We pushed past the rows of glass cases. I did my best not to linger, I swear, but some of these things were just too awesome to pass up. There was a staff in one of those cases that supposedly belonged to Moses. In with an ornate sarcophagus was a dagger that'd belonged to Tutankhamen, and the blade was made from the iron found in a meteorite. I could have wandered the armory for hours.
The deeper we went into the showroom, though, the more I felt a strange dread welling up in me. It was a really peculiar feeling, like something was sneaking up on me. I stopped now and then, trying to sense where it was coming from, but couldn't pin down the source. Joe and Germaine felt nothing.
I took another step, and the feeling intensified by double.
“There's something going on in this place,” I said. “I can feel something weighing down on me. Something that doesn't want me here.”
Germaine perked up. “It's the sword! It's gotta be the sword!”
“Think so?” I asked, bracing myself against one of the cases. “It feels... it feels all wrong. I have the strangest feeling in my heart.” The thumping in my chest was surging up to new heights with each step I took. Whatever it was, Gadreel really disliked it.
“Follow that feeling, kid. You might lead us right to it!” urged Germaine.
“Yeah, keep going, Lucy. I'll bet it's the angel sword's aura!” said Joe.
Maybe Joe was onto something, but suddenly I just wanted to turn tail and get out of there. I was being actively pushed away by some force I couldn't see.
I pressed on with no little difficulty, walking towards the back of the room. I kept my head down, just focusing on the awful feeling that overcame me. I had a weird taste in my mouth. It was vaguely metallic; and this, too, only grew stronger the further I walked. Then, studying the way ahead, I noticed that the showroom branched off into a long hallway. “It's this way, whatever it is,” I said.
We started down the hall.
THIRTY-ONE
“Question is, which room is it?” asked Germaine as we stood at the end of the hallway.
We'd walked more than thirty feet and passed no less than ten doors on either side of the hall which all bore signs reading “no admittance”. Any one of them could have housed the sword we were looking for.
The air in this hallway was all wrong, and I was picking up more than just a bad vibe now. There was something more tangible than dread in the air, a certain stench I felt reasonably sure I'd whiffed before.
The smell of the grave.
“Joe,” I said, “keep your eyes open, man. There's something in here with us. I smell something weird. The living dead, maybe.”
Joe whipped open the Zippo. “You sure?”
Sniffing at the air, Germaine scoffed. “Nah, you're imagining things, kid. My sensory apparatus is a lot more sensitive than a human's, and I can't smell shit.”
I took another step, glancing at the stretch of doors ahead. “I'm not so sure.”
By the looks of it, this hallway stretched another fifty or so yards before branching off in two different directions. I was about ready to drop a trail of breadcrumbs, what with all the wandering we'd done. This place was massive, easy to get lost in. Pressing on, I booked it to the next split in the hall, the feeling of oppression never waning and my stomach playing host to a knot of dread.
Arriving at the end of the hall, the stench of death hit me harder than ever, and a glance around the corner showed me why that was. “Stop,” I warned Joe in a whisper, pushing him back the way we'd come. “Zombies. And...” I squinted, trying to size up and describe what I was seeing. “Something else.”
There were at least ten zombies standing in the hall just around the left-hand bend. And that “something else”, as best I could tell, was a massive humanoid shape. It wasn't Agamemnon; I was pretty confident of that. Unless he'd gained a hell of a lot of weight since last we met, and a few feet in height. No, this thing amongst the zombies stood a good ten feet tall, and its limbs were piles of ruddy hamburger. Was it a zombie? It certainly reeked like one.
“What do you make of that thing, Germaine?” I asked, brushing the spider off of my shoulder.
He hit the ground and peeked around the corner, quickly skittering back towards me. “That's no good. It's a construct, kiddo. A flesh golem.”
“A flesh golem?” asked Joe. “What the hell is that?”
Patting the floor with two of his arms, Germaine tried to explain. “It's a mountain of rotting meat, is what it is. Animated like those suits of armor, sort of. Except this thing's gonna have an attitude. When Agamemnon said he was going to provide his own security, he wasn't bluffing.”
