Walking Dead

CHAPTER 26

My brain wouldn’t let me process more than the dead woman for a few seconds. She’d been blond once upon a time, and for a desiccated corpse she still had a lot of hair. It was piled in a loose bun that was beginning to fall around cadaverous cheekbones and sunken eyes. Her skin was mostly blue, with rough raw purply-red streaks marring her flesh where it was exposed under her dress. At a guess, I thought she’d been dead for over a hundred years. Not that I really knew from long-dead bodies, but her dress looked straight out of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The two little dead girls sitting with her, which my eyes had been trying very hard not to see, wore equally old-fashioned clothes. Their hair, dull brown, was carefully braided, and the fragile lace on their collars looked as if it’d undergone an attempt at cleaning bloodstains and viscera from them.

All three of them were partially crushed, though their bodies were sitting in such a way as to almost disguise that. The woman, though, tipped to her left, like her hip couldn’t bear weight, and there was a collapse to the left side of her torso that couldn’t be accounted for by perspective. Her left ankle, booted in fading leather, seemed both whole and delicate, which made the rest of the mess that much worse.

The bigger girl was angled away from me, but once my vision adapted to her mother’s misshapen form, I could see that the child’s shoulder and rib cage were smashed in, and I thought her face was turned the other way to hide similar damage to her features. The littler girl was more broken in half, a childish smile on her dead face as she rested her head on her arms against the table. I suspected that was the only way she could sit up at all, given the flatness of her hips and waist. Even frozen solid, her body wouldn’t have the integrity to remain upright.

I rotated another quarter circle or so, and Archie Redding stopped reading the foreign language to smile beatifically at me and say, “Hello,” in perfectly comprehensible English.

I said, “You crazy motherfucker,” except I had a gag in my mouth, so it came out something like “Y’kavee moffaffuka,” which, under the circumstances, I felt got the point across. Redding looked like somebody’s genial grandfather with sparkling green eyes and a sweet old smile, just as he had in his museum security photograph, although he hadn’t been wearing a long black hooded robe in that. “Wwava vuk iv wong wivvu?”

“I’m sorry,” he said very earnestly. “I’m afraid I can’t understand you. I’d remove the gag, but I can’t allow you to start screaming, so we’re going to have to do without clear communication. Don’t worry, though. It won’t last long. I’ll be cutting your throat in about ten minutes. I need a test case for the cauldron, you see. My guide suggests that between midnight and the first minute after, it has the power to actually bring the dead fully back to life, rather than simply make undead warriors like these poor fellows.” He gestured to one side, and I finished my rotation to discover ten silently screaming dead men standing in rank beside me.

I admit it. I’m not proud. I screamed like a little girl. The gag did a decent job of making me sound deeper and more rugged, but in my heart of hearts I knew that the sound that had erupted from my throat was up there with the most soprano of sopranos, a pure ripping sound of absolute terror.

I spent a good fifteen seconds at it before I realized the dead men weren’t lurching to pull my flesh from my bones or eat my eyeballs out or anything else of equal disgustingness. Nor, at a second look, were any of them Cernunnos or his Riders, so I flung my weight sideways and rotated back to Redding. “Whevva vukivva Hhnnt?”

He shook his head with what looked like a genuine affectation of sympathy. “I do wish we could speak. I’d like to know what brought you here, and there’s so little time.” He brightened. “But if the cauldron works as my guide believes it will, then we’ll be able to talk afterward.”

Hopefully, I said, “M mmnt hweem,” and meant it. I’d gotten all my screaming out already. I was sure I could make better use of my time than screaming if he’d ungag me. Like biting his face off, or something.

Redding looked like he’d understood me that time, but it didn’t make him remove the gag.

“Whovvavuk iv vrr ghyyyv?” I was getting better at talking through the gag. At least, I thought I was. Redding didn’t seem impressed. What’s a girl got to do? I ask you.

