Thirty-One
I’m not sure exactly how long I stayed there, just staring down at Derek and wishing that he’d open his eyes, crack a joke and call me an idiot for falling for that. But that’s not what happened.
Instead his spirit lifted free of the body and regarded me calmly. It nodded, and I sensed a wave of gratitude wash over me from Derek’s soul.
Hannah floated over to us and held out her hand. Our fight is not over. Gertrude moves East with the rest of her forces. Her plans are coming together even as we speak. I know this is hard, Ryan, but we need to get moving soon. She spared me a soft glance before turning to Derek. I’ll guide him to a safe rest in the afterworld, it’s sort of my duty after all. I’ll find you when it’s done. I know I still owe you an explanation.
I didn’t have it in me to say anything, but I motioned for her to carry out her charge and watched both of their spectral figures raise up into the air and vanish in a flare of light that most mortals could not see. Since Selene and I were exceptions to that rule, and Gabby was never mortal to begin with, all three of us watched them depart.
When Derek’s eyes opened again they were clouded over with a milky white film. A zombie. I guess Gabby’s cleansing blast just put down the zombies that were already animated, and laid the phantoms to rest. Without Autumn’s cure reaching this far out from central park just yet, Derek’s body had no defense against whatever dark spores he had inhaled during the day.
Selene and Gabby both jolted towards me, prepared to put him down so I didn’t have to.
I lifted my hand calmly to show them that I was in control, and then reached for my pistol. One was still off in the forest from my duel with Michelle. The other was in Selene’s hand. I almost reached for my sword, but then I thought about what sort of dirty jokes Derek would’ve made if he ever found out I executed his zombified corpse with a blade.
‘Stick it in me,’ he’d say, and then he’d have cackled at how uncomfortable I got.
In the end I just lowered the zombie that was no longer my friend onto the ground and commanded a set of roots and vines to entangle him, making sure one punched through its skull as I laid him to rest. A roughly Derek-sized thicket of tangled roots and vines grew out of the ground. An earthen coffin for the truest friend I ever had.
The barest hint of a smile crossed my face as I tested the limits of my dryad powers and tried to see if I could grow something specific. Luckily, I knew he had a sample on him in one of his pockets. Sure enough, after a moment’s concentration, a marijuana plant sprang up from his grave. It’s what he would have wanted.
Turning from him and taking a deep breath, I looked at the two girls staring expectantly at me. Gabby looked as resplendent as ever wearing Michelle’s armor and clutching that mace. Selene looked as tired as I felt, but her determination to keep on trucking in spite of it only made her more attractive to my eyes.
“Where to next, boss?” Selene asked.
I used my thumb to gesture at the ram-themed black school bus that the college cultists wouldn’t be using anytime soon. “We’re loading up and heading back to Eastport. Gertrude just earned herself a permanent slot on my shit list. Whatever she’s planning ends tonight.”
-
We held out until 11:12 pm before I reached for that axe and moved forward.
One of our civilian survivors got ripped apart and that was it, I snapped.
Tabitha was howling behind me, in the throws of labor, fighting a battle all her own.
The Hunters all made a firing line in front of the ice-coated wall and fired short-controlled bursts to take down anything that got past me. Lana floated over their heads firing off spells extremely cautiously so she could conserve her power and slow down the tide of the dead.
As for me? I just waded in and hacked apart anything that came within reach.
My red tie was still safely in Autumn’s care. But between the red fire axe and the (frankly gratuitous amounts of) blood splattered across me, I think it is safe to say I was still Red Ryan even without it.
The horde of undead was endless. I was almost starting to think there were too many for me to hold back, even with the concentrated fire support. It was a quick, insidious thought that tore at my energy reserves and asked me if it wouldn’t be easier just to lie down. Of course I’d never give in, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting tired.
Of course, that was right around the time I got back in contact with Blue Ryan, as he emerged from the cursed mass grave below Camp Ferris. Derek’s gone. The thought bounced between both of my minds like a ping pong ball during an intense table tennis match.
My vision turned as red as the axe in my hands, and I realized I’d had it all wrong earlier. It’s not that there were ‘too many zombies.’ There weren’t enough zombies left.
I wasn’t trapped in this hospital with them. They were trapped in here with me.
I was right. This city really was a meat grinder, and it was time to turn the wheel.
-
My heart rate was strangely calm as I drove the ram’s head bus down the highway, considering my other body was busy going on an absolute massacre. It was sort of like having two tabs open at once on a computer. I could feel the grip of the axe in my hand just as well as the wheel of the bus, and was busy operating both. One did not feel like more me than the other. Sort of like listening to music while also playing a video game.
If anything my Blue body felt calmer knowing that my Red body was channeling all of our anger and grief into a constructive vector. Keeping Tabitha safe was as worthy a usage of all that rage as I could imagine.
It wouldn’t bring Derek back. But it felt better than doing nothing.
Gabby was sitting in the far back with her wings splayed out. Selene was only a couple of seats closer, laying down as best she could. Both girls were chatting, and seemed to be getting along quite well.
Io was feeding me updates telepathically, talking about how the fighting was progressing throughout Eastport. For as many zombies as there were, they only accounted for about 35% of the population. Thanks to Aleksei’s efforts and the Bureau’s hard work, most of Eastport’s citizenry were safely barricaded in one of the five major sports stadiums throughout the city. Aside from a few pockets of resistance such as the hospital, they had everything pretty much locked down, and a lot of their operations were focused on herding all the zombies away from survivors.
