Part 49 (1/2)

”What?”

”That's how I get back man,” Death said plainly. ”That's how I leave this place. I do myself. Course, I can't do myself now, seeing as I'm the most f.u.c.ked up I've evah been. The car crash would've done the trick, but I wasn't ready to leave then.”

”Why not?” Tony demanded.

”I just wasn't ready.”

”And now?”

”Pain is too close.” Death explained. ”He knows I'm around here. Too many of us special folk in the area. You can bet that c.o.c.ksucker is just waiting for the next vibe of agony, so he can zero in and kick the living s.h.i.+t out of me. And it'll happen when this spinal s.h.i.+t wears off. f.u.c.k that. Time to go. I had my days in the sun.”

Death looked Tony straight in the eye. ”Give me the morphine.”

The request made Tony hesitate. ”Morphine?”

”Yeah, the morphine you got. You think I forgot or something?”

Again Tony hesitated. Then, he reached into his pocket and felt the injectors he had retrieved from the car trunk so long ago. There were six of them. He pulled them out and slowly handed them over. Death took them one by one. He gave Tony an approving nod. He plucked the plastic tops off of the autoinjectors and studied the needles. Nodding to himself, Death wasted no time in placing one to his neck. He placed a thumb on the end, ready to deliver the load, and then took a breath.

”Wait,” Tony said.

Death looked up at him.

”I mean, that's it?” Tony grated. ”I travel warp speed across the country to backwater BC to find you-which I do-and then get to watch you shoot up?”

Death made a face. ”You wanted me to go back, right? I'm convinced. If Pain gets his hands on me, he won't let me die. He'll just keep right on torturing me for all f.u.c.king eternity. And if I'm in f.u.c.king limbo, where does that put the human race? All the bad parts of the Bible. And probably worse.” He regarded them all. ”Well, that's it then. It's been real people, and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun.”

With that, he jammed the autoinjector into his jugular.

He grimaced for a moment and held the injector in place while the load of morphine was delivered. When it was done, he dropped it to the floor and readied the second one. ”What?” Death fired at them. ”Never seen someone overdose before?”

”Not on purpose,” Crew commented quietly.

Death injected number two, and held it there for a moment. He sighed and smiled. ”Well, you're in for a treat, buddy. You're going to see a lot more before I'm done here.”

Then, the cabin shook in fury.

It was a loud collective slap, as if four separate waves had clapped the walls of the dwelling at once, and it was frightful enough to make all within jump, with the exception of Fear. The weathered planks covering the breaches made by the attack earlier began to buckle inwards. Wood splintered loudly. Sounds of the dead permeated the interior. The Stickman pressed himself in a corner, eyes wide with fright. Danny and Crew fell back towards the kitchen to where Tony and Lucy stood. All of them looked to the door. Something was pressing very hard up against it.

”Keep those f.u.c.kers outta here!” Death wailed at them.

”Keep them out!” Tony screamed at the men. They all looked at him with eyes flooded with terror. Hands, black hands of the dead, seeped in underneath the wood nailed over the doors and windows. They turned like huge seeking worms, looking for purchase, clawing into the wood's surface.

A frantic Tony reached into his coat and withdrew the knives he had. He gathered up his hatchet and bat. He gave the three-inch Beretta knife to Danny, who took it but merely gazed at the horrors trying to enter the cabin. Tony gave Crew the military boot knife with the four-inch blade. He moved and shoved the baseball bat into the Stickman's hands. ”Stay in the middle!” Tony shouted at Lucy. Her beautiful face looked petrified. Tony mentally vowed to let nothing happen to her while he drew breath.

He flew at the door and hacked away a hand with one chop of his hatchet. He placed his shoulder against the bulging wood and heaved back. Another hand sought to grab his shoulder. Tony twisted away and chopped. Fingers fell to the floor. Another hand burst through the wood in an explosion of shards and splinters, and clawed for his face. He caught the wrist and cut through it with one swipe of the hatchet.

Then, he looked back.

The others were frozen.

