Reborn

by Kate Danley

  The hatch slammed shut behind her, sealing Tanis in darkness.

  # # #

  Heather Paxton wasn’t sure if she was dead and dreaming of life, or alive and dreaming of death.

  Until recently, she had been lying in the same position for days, breathing very little, eating sometimes from a couple of granola bars she had in her field pack, her digestive system shut down almost completely.

  Then, about an hour ago, she had heard an explosion that had crashed through the ship like a thunderbolt. Then for a moment the dromon had been becalmed, resting motionless except for the waves washing against the hull.

  Had something happened to the science vessel? Heather was surprised that she felt only mild curiosity, despite the fact that it was her boat, her jewel, representing her career, her future. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was that she was alive this second.

  The stillness had not lasted long. It was followed by a creaking sound, a sound of wood on brass, a sound of water splashing. The oarsmen were back at work.

  This was a galley, after all. Whatever had happened to the science vessel wasn’t going to stop the dromon in its progress towards Seattle.

  Heather curled up tighter in the dark hole she’d found for herself in the depths of the ship’s hold. She had become very good at remaining motionless, at letting time pass, minutes uncounted. At just being.

  Not long after that, she heard the rush of flames and the sound of burning. Was the galley on fire? Deep in her heart, she prayed that this was so. That the ship would burn to cinders before reaching land. True, Heather would be burned up with it, and the prospect of a fiery death didn’t appeal to her much.

  Still, it was far better than the alternative.

  However, as time passed and the combustible sounds faded away, Heather came to the realization that fire was not to be her salvation. The fire was probably another weapon that the dromon had to fend off attack.

  The dromon was going to complete its mission, no matter what.

  More time passed.

  Then she heard scuffling on the deck above. The sounds of fighting and struggle. Like the sounds from when she’d first hidden in the hold of the ship, an eternity ago, when the resurrected lords had slaughtered the men from the science vessel.

  But no, these were different sounds, weren’t they? A week ago, there had been screams and the sounds of slaughter. This time there was scuffling, but no shrieks of terror. And the scuffling was faster and, to Heather’s ear, more purposeful.

  Almost as if someone was fighting back. As if a few people were prepared to meet this horror straight on and not go down without a struggle.

  She heard the snarling of a dog, and suddenly, her days of enforced isolation, of voluntary neutrality, were forgotten. She crawled out of her hole to see what was happening.

  The fighting was on the deck above her, and she wasn’t going to climb up there to join in the fray. She wasn’t that brave or that foolish. But she had to know who was—who had been fearless enough to come on board this ship and fight with the undead.

  On this level of the ship, three decks down, the ceiling was so low that Heather couldn’t stand. She crouched and crawled her way to the forward hatch, listening to the sounds of scuffling just inches above her.

  Then the dog was howling and the hatch above her opened, just slightly.

  Heather skittered back into the darkness of the hold as the figure of a woman pushed its way through the hatch and down the companionway, the lid slamming shut after her. She fell down the ladder and landed on the deck in front of Heather, her eyes shut and her chest heaving.

  Heather crawled out and looked at her. Her long black ponytail snaked out from her head like a serpent. She was young and probably would have been pretty under other circumstances.

  Her eyes opened and locked with Heather’s for an instant. They were a startlingly pure green and not yellow at all.

  Heather placed her finger to her lips and gestured for the woman to follow her back to her hidey-hole. Then Heather went back, trusting that the woman would follow her.

  She did.

  # # #

  Tanis thought she might have been imagining things. The fleeting glimpse of the crazed woman’s face before hers, her eyes crazed but not glowing yellow, putting her finger to her lips and then disappearing in the darkness like a vision.

  But she had gestured for Tanis to follow her, and follow her she did. Crawling through the dark cavern of the ship’s hold, Tanis lost sight of the phantom woman.

  Crawling farther into the darkness, she’d just about decided the woman was an illusion, brought on by the stress of the moment, when a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Come here,” the woman’s voice whispered.

  Tanis followed the arm into a coffin-sized cubbyhole. There was barely enough room for the two of them to fit.

  “Do you come from the university?” the woman asked.

  Tanis blinked, straining to see the woman’s face. She was dishwater blond and in her thirties. She would have been pretty under other circumstances.

  “No,” Tanis said. “We came to stop this ship.”

  “How many of them are you?”

  “There were six.”

  Tanis could just make out the woman’s expression. It was not hopeful.

  “Six of you? That’s all?”

  Without warning, a hand gripped Tanis by the leg and began to pull.

  Tanis found herself yanked out of the confines of the cubbyhole and onto the hard surface of the deck. A dead lord was there, his white robes billowing around him, his dreadful yellow eyes glowing with a ferocious intensity. She wished to God she still had her hammer.

  He raised his dagger, ready to slash it down across Tanis’ throat.

  Then, all at once, he fell to the side, an ax buried in his brain.

  Matt Cahill stood behind him. As the dead lord fell to the deck, Matt pried his ax loose from the body.

  “Where’s your hammer?” he asked her.

  “I lost it.”

  He reached down and picked up the dead lord’s dagger from the deck and handed it to her.

