The Dead Series (Book 2): Dead Is All You Get (41 page)

St. Monica’s came into view, and with it the horror of my final reality. As I cruised slowly towards the church, I saw them—milling outside like anxious, hungry vultures. Draggers—twenty or thirty of them. Of course, they weren’t dead. It was probably my imagination, but the nerve agent appeared to make them even more alive. Ready for anything. Only these stood in the way of me doing what I needed to do. I was afraid for Holly, not me. And so I continued past the church into the darkness, where I parked on a lonely side street.

“Not much longer, babe,” I said.

Reaching across, I grabbed my axe and exited the vehicle, locking it up tight behind me. Outside, the air was cold. I turned my face to the sky—grey clouds rolled in, blotting out the moon. The wind chilled me, but I didn’t shiver. I was numb. When you have something to do, you do it. There is nothing else. You exist only for this one true thing. Walking faster past trash and dead birds, I stepped into a pool of light thrown from a streetlamp. I was around thirty yards away. They turned when they saw me. They were the crafty kind, I could tell—the kind who could organize.

The leader, a ratty teenager with stringy brown hair and black hole eyes—my roommate from the police station holding cell—grimaced. It tilted its head back and, its throat blowing up like a bullfrog in a Cajun swamp, it let out a death shriek that echoed up and down the block. Immediately, the others responded. And they came for me.

I stood in the middle of the street, gripping my beloved axe with both hands. I didn’t want to pray to a God who had cut me so deeply, but I did. I did it for Holly. “Please, God,” I said. “Please, in your infinite mercy, make them pay.”

The leader hung back as the others rushed me. They were organized, these disciples of Hell, like a cackle of hyenas surrounding an injured antelope. Facing Death, I closed my eyes. But only for a second. When the first one came at me, I hacked off its hands in two swift strokes. It flailed at me, confused as to why it couldn’t grab me. Then I took its head. More grunting, more screeching commands. Two more came at me. I hacked at their necks, throwing them off balance as they swung towards me. Kicking each of them, I sent them into the others, who struggled to grab me. These I stopped by splitting their heads from the top down. Black sludge oozed out from broken craniums as they fell in a pile. I finished the first two I’d started.

For a moment, I was that kid with his hockey stick. Skating purposefully around the rink, taking on all comers. I was me at my happiest. The boy with no father who was full of plans and dreams. Then I was
me
, and I moved forward into the oozing mass of hungry predators who thought they still had a shot.

Tirelessly, I hacked off arms and disarranged faces. I took off legs, leaving the attackers stumped and crawling desperately towards me, ravenous for my flesh. Squirming body parts lay everywhere, and I almost tripped as I came for the final few—the ones who thought they could win. One leapt towards me. I stepped out of the way and, as it hit the ground, brought my bloody axe down on its spine, severing the vital electrical messages from brain to limb. It could do nothing more than twist its upper body and howl at me in rage. Still hungry. Still trying.

I faced the second to last—a woman dressed as a real estate agent in a ratty gold jacket and no shoes. It tried to overtake me. I let it. And as it reached me, its hungry, grinning mouth so close to my neck, I jammed the axe handle under its jaw, driving it up and through the head, crushing everything in its path. Tumbling backwards, the dragger swung around—toothless—ready for another go. So I took off its head, which rolled towards the feet of the lone remaining dragger. The teenager with the stringy hair and black hole eyes.

For a time it stood there, studying me. I could see in it a creeping intelligence that I needed to acknowledge. We faced each other. It with the Billabong tee shirt and ripped jeans. Me in my bloodied Black Dragon uniform, breathing hard. Aching from the workout its comrades had given me. Everything moved around me except this thing. Draggers. Parts of draggers—heads especially.

“God, this last one,” I said. “Let me finish the mission. You owe me that.”

The dead thing looked at me curiously, as if it couldn’t believe that this young Polack from a town nobody’d ever heard of was
praying
. It might have even chuckled. No, just my imagination. Slowly, I turned the axe in my hands, the handle slick, covered in black blood like my hands and clothes. The dragger waited—the undead have all the patience in the world. I expected it to rush me and I gripped the axe, waiting for it to make a move. Instead, it ran away.

“Thank you,” I said.

From far off, a death shriek echoed as I made my way back to the Escalade. Once again, I was completely alone, my tired footsteps slapping against the cold asphalt. A few drops of rain hit me as I tossed the axe aside, lifted Holly out of the backseat and walked steadily towards the church. Alone. Nothing moved—not even the gory remains of the draggers I’d dispatched. I was more than tired. Tired to my soul. Nothing in life could ever have prepared me for this. But I had to go on.

I made my way up the steps of the church and, when I got to the doors, I heard it. Singing. It was faint, but this time I knew it wasn’t my imagination. Someone was singing. My wife in my arms, I opened one of the doors and went inside.

The church was empty, except for one person—a girl. I couldn’t see her very well—she stood in front of the dimly lit altar. There, alone in the church, she sang “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.” Her voice was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. I wanted to stay there, listening to her forever.

Carrying my wife up the aisle, I gazed at the statues of the saints, the stained glass windows illuminated from the outside by bright artificial lights, and at the Stations of the Cross which, in spite of my condition, depicted more suffering than I could ever know. And directly in front of me behind the altar hung Jesus on the cross. God had let me come this far. I knew in my heart Holly would be safe now.

