Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2)

by Daryl Banner

  C H A P T E R – F I F T E E N

  A F A M I L I A R P L A C E

  “You have to promise me you won’t touch them!” she calls out through the air that tosses our hair everywhere. “Not a thing or else it dies! All of it dies when we touch it! So we can’t touch it!”

  For a moment, I really wish she could be a friend. What a convenient way to travel. If all it took was a pair of enormous dragonfly wings, I could totally give this idea to Marigold and we’d have liftoff. How in the world a simple pair of insect wings is lifting her—or rather, us—into the air is simply impossible to fathom.

  I fight an urge to ask her to let me go. I realize, from this great height, I most certainly do not want to be let go. I know all about “shattering” …

  “Do you like to fly?” she asks, her voice carrying the lunatic excitement of a person who needs to be medicated heavily and restrained to a bed.

  I stare down longingly at the world as it passes by, my heart heavy and strangled with terror of another kind. John is down there somewhere, and I hope he’s alive. As I drift along the colorless sky, unable anymore even to see the rainbow of Grim’s army, I feel like I’ve said goodbye to my friends without having said a word at all.

  “We’re almost there!” She’s started to descend. The wind blows harshly, throwing my hair in every possible direction. I can’t even see where we’re going.

  “Please, Shee, please,” I respond, hoping my voice carries through the violent wind, “can we please return to my friends when we’re done?”

  “You must promise not to touch them!” she goes on.

  “Promise!” I cry out. “Please, can I …”

  The mist of the land gives way, and I look down at the place over which we’re hovering. Another dark, ruinous expanse of nothing. The earth here is so dry, it’s fissured. A straggling trench cuts through the terrain, something that may have once been a river. It rushes up to me so fast I lift my arms to shield my face from an impact.

  Almost gently, however, I’m brought to rights and set down on my feet, and for the first time in what feels like hours, the Shee-thing lets me go. I don’t run. I do a few spins, taking in this new environment. There isn’t a blade of grass in sight. Has Shee deceived me? Has the creature flown me to some faraway nest of hers where her strange, devious plans for revenge can be realized?

  “I can’t bring us too much closer,” the spider-lady explains, her scorpion legs clicking anxiously. “When I get too close to the flowers, the voices tell me to stay away.” She giggles, finding that funny apparently. “I already know I can’t touch them, silly things. I wouldn’t dare! But the flowers are protective.” She giggles again, louder. “Silly flowers. Come!”

  “There are … voices?”

  “Yes. It’s the flower-people. The voices in the flowers. They cry out for me to stay away.” She licks her lips. “I wouldn’t dare touch them, but they remind me anyway. Are you going to come along, Winter?”

  “Yes.” I start to follow her. “I’m following my friend.”

  She grins so broadly, I see every tooth in her mouth and her eyes scrunch up to nothing. “I knew you weren’t like all the others! Come, come, come!” She lets her many legs slowly glide her through the waste. I follow quickly, knowing full well that I’m following an insane person.

  An insane person who speaks to flowers, and hears responses from them.

  There are the remnants of trees jutting out of the earth, but none of them have branches or leaves of any kind, and they are not very tall. It almost appears as a landscape of giant, beige thorns. In the distance, however, I see the foliage-that-once-was becoming much thicker, almost like the Dead Woods that surround Trenton, except they are phenomenally taller. Much, much taller.

  “Excited??” she asks, glancing back to make sure I’m still following. I smile politely. “Just a bit further!”

  I’m watching her from behind, studying the way she moves. She isn’t quick until she’s airborne. I consider whether or not I could outrun her. Ironic it’d be, that two legs might be able to outrun twenty. She’s very skilled at making such an amount of legs move, especially given the fact they are legs of other species. Every four seconds or so, her body lurches to the left, then rights itself a second later, as if one of her scorpion legs has to reach too far to compensate for the awkward differing length of one of the spider legs. A coil of her pink hair tickles down her bare back, bouncing on the hind limb of a cricket. I watch that coil bounce and bounce and bounce, trying to judge how fast I can truly run. If I overestimate myself, or miscalculate my own speed … it may very well be the last calculation I ever make.

