“Hello, John.”
He could distinguish voices. Or was the room bugged? I didn’t know what he was capable of supernaturally, and what he might need to augment with technology. I’d never known the Withered to have much range on their powers, though, so wherever he was he probably wasn’t far. I frowned and thought of another mechanical question: how long could he use a corpse after he killed it? Elijah said he could only drain a corpse within about twenty-four hours—did Rack’s power over the dead have a similar limit? Twenty-four hours ago we hadn’t even known we were coming. I touched the body’s arm and tried to lift it; it was stiff.
“That’s evidence,” said Diana.
“That’s rigor mortis,” I said. “This body died somewhere between ten and…” I tested it again. “Thirty hours ago.”
“The mouth moves just fine,” said Potash.
“I could—” said Elijah, but I cut him off with an urgent hand motion. If he was using the corpse’s ears to identify our voices, he might not know Elijah was with us.
But then I realized with mounting horror that he might already know. He claimed to know everything. How could he have prepared this corpse to meet us unless he knew we were coming?
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“We haven’t even cleared the upper story,” said Diana. “You’re just going to trust him when he says he’s not here?”
“I guarantee he’s here,” I said. “This is a trap and we need to get out now.”
“Too late,” the body whispered.
Someone downstairs fired a gun.
It started as shouts, shocked and desperate: “He’s here!” “Look out!” “Behind you!” Urgent and angry, perforated by gunfire, and Potash ran for the door while Ostler screamed in our ears to know what was going on. All too soon, though, the shouting turned to shrieks of pain, howls and sobs and horrific death yells as whatever was attacking tore our armed escort to pieces. Potash roared in defiance, and we shouted for him to come back, to stay together and force the confrontation we needed, but he was gone. Diana swore and followed him back to the stairs, shouting at us to stay with her, and I ran after her with Elijah close on my heels. A spray of bullets tore the floor ahead of me, showering the stairway with splinters, and I fell back, covering my eyes. Elijah steadied me, and I counted to three before running again, steeling myself to face another barrage of friendly fire. As I ran I tried to visualize the house in my head, estimating that the errant bullets had come up through the floor from … the kitchen. The top of the basement stairs. We reached the main floor, jumping over the fallen bodies, slipping in the blood, and ran through the hall toward the battle. Another burst of gunfire tore through the wall, but it was ten feet to the side—a mile away in close combat—and we kept running.
“What’s going on in there?” Ostler demanded on the radio. “Somebody talk to me!”
“We need—” said Diana, but she stopped abruptly. I reached the kitchen just in time to see her fall to the floor, her arm, still clutching her rifle, ripped from her body. Rack was no more than a shadow, seeming somehow unreal and enormous at the same time. He threw the arm at me and I ducked, and Potash roared again and attacked, muzzle fire lighting up the room in a staccato strobe. I caught only a glimpse of Rack’s chest, a roiling mass of ash that seemed to burn his skin around the hole, the dirty yellow bones of his shattered rib cage protruding grotesquely from the edges. His face was a nightmare: wide eyes above, human and furious, a black, greasy hole beneath them. He had no nose, mouth, trachea, or chest. As he stalked through the center of that maelstrom, heedless of bullets, blood streaming from his fingers, I couldn’t help but wonder: we got our concept of “king” from this creature?
Did we get “heartless” from him as well?
“We need backup,” I said into my radio. “And every doctor you can find.”
Elijah ran toward the Withered, screaming, but Rack turned suddenly and slipped through the door to the basement. Potash paused to reload his rifle, slapping in another magazine, but Elijah ran straight for the door, only to stagger back as a hail of bullets struck him in the chest. He fell, and Potash crouched just outside the doorway.
“He was ready for Elijah,” I said. “He planned an escape and a ranged weapon to deal with him—he knew everything before we even got here.”
Potash brandished his machete. “This ends tonight. One blow to the neck, remove the head before it can heal.”
“You’ll never get close enough.”