Holiday Magick (28 page)

“Jared?”

I pulled myself up from my pillow and threw my feet in the general direction of the floor, frowning at the daylight streaming in around me. After the eerie glow had faded, I had felt drained, like I'd pounded a six-pack of the opposite of Red Bull. Aunt Rosie had simply pointed me toward home, and I'd dragged myself back and gone to bed.

“Jared, aren't you up yet?” My mother paused in the door to my room, rubbing her fingers against the back of her other hand. “I need to go to the police station. Rosie was arrested last night.”

I shook my head, but my thoughts didn't get any clearer. “Arrested?”

“Apparently, she broke into the DOT shed by the highway and stole a truck.”

I stared at my mother and tried to make my brain work. I still felt like
I'd
been hit with a truck. “Oh.”

“I think—I don't think it's a good idea for her to stay here anymore. She clearly needs more help than I can give her, more supervision. A truck!” She looked out the window and seemed to have forgotten I was within earshot. “What if she'd lost control of it, crashed into a car full of people, or even someone's house? A big salt truck like that—several tons of steel, being driven by someone who's…” She shook her head. “I'll be gone for a while. Call me on my cell if you need anything.”

I yawned wide as I stumbled into the shower, then toweled off and padded back to my bedroom, turning on the TV just to see how bad things had gotten. I flipped a few channels, but got nothing but salt-and-pepper static. Either Mom hadn't paid the cable bill, or things were really bad. As I grabbed a shirt, a ghost in uniform glided through my closed door.

“Gah!” I pulled the shirt on quickly. This was worse than the locker room—didn't the afterlife have any rules about giving people some privacy?

“Your aunt has been detained by the authorities.” The guy was younger than Captain Simmons. Clean-shaven, with brown hair, he looked like he could've been in high school.
And he died. He was only a couple of years older than me, and he died. He's been dead for a century and a half, and he never really got to live
.

“Yeah, I know. My mom's gone to see her. Is she okay?”

“She was apprehended as she was returning the vehicle, but she was successful. She sent me to speak to you, to tell you that there is a good chance that the authorities will give her a medicine that will keep her from being able to see or hear us. So it will be up to you.”

My voice cracked. “Up to me?” Shaking my head, I started pacing around the room, avoiding getting too close to the dead guy who'd just told me I was the last hope of averting the zombie apocalypse.
Up to me? If that's the case, then the world is so screwed…

“We're much stronger now, but your aunt said that you had the ability to increase our strength when we are weakened. So you need to be prepared, to be by the breach in the salt line when the worst of the attacks come, and to bring those crystals. We have more than half our forces in place by the breach now. We don't need sleep, and we don't need leave. We'll keep this town safe…or die trying.”

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh. The guy gave me a grin and said, “I'm Corporal Matthew Sutton.”

My first friend from beyond the grave. “Jared. Jared Dustin. I'd shake your hand, but…”

He gave me a nod and a twisted half-grin. “Understood. We're all able to leave the cemetery now. Thank you for that, by the way. Even at this time of year, which is one of the strongest for us, we still don't have the strength to do much. I saw what you did last night, what you did for us, and now we are strong enough to do battle. It looked…” He held up his hands.

I pinked up and shrugged, not knowing what to say.

“I'm headed back to the front line now; your aunt explained to the captain how we can stop the…the walking corpses, when they come.”

Whew. Glad one of us knew. “That's great. I mean…thanks for doing this. I know you don't have to.” I thought I had to say something for disturbing his not-so-eternal rest.

“I signed up to defend my country—duty, honor, and service. I didn't expect that service to last for so long, though. But I made a promise. I gave my life keeping that promise—we all did. If we can make a difference now, then, well, it gives our existence a purpose.” His solemn gaze stayed steady on me, and I felt my inner slacker squirm. “Shall we be on our way?”

The first zombies arrived a few hours later. They followed along the edge of the salt-line—fortunately, no one in the town hall had made cleaning it up a priority—and filtered toward the breach. Ghostly scouts mirrored them from the other side of the salt line before reporting in, and Corporal Sutton popped in every hour or so to give me updates.

In late morning, as they drew closer to the breach, I jogged up the sidewalk, past the cemetery, past the thrift store and the organic bakery and the real estate agency, crossing the long driveway that led back to the high school (“Home of the ‘Fighting Blue'”—as though other teams would quake in their helmets when confronted with an assertive primary color). The crystals clinked in my backpack, but I'd packed them in sideways this time so none of them could stab me in the spine.

The soldiers formed a line, three men deep, across the street at the breach, unnoticed by the people who ran from the shops or dropped their keys or packages in their rush to get in their cars. Captain Simmons gave me a nod as I joined the line.

Old Mr. Tibideau climbed out onto his roof with a shotgun and yelled at people below. “They're comin'! I can see ‘em movin' up the road!”

Flashing lights came from behind us, evidence that the town's entire police force had arrived—in a single car.

“You can't be out here, kid.” One of the police officers, a guy who looked to be in his thirties, approached. His eyes seemed too wide and kept darting to the road, even though his voice was professional. “Go home now.”

I shook my head. “I need to be here.”

