From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (10 page)

When the song ended,
I hit the button on my stereo and brought up my song menu. I dialed up
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
. With as much casualness as I could muster, I continued to drive like I knew where I was going. Unfortunately, I think I passed the high school three times before the song was over.

“You lost?” Jeremy said as the song ended.

“Just trying to see if I can sense her,” I lied.

I pulled into the parking lot and parked in front of the pizza place this time. I shut down my car and glanced over to Jeremy, who had the sense to still be sitting there like nothing was going on. I was absolutely not going to play another song for him to sing. Seriously, if he started in on
Something To Believe In
, my panties might very well end up on the floor.

Not a romantic comedy, not a romantic comedy
, I started to chant in my head. Of course, if I just treat him like one of those coin-operated horses that used to be in front of the store, I could ride him once and call it good.

See? That’s just the sort of thinking that starts sending things on the road to ruin. Pretty soon some werewolf with amazing abs will show up, and then the two will be fighting over me, but I will be so torn, because I truly love them both…

Blech!

You see how silly that all sounds? I mean it might be good
for thirteen-year-old girls who have not been called ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ by everybody at school yet to think that it is perfectly normal to ‘be in love’ with two guys at once. However, I seem to recall society having an entirely different view of those sorts of things.

Being a girl is a lot harder than it looks. Sure, the guys all think we hold the strings…and for the most part we do. But it all starts with the anatomically impossible Barbie
, continues with every single magazine that waits at the check-out aisle at the store, and is celebrated in the movies.

One Thing Leads To Another

Look at me getting all ‘issue’ oriented. You don’t need me to tell you this crap. I bet you’re wishing I would hurry up and just go to town on The
Queen of the Zombies, aren’t you? Well let me share something with you.

I bet a lot have you have seen that movie,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Well, you know how he breaks away every so often to talk to the audience? That is what I’m doing here. Don’t worry about Jeremy, he won’t move until I take the pause button off of this story.

I have been digging in to the horror thing ever since Morgan explained that some of the stuff you read is actually based on reality. Even more interesting, this stuff goes on right under your noses
, and most humans don’t even realize it.

I guess the closest you have come is Bigfoot. Oh yeah, he’s real, but we can talk about that later. But the thing I wanted to discuss is your impatience. You want me to hurry up and deal with
Adrianna. Am I right?

Just think about it, if everybody s
tayed out of the water,
Jaws
would have been a pretty boring movie. Are you following me on this? No? Then let me try to be a bit clearer.

Have you ever been watching a movie and the bad guy is right there in the crosshairs of the hero? Only, instead of pulling the trigger, something
happens and the bad guy gets away. Or maybe the bad guy has the good guy all tied up. He is going to kill him, but first he has to tell him his plan. During that little monolog, the hero manages to wriggle free and escape. Think about it; if he didn’t, the movie would have only been twenty minutes long and you would all be complaining about being ripped off.

Now are you on the same page? I hope so. Yes, I want to get
Adrianna just as badly as you want me to, but if I would have figured out that she was right across the street the first time I went to Estacada…or even if I could have blown her away when we met at Voodoo Doughnut Too (hmm…wish I still like regular food, a bacon maple bar would be yummy), well then this would be just another short Ava adventure. So sit back, pop some corn, and just hang out with me for a while. I’ll get her, don’t you worry. If not, then this is going to be one of the shortest book series ever. Now back to me and Jeremy sitting in the car.

“So what’s the plan?” Jeremy asked.

“Plan?”

I don’t know who he had been getting his information from, but I’m not much for planning. Besides, plans just lock you in to a set of actions. Then, when it all goes wrong, you are standing there wondering what to do next. Sorta like that whole playing dead idea if you are ever attacked by a bear. If that doesn’t work, you are really going to have a hard time implementing a second
option.

“You know,” Jeremy prompted. He even did that whole thing where he rolled his hands at the wrists like that would
kick start my brain or something. “Like we sneak in the back door or something?”

I started to giggle. I’m sorry, but once he said that, all I could think of was him trying to get in
Adrianna’s ‘back door.’ Maybe I’m wrong, but in our limited exposure to one another, she actually struck me as kind of prudish.

