Chapter 23:
The men in the boat were no fools. They wanted nothing to do with getting so close to the shore–especially after hearing that the things there might be stirred up. They insisted on dropping the King and his companions in the shallows and making them wade the rest of the way to shore. Likely they wouldn't bother coming back to retrieve them. Getting off the island was going to be interesting.
Sarah wanted badly to take the lead as Finn led the way up on shore with Orzsebet all but pressed into the back of his suit. That was one funny thing about this mad situation. She wanted to laugh out loud at the deadly Lady of Spies trying to share her hubby's clothes in an effort not to be munched on by zombies. Finn's mind was clear and focused though. It was the eerie serenity of 'new Finn'.
"I come to speak to the Lady of the Island," Finn said. He might have been talking to the air. Orzsebet couldn't see a thing in the darkness. That was part of what made this so terrifying. "Anything," she hissed. "They're all around us," Sarah whispered back. They could get back to the water, but there wasn't anywhere to go after that. The King took a talisman off his neck–a tiny locket and held it out. "The Lady gave me this–in case I ever had to return," said the King. He could feel them moving. "Th-they're... I think they're standing aside, Finn," Sarah burbled. Finn grimly nodded. He knew the way from here, and he set off, half-dragging Orzsebet behind him.
The big man clearly knew the way. With the certainty of a man who'd been someplace before, the King of Ooo went up and down through those nightmare woods. Orzsebet, who'd thought she'd seen ugliness watched her master navigate a hellish landscape that should have left him with nightmares the rest of his days. Finn's face was closed. 'New Finn' was in the house as they walked up to the darkened maw of a cave.
The big man fished out a flashlight, and Sarah was quick to follow suit, with Orzsebet being a beat late. The surfaces around them were hard and showed signs of concrete under the slime and muck. Here and there Orzsebet picked out the rusted remnants of thousand-year-old signs. This place had once been built by the King's remote ancestors, and the Lady of Spies found herself wondering what stories these stones could tell. More to the point, it suggested that her information was correct. There was something here worth stealing for a desperate despot searching for the means to conquer the world.
Just like outside, their leader brought them through the maze of passageways, past darkened entries that stank of decay, and open spaces that held restless, shuffling dead. He led them into a small space that was seeing service as a makeshift bedchamber for a long-dead occupant, though there were signs that it had once been something else. Sarah's keen eyes picked out a light that might once have belonged to a surgical theater in the ceiling overhead. The overgrown, moss-covered ruin in the corner might have been a table for surgical instruments. And was that a respirator in the corner?
Indeed, as the trio approached the master of this ruined land, Sarah's eyes wanted to conjure a gurney. The wheels had long ago rotted to nothing, and the mattress had decayed to dust, but she could see the metal railings that would have secured the patient from falling off. What was this place, she thought? A hospital?
"Hey," Finn greeted the dead woman. His tone was tender–like they were lovers. Finn, the specter replied. I know this is no social call... "Yeah, babe," he agreed. "Unwelcome visitors on your island..." The undead paused, and Finn stepped closer. You shouldn't be here, Finn, Rose opined. My domain is deadly to you... "They seek to steal from you," the King said. "I'm here to stop them..." That gave the specter pause, and Orzsebet imagined that thing was thinking. Her guess was confirmed as Skeleton Princess announced, there was a disturbance earlier. It was gone again before I came fully awake. And then Finn had announced himself.
On his side, Finn frowned in worry. Whoever was here was smart and cagey enough not to go straight for the perceived treasure. They were laying low and doing their best not to stir things up too badly. His mind went to the mindless, shambling undead. They were shackled to Rose's will. They became sleepy and listless when she slept. The Skeleton Princess spent more and more time away from the world as the world spun on along its track through time. That mean that people poking around here could more easily slip past the undead and potentially risk unleashing deadly danger on the world. He needed an answer for that.
"Rose," he said. "There are people looking around here for a treasure... I'm afraid they'll bring back something awful to the world of the living. I need you to be on guard." I'm tired, Finn, the undead replied. I grow weary of the world. I only want to sleep. Orzsebet found herself muttering curses. This thing wasn't going to be much help to them apparently. She halfway wanted to go searching for the interlopers herself. Only trouble was that she didn't know where to look or what they might even be searching for. "I'm'a let you rest a moment," Finn said, "but we need to talk about this. We need to find an answer before something terrible's let loose on the world..."
