All Katie could do now was pray that her plan worked. One tiny slip up and she’d be dead. Or worse.
Everything would work out. Everything had to work out. There was no option for it not to. Telling herself it would be fine did not mean it would end up being fine, but the mantra made her feel more confident. And right, now, as her body surrendered to sleep, confidence was the only thing keeping her going.
Jaye, Dina and Leo had done what she told them – had spoken to Henry Lawson about her. They’d also done a few things she had not asked them to – hadn’t needed to. With the warning that the trio would betray Katie, she had taken it on good faith that they would, and ordered them to tell nobody else of this plan to fall into a dark sleep and let Henry rescue her. It was insanely dangerous but no-one had accused her of being sane recently. And Katie had been working on another scheme while they thought they were in the thick of things. Most of her plan centred on giving her friends needless jobs to do (which sounded important) which kept them out of harm’s way.
“Save me,” Katie heard herself say. She sounded very distant – as if the body she floated in and the body her voice came from were miles apart. A world apart. “Like you always do.”
“I don’t know how to.”
A warm hand curled around hers, long fingers winding through hers. Katie remembered that that touch, the strong arms that those hands belonged to. The times they had scooped her up or supported her when she was too weak to walk.
“Can you help her now?”
There was another figure by her bed. This edge of sleep was too thick to make any detail out but the smell... it was sweat and death. She recognised it in a flash and then the suffocating sleep dragged her under.
She had her eyes closed and she was lying flat on her back on something cold and smooth, wearing a thin hospital gown that itched and fell open in all the wrong places. For one sickening second, Katie was dead and laid out on a morticians table just waiting for the scalpel to dissect her corpse. Great. Dead and i didn’t even see it. It was so cold here. Well, duh! They had to keep morgues cold didn’t they? To stop organs putrefying. She shuddered at the thought and that was how she knew she was still alive. The dead don’t tremble. That, and the gentle pressure of a dozen hands resting on her stomach, her legs, her arms, any patch of flat or exposed skin, told her that.
Katie forced her eyes open as she turned her head to one side, thinking how nice it would be to just lie here in the middle of all these warm bodies and sleep… sleep until they put her six feet under… sleep until they covered her with dirt and dry flowers… and then sleep forever more. Because she was tired of this. She deserved a rest, didn’t she?
Even if lasts forever?
But Katie couldn’t think of an instance where that would be a bad thing.
She just knew it was.
Staring into the ruined face of the thing lying next to her confirmed it. There suddenly wasn’t even enough air to scream. Katie felt her already tight abs stiffen further, reflexively and uncontrollably. What the hell was she thinking about, letting these creatures touch her? She tried to sit up and shake the hands off. Although they moved slightly with her movements, were gentle and light on her sore skin, getting them to let go was next to impossible. They all pressed down on her, keeping her fat to the floor. Never were the zombie things rough, or hurt her tender but remarkably unbroken skin; they just kept up this pressure that was as unyielding as it was soft as it was terrible. No, no, no. This wasn’t the plan. She struggled to draw a full breath and couldn’t help but whimper as the one lying beside her grinned. It didn’t look like any smile she had ever seen. More a mouth being pulled back at the corners. It looked painful but the zombie thing did not appear to feel anything. Not one thing.
“What do you want from me?” she managed to ask. She didn’t expect a reply – the mouths on these faces were for show only. They didn’t need to use words.
She struggled to rise up once more. It wasn’t happening. Crumbling or not, missing limbs or not, these creatures were stronger. And now they had Katie, they weren’t about to give up their prize.
“Let me go!” However loud she shouted, they wouldn’t hear her. The one with a hand on her cheeks opened it’s eyes, an empty, lifeless blue. Like dying in the sea. The last thing I’ll ever see. Sea.
It was getting harder to breathe. The white walls, the grey window, they were closing in her. And she did not feel any urgency to escape.
The gaping faces all around twisted towards Katie, staggered to their knees and started towards her. Not one off them lifted their hand from her. They were touching her. They were going to crush her between them. They were going to swallow her until she became one of them. Unthinking unseeing uncaring unknowing. The thought terrified Katie at the same time as it comforted her. No more thinking for herself; no more hard decisions; no more trying to do the right thing; no more anything. No more...
If I have to go through this shit just to get the good times back I’ll do it!
The zombie creatures were pressed against her by then. Trying to paw at her face and tangle their fingers in her long hair, so close that Katie could make out features beneath their smudged faces. Her friends were all pushing against her body. Wanted her to become like them – ruined bodies ravaging dreams for a way to survive. Behind them all, though, she glimpsed three faces she knew well enough to make her heart trip-hammer against her ribs and hot tears prickle her eyes. The sight froze her mid-struggle. The decaying bodies were crushing the air out of her, turning the air black with their dark desires. A soul. A body with some life in it. Suddenly it dawned. Death needed life. Without it, the dead of Northwood would return to the grave.
So she had to let them live, didn’t she. if only that didn’t have to mean her own demise...
