“Come here Jade. You don't need to be hanging out with them losers,” he said.
That was a joke. Him calling us losers. I looked back at the ass-potatoes, Carson and Brett. Excluding them, maybe he was onto something with them.
“No daddy. I won't ever come back,” Jade said, stepping forward as if to speak with him. I grabbed her arm. She wasn't going near him.
She turned to me and shook her head, like, it's okay.
I redoubled my hold and shook my head back. “No fucking way Jade.”
The corpses started to get agitated. One in particular. He shambled forward, keeping his eye on Jade's dad, who had begun to inch closer.
The corpses closed in on him, a tide wave of death to shore.
Oh geez. This is the one I had raised before... Clyde. Fluke of flukes. In the whole graveyard I couldn't raise a new corpse? I bet raising zombies more than once wasn't a good thing.
“I have risen again,” Clyde said, his voice full of the dirt-sound I was getting used to. “For what purpose, necromancer...for what purpose.”
The other zombies, in various stages of rot, stared at me.
“I'm sorry,” I rushed out. “This guy is going to put a serious pounding on us and I need help.”
The corpses turned their attention to Jade's dad.
“A bunch of dead people ain't gonna matter to me boy! I'm gettin' my girl back and there ain't shit from shinola you can do about it!”
He lunged forward to grab Jade and I felt intent form in my mind, I didn't have one moment to say anything, but the corpses knew.
They knew what needed doing.
We were of one mind, the zombies and I.
The twice-raised zombie (my guy-in-charge, I thought wildly), swung its arm in the path of Jade's dad, clotheslining him.
His progress effectively halted, he turned, wading into the batch of corpses. He threw a punch into Clyde and all he got for his trouble was some black ooze from the impact with the corpse's face whose teeth gleamed through his cheek.
Clyde-the-Corpse took the beating, placing a hand on either side of Jade's dad's head, boxing his ears. He howled, kneeing Clyde in the gut. Clyde obligingly rolled down the small knoll, just out of sight.
Holy shit.
Jade's dad hissed a sound of fierce triumph and turned to grab his prize, Jade leaning backward in avoidance. The other four corpses took their cue, moving forward as a single unit, laying their collective hands on him.
An awkward dance began, Jade's dad swinging corpses. They would get up again, restraining him. Meanwhile, Clyde shambled up the hill, steady and slow, making his way toward Jade's dad.
It was almost funny, Jade's dad on the bare earth, looking like he was drowning in a sea of dead people. He flailed his arms about, trying to grab solid ground and hoist himself to his feet, while a determined zombie would then weigh him back down.
I let him battle the zombies. When the Js walked up and John said, apprehensively looking at the spectacle of dead bodies, “Shouldn't we, like, get outta here? And, while we're at it, can you get them, you know, back?” pointing to the ground under our feet.
I spared a glance at the spectacle of struggling. I could hear grunting and some colorful swear words.
“Are they going to hurt him?” Jade asked.
I shook my head. “Nah, not unless I tell them.”
“Hey dude, you sure on that, cuz they seem kinda enthusiastic,” Jonesy said, tilting his head in the direction of the ruckus.
The zombies had taken things to heart and one was banging Mr. Scary's head on the grass.
“Hey! Quit that! No head-banging,” I said.
The zombie slowed the head-banging with a dissatisfied grunt that sounded a little muffled.
No tongue.
Carson and Brett were wearing identical expressions of fascinated surprise. It was like a train wreck, you know you don't want to be on the train, but you wanna see what happens. Morons.
Priorities, priorities...
“Okay, you two,” I looked at John and Jonesy. “Get Jade home, fast.”
“What about...” John rolled his eyes in the direction of the dopes.
Yeah, them.
I walked over to Carson with the zombie noise part of the background melee.
I hollered back to Jonesy, “Keep an eye on my zombies.”
Jonesy's eyes became like saucers. “Who me?” he squeaked out. “Have John do it, he's good at that.”
