Cursing, David hauled the meat puppet up and half carried, half dragged him toward the pond of black sludge.
“God,” Charlie whispered. “He looks even worse than he did before.”
David, intent on his task, didn’t notice us. He hauled the puppet to the edge of the sludge pond, stood him up, and pushed him in. As soon as the puppet landed inside, the sludge heaved up around him and then ripped him to shreds as if the liquid were made of a million vicious blades. In seconds it was all over, and the sludge was still again, gleaming quiet and dark in the sun.
David was leaning forward on his knees, catching his breath, but he turned his head sharply toward the sludge as if it had said something to him, and then he stood up, squinting at us.
“Who’s there?” he yelled.
“It’s me,” Charlie called back. “I … I thought about what you said, and you’re right. It’s stupid to be on the losing side. I want to join y’all. And I got a present for the shadow.”
“Well, heyyy, how about that!” David grinned, looking as excited as a six-year-old on Christmas morning. His teeth were rotted gray stubs in his mouth, little tombstones in his bleeding gums. “I knew you’d come around! We got us some good times ahead, girlfriend. Why don’t you and your present come on down and let me take a look?”
We slowly walked toward David, my hands still on my head, Charlie’s rifle at my back. As we got closer, I saw that his head wasn’t shaved; the hair looked like it had mostly all fallen out except for some stray long greasy strands here and there. Even his eyebrows were gone. His eyes were a sickly yellow, and he didn’t look or smell like he’d bathed in months. His face was blotched with acne, and his bald genitals were crusty, pitted with chancres.
“Well, ain’t you a tasty-looking piece?” he asked me, his jaundiced eyes shining. “Too bad you’re a girl, but you look like you got some muscle in your bustle, so we can play a little make-believe. I bet you’re a whole lot more lively than what I got around here.”
David snapped his fingers, and there was a mass rustling in the trees and brush ringing the top of the garden. At least thirty meat puppets in various stages of dress and undress emerged and stood at attention. Most of them appeared to be captured ROTC cadets, and they were armed with axes and baseball bats.
Hoo boy. This could go badly.
“My very own gimp squad.” David laughed. “They do exactly what I tell ’em, but sometimes that gets a little boring, you know? So, hey, Charlie, thanks.”
“Sh-she’s for the shadow,” Charlie stammered, looking horrified.
“Aw, the shadow don’t mind sloppy seconds. That’s the deal, I always get first dibs.” Then his expression soured. “Well, Miko gets first dibs, but that ain’t gonna have to go on too much longer, ’specially not now that you’re here, Charlie.”
He beamed at her. “Good times, I’m telling you! We’ll bust on out of here with all the loot I got up at the house, drive to Vegas, live like gangstas!”
David suddenly turned toward the sludge pond like a dog that had been chain-jerked. “Aw. Seriously? … Fine.”
He turned back to Charlie, petulant as a kid who’d just been denied an ice cream cone. “The shadow wants to see her. Get her up on that ledge over there.”
Charlie poked me in the back with the barrel of her rifle, and I stepped toward the sludge pond, my heart hammering in my sweaty chest. At least with my jacket on over my bull-riding glove, David couldn’t see my fire, and with a little luck the shadow wouldn’t be able to sense it until it was too late.
Jessie … I heard the little-girl voice inside my head. It was just as creepy as Charlie had described. Tell me what you want, Jessie.
Licking my suddenly dry lips, I climbed up onto the pond’s ledge and stared down into the shiny blackness. Tried to blank out my thoughts, in case it had stronger telepathy than Charlie had suggested. I started to replay the lyrics to Beastie Boys songs in my head, over and over, no sleeping till Brooklyn, it was sabotage.
Come on, you can tell me, the shadow wheedled. I bet you don’t like that Miko much, do you? I don’t like her, either.
Suddenly, I had an image in my head of myself killing David, taking his head right off with one of the puppets’ axes, and taking his place. I wouldn’t become a diseased wreck like him. I was strong, so much stronger than the boy, and the shadow and I could defeat Miko together. And then we could rescue my men and leave the town. I could have anything I wanted, and with the shadow’s power, nobody could stop me.
