Empire (29 page)

    Tetch clasped his hands and cocked his head. Waiting for Voorhees to exhaust his bravado and realize that he was the lesser man. To give up the child. Instead, the cop stepped to the edge of the roof.

    "She's talked about other things. You like 'em young, don't you Baron?"

    The young man's arrogance drained from his face and he was the pathetic little worm that Voorhees had seen all along. The yawning space between them seemed to contract, Tetch's shoulders dropping, his stance changed from threatening to threatened.

    "I can see why you prefer the company of those maggot-eaten retards. They don't judge you, do they? They don't care what you do in your house out there in the swamp. Out there, you're the only man Lily needs - isn't that right?"

    Tetch's lip curled as he glared in the cop's direction, but he wouldn't look directly at him. Voorhees pushed further. "I've been here a long time. I know people like you. You think you can do whatever you want. But this city still has a cop." He slipped his hand into his trench coat. "And no, I'm not going to arrest you."

    Tetch shook his head angrily. This wasn't going the way he'd planned. Voorhees grinned, even though the hand in his coat was closed around nothing but a belt loop. "I don't think I even have handcuffs. Lost 'em at the shelter. You hear about that? Did your dogs report back to you about the bang-up job they did?" He stifled a chuckle. It didn't register that he'd done it with the hand in his coat. "Speaking of which, we hacked that skull-faced rotter to pieces. Was he your favorite doggy?"

    It was Tetch's turn to chuckle.

    "Not really." He said.

    Then he shouted "KILL" and the doggy guarding the PD snapped the revolver upward and fired.

    It missed Voorhees by a hair. He threw himself to the rooftop. Another shot grazed the edge of the building, spitting dust into the cop's eyes.

    "Pull out your gun and shoot me!" Tetch laughed. He clapped his hands and turned away. He was leaving. Leaving without--

    No--

    Voorhees began a frantic crawl toward the access door. "DUNCAN!!" He bellowed. "THEY'RE INSIDE!!!"

    Down below, the undead gunman, Gerald, walked across the plaza to the de-barricaded City Hall entrance. Prudence and Bailey were already making their way across the lobby.

    On the fourth floor, Jenna heard Voorhees' voice bouncing down the stairwell. "What's he saying?" She asked Duncan. He didn't hear her; he was letting Lily see the shotgun, warding her curious hands away with an attempt at a stern look.

    Cheryl poked her head past Jenna into the stairwell. "Voorhees?...He's saying something about 'inside'. Voorhees!"

    The two women stood in the doorway and listened for a response. It came.

    "That sounded like a moan. Like he's hurt!" Cheryl whispered.

    "That came from downstairs," Jenna gasped.

    A thin woman appeared on the landing below. Cheryl was halfway down the stairs when she realized the woman was dead, but she ran into its arms anyway, senselessly, shrieking all the while; and Prudence, embracing her, clamped rotted teeth down on her cheek just beneath the eye.

    Duncan shoved Jenna aside and took aim. Cheryl turned, her face a bloody screaming hole, and he blew her away.

    Gerald staggered into view and fired wildly. Duncan and Jenna fell back. The shotgun clattered at the rotters' feet. Bailey passed Gerald as the latter emptied the revolver and reloaded from his pocket.

    "God! God!" Duncan stammered, covering Jenna with his arms, protecting and restraining her at the same time, watching Bailey come up - but the zombie simply made a left into the fourth-floor hallway.

    Lily let out a terrible cry.

    "No!" Jenna tried to thrust Duncan off of her. A bullet whined past the pair as they struggled. "Stay down!!" He yelled. "LILY!!" She wailed.

    Bailey emerged with the girl writhing in his grip. Gerald clumsily ascended the stairs and trained the revolver on the two adults. Lily strained at them from over Bailey's shoulder. "DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!! PLEEEEEAASE!!!"

    Voorhees stumbled down the stairs from the roof. He saw Gerald and leapt to the floor just before a flurry of gunshots chewed up the wall where he'd been. "Shotgun," he breathed, slapping at Duncan, "shotgun--" Then he realized it wasn't in the man's hands.

    Gerald continued to lay down suppressing fire. There was a hollow click. He lowered his head to reload.

    Voorhees leapt over the stairs and slammed into him, dashing Gerald's skull against the wall. They fell in a mess of thrashing limbs. He heard the others coming down after him, saw Jenna tear the revolver from the undead's hand. She rushed downstairs after the others.

    A few ferals had entered the lobby. Bailey swatted them out of his path. Simeon and Tetch waited right outside in the idling truck. "Hurry now!" Tetch yelled encouragingly.

