“So? Who gives a rat's ass?” Chimney asked dismissively. It wasn't as if you couldn't just kill everything that moved as a solution. That was always his solution.
“You will, because that kid's going to know where all the dead are.”
“Where? Which dead?” McKenzie asked, hearing the latest bit of their conversation.
“All,” Jeffrey answered.
“The world?” McKenzie asked, his gaze seeking and finding a kid that looked like every other fifteen year-old.
“Bullshit, Parker,” Smoker said with flat indifference.
“Mark my words. That kid will be the messiah to the dead. And there are much more of them than the living. Think about it, dipshit.”
Parker stalked off, brushing past the Cloak.
Darrell the Cloak had sweat running down his face as Smoker came by in a shroud of nicotine perfume. “Don't let that go until we're all out of their line of sight.”
The Cloak nodded, his limbs shaking. It was always beyond his skill level to cloak this many. He looked around him, barely breathing, as the last of the mundane assassins passed out of the building, Parker at the lead, the only paranormal.
He made sure he cloaked Parker the longest.
He was the scariest of them all. Darrell didn't want to get killed.
Then be raised by Jeffrey Parker as one of his undead slaves.
Who would?
The field of invisible energy shivered under the fist of his internal command, a bone-crusher headache starting up from overusing the muscle to cloak six agents. It was always harder to cloak paranormals, Darrell didn't know why. He was glad Parker was the only one.
Eff it... he let the shielding cloak fall away with a great sigh. A wave of intense relief came over Darrell when he no longer clutched onto what felt like a sheet of heavy glass his sweaty grip could no longer hold, threatening to shatter over his head at the wrong moment.
Not that there was a right one.
He walked off, leaving Kent Middle School behind.
Jade LeClerc felt a ripple like a hiccup in the air, and suddenly there were emotional signatures that bleeped into existence that hadn't been there a moment before. She trailed off with what she'd been discussing with Sophie, looking around frantically, seeing nothing.
What had that been?
Because she felt it; six new people. People with intense emotions. One had seemed vaguely familiar in a way she couldn't put her finger on.
Weird. It felt like being covered with slime.
She forgot all about it when Caleb came back from his locker with his pulse-reader.
Gawd, he was so hot. She moistened her lips and purposely made an expression of casualness come over her face. What if he didn't like her? Jade was suddenly nervous, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Like when he found out about her dad. When he realized that she wasn't really very good. Her self-doubts rolled around underneath her skin like a miserable itch that could never be scratched.
Then he smiled at her, a piece of rich brown hair falling over eyes just slightly darker and she suddenly knew it'd be okay.
Caleb Hart inspired confidence.
God knew, she could use some of that.
****
1929
Clyde shifted, wincing at the pulling it caused on his abused knuckles. Didn't matter that he'd worn gloves. In the end, the softened skin had sloughed off like melting wax off a candle. They'd wrapped his hands at the hospital but it'd be a week before they were perfect. He gritted his teeth through it, shifting smoothly into third gear, the crank churning loudly.
They were approaching the last wooden bridge in the state, it crossed the great Puyallup River. At one time there had been towering Douglas Fir trees that hugged the swirling depths when his father was a boy. But the stewards of that long ago forest fell to progress.
To farms like the one he cultivated.
It was sad in a way, Clyde thought.
Clyde welcomed it when Maggie broke his contemplative silence. “Remember what the doctor said about exertion, Clyde,” her voice filled with solemn worry with a dash of reprimand.
She knew him too well.
“Yes, Dear Heart,” Clyde said, digging his fingers slightly into her stocking-encased thigh, her small gasp was a musical delight to his ears. When he turned to look upon her, high color bloomed delicately on her cheekbones, her eyes sparkled with knowledge borne from experience.
Their shared chemistry swirled between them like a drug they'd just discovered.
One they could use together.
His only warning was the widening of her eyes. He'd only taken his eyes off the road for a second.
“Clyde!” Maggie screamed, “look ahead!”
He did, slamming his stiff wheel to the left as he tore the car's shifter into neutral, killing the engine.
They stared for a handful of heartbeats at what was before them.
Clyde swung out of the body of the cab, using the door as a handle. His eyes sought Maggie's. “I have to, Maggie.”
A million thoughts went through his head: the money from the fight in the baggage compartment of the car, his intended strapped safely inside said vehicle, their babe tucked inside the sanctuary of her womb.
His eyes slid to the sight in front of him.
Clyde turned away from Maggie with an effort that was physically painful.
The smoldering bus sat, balanced as if on a teeter-totter, the nose hanging over the guardrails.
Children's hands lay flat against glass that wouldn't open.
Clyde didn't know it then, but that safety feature would not come into play until he lived again.
For now, their noses pressed against glass that held them prisoner in a bus that was ready to plunge into the icy river below.
Clyde ran, rolling up his sleeves as he did. The light headache was the only warning that anyone would have been a better candidate to rescue a busload of children than he.
Anyone that hadn't just lived through a fight with Jack Dempsey.
And won.