You ever sit someplace where there are a lot of people wal
king past and try to imagine them having sex? No? Oh, you absolutely have to do this. The next time you are out someplace by yourself, just take a seat on a bench and watch people as they go by. Now try to figure out if they are super freaky, or DMV boring. In fact, that was where I came up with this little game. I was standing in line at the local DMV for what felt like eternity.

“What’s so funny?” Jeremy asked. Although
, from the look on his face, I am guessing that it wasn’t the first time he’d done so.

“You said back door,” I chortled while attempting my rea
lly bad
Beavis & Butthead
impersonation.

At first he just stood there with a blank look. I wa
s afraid I’d sprained his brain…until he smiled. Then, very slowly at first, he joined in on the laughing.

I guess it was a good thing that we hadn’t just parked and gone into the pizza place to start asking the locals about anything strange going on in the woods. If we had, we would have totally missed the old man zombie stumbling out of the alley a block away.

How weird is that? A town as small as Estacada and they still have dirty little alleys. I know, totally weird. I mean, an alley is something you expect in someplace like New York or Chicago. You certainly would not expect to find one in a tiny logging community like this.

“What
do we do with it?” Jeremy asked as we got out of the car and moved in for a closer look.

He had rushed up to the zombie as soon as he realized what it was. Only, once he got close and took in a good whiff, he b
ecame a giant sissy. He poked at it with his fingers and kept jumping back like he was afraid of the damn thing. The trouble with that whole reaction was the simple fact that the zombie didn’t even seem to notice that he was there. It just kept on trudging across the street like nothing was happening.

As for me. Well, I was having an entirely different response. As soon as I got a sniff of
that thing, my sharkmouth had come on in full force. It was chomping time!

Part of me really wanted to tear into this thing
, but it seemed to be walking with such a purpose that my cat-like curiosity told me to follow it a while and see what happens. It turned down a narrow residential street. This is where some of my special abilities really started to come in handy. I could listen to all the surrounding houses. So far, most everybody was settled in and listening to the evening news. A few were already asleep, and one house made me blush…if ghouls blush that is. I know that I quickly redirected my attention away from that particular house as soon as I realized what it was that I was hearing. Okay…not
right
away, but pretty soon.

Then something happened that really got my attention. The left arm fell off of the zombie. Not wanting it to go to waste, yes I picked it up and snacked on it as I continued to follow. Jeremy, to his credi
t, stayed just a few steps away and didn’t try to bother me while I ate.

I kept pace with the zombie as it made another turn. I was not all that surprised when the other arm fell off. Hey, you have popcorn, I get zombie arms.

However, I was surprised when the zombie stopped at a house that was sort of away from the beaten path. This place was little more than a run-down shack. The zombie, what was left of him anyway, walked up to the rusty fence and stopped at the gate. When it looked down, I imagine that was the first time it became aware that it no longer had any arms. By the way…they were dee-lish!

I was ready to move in and put this thing away when the door to the house opened and an old lady came out.

“That you, Horace?” she squawked. “Told you if you left with that eye-tal-yon gal that you could just stay gone.”

Horace’s only reply was a low moan. Well
, at least I knew that Adrianna had been here. Not a lot of European women wandering around the streets of Estacada, Oregon. But the question now was, why here? Why these people in particular?

I stopped dead in my tracks; no pun intended. Although I do have to admit that was a pretty good one. Something about all of this suddenly made no sense at all. This
Queen of the Zombies was bent on taking over the world. That part I don’t really have a problem with. Granted, I don’t understand it, but I guess it must simply be part of her nature. What I was totally at a loss to explain was why she would come to this place. And not that I have anything against my beautiful Pacific Northwest, but nothing really major when it comes to world events happens here. In fact, Seattle would be a much more appropriate setting for somebody bent on taking over or wiping out the world.

Estacada, Oregon is someplace I am willing to bet none of you have heard of in your life.
Most of the folks who live in Oregon probably have no idea where this place is.

“Go
back in your home, Betty,” a voice spoke from the shadows.

