Timesurfers Read online

  “We’re the enemy,” Mel interjected. “They would throw us to those lions in an instant.”

  “They don’t even know me,” Cate snapped. “I could be a very nice person!”

  “You’re guilty by association,” Mel said.

  “Back in,” Balthazar called as Gaspar reached them. Putting their backs together gave them 360-degree visibility. “Mel, don’t take your eyes off those lions.”

  Mel rolled his eyes. “They’re not doing anything. I’m not convinced they actually add any danger.”

  “Oh please.” Cate elbowed Mel hard in the ribs. “The addition of lions to anything exponentially increases the danger. It’s irrefutable.”

  Gaspar started divvying up the weapons. “Everyone gets a spear. There’s another knife and some throwing razor disks for you, Cate. Ouch!” He sucked his fingers. “They’re sharp. Watch them.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek and deliberated how to take the disks from him without losing a finger. “What the...?” Gaspar’s hand was heading straight for her breasts.

  A metal ping was followed by three more as the disks attached to the silver strips of duct tape from the weapons room wrapped around her left arm. It was magnetic. “Oh, that’s what you were doing.” She stood sheepishly while Gaspar finished distributing weapons.

  “Okay. There are four of us and three lions.” Balthazar’s eyes remained glued to the lions.

  Silence followed.

  “And...” Cate prompted.

  “I was giving a sit rep,” Balthazar said. “We need an entire army to help with what’s headed this way.”

  She jumped as the three boys whooped.

  “You two collect the bodies, and I’ll finish off the injured,” Balthazar commanded.

  There were about ten grommets clinging to life scattered around the arena. “No, don’t kill them. I can heal them.”

  “There are two things wrong with that idea. With that many little pockets of time out of sync, everything might implode. You can only take so many bricks from a wall before it crumbles. The bigger problem is if you heal them, that’s even more people who want us dead to contend with.” Balthazar twirled the double-edged sword in his hand. “I’ll make it as quick and painless as possible for them.”

  Cate turned her head as Balthazar plunged a sword into one of the grommets.

  Mel patted her shoulder. “Breathe through it.”

  The boys worked at their gruesome task with the solemn resolve of warriors. Each time Balthazar plunged his sword into a body the crowd roared. Mel and Gaspar dragged all the bodies to one area.

  “Right. Let’s get prepared,” Balthazar said.

  “What exactly are we preparing for?” Cate asked.

  “Any second now, fifty of the meanest criminals from the North Isle de Pantheon will drop out of the sky to fight for their lives. We need every dead body fighting.”

  She reached over to touch the nearest body. “You just told me I couldn’t heal those grommets because some big wall was going to come crashing down.”

  “You’re not healing them. You’re making zombies. I want you to wake them up and order them to fight.”

  “Huh?” Cate blinked a few times. Had she heard him correctly?

  Chapter 25

  Sparkling Zombies

  “I want to see a bloody army of sparkling zombies ASAP,” Balthazar growled.

  “I’ve never made a zombie army.”

  “It’s exactly the same as when you made Brittany into a zombie,” Balthazar said.

  “That was one person and I did it by accident.”

  “What about that grommet over there?” Mel pointed to the boy whose eyes had glowed violet when Cate touched his hand before.

  “I‘ve seen you raise an entire graveyard of dead bodies,” Gaspar said.

  “That was future me!” Cate pulled frantically at her hair. “And even if I can, what’s to say they won’t all try and kill us?”

  “Because when you make a zombie they have to do what you tell them!” Balthazar’s eyes widened as he looked at the sky.

  “Make your own zombie,” Cate screamed.

  “That’s your thing. No other Timesurfer has ever been able to raise the dead and control them. That’s what makes you special and more than a little bit creepy. You’re the perfect weapon of mass destruction. The number of dead things outweighs the number of living things exponentially.”

  There it was! The reason the Timesurfers were so interested in her. She was the perfect weapon of mass destruction. There was no time to contemplate her discovery further.

  “Here they come!” Mel shouted.

