Un2Dead (Book One of the Un2Series)

Jayne hit the “Talk” button on the intercom next to the glass cell door.

“I need the two of you to separate and for the Mistress of the dark to step back a few feet.”

Reese begrudgingly stepped a few feet over but continued to hold Wit’s hand.

“You need to stand farther apart than that. Take a few steps back, Reese.”

Reese didn’t move. Jayne reached into the folds of her pants and produced the shiny black remote. She slapped it against the door and held it there for Reese to see. Reese quickly took two giant steps backward preferring the temporary shooting muscle pain to the searing sensation of burning flesh.

Jayne motioned Wit forward as she opened the clear panel between them, keeping her eyes trained on Reese, the one she considered more dangerous despite her injuries. DeLeon rushed forward to greet Wit as he would a dinner guest.

“You look fabulous! Just great!” DeLeon scanned Wit as he turned him about. ”Come this way.”

He escorted Wit to the lab leaving Jayne to tag behind.

“As I mentioned earlier, you will perform the duties that once belonged to the late, great Joseph.” DeLeon paused dramatically, rubbing his brow. “No. On second thought I believe you will be Jayne. Jayne, you are now Joseph.”

Jayne opened her mouth to object and was duly thwarted by DeLeon’s index finger.

“It isn’t up for discussion. Jayne will don the breastplate. Wit will restore the emblem.”

“And how, pray tell, will Mr. Witmoore know what to do?” Jayne sneered.

“You will direct him.”

“This is absurd!”

“Is it, Jayne? I look at it this way. What would the chances be of the cook poisoning the king’s food if he had to taste it himself?”

“Are you insinuating that I can’t be trusted?” Jayne huffed.

“No. I’m stating it as a fact. I trust you about as far as I can throw you. Put on the armor.”

DeLeon slid the platter of fruit and cheese over, set down his sword and seated himself on the table. Jayne stared back at him.

“Get the armor from the altar,” Jayne directed Wit as she continued to stare at Deleon.

Wit removed the breastplate from its dais in the center of the altar, grabbing it along the sides of its sculpted pectorals. The armor felt even lighter than Wit remembered. As he carried it back to Jayne, it felt as if the armor was pulling him forward. The armor seemed eager if that was at all possible. He presented the chest piece to Jayne and she raised her arms in a manner that urged Wit to assist her in slipping it on.

“Ah,ah,ah!” DeLeon interjected accompanied by a finger wag. ”No shirt. It has to touch the flesh.”

Jayne dropped her arms and sighed. DeLeon nodded for her to proceed. Jayne crisscrossed her arms above her head taking hold of the linen cowl draped around her neck. Wit didn’t know where to look. First, he glanced at the floor, then across the grotto to see Reese standing at the glass wall of the cell, then back at Jayne just in time to see her unveil a truly lovely pair of breasts. Wit caught himself staring, not at her breasts but at the ragged black and green welt that started about mid-cleavage, traversed across washboard abs and ended out of view below the belly button. The incision could have been done with a discarded lid cut from a tin can. Whoever did it certainly was not a surgeon. Saying the job was butchered would be a slam against the profession. Wit turned his head out of equal parts courtesy and disgust. Reese winced. The wound was hard to look at even at a distance.

“Aren’t you going to ask Jayne what that bit of nastiness is all about?” DeLeon prodded Wit.

Wit looked to Jayne, embarrassed.

“It’s okay, Witmoore. Just one more humiliation I’m forced to deal with on a daily basis.” She glared again at DeLeon who was very much enjoying her discomfort. “That day at the pet store, the day all this shit hit the fan, we went back to cover our tracks and clean up the mess you and Joey had made. There was what was left of Trevor, torn in half, pinned to the wall. When we went to bag him we noticed a faint green glow reflecting on the chrome corkscrew that ran through his chest. His body didn’t fare too well, but his heart, if you could call it that, could be salvaged. We did what we had to in order to keep the heart functioning. We thought we may be able to extract the essence of whatever the viper produced if we got it back here. We had to find some means of keeping it alive. Putting it into a healthy body seemed our only option at the time. No time to waste. The shards of glass from the shattered tanks were the sharpest thing we had at the time.”

“So you let them slice you open right there at the store with fish tank glass?”

“Let would not be the word. I lost. I drew the short straw.”

“You drew straws?”

“Actually, we did rock, paper, scissors. Trust me. Never throw ‘paper’.”

