Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8) (28 page)

Suddenly the temperature in the coffin-elevator dipped. She thought at first the goose bumps on her arms were a reaction from her fear, but when the air started to bite at the inside of her nostrils and lungs with bitter cold, she knew something powerfully strange was afoot. Cassie prepared herself for death in the cold blackness. Then, speaking to her through the chill, a voice from beyond time, beyond life and certainly beyond death spoke to her. The grating voice shook her.

“Oh not now little one. Not now. We’ve so much to discuss before you come to me.”

All alone in the dark, Cassie started to cry.

*****

The Voice spoke to her from the dead bodies she shared the elevator with for hours, days maybe. There was no way to know. Sometimes the Voice came from Alan’s body, and sometimes it came from Melanie’s body. Cassie couldn't tell the difference in the Voice when it switched bodies, but she knew the Voice used both. It did it to prove a point. To show her that everything dead was its plaything. Today it was inside Melanie’s body. Regardless of who it came out of, it was always the same. Sometimes the Voice’s tactics would change slightly, but the goal always appeared to be the same. Cassie was gaining some level of satisfaction playing hard to get, and ignoring the Voice’s bullshit. The fight was all she had left.

“Where is he? Why hasn’t he come?”

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason. Maybe he was asleep all day, and when he woke up he was surprised by too many and died. I just hope if he died, he died quickly. Not like I'm dying.”

“Oh nonsense Cassandra. He’s still alive. He’s at his work. Making a safe place to survive. Nesting like a bear going into hibernation. Selfish isn’t he?”

“I don’t believe you one bit. He might be making a place safe, but he isn’t selfish.”

“Why shouldn’t you believe me? You’re talking to the corpse of your former boss. You believe that this is happening, why wouldn’t you believe I’m telling the truth? Is it that much of a stretch?”

“Go fuck yourself. Why are you doing this to me anyway? Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the one pulling all the strings my dear. Every last one.”

“Is this all about good and evil? End of the world bullshit?”

“Something akin to that, yes.”

“What the hell does this have to do with Adrian and I? We’re just normal people for Christ’s sake. We put our pants on every morning just like everyone else.”

“That’s exactly why. Humanity will suffer for its transgressions. If a select few can be made to fail before all are eradicated, then the full bounty will be collected. The future of the human species will be decided partially by his survival, and how he chooses to survive. Poor start if you ask me, leaving the one he supposedly loved most behind here to rot.”

“Eat shit and live you frosty bitch. He didn’t leave me behind.”

“Perhaps if he ever builds up the courage to find you, you can ask him why the long wait yourself. Sadly, I don’t think you’ll survive that long. Your meeting with him could be… decidedly violent.”

“I’ll kill myself before I hurt him.”

“You’ll hurt him even more dead. You can hurt him the most when you're dead. In fact, I’ll see to it that you’re quite ripe by the time your man ever comes around. Time to get your strings, puppet.”

The tiny woman felt the cold invade her, rape her, sliding in her nose, mouth, eyes, pussy and ass. She tried to stand, to escape, but it was pointless. There was nowhere to go. No escape to be had. The black, the cold surrounded her soul with bitterness and anger so real and physical it was as if a vice had been placed around her heart and turned over and over squeezing everything good inside it out. Cassie fought. She fought as hard as her dying body would allow against the frigid evil, screaming and clawing at her own flesh but in the end she succumbed to it alone, violated, sitting in the elevator flanked by two of the undying.
 

Her Lieutenants.
 

Cassie’s dead white eyes opened and saw nothing but darkness. Unlike the other undead birthed and shat out upon the world the past weeks, her mind was still dangerously intact, though changed. Made perverse and evil. She looked to the elevator doors, now knowing full well how to open them, but knowing it was far too soon. Her dark friend with the voice, the darkness now inside her had told her days before there would be bombs, and she shouldn’t leave until the bombs fell, and the survivors nearby killed each other and starved to death.

The corrupted remnants of Cassie wanted nothing more than to see her man again, and ask him why he had left her so alone to die. She wanted to see him, and to press her lips against his body… And bite. Tear and rend and destroy with as much anger as she'd ever had love.

She had time. All the time in the world.