The obvious answer was keep him talking. If I could stretch my useless interrogation out to one minute past midnight, the dead family would stay dead, I would stay alive, and maybe I could jimmy myself off the basketball hoop and knock Redding out with my body weight as I tried to avoid head-diving into the cauldron. It was a plan. I ran with it. “Vvt hhvvnd voo vr fmmvy, Revving?” I was getting better at talking. My gag was loosening. Apparently Redding hadn’t taken Kidnapping 101 before tying me up here.

Wherever the hell here was. We’d visited Redding’s apartment, and I was pretty sure if there was other property listed in his name, we’d have visited there, too. Either this place wasn’t on the books or we’d done some embarrassingly sloppy police work. Which reminded me unpleasantly of the little army of dead men at my side. Those people had gone missing from somewhere, and they didn’t bear the Redding family’s freezer burns. He hadn’t been keeping them on ice to use for test runs in the cauldron.

The thought that they were, in fact, hordes of undead birthed straight from the cauldron, like in the movie, swept over me, and I swung back around to look more closely at the little army.

They carried short swords and wore leather armor over their cadaverous bodies, which lent credence to them being ancient warriors torn from the cauldron’s heart. Either that, or Redding had murdered a bunch of soldiers from the Society of Creative Anachronism, which honestly seemed less likely than undead killers several centuries old.

“Vve cauvvron vrks,” I said in genuine astonishment. I didn’t want it to, but a tiny part of my brain chalked up a functioning black cauldron as unexpectedly cool. “I vvoght vrr wavvnt an army invvide it. Vrr’d vey cmme frmm?”

Redding, to my dismay, checked his watch before answering. I wasn’t fooling him into losing track of time. Evidently we had enough, though, because he said, “My master gave me the incantation to retrieve ancient souls held captive in the cauldron, warriors who would protect me while I completed the ritual for my family. More were born, but most were too weak after so much time. These are all that are left.”

That suggested the undead could die. I actually relaxed into my bonds, slumping in relief. There was light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I cast a thankful glance upward, except up was down and the tunnel below me was the cauldron. I said, “Crap,” so softly that the gag couldn’t distort it, and, more urgently, repeated, “Vvt did hhvvn voo yrr fmmly?” Keeping him talking could only benefit me.

He sighed, turning a page in his book and finding the text he wanted with a fingertip before answering me. “We ought not have been traveling in winter, but it had been mild, and we hoped we might push through the mountain passes and be in California by spring. We wanted to farm, you see. That was our dream, me and Ida and the girls.” He fell silent again, cheery countenance darkened with old, maddening sorrow. “There was an avalanche. I was thrown clear, but Ida and the girls…their bodies were frozen by the time I retrieved them. Some of the others in the wagon train buried their dead there, but I could never do such a thing. I took them west, all the way west, praying for a miracle that would bring them back to me.” His smile came back, beatific and terrible. “And before winter broke its hold, a miracle came to me.”

“Vervuvvos?”

“A banshee,” he corrected, though I couldn’t tell if he’d understood me. It didn’t matter. His answer stripped the strength from my muscles and I sagged toward the cauldron, eyes closed in something very close to defeat. More or less everybody knew banshees were Irish harbingers of death, that they came to cry on a porch the night someone was due to die.

The one I’d met did a whole lot more, too. Every thirty years or so, when the full moon and the winter equinoxes aligned, it came to kill in the name of its master. If it could do that, I had very little doubt it could do more, like answer the prayers of a desperate man willing to do anything to restore his family. Whatever price it demanded would be unspeakable, but I doubted very much that Redding had cared about or considered that angle of retrieving his family from the dead. Revulsion flowed through me, my power’s answer to a hideous idea, but Redding’s expression remained serene. “It told me how to preserve their bodies in salt and ice and blood, and gave me a charm to chant when I opened my own veins to offer the blood. It offered me an answer to my prayers.”

