DeadBorn (25 page)

“
My daughter was a deadborn,” she says softly and I can tell by the way she says it that she isn't talking about the zombies or the demons. “A stillborn. I was too ashamed to go to the hospital, so I had the baby by myself in a little room by the sea.” She smiles and her eyes go even cloudier, drift further away into the recesses of her brain and make her next words seem foreign, like they're in another language, one that nobody speaks but her. “But I had this power inside of me, so I saved her.” Patricia stops speaking abruptly and looks up at Holly. “I saved
you.
”

“
You ruined me,” Holly whispers, holding out her hand to indicate the situation that we're in. “You ruined everything.” Patricia isn't listening though and I can see that she's been waiting to tell this story for a long, long time.

“
When they found me, when they found the marks around the baby's neck from the umbilical cord, they took her away. They said I was trying to kill her, but I wasn't. I
wasn't.
” Patricia is crying, running her fingers through her blonde hair and pacing frantically. The DeadBorn behind her are getting riled up and I'm worried that they're going to somehow break free of the magic and come charging at us. “When I told them the truth, they locked me up and I've been there ever since.” Patricia smiles and it isn't a happy smile, it's a crazy one. “My parents, your grandparents, they encouraged it and fed them lies and paid so much money to keep me there, so, so, so much money.” Patricia pauses and looks over the half-wall that separates the stairs from the rest of the room. “He never came for me, you know, your father.” Holly takes a step forward and squeezes her fists by her sides. I reach out a hand and place it on her shoulder as a gentle reminder to stay calm. She absolutely needs to stay in control of herself, of this whole, horrible situation, if we want to get out of it alive.

“
My father was Bart Arget,” Holly declares and her voice is strong but transparent. I can hear the hurt there and so can Patricia, but then, that's what Holly wants. “And my mother was Kelsie Arget. You, you're nothing to me. You could've been, you really could've, but now, what am I supposed to think of you when you've done nothing but hurt me and the people I love?” Patricia turns around slowly and meets Holly's eyes. Again, that whisper of magic fills the room and brushes over my skin, hot and barely contained.

“
It's awake in you now, this same power,” Patricia tells Holly matter-of-factly. “You're going to need my help with it. You don't want to struggle through it like I did.” She smiles and shakes her head. “You don't want to make the same mistakes, do you? Do you think I intended things to get this far?”

“
I know you say you didn't,” Holly tells her. “But now that I've met you, I think otherwise. I think you were mad at the world and you got exactly what you wanted.”

“
Do you?” Patricia asks and I'm afraid she's starting to get angry. If Holly pisses her off, she could kill us all, just like that. The only thing that's keeping us alive right now is the fact that she wants Holly to like her, wants them to be a family. “Do you really think I would want my grandchild to grow up in a world like this? If I could, I'd take it all back, Holly, Olly, Olly.”

“
What the fuck are you talking about?” Holly snarls at the same moment that the unborn wakes up and starts to chant that horrible nickname over and over and over. Patricia smiles nice and big and opens her arms like a bird spreading its wings, folds of fabric dripping to the floor in ebony heaps.

“
You're pregnant, darling,” she tells Holly and my stomach drops to the floor, making the room spin wildly in circles around me. I put both of my hands out and grab onto Holly's shoulders. She doesn't sway, not even a little, doesn't even really seem all that shocked by it.
When?
I wonder. It couldn't be from today or yesterday and we'd only done it twice before that. The second time was with a condom, but the first time …

“
How the fuck would you know something like that?” Holly growls and I can see that she doesn't believe Patricia. Once I can think clearly, I wonder why I do. How could she know something like that? Besides, Holly told me she wasn't pregnant, that she got her period afterward.

“
The magic,” Patricia says with a smile. “It's always there inside of you, but it isn't accessible until you're – ”

“
Liar,” Holly hisses, interrupting the woman who couldn't be any less her mother than she is now. She turns to the side and paces until she's standing directly over the ax. I can see that she's getting ready to do it. There's sweat beading on her brow and on the back of her neck. It's almost time. “I can't be,” she whispers and I think this last part is more for her than for anymore else.

