by Aaron Crash
Trina kissed him softly. It was nice, but he was ready for her. He couldn’t relax, not when she seemed to be having trouble reining in her bloodthirsty nature. “Blaze, I’m sorry for everything. I remember what happened in the torpedo.”
“It’s okay,” Blaze said. He eased her back. “Trina, we can’t make out, not with how you are and what’s going on. You know something, don’t you?”
Trina’s eyes went black and she grew fangs. “I do. Chthonic, he’s everywhere on this planet. That little skeleton show with the pregnant woman and her fetus? It was just to dick with you. That wasn’t Chthonic, or it was, but it wasn’t the end of him.”
“How do you know about the skeleton baby thing?” Blaze asked. “You were out.”
Trina nodded. “I was unconscious, but I was somehow still around. Elle put me in a stasis spell before she collapsed. Anyway, I could still see everything going on around me. This planet, the lord of death, it’s making it hard to keep myself under control. Being undead, I’m pretty much a ghost in vampire’s clothing.”
“So how will we recognize the real Chthonic?” Blaze asked.
“I think you’ll know. When we realized that Xerxes was inside the P13rce unit, it was pretty apparent, right? With Chthonic, it will be the same way. And there is a central presence that we can fight, I can feel it. And while it might be some mysterious thing, I doubt it will be. Archdukes of hell probably like being recognized on the street.” Trina took three steps backward. “Sorry, Blaze, but I need to get away from your blood. It’s, um, tempting me, yeah.”
“It’s okay. I get it.” Blaze gritted his teeth. How were they going to get out of this one?
“You know, you’re being stupid about me,” Trina said. “Having a vampire on your team puts you in incredible danger. Our little Alpha, Bravo, Charlie game is fun and all, but in the end, we’re gonna hit Zulu. Maybe now is the time to end it.”
“Not a chance, Trina,” Blaze said. “Look, we deal with Cali, and no offense, Cali is about a hundred times more dangerous than you are. And yet, she’s the most effective weapon we have. Right now, she’s probably done with the dragons up there and gnawing on their bones like a Rottweiler. No, Trina, as long as you want to fight evil with us, you’re a part of our family. And you’re super hot. At some stage, I’ll get to tell my buddies I’m banging a vampire.”
Trina rolled her eyes. “Great. That’s just what every girl wants to hear. Sorry, Blaze, but between you, Elle, and the blonde bimbo, your blood is all about to drive me crazy. I’ll be outside.”
“But the ghosts...” Blaze stopped himself. Like Trina had said, the ghosts wouldn’t care at all about a vampire. To them, she’d be one more dead thing wandering around.
Trina slipped away through a side door.
Blaze climbed the ladder to check in with Ling. The Meelah sat at the mouth of a window, gazing into the storm of ghosts. It was as if a cyclone of people circled the barn, trying to get in. Some of the figures reached toward Blaze, but then they were pushed back into a mess of faces, arms, legs, ragged clothes, old dresses, funeral suits, and prom dresses. An amazing array of restless souls spun around and around the barn. The whirlwind of specters blocked out the sky, the landscape, the gravel road in the distance, everything.
And it was Elle that kept them safe. The power his sister wielded was amazing. And yet, they were up against some amazingly diabolical shit.
When there was a break in the maelstrom of raging spirits, the eternal twilight of the sky and ceaseless rain made seeing even the ground difficult. The flames had finally been doused by the storm, but only cinders and ashes were left of the old house.
Blaze sat down next to Ling. In a pocket of his old woodland cammies from his Marine Corps days, he had an emergency med kit. The burns on his arm and leg were killing him, but he had some synthetic skin and a miniature electric syringe for the pain.
“I do apologize for going insane and trying to kill you,” the Shaolin sloth said. “I’d like to say it won’t happen again, but if I get touched by a ghost, the same thing will most likely reoccur. I find it rather unsettling that I can lose my wits so easily.”
“I about lost my wits a few minutes ago,” Blaze said. “Patsy is hotter than summertime asphalt and as sweet as a September peach. Got in trouble with the girlfriend.”
An old ghost woman with no teeth tried to get into the barn and was thrown back into the swirl.