“So you're telling me it's a zombie on steroids?” asked Joe, hitting the striker and turning on the lighter. “I'll toast it from a distance. No problem. They'll all burn before they even catch sight of us.”
“Do it,” I urged him. “When they're out of the way we'll storm the chamber they're camped out in front of. The sword we're looking for is in it.”
The sword was almost certainly around this next corner, and all we needed to do was destroy some zombies to get to it. Easy-peasy, right?
Not right.
I glanced around the corner, giving Joe the thumbs up.
And then I suddenly recoiled. “H-hold on,” I gasped.
Joe had already pinched off a fireball, and was ready to toss it. “What's the matter, Lucy?”
I palmed at my brow, finding a cold sweat brewing there. I looked around the corner once more, wanting to be sure of what I'd seen. “G-guys,” I said, “we need another plan.”
Germaine crawled up my back and perched himself atop my head. “What's wrong with you, kid? You're shaking like a leaf.”
Damn straight I was. “My brother is over there.”
Standing amidst the group of zombies was my dead brother, Conrad.
***
This was no time to be getting sentimental, and Germaine told me as much. “Listen, I'm real sorry for your loss and all that, but we've gotta take these things down, Lucy. Got me? The sword is probably just beyond there.”
I'd known for a long time that I might meet my brother in battle. Conrad had been raised by Agamemnon, just like I'd feared. And the timing of our reunion couldn't have been any worse. This was the moment of truth, the moment when we were supposed to snatch the weapon that would help us save the world. But here I was, chickening out at the last minute.
I'm pretty sure I've talked to you a bit about my older brother before. Conrad and I grew up together. He was a few years older than me, and to make a long story short, everyone loved the crap out of him. He was a charismatic guy, good looking and sharp. In the end, though, a drug addiction had done him in. I was the one who found him after he overdosed in the bathroom at my mom's place. Once upon a time, everyone used to tell me that I looked just like him, and when I turned the corner and saw him standing there with the rest, I could still see a faint resemblance.
A fair bit of skin had been lost to the processes of decomposition, and his face no longer maintained its usual shape. What remained of his face had dried up, was clinging precariously to the bones. The corners of his mouth were cracked, oozing black liquid too putrid to be considered proper blood, but his eyes... Those ice blue eyes were still as clear as they'd been on the day he died. It was chilling. I had zero doubt that it was him. Further driving my conviction was the outfit he was wearing. It was the suit my mother had chosen to bury him in. The grave had tarnished it, sure, but it was the same damn suit. I was positive.
“What's the hold-up, Lucy?” asked Joe. “That isn't your brother over there... it's a zombie. Let me torch them and we'll complete the mission, OK? Just stand back.”
I gripped his forearm and pushed him back into the hall. “No, hold on. Please.”
I'm no softie. I mess things up with my brashness all the time, and in any other situation I'm the kind of guy to shoot first, ask questions later. This find had stop
ped me in my tracks, though. Maybe you'll shake your head at me for screeching to a halt so close to the finish line, but this wasn't something I could do. I couldn't just toast Conrad up like the rest.
It didn't matter what Joe said, how he tried to justify this. That was my brother over there, for God's sake.
“Lucy,” said Germaine, trying to talk some sense into me, “that thing over there really ain't your brother. I promise you that. It may be his body, sure, and I don't blame ya for being upset. But it isn't like you can chat with him. It's not like he's standing there just waiting to catch up with ya. He's a shell, and he's being manipulated by Agamemnon, just like the countless others you've encountered. The only thing you can do... the only merciful thing you can do, is to destroy him and put him out of his misery.”
Wise words for a spider. I knew Germaine was right, of course. Hell, I'd known that to be the case before he'd even opened his mouth. But it didn't make it any easier on me, and it didn't incite me to take action, either. “I need a minute to think,” I said, slumping against the wall.