John turned to him with a glare. “So I've done so much zombie-sitting, right?”
I sighed, kinda busy here. “Both of you then, just till I'm done talking to these guys.”
I gave the come over here look to Jade. She came, casting nervous glances behind where her dad was buried under a pile of death.
I felt better once she was next to me.
Carson gave me a smug smile. “Having some trouble with the girlfriend's family?”
“No, just handling things Carson. We're even now,” I said.
“How do ya figure?” he asked, Brett's beady eyes following us back and forth, back and forth.
“As I see it, people knowing you're a Pyro will get you big-time attention from some key people,” I reminded him logically.
“That's bullshit, Hart. You're a damn corpse-raiser.” He gestured behind him to the squall that was the fight behind me. My friends nervously shifted their feet, John making the hand signal, come on, hurry up.
“We all know what you are now.” I looked at Brett, remembering that he'd found out tonight with the rest of us. “Playing with fire is a pretty important skill pal and you're doing a fine job of managing it,” I said.
Throwing fire balls had to be illegal somewhere.
“Let's get outta here, Carson, let him figure his own crap out,” Brett said.
“Yeah, I was done here anyway. Have fun with that,” he said, motioning to the zombie brawl.
“See ya, Hart... Jade.” Carson puckered his lips and blew her a kiss.
“Go guzzle bleach, ya squirrel,” Jade said.
My eyebrow rose; not just another pretty face.
We raced over to the zombie pile. It was getting bad, Jade's dad continued to try to pry himself out of the mountain of zombies and they would tumble away like bowling pins. Then Clyde would straddle him and it would start all over again.
“Stop,” I said.
All the zombies stood stock still, awaiting the next command. One fell over in mid-struggle.
Cool. Über-cool. I like.
“Come on, Caleb,” John urged.
Right, back to it.
Jade's dad lurched unsteadily to his feet, his considerable size a factor on smoothness, along with the booze.
Jade stayed close to me and the guys.
“You,” I said and the zombies all looked at me. “Not you guys.” I dismissed them with a hand but they continued to stare at me with steady devotion. Uh, creeper.
I turned back to Jade's dad. “You better just give up.”
“I ain't givin' up, but I can see when things get challengin',” he said in a slur.
This guy... what a turd!
“You have one last chance, girlie, come with your daddy.” He held his hand out to Jade.
“No,” she said quietly.
“I see how you're gonna be. I'll fight that bitch sister of mine, and get my kid back where she belongs... under my roof!” He smacked a meaty fist into a meatier palm for emphasis.
Looking out at my army of dead, his gaze fell back on me like a weight. This close I could see his nose was slightly bulbous, with a fine spider webbing of broken capillaries.
“And you,” he jabbed a thick finger right in front of my chest, which made the zombies tense. Geez, they were being my emotional barometer. “I won't forget what ya did to me today. You're not normal. This,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the zombies, “ain't normal. Sometime, when you're not lookin', I'll be there... waitin'. And there won't be no help from any of them,” he said,
pointing a finger at Team-Rot.
Special.
He straightened to his full height, inches taller than me, looking down his drunken nose at me and my friends.
At Jade.
He didn't intimidate me. It wasn't having the zombies around or false bravado. Here was a grown man, Dad's age for God's sake, who had been a bully in school, a drunk as an adult and a child-beating father. I didn't have a drop of respect for him.
I spoke in a furious, low tone, “don't you come near Jade. You don't know what I can do. You're not gonna hurt her... ever.” My finger shook in front of his chest.
He could taste my beating on his tongue, but gave a furtive look to the group of patient zombies. He wasn't going to take them on again.
His eyes narrowed. “You haven't seen the last of me,” he said to no one in particular. Staring a hole through Jade. “You especially, little lady.” And with that, he stumbled off, weaving more or less in a straight line.
Playing with zombies will sober a person up.
****
That went well.
The only relief was Carson's ability was almost as troubling as mine. He would be looked at as a teach-and-contain for sure. And knowing that he hadn't even told his butt-buddy Brett? Well that was a surprise.
