by JL Bryan
“That ain’t nothing,” said the other assistant, an older black man. He was clearly the supervisor, since he was laying out blades instead of rinsing out decaying fat folds. “Just before you started, we had this O.D.’d hooker, every venereal disease you can name growing all over the place. Looked like week-old pot roast down there.”
The younger guy made a small heaving sound, and the older one laughed. Then he noticed Alexander approaching the refrigeration unit.
“Hey!” the older morgue assistant yelled at Alexander. “Who the hell are you?”
Alexander didn't stop for questions, but continued on to the wall of little stainless steel doors, each one holding a corpse behind it. It was like one of those Christmas calendars where you were supposed to punch out one cardboard square a day, to find the chocolate treat hidden behind it. He couldn’t wait to see what the morgue had for him. He hoped it was full.
He opened one and slid out the conveyor drawer, which held a body covered in a white sheet. Alexander whipped off the sheet, revealing a fiftyish woman in a pantsuit with a shattered arm and a partly crushed skull. It looked like she'd died in a traffic accident.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Alexander said. “Want to take a walk?”
He laid a hand on her neck. The dark energy flowed out of him, carrying droplets of Alexander's essence into the dead cells of her corpse.
He opened another drawer, revealing a young man with a bullet wound through the chest, his jersey shirt stiff with dried brown blood. Another drawer held an elderly man who might have died of natural causes. Another held a shrunken boy of eleven or twelve with a shaved head.
“What are you doing?” The older morgue assistant approached him, and his green-haired protégé trailed behind him, looking embarrassed. “Where’s your ID badge?”
“Don't you recognize me?” Alexander tugged down the face mask and gave him a big, crazy smile.
“You a student?” the older man asked.
“No,” Alexander said. In his mind, he made contact with the bits of energy he'd planted within the bodies around him. “You work with me every day, side by side. You must know who I am.”
The green-haired assistant approached, standing beside his supervisor with his arms crossed. He was a short and wiry guy, but he looked ready to fight.
“Stop messing with my bodies,” the older man said. “You tell me who the hell you are and what the hell you’re doing or you get the hell out of my morgue.” He pointed to the door. “In fact, let’s just skip to that last part.”
“I am simply carrying out my business,” Alexander said. “And as for my name, I've had far more than I can remember.”
Alexander held up a hand, and the dozen dead bodies slowly sat up behind him.
“I am the vulture circling above from the moment of your birth. I am the eternal force that eats the souls of men and sends the damned to their final suffering.” The dead bodies slid off their tables and staggered toward the mortuary assistants. “I am Death, destroyer of worlds.”
The dozen reanimated corpses lurched toward the two men, their bare feet shuffling forward one step at a time, their toe tags scraping along the linoleum floor. The corpses raised their arms high above their heads, with their hands hanging limp in the air like they were marionette dolls. All the walking dead dropped their jaws wide open and groaned in unison, shambling closer to the morgue assistants.
Both of the morgue assistants screamed and ran away.
Alexander laughed. He mentally ordered his walking zombies to stop where they were, and they locked up as if playing freeze tag.
He opened more drawers, touched and animated more bodies. Some of them were quite diseased, or a bit gory and mangled, but that didn't matter. He was taking them all. And then he’d be on his way.
Chapter Forty-Four
Seth pulled at the rope with his right hand, which pulled his left hand back against the headboard. Then he pulled with his left hand, and his right snapped back.
“What the hell?” Seth said to the naked blond girl on top of him. “Help me get out of this!”
“But I like it,” Allegra frowned.
“I have to go!” Seth said. “That was Jenny! My girlfriend!”
“I don’t think she’s your girlfriend anymore.” Allegra giggled. “You’re funny.”
“I’m serious here.” Seth looked up at his bound hands. He couldn’t see them very well when they were close together, so he pulled his right wrist to his face. They were tied with a dense clump of small knots. “Can you cut me loose or something? Look for a knife.”
“You want to leave me?” Allegra asked.