“
It's how I knew you were alive, that you were out there, that you were just miles from me,” Patricia whispers, getting very, very close to Holly. She's crying now and to me, she looks like the saddest person in the whole world. I feel sorry for her then, even with all she's done. To get to this point, things could not have been easy for her. “Miles away,” Patricia repeats. “But you couldn't have been any further from me. Three weeks ago to the day,” she says, and Holly spins around suddenly, hair catching on her lips and sticking there. “I heard the whisper of your magic calling to me.” Holly's round eyes look like marbles, shiny with shock and recognition and disbelief. Three weeks ago to the day, Holly and I had sex for the first time. She looks over at me and our eyes meet and I know, I just know that Patricia's telling the truth. “Don't look at him,” she says, stepping closer to Holly,
touching
her. She puts her hands on either side of her daughter's face and stares into her eyes. “He can't help you, but I can. Holly, I – ”

The knife comes out of Holly's sweatshirt faster than I can blink and she plunges it into Patricia's chest, all the way to the hilt. She screams as she does this, moans like one of the DeadBorn as the two of them slump to the floor in a rush of crimson blood and wet gasps. Pink bubbles are forming on the necromancer's lips, and her eyes, oh god, her eyes are the worst part. Holly sees them, too, and gets caught on that sense of love and betrayal and confusion that's shimmering there behind the tears.

“
I didn't want to, but I had to,” Holly says. “I didn't want to, but I
had
to.” She repeats this again and again and again while Patricia's arms go slack and her eyes flutter closed. When she dies, there's this palpable sense of power that radiates out from her body, that cuts across the room like a nuclear explosion, knocking all of us, even the DeadBorn, back.

Seconds later, the room erupts into violent chaos.

***

Sixty-Nine Hours And One Minute After …

Patricia has turned into a zombie.

Somehow, I had gotten it into my mind that once she was dead, this would all be over, that the DeadBorn would just go away, that we could all go home and start school in the fall. I was wrong.

“
Galen!” Holly screeches as Patricia's slack body suddenly snaps tight with energy, and then she's rushing the love of my life, the mother of my child, and I'm going crazy. Sound ceases to exist for me, and all I can see is Holly struggling for her life. I don't see Dawson or Valerie or the unborn or anything else, just her, only her.

The ax is in my hand before I know it, and I'm sprinting forward like I'm in a marathon, raising the weapon above my head and bringing it down on the back of Patricia's calf. Since she's kneeling on the floor, legs bent behind her, it's an easy shot and the ax goes straight to the bone. It doesn't stop her from going after Holly though and I can see with horror that Patricia's teeth are only inches from Holly's throat. With a shout of rage, I bring the ax down twice more and manage to sever the zombie's leg at the knee. The stench in the room is absolutely horrendous, like maybe Patricia had some way of controlling it. Now the stink is unbearable, choking me as I reach forward and grab the back of Patricia's robes, hook the ax around her throat and pull.

She falls backward with a keening squall as I stumble past her and check Holly for injuries. If she turns, then I'm done, just done. I can't live without her in this world, not even for a second.

“
I'm okay,” she says. “I'm okay, I'm okay.” Holly grabs my zombie arm and hot, pulsing energy runs through it. “Galen, you have to trust me. Do you trust me?” I nod because I can't even think of a single word in the English language right now. My mind is full of pictures and emotions and sensations. Holly grabs me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. “Don't get bit.” And then she's spinning me away and pushing me towards the DeadBorn that Patricia had brought with her.

The only reason we're not already dead is because without Patricia, the creatures are much slower to react, unsure of their purpose and what they're doing here. When I come stumbling towards them, however, things change. As soon as I get within a few feet of them, they explode into action, rushing me in a small group. The one on the far right, a pretty redhead with freckles on her bloody face and a golden rose ring, veers off and goes straight for Holly. Seconds later, her head explodes, torn apart with the last slug in Valerie's double barrel shotgun.

