Nine
Nobody moved for a solid couple seconds. It was just me with my gun pointed at this dude’s head and him holding up his weird scepter thing like it was going to protect him from me. Spoiler alert, it wouldn’t.
“Whoa, easy there big guy, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” He said calmly.
“Like hell we did!” I shouted, about as far from calm as I had ever been in my life. “You unleashed a zombie apocalypse on purpose, you’re tampering with dark magic, and you killed Hannah! I think we’re on exactly the feet we need to be, asshole.”
Blondie made a face and waffled back and forth as he realized I had made some good points. Behind him, his followers were busy lifting a coffin up over their heads and marching back towards the black ram-horned bus they arrived on.
“Okay pal. You must be Ryan, right? I’m Kevin, by the way. We met very briefly. My dad offered to pay for your surgeries and set you up with that trust fund, remember?”
“I remember turning him down. What I wanted, money couldn’t buy.”
Kevin nodded, actually agreeing with me. “You’re absolutely right. We both lost our girlfriends in that same accident. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that I killed anyone, but I understand why you might hold me responsible. I’m just trying to bring back my own dead love. Tell you what. When this ritual works and I bring Britney back, I can do your girlfriend next. Where’s she buried?”
If his choice of words wasn’t bad enough, the leering grin this douche-canoe plastered across his face was enough to make my finger twitch towards the trigger.
Ryan, no! We need him alive if he’s going to explain how he created the dark spores. You can’t kill him! Io’s voice suddenly shouted through our psychic connection.
I have done some pretty hard things in my life. Giving the doctors my consent to amputate my left arm below the elbow, fighting vampires after less than a week of Bureau training, allowing myself to love again after losing the woman I thought of as my soulmate, keeping my trio of monster girlfriends alive when it felt like the whole world was against us, and fighting (and defeating) a powerful demon after like a freaking month of even knowing about all this magical and monstrous mayhem surrounding Eastport, just to name a few. None of it compared to the decision that now lay before me.
All I wanted was to pull the trigger and watch his head explode. Every fiber of my being seemed to concentrate on my pointer finger, begging to just squeeze off a few rounds and watch the life flee from his eyes. It was the bare minimum that he deserved for murdering Hannah.
But I had a mission. This wouldn’t bring her back, it wouldn’t undo what he did, it wouldn’t protect her. It was just vengeance. I’m not so sure that’s the sort of guy I wanted to be.
I lowered my gun.
“See? You get it, man! I knew it from the second I saw you. Guys like us will move mountains for our girls. Storm heaven, invade hell, scour the earth, whatever. So long as our women are safe, who gives a shit, right?” Kevin laughed.
He actually laughed.
Several memories played through my head at once. Euna’s copy turning pale and reanimating. That zombie in the lab writhing around like it was in agony as Dr. Carolyn’s capsule tore pieces of it off to examine under a microscope. All the survivors we passed on the drive here all coming together to help one another as the zombies clawed at their defenses. Hell, just the sheer number of people that had been turned in less than twelve hours alone. Those were all innocent people who had died and had their bodies reanimated into vicious monsters, all so this stupid prick could bring back his dead girlfriend.
A tough question popped into my head. Something I’m not sure I had a good answer for. Is that something I would do for Tabitha, Euna, Io, or Hannah? Would I really sacrifice all those strangers just to save one of my girls? I swallowed nervously as I realized I really didn’t know.
Maybe, honestly. I shook my head to clear away such thought. Whether I would or not, I still had a mission to complete. I raised the gun once more.
“By my authority as Keeper, you’re under arrest, Kevin. We’re taking you in.”
Kevin’s face contorted into a mixture of disgust and anger. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me! I thought you were a real Chad, pal. Turns out you’re just a freaking Nigel!”
I had no clue what that meant, and Kevin didn’t give me any time to figure it out. His eyes suddenly glowed a sickly green and he leveled his staff at me, firing off a necrotic blast with the force of a shotgun.
I dove for cover and the green bolt of energy blew apart three headstones in a row before dissipating. Letting instinct drive me to a kneeling position, I drew my other handgun and fired off a hail of bullets from both pistols.
Kevin held his scepter out and each bullet I fired just bounced harmlessly off an invisible shield that appeared between us. When he tilted his head back and cackled, his skin appeared momentarily transparent, allowing me to see the outline of his skull as he laughed maniacally.
I kept firing until both guns were empty (a helluva lot sooner than my Roulette Rouges would’ve emptied, for the record) then swapped over to my sword. From over my head, all twelve Hunters opened fire on Kevin before I could close the distance.
The douchebag who murdered my fiance stumbled back a step and reinforced his green energy shield, turning it into a bubble around him that was shedding incoming bullets like raindrops deflecting off an umbrella.
A deafening report from behind me announced Blitz’s entrance into the fray as he sent three red bolts of energy streaking through the graveyard to impact Kevin’s shield. The bubble popped and the man dove behind a row of headstones.
There was no way he made it without getting hit. I saw bullets hit him. Yet no blood was splattered across the grass.
