Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (31 page)

“Meet me at the back of the bakery. I think it might be safer.”

Mara hung up and glanced at the phone for a second. “
Safer
?”

* * *

The stoplight at Woodstock Boulevard was dark, so Mara took the left without slowing down since there was no approaching traffic. The first couple blocks were unlit and quiet, until she came to the overturned bus in the middle of the street. Clouds of dust billowed under a nearby working streetlight and a large African American man in a blue uniform was lifting himself out of the upturned doors at the front of the bus. Someone else banged and yelled at the doors in the center of the bus but had yet to wedge them open.

Mara slowed and considered stopping to see if anyone needed help, but a cluster of three green apparitions standing on the other side of the road made her think it would be best to get to the shop. She continued down the street, thankful to see the streetlights on again, scanning the blocks ahead, making sure nothing jumped into her path again.

A couple blocks from the shop, all the streetlights went out, and the entire area plunged into darkness. From the corner of her eye, she saw a green someone dart across a side street. In the next block, she saw an old potbellied man, green and transparent, riding on an ordinary bicycle, only visible beneath him because of the glow he radiated.

On the corner before the shop, she saw her first shedding victim. She could not bring herself to think of them as zombies, even though they had that look about them. This one was a tall, wiry man, standing stiffly at the corner staring vacantly into the street in her direction. Her paranoia made her think that somehow this guy was a sentry for Prado, or Prado being a sentry, but it was too dark, and his eyes were too blackened to actually tell where he was looking.

Continuing past the Mason Fix-It Shop and Ping’s Bakery, Mara took a right at the corner and saw another gray-skinned, vacant-eyed man swaying and staring at the corner on the next block. She continued until she came to the alley behind the shop and turned. A few feet into the dark road, she stopped and got out of the car. The door behind Ping’s Bakery opened, and a narrow shaft of light came from it.

“Mara?” Ping whispered, poking his head out into the night.

“Yeah, is the power out?” she said. She lightly closed her car door, not worrying if it fully latched and walked toward the flashlight.

“There was power a minute ago, but I didn’t want to light up the whole place. With a glass storefront, we’d look like some kind of beacon on this block. I don’t want to draw the interest of those strange creatures lurking around out there.”

“How many people do you think have been affected by this thing of Prado’s? I mean, I ran into more than half a dozen between here and Eighty-Second Avenue.”

“I’ve no idea. We can check out the news online in my office, assuming electricity and Internet access is available. Come on in,” he said.

The smells of cinnamon and lemon struck her as she followed him across the kitchen past the swinging doors that led to the customer area and into a small office built into the back wall of the building. She heard a couple clicks and switches while computer screen ignited, casting a glow across Ping’s face. He launched the browser and entered the Web address of a local television station. A screaming headline filled the screen: Shedding Epidemic Spreads Fear and Confusion across PDX. Below that was a simple button labeled Live Coverage. Ping pressed a button on his speakers and clicked the button on the screen.

A live shot from a helicopter appeared in a video frame, and the muffled voice of a reporter narrated, “It seems that most of the people stricken with the shedding have awakened from their comas and are mindlessly walking out of their hospital rooms. Many of them have staggered into the streets and have yet to be retrieved by their caregivers.”

A spotlight from the helicopter flashed down over what looked like the Morrison Bridge leading out of downtown Portland. In the center of the roadway, several of the patients, dressed in pajamas and hospital gowns, lurched forward without acknowledging the light or the noise from the helicopter.

The voice of the anchor cut in. “Miles, it looks like they are all heading in the same direction. We’ve gotten reports from the eastern part of town that they are heading west and from up north that they are heading south. Is it possible all of these poor souls are trying to get to the same place?”

“Charlie, are you asking me if I think these delirious people are coordinating their movements in some way? If you are, I think that sounds a little kooky, don’t you?”

There was a moment of silence, then the anchor said, “Just trying to make sense out of what is going on. It’s not easy, considering the deluge of reports of strange sightings we’ve been getting tonight. Do you have any observations that may help our viewers?”

