Dead Set Page 21

  “What’d you do?”

  “Dragged it out of the guy and into the bathroom—gave it enough substance so I could actually fight it.”

  All the color drained out of Adam’s face. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Well, only if you consider giving a bloodthirsty spirit of the damned that would love nothing more than to split your skull a corporeal body dangerous.”

  Adam fidgeted with his seat belt. “Ah…”

  “But that wasn’t even the most dangerous part.”

  My apprentice let go of the seat belt and hugged my bag a little tighter to his chest. “Then which part was?”

  “The part when I opened a gate to Hell.”

  “What?!”

  “It’s not that bad—just have to watch out for the fleas.”

  “The fleas?”

  Before I could answer, we pulled into the parking lot with the black truck right behind us. Bright yellow light spilled out from the long windows of Cathy’s jiu-jitsu school. It appeared to be in session, and there were enough cars out front to have me more than a little concerned—an army of trained fighters possessed by the spirits of the damned would really be a pain in the butt.

  Why couldn’t it be the Yarn Barn that stayed open on Saturday night on the far side of town? It had to be skilled fighters.

  “There’s your wife’s car!” Adam shouted, pointing at Porter’s slick new ride parked in front of the theater. “I don’t see her.”

  “Neither do I.”

  I also don’t sense the Old Dead. Neither of those things make for a good sign.

  I parked the Dad Wagon next to Porter’s car. There were no signs of a struggle, and a small flashing red light on the dash told me she’d taken the time to lock the car.

  The muscle truck pulled in next to us, its powerful engine rumbling to a stop.

  “What are we going to do?” Adam asked, keeping an eye on the darkened entrance to the Brighton 8.

  “We’ll start with getting out of the car,” I said, taking my red duffle from Adam and pushing open the door. I stopped to get a look at the Honda’s back seat—no skull, and no Porter.

  Am I relieved? Or just a different form of concerned?

  I gently placed the duffle on the hood of the still-warm Dad Wagon.

  Rob and his crew piled out of their truck like murder-shriners, each one just a tiny bit scarier than the one before them, but all looking to the world’s best mechanic to lead them.

  “Thanks for offering to help guys,” I said, trying to look tough in spite of my ashen-faced apprentice. “I don’t know what Rob told you…”

  One of the larger and more heavily muscled mechanics pounded a fist into his palm. “He said your wife was in trouble.”

  “Aside from the kidnapping of my son, yes, that about sums it up. Wait, I forgot to mention the unholy spirits of the damned.”

  “Huh?”

  “He means ghosts,” Adam said, puffing up his chest.

  Muscles started, then froze mid-nod. “Wait, did you say ghosts?”

  “Sure did.”

  The large man conferred with a lanky face-tattooed individual next to him before returning to me. “So you know how to get rid of ghosts?”

  “I do.”

  A wave of relief washed over Muscles. “Oh hell yeah. Let’s bust some ghost shit up!”

  Rob placed a hand on Muscle’s shoulder. “Thanks, Charlie. Now, Gene, is that the place?” the lead mechanic said, pointing to the theater.

  “It is. Remember, though, this woman has my son, and potentially now my wife. I can’t have you guys go barging in there—”

  The disappointment on their faces was palpable.

  “—until we have a plan. I can’t have you guys getting possessed by sprits of the damned and then deciding our heads would look better detached from our bodies.”

  A smattering of nods and neck rubs told me I still had at least half my audience. “Just give Adam and me a minute to figure out the best plan, then we’ll go.”

  Rob nodded and conferred with his team of human-sized action figures.

  I unzipped the duffle, splitting it from stem to stern across the car’s hood like a gutted fish. “Adam, remember when you made love jerky?”

  My apprentice turned away from the darkened strip mall long enough to cock his head to one side and look at me like I’d gone crazy. “Yeah… but I don’t think being a goat would really help us, and it was so itchy…”

  “I don’t want you to make love jerky, but I want you to apply some of that skill of yours toward concocting potions.”

