Chapter 10
ten
. . .
“So I was possessed by the Zombie Queen, and that’s like Alice in Wonderland? Is she Alice or the Red Queen, or the Queen of Hearts? Wasn’t there another one or was that the Disney adaptation?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, sharpening my knife, or trying. Tom was showing me how to do it right, but apparently, I kept doing it all wrong.
“Why is your hair purple?”
I tugged on a strand of my formerly blond hair.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” I’d grabbed the box of purple dye along with my Epson salts when I stopped at the corner store before I went back to the hotel.
Tom and Gloria hadn’t been there, so I dyed my hair, went to bed, then woke up, took a shower, and went to track them down.
Now, we were in the movie theater, locked in, staying closed for the matinee and the evening shows.
“I left Hazen,” I added. I needed to say that enough times that I started to believe it.
That’s what the dye had been about. I wasn’t the sensible housewife anymore.
I wasn’t interested in holding to society’s standards, which is why I wore one of Lock’s t-shirts and a hemp bracelet Wat had made for me last year at scout camp.
“Why?”
“So the zombies don’t kill him, or the vampires, or the werewolves.” And whatever else was out there, just waiting to pounce. I slipped and my knife cut through my pants and my leg as easily as butter.
“Looks like it’s got a good edge,” Tom said with a smile before he got up to get the first aid kit.
I held my leg out while he did stitches. They hurt, but not as much as leaving Hazen. “Tom, after you drank the Grand Master’s serum, did you have any side-effects?”
“Sure. I told you about the hallucinations. It was like drinking tar and pain.” He made a face. “I can still remember it curling my tongue.”
Gloria laughed and poked his shoulder. “But it saved your life, and that’s what matters.” They exchanged shy, kind of sweet looks that I had no idea was in either of their repertoires.
“Are you guys seriously dating, or was that just a zombie queen thing?”
“Oh.” Gloria’s eyes went big, and she darted uneasy glances at him. “I forgot that the two of you were lovers.”
I fell over backwards laughing, and the thread tugged on my skin, reminding me that I was still attached to Tom’s needle. “We’re not lovers. We’re slaying buddies.”
“I’m teaching her to slay,” Tom corrected. “We are definitely not lovers. I’m a strict Protestant. I would never take a lover.”
I stopped laughing. That made me think too many things about Hazen. I sat up and watched him finish working on my leg.
“What’s a Protestant?” Gloria whispered to me while he left to put away the first aid kit in the storage room. The little kitchen in the theater was so cozy, way too cozy.
I shrugged. “Aren’t they like pilgrims?”
“So, he’s four hundred years old?”
I giggled. “Let me guess, that’s hot, right?”
She sighed dreamily and put her hand to her wild, frizzy hair. “He’s an immortal slayer. It’s very sexy.” The tape over her broken nose made her look more ridiculous than melodramatic.
“Will you be okay here while we go slaying?”
She sat bolt upright. “You’re leaving me alone?
No way. I’d rather die than be left alone where I can be possessed again.
That was horrible. I woke up to someone pinching my nose and forcing something down my throat.
After that, I tried to get it out, but I could feel it growing until I passed out from not being able to breathe.
” She shivered again. “I’ll be a slayer like you guys. ”
“Tom?” I said as soon as he came back in. “Did you hear that? Gloria wants to be a slayer so she’s not by herself the next time she’s possessed.”
He shrugged and then studied her for a long time. “You’ll have to wear proper equipment.”
I glared at him. “What do you mean, proper equipment? I only have one pair of red pleather pants.”
“That isn’t slaying equipment, it’s luring gear. Protective gear is what I’m talking about.”
“Oh. That’s good then.” I smiled at Gloria, but somewhere inside, I was wondering why the crap Tom would dress her in protective gear while I was the bait.
Seriously. He clearly liked her a lot more than he liked me.
Where was the one man in the world who thought I was the best?
Oh, right. He was at home sleeping with his stomach full of the last meat loaf I’d ever cook him.
I stood up. “Let’s go.”
Tom nodded and twenty minutes later, we were veering through the dark streets in the old muffin van.
I had my slayer knife in my hand. My leg hurt where I’d cut myself like an idiot, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my chest. I’d gotten dressed in the van while Tom and Gloria were chatting in front.
I even put on the uncomfortable underwear, because you know, viva la slayer mom.
