Acherontia Atropos Part 11

The Browning dropped from my suddenly lax grip and fell to the

thinly carpeted floor with a loud thud. I was lucky that it didn't

choose that moment to go off and take me out.

I stared into the flat, dead eyes of Yan like a deer caught by the

headlights of a tractor trailer. For a long moment, I wondered if

it were just a new horror that my nightmares had produced. But no,

the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh was stronger than ever,

accompanied by the dull, wet scent of damp earth and death. I was

awake.

"No." I whispered, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. "You

can't be here. You're dead." For a crazy second, I wondered if I'd

dreamed it all, and that he actually was alive.

No. No. It couldn't be possible.

Yan continued to watch me. There was nothing in his eyes, no vital

spark or hint of reflection. It was like trying to look into the

eyes of one of the preserved animal specimens at the museum.

"What do you want?" I whispered, very afraid. It's not often that

a guy gets visited by the ripening corpse of one of his friends.

This was definitely a first for me.

Yan's mouth opened and moved, as if he were talking. No sound came

out though, nothing but the whistling of moving air. My gaze moved

slowly, reluctantly down... oh God, I didn't want to look. Yan had

been buried in a suit. It still looked starched and pressed, like

he'd just taken it out of his closet and put it on. he high collar

was buttoned and he was wearing a tie, but I could still see a bit

of his neck. The gaping hole was still there; it looked like some

giant had reached down and just scooped half of his neck away. Air

was rushing out through the gap between the collar and his throat.

I covered my mouth with one hand. Of course, he couldn't talk. No

vocal cords. No throat. It all made perfect sense. A hysterical

little giggle started bubbling up inside me, and I fought it off.

If I started laughing now, I'd never stop. Stop. "Please stop," I

said, very carefully.

Yan stopped moving his mouth. Once again, he just looked at me.

There was something in his empty gaze, as strange as it seemed. He

was expecting something. No, not just expecting. Needing.

Needing me to command him, to give him something to do. The

knowledge came to me, the thought forming completely unbidden in

my subconscious.

Oh shit...he was looking at me for orders. What the hell was going

on?

I shivered. Static energy crawled along my skin, making every hair

on my body stand on end. I was overflowing, there was too much...

too much what?

My hands stung, and I looked down at them. Blood glittered on my

palms, welling up from four cuts that I'd made there with my

fingernails. I'd been clenching my hands in my sleep.

And now that I was awake and looking at the blood, I needed to do

something. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the weird thoughts

that were creeping through my mind. I could almost feel that cold,

dark energy dancing along my fingertips in the moonlight. I had

to...

I held out a shaking hand toward Yan. Blood droplets glittered on

my fingertips. I spoke, the words drawn from me reluctantly by the

power. "Drink," I said, my voice husky in my ears. "Take the

offering and walk again."

The corpse...

No, that wasn't right.

Zombie. Yes. It was a zombie--didn't need any more urging. It

grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward, then began to suck the

blood from my fingers. Its hand was hard and cold, its skin

faintly waxy. A dry, leathery tongue rasped against my fingertips,

and I let out a soft, frightened whimper and tried to pull my hand

away. The zombie clung like a limpet, making a protesting almost-

sound, and continued to lap at the blood. I stopped trying to get

away when its grip tightened enough to make the bones of my wrist

grind together. When it had finished with my fingers, the zombie

turned its attention to the still bleeding wounds on the palm of

my hand and began to drink from them. It looked at me the entire

time.

I was caught in its gaze, frozen. With each passing minute, the

zombie's eyes became less flat, less dead. There was something

shining in them--not life, it couldn't be that--but awareness.

Knowledge. Self. Just as weird, its neck healed as I watched,

shiny white scar tissue closing over the gaping hole.

My nerves protested like all hell when the zombie began sucking at

the cuts. The pain brought me back, and I suddenly realized that I

was just standing there, letting something that just crawled out

of the ground drink my blood. Oh God. I tried to pull my hand back

again. The zombie mewled out a pathetic protest. "Let go," I said,

sharply.

