The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (25 page)

Where’s Rowdy Roddy Piper when you need him
? I think, and then run from the box.

Back in the hall, Willem stands at the far end by the door, holding it open. “C’mon,” he shouts. His eyes go wide. “Hurry!”

I can hear them before I see them. The rumble of three hundred small feet grows loud behind me. I glance back when I reach the door and see a writhing wall of child-size Draugar closing the distance. Willem slams the door closed behind us, and Jakob is already waiting with one of the brass poles used to hold the velvet cord. He slides it through the door handles, just as the horde pushes on the other side. The doors flex and creak, but hold. Had the mob been adult Draugar, the result might have been different.

We’ve turned to flee down the hall when a new sound pricks my ears. It’s barely discernible above the pounding on the door—the electric whir of a motorized cart.

Talbot’s mission of revenge ended in failure.

Chunka Love is back.

T
he motorized cart slides into view at the end of the hall. It’s black and expensive looking, though the front is marred by blood and chunks of dried flesh—probably from plowing through corpses littering the floor. Not that we’ve seen any bodies, but they’re here somewhere. The whirring engine sounds strained, like it’s been worked too hard, too long.

Please let the battery die
, I think, but then I realize she’s blocking our path.

The doors behind us shake violently, but the improvised lock holds.

When the woman comes fully into view, my stomach knots. Her heavily made-up face and blond handlebars were bad enough. But she’s completed the look by wearing a tight pair of hot pink short shorts that show off her cottage-cheesy, spider-veined legs. But the shorts are almost completely hidden by her unbridled belly, which hangs down from the bottom of a too-tight T-shirt like a loose curtain of skin. In fact, the skin is so loose that I suspect she’s been using her belly fat to hock up parasite bombs like the one that got Talbot.

For a moment, I wonder why the parasites would alter a human being in such a way, but then realize that not one of us has moved an inch since she blocked our path. Shock is the secret to her success.

Beep, beep, beep.
The electric cart chimes as the Draugr-woman completes a three-point turn so that she’s facing us.

When I see her neck bulging, I snap out of my trance. “Look out!” I shout, shoving my three compatriots through the open door to our right.

I hear a hocking pop and then a wet thud. I jump at the sound and spin around. A large blob of what looks like Crisco mixed with ketchup and maggots slowly slides down the glass of the ticket booth. I can barely see the fat lady beyond, but she’s growing larger.

Not larger. Closer.

The whir of her electric cart is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Stand back,” Jakob says. He steps out into the hall and fires off four shotgun rounds. Sparks spray as many of the pellets ricochet off the cart. Gore splatters against the hallway walls as the body is shredded.

I peek out into the hall as the smoke from Jakob’s barrage clears. For a moment, I think he’s managed to actually take the Draugr’s head clean off. A wet hacking says otherwise. The head isn’t missing, it’s tilted back, protected by the thing’s girth.

Jakob pumps the shotgun, preparing to fire his last two rounds, but I grab his arm and yank him back inside the ticket booth. The Draugr’s head springs up and fires a fatty wad, which sails just past Jakob’s head and strikes the locked double doors. The wet splat against the doors seems to enrage the horde of tiny Draugar on the other side.

She’s not trying to kill us
, I realize.
She’s just slowing us down.

The doors shake loudly, and I chance a look. The wad struck the pole, tilting it slightly and coating it with slick fat. As the door shakes, I see the pole shift.

Jakob was never her target.

The throaty gurgle repeats as the Draugr prepares to catapult a fresh wad of raw nastiness.

“We need to stop it,” I say. “Before it opens the door.”

“How?” Steven asks. “He just shot the shit out of it and only managed to spring a few leaks.”

A wet pop signifies the firing of a projectile. It slams against the door with a rattle of metal. I expect the doors to swing open and the ticket booth to swarm with pint-size Draugar, but the woman starts hocking up fat.

I look at her through the glass. Her stomach convulses in waves as the loose material is gathered from her prodigious reserve and moved into her sack-like under-chin.

“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” I say. I step up to the door, tense as I prepare to spring into action.

“Jane…” Willem says with growing concern.