“We ain't got a minute, Lucy!” said Joe. “I'm going in.”
“Joe, c'mon...” I reached out to stop him.
Too late.
“We're wrapping this up now!” shouted Joe, revealing himself to the zombies assembled in the hall. The fire jumped from his lighter, tongues of flame raining down upon the shambling figures.
“No!” I reached out and batted the Zippo from his grasp. The silver case struck the floor and slid down the hall, disappearing at the zombies' feet. From behind the wall of smaller undead I heard a wild, inhuman cry.
The hulking, fleshy construct was coming for us.
I watched as the lesser foes disintegrated in the flames. Forced cremation is probably an awful way to go, and the undead loosed hisses and shrieks as their bodies fell away in the fire. My brother was among them. I watched in stunned silence as what remained of his body was consumed by Joe's attack. In the space of a few seconds Conrad was reduced to ash. One minute he'd been there, the next, poof, he was nothing but cinders.
I'd seen more zombies than I could count meet that same fate. But this time, it bothered me. It bothered me to no end. My brother clawed at the air as he went down, and even though Germaine and Joe had assured me that he wasn't really alive, the pain in those blue eyes said otherwise. How could I really be sure that nothing remained of my brother in that reanimated husk? I hadn't even had a chance to reach out to him, to try and reason with him. Maybe he would have recognized me...
As his body crumbled, I knew I'd never get the chance to find out. Reason told me that, yeah, he was just like all of the other zombies I'd faced off against. Mindless. Vicious. A servant of the necromancer. But you know what? Reason could fuck off. That burning body was my older brother, the guy I'd grown up with. The one I'd played soccer with in the back yard. The one who'd taught me how to ride a bike.
It would have been nice to reflect on Conrad's life just then, to have a moment of silence, at least.
Instead, I caught a wrecking ball to the gut.
THIRTY-TWO
A cannonball-shaped fist struck me in the center of mass and lifted me off of the ground. The fleshy construct, reeking of decay, had thundered down the hall and lashed out at the first target within reach. The breath was ejected from my lungs, and for a minute there, everything went blank.
Next thing I knew, I was slammed into the stone wall. The smooth, ancient stone I'd so admired gave way as my body struck it. When the creature finally drew its fist away, I was nestled in the rock, half-buried in rubble. It reared back for another hit, a hammer-fist this time, intending to mash me into jelly.
Joe had managed to dodge the thing, and Germaine was cowering in a corner.
The click of the Zippo sounded, and when next I opened my eyes, the behemoth in front of me was roaring in pain. The creature was like something out of a Hammer horror film. Several different corpses had gone into its construction, but the parts didn't always mesh. Its hands were round and solid, lacking fingers, and covered in creases like deep wrinkles. Its face was expressionless, featuring eyes of different sizes and a cavernous hack-job of a mouth.
And now it was on fire.
The beast fell back, thrashing as the flames consumed more and more of its body. Compared to the other zombies, this thing was taking its sweet time to burn. It was thicker, meatier, more resistant to fire than the others had been.
I decided to help it along.
Pulling myself out of the busted wall, I paused long enough to take a deep breath. The jumble of broken ribs in my abdomen popped as I did so, the bones slowly returning to their proper places as if by magnetism. Then, jumping into the air, I buried my heel in the flesh golem's contorted face.
The hall shook as the creature fell to the ground. It wasn't long after that when the fire finally did its job. Standing close by like an orchestra conductor, Joe waved his hands back and forth, moving the Zippo furiously as though it were a baton. The flames had spread, and the construct's body crackled as it fell to pieces. It was dead.
“Holy shit,” said Germaine, crawling down from the ceiling and returning to my shoulder. “That was too much, boys. Next time, lets just stick to the plan, yeah? Too close for comfort.”
In the aftermath, I really didn't know what to say. My gut was still smarting from getting socked by the big guy, and Joe was ambling around in a daze. Spitting a little blood onto the ground, I stretched and made sure that all of my innards were well situated before staggering down the hall, over the mounds of smoldering ash that now covered the floor.