“Sex-obsessed Humans, yes, I imagine you have trouble keeping your thoughts clear. But I am Meelah, as well as a Shaolin monk. For me to lose control is disconcerting. I can’t imagine how it feels to be Trina and Cali. Once we escape this planet, the odds of me turning evil plummet. For them, our vampire and our werewolf, their sanity is under constant threat. You are kind to keep them.”
Blaze had to chuckle at that. “It’s not out of kindness. My sister once accused me of only seeing my crew as weapons. She might’ve been right. What Cali can do is sick, and Trina is crazy tough. Also, she’s my girlfriend, and I haven’t had to kill an evil girlfriend yet. I don’t plan on starting anytime soon. It’ll work out. I have faith.”
“It will,” Ling agreed. “Though I fear for Cali. There is a good chance we won’t see her again. She might destroy all the dragons and then flee. That would be a shame, but I will let go of my expectations and my self-centered fear.”
Blaze pressed the electric syringe against his carotid artery. Relief came immediately. Then he sprayed the synthetic skin on his arm and leg where Ling had grazed him with the fusion nunchaku. “Don’t be scared of Cali taking off. She’s still hurt from being caught between Elle and me. And only recently I hit her with a silver spear. As a werewolf, she doesn’t have any kind of ability to forgive. No, once she’s done with the dragons, she’ll be coming for us. Mark my words.”
“If she does, and we can’t close her bracelets, we’ll die. How fascinating is death, the final frontier? And we are on a haunted planet. No wonder the house was trying to scare us.”
The ghosts dissipated for a bit and the cloudy sky came into view.
There, on the ground, was the girl in the little dress. She created her church with her hands, created the steeple with her index fingers, then opened the doors, which were her thumbs. Over and over she made the motion and mouthed the words.
“What’s her deal?” Blaze asked. “We keep seeing her. It seems important. Do you think that’s Chthonic?”
“Who can say?” Ling said. “I am more concerned about this Patsy woman. Her story seems thin. If the Gorebacks were here, I haven’t seen any tracks and we didn’t see anyone drive off. Perhaps she is the demon.”
“If she is, she fooled Trina’s nose. Our vampire wanted to eat her. Said it over and over.” Blaze had to grin and nod his head at the double entendre.
Ling sighed. “Yes, I get the oral sex reference. As I’ve said before, it’s amazing your species took a break from your constant fixations to create the wheel, cultivate agriculture, or leave your planet. We shall see. I heard you and Trina talking. I agree with her. When Chthonic makes his presence known, we’ll know. But perhaps we won’t have to fight him. If we can secure Granny and escape with Patsy and her family, perhaps we can avoid a fight.”
Blaze smacked his ax into the palm of his hand. “Now you’re talking dirty. I want to take this archduke dickhead down with extreme prejudice. He’s hurt a lot of people, including, I bet, that little ghost girl in the yellow dress.”
They fell silent, waiting for the hour to go by, watching the array of ghosts trying to get access to the barn. They saw the little girl ghost again, and while Blaze looked for Trina, he didn’t see the vampire. She was probably chilling on the other side of the barn, waiting, trying not think about how hungry she was.
Ten minutes passed, and they still had about half an hour to go, when once again the ghost storm ceased for a moment.
The cornfields came into view, but they were being trampled by figures shambling toward them. Rows of shado
wy figures, lurching, stumbling, but coming forward. The smell of them, sweet and unmistakable, added nausea to the cold chill clawing into Blaze’s belly.
“If you were the god of death, and if you had an entire planet of graveyards and corpses, what is the first thing you’d do?” the gunny asked.
Ling leapt to his feet. “The population of Hutchinson Prime was two billion. Colonists have been here for a hundred years. Those that didn’t leave, well, I think we can assume they were slain or killed each other, driven insane by the ghosts.”
Blaze nodded. “Yeah, so we’re looking at millions if not billions of problems. Not just ghosts—these things have bones.”
Blaze triggered his ax. “Elle, we have a problem!”
“What’s coming?” Patsy asked in a fearful voice.
Blaze couldn’t answer. The number of monsters he was seeing shut off his brain and froze his tongue.
“Starts with a ‘z,’” he muttered. Then he slid down the ladder, a plan forming. Whether it would work or not, well, he could only hope.
