“No, Mom, this is my responsibility. These girls are obviously here for me,” I said, edging back in front of her.
“Megan Amanda—”
She didn’t have time to get to my last name before the two sisters’ blue eyes suddenly turned bright, Reanimated red. They lunged at me, claws raised as I stumbled backward into Mom. I had just enough time to notice that their French manicures were in awfully good shape for chicks who’d dug themselves out from under six feet of dirt before we were on the floor, rumbling like something from the WWWF.
CHAPTER 11
I heard Shane screaming and saw Mom trying to pull one of the sisters off of me, but they were too strong. Groaner number one shoved Mom away as if she weighed nothing and then turned her attention back to me with a swipe aimed at my eyes. I wiggled to the left just in time to catch the blow on the shoulder, not the face, but it still hurt like nobody’s business.
“Absis—”
Groaner two shoved her hand into my face, interrupting the freezing command even as groaner one made a lunge for my throat.
Mom grabbed a baseball bat from the closet and knocked the lunger’s head hard enough to spin her face around to her back, then started whaling on the second zombie, but the thing barely seemed to notice. Argh! If only Mom could still command the dead!
But Mom hadn’t been able to actively Settle since I was five years old and started manifesting. That meant she couldn’t help me any more than the average terrified human parent. It also meant that, once these ladies had eaten me, she and Dad would have no way to get rid of them.
I had to get free. There was no other option.
I screamed and kicked and thrashed but barely managed to keep clear of one zombie’s hands and the other zombie’s mouth. The second one was getting way too freaking close to getting her teeth into me, a fact that made my heart beat triple time as I shoved at the hand still covering my mouth.
One part of me heard Mom yell for Dad, but the other part was back at the night of my first attack. I remembered the searing pain as the zombie tore into my shoulder, the feeling of flesh tearing away from flesh as I scuttled backward, screaming. I was suddenly ten years old again, helpless to do anything but lie there and pray for help.
No! You aren’t that little kid anymore. Pull your head out of your ass and do something!
I forced the memory away as I reared back and head-butted the thing on top of me. Pain blossomed through my forehead, but luckily the zombie was dazed enough by the blow to be temporarily distracted from her bid to rip out my throat. Seconds later, Dad was there above me, kicking her away.
“Grab my arms, Megan!” I clung to my dad’s forearms as he snatched me under the armpits and hauled me out from under the two feral versions of Shane.
I kicked the one with her face still in the right direction in the eye as my dad wrenched me free, giving us a few extra seconds to turn and haul ass. Mom was already holding open the door to my parents’ bedroom, ready to slam it closed as soon as we were safely inside. Dad and I lurched through the opening, still awkwardly clinging to each other, but luckily we didn’t fall down until we were near the bed.
“They’re clones, I’m sure of it,” Mom spoke into the phone at her ear as she closed the door and flipped the dead bolt. “Yes, I know that—listen, I—dammit, Carl, they were trying to eat my daughter. We’re locked in our bedroom, but I don’t know how long the door will hold. We need backup. Now!”
As if on cue, something that sounded like a fist connected with the door, making it rattle. A second later, another blow hit and the wood groaned in a way that wasn’t comforting. We had to get out of here before they found a way in.
“Mom, the window!” I was up and across the room in a second, throwing open the window next to my parents’ bed. Our house is all one level, and the lot only sloped a little bit on that side. It was maybe a four-foot drop to the ground and from there only ten to twelve feet around to the side of the house where my dad’s truck was parked in the driveway.
“We’re going to try to get out to the—”
Mom was interrupted by a splintering sound as a white Mary Jane broke through the bottom of the door.
“Jennifer, come on!” My dad kicked out the screen and helped me through the window. I hit the ground and turned to see if Mom needed help getting through. I was reaching up to take her hand when she screamed.
“Behind you, Megan!”
On pure instinct, I ducked down. A second later, I felt the air stir as something zoomed over my head and hit the brick wall in front of me.
“Gunhhh!” Yet another version of Shane groaned as she struggled to stand, half of her head smashed in by contact with the bricks. Too bad zombies didn’t need brains to function or I might have been able to eliminate her as a possible threat. But no, she was already up and at me—trudging forward, arms raised and hands ready to close around my neck and squeeze as soon as she got close enough.
I turned to run, only to find two other clones shuffling in from the front yard. I changed direction, rounding the house into the backyard.
If I’d been able to draw a big enough breath, I would have screamed.
The entire yard was filled with Shanes, at least two dozen of them. That evil freak on the phone had wanted to make sure I wouldn’t survive this attack, so she’d made up for what black-magically raised zombies lacked in speed with pure numbers. My family was surrounded, and unless help showed soon, we weren’t going to live to share the story of these clones with the rest of the Settler world.
“Reverto! Reverto!”
I hurled everything I had at the clones, but it didn’t do a bit of good. There were too many of them for the
reverto
spell to work. They wouldn’t be going anywhere unless I miraculously gained more power or worked the
pax frater corpus
—which was impossible since I certainly hadn’t memorized the entire thing.
I was out of options. Unless . . .
No, I couldn’t try the flame command—not yet. I hadn’t even had the chance to practice it once. I was likely to screw up the hand motions and end up shocking myself senseless and providing the corpses with an easy feast. Better to stick with what I knew I could handle.