It did exactly as it was told, and I stumbled back a step and ran

the backs of my legs into Heero's bed. I just wanted to laugh. It

was mine, all mine. I'd created it, brought it to me, and now it

was mine to command. A strange kind of elation welled up inside me,

and I felt the dark energy stir, pulling toward the zombie. I

wanted to touch it again, to share my blood with it. It was mine.

My child...

/Stop that!/ I told myself. This was too freaky.

The zombie stared at me again. Its lips were dark with blood. We

watched each other for an eternal second, and then the zombie

licked its lips. It was as if that little bit made all of the

blood, magic, or whatever reach critical mass. Suddenly, the

zombie's entire posture changed. It was no longer stiff and dead,

though it wasn't quite alive.

It looked at me, and Self flooded into its eyes. "Duo?" it said

with Yan's voice, inflections, and everything. "What's going on?"

It--no, shit, I couldn't think of the zombie as an it any more,

not when it was looking at me like that--HE sounded like a lost,

scared little boy.

I took an involuntary step back, toward the door. The zombie took

a step toward me.

That was it. "Stay there!" I yelled, my voice cracking. I backed

away more quickly, even though the zombie obeyed my command. This

had to be a bad dream. I ran my back into the door and yelped.

Yan the zombie watched me, a mixture of curiosity and hurt on his

dead face. "Duo, what's wrong?" he asked.

That was too much. I fumbled for the doorknob, not looking away

from the zombie, and managed to get the door open.

I slammed the door behind me as soon as I was out in the hall,

then ran the short distance to Wufei's room. My breath was sobbing

in my throat, coming way too fast. "Wufei!" I said as loudly as I

dared, knocking on the door. There was no answer. "Wufei!" My

voice shook. I knew on an intellectual level that the zombie would

still be back in my room, waiting for the next order... but my

intellect was definitely not at home. I could all too easily

imagine the zombie creeping up behind me, reaching out for me in

classic "Night of the Living Dead" style.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God...

"Wufei!" I gave up any pretense at being quiet. If the other guys

in the hall had a problem, THEY could go deal with the damn zombie.

I pounded on the door. Still no answer, and for one terrible

moment I imagined that another zombie had come and gotten Wufei,

and any minute the one in my room would change its mind about

obeying me and eat my brain like so many licorice all-sorts. My

knees gave out and crashed into Wufei's door and slid slowly down

its smooth surface until I was on the floor. I continued to hit

the door with one hand. The cuts in my palm had reopened, leaving

little smears of blood on the door every time I hit it.

There was a soft sound beyond the door, and it was suddenly jerked

open. I fell over, caught completely off guard, and ended up

sprawling at Wufei's feet. His hair was hanging around his face,

and he was wearing only a pair of pants. "Duo?" He asked,

incredulous. "What's wrong?"

I was feeling a little upset. Yan dying, I could handle. Dead was

dead, no changing it, I wouldn't be Shinigami if I didn't know

that. But... now... he wasn't dead. Kind of. Because of me.

So I went into a round of hysterics.

Wufei handled it pretty well, I think. I threw myself at him and

locked my arms around his waist, and he didn't push me away.

Instead, he awkwardly returned my desperate embrace. He didn't do

that sort of thing very often. He stood there and half held me and

listened to me babble for several minutes before he realized that

I wasn't going to just calm down on my own. Then he pushed me away

slightly, grabbed my arms, and shook me once, very firmly.

The sound of my teeth rattling in my head brought me back to my

senses. My breath came in rapid gasps. I concentrated on slowing

down until a small measure of coherency returned to my thoughts.

"Okay, Duo." Wufei said, a great deal more calm than he had any

right to be. Then again, he didn't know about the dead guy in my

room yet. "What's going on?"

I took a long, deep breath. "Yan." I said, very softly. "He's...

in my room."

Wufei's eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. "What?"

"Yan's in my room!" I shouted, my voice cracking.

To Wufei's credit, he didn't ask questions or patronize me. I

guessed that after the week we'd all been having, he was pretty

much willing to believe anything. "Can I let go of you now?" he

asked.