It doesn’t have to.
That voice... she knew it from somewhere. A golden hand reached through the masses of sad creatures on top of her and Katie grabbed for it. “Jack.” Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. He was somewhere else, doing something else, with some-one else. Some-one who wasn’t her. Well, it better be bloody worth it! Katie cursed him in her mind and then switched her attention to the hand trying to get to her. She just knew she had to get to it. Somehow, she did, shouldering her path through the bodies, pushing them and ignoring them break as they fell. One fell but, magically, there was always another one to take its’ place. If she tilted her head to the left and squinted just enough, the smudged faces became all the people she had met since the last week of August. All the students she trained with and shared classes with at Levenson Academy.
“You shouldn’t have come back here.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she shrugged, kicking out at one particularly persistent zombie. Something cracked under her boot. Blood poured out of that torn up mouth and it fell to the floor, twitching and moaning. “Did i just-?”
“No.”
“But I felt his ribs break. He’s bleeding. I punctured his lung.” The height of the creature made her think it was Adam, and she couldn’t think of him as a thing. Couldn’t think of any of them that way, really, even though there was little of the human left in any of them now. She began to bend down, wanting to help this thing that she had harmed. Mademoiselle Romani took Katie by the wrist and pulled her along to the next corner. She reached out to catch hold of one of those three people as she passed by but she couldn’t quite reach… and then they were behind her, never even knew she was there. “Leave it alone, Katie. The dead are stronger than you imagine.”
“What?”
“You think you can fix everything. You can’t fix any of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not how it’s meant to be. You’re not that strong, Katie. This is bigger than you. It’s going to chew you up and spit you out and you won’t be able to stop it.”
> This talk had taken a sharp turn towards Negativity Town – stopping at Waste, Hopeless and Surrender. Two could play that game. “I’m not that good to eat.” It was harder to make her eyes shine in this nightmare world, almost impossible to set her face as hard as stone when she knew exactly what to be scared of.
And what are you scared of now?
The inner voice, sharp enough to cut glass, came like a minor miracle.
Everything.
And don’t you forget it.
“They’re coming.”
Mademoiselle Romani, as perfect as the only time Katie had ever seen her alive, smiled and fumbled with the green and gold layers around her torso. And then came something Katie hadn’t expected. Her face, her clothes, everything about her began to melt away, morphing into a completely different shape. One with green eyes and cowboy boots.
Jack. She wanted to believe it was him. Her cowboy could just appear before her and take her away from the monsters; never let them bother her again. The world would go back to normal once he was holding her again. She would be stronger, faster, better. This crazy town would carry on being crazy and the monsters could rule it with iron and fire for all she cared.
“Henry?”
“Yes. You’re in danger.”
“You think?”
“Grave danger.”
Katie couldn’t help but snort a laugh at that and, when Henry looked at her in confusion, explained. “Grave. You know, since that’s where I’ll end up.”
“I promise you, I won’t let them take you.”
“Why not? If not them, somebody else will.” It was amazing how therapeutic this was – letting the darkness out in short bursts, moments of absolute black. Solid and certain pitch. “One day, my nightmares are going to kill me. Why not today?”
“Never said it wouldn’t be today.” His gentle voice grew more pointed aas his face shifted through a thousand different ones. None that she recognised but a sickness twisted in her gut. She knew who each and every one of them were.
No. They can’t be.
Say the word.
Not that many. They can’t all be.
Say the word.
“Victims.” The word was a breath... a word written in the wind. There was no wind. There was a man with a changing face before her and a dying army struggling around the corner. And in the middle? A sixteen year old girl in work boots, a blood spotted hospital gown and nothing to lose.
“I just said it wouldn’t be them, little girl.” The ever shifting face finally settled on the one she would never really be ready for. It hurt just to look into those eyes burning with hate and rage. They had blazed so long and so hot that they had lot any colour. They were just pits of sparking red. Blind, furious, out for blood.
My blood. The certainty was just there, in her mind. Waiting for her to do something with the knowledge – freeze with fear, scream, cry, crumble to the ground under the weight of confusion. She was too far gone to do any of those rational things. Katie looked down and thought about her old stripey make-up bag, how she wished she had it with her, and it materialised in her right hand. She could sense the echo of some kind of strap on her wrist. That was a world away. Right here and now, her body was perfect. Tired to the point of falling down but utterly unblemished.
The man in front of her frowned. He had not been expecting this.
“What? I’m not dying with smudged lipgloss.”
“Then you’ll just die pretty.”
“Aww, you think I’m pretty. How sweet.” Katie unzipped the bag and took out of a lipstick tube with nothing in but paperclips. Then she pulled out the plastic compact and pulled it open. The mirror in the top wasn’t a mirror. It was a silver sheriffs badge, glinting back at her like looking glass. “Funny thing about mirrors. They reflect just like silver.”
“Those are gonna be your last words.” The man growled. It was low and animal. There wasn’t a hint of mortal conflict. His thoughts were as clear as Katie’s own.
