Zombie King

by J. C. Diem

  “What does the file say about him?” the blonde agent asked.

  I opened the file and we read through it together. The necromancer had been resurrected by his widow. He’d taught her how to raise zombies and they’d made a pact to bring each other back if either of them died. They hadn’t taken into account the fact that their affection for each other would die with them. While their bodies could be resurrected, love couldn’t be revived. She’d been able to control him until he’d first fed. Then he’d promptly turned on her and had killed her.

  “That’s true love for you,” Flynn said as he read the last paragraph. He read almost as slowly as me.

  “He ate her heart.” Kala’s tone was incredulous and disgusted. “Do zombies usually do that?”

  “Just the ones that were necromancers when they were alive,” Reece said as he descended the stairs and loped towards the kitchen. I flicked a glance over my shoulder to see him wearing only a pair of jeans that rode down low on his hips.

  “How do you know so much about them?” I asked.

  “I’ve read through most of the PIA files,” he said.

  Kala held up her empty mug. “I’ll have one,” she said by way of a request.

  Reece beckoned with his hand and she tossed the mug to him. His bicep flexed as he snagged it out of the air one handed. He caught the mug that Flynn threw at him a second later. He lifted his eyebrow at me and it was my turn to toss him my cup. My aim was slightly off and he reached out to snag it before it hit the wall.

  “Looks like we’ll have to teach you how to throw as well as fight,” he said with a hint of a grin.

  Kala elbowed me in the side to snap me out of my stare. Would I ever get used to seeing him half clothed?

  “If you say anything about eye candy, I’ll shoot you,” I said in a low voice.

  “Ooh,” she said in mock fright. “I’m so scared!”

  “I would be,” Flynn said, half seriously. “Did you see what she did to those zombies?” He slouched back and put his arm along the back of the couch, which brought him into contact with my shoulder. He didn’t mean anything by it, but Reece inadvertently sent a flare of jealousy at me anyway. “How did you manage to shoot them all in the eye like that? It was so dark and foggy that you should have barely been able to see them.”

  “Don’t forget that Lexi was using my eyes and hands rather than her own, which would have made it that much harder,” Reece said as he carried four mugs into the living room.

  He handed the drinks out and took a seat beside Kala. It was rare for us all to sit and relax together, but we’d earned the break. Mark was in the coms room, engrossed with the computer.

  “What does it feel like when you’re in each other’s heads?” Kala asked almost hesitantly as if expecting us to be angry at being questioned.

  Reece leaned forward to meet my eyes and we both shrugged. “It’s hard to explain,” he replied. “I can always feel her in there, but I can smother the link if I try hard enough. I get this strange tingle in the back of my head when she’s trying to contact me.”

  That was the same sensation I felt when I was close to the zombies or the unknown watcher that was apparently stalking me. It was highly disturbing that I was able to feel things that no one else could. It had to have something to do with the battle that was supposedly going on inside me. I wished I could just be normal. Or as normal as a creature like me could possibly be.

  “What was it like when Lexi took over and started shooting the zombies?” Flynn asked.

  “It was highly…intense,” Reece replied. That wasn’t the word he’d been going to use, but it was close. The actual word had been ‘intimate’ and it was fitting. Our minds had melded tightly together. I had the feeling that if we’d wanted to, we could have rifled through each other’s thoughts and learned anything that we’d wanted to know.

  “Can you take Lexi over like that?” Kala wanted to know and dread seized me when Reece leaned forward to look at me again.

  “I don’t know,” he said, sensing my reluctance to be a lab rat for our friends.

  Flynn made a point that I wished he’d kept to himself. “It’s only fair if you can test to see if it goes both ways.”

  Kala nodded in agreement. “That’s true.”

  Giving in to the inevitable, I shrugged and handed my laptop to Flynn. “Just don’t make me cluck like a chicken,” I said to Reece.