  “What kind of potion?”

  Jingle.

  One of the strip mall doors opened, bringing with it a sour bouquet of rot and burnt flesh that caught the breeze and wafted over us.

  “Where did that come from?” I said, my back to the shops.

  “From the school; they’re coming this way!”

  “Shit—”

  “There’s like two dozen of them…” Adam said, his voice cracking. “Is that what New Dead smell like?”

  “Yeah. Lovely isn’t it? Now help me, we’ve got to get them out of those innocent people before our mechanic muscle bashes someone’s skull with a socket wrench.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to work up a spell to get the spirits out of their bodies and subjected to the laws of tire-iron physics.”

  Adam wrung his hands. “I don’t… I only…”

  “There’s a pump sprayer in the trunk, go grab it.”

  My apprentice popped open the Mazda’s trunk and returned with a white plastic pesticide sprayer, its black nozzle dangling above the ground behind him like a scorpion’s tail.

  “There’s nothing in it…”

  “Crap.”

  Adam crunched up his face. “We need something earthy, right? Something with salt in it?”

  Salt of the earth—great equalizer when it comes to spirits.

  “Yes.”

  My apprentice turned to the tattooed tag-team wrestling squad. “Any of you guys have like an energy drink or something?”

  Muscles nodded. “Yeah, I got a Monstero, but I drank some—is that okay?”

  Adam grabbed the oil-can-sized beverage. “Oh yeah, these are good. Have you tried the Gorilla Grape?”

  “No, I’ll ask my mom—err, my housekeeper to get me some,” Muscles said, looking around furtively, as if checking to see if anyone had noticed his slip-up. If anyone had, they’d taken into account the size of his biceps and decided it wasn’t worth following up on.

  Adam dumped the can into the pump sprayer. “One thousand milligrams of salt per serving.”

  “How many servings?”

  “Three in this can.”

  “Holy crap, it’s amazing your heart still works,” I said, shaking my head.

  “All part of a balanced diet,” Adam said as he screwed the lid back on the pump sprayer.

  “I’m pretty sure no one—literally no one ever—considered Monstero part of a balanced diet.”

  Adam ignored me. “What now?”

  “Now, before they get here, I need you to enchant that Monstero to extract the New Dead from those,” I said, pointing to the dozen plus smoldering souls of the damned closing in on us.

  Adam hesitated. “I don’t know if…”

  “You’ve got the skill to do this. I know you can do it, but more than that, I believe you can do it.”

  Magick is all about belief—it’s time to put mine to the test.

  “Wait, Gene! What are you going to do?”

  I gently dug my hands into the duffle, coming back with a slightly oversized bright-pink plastic yard flamingo. I zipped the bag shut and cradled the yard art under my arm like a football, then turned to face the darkened doors of the Brighton 8. “I’m going to go save my family.”

  “Gene? Where’d you go?” Adam asked, as if looking right through me. Which, as long as I held the flamingo, he was.

  I set the s
mall plastic bird back on the hood. “The Flock, it’s a long story, and honestly, one you would do good to not emulate.”

  My apprentice smiled and pumped air into the sprayer. “I won’t let you down, boss.”

  “I know you won’t. You’re a great apprentice, and if I survive this, beer’s on me.”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t have time to answer him before the first wave of the martial art monsters were upon us.

  Yes, really—now don’t make me regret thinking that.

  46

  Flares and Flamingos

  They didn’t stop to talk. Then again I don’t know what the New Dead would say that I hadn’t already heard before. The refrain was pretty much the same every time. “We are terribly unhappy at the current state of our existence. We wish you ill will and would like to take your life as our own.”

  They don’t use those exact terms, but the soul of the message was always the same.

  Adam gave that pump sprayer one last thrust, then spoke the incantation. Magick popped and clicked like a cheap keyboard from my apprentice’s fingers. “Format c colon!”