  The sky was dark with black helicopters. The criminals from the North Isle de Pantheon dangled from ropes under them. Cate pressed her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to block out the deafening roar from the rotor blades. Sand stung her face as the helicopters hovered close enough for their passengers to drop to the ground.

  The lions were on their feet, noses sniffing the air. The prisoners dropped to the ground. As they strode closer she realised why the lions were so interested. Each criminal had been doused with blood.

  A man gave her a ghoulish smile, pointed at her, and drew a line across his throat. He stalked forward, shoving other prisoners out of his path. He stopped to crack his knuckles. “You’re mine! Not so brave without pretty boy to help you, are you?”

  As he charged forward, she was overcome by an unnerving sense of déjà vu. Her mind flashed to the fight at the Neon Posse with Jonah. This was gorilla guy. She darted out of his path and grabbed his wrist as he skidded past. With one foot lodged between his shoulder blades, she yanked hard. He howled in pain. His shoulder gave a loud pop and hung loose.

  “Clearly you learned nothing from our last meeting.” She twisted behind him and landed a spinning heal kick to his temple. He dropped to his knees, and she pounded her heel against the side of his head again. He collapsed, unconscious.

  “Cate!” Two prisoners lay lifeless near Mel as he struggled with two more. “Make your zombies!”

  Three prisoners boxed her in. “I’m a bit busy.” She grabbed a knife in each hand and balanced their cool marble handles against her shaking palm as she aimed directly for one prisoner’s heart. The knife wobbled through the air and fell short. “Oh, come on!”

  She grabbed at the three jagged disks attached to the metallic tape on her arm and threw them one after another. Two prisoners clutched at their throats as blood spurted through their fingers. The third kept coming. Her leg hit something soft and warm as she backed away. A low rumble vibrated through her body. She turned her head slowly to discover she had backed into a lion!

  At the exact moment the prisoner lurched forward she lunged left. He missed her and unintentionally tackled the lion front on. The lion pinned him to the ground, and with a single swipe of its paw ripped a gaping hole in his chest. Blood sprayed through the air as the beast’s teeth tore through the man’s neck. Cate scrambled over a dead lion and placed her hands on a dead body.

  “You have to use your mind! There’s no time to run around and raise them individually,” Balthazar yelled.

  She tried everything from yelling “abracadabra” to the worst curse words she knew. No matter what she thought or screamed, the dead bodies stayed dead. Even the four she was touching with her hands and feet remained lifeless.

  The prisoners had very successfully targeted the group of grommets at the end of the arena. The three remaining grommets down there were outnumbered. It would only be a matter of time before the prisoners all focused on Cate and the boys. They would be hopelessly outnumbered.

  “I think my power’s broken,” she yelled to no one in particular.

  “Now would be a great time to show some of that badass you’re always talking about,” Gaspar panted.

  “Argh!” She screamed with frustration. Wake up and fight! Wake up and fight! Wake up and fight you mother f—

  The ground trembled, and cracks feathered along the
floor of the arena. A labyrinth of gaps opened. Steam exploded and hissed angrily before it dissipated in the sky above the pile of bodies. The stench of sulphur assaulted her nostrils, a prelude to the putrid smell of death and decay that followed. That didn’t happened when Brittany had come back to life.

  The eerie hush that followed made her skin crawl. No one in the arena moved. The crowd was silent. The corpses twitched and then struggled to their feet. No sign of their ripped clothes or mutilated bodies remained. You would pass these newly created zombies in the street and not give them a second look, except for their iridescent violet eyes.

  She pressed against the dead lion, contemplating her next move. With a vicious twist of its body, the lion sprung to its feet. Her side slammed into the ground, and as she lifted her head, she came nose to nose with the lion. It stared at her with gleaming violet eyes.

  “Will you look at that?” Gaspar yelled. “She made a zombie lion.”

  “They’re all useless if they aren’t fighting!” Balthazar called.