It was a compelling vision, all right, and for two milliseconds I might have even believed it.
“I hate Miko with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns,” I whispered, crouching down on the ledge. The surface of the sludge was bulging slightly; I knew the shadow was right there below me. “But you know what?”
I whipped off my glove and plunged my flaming hand into the sludge, and as the shadow shrieked inside my head, I pulled us both into my hellement.
I was standing in my old bedroom, and before me was what looked like an overturned five-gallon bucket of raspberry jelly, only it sure didn’t smell like any fruit you’d want to eat. It didn’t have any visible eyes or mouth or any other features, but the thing shuddered as if it were startled, disoriented.
“I hate slimy, parasitic little devils like you a whole lot more,” I told it.
The jelly shrieked and whipped spiky pseudopods at my legs. I jumped backward onto the bed to dodge the swipe, rolled across the mattress, and landed on the other side. The jelly was sprouting pseudopods everywhere, the red tentacles shooting up to stick to the ceiling, the walls, lifting the boneless body up off the ground as the jelly separated in the middle, forming a toothy, noxious maw. Worse, the jelly was swelling, growing, apparently feeding off the dark energies that still irradiated the hellement.
“That was a nasty trick, bringing me here,” the jelly said in its little-girl voice. “I’m going to kill you for it.”
My sword and shield were by the dresser where I’d left them; I snatched them up barely in time to slash at a pair of pseudopods shooting at me from across the bed. The cut pseudopods retreated, whipping away, spraying me with ichor that sizzled painfully on my face and arms. The jelly was growing so quickly that in a few minutes it would surely suffocate me with its sheer bulk.
“If you kill me, how are you going to get out of here?” I yelled, trying to ignore the pain from my acid burns.
My question registered, and seemed to stymie it for just a minute. I quickly blinked through several gemviews with my ocularis, hoping I’d see something … and there it was: a pulsing heart in the middle of the gooey mass.
There was no time to waste. I launched myself back across the bed at the monster and rammed my left arm right into its soft body. Instantly my flesh was burning, my skin melting, and the creature was shrieking, whipping my back and arms with its pseudopods, and I knew I’d be dead in just a few seconds if I didn’t kill it. Right before the nerves in my hand died, I felt my fingers close on its nasty little heart and I gave a hard jerk, pulling it free. The pseudopods went slack, and the jelly fell to the floor with a tremendous splat.
I staggered backward into the dresser. My left hand was nearly skeletal, and the blue-black heart slipped from my fingers onto the floor. The organ sprouted centipede legs and started to scurry back to the jelly mass, presumably to regenerate the monster. I took careful aim with my sword and speared it right to the floorboards. The heart spasmed around the blade, then began to disintegrate into a nasty gray liquid. The jelly body, too, was decaying to a pool of sour blood on the floor.
Once the burst of adrenaline subsided, I realized that my left arm was in tremendous pain, and the acidic ichor was continuing to eat its way through my flesh and bone. Time to leave. I hopped over the puddle and opened the red portal door with my good hand.
The return to my body was disorienting and unpleasant. I couldn’t see; there was a thick, stinging liquid in my eyes. My face was
wet and sticky, and there was blood and something else in my mouth. I spat it out, just as a dozen death-memories hit me, and I spent the next few minutes being violently ill.
When I’d purged most of the blood and the memories along with it, I wiped my eyes with my arm—thank God, I was still wearing my dragonskins—and blinked, trying to see.
I was sickened but not even remotely surprised to see the mangled corpse of a meat puppet at my feet. But I wasn’t in the garden. I looked around; I’d run up into the trees, I supposed to find more puppets to kill. The garden below me was the scene of a massacre; it looked as though David had sent a half-dozen puppets after me at the sludge pond, but then I’d run around killing anything I could lay my hands on. No one was moving.
My heart dropped. Charlie. Where was Charlie? And then I saw her kneeling beside David. She looked like she was okay, or at least not badly injured. David’s jaundiced eyes were staring wide, and I could see a dark pool of blood under his head.
