“Such a strange place to store it,” the driver said, watching her work. The driver raised his eyebrow the way a high-society snob would.
She reached into the hole and grabbed something. She tugged, not expecting it to be stuck, and sighed. With more effort, she pried it loose, along with a cloud of dust and a string of cobwebs.
“The last members of the cult of Bahtzuul buried it here before those meat puppets who stupidly fought that Mexican army could make their last stand. They carted it around after Bahtzuul’s fall, evading the hands of the Immortuos Venandi until they could discover where the body of our Lord is buried. They never found out and had to stash it.”
After another tug, she pulled out a pinewood box with an old iron lock. She dragged it out onto the floor, and the ghouls gathered, finished with slaughtering the tourists who were inside the building. Two of the tourists had already risen from the dead and wandered aimlessly. Being second-generation ghouls a step away from Violess, they remained mentally diluted.
She attempted to break the lock with the crowbar but instead popped the entire locking mechanism off the wood. The little screw holes coughed sawdust as the screws stripped the wood on their way out.
Violess laughed to herself. “It took hundreds of years and false leads to confirm the tomb of Bahtzuul at Glacier Peak.”
Inside the box was something near the size of a human torso, wrapped in old cloth that flaked and peel the moment it was unwrapped. With little effort, she stripped off the cloth-like wrapping paper, and she grinned as if on the verge of an orgasm. She held up a husk of petrified meat, like an old leather bag. “And now, this is the key to waking Him up: the heart of Bahtzuul.”
The cabin inhabitants slept soundly through the night. The fireplace dimmed by early morning while Fiya drifted away in the comfort of the werebear chair. Thomas and Liama slept on Rutger’s waterbed, though Liama stole the covers. After making sure Fiya drifted into deep sleep, Rutger took the couch.
He was also the first to rise, beating the sun to the punch. He immediately set fruit and bread on the table for breakfast as the others eventually rose from the dead of sleep. Fiya rekindled the fireplace when she awoke to the quiet house.
After using the bathroom at the end of the hall, she found the other three at the table, eating bananas and orange slices with toast and butter. Rutger offered cinnamon and sugar for Liama to sprinkle on her toast, which she rejected.
“Just as you like,” Rutger replied and buried his toast with it.
Fiya watched them eat but just couldn’t feel hungry herself. She stretched in the den, the only place with enough floor space, and exercised with wide lunges, exhausting jumping jacks, and punishing sit-ups. Liama noticed when she dropped to the floor and couldn’t keep count of how many knuckle-push-ups Fiya completed.
“Don’t stare. That’s rude,” Thomas said to Liama.
Liama hung her head in shame and returned to eating her toast. “Okay. I just never saw anybody do that in the morning.”
“Mom used to,” he fibbed. Though Liama’s mother did work out in the mornings, it was nothing compared to what Fiya was doing.
She shook her head without looking back at her father. “I never seen her.”
“She was always up before you. She did.”
“Okay … If you say so.” She folded her buttered toast like a taco and scarfed it down in three bites.
When Fiya was done, she rolled over on her back for breathing exercises.
She caught Rutger observing her routine, and when she relaxed, he asked, “Gonna eat?”
She exhaled, then pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and rocked forward to a sitting position. She got to her feet and walked over to the table, taking a single banana. She didn’t want it, probably needed it but didn’t feel like she did. She knew the banana, however, would be the best item on the table that wouldn’t agitate whatever was going on in her stomach. If she got out of this, she planned on hitting the hospital to get checked out. All she could think about were ulcers or chronic acid reflux. She ate the banana in pieces while standing at the table.
“I’m feeling pretty good about this,” Thomas said to Rutger. “Going back to the others like I promised and getting them out of there. Stop this cult from having the correct sacrifices to raise this demon from the dead. I feel pretty darn good. Confident.”
“That would only stop them for a little while,” Rutger added. “They’ll find eighteen more replacements and try again. We’ll need to stop them altogether, but you’re free to leave with the others. It’s really no place for you, and especially her, to be in the middle of this kind of fight. Take the others and run.”
“Understood.”
