by Ty Drago
The lights went out.
Something in contact with the wet floor must have been plugged into one of the wall outlets because a fuse had clearly popped. Fortunately, a second later, one of those boxy-looking emergency lights mounted up near the ceiling flickered on, bathing everything in a greenish glow.
I straightened up and blinked, letting my eyes adjust.
The poor dead girl still lay on the metal table, her body covered with a sheet and her skin looking oddly healthy in the greenish light.
Bodies were sprawled across the floor all around her, eyes sightless and limbs askew in the wide puddle of water. These soaked, zapped Corpses weren’t dead, of course. But they’d be trapped in their immobile hosts until rescued.
Either way, it had worked!
Then I heard Helene and Dave both gasp. I looked at them and then followed their shared gaze up to the ceiling.
Ever hear the term “my blood ran cold”? You hear it in old horror movies, the ones starring Vincent Price. But I’d never really gotten the concept behind it.
Until now.
The Queen of the Dead wasn’t on the floor amid her fallen cronies.
She was on the ceiling.
I’d seen Corpses jump plenty of times. They were good at it, some of them better than Michael Jordan. But this had to be twelve feet straight up! And that wasn’t the half of it because the ceiling in this room was, like the walls and floor, concrete. Cavanaugh had somehow jabbed her fingertips deep into the hard surface—her toes too, having leaped right out of her fancy red pumps. Clearly she had tremendous strength, much more than any Deader I’d ever seen.
But that was crazy!
Her host body, after all, was human. How could human bones drive into cement?
As if reading my mind—a terrifying thought—the Queen grinned her hideous grin. “Don’t look so surprised, children. You’re all stronger than you look. Consider the karate master who breaks a cinder block with the blade of his hand. This is no different.”
I leveled my pistol at her. Helene leveled both of hers. The Burgermeister, who held nothing now but an empty bucket, just glowered. “Your dudes are down for the count,” he said. “Those bodies they’re in just got good and fried. Will’s seen to that. No way are they getting up again until they can transfer. That means you’re alone.”
Cavanaugh laughed. “Others will come. In fact, they’re coming already.” Then she tilted her head and looked directly at me. Any cold, running blood I had in my face drained away.
“Will?” she echoed thoughtfully. “Will…Ritter?” Her grin widened. “I got your message. The one you left with my minion at the prison.”
“Great,” I replied. “Thing is, though…we need the body on that table.”
The Queen studied me. “That makes two of us. But what do you need it for? Since when do the Undertakers have any interest in the truly dead?” Then, when I didn’t reply, she laughed again. “Well, that leaves us with something of a dilemma, doesn’t it? We can’t both have the pretty human cadaver. A standoff.”
“Except there’s three of us!” Helene said sharply, her pistols rock steady. “And we got these!”
Cavanaugh sighed. She sounded relaxed, even casual—as if dangling like a spider upside down from the ceiling was as natural as chilling on a sofa. “I’m not afraid of your saltwater.”
“Why don’t you come down and say that?” Helene pressed.
I took a step forward. As near as I could estimate, Cavanaugh was in range—barely.
“In a moment, little ones. I need to decide which of you to kill first, though I suppose it hardly matters, provided I leave young Will here for last.” Her eyes bore into me again. “You see, I want to tell you a few things…reveal a few surprise associations I’ve made of late…before I kill you. Who knows, maybe I’ll wear your girlfriend there as my next host. I’ve never occupied a body so young.”
Beside me, despite her nearly bottomless bravery, I heard Helene utter a small involuntary cry of horror.
Suddenly, the blood came rushing back to my face. Only it wasn’t cold anymore.
“No way!” I screamed, the word bubbling out of me like a war cry. Then I fired.
I’d been right. Cavanaugh had been in range—except she wasn’t there by the time my saltwater hit the ceiling. She’d vaulted sideways with the speed and agility of a big cat onto the top of a steel cabinet at least six feet away.
I turned and fired a second time. But she simply jumped again—this time from the cabinet, off the back wall, and then onto the countertop on the far side of the room. For a moment, I managed to see through my fury long enough to wonder why she didn’t just drop to the floor. But of course, she couldn’t. Although no longer electrified, the floor was still layered in saltwater—and the Queen’s feet were bare.
I aimed and fired a third time, but it was no good. She was too fast for me. With a final leap, she cleared all our heads and landed atop some shelving by the door. Whirling around, I took aim again, silently wondering why Helene wasn’t doing the same thing. But then I noticed Helene wasn’t even beside me anymore.
The Queen smiled. “This is all very amusing. But I want the body on that table. I need a new host.”
A voice said, “You can’t have her!”
I looked over my shoulder to find Helene standing beside the metal table. Her pistols were nowhere in sight. Instead, she’d snatched a nasty-looking syringe. It was almost the size of a knitting needle and must have been used for embalming or something like that because I couldn’t image any doctor sticking anything that big into a living person.
Helene had turned the dead girl’s head to the side and was pressing the needle’s point against her lifeless temple.
“What game are you playing, child?” the Queen asked. All the amusement was gone from her dead eyes.