Joe stayed out of my way. Heck, his eyes stayed far away from me, and he instead looked down at his handiwork. “Hey,” he said to me in a voice nearly too small to be heard. “I'm, uh... I'm sorry, Lucy.”
“I'm sorry, too,” I replied. “For a lot of things. Sorry that, once, I was a dirtbag who hounded your mom for cash. Sorry that I couldn't fuck up Agamemnon before it came to this. Sorry that I let my head get too big and almost got everyone killed back in the woods. I could go on...” I forced a grin. “Ultimately, though... you don't have anything to apologize for, Joe. I should be thanking you. You had the strength to do what I couldn't.”
My zombie brother had needed dispatched. I'd known it all along. But if it'd been up to me then I'd have still been standing around the corner, thinking of ways to try and reach out to what was very clearly an undead shell. Just because I'd known what needed done didn't make the reality hurt any less. My stomach was in knots, and not just because I'd been sucker-punched. It was unlikely that anything of my brother had survived in that reanimated husk, but now I'd never know for sure. Joe had taken matters into his own hands, burnt him to a crisp before I could confirm it.
For the second time, my brother had died and I hadn't found closure.
The first time around, when he was buried, well... I never really mourned the loss. I'd felt a numbness, a sort of melancholy at his passing, but his death hadn't hit me like it did everyone else. I cared about him, but couldn't cry like everyone else. And for years, I'd carried that grief in a neat little package, wondering if there was something wrong with me. Seeing Conrad again, in the flesh, had overwhelmed me.
Now that the fight was over with, the numbness prevailed. I felt pretty shell-shocked, all things considered. The ominous feeling that'd washed over me earlier still persisted, but strangely enough, it'd taken a back seat to the melancholy.
“Hey, man. It's water under the bridge, OK?” Joe patted me on the shoulder. “I know it's hard on you. I can't imagine what I'd do if that were my bro. Or hell, if my mom had been raised like that...” He shuddered a little. “I'm sorry, Lucy.”
Germaine cleared his throat. “So, I'm not trying to break up this sweet moment. It's darling, really, but... you boys haven't forgotten what it is we came for, right? That sword is in one of these rooms here, ain't it? Do you still feel it, Lucy?”
I scanne
d the hall. The zombies had been standing guard outside of one door in particular, and as I walked towards it, pressing my hand to the stone, I felt a wave of panic course through me. “There's something in here. And I'll bet it's the sword.”
The door was one solid piece of rock. There was a locking mechanism, but without a key we weren't going to get in.
Let me rephrase that.
We weren't going to get in there nicely.
I laid into that door like it owed me money, and after a couple of blows, the stone fell away, revealing a small, dim chamber.
At its center was a glass case, and even from the doorway I could make out the shape of a long, straight saber in a leather scabbard. It was surprisingly simplistic in design for a sword forged of heavenly materials, but the intense fear that struck me at sighting it convinced me we'd found our mark. “That's it, all right.”
Germaine scrambled into the room and parked himself atop the glass case to verify. “I'll say it is! The Archangel Saber... what a gorgeous specimen. A legendary weapon, this.” He turned to Joe. “You might wanna bust this case and take the sword,” he urged. “Lucy here ain't gonna be able to carry it without killing himself, and if we aren't quick, we might run into more of Dennis' security.”
We'd made it. We'd found the mythical weapon that was going to save the world and put us on equal footing with Agamemnon.
So why did I feel so hollow?
THIRTY-THREE
Joe slung the sword over his shoulder and the three of us ran out of the armory. We encountered a couple more of the enchanted suits along the way, and I stayed behind to break them into scrap. When we finally made it out into the courtyard, we found Kubo, Percy and Kanta sitting around exhausted, panting, with bits of shrapnel all around them. Dennis was sitting there, too, looking furious. He'd lit a cigarette, and at seeing us exit the armory, he cursed under his breath.
Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2) Page 21
