by Eros, Marata
“Put a leash on your zombie, Parker, or I'll have McKenzie clean things up.”
“No, you won't,” Jeffrey said in a voice honed by hard experience. “You need this, Chimney.”
Smoker clenched his fists. He'd begun liking whenever he could beat the snot out of this zombie puppeteer. Of course, now Parker was hands off. That directive had come from the top. Parker was a stubborn cuss. Slow learner.
He needed to learn some respect. Smoker had been hell-bent on giving him advanced lessons until he got the word.
Smoker thought about the next assignment with the new AFTD and smiled. Parker would be in charge of that new brat. Perfect. A smile grew on Smoker's face, revealing teeth like stained Chiclets in a mouth that rivaled Parker's zombies.
Jeffrey didn't like the satisfied smirk on Chimney's face as he lit up another cigarette with the last. The sight struck Parker for perhaps the millionth time—how appropriate the nickname Chimney was for this prick.
As an added bonus, the abbreviated name rustled his Jimmies. Parker grinned at the thought, and the French Prime Minister grinned back, his mouth a sea of rot.
Hmm... that wouldn't do . Jeffrey dampened the beautiful glow he'd given his zombie, and deflected some of it to the mouth.
Jeffrey frowned. The mouths always gave him trouble.
When he was ready the naked zombie stood next to him, his slight paunch a small bowling ball above his limp genitalia.
The suits moved out of the way like a sea parting before a mighty ship.
McKenzie gulped. He hated Parker's creepers, loathed them . He wiped the beaded sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, his Adam's apple bobbing like a nut about to get cracked.
“What would you have of me?” the Minister asked.
“We need you to sign the papers assigning a successor to replace you,” Jeffrey replied in perfect French.
Chimney leaned forward, the smoke wafting and curling around Parker and his zombie.
The Minister hissed, snapping his newly formed teeth next to Smoker's ear with an ominous click.
The dead Minister hadn't missed, but been held back from a rightful chewing by Parker.
“Don't get cute, Parker,” Smoker said through the wall of smoke.
Jeffrey shrugged.
They left, and as they did a man joined them in the hall, carrying France's dead leader's clothes over his arm.
Walking to the balcony that overlooked the masses of people who waited to hear Parker's zombie proclaim his successor, they dressed him robotically.
Parker would never know what made him look up suddenly, just as they were on the verge of Frenchie executing the manipulation of the decade.
When he did he saw a form hover near the ceiling, a hazy image as if cast by an old-fashioned movie projector.
McKenzie needed no urging, his gun automatically going to the image above their heads, his nerves frayed by the zombie detail: he pointed his silencer at the ceiling, emptying the entire catalog through the apparition.
But it wasn't a ghost.
It had been a teenage girl, her form shattering like soft mist when the bullets burst through.
Parker didn't know who she was or why those bullets passed harmlessly through her. Hell, were even now embedded in the antique plaster that adorned the ceiling.
He looked at Chimney, the zombie standing perfectly still, waiting for Jeffrey's next command, absolutely oblivious to what had just happened.
If it didn't involve the necromancer, it was of no consequence.
“What the blue hell was that?” McKenzie asked in a voice that was squeezed with contained terror. “Ghost?”
Parker smiled—McKenzie was such a mundane. Jeffrey would have felt a ghost a kilometer away, so to speak.
“Astral Projectionist,” Smoker answered calmly.
“Does this change our plans here today?” McKenzie asked as the other men gave uneasy glances at every corner of the room, six pairs of eyes now looking above them.
No one ever looks up.
Smoker cocked an eyebrow. “Our plans? No. Her plans—absolutely.” He made a circling motion in the air like, get a move on . “Parker tell him this.” He thrust papers into Jeffrey's hands and he told his zombie what to say.
“Yes,” it said, drawing out the syllable with a hiss and Jeffrey released his hold on the zombie. Its fluidity as it strode outside onto the balcony wasn't compromised in the slightest when the Minister raised his hand in a natural salute to the French people who had gathered to hear his succession speech.
As Parker listened to the monotone speech of his zombie he got itchy. Finally, when he couldn't stand it anymore, he asked, “Who's the girl?”
Chimney shrugged. “Don't know. Doesn't matter. We have five-point APs. They'll read her sig, nail her region. She'll get cleaned.” Smoke drifted out of the slit of his mouth.
They stared at each other and Jeffrey forced a casual look of indifference on his face.
But inside, where no one knew him, a tiny grain of concern began for the girl.
Jeffrey couldn't help but notice she was around the same age he'd been when he was torn from his old life.
Now, because of a fluke of circumstance, she may never live hers.
*
The French leader was “assassinated” later that day by mysterious circumstances.
Dead again.
After conveniently having laid the groundwork for the leader that the United States wanted as lackey.
Their sock puppet was in place, the first of many more to come. With a Cadaver Manipulator, many things were possible. The potential was limitless.
Jeffrey didn't think they really knew how much.
Someday they would.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Parker had been made aware of his next assignment. There was a new five-point AFTD.
The scientist's kid. Caleb Hart.
