by Jerry Hart
They nodded their understanding. Owen ran to the rear exit, hoping it would once again be clear. It was, so he climbed to the roof and grabbed the orb. Looking down, he saw the zombie crowd bunched together, trying to get into the gift shop in one big wave.
Noticing the Ferris wheel, Owen decided that would be a good place to draw the zombies. It was far away from the exit so the others could slip by behind the monsters’ backs.
Owen jumped onto the roof of the next building—a restaurant—and made his way effortlessly to the Ferris wheel. The zombies hadn’t noticed him yet. He jumped down onto the ground and ran as fast as he could. Stopping just in front of the wheel, he spun around to face the horde.
“Hey!” he shouted.
A few heads turned, but the horde continued their attack on the shop. Owen looked down at the orb, running his fingers over its surface, hoping to either find a way to catch the zombies’ attention with it or shut them down completely.
Suddenly a few more zombies noticed him, then a few more, and then all of them. Before Owen knew it, the entire crowd was charging him. He turned and started climbing the Ferris wheel with amazing speed.
The zombies started climbing with equal agility. Owen saw old men, women and children climbing like monkeys to get to him. His fascination with the sight caused him to slip on one of spokes and almost plummet to the ground. The orb nearly slipped from under his arm.
After regaining his balance, he continued to climb. The old wheel began to sway gently due to the increased weight on its one side. Owen reached the top and looked down. The zombies were still climbing fast.
Over by the gift shop, Nikki, Darlington and Curtis ran for the park exit. Nikki gave Owen a quick glance before departing.
Suddenly the wheel gave a violent lurch. Some of the zombies were lifting the wheel off of its support arm. Owen fell down into a car just below him. The entire wheel tilted from side to side as the zombies on the ground held it up. Just how strong were these things? It was like their strength was increasing.
A zombie child appeared at Owen’s car. It was a boy, no older than seven. He reached out to Owen, dark tears stained on his white cheeks.
“Huh?” the boy said in a horrible moan.
Owen pulled away from him just as the wheel gave its final lurch. The whole contraption fell to the ground in a horrible crash.
* * *
Branches scratched Curtis’s face as he ran through the dark woods. He heard footfalls behind him and assumed it was Nikki and her friend, but he didn’t dare look back. He cursed himself for wearing flip-flops instead of sneakers.
He could barely see where he was going; the moonlight wasn’t penetrating the canopy of trees. It had been a straight shot to the park, though, so he was fairly confident he was going the right way and that he would reach the street soon.
And that he did. Soil turned into asphalt as Curtis found himself in the practical ghost town. His red Chevy truck was parked in front of an old thrift shop. He turned toward the woods and waited for Nikki.
A short while passed, but no one emerged.
“Nikki?” he called.
Silence.
Curtis hopped from one foot to the other, anxious to be gone from this place. He waited another minute. No one. Nothing.
He ran for his truck and, once inside, sped off.
* * *
Owen was in considerable pain when he woke up. He had been thrown several yards from the Ferris wheel as it collapsed.
Standing up, he could see all of the pale zombies crushed beneath it. And then he realized something was missing. The orb. He looked around and found it near the collapsed wheel, a few inches away from one of the pinned zombies.
He walked over to it and, as he reached down, the zombie, a young blond girl, awoke and touched his hand. Owen jumped back in revolted surprise.
“Huh?” she asked, trying to remove herself from her position under the wheel.
Owen felt sorry for her. She didn’t appear to be in pain, but he knew it hadn’t been her fault, what had happened to her. None of these people had asked to be turned into brainless zombies.
And now most, if not all, were dead. The girl, who had been desperately trying to free herself, suddenly lay still on the ground. Owen assumed she had died. He spent the next minute checking the others to see if any of them had lived. None had.
After he was done, he went back into the gift shop and found D standing in a corner. His blue eyes weren’t glowing. Owen, not knowing anything about the robot’s power source, had shut it down earlier to conserve energy.
He turned it back on and dressed it in the long trench coat and hat he had stolen from Mr. Elfman, an elderly neighbor from Owen’s condo. After the robot was dressed, Owen ordered D to follow him into town.
* * *
Curtis waited in agitation at the first gas station he could find, hoping someone from that amusement park would show up like they said they would.
He had resisted the urge to just go straight home. He’d had enough of Baker. He’d had enough psychics telling him about dead friends. He’d had enough of Nikki’s weird-looking friend who looked more alien than human.
Curtis Merriman had had enough of pale-faced zombies saying “huh” over and over.
But there was something else. There was the blond kid who’d saved him from the zombies. He’d looked familiar to Curtis, but he couldn’t place him just yet.
Just then, headlights appeared in the distance and approached the tiny gas station at an alarming speed. Curtis stepped closer to his truck as the car, a silver Honda Civic, came to a dead stop next to him, kicking dirt up from the ground. He’d parked next to this car when he’d gone to see Nikki.
Curtis peeked into the car through the passenger-side window and saw a pair of bright blue eyes staring back at him. The window lowered and Curtis saw the shiny metal face the eyes belonged to.
He was staring at a robot. The surprises just kept coming. The robot was wearing a brown fedora and trench coat.
