Max was halfway between his (mostly) human form and that of the full wolf, but he was badly wounded. A sizable slash yawned in his side, and both his legs had been savaged.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, hurrying up to him and crouching down. “This is all my fault—is there anything I can do?”
Max smiled, but the pain showed on his face.
“It was Jemini’s plan, not yours,” he muttered. “And we should have been ready for the ghouls. We weren’t.” He struggled to straighten himself up. “I self-heal; we all do. Even those corpses on the roadside will probably rise up again, but it takes time. I’m probably not going to be any use to you until at least—”
“No.” I spoke firmly and looked Max directly in the eyes. “You folks have already helped me enough—this fight is one I really have to win on my own.”
Max didn’t argue. I don’t think he had the strength.
I walked the rest of the way in silence.
When I reached the factory courtyard, I came upon a scene that looked like the set of a horror movie massacre. The enormous shape of Mumps covered much of the ground, and Forgoth sat atop his pet, looking miserable but far from grief stricken.
I self-heal, Max had told me. We all do.
There were wounded ghouls everywhere, but no sign of—
“You’re back,” said a voice.
I turned to see Jemini emerge from the side door of the factory, followed by a gang of injured but formidable-looking vampires.
“Your hand didn’t come back,” she said. “But I doubt it’s dead. We need to lay another tr—”
“No more traps.” I shook my head. “It’s like I just told Max—I need to sort out my own problems, and if that means killing Kambo Cheapteeth all over again, then so be it. I just wanted to pop by and say thank you.”
I held out my remaining hand, and Jemini looked down at it for a long time before she took it and we shook on our new friendship.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I smiled grimly. “I’m pretty sure I know where my rogue limb is heading…so I’m going to go meet it. You know, in a guns-at-dawn sort of way.”
The vampire girl smiled, and I noticed for the first time that she had braces fitted over the top of her fangs.
“Good luck,” she said.
I nodded. “Thanks—if I don’t come back in the next few hours, I’ll be down a really deep hole or something.”
With that, I turned and walked away, leaving all my undead friends behind me.
I felt sure that my arm was going to exactly the same destination to which I was now heading. Despite not having the slightest clue what my own Unfinished Business might be, I knew with a deep and powerful certainty that only one of us would return.
It was my arm or me.
Carble & Stein’s Magnificent Circus had long since deserted Midden Field on the northern borders of Mortlake, but the ground remained a burned and desolate wilderness.
I remember the local council trying to clear the area after the circus had left, with little success. The grass stopped growing and a wild assortment of ugly crows seemed to congregate there, making horrible cawing noises and generally frightening off any other form of wildlife that wandered onto the abandoned ground.
I never knew about the death of Kambo Cheapteeth or his creepy friends after the circus left, but I did know that the local kids never went up onto that ground—EVER.
The field was shrouded in a strange, thick mist as I clambered over the south fence and headed for the place where I knew that truck had been parked.
I didn’t have flashbacks, not as such, but I could still vividly remember those two gawkers all standing around me as I lay on the ground, shaking and twitching with shock. One of them laughed—Candy cried—the other one just stared down at me as if I was dead.
The recollection sent a shiver up my spine as I came to a standstill on the very spot where I’d been electrocuted just over a year ago.
The hand was waiting for me in a little circle of grass that the heavy mists were giving a wide berth—they meandered around the edge of the tiny space but didn’t seem to actually seep into it.
A possessed hand with nine fingers.
NINE.
It looked mutated beyond belief, like a giant spider awaiting its prey. It reminded me of the face hugger in the Alien movies, minus the tail.
I stopped and felt every muscle in my body tensing up.
“I don’t think you can kill me, Kambo Cheapteeth,” I said, clenching my fist. “But I really want my arm back, so I guess you’re going to have to try.”
I charged forward and my evil limb sprang into the air to meet me. Neither of us screamed, me because I wouldn’t and my arm because it couldn’t—apparently the mouth it had employed earlier was now sealed up and withered…
We collided in mid-air like two ancient warriors of legend. The hand went straight for my face and I made a grab for the socket end of the arm.
There was a dull thud as we hit the tough grass, me spitting, dribbling, and biting and the hand snatching, scratching, and clawing.
I felt the strength of its grip—the sheer, inhuman, brutal power that had rent the ghouls limb from limb while I lay unconscious in my grave.
At the same time, I gripped with all my might, my own fingers digging into the flesh of the socket and my few muscles bulging and straining as I fought to tear the limb away from its rabid assault.
“It’s…my…arm!” I screamed, rolling over and driving a knee into the arm to help me with leverage. “I want…it…BACK! Arghghgh!”
I swear I could hear my jaw beginning to crack under the terrible pressure of the evil hand’s death grip.
Then I realized my one true advantage in the fight and I let my body go limp.
The hand smothered me and forced me onto the ground as I let the strength bleed out of my body. Then it took hold of my hair and rammed my head hard into the ground. Apparently assuming that I was suitably unconscious, it climbed, spider-like, onto the top of my head and gripped my skull with all nine of its fingers.
Then I felt the burrowing—a searing invasion of malign energy as the soul of Kambo Cheapteeth tried to get into my mind.
