by Gary Jonas
She caught me watching her and smiled over the top of her glasses. If I wasn’t mistaken, she checked out my whole body and liked what she saw. I went back in my office to wait for Amanda and Brand.
Amanda showed up right before Brand. She and Ramona went into my office but I put my hand on Brand’s arm to stop him.
“How is she?” I asked for my own sake as much as his. Testing my waters, seeing how I felt.
Brand’s eyes narrowed for the briefest of moments, calculating, or judging. “Worse, or at least that’s the rumor. They aren’t letting anyone in, not even family or friends. Hell, they aren’t even allowing civilians on the same floor anymore.”
“Is that weird?”
“Not unheard of, but yeah. What’s weird is if it’s that bad, they should have called in the CDC by now.”
“Hello?” Ramona called from the other room.
Brand raised his eyebrows. “Our specialist?”
“Yeah. Let’s—” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. Taken off guard, I pushed away.
“Just wanted to do that before we went in.” He gave me his best cocky smile.
“Why?”
The smile went away. “One day, you’re not gonna have to ask.” He laid his hand on the small of my back, indicating I go before him. “At least, that’s my hope.”
We settled into my office and I made quick introductions. Amanda laid the zombie’s phone on my desk.
“My tech guy says it belonged to a guy named Qaletaqa. No last name. Or first, whichever.” She looked at Ramona.
“What? You think we all know each other?”
Amanda blushed. “No, but—”
“Well, in this case, I do know him.” She gave Amanda the same smile she’d given me in the truck, but it disappeared quickly. “You could say we ran in the same social circle. He is…was…a guardian of the people. This is not good.”
“A guardian against what?” Brand asked.
Ramona picked up the phone without answering him. She scrolled through the contacts. “Not against anything, not at the moment. He was the guardian of something.” She stopped on a contact and a worry line appeared between her brows. “This is a Navajo name.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“We don’t get along much with Navajo. Except in one case, where both tribes join against a common enemy.” She scrolled further. “Oooohhh.” Ramona looked up at Brand. “What was your DJ friend’s name?”
“Two friends. Eleventh Hour. And Trixster Thirteen.”
“Yeah. Well, looks like you and Trixster have a mutual friend here.” She waved the phone.
“He was also driving Trixster’s truck, so we kind of knew that already.”
Ramona ignored him again and went back to scrolling through the phone. “And, Qaletaqa had a three-way chat with Trixster and the Navajo, though the conversation’s been erased.”
“What’s the Navajo guy’s name?” Brand’s voice made my skin tighten the way it does before a fight.
Ramona handed the phone to Brand. “I’m not saying it out loud. He’s dead.”
Brand swiped it away from Ramona. “So do you know what the guardian was guarding?”
“Yes I do. And if it’s gone we’re in a shitload of trouble.”
Chapter 16
Brand rolled his eyes. “The suspense is killing me so why don’t you just tell us what we’re dealing with.”
“You probably won’t believe me.”
“Try us,” I said.
Ramona looked at me over her glasses. “Okay. Like everything else it starts with story. Spoken, written, drawn – it doesn’t matter,” said Ramona. “What if I could convince you that what we’re dealing with exists beyond this world? And that my people have kept it at bay as long as we’ve been here.”
“What do you mean, ‘beyond the world?’” I folded my hands on the desk. “Are we talking about gods?”
Ramona’s eyes widened just a bit. “There are things out there without shapes. Without form.”
Brand smiled and pounded the table. “Yes! Lovecraft! They had a book on the nightstand. Didn’t they, Kel?”
Ramona bit her lower lip and exhaled. “Lovecraft wrote fictional stories. This is real. But you can talk stories or physics – in the end they’re the same when it comes to this stuff. It’s just manipulation of energy into form. And as we manipulate them, so they manipulate us. How well do you know Hopi mythology?”
“Probably as well as you know hemodynamics and Stokes’ Law in relation to massive trauma.” Brand said.
