Over Your Dead Body

by Dan Wells

  We spent the day with them, most of it talking, because the stand did very little business. I planned out how to kill each one of them if I needed to: a stab here, a slash there, the entire group gone before they could fight back. But I couldn’t just kill people. The road had some traffic, but not much, and the few customers who came seemed to be regulars—locals who knew the cultists by name and bought a bushel of carrots or potatoes without bothering to ask the price. They looked nervously at Brooke and me, perhaps wondering if they could save us from whatever indoctrination lay in store. But they didn’t do anything and drove away, and we watched the sun arc lazily across the sky, pulling us slowly toward evening.

  I was not, I decided, imagining the emptiness. Sister Debbie and the others were friendly, but there was nothing behind it—no real concern for us or for anything else, just a rote recitation of meaningless small talk. Sometime in the afternoon they started over, repeating the same pleasantries, the same jokes, the same cheerful affirmations that had filled the morning, and my sense of unease grew deeper. Brooke chattered along as if nothing were out of the ordinary, and I wondered how many personalities had come and gone during the day, holding the same conversations one after the other without ever realizing it. It made me angry—it made me furious—to think that these hollow shells of former people might be the perfect match for my only friend left in the world. I closed my eyes and counted, running through number sequences and old recipes, estimating how many pots of vegetable soup I could make with the ingredients here in the stand. Anything to take my mind off of Brooke and the hell I had put her through. She didn’t deserve this—brain-dead small talk in the middle of nowhere. She deserved a house. A bed she could sleep in more than two nights in a row. An education in math and English and science, instead of just How to Wash Your Clothes in a Truck Stop Bathroom, How To Hide From The Demon Army Chasing Us. She deserved a boyfriend that loved her back. I was trying my best to give her what I could, but John Cleaver and Boy Dog are a sorry excuse for a family.

  After we kill the Withered, I thought. A normal life can wait—don’t get distracted. Don’t lose track of why we’re really here. The Withered were killers, they were torturers, they were supernatural monsters; everything we’d never wanted to believe was real. Yashodh, whatever his methods, had stolen these five people’s lives so completely they didn’t even realize it—five walking corpses, physically alive but mentally gone. People who did that to other people had to be stopped. Brooke was the best possible reminder of why, and her memory, faulty as it was, was my only way to find them. I wouldn’t let them hurt anyone else like they’d hurt her.

  But how much was I hurting her in the meantime?

  It wasn’t quite dusk yet when a flatbed truck pulled to a stop beside us, and a man stepped out and introduced himself as Brother Lance. The six of them started packing up the vegetables, and Brooke and I pitched in, leaving the old wooden stand empty until tomorrow. They climbed into the back with the crates of food, and I lifted Boy Dog up after them. We held tight to the metal handrails as the truck rocked gently back and forth through a three-point turn and then rattled back down the road where it had come from. I looked at Brooke, and she looked at me, and we watched each other quietly as the sun dropped out of sight and the bright blue sky turned yellow, then orange, then a blue so deep that all the other colors of the world seemed to fall into it and disappear. Brother Lance turned on his headlights, and we pulled off onto a dirt road, passing through a nondescript gate and driving toward an old white farmhouse that seemed to shine as the light beams hit it.

  “Home again,” said Sister Debbie, smiling with the same mellow emptiness she’d used earlier to point out a bird flying over the vegetable stand.

  The truck stopped, and I jumped out before lifting Boy Dog down with a grunt. He explored the dirt driveway, sniffing the tire tracks and the tufts of night-black grass. I turned back to help Brooke, but she was already down, and put a hand on my arm, pressing close to whisper in my ear.

  “I’m sad.”

  Instantly I worried about another suicide attempt, but before I could even start the process of changing her mind, she shook her head, pressing closer and forcing me a few steps to the side, out of earshot of the cultists. “Not for me,” she said. “For them.”

  I glanced at the six farmers unloading the truck, listless and cheerful all at once. “You think they’re sad?”

  “I don’t think they can be sad,” said Brooke. “So I’m being sad for them.”

  Brother Stan nodded toward us, his arms full of vegetable boxes. “Would you mind grabbing a crate each and following me up to the house? I can introduce you to Christopher.”

  “This is it,” I whispered to Brooke. “I don’t want you to freak out, but I want you to be ready to run if we have to. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We don’t know what we’re going to find in there, and we don’t know what this Withered can do, so just … be ready for anything.”

  “I’m not going to freak out,” she said, stooping to pick up a crate.

  I picked up one of my own and followed her, ten or twenty steps behind Brother Stan. “I just don’t want to take you by surprise, okay? We’re partners in this.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” said Brooke.

  Brother Stan waited for us by the door, propping it open with his foot. After a moment of terrified hesitation, I went in. It scared me to be here, so far from help, so far from anything, but the lights were on, and I could hear happy voices murmuring in a nearby room. The door led in to a kitchen, and we set the wooden crates on the floor where Brother Stan pointed.