I nodded, not trusting myself to talk again. He let go of my arms,

then disappeared into his room for a moment. When he came back out,

he was tugging on a shirt one handed and holding his sword.

Wordlessly, we walked down the hall to my room. Wufei opened my

door and took a cautious look inside.

If he saw anything, he didn't give any outward sign. For a crazy

minute, I wondered if it had been a nightmare, and I'd gotten

Wufei out of bed for nothing. God, I hoped it was a nightmare. I'd

take the ass kicking without a complaint.

Wufei took a deliberate step back and quietly shut the door. His

face had taken on a pale, sickly tinge. "That," he said very

carefully, "is impossible."

My eyes widened. I hadn't heard Wufei sound like that very often.

He was afraid. The only thing that was keeping him from breaking

down like me was the fact that he was Wufei, and Wufei would never

let anyone see him like that. I fell back against the wall with a

solid thump and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. I

wanted to laugh. "Oh good," I said. "That means I must be

imagining it."

Wufei took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Did it attack

you?"

I shook my head.

"Did it act hostile at all?"

I shook my head again. "It..." I took a deep breath and tried

again. My words came out in a rush. "It's waiting for me to tell

it to do something."

Wufei's eyes widened. "What?"

I scrubbed at my eyes with one hand, the hand that the zombie

hadn't touched. "It's waiting for me to give it orders. It's

mine."

"How...?"

"I don't know. Jesus, I don't know." I actually started laughing.

I put my face in one hand and slammed the other into the floor.

Hard. The pain shocked me enough that I managed to pull myself out

of another looming bout of hysteria. "God, Wufei... when are our

lives ever going to go back to normal?"

Wufei crouched down until he was level with me. "I don't know," he

said. "Were they that normal to begin with?"

I snorted. "God, I don't know how you handle this so well."

"It's happening to you, not me. I'm only effected because I am

your friend...so I am at least getting a choice as to whether or

not I want to get involved," he pointed out. "Besides, maybe you

only think I'm taking it well. Maybe once the zombie's taken care

of, I'm going to go back to my room, lock myself in, and draw on

the walls for a while."

The comment had its desired effect. I laughed, and it wasn't

tainted with panic in the slightest. The image of Wufei, barefoot

and with his hair loose, drawing on the walls with scented

permanent markers was just too ridiculous. I felt calmer almost

immediately, a little removed from the problem. If Wufei could

handle it, so could I, damnit.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. God, Wufei is one cool

cucumber.

"You win." I said. "I'm okay now." I took a deep breath. No, I

wasn't okay, but at least I was in control. "What do we do?"

"We go inside and see what it wants. It came from somewhere. We

send it back." It sounded so simple when he said it. Maybe it was

that easy. I hoped so. Sometimes I wished I could see the world in

simple terms like Wufei seemed to. There's a fight, so you apply

sufficient force to the enemy that you will leave nothing standing.

There is a wrong, so you right it. There's a pervert groping you,

so you kick him in the nuts. There's not enough rice, so you go

buy more. There's a reanimated, ripe-smelling corpse standing in

your friends' rooms, so you go in and ask it what it wants, then

send it home. See? Fits right in.

I nodded shakily and stood up. He followed me when I walked into

my room. It was the bravest thing I'd done all week.

The zombie was standing where I'd left it--him. When I came in, he

looked at me, and I only had one name for the expression on his

face. He was hurt. I suddenly felt like a heel, which seemed

pretty ridiculous. I was feeling bad about hurting the feelings of

a corpse.

But damnit, corpses weren't supposed to look so...alive.

"Duo?" Yan looked up at me. There was still a strange flatness in

his eyes, like he was lacking some vital spark. Well, duh. But at

the same time, they were still Yan's eyes, and there was still a

measure of intelligence and self awareness in them. "What's going

on? What am I doing here?"

I carefully moved past him and sat on my bed. Wufei stayed

standing, by the door, still holding his sword. "What do you want,

Yan?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.

If anything, the question seemed to just confuse him more.

"Want...?" he said wonderingly, as if the thought that he might

actually want something was completely foreign to him.

