Terrence was the first to hit, tucking his shoulder and ducking beneath my outstretched arms. The impact lifted me off my feet and moments later I lay on my back, the breath slammed out of me. Then Phillip and Delenn joined in the dog pile. I felt like a thousand pounds lay on top of me. Despite that, it didn’t feel as heavy as it should have. I remembered one time when a football player slammed into me and fell on top of me, and that had been a scrawny one. It had felt far worse than this.
“Now push them off,” Isabelle instructed, though it sounded muffled beneath the bodies of my faux attackers.
Gathering my strength, I placed my hands on Terrence’s chest plate and pushed, grunting. At first, nothing happened. But then, Terrence, and Phillip, and Delenn, lifted. By the time my arms were fully extended, Delenn had fallen to the side and Phillip had stood.
I bent my arms again and then pushed with all my strength. Terrence flew toward the ceiling of the gym and slammed into it. Then, nothing holding him up, he plummeted back to the deck, landing on his stomach. He emitted a loud groan.
I covered my gaping mouth with a hand and gasped. “Terrence! I’m so sorry!” I ran to where he lay and grabbed his hand.
“Careful, darlin’,” Phillip cautioned. “Wouldn’t want to crush his fingers.”
A slap against what sounded like armor came from behind, followed by an “ow” from Philip. Likely one of the ladies had slapped his helmet.
I ignored him. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” I said.
Terrence squeezed my hand. “You’ve got some strength there, kid,” he wheezed. “Good thing you weren’t trying to kill me.” He let out a hoarse, sick chuckle.
I joined in, laughing louder than I should have, considering I probably broke a rib or two of my lead protector.
“See?” Isabelle said, not having moved from where she stood, arms crossed. “You have speed and strength greater than you know.”
“Yeah, and I almost killed a man.”
“Pfft, his armor absorbed most of the blow, didn’t it, Terrence? Nano-armor is flexible, whereas Marine armor would have cracked.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Terrence replied, rising but holding a hand to his ribs. “Just might need to visit the med center.”
“Might as well move in there,” Phillip chimed in, walking over to put an arm around his squad leader. “You okay alone, Delenn and Eleanor?” he asked.
“Yeah. And I have Isabelle here too,” I said. She could hold off an army.
“We’ll be back quick as a whistle,” Phillip said, leading Terrence out.
“We’ll give you two some privacy,” Eleanor said, leading Delenn toward the transport doors to stand watch.
I turned to Isabelle. “So...”
Isabelle held her hand up to forestall me, a distant look in her eyes. A moment later her eyes re-focused on me. “I have good news. Great news, actually.”
“What?” I asked.
“My father came through. The anti-virus or cure or whatever they call it worked.”
My eyes widened. “They’re cured? All of them?”
“For the most part,” Isabelle replied. “Some died from the cure, the rest are unconscious and we’re waiting to see if they wake up. The few that have appear to be back to normal.”
“Well, that’s great news,” I said. “Maybe our planet can finally get back to normal.”
“It’ll be years before the planet is back to normal,” Isabelle cautioned.
“So, I’ll probably have to go elsewhere to finish school?” I asked.
“Most likely,” Isabelle said.
“But you don’t need to finish, obviously,” I said.
“Correct. I did my schooling at the Tower two thousand years ago.”
“I guess I’ll be on my own, then. Kimberly’s off to what, train with you?”
“There’s not much choice there,” Isabelle said. “She’s famous enough that even with a new identity someone could identify her, and her life would be in danger. Just like I trained you to defend yourself, I’ll train Kimberly to fight for herself.”
“Will I see you guys again soon?”
“We’ll be around,” she replied, cryptically. “And now, I should be going. Time to start to hunt for the monsters who created and unleashed this plague upon the galaxy.”
“Safe travels,” I said.
“You too. Don’t get too bored with school and living the high life.”
