“Your daughter?” Remy said, lifting the light weight of Cornelia slightly.
“I know, son,” Hayward said. “But you are not the prey we hoped to catch with this bait. Now put her down and step in here with me. I will explain.”
“You killin’ your own children,
hommeV
’
Hayward laughed. “Corey, honey. Reassure the poor man.”
Suddenly in Remy’s arms the girl’s body moved. It so startled him, he almost dropped her.
Somehow she lifted her head, closing the huge gash across her neck as she moved. “Thanks for caring,” she said in a whisper. “You are a dear and I would enjoy staying in your arms, but I can’t. Now please put me down.”
Then her head rolled back and she was again the body of a dead girl. No pulse, no blood, no life. A huge gash sliced across her neck.
Remy stared at the now lifeless body in his arms, his mind not believing what he had just seen. Yet, it had happened. He glanced at Hayward and the father nodded, indicating that Remy should put her down.
STIltDORtl III Tilt BIST
Carefully, Remy placed the body of the young girl back in the gutter and stood.
“Now, quickly,” Hayward said. “Come with me.” He turned and moved back into the courtyard and the black shadows beyond.
Dazed, Remy followed through the courtyard door. There had been a number of times over the years in New Orleans when he knew someone he had once thought dead to be still alive. His wife, Belle, was one. But he had never had a corpse come to life in his arms. At least not until tonight.
And Hayward had used the term
bait?
His own daughter as bait? And what was he trying to catch with a dead girl? Who or what would
want
a dead girl?
Too many questions.
Remy, with only a glance at the body in the mist, stepped through the dark courtyard door and was instantly blinded by intense white light. One hand came up to shade his eyes while the other went inside his pocket for his cards. He had the ability to change the potential energy in an object to kinetic energy, creating an instant bomb.
Crouching, he blinked hard and fast, forcing his eyes to focus on his surroundings more quickly than natural.
There seemed to be no danger.
Slowly, he turned around. The door he’d stepped through was nothing more than a black archway. He couldn’t see anything through it, let alone the cobblestone street and the girl’s body that he knew was only a few feet away.
“Over here, LeBeau,” Hayward’s voice said.
Remy hesitated while glancing around. The huge room
THE UlTMATE Ml Ell
was filled with thousands of computers and machines and at least fifty people, all wearing white lab coats. Only Hayward and Remy and the computers broke the stark whiteness of the room. Every person in the room seemed to be focused on their own task. No one paid him the slightest attention.
With one more glance at the blank door into the street, Remy moved over where Hayward stood behind a row of white lab coats sitting in front of computer screens. On the one directly in front of Hayward, Remy could see Cornelia’s body in the street.
Other screens showed the road and the surrounding buildings. It was clearly a very sophisticated surveillance system, one Remy bet even Wolverine would have been interested in studying.
Remy was about to ask Hayward what in the hell was going on when a white-faced man in a white lab coat at the end of the row said, “I have contact from the east.”
“Good,” Hayward said.
Remy leaned forward as out of the corner of the screen a shadow moved. And then another and another.
“There are nine of them,” another white-faced man in front of a screen said.
Suddenly, figures appeared out of the shadows around Cornelia, almost as mysteriously as Hayward had appeared. Remy had been raised in the thieves’ guild, trained in not being seen. And he was impressed.
“Who are dey?” he asked.
Then he saw. They were children. The oldest didn’t look more than sixteen; the youngest he guessed around ten. They were all dressed in black and moved smoothly, almost
huliom in the hist
as if they were floating. But he knew they weren’t. They just knew how to move silently and quickly.
They surrounded Cornelia’s body and one of them picked her up, her stained white dress a stark contrast to their black bodysuits.
One of the older children motioned that they should go and almost as quickly as they had appeared, the children and Cornelia’s body disappeared into the shadows.
Beside Remy, Hayward let out a deep breath, as if relieved. “They took her. Good.”
“You wanted dis?” Remy asked.
