The Dickens Mirror Page 32

  God! A scream boiled at the back of Rima’s throat. A large swath of the girl’s scalp drooped free of the skull, like the corner of a sheet from an unmade bed, to curl over what remained of her left ear. What hair was left, that which hadn’t fallen out in clumps to nest on her shoulders, dragged in long gray clots. Rust-red purge fluid streamed from the woman’s nostrils to coat her neck and chest. Bulging green vessels, filled with dead blood, wormed under her translucent skin. The wicked stripe of a blue-black bruise snugged her neck like a satin choker.

  It’s the girl who hung herself. Bode put our food in her sack. But she can’t be this rotted. At most, she’s been dead only a day, not a week or month. This was the work of the fog: not simply reanimating the dead but giving them the nightmare visages Rima had imagined.

  The girl was pushing her way out of the sack now, jamming it down around her hips as if stepping out of a dress. The girl’s belly hung, the muscles that should moor skin to bone slack, and the guts inside bloated with gas.

  Rima’s eyes danced away. On the snow, other sacks were ripping as the dead pulled themselves free. She watched as one old man, flesh sagging from his jaws to reveal the scattered brown pegs of rotted teeth, turned them a single baleful, milky-white eye. The other socket dripped a mucuslike jelly, and when the old man scraped his fingers over his cheek, his entire face suddenly peeled away in a sodden flap. Groaning, the old man discarded his face, letting it plop to the snow like a soiled kerchief not worth washing. Where his nose had been were only two vertical tear-shaped slits. Dangling scraps of shredded, putrefying muscle bearded his lower jaw. His belly was also heavy with bloat.

  “I got the pike and a penknife.” Tony’s voice was shaky, far away. “Rima … Rima, look at me!”

  “Y-yes?” Her neck was stiff as a rusted hinge. “What?”

  Tony’s eyes were intent. “Take my chopper. Careful; just sharpened it. And I’m sorry, but you’ll have to move out. Go to my left, and remember, short chops. Only got the one edge, and you don’t have a lot of reach, so you’ll have to wait until they’re close. Don’t swing so wild it pulls you around and off-balance, all right?”

  “What?” It was as if he spoke in a foreign tongue. Her mind didn’t want to understand. “I don’t …”

  “Damme!” Hefting his pike, Tony flashed an angry look. “Rima, do what I say. Emma? Move away to my right. If I swing, I don’t want to risk hitting you. Listen to me, both of you: you get a chance, you see an opening, you run.”

  “Where?” Emma’s voice was quaking. “There’s nowhere to g-go.”

  “Unless the fog lets you through. It did once before.”

  “It won’t, not now.” Emma sounded both angry and scared. “She’s here. I don’t understand. She wanted me before. Why not just take me now and stop this?”

  A good question. Maybe she wants to see what will happen. Or perhaps the woman would enjoy watching them being torn to bits. Makes no sense. Rima slid the chopper from Tony’s hip sheath. The blade was much more knife than she was used to, and heavy. She gripped the chopper’s bone hilt until her knuckles whitened. Why torture us? There had to be another game here, something she didn’t know yet.

  “Tony,” she said, moving to flank him on the left, “how do you kill something that’s already dead?”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “Chop off their heads.” Tears were streaming down Emma’s face, but the girl choked up on her pike. “Shoot them in the brains, or burn them. It works in books and on TV.”

  “Pity, chuckaboo, but this is real life, and I could use some ideas,” Tony said. “Not going to stop me trying … Oh God.” His skin went pale as glass. “Rima, look at their bellies. Look at all their bellies.”

  And so many of them. There were twenty in all—easily twice what they’d actually gathered on their rounds, as if the fog wasn’t content with only bringing these monstrosities to life but wished to stack the odds against them. Most of the bodies were more or less intact, though some were in much worse shape. The stomach of each and every one of the dead bulged, but she now saw that instead of bloat, their tented skin heaved and rolled. In a way, it was as if they’d knotted the sack of something undead around their waists.