Jakob mimics his son’s tone, saying, “Raven…”

I ignore them and glance through the window one more time. She’s just ten feet from the booth but still focused on the door. If she hits it just one more time, we might all be screwed. I’m determined to not let that happen. It’s going to take a sacrifice, though.

The pouch of flesh beneath her chin goes suddenly taut like a bullfrog’s vocal sac as it fills with liquid fat.
Any second now.
I pull the hood of my cloak up over my head.

The Draugr cocks its head back slightly. Its jaw drops open. The neck flexes.

Here it comes!

I leap into the hallway, turn my back to the Draugr, and flare open my cloak, filling the hallway with a black shroud. I catch a glimpse of the double doors, which are still shaking.
The pole holding them shut is about to slide free. “The doors!” I shout.

I cringe as a fleshy
pop
fills the hall. The impact nearly knocks me over, but Jakob catches me. Willem runs out behind him and heads for the door. He pushes the post back in place with his foot. The fat- and parasite-covered metal is too dangerous to touch with a bare hand.

After freeing the button on my cloak, I let it fall to the floor. It drops fast, pulled down by the weight of the fat now clinging to it.

When the hocking sound begins anew, I turn to face the Draugr. The waves of flesh undulate over her body even faster than before. She knows what’s coming. The collective knows what’s coming. It’s not the first time we’ve done this dance.

I reach back and take hold of the samurai sword’s handle. The metallic
zing
of the blade sliding free of the scabbard drowns out the banging on the doors and the hocking Draugr. The sound focuses me.

Gripping the handle with two hands, I raise the blade to the right of my head. I cover the distance between me and the obese Draugr in three strides. With a quick horizontal swipe of the
katana
, I slit the expanding sac lengthwise. Chunky lard, full of clam-like globs, slides out of the sliced flesh and fills the air with a scent something like dead fish and skunk ass. It looks like someone cut open a really big, spoiled crab rangoon and squeezed out the filling.

With its only weapon disabled, the Draugr’s chubby digits work the cart’s tiny joystick.
Beep, beep, beep.
I have no trouble keeping pace. She stops when I lower the sword tip in front of her face.

Knowing the Queen can see and hear me through this woman, I meet her parasite-filled eyes and say, “Every last one of you.”

A quick jab puts the woman out of her misery and seals the fate of the several thousand parasites occupying her body.

The banging on the door stops just long enough for me to hear Diane screaming in anger, her voice echoing in the showroom beyond the double doors.

While I wipe my blade off on the clean side of my discarded cloak, Willem hops away from the doors. The pole is back in place. “I’m not sure how long that will hold,” he says. “It’s pretty slick.” He gets a look at the now-dead Draugr and scowls.

We faced an oversize Draugr once before. There was no fat left on his formerly obese body, but after a long soak in the ocean, his folds of loose skin became supple once more…just before peeling free of his body and covering me like a blanket. “Remind you of Captain Loose Skin, too?”

He nods. “I wonder if he used the same technique on our ancestors.”

“A mystery to be solved hopefully never,” I say before working my way around the portly corpse. When we’re all in the clear, I turn to Steven. “Which way?”

He looks shaken. I’m sure he’s about to marvel at our blasé response to dispatching this hideous woman, so I take his arm with my left hand and squeeze. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t clapped.”

“I thought they were—”

“I don’t give a damn what you thought,” I say. “From now on, if you want to live through this, you don’t think. You just do what we tell you. Agreed?”

“Yeah. S-sure.”

“Now,” I say, “Which way?”

For a second I’m afraid I’m going to have to remind him where we’re going, but then he points to the right and says, “We can reach the duty-free shops this way. Go through the employee entrance.
But if they know the ship as good as the people they’ve…possessed, then they could already be there.”

I’d really rather not face down a Draugar horde, but I say, “That’s a chance we’re going to have to take. Just try not to break into a dance routine or flag down any friends.”

He looks down at his feet for a moment. If he’s crying, I swear I’m going to nut-shot him and find my own way. But then he catches me off guard by saying, “Thanks. For everything. I’d be dead several times over by now if it wasn’t for you.”

