The Wiccan Diaries (8 page)

As I approached Occam’s place, I picked up the infrared
device which activated the cruel iron gate. It rattled aside and I entered
through a pass in the large building leading to the sequestered courtyard. The
gate rolled smoothly back into place. I got out of the Charger. Only direct
midday sun could penetrate the courtyard. The rest of the time it was tranquil.
Occam liked to barbecue.

I was fatigued and thirsty; when I didn’t sleep my muscles
protested. Something about vampirism required a vampire pass the daylight hours
in well-fortified repose. My bedroom had more defenses than just curtains and a
locking door.

I heard
it
. The
infected revenant from two nights before, rattling around in the back of the
car.

It now had the Suck.

That’s why I wanted to check the morgue. I went upstairs,
passing through corridors––they went off in every
direction––to the library Occam and I used as our base of
operations. I passed through the stacks on feet of silence. They were vertical
and stuffed full of books. Occam put a high premium on knowing things.

A series of notebooks held our discoveries so far. I took
down the first volume, marked INCUBATION. We had documented and photographed
everything.

The things Moretti had given me I offloaded onto the rich
mahogany desk with the green lawyer lamps. It was a large enough desk that I
could spread everything out. This helped give an overview of things.

I had papers going everywhere.

“Regular time course, barring outside influence, typically
forty-eight hours,” I read in the Incubation notebook. That was the time it
took for the Suck to reach equilibrium in the blood plasma. There was no
steady-state, however, such as happened with the introduction of any foreign
substance into the bloodstream, a flu shot, for example. From there, the
contagion began to spread. It destroyed red blood cells, wreaking havoc inside
the host body.

“Left unchecked,” wrote Occam, “this represents a potential
worldwide pandemic several orders above the HIV virus or Black Plague. Indeed,
it threatens to wipe out both human and vampire civilizations. So far, my
assistant and I have managed to keep it under wraps. Whoever this boker may be,
if he is not stopped, he just may institute the Zombie Apocalypse.”

I fetched a microwaved blood cup from the kitchen down the
hall and returned, thinking about the Zombie Apocalypse.

The Zombie Apocalypse was this
theory
, much like The Singularity was a theory that computers would
one day rule the world.

Instead of supercomputers destroying human civilization, our
very bodies destroyed us from within, which made the Zombie Apocalypse far, far
scarier. Carriers passed it wholesale to every non-infected individual through
biting. Examination of the disease revealed striking similarities to the rabies
virus.

So far, Occam and I had studied six cases of individuals
infected with the Suck. All six were revenants––previously dead
individuals, who had been brought back to life. It was Occam who hypothesized
their saliva was spreading the disease. A disease which made them
extraordinarily fast and crazy fighting machines.

The victim in the Dodge Charger was unique in that he was
the only living human being to have been infected. I remembered how he had
tried to attack me. Had he succeeded in biting me, I would not have got the
Suck. A carrier could not become infected to the degree that it could spread
the virus until the first forty-eight hours had elapsed. Downstairs, I heard
him rattling around, which meant he was fully infected.

The dying and being reborn phases had passed. It was not
unlike becoming a vampire, I realized.

Occam and I had experimented on rats. A rat was
physiologically similar to a human being but not the same. Which was how we had
arrived at the forty-eight hour incubation period.

As for the rabies similarity, we noticed early that the
infected patients had begun to twitch and froth at their mouths a few hours
after the delivery into the bloodstream of the contagion. This was put down to
shock at first.

The body immediately began to die.

What we realized soon after was that it was neuroinvasive,
that is, it attacked the central nervous system of the new carrier. They were
being rewired.

Among their new attributes seemed to be an insatiable desire
to cause maximal spread by attacking and killing uninfected individuals.

The infected rats would turn on their cagemates, killing
them instantly. I wrote it all down.

“We believe this is to accelerate the turning process. The
quicker they die, the sooner they can be resurrected. And kill.”