  Her mouth dried up. Behind, not more than ten feet away, the fog’s fizz and crackle seemed to grow louder, as if an excited and eager crowd was elbowing its way closer to the edges of a boxing ring—all the better to see.

  Kicking their way free of the sacks, the dead—the girl who’d hung herself, that old man, a woman with fair hair who might even have been pretty once—began coming. When they moved, bits and pieces shed and fell: flaps of skin, tangled knots of hair, an ear, half a nose. But the dead didn’t seem to care. They kept coming, and fast, puffs of ice rising like the steam of coal-fired engines as they kicked across the snow. As they ran, their heaving, writhing bellies bobbed and bounced. Those stomachs were so heavy, they ought to have burst.

  But Rima thought that would happen only when these reanimated dead were closer. One would’ve done, too, but whatever was in charge here—the fog itself or only the woman with the purple eyes—was evidently leaving nothing to chance.

  This is the reason she’s waiting. She and Tony and Emma could fight, but a thrust of Tony’s pike or chop of her blade into precisely the wrong spot … This is what she wants to see.

  “I don’t understand,” Emma said. “What’s it mean?”

  “Infected, chuckaboo.” Tony’s tone was grim. “Each and every one.”

  He was right.

  These dead were rotters.

  EMMA

  Why Meme Freaked

  DESPITE THIS STUPID skirt and horrible boots and a bum ankle—despite the searing pain in her ribs and new blood in her mouth—she was keeping up, though every breath felt like talons raking her throat. It was true, what they said about fear and adrenaline, though Elizabeth’s body was starting to ache, break down. They were going fast, racing through passages, with Bode in the lead, doubling back on his trail of wax drippings. The tunnels were so still it was like moving in that airless, motionless space between heartbeats. The only sound was the scuff of their boots on rock. On the way out of her cell, she’d swept up both the flask and that scalpel. In her right skirt pocket, the flask banged in time with every step. (Though why she’d bothered, she couldn’t say; just thought it would be useful. She wasn’t a drinker, but if ever there was a good time to start …) The scalpel she’d tucked into the left pocket on purpose, because she was right-handed and worried that even with the strip of burlap wrapped around the blade, she’d forget and end up slicing fingers. Now she reached and felt for the long bone handle through a layer of wool. Felt good to have a weapon, not that she figured it would be of much use. A while back, they’d passed a four-way junction, and they were still moving fast, pelting past closed cell doors, every one of which looked the same. So did the rock, and the tunnels themselves reminded her of long snakes eeling for the asylum.

  Tunnels and Bode: the echo wasn’t lost on her, and it was easier thinking about that than what had happened in her cell. Her Bode had spent an entire lifetime between the pages of a book fighting horrors in enemy tunnels. Even though this was a different boy, tunnels might be just a Bode-character hiccup, something constant between Nows, like eye color or the shape of his nose.

  “Hush.” Bode suddenly pulled up. “I thought I … there.” He darted a look down the corridor unspooling ahead of them. “Damn. You hear that?”

  “Hear?” She was panting hard, coughing a little, swallowing back blood. But then she caught it: a distant clank, followed by a far-off rumble. Uh-oh. “What’s that?”

  “Door. A lot of the tunnels are blocked off with iron grates. That’s what you’re hearing. But you need a key, and if somebody’s got one …”

  “That means we’re out of time.” And heading right for them. Her stomach sank. “Do we turn back?”

  “And meet up with Weber?” Bode grunted. “Not in this lif
etime. But there’s that four-way. We duck into a side tunnel. I think one leads out to the old derelict criminal wings. It was colder and wet-smelling, so it might open to the surface.”

  “What if it’s only Meme coming? Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe that’s why the screaming stopped.”

  “Could be.” Bode didn’t sound convinced. “We wouldn’t know until we come face-to-face, and I don’t much like that plan, do you?” When she shook her head, he said, “Tell me something. When she looked at you through those panops, what’d she see? After you got to be … Emma, that is. You know what she saw, yeah?”

  “Let me ask you a question. The Emma in your nightmares: who’s she look like?”

  “ ’At’s just it.” He gnawed at his lower lip. “I never have been able to figure it.”

  “Figure what?”

