It occurred to Lucy that she had
actually never physically been in a graveyard. She was eighteen
years old and yet she had never been anywhere near one of these
places. Sure, relatives had died—Daddy’s father, one of his
brothers, and an ancient aunt from her mother’s side of the family.
But both her mother and father had always insisted that neither she
nor Seth had to go.
Weird,
she thought, now walking in the moonlit night, surrounded by a
crush of headstones.
Something… a tingle, or a chill,
rippled through her body as if it were coming right out of the
ground. Almost like a weak electrical charge coming through her
feet.
She stopped, momentarily dazed, and
looked around her. She could swear something palpable, something
almost visible, was rippling outward from her. Tentatively she
reached out her hands, and even though she wasn’t touching the
ground, she could feel a cold, dank energy flowing through her
fingers with little electric shocks.
Wow,
Lucy thought as she turned around on the spot, looking at the
ground and then feeling a pull, something literally tugging at her,
pulling at her gut like a cramp… no, not a cramp. More like that
feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster, and your belly
flips over.
“
Lucy… what’s the matter?”
Abbey was walking back toward her, eyes worried. Or was it
fear?
“
I-I don’t know.” Lucy
touched the spot on her stomach were that feeling of being pulled
at was coming from. It was getting stronger. And, to Lucy’s dismay,
she was starting to feel hungry. As if whatever was pulling at her
was something she was yearning for—and had always been hungry
for.
Abbey reached out and took her gently
by the arm. Lucy could swear Abbey jerked, as if she were feeling
what Lucy was feeling. She let go of her, looking at her own hand
like there was something clinging to her flesh.
Why does everyone do
that?
Lucy tried to say something, but just
then she realized what was pulling at her: the dead.
She closed her eyes and tried to force
out that sickening thought, but that just made the sensation worse.
It was like no matter where she was trying to drag her mind, there
was something cold and dead—and inviting—calling to her. And they
were reaching back, trying to pull her to them.
Abbey grabbed her again, this time
hard, as she pulled her along with her. “It’s not far… and time’s
almost up.”
“
I can’t,” Lucy rasped as
she tripped along after Abbey. “I think something’s
wrong!”
“
Nothing’s wrong!” Abbey
practically sobbed. “Everything will be fine. We’ve just got to get
there… before it’s too late.”
Moving faster seemed to help, as if
the dead couldn’t quite get a grip on her if she was moving fast
enough. “Where are we going?” Lucy said, but suddenly she knew.
Right in front of them a head stone had long, thick white candles
atop it, and in the middle was what looked like a picture
frame.
Abbey stopped right before the
headstone, pulled a lighter from her pocket and lit the two
candles. Between the moonlight and the dim candlelight, Lucy could
make out a handsome couple, not much younger than her own parents,
peering out from the frame, looking adoringly into the
camera.
Lucy looked down and read the names on
the stone.
James and Julie Adams. Beloved and
Missed.
They had died two years
ago.
“
I took this picture,” Abbey
said, her hand shaking as her finger caressed the shiny black of
the frame. “We were so happy.”
“
I’m sorry.” Lucy couldn’t
believe it. She’d just assumed Abbey was living with her
grandmother because her parents were getting a divorce. She had
never even thought they were dead; hadn’t thought to even
ask.
“
Don’t be sorry.” Abbey
swiped at the tears that were streaking her mascara. “Your grandma
and mine both couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help me.”
“
What?”
Abbey smiled bitterly, turning to face
Lucy. “My Gram’s a witch, yours is a necromancer.”
“
I-I don’t know where…” Lucy
began to deny it, but the look on Abbey’s face said it all. The jig
was up. “You know?” Then another thought crossed Lucy’s mind. “Did
you know before I met you? Like, is that why you became my
friend?”
“
God, no,” Abbey sobbed.
“I’m your friend. I just guessed that you had your grandma’s power,
though hers is pretty much just a glimmer of what it used to be…
nothing much at all compared to yours.”