Occam didn’t like that. He wrote: “It all rests on this
boker. If his intentions are genocidal, we must prepare for the Apocalypse. If,
however, his intentions are tactical, like some smart bomb, and he has a
specific target in mind, unintended fallout may result in the Apocalypse
anyhow. At all costs we must find and destroy the boker. He is the brain, the
head. If we kill him, it may not be too late to stop the spread of this
sucking
disease.”

It made thinking about some random murderer named Peter
Panico almost pointless. I just wanted to make sure whoever was killing, the
victims weren’t coming down with the Suck. I suspected Peter Panico to be a
vampire, as I suspected the boker to potentially be a vampire––as
the Suck was too similar to vampirism itself. What I feared was that there
might be some connection between them, linking the two.

I took Infester’s guide,
The
411
, out of my jacket pocket, and laid it on top of the table next to the
other documents. I had a lot of reading ahead of me, and I had to see about the
morgue tonight,
after hours
, to check
on the bodies. I just hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was.

I would be able to tell by the bite mark. Occam and I had
developed a special kit that allowed field-testing for the Suck. If any of them
were infected, cremation facilities were located on the premises. I could
quickly get rid of the evidence.

I had made a habit out of going to the morgue. I went there
every night. It was only murder victims that I checked. They went to the
pathologist, who checked for unnatural death. The rest I could forget about.

It was still too early to enlist the help of others. There
was no way that we were going to ask the Lenoir for help.

Something threatening
vampires. A contagion specifically targeting blood drinkers.
Their response
would have been to quarantine the city and destroy all life, rather than risk
it spreading.

Find the boker. Kill
the boker.
I picked up
The 411
.
“Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse,” it said. I turned the page, and began to
read. There was a note from the author.

“Vigilance is the difference from falling (being bitten) in
the first wave, and surviving the onslaught to regroup. In any simulation of
the Apocalypse, the first seventy-two hours is like Nagasaki and Hiroshima
combined. It is like Chernobyl and the Aswan Dam. Like the outbreak of some
terrible new Plague and the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Only a
coolheaded mind will prevail. It is important
foremost
to have no affection for those coming down with a case of
the Suck––

“Kill them, cut their heads off, scorch their bodies.
Otherwise, they will enlist you in their ranks. A zombie doesn’t care if it
used to go to church with you. It doesn’t care if you used to call it ‘Mom’ or
‘Dad’ or ‘Cousin’ or ‘Brother,’ ‘Wife,’ ‘Sister,’ etc. It is a ravenous
fast-moving death bringer. Crush its skull in with a vice.
That
is your first warning.

“Before you continue,” he wrote, “swear the following:
I
, insert your name,
being of sound unsucked mind, uninfected by
any Fast Walker, swear to battle the Armies of Hell, if such be unleashed, and
will pass on my knowledge to any worthy, uninitiated, human member of the
species. So help me
, state your religious figure. Sign and date.”

I couldn’t reasonably sign it, as I was no longer
human
, but there was an asterisk,
recommending all signees do so in their own blood. “For, as everyone knows,
Zombie blood is always
black
.”

It was a way of telling who your friends were.

I wasn’t looking forward to dragging him out of the trunk of
the car. Just how fast did they move, anyway?

The boker seemed to have a mind connection to his zombies.
Hadn’t the last one
veered
off, when
it was called;
hissed
at, rather? It
was like Sid and his progeny. They had to do what Sid said. That was the only
thing saving us from the Zombie Apocalypse. They were doing what the boker
said. Which, for the moment, was not much.

If the boker died with his zombies still unaccounted for... It
would be like a free-for-all... they would be let loose––free to go
wherever they pleased and eat everybody.

This required some serious thinking on my part. I flipped
through
The 411
. It was loaded.
Weapons, tracking the
king-sire
....

King-sire....

I flipped to the glossary at the back.

King-sire [ki ing s
ī
r] n: 1. the origin point, the
Infector-In-Chief, the primary root of any infectious outbreak, the number one
zombie; the only zombie with the power of thought; some king-sires may appear
as outwardly human 2. The one responsible.

The boker.

Chapter 7 – Halsey

Lia chewed her gum, waiting for one of us to tell her what
was going on. The family dynamic was immediately apparent; she was Big Sis.
Ballard looked at her and then at me. “You should come in,” he said.