I snorted. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
Isabelle smiled. “Any time.” She faded to shadowy mist and was gone.
Chapter 10
The first day of school. Well, the first day back to school. Three weeks had passed since I awoke as an undead super human. Three weeks of watching as Galatia IV slowly came back to life, with the people starting to rebuild their lives. Three weeks of watching mass burials of those who hadn’t made it, either because they’d been eaten by the infected, been shot by the Marines or killed permanently in some other way.
The fleet had dispersed, and things started calming down. Then my father asked me where I wanted to go to school. He’d offered private school, with tutors coming to me. Yet life on the Nightblade was boring, even with Orin to speak to. I chose Gerald Raverdeen High School on Xaros III, one of the designated refugee planets chosen for those affected by the disaster on Galatia IV. It was rated highly from the research I’d done.
I was looking forward to continuing my senior year, I really was. But the bigots had other plans.
I showed up at school that morning in my nondescript speeder. I had insisted to my father, in no uncertain terms, that I did not want my identity as his daughter being known. He had agreed, reluctantly, and even told my guards to back off after I pointed out how suspicious it would look to have four Shadow Watch Guards dropping me off or hanging out waiting for me all day. I was alone at last.
That may have been a bad choice on my part.
A crowd had gathered, but until I got out of my speeder, I didn’t know why and assumed they were there to wish their children well for their first day. Nope. They were there to protest the undead. Me. How do I know? The signs telling the dead to go to Hell or go frack themselves gave it away quickly.
Police officers held the crowd back, leaving a small pathway that the normal students walked up on their way into the high school. The students gawked at the gathering but there was no fear in their stances as they ascended the stairs and passed a cordon before entering the school. At closer scrutiny I recognized the cordon as part of a National Guard perimeter around the school. Someone was serious about security.
I wasn’t the only undead starting at Gerald Raverdeen High School that day, either. A group of nervous-looking students stood huddled to one side, looking dejected. The difference was they had their parents with them, and those parents were ushering their wards back to their vehicles. They weren’t eager for a confrontation.
I opened my mouth to shout to my fellow undead, but snapped it shut. They wouldn’t hear me, and they were the ones doing the smart thing. I turned, preparing to leave myself.
“Rachel?” A male voice said from behind me, half question, half recognition.
I spun around, feeling momentarily dizzy from doing a three-sixty in less than as many milliseconds. “Orin?” I smiled despite the situation. A friendly face, at last. “I didn’t know you were enrolled here.”
He shrugged. “You mentioned it in a text, and I wasn’t committed anywhere else, so I figured I’d enroll where I would have a friend around.” He gazed at the hate-filled crowd being held back by police. “I don’t know that it will matter, now.”
“There were more,” I said. “They took off.”
“Yeah, I was with them. I tried to convince them to stay, but they were scared.”
“Why aren’t you scared?”
He shrugged. “Not much left to live for. They’ve got families.” He waved his hands to illustrate the now-fleeing students and their families. “I don’t have someone who wil
l miss me.”
“I’ll miss you,” I blurted before I could let rational thought stop me. I would have blushed if I wasn’t pale as an albino horse. I cleared my throat. “I mean, you don’t think we’ll die today, do you?”
“I certainly hope not. Your guards aren’t around by any chance, are they?”
“I don’t want them around,” I said sternly. “You have no idea how much of a fight I had to convince my father to have them keep their distance.”
“It might have been a mistake,” he pointed out in a matter-of-fact tone.
I straightened my back and faced the sidewalk head on. “No, it wasn’t. I’ve got to prove I can stand on my own two feet. Besides, they’re not going to do anything more than spew hateful words. The police and National Guard will keep us safe.”
“I hope you’re right,” Orin said ominously. He held out his hand. “Shall we?”
I smiled for the second time since seeing him. “Through the valley of death.”
“Ironic.”
“I know.” I started walking and he matched steps with me.
