Grave Creatures Read online

  Then, in unison, every one of the zombies froze.

  My eye twitched. “Uh…what just happened?”

  “I don’t know, Ian,” said Rachel, “but I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Enough was enough. I could take a joke just as well as anyone, but this was starting to lose its funny. Unless, of course, all the zombies were all about to dance to a rendition of Thriller. That would have been the cherry on top, for sure.

  I waited.

  No music.

  I waited some more.

  Still no music.

  “Okay, guys,” I said finally, staring to weary of this charade. “Tell me this is an elaborate joke and let’s get on with it. You got me. Ha ha. Well-played. I’ve been bested. Etcetera, etcetera.”

  “No joke,” said Chuck.

  “Come on.” The hairs on the back of my neck were sticking straight out. “Quit messing around. This has gone far enough.”

  “Ian,” Griff whispered, “we are as perplexed about this as you are. There is no tomfoolery afoot.”

  I gulped and glanced around at the bodies standing like statues in the cemetery. There were about twenty of them, at least that I could see from here. The place wasn’t exactly tiny, after all.

  As an amalgamite, I had the ability to see quite well in dark situations, and I could lightly zoom my vision, too. Not like a pair of binoculars or anything, but much better than merely squinting.

  I focused in on the nearest “zombie” and saw no animation at all. No breathing. No movement. Nothing. It was as still as stone. I zoomed in on the next one, and the next. None of them were moving. Not even slightly. They were literally dead still.

  “Oh shit,” I said after a hard swallow, “those things are fucking real!”

  As if validating my statement, the entire collection of reanimated corpses turned toward us.

  Chapter 4

  The air was still and my senses were on overdrive. I was so jacked up that I could hear a gnat fart from a mile away.

  “Something tells me the shit is about to hit the fan,” Felicia said while slowly pulling out her Eagle.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I said as my mouth ran dry. “Zombies aren’t supposed to exist.”

  “Neither are werewolves, vampires, fae, mages…” Rachel said as her hands began to glow. “Shall I go on?”

  My brain was struggling with this. We were standing in the middle of a graveyard off the beaten path of downtown Vegas staring down a mass of dead people who were all focused intently on us. This was no joke, no flashmob, no movie set, and more than likely not an apocalyptic preparation rally.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Jasmine, head?”

  “What? Here?”

  “I don’t mean that,” I hissed. And I’m supposed to be the dirty one? “You’ve watched the movies and read the books. So have I. Do you agree that we should shoot them in the head?”

  The zombie closest to us screeched something fierce, causing me to nearly crap my pants. Without thought, I pulled the trigger and let a breaker blow the damn thing’s head in two.

  It collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

  “Yep,” Jasmine said with a nod. “Definitely aim for the head.”

  We formed a semi-circle and began firing like mad as the things ran at us. The mages were laying down energy pulses and casting flaming pain wherever possible. They were just trying to slow the dead down long enough for the rest of us to blow their heads off. It worked on most of the creatures, but a few were getting through.

  Chuck, Felicia, and I dropped down so we were under the stream of magical mayhem. There was no sense in getting caught in the crossfire, after all. We kept our breaker bullets streaming at them like there was no tomorrow. Of course, if this was an actual zombie apocalypse, maybe there would be no tomorrow. I shuddered at the thought.

  My original guesstimate of twenty was clearly way off since the damn things kept coming. If they were digging out of the entire graveyard, we were going to lose this war. And I could only hope that this was the only graveyard affected right now.

  “Griff,” I called out, “can you cast a light over the area?”

  He did.

  Just as I expected, bodies were actively pushing up out of the dirt.

  Griff moved the light around and we saw that not all of the graves were opening. The people I had seen when I’d turned on to Eldorado must have actually been visitors. Hopefully they weren’t seeing what was happening here, or if they were, they had enough sense to get the hell out of the cemetery.

  “I’m assuming you see…”

  “I do,” answered Griff. “Charles, I’ll need you to cover me as I seek the source of this reckoning.”

  “Cover you?” I said after tagging a zombie through the neck with enough of an upward angle to blow out the back of his head. “Where the hell are you going?”

  Griff continued scanning the grounds. “If I can locate the base of the power, I can shut it off. Much like one would do with a faucet.”

  “Or an overflowing toilet?” suggested Chuck.

  “I’d prefer my less vulgar description, but that’s the right of it.”

  Seeing that most of the dead were coming at us from a single angle, I saw no point in sending out two of my officers alone. We were all better off working together than splitting apart.

  “We move as a team,” I stated. Then I nodded at Griff. “You direct us, but we all move as one.”

  We crept along, keeping careful to unleash bullets at anything that came close. I couldn’t imagine any non-dead individuals would be dumb enough to run toward us at this point, especially at night in a graveyard.

  “Look out!” shouted Rachel as one of the creatures reached for Jasmine out of the shadows.

  I jumped forward and dropkicked it so hard that my shoe came off, sticking in its chest cavity. It wasn’t easy keeping your shoes nice in this line of work.

  Felicia stepped over and dropped a bullet in the thing’s skull.