  We’ve finally broken into the wall of very tall thorns that some ancestor might’ve reluctantly called a forest, and the claustrophobia begins to suffocate me. I don’t want to advance much farther into these woods than I have to, as I might admit my trust with this Shee-creature is less than ideal for anything I’d safely call a friendship.

  “Here, here!” she exclaims.

  I come only as close as is absolutely necessary, making sure to keep enough distance from her scorpion vice grip. When I lay my eyes on the sight, however …

  “There’s so little color in the world,” the Shee-lady says, thoughtful, curious. “I wish there was more color.”

  What I’m staring at are the biggest purple petals I’ve ever seen—each one about the size of a hand. It blossoms among a thicket of green stems and coiling tendrils of blue that have no business at all to exist here in the middle of all this endless desolation. Tiny spots of grass sprout around the tree against which these impossibly large flowers have somehow managed to survive.

  “How?” I ask, genuinely amazed at the sight.

  “There are more!” she says excitedly.

  Realizing it might mean another terrifying trip in the air, I assure her, “No, no, it’s okay. You don’t need to show me. I’m …” I shake my head, dumbfounded. “I am simply impressed with these flowers. They’re quite big.” And then I have another thought. It’s a thought I should have had the very first time she ever mentioned big flowers. “You said there’s … a place with more of these?”

  “Many, many, many more,” Shee eagerly agrees, her purple-red eyes flashing. “But we can’t get near it. No, no, we can’t touch them. No way.” She brings a finger to her lips, begins gnawing on it. “The flower people won’t let us and I don’t want the flowers to die. My children like to sometimes go there, but I’m not allowed.”

  Her children … Big bugs. Big flowers. Big greens.

  Is she talking about what I think she’s talking about?

  “Shee. I need you to listen to me. Please. The people I was with back at the city. There are many people there, people who are not like us. They are people who can touch the flowers. They are people, um … people that bleed, understand? They desperately need to get to this place with the big flowers, or they will die.”

  Of all the random acts that have occurred in my Second Life so far, I could never have predicted that this terrifying one involving a crazy friendless lady-thing with scorpion legs who might still destroy everything I love would lead me directly to John’s lifelong dream.

  Garden.

  “They will die?” she asks, confused.

  “Yes, they will die. They will starve. They will … stop moving.” How can I get this strange, dangerous creature to understand that I really, truly need her help?

  “I don’t like things to die,” she reasons, working her lips into a smirk and bringing out a dimple in her cheek I hadn’t noticed before.

  What am I doing? How the hell can I trust her?

  “There is an army,” I decide to tell her, because why not? “This army is trying to kill everything on the planet. They’re making everything die. Even big, pretty flowers.”

  Shee-lady’s face turns sour, terrified, pained. “Why would an army do such a thing??”

  “We need your help.” Yes, please, keep her listening to me, keep her resp
onding like a sane person. “The army was headed for the city we just came from. My city. We need to go back and stop that army from killing my friends. The army will even kill your spiders and your crickets and your … your other critters.”

  “This is awful, awful news! What is an army?” she asks suddenly, peering off into nowhere, as if trying to picture what one might look like.

  “A … big group of people who are on fire. That’s what an army is,” I explain. “Now please, Shee. Take me back to the city. Let’s stop this Burning Army before they make their way here and … and to the place with the rest of the big flowers. We have to protect the flowers and the, the, the spiders.”

  Shee nods, to my great relief. Is there an ounce of self-control within her, after all? “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” Suddenly, her dragonfly wings begin to flutter. “Yes, yes,” she keeps agreeing, though I find myself terrified with what, exactly, she’s agreeing.

  Suddenly her scorpion legs lash out, and I’m trapped in her clutch again. Her wings give a swish, a buzz, and then the world’s dropping away once more.

