Acheron Highway: A Jonathan Shade Novel (8 page)

“Why not?”

“I worry that without a monitor I won’t be able to find my way back.”

“Interesting.”
 
I moved around to the driver’s side and opened the car door.

Walter tapped his hands on the passenger T-top.
 
“Before you go…”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t say anything during the session, but the Chinese woman and that big guy are both killers.”

I nodded.

“It’s all they are,” he said.

“It’s not
all
they are.”

“They have more death in their eyes than you do, and I can tell that you’ve taken lives before too.”

“It’s all right, Walter.
 
They’re on my side.”

“I hope so.”
 
He turned to go then looked back one more time.
 
“I wouldn’t want either one of them for an enemy.”

I hopped into my car thinking Walter was smarter than he looked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Miranda waited in the parking lot at my apartment complex.
 
When I pulled into a space and shut off the engine, she raced to the Firebird before I could even pull the keys out of the ignition.
 
I opened the door and climbed out.
 
A cold front was moving in; I could feel the temperature plummeting.
 
There were times when I hated Colorado.
 
Sure, there were days in December where the sun blazed in the sky and the weather remained in the sixties, but then there were the awful arctic snaps that chilled you to the bone and the weather could switch from one extreme to the next on any given day.
 
Variety may be the spice of life, but San Diego sounded great to me.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

“Did you learn anything?”

“Remote viewing is probably used to spy on women undressing.”

She gave me a confused look.

“Sort of astral projection.
 
Government program for psychic spies from the seventies?
 
Nothing?”

She shook her head.
 
“None of that means anything to me.”

“Did you see the movie
The Men Who Stare at Goats
?
 
George Clooney and Kevin Spacey?”

“I don’t watch movies.”

“I could never date you.”

“You haven’t asked me out yet, Jonathan.
 
I might say yes.”

“I don’t date dead girls who don’t watch movies.”

“Only dead girls who
do
watch movies.”

“Something like that.”

“Can I come inside?
 
It’s getting cold out here.”

I nodded.
 
If a dead girl noticed the cold, it was going to be bad.

As we walked toward my apartment, the motion detector light on the side of the building illuminated.
 
I glanced over and saw four men moving toward us.
 
Something about the way they moved told me they were coming for us.
 
Call it a
Spidey
sense if you want, but as soon as I saw them, I knew they meant to attack.
 
As they moved through the light, I saw that they were corpses.

“Shit.”
 
I pulled out my car keys and clicked off the alarm.
 
“Get in the car.”

“What’s going on?”

“Dead guys in party mode.”

She ran to the car.

“I have a sword in the backseat.
 
Hand it to me.”

“You’re so calm,” she said, her voice quaking.
 
No reaction to the sword, just that I seemed calm.
 
Like everyone keeps a sword in the car.
 
Weird chick.

“The sword?”

She dug in the backseat.
 
I took a few deep breaths and watched the dead guys get closer.
 
They weren’t in a big hurry.
 
I could probably hop in the car and drive away, but I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t attack other residents.
 
Miranda handed me the sword.
 
I pulled it out of the scabbard, which I handed back to her.
 
I stepped toward the dead guys.

“It’s past your grave time,” I said when they were ten feet away.

“Give her to us.”

“Sorry, she’s not into necrophilia.”
 
I knew they meant Sharon, but as Miranda was the only woman here, I figured I’d feign ignorance.

The dead guys kept coming, so I didn’t bother playing nice.
 
I swung the blade fast and strong and lopped off the first guy’s head.

I’d expected more resistance, but the blade chopped right through flesh and bone with no trouble at all.
 
I swung too far but recovered quickly and spun full circle, whipping the blade around to chop another dead guy in half.
 
The other two jumped back.

I decapitated a guy six months ago, but he was a magically engineered assassin and it took three swings to cut through his neck.
 
Without magic to reinforce them, the dead guys didn’t stand a chance against the sword.
 
I wondered about myself at this point.
 
Cutting off heads?
 
Multiple times in a year?
 
Shouldn’t that bother me on some level?

I brandished the blade and kept myself between the two corpses and the car while I considered that.

Nope.
 
Didn’t bother me.
 
I didn’t feel one way or the other about it, and that seemed strange.
 
I made a note to check my own pulse.
 
Maybe I, too, was dead and didn’t know it.
 
Well, as long as I wasn’t trapped in an M. Night
Shyamalan
movie, I couldn’t be doing too bad.
 
Right?

The corpse I’d cut in half kept crawling toward me.

“Really?” I said.

“We’re here for the woman.
 
Give her to us, and we’ll let you live.”

“That’s mighty considerate of you.”

“Give her up, Mr. Shade.”

“Dead guys shouldn’t talk.”
 