Fiya listened but couldn’t think of anything to contribute. She ultimately agreed with Rutger: They needed to get as far away as possible as soon as possible. Then a question slipped from her thoughts. “How are we getting up the mountain, Glacier Peak?”
Rutger focused on her and gave her an inquisitive look she was familiar with. He wanted her to clarify, so she did. “Glacier Peak is part of the national park, so are there roads going up there?”
He shrugged. “There has to be something, a way they’re getting up there if they’re digging up Bahtzuul.”
“Hmmm. I’ll Google Map it when we’re going that way, just to be sure. I want a vacation before having to tromp through the wilderness again.” She ate the last of the banana and tossed the peel in the trash. “I’m going to clean up. Is the shower good?”
Rutger nodded, and she gave him the thumbs-up while carrying her gear into the back bathroom.
Within twenty minutes, Fiya had gotten herself cleaned up. She came back out to the den with her Kevlar pants and vest on, but barefoot. She overheard Rutger ask, “What was it you were doing before all this went down?”
Thomas replied, “I, uh, helped run a mom ’n’ pop pet store in San Francisco. I was basically manager after so many years, but since I didn’t own it, I didn’t have any say about it closing down during that COVID pandemic. I found a job in Olympia looking for an assistant manager position for Petworld. Felt a little bit like a sell-out, and even a few steps backward, but a job’s a job, right?” He shrugged. “It’s not anywhere near as impressive as anything you two do.”
“Stop right there, Tommy.”
“Thomas.” He never liked being called Tommy.
“Alright, Thomas. You do honest work, finding homes for pets, so they’re not on the streets, and you take care of that little lady right there. That will always be impressive.”
Thomas laughed half-heartedly. “I wanted to be a fireman, actually, but I didn’t have the lung power to finish training. I used to smoke like a chimney when I was a teen.”
Rutger gave Thomas a good, long look as if sizing him up. He tongued the back of his teeth to dislodge a piece of toast. When he got it, he leaned back in his chair and asked, “Thomas, have you ever fired a gun before?” He remembered Thomas made a batch of silver bullets for Fiya but was curious what exactly was the man’s experience.
Liama hopped down from the table. “Excuse me. I have to use the lady’s room.”
Smiling, Rutger said, “You’re excused. Just remember to use the one in the bedroom.”
“Okay!” She scampered into the back end of the cabin. The lock on the door echoed back to the front.
When she was gone, Thomas looked back at Rutger and answered, “Of course. Long-arms mostly. My father brought us up hunting.” His eyes wandered over to the Blackhawk revolver, holstered in a belt hanging on the back of one of the chairs. A glistening light bounced off it as if it knew it was part of the conversation. “Did you need me to …?”
“Only if it comes to it,” Rutger answered before he could finish. His eyes rolled to Fiya, who finished buckling her boots and rolling up the Kevlar sleeves. Her mask rested on the arm of the couch near her. She glanced back, noticing the silence, and gave a half-ass smile to Rutger. She finished
gearing up as Rutger continued. “I actually made it for her. Originally intended as a 21st birthday gift, but it wasn’t ready by the time that came around. I was already retired so I wasn’t going to have a true use for it. Plus, she was a natural, as much as she wants to deny it.”
Fiya snapped back, “I heard that.”
“I know you did.”
Thomas turned to Fiya and asked, “Why would you deny being good at something?”
Tightening her glove, she gave him a stern gaze that said I don’t want to talk about it … a look many women will give but was often ignored. Thomas luckily learned about this look a long time ago from his own mother, which he also saw in Liama, so he dropped the inquisition and turned back to Rutger.
“I saw potential in her to be a strong gunslinger, one so dedicated to taking out the undead. Plus, as she grew, I noticed how petite she stayed, so I felt she’d be safer with a firearm instead of getting up close and personal.” When Rutger saw the same look from Fiya drilling into him, he ceased speaking and finished his glass of water.
Liama came back with her hands damp, and Thomas ushered her into his seat at the table as he got up, pushing a half-full glass of milk in front of her.
