DeadBorn (17 page)

“
Holly, no!” I shout as she sobs and stumbles out the bathroom door and away, leaving me with the fleshy mass that used to be Martin. I feel even worse when I see that it's still moving, quivering with magic, desperate to get at me even though it's a physical impossibility. “Holly!” I screech as my arm goes completely numb below her makeshift tourniquet. It seems like hours that she's gone although my logical mind tells me that it's only been minutes.

When she returns, Holly has a screwdriver in one hand. I can't even fathom what she's planning on doing with it as she threads it into the knot of the tourniquet. Then she begins to spin it, and pain crashes over and through me, smashing into my brain and knocking me to the floor of unconsciousness.

***

Thirty-Seven Hours and Two Minutes After …

I drift in and out of consciousness, navigating between nightmares with the same skill that dream-Holly is guiding our imaginary boat. The steering wheel is a screwdriver and I notice that each time she spins it, my arm feels lighter, like there's a good possibility that it'll detach itself and go drifting off into a sky that's filled with crimson clouds. When it starts to rain, I find that I'm soaked in blood, just dripping with it. It burns my skin and sluices between my lips, desperate to get down my throat. But Holly stops it by dropping the steering wheel and putting a bottle of water to my mouth. She forces me to drink nearly all of it and then whispers quietly in my ear.

“
You're alright, Galen. You're okay. I'm here; I'm right here.”

My eyes snap open and Holly's still there, only we're not on a boat. We're lying on the floor in the hallway and I've got a pillow under my head and a blanket around my feet. When I try to move my arm, it doesn't respond. When I try to look at it, Holly grabs my chin and keeps my gaze away.

“
How do you feel?” she asks me as I blink my eyes and focus on a series of nature photographs that line the wall behind her head.

“
Alright, I guess,” I tell her honestly. “Maybe a bit tired, but that's it. My arm doesn't even hurt anymore.” I try to look at it again, but Holly still won't let me. She kisses my lips a hundred times and I can tell that she's been crying for awhile now. Her face is blotchy and sad and there are lines there that I've never seen before, valleys of stress that connect her lips to her chin and her eyes to her ears. I've put Holly through hell. “I'm sorry,” I say, feeling guilty for not taking her worries more seriously. I shouldn't have gotten so close to Martin. Holly knew, she
knew
, and she was right.

Holly brushes blonde hair away from my face and runs her thumbs across my eyebrows. She's crying again, and I can tell that something's wrong. I just don't know what it is yet. Obviously, I haven't turned into a zombie, which is pretty amazing since I could feel the magic coursing through my veins like poison. I don't know why it works that way, but it does. I know it. And Holly does, too. Otherwise she wouldn't have done what she did with the screwdriver. Now that I'm awake, I understand why. She was tightening the tourniquet, cutting off the flow of magic to the rest of my body. She's so fucking smart, I can't stand it.

“
What happened to my arm?” I ask her point-blank. She doesn't answer right away and instead, lets her body slump sideways until she's lying next to me. Dawson and Valerie are nowhere to be seen and I wonder if they know about Martin yet. Martin. Poor fucking Martin. I feel even worse since I don't know how he died or if there was anything we could've done to save him. I ask Holly about it and the look on her face tells me that she's hiding something from me. Not just about my arm though there's that, too.

“
Galen, I … ” Holly pauses and I can hear footsteps from behind me. It's Dawson.

“
There's some really fucked up noises coming from the warehouse,” he tells us, looming over me with a curious expression. His brown eyes show enough shock that I'm guessing I've been out for awhile. “Oh my god, he's awake.” Dawson switches his gaze to Holly and then back to mine again. Whatever he sees in her face convinces him not to say anything else. That's when I know that my arm is done for. They cut it off or it's dead, destroyed by the lack of blood flow. If that's true then I may as well amputate it because gangrene could set in and kill me. Either way, I'm going to need medical help that they can't give. Either way, I'm dead.

“
Go tell Valerie,” Holly says and Dawson nods, immediately heading in the direction of the offices. I wonder where he's going when Holly reaches down and takes my face between her hands. “Are you hungry?” she asks me and tries to smile. “There's a ton of food in the break room. I could make you a sandwich or a cup of ramen or something.”

