Timesurfers (32 page)

Cate turned her head as Balthazar plunged a
sword into one of the grommets.

Mel patted her shoulder. “Breathe through
it.”

The boys worked at their gruesome task with
the solemn resolve of warriors. Each time Balthazar plunged his
sword into a body the crowd roared. Mel and Gaspar dragged all the
bodies to one area.

“Right. Let’s get prepared,” Balthazar
said.

“What exactly are we preparing for?” Cate
asked.

“Any second now, fifty of the meanest
criminals from the North Isle de Pantheon will drop out of the sky
to fight for their lives. We need every dead body fighting.”

She reached over to touch the nearest body.
“You just told me I couldn’t heal those grommets because some big
wall was going to come crashing down.”

“You’re not healing them. You’re making
zombies. I want you to wake them up and order them to fight.”

“Huh?” Cate blinked a few times. Had she
heard him correctly?

Chapter 25

Sparkling Zombies

“I
want to see a bloody army of sparkling zombies
ASAP,” Balthazar growled.

“I’ve never made a zombie army.”

“It’s exactly the same as when you made
Brittany into a zombie,” Balthazar said.

“That was one person and I did it by
accident.”

“What about that grommet over there?” Mel
pointed to the boy whose eyes had glowed violet when Cate touched
his hand before.

“I‘ve seen you raise an entire graveyard of
dead bodies,” Gaspar said.

“That was future me!” Cate pulled frantically
at her hair. “And even if I can, what’s to say they won’t all try
and kill us?”

“Because when
you
make a zombie they have to do what
you
tell them!” Balthazar’s eyes widened as he looked at the sky.

“Make your own zombie,” Cate screamed.

“That’s your thing. No other Timesurfer has
ever been able to raise the dead and control them. That’s what
makes you special and more than a little bit creepy. You’re the
perfect weapon of mass destruction. The number of dead things
outweighs the number of living things exponentially.”

There it was! The reason the Timesurfers were
so interested in her. She was the perfect weapon of mass
destruction. There was no time to contemplate her discovery
further.

“Here they come!” Mel shouted.

The sky was dark with black helicopters. The
criminals from the North Isle de Pantheon dangled from ropes under
them. Cate pressed her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to
block out the deafening roar from the rotor blades. Sand stung her
face as the helicopters hovered close enough for their passengers
to drop to the ground.

The lions were on their feet, noses sniffing
the air. The prisoners dropped to the ground. As they strode closer
she
realised
why the
lions were so interested. Each criminal had been doused with
blood.

A man gave her a ghoulish smile, pointed at
her, and drew a line across his throat. He stalked forward, shoving
other prisoners out of his path. He stopped to crack his knuckles.
“You’re mine! Not so brave without pretty boy to help you, are
you?”

As he charged forward, she was overcome by an
unnerving sense of déjà vu. Her mind flashed to the fight at the
Neon Posse with Jonah. This was gorilla guy. She darted out of his
path and grabbed his wrist as he skidded past. With one foot lodged
between his shoulder blades, she yanked hard. He howled in pain.
His shoulder gave a loud pop and hung loose.

“Clearly you learned nothing from our last
meeting.” She twisted behind him and landed a spinning heal kick to
his temple. He dropped to his knees, and she pounded her heel
against the side of his head again. He collapsed, unconscious.

“Cate!” Two prisoners lay lifeless near Mel
as he struggled with two more. “Make your zombies!”

Three prisoners boxed her in. “I’m a bit
busy.” She grabbed a knife in each hand and balanced their cool
marble handles against her shaking palm as she aimed directly for
one prisoner’s heart. The knife wobbled through the air and fell
short. “Oh, come on!”

She grabbed at the three jagged disks
attached to the metallic tape on her arm and threw them one after
another. Two prisoners clutched at their throats as blood spurted
through their fingers. The third kept coming. Her leg hit something
soft and warm as she backed away. A low rumble vibrated through her
body. She turned her head slowly to discover she had backed into a
lion!

