“Probably not. Unless someone thawed the soil.” Ambrose was suddenly beside me, laying a hand on my hunched shoulders. His warmth helped still my shaking body.
“Could that be done?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps with repeated lightning strikes.”
As if receiving its cue, eye-abrading light strobed against the windows and a whole series of thunder bursts rolled over the house, making the walls tremble. I could feel the power in my fillings, and my mouth flooded with a horrible metallic taste.
I began to shudder again. The Psalm 91 suddenly popped into my head and I heard myself say: “ ‘You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor the destructors that lay waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you…. ’”
“Amen, amen, amen. Now come guard the door,” Ambrose said. His voice was bracing but his hand dropped away from me.
“Okay…Ambrose?” I came up behind him. Unable to stop myself, I snuggled into his back. I was still trembling. That made me feel ashamed, but I couldn’t stop.
“What is it?” he asked. His voice was calm and patient.
“I dreamed of my mom. That she was a zombie. Saint Germain was with her and she killed me.” This last part I could barely whisper.
“Your parents are buried in that cemetery?” His voice remained calm, but I knew he understood my growing horror without me speaking it.
“Yes.”
He turned and both arms came around me. We were careful with the guns but he held me tight and I felt him kiss my hair. Instantly I calmed, my heart slowing to a normal pace. It’ll be okay, I told myself. Ambrose will protect us. Somehow he’ll make this go away.
“Your mother won’t kill you,” he promised. “I’m here and I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.” He didn’t say that she wouldn’t get out of her grave, though. Ambrose didn’t make promises he knew he couldn’t keep. “Are you ready?”
Ready? To open the door and maybe see my mother as a killer zombie?
“Hell, no,” I said. “But let’s do it anyway.”
“That’s my girl,” he said approvingly. Ambrose turned away. And then time seemed to almost stop.
I know now that there were two kinds of time. One is the stuff that makes up days and nights. You mark it with minutes and hours on a watch or a clock, or by weeks and months on a calendar. That’s normal time where most of us live.
Then there is the other kind of time, the kind that goes at once too swiftly and also too slowly for the consulting of timepieces. It is the variety that rushes at you in moments of peril. Flight-or-fight moments. That’s where we were that night. The body understands this, even if it has never encountered it before, and I was sure that, like me, Ambrose was recalibrating to this faster internal stopwatch, sending adrenaline to his muscles, speeding up his heart so he was prepared for the shift into battle time where normal hesitation could lead to death.
Another moment and he was ready. And since he dragged me along with him, I was too—at least as ready as I could be given my fragile body and lack of experience. It could have been worse, but a dark and dangerous part of my personality, dormant until I met Ambrose, awoke in the face of this new threat and prepared itself for whatever horror I would have to face. That included my mother, if she was out there.
I checked my revolver, making sure it was loaded. Ambrose cleared his throat and time started again, seconds snapping into battle rhythm.
He said, “I discovered long ago that I was willing to lose my life in combat, but not my nerve. Not my honor. That’s why we will do this thing—and do it fully—no matter how terrified or sickened we may be.”
Translation: We would do this no matter how terrified and sickened I might be. He was speaking to me, testing my soul. And he was right. This had to be done. Especially if my mother really was out there. Saint Germain could not be allowed to win. Everything I had told myself in Fiji remained true; he absolutely had to be stopped. At any price.
“Let’s go.” It cost me to say that, but I managed it and in a calm voice that almost matched Ambrose’s.
Shotgun ready, he unlatched the door and stepped swiftly onto the covered porch. Not hesitating, except in my mind, I stepped right after him, the Colt pointing safely away from Ambrose but ready to be fired at anything that moved.
Gallows, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven. In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.
Nihilist, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoy.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
With what anguish of mind I remember my childhood, Recalled in the light of a knowledge since gained; The malarious farm, the wet, fungus grown wildwood, The chills then contracted that since have remained.
