by Mia Strange
The Shades, oblivious of the rotting army closing in behind them, focused first on Phil, shifted to The Bone Man, and then on to me. They wanted souls. Living, breathing souls. They fed off the essence of everything that made us human. And Zombie Phil just didn’t have that winning ticket. The Shades would destroy him to get to us. And it would happen now.
I could feel the evil pressing in, while the magic coiled in and onto itself, withdrawing, hiding once again in the steam that surrounded us. It slid back into the night, taking all its magical colors with it.
I felt abandoned. Alone. Betrayed.
So much for the steam magic. I wished I hadn’t found it. What good had come of it? I couldn’t command it. I couldn’t use it. And who would believe me anyway?
I desperately tried to catch the last trace of magic, a wisp really, as it passed through my fingertips. The magic paused for a moment, as if shaking hands goodbye, then turned to leave.
“Coward,” I whispered.
The magic stopped, uncoiled from my hand and twisted around my waist. Slipping into a ragged hole in my top and melting through fabric, it reached my bare skin. I gasped as my skin cooled and then burned, then cooled again. And then? There was no pain. No pain at all.
Impossible.
I braced myself, letting the ruined handkerchief drop away and using The Bone Man’s blade as a crutch, I managed to get to my knees. I almost buckled from exhaustion, but the pain. Gone. Touching my hand to my stomach, my fingers still came up bloody. Guess a miraculous healing was asking too much. But no pain? You bet I’d take it.
“Thanks,” I whispered to the stream of colors.
The magic paused, slipped from my body and rode the steam, disappearing into the night.
“You ready, Skye?”
I looked up at the back of The Bone Man— and up and up. “Ready?” I asked with a half— smile tugging at my lips. I knew he’d bring me into this fight. I knew it. “Thought you wanted me on my ass and helpless.”
“You? Helpless? That’s a good one,” he said without turning around. “Tell me you’re still sitting. ‘Cause what I want is for you to stay put and not move around.”
“I’m not moving.” I tried to stand.
“I mean it. Don’t need you to bleed out and make my staging area all slippery.”
“Yeah. It’s always about you.” I sucked in a breath, trying to fight off the weakness.
“And you,” he shot back. “Always making it harder than it has to be.”
“Well,” I pushed to my feet with the aid of the sword. “Just tell me when it is convenient for me to bleed out. I’ll clear my schedule.”
“Funny.” He looked down at me as I leaned into him. He frowned. “Why are you standing?”
“Same reason you are. We’re the meet and greet committee, remember?”
It was The Bone Man’s turn to roll his eyes. “You make a terrible hostess. You know that, right?”
“Come on. How much worse can I make it?” The Bone Man shrugged. “You really want that answer?”
I managed a weak punch to his arm.
“Didn’t hurt.”
He was right. This time.
“Look,” I said. “Phil can’t hold them off for long you know. His conversational skills suck.” Phil grunted on cue.
“You don’t have to tell me.” The Bone Man turned and whistled, soft and low. The cluster of mechanical ants at our feet stopped their chaos, lined up, and marched over to his legs. In perfect order, they crawled up each pant leg and into the pockets of his coat. Their little antenna lights snapped off.
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Really? You’re worried about the ants?”
He shrugged. “Why waste good tech?”
I didn’t say the obvious. The tech would go to whatever opportunists would rob our dead bodies first. And none of them played for our team. That would be team good guys. I thought about our necromancer, Traveler Hale. Well, mostly we were good guys.
The Shades moved closer. Phil drooled more than ever. Long streams of thick saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth and pooled on the cement. Gross. Still, it wasn’t Phil’s fault. For one he was a zombie, and that’s just what zombies do. And two, the Shades were in what was left of his mind now, no doubt about it.
We looked past Phil and the Shades, watching as the zombies gained in numbers. Appearing from hidden alleyways and darkened doors, one dropped from a roof top, crashing head first into the pavement. He got up, his neck now bent at an impossible angle, his skull crushed, and yet the monster kept coming. Luckily, they didn’t gain momentum. Not yet. They could see us, but the Shades were blocking our scent. And it was the smell of fresh meat that would drive them into the final frenzy, a frenzy we couldn’t survive. There were just too damn many.
