Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (12 page)

Billy saw a shadow move, and he tried to warn them. “She's behind the door.”

Mira grabbed the first one and snapped his neck. The other took a step back, but stopped just long enough to take in the horror of the once cute girl biting hard into the exposed neck of her dead captive. She pulled from the neck an enormous chunk of flesh and blood,
then pushed the one she was eating into the other trooper. They all crashed to the floor and he found himself pinned beneath zombie-Mira and his dead companion. The guard let out a cry, and as Billy Purgatory took his run and jumped the pile, skateboard in hand, he watched Mira shove her fingers into the eye-sockets of the remaining guard.

“Look, Billy.” She gurgled with her mouth full. “Look. All over fingers.”

Billy landed with his feet on his board and he flew down the hallway towards the grand staircase. “Sorry, Mom — time-out just ended.”

III.

The fact that the front door was locked, like every other door that Billy pulled on, was way uncool. That the window he usually snuck out of was locked, and that banging his skateboard into it wouldn't break the shatter-proof glass, was just overkill. Billy heard an unhealthy scream drift through the house from upstairs. It was too deep a voice to be Mira's, even though her voice wasn't near as singsong as he'd heard it to be in the past. Billy had stayed up late and seen all the movies — everyone she bit was turning into a zombie, and Billy was trapped in this place.

Billy looked up the landing to see one of the troopers, sans helmet and half his face, had already turned. He was sniffing the air and trying to navigate down the steps. Billy ran down one of the thousand hallways in this joint, trying to get to the back of the house and hopefully an unlocked door.

“You don't need to know the secrets hidden behind any locked doors in this house.” Billy mocked his mother's voice as he skated down the hallway. “Yeah, well put zombiepocalypse in your French press and smoke it, Mom.”

Billy put the brakes on as he heard a ding to his left. He saw a lighted little button in the shape of an up arrow — they had an
elevator. Billy kicked up his board, ready to run in when the doors opened and take this thing as high as it would go. He'd climb out a chimney if he had to.

The doors to the elevator slid open. Four of the maids where busy ripping cutlets off one of the butlers. The motion of the opening doors turned all eyes and bloody chewing faces to Billy.

Billy swung his board at the one closest to the door; he clocked her right in her undead face and broke her undead nose. She tumbled back into her companions, who confused her for the butler and started tearing into her. Billy was into the air and again landing on his wheels faster than you could say, “A funny thing happened to me on an elevator ride with a bunch of zombie maids.”

He knew that this was not going well for him. The outbreak was spreading faster than he had imagined. He figured every member of the household staff on the second floor was already playing for team meat. Now, if those ever climbed out of that elevator — and if what was left of black-ops ever made it to the bottom of the stairs — it wouldn't be long before anyone on this floor had the chewed-on sickness too.

Billy tried to calculate just how large the household staff was and gave up after eleven — he'd never seen the same one of them twice that he could remember. “There's gotta be a hundred of them,” Billy guessed. A hundred hungry mouths to feed versus one lonely skateboarder were not good odds for the boy.

He rolled off the wood floors of the hallway and found himself skating across the fine marble of the grand ballroom at the center of the house. It was an open area, largely empty beyond stacks of chairs on the south wall and high columns which rose beyond the second floor. The noise of his wheels echoing in the empty, largely unlit place seemed ever so loud. Billy watched zombie butlers and maids spill out onto the balconies from the second floor that looked down into the room. Damn, there was a staircase that led down from reception area up there. Billy was out in the open, and a rolling duck.

Zombies slashed at the air in the general direction of the first floor. One of the maids didn't get the concept that she was a story up and went right over the balcony, crashing to the ballroom floor and snapping her neck. Her zombie head broke open like a melon right
before he almost rolled into her. He jumped her twitching corpse and the black ooze that spilled out over the expensive floor.

Billy kicked off harder, trying to clear the room as fast as he could. Zombies flooded the balconies over the archway he was skating for, and if another one of them decided to jump and landed just right, Billy would be done for.

