Deadworld

by J N Duncan

  “If that’s what it takes. You can’t face this guy alone, Jackie. No.”

  She was passed arguing the point. “Okay, we stay together. You better be right.”

  Nick hoped so as well. He drew a six-shooter from its holster and held it loosely but ready at his side as they approached the house. The inside was black as pitch and was beginning to feel about as thick with the sense of the dead. He could sense ghosts in the area. It had to be the place. “I really wish you would stay back at the car,” he told her.

  “There’s a girl dying in there, Nick. Let’s go.” At the foot of the front steps she paused. “Maybe we should go around back?”

  Nick shook his head. He knew they were running dangerously low on time. They could only be so careful now if the girl was going to be saved. “Last chance, Jackie. Please go back and wait.”

  She jabbed a finger at his ribs. “Do you want to get this guy or not?” Jackie reached for the handle and jiggled the door. “Shit, locked.”

  The door was a framed stained-glass window depicting some religious symbolism Nick paid little attention to as he flicked the barrel of his revolver through, sending shards of glass tumbling inward to the floor. He reached in and opened the door. “No, it’s not.”

  Jackie leaned up against the door frame, gun held up between both hands, ready to go in. Nick swung the door in and stepped inside, scanning the entry along the barrel of his gun. Jackie turned and bolted over to the archway leading into the living room on the right side of the house. Once inside, it was not as dark as it had appeared. The growing light outside provided enough to see inside, and the front of the home was empty. She peered in and then stepped into the former living room, which now appeared to be an elegant seating room filled with Victorian furnishings. Stairs in front of them went up to the second floor, while the doorway to the left opened into what looked to be the front office. Above, a delicate chandelier of gold and glass hung high up over their heads.

  The smell was unsettlingly sterile.

  Jackie motioned at him and pointed up the stairs and then toward the floor. Where would they have the embalming equipment? Basement was the logical choice. Nick pointed at the floor, and Jackie nodded agreement, walking across the entry toward him. From above, Nick heard a soft creak and groan, as though perhaps someone were walking directly overhead. The sound was followed by the short, sharp sound of a fizzle.

  Short-circuited wiring. Nick leaped forward, shoving Jackie back toward the sitting room, and the chandelier crashed to the center of the floor, showering Nick in tiny shards of glass.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jackie muttered, climbing back to her feet.

  “All right?” Nick kicked off the mangled light and stood up, shaking the glass off his coat.

  She nodded. “Yeah, thanks. I-”

  “Oh, good show. The sheriff saves the poor damsel in distress.” Drake’s voice was hollow, echoing from out of the ventilation ducts.

  Nick glanced around and caught the faint, wispy glow of a ghost drifting back through the wall in the rear of the sitting room. “The show is just starting, Drake!” Nick shouted into the room. “I won’t miss this time.”

  “Well, he’s in here at least,” Jackie said, sounding a bit more like her usual pissed-off self.

  “Waiting and ready,” Nick added. So far, so bad, Nick figured. Cornelius had it all choreographed, and it was up to Nick to figure out a way to alter the game plan in their favor, but so far, nothing brilliant was coming to mind. He pointed toward the office, and Jackie nodded. They approached, guns out and ready.

  The room was empty of the living or dead, with a doorway leading down a short hallway toward the back of the house. Likely the former kitchen, and that meant the entry to the basement.

  Nick shouldered up to Jackie to whisper in her ear. “If he’s feeding when we find the girl, I’ll try to grab her. You put as many holes in Drake as you can, and whatever you do, do not look him in the eye. There should be a back door here close by. We’ll get out that way if we can.” Jackie nodded once and kept her gaze focused on the hall.

  The hall had a small bathroom on one side and an oversize closet that was floor-to-ceiling coffin samples, dozens of doll-sized miniatures to pretend your loved ones were getting buried in. Past that was the kitchen, beyond which a door in the back led to what was likely the former mud room. A door led out, and another led down. Next to the door, a small electric lift sat waiting where the dumb-waiter likely was.

