Zoey tumbled back onto the cobblestones. Her eyes watered. She tasted blood.
Wu stood there stunned for the moment, unsure of what had just happened, looking back and forth from her to the fist that was still standing erect from the box. The naked corpse then raised itself up slowly from the steamer trunk. It moved unnaturally, not using its hands at all to climb to its feet. It just unfolded itself, like a machine. Dark fluids oozed from various holes, maggots dripped off of it in squirming clumps.
The corpse took a step out of the box. Wu sprang into action.
He pointed his closed fist at the figure and with a sharp mechanical snap, an unseen object launched from his wrist and whizzed through the night, punching the corpse in the chest. Blue arcs of electricity flickered and popped off the embedded projectile, the smell of cooked flesh filled the air.
The corpse was not bothered. It stepped out of the box and lumbered toward Zoey. Its face was slack, the head lolling around without purpose, the mouth drooping open stupidly. The sewn-shut eyelids were sunken, as if there were no eyeballs behind them. A viscous stream of dumpster water ran freely from its lips.
Wu ran in Zoey’s direction, pulled her to her feet, and urged her through the doors, back into the foyer. She and Wu tumbled through and spun to close the door on the approaching corpse—
Zoey said, “Wait!”
Stench Machine the Cat was still out there, heading toward the door but not really showing the urgency Zoey would have preferred.
“GET IN HERE!”
Stench Machine, still traveling according to his own itinerary and no one else’s, trotted through the doorway. The corpse stepped purposefully toward the door, just two strides behind him. Zoey and Wu shoved at the door—
Too late. The corpse effortlessly flung the doors open. Zoey and Wu staggered backward. The corpse stepped forward, then its left hand pistoned out and slammed Wu in the chest so hard that he fell and then slid backward on the marble tiles for several feet.
The corpse, Zoey saw, was wearing a glowing apparatus around its neck. It blinked and got brighter, then a hologram flashed to life, an image projected over the corpse’s dead, slack face. It was another face, a translucent mask of light. It had chiseled features and a pompadour of sculpted, unmoving black hair. A cartoon face, not a real one.
The face smiled and in a modulated voice said, “Didn’t think you’d see him again, did you? Everything comes back around, my dear. WE are RISING.”
Zoey tried to process what it had just said. Then she noticed the sloppy surgery scars on the corpse’s shoulders. It appeared that sparing Dexter Tilley had only bought another four weeks or so of life and Zoey was going to go out on a limb and say that he had not made the most of it.
Then Zoey realized that someone was remotely driving the dead body’s implants and that, oh yeah, it meant this corpse was strong enough to tear her in half.
Wu jumped to his feet, making the simple movement look acrobatic. He waved at her and said, “GO!”
The problem was that the place Zoey needed to go—her bedroom, where she had both a panic room and a necklace that could shut down the corpse’s mechanism—was upstairs. Tilley’s resurrected robot corpse stood right between the two staircases, meaning he’d be able to easily snatch her before she hit the first step on either.
Wu knew her dilemma and urged her to just go, in any direction, to just get distance.
Zoey snatched up her cat and ran out of the foyer, toward the nearest hallway, which led to the west wing of the mansion. Behind her came rapid footsteps, each one beginning with a faint electrical whine and ending with a slap of rotten meat, the machinery inside doing its work. Wu was shouting instructions that she could not hear over the sound of her own frantic breaths and hammering heart. She put a hand on her neck, hoping her override necklace would have magically appeared there despite the fact that she’d taken it off an hour ago, before her bath. No such luck.
Zoey ducked into the first room she came to, a space walled with glass cases that had been Arthur Livingston’s cigar humidor. The floor was now mostly occupied by a life-sized animatronic moose Zoey had accidentally won in an online auction while drunk and then quickly broken while attempting to ride it. Before she could turn and force the door closed, a hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her backward.
Stench Machine thrashed free, as usual deciding that he’d have a better shot on his own. Zoey tried to remember Wu’s self-defense training. Don’t pull away, turn and face the attacker, get your balance, strike back, go for the eyes. She twisted herself around, feeling hair getting ripped from her scalp, in time to see that the holographic face was grinning at her, the slack visage of the corpse lolling behind it. Well, clearly clawing at its sewn-up eyes wasn’t going to accomplish a lot.
Wu burst into the room and pulled out a jagged, black knife. He plunged it into the corpse’s shoulder and punched a button with his thumb. There was a flash from the blade and a meaty ripping noise. The corpse’s shoulder exploded, sending bits of putrid meat flying. The arm went limp and Zoey twisted out of its grip, then stumbled and fell to the floor.
Wu reared back with his explode-knife again and tried to stab the ghoul in the lower back, as if hoping to sever its spine and paralyze it. Instead, the one-armed corpse spun on him, reaching out with its remaining arm and snatching his knife hand by the wrist. Wu tried to pull himself away, causing the pair of them to crash into a glass case, sending shards and cigars flying. They then toppled to the floor, the corpse on top.
The corpse’s hand was still around Wu’s wrist.
It squeezed.
There was a sound like a bag of peanuts getting crushed under a boot. Wu tried to suppress his scream, then failed. The noise he made terrified Zoey. The knife fell to the floor and his hand flopped over, now barely connected to his arm.
Zoey had to get that necklace.
She yelled, “I’ll be back!”
Over Wu’s protests, she ran and leaped over the two of them, stumbling into the hall and sprinting toward the stairs. She went up, nearly bowling over Carlton on the way. She made it to her bedroom, then pushed through into the bathroom. She always left the necklace next to the sink …
It wasn’t there.
She looked around, knocking aside face creams and toothpaste. She faintly heard another howl from Wu, the noise rolling through the halls below her. The Tilley zombie could crush his skull any time it chose to.
She looked around the tub. Nothing. She stumbled back out into the bedroom. No necklace on the nightstand. Not on her dresser. Not on top of her mini-fridge, or Stench Machine’s mini-fridge. Had it fallen under the bed? She dropped to the floor, looked.
There was a crash and tinkle of glass breaking from downstairs. But no more screams …
She went back into the bathroom. Had she checked by the sink? She checked again. Had she really checked the lip of the tub carefully? Maybe it fell onto the floor and got kicked under the bath mat. She looked. She was covered in sweat.
It wasn’t here.
Okay. Okay. Plan B.
She needed a weapon. There was a cheese knife on the tray … no, it was flimsy.
She paused to listen.
From below, only silence.
Damn it. So stupid. Wasting time.
She grabbed one of the empty beer bottles from the floor. Through the bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs. Her heart drumming. She braced herself for what she would see when she arrived back in the moose humidor. For what she would do after she saw it.