He watched him now without Caleb knowing. The father had given him a concealing concoction to dampen his ability. But his superiors had their sources. They knew exactly what the Hart family had cooked up to camouflage the boy's skills.
They had the standard issue pulse gadgetry in place but mainly, it was the Precog. She had seen what he was. She may be psychotic (and she really was) but she was always on target.
Dead on. Jeffrey smiled at his internal pun.
He could feel the kid's power from here and it was surreal. It matched his own seamlessly. Parker turned that over in his sharp mind. Was it because he was a five-point? Or—was there something he was missing? An epiphany lay just out of reach.
But the realization was shattered, of course.
“Looks like the father,” Chimney commented.
Parker grunted a response, he was feeling magnanimous.
“Likes that girl there,” Smoker said, indicating a petite girl that fluttered around Caleb like a pink butterfly. “But how much does he like her ?” Smoker asked rhetorically.
“Why?” Parker asked through his teeth, his pleasant feelings for the day being carried off by an unseen wind.
Chimney shrugged, his cigarette hardly moving from its perch inside his mouth. “Handy, is all. If he cared about her, we could use that.”
Yes , Jeffrey knew how that worked. Instead he asked, “When?”
“Soon. Our intel says they're planning some kind of,” he waved his smoking hand around, lazy spirals of noxious menthol seeped under Jeffrey's nose.
He'd love it when this guy was dead.
Really dead.
“... soiree at the old cemetery.”
“Clemens?” Jeffrey asked, curious despite his irritation.
“Don't know,” Chimney brought his pulse up, jabbing his thumb into the reading dock, “got the GPS coordinates in here, name doesn't matter.”
“I know where it is,” Jeffrey said in a low voice.
“You do, do you?” Smoker said, nearly hairless eyebrow hiked.
“Of course,” Jeffrey looked into his flat eyes
, jaundiced because of his habit, and tapped his temple. “The GPS is here, Chimney.”
Smoker frowned at the nickname, their stalemate relationship contrary to them both, but as necessary as breathing.
“You know where all the cemeteries in Kent are?” Smoker scoffed, taking a long drag.
“Not Kent.”
Smoker's look was comical, explain.
“The state,” Parker answered, and couldn't keep the condescension out of his voice.
“So what? How important is that?” Smoker shrugged.
Jeffrey smiled at him. “You think that's nothing. Chew on this,” Parker said, getting right up close to Smoker, “that almost fifteen year old will know where the dead are too,” he said in a fierce whisper, and could feel the others agents approaching.
“So? Who gives a rat's ass?” Chimney asked dismissively.
It wasn't as if you couldn't just kill everything that moved as a solution. That was always Chimney's solution. “You will, because that kid's going to know where all the dead are.”
“Where? Which dead?” McKenzie asked, hearing the latest bit of their conversation.
“All,” Jeffrey answered.
“The world?” McKenzie asked, his gaze seeking and finding a kid that looked like every other fifteen year-old boy.
“Bullshit, Parker,” Smoker said with flat disbelief.
“Mark my words. That kid will be the messiah to the dead. And there are much more of them than the living. Think about it, dipshit.”
Parker stalked off, brushing past the Cloak.
Darrell the Cloak had sweat running down his face as Smoker came by in a shroud of nicotine perfume. “Don't let that go until we're all out of their line of sight.”
The Cloak nodded, his limbs shaking. It was always beyond his skill level to cloak this many. He looked around him, barely breathing, as the last of the mundane assassins passed out of the building, Parker at the lead, the only paranormal.
He made sure he cloaked Parker the longest. He was the scariest of them all. Darrell didn't want to get killed. Then be raised by Jeffrey Parker as one of his undead slaves.
Who would want that?
The field of invisible energy shivered under the fist of his internal command, a bonecrusher headache starting up from overusing the muscle to cloak six agents. It was always harder to cloak paranormals, Darrell didn't know why. He was glad Parker was the only one.
Fuck it. He let the shielding cloak fall away with a great sigh. A wave of intense relief came over Darrell when he no longer clutched onto what felt like a sheet of heavy glass his sweaty grip could no longer hold, threatening to shatter over his head at the wrong moment.
Not that there was a right one.
He walked off, leaving Kent Middle School behind.
*
Jade LeClerc felt a ripple like a hiccup in the air, and suddenly there were emotional signatures that bleeped into existence that hadn't been there a moment before. She trailed off with what she'd been discussing with Sophie, looking around frantically, seeing nothing.
What had that been? Because she felt it; six new people. People with intense emotions. One had seemed vaguely familiar in a way she couldn't put her finger on.
Weird. It felt like being covered with slime.
Jade forgot all about it when Caleb came back from his locker with his pulse-reader.
Gawd, he was so hot. She moistened her lips and purposely made an expression of casualness come over her face.
What if he didn't like her? Jade was suddenly nervous, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Like when he found out about her dad. When he realized that she wasn't really very good. Her self-doubts rolled around underneath her skin like a miserable itch that could never be scratched.
Then he smiled at her, a piece of rich brown hair falling over eyes just slightly darker and she suddenly knew it'd be okay.
Caleb Hart inspired confidence.
God knew, she could use some of that.