Ramona rolled her eyes. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, I used to sit and listen to my Grandma tell the old stories for hours. I understood them in ways that other kids didn’t. I thought I could see through them, as I got older. They’re formulas to me now, mathematical equations. A way to describe reality. Those old stories are my people’s way of describing some mathematical and physical truths that scientists are only now discovering in quantum and other areas.”
“So what are we dealing with here?” Amanda tapped the fishbowl.
Ramona smiled. “The worst case of cultural appropriation I hope we ever see. Brand’s friend, DJ Jackass—”
“DJ Trixster Thirteen.” Despite everything, Brand sounded defensive.
“—possesses something that doesn’t belong to him. And now you’re looking at the consequences.” Ramona messed with the phone until she found what she wanted. She tapped the screen and the same song from the night before poured out. I realized I wanted everyone out of the room but Brand. He eyed me and I knew he had the same thought. Amanda’s eyes looked glazed. Ramona glanced up at me then back down at the phone.
After a minute she said, “There. Right there. Hear it?”
Amanda tilted her head. “The flute?”
“Bingo.” She turned off the music. My head cleared immediately.
Brand stood up. “So Trix stole a magic Hopi flute. Big deal. We’ll find him and get it back, break the spell, save the day.”
Ramona pointed to Brand’s chair. “Sit back down, Bud. It’s not that easy.”
Brand looked from Ramona to me. “Kel, come on, we got this.”
There was a time when I was as impulsive as Brand. Then I’d learned from Jonathan that sometimes you need to gather a little more evidence before rushing into danger. Not that we always did that, but I liked to think I was getting better at it.
Yeah, okay, recent events at Tally’s excluded.
“Just hang on a minute, Brand. What else can you tell us before we go whipping out our swords and kicking ass?”
Ramona raised her eyebrows and looked me dead in the eye. “Can’t wait to see that.”
Yup. She likes me.
Ramona eased off. “All right, Hopi mythology, the Cliff’s Notes version.”
“Don’t you mean Cliff-dweller’s Notes?” Brand grinned.
“Does he come with a muzzle?” Ramona looked at me.
“Well, there was this one time….”
Amanda sniggered.
Ramona put a hand up to stop me. “You wouldn’t believe how uninterested I am in hearing the end of that story. So, getting back to it, the Hopi teach that people lived in three other worlds before this one. Each world developed evil and corruption and the people strayed from their beliefs and ways. Finally, a goddess named Grandmother Spider led the righteous up a ladder to a hole in the sky in the Third World, which became the ground in this one, the Fourth World. They came through a sipapu – a tiny hole in the middle of a kiva, where we hold ceremonies. A hole in reality. Or, what I’d call in my science life, a singularity.”
Brand shook his head. “But, you’re not talking about reality reality, are you? It’s just a story. This stuff is crazy.”
“As crazy as layered time?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
Ramona watched us. “You may not believe in layered time or other dimensions, but they sure believe in you. On one hand, the thing your friend stole was a flute. But it’s also
an artifact, from the creature my people call Kokopelli.”
“Oh, yeah! That Indian dude everybody got tattooed on their arm back in the nineteen-nineties.”
“Please focus, Brand.”
Ramona grinned at me. “Thanks, Kelly. Kokopelli is a creature from the Third World, one of the evils we escaped by coming through the sipapu. But we never forgot him. It. We remembered its power.” Ramona’s eyes lost focus for a moment.
“Not everyone who climbed the ladder was good. The last woman who came through only pretended to be. She carried the seeds of evil with her, and stirred up the tribe who took her in. She told them about the power they’d left behind. Some of the people were foolish enough to listen, and came to believe they could control that power. Classic mistake.”
“Always is,” I said. Like wizards thinking they could control Sekutar warriors, as a completely non-biased example.
Ramona nodded. “In order to bring energy from outside into our world, you have two options. You must displace other energy, or create a vessel to contain the extra energy.”
Amanda’s face lit up. “So someone made a flute to contain and direct the energy. Magic 101.”
“Exactly, Amanda. Works for science, too. So the people used magic to conduct and then concentrate Kokopelli’s energy into a flute. Something they could play, an instrument, to control it.”