  “How you can be two people at once. Sometimes, in the nightmare, I think you’re Elizabeth. Others, I could swear you’re …”

  “Who?”

  “When I think about it?” He held her gaze. “I could swear that you’re Meme.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “So now you know why Meme freaked.”

  Bode stared a good half second. “Oh holy God. You’re saying Meme is who you really look—”

  A voice, hollow with distance, interrupted. “Bode?”

  Emma jumped. Starting, Bode snapped his head toward the far corridor ahead, then grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him. Not a word, he mouthed, and she thought, Wasn’t planning on it.

  “Bode.” Meme’s voice was getting closer. From the sound of it, she wasn’t creeping along either, but coming pretty fast. “You know what she is,” Meme called. “I need to take her to him, and I have to do it before it is too late for us all.”

  Him. She meant Kramer, who had at least one version of Tony that didn’t belong and either had or was trying to find all of them who’d shared in that valley and its nightmares: Lily, Chad, Lizzie. Must not know about Bode yet or he’d be with the other Tony. Unless Kramer thought he had plenty of time; after all, Bode worked here, and—until only a little while ago—had no clue what Kramer was doing. She wondered, too: If I’m the strongest piece, and a little bit of me was in Elizabeth all along … shouldn’t Meme be sick like the Tonys? Unless Meme was different somehow. And how was Kramer or this woman with the panops gathering anyone without the Mirror or cynosure? Unless … Another way in? A back door? Something similar to what a computer programmer put into operating systems and software that allowed him to bypass security protocols and infiltrate the guts of a system? Would McDermott have wanted a back way into his book-worlds? To what, visit?

  God. The realization was like the detonation of a firecracker in her mind. Something like down cellar?

  “Come on. Back the way we came. Here.” He pressed a candle on an iron miner’s pick into her hands. “And take Weber’s match safe, too, in case we have to separate.”

  “Oh no, Bode, we’re not splitting …” She gasped at the sudden, unmistakable clash of metal on metal that reverberated through the tunnels. “You hear that?”

  “Yeah.” Bode turned a complete circle. “That’s locks,” he said. “Those are bolts.”

  Not being shot from the case. Heart pounding, Emma looked right and left. Being run back on every cell, every door …

  Then, to her horror, came screams—but not from people. These screams shrilled from hinges that probably hadn’t seen use since these tunnels were born.

  All the cell doors, each and every one, were beginning to open.

  RIMA

  Swarm

  THIS WOULD BE over in seconds, not minutes, and they all three knew it.

  “The fog. Can we get into it somehow? Will it let us through?” When she didn’t reply, Tony snapped, “Rima! Don’t look at them! Look at me. The fog … can we cross?”

  “No.” She tore her gaze from the ravening swarm nearly on them. “That is, I … I don’t know. Emma, maybe, but …”

  “No way,” Emma said. Then, almost to herself: “Where’s Jack?”

  “Watch it!” At Tony’s shout, Rima jerked round just as that girl—the hanger—launched herself on a rusty screech. Gasping, Rima tried for a chop, but then Tony was sweeping the butt end of his pike in a sharp uppercut. The wood handle caught the girl under the jaw. Her neck snapped back, and as the girl blundered back into three other rotters, he whirled the pike around and drove forward. The point punched through the girl’s breastbone with a dull thuck. No blood spumed, but the girl’s mouth gaped in a howl, and ichor, sticky and foul, boiled in an inky torrent. Still yowling, the sound like a file dragging over metal, the girl staggered onto her heels as Tony yanked the pike free.

  “Back up, back up!” Tony jabbed with the pike, batting at hands right and left, trying to keep his swings short and controlled. To his right, Rima saw Emma sweep her pike low to the ground so it snagged a young boy at his ankles and sent him sprawling. “Good girl!” Tony yelled. “Both of you, get as close to the fog as you can!”

  Rima saw why he wanted that, too. The dead flanked them in a rough semicircle, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t pass into the fog either. It wasn’t ideal, but that meant no dead could come round behind them. She felt the prickle of the fog’s energy along her neck and back. She chopped in swift cuts, first right and then left, trying to vary the rhythm. Please—she had no breath to shout at the woman—please, help them, help us!