“
That's all I got!” I hear her shout from the corner of the room. The headless corpse is still running, but it's stumbling now and without those teeth, a hell of a lot less dangerous.

My arm is pulsing like crazy, reaching out for the zombies, tearing into their flesh. I can't stop it now; it's like it's got a mind of its own. Or maybe that's just Holly, guiding me, directing me with this warm flow of magic that I can feel hanging in the air and clinging to my dead flesh like cobwebs. My muscles are contracting and spasming painfully, like there's an electrical impulse running through them, flexing my fingers, dragging my nails back over rotten flesh and punching my hand through bodies. All I can do is stand there and avoid the other DeadBorn. I dodge around them like a dancer, tiptoeing and ducking and even throwing myself to the floor when there's no other way.

When they come crashing down on me and I think I'm done for, there's Dawson with a baseball bat. He swings it hard and knocks a particularly smelly, gooey zombie off of me, flesh sloughing off its bones as it rolls across the carpet and tries to stand. Valerie joins in and the two of them wail on the shrieking DeadBorn, flinging gunk and bits of green-brown skin across the walls of the once pristine office.

My left arm tenses, pulls back and rockets forward, straight into the face of a female zombie with braces and eyes that ooze white down her cheeks. Her head rocks back on her shoulders at an angle that no living person could survive and flops forward, straight towards my face. Her teeth are still slashing the air, desperate to get at my flesh and consume it. I can't let that happen, not now. I have to get through this. Even though there's a festering legion outside the building, I feel like we're going to make it if we can just survive this last stretch. Somehow, I feel it in my bones like a prophecy.

And then it just stops.

The braces zombie stops, my arm stops, the howling and the screeching from outside stop. This strange silence settles over the room as I push the loper away from me and struggle to my feet. Dawson and Valerie still have their weapons raised and are glancing at the remaining five zombies with distrust and confusion. They're just standing there, even the one I just punched. It rises to its feet, turns towards Holly and just freezes like a macabre statue of flesh.

Holly is on the ground with one hand over her mouth and the other across her belly. Her face is pale and sweaty and for one, sickening, horrible moment, I think she's done for, that she's been bitten and she's going to die. I don't waste a single moment going to her and taking her into my arms. She's shaking and I think to myself,
This is it. She's going to die, right here, right now.

And then I hear her laugh.

The sound is the sweetest, purest, most joyful thing I've ever heard. I lean back and look at Holly's face. Her eyes are wide and beautiful, filled with a dancing energy of the cosmos, a solar concoction of personal triumph, relief, and sorrow. It's like Holly's eyes are the world's most famous paintings, the most beautiful art ever created, and they're staring at me, wanting me, needing me. I kiss her eyelids a hundred times and sit back, falling to my butt on the bloody carpet. Patricia is behind me, blonde and pretty still, but she isn't moving. She, too, is staring straight at Holly like she's God.

As if to tell us it's safe now, that everything's going to be okay, the little cat comes out from behind a cabinet and rubs against Holly's arm, crawls into her lap and begins to purr. Holly smiles down at her and then looks back up at me.

“
I did it,” Holly whispers as her fingers tangle in tabby fur “I did it. I've got control of the DeadBorn.”

***

Sixty-Nine Hours And Thirty-Three Minutes After …

Dawson pulls the boards off the window only with the strongest urging from Valerie. She promises him that she'll keep watch on the zombies who are now marching down the stairs in a single file line. Holly says she's gathering all of the ones in this area together, that she's going to line them up like soldiers and give them a proper sending off, and I couldn't agree more. But first, we have to check for demons.

When the peachy tint of dawn finally reaches its delicate fingers into the room, I think we all feel a little better, a little less hopeless. Dawson pushes the window open and we all climb onto the roof together. The horde is still there, a stinking, shuffling mass of death, but it isn't raging, not anymore. And there's not a single, rotten angel in sight. I guess that they've been taken down by the other DeadBorn, but I suppose I may never know.