“
I can’t really do
anything.”
Abbey rolled her eyes.
“
Okay, I have done a couple
things, but they were creepy, and I had no control over it. I don’t
think I can actually do anything on purpose.”
Abbey’s head drooped, her chin bending
into her chest as a tear formed on her chin and dropped onto her
black T-shirt. Abbey sniffled and then looked back up, shaking her
head. “All you have to do—” she reached out and grabbed Lucy’s
hand, something sharp biting into her palm, “is forgive
me.”
Suddenly the pain in her hand was
nothing. What she felt was like the weight of the world tugging her
by the guts down to the ground. She fell to her knees, one hand
still clutched in Abbey’s grasp, the other tried to hold herself up
from being crushed to the ground. Even with the pain, she could
feel things. Somehow she knew, could feel, that her blood and
Abbey’s were mingling together, their two powers mixing—and that
Abbey was directing Lucy’s horrible power, focusing its flow
straight down into the graves of her mother and father.
Lucy felt Abbey’s parents jerk as
their bodies filled with her power… was it life? Was it their
spirits? Lucy couldn’t tell, and before she could look deeper she
felt herself being pulled in a hundred different directions. It was
excruciating, and confusing, and made her stomach lurch.
One moment she realized she was
screaming like someone was killing her, the next moment the
contents of her stomach were being disgorged through her mouth and
splattering on the dried out grass of the graveyard.
“
Come back to me,” Abbey
cried out, her voice shaking with grief and terror. “Mom… Dad… I
need you to come back to me… I can’t do this, I can’t live any
longer without you!”
And like a tidal wave, Lucy and
Abbey’s power burst from them and into the ground, and then it
blasted back up at them both, knocking them back five or more feet.
Lucy smacked her head on the cold ground, which was better than on
a grave stone, but it still hurt, and the dizzy, blacking-out
feeling didn’t mix well with all the other nauseating, gut
wrenching pain, and electrical shocks that were still surging
though her body and mind.
Lucy just lay there for a moment,
feeling the power wash out of her body and seep into the ground
around her. The earth was cold beneath her, yet she was covered in
sweat. Her mind was still electrified, and she could feel things
all around her moving, encroaching toward her. She leaned up and
pulled herself onto her knees, looking around her, expecting to see
things running at her. But nothing stirred, not even
Abbey.
She lay there on her back, not moving,
her eyes closed. Lucy crawled over to her and shook her, calling
out her name, though her voice was hoarse. No response. She felt
for a pulse and thankfully found one, then leaned down until she
could hear her breathing.
Thank god.
Lucy looked around, felt in her pockets for her
phone—it wasn’t there! She’d forgotten it. Damn it! She felt the
pockets of Abbey’s black cargo pants; lots of pockets, but no
bulges big enough to be a phone.
I’ve got to get her out of here, Lucy
told herself. She just had to choose: go and get help, or try and
drag Abbey’s unconscious body to safety. She felt like she’d been
hit by a truck, but she so didn’t want to leave Abbey there alone.
Not with what had just happened. Who knew what was coming? And
truthfully, she didn’t want to come back to this place for
anything.
So Lucy stood up, feeling her head
pounding and pitching on top of her shoulders. She held her head
for a moment until the world stopped spinning. A few deep breaths
and she opened her eyes. The night fog had cleared a little, but
she still couldn’t see the perimeter of the graveyard. Which way
had they come in?
Crap!
She leaned down to grab Abbey under
the arms when she heard a crack, the kind like a limb getting split
off a tree by lightning. Lucy gulped and looked up. There directly
in front of her was a hand covered in dirt and clumps of grass,
sticking out of the grave of James and Julie Adams.