I thought of the gods I’d met and the toys they carried, especially a certain hammer. “I bet that went really well.”
Ramona laughed without humor. “Yeah, it did. You know the cliff ruins in southwest Colorado? At one time, the Anasazi thrived there. They built cities, kept animals, grew crops. And then they scattered, disappeared off the face of the earth. Nobody knows why. Archaeologists think maybe there was a drought, something that killed off the crops and animals.” Ramona paused and looked down at the desk. “Something that led to cannibalism.”
“Whoa!” Brand sat back down in his chair, absolutely engrossed. Amanda and I leaned forward, just as involved.
Ramona’s head shot up. “But they’re wrong! We didn’t do that!” The force of her voice made us all jump back.
“It wasn’t cannibalism, not quite. At least, at the point when the Anasazi were eaten, the things doing the eating weren’t human anymore.”
Brand looked at me. I saw the sparkle in his eye.
Ramona went on. “In Chaco Canyon to the west, the Navajo were dealing with their own crisis. A man came to them, a peddler and a gambler. He set up his games and played until the Navajo lost everything to him, even their freedom. The peddler set them to work building a tower where they worshiped him – with human sacrifice. In return he promised the sacrificed ones eternal life.”
Brand couldn’t stand being quiet anymore. “Let me guess. Deader living through music. Zombies!”
“Just like the ones you faced outside the magic gift shop of horrors. If that stupid DJ plays the flute near a cemetery, you’ll be facing a lot more of them.”
Brand jumped up again. “An army of zombies! Dire’s gonna be psyched.” Brand smiled at me. “I’m psyched. Are you psyched, Kel?”
Yeah, actually I was. “So what do we need to do, besides kill a bunch of zombies?”
“I love what just came out of your mouth.” Brand was practically dancing.
Ramona shook her head. “If it comes to that. We need to find the flute before the dead rise to do Kokopelli’s bidding.”
Brand stared into Ramona’s eyes. “Who cares? Zombies. I love my life.” Brand actually did a victory lap around the office. He could have been a dancing Kokopelli himself.
Ramona watched him. “You really are a fucking asshole, you know that?” She looked at Amanda. “Or is he just that dense?”
“Six of one, yada yada.” Amanda stood up and put her hand on Brand’s chest when he ran around to her, stopping him in his tracks. “He doesn’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked, just as lost as Brand.
“Kel, you’re smarter than that.” Amanda tilted her head. “Or maybe you don’t care.”
Brand pulled Amanda’s hand off his chest. “What are we missing?” Then his eyes got big. “Wait. The flute doesn’t just affect dead people, but undead people. Vampires. That’s why Miranda acted all fucked up.” He grinned at me again. “Zombie vampires. Life just gets better and better.”
I didn’t smile back as I realized the other thing we’d missed. “The people in the hospital. With the ‘weird skin condition.’ Are they zombies, too?”
Brand’s grin slipped away as he looked at Ramona. “They’re alive. They aren’t zombies.” His voice sounded lost.
Ramona fixed her eyes on him. “No, they aren’t zombies.”
Brand relaxed. “See?”
“They’re worse.”
Chapter 17
“Worse?” Brand’s voice cracked on the word. “What’s wrong with Daphne?”
I caught Amanda glancing at me. So did Ramona. I gave them nothing back.
Ramona didn’t answer him. “Kelly, do me a favor and bring up an image of Kokopelli on the computer.”
“Sure thing. Hang on.” Everyone stood behind me while I did a quick Google search. The first images were all tattoos. Cheesy ones. On white guys.
Brand pointed at the screen. “Yeah, see, that’s what I’m talking about. All those nineties tattoos.”
Ramona frowned. “Type in ‘petroglyphs.’”
I typed in ‘petroglyphs Kokopelli’ and new images came up of stunning rock paintings.
“That’s better.” Ramona leaned in toward the screen. “There are many myths about Kokopelli. Many depictions. The benign one says Kokopelli was a flute-playing peddler. Like any musician, he’d come to town, dazzle everybody with his music and then sleep with all the women.”