There the zombies stood, waiting for orders. I turned to Jade and said, “What do ya say, one more time. I gotta get these guys back in the ground.”
She looked up at me with eyes shining with unshed tears, uh-oh.
The Js looked horrified: Girl crying! Girl crying!
“What's wrong?” I asked.
A fat tear rode a slow path down her face and she did one of those hitching breaths that people do when crying might make way to sobbing. “I'm so embarrassed!”
Ah... what?
Out loud I asked, “Why?”
“Because he's my dad, and he's drunk and so stupid.”
Absolutely.
“Don't worry about him. He isn't going to do the right thing, ever. You worrying about it won't change the way he acts,” I reassured her.
“Can't pick your family,” Jonesy chimed in unhelpfully.
John sighed.
Jade surprised us all by drying her tears and saying a quiet, “You're right.”
“See, that's what I'm talkin' about.” Jonesy did a dance step to emphasize his point.
Jade's eyes narrowed. “Don't push it.”
John smiled, I laughed and the moment passed.
“Let's get your zombies back in the dirt,” Jade said.
I held out my hand to her and we clasped them in a tight grip. Two things happened at once, the zombies moved to their respective graves, and I felt a low buzzing. Not voices, but similar to an electrical current. Different than with Tiff, but related somehow. I gave a mental “flex” and the energy moved through me, swirling. Then it found the thread that couldn't be seen, the power moving as a conduit, connected as I was to the zombies.
With explosive sighs, the breath slid out of their bodies, permanently escaping. Clyde, the main zombie, lingered longest. An expression was in his eyes that went beyond devotion; bright intelligence burning there. I shoved the last of that lingering otherness down to them and thought, die.
The corpses collapsed on their graves, boneless, like puppets whose strings had been cut. The ground rolled noiselessly over them, like water poured backwards and they were hidden once again.
Jade released my hand and said, “That is such a weird sensation, it makes my teeth ache.” She rubbed her hand on her jeans.
The whispering was back, but manageable. Feeding the power made it quiet down to a dull roar, even dead-center in the cemetery.
I walked over to Clyde's grave. There was something that was nagging at me, something that I should be thinking about but it escaped my consciousness. Too much had happened in too short of time. I was having a brain fart.
“Let's get outta here,” Jonesy said.
Nobody had to ask me twice. Tomorrow was AP testing and drug-taking time. I was up for it.
I'd missed supper, a big, bad one in my house. I pulsed the parents on the way back to deflect The Wrath. The three of us had gotten our stories straight before going our separate ways.
Jade had protested me walking her home. But with Brett living in her neighborhood and her dad on a rampage, I'd believed him when he said he'd be watching. I told the parents we were just blowing off some steam with the AP Test coming up tomorrow. I'd headed off disaster and wasn't ready to tell them about all the other stuff: Jade's dad, the prank that went way-wrong with Carson. And best of all, that we had a fire-starter running amuck. Yeah, that.
Later, Dad and I put our heads together talking about how I had to have the inhibitor with food and all the stuff I already knew.
“Dad, are you telling me this because you're worried I won't get it and like OD or something? Or, are you telling me so you feel better in case I do the 'stupid'.”
Dad laughed. “Caleb, you're funny.”
I waited.
“The latter,” Dad replied. That's what I thought, the second one.
“I knew that you were giving yourself an out.”
Mom set the bowl of chili down in front of me with the yummy Mexican cheese on top and a huge hunk of cornbread. Time to pork.
“Dad just wants to remind you honey, since you're such an accomplished pill popper.”
My eyes rolled up to meet hers with the spoon halfway to my open mouth. “How'd that go over with all the other adults? Pill popper? Nice.”
“I guess I'll be serious about it when I have to be. Right now humor is the lesser of two evils.”
“What's the other one?” I asked.
“Anxiety.”
Oh. I guess I hadn't given a lot of thought to my parents being worried.
