Death Incarnate Read online

  Clothes mend while we watch, becoming crisp, flat, and new again.

  Flesh begins to form over skeletal, big-knuckled hands almost too large for his frame—hands that have hit a thousand faces.

  Clyde's fingers flex and tendons pop, realigning into position with wet, hard sounds.

  Hazel eyes, so much like Jeff Parker's, blink. Brown eyelashes sweep down against a face littered with perpetual stubble crossing the high curve of his cheekbone.

  “Master,” Clyde breathes reverently. A tongue, mottled black, flicks against his dry lips.

  Dad lightly taps Clyde's jaw near his mouth, and I feel that fist of his power flex, causing my breath to pause. A swollen moment of rightness grows, edging toward finality, then Clyde turns and faces the group, looking as human as the rest of us.

  Only an AftD would know. The small beep on our undead radar chimes with every beat of his undead heart.

  “Let's go,” Mitchell says, popping the moment like bursting a bubble.

  He turns with my sister clutched against him.

  “Mitchell!” Mom cries, chasing after them, but he doesn't slow down.

  There's a small part of me that isn't a hundred percent sure what Mitch will do when faced with his family's killers again.

  Will his zombieness take over—and Dee will come first? Or will he see the violence against his brother and sister and forget why he's here in his earth of the past?

  While he's “alive” again in this time?

  Thankfully, Gramps is charging ahead, even ahead of Mitch’s lumbering hulk. Gramps doesn't have to guess at the location of Mitchell's house.

  It's the one where all the screaming is coming from.

  I don't take the time to think about the coincidence of how Mitchell's house is clearly in the same neighborhood my dad grew up in. I tally that factoid mentally and haul ass.

  Two cars pass us as we run down the sidewalk and almost shake my shit up, causing me to fall.

  I pause when I shouldn't, unable to move as I take in the sight. It's weird as fuck to see cars on the road instead of overhead. Feels reckless. Doesn't matter that in my brain, I know this was normal forty years ago. Normal to ride with Gramps on the rare occasion he drives his ancient car.

  The traffic slows. Something about a dozen people running like the devil's chasing them gets people’s attention.

  Maybe the kind of notice we don't want, from the wrong people.

  I think over the facts of history as I run after the others. Brain Impulse Tech hasn't come around, and I remember that it doesn't develop in this world. Kim and Ron didn't have any in the future of Mitchell's world (just an ass ton of bots). The Zondoraes do advance the cyborgs, but pulse is not here. They’re probably using cell phones and texting for fuck's sake.

  I don't give any shits if Mitch Boy is all pissed because I told Dad to fix Clyde as precious seconds flew past. Dad's got death mojo on this earth—but only in this time. Clyde shambling like a box of walking rot would've put the entire group in jeopardy.

  Plus, having two zombies is better than one.

  Gramps is almost to the door. A funky style house where the stairs split right inside the front door—one up, one down. The sidelight windows flanking the entry door are shattered. Bubbled amber glass is scattered like crystallized aging sunlight on the small stoop of the house.

  A young woman's piercing scream rises above the ambient sound of the neighborhood. The scream is a cattle-prod-to-the-ass style, and every one of us guys leaps the four steps, clearing the broken glass.

  Gramps kicks the ajar door wide open.

  The brass knob smacks the wall and flies back under the force.

  Mitch arrests the progress of the door's return swing before it can shut, yanking the knob off like an unwanted boil. He tosses it behind him, and we pour in, squeezed into a tight stairwell that conjoins the two short flights of steps to the basement and upper level.

  A frightened girl about Dee's age or so turns her face from a supine position on the ground, a thick-treaded boot laying claim to the center of her chest. Her sweaty, light hair hangs in strings around a face that's a feminine version of her hulk of a brother.

  “Tara,” Mitch growls, fingers balling into meaty fists.

  The man standing above her turns to face us. His pants are at his ankles, but thank fuck, he’s still wearing underwear.

  Comical surprise washes over his face, and we find ourselves in the vulnerable position of being six steps below the criminal Mitch was too late to stop the first time.

