Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (2 page)

Must not be rude, not my strongest point.

Out loud I said, “You asked me to.”

John was standing at my right, trying to mask a
fine, all-over tremble. His freckles stood out on a pale face like
beacons of fright.

“What the hell is
this?” John asked.

He didn't really
just ask that? John... duh
.

The zombie looked at me with eyes that clung from
threads of sinew; moving wetly in its sockets, sucking like a vacuum.

“
Why have you
woken me?”
it
repeated, shambling a step closer. The smell... wow. It rose like a
torrent of rotting garbage and
other things.
John clapped his hand over his nose, taking a step backward.

The corpse took another
step... figuring this out would be good.

“Got any brilliant suggestions?” I asked John,
my eyes steady on the zombie, hoping like hell John would lend an
intellectual hand.

“
Do
not
have the Zombie Handbook
handy,” John said, his eyes a tad wide.

Not helpful.

The corpse looked at
me, head tilted, “You're just a boy...how could you know for what
purpose you have disturbed my slumber?”

Uh-oh, coming up
with an excuse,
so
not
my thing.

“I didn't... mean to wake you up...” I fumbled
out. I wasn't usually this tongue-tied but meeting a corpse in the
flesh (ha-ha) stole my speech.

“
You do not
know what you would have of me? You use your life-force to waken me
and yet... without purpose? Put me back,”
he
said thickly. His clothes hung in tatters and the smell was
definitely old, dark coffin, not that I knew what
that
smelled like.

John's look
clearly said,
do something!
I
guess what I hadn't told my friends was that I had never thought that
I could actually raise the dead. But here he was, standing before me
in all his rotting glory.

Looking out
amongst the teenagers collected outside the cemetery, “To whom much
is given, much is expected. Put me back,”
he
said.

Adults were all the
same, even dead, lecture, lecture.

“
How?
”
I asked.

“
You are the
necromancer, boy, not I.”
Again
that quizzical brow over rotting facial countenance.

Interpretation challenge... but I was managing.

“
A what?” I
asked, surprisingly calm, for the first time, there were no whispers.
Perfect, blessed silence filled my head. It was the most natural
thing in the world; talking to the dead. Looking at the corpse,
its
eyeballs, like inky marbles stared back at me with uncanny devotion.

“
A diviner of
the black arts, magic...”
he
replied.

All that time
with the star in my basement, huh,
right
.

I could still
taste distressingly metallic blood in my mouth. I was connecting dots
here, but I had an epiphany, I could put it back with blood! Things
had only gotten
ü
ber-weird
when I had my lip busted open by Jonesy. I looked back at the corpse
(
Clyde,
a person
once), no longer feeling that sense of swimming power just underneath
the surface. Now was not the time to get queasy with the dead. I
needed to regain that essence, fast.

“Ah... hang on a
minute,” I said to the corpse, who stared blankly back... ah-huh.

“John, give me your blade.”

“What the heck Caleb? What are you planning to
do with this...” John said pointing his finger at the patient
corpse, “...thing?” who was as immobile out of his grave as in.

“I figure my blood
made it jump out of its grave, now I need some to put him back and
you're going to help me,” I said in a one sentence rush.

John's face got
paler, if possible. “Ah, we're good friends and all but no
,
not a good plan! We don't know that for sure anyway.” The
logic-master was not feelin' it. Couldn't say I blamed him, me
holding a knife and all.

“... here's the deal,
let's do a little 'friendship blood bank' just for the sake of
putting the dead guy back in his grave, eh?” I began tapping my
foot on the disturbed mess of the grave. John would ante up the blood
or this was gonna be a long damn night.

“What?” strained trust crowded his eyes.

“Just here, give me your forearm.” I placed
the side of the blade on his forearm where it shone black in the pale
moonlight. My left hand wrapped tight, steadying his flesh for
puncture.

John took a deep breath,“Okay, but you're going
to owe me, big time,” the whites of his eyes bulging.

I pressed the point of the blade against his arm
until the pressure broke the skin. John sucked in a lungful, blood
welled and I let up the pressure. The zombie's head jerked at the
sight of the blood, causing the disturbing sound of neck bones
popping.

Would I ever get
used to that noise? I repeated the process with my own arm. Our
identical wounds pressed together, I offered it to my zombie. I could
feel somehow that he was mine, I knew it
.

A vibrating tuning fork of trembling power welled
up inside me. A strange mixture of fear, dread and excitement
paralyzed me. My teeth throbbed with the intensity of it. The
zombie's hand snaked out, taking hold of the offered forearm. It felt
cold against my warm flesh, like iced tentacles. I swabbed a blot of
blood, inking it with my index and middle fingers on the zombies
forehead, like warpaint. It rolled those empty eyes up at me, its
dead bones clinging to my fingertips.

We shared a
suspended moment in time, a terrible beauty of control balanced
precariously. “Go back and rest,” I said, feeling that balance
reached, that
I
was
choosing for both of us.

The zombie reluctantly let go of my arm, sand
through a sieve, lying down on the disturbed ground while his grave
encased him in a shroud of earth.

I was a
corpse-raiser
,
one of
two, and it was not a safe thing to be.

John and I stared at each other over the grave for
a swollen minute, his face showing a mixture of sympathy and dread.
He knew what this distinction would mean for me in the world we lived
in.

I was shaking
from the intensity of it all, there was no controlling it. This was
not the same as Biology experiments and roadkill, this was real, this
was huge. Looking outside the cemetery perimeter at two enemies and
one friend, I knew it was time to swear the group to secrecy. A
trickle of sweat slithered down my back, pooling at the waistband of
my jeans, instantly chilling against my fevered flesh. I
didn't
want the same future as Parker, that loss of freedom was so
not
a part of The Plan, my plan.