I appreciate the gesture, but this isn’t the time for a Dr. Phil breakthrough. “Glad you’ve had an epiphany, but I’d like to not be here when the man-eating children break through those doors, so get a move on, Strawberry Shortcake.”

With a sheepish smile, Steven leads us to the duty-free shops.

W
e’re here,” Steven says, stopping by a door that’s labeled “Employees Only,” which seems like a no-brainer because the entrance to this hallway had a similar label. “This is one of four duty-free shops. It’s connected to one of the others, which is close to the main atrium. That’s the way we want to go.”

When we respond with silence, he grows nervous and says, “You’re going first, right?”

I step up to the door with a sigh. “We need to have a chat about chivalry.”

“We are being chivalrous,” Willem says with a slight grin. “Ladies first.”

After giving him a well-deserved middle finger, I lean into the door’s push handle and open it slowly. The door is well oiled and doesn’t make a sound. With just enough room to fit my head through, I take a look. The duty-free shop is a well-designed space with lots of curved walls and oval compartments, each of which displays a different type of product. There are necklaces, sunglasses, perfumes, soaps, and hats—all brand-name, all costing a small fortune. The ceiling is a series of square mirrors that reflect the gleaming hardwood floor and splotches of light provided by ample recessed bulbs. But the most wonderful sight inside the duty-free shop? It’s completely devoid of Draugar.

I step inside and motion for the others to follow. I haven’t seen the entire shop, so I place a finger to my lips, indicating the need for stealth, which really goes without saying at this point. But you never know when fancy-pants Steven will decide to announce our presence. If there’s a surprise in the next room, I want to see it first.

While tiptoeing to the break between sections, I catch the scent of something foul. It’s nothing compared to the stench wafting off the obese Draugr woman, but it smells worse than the unwashed hippies I worked alongside on the
Sentinel
, and that’s no small feat. I hold out my hand to the others. The effect is like a Gorgon’s stare. Willem, Jakob, and Steven freeze in place, spread out in a single-file line.

I slide up to the entryway and slowly poke my head around the door frame. The next room is full of designer clothing hanging on racks. Looking out over the space, I can’t see a thing, but the eau de death persists. Motion catches my attention, but not from ahead.

It’s above.

I look up and see it. A lone Draugr. It stands on the far side of a clothing rack, shifting back and forth. Its small stature makes me think it’s one of the children, but then I see the gray, wispy hair and age spots pocking the scalp beneath. It’s an old man.

Beyond him I can see the wide-open hallway that leads to the atrium. Despite there being a Draugr waiting in the other room, his appearance doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the otherwise complete lack of undead.
Where the hell is everyone?
I find it hard to believe that with three thousand people available, this entire ship wouldn’t be swarming with savages seeking us out.

But all is quiet, and the only Draugr standing watch over the area leading to the showroom is Grandpa Munster. Sure, he’s got a shield of children to protect him, but—

A pattern emerges.

The young and weak.

The old and frail.

The obese and incapable.

The severely wounded.

These are the Draugar we’ve encountered thus far. Why? Are they protecting the more healthy and uninjured people for some reason?

And because our path isn’t blocked by a horde of children or undead geriatrics, I think it’s safe to assume that their endgame is still a mystery. They might even be reining in their defenses to protect the Queen in the showroom. Most of what I said about killing the Queen and crushing her wormy body was misdirection. As much as I’d like it dead, I have no desire to see another Queen, nor touch it with my bare hands, let alone squeeze out its guts.

The problem is that if this old codger, or any other Draugr, sees us heading in the opposite direction, the jig will be up. And that leads to two questions. First, can I kill him without being seen? Second, does killing the human host sever the link to the hive mind, or will the parasites still be able to see us and transmit that information to the others?

I suspect that mammalian minds work like some kind of signal booster. If I’m right, severing the connection should leave the Draugar blind to what we’re doing. But I also think the sudden silence of the hundreds of parasites populating the man’s body won’t go unnoticed. If they’re as smart as I think they are, others will come to inspect. Maybe even send in the cavalry.