“
Holly, tell me about my arm.”

“
I made myself a can of beef stew. It tasted like dog shit, but if you want, I could make you that, too.”

“
Holly, please.” Her eyes are tearing up now, but she's still smiling.

“
There's some cheddar cheese and a box of Ritz crackers. Want that with some slices of ham?”

“
Holly!” My hands come up suddenly and grab the sides of her face. Sensation shoots through my left arm and there's a split second there where I feel like it's completely out of my control, like it could do anything that it wanted and I couldn't stop it. My fingers dig into her cheek and then relax abruptly as if they've just realized what they've done. “Holly?” The word's a question on my lips, one that gets more and more complex by the moment. I pull both of my arms back and cradle the left in the right. Then I look to Holly for answers. But she doesn't know any. I can see it in her eyes; they're almost entirely white, like she's a ghost or something.

“
W-what?” Holly asks and I know she's not asking me, just the universe. I don't blame her. I'm just as confused myself because now that I can finally see my arm, I don't just think that's it dead: I know it.

The skin is mottled with black and gray patches, a mosaic of dead flesh that spans the entire length of my arm from fingertips to shoulder. The tourniquet is still in place, and I can see from the indents in my arm how tight Holly managed to get it. There isn't an inch of pale pink skin left anywhere on it, even my nails are black.

“
Am I … a zombie?” I ask and although the question sounds stupid, it isn't. I'm generally afraid for Holly, for Dawson, for Valerie, for
myself.
Holly swallows hard and reaches down to take my hand. Hers is soft and warm and just as comforting as it's always been. It fits it mine like it was made to be there and although there are strange pulsations coming from my arm, I can still feel her as if nothing's changed. She examines my fingers, my wrist, the skin on my elbow and then locks gazes with me. There are all of these emotions swimming around in her eyes like fish. I don't know what to make of them. There's fear there, sure, but there's also relief and curiosity, an all consuming need to find out what's happened to me.

“
No,” she says confidently as she releases me and tries to smile. “But I think your arm is.”

CHAPTER 15

Molder

Thirty-Seven Hours and Twenty-Six Minutes After …

While I was sleeping, Valerie worked all day on the windows downstairs while Dawson kept watch and Holly took care of me. During that time, there wasn't a DeadBorn to speak of, not in the horizon, not in the building, not in the sky.

Now there is.

“
No way in fuck I'm going down there,” Dawson says although nobody's asked him to do any such thing. I'm sitting away from the edge with my back to the wall, arm wrapped in shredded T-shirts and fashioned with a makeshift sling. Holly says it's best if nobody knows about it because she thinks either Valerie or Dawson is liable to shoot me. She doesn't mention Martin, nobody does. I wonder if his body is still in the bathroom or if someone's cleaned it up. I decide that I don't want to think about it and try to focus on the crashing sounds that are emanating form the barn.

My arm feels almost normal. What keeps me from forgetting about it completely is this nagging pull, like someone has a string wrapped around my wrist and is trying to control me like a marionette. The place where Martin bit me, which still carries tiny indentations of his teeth, feels warm, almost hot, like it wants to sweat but can't. If it wasn't for those things, I might've been able to pretend it didn't happen. Except for the black, leathery skin of course.

“
Do you think it's another one of those fire faces?” Dawson asks and I can tell that he's read my journal because he glances back at me and kind of smiles.

“
Dunno,” Valerie replies as she paces beneath the oak tree like a cougar awaiting a deer. She seems so confident now, like she could kill any of the DeadBorn, even the angels. “But I won't feel safe spending the night with it there. We have to find out what it is and take care of it.”

“
I'm not going down there,” Dawson repeats and Valerie rolls her eyes. When she glances back at him though, I can see that she's grown fond of him in the few, short hours that they've known each other. Maybe he reminds her of a brother, a friend, a cousin, someone that could very well be dead. I keep my thoughts carefully bare and try to focus on keeping my arm still. It wants to move around, raise up to the sky and proclaim that it's still here. I figure it must be some type of side effect from my brain, probably glad to have the limb back in place. But that's only because it doesn't know how it happened. I do. It was magic. Not good.

