by Ty Drago
“We’ll tie him up,” I said, pulling the big dude out of the van as he convulsed. “Leave him in that old gas station. Then, when we get far enough away, we’ll call the cops and have them come rescue him.”
Dillin stared at me. He looked—I guess “uncomfortable” is the best word for it. “But he’s … innocent!”
“I know,” I said. “Third one I’ve zapped today. Sucks, huh?”
We dragged the poor guy over to the closed gas station, where I picked the lock. Once inside, I trussed him up pretty good with his own shoelaces. I didn’t gag him. Gags are more dangerous than you’d think. People choke and die on gags. So instead, I just left him on the floor with an apology. Being still pretty zapped, he didn’t respond—though the look in his eyes made me question his forgiving nature.
Julie said, “Is he gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,” I told her. And it was true. Almost certainly.
War sucks, I thought.
Dillin said he’d drive. I didn’t mind. It’s easier to defend yourself when your hands are free. So I got Julie settled in the van’s back seat. As I did, she looked up at me with those huge brown eyes of hers and said, “I wanna go home.”
“Um … I’m taking you to your sister,” I replied, hoping that would end it.
It didn’t. “My mom and dad are getting divorced.”
“I know.”
“Dad moved out. He wants to take me with him.”
“I know.”
“Did Helene tell you?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Were you at my school to protect me?”
“That was part of it.”
“What was the other part?” she asked.
“You’re the right age to start Seeing deaders, and the Sight usually runs in families. But your sister was worried about more’n that. She also wanted me to … watch over you … until the end of the school year, when your dad was gonna take you out of the area. Away from … them.”
“Helene’s been gone a long time.” She sounded sad.
“I know.”
“Years.”
“I know.”
“She’s been fighting … them.” Her eyes flicked over to the Zombie Prince, who was settling himself behind the steering wheel.
“Yeah,” I said.
“If I go where she went, I won’t be able to go home either,” Julie added. Her gaze locked on mine, and there was a quality in them—a kind of steel—that would brook no lies. “Will I?”
“No,” I replied. “Not until we beat them. Not until it’s safe.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope,” I told the girl. “You tired?”
“No.”
“Well, why don’t you lie down anyway? It’s been a scary day.”
She considered that. “Yeah, it has.” Then she stretched out across the seat and closed her eyes.
And, just like that, we were off.
“I need to call Haven,” I told Dillin, pulling my sat phone out of my pocket.
The Corpse moved fast. Seriously fast. The kind of fast I’d only ever seen in Royals. One instant the phone was in my hand and the next it was out the open window, sailing deep into a passing treeline.
“Hey!” I snapped, instinctively readying my pocketknife.
“I’m sorry!” he said quickly, holding up his hand in an “I come in peace” gesture.
“Pull over!” I told him, holding up the Taser. “Now!”
“Mr. Ritter–“
“What’d you do that for?”
“Will–”
“Tell me!”
He took his gaze off the road and gave me a hard look with his dead eyes. “What do you think would happen if you called Haven and told them about me? What do you think your chief, the infamous Tom Jefferson, would say? What would he tell you to do?”
The only reason I gave him the answer he expected was because it also happened to be the true one. “Waste you.”
“Right. So, no phone calls … not until we can set something up, a meeting in a public place where there can be a free, safe exchange of ideas.”
Exchange of ideas. Dude even talks like a principal!
“You told me you had information.” I tried not to think about my sat phone, lost back there in the woods. Haven had probably already sent the Angels out looking for us. When I didn’t check in, they’d freak. Helene, especially. She’d figure the deaders had gotten me and her sister, both.
“I do,” Dillin replied.
“And you said you’d tell me on the way.”
He considered this. Then he replied, “Take me to your leader.”
Which catches us up.
“What’s wrong with ‘Take me to your leader’?” he asked, looking perplexed when, in my generally poopy mood, I’d called his line lame. “You have a leader. Take me to him! Then I’ll tell you both everything I know.”
I squirmed in the passenger seat, trying to settle myself down. I was on edge—and most of what was honing that edge had nothing to do with the Corpses hunting us. I’d been hunted by so many dead people for so long that it had gotten to be second nature. No, what had me so wired was the idea of cooperating with one!
“I’m not taking you to Haven!” I snapped.
He looked confused. “I don’t expect you to. I told you: a public place where there can be a free, safe exchange—”
“Yeah, I heard that part. But how am I supposed to set up a meeting without my phone?”
“Once we’re in Philly, we’ll … I don’t know … buy you one of those throw-away cell phones. You can contact Mr. Jefferson using that.”
I sat back in the passenger seat and regarded him. He wasn’t making a lot of sense. First he throws my phone out the window and then turns right around and offers to buy me another one. He doesn’t want me to contact Haven because he’s afraid Tom’ll order me to kill him. But then he says I can phone home as soon as we’re in Philly, as if he thinks the chief’s attitude will have changed in the next hour?
This dead dude’s all over the map. It’s almost as if he’s not just running, but running …
“Scared,” I remarked aloud. “You’re scared.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. I’d nailed it.
