by Ty Drago
“This guy’s playing it pretty loud and large, isn’t he?” I asked. “You Corps— … um … Malum are usually more careful than this.”
He glanced at me as we reached the far side of the bridge.
“As of today, the rules have changed,” he said. “You should know. You changed them.”
Chapter 12
MALITE
We turned off the Falls Bridge and onto Kelly Drive, heading into Center City.
Kelly Drive is no Schuylkill Expressway. For one, it’s narrower, only one or two lanes headed southeast, into the city, and one or two lanes headed northwest, out of the city. For another, it’s way prettier, with the shops and neighborhoods on our left giving way to towering, rough cut granite cliffs as Philly got ever closer. To our right, the river followed us like an old friend, with a wide grass park between it and us.
Fairmount Park.
There were plenty of cars, but even more joggers and cyclists—just innocent civilians enjoying a sunny June day, blissfully ignorant. To these folks, mostly college age or older, there were no Corpses, there was no war, and the things—Malites—chasing us were only figments from nightmares.
At that moment, in that moment, I hated them.
From the backseat, Julie’s cries had changed into wracking sobs.
I turned around in my seat, drawing a sharp, disapproving—and very dead—look from Dillin for unhooking my seatbelt.
“Julie?” I said.
She sobbed.
“Julie. Look at me.”
She looked at me, her eyes red from crying, her small round face ghostly pale. “I’m … scared …” she stammered.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I promised. “I’ll get you to your sister, don’t you worry.”
She stared hard at me, wanting to believe. Needing to believe. Then, gulping air, she nodded. I nodded back, did my best to smile, and then turned forward again.
It suddenly felt like an awful burden. I’d told the girl what I had to, the same thing I’d been telling myself.
But Parker’s out there. And that thing. No, those things. Parker had two of those toolboxes!
“Are they still after us?” I asked Dillin, who kept one dead eye on the mirrors. Of course, he was also driving with only one hand, as his other was back on the bridge.
“Unless Parker calls them off, yes. But he won’t call them off.” He switched lanes, cutting left around a panel truck that was moving too slow for him. “That said … they’re new to Earth. They don’t know the environment. Its strangeness probably frightens them.”
I blinked. “Frightens them?”
He nodded. “Children get frightened. You should know that better than most.”
For a second, an offended reply about everyone getting frightened, child or otherwise, sat on my tongue. But then his real point sunk in.
“Children?” I asked.
Another nod. “Malites are our children.”
“The monster that took your arm off and almost chewed its way through our windshield was a Malum kid?”
“Yes.”
“But it looked like a rat! A flying rat!”
“That was just the host body it found when Parker released it.”
I admit processing this took longer than it should have. It’d been a hard day. “You mean Malites … possess animal dead bodies?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that they do use animal bodies for hosts … but they don’t necessarily have to be dead.”
More processing.
“But it had wings!”
“Malites like to alter their host bodies at the genetic level. That’s why they take living hosts. Dead hosts can’t be altered.”
Nope. Not getting it. “But how can they—”
That’s when Dillin cursed.
Three cop cars were blocking the road just around the next bend. Another roadblock.
Double crap.
“Your wife’s pulled out all the stops,” I said.
“She’s nothing if not thorough,” he replied.
Then he cut the wheel hard to the right, pulling us into a parking lot that ran beside the river. There were already a bunch of cars there, probably belonging to bikers and joggers. June days were like that.
How far are we from Center City?
Then I spotted the building at the far end of the parking lot and knew.
It was a boathouse.
Boathouse Row.
Philly’s a big crew town. I mean a big crew town. One of the biggest in the country, maybe in the world. Just to give you an idea, remember when I told you Kelly Drive used to be East River Drive? Well, it got renamed for John Brendan “Jack” Kelly, Jr., an Olympic rowing champion from the 1920s. Don’t believe me? Look it up.
Today, there are a whole bunch of boathouses lining the eastern banks of the Schuylkill River—big, colorful, two or three-story wooden buildings, all with direct river access. Each is owned by a group that sponsors a rowing crew. Some are new and fancy enough to get rented out for parties or weddings. Others are old, like 1860’s old. And a few are condemned.
This was one of the condemned ones.
As we climbed out of our stolen car with the hole in the windshield, Julie immediately took my hand. She’d recovered somewhat, but I could feel her trembling, and her dark eyes seemed to look everywhere at once. Then they settled on Dillin’s missing arm and she asked nervously, “Does … it hurt?”
“No,” he replied. Then, having to turn awkwardly to shut the car door, he added, “But it is inconvenient.”
“What if people … see it?” she asked.
“They won’t,” he said.
“Why not? How come Will and I can see what you really look like? How come those other two girls could … but not anybody else?”
“It’s called his Mask,” I replied.
“It’s called my cover,” he said at the same time.
We looked at each other.
