Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My fingers were sparking dangerously, and I was fully aware that my eyes were blazing Angel gold.
The entire area was awash in the color. My gut told me it was the real Dip Doody behind the door, and I was about to freak him the hell out.
I wasn’t sure what Gideon had in mind, but it wasn’t going to be good for Dip’s mental state or self-esteem.
The sheriff would be armed. As a cop, he always carried his weapon, but his bullets wouldn’t kill us. The only person who was at risk of dying from a gunshot wound was June, and she was covered like white on rice.
Jegguthiz had stepped up beside Jennifer. Earlier, I thought he was slightly cute when he smiled. He wasn’t smiling now. And he wasn’t cute. He was freaking terrifying. With his eyes narrowed to slits and his hulking body ready to attack, he was scary personified.
“I’ll know. I’ll know if it’s him,” Jennifer said as I wrapped my hand around the knob. “I’ll be able to see.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Charlie told her. “Give it a shot, but we’re not going on just that.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Make sure that everyone lives through the next ten minutes,” Gideon answered in a clipped tone.
“Works for me, motherfucker,” Candy Vargo said with the machine gun still aimed at the door.
“Dip,” I called through the door. “It’s me. Daisy. I’m going to let you in. Keep your gun in the holster.”
“What?” he yelled, confused and freaking out. The man was hyperventilating.
I didn’t answer him. Pressing my lips together, I unlocked the door and turned the handle. The second he entered the house, he was tackled to the ground by Gideon and Zander and surrounded by Demons. The Demons had guns trained on him and were ready to shoot. Dip Doody was terrified.
Gideon put his hand over Dip’s mouth and leaned in. “Dip, you’ve walked into something you shouldn’t see. What I need you to do is follow my directions. No more, no less. Am I clear?”
Dip’s eyes were huge as he nodded jerkily, or as much as he could considering Gideon’s hand was over his mouth and two large men were straddling him. Jennifer whimpered in the background but didn’t move to stop the action.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth and you’re going to answer a question,” Gideon continued as he slowly removed his hand. “What’s the TV show that you watch and made Jennifer swear on her wine to keep it a secret?”
He waited.
“What are you? Cartel? Mafia? Spies?” Dip shouted. “What in tarnation is goin’ on here? I’m gonna arrest every single one of you. You hear me?”
“I hear you, Dip,” Gideon told him flatly. “The question is, did you hear me? Candy Vargo has a gun aimed at your head, along with a few others who possess itchy trigger fingers. You need to answer the question so I know it’s the real you.”
Dip’s face was blood red, and he was sweating profusely. It was a terrible thing to watch.
“It’s him,” Jennifer said. “I see him. It’s Dip.”
“Jennifer?” he cried out. “Are you okay, babe?”
As she moved towards him, I held up a hand and shook my head. “Not until we know for sure.”
She stopped. Tears streamed down her face. I realized I was crying too. Humans were not supposed to get messed up in our world. This was bad.
“Dip,” Gideon said. “I’m going to give you one more chance. Answer my question. Now.”
Dip was pissed. He was embarrassed and getting more worked up by the second. “Lemme tell you something, Gideon. You’re real close to getting arrested for committing a felony. But to answer your question… It’s Little House on the Prairie,” he snarled.
Zander took over and ripped open Dip’s shirt. As expected, and hoped for, the man had three nipples. Satisfied, Gideon got off of Dip and helped him to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said. “It had to be done.”
Dip buttoned his shirt back up with the two buttons that were left.
Most of them had popped off. He glared at Gideon.
“Would you like to tell me what the hell is going on here? Looks like a goddamn horror movie out there. If that’s what you call home security, then I’m predicting that you’re gonna spend a good long time in the slammer. ”
“Dip,” Jennifer said, running to him and hugging him tight. “I’m so sorry. Don’t be mad at Gideon. Those people out on the lawn are trying to kill us.”
Dip did not fuck around. He pulled his police radio from his belt and went to call for backup. Candy wiggled her fingers and rendered the radio dead. What we didn’t need was more humans on the scene. Having Dip here was bad enough.
“What the…” he muttered, shaking the radio to fix it.
Shaking it wouldn’t help.
“Here’s the deal, Dip,” Gideon said.
