Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (29 page)

“I'm sorry,” I rushed out. “This guy is
going to put a serious pounding on us and I need help.”

The corpses turned their attention to Jade's dad.

“A bunch of dead people ain't gonna matter to me
boy! I'm gettin' my girl back and there ain't shit from shinola you
can do about it!”

He lunged forward to grab Jade and I felt intent form in my mind, I
didn't have one moment to say anything, but the corpses knew.

They
knew what needed doing.

We were of one mind, the zombies and I.

The twice-raised zombie (my guy-in-charge, I
thought wildly), swung its arm in the path of Jade's dad,
clotheslining him.

His progress effectively halted, he turned, wading
into the batch of corpses. He threw a punch into Clyde and all he got
for his trouble was some black ooze from the impact with the corpse's
face whose teeth gleamed through his cheek.

Clyde-the-Corpse took the beating, placing a hand
on either side of Jade's dad's head, boxing his ears. He howled,
kneeing Clyde in the gut. Clyde obligingly rolled down the small
knoll, just out of sight.

Holy shit.

Jade's dad hissed a sound of fierce triumph and
turned to grab his prize, Jade leaning backward in avoidance. The
other four corpses took their cue, moving forward as a single unit,
laying their collective hands on him.

An awkward dance began, Jade's dad swinging
corpses. They would get up again, restraining him. Meanwhile, Clyde
shambled up the hill, steady and slow, making his way toward Jade's
dad.

It was almost funny, Jade's dad on the bare earth,
looking like he was drowning in a sea of dead people. He flailed his
arms about, trying to grab solid ground and hoist himself to his
feet, while a determined zombie would then weigh him back down.

I
let him battle the zombies. When the Js walked up and John said,
apprehensively looking at the spectacle of dead bodies, “Shouldn't
we, like, get outta here? And, while we're at it, can you get them,
you know, back?” pointing to the ground under our feet.

I spared a glance at the spectacle of struggling.
I could hear grunting and some colorful swear words.

“Are they going to hurt him?” Jade asked.

I shook my head. “Nah, not unless I tell them.”

“Hey dude, you sure on that, cuz they seem kinda
enthusiastic,” Jonesy said, tilting his head in the direction of
the ruckus.

The zombies had taken things to heart and one was
banging Mr. Scary's head on the grass.

“Hey! Quit that! No head-banging,” I said.

The zombie slowed the head-banging with a
dissatisfied grunt that sounded a little muffled.

No tongue.

Carson and Brett were wearing identical
expressions of fascinated surprise. It was like a train wreck, you
know you don't want to be on the train, but you wanna see what
happens. Morons.

Priorities, priorities...

“Okay, you two,” I looked at John and Jonesy.
“Get Jade home, fast.”

“What about...” John rolled his eyes in the
direction of the dopes.

Yeah, them.

I walked over to Carson with the zombie noise part
of the background melee.

I hollered back to Jonesy, “Keep an eye on my
zombies.”

Jonesy's eyes became like saucers. “Who me?”
he squeaked out. “Have John do it, he's good at that.”

John
turned to him with a glare. “So I've done so much zombie-sitting
,
right?”

I sighed, kinda busy here. “Both of you then,
just till I'm done talking to these guys.”

I
gave the
come
over here
look to Jade. She came, casting nervous glances behind where her dad
was buried under a pile of death.

I felt better once she was next to me.

Carson gave me a smug smile. “Having some
trouble with the girlfriend's family?”

“No,
just handling things Carson. We're even now,” I said.

“How do ya figure?” he asked, Brett's beady
eyes following us back and forth, back and forth.

“As I see it, people knowing you're a Pyro will
get you big-time attention from some key people,” I reminded him
logically.

“
That's
bullshit, Hart. You're a damn corpse-raiser.” He gestured behind
him to the squall that was the fight behind me. My friends nervously
shifted their feet, John making the hand signal,
come
on
,
hurry
up.

“
We
all know what
you
are now.” I looked at Brett, remembering that he'd found out
tonight with the rest of us. “Playing with fire is a pretty
important skill pal and you're doing a fine job of managing it,” I
said.

Throwing fire balls had to be illegal somewhere.

“Let's get outta here, Carson, let him figure
his own crap out,” Brett said.

“Yeah, I was done here anyway. Have fun with
that,” he said, motioning to the zombie brawl.

“
See
ya, Hart...
Jade
.”
Carson puckered his lips and blew her a kiss.

“Go guzzle bleach, ya squirrel,” Jade said.

My eyebrow rose; not just another pretty face.

We raced over to the zombie pile. It was getting
bad, Jade's dad continued to try to pry himself out of the mountain
of zombies and they would tumble away like bowling pins. Then Clyde
would straddle him and it would start all over again.

“Stop,” I said.

All the zombies stood stock still, awaiting the
next command. One fell over in mid-struggle.

Cool.
Ü
ber-cool.
I like.

“
Come
on
,
Caleb,” John urged.

Right, back to it.

Jade's dad lurched unsteadily to his feet, his
considerable size a factor on smoothness,
along
with the booze
.

Jade stayed close to me and the guys.

“
You,”
I said and the zombies all looked at me. “Not you guys.” I
dismissed them with a hand but they continued to stare at me with
steady devotion.
Uh
,
creeper.

I
turned back to Jade's dad. “You better just give up.”

“I ain't givin' up, but I can see when things
get challengin',” he said in a slur.

This
guy... what a turd!

“You have one last chance, girlie, come with
your daddy.” He held his hand out to Jade.

“No,” she said quietly.

