“Ethan, I-”
“Don’t. Just don’t,” he said, swallowing so hard I could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
“Please, don’t go,” I called after him. “I’m sorry, I never meant-”
“I don’t care what you meant.” He stopped and spun around, glaring at me with what looked like tears in his eyes. “This isn’t going to work. I won’t let you treat me like some sort of rapist while you mess around with another guy behind my back.”
“I wasn’t messing around, I swear,” I hiccupped, tears streaming down my face. This couldn’t be happening! I couldn’t have ruined everything with the boy I loved with one stupid kiss. What had I done? “It was just one time.”
“One time is enough,” he whispered. “I’m done.”
“Ethan, I-”
“I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“Ethan!” I tried to follow him as he stormed away, but I was so dizzy that I would have tripped over my skates and fallen if Cliff hadn’t caught me a second time.
This time, however, his touch didn’t make me feel better. It just reminded me what a horrible person I was. It suddenly hit me that I was just like my mom-a cheater. A lying, filthy cheater too stupid to think about how many lives I could screw up with just one kiss.
“I’m sorry, I just…” I pulled away and buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t stand to look at him right now. It wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t make it any easier. “I’m awful. I can’t believe I-”
“You just got some horrible news. You weren’t yourself,” he said. “Once you talk to Ethan and let him know about your dad, he’ll understand this was an accident. A reaction to stress or a moment of insanity or-”
“But it wasn’t,” I whispered, using my sleeve to clean up my face. Gross, but better messy sleeve than messy nose. “I wanted to kiss you.”
Cliff was silent for a second. “No, you didn’t. Not really.”
“No… I think I-”
“No. You didn’t.” Cliff’s voice was way firmer than anything I’d ever heard from him before. “This is my fault. I should have told you.”
“Should have told me what?”
He sighed and shoved his glasses back up his nose. “I haven’t been coming to see you because I need Settling or even because I want to help. I mean, I do want to help, but that’s not… It’s just… Man, this is harder than I thought.”
“What’s harder than you thought?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t going to like what Cliff had to say. God, I was sick of everyone hiding things from me! “Tell me!”
“I-I’ve been feeding on you. I have to feed on you or I’ll-”
“Feeding on me?”
“On your energy. Sort of like a battery?” He blushed bright red, clearly as embarrassed as I was skeeved. “Your power is what’s keeping me out of my grave, what’s making me strong so I can help you. It’s connecting us, which might make you feel… I mean, it’s certainly made me feel… Though I think I would have felt that anyway because I just think you’re-”
“You’ve been lying to me.” I felt something deep inside me freeze over. “This whole time.”
“No! Not at first. I didn’t know at first, but then I had that vision last night. More like a visitation really. It was like nothing I’ve ever-”
“Great. Congratulations.” I spun on my skate and headed back toward the ice, needing to be far away from Cliff and the dizziness and guilt and anger he inspired.
“Megan, come back. We have to get down to the river. In my vision, I saw-”
“I don’t care,” I tossed over my shoulder. “You’re a liar!”
Leaves crunched under Cliff’s feet as he ran after me. “Not about this. I swear! And I swear I’ll tell you everything, I just-” I heard Cliff cry out and turned in time to see his eyelids fluttering and his eyes roll back in his head.
“Cliff?” He groaned as he fell to his knees, clutching at his head. “Are you okay?”
“Run, Megan. Get to the river. You have to get to the river. They’re coming. Tonight. They’re-”
“Who’s coming?”
“They’re not like the others. But if they rise… You have to go. Don’t let them stop you, don’t-” He cried out and fell the rest of the way to the ground, toppling into the fresh snow.
“Cliff?” I squatted down and pressed a hand to his cheek. He was burning up, and when I touched him flinched like he was in pain.
“Habeo are transit.”
“What?”
“Habeo are transit. It’s a spell you have to remember. Hopefully we won’t need it but-”
“What the heck? Now you’re some sort of magical expert?”
“No, but I’ve been hearing those words in my head since that day we went for a walk outside your house, and now I know what they mean,” he said, the intensity in his eyes scaring me a little. “It’s a spell, and it’s the way you’ll be able to get the one heart you need if-”
“One heart?” The words made me shiver.
“If these zombies rise tonight, you’re going to need a heart to put them back in the ground. I’m not sure how you’re going to-”
“A heart? Great.” I rolled my eyes and backed away. “God, Cliff, that’s basically black magic. Messing around with blood and internal organs and stuff? You’ve got to get a special permit to get anything like that and then drive up to this SA-approved slaughterhouse in Missouri to-”
“Not an animal heart, a human heart.”