Hayward nodded, glancing away from the screen and looking directly at Remy. “You look as if you could use a drink. And I know I do.” He put a heavy hand on Remy’s shoulder and turned him away from the monitor toward a door on the far side of the room. “I will explain. But only after a drink.”
Hayward’s private office looked nothing like his lab. Oak shelves filled with leather books covered two walls. Expensive paintings under spotlights dominated the other two. A large desk filled one corner, but Hayward directed Remy to the overstuffed couch and then asked him for his choice.
“Nothin’ ’til I get a few answers.”
Hayward nodded and punched a small button. A panel and picture slid back and a well-stocked bar slid forward. In silence he poured himself a Scotch and took a good portion of it straight away. Then he refilled his glass and turned to Remy.
“You almost destroyed my plan tonight, son.”
“I was t’inkin’ I was helpin’, me.”
Itlf OLimATE X-ilfH
Hayward laughed, then dropped down into a large chair that faced the couch. He took another sip of his Scotch and then sighed. “Remy, you remember the last time Cornelia and I saw you?”
‘Airport. ’ ’
Hayward nodded. “We were returning from the best specialists in the country. Cornelia had only two months to live at that point.”
“What?” Remy almost stood, but instead moved to the edge of the couch.
‘Nothing anyone could do. Hereditary illness, the same that killed her mother. I had always feared it would take my daughter, too, and it did.”
Remy didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing as Hayward again sipped his Scotch.
“I spent most of Cornelia’s life working on a way to save her. When you last saw us, I had determined that I had failed. There was no cure. So I went the next step. I figured out a way to bring her back after she was dead. ’ ’
“De Elixir o’ Life?” Remy asked. For generations both the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild had fought over the Elixir of Life. It was the very reason Remy had been banned from his hometown.
Hayward laughed, dismissing Remy’s question with a wave of his hand. “Not hardly. You and your family made sure that wasn’t possible. Besides, there was too much baggage with that Elixir.”
“Den how?”
Hayward laughed, but this time his laugh sounded hollow and strained, as if directed at his own personal demon.
5TILLD0RH in Tit HIST
“I mixed science with black magic,” he said. “Simple, actually.”
“Voodoo?” Remy asked, his stomach sinking at the thought of zombies.
“Not really,” Hayward said. “I just studied the principles behind the voodoo and the zombie legends and applied science to them. By the time Cornelia died, I had the answer. I brought her back.”
Remy nodded. So the young girl he’d picked up in the street had actually been dead. But somehow reanimated with life. Science or black magic, she was still a zombie. One of the walking dead.
Hayward downed the last of his Scotch and stood, moving over to the bar to make himself another. With his back to Remy he continued talking. “I can tell you don’t understand. I loved my daughter more than anything. The thought of her dying was impossible for me even to consider.”
“She still dead,
homnie,”
Remy said.
“Only technically,” Hayward said, spinning around to face the X-Man.
Remy held the intense, blazing gaze of Hayward for a moment. The man was obsessed with this topic, that much was very clear. There seemed no point in arguing it. Inside Hayward knew his daughter was dead and that knowledge was eating at him like maggots in a coffin. And Remy knew that the children, once zombies, were monsters. They might look like the children they used to be, but they were just dead flesh walking. Nothing more.
Remy stood and stepped toward the door through which
THE UlTinm X-flff!
they had entered. “So why slit her t’roat an’ put her out, bait for de other child’n? What went wrong?”
“My formula was stolen,” Hayward said. His shoulders sagged and he moved over and sat down heavily in his chair. “It was meant only for Cornelia. No one else.”
“Who stole it?
‘ ‘A lab tech,” Hayward said, almost laughing. ‘ ‘A nobody who is now dead and will remain that way. ”
“But dose childr’n out dere de walkin’ dead.”
