The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror(57)

 

"Yeah, if you were seven inches tall," said Marty in the Morning, all dead, all the time.

 

Ben turned to Theo. "We've got to do something about this."

 

The others in the room were looking from one to the other, each with a look on his or her face that was much more horrified than when they'd been only facing the prospect of an undead mob eating their brains. These zombies had secrets.

 

"Theo Crowe's wife thinks she's some kind of warrior mutant killer!" shouted a rotted woman who had once been a psych nurse at the county hospital.

 

Everybody in the chapel sort of looked at one another and nodded, shrugged, let out a sigh of relief.

 

"We knew that," yelled Mavis. "Everybody knows that. That's not news."

 

"Oh, sorry," said the dead nurse. There was a pause; then, "Okay, then. Wally Beerbinder is addicted to painkillers."

 

"Wally's not here," said Mavis. "He's spending Christmas with his daughter in L.A."

 

"I got nothing," said the nurse. "Someone else go."

 

"Tucker Case thinks his bat can talk," shouted Arthur Tannbeau, the dead citrus farmer.

 

"Who wants to sing Christmas carols?" said Tuck. "I'll start. 'Deck the halls…"

 

And so they sang, loud enough to drown out the secrets of the undead. They sang with great Christmas spirit, loud and off-key, until the battering ram hit the front doors.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 18

 

 

YOUR PUNY WORM GOD WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST MY SUPERIOR CHRISTMAS KUNG FU

 

 

 

 

Molly slipped out the back door of the cabin and around the outside wall until she could see the tall figure standing before her picture window. The fallen wires had stopped sparking out by the street and the stars and moon barely cut through the darkness at all. Strangely enough, she could clearly see the man by her front window because there was a faint glow shining around him.

 

Radioactive, Molly thought. He wore the long black duster favored by sand pirates. Why, though, would a desert marauder be out in a rainstorm?

 

She assumed the Hasso No Kamae stance, back straight, the sword held high and tilted back over her right shoulder, the sword guard at mouth level, her left foot forward. She was three steps from delivering a deathblow to the intruder. The sword balanced perfectly in her grip, so perfectly that it seemed to weigh nothing at all. She could feel the wet pine needles under her bare feet and wished that she'd put on shoes before dashing out into the night. The cold rain against her bare skin made her think that maybe a sweater would have been a good idea as well.

 

The glowing man looked toward the opposite corner of the cabin and Molly made her move. Three soft steps and she stood behind him; the edge of her blade lay across the side of his neck. A quick pull and she would cut him to his vertebrae.

 

"Move and die," Molly said.

 

"Nuh-uh," said the glowing man.

 

The tip of Molly's sword extended a foot beyond the stranger's face. He looked at the blade. "I like your sword. Want to see mine?"

 

"You move, you die," Molly said, thinking that it wasn't the sort of thing you should have to repeat. "Who are you?"

 

"I'm Raziel," said Raziel. "It's not the sword of the Lord, or anything. Not for destroying cities, just for fighting one or two enemies at a time, or slicing cold cuts. Do you like salami?"

 

Molly didn't quite know how to proceed. This glowing sand pirate seemed perfectly unafraid, perfectly unconcerned, in fact, that she was holding a razor-sharp blade against his carotid artery. "Why are you looking in my window in the middle of the night?"

 

"Because I can't see through the wooden part."

 

Molly snapped her wrists back and smacked Raziel in the side of the head with the flat of her blade.

 

"Ouch."

 

"Who are you and why are you here?" Molly said. She snapped her blade back to threaten another smack, and in that instant Raziel stepped away from her, spun, and drew a sword from the middle of his back.

 

Molly hesitated, just a second, then approached and snapped her blade down, this time in a real attack aimed at his shoulder. Raziel parried the blow and riposted. Molly swept his blade aside and came around with her blade for a cut to the left arm. Raziel got his sword around just in time to deflect her blade down his arm instead of across it. The razor-sharp tashi took a long swath of fabric from his coat, as well as a thin slice of flesh down his forearm.

 

"Hey," he said, looking at his now-flapping sleeve.

 

There was no blood. Just a dark stripe where the flesh was gone. He started hacking, his sword describing an infinity pattern in the air before him as he drove Molly back through the pine forest toward the road. She quickstepped back, parrying some blows, dodging others, stepping around trees, kicking up wet pine straw as she moved. She could only see her glowing attacker, his sword shining now as well, the darkness around her so complete that she moved only by memory and feel. As she deflected one of the blows, her heel caught on a root and she lost her balance. She started to go over backward and spun as if to catch herself. Raziel's momentum carried him forward, his sword swinging for a target that a second before had been two feet higher, and he ran right onto Molly's blade. She was bent over forward; the blade extended back across her rib cage and through Raziel, extending another two feet out his back. They were frozen there for a moment — him bent over her back, stuck together with her sword — like two dogs who needed a bucket of water thrown on them.