  Drake’s hollow, distant voice came drifting up through the vents once again. “Dear boy, you are dallying. This cute little thing is getting droopy-eyed. I would think for your last effort you would be giving it that one hundred and ten percent. Agatha deserved no less. I would have done the same for my boy, were he alive today, but, alas, he is not.”

  Nick reached over and grabbed the mudroom door’s handle. “Be wary. We’re walking into a trap.” She nodded, and Nick opened the door. At that moment, the ringing thrum of Deadworld began to abate. “Damnit. He’s stopped feeding.”

  The heavy, metal basement door was unlocked, and Nick shoved it open and leaped down to the landing. Jackie tried to run after.

  Summoning up the bit of extra strength he could, Nick braced himself for the landing so he would keep from slamming into the opposite wall. He had both guns out pointing out across the basement floor when his feet touched down.

  A single fluorescent light burned in the middle of the room, an all-too-familiar setup. Its blue-white glare cast a ghostly cone of light down on the cadaver’s table, upon which the Agatha lookalike lay. She was still clad in Winnie the Pooh pajamas, and her listless arm hung over the side of the table, fresh blood dripping from the small puncture in her arm.

  Of Drake, there was no immediate sign. Guns held out before him, Nick leaped the last six stairs to the floor. Behind him, Jackie stopped on the landing, crouched down on the balls of her feet, Glock scanning across the room.

  “Cover me,” he said and ran over to the little girl. Be alive! Please, just be alive! Nick picked up the dangling arm, his fingers clamped across her wrist, and he found a faint pulse. “She’s alive!”

  “Where the hell is he?” Jackie said in a hushed voice.

  Nick dug in his pocket for his pocketknife. The girl’s other wrist and ankles were bound with the familiar zip-ties. “I don’t…” He stopped after taking a single step. Above them, at the top of the stairs, the basement door slammed shut. It was followed by the loud and unmistakable sound of a dead bolt being slid into place. And then the light went out. “Shit.”

  Jackie squeezed off two quick shots. “Fuck! Nick, it’s a solid steel door. What the hell?”

  “Call Gamble now, Jackie.” The trap had been sprung. The question was just how tightly were they being held?

  “Gamble? Get them here. Now. Fire, ambulance, everyone. We’re locked in the basement of Tanenbaum’s Funeral Home.”

  In the pitch blackness, Nick fumbled around for the girl’s hands and feet, hoping he did not cut her skin getting her free.

  “Nick? You smell something?”

  He did the moment she said it. Smoke. “Yeah. Something’s burning.”

  The dim light of her cell phone came back on. “Gamble! Tell them the building is likely on fire, so the sooner the better. No. The power is out down here, I have no fucking idea how we’re getting out. Yes, I tried! It’s a metal fucking door. Just get them over here!”

  “Keep the cell on, Jackie. We can use the light to see with.”

  She began to walk toward him, but a thunderous boom shook the house, knocking her down the last three steps to the floor.

  Floating through the foul air, Drake’s voice quietly taunted. “Speed, dear boy. Once again, you have gone for the rescue over the kill. I’d hoped just this once you would give in on that choice, but it seems you will be stubborn to the end. I am still the gentleman, however, and have given you one last chance. Figure it out, and perhaps we shall dance again. You are too predicta
ble, my friend. Good-bye. I shall see you on the other side.”

  Drake’s laughter faded into the smoky darkness.

  “There has to be another door out of here,” Jackie said.

  There should be, and odds were it was securely sealed like the other one. “There should be windows though,” Nick answered. “Painted over, maybe. If they’re big enough we might be able to push the girl through.”

  “Okay,” she said, moving over to a wall and stumbling over something metal on the floor. “Ow! Goddamnit.” Her voice had a tinge of panic to it, and Nick could hardly blame her for that one. Trapped in a burning building was not high on his choices of ways to go.

  Smoke was beginning to thicken in the air. Another boom, and there came the sound of something crashing on the floor above. The second-floor ceiling perhaps? If they had looked upstairs first, they might have found whatever materials Drake had situated to take the house down.