The rose-pink of morning light bled into the kitchen window. “Drink up, hon, don’t want to waste it.” She did what she was told, and he took his turn to use the restroom. Thomas wondered for a moment what was wrong with the other toilet; maybe it could be something he could fix for Rutger for all his help. He itched to do it now, but there was no time. Perhaps when everything was over.
Rutger stepped away from the table to fetch himself the last of the coffee in the kettle before having to turn off the fireplace. As he crossed his den, he glanced at Fiya strapping a leather pouch, like a small backpack, to her thigh. “Sure you don’t want to eat anything else?” His voice expressed concern. “We’ll be at least three hours before we arrive at Skyhill if I ignore the speed limits. I don’t want you fainting on us or anything.”
“I’m fine,” she replied with a thin smile. Rutger gave her an unsatisfied look, one that knew she was holding back but knew he wasn’t going to get anything else. She added, “I have some protein bar survival biscuits in my bag. I’ll be fine.”
He sighed. “Just as you like.”
Thomas returned and rubbed Liama’s shoulders. She glanced at his hands and saw the leftover water around his knuckles and felt better knowing he did wash his hands before putting them on her. “Mr. Bronson?” he asked.
“Just Rutger, please.”
“Cool. Rutger, I can probably fix your hall bathroom if something’s wrong with it. It’s the least I can do.”
Rutger waved him off. “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely sure. It’s fine as is.”
Thomas tightened his mouth into a confused frown and narrowed his eyes at the big man. He wasn’t sure if the old guy was sparring some playful banter or maybe preferred doing his own home maintenance, and he’s just being polite in a weird way?
Unfortunately, Liama wasn’t fond of drinking plain milk, but she did her best to swallow what was given to her. She hoped for chocolate milk again but the last of it was used the night before. She was two slugs away from finishing when the kitchen window behind her burst inward, and the shape of a giant wolf on two legs reached in for them.
Thomas cried out, “Baby!”
Liama dropped the glass, and Thomas snatched her from the table, ducking to the floor and out of the claw’s reach. Liama already broke into tears before they hit the floor.
The beast finished clawing through the window, flipping the table over in the process.
Thomas saw and reached for the Blackhawk as it fell on the floor.
Just as Rutger and Fiya turned to see the werewolf crash into the kitchen, the other windows exploded inward around the den of the cabin. Ghouls appeared, climbing over each other to get through the windows.
Rutger reached for his axe next to the fireplace.
“Oh, crap,” Fiya grumbled, grabbing her mask off the arm of the couch. She leaped over the couch to her guitar case and unlatched it, releasing her longsword.
One ghoul wriggled all the way into the cabin and shambled over to Fiya. It wore blue garage- mechanic’s coveralls and had a pale face with ghostly yellow eyes that targeted her. Its teeth were stained with blackened blood, and it bared them at her, hoping for a fresh coat.
Using the momentum to turn around, Fiya swung her sword, cleaving the ghoul in two, ruining Rutger’s poor couch with a sour rotten smell that would probably never get out. Oh well, he can bill me.
The werewolf crept closer to Thomas and Liama, knocking the table out of the way, shattering against the refrigerator. It grinned with its tongue slithering out, glossing its front canines.
“Cover your ears, baby,” Thomas said, pointing the Blackhawk at its chest, and pulled the trigger. Click. Thomas’ eyes bulged as nothing came out of the barrel, and his jaw slacked, devastated that this whole time they never loaded the thing with the silver bullets.
The werewolf chuckled, and then taunted, “Bullets not included.” It reached its claws back, winding up for a powerful swing, not caring at all that the instructions were to take the Bradleys alive and kill only the Immortuos Venandi hunters.
Thomas and Liama cowered as the Blackhawk dangled uselessly in Thomas’s grip.
Before the werewolf could follow through with the swing, it heard a soft voice whisper near its ear, “No ammo required.” A sword rammed through its bottom jaw, spearing out from the top of its head. Fiya secured the werewolf’s jaws shut like a toothpick holding a sandwich together. As she slid the sword back from the now cross-eyed werewolf, letting it slump to the floor, she looked down at Thomas and Liama, pulling her mask down over her face. She hurried them out of the kitchen and near Rutger, who had been showing the invading ghouls how to properly cleave heads.
