A Boy and His Corpse (11 page)

              “I—I think so,” Alan said.

              “Good. Then do it,” James said. “And Herbert, get Mr. Rovas on the phone. It’s time to make some demands.”

“Demands?” Lorraine asked. “How can we make demands?”

“Because we finally have our second necromancer,” James said, smiling. “Call the man.”

President Rosewater

President Rosewater sat in the back seat of a bulletproof, black car with a clenched jaw. His driver flew through a busy intersection in front of a mall complex, and four more black cars followed in their wake.

“Sir, are you alright?” The secret serviceman driving asked. He was a blond man who couldn’t be older than 35. His black suit hugged his broad shoulders and Rosewater could see his blue eyes in the rearview mirror. The President shook his head to the question. He couldn’t stop trembling.

“Adams, just g-g-get me to the address I gave you,” the President said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Adam’s partner, Hernandez, a Hispanic man with a shaved head and piercing brown eyes, sat to the right of the President. He was the same man who had cleaned the blood off the President’s suit after the leader of free world had jumped into the car after a full on sprint down Herbert’s street. Hernandez folded up his blood-stained handkerchief and tucked it in his pocket. He didn’t ask any questions. That wasn’t his job.

“Turn right,” the GPS device said in a robotic voice.

The driver turned right and down the entrance ramp onto Route 80.

What if he’s not there
? Rosewater thought before he said, “He
has
to be there,” to himself. Hernandez gave him a furtive glance

“Do you want me to call the vice-president for you, sir?” The Hispanic man asked.

“No, no,” Rosewater said.
This has gotten big enough.
”No need for that.”
             

Rosewater grimaced as he replayed the grizzly scene at Herbert’s house in his head. The corpse’s hand went right through Agent Heinzelman’s back. Luckily, the man was expendable since he was a member of the Undead Militia and officially off the books. That’s why Rosewater went in alone with just the two of them. If something bad happened, nobody would ask for them or miss them. The Undead Militia called for a lonely existence. At least, that’s what Mr. Rovas had once told him.

Speaking of Mr. Rovas, the town they were headed for was in the exact
opposite
direction of Mandolin Arsenal. The President didn’t even know how to get inside the secret, underground base. He did, however, know Mr. Rovas’ home address.

“My house number is 742 Milburn Lane in Denville, New Jersey,” Mr. Rovas had told him on his second meeting with him. “I’m only telling you this in case you
need
to see me. And I’m talking end of the world, need to see me.”

President Rosewater still remembered their first encounter. How could he forget? They met in a White House bathroom. Rosewater had been in office for little over a month when he met the man with long, black hair and cargo pants washing his hands at a sink.

Rosewater nodded to him and headed for a stall. The man at the sink did the strangest thing imaginable. He followed him inside.

“What in the—” Rosewater said, but Mr. Rovas put his wet hand over his mouth before he could finish the sentence. The man smelled like lemons.

“Shhh-” Mr. Rovas had told him in the cramped stall. “I have something to show you.”

Oh, God
, Rosewater remembered thinking.

The man pulled out a phone from his pants and showed him a series of short videos featuring former Presidents observing the undead moving. They watched on as a short black man controlled the shambling corpses by merely throwing out his hand. Legions of the undead moved at his command in what looked like an underground silo. That man was Herbert Chandler.

Damn him
, Rosewater thought as his driver took the exit off at Denville.
He ruined everything.

Mr. Rovas was right. Trying to force Herbert’s son into this was a bad idea. The President still didn’t know what he was going to say to Mr. Rovas once he saw him, especially with all these secret servicemen present. But the man had an obligation to do
something
.

“Turn right,” the GPS said. The driver made a right past a Burger King.

I really should have taken that damn call when I had the chance.

“According to this GPS, we’re almost there,” the driver said. Rosewater turned around in his seat and watched the procession of cars that followed. It was now or nothing.

The driver went straight until he reached a row of houses, each one cozier than the last. Rosewater stared out intently. For some reason, he imagined Mr. Rovas living in an isolated cabin like the Unabomber, not in a quaint neighborhood like this.

“You have now reached your destination,” the GPS device said.

“This is it,” the blond driver said. “Should I park on the side?”

“Yes,” Rosewater said. “Both of you stay here unless I give the command to come out. I will only be a few minutes.”

The secret serviceman next to him shook his head.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t let you do that. Not this time.”

The President was about to say something, but he resigned himself to nodding instead.

Seven forty-two Milburn Lane was a modest, yellow, two floor house. A grey Oldsmobile sat in the driveway. He reached into his pocket and finagled out his secret phone. He called it and waited, but nobody answered.

“Dammit,” Rosewater said, hanging up. The lights were on inside the house, and the President wondered if he should just get out and knock.

“Is there a problem, sir?” The driver asked.

“No, there’s no problem,” Rosewater grumbled. He called again and nobody picked up.

“Dammit,” Rosewater said again. “Stay here,” he told the agents, but they both got out anyway.