“Shit.” I shook my head, feeling sick just thinking about what he was saying. Human sacrifice. That was black magic-midnight black-even if you got the heart from someone who was already dead. “No freaking way.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner and let you get used to the idea,” he said.
“I’m never going to get used to the idea because-” I broke off, something on the wind demanding my attention.
“You’ve got to-”
“Wait a second.” I turned, already praying I wasn’t smelling what I thought I was smelling. But it was there, the scent of grave dirt and rotted corpse, mingling with the smell of funnel cakes frying in the food tents.
Zombies. Real zombies-not the coma kind this time-and they were hella close, if the faint groans were any indication.
“I have to go.”
“No! You can’t fight them!”
“Well, I’m not going to feed them a human heart.”
“They’re not the zombies you have to worry about!” Cliff yelled after me, but I ignored him, hurrying toward the ice as fast as my clumsy feet would carry me. “You have to get down to the river, by the bridge! There’s no time to waste.”
I stumbled over a fallen tree and hit the ground, but was up again a second later. Cliff was right, there was no time to waste. Screams suddenly sounded from the ice-raw, terrified screams.
“No, Megan. Don’t fight them,” Cliff called after me.
Sorry, Cliff, but I couldn’t leave over a dozen people vulnerable to zombie attack.
I burst onto the ice so fast I nearly fell down again, but managed to rega
in my balance in time to glide to the left, getting out of the path of a couple of CHS kids who were running screaming from the ice. Behind them, I caught a glimpse of the unholy heck that had broken loose in the past few minutes.
The ice that was once clean and unmarked except for the tracks made by a few eager skaters was already spattered with blood. Two patches of crimson stained the pond, horrific roses blooming larger and larger as the zombies ripped into their victims. They were real zombies this time, dozens of them. Their eyes glowed red, pus dripped from the edges of their mouths, and the stench of rotted flesh filled the air, mingling with the scent of hot dogs, making gorge rise in my throat.
But there was no time for yacking or people were going to die. Again.
Thankfully, my Settlers’ Affairs tail was already out of her car and on the job, pax frater corpus-ing one of the two zombies who had managed to get its mouth into living flesh. Kitty’s tiny hands flashed as she struck the feral corpse with her silver knife and chanted the words that would put it down and keep it down until a Protocol team could come remove the body.
“Megan! Get the other one, while I call for backup!” she screamed as she pulled her cell from her back pocket. I nodded and turned toward the other RC, a part of me elated to see that Kitty still had some faith in me.
Refusing to think about the unique challenges of taking down the Undead on ice, or my epic klutziness, I raced toward the other RC. It was a she, judging by the remnants of her dress, but she’d long ago lost most of her flesh. The face that snapped up to growl at me as I interrupted her feast was skeletal, with only a few leathery flaps of skin clinging to cheek and jaw bones.
“Help me! Help!” The man beneath her screamed and clutched at his right thigh, which already sported a huge hole.
“Pax frater corpus, potestatum spirituum!” The momentum from my punch carried me over the RC I’d just whacked in the face and sent me spinning out of control a few feet away-Kristi Yamaguchi I obviously was not, but it got the job done.
By the time I steadied myself, the zombie was sacked out, looking as dead as she truly was. Across the ice, Kitty was off the phone and headed toward another patch of zombies. Hopefully that meant backup wasn’t too far away, and Protocol officers would be here soon to snatch both the corpses we’d put down and take them away. I couldn’t take the time to dispose of the bodies myself. There wasn’t even time to help the man my RC had nearly made a snack of, other than to urge him to apply direct pressure to his wound while he waited for the paramedics before racing away.
There were too many of the Undead for Kitty to handle alone. Dozens already covered the ice, and dozens more poured from the woods, shuffling relentlessly toward the few completely freaked-out living still trying to flee toward the parking lot. The only bright spot was that most of the skaters had escaped, and the cheerleaders and pom squad had also vacated the premises, so there were very few human eyes to observe as I commenced kicking zombie tail.
“Inmundorum ut eicerent eos et curarent,” I chanted, continuing the pax frater spell as I cut a quick diagonal across the pond, whacking a zombie on my left and a couple on my right as I went.