At first, the crowd didn’t notice us. They kept shouting aimlessly about how the dead should have all sorts of awful things done to them or, more tamely, go home. But it was inevitable that someone would notice us. And they did, when we were about halfway to the stairs.
“There’s two of ‘em!” a shrill voice rang out, somehow cutting through the din. “There’s two of them undead!”
I continued forward, not daring to look around for fear my knees would turn to jelly or I would turn tail and run. Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, I chanted mentally. I jerked to a halt and shuddered as a hand touched mine before I realized it was Orin.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, smiling down at me. “Do you mind?”
Another time, another place, I would have smiled sweetly, maybe even shyly, while taking his hand. Here though, I grabbed the proffered hand and held on as if I were drowning and he was the only person who could pull me out of the water. Only this was a sea of hate. Steeling my nerves again, I started forward, friend at my side.
We had gone another ten paces when something hit the back of my head. Something warm and slimy. “Ugh,” I grunted, touching the point of impact and bringing my hand back in front of my face to view the results. A red fruit of some sort sat dripping in my hand, mocking me as its remnants slithered down my back.
“Scum!” a voice cut through the air.
“Go home!” another voice came.
“We don’t want you here!” a third came.
“You should have stayed dead!”
“Death to the undead!”
The voices continued, becoming a torrent I struggled to ignore. I let go of Orin’s hand and raised my hands, preparing to cover my ears, before stopping myself. “No, I won’t let them win,” I muttered. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of showing weakness. Sticks and steel could break my bones, but words could never hurt me went the childhood rhyme on my world. Oh how wrong that rhyme was.
I shook my hand to rid it of the red fruit but chose not to share the remnants with Orin. Instead, I clenched my fists, the only outward sign I would allow of my stress and continued. “Let’s go. We’ll be safe beyond the cordon.” I continued on, though we’d only made it a short way.
Emboldened by the first thrown fruit, more followed. Fruits and vegetables flew through the air and slammed into the ground around us and onto our bodies. A moment later I felt sharp jabs of pain. I looked down to see rocks littering the ground. They were throwing rocks at us? The police would stop them, I was sure of it. Boy was I wrong.
The torrent of rocks did the exact opposite of slowing down. They accelerated and soon the rock storm became a rock hurricane, with dust rising from the points of impact, obscuring my vision and causing me to cough and my eyes to water. Our progress halted again as I pulled my shirt up to block the dust. I mean, I was undead so it shouldn’t have affected me, but it did. Orin too, by the look of his tear-filled eyes.
“Tear gas,” he shouted with a gasp before hiding his mouth and nose again behind the fabric of his shirt. For all the good it would do.
I realized too late that the smoke rising from the rocks was indeed a gas, for my eyes went from watering to burning. I looked to the side, expecting to see the police turning to push the protesters back. Instead I found the police pointing their gas launchers toward me. “No!” I shouted. I wasn’t the bad guy!
They paid me no mind, and another volley of gas canisters soared through the air. The growing haze forced me to struggle to see the hate-filled crowd, though I could still hear them. That didn’t last long, though, for the sounds of my surroundings were quickly being quashed by the sound of blood pounding in my ears. I was panicking.
Through the tear-inducing mist I saw the police line part, not break, part like gates opening, and the crowd flood through. Their target? Orin and I.
My nose and mouth still in my shirt, I tried to cover my head as more projectiles slammed into me. The gas began drifting away, blowing in the wind, but the view it left filled me with terror.
Protesters had us surrounded. Their shouts filled my ears and disoriented me, leaving me staring at the swarm like a deer witnessing a herd of hunters charging it would. For a moment we stood in the eye of a hurricane of flesh, for all the projectiles stopped and only the shouting remained, like wind in the eye. It didn’t last, though, as the first protester took a step forward.