A scared Corpse. I’d encountered them before, of course. When cornered, helpless, and faced with their own death—real death—deaders tended to blubber like the cowards they really were. But this wasn’t that kind of scared. This was much closer to the fear that Undertakers carry with them every minute of every day: a slow burn kind of scared, born from the knowledge that any moment might be your last.
This was dread.
Trust me. I know dread when I see it.
“Is Cavanaugh really your wife?” I asked him.
“She is,” he replied. Then, more pointedly: “I’ll never lie to you, Will. That’s a promise. Never.”
Uh huh.
“But you’re scared of her.”
“Aren’t you?” he asked.
“Sure,” I admitted. “But I’m not married to her. What happened to ‘love, honor and cherish’?”
“It’s not the same where I come from. Love isn’t … that is, we don’t …” His words trailed off, and he gripped the wheel tighter. I actually heard the bones in his dead fingers crack.
“What’s she going to do if she catches you?” I asked him.
For half-a-minute, he didn’t answer. Then, in a very small voice, he said, “Have you ever been in a ‘No Win’ situation?”
“Answer the question,” I said.
“I am answering the question. Have you or haven’t you?”
I thought about it. “No.”
“Well, they exist. I’m in one now. I’ve been on your world for about four months. My wife and mistress, the Queen of the Malum, summoned me. Do you know why?” Then, without waiting for me to reply, he said, “So that I may give her children.�
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All kinds of ewwww.
“Okay …” I muttered. “That’s not—”
But there was no stopping him now. “I’m of royal blood, Will. The Queen may only mate with royal blood. That rule is absolute in my culture. So, when she desires to, she selects her mate from among the royals. The male … me … is not offered a choice.”
His already pale face looked somehow paler, which was weird, since blood can’t drain from your cheeks when it’s not pumping in the first place. He said, “It’s considered a great honor to be chosen, and my family was suitably compensated. As for me, I was put on ‘standby.’ Our mistress would call me when she was ready.”
“And now she’s ready?”
He nodded.
He was dead. She was dead. Picturing that was bad enough. But I’d seen up close what the Malum actually looked like. And picturing that was the kind of thing that put you in therapy for the rest of your life.
“Um …” I said. Mr. Articulate, that’s me. “I’m not sure I want to know—”
“Immediately after mating,” the Zombie Prince said, “she’ll kill me.”
I blinked. “Kill you?”
“Kill me and consume me. That’s also my culture. I’m supposed to be further ‘honored’ by becoming nourishment for my own offspring.”
Praying mantises did that, didn’t they? Black widow spiders, too. “Sounds like a pretty crappy honor,” I told him.
He nodded. “That’s what I mean when I describe my situation as ‘No Win.’ If I betray her, my wife kills me. If I don’t betray her, she still kills me. No way out.”
“Sorry, dude,” I said, and I was astonished to find that I meant it. Since when had I started feeling sorry for Corpses? “But that still doesn’t explain why you picked ‘betray’ over ‘don’t betray.’”
“Will,” he replied, “do you know what a ‘Fifth Column’ is?”
By then we’d left the turnpike, taking Exit 326 toward Valley Forge and Philadelphia.
Smooth sailing—up until now.
Ahead, all traffic braked to a stop. And, in the distance, I spotted something that looked a lot like a police roadblock.
Crap, I thought.
Chapter 8
THE SURE-KILL
The Schuylkill Expressway has made somebody’s list as one of the top ten most dangerous roads in America. For that reason, locals sometimes call it the “Sure-Kill.”
From end to end, it’s only ten miles long. But they’re ten tough miles, running from the burbs northwest of the city, down along the steeply-cliffed western bank of the Schuylkill River, and eventually into Philly. There, it slices right through the middle of town, almost all the way down to the stadiums.
At rush hour, it’s a sight to behold. Wall-to-wall cars. At such times, those ten miles can cost you two hours.
And, trust me, it’s even worse when there is a roadblock.
They were Philly cops. This was weird, since technically the Sure-Kill is a state-owned road. The cops had stationed themselves right at Philly’s northern border—the City Avenue exit, it’s called—with a total of eight cruisers working the site, some parked to the side and the rest blocking the eastbound lanes and checking drivers. All their lights were flashing.
It was just past one in the afternoon, so the expressway wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it would be in three hours. But that still left a lot of cars on the road, all of which had piled up behind the barricade, forming a line of braked traffic at least half-a-mile long.
“Think your … wife … is behind this?” I asked Dillin. It was still weird to picture Lilith Cavanaugh married to anybody, though, if I added on the notion of her eating her husband—well, that helped.
“I don’t know,” the Zombie Prince admitted. “Do you think so?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He braked smoothly to the back of the right-hand line of cars. “Why?”
“Because, otherwise they’d be state troopers, not Philly cops. This has got Cavanaugh’s stench all over it.”
“You’re a smart young man.” He looked around. “Plenty of exits coming up. Lincoln Avenue. City Avenue. Roosevelt Boulevard. But they’re all blocked.”
They would be, wouldn’t they? The Queen of the Dead wouldn’t want her flies slipping out of the web.