  Dad turns to me in what feels like slow motion as the loser raises his gun.

  “Weapon!” Gramps yells so loud, his voice is like gunfire of its own.

  Mitchell’s palm goes up, and the fucker shoots a hole through it.

  My ears ring from the report, but Dad and I have already clasped the hands.

  Death energy closes like a net, taking our breath, charging the fine hair on our bodies.

  We raise.

  The hole in Mitch's hand closes like a memory from the backlash of our power.

  Kim and Sophie gasp and scream.

  Didn't think about the season, I muse vaguely. But I know that it is from the insects. Cicadas would've been perfect, but they're not native to the Pacific Northwest.

  Grasshoppers will do.

  I almost pivot when I hear the noise roaring behind me like a living train.

  A vacant smile slips into place on Dad’s face, and I feel its twin on my own.

  The grasshoppers come in a torrent of snapping brownish-green rustling that creeps up the stairs.

  Another discharged round shifts my hair before burying itself in the wall above my head.

  Clyde lurches forward to take the next rounds in the chest. He stumbles and plants his hands on the steps in front of him, crushing insects.

  The grasshoppers behave as though a log fell in the river of their momentum, moving around the barricade of Clyde's hands in their path to where they're needed with uncanny determination.

  And the devotion of the undead.

  They hop when they're within range of Tara's attacker. The noise of their clicking fills the stairwell, joining the clicking of the empty gun cartridge as the trigger is pulled again and again.

  The murderer throws his arms up in a warding gesture, reactively raising the gun and firing an empty chamber at the ceiling.

  Mitchell gains the top step, scoops his sister off the floor in one move, and straightens, gripping the guy above the elbow.

  Dad and I siphon our death energy and fling, smacking Mitch with a warm tide of our combined power—and strength.

  In this case, two five-point AftDs can't command a zombie we didn't raise.

  But we can sure as shit aid and abet.

  Mitch compresses his fingers in a classic pincer grip and pulverizes the guy's arm before we take our next breath.

  The dude opens his mouth to scream, and the opportunistic grasshoppers leap inside like a perfectly orchestrated dance step.

  My vague smile becomes a beautiful grin.

  “Timmy?” Mitchell says, ignoring the staggering, gurgling fucker and stroking hair away from his sister's face.

  She hiccups back some of the clearest sad terror I've ever witnessed in my life, and whispers, “Basement.”

  Our eyes track to the second flight of steps leading to darkness below, and I plunge down the stairs, plowing through the girls, John, and Jonesy—but Gramps beats us to it.

  He looks up at me from the two treads that separate us. “You two death-zoners can't take the fire.”

  Neither can he, I open my mouth to say, but it's too late as he jogs down the remaining pair of steps.

  The sounds of the criminal behind us suffocating on dead insects is a choking music in the background.

  “No!” Gramps shouts, crouching.

  Semi-auto gunfire chatters above his head, splintering wood and causing drywall fragments to spray clouds of powdery debris.

  Drywall dust
fills the small threshold leading into the dim basement, covering those closest in a fine, white layer.

  An old television sounds off in the post-gunfire basement, throwing chunks of light and sound against walls.

  I round the corner, my grimy fingers gripping what's left of the wooden doorframe.

  A boy around twelve years old is lying on the floor, gutted like an animal, his intestines pulsing the last of his fresh, bright blood beneath him.

  Too late. We're too late.

  Then I see Mitch through a pane of glass in the sliding glass door.

  He stands like a statue. Behind him, an acre of illegal grass so green I know it's leeching a jabillion pounds of fertilizer into the aquifer spreads behind him in an emerald carpet.

  This is not Mitch the zombie—but the dude he was.

  Oh fuck me, he's younger than I am now.

  Time stands still, the moment like a pregnancy that never gives birth. Dust motes scatter between us as though space has been captured in that poignant moment.

  The murderer of his brother stands between me and Mitch, and our eyes meet. The criminal easily reads my expression then turns to see what I've just seen.

