“A hot spot,” Holly says with a sigh as she falls to her knees and starts to dig through the box with a detached frenzy. “It's where the demons come from.”
“Did you learn this in your dream, too?” Dawson says, moving threateningly across the barn. I follow after him, ready to grab him if he goes for Holly. “What else are you not telling us?” Holly ignores him and keeps digging. “Look at me!”
“Shut up!” she screams and tears start to roll down her bloody face. “Just shut up and leave me alone.”
“But we need to know,” Dawson says as he collapses to his knees next to her. His voice is much softer now, pleading. “You have to tell us, Holly Olly. You just have to.” My blood freezes at his words. Holly Olly. I've never heard anyone use that nickname before, not once in the two years since Holly and I started dating. She doesn't seem to care though and when Dawson starts crying, he leans forward and puts his arms around her. Holly doesn't push him away and instead, reaches a hand up and puts her fingers on his arm.
Jealously doesn't even begin to cover what I'm feeling right now. I want to lope across the room like a DeadBorn and tear his head off. She doesn't want me? I wonder as my heart begins to pump fiercely and a surge of adrenaline pierces my chest. She wants him?
“The really bad DeadBorn,” she says as Dawson sits back and drops his arms to his sides. “Like the ones by the lake and the ones that breathe fire, they come from hot spots. Inside this building is a hot spot.”
“Then shouldn't we get the fuck out of here?” I ask and Holly's head whips around at the bitter note in my voice. When our eyes meet, I see that all her love's for me and I'm even more confused by her actions.
“There are hot spots everywhere. We can't really get away from them, but we can't really sleep next to them either. That's why I want to stay in the refuge building, even if it has a hundred windows.”
“How do you know all of this stuff?” Martin asks and I don't sense even the slightest hint of an accusation in his voice, but for some reason, Holly does. She tucks some bloody blonde behind her ear and scowls.
“I just dreamed it, okay?” she says, but I know that's a lie. I can tell from the stiffness in her neck and the way her words rush out of her mouth in a jumble. Something's happening to Holly that I don't understand. It started this morning and it doesn't look like it's going to stop until it consumes her completely. As soon as we get a chance, if we get a chance, we need to have a talk. I don't say anything now because I don't want Martin or Dawson to know, but I do step forward and squeeze her shoulder comfortingly. She doesn't pull away, but her spine straightens and the muscles in her forehead clench. I don't know what's happened to her just now, but she seems almost repulsed by me. “Let's just get our stuff and get out of here,” Holly says and stands up.
Martin and Dawson follow suit and the four us spend the next few minutes gathering hammers, nails, flashlights, boots, anything we can find really that we think we might need. And all of us, all of us, take an ax. If we've learned anything about the DeadBorn thus far, it's that guns are practically useless against them. The baseball bats have worked beautifully, but as I heft an ax in my hand, I guess that they'll do even better. Unless we're fighting against one of the fire faces. Or the rotten angels. Or the ooze spitters that I haven't seen yet.
We're so busy digging through boxes of metal and dumping things on the floor that a little commotion from one of the back rooms doesn't raise any of our alarms. I, at least, just subconsciously attribute the noise to one of the others. It isn't until the door melts off its hinges and comes crashing down in a wave hot smoke that we take notice.
“Holy fuck!” Dawson shouts as he steps back and falls over a metal tool box. Martin doesn't even iterate any words; he just screams.
A fire face is staring straight at me.
At first I don't know what to do. I'm frozen in place by the absolute horror of it all. The dead baby was bad enough, but at least I hadn't felt like prey in front of its milky blue eyes. This DeadBorn is looking at me like I'm the source of all its problems, like it's the devil and I'm God, bound to be locked in an epic war for eternity. It's not a good feeling. I stumble back, trying hard not to focus on the white ribs that protrude from the creature's lumpy chest or the heart that's beating wildly inside it.
From its lips, if you can even call them that, drips a molten red that singes the concrete floor and the walls around it.