“Nothing more from up here. We’re heading into the southeast portion of the metro area to see what we can figure out. Chopper 8 out.”

The picture switched back to the perfectly coiffed middle-aged anchor who said, “Regarding those strange sightings from around town, if you have any pictures of what appear to be greenish specter-looking phenomena, please send them to this email address or you can load them directly on our Web site. Here are a few of the dozens we have received already.”

On the screen, a series of amateur photos appeared in sequence, all of them of transparent people, fluorescing green, mostly in grainy out-of-focus shots. The anchor provided another voice-over. “Our reporters are getting information that many of these photographs appear to be images of people afflicted with the shedding, but we cannot get confirmation of that from local or hospital authorities. Some sources are speculating that these phantom images are some kind of hoax, but we are getting too many photographs from too many sources for that to be the case. Dozens more are showing up on social media.”

Ping closed the browser window but left the computer on to provide a little light. He turned to Mara. “You need to get the Chronicle. I think Prado might be leading all these people in this direction for a reason. The shedding victims are definitely converging on this area. I circled around the neighborhood a couple times on the way here, and it appears they are coming from every direction, centered on Woodstock.”

“Isn’t that a little paranoid? How would he even know we were here?”

“Did you encounter any of the shedding victims on the way?”

“I saw a couple.”

“Well, if you saw them, then it’s likely that Prado saw you.”

“I can’t believe—”

A crash at the front of the bakery shook the entire building. Ping’s eyes widened in the glow of the computer screen, and he jumped up. “Stay here. Let me take a look.”

He jogged over to the swinging doors and nudged one open enough to look out into the front of the bakery. Four half-rotted, gray-skinned people were clumsily crawling through the bashed-in window that had served as the store’s front wall. Ping turned and whispered, “Let’s go. We have to get to the Chronicle.”

The door next to his head swung inward and struck him squarely in the face.

Sam could see his breath condense in the cold night air as he and his mother tried to keep pace with Buddy, who continued to move under Prado’s influence and jerkily made good time up a hill past a row of tiny shops and a drive-through restaurant. Diana pulled up her overcoat around her neck and leaned into the incline without seeming to exert herself. The hill felt more challenging to Sam than it appeared to be for his mother.

“Let’s give him a couple more blocks, and then I think you should prompt him to go back to the house,” Diana said. “I don’t think he actually has a destination in mind. He looks like he’s sleepwalking.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Sam said. His phone rang, and he took it out of his jacket pocket and lifted it to his ear.

“Did you guys find Buddy yet?” Mara’s tinny voice blared at him. Crashing sounds reverberated in the background.

“Yeah, he’s like ten yards ahead of us, going up the hill by the drive-in place with the great corn dogs. I know you said all corn dogs are the same, but—”

“Shut up about the corn dogs! Prado’s zombies have Ping cornered under the sink in the back of the bakery.”

“So? Zap them or pixelate them or time lock them or whatever.”

“These are real people. I can’t go around pixelating and shooting lightning bolts at them. They’re victims too. And I don’t honestly think I can freeze all of them at one time without, you know, fading out. They are coming from everywhere.”

Diana looked over, concerned. “What’s going on? Let me talk to her.”

“Hold on,” he said to Mara, then turned to his mom. “Mara and Ping are apparently in the middle of some kind of zombie apocalypse. I’ll be right back.” He jogged up to Buddy, passed him, then turned around on the sidewalk directly in his path, standing under a streetlight. “Hey, Prado, you in there?”

Buddy’s face was in much worse shape than it had been earlier. The black fissures that split his skin had now distorted his features, making his mouth look as if it were a gash running from his chin, up through a nostril and to the bottom of his left eye, bulging out of its socket. He kept walking toward Sam, who walked backward ahead of him, ducking his head down, trying to get Buddy’s attention. It took a moment to catch a glint of acknowledgment, a subtle hiking of a disintegrating brow.

“Stop right there,” Sam said. “Don’t move a muscle.”

Buddy halted with one foot planted solidly on the ground ahead of the other, stopped midstride before he could bring the trailing foot forward. Sam raised the phone back to his ear and watched his mother speed-walk toward him. “Mara? Hello?”

