The Death Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy Box Set: (Books 1-3) (42 page)

Tiff looked at me, she was okay but she wasn't what I was. I knew where the body lay the minute my foot hit the ground. Where was John when I needed him? I sure could use his psychic Null skills about now. He'd tune the worst of it out.

“You okay?” she asked, Garcia looking on.

“Yeah, but I could use a Null about now.”

“We have one on the way, you going to be okay?”

I nodded.
I was gonna have to be.

We walked forward, the warm breeze of Indian summer lifting the sweaty strands of hair off my forehead. We started up the knoll, the great Douglas  Fir trees swaying at the top, sentinel and waiting. The yellow tape swayed in the light breeze, the color standing out like a flag of warning.

Hiking up there, my head buzzed like a swarm of bees were trapped and searching for escape. Tiff made a low sound in the back of her throat and went to take my hand but I shook my head, that'd make it worse for sure. It'd notch my undead crap up to something I maybe couldn't deal with.

“Let's pull out the big guns when we absolutely have to and not a minute before,” I said.

She nodded, looking a little buzzed.

At the edge of the tape, I could see where the corpse lay and Garcia turned me bodily, his large hands cupping my entire shoulders. “This is going to be
really bad.
Don't feel bad if you throw up. It can happen. In fact, it happens to all of us at some time or another.”

Throw up?
The barf-o-ma-tic was not in My Plan.

I nodded. I wasn't gonna back down now. He looked at Tiff and she nodded, already shaky.

It was the smell that hit me first. Somewhere between the copper of blood and open sewer. Like the shitters you had to use at the crappy rest stops. I felt my lunch start to rise and was sure that I was gonna spray it when I had a sudden inspiration. Maybe I could just think about the kid as a zombie
already
and that'd rein in the reaction. Because, right now, inside my head, I was definitely thinking about the kid as a
kid,
not a zombie.

I turned to Tiff. “Listen,” I started, but she had her eyes glued on the corpse and was doing the shallow breaths through her mouth, “I  have an idea.”

When I told her she said, “That's kinda brilliant, Hart. But if I upchuck in the next ten minutes, call me a liar.”

We looked back at the team and the dude that looked in charge nodded to Garcia and he lifted up the tape, at the same time he clipped name badges on our shirts. We walked forward and that's when I knew visualizing wasn't gonna work on this one.

This was way-worse than road kill.

I sank to my knees beside the corpse and it spoke to me...

It screamed to me.

My head felt filled with the mudslide of its pleas. Its pleas for release. It was a boy, a boy my age and his head leaned at an awkward angle, things had been done to him, I didn't know what, but it didn't take a great amount of imagination to figure it out. I looked over the chest, seeing the fragility of bones and ribs. They offered no protection now. His intestines had been splayed out and looked like obscene worms.

Tiff gasped, doing the quick swallows, then split for the perimeter, where I heard her start gagging. That made me want to puke too, but I was hearing stuff and that overrode the horror in front of me.

Who I was rose to the surface, but the AFTD squelched it. Me-
Caleb
, was horrified.
But the AFTD part spoke for me.

That power rushed through me now. There was no warning, no bartering. It poured out of me like the vomit spewing from Tiffany in a spine-tingling moment of shattering glass...spilling over the dead boy, his body jerking in response.

Oh shit-in-a-sack,
I thought dreamily. I'd forgotten how great it felt to let it loose. Garcia saw the body twitch in response to the growing power and yelled, “Oh hell. Get the Null, I wasn't ready...Gale!” he screamed. “Where is she?” he bellowed.

The lead forensic guy said, “Hell if I know, Williams said she was running behind.”

Garcia flung a hand through his hair and strode over to me, the muffled sounds of Tiff puking in the background. “Listen Caleb, let's just rein this in until Gale shows up, the Null will be here any time.”

He reached out as if to touch me.

“Don't touch me right now, it'd be bad,” I said with real feeling.

His hand hovered, and he thought about it... pulling back. Just then a frantic looking cop came running up, his uniform all out of whack. “Why'd you let him get going?”

“I didn't, he just... I don't know..
. oh hell,
look at that.” Garcia said helplessly.

Yeah, look at that.

The corpse sat upright and started piling his guts back into the open cavity of his body.

Tiff took that opportunity to turn around in her barfing to check out the activity, took one look at the corpse, and started puking again.

Geez.

I concentrated on the corpse, sorry...
zombie
, and gave him the last of the juice, concentrating my efforts like a weapon, I shoved out everything I had and said,
Live.

And he did.

Right before our eyes he filled out, like water in a cup, he transformed before us standing as he did. A reversal of fortune, his eyes coming alive in their sockets.

They moved to me. “Master,” he breathed out, the wash of it like a stain of rot.

“My God,” the forensic tech said.

Gale came bounding up. “Raul! What the hell?” she shrieked.

“Yes, what the hell,” Garcia repeated dully.

“Why didn't ya wait? Holy crap, we have a live one here! And, he's a murder vic...” Gale said as she slapped her forehead.

“Where's the damn Null?” Garcia shouted to no one in particular, never taking his eyes off the corpse. That was okay, because the corpse wasn't taking his eyes off me.

Perfect.

Tiff walked up, wiping a shaky hand over her mouth. “Wow...he looks, alive,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He looks wrong somehow, though,” she said.

And how do zombies look right? I wondered.

He turned those wet, glittering eyes toward her and she stepped back. “I think he knows what ya are, Tiff.”

She nodded. “He knows.”

“Why did you wake me?”
he asked.

