
Colm & the Ghost's Revenge Page 15