  To her right, Tony choked up on the pike and raked it in a fast, sideways cut so violent Rima heard the whistle as the point sped through the air. The iron shaft smashed into a woman whose left arm ended in a jagged tooth of bone. Careering sideways, the dead thing flailed with one good hand, bringing down two more as she fell, the three of them toppling like pins.

  That was when whatever good luck they were going to get ran out. As soon as Tony’s pike cleared, more dead piled in, hands outstretched to grab.

  “Tony, to your left!” Darting forward, Rima brought the chopper around in a wild swing. She felt when the blade clipped the arm of a bedraggled man with muttonchops, shaving skin and then stuttering over bone to skip away.

  But she’d also done exactly what Tony warned her against. As she finished the follow-through, her center shifted. Pulled off-balance, she floundered into a staggering half turn to the left. In the next instant, she felt hands scrambling up her back, fingers whisking at her neck. Something knotted in her shawl and pulled tight. The thick wool inched down, and then a wave of panic crashed into her chest as her air cut out.

  No! Dropping the chopper, she clawed at her neck. There were other hands on her now, and they bore her to the snow, smashing her facedown the way you might bludgeon a large fish you’d just hooked. She felt cold sheet over her face. Snow clotted in her mouth and plugged her nose, not that it mattered, because she couldn’t breathe anyway. Above the pound of her pulse, she thought she heard Tony bellow something, and then Emma’s shout. An instant later, whatever had hooked her shawl jerked and then the pressure eased: not a lot, but enough that she was already blindly surging up from the snow.

  Coughing, she wrenched the shawl from around her neck. Tony … Emma … the chopper, where’s … She spotted the chopper’s bone handle two feet away to her right. To her left, Tony had impaled her attacker in the neck. The pike had pierced clear through, and the hook was now snagged under the dead woman’s right ear.

  “Hurry, Tony!” Emma had her back to him, and now she swung her pike, jabbing at hands and bodies. A boy—most of his chest gone and only shreds of muscle clinging to jagged ribs—clamped both hands on the pike’s handle and gave the girl a mighty jerk. Crying out, Emma stumbled, then loosed her grip on the pike. Without her weight, the boy lost his footing and staggered to one knee. Racing forward, Emma aimed a kick for the boy’s jaw. There was a sodden crack, and suddenly, half the boy’s jaw ripped free to career away, like the broken handle of a jug, into the snow. Gargling, the boy clapped both hands to his ruined face. Seizing her pike, E
mma levered the iron spike upward. Another crack, and this time what remained of the boy’s head split in two. The girl danced back. “Tony, come on!”

  “Can’t!” Try as he might, he couldn’t wrest his pike free. “Clear out, Emma, back up!”

  “No, let it go!” Emma shouted. “You can have mine!”

  “She’s right!” Rima croaked, as the dead woman wrapped both hands around the pike’s iron shaft. “Let go, Tony! Leave it!”

  Too late. As the woman fell back, her momentum dragged Tony forward and off his feet. Rima heard Emma shriek as grasping hands shot out to latch onto and then swarm up Tony’s pike. A leering boy with no lips opened his naked jaws—

  Tony began to scream.

  EMMA

  Domain

  1

  “BODE.” BLOOD SLUSHING with terror, Emma put a hand on his arm. Up and down this corridor, each cell door was slowly swinging open. “Bode, the doors … how …”

  “I don’t know, but … Christ.” His eyes bulged. His hand closed over her elbow, and he began taking slow steps backward, tugging her along with him. “There are cells ahead and behind. We got … we got to get out of …”

  Yes, but go where? As they drew back, she saw that the doors were wide open now, each coming to rest with a resounding clang of metal against brick wall. Her heart squeezed down with dread. In the nacreous green light, each open door was a blank, a yawning void. She could hear them—the scrape of Bode’s boots and the tap of her heels—but from the open cells, there was nothing. No one wandered out. For a split second, she let herself think, They’re all empty. No one there. Just props, like in a horror movie.