Ramona traced an image of Kokopelli with her finger. “You see how his back curves? A lot of people take that as a hunchback or a peddler’s pack, but maybe it’s something else. Now look at his hair, those supposed braids. What do you notice about the front two braids on this image?”
I studied it for a minute. The braids flew all around as he danced and played the flute. I had a quick image of the Pied Piper, an old fairy tale from Germany that didn’t end well.
“The first two braids are going a different direction.”
“Right. See how they curve forward, and the way his back hunches up and curves backward? What does that make you think of?
“It’s…not a man, is it?” I asked.
Brand’s eyes got huge. “He’s a giant bug. Like a cockroach.”
Ramona clapped Brand on the shoulder. “Look at the big brain on Brand.”
“Pulp Fiction.” Amanda couldn’t help herself when it came to pop culture.
Ramona smiled at Amanda. “Nice. Yeah, I do get out of my office now and then and catch a movie. But you’re right, Brand. Some people think Kokopelli’s a giant bug. Not a cockroach though. A robber fly. Or, as I tend to think of it, a cicada.”
That made sense to me in a terrible way. “Cicadas come out of the ground in the spring, and then they sing all summer long.”
Ramona raised her eyebrows at me and gave the same smile she’d shown me earlier in the dojo. “Look at the bigger brain on Kelly. That’s exactly right. Kokopelli is a harbinger of summer. He’s a giant cicada with a flute who came out of a hole in the ground and visits all the villages. Thing is, he still seduces men and women with his music, obviously. It’s just that he doesn’t make babies. Not quite.”
“Oh, no.” Brand spoke barely above a whisper.
Ramona nodded. “The dancers who took the magic-laced drugs from Tally’s came under the flute’s spell a different way. They’re turning into Children of Kokopelli.”
“And Kafka wept,” Amanda muttered.
Brand’s face paled. “You’re saying they’re becoming giant bugs, like Kokopelli.”
“Giant cannibalistic bugs, like the ones that attacked the Anasazi, along with their zombie sacrifices
. I’m sorry, Brand.”
He stood silent and perfectly still. It scared me. More than that, it broke my heart a little. And that unexpected sensation scared me even more. I didn’t give a shit about Daphne, hated her vary name at this point, but I hated seeing my boyfriend brokenhearted even more.
I put my hand on his arm. “So, we’ll get the flute and reverse the spell. Save the day, like you said. Save Daphne.”
Brand looked at my hand. Finally, he covered it with his own.
“I never heard a story about a reversal.” Ramona’s voice softened and her words came slowly. “I think once the transformation starts, there’s no stopping it.”
Brand dropped his hand. “Bullshit. Maybe you haven’t heard them all.”
Amanda spoke. “If we can’t save them, that’s going to be a huge problem. All those people, or whatever they are now, in hospital beds. They’re going to wake up and find themselves in a giant restaurant full of food that can’t fight back.”
Ramona nodded. “That’s why we need to do something now. Get them all sequestered in one area, out of the hospitals and someplace secure and away from everyone.”
I watched the conflict play out on Brand’s face as he wrestled with his Sekutar instincts. “Where we wait until they wake up as huge cicadas and then we slaughter them. As much as I’d love to do that, I’m not killing Daphne.”
I wanted to scream. I kept my voice calm instead. “We don’t have a choice. When the time comes, I’ll do it for you.”
Brand’s eyes narrowed. He parted his lips to speak, but stopped. He nodded and gave me a small smile.
Ramona took out her phone. “First things first. There’ll be a lot of questions if we try to move them out of the hospitals. From the family, from doctors, from everyone. Let’s not forget the media. They’re already covering this story like crazy. Let me make some phone calls. I’ve got people in the CDC. This isn’t our first zombie rodeo.”
Brand grinned. “Oh, man. Those videos of crazy motherfuckers trying to bite people and surviving a bunch of gunshot wounds. They blamed it on bath salts, right?”
Ramona rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Bath salts. At least that’s the cover we used.”
