The Color of Fear (27 page)

The abominable bat had bitten her when it swooped by.

The scepter rose again as the queen shouted, “It’s done!”

A hot, electrostatic buzz shivered through Caitlin’s body. Her eyes swam with bright-red tears. Red berry juice leaked from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks like running mascara. The hardened clay over Caitlin’s body broke apart, shattered into a million soft, powdery flakes, and fell clean off her body. She felt vulnerable. Defenseless. Naked. Her eyeballs began to glow hot pink. Her warm, flesh-toned skin began to cool and decolorize.

Still clutching the queen’s hand and scepter, Caitlin body-slammed her hard. She followed that punishing body-check with another and another, all the while battling to pry the queen’s waxen fingers from the shaft.

She slammed the queen one more time with her full weight, putting extra hip force into the wallop.

The queen’s grip broke for a split second, and she briefly lost hold of the scepter.

Caitlin snatched it.

She took three running steps and leaped off the stage. She landed upright on the dance floor, scepter in hand. Caitlin clutched the scepter firmly, but delicately.

Now what do I do with it?

The queen fell to her knees, writhing about and screaming.

Caitlin had to help Natalie first. She breathed hard as she scanned the hall. The little zombie chili pepper was still dancing, eyes closed, on the platform.

In one swift move, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White swooped in and hoisted Natalie by her underarms.

Thank God!

The Queen of Hearts found her footing on the stage, assisted by the three members of the zombie pirate band—Blackbeard, Captain Hook, and Long John Silver.

The queen’s arms flailed in anger. She pointed in Caitlin’s general direction. “Off with her head! And bring it back on a platter—along with the scepter!”

The words paralyzed Caitlin.

Blackbeard and Long John drew black daggers. Captain Hook unveiled a polished silver scythe that had been affixed to his left arm. The gleam in their eyes told her that they were intent on cold-blooded butchery. Torchlight glimmered off their blades.

“Cut her down by the legs!” the queen called out to Blackbeard and Long John. “And you, Hook, you take her head.”

Caitlin looked up, her eyes like searchlights. Rapunzel and Cindy stood high up on some wooden scaffolding above the stage. Rapunzel was anchoring a long braid of hair to a rafter.

Blackbeard cocked his arm, taking aim.

Caitlin turned and ran.

The pirate flung his dagger. It sliced through the air.

Swoosh.

A stabbing pain shot through Caitlin’s body.

She wailed.

Then she collapsed on the dance floor.

Silent and motionless.

Caitlin’s breath came in
gasps as she lay facedown, immobile on the ballroom floor. The pain was coming from her right thigh. She rolled slowly and gently onto her left side, wincing from the pain but keeping that scepter tightly gripped in her hand.

She snuck a glance back.

Captain Hook was cleaning his curved blade with a hanky while nodding to Long John Silver.

The peg-legged swashbuckler raised his dagger.

Aimed it—right at Caitlin!

She knew this was going to be a slaughter.

“Hurry,” Rapunzel shrieked at Cinderella. Cindy then leaped from the rafters, swinging on a braided vine like a flying trapeze artist.

She kicked the black dagger from the pirate’s hand as she swung by. Then she walloped each buccaneer in the head with her heel as she swung back, knocking them cold.

Caitlin exhaled in relief.

Rapunzel slid down from the rafters and dashed toward her.

Cindy released her hold on the braid and dropped to the stage. There was cold steel in her eyes.

She leaned over the pirates, examining each one to make sure he was out. Blackbeard seized her by the ankle as she stood next to him.

“That foot is spoken for,” Cinderella said, firing a pulverizing front kick to his ugly, scarred face.

Lights out.

The clawed paw from a snarling zombie cat snatched Cinderella by her other foot. The feline twisted it hard, and Cindy winced as she fell on her back.

Three gruesome pigs dove in, their pale hooves clawing into Cinderella’s flesh. She shook them off. With her free leg, she delivered another walloping roundhouse kick to the side of the first pig. “Get back, Baby Back!”

Whuuummppp!

She slammed the second pig’s head sideways with a crushing crescent kick. Sweat, saliva, and zombie slop sprayed in all directions.

The third pig leaped onto her leg and clung tight.

Cinderella delivered a backhand and shook the sow loose.

She took a step back and wound up.

Two rapid-fire hammer kicks slammed the sow’s head right and left!

Another splatter of zombie slop gushed out. The ghastly pig was out cold.

Rapunzel reached Caitlin.

“There’s a dagger in my leg,” Caitlin said.

“Don’t move.” Rapunzel replied.

Rapunzel inspected the wound.

“Good news—the blade entered cleanly. No blood to attract these cannibals. Bad news—when I pull the bloody blade out, you’ll be live bait. We’ll have to run. You strong enough?”

Caitlin tilted her head toward Rapunzel.

“I think so. I’m a fast limper.”

Rapunzel gently patted her on the head. “That’s my girl.”

With a delicate touch, she began to slide the knife smoothly out of Caitlin’s leg.

Caitlin winced at the sound of wet suction and slurp. Then it was out.

The blade dripped human blood. Fifteen hundred zombies jerked their heads, sniffing the fresh
food
like savage hounds. They drooled.

Rapunzel stood. She climbed on top of a table. Then she flung the bloody dagger far across the ballroom, over the heads of the crowd, and onto the stage. A mass of grunting ghouls began moving in that direction.

Rapunzel tore a long strip from a white tablecloth and knelt down by Caitlin.

“I bought us about twenty seconds. Hold still.”

She ripped a hole in Caitlin’s jeans, exposing a deep gash. She wrapped a bandage tight around the leg.

“You okay?”

Caitlin nodded. Rapunzel helped her to her feet.

“How do you feel?”