Motioning for his companions to follow, the big man stepped off. It had been decades since he'd been in this place, but he knew a space that was relatively safe. There was a room near Rose's lying bed that had caved in and was open to the sky. He and Jake had stayed the night there when they brought Rose's leg back the time Ice King stole it. Taking the turns as one who knew them, the big man led the way past spaces that reminded Sarah of home, strangely enough, finally bringing them out into a half-submerged room that was open to the air above them.
Setting his pack down on a moss-covered cement table, the big man opened it up, spreading the flap out to make a rude table-cloth. On top of that, he set his water-bottle. Sarah shivered. Everything was dangerous here for a creature of flesh and blood. Who knew where the deadly virus could be lurking? Finn was right, it was deadly for anybody to come to this place. Much like the Wishmaster's Maze, this was a place best forgotten.
Careful of the risk, the cyborg hottie squatted near him, setting her bag next to his on the table. Finn himself had begun to pace, his manic energy showing his worry. A lifetime ago, he'd thought of zombies as a joke. He'd splattered some way back in the day, smashing them to nothing. He'd stopped thinking of this as a big joke when he'd come back from Rose's domain the first time.
"What is this place," Orzsebet asked? It was obviously manmade. Under the growth of filth and moss were concrete walls. "It looks like a lab of some kind," Sarah burbled. Finn, who'd never noticed the uncanny similarities between Rose's home and Bonnie's lab now saw things with new eyes. "This is where they made it," the King muttered. "Made what," demanded Orzsebet? "The zombie virus," Sarah whispered. Finn was right. He was oh-so right. The containments, the secure rooms, the decontamination chambers... Only labs working on really dangerous things needed such precautions.
"The precautions failed obviously," murmured a clearly frightened Agent Princess, "but is there anything of value left?" The laboratory was in ruins and had been for a thousand years. Any equipment or samples would long ago have rotted away. This gambit made no sense if there was nothing here to take. That question had been puzzling Sarah too, and she found herself glancing to her very-agitated husband. Finn was more worked up than she'd seen him in quite a long while. Either his fear of this place was strong enough to work through all the neurochemical changes from the nanites... Or the nanites have given him so much clarity of thought that he sees danger that he wouldn't have seen before this, thought Sarah.
Either way, there was little to be done right now. The King pulled a folding cot from his pack and stretched it out. Orzsebet goggled at that. Drawing a straw from a plastic wrapper, the King tucked it into the tip of the water bottle. Fitting the straw to the side of his mask, the big man drank deep. Tossing the straw away, he pulled another straw and handed it to Orzsebet. The Lady of Spies sighed. It was going to be a very long night. How was she going to take a piss if she needed to?!
"Where am I going to sleep," she muttered, as she handed the bottle back? "The cot," Finn replied. She gave him a strange look. "We're not all going to fit on that cot," she said. "I can lock my knees in this position," Sarah replied. "I can squat here all night if I have to. You and Finn can take turns on the cot." The Lady of Spies stared at the cot, her mind going to the thousand terrors around them. She had a fear of waking up dead with one of those things munching on her skull. At the same time... she was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to sleep. She wanted to sleep a long, long time.
The King's eyes were on hers when she looked up. "Ok," she muttered, as she lay herself down–her feet hanging off the edge. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long at all before she was gone. For Finn, it was back to pacing. His overwrought mind wouldn't let him sleep. Sarah could vaguely see the undead wandering around above them on the rim of the forgotten lab. "They're not good climbers, babe," Finn muttered. "She locked the thought out of their minds centuries ago because they kept falling to their destruction."
"This place," Sarah murmured. "It's... I think you're right, Finn. This... It looks like a military lab–like the kind of place you..." "...make terrible things," Finn agreed. And Rose had been right there in the mix–maybe even leading the charge. At the same time, so what? What did it matter? Those events were a thousand years ago. Any crimes she'd been guilty of were centuries in the past. What worried him more was the risk of their being hidden stores of the deadly virus that had spawned the Skeleton Princess.
As Sarah watched their surroundings, and listened, the King of Ooo laid out his fears and bounced ideas off of her. He wanted to search the forgotten halls of the lab. Maybe there was an old computer that Sarah could pull something off of. Bonnie had once said that sometimes old electronics could still be made to work. She'd had great success building from scavenged parts. "It's worth a try, Finn," Sarah agreed. He was still pacing and clearly still worried. She would have made him got to sleep if she thought he would listen. The light of false-dawn at the rim of the pit suggested that it would soon not matter. They would have light to search, and there would be little sense in waiting then.