The bus teetered forward and with a screeching of metal against wood it fell into the murk of a river Clyde had fished in when he was a boy. The gentle branches of that time caressing the water alongside his pole while offering shade to his catch.
Clyde dove in after the screaming children, the water slapping his body with freezing pain when he speared the surface.
He could hear his Maggie screaming in the background as he used his momentum to propel his body into the depths after the retreating bus.
Her voice faded as the water pressed over the top of him like a watery coffin.
*
Maggie gripped the rail, the one that wasn't broken and watched her brave Clyde slip into the water like the perfect athlete he was. She couldn't watch him risk himself.
She did anyway.
The keys to the Buick were clutched in her hand.
There!
He popped out of the water, strong strokes bringing two children by the scruff of their necks. He laid them on shore and swept back under.
Clyde dipped down four more times.
Maggie counted the wet heads.
Eight.
She watched Clyde's chest heave with absolute exhaustion, hypothermia taking hold, his lips blue, skin taking on an ashen edge. He put his face to the sun as he swept forward again and his eyes caught hers as he plunged back in, his arm arcing once as it knifed the surface to slide into the depths again.
A horrible premonition swept over Maggie and she shuddered as hot sunlight beat down on her, the chill of the feeling sinking into her bones.
“No!” she shouted as warning to Clyde.
His eyes flashed at hers and were gone.
Maggie waited for Clyde to return to the surface.
She watched as the seconds became minutes, as the water quieted where he had been, the bus-gone.
Maggie screamed as men from an ambulance raced down the wood planks of the bridge.
“Save him!” she screamed at no one and everyone.
Maggie couldn't swim. But even if she could have, Clyde's look had been clear.
Do not endanger yourself.
Or their unborn child.
Clyde looked up from the bottom of the river, the sun a great ball of pale iridescence as shadows formed on the water's surface and came for him. Floating limbs of snakelike black latched onto his arms as he felt who he was... who he had been:
Leave.
Clyde felt heat and rhythmic pressure on his chest.
He felt regret like a lead weight which pressed down on his chest.
Then there was nothing.
And everything.
His last conscious thought as a human was how much he wished to be with Maggie. He would have done anything to remain.
But now another place beckoned. It appealed to Clyde but for reasons he could not have fathomed.
He hung there in the balance of the world he had lived in and the one which stood as invitation, finally slipping over.
*
2025
The chopper swept down over Clemens Cemetery, the teens discovering all the wonders of an illicit graveyard and truly haunted house below.
Curious bastards, Jeffrey thought, not unkindly. Had he been allowed a normal childhood, he might have been the exploring type.
As it was, he had been in the tender care of a government spook shop who had no name. His parents had been people like Chimney and McKenzie. Their discipline running abnormal lines:
Sit, stay, roll over... play dead. Or... we kill your zombies. They'd been using his undead like cannon fodder for almost ten years. He was in the middle of his twenties and had never loved anyone. His life was not normal. And Caleb Hart's would not be either.
Jeffrey was tasked with Caleb Hart's acquisition, but he wouldn't be a part of his manipulation. The challenge would be to make sure his colleagues didn't get even a faint whiff of his intentions or he couldn't help the boy.
Parker looked down from the soundless chopper and had a pang of nostalgia for the boy he might have been.
In another life, another time.
Now it was Caleb Hart's life. And he'd be damned if that'd be fucked six ways to Sunday.
Not on his watch.
He observed his people leak down the ropes like oil on water and the kids begin to respond.
This would be the theatrical performance of his career and he wasn't about to blow it.
Parker leapt out of the chopper, facing off with a power that was in harmony with his own.
His feet touched down and the death sang to him for release.
Jeffrey ignored them, his eyes finding Caleb's as he worked his way between the gravestones toward the young necromancer.
*
Brandt caught up with Kyle in the hall and plucked his sleeve. Kyle turned and they exchanged a heated glance.
“I've got it,” Brandt said in a low voice, showing a sliver of the white cap of the pill bottle to Kyle.
Hart nodded. “Thanks... I don't know what we'd do if...”
“I understand. It's sure a helluva different situation than when we began. Who was to know...” Brandt's revelation died on his lips at the sight of Kyle's brows jacked down like a brick over his eyes.
“Okay, cool it.”
Kyle frowned harder, if possible. “I know they're listening.”
Brandt ran a hand through his long hair, finally clasping it in a messy ponytail on the back of his head. “Paranoid-much, pal.”
Kyle nodded. “Didn't used to be.”
They walked to the outside in unspoken agreement.
Standing beneath the shade of a lone outcrop of trees they continued. “Who would know your kid would ping AFTD. Seriously?” Brandt stared at him for another heartbeat and said, “You think they're going to what? Use him?”
“Maybe,” Kyle looked at him. “Remember when those government men showed up? Asking questions about Pulse?”
Brandt nodded, knowing there would be a point coming. With Hart, there always was.
“Caleb's seen them hanging around the school.”
“What, before the AP Testing?”
Kyle nodded.