I want to kill and
(obliterate)
Maim and make you scream. You and everyone you care about
(everything you know and love)
Will fear me. And you can’t stop me.
Why was he so bent on hurting her? He hated her for seeing him murder a teenage boy 150 years ago as some sort of future memory ghost thing. It was hard to explain and it made her head ache to think about it too much but the short story was he had got mad at her for seeing and, worried she might report him to whoever sheriffed the sheriffs in the 19th century, had taken his anger out on that teenage boy every night until he had found her. That boy had been Jack, and she had nearly died to save him.
She took the badge out of the compact and let the shell shaped object clatter to the floor. Then she held the shield up and put a finger to her lips, moving slowly and deliberately.
Not bothering to wait more than half a second, Katie folded her fingers around the badge, feeling the points of the star slice into her palm. Still watching the man who burned with hate, she tightened her hand into a fist and felt hot blood seeping through her fingers and dripping onto her boots, the floor, even making tracks towards her arm.
“Give me that!” he roared and threw himself at her.
At the last moment, Katie took a step to the side and turned to see him land hard on his right hip, dragging his sorry backside through a pool of her blood. I didn’t know there would be so much. “Ooh, nice move, cow poke. Now, get the big boys out and let’s dance.” And what better place to dance than on a dancefloor.
Brown eyes snapped open and locked right away with dark blue ones. Not the ones Katie had wanted to wake up to but they were there. That was all that mattered. Whatever else was in store for her today, waking up alone wasn’t on the list.
“What just happened?”
“Wrong question, Pointer.”
“Huh?”
“You asked what happened. Either it’s the wrong question or I don’t have the right answers.”
“Again… huh?”
“Nothing happened. But it’s about to.” As she continued speaking, Katie swung her legs out of bed and started dressing. She unhooked the strap from her right wrist, flexed her fingers and laid it on the top pillow. The bruises and cuts on her arms and legs didn’t even tingle. She ripped the dressings off. Nothing. “Do you mind? I’m halfway to naked under this gown.”
Leo grunted, only a little bit surprised, and turned around. There were no injuries on her now – they’d just vanished when she took the bandages off. The man who had come right after her eyes closed had just faded away a few seconds before. There was no trace of sleep in her face or body, nothing slow about her movements or the manic speed of her speech.
“See, I figured stuff out. Can’t really talk about it yet but you can all come and watch the showdown in ooh – ten minutes? Bring weapons, it might get nasty. Showdown at Shimma, ha, I like that. Anyway, Henry’s not really Henry, and he thinks I’ll be an easy kill. He got into my dreams and stopped the zombies killing because he wants to do it himself and they’re not real I don’t think. Scary, but I think they only have power if I give it to them. I took back control of my nightmare and they’re still locked tight up here. And now I’m off to meet him at the club and get this over.”
One way or another.
Leo turned back around and took in her worn jeans and trainers, too long t-shirt and black coat with bits of banana yellow on the zips and buttons. Katie dragged a brush through her hair then folded it away in a tiny make-up bag she tucked into a pocket. She didn’t look remotely like a soldier on the way to a battle that couldn’t be won. Katie looked for all the world like a teenage girl dressed in her scruffs to go to college and doodle through all her lessons.
“Weapons?” he stuttered, still trying to sort through everything she had just told him.
“Uh-huh. You know… sharp th
ings, shooty things, things for hitting people over the head with. Weapons.”
“Bitch, you are not making sense. And what’ve you got?”
Katie opened her hand and showed Leo the silver badge she held. Her palm was slashed, bleeding and burning as she held it.
“Gonna be helpful.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“Chill! Seriously.”
“Stop that.”
“Not even breathin’,” he pointed out.
“But you’re thinking. You’re thinking so loudly that I can’t.”
“Okay. I won’t think.” And he tried because he didn’t dare disobey Katie in this mood. She clearly wasn’t in the mood to listen to his backchat.
The air in the room felt still and breakable, the temperature had dropped by about five degrees while they had been talking.
“What’s going on, Katie? You’re not acting like you. Are you even you any more?”
Because the way she held herself, the way her face was no longer smiles and curves but angles and smirks, even the words she was saying…
“Katie’s not here today.”
Shimma was just a few minute’s sprint away.
Hmmm… no. Don’t want to seem too eager
So Katie left the student medical centre and took a leisurely walk towards the club. It was a nice day – bright, warm when the sun shone, dry. It didn’t seem to fit with the mood. A storm was brewing – just not in the sky. Her head was starting to ache. Maybe Dr de Rossa had been right and she should have taken a box of prescribed painkillers if she insisted on discharging herself.
“Gotta dash, doc. Places to be.” The voice, the words, they sounded strange to her own ears and made her pause for just a minute before leaving. The darkness was winning – it was changing her… the slimy black thing that had been twisting and growing deep inside was now huge and hungry. Just a little longer. Wait another minute and then… then you can have your fun.
Chapter fifteen
Unfinished Business (The Shades of Northwood 3) Page 14