Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (38 page)

Seth stared at him. “My relatives? You brought up my dead ancestors?”

“Don't be so offended,” Alexander said. “They are my family, too. Oh, here's a special treat, just for you.” Alexander stood aside, and another zombie stepped forward. The embalming fluid had done its work—Jenny could recognize the partially decayed face of Carter, Seth's dead brother, from pictures around Seth's house.

“You fucking bastard!” Seth leaped toward Alexander, and Jenny grabbed his arm to stop him. Fortunately, Heather followed suit, grabbing his other arm, and together they managed to restrain Seth from diving into the crowd of zombies to get at Alexander.

“Seth, no!” Jenny shouted. “Don't let him get to you.”

“I'm afraid I've already gotten to all of you,” Alexander said. “I'm going to watch your friends and family tear you apart, Seth, Jenny...whoever you are.” He was looking at Heather.

“She knows who I am.” Heather pointed to Ashleigh. “Does the Homeland Security Committee know you're here?”

“She's a CDC doctor,” Ashleigh told Alexander. “The one who's been studying Jenny.”

“That's very interesting.” Alexander yawned. “Now, if you don't mind, we all have our lives to get back to. Well, some of us do.” He made a gesture like he was throwing a ball.

The zombies charged forward from both sides, the football team leading the attack from one end, Seth's dead relatives leading from the other.

“Come on!” Jenny screamed, pulling Seth's arm. She opened the door to third-floor staircase and pulled Seth in with her. Nobody had to tell Heather to get moving. She followed them through, then slammed and locked the door, while fists pounded on the other side.

They picked up Louisville Sluggers that were waiting on the third step. After much discussion, they had determined that a baseball bat would be the most effective and convenient tool for bashing back a horde of zombies at close range, once Jenny explained that guns were essentially useless against them.

The door cracked and splintered, and then two sledge hammers crashed through it. Dr. and Mrs. Goodling broke down the doors and then charged up the steps gripping the large hammers, their eyes blank. The football players followed them through the shattered door.

Seth cracked his bat into Dr. Goodling's arm, then into Mrs. Goodling's, breaking their arm bones so that they dropped the sledge hammers.

Jenny, Seth and Heather backed up the staircase while beating the horde back. The idea was to lead them up into the third floor, which Seth's grandfather had redesigned as a maze of narrow hallways to trick his great-grandfather's ghost. It would ensure they would only have to confront a few zombies at a time, and hopefully a number of zombies would get lost or distracted down some of the dead-end corridors.

Seth's grandfather had long ago nailed shut and walled over all the windows on the third floor. Several hours ago, Seth and Jenny's dad had broken a hole in one of these walls with a hammer and pried the window open. That window would be the escape route for Seth, Jenny, and Heather, but they had to cross the maze first, trapping the zombie horde inside.

They reached the stop of the stairs and backed through the maze while the zombies pressed forward. Seth led the way, down one narrow, dim passage and back up another.

Jenny pounded at the zombies, even taking the head off of Seth's dead grandfather.

Then the roar of a motor sounded, and a chainsaw ripped out through the wall next to Jenny, barely missing her head. She cried out and reeled back. Seth caught her.

The chainsaw ripped a diagonal slash through the maze wall. Another chainsaw carved through the wall farther down, shattering mirrors along the wall.

“Hey, zombies can't use chainsaws!” Seth protested.

Axes and sledgehammers brought down the carved wall in a crash of plaster and dust, and zombie cheerleaders swarmed forward, swinging their tools. Jenny, Seth and Heather barely made it around the next corner. Some of the zombies followed, but more of them were focused on destroying the maze, wall by wall.

Seth led them up the next hall, but seven or eight of the football players had gotten ahead of them through a hole in one wall or another, and now charged towards them. Alexander had them trapped.

“This way!” Seth led them through a door into his great-grandfather's bedroom, which got them out of the most immediate danger, but it was the worst place to be. There was no other door in the room. When Seth's grandfather had rebuilt the third floor, he'd shrunk this bedroom to make sure it didn't touch any exterior walls, so that there was no easy exit for the ghost. The room was surrounded by the maze on all sides.