“Just a minute,” said Lia, not unkindly. “Who is this? And
what is she doing here?”

Ballard just shrugged. “I’m his pen pal,” I said; it wasn’t
a lie. Cottoning on, Ballard said, “I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I?”

She looked at us dubiously.

“I swear, Lia is so old-fashioned sometimes. It’s like she
thinks I’m going to put a move on you,” he said, as he led me through the
garage. I saw bikes and cars being worked on. There was a lot of chrome. I
didn’t know much about motorcycles, but I wanted to learn. I enjoyed the wind
in my hair. “Don’t let how she looks fool you. Ever since Risky died, she’s
become like this
matriarch
.” He tried
the word on like an unusual taste he was thinking of acquiring.

“Who’s Risky?” I asked, following behind him. He walked
really
fast.

He turned around. I had had to shout, he had gotten so far
ahead. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“That’s okay.”

He smiled. Talking to him was very easy. He put a rag he was
carrying in his back pocket, pointing to a picture framed on the wall of the
bike shop.
“That
is Risky,” he said.
“My uncle.”

I saw a picture of a distinguished-looking older man with
salt-and-pepper stubble on his face. He had a twinkle in his eye, like he knew
things.

“I know,” said Ballard, approving of the way I looked at
him. Lia was still watching us from outside. She put on her helmet and got
ready to leave.

“Do they just ride around all day?” I wondered out loud.

“And at night,” said Ballard. He opened a door, and held it
open for me unselfconsciously. I passed through. We were in what must have been
their home––Lia’s and Ballard’s.

It was attached to the shop. The hallways were very narrow.
I saw a small kitchen down the hall. It had a draining board at the sink, and a
white towel with sunflowers to dry the dishes. There were curios and other
things on spindle-legged tables and family photographs on the walls. Ballard
followed behind with his hands in his back pockets. I turned around. He nearly
bumped into me. “Sorry,” I apologized. I had to look up at him.

He wasn’t as tall as his brothers. Which was another thing.

“Are all of those guys related to you?” I asked.

He got a quizzical look. “You mean
them
? No. Why?”

“I just wondered,” I said.

“This is my family.” He pointed at all of the photographs.
“My mother and father. They’re retired now. They’re living in Greece. You know
those white cliffs?”

I assumed he was talking about all of Greece’s coastline on
the Mediterranean.

“Yeah those. They live in a little place. It has no running
water. They have to fetch it in buckets. But they do their own thing.”

“So you and Lia?”

“There are two others of us,” said Ballard, “but they moved
to the States.” He pointed to his two older brothers.

“So Lia...”

“Lia is
popular
,”
he said, immediately grasping what I was getting at. It made me blush, slightly.
I looked down. He seemed nervous. One foot was standing on the toes of the
other.

“It must be hard, running this shop, with just the two of
you.”

“You have no idea,” said Ballard. He offered me a
grattachecca. It was a delicious concoction he whipped up in their tiny
kitchen. I sat at a table while he worked. There was a lovely lemon scent to
their small home. If I peeked over the edge of the window I could just see the
street from where we were at. I saw Lia disappearing down the alleyway on her
motorcycle, her legs straddling the chassis, in a group of all the Six Nine
Guys.

“Grattachecca,”
he
said, in his lovely Italian. It was like a slurpee, but better, very
refreshing. He sat down at the table, taking a bite of his own grattachecca. It
was blue-colored flavored ice. “So….”

I knew what he meant. “I bet you’re wondering why I’m here,”
I said. None of my fear at meeting him remained. He just had a face: so young,
so innocent....

I knew, in that moment, that I could tell him anything, just
as I was equally sure that there would be no ridicule, no censure, in his eyes.
It was like I had been
floating
––he
was my bright horizon. I was leaving the abyss.

I unzipped my backpack and took out the strange book. He
looked warily at the cover of the nondescript volume.

It was very old.

