DeadBorn (5 page)

“
Leave him alone, okay?” I say and I realize that I'm shaking.

“
There is,” Holly says and her blues eyes are swimming with tears. I don't understand why, but I assume that she'll tell me so for the moment, I join Dawson on the ground and try to catch my breath. “And I'm the reason she's here.” Martin is rubbing his chin and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as if nothing has happened. He's the most socially awkward person I've ever met and now I know why I couldn't remember his name: I'd probably blocked it out.

“
Why?” he asks and Holly just shakes her head.

“
I don't know,” she tells us all honestly. “But I do know that her magic is out of control and that it's spreading quickly. We don't have time for rest breaks.” This is directed at me since I know she only really cares about what I'm doing. Dawson and Martin are tagalongs. Holly will protect them if they're here, especially Dawson since she feels guilty, but if it comes to me or them, she'll pick me any day. I think I'm in love with Holly. I realize that now is not the time to tell her that, so I bite down on my words and listen carefully to the ensuing conversation.

“
What the fuck is a necromancer?” Dawson asks as he rubs his face like a crazy person with quick up and down motions. He's also breathing more rapidly than he should since he's sitting down. Even though he's Holly's ex, I'm kind of worried about him.

“
It's a magician that can raise the dead,” Martin interjects proudly. I see that Dawson's face is getting red and angry again, so I butt into the conversation.

“
Maybe the source of it all doesn't matter,” I say and I mean this. I force myself to my feet and try not to stumble. I'm
tired,
mentally and physically. “Maybe it's a disease or a fungus or an ethereal punishment, I don't know, but who cares? All that matters is that we get through this.” I turn to Holly and glance sidelong at Martin. “So what do we do?”

“
In my dream,” Holly says and in my heart, I hear her ominous words ringing like a death knell.
“I had a dream. You were in it, only you were dead.”
I keep the morbid thought to myself, certain that Holly is already aware of it. “I didn't see Galen's mother, so that's where we're going. I want to break the memories, make them false. If things keep going the way I saw them, then you're all gong to die.” I notice that she doesn't say
'we.'
Holly doesn't say
we're
all going to die. I look down at the ground.

“
No,” Martin says and I glance up quickly. He's shaking his head and straightening his T-shirt. “What we should be doing is commandeering a vehicle and gathering supplies, especially weapons. Think for just a second about all the zombie movies you've ever seen.”

“
This isn't a goddamn movie!” Holly shouts at him and I see that her brow is set in that determined line that I'm so used to. Once it gets there, there's no way to smooth it out. Holly will get her way, no matter the consequences. “Galen and I are going to his mother's house. You can stay or follow, I don't care.” She spins around on her heel and starts off through the park, gesturing for me to follow. I don't say a word, just move forward so that I can wrap my hand in hers. Moments later, footsteps join us. When I glance over my shoulder, I see that both Dawson and Martin are there. I can't imagine that they wouldn't follow Holly. The world would follow Holly if they could see her. She has an inner strength that glows like the sun. It attracts everyone around her like moths to a flame.

“
Maybe after we visit Galen's mother … ” Martin says and I hear a growl from behind me. When I look over my shoulder, I see that it's not a zombie, just Dawson. Martin is annoying, true, but I can see that Dawson is using him like a punching bag, directing all his anger and his frustration at the kid. I ignore them both.

“
Are they really zombies?” I ask Holly and she shrugs, keeping her eyes scanning back and forth like a laser. She expects more of them at any moment. I can see that, plain as day, and it scares the shit out of me.

“
My dream was silent,” Holly says and then tries to smile. Again, I can see that it's fake, but I return it, hoping to keep her calm and collected until she gets the chance to cry. Then it can be my turn to take care of her, hold her and brush her hair back, give her something to live for. When my dad died, she did the same for me. I want to return that favor. I want to marry Holly. I choke back tears and bite my lip. “Except for one word,” she says and her brow is pinched and tight like she's thinking really hard about something.

