The Death Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy Box Set: (Books 1-3) (67 page)

“Shut up or I send them to you as well,” Parker said smoothly.

She shut up.

“You need to leave. You've killed the murderer.”

“By zombie,” Tiff said, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie.

Garcia nodded. “And take them with you.” The zombies turned to look at him and he shuddered.

Tiff and I couldn't relate. They had done something terribly necessary and they were ours. Somehow.

Jade groaned and moved a little on the grass and Parker looked at his two zombies and then Clyde. “He's yours now. You can't just raise whatever you want. Did you call him?”

I shook my head.

He nodded. “He'll come now whenever you're under duress. It's just what it is. Be prepared. They don't stay as they were, they become more.”

I looked at the perfection of Clyde, who looked entirely human except for the clown-mouth in red.

Cripes.

“I'm going.” The zombies looked at Parker, moving to stand beside him. “These are my soldiers now. They never go back-to-ground.”

Garcia started and my mouth dropped.

Parker smiled. “There is much you do not know about being a five-point. And as you
do
know... you are much more.”

Sirens wailed in the background and Parker's eyes narrowed on Garcia.

“Guilty,” Garcia said, his hands spread.

“I must go. We will see each other again.” Parker turned, and began to jog for the forest perimeter, the buzzing of the cars from the highway a droning in the background. I watched them melt into the woods, their shapes swallowed into the dark embrace of the forest.

Parker had saved me.

Clyde stood staring at me, waiting.

He looked achingly human.

Jade came to, her head whipping around. “Where is he?”

“Dead,” I said, gathering her into my arms.

“Is it over?” she asked.

Garcia and my eyes met. “Oh yeah, it's over,” I said.

Flashlights found us. Officers surrounded us, coming from below, guns drawn.

Gale reached us first. “It was Smith?”

Garcia nodded.

“Crap, Raul, I would have never...”

He nodded. “None of us did.”

They looked at McGraw, no longer animated, having fallen to the ground when Parker no longer needed him. Garcia shook his head when she looked a question at him. Then her eyes found Smith's sister.

“That bitch helped him,” she stated.

Garcia nodded. “She identified the Nulls and he killed them.”

Gale looked confused. “Wait a sec. How was the Mason boy killed almost ten years ago? That means...”

“He was one of the first, like my AFTD teacher,” I said.

“So, he was like our age when he started killing kids? Brett's brother was a Null,” Jade said.

I nodded. “He was a serial killer when he wasn't even an adult. And that sick sister of his was helping out.”

“She'll sing. Oh yes, she'll sing like a canary down at the precinct,” Garcia said with surety.

The other cops swarmed around us like bees to a hive, jerking Smith's sister to her feet and dragging her off for a nice little trip to the station.

Gale said, “Let's get your statements downtown.”

I wasn't letting go of Jade for anything, ever again. I took my pulse out and pulsed the Parents.

Initializing

Mom
- CH

Where are you, young man?
-AH

I had to go to a crime-scene and things got stupid...can you and Dad meet us down at the police station?
-CH

Pause in pulse transmission

Yes, we'll be there in ten.
- AH

K, I'll explain everything then.-
CH

Pulse to hibernate

I used a watered down rag that one of the cops gave me to wipe Smith's blood off my face. Tossing it on the ground and turning to Jade I kissed the top of her head and stood with her leaning into me. I noticed Clyde watching Gale again.

“Must I leave and go to where I rest, Master?” he asked.

I nodded. “I don't know what Parker was saying exactly about our connection, Clyde. But it may mean something different for us in the future.”

“What connection?” Gale asked.

I explained everything, including the zombie soldiers that were never laid to rest.

“Does this mean that he,” and she pointed at Clyde and swallowed so loud I heard the click, “could be alive again?”

I shrugged. “I don't know, but the facts are: his don't rest again. They behave like zombie body guards.”

She circled Clyde and he followed her motion, following her with his eyes. Without warning, his hand snaked out and gripped her wrist, hauling her against him and she yelped.

He leaned in and I said, “Clyde!”

“Do not fret,” he said, his eyes going back to Gale's. “Why do you regard me thus, necromancer?”

“I am not like him,” her eyes darted to me then back to him, her wrist curled between their chests, his form looming over hers.

“Ah, there you are wrong. You do not command me but I feel you in my skull, a pulsating warmth of life. You are the same flavor as my master, like the girl,” and his gaze drifted briefly to Tiff then back to Gale again, “but different.”

“Do you not feel that tether which binds us?” he asked, every tooth straight and white in his mouth.

Guess I got it right this time.

“Yes,” she said, her voice breathy.

“Caleb!” Garcia said.

“Clyde, let her go, please,” I said.

He slowly released her wrist, and she stepped back, rubbing it, her gaze wounded and shocky. He'd taken her by surprise.

Clyde turned to me. “Has the danger passed?”

I nodded.

“I will go then back to whence I came.”

He turned to go and I called out, “Wait!”

I ran to him and stuck out my hand, he wrapped his around mine and we shook.

Like men do.

“Thank you.”

“You are most welcome,” he said and with a final look at Gale, was gone.