~*~
Lucy felt a cold stabbing fear in her
gut. It wasn’t that horrible pulling feeling anymore. No, this was
pure, undiluted fear. If she weren’t so tired she might’ve
screamed, she might’ve turned and ran, right then, forgetting about
Abbey lying unconscious and defenseless at her feet. But she was
both exhausted and acutely aware of what was going on around
her.
It was a chaotic mess. It wasn’t just
Abbey’s parents digging themselves out of their graves, the
cemetery was vibrating with activity—not life… just two hundred
corpses rising, clawing their way out of their coffins.
Shit, shit, shit, shit,
shit!
And if the rather nasty state of James
and Julie Adams freshly animated corpses was any indication of what
was to come crawling out of the rest of the graves, Lucy was glad
she’d already thrown up the contents of her stomach.
Covered in dirt, stitches clearly
holding her flesh together, Mrs. Adam’s head had obviously
separated from her shoulders, the stitches bulging since her entire
head lolled to the side. They hadn’t bothered trying to stabilize
or reinforce the neck. Lucy hoped, for Abbey’s sake, that the
funeral had been closed casket.
Mr. Adams had had the top of his skull
chopped off, and they had simply stapled it back on top of his
head. And as he stepped out of his grave, his suit wrinkled and
caked with soil, Lucy saw that his left leg was crooked—probably
broken during the accident.
Lucy couldn’t keep her eyes on Mr. and
Mrs. Adams. It wasn’t their disturbing appearance… it was that
corpses were breaking through the ground all around her. Some
faster than others, some almost completely skeletal, some almost
looked like they were in good enough shape they could’ve passed for
living. Must have been gentle deaths, and the embalming procedure
had frozen them that way.
But most were stooped, rotting bags of
mottled flesh, oozing fluids and eyes bulging or drooping out of
their sockets.
Lucy fell to her knees beside Abbey,
trying to shake her awake. If they ran they might have a
chance.
Are they zombies? If they
are, will they eat us?
Lucy cried out
Abbey’s name.
Or just our
brains?
Suddenly Abbey’s eyes snapped open,
she gasped and brought her arm up over her face, moaning. And then
she was screaming. She’d caught sight of a zombie crawling out of
his grave—there was only half of him left. She scrambled to her
feet, spinning around, gasping between screams, looking to Lucy,
her terrified eyes barely registering her. But then she just
stopped screaming, stopped moving, wasn’t even breathing for a
moment.
“
Momma… Daddy?” She gasped
and gulped breath as she started to stagger toward her parents’
animated corpses.
Oh god.
Lucy reached out and tried to grab Abbey, caught her elbow and
dragged her back to her. Abbey tried to push Lucy away, but Lucy
wouldn’t let go. Abbey turned on her and pushed again. “Let go of
me!”
“
Abbey, we’ve got to get out
of here!” Lucy tried to pull her toward the only clear path she
could see. The only way that didn’t have a corpse dragging itself
toward them. But Abbey couldn’t take her eyes away from her
parents, and she just kept calling to them, and pushing at Lucy,
trying to get free of her.
“
They’re not you parents
anymore!” Lucy said. She shook her friend and turned her to face
her.
Abbey’s eyes flashed, the whites of
her eyes huge, her mouth now open in a snarl. She reared back and
slapped Lucy across the cheek, hard enough Lucy lost her hold on
one of Abbey’s shoulders, but she kept hold of the other for dear
life. She couldn’t let her get any closer to her
parents.
She couldn’t feel much anymore, there
were just too many dead people walking around, fighting with each
other. But she could tell two things: there were no spirits in any
of the zombies, just energy filling them, making them move; and she
could feel hunger rolling off every single one of them.
Guess that answers the
“will they eat us?” question.
Lucy gasped when she saw a skeletal
hand clasp down on Abbey’s shoulder, a rotting face appearing out
of the darkness, its teeth flashing as it went for her throat. Lucy
swung her fist and punched the gruesome creature in the face,
knocking out one of its slimy teeth. But just then something
grabbed Lucy by the ankle, making her fall to one knee and
scream.