“
What?” I ask and it takes her the entire walk through the park to tell me. She pauses at the second bridge, the one that spans a small creek and turns to face me, blue eyes wide and fearful.

“
DeadBorn,” she says and her voice quivers just a bit. “She said DeadBorn.”

CHAPTER 5

Repudiation

Five Hours and Fifteen Minutes After …

A one hour bike ride turns into a three hour march across the city. For the first hour or so, we don't encounter anything out of the ordinary, and I think we all begin to question what we saw. Well, all of us but Holly. She keeps walking, shoulders back, chest high. Her eyes hold this determination that never sways, not even when we walk through crowds of people and cross busy streets.

I think Dawson especially wants to believe that he's imagined everything, that his mother will be alive when he gets home, that things can just go back to the way they were when he went to sleep last night. I don't blame him, not a bit. I want the same thing for Holly. I want what happened to be a terrible dream, something that will fade away by the evening when we sit down to dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Arget, and I wash the dishes while Holly rubs my back in comforting circles.

Then I see the black and silver light again.

It's flickering at the edge of the brush, a fleeting burst of color that fades away as quickly as it came.

“
Did you see that?” Martin asks and seconds later, out of the bushes, a homeless man stumbles, jacket dirty and stained with blood. He lunges for Dawson and pauses only when Holly smashes him in the face with her baseball bat.

“
Run!” she screams and we all bolt out of the small park and into the street where I'm nearly run over by a bus. Holly kisses my face a hundred times on the other side and then we run. And run. And run.

Now the four of us are standing outside of my house and my mother's car is parked in the driveway.

“
That's a good sign,” I tell Holly as we approach the front door and I try the knob. It's locked. I knock quickly and we all wait in tense anticipation. Nothing happens. Moments pass and Holly rings the doorbell. Still, nothing. We both knock again as hard as we can and then we shout and jump up and down. “Let's try the back,” I say finally. I go the way I went when I took my bike yesterday and climb the stairs to the guest room balcony. The door there is locked, too, so I crawl onto the roof with Holly in tow. Dawson and Martin sit at my mother's bistro table and tell us they'll wait. I can only hope that they won't have killed each other by the time we get back. When I reach my bedroom window, I can already tell that something is wrong. There's a bottle of wine on my bed next to several empty bottles of pills. “Mom,” I say as I jump into the room and take off down the hallway. I pause suddenly and I realize that I've left Holly, but when I turn around to go back for her, she's already there, standing right behind me. “Help me,” I say and she nods. We search the upstairs and find nothing.

When we get downstairs, the house is quiet. That's unusual for my mother. She lives off my father's life insurance and she's always home with the stereo or the T.V. on for company. The fact that daytime talk shows aren't blaring into the room is a sign that something is definitely wrong. I take Holly's hand in mine and approach the garage. Both the door from the kitchen to the garage and the door from the garage to the backyard are open. I move down the cement steps and let Holly sweep the room like a police officer, bat held high over her shoulder. Once she determines that everything is clear, we lock both doors and go upstairs to bring Martin and Dawson inside.

“
My mother isn't here,” I say, but that's about all I can determine. The wine and the pills suggest that something bad has happened yet there's no body. There's also no signs of blood or of a struggle, no forced entry. Obviously, Mom left of her own accord yet she didn't take the car. I don't know what to make of the situation, so I sit down heavily on the edge of the guest bed and try to take deep, calming breaths. Holly turns on the T.V. and switches to the news before disappearing into the hallway. When she comes back, she has my laptop in hand.

“
We need to see how bad this thing is,” she says as she sits down next to me. I watch the pretty reporter talk about about a kitten that was rescued from a drain pipe and wonder why the fuck she isn't talking about the hordes of undead monsters sweeping across our city. Watercrest isn't a metropolis or anything like that, but it's no backwoods village either. I watch absently as Holly's eyes scan the computer screen.

