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!”
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