Zombie King

by J. C. Diem

  A swell of power pulsed somewhere to the west and I turned to face it.

  “What’s wrong now?” Flynn asked almost wearily.

  “The Zombie King just raised some more corpses,” Reece answered for me. We were linked so strongly that it was a struggle to extricate myself from his mind.

  Agent Steel wiped a hand over his dripping face and grimaced. “I still had one cemetery left to search. That must be where he is.”

  “It could be worse,” I reminded him. “We found two circles and managed to destroy them.”

  “I found two as well,” Flynn said.

  “I found this one a little too late,” Reece put in.

  “Lexi’s right,” Mark said. “It could have been much worse. We now have only one group of zombies left to destroy instead of six.”

  “How could he have the energy to raise so many minions in such a short space of time?” I asked as Mark pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “I doubt he’d have been able to utilize all of the circles,” he said as he dialed the Cleanup Crew. “It was just dumb luck that he headed to the only other circle that we hadn’t found.”

  After arranging for the Crew to take care of the mess that we’d left, Mark urged us towards the SUV. He’d used his electronic zapper to kill the cameras and this time he left them off so the Crew wouldn’t be captured on tape. At least this cemetery was more isolated than the others and our shots had been mostly muffled by the persistent downpour. The cops hadn’t been called by any concerned citizens. Our battle with the bokor would continue to rage beneath the noses of the citizens of New Orleans.

  ₪₪₪

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mark had parked the SUV half a block away from the cemetery to avoid it being spotted by the cameras. The police would become suspicious if they saw our vehicle in the vicinity of the desecrations that were being made, or any further robberies that the bokor might stage. We had a legal right to investigate the crimes, but explaining who we were trying to apprehend would be difficult.

  We climbed into the SUV and the seats instantly became soaked. While I was as bedraggled as Kala, at least I didn’t have mascara running down my face. Mark handed her his dripping handkerchief. “You look like a raccoon,” he explained at her quizzical look.

  Most girls would have been insulted, but she just laughed. “That’ll teach me to wear mascara in the rain.” She wiped her face as clean as she could get it then turned to me. “Did I get it all?”

  “Mostly,” I replied and took the handkerchief. She sat patiently while I rubbed the rest away.

  Flynn shook his head in disbelief when I handed the handkerchief back to Mark. “Why do girls have to be so vain?” he asked.

  “Why do guys have to be so careless about their appearance?” Kala shot back. “If you spent more time on grooming then maybe you’d pick up more often.”

  “I don’t exactly live the kind of life where I can have a steady girlfriend,” he retorted.

  “Who said anything about a steady girlfriend? There’s nothing wrong with a night or two of casual sex.”

  To me, there was plenty wrong with that. I just wasn’t the type of girl who could trust someone that I didn’t know with my body. Reece glanced into the rearview mirror and gave me a knowing look. My face flamed as I picked up the thought that I’d trusted him enough to sleep with him twice. The look faded when I silently reminded him that neither of us had had a choice about the incidents. Both times had literally been a life or death situation.

  Mark’s head swiveled from Reece to me and back again. He knew we were sharing something that the rest of them weren’t privy to. Thankfully, he didn’t demand to know what we were silently discussing.

  It wasn’t a long journey to the final cemetery, but we were too late to stop our quarry from completing his spell. The green fog that rose each time the reanimation ritual was used was already beginning to dissipate. I couldn’t sense any zombies nearby and I could only feel the faint residue that they’d been here at all. “They’re gone,” I said before anyone could leave the SUV. “They went that way.” I pointed up the street and Reece set the vehicle into motion without waiting for Mark’s order.

  I lost the trail after a few blocks and we cruised aimlessly in search of the truck and its unholy cargo of corpses. The bokor hadn’t stuck around to rob another bank or to break into any other buildings. He was either exhausted after raising two separate groups of zombies, or he was afraid that we’d find him and shut him down. Personally, I thought the second option was more likely.

  “Do you have any theories on what the Zombie King will do next?” I asked Flynn.

  Unsure whether I was teasing him or not, he saw that I was serious and offered his opinion. “I think he’s too arrogant to hide for long. Now that he knows he can raise two bunches of zombies quickly, he’ll probably try this again fairly soon. We can’t be everywhere at once and he knows there are only a few of us. If I were him, I’d watch one of the cemeteries and move in when we finish searching it. He could raise his soldiers, squirrel them away then come back for more once or twice a night until he has all the puppets he needs.”

  “You’d make a really good bad guy,” Kala leaned forward to say.

  It was a backhanded compliment. “Thanks?” he said, unsure how to take it.

  There was little point in driving around New Orleans now that the bokor had fled, so we returned to the compound. I stripped down and wrung the water out of my clothes as best I could before taking a shower. Dressing in a fresh t-shirt and comfortable sweatpants, I opened the door to find Mark standing on the other side and about to knock. He was carrying a basket full of soaked clothes. “Come with me,” he ordered as I dumped mine on the top of the pile.