”f.u.c.king move!” Tony screamed at them. But he could see they could not. Their fear was too great. The Stickman had wormed himself as far into his corner as he could, bat clutched before him. Danny and Crew crouched, looking everywhere at once, and doing nothing. They were rooted in place by the sudden ferocity of the undead's attack. Over their shoulders, Tony saw the wood covering the window in the kitchen burst apart, and a dark writhing ma.s.s of bodies began to ooze through. At the door, he felt the planks crack and bulge from the pressure building outside. An icy blast of wind blew through the house.

And Fear stepped up.

Tony saw him-saw f.u.c.khead Freddietake a quick look around at the situation and then focused on the men in the room. Almost instantly, Tony saw their expressions of fright melt away. Incredibly, he felt the same way, and he quickly looked upon Fear with an expression of wonder and understanding. Perhaps that was why Time insisted Fear come along in the first place. For so long, Tony thought of the thing called Freddy as something evil, but now he saw Time's wisdom in including him in the hunt for Death. Only now did Tony understand when it was most important and needed.

For not only could Fear inflict his nature with but a thought...

He could also take it away.

Whatever terror, dread or panic the men felt suddenly disappeared and left them blinking, wondering pointedly what just happened?

It was Crew who moved first. He bolted for the breach in the kitchen, grabbing a zombie halfway through the window by its rotting head and twisting it clear off its shoulders. The corpse shuddered, and its upper torso fell into the sink while its lower half remained outside. But Crew did not stop there. He grabbed limbs where they snaked in and broke them with such savagery that Tony could only stare at the man's single-handed butchery of the dead.

”Holy f.u.c.k,” he breathed as he watched Crew halt the dead from coming into the kitchen.

Danny also moved. The big man rushed to the windows in the front of the cabin and began stabbing and slas.h.i.+ng at the limbs attempting to break through.

The Stickman bounded past him, bat raised and crying out at a stunned Tony ”'Old on, me son, 'old on!” He smashed in the face and skull of one zombie just above Tony's head. He fought with the fury of a man without a drop of fear. Tony's own adrenalin rushed in then, and he lifted his hatchet to swing.

And the battle for the cabin began in earnest.

Injecting morphine shot number four, Death watched it all go down with a s.p.a.ced out smile on his features. Everything seemed to move in super slow motion. What was it they called it in The Matrix? He remembered then. Bullet time.

In the kitchen, Crew fought with a terrible energy that actually pushed the tide of zombies back. He felt no fear whatsoever, and what remained was an overwhelming desire to kill the should-be-dead. He was a rock in a river, and any corpse that sought to pa.s.s had their limbs twisted and broken or, much to Crew's surprise, simply ripped free. He removed the heads of five of the dead, the heads falling to the kitchen floor like stringy black coconuts. He punched when he could and used the military knife in an underhanded fas.h.i.+on. He slashed the fingers off one seeking arm, and when it did not retreat, he drove the blade through the rotten skull of the owner.

That seemed to be the last.

When he was done, he stepped back and surveyed the area. h.e.l.l's kitchen, he thought with dark humour, witnessing the ma.s.s of ownerless limbs, black blood and fingers splashed all over.

At the front of the cabin, Tony, Danny and the Stickman fought with a calmness that could only be matched by the best locally-grown pot. They placed their shoulders to the splitting timbers, and as limbs came through, they held and cut, dropping the limbs in seconds. They held the attack back before Tony jerked his head up and looked over the Stickman's grimacing face.

”Danny, get to the washroom!”

”Why?”

”They can get in there!”

”s.h.i.+t,” the giant hissed. He broke away from the door and window, and headed for the john.

”Just ye and I now, me son,” the Stickman smiled at Tony.

He did not smile back.

Two powerful frost bitten arms smashed through the planks and grabbed a hold of the wood before either man could react. Black fingers gouged wood, making it squeal. The arms pulled backwards, and a huge hole cracked open in the front window. Dark bodies pushed forward, moaning as they came on. Tony chopped with his hatchet, taking one zombie between its unseeing eyes and splitting open its skull. The thing fell back to be replaced by two more. The Stickman threw down his bat. He grabbed and broke three of the arms in a matter of seconds while Tony dealt with more clutching hands. They fought side by side, fuelled by adrenalin, and in perfect timing with each other. When one man stepped back, the other stepped in and held the line. If a stray hand sought to grab the man standing before the breach, the other would disable it by breaking it, severing it, or simply ripping the hand off its rotting wrist.