by Stacey Jay
“Oh shit.” The cuss word escaped before I realized I was in the presence of children and should probably watch my language. But then again, these boys and girls were being exposed to something a whole lot worse than my potty mouth.
Three zombies had commanded control of the tent, cornering five kids and Penny—who had volunteered for skate-rental duty to avoid the nerve-racking experience of selling couples’ skate tickets. Penny was fending them off with a pair of skates turned around blade-first, but she was well on her way to being overwhelmed. The two older boys were trying to join the fight, but they couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven and were no match for the supernatural strength of fully grown zombies.
The only thing that had saved them—or the three little kids cowering beneath the benches where they had been trying on skates before the Undead descended—was that Penny was the one bleeding. RCs were usually raised with a specific target in mind but were easily distracted by the energy emitted by blood, and Penny was providing plenty of that. Crimson streamed down her pale, freckled face from a gouge in her scalp. It didn’t look like a zombie bite, so she must have been injured some other way.
Not that it mattered—the zombies would still finish her off if I couldn’t get them away from her. Fast.
“Penny, this way! Run to me!” We needed to get the zombies away from the kids, and I needed the zombies out of that crowded corner if I was going to make sure I took care of all three of them before they took care of me.
“Megan!” Penny’s wide, frantic eyes darted to mine, relief and terror mingling on her face. “Oh God, please, go get help!”
“Help us,” the boy next to her yelled, his words turning into a horrified scream as he barely deflected a lunging zombie with the skate in his hand.
“Mama! Mama!” The little girl under the bench wasn’t the only one wailing for her mother, but she was definitely the loudest. She was making so much noise I had to scream to be heard.
“Come on, Penny, run to me!”
“I can’t,” she moaned, screaming again as the zombie directly in front of her got one hand around her arm and leaned toward her face.
She whacked him with the skate in her other hand, slamming it into his face again and again with a strength I hadn’t known she possessed, but it wasn’t going to be enough. The others were closing in, and running was no longer an option.
I ran toward them, scrolling through my options as I went. I couldn’t work the exuro spell and risk burning everyone alive. I wasn’t even sure it was safe to invoke the reverto command—assuming it might work with so many zombies raised at once—in such close quarters. Penny or one of the kids would definitely get in the path of the spell, and I didn’t know what that would do to human flesh.
Allegedly, Settler magic doesn’t have much effect upon humans aside from a slight stinging sensation, but my powers weren’t of the average Settler variety. I had a freaky virus and had to be careful. I couldn’t risk electrocuting the people I was trying to save. The pax frater required direct contact with the RC, so I supposed it was my best choice. I’d just have to be sure not to touch anything but the zombies.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really control who touched me.
I hadn’t made it close enough for the punch I was throwing to connect with the nearest zombie when the little girl wailing for her mother darted from beneath the bench, launching herself at my legs.
“Pax frater cor—” I swallowed the spell as fast as I could, sucking my power back inside myself, but it was too late.
One second, pudgy little three- or four-year-old hands were latched onto my thigh; the next, the little girl was screaming. I saw smoke rising from her tiny red palms and reached for her, some part of me instinctively wanting to offer comfort. But she skittered away, crawling across the floor, the look in her wide brown eyes making it clear I was as much a monster as the slobbery rotten things behind me.
The look would have been sufficiently crushing on its own, but a second later it got a whole lot of help from the SA officer at the entrance to the tent.
“You’re coming with me, Berry,” Smythe said, the anger twisting his features making it clear he thought I’d hurt the little girl on purpose. “I’ll be back for you in two minutes.”
“Just get the kids out,” I yelled, kicking a zombie away from Penny as Smythe gathered the littlest kids from beneath the bench and hustled them out the way he’d come.
“I’ll be back,” he said, channeling the Terminator in true Smythe fashion.
I turned back to the Undead, determined not to think about this latest injustice, and slammed my fist into the closest zombie. “Pax frater crrpp—” This time my words were cut off by a thick hand over my mouth.