“No sir,” Dip shot back. “I’m making the deals here. Everyone in this house is comin’ down to the station. Now. The weapons will be confiscated, and I’m sorry to say, you people are in a heap of trouble.”
I had to give it to him. There were multiple guns pointed at him, and he was still trying to do his duty.
“Do you want the truth, Dip?” Gideon asked, getting impatient. There were zombies outside, and having to deal with Dip had added another layer of bad to an already terrible situation.
“Lemme hear your version of the truth,” Dip ground out. “It’d better be good.”
“Oh, it is,” Gideon replied coolly. “I’m the Grim Reaper.
Daisy is the Angel of Mercy. Candy Vargo over there with the machine gun is the Keeper of Fate.
And Charlie, he’s not a medical scientist, he’s the Enforcer.
We’re all Immortal. The inhuman-looking freaks on the lawn are zombies—reanimated dead.
They’re after Jennifer, Alana Catherine and Shitty Ritchie, who are also Immortal and next in line to be the next Higher Power.
We need to stop them, and you’re in the way. ”
“Wait,” he said. “Shitty Ritchie is real? I thought he was a character from a kids show… is he really a cannibal?”
“Used to be,” Shitty Ritchie called out. “Not anymore.”
Gideon shook his head and closed his eyes briefly. “Dip, I’m going to apologize to you right now.”
Dip was still pissed. “For what? You already said you were sorry. And sorry isn’t really cutting it.”
“For this,” Gideon said as he reared back, punched Dip in the face and knocked him out cold.
Dip Doody fell to the floor with a thud.
Jennifer kneeled at his side and cried. “Lord have mercy. Did you really have to do that?” she asked.
“I did,” Gideon replied. “It’s too dangerous for him to be conscious. Do you think if we told him to stay in the house during the battle that he would do that?”
“No, he would not do that. My man is all cop—through and through.” She shook her head. “But couldn’t you have just,” she snapped her fingers, “sparkled him into unconsciousness? Was punching him in the face necessary?”
Gideon tucked his chin, looking a little chagrinned. “Umm...”
Candy Vargo piped up. “No worries. We’ll fix up his eye...” She looked at Dip’s bloody face, shaking her head as she fished a toothpick out of her pocket and stuck it between her teeth. “And nose. He’ll be good as new.”
Jennifer did not look reassured.
“Okay,” I said, cracking my knuckles. With a horde of zombies on the lawn, there wasn’t time for more niceties. “Are we ready? We have trespassers outside who need their asses kicked.”
“Born ready,” Candy Vargo announced. “Reaper. Count us off again. Hopefully, nobody else shows up at the door.”
Gideon obliged. “On three.”
The situation was almost identical to our previous fight with the undead, which wasn’t surprising. The zombies couldn’t think for themselves. They’d been programmed by the Higher Power to be relentless.
Last time there were ten. This time, at least fifty of them had shown up for the fight.
Again, they didn’t look like the zombies from TV or the movies, in that they weren’t rotting corpses.
Even so, they weren’t pretty to look at.
The Higher Power had raised men from the dead who were large in stature and muscular to populate her army.
Their eyes were milky white and soulless, and each of them was bald and toothless.
They didn’t resemble cadavers, but they didn’t appear to have many human qualities left either.
They stood shoulder to shoulder and stared at us.
I scanned the line, searching for Tom Hanks, but there was no sign of him.
The Higher Power had shown up at the end last time.
I wondered if it planned to grace us with Its disgusting presence once again, after we finished off this second wave.
Probably. There wasn’t anything original about the Higher Power, and the entire scene felt like I was watching a reboot of a shitty B horror film.
I was ready to get to the credits. “Okay guys,” I yelled at the bald freaks on the lawn. “Let’s get this over with. I have a wedding to plan.”
If they zombies understood, it didn’t show.
“And I have to take a crap,” Candy Vargo added, giving them the middle finger salute. “Start talkin’, fuckers.”
“Give us the child, the tiny one, and the recently turned Immortal woman. We know they are in the house,” the zombie bellowed.
His robotic voice rocked the earth beneath his feet, and the ground split opened on either side of the zombie throng.
Several trees in the yard fell into the large craters left by the explosions.