  A look of concentration came over him then his eyes closed and I felt him invade my mind. I instinctively shut down my thoughts to keep him out and only allowed him the same control he’d given to me. “He’s in my head and is seeing through my eyes,” I told our team mates as my vision doubled for a moment before becoming clear again. I looked down at my hands and they seemed unusually small.

  Kala edged forward so she could see Reece’s face to make sure his eyes were closed and held up her hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Three,” he responded immediately. “Nice,” he said dryly when she curled two of her fingers down so only the middle one was left. “Very ladylike.”

  She giggled and then it was Flynn’s turn to make a request. “Can you make Lexi pick up her mug?” Flynn queried.

  Feeling like a puppet, I didn’t fight it as Reece reached out to grab the steaming mug. He lifted it to my mouth and I took a sip and swallowed. His eyes flew open in shock. “I could taste that!”

  Mark had descended the stairs and overheard his statement. “Your bond must be even stronger than I’d anticipated,” he mused as he joined us on the couch. “I’d like to explore this further.” I tried to hide my scowl behind my mug, but he saw it anyway. “Don’t you want to learn as much about your bond as possible?”

  “Not really,” I replied. “I’d rather just get rid of it entirely.”

  Strangely, that inflicted a stab of hurt on Reece. He squelched the emotion and I pretended that I hadn’t felt it at all. Didn’t he want to be free? Surely he didn’t want to be shackled to me for the rest of his life.

  ₪₪₪

  Chapter Nineteen

  After a day spent training with the team and a solid two hours of sparring with Reece to learn how to control my anger, I was feeling edgy. He’d pushed me harder than usual, bringing my rage to the surface then forcing me to quell it again and again. Was this punishment for hurting his feelings? I thought women were supposed to be complicated, but his moods were just as hard to decipher as ours.

  Leaving the compound in mid-afternoon, we performed another fruitless search of all fifteen cemeteries then took a break before the sun went down. We ordered fast food and took it to a nearby park. The sky was clear and nightfall wasn’t far away. Smells washed over us continually and I’d already learned to tune most of them out. Then the breeze wafted a different scent over and I wasn’t the only one to turn and stare at the street.

  “What is it?” Mark asked with his mouth full of fries.

  Kala smirked, but refrained from making a snide remark about talking with his mouth full. “We just smelled the bokor.” We’d all picked up his scent after we’d rescued Reece from death by zombie horde.

  “He isn’t in the truck this time,” Flynn said. He was facing the street and had been watching the traffic pass by.

  The bokor didn’t have his minions with him, which meant he was most likely going to create some more. “Is anyone else getting sick of driving around hoping we’ll stumble across him?” I complained.

  “Yes,” our boss replied, surprising us all. “But what choice do we have? He’s becoming more skilled with practice and he can now raise a large number of zombies in just a few minutes. If we had help, we could watch all of the cemeteries at once. With only five of us, the odds aren’t good.”

  “What if each of us stakes out a cemetery and you hack into the CCTV cameras that are around the other ten?” Kala asked. “You can buy us all a tablet and we can all watch three graveyards at once,” she proposed. “Even if we don’t see the bokor in action, the gree
n fog should show up on our screens when he raises his next batch of undead. We can head there as soon as we spot it and have a better chance of catching him.”

  Mark turned to her in astonishment. “That’s an excellent idea, Agent Walker.”

  “You’re not going to leave Alexis alone in a graveyard with a powerful bokor on the loose?” Reece said in disbelief that our boss was even contemplating the idea.

  “Who saved who’s butt again?” I said mildly, reminding him of just how many zombies I’d taken out with his hands and eyes.

  “We can’t treat her like a baby forever,” Flynn said. “Lexi is smart and capable. She can handle herself.” I grinned to show my appreciation of his support even if I did feel a little nervous at the idea of being on my own. I hadn’t forgotten the unknown watcher that was stalking me like a shark circling its prey.