I came back to where Jade and Tiff stood. Gale was still cradling that hand, her eyes where Clyde had been, an indecipherable expression on her face.

We made our way in the murky gloom, the flashlights casting swaths of bluish-white light just ahead of our footsteps. We arrived at the squad cars, their bright blue and red strobes spearing the darkness with artificial color.

We piled into the back of Garcia's cruiser and as we drove away I was struck by something:

Clyde hadn't smelled like the dead.

CHAPTER 32

I was exhausted but happy. Finally. We were almost to Gramps' and it was a Halloween that was clear and cold. I'd had to commit to wearing a coat, which seemed vaguely uncool. After all, with Jade curled up next to me, I felt pretty warm.

The week leading up to my birthday had been full of questions, speculations, confessions. Best of all, Jade and I were no longer separated.

Zealots that belonged to the separatist group, Mundanes Unite, had raised John Smith and his sister Anne. Mom had explained to me that it was a group set on the control and incarceration of paranormals.

In other words, Professional Creepers.

The Smith kids had never had a chance in a household like that. Day in and day out, they were preached to about how dangerous all paranormals were. It was only a matter of time before someone snapped.

Garcia had gone to each family personally, delivering the news of the killer's demise. Brett's family took it the hardest. To think that John Smith had chosen a toddler at the same park that I was in, that I was playing at
that day
. Well, it had been a terrible, near miss.

It could have been me.

It didn't make sense that Ceci had been targeted. But Anne Smith had confessed they used her death as a distraction to lead the cops away from the Null theory.

A distraction. Somehow, I didn't think Officer Cline would think about it that way. Ever.

The cops kept the tidbit about the zombies
eating Smith
out of the papers somehow. Parker was kept under wraps too. He'd been listed only as a “good Samaritan.” I wasn't so sure about that but I knew one thing:

He'd saved me. A supremely weird development.

I didn't know how to feel about that part. He was neatly in the “bad guy” box. Now I'd have to rethink his role in my life. He'd gone against the Graysheets to help me. Why?

And he had zombies with him all the time. It was a new world order, I thought. Too bizarre for words.

As we got out of Bry's car, I saw Jonesy and my parents huddled around the fire, their breath misting and a smile broke over my face. The first one in what felt like a million years.

Mia's car pulled up after Bry's and the rest of the group got out, finding a spot by Gramp's ginormous fire.

Jade was crammed in the crook of my arm and we slowly approached the fire. The moon rode high over our heads, the stumps in the lake bed frozen spears dotting the horizon.

Dad looked at me. “Happy Birthday, Son.”

“It's been a helluva year, Caleb!” Gramps agreed, stabbing a dog through the middle and hanging it over the flames.

I laughed. “Yeah, it sure has.”

“I hope it's not a trend. I, for one, want things to settle down,” Mom said.

John and the other kids were solemn but Jonesy broke the mood.

“Settling down is not part of the program for Caleb. Excitement follows him around.” With that, he bent Sophie back where she stood and laid a big one right on her mouth.

In front of his parents.

“Young man, you get your tongue out of her mouth right now!” Helen said (obviously over her bout of morning sickness or whatever).

Alex sprayed pop into the fire and it sparked back and hit Mia's hoodie, which started to smolder. Bry leaped over and jerked off her sweatshirt and half her top came off with it, exposing her bra.

Mom said, “Oh my.”

Jonesy, (his tongue firmly out of Sophie's mouth), had missed the fire part and said, “Are we really taking clothes off?” in a hopeful voice.

“No, you ass-hat, Bry was trying to help Mia!” Tiff said in a huff.

“Looks like it,” Jonesy said in a droll way.

John barked out a laugh and Jade smiled up at me.

Looked like things were back to normal.

For tonight.

The End

Praise for
DEATH INCEPTION:

“...I think I have fallen in love with anything by Tamara Rose Blodgett. I find myself not able to put any of her books down.-
meaghen81883

“....I really, really loved the new twist that Tamara Rose Blodgett put upon the zombies. I mean the way that they actually became a zombie. I love reading zombie books and it is very awesome when you find a new kind of zombie book to read.-
Nancy Allen (The Avid Reader)

“....This was a great collection of stories, get to learn why people are the way they are. I really enjoyed the stories about Clyde since he was so endearing and mysterious in the series. Questions answered but mystery still remains!
-JD "JD"

Kyle Ulysses Hart and his team of scientists mapped the human genome in the year 2010. As Brain Impulse Technology came online... so did the long arm of the United States government. A covert, military-driven regime was born with genetic manipulation the key to future widespread control.

When pharmaceutical laboratories, funded by the Graysheets, discover a way to unlock paranormal potential through compulsive inoculation, their exploitative dream is realized.

Clyde and Caleb's lives are predestined to intertwine as they cross paths, his history becoming Caleb's future.

A lone teenager named Jeffrey Parker, falls prey when he manifests the rare, Affinity for the Dead.The Graysheets abandon all pretense of stewardship, ripping him from his family for their nefarious purposes.

Can Jeffrey remain who he was destined to be in an environment exclusively built for mass control?