Once near him, Rutger grabbed Thomas’s sleeve and leaned close to him. He whispered, “To the other bathroom, at the end of the hall.” He let him go and patted him on the shoulder.
Thomas just stared at him in a frozen shock, slowly digesting what he was just instructed. Liama panicked, not knowing where to look as all ends of the cabin had come under siege with ghouls.
The front door pounded so hard the hinges rattled.
Rutger commanded, “Go! Now!”
Shaking free of his sudden shock, Thomas grabbed Liama by the hand and ran down the hall, dodging the grasp of a ghoul that came too close.
Fiya helped block the entrance of the hallway after they fled and slit the nearest ghoul from groin to sternum. Soon, her back was to Rutger’s, fending off a seemingly increasing number of gnashing teeth and skeletal fingernails.
Rutger whirled his axe to split the head of one ghoul, spraying a fountain of blood flickering into the fire.
Fiya kabobbed another into the one behind it. Then she reached out for the skull of another, jammed her thumb into its eye socket to secure a grip, and rammed its head into the corner of a wall, leaving a good 90-degree dent in its scalp. She pulled her sword back, removing the two kabobs, and sliced the scalp off another slowly approaching ghoul, flinging its skull cap across the den like a wet Frisbee.
“Bringing back any fond memories?” Fiya asked, sizing up the next batch of intruding ghouls.
“My memory needs a little bit of jogging,” Rutger replied, flattening the head of a ghoul with the flat side of his axe. A jet of blood and brain matter squished from its ear. An eye bulged from the socket but didn’t burst. “And that was a fond one,” he laughed.
Thomas thrust the door shut as he and Liama entered the hall bathroom. It was small, and the walls had ugly brown wood paneling as if it were designed in the 1970s, but at least it was clean. The floorspace might have been five feet and another six feet wide, plus the bathtub. It reminded him of a bathroom inside a single-wide trailer. Instead of a plastic curtain, the tub ha
d an open glass-textured door, revealing a white tub. No soap, no shampoo bottles, no rags. Not even a water stain inside the tub from regular use.
He stashed the revolver in the back of his jeans for now while he tried to think.
There was a window above the sink and medicine cabinet, but too small for Liama to fit. With just the two of them it felt crammed like a busy elevator. He saw a little switch on the lock handle and went to flip it, then thought out loud, “There’s no way that lock is going to hold them off.”
“What about that?” Liama asked, pointing to the doorframe.
Thomas took a step back for a better view and saw a steel security bar about four inches wide and two inches thick, raised up, attached to the doorframe. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the frame itself wasn’t wooden at all. It had been painted brown to look like wood paneling. He put a hand to it and felt it was cool to the touch: all steel framing, to help reinforce the door. “Oh, my God! This is part panic room, part shitter!” Then he turned to Liama, who raised a judging eyebrow at his language, and he grinned innocently.
“I know, I know, I didn’t hear that,” she mocked, rolling her eyes.
Thomas looked back at the security door frame. “In any other situation, I’d say this was overkill for privacy, but this guy really knows how to prepare.”
A ghoul’s skull cleaved open from Rutger’s axe and another’s guts spilled on the floor, followed by decapitation, courtesy of Fiya’s sword. The best thing about hacking through ghouls and zombies: the tissue is much softer. Without a proper metabolism, their flesh progressively rotted away, loosening and sagging. Obsessive body-builders would become just as delicate as an overweight person they harass, given enough time.
The front door shattered in. The hinges flew and embedded in the walls like shuriken stars, and Kael stood looming in the doorway. He breathed heavily, taking up almost the entire frame. He had remained unchanged, aside from the razor claws and the fiery-green eyes. He gazed at Fiya first, appreciated her coconut scent that made her easy to track and a hint something else he couldn’t quite yet peg, and then narrowed his eyes on Rutger. “Age hasn’t been kind to you, old codger. I’m surprised you’re still walking.” He grinned, revealing canines that grew into sharper lengths.
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