  Mark checked his watch and motioned for us to finish our meals quickly. “The stores should still be open. Let’s get a move on.” He used his tablet to search for the closest electronic store that stocked the items we needed while the rest of us finished our meals.

  We bundled into the SUV and made our way to the store. We waited in the car while Mark made his purchases. He returned after a few minutes and spent some time linking all five tablets together. I had no idea how he did it, but he set the tablets to watching two different cemeteries each. When he was done, he handed them over to us. I’d been assigned three of the graveyards that Kala and I had searched together. They were close together and it would take less than five minutes to sprint to the two that were displayed on my monitor if I spied the bokor in action.

  Mark was much slower on foot than any of us so he’d take the SUV. I was the first to be dropped off and Flynn climbed out to let me disembark from the vehicle. Mark turned to face me before I made it to the door. “Call me if you see the bokor or if you feel that you are in any danger.”

  Reece turned his head slightly and watched me from the corner of his eye. I caught his thought that I should reach out to him as well and nodded to them both. “Yes, sir.”

  With the tablet tucked beneath my arm, I headed to the cemetery and performed a thorough search. There were no new circles drawn on the ground and no signs that any of the crypts or mausoleums had been disturbed since we’d last searched the place.

  Full dark descended and the reality of my current location hit me. I was alone in an ancient cemetery. I’d never been particularly afraid of the dark before, but I couldn’t deny the smidgeon of fear that crept over me now.

  Climbing up onto one of the crypts, I sat with my legs crossed and settled down to watch the tablet. After an hour or so, my butt went to sleep and I climbed down to stretch my legs. My cell phone rang and I fumbled it out of my pocket to see that Mark was calling.

  “I’m just checking in,” he said when I answered the phone. “Have you seen or sensed anything yet?”

  I was about to answer in the negative, but hesitated when the insidious feeling that I was being watched crept over me again. “Nothing so far,” I replied. For all I knew, the sensation was just in my mind.

  “I’ll keep in touch every hour, unless one of us spots the bokor,” he promised then hung up.

  Pretending that I wasn’t aware I was being scrutinized, I walked up and down the row of crypts, keeping a close watch on the tablet. I’d expected the Zombie King to have made his move by now, but there had been no sign of him yet.

  Close to the second hour of waiting, I was bored out of my mind. A casual glance around made me freeze for a moment as I spied someone standing in the shadows of a mausoleum several rows away. Even with my heightened eyesight, they were just a vague outline.

  My cell phone rang again and I looked away from the shadowy figure to answer it. When I looked again, they were gone and so was the sensation of being watched. “Hi, Mark,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  “We’re on our way to pick you up,” he said. “It seems the bokor has a different plan in mind tonight. We’ll be there in five minutes.” He didn’t elaborate further.

  I was the last one to be picked up. Kala opened her door and motioned for me to climb over her. I scrambled inside and we took off even before I was seated. The blonde agent let out a startled sound when I landed in her lap. “Sorry, Lexi, you’re pretty and everything, but you’re really not my type,” she said.

  Flynn laughed and took my hand to haul me into the middle seat. Even Reece was smiling. Mark and I weren’t anywhere near as amused as them. I rested the tablet on my lap and braced myself as best I could as we took a corner way too fast.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked when my heart dislodged from my throat enough for me to speak. It had been a while since I’d been disturbed by our chauffeur’s maniacal driving skills.

  “I was randomly checking the CCTV cameras around the city when I spied green fog coming from a retirement home a few minutes ago,” Mark replied. “We’re on our way to investigate it now.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Flynn said in dread at what we’d find when we arrived. I shared his trepidation.

  Speeding as much as he dared, Reece soon eased to a halt outside a decrepit old house. A worn sign that read ‘Shady Rest Retirement Home’ was the only indication that it wasn’t just another old, rundown home in desperate need of a makeover.

  Green fog spilled from the open front door and the sounds of chewing came from within. “Do you hear that?” I whispered to the others with a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “What is it?” Mark asked quietly.