  “Till you get it back,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Dromon Galley

  “My name is Heather Paxton.”

  Matt had snapped a glow stick and they sat around the eerie green light, breathing heavily. They spoke in whispers, for the ship had fallen into silence again.

  Matt had just told them how he had fallen into the sea from the burning deck of the Demeter. Clutching the bottom of the galley, he had climbed up into the hawsehole, grabbing on to the anchor and pulling himself up. Then he made his way from the bottom of the ship to this midlevel deck, where he had seen Tanis under attack.

  Now there was this half-crazed-looking woman, this survivor. Tanis couldn’t help but think of her as Ben Gunn, the mad pirate, marooned and forgotten, in Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Her father used to read that to her and her brother to put them to sleep. She cast all thought of Brett from her mind and listened to Heather’s story.

  “I used to be a marine archeologist,” Heather said. “But that was a lifetime ago. I headed an expedition to the Black Sea to find this ship. If possible, to raise it. To bring it back to the university.

  “What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t conceivably have known, is that the men on this ship had been waiting. Waiting for the chance to fulfill their destiny.

  “I’ve spent my time here reading these inscriptions and hieroglyphics. Translating them. Deciphering them. Decoding them. Reading their story.

  “These men, the lords, they traveled to an island in the Black Sea. I don’t know where. I don’t think it exists anymore. I think it’s been swallowed by the ocean. I hope it has.

  “On the island they made a deal with…a being. An otherworldly force. I don’t know what to call it. They called it a god. They called it ‘Moloch.’ They sold their souls in exchange for unlimited power over
the world.

  “Now, I don’t know what that means. But I do know this. This ship must never reach port. For when it does, that deal will be fulfilled.”

  Matt nodded with steely determination. “Don’t worry. We’ll stop it before it makes shore.”

  Tanis couldn’t keep quiet. “But how? It’s all well and good to say we’ll stop it, but how? The explosives are gone. The men in robes have them. And Carrie and Lowell and Wilson—they’re gone, too. How are we going to stop this damned ship, just the three of us?”

  “There might be a way,” Heather said. “There’s a temple in the front of the ship. A chapel. Whatever. It’s dedicated to Moloch. I crawled through when they were slaughtering my crew. There’s an altar there. With hieroglyphics. Somehow, the hieroglyphics make this ship operate. They’re empowered in some way. If we were to get there and destroy that altar, the spell might be broken. The ship might lose its power.”

  “Spell?” Tanis said in disbelief.

  “Do you find that hard to believe after all this?” Heather asked.

  “You say ‘might,’” Matt said. “You don’t know for sure?”

  “I don’t,” Heather said. “I only know that if we destroy that altar, it will change things.”

  Matt nodded. It fit with his past experience. Twice he’d destroyed altars in his post-resurrection journeys and it had diminished the power of the evil forces he was battling at the time. “Then let’s get going. We’re running out of time.”

  # # #

  Tanis crawled through the ship, the dead lord’s dagger gripped in her hand. She didn’t like it. She missed her hammer. She wondered how Matt would feel if he didn’t have his ax, if he had to carry a sword instead.

  Heather was leading the way. She stopped.

  There in front of her was a door with an odd insignia on it, like nothing Tanis had ever seen before.

  “That’s it,” Heather whispered. “The altar is in there.”

  “Why isn’t there a guard?” Tanis asked.

  Matt shrugged. “Who would they be guarding it from? They think they’re alone on this ship.”

  They crept to the door and waited, listening. Voices came to them from the other side of the door. Voices speaking English.

  “It’s Carrie,” Tanis said.

  Before she knew what was happening, Matt had kicked the door in and burst through it.

  Carrie, Lowell, and Wilson were chained to benches. Four lords guarded them. Matt took out the first one with a sideways blow from his ax. Tanis handled the second one, before he had time to react, plunging her dagger into his stomach and twisting it.

  The two remaining lords were ready for them. Brandishing their daggers, they jumped for Tanis and Matt. Matt chopped down with his ax and the lord’s hand flew off, dagger and all.

  Tanis danced away from her lord as he approached, her dagger held out like a switchblade. She moved to the side and he moved with her. Quickly, she darted to the right and grabbed the lord’s dagger arm, pulling it down. The lord yanked it back up, slicing Tanis in the leg, but Tanis pulled him in close and shoved her dagger in his throat.

  It was over in less than a minute.

  “You did good,” Matt told her.

  “I still miss my hammer.”

  Matt took a key off the wall and proceeded to unchain Carrie.

  “I knew you weren’t dead,” she told Matt. “I knew they couldn’t kill you.”

  “Why didn’t they kill you?” Tanis asked, unchaining Wilson.

  “They didn’t know what the fuck we were!”

  “I think they were curious,” Lowell said. “They saw what we could do. They wanted to find out more about us.”

  Tanis looked around. “What about Dr. Dorcott?”

  “They weren’t curious about her,” Wilson said.

  Heather was examining the stone altar at the far side of the room. It was rough, made of granite, and on it there were ancient carvings. They looked like they’d been old even when this ship was built.