I felt a slight breeze to my left. Jeremy had vanished. As for me, I was standing in the shadow of a tall hedge. One more step and I would have been in the flickering glow of the streetlight.
Sometimes it pays to be lucky.

I watched
Adrianna step into that streetlight’s glow. She was wearing all black and looked sickeningly sexy. The outfit seemed to have been poured over her body. Not one little roll or bulge. Where is the fairness? Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail that barely reached past the base of her neck. To put it bluntly, she looked amazing.

“Who’s there?” Betty snapped. “Sounds like that trashy li
ttle tramp that came and took my Horace?”

“I don’t want you hurt, Betty,”
Adrianna said with surprising softness. “Go inside…now.”

The zombie, Horace I have to assume, let out another moan. I saw this woman Betty stop in her tracks. She had actually been just about to return inside when she heard that pitiful sound.

“What have you done to my Horace?” Betty snapped. She reached inside her door. I was expecting a gun.

That is another thing about my beloved Pacific Northwest. If a zombie outbreak were to ever happen. I would
give my state even money on the odds for survival—us and probably Texas.

Instead, she came out with a walker. She plucked the ey
eglasses that hung from a chain around her neck and pushed them up on her nose with what I imagine must be considered defiance. Betty wasn’t taking no crap from Adrianna. I expected Adrianna to blow up or something. I expected her to cop that smarmy attitude that she used with me when we met. Instead, she walked up to Horace and placed her hand on his forehead. The zombie dropped like somebody had just pulled the plug.

“
Betty, please go inside, I will explain everything to you inside.” Her voice was almost kind, that was not at all what I expected.

Tell her to kiss your wrinkly behind, Betty
, I thought. I waited for that cantankerous old woman to lay into Adrianna like nobody’s business. Instead, she turned and walked back inside. The rattling slam of the screen door followed a second later. This was not my night for guessing how people would react.

“Ava,”
Adrianna called into the darkness.

“Seriously?” I spat.

“I don’t have time for you right now.” Adrianna turned and looked right at me. I guess that’s what I get for thinking that I am so unique and special. Perhaps when dealing with humans that was the case, but not when dealing with other supes.

“So you’ve known I was here the whole time?” I asked as I stepped out of the shadows.

“Yes, and your little vampire friend, too.”

“Figures you would practically quote the Wicked Witch of the West,” I grumbled.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” Jeremy said with way too much awe in his voice as he stepped off the roof of a house across the street.

“Met a lot of Zombie Queens have you?”
Adrianna dismissed Jeremy with one hand and turned her focus to me. “And perhaps you were not clear when we parted ways. You and I are now set against the other. You have chosen to side with whoever is so recklessly in charge of this area.”

Recklessly in
charge? Morgan would love that…if I survived this encounter long enough to share that little tidbit.

“Can I call for a momentary truce?” I asked. Hey, it
couldn’t hurt.

“This is not really a good time,”
Adrianna sighed. She glanced down at the crumpled body at her feet, and then at the door that Betty had vanished through.

“Let me ask one question and I will leave you to whatever sick and twisted thing you have going on here,” I offered.

“If you do me one favor, I will answer one question,” Adrianna replied. The problem is, she came back with that way too fast for comfort. To say that I didn’t trust her was a huge understatement.

“Don’t get me wrong—
” I started, but Adrianna was seriously impatient and cut me off.

“I told you that I don’t have time for this, Ava,” she snapped. “Either take the deal or leave.”

That was kind of rude. Plus, it totally left out the possibility that just maybe we were going to have to fight it out right here and now. I mean, it was obvious that she was doing zombie stuff. There was no denying that one lay at her feet right this very minute.

My job
, as assigned by Morgan, had been to come out here and deal with the zombie threat if one existed. I could now safely confirm that zombies were in fact wandering about the town of Estacada. Okay…it was only one, but it had to start someplace, right?

My quandary was
still the whole ‘why here’ question. I will admit that I would probably never be nominated for detective of the year. However, I could find no logical reason why Adrianna would come all the way out to such a remote location from wherever she’d been kept imprisoned to kick off her latest attempt at wiping out the world.