John nodded.
Clara looked at the young Travelers. "We find we cannot enter the sphere, the door is..." she trailed off.
Lewis Archer smiled. He'd done his Lock-Manipulator job a little too well. He put his hand on his chest, puffing up and replied, "Allow me."
He gracefully strode to the huge portal while the whole group muttered and Archer jumped up, slapping the locks on the top. Then repeated it, swinging low to nail the dual locks at the bottom. Everyone heard the locks tumble together and snap to the unlocked position.
One of the sphere guys spoke for the first time. "Do they all possess magic?"
"I don't!" Bry said, raising his hand. The Band swung their heads to look at him and he dropped his hand. They walked over to the massive doors and with one Band member on each side they heaved it to the right, rolling it smoothly on its internal runners.
It slid open and the light of the sphere tunnel poured into the Outside, illuminating the murkiness of where we all stood, the grave markers standing like stout guideposts of death in the background.
"Shit!" Archer yelled.
Hearing his alarm, the Band readied their weapons. The Js and I ran up behind him as the Zondorae brothers fell out of the Pathway with a practiced drop and hop. I glanced to make sure Jade was near me then looked back at the scene inside the sphere.
What really got me excited were the black tranquilizer guns that stood at attention in their hands. Pulse-activated, of course.
Looked like crap was gonna go down.
Typical.
CHAPTER 11
"Jonesy!" I screamed when I saw one of the Zondorae brothers raise his gun at the guy that was with Clara.
"It's pulse, Jones!" John bellowed into the suddenly still air.
Jonesy turned his head and touched the sphere, his hands biting into the wall. A surge of light bloomed underneath his palm and jumped to the floor, running underneath their collective feet where it threaded up to where Joe Zondorae held the gun.
It jammed and he dropped it, zapped and smoldering with the electromagnetic surge executed by the Jonester.
"Hell!" he yelled, looking at his brother for assistance.
Gary Zondorae didn't hesitate, walking toward whoever was closest with a chilling nonchalance, his stride eating the distance. Nailing everyone within two meters; he made the tranquilizer gun work for him. The darts were small, filling the chamber like a standard nine millimeter. I thought he was just animal enough to have a round loaded in the chamber.
I looked at the guns and though they resembled metal, they'd fire just fine, their organic components having survived the Pathway. These Graysheet minions would have everything they needed to make their time here work towards their advantage. The Zondorae brother leveled his gun at the huge males of the Band and chambered another clip.
I paused, rage surging through me as I saw a grin replace his blank expression.
I'd wipe that smile off soon enough.
*
The Queen
Clara's shoulders slumped in defeat, the Traveler's guns were trained on them again, three of their darts buried into the boy with skin the color of night, his collapsed form was on the ground of the tunnel as the mob approached them.
There were hundreds.
The Band readied for war, the entirety of the Kingdom of Kentucky pouring from the heart of Clara's kingdom toward them, their dirty and starving faces telling her what her end would be.
Most were men, the criminal element loosed upon her sphere, having looted, pillaged and Guardian knew what else, Clara thought on a mournful note. Regret took up residence in her heart as she met Matthew's eyes.
How would they ever survive this? There were not enough Band to defend, the situation appeared far worse than even her wildest speculations.
Clara noted that Daniel and Edwin wore the darts as well, their manner not fully alert. The poisonous sleep worked on them as she watched.
They would be cut down unprotected, the twilight drug working its black magic against them.
Their bodies would succumb even when their minds did not.
*
"Caleb," Jade whispered and I looked into her worried eyes, her love and trust shining out of them like a spear of hope.
Piercing my heart.
My soul.
I squeezed my eyes closed as the mob came, my jaw clenching with the realization of what I'd have to do.
What I'd always known there was potential for.
I looked at the filthy criminals who moved toward us; forty meters out, closing in fast. My gaze swept over the huge guys, the Band, I thought randomly. Then finally, my gaze fell on my friends. Jonesy was unconscious from whatever crap had been in their guns. I took note of the Zondorae brothers having satisfied smirks across their faces.
They wanted these people to suffer, to be unassisted.
Well tough shit.
Jade had been touching my arm, getting an emotional radio signal of the feelings that were screaming through my psyche, vibrating like a tuning fork before finding its errand.
In this case, the dead.
Jade looked up at me, permission standing in her eyes. "Do it," she finished her thought.
John's eyes widened when he saw where I looked.
The graveyard lay like a sleeping army outside the sphere.
Waiting.
*
The Queen
"Clara," Sarah nearly wailed, tears running down her face. Her voice, her manner, told Clara the same thing she had been ruminating on but a moment before.
What could they be about before this insurmountable violence?
"We will prevail," Clara said even as she mourned her survival and that of the people that were near her. She had utterly forgotten the Travelers behind her.
The Band had not, standing in the center of the sphere tunnel, grouped in pairs with half facing the screaming group of degenerates who had overtaken Clara's peaceful sphere. The other half faced the two from another world.
It was Matthew that caught the look between the two young Travelers, the dark one who controlled the dead and the one with hair more fiery than Clara's.
It took him but a moment to ascertain the direction of their thoughts.
It was even more rapid for Clara, who screamed in ringing terror, "No!"
Even as the young Traveler's face straightened into a mask of concentration, the air was instantly heavy with his will, his intent.
Death sang around who were present.
The dead would weep no more but rise again.
No matter who they were, what they had been, they would rise and do the bidding of the young Traveler.
Clara knew it and was afraid.