—Ambrose Bierce
Chapter Fourteen
I made myself step onto the icebox porch, and looked into the supernatural storm that frightened me almost as much as Saint Germain himself. It was like the gale on the island but so much fiercer and colder. The wind also carried a smell of rot and sulfur that had me gagging. Could it be that it was stronger because the real Saint Germain was near?
Go back! We’ll die out here, whimpered the part of me that feared the storm.
We’ll die if we stay inside and pretend nothing is wrong, answered the part of me that feared Saint Germain.
And anyway, I wasn’t letting Ambrose face this on his own. Our chances of survival were better if we stayed together. I’d watched monster movies. I knew how these things worked.
Lightning hit the yard a few feet from our car. The porch shook as it rattled the ground, and an expanse of loosely woven icy crystals immediately peeled off the slate roof and slid down like the cold blade of an icy guillotine between Ambrose and me, just missing my outstretched hand that held the revolver. I flinched back from the crashing ice, stumbling on the doormat now sheeted with unnaturally large spikes of frozen water. I noticed that the stone steps were also covered in what looked like miniature stalagmites thrusting up from the ground. I told myself it was just hoarfrost, but I didn’t believe it.
I stepped sideways so I could see Ambrose but refused to leave the comparative warmth of the doorway. The final rush of falling ice hit the granite steps and came apart with a soft shattering sound.
This was just snow falling off the roof, jarred loose by lightning. Nothing more. Ambrose, with his keen hearing, hadn’t even flinched. Saint Germain wasn’t up there waiting to pounce. I had nothing to fear.
And then the world got darker and I realized that what few lights had been on in the houses to the north of us were gone.
Hands trembling, I kept my gun raised and my eyes watching the trees and shrubbery while Ambrose circled the car. It seemed to be intact, but the snow had reached all the way to the doors. It would be even deeper out in the street.
Saying nothing, Ambrose turned from our rental and looked at me. He jerked his head toward the road and I understood that he was going to see if there were any tracks leading up to the house from the street.
I nodded, wanting badly to follow him, but knowing that the cold would probably do something bad to my heart—and what Ambrose didn’t need was to be giving me first aid if we were about to be overrun with zombies.
Ambrose ghosted into the trees. I wouldn’t have known where he had gone except for the vapor trail he left behind. In spite of the heat at my back, I shivered violently as I watched the ghostly tail slowly dissipate. Lightning was illuminating the horizon again and the wind cut like an ice dagger, tearing through my clothes and into my skin, trying to find my heart. It seemed Mother Nature was cooperating enthusiastically with Saint Germain and making a serious attempt to kill me.
The gun was so cold. I wondered if it was possible for the Colt to f
reeze to my hand. That would be bad, but I refused to let go or step back inside the house. I couldn’t see much in the dark and snow but I could still hear.
A plane passed high overhead, its tiny line of windows cheerily alight and silhouetting a small crowd of heads. I had the foolish impulse to rush out into the open, waving my arms and screaming at them for help. But we would never be seen or heard by anyone in the plane. We would be lucky if the pilot noticed that Bar Harbor was dark and said something to the control tower in Bangor. And even if they did report something, it would likely be dawn before any rescue or utilities people were dispatched to investigate.
Looking away from the plane, I strained to hear any sound, but it was hard with my blood swishing in my ears and my heart thundering ever louder and increasingly more irregularly. I had to squint my eyes because the brutal cold was making them tear.
Then the bad thing happened. Ambrose discharged the shotgun. Ambrose wasn’t careless, and he had proven he could handle zombies in twos and threes without using a gun. There was only one reason that he would resort to gunfire: something more dangerous.
