DeadBorn

by C. M. Stunich

  “How the fuck would you know something like that?” Holly growls and I can see that she doesn't believe Patricia. Once I can think clearly, I wonder why I do. How could she know something like that? Besides, Holly told me she wasn't pregnant, that she got her period afterward.

  “The magic,” Patricia says with a smile. “It's always there inside of you, but it isn't accessible until you're – ”

  “Liar,” Holly hisses, interrupting the woman who couldn't be any less her mother than she is now. She turns to the side and paces until she's standing directly over the ax. I can see that she's getting ready to do it. There's sweat beading on her brow and on the back of her neck. It's almost time. “I can't be,” she whispers and I think this last part is more for her than for anymore else.

  “It's how I knew you were alive, that you were out there, that you were just miles from me,” Patricia whispers, getting very, very close to Holly. She's crying now and to me, she looks like the saddest person in the whole world. I feel sorry for her then, even with all she's done. To get to this point, things could not have been easy for her. “Miles away,” Patricia repeats. “But you couldn't have been any further from me. Three weeks ago to the day,” she says, and Holly spins around suddenly, hair catching on her lips and sticking there. “I heard the whisper of your magic calling to me.” Holly's round eyes look like marbles, shiny with shock and recognition and disbelief. Three weeks ago to the day, Holly and I had sex for the first time. She looks over at me and our eyes meet and I know, I just know that Patricia's telling the truth. “Don't look at him,” she says, stepping closer to Holly, touching her. She puts her hands on either side of her daughter's face and stares into her eyes. “He can't help you, but I can. Holly, I – ”

  The knife comes out of Holly's sweatshirt faster than I can blink and she plunges it into Patricia's chest, all the way to the hilt. She screams as she does this, moans like one of the DeadBorn as the two of them slump to the floor in a rush of crimson blood and wet gasps. Pink bubbles are forming on the necromancer's lips, and her eyes, oh god, her eyes are the worst part. Holly sees them, too, and gets caught on that sense of love and betrayal and confusion that's shimmering there behind the tears.

  “I didn't want to, but I had to,” Holly says. “I didn't want to, but I had to.” She repeats this again and again and again while Patricia's arms go slack and her eyes flutter closed. When she dies, there's this palpable sense of power that radiates out from her body, that cuts across the room like a nuclear explosion, knocking all of us, even the DeadBorn, back.

  Seconds later, the room erupts into violent chaos.

  ***

  Sixty-Nine Hours And One Minute After …

  Patricia has turned into a zombie.

  Somehow, I had gotten it into my mind that once she was dead, this would all be over, that the DeadBorn would just go away, that we could all go home and start school in the fall. I was wrong.

  “Galen!” Holly screeches as Patricia's slack body suddenly snaps tight with energy, and then she's rushing the love of my life, the mother of my child, and I'm going crazy. Sound ceases to exist for me, and all I can see is Holly struggling for her life. I don't see Dawson or Valerie or the unborn or anything else, just her, only her.

  The ax is in my hand before I know it, and I'm sprinting forward like I'm in a marathon, raising the weapon above my head and bringing it down on the back of Patricia's calf. Since she's kneeling on the floor, legs bent behind her, it's an easy shot and the ax goes straight to the bone. It doesn't stop her from going after Holly though and I can see with horror that Patricia's teeth are only inches from Holly's throat. With a shout of rage, I bring the ax down twice more and manage to sever the zombie's leg at the knee. The stench in the room is absolutely horrendous, like maybe Patricia had some way of controlling it. Now the stink is unbearable, choking me as I reach forward and grab the back of Patricia's robes, hook the ax around her throat and pull.

  She falls backward with a keening squall as I stumble past her and check Holly for injuries. If she turns, then I'm done, just done. I can't live without her in this world, not even for a second.