“Rivvual murvur iv nevvar a good anver.” I felt strongly that this was true. On the other hand, I was a few minutes from dying and very curious. Also, I intended to stage a fanastic rescue just as soon as I figured out how. I’d left the rapier in Petite’s backseat, and I wasn’t sure it’d do me much good for getting out of a hog-tie anyway.

On the other hand, it was a damn sight better than nothing. I fixed my eyes on Redding, doing my best impression of listening hard, and took a long slow breath through my nostrils to steady my breathing. I’d drawn the rapier out of nowhere once before, when the circumstances hadn’t been any more forgiving. If desperation counted for anything, it would materialize in my hand any second now. Redding glanced at his watch again, suggesting my let me explain, Mr. Bond tactic wasn’t working as well as I hoped. He tapped the text he intended to read, checked his watch a third time, then turned his attention back to me. Apparently the timing had to be just perfect, and we were still a little ways out from my impending doom. “The blood had to be my own. Family to family. Nothing else would preserve them through time until they could rise again. But I was already aging, and so the banshee offered me a way to extend my own years so I could tend to my dear wife and children. The death of a child on the eve of the dead,” he said solemly, “at every fiftieth anniversary of the year of my birth. That was the least it would accept, to give me life long enought to see my family restored.”

I kept my mouth shut that time, partly because I suspected what I had to say wouldn’t be helpful: killing somebody else’s kid to bring back your own seemed like a good idea? and partly because my heartbeat had slowed and the calming, serene confidence that I could bend space just enough to grab my sword was starting to come over me. Snarking at Redding seemed like a bad exchange for possibly saving my own neck.

He gave me another startlingly beatific smile. “And it was right. I’ve waited a hundred and sixty-seven years for this night, and you’ve come to help me assure it will be successful. Even if I only have enough time to resurrect you tonight, in another year I can awaken my children and their mother.”

I had the unpleasant idea that my zombie would be his companion for the intervening year, and it turned out that vampires weren’t actually at the top of my Very Bad Undead list. Me as one of the walking dead beat vampires hands down. Inspired by panic, I forgot about trying to be Zen and cool and one with the universe. I’d been trying to save my own life a few hours ago when I’d yanked it through the ether. There’d been no calm involved. Right now, I was all for terror-induced teleportation. One sword coming up, or one dead Joanne going down.

And time ran out. Redding drew his hood farther over his head, making himself a black mark against the night, and took a long slim knife from beneath his robe. A sudden vivid image of Sonata hanging in the air, ghostly blood draining from long cuts on her body, sprang to mind. I wasn’t spread-eagle, and he’d probably cut my throat to make sure I was dead before midnight, but I had no doubt I’d be made victim to the same five-cut ritual Matilda and the others had died in. That was a hell of a way to go.

My fingers, cold as they were, had enough feeling in them to close around the rapier’s haft. I put bursting into tears of relief on my list of things to do about an hour from now, and did my absolute best to whip myself in a circle and cut Redding’s totally insane head off. I was pretty sure I’d seen a movie trailer with a martial-arts expert trussed up like I was. He’d managed to kick the bad guys’ asses. It could be done.

Not, however, by me. I swung around in a lazy circle without anything like enough momentum to do damage. The rapier stuck out from behind my back at a ridiculous angle, enough to make Redding step back in surprise, but I didn’t think I was going to surprise him to death. I swished around again, trying to shift the sword enough to saw through the ropes around my wrists. This was, by any reasonable expectation, impossible. I’d spent a lot of time with the impossible over the last year, though, so I wasn’t quite ready to give up hope. In the worst scenario, I could arch into the ties and attack the rope holding my feet. A living body entering the cauldron was supposed to be what destroyed it. It wasn’t top on my list of choices, but if I couldn’t get free in the next few minutes, there were worse ways to go out.

Sadly, I had not anticipated the silent platoon of undead taking the sudden appearance of my sword as a threat.