  “I’ll go get Christopher,” said Brother Stan, and I realized it was unsettling to hear him talk about someone, especially a fellow cultist, without “Brother” at the beginning. Christopher lived here, but he was fundamentally different from the others. I didn’t know what to expect. Brother Stan left us alone in the kitchen, and I felt for the gun in the back of my waistband, hidden by my shirt. The magazine was hidden in one of my backpack straps, in a pocket I’d made by digging out the padding. There was no way we could kill a Withered with something as simple as a gun, but it might buy us enough time to get out.

  “The dirt road was a straight shot in from the gate,” I said. “Maybe a hundred yards at the most. If I say go, you go, okay? Don’t wait for me, just get out, and I promise I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll protect you.”

  “He can control people’s minds,” I said. “We don’t know how, but we don’t want to give him a chance to try it. Just—”

  “Calm down,” said Brooke. “I told you, I’ve got this.”

  Her assurance only made me more nervous. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stop him from controlling our minds,” said Brooke.

  “You don’t have … powers,” I said. “You remember that, right?”

  “Of course I know that,” Brooke whispered. “But he doesn’t.”

  “Brooke—”

  Footsteps clomped toward us down the hall, and I ran through my story again, looking for any last minute ways to polish it, to craft the perfect lie that would help ingratiate us into his community, to give us the time to get to know him, to find his weaknesses, to stay under his radar until the perfect time to strike.

  A short, dark man walked into the room. He was balding on top, with a wispy gray mullet behind his ears. Mid fifties, I guessed, with skin and features that suggested Middle Eastern heritage. He smiled when he saw us, not like the cultists did, but a broad, genuine smile that seemed almost shocking after a day full of pale imitations. “My name is Christopher,” he said, and his voice was thin but firm. “Welcome to the Spirit of Light. I understand you’re looking for Sister Kara?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but Brooke spoke first. “Actually we’re looking for you,” she said. “It’s been a long time, Yashodh.”

  I tensed, moving my hand clos
er to the gun magazine. What was she doing?

  Christopher blinked in surprise, then took a step back and eyed us suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  “That’s the trouble with these bodies,” said Brooke. “No one ever recognizes me.” She dropped her backpack to the floor, and spread her arms slightly, presenting herself like an old friend. “It’s me: Hulla. I’m Nobody.”

  4

  Yashodh watched us warily.

  My hand itched to lunge for the gun.

  “Brother Stan,” said Yashodh. “Can you help get the rest of the truck unloaded?”

  “Of course,” said Brother Stan, walking past him toward the door. I stepped to the side, circling slightly so that he never blocked my view of Yashodh. I don’t know what prompted Brooke to spill our secrets like that, but I wanted to be ready if it all went to hell. Brother Stan walked outside and off the porch, and the door banged closed behind him.

  “Who are you with?” asked Yashodh softly.

  “With each other,” said Nobody.

  “I mean which side,” said Yashodh. “Rack’s trying to raise an army. Are you here to press me into it?”

  “No,” I said quickly. If he used the word “press,” then he didn’t want to join the Withered army at all; we needed to seem like allies. “We’re trying to stay out of the whole thing, like you.”

  Yashodh studied me a moment, then looked back at Nobody. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s mine,” said Nobody, “and you don’t touch him.”

  “Fair enough,” said Yashodh. “And you won’t touch any of mine? We haven’t had a death here in decades; I don’t want to have to explain one of your suicides the next time the police come through for an inspection.”

  “No fuss from either side,” said Nobody. “We just want to talk.”

  Yashodh paused again, watching us, until at last he nodded. “I have a private room. We can talk in there.”

  He led us through the house, past a sitting room full of a dozen or so cultists singing quietly to themselves. They beamed when they saw him, whispering his name in a sibilant chorus: “Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher.” He slowed and gestured to them but didn’t stop, leading us up the stairs to a small office with an old kitchen table for a desk. The wooden chairs were mismatched, and the carpet was a spiral pattern woven from old scraps and rags. He closed the door behind us and sat with a heavy sigh.

  “I knew it was only a matter of time,” he said. “It was bad enough before Fort Bruce, but after…” He shook his head. “It’s a horrible thing, to look at a massacre like that and not be able to tell who won.”

  “Twenty-three humans dead,” I said.

  “And not a word from Rack since,” said Yashodh. “If that was a victory for the Withered, their recruitment efforts would have stepped up, not down.”

  “Did he come to you?” asked Nobody.

  “Not yet,” said Yashodh. “But I have friends who’ve sent me word of his plans. Though even them I haven’t heard from lately.”

  “Nashuja,” I said, venturing a guess. Nashuja we had killed last month, she was a grizzled woman who made her living as a long-haul trucker. She picked up hitchhikers and killed them in empty rest stops, cracking open their bones and sucking out the marrow, crying for the mothers who would never see their children again.

  Yashodh shook his head. “Dag,” he said. We had killed Dag four months earlier. “I haven’t heard from Nashuja in … hundreds of years at least. I didn’t know she kept in contact with anyone.”

  “Kanta found her a few years ago,” said Nobody. “I worked with him before he died.”