****
1929
Clyde shifted, wincing at the pulling it caused on his abused knuckles. Didn't matter that he'd worn gloves. In the end, the softened skin had sloughed off like melting wax off a candle. They'd wrapped his hands at the hospital but it'd be a week before they were perfect. He gritted his teeth through it, shifting smoothly into third gear, the crank churning loudly.
They were approaching the last wooden bridge in the state, it crossed the great Puyallup River. At one time there had been towering Douglas Fir trees that hugged the swirling depths when his father was a boy. But the stewards of that long ago forest fell to progress.
To farms like the one he cultivated. It was sad in a way, Clyde thought.
Clyde welcomed Maggie breaking his contemplative silence. “Remember what the doctor said about exertion, Clyde,” her voice was filled with solemn worry and a dash of reprimand.
She knew him too well.
“Yes, Dear Heart,” Clyde said, digging his fingers slightly into her stocking-encased thigh, her small gasp was a musical delight to his ears.
When he turned, high color bloomed delicately on her cheekbones, her eyes sparkled with knowledge borne from experience.
Their shared chemistry swirled between them like a drug they'd just discovered.
One they could use together.
His only warning was the widening of her eyes. He'd only taken his eyes off the road for a second.
“Clyde!” Maggie screamed, “look ahead!”
He did, slamming his stiff wheel to the left as he tore the car's shifter into neutral, killing the engine.
They stared for a handful of heartbeats at what was before them.
Clyde swung out of the body of the cab, using the door as a handle. His eyes sought Maggie's. “I have to, Maggie.”
A million thoughts went through his head: the money from the fight in the baggage compartment of the car, his intended strapped safely inside said vehicle, their babe tucked inside the sanctuary of her womb.
His eyes slid to the sight in front of him.
Clyde turned away from Maggie with an effort that was physically painful.
The smoldering bus sat, balanced as if on a teeter-totter, the nose hanging over the guardrails.
Children's hands lay flat against glass that wouldn't open.
Clyde didn't know it then, but that safety feature would not come into play until he lived again.
For now, their noses pressed against glass that held them prisoner in a bus that was ready to plunge into the icy river below.
Clyde ran, rolling up his sleeves as he did. The light headache was the only warning that anyone would have been a better candidate to rescue a busload of children than he.
Anyone that hadn't just lived through a fight with Jack Dempsey.
And won.
The bus teetered forward and with a screeching of metal against wood it fell into the murk of a river Clyde had fished in when he was a boy. The gentle branches of that time caressing the water alongside his pole while offering shade to his catch.
Clyde dove in after the screaming children, the water slapping his body with freezing pain when he speared the surface.
He could hear his Maggie screaming in the background as he used his momentum to propel his body into the depths after the retreating bus.
Her voice faded as the liquid coldness pressed over the top of him like a watery coffin.
*
Maggie gripped the rail, the one that wasn't broken, and watched her brave Clyde slip into the water like the perfect athlete he was. She couldn't watch him risk himself.
She did anyway.
The keys to the Coipe were clutched in her hand.
There!
He popped out of the water, strong strokes bringing two children by the scruff of their necks. He laid them on shore and swept back under.
Clyde dipped down four more times.
Maggie counted the wet heads.
Eight.
She wa
tched Clyde's chest heave with absolute exhaustion, hypothermia taking hold, his lips blue, skin taking on an ashen edge. He put his face to the sun as he swept forward again and his eyes caught hers as he plunged back in, his arm arcing once as it knifed the surface to slide into the depths once again.
A horrible premonition swept over Maggie and she shuddered as hot sunlight beat down on her, the chill of the feeling sinking into her bones.
“No!” she shouted as warning to Clyde.
His eyes flashed at hers and were gone.
Maggie waited for Clyde to return to the surface.
She watched as the seconds became minutes, as the water quieted where he had been, the bus—gone.
Maggie screamed as men from an ambulance raced down the wood planks of the bridge.
“Save him!” she screamed at no one and everyone.
Maggie couldn't swim. But even if she could have, Clyde's look had been clear.
Do not endanger yourself.
Or their unborn child.
*
Clyde looked up from the bottom of the river, the sun a great ball of pale iridescence as shadows formed on the water's surface and came for him. Floating limbs of snakelike black latched onto his arms as he felt who he was, who he had been:
Leave.
Clyde felt heat and rhythmic pressure on his chest. Regret like a lead weight pressed down on his chest. Then there was nothing.
And everything.
His last conscious thought as a human was how much he wished to be with Maggie. He would have done anything to remain.
But now another place beckoned. It appealed to Clyde but for reasons he could not have fathomed.
He hung there in the balance of the world he had lived in and the one which stood as invitation.
Finally he slipped over.
*
2025
The chopper swept down over Clemensʼ Cemetery, the teens discovering all the wonders of an illicit graveyard and truly haunted house below.
Curious bastards, Jeffrey thought, not unkindly. Had he been allowed a normal childhood, he might have been the exploring type.
As it was, he had been in the tender care of a government spook shop who had no name. His parents had been people like Chimney and McKenzie. Their discipline running abnormal lines: