The Reburialists

by J. C. Nelson

  I ran down the hall into the hotel portion of the casino as it crested the rail.

  Behind me, the Re-Animus roared, “There is no one my size.”

  I turned corners as fast as they came, letting it slide on the marble floors, knowing in a foot race it would be on me in seconds.

  At the next hallway, I ducked into a stairwell, ran up to the second floor, and ran for the lobby.

  Behind me, the stairwell door wrenched off the hinges as the Re-Animus howled in rage.

  I ducked into a conference room, out the other side, down a row of open hotel rooms. Two of them I slammed shut, then ducked into an empty one across the hall, hiding behind the door.

  It came, each step shaking the floor.

  The scent of the grave came before it, empty earth, vinegar, and rotten meat. With each step, its skin crackled like glass crushed underfoot. “Grace Roberts. Come out and I will take you to Ra-Ame as an offering.”

  It dragged one claw along the wall. “I can hear your heart beating. Like Ra-Ame’s, still alive. I woke her when you took my spawn. Whispered your name into her tomb. The old Carson is dead, and she has nothing to fear. She is coming.”

  A crushing explosion sent clouds of wallboard dust billowing into the room, choking me.

  “Come to me,” it snarled, smashing another wall.

  Like smoke, the dust filled the air. I covered my mouth, breathing through my sleeve, but couldn’t stifle the gagging cough.

  The hallway fell silent. Then rubble cracked as it moved, standing in the doorway. It rumbled, a low laugh that echoed in the darkness. “Come now, sweet flesh.”

  I knew in that moment how I would die. In a condemned building, in the desert, sixteen hundred miles from my daughter. I clutched the Deliverator, held my breath, and prepared to step out.

  I would die, but die fighting.

  “Hey, ugly.” Brynner!

  His voice came from down the hall. “What’d I tell you about picking on someone your own size?”

  It shuffled, turning toward him, and sprinted down the hall.

  I stepped out, but Brynner stood right behind him, and I might hit him.

  Brynner crouched at the end of the balcony, his daggers drawn. As the monster leaped at him, Brynner hopped onto the balcony edge, his arms outstretched. “Come to Papa.”

  It sailed over the edge with him.

  Thirty-Two

  BRYNNER

  It had taken precious minutes to find Grace, or rather, to find the Re-Animus tearing its way through a line of hotel rooms. I followed Grace’s plan. Somewhat. It came after me, six hundred pounds of ugly and mean.

  I leaped onto the balcony railing. Below, green water churned like a maelstrom. I hadn’t liked swimming even as a kid. I liked diving even less. Especially diving into water that had a heaping helping of broken glass.

  Diving with a monster at my feet ranked even worse, but the alternative involved getting shaved by a barber with six-inchlong claws. I threw myself over the railing a roach’s breath ahead of it and plummeted to the water below.

  In a crash of bubbles, I swam for the surface and grabbed a deep breath before a claw grabbed me by the ankle and ripped me under. The salt water wasn’t killing it. Oh, sure, black fumes leaked out, further tainting the water, but it wasn’t going to die before it killed me. It stood on the bottom of the pool and swung a shard of glass like a sword at me.

  Only the water saved my life, slowing it down just enough for me to dodge.

  Above me, the water churned as another body jumped in. With Amy, I’d stand a chance.

  Then a tendril of long blond hair swirled into view.

  Grace?

  She held her Deliverator in one hand and lined up to shoot, aiming way too low.

  The explosion from her gun hit me like a fist, the bullet splitting the water, sailing harmlessly past the Re-Animus. And into the glass wall of the swimming pool, right at the bottom edge.

  Cracks blossomed like a desert flower, then exploded outward. Pool water spun into a tornado. The Re-Animus let me go, and with burning lungs I broke the surface, caught in a whirlpool. The whirlpool raged around me, throwing me into Grace and then the wall. I grabbed on to the wall with one hand and caught Grace’s hair with the other, holding us safe.

  Beneath us, the Re-Animus writhed, smoke dissolving in the water, then caught fire in the midday sun. It fell to the ground flailing, then rose, unsteady on feet the size of mailboxes. I let go of the wall, leaving Grace lying against it, and stepped between her and the Re-Animus, drawing my daggers.

  The pool water had drained, leaving only a few soggy inches to splash in as we closed the distance in the ruined swimming hole.

  In a flash, it was on me, swinging claws like swords.

  In that split second, Amy’s words came back to me. I’d die in the desert if I didn’t learn to move with my enemy. So I danced with it, not my normal method, lunging from blow to blow, but waiting for it to strike and extending my blades as I dodged.

  Around the pool we fought, broken glass underfoot. With every cut, it grew slower. Dropping its arms, it hurled itself shoulder first at me, slamming me into the wall. Its voice gurgled from the pool water in its lungs. “We die together, lesser Carson.”

  “You first.” I rammed a blade into its heart.

  The blade snapped off clean at the handle.

  The Re-Animus gushed from its corpse, the smoke catching fire under harsh sun, and even still, it struggled to rise. “I will be avenged. Ra-Ame knows you have her heart. She will bring her armies to reclaim it. Your world will burn.”

  I knelt over it, putting my knee on a chest that felt like rock. “Look at me while you die. I’m Brynner Carson. I’m the death that follows.”

  Its eyes burned with hate. “Do you want to know how your family died? It was easy. I shook a child until the woman came out. I bent the woman until the man joined her.”

  I punched it on the chest, driving the embedded blade further in, and leaving my knuckles a bloody mess, but the rage inside me burned hotter than the desert at noon. “You will never kill another person.”

  Grace limped over and pulled out her Deliverator. With care, she lined up and squeezed off a shot into its leg, paused, and moved up, putting a bullet hole every few inches.

  It writhed, each shot leaving it weaker. “She’s coming for you. Ra-Ame is coming.”

  Grace put her Deliverator to its head. “When she gets here, we’ll kill her, too.”

  The gun roared, and with a gush of darkness, the Re-Animus died a second, final death. With Grace’s help, I crawled through the hole in the swimming pool wall, stepping out of the pool into a flooded casino, and staggered toward the entrance.

  The front door opened, and a woman walked in, the brilliant daylight casting her into shadow. I shielded my eyes. “Amy?”

  “Hold.” The woman’s voice rippled with strange power, a familiar voice. With each step, gold jewelry shimmered on every inch of her body. “Listen. I am a message from Ra-Ame. You have killed one of her children, imprisoned another, and stolen knowledge. Your blood desecrated her tomb and stole something precious.”

  Her voice worked a spell over me, a voice that echoed in my memories, dreams, and nightmares.

  She stepped closer. “Her armies wait at the door, but there is still time. Deliver her heart, and that of a Carson, and she will return to her slumber.”

  She took one more step, and the light from the overhead windows hit her. “Death that Follows, do you understand?”

  I finally did. “I do. Mom.”

  “This is but a host for Ra-Ame. Daughter of the pharaoh, child of darkness, the willing sacrifice. This body walked the paths of the dead, desecrated my tomb, and stole from me.”

  Her cold, calm logic only made me angrier, but, looking on the face I’d wanted to see for years, I couldn’t act. “You killed her.”

  She stepped closer. Woven cotton wrappings covered her body beneath the jewelry. “My guardians know only
to kill. It is an instinct, like scratching an itch or slapping a mosquito. When she no longer needed this body, I took it. Preserved it, maintained it. It is special to you, is it not?”

  It was, and that made me hate Ra-Ame that much more. “My mother is dead. You aren’t her. I saw you kill her.”

  “Had I awakened sooner, I would have offered her a choice. Those who see the final sign are rare, and those that understand, even more so.” One more step, and I could touch her. I wanted to, so badly it brought tears to my eyes.

  She looked up at me with eyes that no longer focused. “You have one week to return her heart. Bring it, and that of your father, to the place she will show you. You could have ended this so many years ago. Do not fail to do so now.”

  “Or you kill me.” I’d gotten used to things threatening me.

  She pressed a cold hand to my cheek and shook her head. “Your own life does not matter to you, son of this body.” She looked to Grace. “I will take hers.”

  GRACE

  The only thing keeping me from giving it more holes than a golf course was that Brynner stood so close. He stood, completely frozen. For once, I think I understood why. If my brother’s corpse had come to me, speaking in his voice, I’d have had a hard time acting.

  Of course my brother wouldn’t. I took the three-hundreddollar credit for cremation as the only good thing to come from his death, though it was gone in an instant.

  I leveled the Deliverator at her and spoke as I took the safety off. “You can try to kill me. I’ve proven more resistant than you might think.”

  Faster than I could see, faster than I could move or think, she threw Brynner to the side and lashed out, grabbing me with a finger in my ear and a thumb in my eye. She lifted me so my feet barely touched and whispered. “I have walked in your shadow, and you did not see me. I have opened the door to your apartment, watched you sleep, and you did not wake.”

  She shuddered and dropped me, her eyes bulging from her head. The point of Brynner’s dagger stuck out of her chest, curiously blood free. He wrapped his arm around her neck, stabbing her over and over, until she collapsed, a funnel of darkness evaporating in the light.

  “Brynner.” I reached for him, and he shied away. “I’m going to call for medics. Will you be okay here?”

  He sat down on the stairs and put his head in his hands, not trying to hide the tears that fell. “No. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay.”

  I ran out the door and stopped, shocked.

  Corpses littered the front of the casino, gutted like fish. Amy knelt at the far edge of the parking lot, surrounded by a mound of slaughtered bodies. I cupped my hands and shouted, “Amy!” I ran toward her as she rose to one knee. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up at me, panting. “Even I have limits to my strength, though I will never admit that to a man. Grace Roberts, you have survived. You were successful?”

  I shook my head. “We won, but I don’t know if it counts. Could’ve used your help.”

  She pointed to a misshapen corpse. “The old one brought friends. Many friends, and I cannot be everywhere.”

  “Keep an eye on Brynner. I have to call a medic.” I ran to the same convenience store as before, and dialed BSI Emergencies. “This is Grace Roberts. We’re in the Rainbow’s End Casino. The Re-Animus is dead. We need medical help.”

  The dispatcher answered, her voice warm and confident. “Stay put, we’re on the way.”

  I waited nearly an hour in the dusky, still air, beside a man who neither moved nor spoke. Sirens wailed like wolves in the distance. Then flashing lights lit up the front of the hotel. But the first people through the door weren’t paramedics or police.

  It was a camera crew. News reporters, soundmen, and garish lights that flooded the place so brightly the noon desert would have seemed dark. The endless questions. The constant narrative. The monster was dead, right? So everyone was safe, right?

  The only one to escape the reporters was Amy. When I asked her to pose for a group photo, she spat on the ground. “In the old country, the faces of warriors are a secret. Not even the old ones know who is a hunter and who is prey. You and your television, spreading your name and your face for all the world to see.”

  And then came the BSI Analysis group, taking first the Re-Animus, and later, Brynner’s mother. Still he sat, motionless. Only when the news crew had packed their gear and the analysts left did I try to move him.

  “The BSI outpost commander called a few minutes ago. They’re dealing with a few hundred shamblers, but nothing major. You did it. Killed a Re-Animus. In its home.” I sat beside him, taking his arm.

  When he finally answered, his voice came out like a whisper. “I broke a blade on it.”

  “I know. The skin on that thing was like flexible concrete.”

  “I broke the other one on—her.” He dropped a handle, letting it bounce down the stairs to where Amy stood.

  “The old ones are not so vulnerable to such weapons when they have changed their bodies. This was a special blade. One of a set.” She spun the handle in her fingers, then pointed to the grip. “Do you see these markings? They were used to separate the soul from the body. Where did you get them?”

  Brynner rose and walked past. “My mom found them.”

  Amy shook her head. “Such artifacts are prized and protected. Where would an American find such things?”

  “Her tomb. Ra-Ame’s tomb.”

  Amy handed him back the blade, then clasped his hand. “Then her claim is true. Your mother disturbed the grave. Stole the daggers that kept Ra-Ame in her slumber. And took the heart.”

  Brynner shot to his feet, looming over her. “She’s dead. What does it matter now?”

  I moved between them, pushing the two apart. “Stop. Just stop. We’re all tired, and hurt. Let’s just table this discussion for now. We need to go find a better place to sleep and get some rest.”

  “We’ll sleep on the plane. I’m flying back to Seattle tonight on the cargo transport with the Re-Animus body.” Brynner threw the blade handle on the floor and walked out. I followed him.

  Somewhere between the military landing strip and Seattle, I lost myself in Heinrich Carson’s journals, once more wrapping my mind around the arcane set of symbols he used for everything. When Brynner said we’d been delayed to let a storm pass, I waved him away. Faster and faster I read, until I reached for the last journal, that last page.

  And threw it across the hold, cursing in rage. “Wasted.” I stormed past the co-org casket to throw a bag of books at Brynner. “All that time wasted. It’s not in there.”

  Amy took my hand, trying to pull me to sit beside her. “Calm yourself, Grace Roberts. Start from the start.”

  “The heart. I don’t know where he hid it. I read everything. Everything.”

  Brynner shook his head. “He used to leave me thirtyminute voice mail messages. It’s the only thing he talked about the last few times. He never let it out of his sight. I just don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. Heinrich Carson took the location of the heart to the grave with him.” I sat down between the two of them, so frustrated I could barely keep myself from screaming.

  Amy looked at Brynner, her brow furrowed. “Could it be buried with him? His tomb is, how to say? Unique.”

  “I don’t think so. Uncle Bran said he didn’t have it with him when he came home for the last couple weeks. We’ll know in a few days for sure, when we dig him up.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” I reached to feel of his head, and he let me brush his skin. “Tell me you didn’t say what I think you did.”

  “Dad wasn’t given a BSI standard burial, because he wanted to be cremated with Mom. After she—died, he left me with my aunt and uncle and went everywhere, searching for Ra-Ame’s tomb. Trying to recover her body.” He walked down the cargo hold to where the second casket lay, and I followed.

  He stood over the casket like a soldier keeping watch. “I’m going to take her home and put her to rest a
s soon as we’re done in Seattle.”

  Which reminded me of the other thing that had been bothering me. “I’ve got unfinished business in the lab and with the director.”

  Brynner’s eyebrows raised, and he tilted his head, looking at me askance. “You can throw any words you want her way, but if you try to punch her, I’ll have to carry you out.”

  “I’ll let her decide how we play it. Frankly, I could have it out with her over the phone. I’m going back to the lab to finish what I started.” The more I thought about it, the more certain I became. “How to kill a Re-Animus without a fifty-thousandgallonpool.”

  Amy spoke over my shoulder, almost giving me a heart attack. “Flashlights and syringes will not aid you against Ra-Ame, if she keeps her word. Did you not see the old one?”

  For once, it was my turn to be smug. “I did. I think what it calls strength, I call weakness. If that’s what an old Re-Animus looks like, I’m going to build a weapon to kill them all.”

  Brynner and Amy competed for “best surprised/shocked look.” Amy found her voice first. “Grace Roberts, how do you plan to do this?”

  Thirty-Three

  BRYNNER

  I prodded Grace for at least the hundredth time since we started our landing pattern to touch down in Seattle. “How?”

  Just like before, she shook her head. “I have to run a set of tests first.”

  The midnight streets let us through without delay, but we’d barely made it to BSI headquarters when she disappeared into the lab, following the guards transferring the Re-Animus corpse.

  And I had debriefings and re-briefings until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The last meeting was with Director Bismuth. I arrived to find Amy and Grace waiting.

  Director Bismuth stood at the head of the table, her arms behind her back. “I will not lie to you. I did not expect success on your mission. While I have utmost faith in you, Brynner, only one other man has killed a Re-Animus and survived to brag.”

  Amy snorted and shook her head, but kept her mouth shut. Director Bismuth glared at her for a moment before continuing. “After we broadcast news of your victory, teams in Los Angeles and Dallas banded together to fight the Re-Animus rampaging in their area using similar methods.”