Sharmila is still dubious, but she shrugs. I’m not happy either. I don’t want to stay by myself, surrounded by corpses. But we need to protect our only way out. Besides, I’ll be safer up here than down there. Beranabus is doing me a favour, though I’m sure he’s thinking only of his own well-being, not mine.
As they make their way across the deck, I move closer to the window and pat a couple of patches back into place. Windows never remain stable for more than a few minutes, but I have the power to keep them open indefinitely. If demons were able to manipulate the lights like I can, mankind would have been wiped out long ago.
The minutes pass with agonising slowness. The sun is relentless and my mouth is dry. I could easily find something to drink, but I don’t want to abandon my post. I’m sure I could open another window if this one blinks out of existence but I don’t want to take any chances. I’m not sure how lodestones work. Maybe Juni could use its power to slow me down.
As I’m concentrating, trying not to obsess about the mounds of corpses around me, the smaller, unpredictable patches of light begin to pulse. “Not now,” I groan, but the patches ignore me. Moments later come the whispers. Faster, more urgently than before. I tense, expecting to find myself acting against my wishes. Maybe they’ll make me close the window or head after the others, to die with them in the ship’s hold.
But nothing happens. If the lights are trying to influence me, they’re failing. Ignoring them, I focus on the window, holding it in place, keeping the shape.
Something flickers to my left. I turn and see a group of the small patches click together. They swirl over and around one another, a mini vortex of various hues and shades of light.
More patches are attracted to the cluster. It grows and spins faster, changing shape, pulsing rapidly. The whispers grow louder, become shouts. I don’t know what’s happening, but it can only be bad news. I wish the others were here, so we could abandon this place immediately.
When almost all of the small lights have joined and are whirling around, they suddenly zip towards me. Yelping, I throw myself aside. I expect them to chase me, but then I see that I was never their target. They were aiming for the window. They slap into it and shimmer across the face of the white panel. As I sit up and stare, the window becomes a multicoloured rip in the air.
The whispers die away. Silence falls. I stand but don’t approach the window. I study it cautiously, fearfully. The lights pulse rapidly, then slide towards the centre, all the colours angling to the focal point, drawn to it as if by gravity.
Then—an explosion. A ball of light bursts from the heart of the window and shoots across the ship’s swimming pool, circling it in a spiral pattern, like a punctured balloon careening across a room. The window resumes its white colour.
The ball circles the pool a few more times, then drifts towards the deck and comes to a halt three or four feet above it. The ball is rainbow-coloured, about the size of a large dog, though its shape changes constantly. It reminds me of the jellyish substance in a lava lamp, the way it oozes from one form into another, altering all the time.
“What the hell are you?” I gasp, not expecting an answer. But to my astonishment I receive one.
“I have no name.”
I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff over the last few years that would leave most people’s jaws hanging. I thought I was immune to surprise. But this blows me away. All I can do is gawp at the ball of light like a five-year-old who’s walked in on Santa Claus.
“You must come with me,” the voice says. I don’t know where the words are coming from. They seem to be forming inside my head.
“Come…” the voice insists.
“Come where?” I croak. “Who are you? What are you?”
“There will be time for explanations later. We must depart this world before…” The voice stops and there’s a sighing sound. “Too late.”
“What do you mean?”
Before the ball of light can answer, my crazy fantasy of a few minutes ago becomes a reality. All around me, the corpses on the deck shudder, twitch, then clamber to their feet. As impossible as it is, the dead have come back to life, and they’re focusing their glinting, hungry eyes on me.
→The rising dead terrify me more than any demon ever did. Demons are natural. They obey certain laws. You know what to expect when you face one of them. But the dead aren’t supposed to return. When a body perishes, the soul moves on. That’s the way it’s always been. But someone must have forgotten to mention that to these walking, snarling, slavering corpses.
I stand like a simpleton, watching them advance. I’d heard that zombies in movies walk slowly, stiffly, mechanically. Not these. They don’t have the look of living people, but they move like them, fluidly and firmly.
As the dead close in on me, teeth exposed, hands outstretched, the ball of light flits over their heads and flares, causing them to cover their eyes and stumble to a halt. They mewl like newborn calves and lash out at the light.
“Come…” the voice repeats. “Cross while they are distracted.”
“Where?” I howl, gaze fixed on the zombies.
“Come…” is the only response. The ball of light skims over the heads of the walking dead and hovers by the window.
“I can’t,” I whisper, studying the ranks of animated corpses. “The others…”
“Doomed,” the voice says. “You cannot worry about them. They are no longer your concern. Come…” It sounds impatient.
A man without a chest – it’s been ripped away, exposing the bones of his spine and shoulders – lowers his arms and blinks. Realising he can see again, he sets his sights on me and rushes forward, howling wildly.
My hands, which have been trembling by my sides, shoot up and I unleash a ball of energy. The dead man flies backwards, knocking down those behind him. As others converge, I blast them with magic and back up close to the window.
“Yes,” the voice murmurs approvingly.
But I’ve no intention of going anywhere with this freakish ball of talking light. I ran out on Beranabus once, long ago. Never again.
Taking a firm stand, I construct an invisible barrier, a circle of magic six or seven feet in diameter, through which the dead can’t pass. I’m not good at this type of magic. I doubt I could put a barrier in place strong enough to stop a demon. But if these revived corpses are only as strong as they were in life, it should repel them.
My stomach rumbles with fear as the zombies cluster around the barrier. They scrape, punch, kick and spit at it. I hear – imagine – a creaking noise. I reinforce the barrier, sweating desperately, and turn 360 degrees, trying to cover every angle at once, ensuring there are no weak points.
There aren’t. The barrier holds. As long as the magic in the air remains, I can keep these wretched zombies at bay.
I’ve been holding my breath. Letting it out, I bend over and smile raggedly. I even manage a weak laugh. That would have been an awful death. To stand up to one powerful demon after another, only to fall to a pack of alarming but relatively weak zombies… It would have been a shameful way to go.
“You have done well,” the voice says, pulsing eagerly by the window. “Now come with me. We must leave this world. We have far to go.”
I straighten and study the ball of light. I’m glad of the excuse not to look at the writhing zombies, especially the children, every bit as ravenous as the adults.
“I’m going nowhere without the others,”