Death 07 - For the Love of Death (7 page)

Caleb

The Skopamish move in on the suits, and I let them. Feels like old times.

I turn to Gramps, and he’s struggling to get up. I pop my hand out; he grabs on, and

I jerk him to his feet. He only sways a little. Tough old bird.

We survey the murderous Native Americans.

“Good thing Jade stayed home,” Gramps comments conversationally.

“Yeah, she was really jonesing to come.”

Gramps gives me a sidelong glance. “Would’ve been bad.”

Yeah.

The AFTD in the middle of the road throws a wallop of death energy at the Skopamish.

Tomahawks fall, and their mouths open in silent screams.

Gramps makes a low grunt. “What’s this?”

“Another five-point.”

Arrogant walks over the tops of my zombies, and I charge. I let every bit of what I have go.

It bottoms out, leaving me in a mudslide of death.

Arrogant’s in his early twenties. All five-points are documented. It’s so rare there’s a half dozen of us.

Paxton is one. Dee doesn’t count; she’s only four. Of course, the government doesn’t look into her, because four-points can’t raise dick.

Right.

A flock of starlings rains from the sky like a cloud of black death. They’re an annoying bird while alive. In death, their focus is so much more intense.

“You got this?” Gramps asks.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, just askin’.”

I flick an annoyed glance his way.

The birds dive-bomb Arrogant, and he does what I expect. He flings his hands up in front of his face.

I command the birds to
peck.

They do.

Arrogant screeches, jerking around like an electrocution victim.

I turn my attention to the Skopamish.

They’re already standing at attention, a few have their  headdresses askew.

As I think it, hands rise, adjusting them to rightness.

I grin, my death muscle flexes, and I meet the eyes of the dead that have come.

They fill what used to be a highway between Lake Tapps and Kent.

The smell chokes Gramps.

I feel an abiding comfort.

The dead.

Mine
, I think,
mine
.

They close in around the suit, avoiding the birds that contain Arrogant.

The Null closes his fist.

A ripple washes through the subjects of my summons. A backlash like a numbing whip strikes me.

My scope narrows to whoever is closest. The rest of the dead stop, my bond weakening before the Null’s force.

I throw my surviving strength to the birds. They peck Arrogant, avoiding the face.

Don’t want murder charges.

“Caleb.”

“I got this, Gramps,” I say through gritted teeth. Sweat runs, burning into my eyes.

A zombie who was a settler in the late 1800s clotheslines the Null.

He stumbles, his concentration stolen.

The death surge covers him like a blanket of arms and legs.

“Caleb!”

“Huh?” I’m swimming. The horde is—good. I float in the throng of dead, a river of rightness and serenity.

“Get your shit together.”

My head rocks back from the slap.

My death radar automatically narrows in on the one who's hit me.

Gramps
ʼ angry face fills my pinhole of sight.

Dead hands tear at his clothing.

Stop.

The fist of my power closes.

The hands stop.

“
Waking your shit up, pal.”

“
Gramps,” I say through the fog.

“
Hello
—snap out of it. We've got a group here, and the birds have made Swiss cheese out of numb nuts over there and we don't have answer one.”

The kids.

I step back into myself. It'd been dangerous for me to use my power to that degree.

Hell, I'd scooped myself out like a jack-o-lantern on Halloween.

Hardy-har-har.

I call off the troops.

One of the Skopamish has taken off a bit of flesh from one of the suit’s scalp.

Whoops.

They always go for the head. The Indians have a thing for the head. Banging it, scalping it. Hmm.

“Rest,” I say aloud.

In my mind, I call out three Skopamish. They move to me like liquid as the rest slide back into the ground.

I walk over to Arrogant, having a grand time with the starlings.

Chunks of flesh decorate the old asphalt. Cars whiz by over our heads, oblivious to the undead carnage below.

Stop.

The birds’ black eyes are marbles of indifference in their collective faces. Blood covers beaks.

One slurps in a stringy bit of Arrogant into its mouth.

“Now that's a sound,” Gramps comments dryly.

Yeah.

Arrogant rolls around, groaning.

“
Here's the thing,” I say, “you're gonna answer some stuff.”

“
And things,” Gramps adds and I nod, feeling that old teamwork resurrect itself neatly.

“
I know who you are, Mr. Hart,” he says, groaning.

I smile. Training forces you to reply neutrally, even when a bunch of you is spread all over the road.

Arrogant looks like he has a case of measles he’s scratched so badly they scab and bleed again.

“Good. So now that introductions are unnecessary, where the fuck are my kids?”

He swings his head. “I don’t know. We’ve been reaching out to your son, Paxton…”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Gramps says.

I hold up a palm, and he harrumphs in the background.

“In any event”—he coughs, and blood sails out to join the chunks of flesh left behind from the starlings.

“He ignored us.”

Sounds like Pax
. He’s great at that.
Join the ignored club.

“So we thought we’d force him to listen.”

Ha!

“Hart family’s really resistant to that,” Gramps supplies.

Arrogant sends him a withering look from the ground.

“
You can thank
me
,” Gramps says, shooting me a look.

I sigh. “Thanks, Gramps.”

Arrogant scans the environment.

His shoulders slump when he sees the Skopamish guarding the other three operatives.

“Something went wrong with their vehicle. We had a… government ride in the way and somehow, the safety avoidance kicked offline.”

“Horse shit.”

I look at my filterless grandpa. “Gramps.”

Gramps shrugs. “Calling it what it is.” He pulls out a cigarette, and Arrogant’s eyes widen.

“Not a word or I put it out on the one spot the birdies didn’t dig out.”

Gramps raises his eyebrows, and Arrogant clams up.

“Not helpful.” I turn my attention back to Arrogant. “So you wrecked my kid’s car. It still doesn’t explain where they’ve gone.”

I feel terrific now. The kids aren’t dead. Too bad there’s no Amplifier around. I’d latch on to one of them, and Jade would instantly know they were okay. Just… lost.

“They were here. The boy fell out of the car, and the sister came after.” He tries to sit up, falls back again. “We move in, trying to talk him down, but he’s a wild kid.” He gives me accusing eyes.

Like I have control over my kid.

Paxton’s always been willful. And my upbringing extols that. Hard to break tradition.

Kinda biting me square in the ass now.

“They disappeared. Vanished.” He gives me a true glare now. Bleeding and bested by another Affinity for the Dead, he still has enough sack to say, “He must be an undocumented Dimensional. Slips through the cracks. These Randoms…”

“
You're Random,” I point out.

We stare at each other.

“We're not what you presume us to be. We're recruiting.”

Yeah, the Graysheets thought they were too.

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.

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.