Autumn was proud to inform me that the cure had already covered all the living people in the city and given them a massive resistance boost to any further infection. The way she phrased it made it seem like she had not exclusively targeted the dark spores, but had just given the citizens of Eastport a blanket immunity boost.
Lana stayed close to Tabitha’s door even as my Red body pushed back the zombies so far down the hallway that he was actually out of her sight by now.
According to both my little fairy and Autumn, we only had to wait another forty minutes until the cure hit the remaining zombies and canceled this zombie apocalypse in its first week. Which has got to be some kind of record, right?
When I tried to connect with Tabitha to check in on her directly, I effectively got thrown out on my ass. A powerful psychic blast filled my head with the equivalent of radio static, and left my ears ringing for a few seconds before things normalized.
Shortly after that was when Hanna returned.
I saw a flicker of movement on the highway. What looked like a pale woman in a white dress turning her head to watch the bus go by, then I blinked and she was standing right next to me. My heart rate was a little less calm after that.
Hey hero. Derek’s settling in nicely in paradise. He says to tell you ‘thanks for turning me into weed’ which didn’t make sense to me, but he said you’d get it.
I smiled and explained to her what that was about. ...would have wanted. Glad he liked it. But on a less cheerful note, it’s time you explained to me all about this business with Gertrude. What’s she up to and why did she need Kevin’s girlfriend’s body to do it?
Hannah stared out the windshield for a while before sitting down on the bus bench behind and across from me. Gertrude isn’t just a regular phantom like most of the other ones we’ve put down today. She’s a wraith. A vengeful spirit. In life she was a gangster’s wife who was secretly the brains of her husband’s whole operation. She used him like a puppet to do her bidding, and in a lot of ways built Eastport into the city that it is. But did she get recognized for it? No. Her husband started thinking he could run things without her, got upset that she walked all over him and slept with whoever she wanted, and so he sent a pair of assassins after her. They failed, miserably, and so he made sure that the next attempt didn’t. She died badly, and when she was offered a place in the afterworld she refused, clinging to her anger instead. In the short term, she mastered her new wraith abilities and manipulated events so that her husband got outed publicly for his crimes. Now, most wraiths get their revenge and then disperse, their business is finished. But that wasn’t enough for her, because her husband went down in history as this notorious gangster boss who ran the streets of Eastport and made it the industrial powerhouse it became. She felt that was her legacy, not his, so she stuck around even after that.
Hannah shook her head in disbelief.
Fast forward two centuries to the modern day and you have a powerful spirit looking for any chance to get ahead in her afterlife. Then nine months ago, during your big fight with Boris, hundreds of anomalies opened up and thousands of phantoms spilled out into Eastport. Extra-dimensional immigrants looking for a new lease on life. And who was there to greet them, organize them, and give them new meaning?
Gertrude, I answered immediately.
Exactly. This was her perfect storm. Someone that clever is exactly who you don’t want leading an army of phantoms. That gaggle we found in the forest? That was nothing. She has people all over, poised to take over the city. And that kid, Kevin, was her pawn from the start. His girlfriend was a powerful witch in her own right before she died, and he found her grimoire when he was going through her stuff after the accident. He spent a year and a half absorbing everything she had learned, and performed a seance to contact her. Who shows up instead?
Sensing a pattern, I replied, Gertrude?
That was supposed to be rhetorical, but yes. Gertrude lured him into her fold with promises of raising poor Chelsea from the dead, and he fell for it all. I know he just looked like a dumb frat bro jock, but he was actually pretty gifted in botany, so while she was the one pulling his strings, he crafted and spread those dark spores all by himself. This whole zombie outbreak thing was her plan from the start, to get people panicking and get them out of her way so her people could set up her real endgame.
Which is what exactly?
She’s going to reopen all those portals that Boris cracked open. Permanently. Doing so will create a breach between the mortal world and the afterworld, allowing her to put an end to death and rule over an undead empire that stretches all across the mortal world.
Of course that’s her plan.
Why do I have a feeling that’s not going to work out the way she wants it to?
Hannah laughed lightly. Hmm. Maybe because you and I watched a lot of movies growing up, and opening portals to alternate dimensions never works out great for the villains?
Fair point. Proceed.
What she doesn’t know is…classified. I can’t spill the beans on that, actually, otherwise I’ll get fired. If I get fired I don’t get to visit you anymore.
I shrugged. I’ve heard enough to get the gist. I’m guessing there’s something way worse lurking between the afterworld and the mortal world and if she tears open a hole between them, that thing, or those things, will come ripping through and make us wish for something as simple as a zombie apocalypse?
Wow. Again, I’m not at liberty to say one way or the other, but I’d like to just say there were several reasons I named you the chosen and genre awareness is definitely one of them.
I smirked. C’mon, Hannah, you can tell the truth. You just wanted to watch me fuck a bunch of hot monster girls to get cool powers and beat up bad guys.
Hannah pointedly stared away from me. I can neither confirm nor deny the-
I laughed out loud and caught a glimpse of something golden in the backseat.
My eyes fixed on Gabby, who was staring at me from the back of the bus with a look I was growing steadily more familiar with. Derek (rest his wonderfully wicked soul) was right. She wanted the D.
I glanced over to Hannah, who may or may not have been blushing slightly at the accuracy of my earlier assessment. Whether she was ‘at liberty’ to admit it or not, I knew she liked to watch.
Speaking of, can you get Selene up here to drive us the rest of the way? There’s something I need to take care of.
Red Ryan wasn’t going to be the only one collecting powers on this mission.