But that was the point.
It was my mind…
…and it was also my arm.
I sprang awake with a deep, guttural roar, focusing all my mental energy on the spirit and all my physical energy on the arm.
It wriggled like an angry snake as I snatched hold of the socket end, but I was fighting with a new strength and determination.
I might still be Ed Bagley, but I was also Undead Ed, zombie—a creature of darkness and purpose.
“Kambo Cheapteeth,” I said, spitting through gritted teeth as I wrestled my enemy into submission. “This is my arm…and I want it back!”
Screaming with rage, I rammed the arm socket into my shoulder wound. A terrible light exploded from the fingers and ran along the length of the arm’s flesh; it seeped out and buzzed all around the clearing.
The arm twisted madly to escape, but the ragged tendrils from my devastated shoulder were already twining and blending with those from the socket wound on the scabby appendage.
Kambo Cheapteeth was losing.
I was forcing him out—the corrupt mutations, the demonic mouth that still yelped and twisted in the palm, the dark soul that writhed beneath it.
My shoulder flesh knotted together and, with a final blazing flash of light, I was thrown backward, bodily, on to the dirt.
There was a sudden burst of thunder and a flash of forked lightning that seemed to come from me instead of the thunderheads floating above the field.
I rolled over and forced myself up onto my hands and knees, staring with a mixture of shock and pride at my newly re-joined arm.
Sure, it was a bit freakish-looking…but at least it was my own. Well, most of it.
I waggled the fingers—all nine of them.
Then a horrible sensatio
n of spine-tingling terror made me turn around.
LESSON 19: NEVER GO IT ALONE
There, standing on the grass about ten feet away in a baggy, hideously distorted outfit, was Kambo Cheapteeth.
The clown was about six feet tall, and it is difficult to know how to begin describing him. A mop of curly green hair stood out in the moonlight, but it looked as if it had been colored with green gloss that had burned up in too much direct sunlight. The hair itself was matted, and much of it stood out in darker swathes. Facially, Kambo was a monster—bulging, bloodshot eyes and a plastic, bloodred nose overshot a mouth crammed full of rotting teeth and distorted gums. When he smiled, it was like the gates of the underworld opening to greet you.
“Thanks for forcin’ me out, kid,” the rotting teeth chattered. “I sheem to ’ave me ol’ body back ’n’ all. I can shtand, I can talk, I can move. I can KILL. I feel…pow’ful.”
Kambo staggered a little way toward me, but there was a slight shimmer around his outline—it wasn’t something I’d seen before, but it was something I instantly recognized.
“You’re a ghost,” I said, barely concealing my delight. “Ha ha! Bad luck, CHEAPTEETH—you lose.”
Kambo looked down at himself. Then, as if to test the truth of the statement, he tore across the clearing and slashed at me with claws that would have shredded my chest completely…if they’d made contact.
They didn’t.
Kambo staggered back again, looking at his own hands with bewildered disgust.
“You failed,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was playing poker against a man with no cards. “I hope destroying me wasn’t your Unfinished Business…or you’re really in trouble now. How are you ever going to finish me off if you can’t even touch me?”
I flashed a victorious smile, turned on my heel, and stopped dead.
There were two other people standing in the little glade. Well, I say people.
A midget with an enormous nose, shiny brass teeth, and possibly the strangest ice-cream cone haircut I have ever seen stood beside a tall, thin girl with brittle hair and a pale, blank face. One of her eyes had been sewn up, while the other gaped widely and streamed with water. She put her head to one side while the midget clasped his hands with glee.
“These are my friendsh from the brotherhood, Mishter Carble and Mish Stein. You ruined their deaths too, sho I reckonsh they might jusht wantsh to finish the job for me…”
I took a step back and actually passed through Kambo Cheapteeth.
Stein suddenly smiled and lifted off the ground, her fingers elongated and her mouth dripping with a dark red liquid that I just knew was blood.
Behind her, the demonic little gnome drew a strange, angular knife from his belt and crouched on the ground, proceeding toward me like a monkey on all fours.
I backed away, fast. These two new enemies both looked extremely odd, and I had a really bad feeling about fighting them.
Kambo turned to laugh as I continued to shuffle backward, trying to keep all of them in my field of vision.
The two friends of Cheapteeth had fanned out and were both stalking me from different sides—a pair of fat insects honing in on a helpless grub.
Then, for no reason that I could see, they stopped advancing…and Kambo’s evil grin slid off his face.
Max Moon stepped out of the mist on my right, furred up and ready to fight. His jaw dripped with thick globules of saliva and his face was creased into a malicious grimace.
On my left, Jemini floated at the same height as the strange circus girl, her elongated fangs standing out like pure points of glowing light beneath the glare of the moon.
“Let’s even things up a bit, shall we?” she said, aiming the remark at the clown. “You must be Kambo Cheapteeth. Evil Clive sends his regards.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Max was primed for slaughter, Jemini hovered like a wasp ready to sting, and I clenched all fourteen of my fingers…
…but Kambo’s little group didn’t attack.