  “I'm okay,” she says. “I'm okay, I'm okay.” Holly grabs my zombie arm and hot, pulsing energy runs through it. “Galen, you have to trust me. Do you trust me?” I nod because I can't even think of a single word in the English language right now. My mind is full of pictures and emotions and sensations. Holly grabs me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. “Don't get bit.” And then she's spinning me away and pushing me towards the DeadBorn that Patricia had brought with her.

  The only reason we're not already dead is because without Patricia, the creatures are much slower to react, unsure of their purpose and what they're doing here. When I come stumbling towards them, however, things change. As soon as I get within a few feet of them, they explode into action, rushing me in a small group. The one on the far right, a pretty redhead with freckles on her bloody face and a golden rose ring, veers off and goes straight for Holly. Seconds later, her head explodes, torn apart with the last slug in Valerie's double barrel shotgun.

  “That's all I got!” I hear her shout from the corner of the room. The headless corpse is still running, but it's stumbling now and without those teeth, a hell of a lot less dangerous.

  My arm is pulsing like crazy, reaching out for the zombies, tearing into their flesh. I can't stop it now; it's like it's got a mind of its own. Or maybe that's just Holly, guiding me, directing me with this warm flow of magic that I can feel hanging in the air and clinging to my dead flesh like cobwebs. My muscles are contracting and spasming painfully, like there's an electrical impulse running through them, flexing my fingers, dragging my nails back over rotten flesh and punching my hand through bodies. All I can do is stand there and avoid the other DeadBorn. I dodge around them like a dancer, tiptoeing and ducking and even throwing myself to the floor when there's no other way.

  When they come crashing down on me and I think I'm done for, there's Dawson with a baseball bat. He swings it hard and knocks a particularly smelly, gooey zombie off of me, flesh sloughing off its bones as it rolls across the carpet and tries to stand. Valerie joins in and the two of them wail on the shrieking DeadBorn, flinging gunk and bits of green-brown skin across the walls of the once pristine office.

  My left arm tenses, pulls back and rockets forward, straight into the face of a female zombie with braces and eyes that ooze white down her cheeks. Her head rocks back on her shoulders at an angle that no living person could survive and flops forward, straight towards my face. Her teeth are still slashing the air, desperate to get at my flesh and consume it. I can't let that happen, not now. I have to get through this. Even though there's a festering legion outside the building, I feel like we're going to make it if we can just survive this last stretch. Somehow, I feel it in my bones like a prophecy.

  And then it just stops.

  The braces zombie stops, my arm stops, the howling and the screeching from outside stop. This strange silence settles over the room as I push the loper away from me and struggle to my feet. Dawson and Valerie still have their weapons raised and are glancing at the remaining five zombies with distrust and confusion. They're just standing there, even the one I just punched. It rises to its feet, turns towards Holly and just freezes like a macabre statue of flesh.

  Holly is on the ground with one hand over her mouth and the other across her belly. Her face is pale and sweaty and for one, sickening, horrible moment, I think she's done for, that she's been bitten and she's going to die. I don't waste a single moment going to her and taking her into my arms. She's shaking and I think to myself, This is it. She's going to die, right here, right now.

  And then I hear her laugh.

  The sound is the sweetest, purest, most joyful thing I've ever heard. I lean back and look at Holly's face. Her eyes are wide and beautiful, filled with a dancing energy of the cosmos, a solar concoction of personal triumph, relief, and sorrow. It's like Holly's eyes are
the world's most famous paintings, the most beautiful art ever created, and they're staring at me, wanting me, needing me. I kiss her eyelids a hundred times and sit back, falling to my butt on the bloody carpet. Patricia is behind me, blonde and pretty still, but she isn't moving. She, too, is staring straight at Holly like she's God.

  As if to tell us it's safe now, that everything's going to be okay, the little cat comes out from behind a cabinet and rubs against Holly's arm, crawls into her lap and begins to purr. Holly smiles down at her and then looks back up at me.

  “I did it,” Holly whispers as her fingers tangle in tabby fur “I did it. I've got control of the DeadBorn.”