Black leather encased it, although in some places it had
been worn so thin, the binder’s board showed through. But that wasn’t the most
interesting feature. The most interesting feature––without having
opened it first––was the symbol, a pentacle within a pentacle,
wrapped in a circle, surrounded by
glyphs
––magic
symbols.

And when one opened it....

“Do you know what this
is
?”
I asked him.

He ate his blue, flavored ice, his dark eyes seeming to bore
into mine. He captured some of it from running down his lip with his tongue,
and said, “Yeah.”

It was like we had made a secret pact, right there, in the
kitchen.

“I know a little, not everything. The Internet is full of
rumor––half-truths, false leads. I looked into it while Lia wasn’t
looking. Sometimes she
noses
,” he
said. “From what I understand, isn’t it something like the
Munich Manual
or some other ‘grimoire’––?” He put the
word in quotes, careful not to drop his grattachecca.

I opened the book. It was thick with dust. I blew some of it
away, revealing the signatures, written in different hands, and at different
times––

I saw those of my father, my mother––someone
else’s. They were faded with age. My mother’s hand looked the newest. “A
grimoire
, a
book
of magic,” said Ballard.

“I couldn’t believe you found me,” I said.

“Like I said, I only read the inscription,” he said.

I looked at it again. His uncle had written, in a hurried
hand,
“If I die, Ballard, find
her––find Halsey Rookmaaker; she is the last of her line; the final
Rookmaaker. This is her copy of
The Magus Codex.
‘It being different, accordingly.’”

“That’s the bit that threw me,” said Ballard. “When I went
to look, I mean. I mean, magic? It’s a lot to accept. My uncle believed in this
book. He made sure I found it. I want to know why. Until then, no one knows.
Not even Lia.” He made me promise.

“I won’t tell anyone, Ballard. I promise. I want to know how
you got this book, too.”

“I did find a few things,” he said. “Leads...”

I listened on, interested.

“That’s how I found you. And that...
school
...”

I grimaced... St. Martley’s. How could I explain it?

“It’s all right, if you don’t want to tell me,” he said.

I looked at him. “Ballard, St. Martley’s is a school for
girls––there’s nothing sinister, I swear...”

That wasn’t entirely true, and he knew I was keeping things
from him. “Suit yourself,” he said, “but I was hoping I would get to see you so
we could talk about it. I just didn’t realize it would be happening so soon.
Aren’t you a student there? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

I asked him the same thing.

“I asked you first,” he said.

I sighed....
Teenage
boy....

“Its full title is
St.
Martley’s Academy for the Gifted
.”

“You being the
gifted
one?” he said.

“What can I say?” I said.

He didn’t respond. Instead, he just ate his ice. Mine was
dripping on to the table. We ate in silence for a while. I looked at the
Codex
.

You can’t lie to him.
It isn’t right.
I sighed.

“Okay, it’s a school for Magic, all right? There, I said
it.”

It was like he won, or something.

“I knew it,” he said, with altogether too much satisfaction.

I glared at him. “You shouldn’t gloat,” I said. “It’s
unbecoming.”

“So what do you
do
there, being all gifted and all?”

“Stuff,” I said, either defensively or
evasively––I wasn’t sure.

“‘Stuff?’”
he
repeated, skeptically. “What kind of
‘stuff?’”

It was obvious that he wasn’t going to let this go. “You
know. Math, Science, Geometry. You should see me foil. I do great Algebra.”

“I see. So it’s just P.E. and fifteen-minute breaks and
every other week you get a half day on Friday, is that it?”

“Sure,” I said, enjoying his irritation.

“What did he mean when he said you were, you know... ‘the
last?’” said Ballard, referring to his Uncle Risky.

I saw his heartbreak, then, his soul. It was like mine at
seeing my father’s and mother’s signatures. Ancient ink-strokes on a yellowing
page, filled with dust.

It was the kind of dust I would never be able to get out.
Just as I would never be able to get out the feeling that I had lost them.

“He meant my mother and father. These are
their
signatures.”

Ballard looked at them. “I didn’t know they were... dead,”
he said.

“Yeah well.”