The exhaustion hit me all at once, and I had to lean against the trunk of a nearby pecan tree to keep from keeling over. I got my second wind after a moment or two, and I made my way down the path toward Charlie, my arms and legs shaking and muscles twitching and fever at full burn.
“Charlie,” I croaked. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, not replying. Tears were running down her cheeks as she stared at David’s body.
“Did I do that?” I asked.
She shook her head, then gently turned David’s face toward me so I could see the bullet wound in his temple. “I did, when he sicced the zombies on you.”
“I—I’m sorry you didn’t get to say something to him, before, you know …” I trailed off, then thought, Pal, where the heck are you?
“I’m over here, on this lily pad. I wasn’t sure how I could do any good; Charlie reached safety on her own and attempting to stop the Goad rampaging in your body seemed rather perilous even at my full size.”
Well, embiggen yourself, already … looks like we’ve got more corpse hauling to do.
She wiped her face on the back of her hand. “It’s okay. What was I gonna say, anyhow? ‘Sorry I brought this evil into your life’? ‘Sorry you liked the evil a whole lot better’n you ever liked me’? ‘Sorry you turned out to be a real freak, and yet part of me still loves you’? Shee-it. The bullet probably said everything that needed saying.”
“Do you want to bury him?” I asked.
“No.” She stood up slowly, still gazing down at his body. “He used to be the best friend I’ve ever had … but all these other guys? They were someone’s best friends, too. Someone’s sons and maybe a few of them were someone’s daddies. Whatever we do for David, we do for all of them. And I ain’t got the strength to dig all those graves, do you?”
“Tell her we can give all of them a proper burial,” Pal said. “I know a spell we can use …”
chapter
twenty-nine
Showdown
I was completely wrung out by the time we got back to campus. After a couple of cadets hosed the blood off me in the courtyard, it took my last bit of energy to go upstairs, take a hot shower, change into one of the stupid pizza shirts to sleep in, and collapse into the restraint chair. I was out before Pal finished strapping me in.
A pounding at the door woke me as the morning’s first light was streaming through the blinds. The sound hurt my aching head.
Pal, get that, would you?
I forced open my blurry, sticky eyes and watched him open the door. Charlie was standing there in tiger-stripe fatigues, her AK-47 locked and loaded. She looked pale and scared and excited.
“Miko’s super pissed that we cut off her supply,” Charlie said. “We just got word from the scouts that there are thousands of meat puppets coming to attack campus; they’ll be here in less than an hour. She had way more zombies in reserve than anyone knew. We’ve got the guns, but we’re pretty severely outnumbered. I heard some people talking like maybe we don’t have enough ammunition. Captain Flynn—he’s in command now—is mobilizing everyone and having them report for battle.”
While she spoke, Pal came over to me and undid my head restraints and pulled out the mouthpiece so I could reply.
“Am I supposed to report for battle, too?” I asked, trying to work the stiffness out of my jaw.
She shook her head. “Well, not here, anyway. Sara told me to tell you that whatever y’all are planning to do to attack Miko, y’all best get to doing it pretty soon. The only thing is, I can’t come with y’all, I gotta stay here. Captain’s orders.” Her expression darkened. “And Sara said I’d just get myself killed, anyhow.”
Charlie reached into her sling and pulled out two MREs sealed in tan plastic. She tossed them onto the bed. “That’s y’all’s food for today; they shut down the cafeteria and gave guns to all the cooks. I got you a vegetarian one, and him a meat one.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Did Sara happen to say where I’m supposed to find Miko?”
“Oh. Yeah. She says the cats say that Miko’s base is in the Saguaro Hotel downtown. It’s hard to miss; it’s the tallest building in the whole city.”
She shuffled her feet awkwardly. “Hey, I’ve got to go. I feel like I should give you a hug or something. But that might be kinda weird with you in that chair.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“So, um … bye? I hope I see you around later?”
“Me, too,” I replied. “Fight good. Stay safe.”
Charlie gave me a little wave, then hurried away toward the elevators. Pal freed me from the chair, and I stumbled into the bathroom to pee and splash some cold water on my face.
