Four months later #9
I touch his arm gently and send a pulse of energy into the stiff body.
A twitch.
Uh huh! Brrr! It looks horrifying. I get chills myself when the alpha rises and sits up on the metal platform. He radiates cold, the refrigerator had to lower his temperature significantly to stop the decay.
I step back and control him from a distance, guiding him down from the tray until he stands beside Hanson’s omega.
Only then do I notice his head tilting slightly to the side. I circle around and find a thick, crude seam at the back of his neck.
Looks like something nearly ripped his head off. Maybe a motorcycle accident?
The mortician did a good job. From the front he looks fine, except for the crooked head, but I won’t complain.
I go to the heavy alpha.
He rises too, his head staying straight, so maybe my guess was right. Heart failure? A burst appendix?
Doesn’t matter. He’ll be useful too. I place the thicker alpha by the door, then the omega. Do I have enough strength to control the beta?
I do, apparently.
With a little effort I raise him to his feet.
He’s tall but frail, even under the heavy makeup he looks terrible. I won’t even try guessing what he died of, probably something long and wasting.
Still, he’ll be useful too.
Am I a bad person for doing this, using bodies of these poor people? Definitely. But I want to live, and they are already on the other side, so…
With all four of them beautifully lined up by the door, I stare at them in disbelief for a moment.
One question is rising. What the hell is happening, who am I?
Some kind of fucking necromancer?
The absurdity of this whole situation becomes so overwhelming that at some point I simply give in and accept it exactly as it is.
The omega opens the door on my command and steps into the hallway.
We stand in a long corridor lined with doors whose purpose I can’t even guess.
What’s funny is that somehow I know where Bay is. I never had that, or never thought about it, even though Bay seemed to use it.
I have no idea how that’s suddenly possible for me now, but something simply pulls me in his direction.
Maybe our week of living together strengthened the Bond between us, making me start sensing it the way Bay clearly did all along.
Perhaps my allergy dulled it before, but I don’t have it anymore, so… I feel him with no obstacles?
I go straight at first, then turn with my charming little brigade marching ahead of me like some kind of escort.
That’s when I hear voices, and my pulse jumps. For fuck’s sake, what now…
There’s no way I’m slipping by unnoticed. Obviously.
Two men appear around the corner, an alpha and a beta I’ve never seen before.
Maybe they’re Hansons; they have the heavy features, the thick brow ridges, the broad nasal bridge between the eyes and the square jaws that most Hansons share in different variations.
I remember kids in high school jokingly calling them Neanderthals.
They freeze at the sight of the strange gray company heading toward them.
In a burst of desperation I force the two dead alphas walking in front of me to jump the newcomers and hold them down.
The men scream and struggle, their shouts louder than I’d like, and I know I need to do this fast. I grab the first one by the arm he’s trying to use to fend them off.
A moment later he joins the rest of the pack.
The second one, the beta, fights desperately, throwing punches, but he’s doomed to fail too.
He’s also forced to join my undead ranks.
I feel ridiculously charged now, holding all this unfamiliar energy, yet it’s also much easier to control them with it.
We move in the direction my instinct drags me.
Unfortunately, we run into yet another person.
Shit. A guy walking alone, probably drawn by the screams.
He doesn’t even try to fight. He bolts immediately, sprinting in the exact direction I’m heading, which is… not ideal.
I urge my undead soldiers to hurry, feeling like a necromancer leading his army out of a horror novel. It’s so insane and surreal that it feels like I’m on a movie set, except it’s actually happening.
We reach the stairs the beta ran down. They lead into some kind of deep basement.
At the bottom stands a wide double door he slammed shut behind him.
But I have a zombie horde, hello! That’s something you need to account for. Anyone who watches apocalyptic movies knows zombies will eventually break through anything, right?
I order them to ram the door with their full weight. Six bodies hurl themselves forward and the door creaks and groans.
After a few minutes of that effort, the plaster shakes loose and litters the floor, and the hinges clearly begin to give way.
The door finally crashes inward, and at that same moment I hear gunshots.
Someone is shooting at my zombies. Idiot.
I stay hidden behind their bodies, as they’re obviously not sensitive to gunfire.
The shots crack one after another, then silence. Maybe the magazine is empty. Or maybe the beta saved a single bullet hoping I’ll step out from behind the corpses?