Then one wall of the bedroom came down, and the zombies flooded the room. Alexander and Ashleigh strolled in with them, Alexander looking with an amused smile at the spartan bed, the yellowed photographs, the antique adding machine with the gold and silver coins beside it.

“You've preserved my room in such perfect condition,” Alexander said. “I'm touched, Seth. I bet your whole family lives in fear of me, don't they, Seth? Amusing little humans.”

“Fuck you, Great-grandpa,” Seth said.

Church deacons and football players seized Heather, biting and ripping at her, while Cassie and Neesha and the rest of the zombie cheerleader squad swarmed in tight around Jenny and pulled her away from Seth. Jenny didn't even have room to raise the Slugger, and teeth bit into her fingers and wrists. Somebody pulled the bat away, leaving her empty-handed.

Jenny struggled and kicked against the dead cheerleaders, but she felt their grips tightening, as if the girls' hands were iron. She realized what was happening—the zombies were growing stronger as they touched her, feeding off the dark magic of the Jenny pox. She felt her ribs cracking under the pressure. They tore at her clothes, and teeth bit down all over her.

“Seth!” Jenny cried out. She managed to turn her head until she saw him.

None of the zombies were attacking Seth. Instead, Alexander was grappling with him, clenching Seth's arms in his black-gloved hands. Ashleigh exhaled a cloud of fluffy pink spores that clung to Seth and Alexander's flesh for a moment before dissolving. Ashleigh, like Jenny, must have figured out how to make her power airborne.

Ashleigh lay a hand on Seth's face. “Sweet boy,” she said. “Deep down, you still love me, don't you?”

“Seth, fight it!” Jenny said. She was having trouble breathing. The zombie cheerleaders were crushing her to death. Somewhere off to her side, she heard Heather screaming in pain.

Alexander released Seth, who stood where he was, staring at Ashleigh with a big, goofy smile.

“Come on, Seth,” Ashleigh said. “You know you belong to me. You know I love you more than I could ever love anyone else.” She took his hand. “Forget about Jenny. Stay with me. Forever.”

Seth gazed at her as if hypnotized.

Jenny remembered she had a solution to this—she'd developed a strain of Jenny pox specifically to attack Ashleigh's power. She'd liberated Seth from her spell before.

Jenny imagined black flies devouring golden thread. She conjured up the Ashleigh pox inside her, and then she blew out a cloud of spores.

The black spores whirled around Seth, Ashleigh and Alexander. Seth and Alexander looked disoriented, while Ashleigh suffered an intense cough fit, spitting up gobs of dirty yellow fluid, and fell to her knees.

Something clicked in Jenny's mind. Back in Chiapas, Alexander had sent the zombies after all the Hale Security men, but he'd sent living people to collect Seth from the helicopter. And now, even though he had a couple hundred zombies on hand, he didn't send one of them to attack or restrain Seth.

“Seth,” Jenny said, barely able to draw a breath as the cheerleader zombies crushed her. “Seth, I make the zombies stronger. But you're my opposite.”

Seth looked at her for a moment, and then tore into the dense crowd of zombies surrounding her. They were like matchsticks in his hands. He ripped off heads, tore limbs from sockets, flung zombies across the room. The zombies crumbled in his hands.

All the zombies crushed in around Jenny, throwing up a mob between her and Seth, pushing back across the room and away from him like an evil tide drawing her out to sea.

“Seth, it won't work,” Jenny said. “You have to... turn it up. Breathe it.” She coughed out a few dark spores.

“I'll try,” Seth said. He closed his eyes.

His skin began to glow an eerie, bioluminescent white.

“Hurry,” Jenny whispered. She was starting to black out from the pain. The zombies were still tearing at her, still biting her, and she was covered in her own blood.

Seth opened his eyes. His blue irises had an electric glow.

Then Seth exhaled, and a blinding white fire billowed out from his mouth. This broke into ten thousands tongues of white flame that rained down on the zombies like phosphorous. Jenny thought for a moment of the Pentecost, the holy flames descending on the heads of the disciples. He had created Seth pox.

