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“We’ve got you,” I say, and I’m so happy I pat his shoulder. “You were gone for a bit.” I offer my hand to help him sit up, and he takes it, clasping fists with me. It is the first time I have willingly touched one of my brothers and trusted the gloves to keep them safe.
“I remember,” he says, fingers going to his neck. Suddenly, his eyes go wide. “Get down!” He jerks me toward him as a gunshot sounds behind me.
As I lose my balance and fall, my uncovered face comes perilously close to his. A deafening ping means the round hit the stairwell door. It missed us by inches.
Rev scrabbles beneath me, reaching for his dropped weapon.
Shoulder screaming, I roll to help him. When I twist around, I see the unthinkable. Lazarus is alive.
The fire-haired man faces off with Rev, eyes blazing, gun drawn. “That was a dirty trick!” he shouts at me.
When Rev grabs up his weapon, Lazarus makes no move to avoid being shot. Instead, he grins and resumes his taunting, as if he never died.
“But your tricks aren’t enough to kill me. Nothing you can do will kill me. I am Lazarus!”
Rev squeezes off two shots that hit Lazarus square in the chest.
Lazarus flinches, but the maniacal smile never leaves his face. His eyes are on Rev. He doesn’t seem concerned about me, probably because I don’t have a weapon aimed at him.
Taking advantage of the fact, I pull the vaporizer around to my front and aim it at Lazarus. When he levels his weapon at Rev, I squeeze the trigger.
The kick sends fire through my dislocated shoulder, but it’s worth it. A projectile slams into Lazarus’s chest.
He has time to look down at the gray chewing-gum-like blob and cut a glance to me. “Paintball?” he says. “Really?”
I shout, “Hit the deck!” as I dive behind an AC unit. With relief, I see Rev take cover behind the cinderblock wall of the stairwell.
“Bullets can’t kill me,” Lazarus says. “So you switch to paintball? Fools—!”
An explosion cuts off his last words, and pieces of Lazarus rain down on me.
I come out from behind the AC unit, and I see Lazarus mist painted over every surface. “Try coming back from that, you son of a bitch.”
A clap on my shoulder has me turning to find Rev looking shellshocked, but, thankfully, alive. “Thank you, brother.”
“Of course,” I say. I long to hug him close to me, but I must not grow overconfident in my abilities. Instead, I step a safe distance away, and say, “They found Jud.”
“Thank the Working,” he says, and he sags with relief. “Let’s go home.”
Sarge
The locked dooris no barrier for Steel. On the other side, Ghost gives the all-clear, and we advance into a wide-open underground parking garage lit only by a few weak emergency lights. Faint lines on the ground show where cars might have once parked, but aside from a few haphazardly-placed work trucks and vans, there are no other vehicles. It’s just a sea of boxy concrete pillars marching into the distance like an optical illusion.
“The south opening is that way.” Ghost points to our left. “That’s where Rigor would have gone. They keep the mombies over here.”
We follow him to an alcove closed off by chain-link fencing. At first, the alcove appears small, like an area you might use to store tools or bicycles. But it continues around a corner and stretches into a good-sized enclosure. It needs to be a good size, considering what it holds, about a hundred undead women.
A greenish-hued emergency light casts a sickly glow over the occupants, adding to the unsettling sight. Vacant-eyed and skinny, they look like they’re queued up outside a clinic hoping for fresh needles and a hot meal. Some stand stock-still, facing in different directions. Some have their mouths hanging open. Some are sitting, legs splayed with no care for modesty.
Some are completely nude and streaked with dirt…or other things. Some wear tattered clothing of a casual style. A few have on slinky cocktail dresses with flaccid shoulder straps, looking like they’ve danced the night away in a club and are now numb with exertion and alcohol. Some have been dressed in obvious fetish-costumes, bringing to mind a silent, macabre Halloween party. There’s an Alice in Wonderland with her blue dress and white apron, a Catwoman with her leather mask askew so only one unfocused eye shows through, a French maid in frilly black-and-white with fishnet stockings, a she-devil with a red tail and a behorned hood dangling from her throat, a nurse with a white cap perched at an angle over her stringy hair, and a Dorothy fromWizard of Oz, complete with ruby slippers and tattered ankle socks. Discarded shoes and articles of clothing are dotted all over the ground.
“Oh, my God.” Recon is at my side, and I wonder if he feels as sick as I do.
“God had nothing to do with this,” I say.
“Yeah,” Ghost says. “This is all Lazarus. Well, almost all.”
“What do you mean, almost?” The moment the question leaves my lips, a warm wind stirs through the garage.