  I almost dropped Gertrude the Flamingo. I’d always taught that incantations should be in a language other than your tongue, but I hadn’t expected Adam to go with a command right out of the nineteen-eighties DOS manual.

  It worked, though, I could feel the Magick flow down his arm and into the frothy green energy drink in the tank.

  I’ll be damned. You did it. I never doubted you… Okay, just a little.

  Adam turned the spray nozzle on the fiery horde of compression-shirted possessed. Bright green energy drink infused with enough sodium to stop a horse—and more than a little Adam-brand Magick—rained down on the New Dead in a faint mist.

  The burning spirits of the damned writhed in pain before being forced out of their hosts.

  Now visible, and supremely pissed off, they made for one heck of a target.

  Muscles was the first to pull a lug wrench out of the back of the pickup and start swinging. I’d have expected more fear, but these guys had been raised on worse in video games; for them, this must be just the next logical progression. His forged-steel wrench smashed into one of New Dead, blasting a hunk of ashen bone and withered flesh from its face.

  Nice!

  My excitement was short lived, however, as the creatures missing flesh restored themselves in seconds with a vibrant green glow.

  What the hell else was in that energy drink?

  Rob didn’t waste any time. He organized his crew, and they went on the offensive. Adam kept the spray on until the pump ran out, then followed up by swinging the plastic tank with wild abandon. He made contact more than once, but all he succeeded in doing was making the creatures angrier.

  The newly freed jiu-jitsu students didn’t know what to make of the situation, but to their credit when one of the New Dead got the better of Rob’s guys those ground-fighting experts immediately latched on and went for broke.

  It was a full-on melee, and I had to use my best moves to weave between the fighters. The lanky mechanic with the impressive neck ink swung a well-timed crowbar and blasted one of the New Dead in the leg; but since he didn’t see me, he didn’t know he’d only missed my ducking head by inches. The parking lot was a minefield of tearing claws and blunt force trauma.

  Holding the flamingo under my arm like a football, I launched myself into the fray. With that beautiful piece of yard art in my hands I was invisible, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get hurt—it just meant they wouldn’t get to see me writhing in pain. That little bird and I had been through a few dust ups, and each time we’d come out on top. I just hoped she had a little more luck tucked away in those plastic feathers. Fists swung for my head, and I ducked, only to tumble to my knees to avoid being blasted by Rob’s foot.

  The more the New Dead fought, the more they regenerated. Something was keeping the them fresh as a daisy. They weren’t going to go down with flesh and steel—we needed to open a Hellgate.

  I crossed another few feet, only to skip to the side when a lug wrench blasted a dent in the pavement where I’d been standing. It was then that it opened up: a clean shot to the door. I squeezed the plastic bird under my arm and took a deep breath.

  “Geronimo!” I shouted, racing through the fray, dodging fists and claws, leaping grapplers and the damned.

  I burst free and into the narrow drive in front of the theater, only to slam right into the side of a black and white police cruiser.

  Boom!

  The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, and shattered my companion, sending tiny shards of the once-Magickal bird raining down on the dark pavement.

  No!

  I laid what remained of the tiny bird’s head gently on the pavement.

  I’m sorry, little one.

  “Gene?” Officer Justine’s squad car blocked my path to the door. “What the hell is going on?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “A lot… Did you bring it?”

  Justine appeared far more concerned about the fighting going on behind me. “Yes, but… what are those?”

  “New Dead—long story. Did you bring the bones?”

  Justine reached for her radio, then stopped. “Shit—do you know how much trouble I’d be in if my captain knew I was doing this?”

  “Immense amounts is my guess.”

  “Hell yeah. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Nope.”

  Justine popped the trunk on her cruiser. “They’re in the evidence box. We don’t have the whole skeleton, we’re missing—”

  “The head.”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Because it's inside there,” I said, pointing to the ominous doors of the Brighton 8. “With the woman holding my wife and son captive.”