As the girl continued to sing, I carried my wife to the altar, knelt and laid her gently on the marble floor. She was all I had, but I knew it was time to let her go. Getting up, I went to a holy water font and dipped my fingers in, fouling the water with dragger blood. I returned to the altar and made the Sign of the Cross on my wife’s forehead. It was the best I could do without a priest. Her soul would find its way.

I knelt there for a long time, looking at Holly. Remembering the sound of her voice. The anger left me like a crow with his fill of carrion. A deep pain I knew would never heal wracked me. And I wept. “You once told me you couldn’t wait for me to become the man you would make me,” I said. “I still need to show you, and I’m not ready. Oh, God, Holly! I’m not ready!”

Someone touched my shoulder. When I turned, the girl stood next to me. She was dirty, her small, waif-like body wearing shorts and a bloody T-shirt with the words
L’il Princess
written across it. She couldn’t have been more than ten, with blonde hair and hurt green eyes. There was something so familiar about her. Then I remembered. This was the girl I’d killed on a road in Mt. Shasta so many months ago after she’d turned. I didn’t understand how she could possibly be here. It didn’t matter.

She wiped away my tears and smiled. I grasped her hand, got to my feet and looked at my wife’s body lying in front of the altar. It was done. Weary and in pain, I turned to the girl. There was a peacefulness about her—I can’t explain. I felt myself drifting away. I heard my own voice ask her a question. “What’s your name?”

“Holly. It’s Holly. Don’t be afraid. ‘Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up.’”

Confused and aching, I pulled my hand away and left the church. Stood outside on the steps. Once again, I was alone. I didn’t care what happened to me now. I’d taken care of Holly—I’d honored her memory. I breathed the scent of rain.

Movement in the darkness made me look off to the side. I watched intently as something came out of the shadows. It was the lone dragger—the one who’d run away. It had come back for me.

Slowly, I walked down the steps to meet it. I no longer had my axe. No gun and no knife. Weak from blood loss. I was defenseless, and that was cool. What happens to the soul when you turn? Does it leave the body? Or is it trapped inside, a silent witness to the atrocities you inflict on others, till someone dispatches you? I knew I would find out soon enough. And it didn’t matter. There would be no one left here for me to harm.

The teenage dragger moved closer, cautious from its last encounter with me. It seemed to realize that I was unarmed, and it moved faster. Soon it would be on me. Without emotion, I watched its approach. It was as if this was happening to someone else. I felt nothing. Grinning hideously, it let out a death shriek and came for me. I closed my eyes, ready to accept my fate.

A gunshot echoed in the street. When I opened my eyes, I saw the dragger slithering to the ground at my feet, its head half-blown away. Three figures approached—human figures. A dog ran towards me, whining and yiping with joy. Greta bounded at me and covered me in dog slobber as I struggled to keep my balance.

“Greta, how did you—”

Warnick, Griffin and Fabian came out of the shadows. Griffin ran to me and fell into my arms, covering me in her tears. “You’re alive!” she said.

I thought about it. About how I’d been dead after everything that had happened. I’d lost everything, including my will to live. But seeing Griffin now, I felt differently. I breathed deeply, taking in the early morning air. “I
am
alive,” I said.

It began to rain, cold and steady but refreshing, washing away the poison that had killed most living things in my town. Cleansing Tres Marias of all of the bad. Warnick and Fabian hugged me. “There’s a girl in there,” I said. “We have to help her.”

Warnick and Fabian hurried inside while Griffin and I sat on the steps, me stroking Greta’s ears. Griffin clinging to my good arm. A few moments later the men came out.

“Where’s the girl?” I said.

Warnick shook his head. “There was no one in there. No one except Holly.”

My wife was dead. My baby was dead. But I was alive. I didn’t know why or how. Maybe we’re not supposed to know. We just go on. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Warnick was holding his bible. He took my hands and placed the book in them. Closed my fingers tightly around it. I felt nothing—no healing power, nothing. But I held on anyway. “Come on,” he said. “It’s been a long night.”

When I was little
and afraid, my mother always sang to me. A really old song that was written before I was born—“Catch the Wind.” Though the song was about loss and things that could never be, the words always comforted me. Maybe it was the sweetness of my mother’s voice or the way she gazed at me when she sang it. When I turned thirteen, she gave me an iPod. I don’t know how she figured it out, but somehow she managed to purchase and download the original Donovan recording of the song I loved so much. I hadn’t heard it in a long time—skull-cracking hockey players don’t need comforting. But there were many afternoons when I would stay in my room, listening to that stupid song. And I remembered what it felt like to be so very hurt and so very afraid.

And that’s how I felt now, without Holly.

During that last dangerous day, Warnick had managed to get Griffin, Fabian and Greta safely to our waiting helicopter. Griffin had begged him to wait for me, but Warnick knew better. He could see that I was grief-stricken and suicidal, and that I wanted more than anything to die. What he hadn’t figured on was my desire to get Holly away from that place.

And so they’d made it safely to the National Guard armory and waited for me, even after Warnick and Fabian were certain I was dead. But Griffin had insisted. She’d told Warnick she had a strong feeling—her little woman—a sense that I was alive and needed help. But where would they even begin to look? Griffin had called it. She’d known in her bones that I would return to Tres Marias. And, despite the risk, they’d taken off in a Humvee to look for me.