“This isn’t a game,” Helene replied flatly. “And this girl isn’t a prize. She’s a person…or she was, and she deserves better than to be used up and discarded by the likes of you. I stick this needle through her temple and into her brain, and she becomes useless. Am I right?”
Cavanaugh actually snarled—a guttural, terrifying sound that made my hairs stand up as if I were still tasing the water.
I tried to catch Helene’s eye. If she did this, the body would be useless to us too! She had to know that!
But she wouldn’t even look at me.
The Queen hissed, “You’re playing with fire, young lady!”
Helene shrugged. “Whatever.”
Then she raised her arm high, the long needle gleaming in the dull green emergency light. “Rest in peace,” she said to the dead girl on the table.
With an inhuman cry, the Queen of the Dead leapt at her, her bloated purple hands—mangled from the concrete—reaching out like talons. She meant to tear Helene’s throat out with those hands, to rip her head from her shoulders. I could see it in her milky, hateful eyes.
A lot of things happened fast after that.
One, Helene smiled triumphantly and raised her other hand, the one she’d kept hidden behind the body. In it was one of her water pistols, which she leveled at the Queen, who was in midair and irrevocably committed to her leap.
Two, yours truly went into full panic mode. I fired repeatedly at Cavanaugh but missed every time. Then, in desperation, I threw myself in her path—anything to keep her away from Helene.
Three, I heard Helene yell, “Will! Don’t!” But like the Queen, I was irrevocably committed. I slammed into Cavanaugh just as she reached the metal table. All my weight was behind my shoulder, and I caught her midway up her torso, knocking her out of the air.
Four, the two of us crashed together, toppling a couple of wheeled carts and shoving the table hard enough to throw the body atop it into Helene. I hit the floor a second later. So
did Helene—but with the poor girl’s cadaver atop her. However, the Queen, as agile as ever, somehow managed to balance herself on the table edge, vault over it, and land once again atop the shelving.
“Enough of this,” I heard her say, and I struggled to my feet. On the other side of the table, Helene cursed wildly, trying to get out from under the deal girl’s limp form.
Frantically, aware of how badly I’d just screwed up, I spun around in a circle, trying to track Cavanaugh. She was moving around the room with insane grace, leaping from surface to surface so quickly I could barely keep up.
How can something that dead move that fast?
Then, to my horror, she landed behind Dave. The Burgermeister, who’d stood helpless in the face of this disaster, was wise to the Queen’s presence at his shoulder just a moment too late. Cavanaugh seized him by the throat, lifting the huge kid off the floor with such force that the empty bucket flew from his hand.
“Look at your friend, Will!” the Queen roared. She slammed Dave against the doorframe. The Burgermeister’s big hands clawed at the dead fingers digging into his neck, but her grip was clearly too strong.
No…please. Not again.
Somewhere along the line, I’d lost my pistol. I still had the Taser, but I was much too far away to use it. And this time, Cavanaugh wasn’t standing in the puddle of saltwater. I was.
“Look at him!” she screamed, her dead visage twisted with fury. “I want you to watch his face as I snap his neck! Look at him!”
Helene was trying to get to her feet, but I could already tell she’d be too late.
I did this. I went off mission again…only now Dave’s going to pay for it!
But then Dave, red-faced and all, somehow managed to grin.
“That ain’t…no way…to snap…a neck,” the Burgermeister gasped. Then, raising both his arms, he grabbed Cavanaugh’s head in his huge hands and gave it a single hard twist.
I actually heard her spine snap.
The Queen of the Dead dropped into a heap at Dave’s feet.
“That’s how you snap a neck, Your Royal Wormbagness,” he pronounced.
I’d only known of three occasions when Dave had gone against the dead. And each time, he’d lost—bad. As big and as strong as he was, they were stronger, with their Queen being the strongest of all. And he just wasn’t that good at fighting them.
At least, I’d thought he wasn’t.
I looked back at Helene, who’d finally found her feet. She’d recovered at least one of her water pistols, but of course, there wasn’t anybody to shoot at anymore. The two of us swapped looks. Her expression was as incredulous as mine, but behind her disbelief was visible anger—anger at me.
And I honestly couldn’t blame her.
Dave wiped his hands together with a “job well done” kind of pride. Then, grinning, he trudged across the wet floor toward us, “Hey, Will, how’d you dream up that bucket trick? That was pretty sick!”
“Huh?” I asked stupidly. Then, looking from my friend to the “broken” Queen on the floor and back again, I said distractedly, “Steve told me about it. Well, he suggested it might work, but I don’t think anyone ever tested it.”
Helene remarked, “Duh? Who besides you’s got a Taser?”
“Just me and Tom,” I admitted. “Sorry, Helene. I really blew that.”
“Yep. You really did.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“Whatever.” It was the same thing she’d said to the Queen while she’d been baiting her trap. Same tone too. Then, gazing down at the girl’s cadaver, which lay in the puddle at her feet, she added, “Well, at least she can’t transfer. The body’s too wet with saltwater.”
“Good,” I said.
“Hey, dudes!” the Burgermeister said brightly. “No harm done! In fact, looks to me like we won!”