“Tell him the best part!” DeLeon giggled and kicked his feet.

“We stuffed the heart into my abdomen and taped me up well enough to get me back to the lab . . . ”

“Here it comes!” DeLeon hooted.

“. . . and we open me up to find the thing has attached itself to my intestine. It leeched into my bloodstream and spread like a cancer, forming these barnacle-like lesions on every one of my organs. I was stuck with it. Whatever qualities the green goo possessed were altered by its fusing with my digestive system.”

“There was a whole pen of rabbits right near the front window. Why didn’t you stuff the heart in one of them?” Wit asked innocently.

Decades worth of “Duh!” fell across Jayne’s face. DeLeon broke into a belly laugh.

“Just put the armor on me, Mr. Twenty-five Years Too Late.” Jayne returned her arms to the outstretched position.

Wit maneuvered the breastplate between her arms and onto Jayne’s chest. The void that was meant to hold the emblem framed Jayne’s cleavage and the top portion of the mildewed incision that marred her otherwise beautiful physique. She reached behind her head and secured the back of the collar.

“Next, insert the vials containing the elemental fluids back into the emblem,” Jayne prompted. “They only fit one way. It should be easy.”

“Any particular order? Is there some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo I need to recite as I add the fluids?”

“You’re assembling an ancient battery. Just stick the vials in the chambers.”

“No magic words?”

“No magic words.”

“Damn.” Wit sighed with disappointment.

The candles beneath the vials had warmed the fluids to a point of being hot, but not too hot to hold. Wit took the water-filled vial and slid it into the compartment behind the engraved koi on the emblem. The medallion’s surface fogged as the small glass container pulled from his fingers and snapped into place. The vial’s silver stopper rotated a quarter turn and merged seamlessly with the metal walls surrounding it. Small teal sparks skated across the surface of the medallion, tracing the image of the ancient fish. A fiery display of amber and red crackled through the etched feathers of the Pheacock as the second vial seated. Wit raised the third vial, the vial containing the fluid forcibly taken from him and Reese, the fluid that caused the death of his best friend. His hand trembled. He seriously considered throwing it as hard and as far as he could.

“Anything wrong, Mr. Witmoore?” DeLeon queried.

“Uh, no.” Wit was snapped back to the task at hand. He slid the third vial into the base of the medallion expecting another splash of light. There wasn’t one. It made Wit nervous. He attempted to remove the vial without success. He flipped the assemblage over and bumped it with the heel of his hand.

“Whoa! Hold on there! That isn’t a bottle of ketchup, you know!”

Jayne yanked the medallion away from Wit. She examined the placement of the vials and found everything to be assembled correctly. She rubbed the metal emblem gently across her linen draped thigh to remove the fingerprints Wit had gotten all over its surface.

“Treat this with a bit more respect.” She handed back to Wit in a manner that suggested the proper way to handle such a valuable artifact.

“Now what?” Wit said, holding the medallion by the edges.

“Now you must insert the emblem back into the breastplate. Once it is seated the armor will do the rest.”

Wit looked at the disc he held in his hand. The yin-yang symbol had the fish on the left and the bird on the right. He flipped it to reverse their locations. Then he flipped it back to its original position satisfied that this was the way he first saw it in the breastplate. He raised it level with the circle of cleavage and inserted it into the opening. He quickly took a giant step back, apprehensive of what was about to happen. Nothing happened. He looked to DeLeon who jumped down from the table and stood beside him. Jayne ran her hands over the reconstructed armor, reassuring herself that everything had been done correctly.

“I don’t understand! The armor should be . . . .”

A screech like amplified nails on a chalkboard echoed through the grotto as an electric green spray of sparks pinwheeled around the emblem, illuminating the serpent that surrounded it. An unseen force jerked the armor upward, suspending it and Jayne a few feet above the floor. The viper stayed luminous as the medallion began to rotate. Once the medallion had reversed the positions of the fish and fowl it set itself deeper into the armor. The ingots lining the raceway formed by the viper vibrated as they slid to their proper locations. The precious nuggets aligned with the markings radiating from the medallion’s center, each identifying a moment in time. The suit began calculating wherein the stream of time it currently existed and moved some of the ingots accordingly. Once it was aligned with the universe the armor and its wearer dropped to the ground. Jayne landed cat-like and immediately bounced to her feet.

“Well, that was easy,” she said as she reached behind her head to release the clasp on the collar.