“This area's restricted.” He grabbed my arm, but then let go, his jaw dropping. “Mother of God.” The color drained from his face, so he must have spotted the first zombies. But when I turned, all I saw were the ghosts of the soldiers, and Captain Simmons standing next to me.

“Officer, we would like this young man to remain.” The captain gave the cop his I'm-in-charge-here look, and I wondered if he'd learned it at West Point or somewhere. “He will be a valuable asset in the coming battle.”

My eyebrows shot up as I stared at the captain. “He can see you?”

He gave me a small smile—at least, his moustache twitched in what I thought was a smile. “Thanks to you, we're all strong enough to manifest when we choose, at least for now.”

The cop peddled backwards a few steps, his gun drawn, and his face alternated between shock-pale and apoplectic-red as his gaze darted from one soldier to the next as they made themselves visible to him—to everyone. Old Mr. Tibideau's “And what're these crazy fellas up to? This ain't the time fer play-actin, boys!” floated down from the rooftop.

The cop scrambled back further on shaky legs as the first of the walking corpses came over the hill. They moved as though they were puppets, their movements rough and awkward, but no limbs were dragging. Clammy complexions and clouded eyes gave uniformity to the horde. The first three moved in a small cluster, with a larger group of about a dozen shambling behind.

The smell hit us first, and I gagged with an “ugh” stuck in my throat. Captain Simmons watched like a raptor, calculating when to strike. When the last of the larger group had moved within the breach area, the Captain raised his right arm, and then dropped it with the command of, “Now!”

The ghosts moved in on the zombies. A soldier grabbed the front-most zombie around its chest, as though giving it an aggressive hug. The soldier's arms passed through the flesh without resistance, but then he pulled a…a
version
of the guy from the zombie. The second “person” looked as solid as the first, and a dark, cloudy figure about the size of a monkey clung to its back, talons digging into its shoulders and oversized teeth sunk deep into the back of its head. The body collapsed, leaving the soldier wrestling with…with the nasty little thing clinging to the person's
spirit
. As the soldier caught the thing around its neck, pale light flooded from his hands. The demony cloud-monkey shrank, and then vanished in a puff.

A second soldier reached in and yanked the dark thing out of another zombie, an older woman, half-pulling her soul along before the creature disengaged. The spirit looked down at her own motionless corpse, stumbled back a few steps, and then started to weep. Another balding zombie went down on all fours as the ghost soldier tackled through him, ripping the soul and the monkey-creature from him. In less than a minute, all of the zombie bodies lay still on the asphalt.

The cop seemed a bit zombielike himself as he stared at the corpses on the ground, and then back at the uniformed ghosts who had put them there. “Uh…”

“Officer,” Captain Simmons definitely was smiling now. “We've got this area covered. Please inform the people of this town that they are under the protection of the New Hampshire Third Infantry.”

The officer looked from Captain Simmons, and then in the direction of the cemetery. “From the old Civil War hospital? How…?”

“Do not trouble yourself with that, officer. However, if you would be so kind as to release Miss Dustin from your town jail, we would greatly appreciate it.”

The cop opened the back door of the police car to let Aunt Rosie out. Her eyes found me and she hustled over, straightening her now-dingy gloves as she took in the scene. A few steps away from us, the other two police officers gestured at now-still corpses, their heated tones carrying even though they tried to keep their voices down.

“…burn them where they are,” The officer with steel-grey peppering her short-cut hair said. “This is a public health issue, and the CDC—”

“The CDC went dark two days ago!” The younger officer looked like an ex-jock. “But we can't just burn the bodies without doing any sort of identification. The families need—”

“Officers, I might be able to help.” Aunt Rosie crossed her arms and gave them a who's-crazy-now smile. “Please make sure no one touches the corpses. The necromancer who started this uses death magic to spread his power. The bodies might still be, well…contagious, for lack of a better word. Fire will be a good purifier.”

The female cop looked like she wasn't happy to have a diagnosed schizophrenic backing her up, especially since that support included talk of necromancers and magic. Her tone was overly-polite and condescending. “Miss Dustin, thank you, but please let us handle this.”

Aunt Rosie shrugged. “But I can tell you who they were, if you like.”

The male cop raised a single eyebrow. “And how would you do that?”

“I'll just ask them.”

She stepped closer to the corpses. The ghost soldiers parted before her, many of them touching their caps respectfully as she passed. “Ma'am.”

She surveyed the milling ghosts of the fallen for a silent moment. “I know you've been through something terrible, and I wish we could change it, but we can't. However, if you'd like to give your families some closure, I can let them know what happened to you. Please tell me your names and where you're from.”

Behind me, one of the cops snorted, and I suddenly realized that, even though they could see the soldiers, the souls of the former zombies must still be invisible to them.

One of the spirits approached her, the bald guy. “I'm John Hanson. I live…lived in Manchester.”

“John Hanson from Manchester,” Aunt Rosie called over to the cops, who stopped laughing. “You might want to write these down or something.”

One by one, Aunt Rosie relayed the information. After comforting the weeping woman for several minutes, she got her name. She stepped back over to the cops and spoke in a low voice. “You're going to need to burn the bodies eventually, but for now, they should be…stored. A shallow grave would work. The spirits will lose their tether to this plane if you burn them, and we need their spirits here.”