Death 07 - For the Love of Death Read online

To find our children.

  I charge out of the house and catch sight of a familiar silhouette growing larger as it runs at me. And like the mirage years ago when he saved me, he materializes now.

  Clyde.

  My zombie.

  My friend.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Pax

  I awaken, and the first thing I know without moving is my arm is already healing.

  Crooked.

  Fuck me. I sit up and watch the dudes behind the veil between worlds. I blink, and my eyelids lift.

  I hate this multiverse bullshit.

  Dad told me about Miranda Chen and how she could world-hop. But those Dimensionals are gone now.

  I don’t know what I’m called, but I’m sure of one thing; there are more worlds than the few she explored.

  I didn’t pay an ounce of attention to what one I went to. Dee and I needed to get the hell out. Twilight came, I used my eyeballs, and here we are.

  We.

  I look around and gooseflesh crawls over my body, overriding the pain of my busted arm.

  Dee's gone.

  I jump to my feet. My vision swims at first, doubling. Always the fun of the inter-dimensional transition. Sort of like spin cycle inside a clothes washer.

  Not that I’ve ever experienced it.

  I walk, holding out my arms in front of me. The left is turned like a corkscrew. I grit my teeth, ignoring the pain.

  Great.

  Gotta find an Organic. Of course, as I scan my current environment, I note it looks different from my world. Figures. Hopefully I won’t meet myself. I chuckle, finding the perverse buried in the humor.

  Why did Dee leave? It’s not like her. I think of her timid personality. It’s the entire reason she does martial arts. That and the fact Dad would have an entire herd of cattle if she didn’t have some skills.

  I move through this world with purpose. I know Kent like the back of my hand. Unfortunately, this is not remotely like my Kent.

  All the identical houses give it away.

  And the robots.

  Steam pours out of grates that grow out of sidewalks every three meters.

  It’s a different season here. Not late summer like back home but early winter, I’d gauge.

  My thin hoodie blows for warmth. My teeth chatter like a bitch. I recognize shock easily. Another bennie of no kids is higher and more diverse learning.

  I am a level one medical responder.

  I can heal myself. Due to my unusual gene distribution, I’m a certified Organic with a moderate ability to heal, three-point.

  Can’t set my own arm, though.

  I wade through streets where adult-sized bots walk. Their disconcerting gazes travel over me in a scan-like sweep.

  Don’t like it.

  They stop and turn to me, all of them forming a loose circle.

  Like a gang.

  Obviously, there isn’t a plan for them to look remotely humanoid. Sure, they have arms and legs on their sexless bodies made of an unidentifiable silver-colored alloy. No hair on their skulls, reflective eyes, nothing remotely human.

  They blink with lids that eerily mimic my own.

  Creepers.

  “Identify,” one spits out in a metallic crunch of syllables. Then, “Scan detects compound fracture in the left humerus.”

  Brilliant, guys. My disquiet deepens. However, I’m not quick to panic.

  I shrug. I’m not in any trouble. “Paxton Hart.”

  A siren wails.

  Not a siren. A bot’s open mouth opens, and a horrible high-pitched bellow rings out. Sort of like that old Body Snatchers movie Gramps has.

  I crouch instantly and feel the breeze from metal arms as they fold over the air where I just was.

  I blink, and the veil of my eyelid skates over my pupil. I make the bot’s weakness. I swing out my right arm and pound the flat of my hand into bot-boy behind me. He sails through a sheet of glass that used to be a storefront picture window. A tinkling rain of glass shatters from the impact.

  They all look alike. I quirk my lips as the wailing one is silenced, dropping my foot to the ground from the roundhouse love I put on it.

  Another topples like a bowling pin, head canting to the left.

  Two down, three to go.

  Then more come.

  My arm throbs as my gaze bounces around at all the bots.

  It’s not fun anymore. Dee is missing, my arm’s busted, and a posse of creepers is trying to do me in.