“Say,” he said, choosing to brighten up. “We’re having a
little get-together. You should come tonight. It’s at Lia’s
boyfriend’s
place.” He said the last bit
like he was going to gag. “But it’ll be really fun; it’s really cool there.
It’ll give you a chance to ride your bike, at the very least.”

“Do you have a bike?” I asked.

“You betcha.” He nodded.

“I don’t know,” I said. After all, I had a date. “Can I
bring a date?”

His face fell. “Sure,” he said. He told me where it was at.
“So my uncle knew about magic. And that is what I don’t get. I would love to
know what he was doing, caught up in it. Hey, can you conjure? I mean, can you
do like magic spells, and stuff?”

“Erm...” I said. “It wasn’t really that kind of place.”

He did the frowning thing again. “What d’you mean?” he said.

I knew this would happen if I ever talked to anyone about
what I did at St. Martley’s.

“You
are
a witch,
aren’t you?” he said, pawing me relentlessly like a playful puppy. “I mean,
aren’t you?”

“Erm...”

He looked so embarrassed.

“I mean,
maybe
,” I
said.

“What?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, St. Martley’s isn’t so much a
school of magic as it is a school
against
magic...”

He just stared. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said.

“I’m afraid not,” I said. I felt embarrassed.

“So you’re saying... Let me see if I’ve got this straight,”
he said. “You’re a witch––whose parents were
witches
––”

“Well, a witch and a wizard,” I interjected.

“Of course, sorry,” he said. “...And you go to a magic
school, but you’re not a witch.”

“It’s more like I’m
waiting
,”
I said. “It’s complicated.”

He shrugged. “I guess we have time. Oh, and it’s summer.
That’s why I don’t go to school.”

“Duh! Geez! Of course!” I said. “We go–– no
kidding. Gah!”

“What? You don’t?”

“We go year round, yeah. I told you, it’s all about
abstinence, denial, conforming, rather than accepting who you are.”

“I don’t like this word ‘denial,’” he said. “You mean they
teach you to reject who you really are?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Sounds like hell,” he said.

“It wasn’t
that
bad,” I said. “I had friends.”

“Were they all abstainers, too?” he asked.

“Becca, my best friend,” I said, “she started a Coven.” He
looked on, intrigued. We pretended like we didn’t have a copy of
The Magus Codex
open between us. “But it
was just like pretend, mostly. You see, a witch is taught abstinence first, so
that she can gain all of the other things a supposedly well-rounded individual
should have. Only, all we wanted to do was cast charms and do transformations
and stuff––and we
could
,
if we wanted to, if they taught us. But magic was strictly forbidden at St.
Martley’s. It was like you couldn’t
be
...
anything.”

Even now I felt restricted, here in his too-small kitchen
that smelled like a scent I was beginning to associate with Ballard: clean,
fresh, lemony....

“It wasn’t like we had it rough. To tell you the truth, it
was pretty posh. Everyone tried to do stuff anyways.”

“Were you able to do... stuff?”

“You mean conjure? All that. Never. I’ve never
crafted
, no. Not even once. Some girls
said they did, but we didn’t believe them.”

“Then how did you know?” he asked. “That you were...?”

“‘Gifted,’” I asked? “We didn’t. We
don’t
,” I said.

“I think I understand,” he said.

“I’m sure you do.”

We stopped talking after that. I read the inscription again.
‘It being different, accordingly.’
What the H did that mean?

“Who’s the other guy?” he asked. “The guy at the top of the
page?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the signatures. It went
Frobenius Foucart
, then my dad’s name,
then my mom’s. It bothered me. I didn’t like seeing his name above theirs.
Whoever he was, I had never heard of him before.

“Maybe it’s weird,” I said, “but I would like to find out
about him. Who he is, where he lives... If he is even still alive....”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” said Ballard. He reached for the book.
“It looks like a library book, almost. Like how libraries used to stamp books.
You could tell who checked out what.”

That was an interesting thought––I finished the
grattachecca. In fact, I was sure he was right. “That’s probably
exactly
what it is,” I said, smiling. He
beamed at me. I was going to like Ballard.