  ***

  Sixty-Nine Hours And Thirty-Three Minutes After …

  Dawson pulls the boards off the window only with the strongest urging from Valerie. She promises him that she'll keep watch on the zombies who are now marching down the stairs in a single file line. Holly says she's gathering all of the ones in this area together, that she's going to line them up like soldiers and give them a proper sending off, and I couldn't agree more. But first, we have to check for demons.

  When the peachy tint of dawn finally reaches its delicate fingers into the room, I think we all feel a little better, a little less hopeless. Dawson pushes the window open and we all climb onto the roof together. The horde is still there, a stinking, shuffling mass of death, but it isn't raging, not anymore. And there's not a single, rotten angel in sight. I guess that they've been taken down by the other DeadBorn, but I suppose I may never know.

  “You could've told us the bitch was your mother,” Dawson mumbles, but Valerie shushes him with a kiss. It should be strange since they've only known each other for a few days, but somehow it isn't. I think it's because they've just traveled through hell together and have now arrived back on earth; everything seems different that way, new, shiny. Even a few days of complete misery is enough to reshape the way you think. I feel respectful of everything and everyone, even the little white moth that lands in Holly's hair and sits there like a bow. I watch Dawson and Valerie for a moment, humbled by how fairytale that kiss looks and then turn back to Holly.

  She's still a little sweaty and her eyes are a bit glassy, but I can see that she's working to take on a task that's bigger than any of us could've ever imagined. I wait quietly by her side as zombies and bone bags shuffle in from the forests and the fields and join the mass of quiet death.

  “Seventeen year olds shouldn't be moms,” Holly tells me firmly as she stares into the distance. She's always been a good multitasker. And has always been against teenage pregnancy.

  “I'm sorry,” I say and she's rolls her eyes like I'm crazy.

  “I'm not,” she says as she blinks away some of that crazy power in her pretty baby blues and turns to look at me. “Think about it, if we hadn't been irresponsible, if we'd used a condom, then I wouldn't be pregnant and we'd all be fucking dead.” I think about it for a moment and realize that she's right: our mistake has just saved our lives.

  “Is that irony?” I ask her and she shrugs.

  “I'm going to be a good mother, Galen,” she tells me as her eyes search the sky for rotten angels. I still don't see any. I don't see the water hags either, or the fire faces or the ooze spitters. It's just lopers, just people who've left this world for the next and somehow got trapped in between. “I'm going to be the opposite of the person that Patricia was.” Holly looks down at the shingles on the roof, at the mess of guns and bows and shakes her head. “And I'm going to make sure that I never let the world get me down so hard that I have no choice but to bring it down with me. That isn't right.” She pauses here and even though she looks so strong and heroic and incredible, when she glances over at me, there's this shy uncertainty that I've never seen in her before. “Please tell me that you're going to be right there with me, that you're going to be as good a father as you are a boyfriend.”

  “Fiancé,” I correct and then I kiss her a hundred times on the lips and know that soon enough, everything will be right with the world.

  Epilogue

  Coda

  Seventy-Two Hours After …

  “Help me lay the dead to rest,” Holly says as she takes my hand and leads me through a sea of slack-jawed faces. They're all in varying states of decay, some new, some old, some even that are recognizable. There's a few kids from school, a woman from my mother's book club who I can't remember the name of and feel incredibly guilty over, and then there's her. There's my mom, standing right next to Holly's dad, next to her mother, next to a couple that looks an awful lot like Dawson. Dead. They're all dead.

  “Mom?” I say and then tears are falling, so many tears, too many. I take her hand, but she doesn't respond, not even a little. Her skin is unbelievably pale and super thin, like rice paper. Her eyes are the worst part though. I remember them being brown and muddy, like they were too full of emotions to ever come clean. Now they're glossy and kind of pale, like coffee with too much milk. It's then that I know I believe Holly completely about souls and life and death because my mother's soul is not her in body. I can tell. There's such a noticeable difference that I'm surprised that nobody's ever mentioned it to me before. “How did you find her?” I ask as I look over at Holly and see that she's crying, too.