  She then reached down and pulled my shoe out of its chest and went to hand it to me.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said, wincing. “I have another pair in the car.”

  “Why do you have an extra pair of shoes in the car?” Felicia asked, dropping the shoe.

  “Because I like having options.”

  Again, she said, “Why?”

  “Here,” Griff interrupted. I looked over to see him kneeling while pointing at a very dim multicolored light that was running along the ground. “It’s slowly moving across the cemetery. As it crosses over a grave, it reanimates the life inside.”

  “That’s creepy,” noted Chuck.

  We were all nodding in agreement, mesmerized by the light until we realized that another batch of the bastards were on us.

  “Fire!”

  Heads were blown apart as the carnage piled up until Griff successfully tempered the source of the disturbance. Once the rainbowesque light ceased, so did the deceased…in a manner of speaking. At least the ones who had not fully made it out of their graves. Those just sank back into the dirt from where they were coming.

  The ones above ground were eradicated within a couple of minutes.

  That’s when the world silenced again.

  We all took a collective breath while trying to come to terms with what we’d just seen. I was even considering heading back to Dr. Vernon’s office to unburden my thoughts about this one. She’d never believe it.

  “What just happened?” I said, not expecting an answer.

  Griff provided one anyway.

  “Necromancy,” he said as Chuck helped him to a nearby tombstone. He looked beat. “I’ve not seen this in a very long time.”

  “You say that like you’re two hundred years old,” I said, and then remembered that his personnel file marked him as closer to three hundred. “Never mind. Anyway, you were saying?”

  “It’s an old art. One of darkness. Communion with the dead.” He paused as he glanced around. Finally, he wh
ispered, “Unholy.”

  “Scary as hell, if you ask me.” I was trying to be careful where I stepped, considering that I had only one shoe on. “These things aren’t supposed to exist.” I held up a warning hand at Rachel. “I know, I know. But still, some supernatural bullshit is just that: bullshit. Zombies? Come on. It was so ridiculous that when you first called me I thought for certain you guys were pulling a prank on me.”

  “Why would we do that?” Rachel asked.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Why would we be playing a trick on you?”

  I began moving my shoeless foot around on a soft patch of grass.

  “Good natured fun maybe?” I replied with a shrug. “Could have been boss-appreciation day or something.”

  They all gave me a you’re-joking-right? look.

  “Some employees do it,” I said sullenly. “Anyway, my point is that nobody’s going to believe this.”

  “On the contrary,” Lydia said through the connector. “The Directors have heard what’s happened and they’re very interested in speaking with you.”

  I dropped my head forward and sighed.

  “Lydia,” I said as sweetly as I could manage, “please let them know that we have some cleanup work to do first. I’ll get with them as soon as possible.”

  “I’ve already told them that, babycakes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They said to make it quick.”

  Chapter 5

  I snapped on a fresh pair of shoes, after wrangling the old ones into a bag, being careful not to touch the goop-covered one. I wasn’t going to wear them again because I knew what they’d been through.

  “You think I should donate these?” I asked Rachel.

  “Seriously?”

  “What? I’d have them cleaned first.”

  “Would you wear them knowing where they’d been, even after having them cleaned?”

  I frowned at her. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be considering donating them.”

  “My point, exactly.” She looked back at the shoes. “I’d say burn them.”

  She was probably right, but the idea was silly. It’s not like they had any weird infection on them that would cause the next person who wore them to turn into a zombie.

  “Shit,” I said, feeling the blood fall from my face.

  “What?”

  “You don’t think the blood or goop or whatever it was on my shoes is infectious, do you?”

  She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been touching that shoe,” I answered, pointing. “So did Felicia. Are we going to turn into…”

  “Don’t say it,” she interrupted before I could continue my thought. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

  “You’ve seen the movies, Rachel.”

  “Hollywood, Ian.” She had her arms crossed again. Why she ever uncrossed them around me was a mystery. “There’s no evidence that a zombie bite or zombie…juice is going to cause you or anyone to become a zombie.”

  “But you don’t know that.”

  We were both silent for a few moments, staring at the bag in the back of the car. Sure it was ridiculous to think that this was some kind of infectious thing, even if most of the movies and books said that was the case. But what if there was something to it? Most stories that we read are based on facts, right? Tales about vampires, werewolves, pixies, and so on were all based on reality. Loosely based, sure, but legends are rarely grown out of nothing.

  “Burn them,” she said again, looking less sure of herself. She obviously caught on to the fact that I was staring at her incredulously. “What?”

  “You just said…”

  “I know what I said, Ian.” Her arms tightened as a worried look crested her face. “Burn them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Actually,” she said, unfolding her arms and pushing me back, “I have an even better idea.”

  A light energy rolled out of her hands and levitated the bag out of the car. She moved it until it was on the grass and then blasted it with a fireball. It made a whooshing sound and disappeared.

  “You okay?” yelled Jasmine from her spot near the rest of the gang.

  “Yeah,” I called back. “Just…uh…getting rid of my shoes.”