  Carrying the girl in one arm, Nick felt his way along the back wall, lined with stainless-steel counters and cupboards. There had been a full-sized door for something over on this end of the room.

  “Hey, I found a window!” Jackie called out. “And it’s maybe six inches wide. We’ll never get her through this, Nick.”

  “Okay,” he said, finally finding the door that had been to the left of the stairs and across the room from the foot of the cadaver table. “Office or storage room here. Maybe an extinguisher inside.” Not that it would do them a lot of good in the end. It might buy them a minute or two. Holding the girl, Nick kicked the door in and was greeted by a shimmering wall of heat and bright flame. He turned his back to the fire to protect the girl. “Christ. The ceiling is down in here.”

  That meant the first floor was already engulfed in flames-likely began the moment they came downstairs. They needed that basement door opened. It was only a six-foot span across to the back door through the mudroom. Even with the house on fire, they could make that leap without dying. Probably. Jackie had the same thought.

  “Gamble! We need that basement door unlocked, or you’re going to have a very crispy agent down here.” She coughed several times against the thickening smoke. “Yeah, I realize the place looks like an inferno, but we’re dead if it doesn’t get open. Got it?”

  To emphasize her point, another explosion shook the house, and this time part of the ceiling did collapse, bringing down a pile of flaming furniture from the sitting room. It narrowly missed Jackie, and she jumped back, a short scream escaping her lips. “Oh, my God. Nick! Any brilliant ideas?”

  The fire lit up the room, allowing them to see at least, and Nick saw one last door past the office. It was large and metallic, with a handle much like one might find on an upright freezer. “Come on. In here,” he said, pointing at the cadaver fridge. “It might buy us some time.”

  “That’s crazy. We’ll cook in there.”

  “The floor is going to fall on us out here, Jackie. Move it.”

  Nick ran over to the door and pulled the handle open. Even with the power off, the room inside was still cool relative to the rest of the basement. Once inside, Jackie was hesitant to shut the door all the way.

  “Jackie. It’s forty degrees in here. Close the door.”

  “But… Nick, it’ll be a goddamn oven.”

  “It will be, but it gives us the most time.”

  “Shit.” She pulled the latch shut, and they were closed inside. “Let’s hope they put out the fire before it can cook us.”

  Nick gently laid the girl down on the floor, squatting beside her. He took off his hat and set it down over the wide, staring, and empty eyes. “Yeah, let’s hope.”

  “Oh, no. Damnit, no!”

  He could see that courage and determination, the desire to rescue the girl, which had been driving Jackie past the fear of everything else, slowly evaporate from her gaze. Nick rubbed a hand over his scalp. “I wish you’d have stayed outside, Jackie.”

  She did not respond. Jackie was staring over the top of his head at the back of the freezer. Nick turned and realized the open-mouthed silence had nothing to do with the death of the girl. Oozing her way through the small ventilation grate in back of the ceiling was the faded, distorted form of Laurel.

  Chapter 53

  Oh, my God. Why is she here? We’re about to fucking die, that’s why. Laurel’s ghostly image barely made itself present, a poorly lit hologram of her friend. She bent down immediately and passed her hand through the body of the young girl, a frown stretching the dark lines of her mouth. When she spoke, her voice sounded like it came from the end of a long tunnel.

  “Nick,” she said, her words spaced out with apparent effort, “you must come. We need you.”

  He stood up, hands thrust into his pockets. “We’re trapped here, Laurel.”

  “Nick. You know how.”

  “No!” he answered abruptly. In the dead silence of the freezer, it made Jackie’s stomach jump.

  “Laur, can you help us?” She had no idea what a ghost could do for them, but maybe she knew something they did not. “Nick? What’s going on?”

  Laurel’s foggy image faded to almost nothing for a moment but then sprang back with brief, brilliant intensity. “You must!” Her finger jabbed out at Nick, and she watched him take a hesitant step backward.

  She could not see his face, but a second later, his shoulders visibly sagged. “I can’t do that, Ms. Carpenter. There must be another way.”

  Her head shook. “No time. I’ll help, but hurry.”