I glanced at Wufei. Wufei shrugged. Big help there. So I tried

again. "Why are you here?" When in doubt, rephrase the question.

Yan suddenly smiled. Boyish. Innocent. All American. If you

ignored the fact that he was dead and smelled, that is. "You

called me."

"I *WHAT*?" I nearly yelled. That wasn't the answer I had been

expecting.

Yan regarded me unblinkingly. "You called me," he repeated.

I looked at Wufei. He shrugged. I resisted the urge to hit him.

"Called you from where?"

Yan hesitated. "My... room?" It sounded more like a question than

an answer.

I knew THAT wasn't it. I shook my head. "Try to remember."

"But where would I be if I wasn't in my room?"

It didn't seem right for a zombie to sound so... lost. They were

supposed to try to eat people, and stumble around moaning "fresh

meat" or something like that. At least if you believed the movies.

"I hate to tell you this, man, but you're dead."

"I am?"

I nodded. God, this was so weird. "A vampire ripped your throat

out. It's hard to get deader than that."

Yan reached up and cautiously touched his neck. His eyes widened.

"I don't remember..."

"That's probably for the best," Wufei murmured.

Yan looked at Wufei. He smiled. He'd always liked Wufei. His

attention came back to me almost immediately, though. I was the

focus of his world. "I'm... dead," he said quietly, as if he were

testing out the idea. "My parents are sad, aren't they."

"A lot of us are." I said, just as quietly. "Some of the guys are

out, right now, looking for the monsters that killed you." Shit.

The guys. They wouldn't believe this.

"Can I go home?" he asked.

I shook my head quickly. "I don't think that would be a good idea.

Your parents already got a bad shock when you died. If you showed

back up, I don't know how they'd take it."

He nodded. "You're right. So I'm dead." He was so trusting. It

only made

me feel worse.

"Yes." At least he wasn't in denial about it. I don't know what I

would have done about that.

"Then I should go back to being dead, shouldn't I?" he said slowly.

His voice immediately firmed, and he nodded, as if he liked the

idea. "I should get put back."

Great. Never mind the fact that I had no idea how to do it. Then

again, I hadn't had the foggiest clue on how to bring someone back

as a zombie to begin with. Maybe whatever it was that told me how

to start this little adventure would tell me how to finish it.

"Where did you come from?"

Yan shrugged. No help there.

Wufei cleared his throat. "There's a graveyard a few miles

northwest. That is most likely." I blinked. I hadn't known that.

Wufei smirked. "It pays to be thorough in one's reconnaissance."

I rolled my eyes. Of course. Wufei seriously needed a life if he

spent his time scouting around for graveyards, but I wasn't going

to say that, considering he'd just saved my ass. "Okay, then.

We'll go there. Sound good to everyone?" No objections. Great.

Take charge, Duo. As I stood, a strange thought came to mind.

"Wufei, do you have some salt?"

Wufei had been turning to leave, but he stopped at my question. "I

might have some in my room. Why?"

"Don't know." I shrugged. It had been a weird, stupid idea that

came up from my subconscious. Considering all the interesting

things that had been coming up from that part of my mind lately, I

wasn't going to argue with it.

Wufei obviously was thinking along the same lines as me. "I'll go

check." he said.

* * *

When we consulted with a map, we found that the graveyard was

closer to five miles away. Too long to walk in as little time as

we had until dawn. I knew I sure as hell didn't want to get caught

walking around with Yan's animated corpse. So we hot-wired one of

the cars in the teacher's parking lot, a truck that belonged to

one of the night janitors. Wufei drove. I wasn't feeling too

confident in my ability to do anything that required any amount of

focus.

After a little discussion and shuffling, Yan got relegated to the

back. As sorry as I felt for him, I didn't want to deal with how

he smelled in close quarters. I figured that if the back of the

truck smelled a bit off when we returned it, well... hopefully the

janitor wouldn't notice. There were all sorts of cleaning supplies

and implements back there. Maybe he'd figure that he hadn't rinsed

his mop out well enough or something. Let someone else deal with a

damn mystery for once.