  She doesn’t ascend too far this time. Nearly grazing the land and the pointy dead treetops, she flies low and languidly. Sweeping through trees, rounding around one just as another approaches, I watch with a mixture of fascination and terror as the dust and the death and the nothing pass by. Then suddenly we’re free from the thorny mess, and an expanse of dust envelopes us.

  If I can convince her that we have a common cause to fight for. If I can convince this creature that both our livelihoods are in danger due to the Army Of Burning Puppet-People that are savaging the planet. If I can get her to remain concentrated on that.

  Maybe John will have his Garden after all.

  Too soon, we’re descending again. I don’t recognize the terrain. Trenton is nowhere in sight. “This isn’t it,” I call out, struggling a bit in her grasp. “This isn’t the city. We have to keep going.”

  “I won’t let my new friend get hurt!” she calls back.

  What is she doing? “No, no. I won’t get hurt. Like you, I’m Undead. We don’t hurt. Bring me to Trenton.”

  “I’m not Undead. I’m Shee.” As if unrested by the mere mention of the word, her scorpion legs begin to manipulate me around until I’m facing the ground and find myself hardly dangling by a foot and a strand of hair.

  “Shee!” I cry out, alarmed. We’re drooping over a chasm in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is in sight, not even a stray tree, not a single landmark I know, nothing. “Shee, please!”

  “Your city is too dangerous for a new friend without wings! You’ll be safe here. I will go play with your friends! Oops.” And then she lets go.

  The shriek I try to make gets lost in my throat and in the whirring of white hair that blankets my face as I plummet through sharp air and nothing. The shape of the Shee-lady in flight is swallowed by sand clouds as I descend … falling, falling, falling.

  I try orienting my body, but can’t see through my hair. The only glimpse I catch is of the earth racing up to meet my face.

  And then it does.

  Several cracking sounds wriggle through my body as it settles against the dry, hard-as-cement earth. I don’t move for a moment. I only lie here in a numb, unfeeling pile of limbs. It is a very good thing we don’t feel pain, but I might argue against everyone I know that in some way, we do experience discomfort. My neck is certainly broken and my left shoulder’s shifted in totally the wrong way for it to operate. My legs, I don’t even know where they are. I try to move my right hand, and the fingers on my left one twitch. This is not comfortable.

  “Shee,” I rasp, relieved to discover that my throat is not broken and that I’m capable of speech. “Hello? Hello?” As my face is pressed into the ground, I try shifting to one side so that I can survey my surroundings. Bones in my ribcage give another assortment of snapping sounds and unpleasant splintering noises not unlike an ancient slab of wood giving to a horrid weight. I manage to sit up somehow, an awful crunch issuing from my hip somewhere.

  I’m in a hole in the earth. A hardly generous pit of maybe twelve feet across, perhaps just the same in depth. Everything is slate grey. Even the mist above. I am alone in this pit, deposited like a nickel in a piggybank.

  “So far, being your friend super sucks,” I mutter, knowing all too well that there is no one around. Most likely, this is some creepy secluded spot the spider woman keeps for fun and has no sign of civilization anywhere within a ten billion mile radius. It certainly feels that way. Only a moment ago I was up in the air; I saw all the miles of nothing that surrounds me.

  I pull my legs into a position that looks like I’m seated against the wall of the pit. My left leg looks twisted a bit too far one way. I can’t see my own shoulder for two reasons: one, my neck won’t turn that way, and two, I don’t want to see it.

  I try moving my right hand again. My left one wiggles instead.

  This isn’t good.

  Five minutes passes. Then ten minutes. This is only a guestimate here, seeing as I have no means to tell time. I imagine all the worst things first. I see John mauled by a giant scorpion’s poisonous tail. I see Megan trying ever so hard to control Brains, only to get eaten by her. I see the green eye dislodged, rolling along a sad, barren city street. I see all the Humans who survived the insect barrage to suddenly find themselves amidst a wave of fire that rushes at them from the north, swallowing the gates and the walls and the buildings. I see the fear in their eyes, that last moment of their life before Grim claims it and replaces it with something less than.

  Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes goes by, and then I imagine a better scenario. Maybe this scary scorpion lady shows up and saves the city. She summons all her spiders, to keep them from harming any more of the townsfolk. She faces off with Grim herself, puts an end to his reign of death by fluttering right on top of him and plucking out his eye. Maybe she’ll pin him to the wall with her spindly legs, clicking, snapping at him. I can almost hear him pleading for her to let him go. I can almost hear the cackle of the scorpion lady, giggling and finding him cute and adorable, then asking him to become her new friend. I can almost hear their voices …

  And then I do hear voices. Perking up, I listen. They’re young voices. Teenagers maybe, or younger. It’s a boy and a girl.

  “Maybe,” the boy is saying. “When he was alive.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Every night.”

  Their voices are still very distant, but I hear every word now. I close my eyes and listen carefully.

  “Shut up, you’re lying,” says the girl.

  “I’m not.”

  “If that were true, you’d be an expert by now. You’re no expert. You’d miss a squirrel if it sat on your head.”

  “Of course I’d miss a squirrel if it sat on my head.” The boy laughs mockingly. “How am I supposed to hit a thing on my own head? Besides, there aren’t no more squirrels.”

  “There are, too. Remember the one mom caught?”

  Brother and sister. They must be.

  “No. Now it’s you who’s the liar,” the boy spits back.

  “You want to prove you’re a good shot? Next Crypter or spider we find, you sink an arrow in its eye. Then I’ll call you a good shot.”

  Crypter, she said. They’re Human.

  “I shot that other one in the eye.”

  “Doesn’t count. It was already unmoving and on the ground. You’re lying, dad never gave you no lessons.”

  “He did too.”

  “Then why didn’t he give me any?”

  “You were too busy picking berries with mom. Never mind that they’re all poisonous.” They’re growing closer.

  “They’re not. There’s two kinds that are not. If you don’t know which is which, then it’s your fault, mister good shot. You couldn’t hit an apple off my head.”

  “Wouldn’t want to,” the boy retorts.

  They are so, so close. “Why’s that?”

  “Becau
se I’d hit you in the eye.” The two of them laugh.

  And then they stop. I realize they’ve come up to the brim of the pit behind me. They’re at my back, just above. Do they see me?

  “Rake?”

  “Yeah,” mumbles the boy. They’ve both gone silent.

  I try to turn, but my waist or my shoulder won’t let me. I try to look up, but can’t manage to face them or even catch a glimpse with my inoperable neck.

  “Hey! You!” the boy calls down at me, as if he were addressing a horse or something. “You speak?”

  I lick my lips. These are not the Undead-embracing kind of Humans. I have to play this very carefully if I hope to get out. “Yes,” I answer.

  The boy whispers to his sister: “Let’s go back.”

  “I don’t know,” she breathes, reluctant. They don’t think I can hear them. “Shouldn’t we help her?”

  “No.”

  “Please. It’s been days since we’ve seen—”

  “Robin, no.”

  “But she looks older. She could have a camp.”

  “She could be one of them.” The last three words come out in a hiss, but I hear them perfectly.

  “But she can talk. They can’t talk.”

  “Dad told me once about—”

  “Dad’s not here,” the sister spits back in half a hush.

  They turn quiet again. I have to take advantage of this situation. If I play this wrong, I might lose my one and only opportunity to get free of this pit and make my way back to Trenton.

  It’s time to act like a Human.

  “Help me, please,” I groan, reaching for my thigh. I’m trying to reach with my right hand, and my left grabs it instead. “I’m in so much pain. Are you … are you really there, up there? I can’t see you. I can’t even—can’t even—can’t even turn my neck. Oh, it hurts, it hurts …”