Resurrection

Chapter Nine

While not one of my brightest plans, I decided to pay my visit to Karra alone. Since she’d shown a dislike of Baalth, and a willingness to carve his people up like Thanksgiving Day turkeys, I decided not to bring any of them along. I thought about calling in Katon, but I wasn’t sure how she’d react to him.

Even if she didn’t have a predetermined reason to take a shot at him, he’s pretty intimidating. That wasn’t the mood I wanted to set for our meeting. I wasn’t really sure just what kind of a mood I was going for, my crotch having a few ideas of its own, but intimidating wasn’t it.

Down in Old Town again, I skirted around the edges, sticking to the less populated areas as I worked my way to the asylum. It’s not that I was hiding from Baalth, not exactly, but I really didn’t need his unstable ass popping in and making a mess of things. Just starting to get an idea of what was going on, I certainly didn’t need his help to screw things up. I could do that well enough alone.

As I neared Gailbraith Manor, aptly nicknamed the Gray Hell, a cold chill trickled down my spine. Six stories tall and painted in a single swath from foundation to roof in institutional gray, the building stood out from its crumbling neighbors. Tiny windows, little more than the size of a mail-slot, peered from the sides like murder-holes. A ten foot stone wall surrounded the small, barren yard but it had come down in several places. Jumbles of rock and crumbled mortar lay in dusty piles around the perimeter, some strewn into the road. I had a sense that people avoided the area, as even to this day the debris in the street remained untouched.

Not counted among the smart few to stay away, I drew my gun and slipped through a hole in the wall, then made my way across the yard to the front entrance. The wrought iron gate, which once protected the front doors from threats inside and out, lay bent and mangled. Only one hinge held it on. The doors beyond it were missing entirely.

Though I’m not really easy to spook, I had to admit I was having second thoughts. Here I was, walking alone into the hideout of a killer who’d shown she was more than capable of handling her business with ruthless efficiency. I wasn’t sure I could deal with her, let alone anyone else who might be lurking about. I’d come here on a hunch, thinking I had a shot at talking to Karra, at working something out. Now, as I stepped into the musky-aired foyer of the asylum, I wasn’t so sure. To be safe, I let my senses drift out, hoping they’d give me a heads up in case of trouble, though I wasn’t confident it’d help.

Too late to turn back, at least that’s what I kept telling myself, I continued forward. The foyer was nothing more than a reception area. Rusted metal gates running ceiling to floor, sat open, splitting the room in half. On my side was nothing but a small desk, left to the mercy of time. Passed the gates was an area little more than a twenty foot square.

Against the back wall were two sealed elevators, set side by side, and a door with a sign above it, claiming it led to the stairs. Taped with warning stickers and caution tape, the signal lights broken and dim, the elevators looked like sleeping giant eyes. Even if the power hadn’t been out, I’d have passed.

With a sweaty hand, I yanked open the stairwell door. An ear-splitting squeal shrieked from the hinges and echoed down the stairs. If Karra didn’t already know I was there, she certainly did then. I growled and leaned inside, my gun out in front of me. Expecting company to rush up to greet me, I waited a few minutes but didn’t hear anything. I thought that surprising.

Committed in my mind, trap or otherwise, I started down the stairs. Two levels later, my footfalls thudding over-loud on every step, I reached bottom. A closed, reinforced metal door with no window greeted me. Beside it, protruding from the wall were two loose wires I assumed once belonged to an intercom system; the speaker and control panel long since gone.

Trapped in the tiny stairwell, I felt exposed. If there was a trap to be sprung, I was in it asshole deep. Rather than wait and see my cynicism proven true, I grabbed the knob and gave it a twist. It spun easily and the door cracked open. A bitter scent crept to me from the hall beyond. Part antiseptic, part decay, it stung my nose and tickled my throat. While not quite the level of sniffing a rotting corpse, the smell was unpleasant.

Ignoring the smell, I stepped into the hallway noting the sudden chill. That wasn’t a good sign. With no power to the air conditioners, and the weather outside warm, there were only a couple of likely reasons for such an obvious drop in temperature; magic or spectral entities. I ruled out magic as my senses weren’t hitting on anything. That left ghosts.

I hate ghosts.

While most spectral entities were limited in power and influence, God’s disappearance impacted the in-between world as much as it had the rest. Trapped in limbo, usually by sheer force of will, souls which retained a weak connection to the mortal plain became what we call ghosts.

They can interact with reality in minor ways, moving a lamp, manifesting images and sounds, but are otherwise incapable of reaching out of Limbo. After time these souls would weaken, their focus and determination fading as existence dragged on, and they’d drift off to their rightful end.

With God gone, the boundaries between the worlds had thinned, their limits tested by the rampant magic use of battling angels and demons. To top it off, supernatural beings that once had their roles defined-angels to Heaven, demons to Hell, humans splitting the difference-have been able to circumvent the end. Upon death, no longer immortal in body, angels and demons have willed their spirits to continue to exist, escaping to Limbo to avoid destruction.

Once there, the industrious few have been able to take advantage of the tenuous boundaries and manipulate energy in the real world, generally causing havoc similar to most of the poltergeist stories you’ve heard. Even worse, there were some that broke through the barrier and returned as beings of pure energy: revenants.

Those were the scary ones, entities of magic and will with no physical shell to contain them.

Fortunately, it didn’t take a ghost of that level to set a chill in the air. Any average everyday spook, like those found fluttering about scandalous institutions like Gailbraith, could drop the temperature by ten degrees easily. I hoped that was all it was, as a revenant under the control of a necromancer would be a serious threat to my anal fortitude.

Aware I was spooking myself, I pushed my shivers away and continued down the hall. The first room, the door missing, the room in shambles, was empty. As was the second, third, and fourth, each in similar states of jumbled disarray. The fifth, however, located down a long, barren hall, looked promising. The door, while open, seemed maintained, its hinges still wet with oil.

I glanced inside, staying low and out of sight as much as I could. Rows of unpadded white benches, like stadium seating, were set on a decline. A line of stairs split them in half. At their end was a low wall with an aluminum frame, which looked as though it were intended to contain a window. The shards of shattered glass lying on the floor confirmed my thought, a sparkling line along the base of the wall. Beyond that was a second room, empty but brightly lit by four-pronged lights set high on mobile arms. A quiet hum vibrated the floor, no doubt from a generator powering the lights.

My brain kicked in, remembering what Lilith told me about the place. I realized then the room was a surgical theatre. I shuddered, wondering what kind of people sat on the benches watching as the doctors harvested the organs of their patients. Raised in Hell, I’d seen a lot of things people would call cruel, but regardless of the stories you’ve been told about demons and devils, humanity is by far the most vicious and brutal, the most uncaring, of all of God’s creations.

Too sensitive to the plight of humans unable to defend themselves, my own mother murdered without being given a chance, I had a weak stomach for the things that happened in places like this. I narrowed my focus, to avoid taking in too much, and made my way down the concrete steps. At the wall, I hopped over and dropped the ten feet into the room. Tiny shards of glass crunched beneath my feet.

On the floor, out of sight from the room above, there were two plain backpacks stacked in a corner, just left of a closed, windowed door. I crept to the packs, staying clear of the window, and examined the bags. Uncertain of what I’d find in them, I was sure it’d be something nasty, something I didn’t want to see.

I was wrong.

Packed neatly inside the bags were a few cans of food, an overnight kit, and a small variety of women’s clothing and undergarments. If the lights weren’t confirmation that Karra was here, the clothes were. They carried her scent. Not that I was sniffing them or anything.

You can’t prove it.

Certain of her presence, I resisted the urge to pocket her panties-or do anything else with them-and went to the door. It swung open to reveal another wide hallway. The sides were cluttered with hospital beds, soiled sheets still draped over them. There was a set of closed doors at the end of the hall. While there were no lights, the bright glimmer of those from the operating room filtered through the window of the door I’d closed behind me. My vision degrees better than that of a normal human, I could see without any problem.

On guard, I walked toward the double doors, my eyes darting all over the place. It was my nose, however, which picked her up first. Just as the subtle fragrance of her tripped the warning bells in my head, she was on me. I spun, willing my voice to call out her name, but she struck me before the word formed.

A thin red gash appeared, trailing a line across the back of my gun hand and down the length of my forearm. The searing agony of the magical blade hit me first, followed almost immediately by the cold, rigid numbness of the poison.

Out of instinct, all thoughts of why I was there banished from my mind, I tried to shift the gun to my other hand. A second, silvery slash of Karra’s blade across my left bicep ended my attempt. My pistol tumbled to the ground as my hand lost all function, the other arm fading fast. Armless in an instant, she’d taken away any chance at effective offense, so like a rabbit on race day, I bolted.