The other black cars stopped behind his and those secret servicemen got out, too.

“No, no, no. All of you just stay in your cars unless I give the order to come out,” he said.

Across the street, people started looking out their windows. Some of them made phone calls.

Oh, God, this is getting too big.

More people started to show their faces and some even came out on their front lawns. It wasn’t often (or ever) that the President and his secret servicemen came to Denville, New Jersey.

“Mr. President!” a man wearing basketball shorts called out. His breath was visible in the cold air.

“Mr. President!” a woman called wearing a red Bubble goose jacket.

The President waved to the burgeoning crowd and smiled. “Nothing to see here, people.”

All the while, his heart raced so fast that he feared he was going to have a heart attack.

When he saw a teenager holding his phone up in front of his face, Rosewater blanched.

Good, Lord. He’s filming this!

Rosewater motioned for a pale, red-headed secret serviceman to come closer. He ran up to the President.

“Yes, sir?” the man asked.

“Please tell the men to deal with these people. Especially that kid over there. Do you see him? No, don’t look. Over there! The one with the phone. He’s filming this. Take the camera away from him, but do it gently. We don’t need this getting on the evening news.”

Rosewater watched his red-headed secret serviceman walk over to the others, and they made their way toward the people.

What a mess.

“Adams, Hernandez, let’s go,” Rosewater pointed at the two secret servicemen he drove in with. The three of them made their way to the front door. Hernandez pulled out his gun.

“Put that away,” Rosewater said with a downward swipe. “This is a personal friend of mine.”
I hope.
“I don’t want you scaring him.”

The man lowered his gun, but didn’t put it away, and Rosewater knew that was the best he was going to get. The three of them crept their way up the grass.

Adams walked shoulder-to-shoulder with the President, keeping as close as possible. When they reached the front door, a crack of thunder rattled the sky. Strangely enough, the lightning followed the thunder.

“Whoa!” Somebody said in the background. “Did you just see that?”

Adams looped his arm inside the President’s and began pulling him away from the house.

“Stop! I have to talk to him,” the President said.

“Negative,” Hernandez said as he looped his arm around the President’s other arm.

By the time they dragged the President half way across the front lawn, Mr. Rovas’ front door opened. Rosewater dug his heels into the dirt and nearly tripped everyone up.

“Come on, get in here!” Mr. Rovas said at the front door. “Hurry up inside!”

“You heard the man,” Rosewater shouted at Adams. “Let’s go.”

The two secret servicemen looked at each other, and then moved forward with the President. All the while, Rosewater’s heart thumped like a machine gun.

Herbert

James slapped a cell phone into Herbert’s hand.  “When we’re ready, you’re going to call Rovas.”

Bargaining with Mr. Rovas still didn’t seem like the greatest idea in the world to Herbert, but now that James was in charge, that’s how it looked like it was going to be.

“You sure you don’t want
me
to control them,” Herbert asked James as he glanced over at Alan who sat Indian style in the middle of basement floor. The two dead agents were still upstairs and a weak, green aura encircled his son’s body. 

The knocking at the front door turned into blunt shoulder ramming.

“No,” James said. “Alan has to do this for himself. If he doesn’t, then all of this will be for nothing.”

“All of
what
?” Herbert asked.

“Our plans,” James huffed. “Jeez, I thought you didn’t want robots taking over your job. Did you really mean that or were you just talking out your ass?”

Alan groaned and the green aura around his body flickered.

“Is he in pain?” Lorraine asked, referring to her sweating and grimacing son who had his eyes clamped tight.

James didn’t answer her question. Herbert sympathized with his son.

You’re concentrating too damn hard, boy. Loosen up like you did before.

Herbert remembered the phone in his hand. “Should I make the call now?” He asked.

“Not yet,” James said. “I want to make sure that first time he moved the bodies wasn’t a fluke. Come on, Alan. You can do it.”

Alan didn’t respond and the pounding on the door upstairs continued.

Herbert hoped his next-door neighbor, Fernando, wasn’t home. Fernando recently had his house broken into. The last thing Herbert needed was for him to call the cops about a disturbance next door. He had no idea how he would explain the two dead bodies.

“If Alan doesn’t—” Herbert began, but stopped the moment he heard the door fly open upstairs. It was followed by the loud footsteps of the Agents rushing in the house.

“Oh, my God,” came a woman’s shrill voice upstairs. “
Oh, my God
!”

“Okay, Alan, NOW!” James said, bending down and squeezing Alan’s arm. “Bring them down here.”

There was the sound of shuffling upstairs followed by a male’s struggling voice.

“Get the hell offa me,” the man said. “Lemme go!”

“Bring ‘em down, Alan,” James said and Alan nodded.

So he WAS listening the whole time then,
Herbert thought
.

In the corner, Herbert noticed that Mort nodded along with Alan. Was his son still inside all three corpses? If so, then it was no wonder he looked so fatigued. Going from one corpse to several was incredibly rough on the body, and Herbert always felt wasted whenever he commanded a large batch of corpses.