John and I headed out of the cemetery in a wave of
uncertain promise.

CHAPTER 2

I smacked my alarm, just five more minutes I
thought, dozing off.

“Caleb!” Mom yelled up the stairs.

“Yeah?” I yelled back.

“School!”

I stumbled out of my bed and looked on the floor
for today's clothes... Hmm, what to wear that wasn't too wrinkled. I
picked up a pair of jeans and a shirt and took an experimental whiff.
Good enough! I jerked the jeans on with a hop and a zip. Opened the
underwear and sock drawer, nothing. I ripped open every drawer for
socks, ah-huh! Finally, a couple of socks, not matched but clean...
happy day.

I trudged over to the kitchen table, scarred from
a thousand meals.

“You cookin' today?” I asked, hopeful.

“No, but
you're
eating.”

Eating in the morning blows. I was
that
lazy. I'd open the fridge, nothing. Then the freezer, repeat. I
usually ended up cramming a yogurt down.

Mom looked in the fridge. “What flavor?”

“Do we have blueberry?” It was the only
non-barf fruit I could think about eating this early.

“Last one.”

“Where's Dad?”

Mom and Dad were on the opposite end of the
spectrum. She was free-spirited (read: hippie) and thought the
mystery of life and choice was taken when the scientific puzzle of
the genome mapping was solved.

It made for an interesting family life.

“He is working on that new project.”

Great, hopefully not anything new for kids to rant
about. I'd gone through enough being hassled when I was growing up.

“Does that mean he'll be home for supper
tonight? I've got something to talk to him about.” I wisely didn't
want to mention the whole corpse-raising episode. Dad was logic and
fairness mixed. He'd know what to do.
This.
..
I might need some help on.

“Yes, he will, you know how important meal time
is,” Mom said.

Maybe, maybe not.
Science
was important to Dad.

After I wolfed down the yogurt, knowing the beast
would awaken again at 10 a.m. in class (perfect), I made a 2-point
shot at the trash can. Swish! No mess, but that didn't stop the frown
forming on Mom's face.

I moved quickly to grab my backpack but she
blocked me and I was forced to look up at her. Every girl in the
world was taller than me... wonderful.

She brushed the hair out of my eyes and it shot
back down. “You need a haircut.”

“No, mom.” A time-sucker was all a haircut was
and I had more important things to do.

Slamming the door behind me I took the stairs two
at a time, cruising at a jog. I wanted to reconnoiter with the dudes,
get things straight in my head from last night.

I slowed to a walk. I'd still be there early and I
was feeling lazy. Looking up, I noticed the canopy of trees allowing
filtered morning light to break through, speckling the ground with
sunspots. My head began the familiar thrumming, a buzz seeping into
the crevices of my mind as I walked toward the school.

I stopped where I stood, the buzzing had become
whispering, my heart speeding, my breath quickening in response. My
hands grew damp.

The whispering of the
dead.

I looked around me,
noticing the paved street, the pebbling of the asphalt worn away by a
million cars, the shoulder giving way into the ditch.

Nothing.

I started walking again but the whispering grew
louder. I followed the dull roar of the insidious voice like a magnet
and was rewarded with volume.

There, on the border of the forest and the soft
dirt of the ditch lay a crumpled body, torn and broken, its head at
an awkward angle. My hands trembled as the whispering broke through
to voices and images flooded my head like a pulse-screen.

I heard the thoughts:

headlights bursting like twin spots before its
eyes as it tried to escape those lights... rushing forward... it
sprinted across the street, not timing the advance properly and the
twin orbs bore down on it.

Pain. Intense pain and blinding light.

The cat thought of its litter, its people...
then, was no more.

My breath returned in a paralyzing rush, my feet
planted at the base of her body. A small body that had shared the
last moments of its life with me. A life that was now gone.

I stood for a moment, taking it in, realizing that
life as I knew it was never going to be the same. I wasn't going to
breeze through being a teenager.

Snapping back to reality I realized I was the pied
piper of road kill.

Great.
Definitely my life-goal.

This was just the
kinda thing that had been happening. The frogs in Biology, there had
been so many
.
I hadn't
been able to camouflage that. People would be suspicious. Why
couldn't I be developing something righteous like Pyrokenesis? Now
that would be tight. At least only Brett and Carson knew the
corpse-raising part. Getting them to cooperate with silence, that was
another thing.

I trudged on, my limbs heavy, my head swimming
with the heaviness of an undead-moment. I lifted my hands, the fine
shaking almost gone. Beaded sweat decorated my upper lip and I wiped
it off with the back of my hand. I needed to get a hold of this
thing. I was on it. That's what I told myself but my gut churned.

The familiar doors to our daily prison came into
view. I went inside the school, spotting the “cemetery group,” as
I was not-so-fondly thinking of a few of them.

John and Jonesy stood apart from the others in
stark contrast to each other. Almost 5'10” with a shock of frizzy,
carrot-colored hair and pale blue eyes, John looked a little freakish
but he was my main dude, the go-to guy when things went sideways. I
gave Jonesy an unfriendly look, touching my face. He had short, nappy
hair and teeth that stood out like white Chiclets in a dark face. He
was taller than me too, but built stocky. They'd been with me since
Kindergarten.

The rest of the group was a mixed bag, didn't feel
solid here. It would take some clever conniving to get promises of
secrecy from the rest. Brett Mason and Carson Hamilton stood
side-by-side with identical white-blond hair and height, hard to tell
apart unless you looked at them full-on. They'd been with me since
Kindergarten too, but not in a good way. We had about five minutes
before first bell.

Edging through the
throng of kids I made my way to John and Jonesy first. Jonesy leaned
against the locker, arms crossed. John looked ready to explode, not
typical.

Jonesy said, “Sorry about the bludgeoning.”