  Jackie tapped Nick on the shoulder, and he whirled around on her, startled. For the first time, she saw something she didn’t think possible in those depthless eyes. He looked afraid, which was the last thing Jackie needed to reassure her fraying nerves.

  “Care to explain what the hell you’re talking about?”

  Nick dropped back to his knees, reaching out to lift the hat and brush a strand of hair off the little girl’s face. “Blood. It’s all about blood.”

  Something stung Jackie’s eye, and she reached up to realize it was sweat. Looking behind her on the wall by the door, the thermostat already read seventy-eight degrees. “Blood. What’s blood got do with our current situation?”

  Nick stood up, moving with the effort of an old man. His face had gone into that unreadable zone again, except perhaps a droop in his eyes. Sadness? Haunted? Regardless, not a look Jackie was going for, under the circumstances.

  “Laurel wants me to take us over.”

  “Over where? Outside?”

  “No, Jackie. Over to the other side. Deadworld.”

  Jackie glanced over at Laurel. Was she out of her mind? The look she gave Jackie brought a lump to her throat.

  “Please, hon. Be brave. It’s your only chance.”

  “Don’t we sort of have to be… dead for that?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Drake has been doing it, so presumably I can do it as well.”

  “I’m no vampire though,” Jackie replied. Her mind was still trying to wrap around the notion of going to the “other” side. What did that mean exactly? It was an apples-and-oranges arrangement. Then again, Laurel’s ghost was standing here in front of her. The dead could walk among the living.

  He gave her a reluctant shrug. “Technically, that shouldn’t matter.”

  Jackie grunted. “Technically. You aren’t sounding too sure of yourself, Sheriff, but it’s now… ninety-four degrees in here. We need to try something, so I vote yes for hanging out with Laurel for a while.”

  “Jackie, I can’t do it without blood.”

  “Okay. Well…” The obvious now smacked Jackie square in the gut. He needed her blood. “You need some of my blood.”

  “I might need a lot of your blood, and even then I have no guarantees anything will work.”

  “But Laur thinks it will. She said she will help.”

  Laurel nodded behind Nick. “Yes. It can work. It’s the only way.”

  She took a deep breath. Laur would never steer her wrong about any
thing. “If she says go for it, then go for it, Nick. We have to try. And I’ll have you shoot me before I roast to death in here.”

  “Jackie,” Nick said, stepping up close to her. He reached up, taking her face in his hands. Compared to the air in the sealed room, they were wonderfully cool. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re okay with this. I have to drink your blood, and it may kill you.”

  “I’m good,” she answered back, trying desperately to actually sound that way. “Are you?”

  He licked his lips, prepared to say something, but then Jackie felt herself pulled up to her toes, and Nick’s mouth crushed down against hers. No soft hesitation this time. No pleasant little meeting of the mouths. It was just some heady mix of desperation, need, fear, and desire. After a few seconds he pulled back, but his hands still held her. He smiled. “Better now, thanks. Look at me, Jackie. If you look close enough you might actually see the door to the other side.”

  She stared hard into his eyes, wondering. “Really? You can see that?”

  “If you know how to look, but I want you to know this won’t hurt much at all, just a bit of weakness, maybe a little light-headedness, and then, hopefully, we’ll be good, and Laurel will help me through this.”

  Jackie nodded. “Okay. Sounds good.” The wide doe eyes said different.

  “Now, keep your eye on Laurel. Not much else here to look at, and it might soothe your fear a bit.”

  Jackie’s voice sounded dreamy, almost far away. “I’m not afraid though.”

  Laurel smiled at her. “It won’t take long, hon. You’ll hardly even realize.”

  “What happens then?”

  “This is kind of a plan-as-you-go scenario. Let’s just get you out of here first.”

  There was a dull pain in the crook of her right arm, and then pressure-soft, warm pressure. Out of the corner of her eye, Jackie could see Nick’s head against her elbow. She knew it was happening now, but it all felt so far away. “He did that vampire thing on me again, didn’t he?”

  Laurel nodded. “Better that way, sweetie. Just keep watching me, talking to me, and then we’ll go when Nick is ready.”