“
I was just thinking we should try something like this.” Valerie lifts up her shotgun, aims carefully and blows a hole in the grass near the barn. She looks like a lead in a big budget film with her chestnut curls trailing down her neck and her brown eyes focused and clear. She looks good with a gun, too. It suits her.

The crashing and banging stops but just for a split second. Then there's this massive shriek and the wood on the barn starts to bow outwards, like the pressure inside's just too great for it. It doesn't hold long and soon the wood is scattering across the grass, flinging red boards as far as the edge of the parking lot. Most of them look rotted and old, like they should've been replaced a long time ago. It's an illusion though, one caused by the monster that's stepping through the gaping hole with long, crooked legs and skin like tar. It's black and bubbly, covered in pustules that burst when it moves, spraying yellow and green goop across the walls nearest it. Its head is vaguely human but situated on the end of such a short neck that it blends together and looks like a bulbous lump. The thing's hunched over, too, spine twisted forward and bent like its skinny arms. Its a creature out of my worst nightmare, the most horrible DeadBorn yet.

“
It's an ooze spitter,” I say and I think then that the name doesn't quite do it justice. It's
horrible,
too horrible for any English words that I know. It raises its head, sniffs at the air with two tiny slits that line the front of its face and then vomits green sludge onto the ground at its feet. The goop steams and even manages to melt the foliage around it, erasing the grass from existence like it was never there in the first place. It's worse than fire even because fire, at least, leaves ashes. This leaves nothing. “Holy shit.” I don't know what else to say. Cussing is the only thing that seems appropriate at the moment.

“
How do you think we get rid of this one?” Valerie asks and I notice that Holly isn't even looking at the ooze spitter, she's looking at me, staring straight into my eyes. She's trying to tell me something, but I'm not getting it.

“
Look for a heart, maybe?” Holly suggests and Dawson and Valerie both turn to look at her. Holly immediately holds up her hands and rushes to explain. “That's how we got rid of the fire face, and this is a demon, too, so it would make sense.” Dawson turns away and scratches his head while Valerie lifts hers up and catches the eyes of the ooze spitter. I can tell the moment that it sees her because it grins. Black, crusty lips pull back and the whitest teeth I've ever seen on anyone, let alone a monster, flash the sun right back at us.

“
Don't see anything from here,” she continues, unfazed. “Maybe it's in the back?” The ooze spitter screeches, the sound echoing across the refuge, shrill and untamed. Even the birds stop singing when they hear it. When the DeadBorn starts to run, all is quiet except for the sounds of its pounding footsteps. It's coming right for us.

“
Fuck!” Dawson shouts as he panics and fires off a few rounds into the demon's head. Nothing. It doesn't even slow it. The bullets whiz through the flesh and out the other side, taking bits of the creature with them. But it isn't enough, not by a long shot. Dawson starts to back away, fear taking over his face and clouding his eyes with indecision. He doesn't know what to do.

“
It's like a logic puzzle or something,” Valerie says as she squints her eyes and doesn't flinch a bit. “We've gotta figure out what makes it tick and then spin the clock back, you know what I mean?”

“
Fuck no,” Dawson whispers, but I notice that he doesn't move, doesn't even act like he's going to run. Holly moves forward, past Dawson, and stands next to Valerie as the creature doubles back, gallops away from us, and pauses at the edge of the parking lot, just out of range.

“
Water trumps fire … ” Valerie says, thinking aloud as the ooze spitter sniffs the air again and opens its mouth wide. “And bases trump acids, right?”

“
How do you even know that crap is acid?” Dawson asks as he runs his fingers nervously down the barrel of his gun. Even though it can't help him, it's a symbol of protection and I think that's what he likes. Sometimes illusions are better than truths. None of that will matter though if the ooze spitter kills us all. Could it melt the building down around us? Maybe it could project its vomit through the air, hit us even though we're on the second story? We just don't know, and when Holly glances back at me, I can see that she doesn't know either. When they say that knowledge is power, they aren't kidding.