“I see how you're gonna be. I'll fight that
bitch sister of mine, and get my kid back where she belongs... under
my roof!” He smacked a meaty fist into a meatier palm for emphasis.

Looking out at my army of dead, his gaze fell
back on me like a weight. This close I could see his nose was
slightly bulbous, with a fine spider webbing of broken capillaries.

“
And
you
,”
he jabbed a thick finger right in front of my chest, which made the
zombies tense. Geez, they were being my emotional barometer. “I
won't forget what ya did to me today. You're not normal. This,” he
jerked his thumb in the direction of the zombies, “ain't normal.
Sometime, when you're not lookin', I'll be there... waitin'. And
there won't be no help from any of them,” he said, pointing a
finger at Team-Rot.

Special.

He
straightened to his full height, inches taller than me, looking down
his drunken nose at me and my friends.

At
Jade
.

He didn't intimidate me. It wasn't having the
zombies around or false bravado. Here was a grown man, Dad's age for
God's sake, who had been a bully in school, a drunk as an adult and a
child-beating father. I didn't have a drop of respect for him.

I
spoke in a furious, low tone, “don't you come near Jade. You don't
know
what
I can do. You're not gonna hurt her... ever.” My finger shook in
front of
his
chest.

He
could taste my beating on his tongue, but gave a furtive look to the
group of patient zombies. He wasn't going to take
them
on again.

His
eyes narrowed. “You haven't seen the last of me,” he said to no
one in particular. Staring a hole through Jade. “You especially,
little lady.” And with that, he stumbled off, weaving more or less
in a straight line.

Playing with zombies will sober a person up.

****

That
went well.

The
only relief was Carson's ability was almost as troubling as mine. He
would be looked at as a teach-and-contain for sure. And knowing that
he hadn't even told his butt-buddy Brett? Well that was a surprise.

There the zombies stood, waiting for orders. I
turned to Jade and said, “What do ya say, one more time. I gotta
get these guys back in the ground.”

She looked up at me with eyes shining with unshed
tears, uh-oh.

The Js looked horrified: Girl crying! Girl crying!

“What's wrong?” I asked.

A fat tear rode a slow path down her face and she
did one of those hitching breaths that people do when crying might
make way to sobbing. “I'm so embarrassed!”

Ah... what?

Out loud I asked, “Why?”

“Because
he's my dad, and he's drunk and so stupid.”

Absolutely.

“Don't worry about him. He isn't going to do the
right thing, ever. You worrying about it won't change the way he
acts,” I reassured her.

“Can't pick your family,” Jonesy chimed in
unhelpfully.

John sighed.

Jade surprised us all by drying her tears and
saying a quiet, “You're right.”

“See, that's what I'm talkin' about.” Jonesy
did a dance step to emphasize his point.

Jade's eyes narrowed. “Don't push it.”

John smiled, I laughed and the moment passed.

“Let's get your zombies back in the dirt,”
Jade said.

I held out my hand to her and we clasped them in a
tight grip. Two things happened at once, the zombies moved to their
respective graves, and I felt a low buzzing. Not voices, but similar
to an electrical current. Different than with Tiff, but related
somehow. I gave a mental “flex” and the energy moved through me,
swirling. Then it found the thread that couldn't be seen, the power
moving as a conduit, connected as I was to the zombies.

With
explosive sighs, the breath slid out of their bodies, permanently
escaping. Clyde, the main zombie, lingered longest. An expression was
in his eyes that went beyond devotion; bright intelligence burning
there. I shoved the last of that lingering otherness down to them and
thought,
die.

The corpses collapsed on their graves, boneless,
like puppets whose strings had been cut. The ground rolled
noiselessly over them, like water poured backwards and they were
hidden once again.

Jade released my hand and said, “That is such a
weird sensation, it makes my teeth ache.” She rubbed her hand on
her jeans.

The whispering was back, but manageable. Feeding
the power made it quiet down to a dull roar, even dead-center in the
cemetery.

I walked over to Clyde's grave. There was
something that was nagging at me, something that I should be thinking
about but it escaped my consciousness. Too much had happened in too
short of time. I was having a brain fart.

“Let's get outta here,” Jonesy said.

Nobody had to ask me twice. Tomorrow was AP
testing and drug-taking time. I was up for it.

I'd missed supper, a big, bad one in my house. I
pulsed the parents on the way back to deflect The Wrath. The three of
us had gotten our stories straight before going our separate ways.

Jade had protested me walking her home. But with
Brett living in her neighborhood and her dad on a rampage, I'd
believed him when he said he'd be watching. I told the parents we
were just blowing off some steam with the AP Test coming up tomorrow.
I'd headed off disaster and wasn't ready to tell them about all the
other stuff: Jade's dad, the prank that went way-wrong with Carson.
And best of all, that we had a fire-starter running amuck. Yeah,
that.

Later, Dad and I put our heads together talking
about how I had to have the inhibitor with food and all the stuff I
already knew.

“Dad, are you telling me this because you're
worried I won't get it and like OD or something? Or, are you telling
me so you feel better in case I do the 'stupid'.”

Dad laughed. “Caleb, you're funny.”

I waited.

“The latter,” Dad replied. That's what I
thought, the second one.

“I knew that you were giving yourself an out.”

Mom set the bowl of chili down in front of me with
the yummy Mexican cheese on top and a huge hunk of cornbread. Time to
pork.

“Dad just wants to remind you honey, since
you're such an accomplished pill popper.”

My eyes rolled up to meet hers with the spoon
halfway to my open mouth. “How'd that go over with all the other
adults? Pill popper? Nice.”