And now Curtis noticed the driver. It was the blonde from the park.
“Where’s Nikki?” he asked Curtis.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought they were with you,” the blonde said, a little worried.
“They were, but I lost them in the woods. I waited for them in town, but they never showed up.”
The blonde punched his steering wheel. “Damn her! I’ll bet she went back.”
“What do we do now? I’m not going back there, I’ll tell you that right now.”
The blonde sat there for a moment, thinking. Then, he said, “No, we’re not going back. I doubt any more zombies will show up there, though.”
“How can you be sure?” Curtis asked uneasily.
“They only showed up because of this.” Blondie held up a polished dark-red bowling ball.
“What the hell is that?”
“I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to get out of here. I think you should go home now.”
Curtis was about to agree when it suddenly hit him how he knew the guy.
“Do you know a girl named Alyssa Turner?”
The blonde flinched and his mouth hung open for a moment. Then, he said, “Yes. What about her?”
“Oh, nothing. I just realized I remembered you from somewhere. Your name is Owen, right?”
“Yeah. You’re Curtis, aren’t you? You’re friends with David Hernandez. I knew him, too.”
Now it was Curtis’s turn to flinch. This guy must have known about David’s death.
“Like I said,” Owen said after a moment’s silence, “you should go home. You’re not safe with me. Good luck and … I’m sorry. About everything.”
Curtis nodded and backed away from the car. Owen peeled out and sped down the lonely stretch of highway with his robot.
Tonight is so messed up, Curtis thought. And then he remembered what Nikki had told him when he met her and was told about Marco’s death.
He was murdered
by the same man who killed David, she’d said. But it was what she said next that struck him. In fact, there’s someone here I think you should talk to.
Had she meant Owen or the creepy-looking guy? If the latter, then Curtis would’ve just forgotten the whole thing and gone home. But something told him she had been referring to Owen.
Curtis hopped in his truck and followed the boy and his robot, and judging by the direction they were going, it looked like their destination would be San Sebastian.
CHAPTER 4
Patrick was grateful to be home. He closed the door to his apartment and sat down on his recliner. Toby, his black-and-white tabby cat, hopped into his lap. He patted him gently. After a hard day, coming home to him made it better.
The past twenty-four hours had been hellish. Finding the damaged SUV (which he now knew for a fact belonged to Alyssa Turner) had just been the start of it. That was where he also found little Toby, adopting him after finding out he’d belonged to murder victim David Hernandez. Then there was Daniel Hudson’s death, which was still unexplained.
The icing on the cake, however, had to be the parking garage that had collapsed a few blocks away from Daniel and Alyssa’s condo. When he and the other officers showed up to block off the area, they had been met by a few curious bystanders. These citizens, however, had been a strange bunch.
Then there was the old woman, the one who had attacked him in her apartment. That was strange by itself, but Patrick had the even stranger notion that the woman had been dead before he even showed up. That would mean he’d been attacked by a zombie…
That couldn’t be true, though. Could it?
Only in San Sebastian, folks, he thought with a nervous grin. Plus, Halloween’s a few weeks away.
He tried to put such troubling thoughts from his mind. His weariness aided in that task. And then he fell asleep.
* * *
Calhoun Street was only a block away. Owen parked as close as he could and he and D walked the rest of the way. Montleroy Estates, the condo that was his former home, had its own indoor garage, but it was difficult to get in and out of; Owen wanted a clear exit if he wound up needing to leave quickly.
He saw the cream-colored building that was Montleroy Estates. The place had been swarming with cops a day earlier. Not wanting to risk going through the lobby, Owen and the robot hopped the security gate that led into the garage. From there, they took an elevator to the top floor.
His door was blocked off by yellow police tape. He and D walked through it and entered their dark, cold abode. The place reeked of blood. Owen ran back out to the hallway. The memory of Daniel’s body, lying in a pool of his own blood, came rushing back to him, and it was overwhelming.
D stood just inside, his shiny blue eyes staring out at Owen. Owen took a deep breath; he was here for a reason, and he needed to prepare for the trip he was about to take. He had to get out of the city.
Owen stepped back inside.
After closing the door, the condo was plunged into darkness. Owen turned on a light. He went to the armory and immediately saw the white outline of Daniel’s body on the floor. There was no doubt that the police had confiscated all the weapons they could find the night they raided the place, but Owen knew about the tricks up Daniel’s sleeves.
Running to the far corner of the room, Owen lifted the carpet and saw a rectangular box sitting in a hole in the wood cut specifically for it. He lifted the box out of the floor and opened it. Inside were thirty Busters and a plastic bag full of trackers. Busters were midnight-blue baseball-sized bombs and the trackers were tiny white capsules with locator crystals inside that dissolved in liquids.
He took the whole box with him. On his way out of the armory, he grabbed a flashlight. Then he saw something small and blue lying on the floor. It was a Rejecter.
Daniel’s Rejecter.
The Rejecters were the red cousins to the Busters. They weren’t bombs so much as little balls of bottled-up energy waiting to be released. Not as deadly as the Busters, but still pretty dangerous. Owen picked it up and stared at it. It hadn’t been used yet. Since Owen had used his on Eric, and Chris on the brothers, that only left two. The one that was missing was Alyssa’s.