He pulled into some shadows in a creepy spot on the edge of the city that had a few abandoned shops, a gas station, and maybe a corner grocer’s in between old houses that had been pulled down, along with empty lots.
“So long as you keep this knife up, keep the helmet on, hands covered, you should be fine.”
Gloria looked like she’d been cast in aluminum. The funniest thing was her face mask, which looked like a helmet someone had strapped a tea strainer to.
“And maybe you can find some wild mint or something and we can make tea afterwards with your face,” I said cheerfully and got out of the van, knife in my hand.
Would the Grand Master show up tonight? Probably not unless it was a really big mob of zombies.
I wanted to talk to him about the weapons budget, but I also never wanted to see him again.
He hadn’t marked me, but he’d pressed home the point that I had to leave my husband if I wanted him to be safe.
I’d blame him for my unhappiness if I felt like it.
I walked through the deserted street and went into the first building, the gas station, and poked around into all the rooms, flashing my light before I headed back outside.
Tom was out with Gloria, and she was looking ridiculous, with bits of her bright red hair poking out between the pieces of armor.
“Let’s stick together,” Tom said with a frown in his voice. “You’re upset about your personal life, but you have to keep your head in the game, or you’ll get taken and turned.”
Words to give a girl chills, particularly after what the zombie queen did to Gloria.
“Right.” It was slower going, but we were rewarded by finding a pile of leaves that shifted when I walked past. I threw a rock in it, and it vanished without so much as a thud, then came back out at me at so hard that I had to duck.
It shattered against the wall across the street from us.
Tom nodded at the pile. “This kind usually goes after weak things, kids, cats, birds, you know, small prey. They’re a lot of effort to drag out and kill, but it’ll be good practice for you.”
“It’s not a zombie?” I asked.
“Pygmy troll,” he said.
“Oh, a pygmy troll. Of course there are trolls. Seriously, this world is messed up.”
“Less messed up all the time, slayer,” Gloria said, bumping me with her metal-covered hip.
Ow. I rolled my eyes and crouched down and eyed the pile of leaves. “So, how does this go?”
“Usually you throw stuff at it until it gets tired of being attacked and then it’ll come out to defend itself. That’s when you kill it.”
“And how do you kill it?”
“Fire.”
“Can’t we just light the dried leaves on fire?” Gloria asked, pulling out a lighter.
“He coats it in his saliva, which is a flame deterrent, although that is a very valid logical conclusion,” he said gently, like he didn’t want to crush her tender, budding pyromaniac tendencies.
“Let’s do this.” I went around and gathered up as many rocks as I could find and then came the fun game.
It was like baseball with a machine. One rock came so fast towards my face that I barely caught it and then threw it back, even harder at the monster.
The resulting squish and gurgle was slightly satisfying.
I threw as fast and hard as I could and then I found a chunk of concrete with rebar sticking out of it that I used as a kind of mace.
I smashed it down then hauled it up before it could grab it, then again and again until with a squealing roar that I’d never forget in my wildest nightmares, it came out.
It was small, green, and hideously ugly.
Its roar grew deeper and louder while it got bigger and bigger and bigger until its mouth was the size of me.
Huh.
How was I supposed to kill it again? I dove to the right while its mouth and millions of serrated teeth landed where I’d been. I rolled to my feet and then slashed along its side.
“Fire!” Gloria yelled and threw me her lighter. That’s right.
I pulled out the small canister of flame accelerant and poured it on my knife then lit that sucker on fire.
I went a little bit crazy with it, may have ridden it around stabbing it through its head with my fiery dagger until it slowly deflated and left me standing in a pile of goo littered with teeth and bones.
“That was fabulous!” Gloria said, her big green eyes barely visible through the tea strainer face mask.
“It was weird,” I corrected and went to find some weeds or grass or something to wipe off my boots.
A sound of scattering gravel came from back towards our cars. Had a zombie tracked me already? Good. Zombies were more therapeutic to kill than pygmy trolls.
I found a nice shadowy spot to wait. When the creature’s shadow passed me, I leapt on him at the exact moment he tripped with a loud ‘oof’.
Not a zombie. I rolled over him and came up on one knee, knife held out to the side as I waited for its next move.
If it was a werewolf, he’d be a dead werewolf in two minutes.
“Lucy?”