“I’m so not ready for this,” I croaked to Pal as I rested my forehead against the cool edge of the sink. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a whole fleet of Greyhounds. And then set on fire. God knows what other crap I got infected with yesterday.”
Pal picked up his MRE. “Well, eat some food and take your medicine; perhaps that will help you feel a bit better?”
“I guess it can’t hurt.” I found my Leatherman tool and opened up the veggie MRE, spreading the contents on the cot. The thought of eating cold cheese tortellini for breakfast made my stomach churn, but the package also had chunky peanut butter and crackers and, even better, a chocolate Soldier Fuel bar. I ate the energy bar with a bottle of water and took my antibiotics and ibuprofen. Then waited to see if the food and medicine would stay down.
To my joy, they did.
“I took the liberty of charm-cleaning and drying your clothing after you fell asleep,” Pal told me as he licked clean the inside of his packet of pot roast. “The hose-down left the leather quite damp, and your T-shirt seemed … unsanitary.”
“Thanks, Pal.” I stretched, trying to unwind my knotted back muscles. “Well, let me get dressed, and let’s do this thing.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of another day in the hot riding helmet, so I had Pal clean it and then I traded it to a girl down the hall for her straw cowboy hat. She seemed happy to have something solid to wear into the impending battle. Evidently, combat and tactical helmets were in relatively short supply on campus.
Once we were airborne, our destination was dead easy to find; it was the tallest structure in the city by at least twenty floors. Furthermore, the pale brick tower had the letters SAGUARO HOTEL spelled out in tall steel letters on top of its red, Mission-style hipped tile roof. I was pretty sure anyone within fifteen miles could spot the building.
Once we got closer, I could see a crowd milling at the base of the hotel.
“Jesus, she didn’t even send all the puppets she’s got to campus,” I marveled to Pal. Miko had certainly made serious headway on her two hundred thousand souls during her reign in Cuchillo.
I spotted an alleyway a block from the hotel that was clear of puppets. “Land us over there, behind that diner.”
Pal descended quickly but landed gently beside a green Dumpster. “How are we going to get through that crowd?�
��
“My shotgun and your charm,” I replied. “But maybe we won’t have to use either. Miko did seem like she wanted a face-to-face with me.”
Pal trotted out of the alleyway into the street in front of the hotel, expecting a fight. But the festering mob of meat puppets simply shambled aside as I rode Pal toward the stark white columns and broad marble steps of the hotel. There had to be a thousand bodies in the stinking brown sea parting before us. My skull was pounding again, the heat and hard West Texas sun nearly unbearable. I tipped my straw cowboy hat forward in a futile attempt to get some of the weak breeze on the back of my head.
And in a blink, Miko was suddenly there on the steps, Cooper and the Warlock strung up naked and sunburned on rough-hewn mesquite crosses to either side of her. As a small mercy, their limbs had been tied, not nailed, to the twisted branches. Their heads hung forward, insensible, as their chests shuddered to pull in shallow breaths.
The devil kitten in my saddlebag was purring loudly.
You ready for this? I asked Pal.
“Ready for a slow, bloody, excruciating death followed by eternal damnation? Of course. What fun.”
Ignoring his sarcasm, I drew my pistol-grip Mossberg shotgun and racked a cartridge into the chamber.
“Give ’em back, Miko!” My voice was tight, shaky, a mouse’s outraged squeak at a lion.
She smiled at me, and all at once her beauty and power hit me like a velvet sledgehammer. If I’d been standing I would have fallen to my knees. I hoped I wasn’t getting wet; Pal would know and it would be a sprinkle of embarrassment on top of the disaster sundae I’d brought to our table.
“You know what I want,” she whispered, her voice floating easily over the distance between us. “Give yourself to me, and your men shall go free.”
A tiny part of me—the part that was exhausted, weary of fighting, weary of running—wondered if giving my body and soul to her would really be such a bad thing. It was the same part that had entertained the shadow’s vision of my future with it. I kicked that part of myself in the ass and chased it from my mind.
Shotgun Sorceress Page 25