It s coming. Whatever it is, Nicholas Flamel'said grimly.
We don't want to be trapped here, Scatty said. Let s find Josh and get
back to the car.
Agreed. He who retreats lives longer. He turned to look back into the shop.
The Witch of Endor had Sophie by the arm and was whispering urgently to her.
Wisps of white smoke still curled off the girl, and tendrils of white air
dripped from her fingers like unwound bandages.
Sophie leaned forward and kissed the old woman on the cheek, then she turned
and hurried down the length of the shop. We have to go, she said
breathlessly, we have to get away from here. She had no idea what lay
outside, but her newfound knowledge enabled her imagination to populate the
fog with any number of monstrous creatures.
And close the door behind you, the Witch called out.
And at that moment all the lights flickered and died. Ojai was plunged into
darkness.
The bell jangled as the trio stepped out into the now-deserted street. The
fog had become so thick that drivers had been forced to pull off the road and
there was no longer traffic moving on the main street. An air of unnatural
silence had fallen. Flamel turned to Sophie. Can you pinpoint Josh?
He said he d wait for us in the park. She squinted, trying to penetrate the
fog, but it was so thick that she could barely see a foot in front of her
face. With Flamel and Scatty on either side of her, she stepped off the
sidewalk and made her way to the middle of the empty road. Josh? The fog
swallowed her words, muffling them to little more than a whisper. Josh, she
called again.
There was no response.
A sudden thought struck her and she flung out her right hand, fingers
splayed. A puff of air curled from her hand, but did nothing to the fog
except make it swirl and dance. She tried again, and an icy gale whipped
across the street, cutting a neat corridor through the fog, catching the rear
wing of an abandoned car in the middle of the road, leaving a ragged
indentation in the metal. Whoops. I guess I have to practice, she muttered.
A shape stepped into the opening in the fog, and then a second and a third.
And none of them were alive.
Closest to Sophie, Flamel and Scatty was a complete skeleton, standing tall
and straight, wearing the ragged remains of the blue uniform coat of a U.S.
cavalry officer. It carried the rusted stump of a sword in bony fingers. When
it turned its head toward them, the bones at the base of its skull popped and
cracked.
Necromancy, Flamel breathed. Dee s raised the dead.
Another figure loomed out of the fog: it was the partially mummified body of
a man carrying a huge railroad hammer. Behind it came another dead man, whose
remaining flesh was tanned to the consistency of leather. A pair of withered
leather gun belts was slung low across his hips, and when he saw the group,
he reached for the missing guns with skeletal fingers.
Sophie stood frozen in shock, and the wind died away from her fingers.
They re dead, she whispered. Skeletons. Mummies. They re all dead.
Yep, Scathach said matter-of-factly, skeletons and mummies. It depends on
what type of ground they were buried in. Damp soil, you get skeletons. She
stepped forward and swept out with a nunchaku, knocking the head clear off
another gunslinger, who d been attempting to raise a rusted rifle to his
shoulder. Dry soil, you get the mummies. doesn't stop them from hurting you,
though. The skeletal cavalry officer with the broken sword lashed out at
her, and she parried with her own sword. His rusted blade dissolved into
dust. Scatty s sword swung again and separated the head from the body, which
then immediately crumpled to the ground.
Although the shambling figures moved in complete silence, there were screams
all around now. And even though they were muffled by the fog, fear and abject
terror were clearly audible in them. The ordinary citizens of Ojai had become
aware that the dead were walking through their streets.
The fog was now thick with the creatures. They came from all sides, crowding
in on the trio, encircling them in the center of the road. As the twisting
sheets of dampness eddied and flowed, more and more skeletal and mummified
remains were revealed in brief glimpses: soldiers in the tattered blues and
grays of Civil War uniforms; farmers in rags of old-fashioned overalls;
cowboys in worn chaps and torn denim; women in long, sweeping skirts, now
moldy and ragged; miners in threadbare buckskins.
He s emptied a boot hill graveyard from one of the old abandoned towns!
Scatty exclaimed, standing with her back to Sophie, striking out around her.
No one here s in clothes made after 1880. Two skeletal women wearing
matching bonnets and the rags of their Sunday best clicked their way on bony
feet across Ojai Avenue toward her, arms outstretched. Scatty s sword whipped
around, slicing away the arms, but that didn't even slow them down. She
shoved her nunchaku back into her belt and pulled out her second sword. She
struck out again, both swords forming an
lopped off both heads, sending them bouncing back into the fog. The skeletons
crumpled into a disarray of bones.
Josh, Sophie called again, her voice high in desperation. Josh. Where are
you? Maybe the mummies and skeletons had gotten to him first. Maybe he was
going to loom up out of the fog any minute now, eyes blank and staring, head
twisted at an awkward angle. She shook her head, trying to clear the ghoulish
thoughts.
Flamel's hands burned with cold green fire, and the damp fog was rich with
the odor of mint. He snapped his fingers and sent a sheet of virescent fire
blazing into the fog. The fogbanks glowed emerald and aquamarine, but
otherwise, the magic had no effect. Flamel next threw a small ball of green
light directly in front of two lurching skeletons who loomed up before him.
Fire blazed over the creatures, crisping the remains of their gray
Confederate uniforms. They continued forward, bones clacking on the street,
closing in on him, and there were hundreds more behind them.
Sophie, get the Witch! We need her help.
But she Can't help us, Sophie said desperately. There s nothing more she
can do. She has no power left: she s given everything to me.
Everything? Flamel gasped, ducking beneath a swinging fist. He placed his
hand on the center of the dead man s rib cage and pushed, sending the
skeleton flying back into the crowd, where it fell in a tangle of bones.
Well then, Sophie,
What? she called. What could she do against an army of the undead? She was
a fifteen-year-old girl.