“Desino! Absisto!”
I focused my magic as best I could and hurled the power at the zombie closest to me. It froze in its tracks. The second-stage animation-arrest spells were fairly simple. Unfortunately, they only lasted for a few seconds, maybe a minute, tops. This was only buying me time, not really helping solve the—
I suddenly had an idea. The real Shane really
was
an average Unsettled, though Mom hadn’t seemed convinced she’d spilled the real reason she crawled from her grave. If I could get the 411 from Shane, Mark her, and send her back to her rest, maybe all these other Shanes would go with her. Surely they wouldn’t be able to animate if the person they’d been cloned from was at rest?
Or so I hoped. Otherwise, heading back into the house was probably a very stupid idea.
“Absisto!”
I used my hands to guide the spell toward the zombies on the porch steps, running past them as soon as they were momentarily out of commission.
“Megan!” I heard Mom scream, and could only hope Dad had pulled her to safety.
There was nothing I could do for her now except try to get rid of these zombies. Hand-to-hand combat was useless.
“Desino! Absisto! Desino!”
I managed to freeze enough of the clones to get in through the back door. The living room was blessedly empty, but I could see the first two zombies that had attacked me making quick work of the door to my parents’ bedroom. I had to work fast.
“Shane! Tell me what it is you don’t like about your death!” I said, rushing toward the real Shane, who still stood by the front door, looking nearly as freaked out as I felt.
“My cousin . . . my shoes . . .” She trailed off, looking like she was going to cry. I’d never seen a zombie cry before, and it was completely unnerving.
“Desino!”
I screamed at the zombie that was coming at me from the back porch.
I took Shane’s hand and threw open the front door. There weren’t any zombies on the front lawn, thank God, so I pulled her through and slammed the door behind us.
“Okay, you want your shoes to go to charity. You’re positive that’s all.”
“And . . . I want the police to know that it wasn’t an accident.” Her voice was small, childlike, and I felt a shiver run up my spine. I’d only had one murdered Unsettled as a kid, but I remembered it well. A six-year-old zombie had crawled from her grave to tell me about the foster father who had abused her into an early grave. I hadn’t been able to sleep well for months after.
“Desino! Absisto!”
I stopped the two zombies that were coming out the door, and then kicked them back inside while they were still frozen. The toppled over like big, corpsey bowling pins. Jeez! I wished I had a key so I could lock the door from the outside!
“What happened? Who was it?” I asked as I pulled her toward the mailbox
“My older sister. She ground up nuts and put them in the milk shake she made for me after I had my tonsils out.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” The zombies were starting to come around the side of the house.
“Desino! Absisto!”
Crap! How much longer could this go on before one of our neighbors came out to see what was up? The houses were pretty far apart in our neighborhood but not
that
far. Even if we survived almost certain zombie death and managed to find the freak who’d called me before she spilled our secret, we
still
might have to flee the state.
“Hurry, Shane, explain to me! I want to help you, but you have to hurry!”
“I’m deathly allergic to nuts. My sister knew that when she put those walnuts in there. She wanted to get rid of me so that all of my grandmother’s inheritance would go to her and she wouldn’t have to share. She was going to inherit a million dollars already,” Shane sobbed, swiping a hand across her nose. “I don’t know why that wasn’t enough.”
“Desino! Absisto!”
I hated to interrupt her, but there
were
zombies getting uncomfortably close.
“I think she might have been sorry after. She came and cried by my bed when I was in a coma . . . but it was too late.” Shane was shivering and brought a hand up to her mouth and began chewing on her already ravaged nails. There was no doubt in my mind she was naturally Unsettled. She looked like she’d done the dirty work of getting out of her grave, and if a murderous sister wasn’t enough to pull you from your eternal rest, I didn’t know what was.
Still, the girl on the phone must have somehow gotten to Shane between her grave and our house and used Shane as her latest evil “experiment.” That was what she’d said; I remembered it now—that she loved playing with the dead and that experimenting was so much fun. That. Witch. If I hadn’t wanted her to pay before, I certainly did now. Messing with some poor, tortured soul who had been murdered was just . . . evil.
I wished I had the time or the heart to question Shane about what said evil girl looked like, but I didn’t. The zombies had figured out where I’d run to and were closing in fast. There was no way I’d be able to hold them off for much longer. I didn’t have a second to spare.
“Desino
! Don’t worry, Shane. I’ll make sure your sister doesn’t get away with this,” I said, smoothing a piece of dirty blond hair out of her face.
She was younger than I’d thought at first, probably no more than thirteen. I was only three years older, but I felt almost motherly at that moment—I wanted to comfort her, and I also wanted to make sure her sister rotted in prison for the rest of her life.
“Thanks.” She smiled and threw her arms around me for a hug. For once, I didn’t mind the smell of death because the gratitude in her eyes was as real and alive as anything I’d ever seen.
“Just go get some rest.” I touched her forehead lightly. “Rest in peace, Shane.”
Seconds later, she dashed away, disappearing down the street with preternatural speed. I spun to check out the zombies, who were still approaching at
Night of the Living Dead
shuffle speed across the yard. With. No. Sign. Of. Stopping.