*****

Cassie’s mind, the original one, the kind and loving one, flowed in and out of one deathless state to the other. Some moments her mind existed inside the corpse her soul left behind angry and vengeful, and some moments she slipped into a dreamy state where she was content, and calm. The vast majority of her time was sitting in the dark, her mind slowly churning with bitterness over her lot. It seemed to her that on the nights she was positive about her life and the memories she had of it, she could push her mind away from her body, and get some much needed rest in dreams. She loved those moments, though they were incredibly rare. In those moments the Voice was gone, no longer poisoning her soul, and making her existence an unliving hell.

Cassie’s mind was adrift in dreams when she was reached out and touched by another soul. Cassie’s dreams were strange. Very few people were ever in her dreams when she had them, and when a person did appear, it was a rare and wondrous occurrence, much like a shooting star. Cassie always sought the person out, but just as she was about to talk to them, or wave hello, she felt the icy grip of the Voice yanking her away, back to the oubliette she suffered in.

Tonight (or was it today?) in her dream she was back in her company’s office, sitting at her desk. She was shuffling idiotic paperwork for the Nth time and wishing she was home with her man. Day in and day out she missed him more than anything, but she knew things were forever changed. She knew even if he’d come for her the chances of him making it, let alone finding her in the elevator were slim. He’d be more likely to see that shooting star at noon she felt. Cassie longed for his smile one more time.

“Hey are you really here? Are you? You know… finally free?” A woman’s voice asked quietly from behind her.

Cassie spun in her office chair and saw the gentle, round face of her dead boss Melanie. Melanie was alive in the dream, still plump and whole, with both her cheeks uneaten. Cassie’s heart began to hammer out an enthused drumbeat, realizing she might actually have an interaction, fictional or otherwise.

“Melanie holy shit. Are you here too? Is this a dream? Are we okay?” Cassie stood and clutched Melanie’s arms in a half hug. The two women’s eyes started welling up. It was a moment to relish.

“Cass baby I’m here, wherever here is. We’ve been trying to get to you, trying to talk to you, reach out to you, but you’re gone so much. It’s like your soul has been kidnapped, or worse. It's like we're all floating in the ocean and you bob to the surface for a moment, and we go to you, but you sink back down again before we get to you. Almost all of us are here. We’re dead, we’re waiting for all of this to end, but we’re okay. Everyone is so worried about you.”

“Why worried?” Cassie felt a strange fear suddenly. It felt like she was falling. Since her death in the elevator, fear hadn’t been a part of her life. What else could there be worth being afraid over?

“Well your mortal soul might be at stake here babe. You’re being used by the dark forces. The Devil himself has your number.” Melanie said it so calmly and flat. She said it like she was reciting her shopping list. Mel rubbed Cassie's arms, still holding on to her in the cubicle.

Cassie laughed nervously looking around the office as if there might be someone who could come to help her. “Why me though? This evil fucking voice keeps talking to me all the time, and it’s dodgy as hell. Keeps saying this is about Adrian and I. The voice keeps trying to turn me against Adrian. It tries every single day to make me angry at him. I don’t understand it one bit.”

“Well it’s not really about you dear…” Melanie said as if she was telling her daughter about a lost puppy. “It’s about him. It’s about how you’re being used to get at him. That’s what we all think at least.”

“Why is my boyfriend so damn important? I mean, I love him, and that’s important, but this seems so unreal. I mean… unreal in a world filled with the walking dead. Damn it, you know what I mean.”

Melanie let her friend’s body slide away a bit from their hug but Cassie held firm. She felt rooted by Melanie’s embrace. Grounded and normal. Mel thought for a moment, her eyes looking to the pale white tiled ceiling before responding, “He is a part of this. Like a rat in a maze. He's the rat, and some of us are the walls in the maze. Moved around to get in his way before he gets to the cheese. This is all about us failing the world, and being shitty people. If Adrian can survive this, we get a second chance. If Adrian fails, or maybe even just dies… Well, then we all die. We know he’s part of a small group. Three people. A Trinity. They’re all equally important and have special roles to play. Most of us don’t know the whole story about the others yet, but we hear a lot about your man. Apparently he’s the most important of all. He’s supposed to be documenting this so the people who come later can learn all about it. He's a historian, in a way.”