He ran upstairs to his room and grabbed a fresh change of clothes from his closet. After wearing the same thing for two days, he felt greasy. He also smelled pretty bad. He started the shower and hopped in. Feeling he could be discovered any second, he decided to make the shower short. When he was done, he put on a brown T-shirt and some jeans. Now he felt so much better.
He grabbed a backpack and dumped the contents of the box in there along with extra clothes. He then stuffed the orb into the pack, hoping the clothes would provide proper padding.
As Owen sat on his bed, he realized he was packing in order to go to a destination not yet known to him. Where could he possibly go? There was no way he was going back to Nikki’s, even if she herself had returned. He couldn’t bring himself to look upon the faces of the people he’d killed in the park.
Murderer, a voice in his head whispered.
Owen tried to tell himself that it wasn’t he who had killed them. It was the Ferris wheel. It had collapsed because of the zombies—they killed themselves.
It doesn’t matter, the voice told him. They weren’t the last. You’ll kill again and then claim it was an accident, or self-defense. You’ll keep blaming everyone but yourself.
Owen pushed the voice away and again thought about where he could go. He couldn’t stay here at the condo—it was a crime scene. Noticing how dark and quiet the place was, in contrast to how bright and noisy it used to be, brought on a sudden pain that he wasn’t prepared for at that very moment. He leaned forward, arms locked in front of his stomach, and cried. He cried loud and long, not caring if anyone heard.
After a few minutes, he stopped and wiped his eyes. He hadn’t cried like that in a long time. He felt a little better to have gotten some of that pent-up anxiety out his system, but after a moment, he was again faced with the question of where he could go.
Suddenly he thought of Cullen Matthews, his childhood best friend. Owen hadn’t talked to him in two years, ever since running away. He had always thought of contacting Cullen while here in San Sebastian, but he could never bring himself to actually do it. His brief stay with the Matthews had been such a strange affair; Owen barely remembered it. Everything was vague, as if he had been drunk the entire time.
And then he thought of his own home. The answer had been in front of him the entire time, but he’d chosen to ignore it.
He had to go back home.
Nikki told him his father had built the orb, which was hard to believe, but could also be true. If he wanted to find out the truth, he had to go back.
After a minute, he decided it was time to go back to his hometown of Birch. He zipped up the backpack and stood. He grabbed a gray hoodie from the floor before leaving his room. When he headed back downstairs, he saw something he didn’t expect to see. Standing in the living room, staring up at him, was Daniel Hudson.
And he was alive.
* * *
Doug Hudson stood in the living room of the condo he’d only visited once, back when his brother was still alive. The first thing he noticed, regrettably, was the puddle of blood in the room to his left. He could see it perfectly from where he stood. He was about to walk into the room when he heard footsteps. His heart quickened in fear.
On the stairs stood a blond-haired kid in a brown shirt and jeans, a black backpack slung over his shoulder. At first, Doug thought it was a squatter, trying to take up residence in a newly vacated piece of property.
But then the stranger became more familiar to him. Doug had seen him before. The one time he had visited the place, the blonde had been here.
His name was Owen.
Doug had come up with a plan to get as much information about his brother’s death as he could. Obviously the police knew nothing, and Doug refused to believe his brother was associated with ter
rorism.
The answers had to be at the place Daniel called home. Doug hadn’t been sure what to even look for, but he figured he’d know it when he saw it.
“Oh my god,” Owen muttered, fear etched on his face. “Daniel?”
“What happened to my brother?” Doug asked, ignoring Owen’s shocked appearance.
Owen went from shocked to confused. And then recognition dawned on him. “Doug?”
Doug nodded. He wasn’t sure what to feel at the moment. He had come to the condo angry, ready to place blame on anyone but his brother. Now, upon seeing Owen’s saddened expression, Doug felt pity for him. Daniel had been a pretty good judge of character, and he’d considered Owen and the others his friends.
“What happened to my brother?” Doug asked again, less angrily.
Owen slowly descended the stairs, meeting Doug at the bottom. “I’m so sorry,” Owen said. “He was murdered. A guy named Michael came in here and killed him. But I killed Michael.”
Doug was speechless. He wasn’t expecting him to be so blunt. He was expecting the kid to dance around the question, to answer his question with another question; perhaps not even answer it at all. But he did answer, and Doug believed him. He felt better and worse for it.
“You killed him?” Doug asked, causing Owen to look shocked and disgusted. “My brother’s murderer, I mean.”
Owen calmed down and nodded. “Yeah. At least, I think so. He looked dead. And it was really Chris who did it. Michael’s brother took his body and left before I could really tell. I’m sorry, Doug.”
Doug nodded and looked around the condo again. The destruction was significant: the massive hole in the wall in the room where his brother died; shattered glass from the windows; a hole in the ceiling (he could just barely see this from where he stood).
“What the hell happened?” Doug asked.
“A battle,” Owen said, looking around himself. “The crap really hit the fan once Chris and I got here.”
“Where is Chris?” Doug suddenly remembered the older brunette, Chris Weaver.