CHAPTER 33

“A Monstrous Choice”

As Related by Megan Halsey September 15 1928

I watched the bullet strike Robert Peaslee in the shoulder and then he crumpled to the ground. Instinctively, I turned to return fire. The gun went off, but as it did a hand grabbed my wrist and sent my shot astray. I threw the small form off me and this time took better aim at my target. Better aim gave me a better look, and there she stood like a dark angel, her dress in tatters whipping in the wind, my mother, Elizabeth Halsey!

And she wasn’t alone.

Behind her and to her left stood a man, or at least what had once been a man. It was a man I recognized, even though I had never met him, a man whom I would have known whatever condition he was in, a man whose picture I had seen a thousand times. There, to her left, was my father, the reanimated form of Allan Halsey.

But there was more!

The frail, thin shape that had flung itself out of the forest and knocked my gun hand was not alone. The one creature that had struck me was the size of a small ape, pale and hairless, dressed in only a worn pair of overalls like the two others that stood by the haunting, statuesque forms of my parents. They were ghoulish things, and as I have said, pale, thin, and hairless, with arms and legs like sticks. Their skin was thin and translucent, and I could see the thick blue lines of the veins that pulsated beneath. There was something about these things, their eyes were too large, their heads too bulbous, their limbs too long and thin. I had seen pictures in medical texts of victims of malnutrition and starvation, and here was some resemblance to these creatures, but as much as those photographs had disturbed me, these small monsters unnerved me even more. The one that had struck me was loping across the yard, moving not like any man, but like an animal, like a cat or perhaps even a dog.

I lowered my gun as she stepped toward me and her retinue followed. My father lumbered behind her, but the small creatures—were they children? My God, had Clapham-Lee experimented on children? The small creatures moved cautiously, and kept close to my mother’s skirt, like cats around a favored owner. As the one child-thing reached her she raised her hand slightly, and the creature nuzzled it as it reached her and then fell in with its brethren.

“Mother.” My voice cracked as I spoke to the woman who had borne me for the first time in years. “Mother, I’ve come for you, I’ve come to rescue you.”

There was that look, the one she would give me when she realized that I had done something wrong, that I had disappointed her. I suppose all mothers have that look, or another one just like it. I hadn’t seen it for years, but there it was, like something that had crawled across her face and taken up residence there. “Megan, Megan my darling daughter, you have to stop this.” She swept her hand across the landscape. “All this madness, this death, you have to stop it, you’re destroying everything.”

“Destroying—destroying everything? I didn’t start this, Mother. I came looking for you and they wouldn’t let me see you. These monsters attacked me, threw me in the river. They tried to murder me, Mother.”

“And yet here you are. Safe and sound, perhaps a little worse for wear, perhaps a little better.” That look suddenly adopted a cruel smile. “You’ve never been tested before, have you, Megan? Never been hurt or sick or in danger? You could no more be killed by drowning than any of my other children.”

The three pale things swirled around her and a horrible realization dawned on me. “Those things—they’re my siblings?”

“Your brothers, Megan, your brothers. Magnificent, aren’t they? The product of the union between your father and myself, with just a touch of reanimation reagent during the third trimester. That’s the key, Megan, the reagent injected directly into the womb during gestation. It alters the development, makes the child stronger, faster, more intelligent, more resistant to damage and disease. They have all the same attributes that you do, Megan, just to a greater degree.”

“Clapham-Lee experimented on you while you were pregnant?”

There was that look again, that look of disappointment. “Clapham-Lee? Eric? No, he didn’t experiment on me, not at all. You’ve misunderstood completely. The new reagent, the use of it on fetal development, those weren’t Clapham-Lee’s ideas. He’s more interested in reanimation, building his hollow Empire of the Undead. No, this experiment, this leap in human evolution, this was my idea.”

All around me, the reanimated, those that were still left, stumbled forward. There couldn’t be more than a dozen of them, but Robert and I were trapped, and I knew I was nearly out of bullets. My cache of ammunition, the spare Tommy gun, and the other drum were somewhere in the debris of the cabin.

“Mother, this is wrong,” I said.

“No, my child, it isn’t. Search inside yourself, you have strengths and abilities that set you above normal human beings, and even above the reanimated. If you try, if you reach in and focus your powers you’ll find this to be true. You have the power to control them, to draw them to you, to make them do your bidding. And you were just the first step. Your brothers are the next generation, and they are even stronger. I can only dream of what powers will manifest in those born from the union of my children.”

I stood there, wide-eyed, letting her words slowly sink into my brain, and then slowly began to shake my head. There were words on my lips that slowly, ever so slowly became sounds of denial. “No, NO, NO!” I raised my gun, and with control and precision fired three times.

The bullets sped through the air toward their targets. The first hit home and exploded the head of the smallest of my ersatz siblings. The eyes careened out and away like baseballs that had been hit too hard and lost their covers. The body fell to the ground without a sound. The second bullet hit its target as well, this time leaving a gaping hole in the chest of the largest of the pale-skinned ghouls, through which a torrent of blood flowed. The creature turned and opened its mouth to scream, but only a gurgling whimper came out.

My last shot didn’t connect—the middle child grabbed my father and spun his massive and lumbering form around, letting him take the shot in the thigh. My father roared in pain and anger. He took a step toward me, but my mother put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. All around me, the undead took a step back and I realized that while I knew that I was out of ammo, my mother didn’t.

I waved the gun menacingly. “Mother, please, come with me.” There was a touch of sadness and futility in my voice. “Leave this place. Leave the dead behind and come home. We can be a family again, just you and me.” A tear traced its way down my cheek.

She raised her pistol and fired. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to move, but I wasn’t her target. Behind me, the bullet blew a hole in the chest of the towering body of Clapham-Lee and took his heart out of his back. The body shuddered and slowly crumpled to the ground. His head rolled off, moaning as it came to rest mere inches from where I stood.

“A gift, Megan. But the last one I shall ever give you. I asked you once, in my letter, to not try and find me. Now I am telling you. Leave us be.” She reached out a hand to her last remaining child-thing. “Come, Lazarus.” The demonic monstrosity took her hand and pulled her back.

She and all the others drifted backward into the shadows of the forest, but as I stood there, surrounded by the bodies and ashes, the devastation of our battle and the moaning head of Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, the only thing I could think of were her last words, which were ringing in my head.

“You belong with us, Megan. Someday you’ll realize that. We, you, me, and your brother, belong with your father and his kind. We belong with the dead.”