This was more than one chain gang let off the hook as the zombie wranglers like to say. What happened here? The city of Seattle was supposed to be a zombie free zone. But there was no time to dwell on that bit of misleading tourist info. And who was I going to tell? Post a one—star review on YELP? Complain to The Chamber of Commerce? Like they were still around. So yeah. As they say, first things first. And that meant the Shades.
“Can you walk, Skye?”
“Yep.” I didn’t know if I could, and I knew that I shouldn’t. But without pain radiating from my wounds, I had to do it. I just had to.
As the last of the flare faded to nothing, The Bone Man dropped it on the ground. We started to back away. With his machete once more in hand, and Phil’s collar in the other, The Bone Man and I kept perfect pace as we inched back the way we had come. Hanging onto The Bone Man’s arm, I backed into the shadows as one street lantern sputtered and died and the other dimmed to that sickly yellow pallor once more. The light dimmed and dimmed, until… poof. It went out.
The zombies faded back into darkness. But ya know what? Not seeing them. Was almost scarier. It’s like swimming in murky water and eel grass touches the bottom of your bare feet. It’s what you can’t see that terrifies you the most.
Besides, who was I kidding? We could still hear them. And that alone made my heartbeat kick into overdrive. Even without pain I felt faint, sick. I was pretty sure that raising my blood pressure was a bad idea with a near fatal wound in play. But what could I do? It’s not like I could sit cross—legged, meditate, and have a Zen moment. And I couldn’t not be scared— because, well, because I was scared. So, I tried to ignore my heart as it continued to slam against my battered ribs. The upside? At least it was still beating.
We moved back and back— and back further still— until we were once again standing at the entrance of the Georgetown Morgue. A sudden blast of déjà vu hit me. I felt like I was standing in the mouth of Hell. And I guess in a way I was. After all, this was a place I swore I would never come back to.
Mmm. Guess that would teach me to say, never say never. Yeah. Like I had time to focus on life lessons right now.
We kept up the pace, continuing, inch by inch.
The Shades moved with us, inch by inch.
Copycats.
I halfway expected them to start with the ghostly wailing and lifting of flimsy arms, but I knew better. When the time was right, Shades moved in— silent, deadly. Fast.
It was the fast that had me worried. Right now, they were contemplating Phil. The Bone Man and I stayed crouched behind him like the cowards we were. Phil was drooling like mad and I knew the Shades had pressed more than visions of sugar plums into his head. More likely visions of dangling arms and dripping eyeballs.
Which believe it or not, was good.
After all, Phil hadn’t changed all the way. Not yet. Arms and eyeballs were foreign to him. Oh, they looked yummy all right. He just didn’t know why. Until the Shades moved down the menu to raw chicken or a slab of bloody red meat, Phil would hold his ground, making it that much harder for the Shades to blanket us, which is what they do.
Surround, blanket, press, smother, scratch, and suck.
; Then goodbye soul. Not to mention life.
“Bone Man? What’s the plan?”
“Phil.”
I peeked out from behind The Bone Man and caught a glimpse of Phil just as a particularly long strand of glistening drool hit the ground. This is who, or what, I should say, we were pinning our lives on. Well, I just didn’t know what to say about that.
“Plan B?” I asked hopefully.
“Phil.”
“Is there a C?”
“Phil.”
“Look. Bone Man—”
“Quiet.”
“But—”
“Thinking.”
I sucked in my breath, rested my forehead on the small of The Bone Man’s back and started to count to ten. I got to three. My breath whooshed out and I yelled. “Bone Man. What in the fuck is plan D?”
“Fire.”
“Fire?”
“With Phil as our PRESTO LOG. And we’re there.”
I jumped back and even without pain I knew the movement was a bad idea. Blood spilled from my stomach and dripped down my bare leg, over my knee cap. It seeped into my high boots. This leather mini skirt I was wearing left no doubt about it, I was just dressed all wrong for a fight to the death. Damn it. I never had any fashion sense.