  The carvings were intricate and entwined, looking like a cross between Celtic runes and Easter Island inscriptions.

  “What does it say?” Matt asked her.

  “I don’t know. It’s ancient. Older than any known system of human writing. It may not even be human.”

  “I don’t care,” Matt said.

  Matt swung the butt of his ax down on top of the altar. It cracked. It rumbled. It loosed a tremendous roar.

  Footsteps came pounding down the deck.

  Matt brought his ax down once again. The altar crumbled and fell.

  A yellow glow came from within it. A high-pitched, piercing noise, like a scream or the buzz of a million insects, began to fill the air.

  Matt struck with his ax again. The yellow glow spread throughout the room, throughout the ship.

  The door flung open and the lords rushed in.

  The lords collapsed. Fell to the deck. Lifeless. Dead.

  The freaks had won.

  # # #

  The inside of the galley was filled with a yellow, pulsing glow.

  All the slaves were dead on their benches, still clutching the now motionless oars in their lifeless hands. Walking down the middle of the aisle, Tanis spotted her hammer, cast aside under one of the benches. She moved one of oarsmen’s legs aside to reach it. The leg crumbled to dust under her touch. She grabbed her hammer and picked it up, not sparing the slave a second glance.

  “Let’s get up and breath some real air,” Lowell said, moving to the companionway.

  Tanis climbed the ladder and felt the cool night air on her skin. She’d never thought she would feel that again. She sucked the air in, loving the wet, humid taste of it.

  The ship still glowed, every inch of it. Tanis remembered reading about St. Elmo’s fire when she was a child, and she imagined it as something like this.

  But beyond that, she looked out at the skyline of Seattle stretched out before them.

  “The boat found its own way to port,” said Matt.

  “The sailors are all dead,” Wilson said. “So that’s all right, right? We won, didn’t we?”

  All at once, the yellow glow intensified and focused into a beam of light, which shot from the ship and spread like a beacon towards the city. It shot like a laser, casting its light into every corner of the city and far beyond. It gleamed and hummed and pulsed as it covered all of Seattle in an unearthly effulgence.

  Then the light dissipated into drifting particles of dust. The yellow glow went flickering away.

  “What was that?” Wilson asked.

  “It wasn’t the lords we had to worry about, or the slaves. It was the ship itself that was the danger,” Matt said. “And it’s sent its signal.”

  Oh, crap, Tanis thought. This is just the beginning.

  EPISODE 5

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Dayton, Ohio

  “Stop!” the cop shouted as J.J. dashed across Fourth Street.

  The steady rain made it hard for drivers to see and even harder for them to stop. A guy in a blue pickup slammed on the brakes, but his tires slid on the slick asphalt. The truck bumped J.J., knocking him down. He immediately sprang back up, fueled by adrenaline and the hit of coke he’d taken a few minutes ago. He kept running.

  “Stop where you are!” the skinny cop yelled again.

  J.J. glanced back. The two officers were gaining on him. Shit. He hurried down the empty sidewalk. At one forty in the morning, everything was closed. Then he saw light shining through the window of a twenty-four-hour convenience store just ahead. He shoved the door open and ran inside.

  He nearly collided with an old woman by the front counter. J.J. grabbed her and threw her into the doorway, hoping to slow down the cops. He ducked down an aisle and ran for the back. There had to be another way out.

  The burly cop slammed into him, pinning him against the door of the refrigerated section, his face jammed into the cold glass. J.J. struggled, but Officer Alvarez was too strong. He wrench
ed J.J.’s right arm behind his back, then his left, and closed handcuffs around his wrists.

  “You have the right to remain silent…,” Alvarez began.

  His partner caught up to them, winded from the chase. Officer McCauley didn’t visit the gym as regularly as Alvarez did, which earned him no end of shit. He grabbed his radio to call in the arrest.

  A beam of yellow light shone through the wall of the convenience store. It was the light from the dromon, undimmed across two thousand miles. It bathed J.J. in a golden glow. Then it faded away. The two officers didn’t see it. They also didn’t see the change in J.J.’s eyes, which now radiated the same yellow light.

  J.J. twisted one of his manacled hands and touched Alvarez’s fingers. In a reasonable tone, he said, “I want you to shoot your partner.”

  McCauley snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I bet you do.”

  Alvarez drew his service pistol and shot McCauley in the head. The sound of the shot reverberated through the small store. A neat round hole appeared in the cop’s forehead and a spray of red flew out behind him. He dropped bonelessly to the floor.

  The clerk at the front counter screamed. She and two customers fled the store. J.J. ignored them. He glanced at Alvarez, who just stood there, his expression blank, awaiting further instructions.

  “Uncuff me,” said J.J. The officer complied. J.J. was neither overjoyed nor amazed by the sudden turn of events. He felt, for the first time in his life, perfectly calm. And he knew exactly what to do next.

  “Let’s go.” J.J. stepped over the growing pool of blood around the dead body and walked out of the convenience store, with Alvarez right behind him.

  # # #

  Panama City, Florida

  Carl woke to the sound of his son screaming. He forced his eyes open and peered at the baby monitor. Aidan was hungry. Again.