He flinched and almost came off his board when he heard the gunshots start on the second floor. “Oh crap, they know how to use guns?” Billy was nine ways screwed on this zombie attack deal.

“Undead monsters!” He heard the voice of Broom from somewhere on the second floor. “You are of no consequence to me.”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
“I am your lord and master.”

“That Russian's a dick.” At the last minute, Billy decided to veer off a straight line headed towards the archway, and was glad he did as one of the butlers took a dive for him. Billy heard bones break when he hit, but he was a fatty, and that had absorbed most of the fall. Billy dodged a hungry swipe and flew under the archway and out of zombie-bombardier range for the moment.

He jumped off his board and grabbed it. He peered around the entryway to the service stairs; they were thankfully clear. Billy made his way into the kitchen. He ran past all the glass doors of refrigerated goods and his stomach was rumbling for a sammich — but stopping to make one now is what got stupid people killed in monster movies. Well, that and making out with girls.

“Girls are nothing but bad news.” Billy made a vow that after the girl from the baseball field, and all the vampires, and now Dr. Luna's sweetheart with the zombie-rot, that he was officially done with girls. “Lone wolf, baby.”

Billy ran through the dining room. He could hear more gunfire, and the murmuring chant of the living dead got louder and more menacing all the time. Billy was running out of options, and he was running out of house as he ran into the sunroom.

All glass and again balconies to the second floor, the vast atrium and plant room was an indoor breakfast favorite of his mother's when the weather wasn't cooperative. Billy looked out all those windows at the grounds beyond. He didn't waste any time grabbing an indoor metal patio chair and flinging it with all his might against
one of the forty foot windows. Billy kicked himself to a stop as he watched the chair fly through the air and impact the glass — and then, sadly, bounce off to crash down to the floor.

“If I ever get out of this house…”

Billy didn't have time to finish his vow. The zombies were filling the hallways behind him. Soon the enclosed iron and glass room would be overrun, and the moon and stars which looked down through the glass roof would watch him get ripped to shreds and his brain be some snooty butler's midnight snack.

Zombies swarmed into the room, arms outstretched and mouths agape. The household staff had gotten really ugly really quick. Some of them weren't even in one piece and were dragging themselves into the room. Others were a lot more spry and motivated, climbing over the slower ones to get at Billy first. Torn, ragged, nothing but hungry mouths and blood and leaking black goo. Now he understood why he and Pop hadn't had a maid.

“Pop.” Billy said his name and he wished as hard as he could wish that Pop was there — but he wasn't. Billy felt really sad suddenly that he'd never see Pop again, but he was happy that the old man wouldn't have to see his boy go out like this. “I tried my best, Pop. There was just too damn many of them.”

The zombies were closing in now. All that was left between them and Billy was the breakfast table, and they'd crawl over and dance around that thing like hookers to a jukebox. The boy could feel the seconds of his life ticking away. He could truly say that aside from not getting to say goodbye to Pop, he didn't have any regrets.

“I was as badass as a badass could be.” The only thing that'd make right now any better is if he'd have been sitting on a keg of TNT and had a book of matches. “That'd be an awesome way to go out. It'd look like Drunk Joe's meat market in here.”

There was the loudest ping noise imaginable — high-pitched and unyielding — like a tuning fork. Billy covered his ears and every zombie in the place froze and turned from Billy and towards the noise. Billy's mother and Broom stood on the balcony above. Emelia Purgatory held in her hands a golden sword, which she had slammed hard into the balcony railing.

Billy watched her hold the sword in her hands and could barely make out the blade — it vibrated at such a high frequency. The zombies were entranced and slowly began to shuffle in the direction of the balcony, away from young Billy.

“Mom!” Billy had almost been afraid to speak, that he'd turn the horde back to his direction if he did — but he yelled to his mother just the same. “Throw me the key and let me get out of this place. They want to eat me.”