At the exact moment the prisoner lurched
forward she lunged left. He missed her and unintentionally tackled
the lion front on. The lion pinned him to the ground, and with a
single swipe of its paw ripped a gaping hole in his chest. Blood
sprayed through the air as the beast’s teeth tore through the man’s
neck. Cate scrambled over a dead lion and placed her hands on a
dead body.

“You have to use your mind! There’s no time
to run around and raise them individually,” Balthazar yelled.

She tried everything from yelling
“abracadabra” to the worst curse words she knew. No matter what she
thought or screamed, the dead bodies stayed dead. Even the four she
was touching with her hands and feet remained lifeless.

The prisoners had very successfully targeted
the group of grommets at the end of the arena. The three remaining
grommets down there were outnumbered. It would only be a matter of
time before the prisoners all focused on Cate and the boys. They
would be hopelessly outnumbered.

“I think my power’s broken,” she yelled to no
one in particular.

“Now would be a great time to show some of
that badass you’re always talking about,” Gaspar panted.

“Argh!” She screamed with frustration.
Wake up and fight! Wake up and fight! Wake up and
fight you mother f—

The ground trembled, and cracks feathered
along the floor of the arena. A labyrinth of gaps opened. Steam
exploded and hissed angrily before it dissipated in the sky above
the pile of bodies. The stench of
sulphur
assaulted her nostrils, a prelude to the
putrid smell of death and decay that followed. That didn’t happened
when Brittany had come back to life.

The eerie hush that followed made her skin
crawl. No one in the arena moved. The crowd was silent. The corpses
twitched and then struggled to their feet. No sign of their ripped
clothes or mutilated bodies remained. You would pass these newly
created zombies in the street and not give them a second look,
except for their iridescent violet eyes.

She pressed against the dead lion,
contemplating her next move. With a vicious twist of its body, the
lion sprung to its feet. Her side slammed into the ground, and as
she lifted her head, she came nose to nose with the lion. It stared
at her with gleaming violet eyes.

“Will you look at that?” Gaspar yelled. “She
made a zombie lion.”

“They’re all useless if they aren’t
fighting!” Balthazar called.

The remaining prisoners and grommets in the
arena shuffled restlessly; their eyes darted nervously as they
contemplated their next moves. A prisoner grabbed a spear from the
ground and smashed it against Gaspar’s knees, sending him sprawling
to the ground. He circled around as Gaspar staggered to his feet,
preparing to strike again. The arena crowd sprang to life as the
fighting recommenced.

Cate scrambled to her feet. “Follow me,” she
called to the zombies. Nothing happened. She growled under her
breath. They only woke up when she spoke to them through her mind.
Follow me!
To her surprise the zombies
did. She pointed to the prisoner with the spear facing Gaspar.
Attack him
.

Her zombies swarmed over the prisoner, who
within minutes lay lifeless on the ground. All heads turned to
Cate. What had she done? In that instant she had become everyone’s
enemy. The three boys raced toward her.

Balthazar grabbed her by the shirt and yanked
the rope from over her shoulder. He dragged her toward the edge of
the arena as he unwound the rope and threw it around a column.
“Climb to the top. Move, move,
move
!”

She gripped each end of the rope and hauled
herself up with her arms as she walked her feet up the column as
fast as possible. The boys followed behind her, shoving her in
their hurry. Gaspar cut the rope as he climbed to make it more
difficult for the swarm of the frantic prisoners to follow.

“Order the zombies to kill them all,”
Balthazar ground out as he heaved her higher.

“What about the other grommets?” Cate
scrambled to find her footing against the smooth column. The
prisoners hurled daggers, spears, and anything else they could
reach from the bottom of the column.

Mel swatted weapons away from the column.
“Just do it now, Cate!”

Her zombies stood clustered around their dead
victim. Their chilling violet eyes focused on the column Cate and
the boys were climbing. After a few seconds of indecision they
headed towards them. One threw a jagged disk that carved into her
bicep, causing her to let go of the rope. She swung by one hand as
Balthazar attempted to support her.

“How come they’re attacking me?” Cate
shrieked. “I bloody made them!”