Dillin said, “We need to get out of the open. Any ideas?”
I pointed at the boathouse. “In there.”
He looked at it, seeing the same signs splashed across it as I had.
CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA! DANGER! ASBESTOS!
“Okay,” he said.
That’s when a Malite took off his other arm.
He’d been just turning away from the car when it happened, otherwise the thing might have nailed him in the chest.
As it was, his newly detached arm went flying, spinning up and over the nearest cars, where it clobbered a big bald guy, knocking him over.
The guy’s wife, or girlfriend, or whatever, screamed.
Julie gasped.
The Malite kept going, whipping out across the river in a long arc, getting ready for another attack run. Here, where there were fewer trees and much more open ground, I was able to follow it more easily.
This one wasn’t a rat with wings.
This one looked more like—
—a duck.
Except its bill was more than a foot long, with serrated teeth along both edges that seemed to be moving back and forth, like the blades of a tree trimmer.
Jeez.
“Come on!” I cried, grabbing Julie’s hand and pulling her toward the relative safety of the condemned boathouse. I could only hope the Zombie Prince was following. I mean, it wasn’t like I could grab his hand too, now was it?
We’d gotten maybe twenty feet when the rest of the people in the parking lot registered at least some of what was going on. Nobody had panicked yet. Instead, they just stood, staring at the bald guy who’d been knocked down by Dillin’s arm. He’d found his feet again and was rubbing angrily at a bloody lip and looking around. “Who hit me?” he exclaimed, tacking on a couple of a words that, if I copied them down here, would probably get the book banned from most school libraries.
The severed a
rm lay at his feet but, of course, he couldn’t see it. Dillin’s Mask remained in effect.
“Will! It’s coming!”
This came from Julie, and a glance over my shoulder proved her right. The Malite was gaining speed, and this time it seemed to be coming after us.
“That car!” I exclaimed, pointing to a big pickup truck with lots of undercarriage space. “Get under it! Go!”
The girl didn’t argue. As she ran for the pickup. I went toward the bald guy, who scowled at me as if maybe I was the one who’d knocked him flat and had now returned to pop him a second time.
“Don’t try nothing, kid!” he growled.
I ignored him, bent down, and picked up the severed arm he couldn’t see.
For just a moment, because a moment was all I had, I watched the guy’s eyes. To him, I wasn’t carrying anything in my arms. But I could read the confusion in his expression, as if his eyes and his mind were telling him two different things.
“You’re blind!” I snapped, suddenly angry at him without really knowing why. “Just like all the rest!”
Oddly, that seemed to offend him and he actually made a grab for me, but I jumped clear and turned—just in time.
The Malite lanced down at me.
I swung the severed arm up to meet it.
Dead flesh connected with flying monster. The little stolen body bounced away, slamming into the side window of bald guy’s car so hard that I heard its bones crunch.
Home run, I thought.
“What’s going on?” the bald guy demanded, and there was an edge of menace in his voice that I didn’t much care for. “What is that?” He stared down at the Malite’s broken body.
Then he pulled a gun.
The confusion was gone from his expression. Panic had replaced it.
“It’s okay!” I told him. “Put that down!”
He ignored me, waving the weapon around. “What is that thing? Are there more of them?”
That’s when I heard a scream at my back.
Turning, I spotted a woman on the jogging path that ran past the far side of the parking lot. From the look of things, her leashed dachshund had suddenly leaped up and ripped out its owner’s throat.
Then, as the poor woman collapsed, the creature spouted bat wings and leapt into the air.
It just Transferred.
As the reborn Malite approached, cruising maybe four feet above the gravel lot, I readied Dillin’s arm a second time.
Then I heard a gunshot. A bullet whizzed past my ear.
“Hey!” I yelled.
An instant later, the flying dachshund was swatted out of the air as if by an invisible hand.
An instant after that, a guy in bicycle pants riding along the jogging path, right behind where the Malite had been, toppled over, shot through the chest.
Oh, God …
“I got it!” the bald guy yelled. “Did ya see that, Jess? I got it!”
His wife, or girlfriend, or whatever seemed not to have seen it. Her eyes had gone glassy with shock.
I glared at the dude. He looked back on me, his face flushed with animal triumph. “Did ya see that shot, kid?”
“I saw it,” I said.
Then I hit him upside the head with Dillin’s arm—hard.
He went down a second time. And stayed down.
Finally, though no more than a minute had passed since Dillin and his arm had parted company, the folks in the parking lot started panicking. Most raced for the safety of their cars. Others took off on foot, some south and some north, scattering like frightened deer.
“Julie!” I called.
“I’m okay!” she called back, though her voice sounded like she’d been crying again.
Girl’s gonna have nightmares for the rest of her life!
“Come on!” I told her, looking around for Dillin.
The Zombie Prince was nowhere to be seen.