  “Clean subject,” the first bot announces.

  They swarm.

  I flex my right arm and it bursts to muscular life. I slap the bot who spoke and its head spins off, landing with the sound of a tool box dropped from a roof.

  “Smart ass,” I say.

  “Paranormal level five, full sanction protocol.”

  What?

  Okay, so done with this noise.

  I smack two away and my Body strength sends them flying into the ones who come after them.

  Twenty count now.

  I can't get out of this.

  Deegan! I yell in a psychic scream I send like a net.

  If she is here—and boy, she had better be—I can stand some help with the tin herd here.

  Nothing.

  Shee-it.

  She's sleeping or unconscious.

  I don't allow myself to think about the alternative.

  Twenty-five bots mill around, communicating with metal clicks and chirps.

  Sounds like insects. With a plan.

  I close my eyes as a hand descends on my wrecked arm.

  The pain melts as I ring the supper bell.

  I feel them all around me.

  Rise, I command.

  I open my eyes and chop the bot’s arm with my right hand.

  It collapses and I tear it out of the shoulder socket. Apparently, that affects balance and it staggers away, sputtering and illuminating the two meters around it with a light show shooting out of the gutted joint.

  “Corpse revival detected,” several of the bots announce in a simultaneous stutter.

  “Yeah. Roger that,” I say, feeling queasy.

  Shock's progressing nicely.

  The horde is different here, yet so much the same. My heart does that weird gallop thing inside my chest.

  Bound to happen when my entire family responds to my summons. Including myself.

  As a corpse.

  *

  I face myself. Looking at me as a corpse goes on the top one hundred list of the strangest brand of shit I've ever lived through. Yet.

  “Master,” the Paxton of this world says in way of greeting, question and answer.

  A bot lands on me and I collapse under its weight. Color me stunned.

  Help!

  The bot's weight is gone and Paxton Corpse twists its head around.

  A bot's hand becomes a knife-like bayonet morphing into a single, stabbing implement, and it slams through Paxton Corpse's guts.

  His intestines wind and slide around the spearing metal as it spins.

  Paxton Corpse frowns as though it puzzles him this bot just stabbed him. Both his elbows slam backwards and the bots knife-hand slides out.

  “Better,” Paxton Corpse comments.

  Wow.

  Disable, I think at the collective horde.

  I stagger to my feet and my family is there.

  Gram looks better as a corpse in this world than as a dying human in mine. Cancer is the queen of all bitches.

  I stand in the middle of the melee as my eyes burn with the most intense need to cry I've had in my life.

  Their gazes move to me.

  I swallow what feels like a brick.

  I say, “Disable them all.”

  The bots are outnumbered as the zombies descend. I back away as my sister, Mom and Dad, and the grandparents tear limbs and heads off the bots.

  They’re simply no match for the animated strength of the undead.

  I back further away, but the sight of Gramps as
a zombie freezes me. He moves through the bots like water, a tornado of arms, legs, and flying fists.

  They fall like metal dominoes.

  I’m not surprised when Clyde, the Clyde of this world, joins the fray.

  His gaze reaches mine.

  Go, young Master, he broadcasts in my mind.

  I clench my teeth, jogging away in an unsteady gait.

  I have to find an Organic.

  Gotta break my arm again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Deegan

  The slap wakes me first.

  My face hits the other side of the hard surface.

  “That's it, princess.”

  I open my eyes like slits. They're special, like Pax's, but different.

  Instantly my second eyelids reveal the Brad of this world. Apparently, he hates me here, too. Of course. It all makes sense. Multiverse is a study in Murphy’s Law. It’s not that bad things will happen. It’s that anything that could happen, will.

  Like now.

  My legs are unbound but not my hands.

  I wait until my perfect peripheral vision locates the prick, then I grab him with my legs.

  His hands fly to my shins squeezing the sides of his head.

  He makes a satisfying choking sound that ends in a gurgle.