  In an uncanny and deadly accurate reaction, he shoots through the plate glass where a younger Mitch stands, vapors rising from the seam on the boxes of pizzas he’s holding.

  Before anyone can react, the bullet slams through the non-tempered glass. The aluminum frame of the slider sheds large shards of jagged glass like an iceberg relieving itself of icy flesh.

  A single piece twirls between the top and bottom rails, slowly spinning until, with a final shiver, it falls, shattering into a million pieces on the concrete pad.

  The younger Mitch jerks as if punched. A flower of flesh petals bursts from his chest. The cardboard pizza box lies in a smoldering shredded mess at his feet.

  Mitch looks down at the hole in his body, seems to realize he's mortally wounded, and leans back, hand to chest, disbelief spreading across his face.

  Thick heart blood pumps out of his heavily muscled chest.

  Emotions drag at me, sucking me in. Dad's rage reaches for me first, mingling with a flavor so similar to my own, it would be funny at any other time.

  Gramps reaches the fucker first with an economy of movement that's a thing of beauty, hitting the guy dead center in the throat with a stiff set of knuckles.

  He crumples, windpipe obliterated, and Gramps takes one step and stomps on the guy's wrist.

  Mitch the zombie kicks the gun out of the guy’s strangled grasp as his wide eyes take in the scene.

  Dee hops over the fallen tween on the floor, youthful eyes already glazing over as Mitch's sister screams from behind me, rushing to the boy on the harvest-gold shag carpeting.

  She sinks to her knees, howling over his dead body.

  My sister jerks the old-fashioned glass slider nearly off the rails—more glass tinkles from the abrupt motion—and drops to her knees beside the younger Mitch.

  He's barely alive—Dad and I both feel it. His Death. Blood fills the young Mitch's throat each time he tries to speak, and his hand floats up in the air, trying to reach at anything—touching nothing.

  Dee grabs his seeking hand with her own, pressing it between her breasts.

  “I'm here,” she says in a shaky voice as tears form a riot of wet grief down her face.

  “Mitchell!” his sister shrieks, palms slick with her younger brother's blood.

  But the young Mitch doesn't seem to hear his sister—his eyes are all for Dee.

  They stare at each other until the light in his eyes begins to dim.

  Dee sobs above his body.

  I close my eyes, listening to the shattered chunks of her heart falling to the ground alongside her tears.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pax

  “Deedie,” Gramps says, hand clamped on her shoulder. “Cops are going to show, honey. You can't stay here.”

  Tara is comatose, staring at her dead brothers. Limp hands lie upside down on her thighs. As I study her, I notice she has a slight sway.

  “Shock,” I say unnecessarily.

  Dad and Mom nod. Sophie's tears create tracks in the remnants of whatever makeup she'd been wearing, cutting pale slices through shit girls wear, leaving her vulnerable—cruelly bare.

  Tiff sniffs, shuffling her feet and staring at the ground.

  Tara's eyes wander to Mitch again and again. Mitch the zombie—not the dead Mitch laying in a pool of his own blood a meter from the family barbecue.

  “I'm sorry,” Mitch says, reaching for her.

  “Don't touch me,” she rips her hands away, curling her fingers against her chest. Then she notices they're covered in her brother's blood, and her face instantly crumples to stricken.

  Mitch stands there, clearly not knowing what to do.

  I look away from their interaction. Not going to touch this emotional fun. We did what we could. What we knew how to. It's not like there's some planner for shit like this.

  Travel back in time and save Dee's zombie's family. Yeah right. So normal.

  Oh—and the zombie's the blinker.

  I restrain a forehead smack.

  “You are dead,” Tara points at him as though accusing him of something I know my sister's responsible for. “And this bullshit story, Mitchell—even for you—is not legit.” She glances at the congealing blood beneath the two brothers and skates a hand over her pale face, clearly shaken.

  A smear of crimson is left behind like war paint on her cheekbone.

  The group exchanges a collective uneasy glance.

  I feel for Tara. I do. But I don't know her. I know Dee. And Dee's life hung in the balance.