He was a big man, towering above even Orin, who wasn’t short by any means. But where Orin was twig-thin, this man was enormous. His muscles bulged as he cracked his knuckles. “Not so tough now, undead, are you?” He sneered and the crowd cheered at his comments.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I shouted over the crowd. My vision had cleared somewhat, likely aided by the virus in my blood, or the nanites that had healed me, but I still squinted as the man had the early morning sun behind him.
“You asked for trouble the minute you stepped on this path,” he said gruffly. He gestured and several other men, and even a few women I might have mistook for men, stepped forward. “We’re here to teach your kind a lesson they’ll never forget.”
Part of me wanted to run. To cower in fear and beg for mercy. I wanted to bargain, to tell them if they let us go I would pay them. I wanted to throw my father’s name around. One sentence naming Dawyn Darklance as my father and the crowd would part. But something held my tongue. Fear? Pride? Even to this day I don’t rightly know. In that moment I felt only a white-hot rage boiling up. “We. Won’t. Back. Down,” I said, biting out each word. I felt Orin take my hand again, a silent show of solidarity.
The man’s sneer turned into an evil grin, like the devil made flesh. “Just the way I like it. Let’s get ‘em, boys!” He suited action to words and advanced.
Before I knew what happened, a fist slammed into the back of my head, jerking me forward and dragging Orin with me. I let go of his hand a moment later but before I could turn to face my attacker, the man who had done all the talking was upon me. He made to punch me. I lifted my arms to block, remembering my brief training session aboard the Nightblade, but he kicked me in the stomach. While I doubled over, he kneed me in the face, causing a spike of pain and a sickening crunch sound.
I lost track of Orin in the fighting, though I heard him shout “leave her alone” over the din.
The protesters, my enemies, now, were laughing as I was punched again, this time in my kidney, and cried out in pain. “Please,” I pleaded through tears as blood streamed from my nose and dribbled into my mouth. I could fight, but no, that would make it worse. The memory of me sending Terrence toward the ceiling flashed in my mind. I didn’t want to hurt them.
“Look at her blood!” one of my foes shouted. “It’s green!”
“Freak!” another said.
I had no time to dwell on what color my blood was. I was fighting for my life. I opened my mouth, intending to shout out my identity. I reeled backwar
d as a fist slammed into my mouth as soon as I straightened.
In that moment, I heard a roar of primal fury. I tried to turn my head, but it hurt too much. As I turned my body and I saw Orin holding one of the big men by the throat. His red eyes flicked to me and I felt a moment of fear mixed with awe. He’d gone feral. Some of the newly-cured had done similar in the weeks since the mass curing of Galatia IV.
The big man squirmed in the grasp of my undead friend, but to no avail. He pounded at Orin’s arms and tried to kick, but Orin may as well have been a statue.
A statue that snapped the man’s neck a moment later. He then tossed the corpse into the protesters and lunged toward the ones surrounding me.
For their part, the remaining men backed away, some stumbling over those behind them and falling to the ground. One such unlucky soul became Orin’s next victim as he leapt on them and tore out their throat with his teeth.
“Put him down!” one voice shouted, then was taken up by the crowd moments later.
A bang resounded and Orin’s head exploded, teeth and green blood plus pieces of skull and brain matter flying out.
“Orin!” I screamed, lunging toward my now truly dead friend. But before I could reach him, I felt an impact in my stomach and found myself flying through the air. Someone had kicked me. I lay there, crumpled and bleeding, feeling like I was dying all over again. I tried to rise, but a blow to my back slammed me back into the ground and my chin hit the concrete. At the same time, I lost all feeling in my legs.
Panic settled in then as I struggled to comprehend my lower body being paralyzed. Anger rose up, too, and for a long moment I felt as though I would lose control like Orin had. Must keep it together, I thought, knowing that staying calm was the only thing that might possibly keep me alive.
Activating emergency repair protocol, a voice in my head said, cutting through the din around me. Sending emergency Code Indigo to all available resources, it went on.
Ghost Ranger Page 9