Acheron Highway: A Jonathan Shade Novel by Gary Jonas Read Free Book Online Page B

from the seventies?   Nothing?”
    She shook her head.   “None of that means anything to me.”
    “Did you see the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats ?   George Clooney and Kevin Spacey?”
    “I don’t watch movies.”
    “I could never date you.”
    “You haven’t asked me out yet, Jonathan.   I might say yes.”
    “I don’t date dead girls who don’t watch movies.”
    “Only dead girls who do watch movies.”
    “Something like that.”
    “Can I come inside?   It’s getting cold out here.”
    I nodded.   If a dead girl noticed the cold, it was going to be bad.
    As we walked toward my apartment, the motion detector light on the side of the building illuminated.   I glanced over and saw four men moving toward us.   Something about the way they moved told me they were coming for us.   Call it a Spidey sense if you want, but as soon as I saw them, I knew they meant to attack.   As they moved through the light, I saw that they were corpses.
    “Shit.”   I pulled out my car keys and clicked off the alarm.   “Get in the car.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Dead guys in party mode.”
    She ran to the car.
    “I have a sword in the backseat.   Hand it to me.”
    “You’re so calm,” she said, her voice quaking.   No reaction to the sword, just that I seemed calm.   Like everyone keeps a sword in the car.   Weird chick.
    “The sword?”
    She dug in the backseat.   I took a few deep breaths and watched the dead guys get closer.   They weren’t in a big hurry.   I could probably hop in the car and drive away, but I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t attack other residents.   Miranda handed me the sword.   I pulled it out of the scabbard, which I handed back to her.   I stepped toward the dead guys.
    “It’s past your grave time,” I said when they were ten feet away.
    “Give her to us.”
    “Sorry, she’s not into necrophilia.”   I knew they meant Sharon, but as Miranda was the only woman here, I figured I’d feign ignorance.
    The dead guys kept coming, so I didn’t bother playing nice.   I swung the blade fast and strong and lopped off the first guy’s head.
    I’d expected more resistance, but the blade chopped right through flesh and bone with no trouble at all.   I swung too far but recovered quickly and spun full circle, whipping the blade around to chop another dead guy in half.   The other two jumped back.
    I decapitated a guy six months ago, but he was a magically engineered assassin and it took three swings to cut through his neck.   Without magic to reinforce them, the dead guys didn’t stand a chance against the sword.   I wondered about myself at this point.   Cutting off heads?   Multiple times in a year?   Shouldn’t that bother me on some level?
    I brandished the blade and kept myself between the two corpses and the car while I considered that.
    Nope.   Didn’t bother me.   I didn’t feel one way or the other about it, and that seemed strange.   I made a note to check my own pulse.   Maybe I, too, was dead and didn’t know it.   Well, as long as I wasn’t trapped in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, I couldn’t be doing too bad.   Right?
    The corpse I’d cut in half kept crawling toward me.
    “Really?” I said.
    “We’re here for the woman.   Give her to us, and we’ll let you live.”
    “That’s mighty considerate of you.”
    “Give her up, Mr. Shade.”
    “Dead guys shouldn’t talk.”   I let him crawl closer then chopped off his head.   That brought my lifetime total of decapitations to three, and still I felt nothing.   It bothered me about as much as zapping aliens in a video game.
    I rushed toward the other two.   They split up, so I followed one of them.   He tried to dart behind a car.   I rolled over the hood to cut him off.   He tried to grab me, so I lopped off his arm.   Then I swung the blade and severed his head.
    The last dead guy raced to my car.   I slid across the hood and kicked him in the chest.   He staggered