"Patient Zero."
The words came from out of the blue. Finn was moving almost as soon as the words left his mouth. He'd heard that phrase a lot when Bonnie, Sarah, and Nadia were grinding on the problem of Wildberry's 'meatheads'. He'd finally insisted someone tell him what a 'patient zero' was. The answer had been meaningless science-drivel. Until now. In the space of a breath, the big man tore out of there, blipping himself down the corridor with the power of the Quicksilver Curse. Sarah immediately started snatching up their gear as if for a hasty departure, waking Orzsebet in the process. Seeing Finn gone and the android frantically packing, the Lady of Spies demanded an explanation.
"Rose is Patient Zero," Sarah explained, as she shoved Agent Princess's bag at her. Skeleton Princess had been the target all along. She was the sole remaining original undead. Judging by the place she chose to make her bed, she might well have been the first infected victim of the plague. There was a grave risk that the plague still lived on in the marrow of her mouldering bones. As soon as she had Finn's gear packed, Sarah grabbed the Agent Princess by the scruff and rushed after her husband.
Finn, meanwhile, had arrived in Skeleton Princess's sanctum to find her laying in repose on her bed, but something was wrong. Her leg–the same one Simon had stolen–was missing. The undead woman sat up at the feel of her locket. F-finn, she greeted him. Her mental voice sounded strained. My leg... "On it," Finn growled. "I'll get it back." He was exiting the room as Sarah came running up with Orzsebet in her arms. "Need your sight, babe," Finn said. The thieves weren't undead. They would have left some very warm footprints. "Switching," Sarah murmured. Her eyes scanned the ground.
There were a fair number of tracks, but it was easy to pick out the right ones as those tiny feet belonged on Orzsebet rather than one of the thieves. "This way," said the heavy-duty hottie. The trio headed up and out of the cavernous former laboratory, finding their way through a shattered wall and out into the cold light of early morning. "Anything," Finn growled? It was daylight. He wasn't sure if Sarah's ability to see the heat in things would work. "Almost at thermal crossover," Sarah muttered. "Give me a moment..." The android scanned her pretty face back and forth, her blue eyes going over the same patch of ground outside the lab over and over again. "There," she said. "That way."
The sex-droid led the way, as the group took the twists and turns of the forest. The undead were stirred up, but not nearly as terrifying as Orzsebet had been lead to believe. "Rose has been growing weaker for years," Finn muttered. The Skeleton Princess hadn't bothered to attend Bonnie's annual princess-meeting in thirty years. She spent far more time sleeping than anything else, and when she was asleep, the zombies were practically blocks of wood. It was one of the reasons Finn had taken the Agent Princess's warning so seriously. Of all the people on Ooo, he was probably the only person outside of Jake to know just what things were like here.
Over and around the hills and trails of Zombie Island the android-girl led them. Orzsebet was shocked to find that a man who was close to her own age had no trouble keeping up with the brutal pace. She found herself begging for rest–rest Finn had no time to give her. It felt as though she'd be run until her heart burst–that she'd be left for dead on this island. Finally, Sarah Mertens stopped stock still, her ears twitching. "I hear it too," Finn muttered, as she turned to him to speak. In the blink of an eye he was gone.
"Hey," Finn greeted the thieves. He'd appeared out of nowhere, directly in their path. Leveling his rifle, the big one on the left growled, "who the fuck are you?" "Me," Finn replied? "Nobody special. You guys? You're sick fucks who'd risk every life in the world for greed." "Fuck you, man," growled one of the bandits. There was clear fear in their eyes, though. Where had this guy come from? There shouldn't be anybody else here. The locals were terrified of this place.
"Get lost, before I lose my temper," growled the big fellow. He leveled his rifle at Finn–who was suddenly two feet to the right. Holding up the strange talisman that Rose gave him, the King of Ooo announced, "I want you to understand what you tried to do. You won't be leaving here with that, but I want you to feel just what it was that your bosses were going to do to the good people of this world." Zombies began to come shuffling out of the forest around them. The leader–the mouth–leveled his rifle and opened fire on the nearest. The steel dart tore through the dead flesh like a nail through rotten wood, but the thing kept coming. The men began to fire wildly now, as the zombies closed in on them. They were shockingly fast to say they were little more than rotten meat.