  There was no response. Either they thought we were nuts or they agreed with our level of caution. Probably a little of both.

  “What about me and Felicia?” I said, reminding Rachel that we’d both touched the shoes.

  She began walking back toward the others. “I could flame you both like I did your shoes, but I’m guessing you’d rather wait to see if symptoms appear.”

  “Nice.”

  When we approached the rest of the crew, Griff was walking along the opened graves.

  Rick Portman from the supernatural morgue would be here any minute to help clean things up. If Lydia gave him the full lowdown, he and his crew would have some type of hazmat suits on. At least, I hoped they would. Until we knew more about this zombie stuff, precaution would be rule one.

  “What’s he doing?” Rachel asked Chuck.

  “Counting the graves.”

  “Why?”

  “To be certain that we have a one-to-one ratio,” Griff replied before Chuck could. “If there are more graves then there are bodies, that will mean…”

  “That some of them got away,” I finished for him.

  “Precisely so,” Griff stated with a stiff nod.

  Then he let out a slow breath. The look on his face spelled trouble. Everyone knew it.

  “How many?” I said, trying to keep a measure of calm.

  “Seven.”

  “Swell.” I paused. “Maybe they all froze up because you shut off the magic light show?”

  “You saw those above ground were still moving, Chief,” noted Chuck.

  “True.”

  We all started scanning the area, hoping to spot them in the yard. Even with my enhanced vision, I couldn’t spot any of the damn things nearby. I zoomed as far as I could and swept the area again.

  There was one across the street. It was heading toward the housing complex across Eldorado. I couldn’t have that.

  “There’s one,” I said as I took off running at it.

  “Make sure it’s a zombie before you fire at it, Chief,” Felicia called after me.

  I hopped the fence in full stride and bolted right at the creature, pulling out Boomy in the process. Within a few feet of it, I heard the wheezing and coughing that was the trademark of all zombies in the movies.

  Just as I was about to pop a bullet into its head, it turned and looked at me.

  “Don’t shoo…hic…shoot,” said a man who looked to have seen better years.

  It was a hobo who was clearly shitfaced. He reeked of soured booze and a lack of proper bathing. And even though I had a gun pointed at him, he clung to his bottled wine like it was his most prized possession.

  Rachel caught up a moment later, hands aglow.

  “It’s just a bum,” I said, panting.

  “That’s not ni…hic…nice,” the guy said as if affronted. “I used to be som…somebody, you know?”

  “Right,” I said with a weak smile. “Sorry, pops. Thought you were someone else.”

  “Sto…hic…story of my life.”

  He continued on his way while singing some song about lost love and loneliness.

  “Well, that was close,” said Rachel. “Obviously we’re going to need to vet our zombies before just outright killing them.”

  “Seems so.” I glanced back at the cemetery and opened the full channel on the connector. “False alarm. Was just an old drunk guy. Is there any way to track these damn things?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, then let’s start combing the area. We have seven to pick up before they start biting people and turning everyone into zombies!”

  Chapter 6

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said Griff after Rachel and I rejoined the group.

 
; I turned and looked at him. “What doesn’t work like what?”

  “The myth regarding a zombie bite resulting in the one bitten turning into a zombie.”

  “Oh, right.” I nodded and then squinted. “It doesn’t?”

  “No. In fact, the term zombie is rather boorish.” Sometimes his uppityness was annoying. He was wealthy, yes, but so was I, and you didn’t hear me talking condescendingly all the time. Sometimes, certainly, but that was a requirement of being uber rich. To be fair, though, Griff was from old money. Very old. He came from an age where drinking tea with your pinky sticking out was considered civilized. “What we saw here were merely reanimated corpses who had been instilled with a desire to attack.”

  “Right,” I said, rubbing my chin seriously. “So, you mean they’re…zombies?”

  Griff sighed.

  “Whatever we call them,” said Jasmine as she walked between Griff and me, “we need to round them up before they attack someone.”

  “True,” said Griff and I in unison.

  A slew of white vans pulled up, signaling that Rick Portman and his cleanup crew had arrived.

  Portman was a werebear. You could almost tell by looking at him in his normal state because he was a big bear of a man with bushy brown hair and a matching beard. Plus, he was the kind of guy who lumbered when he walked. His crew were all donning protective suits, but Portman wasn’t the type who bothered with things like that.

  “Everyone split up,” I commanded my team. “They couldn’t have gotten too far. Remember there are seven of them. We get seven and we’re done.”

  Griff and Chuck took off toward South Eastern, and Jasmine and Felicia headed to Robindale.

  “Dex?” called out Portman as Rachel and I took the Eldorado side and combed our way toward the housing development at the end of the cemetery grounds.

  “Hey, Portman,” I said, pausing while Rachel continued on. “Can’t really chat. Got a bunch of zombies on the loose.”

  “Zombies, eh?” He’d said it in such a way that made me think he thought I’d been drinking. I pointed at the corpses littering the ground. “Oh, wow. There are zombies. Lydia told me that, but I thought maybe she’d had a software upgrade to add in a sense of humor or something.”