“Yeah, look, I don’t know what happened here, but this was not a good—”
“I’ll tell you what happened.” Allegra laid down on top of him and kissed him. “First, we met.” She kissed him again. “And then we came here.” She kissed him again, and she reached between his legs and took him in her hand. “And then…”
“Stop it.” Seth shivered. The girl had some weird hold over him. It almost reminded him of Ashleigh.
In fact, he realized, she almost reminded him of Ashleigh.
“You have to help me out.” Seth used the fingers of his right hand to pick at the hard little knots binding his left. He couldn’t pull anything loose. The girl was some kind of knot-tying genius.
“Please,” Seth said.
“Please what?” She kissed him again. “Tell me how to please you.”
“Let me go,” Seth said. “That would please me.”
“No, I’m never going to let you go.” She kept kissing him. “Never, never, never…”
Ashleigh stood between Tommy and Esmeralda on the balcony of their fifth-floor room at the Mandrake House. Below, the street was thick with festival-goers, but the police presence had swelled from an occasional blue uniform to several squad cars, each of them trundling slowly through different parts of the crowd, occasionally shining a spotlight into the park.
“I don’t like this,” Tommy said.
“Oh, the cops aren’t looking for you, Tommy,” Ashleigh said. “Stop being so self-centered.” She rubbed the back of his neck. “Now, get ready, because Jenny’s going to come busting out in about a minute. You can draw power from me. I’m like a battery for you.”
“If you say so.” Tommy scrunched up his forehead and squeezed his closed eyes, like he was concentrating hard. Staying focused had never exactly been his strong point, Ashleigh remembered.
Far below, Jenny ran down the front porch steps of the hotel and onto the sidewalk, bumping carelessly into everyone in her path. She was covering her eyes with one gloved hand, and her mouth was trembling hard.
“There she is, Tommy,” Ashleigh said. “She’s outside, bawling her ass off, poor thing. Are you ready?”
“Just a second…” Tommy raised a finger, his eyes still closed.
“We don’t have any time left! She’s already out!” Ashleigh glared at the small, pathetic figure of Jenny, trying to get through the crowd.
A police car pulled alongside Jenny, moving very slowly. It blasted Jenny with the spotlight, and she turned toward it, looking confused, blocking the light with her arm.
“Oh, what the hell?” Ashleigh said. “Not yet. We need to have the big show first. Tommy, do it now! The cops are on her!”
Tommy opened his eyes. Ashleigh felt most of her strength drain out of her, and she slumped against the railing and struggled to stay on her feet, practically fainting like some stupid lady in an old black-and-white movie. Esmeralda hurried to support her.
Tommy leaned out over the railing, looking down on the crowd below. He opened his mouth, and out flowed what looked like a stream of very dark blood. It corkscrewed over the heads of the crowd like a ribbon curling in the wind, and then it burst into a cloud of tiny, blood-red spores, drifting out over the festival like gruesome confetti.
The cops had gotten out of the car to chase Jenny on foot, but Jenny didn’t yet notice them behind her.
Tommy made a choking sound and stumbled back onto the balcony, and then he fell on his ass, bleached and sweaty and shivering.
Below, the churning of the crowd slowed as Tommy’s fear took hold of them.
Jenny’s power, when applied to a crowd, created an epidemic.
Ashleigh’s power, applied to a crowd, had been known to cause orgies.
When you applied Tommy’s fear to a crowd, you got a panic. Maybe even a riot.
Every mob needed a booster, so Ashleigh had brought an electronic megaphone, which featured the jaunty Fallen Oak High mascot Sonny the Porcupine on the side.
“It’s the girl wearing the gloves!” Ashleigh shouted through the megaphone. She pointed at Jenny. “See her? She’s the one! You have to get her! You have to stop her! You have to kill her!”
Five stories below, Jenny gaped up at the unexpected voice. Ashleigh wondered if Jenny could recognize her pal Darcy at this distance, shouting for a crowd of people to kill her.
A hippie girl with dreadlocks and a nose ring screamed and punched Jenny in the mouth. “Corporatist pig!” the hippie girl screamed.