Okay, off topic. “The cops still cruising by?”
Dad nodded. “Yes, Officers Gale and Ward were just here as a matter of fact.”
“You know Caleb,” Mom began while my mouth was stuffed with chili, “you would probably do better to refer to the officers as such rather than cops.”
Total word-Nazi.
Dad came to the rescue. “Yes, that's something to consider in the future Caleb. Words are powerful.”
I took a big swig of milk and asked Mom for the jalapeños and some honey.
Mom passed the honey and I did an upside down dump.
The parents watched, fascinated, as my cornbread was obscured by a molten mass of goodness.
Dad said, “You having some cornbread with that honey, pal?”
I smiled and nodded
“Okay, so I want you to get up early for a good breakfast, take the pill, then you can scoot to school.”
Dad told me he may halve the pill so I'm not in a daze and can actually get a decent result on the academics.
“Not gonna make me high, Dad?”
“Yes, that's the total idea.” He smiled.
So far, except for jerking dead people out of the ground, I hadn't shown aptitude for much of anything. It was kinda funny if you thought about it.
“It's nicely ironic that Caleb doesn't appear to be blessed with a scientific aptitude but is talented nonetheless,” Mom said, A Point Coming.
Dad frowned. “I know how you feel about all this, Ali. That we are all meant to be completely unique so the balance works for the cohesive whole. But,” shaking his head as if fighting his own internal battle, “human nature is very predictable.”
I stuck up for Mom here. “So, you could predict that I'd be a zombie-raiser?”
Mom automatically corrected me, “Cadaver-Manipulator.”
So irritating, but accurate.
Dad got a little bit of a flushed face. Embarrassed? That would be something.
“No.” He made a steeple with his fingers for his chin. “I certainly didn't anticipate this.”
That made me stop eating.
“What did you think I would be?”
Mom shrugged and Dad said
, “Your mother and I had a lot of theories. In the last few years, every parent waits for the Aptitude Tests or,” he paused, giving me a steady look, “the manifestation of a talent to rear its head.”
Loosening his hands he put his palms out as if to say, that's the way it is for us all.
“In your case, we didn't need the test.”
“Thank goodness for that. What if it had been flushed out in the AP Test, then he'd have been whisked away or worse,” Mom said.
“'Or worse'?” I asked.
I took another bite of the cornbread, resisting the urge to lick my fingers. I picked up a cloth napkin and started working over my fingers.
“Just look at the Parker boy,” Mom said by way of explanation.
“What about him? I've never heard anything about him,” I said.
“Exactly,” Dad stated.
CHAPTER 19
My parents hadn't been thrilled when I unceremoniously stuffed the pill in my front pocket. The deal was, if anyone got a lame idea of checking people's backpacks they wouldn't find the pill. There wasn't a reason I could think of but they were adults and sometimes that was the reason.
Butt-munches.
I told my parents my thinking. Mom huffed and Dad mumbled something about my constitutional rights. Whatever, by the time I was able to yak about my rights, they'd be through my gear in a hot second. Especially with nothing allowed in the aptitude testing room.
Nothing.
Mom had made pancakes and bacon (thank you God). I was on my sixth pancake, having already plowed through half a pound of bacon.
Mom grimaced when I was unable to speak.
Dad looked over his papers, hiding a smile from Mom.
“Caleb, stop shoveling your food.”
“Mom! Come have a pancake and stop panicking about etiquette.” I took a swig of milk and the whole load slid down the pipe.
Mom rolled her eyes. It'd have been impressive but I'd seen Tiff Weller, no one could compete.
I finally had an empty mouth and told her, “Thanks for the breakfast Mom.”
My hair fell into my eyes and I whipped my head back and it stayed there. Mom looked at me and my hair then back to my plate again. She gave a big sigh and turned around, getting the next batch of pancakes on a plate.
“Ah... hon?” Dad called.
Mom turned with an eyebrow raised. “I think I want something lighter,” Dad patted his belly which was barely over the belt.
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