Diana approached and said, “Did you lose her? Did the service go down?”

Sam looked at his screen. “No, the battery’s dead. All that video recording earlier drained it.” He turned to Buddy and said, “Repeat after me . . .”

* * *

Ping, dazed and bleeding from a small cut above his left eyebrow, had managed to crawl along the floor and duck under a stainless steel bar that ran between the legs of the sink to the right of the swinging doors. The creatures now pushing their way into the kitchen didn’t appear to be the sharpest knives in the drawer. They vacantly staggered around, bumping into counters, walls and the large mixer along the far wall, seemingly unable to coordinate their own limbs, much less execute a coordinated assault on the cowering baker.

Mara shook her phone in her hand and placed it back to her ear “Sam?” Talking to Ping, she said, “I think we lost him.” She turned toward the sink under which Ping hid, and yelled over the clatter of pots and utensils being knocked across a stainless steel counter and onto the floor. “I lost Sam. I’m not sure he understood what to do.”

Three of the shedding victims turned away from the sink, which they couldn’t seem to navigate, and shuffled toward Mara. Several more stumbled through the swinging doors, kicking pots across the room, filling the darkness with loud clangs and metallic screeches. Mara backed away from the entrance to the office and eased toward the rear exit. An old lady with a white beehive and few features left to her face lunged, growling in a deep register that made Mara’s skin crawl. Successfully dodging, Mara nearly fell into the arms of a tall, thin man wearing nothing but pajama bottoms. His ribs strained against his decomposing flesh, making him look particularly skeletal in the indirect lighting coming from the office computer. To avoid touching him, Mara twisted her midsection in midair and yawed away from him, losing her balance and falling onto the floor where she landed with a slotted spoon sticking into her back.

The weak light from the office was soon blotted out by the silhouettes that gathered above, a circle of lurching, swaying cadavers that bent closer and closer. Mara raised her hands before her, resigned to striking out, even if these were innocent victims.

The noise stopped. The circle of creatures above stopped bending toward her. She looked to her right, between the legs of her unmoving stalkers and thought she could make out the sheen of Ping’s eyes under the sink.

“Ping? Did you do something?” she said.

“No.” He made a grunting sound and then groaned.

“Are you hurt? Did they touch you? Are you infected?”

“Um. The dragon. I’m trying to keep from . . .”

“Don’t you dare, Ping! No dragons, not now! I am pinned down by a bunch of zombies and I refuse to deal with a dragon. Get a grip, or I swear I will pixelize your butt to kingdom come when I get out of here.”

He exhaled loudly.

Then something wet dripped down from the dark, landing on Mara’s cheek. Squealing, she wiped her face and looked into her mind’s eye, in that place where she could tap into her abilities. As she was about to strike out, the zombies spoke, in unison, and in that creepy baritone she had come to associate with Prado.

“Mara,” they said.

A shiver went down her spine.

“We have Buddy. No, that probably sounds creepy to you,” they chanted.

Mara opened her eyes and looked above at the darkened faces hanging over her.

“It’s Sam,” they said.

Ping shouted from across the room. “It’s a distraction. A trick of some kind.”

“Wait,” Mara hissed back at him.

“All corn dogs are not equal. She’ll know it’s me if I say that,” the zombie chorus said. “The zombies won’t move for a while, but we can’t leave Buddy on the street like this too long.”

“It’s Sam, he’s prompting Buddy, and it’s coming out of these guys,” she said.

“Hurry,” they chanted.

Mara raised her feet and pressed the soles of her shoes against the legs of two of the men that towered over her. They staggered backward enough to allow her to scoot between them.

“I hope that black mist can’t get through the bottoms of my shoes,” she said. She turned toward the sink. “Come on, Ping. I don’t know how much time we have.”

He rolled under the stainless steel bar and into a couple pots. Grabbing the edge of the sink, he pulled himself up and followed Mara to the back door. As she opened it, the zombies said in unison, “Call Mom.”