Their methods sucked.
A yelp distracts me as one of the Skopamish strokes the head of a now-whimpering suit.
Nice.
Cool it.
I don't know how that translates into their language but the indian gives a grunt of pure aw shucks and lets his hand fall.
“Natives are getting restless,” Gramps notes.
“Right. Well, they get it done.”
“True,” he agrees, cig bobbing with his comment.
Arrogant chirps, “You understand the consequence for keeping a Random's abilities hidden.”
“Not my problem. But Paxton is not a Dimensional. I knew one and he's not.”
He opens his mouth.
“Neither is Deegan.”
“Fine.” He coughs again, the flesh of his hand oozing pockmarks of blood. “So where are they?”
Gramps and I look at each other.
No one knows.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Paxton
Shaking. Something is shaking me.
“Young master.”
George. His name is George.
His and two other faces look anxiously into mine. The smell is normal death rot, and it brings me around like smelling salts.
I sit up and feel a little dizzy. Need to mow on food.
“Food,” I croak.
I blink, looking around. Oh shit. We're in the woods again.
“What happened?”
“The Organic put you into a four hour healing coma.”
Swell.
I cough, and it rattles. Bad for me to be supine. Fluids collect. I try a scoop of healing energy and come up empty.
Too empty. Too tired.
Deegan.
Anxiety coils inside me like a snake. Which is really a handy substitute for terror. My sister is somewhere in this effed up circus with all the freaks.
The zombies look around.
No brains.
A tired smile lifts the corners for my mouth. “I need food for me,” I explain, thumb on my chest.
“Ah,” George says, badly covering his disappointment.
“We find a grocery store and get some grub, then I find Deegan.”
Zombies have IQs when they're alive and dead. If they're not the sharpest tool in the shed when they're alive, it plays out when they're raised.
“Let's find a grocery store and then we'll get my sister.”
Nobody moves.
I stand and begin walking.
I tune my pulse disc up, activating GPS location. A map blinks inside my mind.
I see where one is.
I think, deactivate.
I walk to the store, via the forest and scope out a storefront with walls of glass.
It's lousy with bots.
I turn to George.
He looks pretty good. The wife and daughter have to hang around. They really have that waxy gray look.
I explain what George needs to do.
He walks out of the woods and inside the store.
Ten tense minutes pass.
He moves through the glass doors, and breath leaks out of me like a punctured balloon.
Thank God.
Then the bots’ screaming begins.
Fuck.
George doesn’t break stride; he just plows straight up the hill. The purity of undead purpose. Zombies aren’t much for discernment. I am the AFTD. Period.
The bots don’t follow.
I inch closer to the tree line, moving a branch aside.
It's not us they're after.
It's worse.
Deegan is standing behind a huge dude.
He pings my undead radar immediately. Shit.
Dee can only raise murderers.
George comes through the trees, puts the food at my feet and stands. Waiting.
Our cover is blown. They’ve found my sister. She’s in trouble.
George looks at me for his next command.
I net the family.
“Come on.”
The little girl leaves the teddy bear behind.
*
Deegan
I hide behind Mitchell. He slams a fist into the bot.
“What the hell are these?” he bellows.
“I don’t know!” I holler back.
Mitchell uses its arm to whip its body into the one that’s going for me.
“I can’t get them all, Deegan!” he yells.
Then I see my brother jogging down a hill that borders a forest.
“Paxton,” I whisper in relief so profound I feel it in my guts.
“Who?!”
I point to my brother. But Mitchell’s eyes are on the zombies.
A look passes between Pax’s zombies and Mitchell.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, bots holding both his arms. He shifts his gaze over my shoulder.
An image of Clyde flies through my mind. He’s family.
Of course I do. All zombies are trustworthy. I nod.
He grabs my waist as he shrugs the bots off.
He lifts me above his head, and I scream.
Pax’s eyes go round.
Mitchell hollers at the male zombie at Paxton’s right, “Catch her.”
“Yes,” it hisses.
Mitchell tosses me.
It’s an experience I’ll never forget. A zombie’s absolute strength used to make me fly in the air.
Air rushes pass me as I helplessly tumble thirty feet.
Strong arms catch me. The momentum is too much, and I crash into something else.
Two other somethings.
My body buries a woman and a child. I yelp, trying to struggle off them and then give a hiccuping scream as my wrist shrieks in agony.
They’re zombies; all is well. They lift themselves up, brushing off their clothes. “Mistress,” they say simultaneously.
Oh, wow. I back up, stumbling, and the male zombie is taking me by the elbow. Mitchell saved me.
I turn around, and ten bots cover him.
“Paxton!” I scream.
But he's already there.
The bots turn to him and our eyes meet.
“Need ya sis!”
I run down the hill, back to the swarm of bots from which Mitchell tried to save me. The zombies are at my back. I feel it like sunlight warming my skin. Death always feels so alive to an AFTD. Hard to explain.
“Coming!” I scream.
Mitchell’s head pops out of the hill of bots.