“That’s right, the girl with gloves!” Ashleigh shouted. “Get her! Get her now! She’s the one you want. She’s the one behind all your problems!”
More people attacked Jenny, punching her in the head and back and stomach, kicking at her legs. The cops arrived as Jenny doubled over, and one of them bashed Jenny in the face with his knee. The panic had hold of everyone, and the crowd crushed in around Jenny, frenzied and eager to attack. Somebody smashed a beer bottle across her head.
“Now we have to get the fuck out of here,” Ashleigh said. “You don’t want to be here when Jenny does her thing. We could all die.” Ashleigh smiled. “But this time they’ll catch Jenny. Way too many witnesses, too many cops. They’re going to lock her up tight after she mutilates all these people.”
“Or they’ll kill her,” Tommy said.
“That’s not so bad for a second-best.” Ashleigh turned to Esmeralda. “Are you ready?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve been waiting.” Esmeralda gave Ashleigh a big smile.
Ashleigh cupped Esmeralda’s face in her hands. Then she leaned in and kissed Esmeralda hard on the mouth.
“I thought we were in a hurry,” Tommy said.
Ashleigh ignored him. She concentrated on disentangling her mind and spirit from Darcy’s body. After a minute, she was loose, just a discarnate spirit, and dangerously close to drifting away from these human bodies altogether. Maybe back to the deep and hellish void from which they’d come. She felt a moment of panic.
Then she flowed into Esmeralda. She’d invested a lot of time and energy wrapping Esmeralda tight in the golden threads of her love, like a bug in a spider web. Ashleigh, the great golden spider, moved in to claim her prey.
Ashleigh looked out through Esmeralda’s eyes. Darcy was backing away, gaping at her, with a sheen of spit on her chin.
“Oh…” Darcy said. “Oh…GRODY! Why were we doing that?”
“Ashleigh’s task on Earth is done,” Ashleigh said. “She’s back with the angels now, Darcy.”
“But…but where are we?” Darcy looked out at Charleston, and down at the rioting mob below, where people were overturning the temporary vendors’ booths and punching each other at random. “What’s happening? Why, I mean, where—”
Ashleigh put a hand on Darcy’s arm, soothing her a little with her loving energy, though Ashleigh didn’t have much energy left to spare. She was starving. She needed calories.
Below them, the crowd roared, and they smashed windows up and down the street.
“Come on, Darcy,” Ashleigh whispered. “Let’s go inside.”
“Darcy?” Tommy asked. “Why did you call her Darcy?”
“That’s my name, Mr. Angel, sir,” Darcy said.
“You relax, too,” Ashleigh said to Tommy. She led Darcy inside and shot Tommy a warning glance back over her shoulder. “Darcy, you look so troubled.”
“Will someone just tell me where we are?”
“We’re in a safe place. Sit down on this nice bed and relax.” Ashleigh guided her to the bed. “Good. Now just lie back and close your eyes.” She pushed a little more love into the girl.
“But…” Darcy said.
“Sh,” Ashleigh said. “You just stay right there. When you feel a little better, we’ll explain everything. Remember, we’re angels. We’ll watch over you. Just close those pretty eyes and relax now.”
“Okay.” Darcy closed her eyes.
Ashleigh picked up Esmeralda’s purse—she would need the girl’s driver’s license and the rest of her identity. Then she glanced at Darcy’s big canvas purse. Her two-hundred-thousand-dollar PayPal card was in there, and assorted other things she might want. She dropped Esmeralda’s purse inside it, then slung the big purse over her shoulder.
“Okay,” Ashleigh said. “Let’s go, Tommy.”
“What’s happening here?” Tommy leaned in close, looking into her eyes. “Ashleigh?”
“We decided to leave poor Darcy to her own life,” Ashleigh said. “Esmeralda agreed I could share her body, for now.”
“I don’t know if she would agree to that,” Tommy said.
“Tommy! Esmeralda loves me.”
“Making people feel love is your power.”