Hayward sipped at his drink, as if deciding to go on or not. Then he asked, “You ever hear of the Arrington?” Remy felt himself shudder at the mention of the name. Arrington was a combination gang and family. Their leader, a gentleman named Lang, claimed that the Arrington, under old deeds dating from before the War between the States, had title to most of the area where the newer sections of the city had been built. Years ago the courts had rejected the family claim. So the family and their friends, back before Remy was even born, had gone underground, working to retake what they claimed was theirs without much caring how, or who got killed. But for the last five years they had been fairly silent members of the New Orleans crime world.
“Yeah,” Remy said, “I hear o’ dem. I don’ much like w'hat I hear.”
Hayward nodded, staring down into the golden liquid in his glass. “I agree. The stupid lab tech thought he could sell my formula to them. They killed him and took it before I could retrieve my property.”
“So why children?”
“My formula only works on children or young adults.” Remy stood and began to pace, trying to give himself a
STILLBORN II THE HIST
moment to think. He’d just had two run-ins with the Arrington, and both times people had been killed. There was no telling what they’d do with the ability to raise dead children. But one thing for sure, they’d use the children to take parts of the city back by force, parts they felt belonged to them.
Remy stopped his pacing in front of Hayward. “What exactly dey plannin’?”
Hayward looked suddenly tired, his eyes glazed over, his mind a long distance away as he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, but two weeks after they stole the serum, children started turning up missing. Lots of children, mostly from the projects. I never meant for my work to kill children.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and then, in a very soft voice, as if he were only talking to himself, said, “I just wanted to save my own daughter.”
Now Remy understood even more. Not only were the demons of his daughter eating at Hayward, but the deaths of other children now rode his mind, smothering him slowly but surely.
“So what’s Cornelia doin’?”
Hayward seemed to shake himself and glance up at the X-Man standing over him. “She’s locating their operational headquarters for us. I have a force ready to move in when she’s in place.”
Remy knew where the Arrington were mainly headquartered. It was a huge old building just outside the French Quarter. At one time it had been a warehouse, and from the outside it still looked that way. He’d been inside and had no desire to return. But he said nothing.
the mm x-nti
Hazard stood. “I think it’s time we go back to work, don’t you?”
Without waiting for an answer, he moved through the door and into the white lab beyond. Remy followed. There was nothing else for him to do.
Twenty minutes later the signal came in.
“On the big screen,” Hayward said, and on a nearby wall a map of the city suddenly appeared. After a moment a blinking light showed.
“That’s not possible,” one tech said. “That’s outside our door.”
“What?” Hayward said. He stared at the huge map for a moment and then made for the black arch leading into the street. But Remy was faster and he broke through and into the humid night air first, his hands on his cards, ready.
The mist still filled the dark street; again his eyes took a moment to adjust to the extreme difference in light. He moved against the building and crouched, letting all his senses cover the area while his eyes adjusted.
There was no one moving. Nothing.
Hayward blundered into the street, followed by two of his guards. It was then that Remy saw the head.
Cornelia’s head.
It sat on the shallow curb, blank eyes staring at the doorway and her father.
Clamped in her teeth was a small golden button, most likely the bug Hayward had been using to track her.
Now she was truly dead. There would be no bringing her back this time. Not even the walking dead could con-
STUUORH in Tlf HIST
tinue when their heads were cut off. No magic was that powerful.
Hayward slumped to the sidewalk and picked up his daughter’s head, cradling it against his chest as he sobbed.
There was nothing more Remy could do here. Hayward and his men were out of the picture, at least for the moment.
Remy had discovered why he’d been pulled back to New Orleans. Silently, he stepped back into the shadows and moved away. As with any good thief, no one saw him go.
The mist covered the old cotton warehouse district like a thick film. The biggest warehouse in the center loomed like a block In the fog, massive and very dangerous. The wood of the loading docks had decayed and rotted away. Someone long ago had boarded over the high windows on all the buildings. For the untrained eye, the warehouse district looked as if had been deserted for years, just another example of the decay of the city, standing amid many other deserted buildings.