It began when the first of the undead reached his living victim. Grasping the man's face in its shockingly powerful hands, the zombie applied pressure. The hapless victim screamed as the pressure built–even as he tried to pull away from the awful creature. As Finn watched impassively, the bandit's skull cracked, killing him instantly. The dead began immediately to feast on the exposed grey-matter. A second zombie snatched the rifle from a second raider, hurling it away as he bit into the man's tender arm, lacerating the muscle down deep to the bone as his victim screamed. Two zombies converged on the leader, as he fired wildly at them backpedaling as he did so.
Sarah and Orzsebet arrived just as the zombies opened the lead bandit's skull and began scooping out brain tissue. The Lady of Spies immediately turned and began emptying her stomach. Sarah turned her face away. She couldn't watch this. She couldn't imagine how Finn could simply watch this. "I'm fighting with hate," he said, but she wasn't sure if he meant his own or the Bandit Princess's hatred.
Shaking off the ugly feeling afflicting him, Finn turned to the clear waters just within sight beyond the trees. Walking forward, the big man stepped out onto the beach and knelt at the water's edge. Softly, he said, "Talia, I need a favor..." Nothing happened, though ironically Sarah held her breath. Taking a breath, the King stretched his left hand down into the water. "T," he said. "I know you're there. I need you, babe." To Orzsebet, the whole business was bizarre–at least until a waterspout shot skyward from the shallows, and a naked woman stepped out of it, carrying a small bag.
"Pfaa, gigolo," spat Baba Yaga, as she stared at their ugly surroundings! "Where the hell did you call me?" Solemnly, he said, "called you to prevent a tragedy, T." Gesturing, he said, "welcome to Zombie Island." The witch shivered. "Vozrozhdeniya Island," she howled?! "Why the fuck did you call me to this awful place?!" "The Bandit Princess tried to steal Skeleton Princess's leg," Finn said. The pretty woman gave him a queer look. "Seriously," she burbled? It would have sounded absurd to Sarah if it wasn't so serious.
The android-girl nodded, "Rose is Patient Zero for the Zombie Plague, Your Highness." "Rosalina Timoshenko," the rusalka muttered. Wearing a frown, Sarah asked, "you know her?" "Protested outside the State Science Board over her," Talia replied. "She was like your creator, mashina-devushka. Fucking around with things best left undisturbed." Nodding in the direction of the lab, Baba Yaga added, "she was dragged in front of the State Duma twice for deadly accidents at this very lab. I guess this one got her too..."
"She's still a carrier, T," Finn murmured. "Until she's gone." Every one of those pretty faces was staring at him now. "I aim to build a wall, T," he said. "Rose... is going to be gone..." She was literally rotting away as they spoke. She would be dust some day, and the virus would be gone with her. The thought astonished Talia. At the same time, what he said made sense. "Alright, gigolo," she said. "I think we can do this. Let's go."
The King wanted to go in and make sure Rose understood what he was trying to do. She sat up the minute she felt them enter the room, and her 'eyes' locked with Talia's. They'd met once, lifetimes ago. It was clear that both women remembered. "Fucked up, eh," Talia chuckled. Finn glared at her. Moving to Rose's side, he handed her the leg that had been stolen. "I got it back," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry somebody did this to you." The grateful creature gave him the strange googly-eyed smile that she'd given him in the past, as she fit the leg against her stump. "Rest," said Finn. "I'm'a make sure nobody bothers you again..." He was going to build a wall. He was going to wall the world out of her space. Thanks, she offered. Go.
Rising, Finn turned and swiftly rejoined his strange friend, motioning for her to precede him out the door. Though she held her peace–likely out of fear of a fight–the rusalka barely waited until they were outside before lighting into him. "Why do you care about her," Baba Yaga demanded? "She would have been a mass murderer if she'd finished her plague-bombs..." "I think she paid for her choices, T," Finn replied. "Just like the two of us." The words were mild, but the rebuke had an outsized impact on the witch's demeanor. "What's the plan," Talia muttered?