  Mitch died in this time. Earlier than he was supposed to, but he did. We've already changed the when of his death history by interfering with what was supposed to happen.

  And Mitch still ended up dead.

  Dee's saved. She's still alive because he died.

  It's circular reasoning, but it makes a fucked-up kind of sense.

  Fate's a bitch.

  Tara folds her arms. Her deep-blue eyes are slits of midnight sky. “If we're so important, why didn't you come earlier?”

  “I was getting pizza,” Mitch replies in a dazed voice.

  A lot of eyes turn to the cooling body of the younger Mitch. Cold pizza and wrecked cardboard soak up his thickening blood as sirens begin to wail in the background.

  “We can't stay, man—however uncool this scene is—and man, is it,” Jonesy tries to explain in his inane way, spreading his arms away from his body. “We have to get, guys. Because Mac's right: the cops will show, scratchinʼ their heads about how everything went down, and our explanations aren't gonna fly.” His hand moves to his chest, rubbing an absent circle in the middle. “Ya feel me?” His dark eyes drift to Dad and his friends. “And how old are we in this time? Are we gonna like—damn—run into our young selves?” He gives a soft snort, and Mom shoots him a withering look.

  Dad, Jonesy, Sophie, John, and Tiff all have the same concerned expression, whereas Mom's is outright fear. Clyde and Mitch look at the carnage along with the rest of us, but zombies view death differently, and there's no way to know how they perceive it.

  “Drat,” Gramps remarks absently, patting down his shirt and giving an exasperated huff at the apparent deficit of smokes.

  Mitch the zombie stands wearily for an awkward moment then walks down the hall as if he’s decided something.

  “Don't leave, Mitchell,” Dee says, her voice a thread.

  “Not.”

  He returns a moment later with sheets. Covering the bodies, he lingers over his brother's corpse the longest. Blood immediately begins to dot the patterned sheet. The black of his blood soaks it then spreads in seeking tendrils away from the center of his body.

  I gulp. Not because I'm a candy ass, as Gramps would say, but because the horror, blood, and sad get mixed together in a pill I don't want to swallow. That never gets easier.

>   “Can you feel him?” Mitch asks without turning.

  Dad and I close our eyes, but it's Dee who replies in a whisper. “Yes.”

  “Can you raise him?” He lifts his chin, eyes boring into hers.

  She covers her mouth with a hand then shakes her head.

  Only criminals, Smart One. Like you, I silently add.

  His rage shifts to Dad and me.

  “You don't want that,” I say instantly, thinking of Gram, dumped back on our earth, in our era—but she’s cured, not a zombie. Disquiet hammers my thoughts.

  Are my grandparents okay? I wonder suddenly.

  Then Mitch is striding toward us. “Why not?” He beats his chest with a broad fist. “I'm alive.” He enunciates with so much anger, his lips don't move.

  “No, Mitchell,” Dee says in a low voice.

  He whirls to face her. “Schematics, Deegan. It doesn't matter that I'm the walking dead. I don't feel dead.” He taps his skull with a brutal thwack of his fingers.

  The killer is starting to wake up—not dead after all—finally catching his breath again after Gramps’s love tap to the esophagus.

  Mitch's head swivels to the guy on the ground.

  Sheee-it.

  In two strides, Mitch is looming above his brother's murderer.

  His intent blows through my head. Dad twitches beside me from the force of it.

  Dee's eyes round. “Mitchell!” she screams.

  But there’s not enough meaning behind her semi-command. Not the powerful one-word order that would make him stop his forward momentum.

  His revenge.

  Dee doesn't say no. And there's the problem.

  Without that express command halting him, Mitchell lifts his foot, knee hiked to nearly mid-chest, and brings his thick-tread boot powerfully down on the guy's face, crushing his skull.

  He grinds his boot from side to side, determination etched into his face.

  Hard bones crunch like eggshells, squishing the disgusting brain matter seeping from underneath his boot.

  Clyde gives the entire mess his sharp attention.

  God, zombies. Have some raw brains around, and—boom—all rational thought flies out the window.