  “Kanta was on Rack’s side,” said Yashodh, and his voice sounded tired. “He wanted to get us all together, like the old days—the god emperors come back at last.” He gestured around his office. “This is where we are today. This is what we are. Not gods anymore, just…” He shook his head. “They want to recruit me? They want this for their kingdom? Forty-six walking coma patients, smart enough to pull weeds and sew a few shirts and…” he gestured in the air, searching for words, “… wave at each other in the room downstairs? I’d be useless in a war.”

  Yashodh hates himself, I thought. It wasn’t much of a weakness, but it was a start.

  “Rack’s plan is what put us here in the first place,” said Nobody. “We’d been fine for millennia, hidden and surviving, and then he tried to get back into power and the humans noticed us. They fought back. Rack killed twenty-three of them in Fort Bruce, but they killed five of us, and we can’t survive those odds. We have to go back into hiding.”

  “So why are you here?” asked Yashodh. “You can go anywhere and be anyone, but I’m always me. I always have a cult. I can’t survive anywhere else, or any way else. They’ll find me, Rack or the humans or both. And if you’re with me they’ll find you, too.”

  Interesting. He’d said, “I’m always me.” Did that mean he couldn’t change his shape the way so many Withered could? The FBI suspected that the Withered’s ancient origins were in neolithic Turkey; what I had seen as a vaguely Middle Eastern appearance could easily be Turkish. Was this really the same body Yashodh had had for ten thousand years? What else did that suggest about him? I needed him to keep talking about himself, hoping it could suggest something useful about the way his powers worked. I thought of a new tactic and started talking.

  “Strength in numbers,” I said. “Rack’s plan failed because he started poking the bear, causing trouble and getting noticed. But if we stay quiet, if we stay low, then we can survive in the shadows and help defend each other from Rack’s recruiters. Whatever powers you have to fight back, two Withered are still better than one, right?”

  Yashodh stared at me a moment, then turned back to Nobody. “What’s with him, anyway? He knows an awful lot.”

  “We’re partners,” said Nobody.

  “But that’s not like you,” said Yashodh. “You attach yourself to women because you want what they have, and sometimes that includes their men. But once you’ve got whatever it is, you’re never satisfied with it. How long have you been with this kid, without another suicide?”

  “People change,” said Nobody.

  “Not us,” said Yashodh, shaking his head. “Certainly not you and me. We’re the worst of them—the lowest, the weakest, the most repulsive—”

  “But even a weak Withered is strong,” I said. “You have to have something. Hulla’s killed more girls than we can count, but they’ve all been herself. If Rack’s army is still out there, and if they come for us, we can’t fight back. We need your help.”

  Yashodh kept his eyes on Nobody, studying her as I talked. After a moment he pursed his lips. “Is that what it is?” he asked. “You’ve stopped killing altogether, so now you’re weak and you think I can help you? Well let me tell you something, human.” He turned to face me. “I’m even more worthless than she is. I can’t fight, I can’t kill, I can’t do anything. I can make people love me, and if it works then life is tolerable; if it doesn’t then no one loves me at all and I have nothing, and what is the point of living? I’ll kill myself, just like she does. Except I won’t come back.” He opened his hands in a sudden burst. “Poof. I’m gone. You want me to fight a war, but it’s all I can do to stay one step ahead of oblivion. You’re better off without me, because at least you’re alive—all I am is not dead yet.”

  I felt my hands trembling. Does this mean what I think it does? “You have to have something,” I said. “How fast can you heal?”

  He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, exposing a dull red welt on his arm. “I got this scratch pruning pyracantha bushes last week.” He covered it again. “I don’t heal any faster than you do. And when the armies finally come, they’ll hurt a lot more than a pyracantha.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Nobody. “I didn’t know.” She’d realized the same thing I had. A tear rolled down her face. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  I reached into the dug-out pocket in my backpack strap, extrac
ted the loaded magazine, and then pulled the gun from the back of my belt.

  “Wait,” said Yashodh, “what’s going on?”

  I couldn’t just kill people. Except for when I could. I slid the magazine into the gun, clicked it into place, and shot him in the chest. The gunshot rang in my ears, and Nobody covered hers, turning away and crying. Boy Dog howled, backing into the corner. Yashodh looked down at the bullet hole, moving his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked up, staring at me as if searching my face for answers, and then his body crumbled into thick, ashy sludge. Soulstuff, they called it. In ten seconds he was gone, with nothing but dark, acrid muck sizzling holes in the chair and the rug.

  The door opened, and Sister Debbie looked in. “What was that sound?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I thought I saw a bug.”

  Nobody was still crying.

  Sister Debbie looked at the sludge, then all around the room. “Where is Christopher?”

  “He left,” I said. I pulled the magazine clear of the gun, popped the extra bullet out of the chamber, and put them all away. I’d have to find a new hiding place now that Nobody had seen this one. “Who’s in charge here when he’s gone?”

  “He’s never gone,” said Sister Debbie.

  “But if he steps out for a bit,” I said. “Like, if he goes into town for the day? Who’s in charge?”