My foot hadn’t even landed from the first step when a slash horizontally across the backs of both of my legs cut my run short. Snarling, I went down in a heap, face first. Pain welled up in a geyser, then eased almost as fast. I flopped around like an upended turtle. A strong hand latched onto my shoulder and rolled me over. I looked up to see Karra’s masked face. Even with her features covered, she didn’t look happy to see me.

“We need to stop meeting like this.” My mother always told me I could charm the stink from a skunk. It was a long time before I learned she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

Karra let loose a long, drawn out sigh, her eyes swirling red around the brown.

“I thought I told you to stay away.” Though anger hardened her words, she spoke quietly, melodiously. Unlike when we’d spoken earlier, she did nothing to mask her natural speech pattern. While I couldn’t place it, there was something familiar about her voice.

I stared at her, trying to discern the features behind the mask, having no success. “I can’t. You have to know that.”

She growled. Despite the circumstances, I had to admit, it turned me on. She knelt beside me, the point of her sword coming to rest sharp on my chest. That cooled things off a little bit.

“If you won’t leave off willingly, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”

An ugly, cold feeling settled over me. I’d come there thinking whatever had kept her from taking my life the first two times we’d crossed paths would still be in effect. The ice in her voice told me I had presumed too much.“If you’re so set on killing me, why didn’t you do it the last time, or the time before that?” Sometimes you just have to dig. It doesn’t hurt to throw a compliment in either. “You’re certainly capable of it.”

She stared at me for a minute, her breathing slow and calm. “Contrary to what you may believe, I-” she corrected herself, “-Reven, is not your enemy.”

“Yeah, nothing says good guy like a horde of zombies kidnapping and murdering people.”

She sighed and dropped onto her ass, her sword still poised. “I didn’t say he was a saint, I just said he isn’t your enemy. You don’t need to be involved.”

The familiarity of her voice grated on me. “Tell me who you are and what your boss is doing here so I can determine that for myself.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. You just need to accept my word that despite how bad things look, what Reven is doing is the far lesser of two evils. A few more days without interruption, maybe less, and we’re gone.”

Considering my delicate situation, I didn’t want to piss her off, but I couldn’t let her master continue killing people whether she was telling the truth or not. “Baalth isn’t gonna let it be that easy. He has people out looking for you and when they find you, it won’t be his minions that come kicking down your door.”

“His minions like you?”

Ouch. “I’m just working off a contract, I’m not the help. My lease is up once you’re out of the picture, permanently or otherwise.”

“Then let us do what we need to.” I thought I heard a hint of desperation in her voice.

“Look, Karra. I’m not the one calling the shots. I’m just a grunt. You’ve got Baalth with a mad-on for you and my bosses are all over it. They don’t take kindly to people pillaging the locals. Neither do I.” Her eyes reflected a sparkle of compassion, but there was still a strong sense of determination in there as well. “To top all that off, you’ve got at least one more major player looking into your business.”

She tensed. “Who?”

I shook my head, the only part of me unaffected by the poison. “A boy has to have his secrets.”

She hopped to her feet in a huff, the tip of her sword drawing a tiny dot of blood. She stepped away and started to pace. “You always were infuriating,” she muttered.

Shit. Though it was obvious we knew each other somehow, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who she was. Worse still, she was a woman.

Given my history with women, not counting any of the numerous pay-for-play situations, the odds of my making it out of my current situation alive just dropped dramatically. To include my mother, there wasn’t a woman in my life who hadn’t wanted me dead at one point or another.

“Who are you, Karra?” Might as well find out just how bad things were gonna be.

She stopped her pacing and stared at me for a moment. “That’s not important, Triggaltheron.”

My heart skipped a beat. She’d used my given name which meant we’d probably known each other in Hell. That wasn’t a good sign either. As difficult as I am to get along with now, I was far worse when my uncle was still around. My life flashed before my eyes as I realized I was doomed. In brilliant colors, everything that ever meant anything to me ran across the screen of my mind.

Not surprisingly, all I saw were boobs.

Life had been good.

Paralyzed and all-around fucked, I didn’t see any reason to prolong things. “So, what now?”

“I should kill you,” she answered without hesitation, glaring down at me, her fingers tightening on the pommel of her sword.

Right then I knew I had a chance. I kept my mouth shut to avoid screwing things up. If ever there was an advocate who could talk me out of trouble, my mouth wasn’t it.

“But I’m not gonna.” I sighed as she sheathed her weapon. “I do, however, need to make sure you can’t interfere again.”