  I cross my ankles and rotate my heels opposite each other. It twists his neck. Sounds like pop rock machine gun fire light off.

  Thompson drops.

  I jump down, sway, and land on my ass.

  The breath leaves me.

  Jerk drugged me.

  My vision trembles, tripling. Suddenly, there are three Brads. Not a good development.

  I take several deep breaths, oxygenating myself as I scan my environment. Commercial building. Old, mid-twentieth-century cement dungeon with glass block windows.

  Doors are barn-style with a huge steel bar across the center.

  I move my butt backward, heaving it over the bound circle of my arms.

  I gasp as a powerful summons for the dead covers me like a shroud.

  Paxton.

  I’d know his death call anywhere.

  But we’re not in our world, and I’m blind here. I can’t see our world if I’m not touching Pax. I can’t get home.

  My throat closes. A lump forms, begging to shed tears.

  I clamp down on it, taking my butt through my arms. I bring them in front of me.

  Old-fashioned zip ties. Why are they still using petro here?

  Doesn’t matter. They’ll be awful to get off.

  My eyes flick to Brad. I scope for movement. I don’t know if this world has auto-heal features.

  A finger jumps.

  Yeah.

  I look for something sharp.

  It’ll be a little while for Brad to heal up from a spine injury.

  But he will.

  I spot an old electric-powered table saw like the one Gramps has in his garage. The spinning serrated disc climbing out of the center appears to have teeth covered in cobwebs.

  That'll work.

  I stagger to the saw and dip my wrists to the blade. I move them back and forth where the zip tie meets, the thick opaque white binding snags against the tips of the metal. I reposition again.

  Then again.

  I chance a glance behind my shoulder.

  Brad Thompson's eyes are on me.

  Oh god.

  I move faster and my peripheral lids catalog his recovery. His toe twitches as his entire group of ten fingers move. They press the concrete underneath him.

  “You stupid bitch,” he says, enunciating each syllable.

  Voice is working fine.

  The binding snaps and I turn.

  “Don't even try it, Deegan,” Brad says. He struggles to sit up, manages it and views me sideways.

  His head is still touching his shoulder.

  The neck's always the last to heal.

  I cover my mouth. Then let my hand fall, laughing.

  Hate engulfs his expression. “I'll kill you. I have already.”

  I nod my head. “Maybe you will, Brad. But right now, I can't take you seriously when you're talking from your shoulder.”

  A rage so raw it's naked, meets my eyes. It's absolute—I step back.

  An exhale escapes me in a rush.

  “It's been fun, but—bye.”

  I turn to leave, and his voice follows me.

  “I don’t know where you came from, if you’re some holdover Dimensional or what. But I’ll tell you this. You paranormals? You’re extinct here. E-X-T-I-N-C-T.”

  His words make me pause. I glance back.

  Paracide.

  He grins. “That’s right; you leave me here and run off. Go ahead. You won’t get two steps before the cyborgs take you down.”

  Cy-what? It's like a bad sci-fi novel.

  He interprets my expression. “Artificial Life Bots, princess. The ALBs will fuck your day right up.”

  I look him over, his lopsided head still resting against his shoulder.

  Or is it a little higher now?

  Time to go.

  I don't wait, I run.

  *

  I go where the death summons came from. It's as logical a choice as breathing.

  Where the dead are, Paxton will be.

  I stay to the greenbelts, noting the bare sidewalks with strange grates. Vapor escapes in rhythmic bursts, heating the cement sidewalks in winter. Our world uses solar and wind. Here they must have harnessed geothermal, maybe using the off gassing of nearby industry or… the earth’s crust. It’s not a field trip, but I can’t help my curiosity.

  The ALBs Brad told me about cruise up and down the streets with purpose. Many carry personal items, sundries, groceries, and slim notebook type things.

  They look straight ahead, neither backward nor sideways.