If I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t cast, which meant I was just about as helpless against the freakishly strong Undead as any sixteen-year-old girl. Whether the zombie behind me somehow knew that—doubtful, since it was your average drooly flesh-eater—or it was just dumb luck that its hand had connected with my mouth, I couldn’t say.
All I could do was scream and struggle as teeth tore into my shoulder. It was the same shoulder where I already sported a zombie bite scar from when I was ten. Now it just remained to be seen whether I’d live to add another scar to my collection or bleed out right here in the skate tent, taken out by three measly RCs. I’d kicked the tail of at least four times this many at once in the past, but I guess that old saying is true—it only takes one.
White-hot pain, sharp and fierce, cut through my body, shooting through my nerve endings until I was on agony overload. Tears leaked from my eyes and my knees buckled as I fell to the ground, my struggles growing weaker as the zombie’s teeth tore deeper into my skin, getting closer to the bone.
Crap, it hurt so bad. Where was Smythe? Hadn’t he gotten the three little ones somewhere safe by now? Wasn’t he coming back for me? Or was he just going to let me and Penny and the two older boys die, therefore avoiding relocation and taking care of the “Wicked Megan” problem in one fell swoop?
I screamed around the hand over my mouth as the zombie shook its head back and forth like a dog with a hunk of steak. Suddenly I couldn’t think, I couldn’t plan—all I could do was feel and pray wordlessly not to feel anymore. The pain had to stop—it just had to. I would do anything to make it stop, anything to—
“Megan, lie down!” It was a male voice. It must have been Smythe, even though it didn’t sound like him. “Lie down now or you’re going to die! Do it! Lie down!”
I did as I was told, falling flat, bringing the zombie on my shoulder along for the ride. Seconds later the air filled with a whirring sound and bits of flying flesh and bone. I squeezed my eyes closed and held as still as I could, realizing my life was in Smythe’s hands. If he didn’t pull away in time, whatever they were using to chop the zombie off my shoulder would chop my head off as well.
CHAPTER 19
Strong hands appeared. The zombie on top of me was gone. The whirring sound ground to a halt and some sort of sanding machine fell to the ground beside me.
“Skate sharpener,” I groaned, assessing the damage to my shoulder and deciding I would live. “Good call.”
“God, Megan, are you okay?” Penny dropped to her knees and clutched at my hand. Tears still stained her face, but the only sniffling was coming from behind me. One of the two boys still in the tent was crying a little, but no one was screaming anymore. Smythe must have taken care of the other two zombies as well.
“Come on, get up, we have to get out of here,” the male voice said, but it wasn’t Smythe whose face appeared or Smythe’s hands that slid under my armpits, hauling me to my feet. It was Aaron, his face splattered with red from where he’d used the skate sharpener to take out the three zombies.
I cried out as pain shot through my shoulder again, but did my best to help him. He was right—we had to get out of here. Or at least they had to get out of here. I had to stay and make sure the rest of the RCs were contained.
<
br /> “You okay? Can you walk?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, I have to go. I have to find Monica and—”
“No, you have to come with me. The parking lot is full of all these random people and I heard two big guys saying they were coming for you.”
Crap. The rest of Settlers’ Affairs must have arrived and Smythe must have already told them I was a toddler burner! Now they’d arrest me and I’d never make it down to the river to check out the Super Very Bad Thing Cliff had warned me about.
I peeked out of the entrance to the tent to see Smythe and several Protocol officers battling a clutch of RCs, but it wasn’t going well. They seemed . . . weaker than I’d ever seen them before. Their spells weren’t packing the same punch and neither were their attacks. Being observed by even the few dozen people who had seen Settlers in action tonight must have taken its toll. It was a chilling thought that brought home just how much there was to lose if I didn’t figure out who was really responsible for all these attacks.