I took a step away from The Bone Man and what I knew would soon be the fireball of Phil.
I could hardly wrap my mind around the fact that Phil would burn right in front of us. But it was only a zombie bonfire that could save us now. Or at least give us a chance, a whisper of a chance to escape, to continue and fight against the army of the dead coming at us next. Shades and zombies had only one thing in common. Fire. Fire could kill them both.
Okay.
Fire it would be. I was ready. “Bone Man? Grab Phil, and—”
“Light him up,” The Bone Man said before I could.
7
Shades did their best work in the dark of night, which explains why I survived the morgue on my own. I’d entered at dusk, and left just before their power was at its fullest— just. Otherwise, we would have never made it out of there alive.
Not all ghosts are created equal. Some are Shades. Confusing I know. And wasn’t it just my kind of luck to find not only one, but nine of the really bad kind. And even though I could always use a few more friends, these guys? No.
“Hold this.” The Bone Man pushed his blade into my hand. I glanced down at the carved skull on the handle to see if he still found anything funny about this situation. The skull was no longer animated, its stark face, etched in bone, had a look of frozen horror on it. I almost wished he had still been winking and laughing at me. This new face, encased in a silent scream, held the promise of impending doom. And I was not exaggerating.
The Bone Man once again reached into his coat and pulled out another flare. “Last one.”
“Make it count,” I said.
I looked at Phil’s back, at the black and red flannel shirt he was dressed in, at his denim overalls. I flashed back at a visual of Phil as the monster, as another fellow freak in our traveling show. On stage he growled on cue, chomped the heads off chickens, terrorized the crowd with his pointy teeth and decomposing complexion. Not to mention bad breath. Good old rotting Phil. All the way from Missouri.
I couldn’t believe it.
Tough girl, Skye St John, was having an emotional moment. Over Zombie Phil. A first. At least for me. What the hell? I hated zombies. I guess it was because Phil was a good zombie. An oxymoron if I’d ever heard one. After all, there was no such thing as a ‘good’ zombie. Not in my world. Not in any world. Not on any planet, not in any universe. A zombie was a zombie was a zombie.
Still.
He was our zombie.
A full fledge, card—carrying Troupe member of The Traveling Troupe Academy of Dr. Dark. Okay. He used to be a card—carrying member until he ate his. But hey. A member is still a member.
For now, he was one of us. Plus, Phil had maybe three good months before he was Dead and Done. Or was it two? Whatever. And Dr. Dark was always working on a cure. Always feeding Phil vitamins, sneaking him secret, colored potions. Slipping him an occasional butterscotch. Honestly? I just didn’t know if I was ready to sacrifice him. It felt…wrong.
I looked at the back of Phil and knew I didn’t want to watch him become a crispy critter just yet. That barbeque would come soon enough, and my stomach rolled at the thought.
But really, what choice did we have?
We didn’t. That was the hard truth.
“Zombies are soulless. Zombies are dead. We have to let them go. Let go. Let go, we have to let them go. Let go. Let go…”
I repeated the chant under my breath over and over. I had learned it in Gov—care, when the caregivers, yeah right, rather the sadistic, rat—bastard guards, wanted to wash Emma from my mind. They wanted to erase my love for her, and destroy all hope left in my heart. They used the standard Gov lines over and over to control me, to break me. No more Emma? No more reason for me to run away to try and find her, or her tombstone, the one that appeared in my dreams every night.
But I never believed Emma was gone for good. And that stubborn, core belief that never went away, was what got me here tonight.
“You say something, Skye?”
I stopped the mantra. “Naw. Nothing.”
I once again chewed my bottom lip and let the truth of the situation sink in. It was my fault we were in this mess. My fault that my friends, well friend, meaning The Bone Man, the jury still being out on Phil, because after all he might try to eat me someday, were facing this danger.
“Ready?” The Bone Man whispered.
I sucked in a breath and nodded. “Ready.”
The Bone Man grabbed Phil’s collar tight and yanked the zombie toward us. The flare was so close it singed what was left of Phil’s hair. Smoke rose above Phil’s head forming a wicked black halo. The odor assaulted my nostrils and I gagged. Nothing compares to the smell of a zombie burning. Nothing.