  “I can feel them all,” she tells me as she places her hand over her heart and looks up at the sky. The sun is rising round and beautiful, lighting up the morning with a renewed sense of hope. This is over. This is all going to be over. I can even hear helicopters in the distance, a sign that there is other life out there. “They're all inside me,” she whispers as she drops her gaze to mine and I can see a million flames burning there. It's the souls of all the people, waiting to get out, waiting for Holly to let them leave this place for another. That's my guess anyway. Maybe later, I'll ask her. Right now it just seems too inappropriate. “I know where they all are, what they're all doing.” I don't ask how that's possible, just lean forward and kiss her. I've seen the girl do too many amazing things to start questioning her now.

  “How many?” I ask, but Holly shakes her head. She won't tell me, but that's okay, I understand. This isn't about mourning the past, this is about starting over. It has to be because if we were to think about all of the people and the things that we lost, it would be too much. This is a fresh start because it has to be. It can't be anything else.

  Holly turns away from me and approaches her parents. She stands up on her tiptoes and kisses them both on their foreheads before turning to my mother and doing the same. I follow suit and then we both stand silently before Dawson's parents, guilt riding us hard.

  “If we hadn't gone over there … ” Holly starts, but I cut her off.

  “Then Dawson would be dead, too,” I say and I think I actually believe that. “Should we tell him?” I wonder and Holly shakes her head.

  “No,” she says softly. “I don't think he can handle it.” She kisses their foreheads, too, and takes my hand again, pulling me to the head of her birth mother's great army, one that spans generations and decades and all walks of life. The magic was like an equalizer in a way, stripping us down of gender and race and social standing and putting us all in the same place. I'm not saying the apocalypse was a good thing, but that's what it was and now its effects will be felt by all of us. “Stay with me,” she says as she swallows hard and I see that her hands are now glowing with that black and silver light from before.

  “Forever,” I say as I move behind her and put my arms around her waist. Holly smiles gently and closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and relaxes completely into my arms. That same warmth I feel when Holly touches my zombie arm spreads out from her body and into mine, down into the ground and across the golden grasses and the pine trees and the oaks. It spreads past the lake and into the dirt roads that lead out to the highway and then even further, into the cities and the oceans and mountains until it touches everything somehow, someway.

  I put my hands over Holly's belly where someday soon our c
hild will be growing and think how wonderful it is that our love saved the world, but then again, that's how it always works, isn't it?

  I watch in respectful silence as the dead fall away, collapsing to the ground like they've been pushed by a quiet breeze, ever so gently, ever so softly. It's awe inspiring to see them all together like that, like they're a community in and of themselves, like death brought them together for a reason. I close my eyes, just like Holly, and listen as the silence dissipates and slowly, like they've been waiting for this moment for awhile, the birds burst into vibrant, brilliant song.

  ***

  Five Years After …

  Holly and I name our first child 'Martin' after the boy we lost in the refuge and our second 'Patricia' after the woman that started it all. Dawson nearly has a heart attack when he hears, but eventually, he calls to tell us that he understands, but that we can expect him to call her Patsy or something. Holly agrees to that, thankfully, because I think Martin is starting to fall in love with Valerie and Dawson's daughter, Mia, and although they're only four years old, I think it would break their hearts to be separated. Initially, Dawson and Holly also have a fight over the tabby cat but decide that it would be happier living with us. Holly names it Nelly after my mother.

  The world is not the same place that it once was. Holly says you can look at that as a good thing or a bad thing, but that she chooses to see it as a good thing because hell, we lived through all of that crap and so the last remaining people in the world are the luckiest people in the world. Therefore, we live in a world full of only lucky people and how bad could that be?

  The part that scares me the most, and Holly, too, is that Martin and Patsy are showing signs of having the same power that runs through her veins. That black and silver light is a dead giveaway and even though nobody really knows why the dead walked the earth for those three days, Holly and I are scared. She tells me though that we'll give them a good life and love them so hard that they'll never want to do anything like Patricia did. I believe her.