  Then one stops and I meld into the treeline, using a wild growing rhododendron for cover. It's treelike on its own and I climb up into the lower branches, making myself into a ball.

  I nest like a bird in the foliage.

  The bot appears to see me, though I know the greenery provides enough cover.

  I can hear whirs and clicks from here. Innocuous sounds. Scary sounds. I swallow hard.

  “Paranormal detected.”

  Shit.

  The other bots stop their scurrying like ants on a hill.

  More clicking, whirring and chirping ensue. I sink deeper into the arms of the bush. Blood rushes in my ears like a river of trapped noise.

  I don’t have Pax’s control of the dead. Actually, I’m caught in a volatile age, only having my power manifestation for about two years. A late bloomer, they said.

  Fear forms in my chest like an iceberg. Great calves of ice break off and float to my extremities, the beginnings of terror-induced adrenaline.

  I shift my weight and begin to topple out of the bush.

  The bots’ eyes go to the commotion I make.

  Oh no!

  Arms catch me, and a hand covers my mouth. My panic is total.

  It’s Brad. I know it. Somehow, he’s healed up and ready to hurt me.

  Then the familiar, vague, but not unpleasant smell of rot envelops me. Instant comfort.

  Not a normal reaction. Not even a human reaction. But a perfectly normal one for an AFTD.

  “Shh… I am here, mistress.”

  I crane my neck and look into eyes that are deadly, dark, and alive though he’s clearly dead.

  He cocks his eyebrows and I nod. My silence is relief, thanks, and agreement rolled into one.

  The bots are climbing the hill.

  “Your fear tore me out of the earth where I slept.”

  I swallow hard.

  He traces my jawline with a finger. A tattoo of a sword through a beating heart undulates under the motion of his muscular forearm.

  “Such fear, necromancer—where there is no need.”

  He was a huge guy in life. In death, he is an unmovable object. His eyes track movement between the bra
nches, and his square jaw sets.

  “Don’t…” I begin.

  I know my skill level. My control is bad. Paxton could have this guy juggling grapefruit.

  Not me.

  He sets me on my feet and I come to his shoulder.

  His wardrobe looks like late twentieth, early twenty-first.

  He smiles, and there’s some teeth missing. I feel guilt then squelch it. My emotions, not a deliberate call, raised him. I’m freaking here and can’t get my shit together.

  No one raises a perfect zombie when they’re tripping.

  The sound of metal bodies’ stealthy progress over the embankment slides over us as they draw nearer.

  “Are they enemies?”

  A simple question. His eyes search mine.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Why only me?” he asks.

  Why did you raise only one zombie? It's a fair question.

  “I'm seventeen,” I blurt. A small untruth.

  His lips twitch. Dark hair is a vaguely curling cap against his scalp.

  “Then we'll run, mistress.”

  He gives me his back, bending over, his arms out at his side.

  Piggy back.

  A laugh leaks out of me and he turns his face, only his profile visible.

  “There is nothing funny about the approach of over ten of those things, mistress.”

  I sober and climb on.

  His arms wrap my legs. Strong ones.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  I nod, though he can’t see it. “It’s Deegan.”

  The zombies all call us the same thing.

  The first bot shoves through the thicket.

  Its stare latches onto me.

  “Paranormal, level four.” It pauses, then, “Reanimated humanoid.”

  I swear it smiles before it says, “Exterminate.”

  “Not today, jack,” the zombie beneath me says.

  Then he’s running, the wind and bots at our backs.

  I don’t even know his name.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Caleb

  “Baby, no—ya can't come.”

  Jade's emerald gaze narrows down on me like two laser beams.

  Damn.

  “Do not patronize me, Caleb Hart.”

  I don't roll my eyes, but it's an effort.

  I try for reasonable, not my best thing. “I don’t know what kind of a snafu the kids have gotten themselves into, or if it’s a volatile situation.” I rake a hand through my hair. “I don’t want to have my entire family to worry about. As you know, the kids are enough.”