“We don’t want to kill you,” he intoned, as if he hadn’t just ruined my yard.
“No violence is necessary. The choice is yours.”
“Isn’t that the same fuckin’ thing they said the other day?” Candy asked.
“To the word,” Gideon replied. “Except they added Jennifer to the list of demands.”
“Original much?” Candy shouted.
They didn’t have an answer for that. Fine. We had an answer for them.
“Nope. No can do,” I yelled. “You get nothing, nada, bupkis. Not today. Not ever.”
That they understood. Before the battle could start, the door behind us opened. Jennifer poked her head out. The zombies saw her and began salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. The screeches that came from their mouths shattered all the windows in the house.
“On the end,” she said, pointing. “Left side. All the way on the end. That’s the leader.”
I saw Jegguthiz’s hand reach out and yank her back into the house. Without a word I took off toward my target with the Grim Reaper, the Keeper of Fate and the Enforcer on my heels. I could run faster than the speed of light. The first time I did it, I was freaked out. Today, I was thankful.
He was already dead, I reminded myself. His soul might have gone into the Light or the Darkness.
I would never know. Now, his body was a weapon.
A killing machine created by someone who was worse than the abominations It created.
My incredible speed rendered me invisible, so the zombie leader didn’t see me coming.
Too bad for him, I saw him clear as day.
I didn’t need a sword. I didn’t need a grenade.
All I needed were my hands. Picturing my daughter's beautiful face, I did what needed to be done.
No one was going to harm Alana Catherine while I was alive to stop it.
No one. Not a zombie and certainly not Fake Tom Hanks.
I would happily die for my child, but not today.
Today, it was only the zombies who would die, again, for challenging me and those I loved.
This close, the odor hit me. The smell was foul—like dead, decaying flesh. It made sense since that’s what they were. With the sparest of movement, I viciously snapped his neck, ripped the head off the body, then dove into a roll away from the zombies in case they retaliated.
The leader didn’t move or make a sound as he turned to ash. Then, as a whole unit, the rest of them disintegrated and blew away on the breeze.
“Welp,” Candy Vargo said with a chuckle, admiring my handiwork. “That’s one way to get it done.”
“Well done, Daisy,” Charlie said, extending his hand to help me up from the ground. “You’d make a damn good Enforcer.”
“Hah,” I countered. “I’ve got too many jobs as it is.” Death Counselor, Angel of Mercy, wife, and mother. Those were enough to keep me busy for an eternity.
Heather, Zander, Tim, Catriona and the Demons jogged over and looked around in surprise. The applause from the Demons was bizarre.
“Jennifer identified the leader,” I explained. “I completed the mission.”
“Badass,” Candy Vargo said, pointing at me. “The Angel of Mercy ain’t showin’ no damn mercy today!”
“Nope,” I said as the last of the zombie ash cleared off. “There was no Angel of Mercy in that one. That was for my daughter.”
Gideon took me in his arms and held me close. “My hero,” he whispered.
“Just being a mom,” I told him.
“And doing a damned fine job of it,” he replied.
I scanned the field along with everyone else. We were waiting for the last act of the piss poor movie that we were starring in to unfold. Last time, Tom Hanks rose from the ashes and almost killed Jennifer.
This time, there was no sign of the bastard.
“Is It fuckin’ with us?” Candy asked.
“Isn’t it always fucking with us?” I shot back.
“Fine point, well made,” she said, handing me a toothpick.
I put it between my teeth and bit down. Today wasn’t the day for the finale.
We would have to wait for the next shitshow.
Waiting sucked, but we didn’t have much of a choice.
The Higher Power would show up when It wanted to and not a moment earlier.
The positive amidst all the negative was that the zombies would no longer work against us.
Jennifer was our secret weapon. Win-win.
“We need to deal with Dip Doody,” Gideon said with a sigh.
“You going to wipe his mind?” I asked, taking his hand in mine and heading back up to the house.
“I am,” he told me.
“How much of it?”
He stopped walking and looked at me. “That’s going to be up to Jennifer. Her call.”
My heart squeezed tight in my chest. What had started out as such a wonderful day had gone to Hell. I didn’t envy the decision Jennifer would have to make, but I knew what I would choose to do.
For all our sakes, I hoped she would do the same.