“Kevin!” I shouted out. “Stand down and let us get this sorted out. The people I work with have incredible resources. Maybe we can help you. But we can’t let you go through with this resurrection ritual. It’s too dangerous!”
Kevin fake-laughed loudly back. When he spoke again his voice had taken on an otherworldly depth. “How exactly do you plan on stopping me?”
I accessed Io’s drone footage overhead and got a good bead on the guy just in time to see Kevin turn his head to one side and rattled his teeth (I’m not making this up, he chattered like a talking skeleton). Green wafts of energy rose from his lips and sped off away from the graveyard.
I signaled the Hunters to cease fire and rose from my cover, moving towards Kevin with my sword drawn.
Ryan, bad news. All the zombies in the area just started moving towards your position!
Fuck. This was quickly getting out of hand. I idly wondered how many times that same thought process was going to occur to me in the coming days before I got all this sorted out.
“Kevin,” I said warningly. “This isn’t going to end well unless you cooperate with us.”
Kevin rose from behind his own cover. Bullet holes riddled his body, yet no blood spilled out. His face flickered between flesh and glowing skull as he regarded me coolly. “Who said anything about it ending ‘well’ at all, Ryan. All I care about is bringing Britney back. Everyone else, and especially anyone dumb enough to get in my way, can burn for all I care. She’s all that matters.” He raised his scepter towards me and prepared to fire off another blast.
But I was faster.
I triggered my lamia mutation and moved quicker than he could aim, dodging three blasts just by bucking and weaving and leaping clear over a fourth. My sword came up and knocked aside his scepter with almost contemptuous ease. With a quick twirl to reposition the sword, I laid the blade against his throat and locked my eyes on his.
“You’re coming with me,” I said calmly.
Kevin snarled and raised both of his hands up in a claw-like motion. More green energy, this time tinged with streaks of black, swirled all around us. Suddenly, hands popped out of the two nearest graves I was standing between and latched onto my legs. Kevin took a single step backwards and his form flickered as he sped three graves away from me. His hand lifted and the scepter rose from the ground to return to his grasp.
“So long, Ryan. Shame you didn’t take me up on my offer. Guess I’ll just have to raise your girlfriend and keep her for myself.” Cackling, Kevin sped off using that weird flicker-step to catch up to his retreating followers.
I’m gonna kill him, I decided, not even realizing I just broadcast that to all three of my girls in the process.
All around me, zombies were bursting free of coffins and coming towards me. I was having none of it, and used my blade to sever heads or stab into brains over and over again. I cut myself free and had no choice but to just focus on fighting my way through.
Everywhere I turned there was another rotting face shambling towards me. No matter how many heads I destroyed with my sword, there always seemed to be another zombie right behind that one. Since everyone buried here had been clothed in fancy suits and dresses, what followed was a very formal affair that I was rather pleased to be left out of.
Honestly, even with their numbers I was in pretty good shape here. I was a massive, well-built, highly trained killer facing a crowd of people I could just one-shot endlessly. Things were going great… right up until I lost my sword.
I swung a little bit too hard, maybe the panic was getting to me I don’t know, and lodged the blade inside some zombie’s chest. The second it sliced all the way through the skull and bit into the chest cavity it was like the blade was suddenly squeezed together by a powerful vice, and I couldn’t remove it.
To make matters worse, the zombie it was stuck in was still coming at me even though it only had half a brain. Guess I missed whichever part of the rotten gray matter these dark spores were using to animate these corpses.
No biggie.
I yanked out my left handgun, aimed it right into the zombie’s mouth, and pulled the trigger, only to hear a disappointing click as nothing happened.
Oh you idiot, I cursed at myself. I had spent so many months using weapons that automatically reloaded whenever I holstered them that I had completely forgotten to reload either of my pistols. The zombies were closing in all around me, and this one in front of me had already taken up way too much of my time.
“Screw it,” I hissed, letting go of my weapons entirely and leaping straight up.
When I bonded with Tabitha after an emotional first mission, I gained her heightened strength, reflexes and powerful healing factor. Also I got a little hairier everywhere, but that’s not the point. When Io and I made love in the back seat of an SUV right before we went to go save the world, I gained enhanced agility, fangs and claws, and partially impenetrable skin. During that final battle, Euna had been badly damaged and I really thought I’d lost her. So when she had thankfully survived and finally recovered, I may have expressed my gratitude at her survival rather vigorously the moment she moved out of the infirmary and into a room of her own. From her, I gained an adaptable anatomy I still hadn’t worked out all the quirks to.
With a flex of will, I rearranged the mass in my forearms and forged them into long triple-edged blades, just as Euna had done during our first zombie fight. My wrist-screen slid up closer to my elbow as my flesh reconfigured and hardened, until all that was left were sharpened edges and thin points.
I did a backflip in midair and came down with my new arm-blades already in motion.
Zombified heads rolled and bits of rotten flesh and bone scattered all around me as I became a death-dealing whirlwind. My world shrunk down the edges of my blades and the unending masses of undead all around me.
My eyes sought out Hannah, in Selene’s body, through the throng and I fought my way to her. Nothing that stood between us had a chance. But I still had to get to her.