“
There's nothing here,” she says as she shakes her head. “Nothing.” Holly pauses and puts the laptop aside before going for the phone. I realize that none of us have our cellphones and think how useless they really are in a crisis. There was no time to grab one in the heat of things. I thank the universe that my mother likes corded phones from the eighties and watch as Holly calls 911. After a moment, she puts the phone down and nibbles at her lower lip. “Busy signal,” she says before any of us can ask. The woman's actions with the cellphone earlier suddenly make a whole lot more sense. She couldn't get through either.

“
How could there be all of this … ” Dawson pauses, doesn't know quite how to phrase what he's thinking and curses instead. “Shit going on and nobody knows it? Are we all going fucking crazy?” he asks. Martin is already shaking his head. He stands up and looks around at all of us, eyes scanning ours slowly and carefully. It's a bit overdramatic, but I remind myself that this morning, I saw a zombie-demon with a fire face melt a car and decide that if he wants to put his hands on his hips and pretend he's in a movie, who I am to argue with that?

“
We're not crazy,” Martin says confidently. “But we do need to get out of here and fast.”

“
Why?” Holly asks and she sounds exasperated. She gestures at Dawson and he passes the bag of food and weapons to me, so I can pass them to her. She digs around for awhile, comes up with a bag of candy corn and starts to cry silently. Nobody says a thing about it.

“
You're certain there's nothing?” Martin asks as he moves over to the bed. I stand up and let him have my place. “Not even a single blog post? A profile update? Anything?” Holly shrugs and Martin grabs the laptop. “May I?” I shrug and move onto the balcony. I could care less about a stupid piece of plastic at this point.

I look out across the city and hope that I'll spot something interesting, but I can't see anything from here except suburbia. Nothing looks amiss. The old man down the street is even mowing his lawn.

“
Why does it matter anyway?” Dawson asks as he grabs a dusty silk flower from its vase and twirls it around in his fingers. “Obviously, if people were really dying, it'd be all over the Internet. We wouldn't have to search very hard for it.” He sounds kind of relieved at this, like it's a good thing to be crazy. I guess with the alternative already laid out before me, I'd have to agree with him. I'd rather spend some time in a padded cell than on the run from undead monsters.

“
No, see,” Martin says as he licks his lips again. “If it isn't here then it means it's definitely happening. I mean like, one hundred percent happening and the government knows about it.”

“
Oh come the fuck on!” Dawson shouts as he throws the flower. The big, pink petals catch the air and it doesn't go very far, falling to the floor gently in a puff of dust. His violent gesture ruined, Dawson stands up and starts to pace. “Magic, zombies and government conspiracies don't really work for me.”

“
But Christian mythology does?” Holly asks and she sounds bitter and angry and tired.

“
Go to hell,” Dawson says as he bends down and pulls several guns from the bag. “I am fucking out of here. This is nuts.”

“
Wait!” Martin says as he puts the computer aside and stands up. “You should come with us, at least until we get out of town.”

“
Why?” Dawson growls, already halfway to the door. I can see in his eyes that he's made up his mind not to believe what Martin is about to say. I know now why he and Holly didn't last long. They're both too stubborn to coexist with anyone like-minded.

“
Having a little bit of news or a lot of news makes sense but no news? Someone's removing or blocking anything to do with what's happening on the west side of town.” Dawson sneers and flips Martin the finger. Without listening to another word, he disappears around the bend in the hallway and soon after, we hear his footsteps pounding down the stairs.

“
Why would they do that?” I ask as Martin glances over at me. His brown curls are stuck to the sweat on his forehead.

“
Because,” he says and he licks his lips again. The gesture is already starting to bother me, but I can see that it's a way for him to cope with the stress, so I let it go. “Somebody, I don't know who or what, knows what's happening. They're either going to quarantine us or blow us up.”

“
Did you learn that from
The Walking Dead,
too?” Holly says and I think she was trying to sound mean, but she just sounds sad. Her mouth is full of candy corn, but she keeps talking. “Maybe we should go to the CDC and wait for a rocket to blow us all up.”