The big man reached into a pocket and drew out a small object, holding it up before her eyes. It was a strange, reddish-green seed. Her mind went to the awful thing that had masqueraded as his arm. The other curse. It was one of those humbling moments. He was bowed down by the weight of the world, but he still stooped to offer comfort and mercy to the sinners–acknowledging their sins but offering them forgiveness and atonement for their crimes. Talia took the seed from his hand. Kneeling on the ground, she carefully buried it in the soft loam of the island, breathing life into it as she did. Standing again, she took his hands, saying, "follow along, gigolo. This is dangerous, so don't fuck up."
Out on the beach, Orzsebet was pacing back and forth and staring at the interior of the island–and the masses of shiftless, restless dead padding back and forth. Sarah's face snapped up, and she grabbed the ornery wench and pulled her out into the shallow waters. Orzsebet cursed her, but Sarah shushed the ornery bitch, as she pointed to the shimmery field of energy that had sprung up on the margins of the island. "Time dilation," she whispered. Emeraude had described this to her. Talia had risked everything twice to touch the Quicksilver Curse during the war with the Dipped. Now she was doing it again.
Out of that shimmering light, Talia and Finn strode, hand in hand. "W-what did you do," Sarah asked? "Entombed her," Talia replied, mildly. Nodding at Finn, she added, "the gigolo's idea." They'd planted one of Sybil's demon-seeds in the fertile soil around the old laboratory. Talia had accelerated its growth until it had consumed the laboratory. Nothing and no-one could reach Rose now. They'd left the remaining zombies in place to further discourage visitation. In another hundred years or so, this place would be empty once more. "Let's get back to shore," Talia muttered. "You owe me dinner."
It took the better part of an hour to locate the boat the raiding party had come in. Minutes later, they were sailing across the vast lake. Sitting in the prow of the boat, singing in her haunting voice, the witch was in a fine mood. "My people took down the dams when the humans were all gone," she said. "The great lake refilled." It was out of the blue, but it filled in some blanks Finn had. Rose's memories of the place were of a great desert around her lair. It had been gone when she woke up from her long sleep.
"One done, gigolo," Talia remarked. At his puzzled frown, the rusalka said, "she's not alone in carrying a burden, Finn. We need to think about the others and how to rid the world of past mistakes..." Finn's mind went to the toxic soup under Bonnie's palace and the bunker in Abieuwa's kingdom. "Yeah," he said. "I just need the world to stop spinning for a couple weeks."
The sun was setting as Finn tied the boat off at a little fishing village across the lake from the haunted island late that day. As the quartet exited the boat, the King of Ooo graciously stopped and held out his coat. To Orzsebet, he said, "panties. Hand 'em over..." Muttering curses, the Lady of Spies went in her bag and dragged out one of the two pair she had. Sarah contributed a bra, and that–and Finn's jacket–was enough to clothe the witch until their ride could come and get them. Strangers stared at them as they went up to the small café that served the catch of the day. Sitting under the fading sunlight, munching on fried carp, the King turned to his strange friend and offered an ernest, "thanks, T. I'm in your debt." Baba Yaga retorted, "you haven't paid off the last one, gigolo, but I'm working up a list of things you can do around my flat."
Back in the civilized Kingdoms, a very unhappy Kim Kil Wan sat staring at his cold soup and his even colder dinner companion. He looked so cute when he was frothing at the mouth in rage. Chelsea pat the dog-icorn on the cheek–subtly reminding him of their last encounter. "I need that ship in Jungle Kingdom by end of the week," she said in a weird, childish voice. "You can make that happen, right? There's a nice big cargo there. They take it over the ocean to Coca Kingdom, ok? Ok...?" "Ok," Kim muttered. "I got a cargo waiting there to come back," said Chelsea. "When do I see Bronwyn," Kim rumbled? Casually reaching into her purse, the Wax Hustler tossed a severed ear into his soup-bowl. "You don't," she answered. "If my guys see another twerp like this sniffing around, you may never see her again..."
Kim very nearly hurled. Chelsea murmured, "obey. I might reward you. Disobey, and Barry's fate will seem like a heavenly reward..." The dog-icorn began to tremble. It was true. Her henchmen had butchered poor Barry. He'd sent Vivi's husband to his death, and now Bronwyn was at risk too. "I... What am I supposed to tell my wife," Kim rumbled? "Good question," Chelsea answered, as she spooned up soup. "You're good at lieing to her. I'm sure you'll come up with something."
Well, hopefully that was creepy enough for an island full of zombies. Aaannd we see a darker side of Finn.