“No!” he hollers, struggling out of the mound.
I reach Pax and close my hand around his.
Mitchell grabs my other, and I wince as my wrist grinds in pain.
The zombies at my back? The male grabs my shirt from behind, and the woman and child cling to him like a barrel of hooked monkeys.
Pax blinks.
A thin opaque eyelid covers his iris. I blink, and my own descend instantly.
My peripheral vision comes online.
Hundreds of bots rush like a sea of metal to an artificial shore, hands outstretched to hurt us.
“Paxton,” I have a chance to say, fear making his name a tight slur between my teeth.
Then we leave.
But it's not just us.
*
I'm in his arms, moving.
Pax is running beside us. Traveling between worlds zaps me. Not Pax. He’s the traveler. It’s a known fact that using your own ability is not going to flat line energy.
I feel like I could nap for a year.
I crack a lid open and see the underside of Mitchell’s jaw.
My parents will kill me for bringing a corpse home. I’ll be grounded for like... forever.
I sigh and Mitchell slows, looking down at me.
“Can I put you down?”
I nod, and he sets me on my feet.
Pax stops running, the family who keep time with him not winded at all.
Don’t need oxygen when you’re dead.
“What the hell happened?” Pax asks.
I look around. We’re in our neighborhood. “Parents are gonna have a cow.”
“Ah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “A herd.”
“You blinked us… I don’t know, somewhere. Then Brad Thompson was there.”
Pax pulls a face. “No shit?”
Mitchell smirks, and my lips twitch. “Yes. Johnny-creeper-on-the-spot. He hauled me off and had Plans.”
Pax’s face darkens like the promise of thunder.
He turns his attention to Mitchell, giving him a once-over. They’re about the same height. Tall.
Pax asks, “She called you?”
“Not exactly.”
Pax pegs his hips with his hands. “That's like being kinda pregnant. Ya can't kinda call the dead.”
“I'm not that great at it,” I remind him.
Pax smiles. “Not true, buckaroo. You did great. Look at him.”
We do.
Yeah, look at him. I shake it off.
“You even got the mouth right. Dad will be so proud.” He gives me a hug.
Must be grateful I'm alive. Really grateful. Pax isn't much for what Gram calls coochy-coo.
“He's going to be pissed off, Pax.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, he'll get over it.”
“What's your name, dude?”
Mitchell cocks an eyebrow and crosses his arms.
“Mitch.”
Pax’s eyes narrow. “He’s a little stubborn, sis.”
I shrug. “You know how it is when you’re the raiser.”
He nods. “Can you command him?”
Maybe. “Yes, I guess.”
“I don’t like it.”
We look at Mitchell. He gazes back. I stifle the crush-flutter.
“Why? Pax—he chucked me so the bots couldn’t get me.”
“Yeah…” He palms his chin. “I don’t know what the difference will be with zombies from a parallel earth.”
I shrug. Then I think it over. It snaps together like a rubber band.
“Ya think they are autonomous?”
Pax rolls his eyes. “Drop the four-dollar words, Dee.”
“Do. You. Think. That. They. Will. Only. Answer. To. Us?”
I don't contain my sarcasm.
“Yes. I. Do. Drama. Queen,” Pax retaliates in typical sib fashion.
Mitchell hisses at Pax.
Pax turns to him and flogs him with his death energy. I'd know it anywhere. It's a containment net. Like a leash, he's bringing Mitchell to heel.
Which I hate on principle.
He's hot.
Mitchell saved me.
He's mine.
Pax frowns when it doesn't work.
Death skates over him, and the energy surges back over the top of us.
“Wow,” Pax says but not as if he likes it. His face is grim.
“Put him to rest, Dee. Now.”
I don’t want to. I look at Mitchell, and he gives a minor shake of his head.
I smirk. “Can we wait?”
I look at the family he has. “You haven’t put them down either,” I point out.
Mitchell covers his chuckle with a fist.
Pax nails him with a glare. “Can it.”
Mitchell's smile disappears. “Seems like you're not really in a position to tell me jack shit, pal.”
Pax launches himself at Mitchell without warning. They wrap arms and tumble over the small embankment next to the sidewalk, rolling down the wet grass together in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Stop them!” I shriek at the zombie.
He stares, blinking once.
Gah!
I jump down the hill after the men in my life.
Guys.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Caleb
I do know.
Death energy moves through me like still waters, swift and deep.
I’d know the hand of my children anywhere.
“What?” Arrogant asks, flipping over to his hands and knees. “What is it?”
I have to work on my face. It tells everybody everything.
“Stay put, putzmiester,” Gramps says, stiffening his gun arm.
Arrogant looks up.
“I got the undead king here, pal. Don’t get cute.”
“Let’s go, Gramps.”
“On it.”
“Wait!” Arrogant shouts, checking out the Skopamish.
We turn. “Nah. My warriors will go to ground in…”
Twenty minutes, I command them mentally.
“Momentarily.”