Had he split on us? Probably. I mean, he was a Corpse, after all. But still, from what I’d seen of the guy, it didn’t feel right. He’d had plenty of opportunities to ditch Julie and me. Why do it now, especially with no arms?
But I didn’t have time to find out. The Malite had transferred once already. It would do it again.
We needed to get into the boathouse, if only to buy time to plan our next move.
Julie scrambled out from under the pickup and the two of us ran the length of the parking lot, reaching a padlocked door that had once been painted red.
“Hold on,” I said, fumbling for my pocketknife.
“Will!” she screamed.
I looked where she was pointing.
A rabbit was bounding across the parking lot toward us. Except this was no happy park bunny. This rabbit’s ears had been turned into razor-tipped horns and its mouth was a symphony of fangs. Instead of front paws, it had talons as long and savage as an eagle’s.
I swear … I’m gonna have nightmares for the rest of my life, too!
My only hope was to use my pocketknife to either pick or, more likely, slice the lock open.
But who was I kidding? I didn’t have time to do either one. That thing was coming way too fast.
“Julie,” I said.
“What?” she asked, pressing close to me.
“I’m sorry.”
Then someone appeared in front of us, a figure in skin-tight blue.
“Out of the way!” the gunshot biker yelled.
We got out of the way.
He kicked the door in with such force that it almost blew off its hinges. Then, as the Malite leaped, he spun and caught it midair, his grab lightning-quick. “Not this time, little one,” he said, crushing it in his fist.
“Dillin?” I asked.
He actually smiled at me. His teeth were white. But then, this new host body hadn’t been dead more than a minute. About as fresh as they get. Hardcore Type One.
“Inside,” he said.
The three of us ran into the boathouse, slamming the door behind us.
Chapter 13
THE BOATHOUSE
It was dark inside, the windows boarded up. Despite that, as I shone my pocketknife’s flashlight along the walls, colorful graffiti told tales of years, maybe decades, of visitors.
Dillin found an old bench and used it to wedge the door shut.
“Will that keep ‘em out?” Julie asked tearfully.
“Not at all,” he replied. “But the Malite will first have to find a new host and then figure out where we’ve gone. That should buy us some time.”
I asked, “What if Parker and the other Malite show up?”
“No ‘if’ about it. They will show up. And the boathouse is a pretty obvious place to search. But, by then, the parking lot out there will be a crime scene, with plenty of police around … most of them likely human. Parker won’t want to just burst in here and kill us with so many potential witnesses. Things have changed in this war, as I told you … but they haven’t changed that much.”
A nice pep talk, though I wondered how much of it he really believed.
Then the Zombie Prince did a strange thing. He marched over to me and, moving with that uncanny speed Royal Corpses have, snatched the pocketknife out of my hand and shone its flashlight beam on something in his own.
A thin wallet.
“Raymond Exler,” he said solemnly.
“Who?”
“The man who was killed on the bike just now. His name was Raymond Exler.”
“Oh,” I said, perplexed.
Then the Zombie Prince did an even stranger thing. He closed his eyes—his new eyes—and said, “Ray, I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry I’ve had to borrow your body. I will do everything in my power to respect it, and I vow to keep it not one moment longer than I must.”
His eyes opened again. He handed back the pocketknife.
“Thank you.”
“You’re the weirdest dead guy I ever met,” I said.
�
��I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, let’s explore, shall we?”
The boathouse was basically one big room, with a vaulted ceiling and a half-rotted wooden floor. There were two other doors, both padlocked from the outside, and a wide boat ramp that was also tightly closed–though river water, loaded with trash, lapped underneath its doors, slapping noisily against old pilings.
I found a brass plaque, tarnished almost to the point of being unreadable.
THE ORDER OF SAINT JEREMY
BOATHOUSE
DEDICATED ON THE
EIGHTH OF MAY IN THE YEAR
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY
“That’s about the time we started watching,” Dillin remarked.
I shone my light on him. “What?”
“1870. That’s about the time my people started watching your people.”
“That’s almost a hundred and fifty years ago,” I said, unable to keep the accusation out of my voice.
“I know.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julie watching us. The girl was still shaking, but she seemed alert. That was good. I’d been half afraid she’d go into shock. A lot of new Seers did.
Boettcher girls, it seemed, were made of tougher stuff.
“Is that how Corpses know how to act so … human?” I asked.
He nodded. “We’re forced to study each target world for a long time … decades … before an invasion begins. Your language. Your culture. Your history.”
History.
“So when Ms. McKinney was teaching us history, she was just parroting back the facts she’d memorized while learning how best to destroy us?”
He looked at me. “That’s an interesting way of putting it. But, yes.”
I looked back at him. “We should focus on finding a way out of here.”
“Agreed,” he said. “But there are already police cars approaching.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear them. Can’t you?”
I listened, but didn’t hear anything. Then, distantly, I did. Sirens.