“That’s the thing.” Balthazar heaved her back
onto the column. He swatted away the knives and other sharp objects
the zombies were throwing in their direction. “Unless you’re
controlling them, zombies continue on with what they were doing
directly before they died when you wake them up. These guys were
only dead for a few minutes, so they’re continuing with the GTs.
The ones who’ve been dead for decades and then wake up tend to go
insane because they can’t understand the world they’ve woken up
too. Zombies always have to do whatever you say though. Now is not
the time to be magnanimous. It’s them or us.”

A flail similar to the one around Mel’s waist
sailed past her ear.
Kill everyone on the arena
floor. Kill them all now!
She commanded her zombies.

The zombies hunted in packs; impervious to
injury, they fought like machines, sparing no one. The zombie lion
ripped at the carcasses of the other lions that now lay dead.
Thunder rumbled and exploded overhead. The clouds rippled and
shimmered. A gleaming, transparent film oozed across the sky,
creating an enormous dome over the arena, sealing it away from the
rest of the world. The violet gleam in the zombies’ eyes faded, and
they crumpled onto the dirt, lifeless once again.

“What just happened?” Cate’s arms were like
little pieces of chewed string from straining against the rope. Her
palms and fingers were red and raw. “Do they normally collapse like
that?”

Balthazar pointed at the gleaming, clear
dome. “All the prisoners must be dead. That’s a ward which blocks
magic so no one can use their powers for this last test. It puts
everyone on an even par for the hand-to-hand combat.” He dropped to
the dirt and kicked some dead bodies out the way. “Jump!”

She hadn’t taken any notice when she scaled
up the column. She had even been thankful when it was high enough
to protect against the majority of sharp objects hurled her way.
Now, it looked like a damn long way to jump.

Balthazar rolled his eyes. “This you’re
contemplating? After everything we’ve done? Jump, girl.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and jumped. He
steadied her as her knees sagged. An intense chill seeped deep into
her bones as she surveyed the myriad of lifeless bodies.
I did that
.

“Hold it together a little longer. You’re
nearly there.”

Chapter 26

Four Brothers

B
althazar half pulled, and half dragged her numb body
beside him. “We have to wait in the holding pen while all the
corpses are collected.”

“Things would have been a whole lot easier if
Cate had simply compelled everyone not to fight,” Mel panted as
they hustled to the holding pen.

“You suggest that
now
!” Cate hissed.

Balthazar shook his head. “I considered that.
It wasn’t an option. The GTs opened the annual blood sports for
centuries. There has to be blood. Everyone sitting around doing
nothing would have been unacceptable. Even compelling all the
Timesurfers to fight with us against the prisoners wouldn’t have
worked. You can’t have too many grommets survive the GTs.”

The door of the holding pen rumbled shut.
Cate slid onto the floor while the boys leaned against the
railings. Dead calm settled over her, smothering the self-loathing
slithering through her brain. “I murdered all those people.”

Balthazar dropped to his knees and gripped
her shoulders firmly. “The GTs are about whether you
can
and
will
kill. All the
rest is window dressing. A true warrior is prepared to die for
their cause. More importantly, they’re prepared to kill for
it.”

The enormity of what a Timesurfer had to be
prepared to do settled heavily on her chest. “Do you guys have a
bumper sticker with that printed on or something? You’ve said
pretty much exactly what Rose said about the GTs.”

Balthazar smiled. “It’s a pretty standard
spiel.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Cate
asked.

Each boy nodded.

Gaspar shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like
you haven’t, Cate. Look at loser Zach. I mean I know he shouldn’t
have attacked you, and it was self
defence
and all, but he still ended up dead by your
hand.”

“What did you say I did to Zach?”

The three boys looked confused.

“Uh oh. That didn’t happen in your altered
time line, did it?” Mel dragged his hands down his face.

“Why can you tell me about my future, when
the magic has stopped everyone else?” If that magical brain chip
story had been a load of rubbish it was highly probable she would
be attempting to add Jonah and Austin to the list of people she had
killed.