“Pfft.” Arrogant says. “We are the good guys here.”
I nod. “That's what the Helix Complex claimed.”
Arrogant scowls. “We're not remotely comparable.”
“Whatever.”
I glance over my shoulder at the Skopamish.
The chief raises his tomahawk in goodbye.
The suit to his left flinches.
I turn with a smirk.
Gramps winks. “You love to put the screws to those guys.”
I jog to the car and he follows. “And you don't?”
“I got my own methods. Stick to them. Effective.”
I think of the socket wrench incident with Zondorae back in the day. Toes were crushed. Zondorae sang like a bird.
Yeah, Gramps is an effective guy.
Gramps takes a deep breath and slides into the hover car. He's not real keen on something he's not controlling. We float into air traffic. Gramps' head rocks back against the seat at the instantaneous acceleration. A slow breath of relief escapes him when he finds himself still alive.
I grin
It’s as if I’m an old-fashioned submarine. The kids beep on my radar, my radar for the dead.
And it isn’t just them. They have their own dead.
I shut my eyes. One, two—four total.
There’s an alien feel to this group of zombies.
I don’t like it.
The autopilot function in the car beeps.
The car lowers alongside a green space that slopes down to a mandatory belt of non-buildable.
I glance at Gramps, and he clenches his eyes shut, hands biting into the synthetic leather upholstery.
“Gramps.”
“Yup!”
“You can open your eyes.”
“Has the rust bucket landed?”
I smile. “Yeah, it's okay.”
He cracks a lid as the passenger door sweeps open.
“Hate, Caleb. I got nothinʼ but a boatload of hate for these.”
“Hmm, couldn’t tell.”
“Can the sarcasm, pal.”
We step out, and the car lifts.
Zombies turn and stare at me.
A man, woman, and child. A family.
Pax’s work. He usually raises one hard, using a deliberate energy on it. The dad looks perfect. My gaze traces his wardrobe. Late twentieth century, mid-thirties.
The mom and little girl are rough around the edges, gray and peeling, with that smell of rot about three quarters to neat. Like a glass of whiskey that isn’t full.
Gramps asks, “Well—what do we have here?”
I hear a scream and whip my head in the direction it comes from.
I track the sound down a slope of grass on a small embankment beside which we parked. My son and a huge zombie are beating the shit out of each other.
Pax doesn’t have a chance.
On the heels of that thought is the next: Why isn’t he bringing him to heel?
Screw this.
I nail the zombie between the eyes. Freeze.
It staggers.
Pax delivers a punch, and the zombie slaps him. Seems like a slap from a zombie wouldn’t matter.
It occurs to me then he’s trying not to hurt Pax.
Doesn’t matter. Pax flies ten feet, landing on his back.
“What are ya doin’? Askin’?” Gramps cocks his brow at me.
“No. He should be a Walt Disney down there.
”
“He’s kicking Pax’s ass… what? Do I have to take care of it?”
“Gramps—God. No. Stay put.”
I shoot a speculative glance at Fam Zombie on the sidelines and jog to the crest of the hill.
Deegan sees me and screams, “Daddy!” Terror like ice covers her voice.
Nothing moves a man into action faster than their baby girl calling their name like that.
Nothing.
I sprint down the hill, struggling to maintain my balance. My bad knee swears a blue streak as I move beyond the barriers of what it can stand.
I push through, grabbing Deegan, the same size as Jade, and yank her behind me.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I raised him by accident.”
Cripes. A Deegan zombie.
My temper and irritation rise like an oil slick on water. I calm myself.
“Okay, baby—just… put him to rest.”
“I can’t, Dad.”
Can’t.
“Tell him to stop, Deegan. He’s got zombie strength.”
Gramps walks up. “He’s gonna put a hurt on brother, Deedie.”
“I know, Gramps… but I don’t think I can.”
The zombie reaches for Pax.
I make a decision, but it’s not easy.
“Deegan,” I scream, shaking her. “I'm going to give you a spanking!”
It's not the dumbest thing I've ever said but it's up there. I hope it does what I'm going for.
The zombie drops Pax and comes for me.
Hissing.
I hit it again. I’m low on death juice, and it glances off him.
He’s a locomotive.
Deegan has more self-preservation instincts than Jade, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
She steps in front of the undead cyclone.
“Mitchell!” she screams, and I see red when he lays hands on Deegan.
“Okeydokey,” Gramps says with resignation.
He whips the butt of the shotgun into the side of Demon Zombie’s head, and it staggers him.
“No, Gramps!”
She clings to the zombie and he lifts her in his arms, tucking her behind him.
This is so bad.
We circle good old Mitchell, and I know the flavor of corpse he is.
Determined.
You think they’re all alike. Not true. A little of what they were remains present in death.
This guy's protective.
Of Deegan.
“Don’t make me hurt you guys,” he says.
I stop, holding my arm out to Gramps.
Randomly I notice a dent in his head where Gramps beaned him.
Death 07 - For the Love of Death Page 8