No matter how disturbing its origins, at the moment I was thankful for my super-Settling power. Any other Settler would have had to speak the entire spell to disable one zombie and pierce the Undead’s flesh with something metallic while they were at it, making the process both tedious and dangerous. But all I needed was a snippet of the spell, tightly focused energy, and a moment of forceful physical connection-aka a mean right hook or a well-placed kick-to take out my target.
“Omnem languorem et omnem infirmitatem!” I was finishing with a couple of male zombies when I caught a glimpse of Ethan and Monica.
Ethan! He was still here, and in danger. I had to get over and help him, to make sure we had the chance to make up before either one of us died. Not something normal couples had to worry about, but we were far from normal-the past few days had proved that to me in a way even the mess in September hadn’t.
He and Monica were standing back-to-back pax frater-ing a crowd of Undead who had cornered them on the far end of the ice. There were two or three zombie asses to kick on the way over to their side of the pond, but the largest concentration of RCs seemed to be coming from the woods behind them. Rolling Meadows Cemetery was less than a half a mile on the other side. That had to be where our black artist had raised these corpses.
“Megan! The skate rental! There were kids in there.” Monica caught my eye as I moved toward them. She pointed frantically toward the skate-rental tent before turning back to the zombies.
Executing a one-eighty that would have made the Ice Capades proud, I skated back in the direction I’d come. I hated to leave Ethan and Monica, but Kitty was headed their way and there were more SA officials running in from the parking area. They could definitely hold their own, and my unique talents were probably better for fighting in close quarters. I might have the best chance of getting the kids out unharmed.
Just imagining zombies feasting on people too little to even think of defending themselves had my heart racing triple-time as I ran off the ice and awkwardly trotted the few feet to the entrance of the tent.
“Oh shit.” The cuss word escaped before I realized I was in the presence of children and should probably watch my language. But then again, these boys and girls were being exposed to something a whole lot worse than my potty mouth.
Three zombies had commanded control of the tent, cornering five kids and Penny-who had volunteered for skate-rental duty to avoid the nerve-racking experience of selling couples’ skate tickets. Penny was fending them off with a pair of skates turned around blade-first, but she was well on her way to being overwhelmed. The two older boys were trying to join the fight, but they couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven and were no match for the supernatural strength of fully grown zombies.
The only thing that had saved them-or the three little kids cowering beneath the benches where they had been trying on skates before the Undead descended-was that Penny was the one bleeding. RCs were usually raised with a specific target in mind but were easily distracted by the energy emitted by blood, and Penny was providing plenty of that. Crimson streamed down her pale, freckled face from a gouge in her scalp. It didn’t look like a zombie bite, so she must have been injured some other way.
Not that it mattered-the zombies would still finish her off if I couldn’t get them away from her. Fast.
“Penny, this way! Run to me!” We needed to get the zombies away from the kids, and I needed the zombies out of that crowded corner if I was going to make sure I took care of all three of them before they took care of me.
“Megan!” Penny’s wide, frantic eyes darted to mine, relief and terror mingling on her face. “Oh God,
please, go get help!”
“Help us,” the boy next to her yelled, his words turning into a horrified scream as he barely deflected a lunging zombie with the skate in his hand.
“Mama! Mama!” The little girl under the bench wasn’t the only one wailing for her mother, but she was definitely the loudest. She was making so much noise I had to scream to be heard.
“Come on, Penny, run to me!”
“I can’t,” she moaned, screaming again as the zombie directly in front of her got one hand around her arm and leaned toward her face.
She whacked him with the skate in her other hand, slamming it into his face again and again with a strength I hadn’t known she possessed, but it wasn’t going to be enough. The others were closing in, and running was no longer an option.
I ran toward them, scrolling through my options as I went. I couldn’t work the exuro spell and risk burning everyone alive. I wasn’t even sure it was safe to invoke the reverto command-assuming it might work with so many zombies raised at once-in such close quarters. Penny or one of the kids would definitely get in the path of the spell, and I didn’t know what that would do to human flesh.
Allegedly, Settler magic doesn’t have much effect upon humans aside from a slight stinging sensation, but my powers weren’t of the average Settler variety. I had a freaky virus and had to be careful. I couldn’t risk electrocuting the people I was trying to save. The pax frater required direct contact with the RC, so I supposed it was my best choice. I’d just have to be sure not to touch anything but the zombies.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really control who touched me.
I hadn’t made it close enough for the punch I was throwing to connect with the nearest zombie when the little girl wailing for her mother darted from beneath the bench, launching herself at my legs.