Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

If it had just been me, I was pretty sure I could have walked to Pasadena without a zombie getting its rotten hands on me. I could make it, but I wasn’t sure Ethan and Dylan would. I needed help.

“Adan,” I called, reaching out with the juice.

“Domino, where are you?” he said, the words echoing in my mind. “Are you in trouble?”

“You could say that. I’m on Alameda down by the 10.

I’ve got a couple civilians with me-little ones-and we’re surrounded. I could use a hand, but I don’t see how anyone can get to me.”

“Open a gate,” Adan said.

“What?”

“Open a gate to the Between and call me, just like you did with Honey.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah.”

I did as he instructed. A shimmering hole opened in the thick, heavy air and Adan stepped through onto the roof of the truck. He was still wearing the black fatigues and his sword was in his hand. He looked down at the writhing mass of zombies surrounding the truck.

“I told you the brain-scented perfume was a bad idea,” he said.

I laughed. “Do brains even have a scent?”

Adan’s grin turned into a hard line. “To them, maybe. Who are your friends?”

“Ethan and Dylan. They’ve been with me all the way from Huntington Park.”

“Tough kids. Okay, let’s get out of here.”

“What’s the plan?”

“This,” he said. He spread his arms out to his sides, one hand palm-out toward the zombies and his sword held aloft in the other. “Ar shiul,” he shouted, and a ground-level shockwave exploded from our position and expanded like a ripple on the surface of a pond. The zombies swarming the truck were either flattened where they stood or hurled through the air at such speed it was like a gray blur rolling away from us.

I looked around at the destruction. “Holy shit. Is that the sidhe language?”

“Gaelic,” Adan said. “I failed to master the sidhe power words.”

“The Gaelic ones seem pretty good.”

Adan grinned and nodded. “Let’s go.” He reached down and scooped up Ethan in one arm. “Leimim,” he said, and he leaped to the cab and then down to the street. His power words had a real advantage in terms of speed and convenience. My quotations still had more personality, though. I grabbed Dylan and took a running jump from the trailer, then spun my levitation spell and landed easily beside Adan on a small patch of asphalt that wasn’t occupied by fallen zombies.

Adan’s spell had broken the zombies, but it hadn’t destroyed them. As we picked our way through the bodies, they reached for us, grasping at our ankles and clothes. Others crawled or dragged themselves toward us. We cut our way through them with combat and spirit magic and finally reached the freeway overpass. A man was standing on the roof of a car on the far side. He wore a long, leather pimp coat with no shirt underneath and baggy trousers. Heavy gold chains hung from his neck and decorated his bare chest. A Nike flat cap was tugged low on his head and large, gold-rimmed sunglasses hid his eyes. One side of his face was burned black and hairless, and his ear was a fused lump of charred flesh.

It was Simeon Wale.

He held his arms out to his sides and a line of zombies pushed forward, moving between and over the immobilized and abandoned vehicles. He brought his arms down and the zombies stopped, crouching on car hoods or standing stiffly, their limbs trembling with anticipation.

I looked at Wale with my witch sight. “He’s a fucking zombie,” I whispered to Adan. “And he’s still juiced up. How is that possible?”

Adan shook his head. “He’s still got his mind and soul. That’s all he needs.”

“I knew you be coming to the Men’s Room,” Wale said, his voice echoing hollowly under the freeway. “Found you with my seeing words, but couldn’t get here till just now.”

“What do you want, Wale?”

“Thought I might eat you, if that’s okay.”

“Lot of people have tried that, lately,” I said. “No one’s gotten more than a bite of me yet. I’m sorry you died, Wale, but what’s your fucking problem? We can still use you-you can join Anton’s crew.”

“See, that’s just it, I got some workplace resentment. I guess you can see I got my own crew. Don’t want to join Heavy Chevy’s fucking crew. Don’t want you telling me what to do and when. I should have been lieutenant when you got a bump. Only reason I ain’t is you scared of me.”

He grinned, showing me a grill full of gold, diamond-encrusted teeth. “I guess you probably right to be scared of me, though.”

“I don’t have time to kill you right now, Wale. Maybe this can wait until my schedule clears up a little.”

“I guess you got to make time ’cause I’m a hungry mother fucker.”

“You honestly think you can take both Adan and me?”

“Not especially, to tell the truth. That’s why I was real glad to see you got those shorties with you. It was just you and fairy-boy, I probably be in some trouble. But I figure he gonna have to protect them kids, leave you and me to do our thing.”

I glanced at Adan. He raised his eyebrows and gave a little shake of his head. If Wale still had his magic, the only way we could protect Ethan and Dylan was to get them off the battlefield, quickly. I nodded and mouthed the word Go.

I heard Adan’s voice inside my head. “It’s only a few blocks to the club. Stall for time, and I’ll be back.” Then he sheathed his sword and took Dylan from me. “Leimim!” he shouted, and I felt the juice welling up from the street into him. The jump spell carried Adan and the children to the freeway overhead.

I turned and looked back at Wale. He raised his arms again and then brought them down sharply. A terrible cry rolled along the line of zombies and they surged forward. I spun my levitation spell and rose into the air, and the walking dead reached for me, howling in frustration.

Most of them did, anyway. A few of the zombies were Wale’s gangsters and they opened fire. I spun my defensive shield and the hail of bullets filled the air around me with electric-blue starbursts. This was, at best, a temporary counter to the strapped zombies. For one thing, they could probably keep reloading longer than I could keep the shield up. For another, the juice I was putting into the shield was juice I wasn’t using to put the hurt on Wale.

I was on Rashan’s turf, now, and I could reach plenty of juice. I pulled magic out of the tags that scrolled across the blue corrugated fence to my right and the freeway overpass above. “What medicines do not heal, the lance will,” I said. “What the lance does not heal, fire will.” A line of red-orange flame flared to life across the street from curb to curb. I poured juice into it and it grew as if I fed it with gasoline, rising behind me like a curtain that spanned the street. Windows shattered from the heat and the first fuel tank ignited. The resulting fireball was impressive, but I was somewhat disappointed the car wasn’t hurled into the air by the explosion. Hollywood did it better.

The writhing curtain of liquid fire grew to a height of at least fifty feet, and then I released it. Like a tidal wave rolling straight out of hell, it raced forward, flowing harmlessly around my body, and crashed down on the zombies in Wale’s crew. The fire tumbled and splashed like lava coursing through the street and it consumed all it touched, flesh and steel alike. I could hear the zombies’ screams despite the staccato fuel-tank explosions, and I reminded myself that while they were frightened they were beyond the reach of mortal pain.

The dying edges of the fire wave reached far enough to engulf the car Wale was standing on, but he leaped into the air above the flames and hung there. He started hitting me with spontaneous attack spells and all other thoughts fled as I focused on defense. I’d always known Wale had juice. Other than Rashan, he might have been the strongest sorcerer in the outfit. He was fooling himself if he really thought I’d ever been afraid of him, but I’d never trusted him, either. The evil inside him was as easy to see as the magic.