“Galen, run!” Holly screams and her voice wakes me out of my stupor, drawing me around and forcing my legs to move like pistons. The fire face lets out a piercing wail followed by a burst of heat that dries out my bare skin and makes me feel like I've spent an entire day in the hot sun. Holly is standing maybe a dozen feet ahead and to my left with Dawson beside her and Martin behind. I can't lead the DeadBorn towards them, not for any reason. If they died and I lived, then my soul would never recover.
I turn towards the wall opposite the doorway and run as fast as my legs can physically carry me. I feel a strange burning in my muscles, but I ignore it, convinced that whatever pains my body might throw at me as punishment for my epic sprint will pale in comparison to being incinerated. I shiver even as I run, and old nightmares flash behind my eyes, images of me sinking into a volcano as my flesh is seared away by the extreme heat.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I whisper with labored breath as I vault over a pile of old wood and land painfully on my right ankle. My leg gives way and I collapse, rolling sideways and coming up facing the wrong direction. The fire face is coming after me, galloping like a man with a broken leg. As it moves, it keeps its mouth stretched wide and oozes magma across the barn where it simultaneously melts objects and catches them on fire. It's several feet taller than I am and wider, too, with thick, burly arms covered from finger to shoulder in lines of glowing heat that crack the ebony black of its rocky skin. A pyroclastic flow wafts out from its nostrils and chokes the air with the scent of rotting flesh and flaming charcoal.
I turn back around, stumble to my feet and begin to run again. I don't have much hope of making it out of there alive, but I'm going to try just as soon as Holly gets it through her stubborn head to run. She's still in the barn, shouting and waving her weapon. She even fires a few shots at the DeadBorn that slice through its skin and disappear, presumably melting into the creature's scorching bloodstream. I want to scream for Holly to get the fuck out of there, but I know that no matter what I say, she won't listen.
The grunting and huffing behind me has gotten much louder now and I know I'm losing this race. That and I'm coming to the end of the barn. Soon I'm going to have to turn left and the fire face is either going to kill me (if I'm lucky) or maim me and then go after Holly. I imagine briefly what my tombstone might say. If the world doesn't come to an end and I actually get one that is. Galen Nash, 17 years 6 months and 13 days, Beloved Boyfriend. It's a pathetic thought, but it's all I have. My mother would never call me a beloved son and there's nothing else distinguishing about me. Nothing.
“Watch out!” There's a voice I've never heard shouting in the background. I hear it, but I don't know how to respond, so I turn and dive beneath one of the trucks. When I hit the cement, the air is knocked out of me and my ribs scream from the impact. I force myself through the pain and start to crawl. Fear and adrenaline get me through to the other side just as the bed of the truck groans and starts to melt from the heat like an overdone marshmallow. It drips white metal down to the floor where it hisses and steams, popping the tires and dropping the vehicle to its rims. “Bring it towards the doorway!” the voice commands, and I listen because what else is there for me to do?
The fire face opens its mouth even wider and shrills like an angry cat, spewing bits of magma across the room. I narrowly miss having my leg singed by rolling to the side and scrambling to my feet. I don't look very pretty doing it, but it gets the job done and puts me up and facing the owner of the voice. It's a woman in a beige shirt and brown pants with a white hose in one hand and a nightst
ick tucked under her left arm. Holly is nowhere to be seen and I feel a small surge of relief. No matter what, she's going to make it.
“Hurry!” she calls and I feel heat against my back as the fire face gives chase. It's trailing so close behind me that I can hear the labored beating of its red, red heart hammering a morose threnody in tune with my steps. “Now duck!” I don't know why, but something about the woman's voice demands respect, so I listen and drop to the floor, sliding across the cement like Holly slid across the bases in that yesterday that feels as far away as eternity.
Water sprays over my head in an arc, sprinkling me with cool liquid at the same time that I'm assaulted with a hot burst of steam. It singes the back of my neck and soaks my shirt with scalding water. I scream as the pain cuts right through my spine and rocks my brain with a primal fear that convinces me without a doubt that I'm going to die.