And pray.
TWELVE_
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The first fists smacked into the barn door. The whole frame of the structure shuddered. Already, he could hear grumbling, moaning, and the wet smack of rotting flesh on wood. The smell was stifling. It was like being drowned in a swimming pool of liquified dead elephants.
“Elle, wake the fuck up!” Blaze shouted. “Trina, you there?”
“Blaze, they’re coming!” Trina yelled back.
“Don’t I know it! Get to a starcycle, grab the minigun, and get back here. Things’re about to get real.” Blaze turned to Patsy, who cowered behind him. “Patsy, how big was Know Return?”
“About ten thousand people. It’s just a small town.” She chewed on her red fingernails. “But the closest city, Topeka Neo, has about two million. It got hit hard, though, when things changed here. I’d be surprised if anyone was still alive there.”
A hand punched through the wood, shredding the skin, but the owner didn’t care. The person connected to the decayed arm was dead.
Elle was awake and moving. She triggered both of her katanas and sliced off that arm and the arm that followed it. But the ghouls outside had the entire barn swaying. The whole structure was about to come down.
“We lose the barn, we lose our protection from the ghosts,” Elle said.
“Someone tell me what’s going on!” Patsy wailed.
Yeah, like they had time to explain pinche zombies to the blondie. Take a ticket, stand in line, they had better shit to do.
Blaze seized his shotgun, one-handed, and blew a man-shaped hole through the door. A dead woman in a funeral gown shambled forward, rotted tongue working in a rotted mouth. Her eyes, turned to ichor, stained her cheeks like black tears. Most of her fingernails had come loose, and green fuzzy mold painted the ends of her digits.
Elle removed the woman’s head with one swing of a katana, and it rolled across the ground. “Get the teeth!”
“My plan exactly,” Blaze said. “Ling, play dentist. Get that old lady’s teeth and get them to Elle.”
The Meelah slid down the chain that had held Patsy, landed on the ground, and raced over to the severed head.
Blaze activated his armor, slammed his shotgun onto his back, and triggered his ax. He and Elle held the door as zombies shuffled forward, arms reaching, mouths working, moaning, groaning, gnashing their teeth.
These weren’t fast zombies, who could live without a brain or any sort of physiology. These were slow zombies, and a shot to the head would put them down. But if their head worked, so did every part of them. Like vampires, the zombies could infect them—Humans, Meelah, Clickers—with an Onyx virus. Once bitten or scratched, death was certain, and then the infected became a zombie. Those old movies hadn’t lied, though they did get overly dramatic. It was understood. You get infected, we put you down, the end. No tears and no recrimination. Shit happens, brah.
Blaze sank his ax through one skull after another, and once the corpses hit the ground, they were pulled back as other zombies feasted on their brains. Yeah, zombies liked brains. Fresh ones were the delicacies, but dead ones worked in a pinch…like drinking old coffee. But the dead were smart enough not to eat those still on their feet. Fall or get your skull cut open, and it was chilled monkey brains for breakfast.
The sound of feeding zombies turned his stomach, but he preferred the animated corpses to the ghosts. These putas he could kill.
The barn swayed, and the wood creaked. It was seconds away from coming down. Rain and ghosts thudded constantly. All the dead knew what was coming.
The gunny’s fusion ax and his witch sister’s katanas cooked the dead flesh as they pounded through skulls and removed limbs. Smoke sizzled from the charred meat, but it smelled wrong, like barbecuing green pork chops that had been in your fridge too long.
The back door was pushed open, and more zombies started in. Old men with white hair on gray scalps, women with their entrails hanging to their knees, kids in shorts and T-shirts, all with lolling tongues and unseeing black eyes. The horde shambled forward, an awful hunger on their faces, the gleam of glee in their eyes. Live brains! They thought they were going to feast.
The barn swayed to the left, didn’t sway back, and the walls cracked, groaned, the ceiling shifting as nails gave way.
Ling tossed a handful of teeth to Elle, who dropped her swords and cast a consume spell. Onyx energy poured from the faces of the zombies and into Elle. The affected corpses staggered and dropped to the ground.
Elle’s mojo spiked.
Ling engaged the zombies shuffling toward them through the other door. His spinning nunchakus, both of them, spun arms off shoulders and heads off necks.
