Dead Waters - Anton Strout [80]
“What you are, what you have become, is unnatural,” the Inspectre said, “and in the name of the Fraternal Order of Goodness, I—”
“The Order?” he said, laughing. “Are you telling me that there are still living members out there, other than you?”
“The Order will still be here long after you’re gone, Mason, trust me.” The Inspectre lunged for Mason on top of the seats, but the now-young professor batted him away with an awkward swipe of his arm. Clumsy as it was, it was enough to knock the Inspectre over onto one of the theater seats. He grunted as he went down.
“Gone?” Mason said, parroting the Inspectre’s British accent. “Why, yes. . . I do believe it is time I was going.” At his gestures, the circle of zombies around him pressed out into the crowd.
I came out of the row and stepped down the aisle, Jane at my heels. I pulled out my bat, extended it, and slapped it down into my hand. “You’re not going anywhere,” I said.
“Oh, no?” Mason said, looking amused. “I beg to differ.” He gestured again at his assembled army, which was already squaring off against the rest of the agents. “Attack!”
“Good,” I said, charging him. “That’s what I was hoping you were going to say.”
I had seen Mason Redfield’s fighting techniques before, but that psychometric vision had been from years ago when he was still an active member of the Fraternal Order of Goodness. As I closed in on him, Mason must have noticed the intent in my eyes. He dropped down off the top of the seats, wobbling on his new legs like a newborn animal taking its first steps. A look of fear filled his bright young eyes and he pressed his way back into the sea of zombies, more of which fell from the screen every second.
“That’s right,” I said, raising my bat as I hit the first wave of the undead. “You’d better run!”
Connor fell in beside me and used the shamblers’ own slow lurching to help pull them out of my way. For every one he moved, another one fell from the screen to take its place.
“I’m going try to stop the projector,” Jane called out from somewhere behind me, her voice fading as she ran off. “I think that should kill the magic at work here.”
The door in the lower-right corner of the theater leading off to the Department opened. Wesker came walking out of it unassumingly with a coffee mug in hand, but dropped it as he took in the chaos of the room. He looked shocked and not a little pissed off. His hands flew into a series of arcane movements directed at the zombies nearest him, but nothing happened. Panic rose up in my chest, causing me to redouble my efforts. Wesker’s magic had failed against them, but I was happy to see that the blunt-force trauma my bat was delivering still worked just fine.
Connor was off holding his own nearby. Each zombie he knocked down got a quick boot stomp to its head, filling the air with a fleshy crunch.
“This is the most active I’ve been in a movie theater since The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” he said exuberantly.
“If you start singing ‘The Time Warp,’ the next notch on my bat is for you.”
“Fair enough,” he said, grabbing another of the zombies out of my path. “Just get over to Mason Redfield. . .and hurry.”
I pressed harder through the crowd of shuffling undead mayhem, but it was no use. Mason Redfield was always a step ahead of me in the crowd as he backed away, putting more distance between us every second. Shoving through the crowd was no good. There was only one thing I could think of as an alternative.
I collapsed my bat and sheathed it before climbing up onto the front row of seats themselves, putting me half a body length higher than everyone around me. Compared to jumping off the high-rise balcony the other night, my new idea seemed only slightly less insane, but if I gave myself time to come to my senses, I’d talk myself out of it. I stopped analyzing and threw myself out over the battle.
I hadn’t gone