Then suddenly Holly's there hovering over me like an angel. Even covered in blood, her heart shaped face is lovely, delicate and strong at the same time. I reach my hands out to her and she folds me in her arms and pulls me against her. At least for the moment, she's forgotten whatever it is that's bothering her and holds me tightly.
“Galen, look,” she whispers as she turns my face around. Just a few feet away from me, the fire face stands as still as a statue. Its skin is no longer pulsing with orange heat and is now dark and still, like a statue carved from volcanic rock. Inside its ribcage however, the heart is still beating, mocking us with every contraction. For the moment we might seem safe, but I know that we're far from it.
“We have to go,” I tell Holly as I try to get her to stand, but she isn't looking at me. She's watching the woman in the brown pants. She's dropped her nightstick and her hose and has picked up one of the axes. As we watch, she moves forward and swings it at the fire face's chest.
CHAPTER 11
Ad Interim
Fourteen Hours and Fifty-Nine Minutes After …
“Well I didn't figure it out by accident, I'll tell you that,” the woman says as she wipes blood off of her face. “When I first found Doug he was still alive. He's the one that told me where to find the first one. Obviously, I thought he was nuts, but then I saw it.” She shivers and I recognize the look on her face. It's a look that says that you've accepted that the world is fucked and although you want to melt into a puddle on the floor, you're too stubborn to let life take you down that way. Holly has that same look and although I haven't looked in a mirror lately, I'm guessing that I have it, too. “I knew right away that shooting it wasn't going to work.” She smiles tightly and shakes her head. “So I made the connection: water trumps fire.” She pauses again and spits into the sink. We're all sitting slumped on the bathroom floor inside the refuge, too tired to move, too freaked out to rest. It's a horrible place to be. “I turned the hose on it and it went all black and still like that. It was pretty fucking clear though that it wasn't dead.” The woman, whose name is Valerie, stops abruptly and purses her lips together. Her eyes trail over to my face, then Dawson's, Martin's, and finally come to rest on Holly. I wonder if it's that obvious that she's the leader. “What are those things anyway?” she asks.
“DeadBorn,” Holly says simply. “Demons. Some are zombies.” Valerie nods and lets her chestnut hair out of its ponytail.
“I could tell about the zombies,” she says as she turns on the faucet and bends down, attempting to rinse her hair in the flow. “Doug was one of them. Turned into one minutes after he died. I swear, his flesh wasn't even cold. Didn't happen with the other two though.”
“The other two?” Holly asks and I can see that she's still thinking about the dead woman.
“Yeah,” Valerie says as she turns off the faucet and squeezes the end of her hair out. The water's still pink, but it's the best she can do given the circumstances. What we all need is a good, hot shower. “Doug's girlfriend, Cassie, and her sister, Ana. Ana's the one you beat to a pulp.” When Valerie says this, Holly goes white as a sheet and curls over her knees like she's having trouble breathing. “Cassie's body's still lying out somewhere behind the trailer. When I found Doug, he didn't know where either of them had gone. By the time I found them both, they were already dead, and I left 'em where they lay. I didn't think to smash them up like that though, good thinking.”
“Did Doug get bitten?” Martin asks and I can see that, like me, he's trying to understand how this all works. Valerie shrugs and puts her hair back in its ponytail.
“No idea,” she says as she looks down at Holly and softens her expression just a bit. “Honestly, the flesh on his leg was shredded to bits. Maybe he was bitten, maybe not. Why?” Martin opens his mouth to speak when Holly raises her head suddenly.
“How did you know to destroy the heart?” she asks and I can tell from her voice that even she didn't know how to kill the fire faces. Valerie puts her hands in her back pockets and shakes her head. Her wet hair sprinkles the mirror behind her with droplets, but she doesn't notice.