For several minutes, we just sat there, gazing sullenly out at the wall of red and blue between us and Philly. There was no way to turn around. The Sure-Kill wasn’t about turning around. At this particular point along its ten-mile length, the east and west bound lanes were split up, separated by a wide, sloping median that would rip the bottom out of this van if we drove across it, never mind the cops who would drop on us like vultures the moment we tried.
I glanced back at Julie, hoping to find her still asleep. She wasn’t. Her dark eyes were open, her face half-covered by thick strands of dark brown hair. She regarded me pensively. Then she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Quite a bit,” Dillin said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Try to sleep.”
“Not tired,” the girl replied, sitting up.
“They might not be here for us,” the principal suggested.
“I could check,” I said sourly. “Haven monitors police scanners. If I only had my satellite phone …”
He made a sound very much like a sigh, which is weirder than you’d think, considering the dude didn’t breathe. Then he reached into the pocket of his sportcoat and pulled out an iPhone. “I’m sorry. I acted … hastily. You’re right. I was scared. Here, use mine.”
I took it from him—hesitantly, but I took it. As I did, it occurred to me that I’d never actually been handed anything by a Corpse before. Attacked, sure. Chased, all the time. But the simple act of one person handing something to another person? Nope. This was a first.
His screen saver showed—
I blinked.
“South Park? Really?”
He shrugged. “It makes me laugh.”
I called Haven. Dillin’s iPhone wasn’t encrypted, of course, so I had to use one of the “safe” numbers. These were phone numbers that the Chatters changed constantly, to make them harder to monitor. Even so, they were only ever used in emergencies.
Dan McDevitt, Chatter Extraordinaire, picked up. “Grant’s Pest Control. We live to kill. How can I help you?”
“It’s Will,” I said.
“Oh, Jeez. You’re not on your sat phone.”
“I kinda know that, Dan.”
“Right. Hold on. I got orders to pipe you right through.”
The line clicked and, when another voice came on the line, I expected it to be Tom’s.
It wasn’t.
“Where are you?” Helene demanded.
“Helene?” I asked, momentarily startled, while in the back seat, Julie suddenly perked up. “Where’s Tom?”
“Where’s Tom? You drop off the grid for two hours, and the first thing out of your mouth is ‘Where’s Tom?’ Where’s my sister?”
“She’s here,” I said quickly. “She’s safe.”
Then I glanced over at the dead guy who drove the van, and wondered if that was really true.
“Lemme talk to her!”
I handed the cell phone to Julie, who snatched it eagerly. “Helene?”
She listened.
“I’m okay.”
She listened.
“In the back of this big van headed into Philly.”
She listened.
“Uh-uh.”
She listened.
“Uh-uh.”
She listened.
“Yeah, kinda. But Will took care of me.”
And I thought: Whew! That ought to score me some points. Unless she—
“Well, him and Mr. Dillin.”
I felt my stomach jump up through my neck and try to squeeze out my ears.
In the driver’s seat, I saw the Zombie Prince smile thinly with his bloodless lips
and mutter, “Uh-oh …”
Julie listened.
“Huh? Oh yes, he’s one of them … but he’s nice!”
She listened some more.
“Sure, I’m sure. They were all over the school. Will and the Burpmister fought them. But then Will sent Megan and Bridget off with the Burpmister and he and I went to find Mr. Dillin.”
Still more listening.
“Well … ‘cause he was nice.”
A final bout of listening, very short this time.
Then she held the phone out to me. “My sister wants to talk to you.”
Despite whatever he was feeling, Dillin managed a lopsided grin. Dead guys should avoid lopsided grins; their faces can’t quite pull them off. “Woman trouble?” he asked slyly.
“Look who’s talking,” I grumbled as I took the phone.
“Point taken,” he replied.
In my ear, Helene exclaimed, “Who are you talking to?”
“Oh … um …” I stammered. “That’s … just …”
“Please just tell me that my sister’s got it wrong! Tell me you’re not in that van with a deader!”
“He’s different,” I said defensively, wondering if I believed it myself.
“What are you talking about? What’s the matter with you?” Then, after a long pause, she asked, “Will … my God … were you … compromised?”
Compromised. A fancy word for brainwashed. Deaders could do that. In fact, they had done it to Helene once upon a time. They used these little creatures from their home world called Pelligog. Once one of them burrowed into you, it made you very—cooperative—where the Corpses were concerned. It wasn’t something we’d seen them try for a while; we’d gotten too good at spotting it. But, given the circumstances, I supposed I couldn’t really blame Helene for running down that particular street.
“No, I haven’t been brainwashed,” I told her.
“Yeah? That’s just what a brainwashed person would say, isn’t it?”
I sighed. “How do I prove I’m not brainwashed?”
“You can’t!” she snapped. “If you were me, you’d be thinking exactly what I’m thinking!”
“I know.”
“And you’ve got my little sister!”
I felt like a fool. I felt like a traitor. Somehow I’d allowed myself to be led along by this walking cadaver, this Zombie Prince. Stupid. Really stupid. Why had I done such a thing?