As soon as her fingers touched the buckle, the straps on the collar constricted, tightening its hold around her neck. Jayne jammed her thumbs into the openings surrounding her armpits and tried to loosen the armor’s hold. The pocketed leather apron below her ribcage seized her abdomen and lower back letting her know that it was not ready to be removed. The breastplate transformed into a pale, milky second skin. Jayne’s tarnished torso quivered beneath the translucent bodice. The armor expanded and contracted. It breathed. One by one the elemental fluids within the vials were dispersed through a spider web of veins that filled the suit. Air, fire, and water each took a turn providing nourishment to the long dormant entity. Venom, the earth element, swirled from its vial and encircled the medallion, still a shiny embedded coin in the center of Jayne’s chest. The swirl expanded its diameter, slowly fading as it grew and was absorbed by the suit. The hunger satiated, a metallic sheen began to return to the surface of the armor radiating from the emblem, following the outstretched rays from the sunburst. But then the chromium glaze receded and the fleshy vestment returned. Jayne struggled to catch her breath as the organism constricted upon her again. Beneath the milky veil, tiny clouds of green were erupting along the length of Jayne’s scar. The armor sensed there was more venom to be had. The veins that once carried Jayne’s blood were now filled with the venom-tainted anti-freeze she referred to as life fluid, a parting gift from her precious Trevor. The parasite voraciously consumed the emerald fluid as it leeched it through Jayne’s flesh and bones. The armor was a spider to Jayne’s fly, draining her body of liquids, turning her into a husk of shriveled, bark-like skin. She clawed at the suit with fingers that crumbled as she tried to tear herself free. She collapsed to her knees frozen in a voiceless scream.

“It’s killing her! Do something!” Wit screamed at DeLeon, giving Jayne the voice she lacked.

“What do you expect me to do? If you want to do something, go ahead. No one is stopping you.” DeLeon pushed Wit from behind.

Wit looked over his shoulder at Reese. Her terror-filled eyes were as big as saucers. He looked to Jayne. Her eyes pleaded for the help her voice couldn’t provide. He lunged at the breastplate and pried at the buckle on its collar. Jayne’s deteriorating arms reached for Wit in desperation. She pawed at him in panic, her disintegrating hands clutching at his forearm. A burning sensation rocketed through the back of his arm, into his shoulder blade. Jayne’s arm melded with his creating a conduit for the suit to access the trace amounts of venom that still remained in his system. He tried to break free from Jayne’s grip but their arms had fused into a single gnarled limb. Boils and blisters scurried up past his elbow and crackled and popped their way across his bicep as Wit’s bodily fluids were siphoned towards his hand. Self-preservation mode kicked in and he was no longer concerned with Jayne’s demise. He jammed his foot against Jayne’s neck and tried to pull his arm free of her withered tentacle. The pain tore at him but he continued to twist and pull and contort every direction he could manage.

“Do something!” he shrieked.

DeLeon took two steps backward, plucked a grape from the tray and popped it into his mouth. He nonchalantly took hold of the hilt of his sword and sliced through the air a few times. Satisfied with its maneuverability he bounded forward raising the blade as he moved. The steel struck Wit at the shoulder just above the visible line of decay slicing through his flesh and shattering his bone leaving his left arm looking just like the Venus de Milo’s. The only thing that existed beyond the shoulder was the spray of blood drenching the side of his torso. Wit toppled over as he was severed from Jayne’s crumbling corpse. He hit the craftsman-laid pavement hard, breaking the skin along his cheekbone.

The events of the past few days involuntarily clicked through his brain. “I’ve got to return that overdue DVD. . . Reese is gonna be so pissed. . . Who can pull that dent out of the tailgate? It might be easier to just replace it. . . Man that was good oatmeal.”

Wit’s vision began to fail him. He closed his eyes. The stone pavers were cold and felt good on his face. They smelled like the backyard after a rain, like that one evening when Sunny was about four years old. The day had been so hot that the heat even permeated the house. The evening rain washed away the heat and refreshed the thirsty plants that bordered the patio. Reese and he brought Sunny outside to see the pretty stars but she became enamored with the earthworms making their way across the wet concrete slab. She picked them up and chased her mother around in the wet grass as Reese fake squealed in terror. Sunny giggled uncontrollably.

Wit smiled. It was a most pleasant evening and this last memory that passed through Wit’s mind as his heart went out to his girls for the very last time.