Matilda Whitehead had never gotten her bony hands on me. I didn’t know how grateful I was for that until half a dozen cadavers surged forward, grasping for me. The other four swept into place around Redding, making a…prophylactic or phalanx or something like that, of protection. In the good news department, he wasn’t actually all that happy to be protected, since his window of opportunity for murdering me was rapidly coming to a close. Sharp, skinless phalanges digging into my skin fell under less good news. I screamed like a little girl again, and had the bare wittering presence of mind to slam my shields outward, making them into as defensive a weapon as I could.

Three of the warriors staggered back. Another one burst into blue flame, which astonished everyone, including me, enough to stop and gape for a couple of seconds. I recovered before they did, though the two I hadn’t knocked away still had their claws in me. I twisted and bucked, actively trying now, to slice the rope around my ankles so I could fall into the cauldron. Better a willing sacrifice to end a run of evil than being chewed apart by undead soldiers. On my third or fourth flail, the rapier caught in the rope with a soft hiss that signaled parting threads. I said “Shit” as the rope frayed and I fell.

The dead men caught me.

Cold surged through my body as though life itself tried to flee from their unfeeling hands. My shields flared, and the one part of my mind that wasn’t gibbering with fear shut them down. I was balanced precariously on rickety arms whose ropy black muscle held me out of the cauldron. The last thing I wanted to do was make those arms burst into flames.

They didn’t speak, the dead, but they moved together. Three tiny sways, and then a good heave-ho sent me tumbling away from the cauldron and toward Redding’s swimming pool. I hit the concrete edge with my face and tasted blood, but given that I’d been expecting to taste untimely doom, blood was pretty nice.

Behind me, the distinctive note of metal leaving leather hissed. I clenched every muscle in my body and tried to flip myself over, pissed off at the idea of being stabbed in the back at this late date. I almost made it, too, but a booted foot caught me in the back of my ribs and kept me on my stomach. A wordless yell broke from my throat, and for all that it was muffled by the gag, it at least felt like the kind of thing a fighter should go out on. It was angry, full of defiance, ready to face whatever the fates had in store.

It was also a completely inappropriate response to the ropes binding me being slashed apart by someone else’s blade.

My hands flopped to the ground and my feet smashed downward, thunking into the lawn that bordered the swimming pool’s patio. I’d pushed blood back into my system, but actual non-magically-assisted blood flow let me know just how inadequate my efforts had been. Good enough to let me grab the rapier, but not nearly good enough to keep pins and needles that felt like pitons and spikes from driving into my extremities. I lay there for a few seconds just gasping with pain, unable to even care that my back was exposed to a bunch of presumably murderous corpses.

Once that thought worked itself through my over-oxygenated brain, I rolled over on my back and lifted my rapier in a feeble defense. The five warriors who’d taken me down stood in a loose circle, and Redding was caught in the midst of his phalanx, shouting furiously. Apparently they didn’t consider him their general, because they stayed where they were, watching their mates, who were watching me. Waiting for me to do something. After a while I realized what it was.

They wanted a fair fight.

I yanked the gag out of my mouth, spat bile and jumped to my feet. My feet protested this treatment with a shriek of agony, and I had a brief dazzling image of Petite’s brake pads going. Replacing brakes took a while, time I didn’t have, so I slammed the idea of a little extra brake lube through my system and the dancing anguish faded. I didn’t really need new brakes. I just needed to not fall down while I took on undead warriors in man-to-man combat.

All five of the semi-circle of fighters moved forward at once, as one. I guessed they didn’t want a totally fair fight. On the other hand, I’d torched one of them already, so maybe me against nine wasn’t such bad odds. Especially since I only had to stay alive about six more minutes and the witching hour would be ended.

Teeth bared in a grin, rapier aglow with life magic, I fell into a fencing stance and for the second time that day, lifted a hand to say bring it on.

Archie Redding threw his sacrificial knife and caught me in the belly.