“It was still beating. I knew that couldn't be good. Anything with a beating heart is still alive, right?” Martin nods enthusiastically and I can see that he's already developed a crush on the handsome ranger. Although she's at least a decade older than us, I don't blame him. She has a nice face and pale, green eyes that sparkle with a strength of spirit that reminds me of Holly. She's also told us that she's the law enforcement officer for the refuge. Her office is one of the ones on the end, the one with the gun safes. We're lucky we found her actually because none of our keys could open them. Valerie's the only one that's got access. And she's killed two fire faces by herself. Our hopeless situation seems just a bit brighter with her by our side.
“Thank you,” Holly says suddenly as she raises her head from her knees and stares Valerie straight in the face. “For saving Galen.” The ranger nods in acknowledgment.
“You're welcome,” she replies simply and Holly smiles. I can see that the two of them are going to get along perfectly. “Now anybody want to tell me what's going on? Everything seemed fine when I left for work this morning, but when I radioed the station, they didn't respond. The phones and the Internet are down now, too.” Martin cringes at this and all eyes swing to him except Valerie's. Her eyes are on Holly.
“Martin's our resident zombie expert,” she says and Martin blushes. Or maybe his skin is just red like that. He's starting to look pretty sick and I'm thinking that he should probably lay down for awhile.
“Well, I watch a lot of movies,” he says and then pauses. “It would take a long time for those services to be interrupted, even if the horde was widespread.” He coughs and then looks over at Holly as if he's waiting for approval. She gives him a blank stare and Martin's forced to continue with his thought. “The only thing I can think, and I hope to hell this isn't true, is that somebody – the government, I guess, or whoever – shut them down.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Valerie asks as she touches the silent radio at her belt. Martin looks up at her and swallows.
“Because they've given up on us,” he says. “And they don't want anybody to know that.”
“That is seriously fucked,” Dawson says as he stands up and steps over our feet. “And it doesn't make any fucking sense.”
“Why not?” I challenge, feeling animosity towards Holly's ex. She let him touch her and she didn't let you, keeps running through my head like a news bulletin. “A government conspiracy is too far fetched for you to believe, but a horde of demons and zombies is just fine?”
“Screw you, Galen,” Dawson says and then he's storming out the bathroom door. Valerie sighs deeply and checks an old watch that's strapped on her left wrist.
“You kids stick together and I'll see what I can figure out, okay? If we have to, we'll take my truck into town and try to find out what's going on. I know a road that'll take us there without having to drive by the lake.”
“No,” Holly says firmly as she rises to her feet. “We can't leave this spot.”
; “Why not?” Valerie asks, perfectly comfortable with going where nobody else will.
“We just can't.”
“Not good enough.” Holly scowls and turns away. She tries to follow after Dawson, but Valerie stops her with a hand on the arm. “Whatever it is that you know, you better tell me now or I'm going to cuff you and drag you screaming back to the city.” Holly jerks her arm away from the ranger and she lets her.
“It's only going to be worse there.”
“And why's that?” Valerie crosses her arms over chest, perfectly comfortable with waiting Holly's stubbornness out. My girlfriend, the love of my life, the one person that I can actually imagine being trapped on a desert island with, turns to her and drops the biggest bomb of the day right on our heads.
“Because the magic is in the earth and it's spreading fast. All of the dead, all of them, will rise as DeadBorn. Whether they died today or yesterday or a hundred years ago, the magic will find them and animate them. No matter what state the corpse is in, it can be brought back. In a few days, days, the whole world will fall to the undead. It's inevitable.”
“And how the hell did this whole thing get started?” Valerie asks, completely undaunted. She's so business like it's almost scary. She doesn't question Holly's words though. We've all seen enough to convince us that magic exists. And now Holly's just told us all that it's hopeless. I close my eyes and try to breathe through my nose. If there really was no way out, Holly would've killed us both and saved us from the fear and the misery and the pain. I know she would've. I open my eyes and look up at her, but she won't meet my gaze. She knows more than she's letting on, a whole lot more. I'm going to have to get her alone and drag it out of her.
“I don't know everything,” Holly says snippily. “That's all I've got. Sorry if it's not enough.” And then she storms out of the bathroom. I scramble to my feet, stumble past Valerie and chase after her.
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