Though driven by panic, I moved slowly into the yard, following in Ambrose’s tracks. I had no choice. The storm had suddenly become aware of me and shifted to blow directly into my face, and the stone stairs were slick and dangerous with their icy daggers. These tiny hoarfrost knives of the assault were driven hard and almost parallel to the ground. The bitter airstream and stinging snow left me nearly blind as I sank to my knees and then crawled into the garden, trying to make myself small. Hoarfrost stabbed my hands, and I pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my palms in an effort to protect my skin. It helped but I bled anyway, leaving dark patches in the snow, a track that anyone could follow.
I headed for the trees, trying to follow Ambrose’s path, praying that he had broken a wide trail through the snow and that the foliage would offer some shelter from the gale. Crawling into the minimal protection of dark wood, I relied mainly upon the diminishing feeling in my ungloved hands to tell me if I was straying from the trail Ambrose had left.
The shotgun continued to sound. Bang! Bang! And then a pause while he reloaded. It was an older model and carried only two shots. I wondered how much ammo he had managed to stuff in his pockets.
I crawled faster, breath grinding in and out of my lungs like broken glass as my heart failed to carry the needed oxygen to my brain and muscles. The world began to dim, but I managed to find my way to the road and the dark shape that was Ambrose. Head tucked down, I made the final push, clambered up the side of the ditch, and as though stepping through a waterfall, I finally found a safe place at the back of Ambrose’s legs. I took a moment to gasp a few breaths of ice air.
It was easy then to see what we faced. The storm, perhaps at Ambrose’s bidding, had parted and was blowing around them and us, leaving an unobstructed view of the road and what blocked it. None of the shambling horrors coming our way were recently dead, but most were still partly fleshy and able to cause harm. The lightning that had freed them from their graves and surrounded them with an eerie silver light had failed to completely thaw them, and they staggered with stiff limbs like Frankenstein monsters. Their gray faces were frozen and bristling with spikes of hoarfrost and clotted earth. Their frozen vocal chords crackled and popped as they moaned. At the rear of the horde I thought I saw a figure in black, a hard shadow barely discernable from the night around us.
Unable to help myself, I scanned their faces, looking for the one. Her. My mother. And I was not surprised when I found it. But what was infinitely worse than my dream—and for some damn reason completely unexpected—was to see my father there too.
The mewling sound I made was startling enough to draw Ambrose’s attention. Using his body for support, I dragged myself to my feet and pointed the Colt at my mother. I heard my father’s voice: Two hands, girl! Aim carefully and squeeze the trigger slowly. Realign after every shot. Don’t just keep pulling the trigger. You don’t want to blow your own head off.
She was wearing her wedding gown I had chosen for her at the undertaker’s suggestion, and what was left of her hair was in that long braid she had always favored. The rest was…horrible. She had no lips, no nose or eyes. Her flesh about the gown was also burnt, and her neck was broken. The damage was probably from the plane crash and I understood why we hadn’t been able to have an open-casket funeral. To me, she looked more dead than the others. And more evil. Maybe that made it easy for me to pull the trigger. I put bullet after bullet into her. Only at the second did I remember that I also had to shoot the heart as well as the head and lowered the revolver a fraction to shoot again.
The recoil must have hurt, but I was too frozen to feel. I did notice my father’s corpse turning toward my mother and then swinging back to look at me. I say look, but he was missing his eyes. Nevertheless, I believed then and now that he knew it was me who shot her.
Life can be—in fact, almost always is—hard. In some ways I had a leg up on most people who had parents who protected them from this knowledge until they were grown and forced to finally care for themselves. I’d had to face the difficult and even the impossible from a very young age. But this was beyond what even my mind could withstand, and I knew I couldn’t pull the trigger again, even if it meant that my father killed me.
“Shoot him, Ambrose,” I said, my voice cracking. “Shoot him right now!”
Ambrose must have seen what had happened and guessed who these people were, because though other zombies were closer, the next shotgun blasts took off most of my father’s head and drilled through his heart. While he did that, I took aim at the next closest zombies and pulled the trigger of the Colt until it was spent. I felt no guilt at all. Actually, I felt nothing.
“I’m out of shells,” he said. “You?”