    Jenna burst into the lobby - and right into a feral. They went down with a crash. The revolver flew into the shadows. Bailey and Prudence crawled into back of the pickup, holding Lily down, and it sped out of view.

    Jenna went limp with horror as the feral straddled her.

    Duncan cracked its temple with the butt of the shotgun. The zombie sagged; he jammed the gun into its desiccated belly and blew it in half.

    Gerald's twitching body, head crushed beyond recognition, thundered down the stairs. Voorhees followed, shattering another rotter's fractured grin with his fist on his way to the doorway. "Oh God."

    He turned to the others. "Back upstairs NOW!"

    They fled past the shambling dead, who stared blankly at one another as they tried to process what had just happened. The halved rotter lying on the floor blinked at its smoking innards.

    Once the manor gates had been closed behind the truck, Tetch pulled Lily out of the back and wrestled her into the house. She screamed and kicked all the way up the stairs, but once they reached the study she fell silent. He deposited her in a chair by the window and glared at her sullen face.

    "What the hell is wrong with you?"

    He slammed the door and locked it, then paced back and forth in front of her. "You've seen the city now - happy? Was it everything you'd hoped? If I hadn't come and gotten you, do you have any idea what those people might have done?"

    She had closed herself off to him and stared at the carpet. He stamped in his foot on the spot where she was looking. "So there are people in the city. So I lied. But now do you see why? It's Hell out there!"

    "You killed my parents," she mumbled.

    He dropped to one knee before her and clasped her hands. "Who told you that?" She tried to pull her hands free, but he tightened his grip so she just gave up and looked at the wall.

    "I'll ask you one more time. Who told you?"

    "It's true." She replied.

    "No - before I say anything about that I want to know who told you! Was it the man in black? Where is he? Has he left the city?" She bit her lip anxiously. "You don't know where he is." Tetch smiled grimly. "He's left you. Of course he did. But I came looking for you."

    Voorhees' words from the rooftop bored into Tetch's mind. He winced and pushed them back.

    "Your parents - if you can call them that - they abandoned you too. When they came back it wasn't because they cared about you, Lily!"

    "Then why?!" She spat. Her hands trembled inside his. "Because," he pleaded, "they just wanted to have you so they could make people feel sorry for them! I mean, first you're a liability that they have to get rid of and then you're a meal ticket. I've never treated you with anything but love, you KNOW that. I didn't tell you about them because I thought it would hurt you. To know that they were like that."

    "Is that what they said?" Her eyes were dark with mistrust. Her hands still trembled, from rage Tetch realized. "Of course they did." He answered.

    "You let the others eat them."

    "What was I supposed to do, Lily? Bury them in the swamp? Think about it. I just didn't want you to see them...now that you know, do you feel any better? No. You feel awful. And I don't know what the dark man told you about it, but he wasn't there."

    "Yes he was. He's the angel of death."

    "I know." Tetch said. It had a sobering effect on her. For the first time since he'd brought her back she made eye contact. "I know," he repeated, "and it doesn't matter. He has no place in the world anymore. I can bring the dead to life, Lily." He stroked his fingers along the back of her hand. She shuddered. "He doesn't understand things like I do. Neither did Addison. Neither did your parents."

    Her lips parted, she wanted to argue; but there was no argument. He leaned in to kiss her.

    She jerked her hands free and drew herself into a tight ball on the chair. "Liar!"

    He slammed his fist against the nearby desk. She whimpered. He wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, but she wouldn't let him. She wouldn't let him love her when he was the only one who could.

    (You're the only man Lily needs - isn't that right?)

    "I'll prove it to you. You'll see. Soon." He left the study, relocking the door from the outside.

    Addison, Death, Jesus - all hopelessly irrelevant, hopelessly wrong. Cut from the exact same filthy cloth. Tetch pocketed the study key and headed up to the third floor. The servants' quarters up here had been mothballed years back, and a thick skin of dust coated the bare wood beneath his feet. He stood in the silence of one of the front rooms, at a window, and contemplated the encroaching swamp through a film of grime.

    There were ferals out there. He could see some of them, eyeing the house from the shadows.

    In City Hall, Jenna stood at the window in the fourth-floor corridor. They'd barricaded the stairwell entrance, and could hear the ferals that had followed them shuffling outside. "We can't just forget about that girl." Jenna muttered.

    "I know." Replied Voorhees. He toyed with the shotgun in his lap. "We could make a clean break if we had that truck."

    Jenna turned to face him. "Are you suggesting we go to the Addison house?"