  We stopped at the door three down from mine on the right and he balanced the basket on his hip and knocked. Reece opened the door dressed only in a pair of cutoff sweatpants. His expression was resigned when he saw us. He disappeared into his bathroom long enough to pick up his wet clothes and snagged a t-shirt from his dresser on the way back. Donning the shirt, he placed his wet clothing on top of mine then took the basket from Mark.

  Taking the lead, Mark descended to the ground floor and we followed him down the long hallway to the laundry room. Our clothes went into the washing machine then he escorted us to a meeting room just down the hall. The carpet was the same dark blue as the upstairs area and a long oval table took up most of the room. The last time we’d been in one of the conference rooms, I’d been given the shocking news that I was a werewolf. This time, we were here to discuss the bond that had been formed on the very night that I’d turned for the first time.

  “Tell me about what happened between you tonight,” Mark ordered and took a seat.

  Reece sat across from him and I took the seat to his right. “I saw the bokor performing his ritual and knew I was too far away to hit him, but I took the shot anyway,” he said. “I missed and he finished the spell and the zombies rose.”

  “I saw the danger as if I was looking through Reece’s eyes,” I explained. “I guess stress must heighten the bond.”

  Nodding thoughtfully, Mark took his tablet out of his fresh suit and made a note on a file. “What happened next?”

  Reece motioned for me to take over, so I explained how I’d spoken to him mind to mind and how I’d taken control of his hands. Mark’s eyes widened at my description of using Reece to kill the zombies.

  “I could have taken control back at any time,” he said. “I thought it would be best to let Lexi take them down. She’s a much better shot than me.” It wasn’t a compliment, but a simple fact.

  “I’ve never heard of this happening before,” Mark said. He made a few more notes then slid the tablet back into his pocket. “I wish I knew what was so special about you two.” He frowned and studied us both. “It will be interesting to see how this develops.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I could really use a cup of coffee,” I said, hoping to def
lect the conversation to a safer topic.

  Mark checked his watch with a frown. “Isn’t it a little late for coffee?” It was nearing two o-clock and we’d be getting up in a few hours.

  “Nope,” I replied. “I’m already wired and I doubt the caffeine will affect me much more.”

  He might be my boss, but he wasn’t my parent and Mark kept his concerns to himself. “Don’t stay up too late,” he warned me as he stood.

  “Yes, Mom,” Reece murmured just loudly enough for me to hear him and I coughed to hide my snigger.

  Shooting a suspicious glance at us over his shoulder, Mark shook his head and let himself out into the hallway. He turned right to check on our clothes and I turned left. Reece was on my heels when I reached the door to the main area. I was surprised when he followed me into the kitchen and watched me switch on the coffee machine. He shook his head when I lifted a mug, silently enquiring if he wanted a drink.

  “I just wanted to thank you for saving my butt,” he said. “It was weird having you inside my head, but if you hadn’t taken over, I’d probably be dead.” It was said in a matter-of-fact tone and my heart clenched at how close I’d come to losing him.

  “You’d have done the same for me,” I said awkwardly, unused to the praise.

  “Let’s hope I never have to,” he replied then loped towards the stairs. I watched him climb the spiral staircase two at a time wistfully. His thanks had been sincere, but beneath it I’d sensed his unhappiness that I’d been able to take control of even a small part of him. Flynn’s theory that Reece’s wolf didn’t want to be alone might be true, but his human side sure wasn’t happy about being lumped with me.

  ₪₪₪

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flynn’s prediction that the bokor would act sooner rather than later turned out to be wrong. Five nights passed before he finally came out of hiding. He was correct when he’d guessed correctly that the Zombie King would lie in wait for us to search one of the cemeteries before moving in to perform his ritual again.

  After four afternoons and nights of fruitlessly searching the cemeteries for ritual circles, I was frankly getting bored. Mark had paired me up with Flynn this time and we were watching one of the graveyards from a café across the street. It was another rainy night and I held a steaming mug of coffee in both hands.

  Two young women were sitting at a table across the room and were sending flirtatious looks at my companion. He ignored them both, but he was well aware of their scrutiny. “You know, either one of those girls would be happy to go out with you,” I said quietly.

  Sending me a startled glance, his eyes slid sideways to examine the pair. “They’re pretty, but I’m not interested.”

  “Why not?” I asked him bluntly.

  “What would be the point?” he shrugged. “We’re only going to be in New Orleans until our mission is over. Then we’ll head back to Denver until we’re needed somewhere else.”

  “You’re not into one night stands?” I teased.

  “I’m not Kala,” he responded. “She might be the love them and leave them type, but that just isn’t me.”

  “Is that because of your inner snake or is that just you?”

  He shrugged again and picked up his coffee. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I was injected with the virus when I was a toddler. I have no way of knowing what I would have been like if I was still human.”

  I had changed in some ways, but I was still me on the inside. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think our morals change when we become shifters,” I told him. “I still feel the same way towards relationships as I did before I was bitten.”

  His weird green eyes studied me closely. “What is your policy about dating?”

  “It was never that important to me. I’d intended to put my career first,” I said softly and stared out the window into the drizzle. “It sounds corny, but I figured that I’d eventually meet the right man when I was ready to settle down.”

  “You’d buy a house in the suburbs, raise two or three kids and have a normal life together,” he said with a nod of understanding.