The ride to the cemetery was silent. Yan wouldn't speak unless

spoken to, and neither Wufei or I really felt like talking. Once

we got there and unloaded Yan, we had another problem.

"Where the hell did you get buried?" I asked the dead guy, more

than a bit exasperated. The cemetery was huge. Acres of crosses

and weathered stone angels, tall headstones covered with kanji and

english characters, as far as the eye could see. Looking for one

grave would take forever.

"I don't know." Yan shrugged. "I just remember coming to your

room."

Great.

"This is an old graveyard," Wufei said. "There won't be many new

graves. So we look for freshly disturbed sod or dirt."

It was a better than being completely clueless, but for some

reason, the thought of wandering around in a huge, old grave yard

in the middle of the night looking for a small patch of freshly

disturbed earth just did not turn me on. Call me weird. "Wait, I

have a better idea." I glanced at Yan. "Does your family have a

plot in this cemetery, maybe somewhere you guys would

visit?"

Yan nodded slowly. "I think so. Yes. I remember where it is."

I grinned. "Bingo. Take us there, then." Yan the zombie nodded and

chose one of the gravel paths to walk down. Wufei and I followed

him. None of us spoke; the only sound was gravel crunching beneath

our feet.

I watched Yan walking ahead of me. He had his hands in his pockets.

That was another thing. I thought zombies were supposed to shuffle.

And do so while holding their arms stiffly out in front of them. I

would really have to have a talk with the guys that thought up

horror flicks some time. So far, they were batting zero.

Yan's family plot was pretty far from the front gate of the

cemetery. It was on the outskirts; there were trees on almost all

sides of it, and a fence. End of the road. There were several

large grave markers, all of them covered with the graceful,

spidery shapes of hundreds of kanji. I could only understand about

half of them, but the effect itself was pretty. They glimmered in

the moonlight; the characters had been filled in with silver

leafing. Yan's grave was the only relatively new one. There were

two wreaths of flowers set up by it, and an easel with Yan's

picture on it. The picture was draped in black so it looked like

the kanji number four. /Shi./ Death. Yan in the picture was

smiling. His hair was slicked back perfectly and he was in his

uniform.

Strangely enough, the earth over the grave wasn't disturbed. It

just looked like it had settled--there was a depression in the

grass. Yan obviously hadn't clawed his way up through the earth

like in the movies...

/Geeze, man,/ I hissed at myself in annoyance, /enough with the

damn horror movies./

Some days, I really wonder about myself. Other days, I know.

I cleared my throat and looked at Yan. "Looks like the end of the

road, man."

He nodded and stood by his grave. None of us moved for a moment.

Finally, he looked at me, his face expressionless. "Will it hurt?"

he asked.

I hesitated. "I don't know," I said honestly, "I don't think it

will, though."

He nodded. "Then put me back. I'm tired."

At his quiet words, a lump formed in my throat. I blinked my eyes

quickly. Damnit, I was not going to cry. I took a deep breath. The

air tasted tired, faintly moldy and full of the earthy scents of

fresh dirt and old death. "Okay..." I said. "Okay..." I turned let

myself go. I didn't have any better ideas.

As soon as I stopped trying to keep it out, the cool, electrical

power crashed through me, leaving me gasping as if I'd just been

dunked in freezing water. All of my nerve endings were sensitized;

I could feel the slightest breeze, could almost feel the tiny

pressure of the moonlight on my skin. I couldn't give it direction,

because I didn't know what to do with it, so it rushed into the

ground madly, leaving me tingling with its constant flow.

But it was more than that. I could see underground, into the

graves, through the grass and dirt and wood of the coffins.

Skeletons and rotted corpses caught my attention, and I could see

each one in my mind's eye. One woman, now nothing more than dust,

lay in her grave like so, though there was no longer enough of her

left that her position could be discerned with sight. Another

grave held three corpses stacked one on top of each other, ancient

on the bottom, barely fifty years dead on top. I could taste the

last glimmerings of the people that had left the bodies behind,

roll the feel of them between my fingers and tell how old they

were, when they died.