The gnome flipped the knife back into his belt and hopped off across the field in that crouching, monkey sprint while the circus girl shot into the sky like a poisoned dart and vanished on the wind.
Kambo himself began to disappear, but slowly, as if his shadow was fading in a long drawn-out sequence.
“Thish ishn’t over, Ed,” came the hideous drawl. “We’ll come for you again…when you’re at your weakesht…when you leasht expect it.”
“Not if we find you first,” Jemini whispered as the clown’s image flickered and faded.
Darkness settled once again on the little clearing.
LESSON 20: ALWAYS KNOW WHEN TO LIE
I thought my death was bad, but this was worse. I thought that being bitten by a werewolf, chased by ghouls, or choked out by my own demonic hand would have taken me to the very limits of my pain threshold…
…but I was wrong.
Thankfully, the band did stop playing. It just took a very long time.
I’d never been to an undead house party before, but then I’d never been dead before, so I guess it all evened out.
The basement of Mortlake Middle School was crammed with vampires, werewolves, and assorted other creatures I couldn’t even begin to describe. It seemed that every dark shadow had its own peculiar denizen of darkness, but—thankfully—I couldn’t see a midget, a clown, or a girl with a sewn-up eye as I stared around the room.
Evil Clive’s band was called Last Bus Home, for reasons I couldn’t even guess at. After all, none of them would ever catch it.
As a band, they were truly awful. The guitarist had no fingers, the singer sounded like a dog with its foot caught in a bear trap, and Evil Clive would have made a better sound if he’d fallen on the drums instead of playing them…but we all dutifully clapped at the end (even if it was largely due to relief).
Max clapped me on the shoulder and offered me a cup of strange green liquid.
“Diet Ichor,” he explained. “It’s full of chemicals, but then again—you can say that about any drink that comes from a sewer…”
I swallowed a bit of the rancid drink and almost threw up. “Do zombies really drink this?”
Max shrugged and grinned. “Looks like you do,” he said.
“You feeling any better with your old…er…arm back?” Jemini asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. The extra fingers are behaving a bit strangely, though.”
We all glanced down at my left hand, where the extra fingers were doing their best to veer away from the original five.
“That’s a bit weird,” Jemini admitted. “Let’s hope His Evil Highness can shed some light on that—shall we go sit with him for a bit?”
I nodded, thanking Max and Jemini again for saving me in the circus field. Together, the three of us meandered across the dingy, crowded dance floor toward the booth where Evil Clive and the band had set up shop.
Sure, I might stink like a fetid turkey roast, my eyeballs might be a pair of runny eggs, and the worms might actually form a union in my lower intestine, but at least I still had some idea of who I was…and what I was doing.
Would I ever see my family again? Would I ever get to speak—actually SPEAK, face-to-face, with Candy Lipsnicki? Sadly, I just didn’t know…
What I DID know was that my battle with Kambo Cheapteeth had only just begun, but—for tonight, at least—I wanted to hang out with my newfound friends, and kick back and enjoy some top tunes from the new band clambering onto the stage. They were called Children of the Night…
…and their music was sweet.
THE DEMON ARMY
To say the demons occupied the sky in every direction would have been an understatement: they were the sky.
It took me a while to realize that each tiny gap between two demons was in fact filled…by at least two other demons. They were horrible, spindly, chittering humanoids with long claws, screwed up faces, and leathery wings.
The sky was heaving with them.
; “We’re mincemeat,” Max whispered, eyeing the writhing mass of blood-red skins. “Well, I mean, you are already, but—”
“Look!”
Everyone stopped talking when Jemini pointed a shaking finger at the middle of the floating army. There, supported on a cushion of her own bizarre airstream, was Jessica Stein, Kambo Cheapteeth’s demented sidekick.
I couldn’t get the word harpy out of my head when I looked at her.
She hovered on the wind like some giant insect, hair plastered over her sallow face, and black, rotting teeth forcing her mouth into a sick smile. Her one good eye was hidden under the flow of jet locks, while its opposite continued to bleed freely from the stitches that held it firmly shut.
Thanks to Jemini’s brilliant research skills, we now knew a lot more about Miss Stein than we had when I first ran into her. A tightrope walker with a love of unspeakable heights, she’d been committed to a lunatic asylum when she went wild during a show and started to randomly attack the audience. Before the police could capture her, however, she’d broken into a shop that sold doll’s houses and sewn one of her own eyelids shut. No one knew why.
What we did know was that in death she could float unaided and had claws like a dragon.
“Run!” Forgoth shouted, shaking me from my reverie. “Run!”
“NO! STAND YOUR GROUND! THEY WILL NOT ENTER THIS HOUSE!” Mrs. Looker cried, throwing out her hands in a wild gesture. All the doors and windows slammed shut, some with such force that a line of terrible cracks appeared in the plaster. The house on Prospect Hill had sealed like Fort Knox in a matter of seconds.
I would have been well impressed had it not been for the fact that we were watching the sky through a hole in the living room wall.
We didn’t get much time to dwell on this, as it was at that precise moment that the demons fell on us like a rogue wave in a surfing competition, breaking over the house in their hundreds.
Undead Ed Page 6