I let him crawl closer then chopped off his head.
 
That brought my lifetime total of decapitations to three, and still I felt nothing.
 
It bothered me about as much as zapping aliens in a video game.

I rushed toward the other two.
 
They split up, so I followed one of them.
 
He tried to dart behind a car.
 
I rolled over the hood to cut him off.
 
He tried to grab me, so I lopped off his arm.
 
Then I swung the blade and severed his head.

The last dead guy raced to my car.
 
I slid across the hood and kicked him in the chest.
 
He staggered backward, bounced off a Toyota, and before he could move again, I sliced off his head.

That was easy.
 
Lifetime beheadings now stood at five.
 
I checked my pulse: normal.
 
I shrugged, wiped the blade clean on the dead guy’s shirt, and turned back to the Firebird.

I opened the car door.
 
“You can go on up, and I’ll toss the pieces of these clowns into the Dumpster.”

Miranda shook her head.
 
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

She pointed.

I turned and saw twenty more corpses running toward us.

“Well, shit.
 
Maybe we should go someplace else.”
 
I slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
 
I tucked the sword between my seat and the center console.
 
As I threw the car into drive, two corpses jumped onto the hood.
 
Another tried to tug the door open, but I locked it.
 
He slammed his fist through the window, showering me with pieces of glass.

Miranda screamed.

I don’t know what she was worried about.
 
Technically she was already dead.
 
I was the only living person here.
 
I stomped on the accelerator and pulled away from the corpse as it tried to grab me through the window.
 
I practically stood on the brake pedal, and the two dead guys on the hood slid off.
 
I bounced over them only to see ten bodies blocking the exit.

“Hmm.”

I didn’t want to damage the car.
 
I know, it’s just a car, but I liked it and it had already cost me several thousand dollars in bodywork this year.
 
My bank account couldn’t take another hit like that.

Three bodies leaped onto the back of the car.
 
I shifted to reverse and gunned it.
 
I plowed into another body, sending it flying backward.
 
I spun the wheel and skidded over two more dead dudes.
 
The wheels slid and the car spun around, slamming into a Dodge pickup.
 
One of the dead men flew off the back of the Firebird into the bed of the pickup.

I glanced through the broken window and saw another thirty dead people racing toward us.

“Fasten your seat belt,” I said.

Miranda’s hands shook as she struggled with the belt.

“Sorry, baby,” I said to my car.
 
“This is going to hurt.”

I gunned the engine and raced straight at the line of dead people blocking the way to the exit.

The impact threw us forward against the restraints, but the car plowed right through the bodies.
 
Hands and legs pounded the hood and the roof.
 
Something hit the windshield, and the glass
spiderwebbed
.

One of the dead people bounced up onto the roof, and his feet hit the guy on the back of the car, but neither of them fell off.
 
The guy on the roof rammed an elbow against the driver’s side T-top and cracked it.
 
He hit it again and again until his elbow came through, then he grabbed hold and ripped off the T-top, breaking the locking mechanism.
 
He tossed it behind us, where it crashed on the road then skidded against the curb.

The guy on top tried to grab me, but I slammed on the brakes, and he flew off the car.
 
I ran over him with a satisfying
thunk
,
thunk
.

The corpse hanging onto the back of the car smashed out the back window and crawled inside.
 
In my mind, I saw dollar signs adding up the damage.
 
We had to get out of here.

The car bolted toward the exit, and I turned hard to avoid a Datsun as I skidded onto
Leetsdale
Drive.
 
I righted the car and stomped on the accelerator, ignoring the horns that blared at us.

“Take the wheel,” I said.

In the rearview, I saw the corpse in the backseat reaching for me.

“Miranda!
 
Grab the
wh—aaccck
!”

The son of a bitch gripped me from behind and dug his fingers into my throat.
 
I tried to pull his hand away, but his grip was too strong and I couldn’t get leverage.

I tried to reach back to the corpse’s face, but he pulled me hard to the side.
 
I couldn’t breathe.
 
I also couldn’t drive like this.
 
The car bounced over the curb.
 
More horns honked and cars screeched away from us.
 
I caught the steering wheel just in time to turn away from a street lamp.
 
Too close, though.
 
I heard the crack and watched my passenger side view mirror rip away from the door.

Miranda tried to pound on the guy’s arms but ended up hitting me in the face.

“Wheel,” I croaked.

She finally grabbed the steering wheel.
 
I pulled the sword from between the console and jabbed it back, stabbing the bastard through the chest.
 
I drove the blade as hard and far as I could, and he finally released my throat.
 
I pinned the dead guy to the backseat.
 
I rubbed my throat with one hand and took the wheel.
 
I guided us back into the road and turned on the first side street we came to.
 
I wheeled over to the curb.