  The remaining prisoners and grommets in the arena shuffled restlessly; their eyes darted nervously as they contemplated their next moves. A prisoner grabbed a spear from the ground and smashed it against Gaspar’s knees, sending him sprawling to the ground. He circled around as Gaspar staggered to his feet, preparing to strike again. The arena crowd sprang to life as the fighting recommenced.

  Cate scrambled to her feet. “Follow me,” she called to the zombies. Nothing happened. She growled under her breath. They only woke up when she spoke to them through her mind. Follow me! To her surprise the zombies did. She pointed to the prisoner with the spear facing Gaspar. Attack him.

  Her zombies swarmed over the prisoner, who within minutes lay lifeless on the ground. All heads turned to Cate. What had she done? In that instant she had become everyone’s enemy. The three boys raced toward her.

  Balthazar grabbed her by the shirt and yanked the rope from over her shoulder. He dragged her toward the edge of the arena as he unwound the rope and threw it around a column. “Climb to the top. Move, move, move!”

  She gripped each end of the rope and hauled herself up with her arms as she walked her feet up the column as fast as possible. The boys followed behind her, shoving her in their hurry. Gaspar cut the rope as he climbed to make it more difficult for the swarm of the frantic prisoners to follow.

  “Order the zombies to kill them all,” Balthazar ground out as he heaved her higher.

  “What about the other grommets?” Cate scrambled to find her footing against the smooth column. The prisoners hurled daggers, spears, and anything else they could reach from the bottom of the column.

  Mel swatted weapons away from the column. “Just do it now, Cate!”

  Her zombies stood clustered around their dead victim. Their chilling violet eyes focused on the column Cate and the boys were climbing. After a few seconds of indecision they headed towards them. One threw a jagged disk that carved into her bicep, causing her to let go of the rope. She swung by one hand as Balthazar attempted to support her.

  “How come they’re attacking me?” Cate shrieked. “I bloody made them!”

  “That’s the thing.” Balthazar heaved her back onto the column. He swatted away the knives and other sharp objects the zombies were throwing in their direction. “Unless you’re controlling them, zombies continue on with what they were doing directly before they died when you wake them up. These guys were only dead for a few minutes, so they’re continuing with the GTs. The ones who’ve been dead for decades and then wake up tend to go insane because they can’t understand the world they’ve woken up too. Zombies always have to do whatever you say though. Now is not the time to be magnanimous. It’s them or us.”

  A flail similar to the one around Mel’s waist sailed past her ear. Kill everyone on the arena floor. Kill them all now! She commanded her zombies.

  The zombies hunted in packs; impervious to injury, they fought like machines, sparing no one. The zombie lion ripped at the carcasses of the other lions that now lay dead. Thunder rumbled and exploded overhead. The clouds rippled and shimmered. A gleaming, transparent film oozed across the sky, creating an enormous dome over the arena, sealing it away from the rest of the world. The violet gleam in the zombies’ eyes faded, and they crumpled onto the dirt, lifeless once again.

  “What just happened?” Cate’s arms were like little pieces of chewed string from straining against the rope. Her palms and fingers were red and raw. “Do they normally collapse like that?”

  Balthazar pointed at the gleaming, clear dome. “All the prisoners must be dead. That’s a ward which blocks magic so no one can use their powers for this last test. It puts everyone on an even par for the hand-to-hand combat.” He dropped to the dirt and kicked some dead bodies out the way. “Jump!”

  She hadn’t taken any notice when she scaled up the column. She had even been thankful when it was high enough to protect against the majority of sharp objects hurled her way. Now, it looked like a damn long way to jump.

  Balthazar rolled his eyes. “This you’re contemplating? After everything we’ve done? Jump, girl.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and jumped. He steadied her as her knees sagged. An intense chill seeped deep into her bones as she surveyed the myriad of lifeless bodies. I did that.

  “Hold it together a little longer. You’re nearly there.”

  Chapter 26

  Four Brothers

  Balthazar half pulled, and half dragged her numb body beside him. “We have to wait in the holding pen while all the corpses are collected.”

  “Things would have been a whole lot easier if Cate had simply compelled everyone not to fight,” Mel panted as they hustled to the holding pen.