“This is gonna hurt me more than you, buddy,” The Bone Man said. “Thank God you can’t feel anything. It’s been a good run.” He saluted the back of Phil’s head.
The Shades picked up speed and began to fan out around us.
The horde of the dead groaned and moaned and sounded way too close.
“Zombies are soulless. Zombies are dead. Zombies are…” I said the chant out loud. “We have to let them go. Let them go. Let them go. Let them go. Goodbye Phil, goodbye.” My voice cracked and tears once again tumbled down my freezing cheeks. Fear stabbed at my heart. I couldn’t say goodbye to The Bone Man, too.
The street lights hissed and roared back to life. But not on their own.
The steam magic had returned.
It flew in on an icy wind and wrapped around the poles. It fed into the lamps. The lanterns burst into flames. Glass exploded onto the streets. I watched in amazement as the steel poles that held the lamps just moments ago melted into pools of molten iron.
“What the fuck? I said no magic, Skye,” The Bone Man yelled over the noise. “You’ll be dead in minutes.”
The Shades shrank back together, afraid of the blaze on the street.
But the wind picked up our scent, our very human scent, and scattered it down to the zombies who littered the street. The frenzy began in earnest. The zombies, picking up frightening speed, charged.
“Help us,” I screamed to the magic, ignoring The Bone Man. “Over here.” Who had time to explain the, “Hey, it isn’t me,” right now. I concentrated on the magic that lingered in the steam of the cooling pool of metal. “Over here,” I screamed again.
The magic heard me. It heard me! I watched as it paused, rose, and began to snake toward us.
“Faster,” I screamed. “Get over here.”
“Shit, Skye,” The Bone Man yelled. “You’re cheering for the wrong side. That knife wound has affected your brain, girl. Zombies and Shades? Don’t. Need. Encouragement.”
From that moment on, everything went
into fast forward. The Shades flew in. Blackness surrounded me, and I couldn’t breathe. Pressure, like the weight of a hundred pounds of coal, gripped my chest. The Bone Man felt it too. He dropped to his knees. His torch slipped from his long fingers, and Phil’s arm caught on fire.
“No,” I yelled.
“Yes,” The Bone Man yelled.
Phil stared down at his arm like the flames shooting up from it was an everyday occurrence. The Shades, avoiding the blaze, shot straight into the air.
The weight lifted from my chest and I reached for The Bone Man and pushed him to his feet.
The magic swept in and bounced Phil back on his butt. The flames went out. The Bone Man and I were lifted off our feet. An invisible force pushed us into each other, and the two of us tumbled backward in a tangle of arms and legs and swords. Phil followed, slamming into us like a giant gray bowling ball.
“What kind of magic is this?” The Bone Man shouted over the roar of the wind. “Whatever it is, stop it, Skye. You’re not helping.”
Not helping? “Just you watch,” I shouted back.
With the magic floating all around us, I felt empowered. Brave even. I didn’t have a death wish, and I was scared, really scared. But with the gift of no pain from the magic, I could go down fighting. Go down protecting my friends. And if this is the way it ended? Well, that was better than most in our world got. I untangled from The Bone Man and climbed to my feet.
I let my short machete slip from my fingers. It clattered to the pavement. Peeling off what was left of my duster, I grabbed The Bone Man’s blade and wrapped my coat around it. Pushing my way to the front, I snatched the flare from the ground and lit my coat on fire. Now I had a torch. And the Shades, circling above, knew it.
“Skye, what the—” The Bone Man raged behind me.
“Grab Phil and go.”
“No way. You’re delusional.”
The magic, shrouded in steam, swirled around me, wrapping me in a cocoon of warmth and light. I wasn’t fighting alone now, but I didn’t have time to explain it to The Bone Man. The first of the rogue zombies were almost to me, and the Shades were coming from above. “Keep my friends safe,” I whispered to the colors that flew around me. “Protect them. Please.” I gripped the torch with both hands. “Please, please, please,” became my new mantra.