  Sadness rose when I realized none of that would ever happen now. I hadn’t just lost my dream career when I’d become a shifter. I’d also lost any hope of having a family. Being bonded to Reece meant that there would be no children for me now. I’d never allow myself to fall pregnant to a man who could barely tolerate my presence.

  Blinking back tears, I had to put my misery and self-pity on hold when I felt a swell of power.

  Flynn picked up on my tension immediately. “Is it the bokor?” he leaned in to ask in a low voice and I nodded. He took his cell phone out and dialed Mark. “The Zombie King is up to his old tricks,” he said without preamble.

  “Where?” Agent Steel asked.

  “Somewhere to the south,” I said to Flynn and he repeated my directions.

  “I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”

  Quickly draining our coffee, we left the café and stood beneath an awning as we waited for the SUV to appear. We detoured to pick up Reece and Kala before speeding towards the area where I’d sensed the latest batch of zombies being cooked.

  “They’re still here,” I said as we closed in on the graveyard. I could still feel the undead milling around inside the fog-shrouded place.

  “Grab the flamethrowers,” Mark ordered as he pulled to a stop. We weren’t isolated enough to be able to use our guns this time and it wasn’t raining quite heavily enough to douse the flames.

  “Lexi, stay with me,” he said. “We’ll enter from the south. Reece, take the north.” Reece nodded and peeled off even before Mark finished. “Kala, you have the west. Flynn, you take the east. If you see the Zombie King, take him down,” he ordered.

  Mark zapped the cameras and we hurried through the gate and entered the smallish cemetery. This time there were only thirty or so corpses gathered together. I didn’t see a human hiding among them.

  We waited for the others to shift into position before we moved in closer. The zombies sensed me when we were about twenty feet away and turned to attack. Slow and stupid, they were no match for our flamethrowers. We turned them into charred lumps of flesh in mere minutes.

  Kala nudged a smoldering corpse with her boot and made a face when it broke apart. “Why do I get the feeling these zombies were just a distraction?”

  Mark’s phone rang and he fished it out of his jacket. “This is Agent Steel.” He listened intently and we all heard his contact advising him that a jewelry store had been broken into a few minutes ago. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandize had been taken.

  “Thanks for the update,” he said when his contact finished giving him his report.

  “You didn’t see that coming,” Kala complained to Flynn.

  “Actually,” he argued, “I figured he’d use some of his zombies as a decoy sooner or later.”

  “We can’t predict exactly what the bokor is going to do every time,” Mark said wearily as he dialed the Cleanup Crew. “We can only do our best.”

  Unfortunately, our best wasn’t good enough. The Zombie King kept eluding us and we were starting to look like amateurs. The glimpse I’d caught of him through Reece hinted that he was fairly young. How could he be so damn wily?

  Leaving the mess for the Crew to deal with, we hastened back to the SUV to investigate the jewelry store. The same two cops that had turned up to the bank robbery were standing on the sidewalk when we drove past. The younger cop glared at us suspiciously, but the windows were too heavily tinted for him to see inside. Something about his pale eyes gave me the creeps. To add to my heebie-jeebies, the unseen watcher was back again. Picking up on my unease, Reece watched me from time to time as he made a circuit of the city.

  “I doubt the bokor will strike again tonight,” Mark decided after we’d been driving around for a couple of hours in search of him.

  “He’s probably hiding in his lair playing with his treasure,” Flynn agreed darkly.

&n
bsp; “I bet he’s laughing at us right now,” Kala said. Her arms were crossed and her expression was belligerent. Her short, golden blonde hair was spiky from running her hands through it in frustration.

  We arrived back at the compound at a decent hour this time. After taking a shower, I carried my laptop downstairs to the living room. Kala and Flynn were watching a movie about werewolves. They howled in laughter each time an error about our kind was made. Neither of them turned into wolves, but they shared the same general traits as Reece and I. We were all allergic to silver, but some of the items that were supposed to either kill or incapacitate us were ludicrous. How could roses possibly harm us, I wondered as I flicked a glance at the screen.

  Ignoring them both as well as I could, I searched the PIA files for bokors and voodoo practitioners. After a couple of hours of reading and two cups of coffee, I hadn’t learned anything new.

  The next search I ran was for necromancers. One account had been recorded just before the Civil War by an early member of the organization. A slave had murdered a plantation owner and had resurrected him. He’d been so skilled that the dead man had passed as being alive for six months before the deception had finally been discovered. Every single slave on the property had been slaughtered in retaliation by the authorities.

  There were a few more accounts, but only one story of a necromancer that had died and had then been reanimated. The episode had occurred just over a century ago and a photo had been taken by a PIA operative. Sepia toned, the photo was grainy yet chilling. A zombie stared back at the camera with intelligence burning in its slightly milky eyes. It had fed well and was in much better shape than any of the living dead that I’d seen so far.

  Kala leaned over to look at the screen and wrinkled her nose. “He’s a handsome guy,” she said sarcastically.

  “He’s a zombie necromancer,” I said.

  Flynn left his seat and came to sit on my other side. He leaned in to take a look as well and I was boxed in by them both.