For Caleb Hart did not know who would answer his call.
Clara did.
Fear gripped her with icy talons, sinking into the meat of what made Clara brave, her fortitude shaking like a home without a foundation.
Matthew saw her reaction and knew what she feared.
He was too late to stop it, too late to temper Caleb the Traveler.
Only raise some, he thought too late.
Not all.
*
I didn't know who I'd raised, I was just hoping it was enough. The first two of the dead who came forward looked like they may have been people of importance before they died.
I gave a mental shrug. Not that it mattered who they'd been as I saw the crowns that crested their heads, their eyes not quite alive in faces with skin gone gray, the flesh pulled taut.
Huh, I raised them kinda fast, they were lookin' a little corpsey. I gave a little smile as Tiff walked up beside me.
"Kinda a rush job, Caleb," she said, not unkindly.
"Yeah," I looked down at her. "I was sorta in a hurry so lay off."
"Right," Tiff said, looking at the royal pair of corpses. The man was tall, the vestiges of what had been blond hair clinging to a scalp that showed through in patches, dirt from the grave sticking in brownish clumps. But it was the woman, her black eyes soulless, her hands in tight fists of anger that got our full attention.
Her hair was perfect, her mouth... no.
Huh.
"I don't have a good feeling about these two," Tiff said, a thread of uncertainty weaving through the usually rock-hard confidence of her voice.
"You're not losin' your nerve, are ya?" I asked, my eyes never wavering from the royal zombies.
She shook her head but her eyes were trained on the woman.
"Don't worry about it. The dead are dead, right?" I said, winking.
Right.
Or so I'd thought.
*
The Dead Queen
Clara ran to me. I glanced down at her with a question in my eyes. Releasing Tiff's hand I grasped hers, they were cold... like ice. She opened her mouth to warn me.
Clara wished to tell the young Traveler that Queen Ada was not normal in life. She was evil. She was....
Her fear transferred to him like an unwanted gift.
Then Clara's false mother opened her mouth, removing all the doubt for everyone.
Queen Ada looked around the sphere tunnel with profound pleasure. It was so reasonable to her that she would be back to her rightful position within her kingdom. She felt a perverse joy at the thought, until she saw the miserable excuse for a daughter, dressed in breeches, her hair in disarray, no crown, an embarrassment as usual.
That is easily remedied, Ada mused. Clara had always been hard-headed. Ada would be pleased to institute her special brand of discipline once again.
She moved toward Clara then paused, a feeling of being tethered swirled around her uncomfortably, like a line from one of the pungys which dredged the oysters from the muck of the lake. She jerked against the unseen restraint and could not escape. She looked at a boy of mayhap ten and seven years who stood beside Clara.
Realization of what he was and what she had become dawned on Ada.
She wished to break this untenable hold he had on her.
Queen Ada opened her mouth and hissed at the boy.
The boy that commanded death.
And in so doing commanded her.
Ada would not abide such a thing. She shambled forward rather gracefully, considering she was quite dead.
The dead Queen's rotting gaze fell on the woman warrior of the Band and I listened as my zombie started to unravel before my eyes.
"Ah... Raymond's whore," Ada ground out through lips that were a thin slash, the rot of her mouth garbling the words.
"Caleb... you got this, right?" Tiff asked, decidedly nervous. Bry came up to stand beside her.
"Who is this?" Bry asked, stabbing a finger in the direction of the grossest corpse he'd ever seen Caleb raise.
"Queen Ada," Clara said in a whisper.
Gary's voice rose behind them, "So Hart?"
I swung my face away from the beauty queen, all in black, including her mouth. I smiled in the midst of the mess it was all becoming, I never could get the mouths right.
I met the scientist's gaze and he commented, "Did Parker tell you the finer points of control?"
I just stared at him. Well hell, let's just talk while the mob closes in. The prick.
"Not all zombies are alike my friend. If they were bonkers in real life, they're not malleable in death." He shrugged, then, "Thought you'd like to know since this one's looking pretty independent."
Shit. My gaze swung back to the dead royal, only a couple of meters away now. I was silently grateful I'd done a rush-job raising or Queenie here would have already been on them.
John shouted at Clara, that medieval speech thing kinda working out, "Was the queen mad while alive?"
I watched Clara's gaze settle on Queen Ada and she grinned back, her tongue was gray, patches of black like evil polka dots covering the surface. Clara nodded in answer to John as Matthew pulled her behind him protectively.
"Yes, quite," Clara responded.
I looked at the dead royal just in front of her, his eyes glittering black holes without mercy, without reason. Tufts of blond hair were sticking straight up where it remained on the flesh of his skull. Those pitiless eyes bored into mine without connection but with plenty of resistance.
Effing spectacular, independent corpse number two. Just my luck.
Jonesy roused himself, sitting up on his knees, jerking out the darts. He looked around, his eyes taking in the crowd of filthy people with weapons, the Band, his friends, the pair of scientists and finally his eyes settled on the royals.
"Hey Caleb... is that your handiwork there?"
I nodded, stalling.
"They don't look right, bro," Jonesy said, leveling a stare on the pair of royals.
No shit.
We looked at Queen Ada, her advance slow and steady. Purposeful.
"What can be done, Traveler?"
I turned and stared into the only pair of violet eyes I'd ever seen and said, "Going to control her. If that doesn't work, we're gonna have to burn her."
Daniel translated, "Because of her madness while alive, she may be impossible to manipulate in her current state."
The woman of the Band frowned. "How do we... stop her?"