  “This is a kidnapping, Gene. You should have called the police.”

  I removed the brown cardboard banker’s box from the trunk of Justine’s cruiser. It was lighter than I’d expected it to be, but then again, I guess I really didn’t know what I’d expected it to be. It wasn’t like I carry around boxes of bones every day.

  When your daughter becomes a Magician, you’ll get more experience with it. Just think of all the weekends at the graveyards. So. Much. Awesome.

  “I did. You’re here.”

  Justine caught sight of Rob and his muscle across the parking lot, and her jaw tightened. “I told him not to do anything stupid.”

  I held the box under my arm and let the trunk close. “Rob? He couldn’t do anything stupid even if he wanted to, he’s like the smartest guy I know.”

  “He has a tendency to go off half-cocked from time to time… What’s the chubby bearded guy doing?” Justine leaned out her window and stared past me at Adam.

  “He’s my apprentice,” I said, turning to see what Adam was doing. “It would appear he’s trying to open a gate to Hell and doesn’t remember he needs brimstone—can we borrow one of your flares?”

  Justine hesitated. “Borrow?”

  “Thanks!” I yelled, pulling one of the bright red flares from her trunk. “Adam, catch!”

  I launched the unlit flare end over end toward my apprentice.

  Please catch it.

  As it would turn out, my kindergartener possessed more catching acumen than Adam—a lot more. My apprentice dropped the pump sprayer and reached out for the flare, only to have it pass through his fingers and slam headlong into his face.

  Ouch.

  “I got it!” Adam cried, rubbing his face while feeling the ground for the dropped flare.

  Before he could get his hands on it, though, New Dead pounced on him, sending Adam and the flare spinning across the pavement.

  “Shit!” Justine unhooked her seat belt and kicked open the door. The tough-as-nails future detective left the squad car running and raced across the parking lot, nightstick in hand.

  “Go! Save your family—I got this.”

  47

  Cra
cker Break

  I had my bag unzipped and was ready to fill it with the dusty bones of Old Dead still sitting in Justine’s squad car, when a familiar voice stopped me cold.

  “I told you I’d be back, Magician.”

  The New Dead…

  I grabbed for the first thing in the trunk I could find that wasn’t Old Dead, but sadly Justine must have been on traffic duty, as all I could put my fingers on was a scuffed-up orange traffic cone. I swung the cone in a wild arc, missing the possessed Claudia Wilson by mere inches.

  “Whoa—” She pulled back, surprisingly spry for her age thanks to the New Dead. “Being inside your wife was so good. Then again, you already knew that.”

  The New Dead’s ashen face taunted me, its tongue licking those burnt lips.

  “I’m done sending you back to hell.”

  “Good, cause I’m done going back. You can’t stop The Defiler—not now. He’s coming and—”

  The New Dead must not have gotten the memo—don’t go into any diatribes until you’ve got the advantage, and certainly don’t do it when you’ve got a traffic cone pointed at your head. I slapped the possessed woman across the face with the wide base of the rubbery orange barricade. It was a largely symbolic gesture, but it sure as hell made me feel better. “Would you just cut the bullshit?”

  The possessed theater owner snarled and lunged at me like a jungle cat. In hindsight pissing it off might not have been the smartest move. Energized by the possession, Claudia’s sinewy body hit me like a bag of iron rods. My knees buckled against the squad car, and I tumbled into the trunk, my back landing hard alongside the box of Old Dead bones.

  “Maybe I should pay your wife a visit again?” Claudia said, her ashen face inches from mine. “I think she liked it.”

  I reared back to take a swing at the old woman, and hesitated. Claudia had to be in her eighties; if I broke her body the New Dead would just move on, and where would that leave her?

  Damn moral compass…

  The New Dead proprietress made sure I paid dearly for that moment of hesitation, launching herself on top of me and raining down a hailstorm of highly energized fists.