“I’m empty.” And I was empty in so many ways. The Colt and I were both done. I found myself taking a head count as Ambrose pulled me backward. Twenty-eight zombies left. Thirteen on the ground.
“Too many to fight unarmed…. Is there any more ammo at the house?” Ambrose’s voice was calm.
“I don’t know. Maybe in the garage.”
“Go back and look. Take this knife.” We were both so composed as he pressed the weapon into my free hand. Ambrose was calm because he is always self-possessed and me because my world was going black. This time I didn’t fight it. If I died I wouldn’t have to see what we had done, wouldn’t have to drag my mother’s corpse into some bonfire and burn it while it twitched and moaned. And I wouldn’t know if Ambrose failed and we were eaten by zombies.
“Sorry.” My legs folded and I sat down in the snow. I think it is to my credit that I didn’t drop my gun or knife. “No can do.”
Ambrose touched my head in a fleeting caress. “All right. Then we do it the hard way.” He dropped the shotgun and took a step away from me. “Don’t look. And for God’s sake don’t touch me.”
But, of course, I did look. My vision was fading, so that might account for why I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first. Outnumbered, out of bullets and—in my case—literally out of breath, Ambrose did what he had to do to save us. He shifted. I heard a noise as every joint in his body popped and I was sprayed with a hot mist of something that might have been blood.
In seconds he had bounded away, leaving behind some torn clothing and what looked like an animal-shaped shadow on the ground. I fell sideways into the crackling snow and watched as a wolf—a grizzly-bear-sized wolf—laid into the zombies. Claws slashed, heads and entrails flew. It was unparalleled savagery, and yet the zombies kept coming. Not all of them headed for Ambrose either.
While I might have been ready to freeze to death, I found that when push came to shove, I was utterly unwilling to be eaten by former friends and neighbors. Forcing air into my lungs, I tried crawling for the ditch at the side of the road, thinking that maybe I could hide.
Stupidly, I paused at the gully’s edge to look back at Ambrose. A zombie had nea
rly reached me. I recognized him. He was our former sheriff, Douglas Fields. They’d buried him in his uniform and he still had a star pinned to his rotting shirt. I did a second stupid thing, I wasted time and breath emitting a small high scream as Douglas grabbed my leg, and then I toppled all the way onto my back in the ditch, pulling Douglas with me.
My clothes were thick but his teeth and jaws were still intact and I could feel the bite on my shoulder. I screamed again and tried to roll into a ball so he couldn’t get my throat. My attempts to stab him were feeble.
This time, aid arrived. Ambrose was suddenly there, another zombie riding on his back, but his claws were slashing and Sheriff Fields was immediately missing his head. Unfortunately, though I was distracted by the former lawman’s still-thrashing body spasming on top of mine, I could feel Ambrose’s talons doing what the zombie’s teeth had not. His claws laid open my arm and back, cutting through the cloth like butter. Blood poured over me in a warm blanket.
I saw the shadow again, the thing that moved like a ghost but that had some substance. It seemed to be stalking Ambrose. Not sure why, but relying on instinct, I reached out with the knife and jabbed it through what would be the thing’s feet. It whipped about like a snake for a moment or two and then disappeared completely, leaving me to wonder if I had suffered a hallucination.
I saw no more of the fight after that and am not certain how long it went on. Thank God for the cold and the stilling of the wind, because the smell would have been disabling otherwise. As it was, I turned my face into the painful snow and tried to make a small safe place for my nose. I could feel blood trickling down my side but was too weak to try to staunch it.
A horrible snarl sounded nearby, and Douglas’s twitching body was dragged off of me. There was more snarling and tearing.
“Ambrose?” I called weakly. “Are you okay?”
The snarling stopped.
A moment later, an animal growled in my ear, something that sounded like my name. I turned my head and looked at Ambrose. His muzzle was bloody and full of fangs, his jaws were covered in gore and his body trembled.
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