“Well... that makes things dicey. You know they funded the whole nut here, Kyle.”
“I know and I don't much care. This is my son. He's not going to be some...” he whipped his palm around, “experiment.” Kyle's eyes flashed. “If I didn't know better...” Kyle began and Brandt smirked.
“But ya do.”
Kyle nodded. “Yes, I do. If I didn't know better I'd say the Prime Booster had been rigged.”
“Who'd want to juice your kid with such a weird ability?”
Hart shook his head. Damned if he knew. When he could puzzle through the answer, he'd sleep better. As it was, that wasn't happening. Insomnia had become his reluctant companion.
“These will dampen him chemically,” Brandt captured his eyes and held them, “but... it will not last and it might make him higher than a damn kite. Half dose him, Hart.”
Kyle nodded.
AP Testing loomed large in the a.m. He felt so damn bad for Caleb. Couldn't he have had something that was easier to manipulate? Controlling the dead? Raising cadavers? It was going to be a life challenge. And right in the middle of puberty.
Kyle Hart didn't have many regrets. But in this case he wanted a Do Over.
Like yesterday.
He stuffed the pills in his pulse top carrier and made his way to the house.
Sometimes decisions were based on making the best choice amongst bad ones.
The worst part of it all was he felt that it wouldn't be the first time.
*
Parker called in Chimney after the teens scattered and he was left with a zombie that wasn't his... one that had been made from the energy and life force of one of his agents.
Jeffrey didn't know it then but he'd be in a coma for the next month.
Chimney smoked. He stood, surveying the mess of the graveyard and gave Parker a critical eye. They stood in bloated silence for several minutes and finally Smoker said, “Couldn't get the kid?”
“No,” Parker said.
“What in the Sam Hill is that?” he pointed a finger at the zombie cum soldier.
Parker shrugged. He didn't know but someday, it would want Caleb. Its dead eyes found Jeffrey's and moved on without interest.
Searching, always searching.
For its real master.
A kid that wasn't fifteen for a couple of months.
Fucking splendid.
Chimney slowly grinned. “That thing out there is Hart's creature?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, fuck me,” Smoker said, taking a drag.
Jeffrey stared at the red ember glowing softly at the tip, wanting to smash it down his throat.
Chimney looked at him. “You know, you would do well to contain your expression. Everything shows.”
“Maybe I'm not trying,” Jeffrey said and Smoker barked out a laugh, flinging his butt to the ground with a practiced arc where it smoldered, waiting to cause a fire.
“Let's get started,” Chimney said.
Parker nodded.
They cleaned.
When the second crew arrived with the machinery necessary to remove the rotary blade that had stabbed the graveyard and the hundred million dollar specialized stealth pulse chopper remnants, Jeffrey left with what remained of his team.
The zombie soldier followed, its eyes ceaselessly churning through the darkness with a searching intensity that unnerved everyone but Smoker.
He didn't care what dead thing scuttled around. He hadn't been hired to give a shit. He was hired to clean.
And he was hell on wheels at that.
*
They watched Caleb leave the house and Ali laid her head on Kyle's shoulder.
He stroked her hair. “I've done what I can, honey.”
“I knew this was a can of worms, Kyle,
” she whispered into his chest.
Kyle squeezed his wife tighter. There was no explanation that would make her understand that hindsight could be wished for but never used. That sometimes the best a human being on this planet could do was have the best reactions, the best intentions.
They'd have to be satisfied that they'd given him the tools necessary to cope with this unique challenge of his nature. Because it was a part of him now. There was no reversal.
No cure.
His son was a manipulator of the dead. What that would mean, and for whom... it meant different things.
For his parents it meant safeguarding and nurturing a talent that was unknown, powerful... strange.
For the Js and his future it meant friendships that were binding and lacking in prejudice.
And for those in power it might mean exploitation.
The variables were too numerous to know them all.
But Kyle did know one thing: they would watch and wait, be prepared.
Be ready.
They watched their son's silhouette until he was a dark speck of denim on the road as he crested the hill.
Then he vanished over the other side.
CHAPTER 8
1929
Maggie took a deep and shuddering breath as she straightened the tweed lapel of Clyde's Sunday best, closing the tortoiseshell buttons of his vest over the crisp white linen shirt.
The air in her lungs grew hot and painful, hitching in her body as it had each day since his death.
She still could not believe he was gone. Maggie felt like she was floating in a sea without a current and couldn't find where she belonged. Her heart hurt. She imagined all those broken pieces floating around inside her body, the sharpness tearing at the softness of her. Her soul abused and wanting.
Needing.
The coroner and morgue attendant stood stoically by as she did her useless things. None of her ministrations would bring him back from the water that had stolen his life.
But it had been the fight that had readied him for the perfect exit. He had been too injured to be a hero.
Heroes aren't made, Maggie thought, they're natural. He couldn't not be what he was. It had been one of the things that Maggie had loved so much about Clyde.
The Death Series, Books 1-3: Death Whispers, Death Speaks and Death Inception (The Death Series, Volume 1) Page 73