Helene and I scanned around. We’d secured the cadaver we’d been sent to get. Better still, four Corpses lay sprawled out on the floor all around us. Every single one would need a new host before they got up again.
And one of them was the Queen.
It was a good score. An Angels score.
Helene said to Dave, “How’d you learn that…neck break…thing?”
The Burgermeister’s expression turned sheepish, and for a second, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he did. “Sharyn taught it to me.”
“She did?” Helene and I asked at once.
“Yeah. She’s been giving me private lessons.”
“Since when?” I asked.
“About a month,” he replied with a shrug.
I blinked. “But—”
“Forget it for now,” Helene interrupted. “Cavanaugh was right. Others are coming. Let’s get the body and split before they show up.”
“I hear that!” Dave exclaimed, clearly happy with the change in subject. Then he unceremoniously stepped past us and scooped up the dead girl’s cadaver like a rag doll, tossing her limp form over one shoulder.
“Let’s go!” he declared.
On the way out, I noticed a fancy cell phone lying on the floor near the Queen’s broken form. I pocketed it, thinking the Hackers might be able to wring out some decent intel.
Then I promptly forgot about it when one of the morgue drawers kicked open.
I honestly don’t think there’s a scarier sight in the world.
The three of us spun around as hands—the stiff, gray hands of a Type One—groped out of the darkness and clutched the edges of the opening. Once it found purchase, it pulled, and the drawer on which the Deader lay screeched as it rolled along its tracks.
He lay on his back under a sheet, no more than a day or two dead, an old man no doubt earmarked for a coming funeral. This wasn’t the sort of cadaver the Corpses favored—too frail. But this dude evidently intended to make the most of it because he sat stiffly atop his drawer and faced us, his seemly sightless eyes alight with menace.
“I’m Gerald Pierce,” he declared in English, a little overdramatically to be honest. Probably brown-nosing for the Queen, who helpless as she was, could hear him. “And I will kill you all in my mistress’s name!”
Then he swung his legs over and dropped to the floor.
Right into the puddle of saltwater.
His newly stolen body stiffened and then started twitching. With a look of genuine horror on his dead face, he toppled over onto his back, which only got him wetter.
The three of us watched him until his twitching stopped, which meant that saltwater had done its bit and that Gerald Pierce—whoever he was—would need yet another host.
“What a tool,” Helene muttered.
Then we got out of there.
Chapter 23
The Demonstration
We walked the three blocks back to Haven’s northern entrance without any problems—or much conversation. After his mind-blowing defeat of Lilith Cavanaugh, Dave looked happier than I’d seen him in weeks. And Helene…well, Helene wasn’t talking to me.
At one point, we had to briefly duck into a darkened storefront to watch several Corpses hurry past going the other way back toward Chang’s. The Queen’s help had arrived. Soon, every single Deader we’d felled in that basement would be back on his—or her—feet, safely encased in a new stolen body.
If only I’d had a Ritter. Just one.
And this time, I think I might be able to use it.
By morning, Chang’s Funeral Parlor would be cleaned up, almost as if our big fight had never happened. The floor would be mopped, the broken equipment removed or replaced. And of course, all the dead bodies would be gone.
Including several that should have been there.
I glanced over at Dave’s lifeless burden, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt so lousy about succeeding.
; On our way out, I’d suggested to the Burgermeister that he might want to cradle the girl in his arms like a sleeping child rather than over his shoulder like a sack of mulch. Helene agreed, and Dave did so, which turned out to be a good thing. We didn’t pass too many people while en route to Haven, but those we did pass didn’t give us a second glance.
Four teenagers headed home after a late night, with one of them too drunk to walk. Not a pretty picture.
But certainly better than the truth!
Behind the graffiti-covered frontage of an abandoned printing house on Spring Garden Street stood an old fence, one section of which had been broken or cut. After a quick check to make sure no one was looking, we went through, doing our best to hold the chain links wide enough for Dave and his bundle of joy.
From there, we located a particular cellar window, with nails that had rusted away or been pulled out. Helene swung it open, and I climbed through, turning back so the dead girl could be handed to me.
There’d been a time when a building like this would have creeped me out. Now all I felt in this rat-infested cellar was measured relief.
“That went okay,” Dave remarked.
“I guess,” I replied.
Helene didn’t say anything.
A concealed staircase in the cellar led to a subcellar, which led to a sewer, which led to an unused maintenance door.
And simple as that, we were home.
The sentry, who happened to be a sour-faced Burt Moscova, looked us over. “How’d it go?” he asked.
“Went fine,” Helene replied. “How’s Sharyn?”
“The same. Tom says you’re supposed to take the body straight to his office. It’s all set up. Um…you got a girl body, right?”
I nodded.
“Sure did!” Dave grinned. Then he pushed past Burt and marched through the door. For a moment, I thought he might start whistling.
“What’s with him?” Burt asked. “He’s not usually this…happy, is he?”
“At least somebody is,” Helene muttered. Then she and I followed the Burgermeister into Haven proper.
Things were happening outside Tom’s office.