But the barn was about to fall on top of them. That might kill them before the zombies got to them or the ghosts had a chance to drive them insane.
Blaze couldn’t think about that. Some zombie kid bit at the nanotech armor at his thigh, and Blaze chopped him in half. The half kid still scratched and clawed at his boots even though his smoking entrails looked like the black tips on a barbecued hog.
Blaze needed some space. Shotgun off his back, he jacked a fresh shell into the chamber and cleared a space in front of him. The fusion energy ate through a dozen of the zombies, but a hundred more pressed forward.
“Elle? What the hell?” Blaze called out.
His sister removed a cedar wand from a holder on her bandolier. It was covered with a dark powder, and Blaze realized what was coming. She cast a missile spell, but unlike the slivers she usually used, this one was going to be a whole lot bigger.
Dark red Onyx energy disintegrated the cedar wand and covered Elle in a sparking cloud of scarlet, before rushing up and blasting the roof off the barn. Wooden beams, boards, and shingles shattered away. Walls fell to flatten the zombies under them, and hundreds of zombies were crushed, their brains squeezed out of their skulls like squeezing the pus out of a zit. Others were caught by the explosion itself, and flesh was bashed off bone. The ghosts howled as they fluttered into a whirlpool of supernatural energy. Rain drenched everything and everyone in seconds.
Blaze growled. Elle gasped. Patsy wept. Ling grinned.
Surrounded. For as far as the eye could see, there were corpses, easily two million if not more. They were in an ocean of dead bodies, all coming to kill them. It was a haunted planet, owned by the dead, lorded over by Chthonic, master of haunts.
Thousands of the walking dead came stumbling over the bodies of the downed zombies, some half-eaten, some brainless after being crushed by the barn walls, others missing legs but still having enough brainpower to pull their burned and severed bodies across the mud. All the dead were coming at Blaze and his family from every side.
Patsy knelt on the ground, hands clasped over her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was screaming.
Yeah, Blaze thought about joining her. Where in the nombre de Dios was Trina?
&n
bsp; The gunny chopped heads and split skulls, over and over. His shoulder ached, his ax was losing energy, and he was going to have to reload, but if he paused, they would be overwhelmed.
Ling fought relentlessly, spinning his dual nunchakus in glowing circles of destruction. If a zombie was too tall, he cut them in half, cut off their head, and sliced through the brain in seconds. Fast, damn, and Blaze was proud he’d lasted five seconds against the skillful torrent of nunchaku terror.
“Elle!” Blaze roared. “If you’re gonna do something, do it now!”
His sister punched an incoming zombie and tore off his jaw. She then cast another consume spell, powering up for the only thing that could possibly save them.
She tore a red silk bag from her pouch, preparing another dispel magic spell, and this one was going to have to count. Ghosts floated over the zombies almost like air support. Others helicoptered down from the heavens, shrieking with mouths black against their pale white features.
Elle slammed the bag down. A mushroom cloud of dark scarlet Onyx energy erupted around her. The zombies in the area of effect had the evil energy blown out of them, and they fell on their faces. As for the ghosts, the rising explosion pushed them up and away from the ruins of the barn. The force shredded some and blew others into dust. The spectral hurricane was silenced for the moment.
The animated corpses, however, merely came forward in another wave of staggering death and decay. They were in the middle of an ocean of zombies with zero chance of escaping.
Elle fired Onyx missiles through a dozen skulls, but that wasn’t going to make a dent. They were being set upon by millions of the dead, some fresh corpses still bleeding, others just rags and bones, though since they were slow zombies, brains, no matter how decayed, were still in their skulls.
Then a familiar sound erupted from near the farmhouse ruins. The familiar sound of the plasma minigun’s spinning barrels erupted from near the farmhouse ruins. Mowing down zombies left and right, Trina cleared a path on the starcycle, leaving broken brains and destruction in her wake. Mowing down zombies left and right, Trina cleared a path on the starcycle. She must’ve set the cruise control, since she had a foot on the handlebars. She was in full vampire mode, and she wielded the huge gun with both hands. A normal woman her size wouldn’t have been able to use it with such deadly accuracy, but Trina had vampiric super strength.