"Duo," Wufei said, his voice strained.

I opened my eyes slowly, turning to look at Wufei. All around,

small clusters of lights or mist had sprung from the graves. I

knew that they were ghosts - corpse candles - without knowing

precisely why. They were the last gasps of personalities and souls

that had long since moved on, but had been strong enough, angry

enough to stain the ground over them with their presence.

"Ignore them," I said, my voice very calm. "They can't hurt you if

you ignore them."

I turned my eyes back to Yan--no, what was left of Yan. There was

no soul there, only the short-lived memory of who he had been

moving the body, using the vital spark of power that I had given

him. My zombie. My... child. I had called him, and now he was

tired, ready for to rest once more.

I stepped forward, tearing at the scabs on my hand until one came

free and blood welled from the newly reopened wound in a hot line.

The blood clung to my fingertips. I wiped it gently on Yan's lips.

He watched me, his eyes wide and frightened. He couldn't

understand what I was doing. I wasn't sure if I understood, myself.

My hand went to my pocket, and I pulled out the small paper packet

of salt that Wufei had found for me. my guess was that he'd

liberated it from a fast food restaurant at some point. That

wasn't important though. The salt itself was. I sprinkled the salt

on Yan's shoulders, and he shuddered.

"With blood and earth, I bind thee. Return to thy rest and walk no

more," I said, very softly. I couldn't believe the words that were

coming out of my mouth. Too strange for me.

Yan closed his eyes, and smiled. "Thank you," he whispered.

I took him by the arms and helped him lay down on his grave. The

grass and soil flowed over him like water until he was hidden from

sight.

The power inside me dried up abruptly, and I collapsed to my knees

on top of Yan's grave, my hands shaking. Whatever it was that had

moved me before, it was gone now. I was just Duo.

Well, pretty much. Right then, I just felt like a candle that

someone had left out in their car in the middle of summer.

"Are you alright, Duo?" Wufei asked, kneeling by me. I hadn't

heard him move.

"Yeah, just peachy-keen," I said. "Now that that little adventure

is over with."

"Is it?" Wufei asked. He gave me a hand up. "I have a strange

feeling that things are only going to get worse."

I groaned, laughing. "Don't say that, man! Someone might be

listening!" It felt good to laugh and relax. Things were okay now.

The corpse was back in the ground. "Oh God..." I moaned, stumbling

against Wufei as the enormity of what had just happened hit me

like a falling pallet of bricks. "What the hell did I do?" I'd

brought Yan, the boy I'd helped kill, back from the dead. This on

top of everything else. Was I even human any more?

Wufei caught me and held me up. "You didn't do anything," he said.

"Everything that has been happening since the beginning of this

mess has been caused by the vampires." I looked up. He sounded

angry. "Everything," he said again. "They're the reason that the

boy died. They're the ones that...assaulted you." His lips curled

in distaste. "They're why the others are out in the woods tonight

and we're here. Don't try to blame it on yourself." He turned his

gaze on to me, and gave me a sharp shake. "Or I won't be angry

with them any more. I'll save all my anger for YOU."

I nodded meekly. I'd never seen Wufei in a mood quite like this

before.

"Understand?"

I nodded again.

"Good."

He half carried, half dragged me back to the truck, and we drove

back to the school in silence. When we were back in the dorms, I

hesitated in front of my door.

"Wu-man?"

He stopped, halfway down the hall. "Yes?"

I licked my lips nervously. This sounded really weird. "Can I

sleep in your room tonight?"

Wufei turned back toward me, his eyes wide with shock. Finally, he

nodded. "As long as you promise not to have any more visitors."

"I'll do my best." I grinned weakly and let him usher me into his

room. Soon, I was ensconced on his bed.

Wufei grabbed one of his extra blankets and wrapped it around

himself, then sat on the floor by the door, his sword propped

against his shoulder. "Go to sleep, Duo," he said quietly. "I'm

watching over you."

It was like before, when Quatre and Heero had held me. I suddenly

felt warm and safe, because Wufei was there. I didn't have to be

afraid.

I lay down and drifted off to sleep.