Oh crap.

She put her fingers to her covered lips and blew, belting out a sharp, piercing whistle, only slightly muffled by the mask. Unable to cover my ears, I winced, hoping my hearing wasn’t permanently damaged. She had a hell of set of lungs, let me tell you. I’m sure the set of size “C” amplifiers she had on her chest helped. Now that was a stereo system I wouldn’t mind wrapping around my ears.

Before the echoes of her whistle died down, a handful of zombies stumbled through the double doors and made their way over to us. I wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but I didn’t like the looks of it.

“Hey now, I’m all about exploring my wild side but I have to draw the line somewhere.”

Karra ignored me and gestured to the zombies. They bent down and grabbed ahold of my limbs. As they lifted me up, I wasn’t sure what to be more offended by: the fluttering reek that assailed my nose, or the constant barrage of profanity and incessant randomness that spewed from their dead mouths.

After a few seconds, the gibbering pulled ahead in the poll.

“Where are you taking me?”

Once more, Karra chose not to answer while the zombies carried me down the hall and out through the double doors. Along for the jostling ride, almost grateful I couldn’t feel anything, there was nothing to do but wait and see.

Picturing all the grim possibilities, I just hoped Karra’s imagination was nowhere as vivid as mine.

A half hour after having been dumped into the back of a moving van, crowded with zombie funk, and carted across town, I was yanked out and unceremoniously dropped on my ass. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the starlit darkness, night having settled in, but I could smell wet grass and fresh dirt. I rolled my head to the side, eyes searching, and groaned when I realized where they’d taken me; Rest Land Cemetery.

I didn’t like where this was headed. When I spotted the open hole in the ground a few feet from where I laid, I liked it even less.

“You don’t need to do this, Karra.”

She knelt beside me. “Yes, I do. You’re too stubborn to leave well enough alone.”

So what if she was right?

While the poison had just begun to burn off, my legs and arms tingling like they’d been laid in a pile of ants, I still couldn’t really move much. I thrashed around trying to get the feeling back, but it was useless. My limbs were rocks attached to my torso, swinging stiffly, out of my control. That didn’t stop me from fighting when two of her zombies grabbed me and dragged me toward the hole.

Actually, it pretty much did.

Belting out a scream, which would make Jamie Lee Curtis green with envy, they held me at the edge of the grave. Inside was an open concrete liner that looked anything but inviting. The remaining zombies, carrying the lid to the liner, trundled over and stopped beside the hole.

“Be good, Frankie,” Karra told me, frustrating amusement in her voice. She smiled through the mask and tossed my gun into the hole. It landed with an ominous thud.

“Don’t do this!”

She shook her head and motioned to the corpses holding me. She’d already made up her mind. There’d be no talking my way out.

Stiff in ways I could never imagine fun, the zombies lifted me in the air above them. Face down over the hole, staring into it with dread, they tossed me in. With the maw of the grave filling my vision, I mustered every ounce of my strength and forced my arm back. Screaming like a banshee, I felt the vague, disconnected bump of my hand connecting against something. I willed my fingers to close, and though I’m not certain they did, I felt a sharp tug which strained my shoulder.

There was a loud snap and I was yanked sideways just before I slammed into the concrete floor of the liner. I hit hard, my breath forced from my lungs. A split second later, there was a solid thump against my side as something tumbled into the grave with me.

I didn’t have time to wonder about it as I saw the liner lid moving across the hole, its bulk blotting out the stars. Brave man that I am, it took me all of about zero seconds before I started to beg, cry, and plead, all spewing free in one big, wet outburst.

It did me no good.

The lid dropped, settling onto the liner with a puff of dust. Concrete ground against concrete as it settled into place, sealing me in. Seconds later, the muffled sound of dirt being shoveled into the grave started. Thump after dull thump, it rained down on the lid, becoming quieter as the dirt piled up. The liner creaked ominously under the building weight. Unable to move, all I could do was listen to the fading sounds above and the pounding beats of my frantic heart.

I was trapped, buried alive.

I don’t care how badass you think you are, how much you can bench press, or how big your dick is, all that gets tossed out the window the instant the first shovelful of dirt lands over your head. Courage and machismo mean shit when there’s two thousand pounds of earth between you and breathable air. Alone, excised from the light as hope withers on the vine, terror sets in.