“Aaron, we need to get to your car,” I said, not relishing the idea of enlisting Aaron’s help, but at the moment he was my only available ally. At least, the only one with transportation. “Unobserved by all those people out there if we can make it happen.”
“I’ve got something even better. The cheer van is parked in a clearing on the other side of the pond, and I’ve got the keys.” He grabbed my hand and turned back to Penny. “Here Pen, take the keys to my car. You and the kids get inside and lock the doors.”
“But I don’t have a license. I don’t even have a learner’s permit,” she said, her pale face growing even paler.
“You don’t have to drive—just get the kids in the car and lock the doors.”
“But I—”
“Don’t worry. The police should be here soon,” Aaron said, before she could stress any further. “I heard sirens just a few seconds before I came in here. Go ahead, go.” He pushed the keys into her hand and herded her and the kids to the entrance to the tent, where he peeked out to make sure the coast was clear. “Okay, go, run!”
“But what about you guys?”
“Go, Penny, we’ll be fine,” I said, making shooing motions with my hands.
“Just be careful, Megan. You too, Aaron,” she said, then turned and ran for it, the two kids trailing after her as she made a beeline for the parking lot. Thankfully, there were plenty of Settlers controlling the Undead in the direction they were headed.
The entire parking lot was swarming with SA and Protocol officers, and I was betting the siren Aaron had heard was our SA plant on the Carol police force. With something this big, every Settler in Carol would be doing their damnedest not to let real cops on the scene until they had the situation under control. The safety of the world depended on it, and too many people had already seen these OOGPs. We needed to contain the situation and get super busy with a decent cover-up strategy.
Hopefully the Elders would be up to the challenge, though their behavior lately certainly hadn’t encouraged a lot of confidence on my part. That was why I had to make sure I got down to the river to handle whatever it was Cliff had seen. I no longer trusted SA as far as I could throw Elder Thomas with a bum shoulder.
“Come on, let’s go.” I headed out and around the tent before Aaron could reply, making it clear he was along for the ride not the other way around. I wasn’t about to tell him about my zombie-slaying qualifications, but it would be best if he got the message I was in charge.
I toddled toward the ice, my skates making land walking far less speedy than I would have liked. Kitty, Monica, and Ethan were still halfway across the pond in the heat of battle, but I couldn’t stop to help them. I had to get out of here before Smythe or anyone else could take me into custody.
“God, those freaks are scary,” Aaron said as we hurried toward the clearing where he’d said the van was parked. For some reason, though, he didn’t sound that scared. Maybe he was just too pigheaded to understand the real threat. He was probably still buying the “cult members on drugs” story the Settler on the police force had spread the previous night. I mean, if he weren’t denser than solid rock, he surely would have gotten the hint that I wasn’t into him by now, but no such luck. He still insisted on clinging to my hand as we ran.
I followed him down a narrow path and out into the clearing where the big gold and black cheer van was sitting a few feet away from the generators. The thing was enormous and certainly capable of fitting the dozen members of the cheerleading squad plus one dance team guest. So it made me wonder . . . why weren’t any of the cheerleaders in the van?
“God, Aaron, where were you?” Dana fisted her hands on her hips.
“Yeah, we’ve been waiting for like, forever,” Kate said.
“I got a little tied up in the skate tent, but we’re cool. Let’s get inside,” Aaron said, as sirens sounded in the distance.
“Aaron’s right, I think we should get out of here,” I said, trying to think of a good excuse to convince the cheerleaders to drive me into Little Rock. “Probably somewhere far away, across the river. Just in case those . . . um . . . cult members come back.”
“You mean the zombies?” Lee Chin rolled her eyes before hurrying toward the driver’s-side door of the van.
Oh. Crap. They knew the RCs were zombies?
“Stupid zombies,” a girl whose name I didn’t remember piped up. She was covered in bite marks and sporting a very un-perky expression. “This was a lame idea.”