The mob of zombies screeched and twisted, collapsed, writing on the floor, breaking apart. The dead cheerleaders fell away from Jenny and she dropped to the floor. Wherever the white flames landed on Jenny, her injuries were healed.

Seth coughed out a few more drips of white fire. He doubled over, leaning heavily on his knees, ready to crash to the floor himself.

Behind him, Alexander had picked up an ax. He approached Seth, raising the ax over his head, glaring at Seth's back with a look of raw hate.

“Seth,” Jenny said, but her voice was too weak. She pushed herself up to her hands and knees. “Seth, look—”

Alexander swung the ax down towards Seth's neck to decapitate him. Jenny cried out hoarsely, reaching a hand forward. Seth's eyes looked up and met Jenny's just before the ax hit him.

Heather screamed and ran at Alexander. She swung a sledgehammer into Alexander's knee, putting her whole back into it. There was a loud crack and Alexander's entire leg broke and bent backwards, and Alexander screamed and fell to the floor. Heather dropped the sledgehammer and staggered back until she was resting against a wall, panting. Like Jenny, she was beaten, torn, and bitten all over, blood soaking the tattered remains of her clothes.

The falling ax couldn't be stopped, but Heather's blow had knocked him aside just enough that the ax head bit deep into the muscle and sinew between Seth's neck and shoulder. Seth gave a surprised yell and dropped to the floor next to Alexander.

Jenny crawled toward Seth. “Seth, are you okay? Seth?”

“He is not,” Alexander hissed. “We are all damned, all of our kind, Jenny.”

Jenny helped Seth lift the ax from his shoulder. The white glow of Seth's skin grew brighter, and the ax wound healed instantly.

Seth turned to face Alexander.

“Kill me if you want,” Alexander said. “I'll be back again, and again.”

“Dead-raiser,” Seth's voice rang out, and it was not his usual voice. Jenny knew what it was: the ancient, powerful voice of his soul. “The plague-bringer does not belong to you anymore. We only belong to each other. Remember that, if your memories remain in your next life. And remember that she may be your complement, but I am your cross, and I will destroy you.”

Seth raised a hand, which glowed so bright Jenny could barely look at it. He seized Alexander's throat, and he squeezed.

Alexander convulsed, his fingers scrabbling across the floorboards, his entire body shuddering so fast it seemed to vibrate. He levitated off the floor a few inches, then crashed down again, and he ceased all movement.

Alexander's entire body had turned bleach-white, even his hair and the pupils of his eyes. He looked almost like a plaster mold of himself, a discarded shell.

“Is he dead?” Heather asked, from where she leaned against the wall.

“Dead,” Seth said. “Gone from this earth.” He looked at Jenny, and then both of them looked at Ashleigh.

The girl was kneeling on the floor, coughing more glops of yellow fluid. Jenny had seen that before, when she spread Ashleigh pox through the crowd of pregnant girls on Easter, breaking Ashleigh's spell. That was Ashleigh's golden bonds dissolving.

Jenny pushed herself to her feet and approached the girl.

“No!” the girl shouted. “No, please. I am not Ashleigh.”

“Then who are you?” Jenny asked.

“I'm Esmeralda. See?” She hooked a finger under her necklace, then snapped the strand. Beads showered onto the floor. “The little bones. That's how she stayed in touch with me.” The girl broke the beaded bracelet she wore, then lifted the cuff of her pants and broke an anklet there. The beads scattered everywhere. “Don't hurt me, please.”

“You're Alexander's opposite,” Seth said. “You're the channel she used to come back from the dead.”

“Who is Alexander?” Esmeralda asked.

Seth glanced at the white husk of Alexander's corpse. “He's nothing, now.”

“Please, you have to understand,” Esmeralda said. “I didn't want any of this. There's a boy, Tommy—I came here to be with him, not Ashleigh. Ashleigh's magic tricked me. I feel like I've been wrapped up in a golden cocoon this whole time. At first, it was pleasant, but...”

“But then you realize you're her slave,” Seth said, nodding.