Barely able to manage the slightest of movements, enclosed in a three-by-eight steel reinforced, concrete box, the darkness swallowed me whole. Blacker than the deepest obsidian, I could see nothing. Not the lid of the liner, not the nose on my face; nothing.

Deprived of sight and the sounds of the world above, my fear turned inward. Crowded as it was in my head already, it wasn’t a welcome addition. Overcome, I thrashed about knowing it would do me good, but I couldn’t help myself.

Terror knows no reason.

My movement still restricted by the poison in my system, I rocked back and forth, bouncing from wall to wall, squirming inside my tiny prison. After a few moments, my skull finding the head of the liner with a solid thump, I felt something cold pressed against my temple.

It took all my will to battle back my unrepentant shivers and twitches so I could take a second to examine what I’d found. Breathing heavy, my heart still slamming into my ribcage, I gathered myself. Unable to use my hands, I pressed my head against the object. It was small and hard and apparently attached to the concrete wall of the liner.

The skin of my head not sensitive enough to determine what it was, I craned my neck to the side and stuck my tongue out. After a few seconds of fishing around to find the object, the sour taste of old plastic, and a small hint of glue, filled my mouth as my tongue struck home. Fighting back a gag, I let my tongue run loose.

The object was little more than a few inches around, and circular, extending about six inches from the wall. Out of reflex, thinking about the dimensions, I pulled my tongue back in disgust.

Whatever the thing was, it owed me dinner.

Putting aside the question of my manhood, I returned to the examination. When my tongue slipped inside a narrow cavity in the object, nearly getting stuck, my brain engaged.

It was a pipe.

My thoughts started to whirl with excitement. I bumped my nose on the cylinder as I leaned into it in a rush, trying to get as close as I could. With my nose pressed up against it, I sniffed hard. A very faint odor of moist grass crept to my nose. It was the greatest scent I’d ever smelled. Driven by the desire to live, I wrapped my mouth around the pipe-keep your comments to yourself-and sucked hard.

The chilly night air filled my lungs.

I sighed and pulled away from the pipe, relief washing over me. Once again, Karra had been given an opportunity to kill me and she’d passed on it. Regardless of who she was, whatever her relationship to me, she was burrowing past my cynicism and making me think maybe she wasn’t one of the bad guys. That probably meant Reven wasn’t either.

My head hurt just thinking about it.

With my adrenaline taking a dive, my heart rate slowing, I tried my best to get comfortable. No longer worried about suffocating to death, I could wait out the poison, then see what I could do to get out. Hope had returned, springing eternal.

Once the fear passed, I drew in a deep breath and settled in. At least down here, I was pretty safe. I didn’t have to worry about getting caught up in the middle of the pissing match between Baalth, Lilith, and Reven. All things considered, I had it pretty good squirreled away underground, alone in my grave.

“Poodle-juice!”

Or not.

I shrieked when the raspy, guttural voice shouted beside me. The sound echoed through the box as I exploded into squirms again, my crotch warming as my body found a creative way to express its fear. My eyes scanned the inky darkness, but it was like peering through steel; no one would ever mistake me for Superman. My heartbeat ramped up as my mind was a flurry of questions, wondering how anyone could have gotten into the liner with me.

“Who’s there?” I squeaked, my voice easily three octaves higher than usual.

“Fiddle-dee-deeeeeeeeeeee,” the darkness answered, its words moist.

I wiggled into the corner as far as I could to put as much distance between my uninvited guest and my paralyzed ass as possible. My senses fluttered out. Though I didn’t feel the chilling cold which came with the presence of a ghost, I wanted to know what I was dealing with. It only took a second to find out.

Loosing a growl, I withdrew my senses and relaxed. “Stupid zombie.”

“Zom-b-e-e-e-e-e-e-,” it repeated.

I thought back to when I’d been dumped inside the liner and realized I’d managed to grab a hold of something as I fell. That was what landed on me; the zombie’s head. I’d torn it off.

Lucky me.

“I hope you’re happy I pissed myself,” I grumbled as I squirmed from the corner with a wet squish, wedging my stiff leg against the head to keep it from moving, and from biting me.

“Pomegranates!”

The smell of urine wafted about the box and I was glad I had a vent hole. I was also glad I’d only pissed. I’d had burritos for lunch.

Thank Starbucks for small favors.

“Whaaaazzzzup? Whaaaazzzzup?”

As I listened to the zombie’s random insanity, I knew I was in for a long night.

“Bud-wei-ser.”

At least he was singing my song.