  “You suggest that now!” Cate hissed.

  Balthazar shook his head. “I considered that. It wasn’t an option. The GTs opened the annual blood sports for centuries. There has to be blood. Everyone sitting around doing nothing would have been unacceptable. Even compelling all the Timesurfers to fight with us against the prisoners wouldn’t have worked. You can’t have too many grommets survive the GTs.”

  The door of the holding pen rumbled shut. Cate slid onto the floor while the boys leaned against the railings. Dead calm settled over her, smothering the self-loathing slithering through her brain. “I murdered all those people.”

  Balthazar dropped to his knees and gripped her shoulders firmly. “The GTs are about whether you can and will kill. All the rest is window dressing. A true warrior is prepared to die for their cause. More importantly, they’re prepared to kill for it.”

  The enormity of what a Timesurfer had to be prepared to do settled heavily on her chest. “Do you guys have a bumper sticker with that printed on or something? You’ve said pretty much exactly what Rose said about the GTs.”

  Balthazar smiled. “It’s a pretty standard spiel.”

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” Cate asked.

  Each boy nodded.

  Gaspar shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like you haven’t, Cate. Look at loser Zach. I mean I know he shouldn’t have attacked you, and it was self defence and all, but he still ended up dead by your hand.”

  “What did you say I did to Zach?”

  The three boys looked confused.

  “Uh oh. That didn’t happen in your altered time line, did it?” Mel dragged his hands down his face.

  “Why can you tell me about my future, when the magic has stopped everyone else?” If that magical brain chip story had been a load of rubbish it was highly probable she would be attempting to add Jonah and Austin to the list of people she had killed.

  “The dome is blocking all the magic. I could tell you anything you want to know about your future. Well, the future you had before the debacle at the bus stop. We haven’t had a midnight reset in our time since then so who knows how it’s all going to play out now.”

  Cate chewed on her nail. “So you don’t know who kidnapped Xavier? Whether it was Mortez or Elias
?”

  Mel shook his head. “I don’t know who kidnapped Xavier, but that happened before this altered time line was created. Mortez wouldn’t hurt Xavier.”

  So all Cate’s drama with the Timesurfers wasn’t the reason Xavier was taken. “Look, I know she’s your mother, but I’m pretty sure she’ll hurt anyone to get want she wants. You might get a free pass because you’re her sons. Have I found Xavier in the future?”

  “Not yet. But you’ve been looking. We’ve all been looking. Mortez included.”

  “Well I’m going to fix that. Expect to wake up to a reset that shows I’ve found Xavier and he’s safe with Mum and I.” The metallic tape on her arm glowed and vanished. The sword strapped behind Balthazar’s back and Gaspar’s bow and arrow disappeared. A large, fluorescent orange number one appeared on her shirt. The numbers two, three, and four respectively appeared on the boys’ shirts.

  “There’re no weapons allowed for this part. It’s hand-to-hand combat.” Mel shoved Gaspar. “You grabbed a bow and arrow before you climbed that column before. Only an idiot grabs a weapon that requires two hands to operate before they climb something they need to use at least one hand to hold onto at all times.”

  Gaspar shoved Mel back. “Don’t call me an idiot! You’re the one who shot me in the butt.”

  “Shut up.” Cate rubbed the heel of her hand into her eye. She couldn’t give up now. This wasn’t about whether she wanted to be a Timesurfer or not. It was about finding Xavier. She’d wanted plenty of things. Finding Xavier was something she needed to do. “I won’t kill any more people. We just have to fight now, yeah?”

  “It’s not a we thing.” Balthazar peered through the railings. “I think the arena is clear of bodies. We get ten opponents each. We spar with them one at a time, for one minute intervals, and they rotate through three times.”

  Cate’s heart sank. Thirty minutes of continuous, one-on-one sparring was going to hurt.

  “Try and break as many bones as possible or knock them out. That way you get more of a break between attackers. You’ll get Austin, Cate. Mortez chooses him to fight at every GTs.” Mel stretched his arms above his head and started limbering up.