“That really hurts,” Ashleigh said. “You know how hard it is going through life, not sure whether somebody loves you for you, or just because your stupid magic touch makes them feel that way?”
“I never thought of that.”
“The three of us belong together, Tommy,” Ashleigh said. “I know she loves me because we all love each other. It’s not a trick. It’s a thousand lifetimes together. You’ll understand. I’ll tell you all about it. But right now we have to get the fuck out of Dodge before Jenny Mittens turns it all the way up and kills the whole city with us still inside it. Okay?”
Tommy looked at Darcy lolling on the bed, and then he looked carefully at Ashleigh.
“I guess I don’t have a choice,” he said.
“That’s right. Come on. It’s time for Jenny to show the whole world what a horrible thing she is.”
Ashleigh led the way into the hall, and Tommy closed the door behind them.
As Jenny stared into bright spotlight from the police car, a sudden, profound fear came over her. It was dread and paranoia and confusion all mixed together. The crowd around her suddenly reminded her of the lynch mob in Fallen Oak, the wave of mounting tension just before the explosion, when they’d killed Seth and tried to kill Jenny.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and she panicked and ran away from the police.
“It’s the girl wearing the gloves!” a voice boomed high above her. Jenny looked up toward the voice, which actually seemed to come from the roof of the Mandrake House, or maybe one of the darkened balconies. “See her? She’s the one! You have to get her! You have to stop her! You have to kill her!”
All around Jenny, the unfriendly faces of the crowd turned toward her, like they were compass needles and Jenny was magnetic north. They pointed at Jenny.
“That’s her!” somebody shouted. “The girl with gloves!”
“Oh, shit,” Jenny whispered. Her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t breathe very well. She needed to do something, but she couldn’t think straight. Her mind was blinded by fear.
The crowd closed in around Jenny. A dreadlocked hippie girl threw the first punch, right into Jenny's mouth.
“Corporatist pig!” the hippie girl screamed, and then she spit on Jenny. The girl didn't seem to notice the bloody pustules rising across her knuckles, where she'd made contact with Jenny’s lips and teeth.
“That’s right, the girl with gloves!” the voice from above shouted. “Get her! Get her now! She’s the one you want. She’s the one behind all your problems!”
Jenny wondered what the hell that meant.
But those words seemed to open the floodgates—ev
erybody attacked her. Fists pounded her head and her back. Somebody punched her in the stomach and she doubled over. Jenny saw a couple of police jogging toward her and she reached out one hand, hoping maybe they would help her.
Instead, the first cop slammed a knee into her face. Jenny felt her nose crack and a hot gout of blood rush down across her lips. Somebody smashed a bottle over her head.
Jenny fell to the sidewalk and curled into a fetal position, covering the back of her head with her hands. Shoes and sandals and boots kicked and stomped all over her, bruising her ribs, her hips, her legs and arms, the crown of her head. God only knew why everyone had listened to the crazy lady with the megaphone and started attacking her, but Jenny was terrified and didn’t know what to do.
There was one thing she wasn't going to do, she decided. She wasn't going to flare up with the Jenny pox and fight her way out of this crowd. Already the pox was rising in her, fueled by her growing fear. With all these people pushing in around her, pulling her hair and pounding on her body, it would be easy to flood them all with infection, even kill them if necessary, and make her escape.
She wouldn't do that again. She couldn't live with one more death on her hands. So she would lie here and let the mob do its worst, even if they killed her. That, Jenny thought, would be justice for what she’d done to all those people in Fallen Oak.
When she'd made that choice, her whole body relaxed. The blows continued raining down on her, but by now she was in so much pain that things couldn't possibly get any worse. She had died before, and it wasn’t so bad.
Chapter Forty-Five
Seth gave his right hand another hard pull, and it finally slid free of the noose. All the skin was rubbed off at the base of his hand and his wrist, leaving only raw pink tissue, and the end of the rope was wet with his blood, but he was free. It had taken a horribly long amount of time, and it hadn't helped that Allegra wouldn't get off of him, or stop slathering his face and neck with kisses.