Emelia and Broom both got a chuckle out of Billy using the word
key
. “I'm sorry, darling. Their fascination with the blade is unfortunately temporary. It won't last near long enough for you to escape.”

“Throw me a rope or something then. When they turn back around…”

“It'll be messy, yes. But we do thank you for herding them all into one place. It will make the clean-up much more efficient.”

“I'm your son. Why won't you help me?”

“My son is in boarding school in Switzerland. Although you are his near spitting image, aside from that horrendous scar down your face, you are nowhere near the boy he is — nor can you even fathom the man he is to become.”

“But I'm Billy Purgatory!”

“You are
a
Billy Purgatory, but you are not
my
Billy Purgatory — or William, as he is properly known. We don't go for backwoods abominations of given names atop this hill.”

Billy couldn't wrap his ten-year-old brain, thankfully currently still in his skull, around her words. But he tried. “So, there's more than one of me as a kid? Kinda like my old-dude double you shot in the neck?”

“He is you, just older, and will prove more useful to us in learning what we can pillage and rape from that fresh reality of yours than a hundred doctors doing research like Luna. I don't know exactly where you came from yet, or what it will ultimately mean for The Five, but I do know that you and that older version of you stumbled into the wrong reality.”

Billy was again backing towards the glass. “Reality sucks ass.”

Emelia pressed her vibrating sword against the balcony rail, and it stopped its motion and sound. Billy watched as the zombies left
their confusion, and they all turned. Billy meant to give one last defiant look up at the woman who had pretended to be his mother before he was overrun — but what he focused on atop the balcony was the older version of himself coming into view. Older Billy was at full run and he slammed into Broom, running up the Russian's back and then leaping off the balcony and into the air. The force of older Billy's actions was more than enough to send Broom careening over the balcony and falling helplessly to land right in the center of the zombie mob. Having fresh meat dropped amongst them turned all mouths towards the Russian in their midst.

“Broom!” Emelia screamed it in a shrill rage. Billy's older self was flying through the air towards Billy.

The combat armor vest that Older Billy wore had glowing, blinking lights attached to it. Cables, wires, and contraptions that could have only come from Dr. Luna.

“Hold up your board, kid!”

Billy didn't take time to think as he watched the zombies tear Broom into pieces and blood fly up out of the center of the swarm.

Billy held up his board as far as his arms would stretch.

Older Billy dive-bombed towards his younger self and pressed some switch that was taped into his hand. Once again, the hairs on the back of Billy's neck stood on end, and he heard the whirr of the energy crank up and flow into the room. The machinery taped to the flying older version of Billy Purgatory lit up with that blue glow.

Billy Purgatory was seconds from breaking every bone in his body if he slammed into the tile floor of the darkened sunroom — but the machine fired off and he was able to grab the outstretched skateboard that his younger self held aloft below.

The energy overtook them both, and they left the world of locked doors and hidden secrets.

~6~

A
NASTASIA
AND
THE
S
ALTON
S
EA

“THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE DEAD.” That was her only thought as she sank into nothing. The salt burned every taste bud, then filled her lungs. “I am no more.”

The stories her people told were true. It is very dark when you die. It is so cold and you're so numb that you can't even shiver. There was no convulsion, no death rattle declaration — only falling.

There were no tears of remorse — she felt none. She felt nothing at all.

She let loose one laugh in the dark — one last emotion not yet spent. She laughed because she knew that the stories the humans told had been wrong after all.

There was no light welcoming her anywhere.

There was no light to welcome anyone anywhere.

“Or maybe it's just me,” she thought. “Maybe they just turned the lights out for me.”

Wrapped tightly in the funerary offerings of liquid death, with no grave marker to announce her final repose to the world, she considered only the blood trail that had led to this tomb. How many of them had she taken thick essence from so that the muscle and skin could remain upon undead bones? How many smiles had she stolen from them with no thought of their final pain? Even now, she felt no
shame for any of it. It was a math problem, something to keep her brain occupied as her mind grew frail and slow.