“Dizzy. But not weak.”

“Pays to have a bit of zombie in the bloodstream.”

Caitlin lifted her eyes toward the stage. “Look!”

The Queen of Hearts was back on her feet, her face red and hard.

“This isn’t over!” she shouted.

Cinderella got in the queen’s face. “Pity the fool who tries to stand in our way.”

Cinderella then did a double reverse flip, landed on her feet, and somersaulted off the stage. She plowed through the incoming crowd of zombies still searching for the bloodied dagger.

Caitlin examined her forearms and hands while she held the scepter. Her skin had bled white. Hairline fractures were forming on her flesh.

“I need a blood transfusion!” Caitlin pleaded.

Rapunzel sighed. “Too late. For all of us. The queen raised the scepter. The Green Spectrum is dying.”

“But it’s not dead yet!” Caitlin cried out. “Amethyst said we have till sunrise.”

Rapunzel’s right eyebrow sharpened. She picked a cocktail fork off a table. She pricked the tip of her thumb, drawing blood. Caitlin took the fork and did the same.

They swabbed bloody thumbs. Rapunzel said, “Blood sisters.”

The Queen of Hearts bellowed with an operatic shrill, “Trance interruptus!”

Fifteen hundred ruby-eyed zombies froze.

“After them!”

Fifteen hundred heads swiveled in Caitlin’s direction. All eyes burned fire. Not one, not two … but every single ghoul in the ballroom lunged at once.

“Run, Caitlin!” Rapunzel screamed. “Run!”

Caitlin’s legs pumped with
fury as she rocketed toward the exit. She glanced up at a corner of the ceiling.

One, two, thr—forget it!

She rocketed out of the ballroom, racing to stay ahead of the undead. The girls followed close behind, restraining the struggling Natalie as they fled.

The chili pepper faced backward. Snow and Beauty immobilized her arms and sandwiched her thrashing torso between theirs. They held her off the ground as her legs kicked wildly.

Their footsteps echoed with each slap on the stone floor as they hustled down the corridor.

Seven filthy zombie dwarfs were already after them. Along with a bloodthirsty Hansel and a ghoulish Gretel. Belle was right behind. She let out an ear-piercing war cry.

“Oooh-owowowow!”

Caitlin ignored the scream as she scrambled full throttle, like a young doe fleeing a hungry lion.

“We need to get out of this castle, fast.”

“But how?” Snow asked, panting. “There’s a ghoul guarding every exit.”

“We need to surprise them,” Rapunzel said.

“I have an idea!” Caitlin shouted. “When we reach the door, bend over. Ready … ”

The guard was poised. He held his staff crossed over the doorway, barring their exit. The girls reached the threshold.

“Now!” Caitlin screamed.

They crouched and bent forward, sending the maniacally kicking legs of the flailing Natalie into the guard’s jaw and knocking him out cold.

They exploded out the castle door and fled into the moonless night. The air was thick and humid. Low-hanging black clouds looked like clumps of black coal set against a dark, deep-purple sky.

Cawing crows dipped beneath the cloud cover, giving chase like feathered beasts from hell. Then the clouds began to release black rain.

“Careful you don’t slip,” Rapunzel warned as they hightailed it across the wet rear lawn.

Rapunzel turned to Natalie and then back to Caitlin. “We must get you and Natalie home before sunrise.”

“Unless we can shut down the scepter,” Beauty shouted from the rear.

Caitlin had no clue how to do that, and they had no time to stop and figure it out.

They raced across the rotted lawn. It dead-ended at a wide, ominous-looking maze of tall, dark-green hedges encrusted with moldy leaves. They rose twelve feet high above the mud-soaked ground.

“We can’t go in there!” Beauty shouted, blinking hard as raindrops splashed her eyes.

Cindy threw up her hands. “The maze is too wide to go around.”

The drum of galloping feet grew louder.

“There has to be a way out on the other side,” Rapunzel said.

“Yeah, but we might get stuck in that snarl for hours—maybe days,” Beauty cried. “Caitlin and Natalie will miss the portal.”

The relentless cadence of running feet drew closer.

Caitlin’s expression hardened. She wiped rain from her face with a forearm. “No choice. Let’s go.”

She ducked into the maze. The rest followed.

“Hang on tight to that scepter,” Rapunzel warned. They glided around a corner, hydroplaning on the mud as they raced into the complex tangle of hedges.

“Oh my goodness,” said Snow, “it’s not what I expected.”

Cindy’s eyes sprung wide open.

This was no ordinary maze. It appeared to be some sort of bizarre … closet?
The queen’s closet?

“She’s a borderline loon,” Cindy said. “And quite the hoarder.”

Along the insides of the hedges hung closet bars five rods high, overflowing with gowns, shirts, skirts, pants, blouses, coats, and capes. Packed boxes and trunks stuffed with all kinds of merchandise lined the dirt at ground level.

“That loon looted the Kingdom,” Rapunzel said.

Snow White placed her hand on the nearest hedge and closed her eyes, concentrating. “We should head south. It’s our best way out of here.”

They veered around a sharp bend, and found themselves surrounded by twelve-foot-high shelves. The shelves were stocked with a selection of hats and handbags—enough to fill the best Parisian department store.

Natalie squirmed to break free. She kept screaming one word over and over again: “Hungry!”

Caitlin felt a twinge in her heart. She missed Girl Wonder’s copious vocabulary.

The girls banked another corner.

They ran flat into a wall of shoes that climbed up to the sky. There were purple, pointy princess heels; raw-silk pumps; leopard-print wooden mules; gold ballet flats; pointe shoes; black, strappy sandals; ankle-strap, six-inch wedges; snakeskin stilettos; velvet-bowed peep-toes; corkies; and even flip-flops.