Excerpt :
Wax-face seemed to notice Isaac for the first time, widening his eyes -
which Isaac saw were gray with cataracts, streaked with red - and leering at
the librarian with a predatory fascination. His jaw slowly fell open, a stream
of blood flowing down his chin to the floor.
Isaac attempted to flee, but his feet were giving his brain the silent
treatment. The best he got out of himself was turning his head to look over his
shoulder. Two more lumbering, waxy, blood-dripping freaks limped out from
behind bookshelves and toward Isaac.
Our hero would claim for most of his life beyond this event that the
sound he emitted was a leonine roar as he suddenly found the courage to fight
his attackers off and escape.
However, he knew completely well that the noise which escaped his lungs
was a high-pitched, birdlike screech as he attempted to mediate a debate
between Panic and Rage over the course of a second or two;
Oh fuck, zombies.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Find a weapon!
You don’t even know how to use any.
Find one anyway!
It’s a library, are we going to papercut them back to death?
Do we think this is the zombie apocalypse?
I feel like we’re wasting a lot of time here.
Panic ceased its babbling and made a noise not unlike a police siren.
Rage decided now was as good a time as any to hop on a dream-bus and see the
world before the useless skin-sack they inhabited got himself killed, offering
Isaac no more survival pointers.
Isaac jerked back around to face the original zombie (a word he was
still hesitant to use but had now become the only discernible thought he could
latch onto).
The monster had completed its examination, raised its raspy wheeze to a
blood-curdling shriek, and made a mad dash for its prey, blood flying every
which way from his gaping mouth. Isaac could hear the two behind him do the
same.
Well, there you go you useless lump, you went and got us killed.
It’s not his fault, there was nothing in orientation about an
after-hours zombie attack.
The argument in Isaac’s head descended into a cacophonic volley of insults,
mocking tones, and detailed instructions for the other to misbehave with a
tree.
Isaac reminded his debating thoughts that they were all part of the
same person, so tree sap on one’s privates is tree sap on the others. Also, he
added that the zombies may have been close enough that he could smell iron on
their breath, but the well-dressed gentleman with silver hair in the doorway
seemed calm and ready to help. By all laws of logic and probability he was
aware of, Isaac would be dead in three and a half seconds anyway, so no need
for extra stress.
Panic and Rage stared out through Isaac’s eyes. They agreed that there
was indeed a rather pale man with silver hair and an incongruously cheerful
smirk standing at the fair end of the room, absent the blurry gray doppelganger
Isaac normally saw with people and seeming to emit a faint glow. He was dressed
in a white suit with vague green specks all over it, with a feathery gold and
silver cape to go with it.
Whoever he was, he seemed more-or-less qualified to handle such an
unexpected threat.
The new arrival was pointing the palm of his left hand at the scene,
his thumb extended at a right angle. He twitched his hand down at the wrist and
every molecule in the room sang out in unison, connected by static electricity.
“Dí’prætä.”
A razor-thin hemisphere of light erupted in a three-foot radius around
Isaac. The zombies, all of whom had just taken a flying leap for his neck,
landed on the bubble and bounced off.
They each landed on their backsides with a dull thud, totally incapable
of processing this development. They caught the pale man’s scent and turned on
him, assuming he would make a decent meal as well.
The suited man shut his eyes and delicately pressed his fingertips
together, then his palms before he turned them toward the zombies. He intoned a
series of syllables in a steady waltzing rhythm, continuing to use the
molecular structure of the library as a network of loudspeakers.
“Tä’gläcí äy æ’chévän.”
They all froze, and a few of Isaac’s rapid heartbeats later the
monsters disappeared into thin air. As they went, the electric buzz throughout
the area died down until it vanished entirely, along with the bubble around
Isaac.
Without a word, the new arrival sniffed the air like a bloodhound while
wandering toward Isaac. He stopped every few steps and screwed up his face in
concentration. He finally followed his nose to Isaac and began sniffing the
young man’s scalp, seeming to not notice there was a person under the hair. He
jumped back in surprise when he finally did.
“Oh, I am so sorry! I did not realize that you were a person.” The new
man said with a grin and an accent with traces from most of Western Europe. His
voice, though still bouncy and full of life, had lost the musical quality it
had when the entire building spoke for him.
“Who are you?” The stranger asked.
Isaac stared at him without blinking, “Uh…Buh” floating through his
mind again. He waded through a mess of scattered vocabulary to find a coherent
response until he finally landed on, “I-Isaac Falc-cone.”
The activation of the various anatomical components required for speech
set off a domino effect which rattled every other bit of their host, who began
to shake violently as tears once again fell down his face.
The newcomer twitched slightly. “Just a fair warning, Uh-Buh, you ought
to take care not to give away so much of your name to strangers. I mean you no
harm, but many entities may take it as an invitation.”
“Inv… Wha…” Isaac stammered.
The man with the silver hair smiled, grabbed Isaac’s wrist, and helped
him to his feet. He swept some loose zombie dust from Isaac’s clothes, looked
him in the eye, and spoke with extraordinary calm. Isaac couldn’t decide if he
was comforted by or terrified of the stranger.
“Unimportant. Uh-Buh I-Isaac Falc-Cone, nice to meet
you,” The visitor said, still holding on to Isaac’s wrist. “You may call me
L’æon. Næ’vös shívæ!”