I gulped. This was the hard part and I guess the Null had arrived because suddenly the underlying buzz was gone, but the dead I raised was sharp-as-ever, an insistent presence inside my skull.

“I can't do anything with this,” the Null,
Williams,
said. His palm extended toward the boy victim, now a zombie.

I gave him an unfriendly look, I didn't need this, we were here for answers and Tiff had come unhinged.

The zombie took a menacing step toward the Null and all hell broke loose.

Garcia stepped forward, thinking he was going to restrain the kid-zombie. And in one, fluid motion, guts still bulging out grotesquely, he took Garcia's outstretched arm and using his own momentum, threw him over his shoulder, where Garcia began rolling down the hill toward the police cruiser.

Gale said, “Oh shit.”

Yeah, that about covered it.

Tiff grabbed my hand and the zombie stopped, his hand balled up on the forensic guy's lab coat. (Did they wear those to bed, like pajamas, I wondered wildly), and swung his gaze to me and Tiff... something about us connecting physically had given him pause.

Gale came forward and the zombie bared his teeth at her and she stepped back.

Aggressive sucker.
I guess if I'd been murdered I'd be pissed too. Hey...

“Let him go,” I said in a low, clear voice. The zombie let his hand trail down the poor guy's coat and left little gobbets of flesh behind. I guess I'd done a hasty job of construction there. Maybe  I'd do better next time.

“Listen, Gale, this zombie's different.” I said, the zombie looking at each person at the crime scene, taking in their faces. He was way too thoughtful, too sharp by half for my liking. I could feel my control on him was tenuous at best. I needed to get answers or get him back in the ground.
Or both.

“Ya think?” she said, and I was reminded of how young she was. Barely out of the police academy.

I nodded. “I think being murdered has changed something.”

Garcia finally made it back up the hill and the zombie turned on him, hissing.

For cripe's sake. “Stay back, he's different.
Violent.
I don't know if I can hold him,” I said.

My power strained for control, seeking that connection that once it clicked, like a lock and a key... I had him and
he was mine.
But right now, I flat-out didn't.

Garcia stopped, grass stains all over his uniform, his hair standing up with dirt in it.

“Ask him!” Gale shouted and the zombie gave her his full attention, the smell of rot so fresh that even I choked on it. I wanted to puke so bad the back of my throat burned with it.

Garcia and the forensic tech coughed and the Null, disgusted with all of us said, “For God's sake, do I have to do everything?” He lunged forward, all-about-the-moment.

“No!” Garcia said, trying to intervene.

But the zombie leaped forward, meeting Null-boy in a macabre dance, their bodies smacking with a meaty thud right above all the lab equipment.

Geez,
this guy was retarded.
John would have never pulled this!

“Do something, Caleb!” Tiff screamed.

I strode forward, hauling Tiff behind me, her heartbeat struggling for freedom in our sweating palms and she tripped and I jerked her up to her feet, amazed by the adrenaline I had surging through my body.

It made my moves jerky and sporadic but not the zombie,
he was a thing of fluid grace,
and he was using that while he strangled the Null.

“Stop!” I flung out, sucking off Tiff then looking around frantically for Gale, who practically threw herself at me.

I grabbed her forearm, with absolutely no finesse, flinging out my undead energy like rice at a wedding.

The corpse hesitated, grinding his fingers in the tender flesh on either side of the Null's jugular and he screamed but it came out in a muddled gurgle.

He wasn't stopping.

I let go of the chicks and walked over there, taking him by the shoulder, the flesh giving some under the pressure in a disconcerting way, shifting beneath my hand...sliding.

He slapped my hand away and my arm went numb from palm to elbow.

Hell, that hurt.

I was in control here.
I was the necromancer
, not him. I wasn't gonna let him kill this guy. Even if he was an ass-hat.

I bent down on all fours, my jaw hanging over the forehead of the Null, my eyes meeting the zombie's, his fingers continuing their slow crush on the Null, his eyes bulging and an alarming purple hue was taking over.

“Listen to me, stop this...” I was struck by a moment of insight, “
he is not the one that hurt you
... I... I promise.” I felt utterly ridiculous negotiating with the zombie, but he looked at me, stopping the mindless esophagus trample.

Something about the tone of my voice broke his concentration and he straightened so fast I fell back on my butt, my hands thrown behind me to brace my fall and he flew over the Null with that uncanny grace (some of the really juiced up ones can).

He landed on my chest, straddling me, while all my breath left my chest in a solid rush and I couldn't take anything in. I looked up into his face.

He jutted his face down to mine and I gagged on the smell, feeling the distention of his bowels pressing against my torso. I was losing my consciousness, no air, his hot stagnant breath filling my nose.

Then he said the words, “He was like you...”

Who was like me?
I thought, the edges of my consciousness getting fuzzy and gray.

There was a commotion behind me and Garcia said, “Let her. What more can go wrong?”

Jade was there
in my peripheral vision. Oh God,
no.
With a surge of energy I heaved and bucked. Trying to distract him, feeling her warm hand grasp my shoulder, I threw my hand up behind me and she released my shoulder, catching it midair. Her power bathed me like warm honey, sliding down to that well deep inside me. The part that felt the dead, and I used that now...draining it and heaving it into the zombie.

His head flung back, his mouth open, the teeth standing out in his ruined mouth like a bundle of maggots and I thought...
rest.

He threw his body off mine, where he landed, on all fours, squatted down, looking at us for a heartbeat. He turned and scuttled to where the chalk mark was outlined and melded into position. The ground opened, pouring over him in a smooth ripple, covering him like bugs swarming an anthill, then slowing and moving no more.