“This is going to make sure we have the time we need.” Aaron’s hand tightened around my wrist. “Besides, I told you we might get bitten if we worked that one spell. No one said this would be easy.”
“No one said you had to raise so many, either, Aaron. You so overdid it.”
“You did this? You—Ah!” My question turned into a scream as Aaron spun me into him and locked his arms around my torso. An explosion of agony ripped through my wounded shoulder as he lifted me and climbed into the back of the van.
“I didn’t overdo it,” he said. “There are just enough to cause the distraction we need.”
“This isn’t a distraction,” Kimberly whined. “This is a—”
“Just get in the van,” Dana said.
Aaron plopped onto one of the padded benches on the right side, forcing me to sit on his lap, while the rest of the squad claimed seats on the bench facing us or in the two rows of front-facing seats at the head of the van. The doors slammed shut and Lee Chin gunned the vehicle to life.
I was about ten seconds away from being kidnapped by a bunch of zombie-raising cheerleaders. God! And to think Ethan and I had laughed at the very possibility a few days ago. Even staring them in their perky yet evil faces, it was still hard to swallow.
It was so surreal, in fact, that we were pulling out of the clearing and onto the road before my lips remembered how to form words.
“You’ve got to let me out,” I said, fear settling in as the reality of what was happening struck full force. “I work with those people fighting the zombies. They’re going to come looking for me, and you’re not going to like what happens to you when they learn what you’ve done.”
Kimberly and Kate, seated directly across from us, snickered.
“I’m serious. You have no idea what you’re—”
“We’re not scared of Settlers’ Affairs. We’ve got more powerful people on our side,” Dana said in this calm, easy voice that made it clear she believed what she was saying. I, for one, was too shocked to form a quick rebuttal.
How did she know about Settlers’ Affairs? We were a top-secret organization, for God’s sake! We’d operated under the radar for hundreds of years, since the beginning of human civilization. World leaders were still clueless as to our existence, so how in the heck had a bunch of bleached-blond Stepford wannabes gotten the memo? This so proved that SA was totally sucking at their job. If they were half as with-it as they thought they were, this never would have happened.
“Listen,” I said i
n my most reasonable tone as Lee Chin pulled down the ramp leading to the highway heading toward Little Rock. A second ago her choice of direction would have thrilled me, but that was before getting away from the evil cheerleaders became my new first priority. “I don’t know who you’ve got on your side, but I—”
“Yeah, you do, Megan.” Aaron gave me a little squeeze that might have been called affectionate if I weren’t his captive and it hadn’t disturbed the ravaged skin near my shoulder. “You and Jess used to be BFFs. Or have you forgotten?”
“She certainly hasn’t forgotten you,” Dana added with a smug grin.
“Jess?” I asked, unable to believe what I was hearing. This couldn’t be happening. The Jess nightmare was over, had been for months. “But she’s in prison.”
“Not for long.” I heard the smile in Aaron’s voice and was tempted to slam my head back into his nose, but forced myself to hold still. I was only going to have one chance to put up a fight. I had to make sure my timing was right. “We’re getting her out tonight.”
“If Aaron hasn’t screwed everything up,” the girl with all the bite marks said.
“Shut up, Felicity.” Aaron’s arms tightened around me, making me wince. “This was a team effort last time I checked.”
“You shut up.” Felicity’s eyes narrowed in Aaron’s direction. “You’re the only one who could raise the living ones, and you screwed it up. Twice. Then you had all day to kidnap her, but couldn’t get it done, even though you had her in your freaking car this morning.”
“We were being followed. I couldn’t just—”
“So if we fail, it’s going to be all your fault.”
“We won’t fail,” Aaron whispered, his tone cold enough to make me shiver. “We’ve got Megan and everything is going to be fine.”
“But one of the living ones was supposed to bite her, not one of the dead ones. And no one said anything about kidnapping,” Felicity argued, while I forced myself to stay quiet and absorb as much of the insanity as I could.