Cassie let slip a sigh that bordered on being a sob. She knew Adrian would eventually come and try to find her, and she knew now that was the Voice’s plan all along. She wanted so desperately to tell the man she loved to move on, to give a new life a chance, to avoid the trap that was being laid for him, but she didn’t know how to. She didn't want to be the lure that would be his undoing.

“Have you tried to speak with him yet hun?” Melanie asked, almost reading Cassie’s thoughts as she had them.

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Think about him really hard. Right now. Dream of him, and where he might be, and if you try really hard, like Dorothy clicking her heels together, you’ll be zipped to him. There's no place like your man. There's no place like your man. He’s probably pretty easy to find. The big people are like lighthouses in the fog here. Big beacons of hope, quite literally.”

“No shit? You think that’ll work? You’re the only person I’ve ever been able to talk to in these dreams. I've been so alone for so long. It's madness," she said sadly. "If I try and talk to Adrian, I bet that evil cocksucker will yank me away like every time before.”

Melanie chewed a lip for a second. “Baby if there was a night, tonight’s the night. Something is happening. It’s like the calm before the storm right now. I think the Good Lord above is stirring the soup up to make things happen, despite what the little man below wants. I think if you tried really hard, you could do it. But if you’re going to, you gotta do it right now.”

Cassie gritted her teeth and nodded. She wanted one more minute with the man she loved. One minute more might be worth eternity in Hell.

*****

Cassie closed her eyes and concentrated powerfully for minutes. Melanie hovered over her, never taking her hands off Cassie’s shoulders, providing a powerful fetter that gave her confidence. After seeing his eyes, his face, and his hands in her mind’s eye, she suddenly felt the world spin around her as if she was strapped in to a carnival ride. She went with it, letting the swirls of vertigo come and pass, knowing that it was the price she had to pay for the road she needed to walk. When her reality stopped moving, she opened her eyes once more. She was laying on her side in a strange bed beside him. It wasn't their home, or the bed they shared for so many years, but it was comfortable, if only because he was in it. He looked thinner than ever, and weary. His eyes were closed and he was resting peacefully, though his eyebrows were furrowed, showing that even in dreams, his worries of the day never left him.

Cassie leaned in and kissed his cool forehead, pressing her body against his.  Despite being a shadow of his former thick self, she felt so much strength and warmth come from his presence. When she lifted her mouth from his forehead, she saw his eyes were cracking open. In his dark brown eyes she saw recognition. She saw loneliness. Her heart ached for him. They sat there for what felt like hours in an infinite dawn. Golden rays of sun kissed across the room through the window, bathing them both in warmth that felt perfect. Cassie knew the little slice of heaven was short lived. The darkness would come eventually. Soon. If she wanted to talk to him, it needed to be now.

“Adrian, it’s almost time to wake up.” 
 

Adrian shook his head, still half in a dream within a dream, “No, there’s still plenty of time left to be together.” 

She winced. His need for her hurt like a physical stab to the heart. She wished there was more time. Cassie knew now was the time to inform him softly. She knew he had to hear what she needed to say, if only to try and save his life. Not only was humanity’s existence in the balance, Cassie simply wanted the man she loved to survive this. To be free of her. To get away from what she represented to him. The redhead gently caressed Adrian’s ear and let out a sigh that took all her breath. “Our time is over baby.  There’s someone else out there for you.” 

 Adrian’s half asleep eyes widened, taking Cassie in. The two of them looked at each other longingly, like the years they spent together, slowly falling in love. Cassie watched as he replayed their entire relationship, and realized what she meant when she asked him to move on. Only one thing would lead her to tell him that; her own death.

 Adrian’s connection of the situation was crushing to watch. He closed his eyes and put his head back on his pillow as hot tears streamed from his eyes. The moist stain on his pillow grew impossibly fast as Cassie put her hands on his chest, trying to make him feel alright. When he opened his eyes again, all she could do was nod and wrap a thin arm around his chest. She squeezed him and they lay like that for some time. Cassie felt the warmth of the sun peel away off of her back like a cloud had passed between. She knew instantly something was amiss. Nothing happened randomly in this lost existence. Cassie almost blurted out the last thing before the cold suddenly overwhelmed her.