For some reason I am certain it’s the beta shooting, which is why I cannot allow him to continue.
I move close, and under an omega’s arm I manage to see where the beta is huddled behind some crates.
Of course I send the zombies toward him. He tries to run, shoots once, shoots again, then throws the gun aside and in a desperate attempt to save himself, he climbs up onto the top of the cage and crouches on the bars.
Wait. A cage?
A big one! Does Eugene have some sentiment to it? As far as I know he was once a cage fighter himself, back in his younger days.
Only now do I step inside and finally see what’s in the center of the large chamber.
Inside it stands none other than Eugene.
And on a chair beside him sits… my beloved Bay, his hands cuffed behind his back.
Wow, what a relief!
Honestly, I expected to find him in a terrible state, but he only has a split brow and a bloody smear on his cheek, nothing more. Apparently the ‘show’ had just begun, which brings me a wave of relief.
My gaze meets his.
I see his brow lift slightly, his eyes widening as they flick over the zombies.
Hell, I have surprised him for sure. But I surprised myself even more.
"What an unexpected shift in the balance of power," Eugene says slowly, but then he obviously notices who the zombies are.
His eyes widen, he blinks, and a low, frightening growl rises from his throat.
"You bastard, these are my sons!"
I shrug and snort. "You know the saying, loser? Live by the sword, die by the sword!"
Eugene tilts his head, and there’s a crack in his neck as something grows, pushing through his shirt.
"Fair. But that goes for you too. You stepped into this fight, so this fight is going to play out."
His shirt rips. Spikes jut from his neck, and it looks crazy.
"And I’ll start by knocking your lover’s head off his fucking shoulders. Let’s see if you can bring him back too."
Suddenly the beta crouched on top of the cage speaks up.
"Grandpa, I don’t want to die! For fuck’s sake, let’s let this guy go and let them leave! He has to be a sorcerer!"
"The beta’s right, listen to him," I snap through clenched teeth.
"Whatever happens, if you kill Bay, none of you are walking out of here alive, not a single fucking one of you!
" I raise my voice. "I will go after the rest of your fucked-up family and turn them into a fucking zombie army!
" I snarl, going a bit over the top with the cursing, but I just feel like it, adrenaline sky high.
Our eyes meet. Something cracks in his body again, even louder, the sound like one bone sliding along another, and that’s undoubtedly what’s happening.
"Either way, I doubt I’m getting out of this alive," the purple alpha says coldly, as more spikes push out of his shoulders and forearms. It looks crazy.
"You can get out. I’ll be merciful. Someone needs to end this fight. I’m giving you ten seconds. You open that cage, you and your beta walk out, then I walk out of here and we never see each other again."
But that’s when Bay turns his head a little and looks at me, his gaze unwavering.
"Nah. I’m voicing an objection." He turns his head aside and spits a bit of blood. "That’s not a good idea, Alex. They never stop, this type of people. I say we end this here."
And then I notice the movement of his arms.
He spreads them forcefully to the sides, his jaw clenching, his mouth tightening with the immense effort, and then… the handcuffs burst with a shockingly loud snap!
In a fraction of a second, Bay’s hands are free.
Wow. You need serious strength to break handcuffs.
Besides being a mathematician, I also have a second minor in applied physics.
A normal alpha can generate more than twenty-two hundred newtons of sheer force.
Betas and omegas have strength similar to men who lived on Earth before, around four hundred newtons.
Because of that, cuffs used on alphas need to withstand at least twice that amount…
And I highly doubt these are cheap toy cuffs.
In the next heartbeat, Bay stands, kicking the chair back so it crashes against the bars.
Then he rips off his leather jacket and tears his T-shirt off. My eyes drop to his chest.
The tattoos across it glow with a red almost fiery sheen.
"Bring it on," Bay growls, his voice nearly as low as Eugene’s, as he focuses his eyes on the purple alpha.
A long, deep battle growl in the AO language tears from his throat, something I’ve never heard from him before.
Eugene looks his way with a crooked grin; he seems genuinely amused.
"You think you can beat me?"
A matching smile spreads across Bay’s face, as he says, "Oh, I know I can."
Eugene lets out a rumbling laugh.
"Arrogance walks before the fall. You don’t know who I am. I fought in the cage for years! Built my fortune on it! You have no idea how strong I am."