  “The zombies are feeding,” Reece said bleakly.

  Mark’s face turned even more somber. We each took a flamethrower from the back of the SUV then moved into a huddle. “Garrett and Bailey, take the back. Girls, you’re with me. There’s a good chance that the bokor is still inside and I don’t want to give him an opportunity to escape.”

  We gave the guys enough time to sprint to the back of the house then Kala used her foot to push the front door open wider. A body lay on the floor just inside the door. It was a female and she had white, wispy hair and thin, papery skin. Her nightgown was torn open and her innards had been eaten. Her expression was frozen in pain and terror. If this had been a horror movie, she’d have turned into one of the things that had eaten her by now. Since it was a bokor that had raised the zombies, she’d stay dead unless he worked his dark magic to add her to his growing army.

  The chewing sounds were coming from deeper inside the retirement home. We crept down a long hallway, stepping over three more bodies. Rooms branched off to either side, but there was no one dead or alive inside any of them.

  At the back of the house, we reached a large open area where the residents gathered for their recreation time. Twenty or so zombies were hunkered over the bloody corpses of their fellow elderly. I caught a hint of movement and glanced beyond the feeding creatures to see the bokor watching us in shocked surprise.

  “He didn’t think we’d be able to find him,” Kala said in satisfaction.

  The Zombie King gave an order to his freshly made minions. “Protect me!” he screamed.

  In a blur of motion, I pulled my gun from my pocket and aimed. Moving almost as fast as me, the zombies stood, ruining my shot. The bokor fled before I could fire and then I was busy trying to stay alive. Unlike the previous undead that we’d faced, these ones were faster and were far more alert. I wasn’t sure if their alertness was because they were freshly dead rather than long dead, or if it was due to their recent meal.

  Fire flared and the zombies let out buzzing cries of pain as their clothes ignited. They were harder to kill than the older, far less well maintained undead, but they eventually went down. Simply calling the Cleanup Crew in to dispose of the bodies wasn’t going to work this time. Questions would be asked that couldn’t easily be answered. It didn’t take an expert to see the knife wounds in the roasted corpses. The bokor had crept inside the retirement home and had snuck from bed to bed, slashing the throat
s of half of the inhabitants before raising them. The other occupants of the home had been used as food for his newly raised minions.

  “This guy is seriously sick,” Flynn said, looking ill.

  “He must have thought that using fresh dead would be a better idea than resurrecting old corpses,” Mark responded.

  Kala hesitated then her mischievousness took over. “Well, they’re not exactly young corpses, are they? Technically, they were already pretty old before he killed them and turned them into zombies.”

  Mark sent her a withering stare then called the Cleanup Crew in. This time, we stayed until the pair arrived. Taking in the state of the bodies, the team of two huddled together with Mark to decide the best way to handle this.

  Reaching their decision, our boss called us over. “Help us put them all back in their beds,” he said. “We’re going to burn the place to the ground. I’ll make a call to my superiors and ask them to smooth things over with the local authorities so they don’t ask too many questions.”

  From the sounds of it, he’d used this tactic before with success. The retirement home was enclosed by a large yard on all sides. It should be isolated enough not to set the buildings on either side alight.

  I wasn’t happy about lugging either the eaten corpses or the dead zombies around, but kept my complaints to myself. While I felt no pity or remorse for killing our targets, I did feel compassion for the poor old people who’d died this night. Instead of living out the remainder of their lives in peace, they’d been brutally murdered and their bodies had been defiled. It was distressing to realize that even in death, sometimes there was no peace.

  Following my fellow agents’ example, I tucked two bodies beneath my arms at a time and carried them to the bedrooms upstairs. It was easy enough to work out which body belonged in which bed. Their scents were clear enough and led us to the correct rooms. We had more trouble with the charred zombies, but eventually we had everyone in their proper places.