Wizard Part XX

PART I PART II PART III PART IV PART V PART VI PART VII PART VIII PART IX PART X PART XI PART XII PART XIII PART XIV PART XV PART XVI PART XVII PART XVIII
PART XIX

ALL PARTS HERE

Part XX

As I struggled to catch my breath I looked up and saw Em looking at me through the glass porch door. She looked upset. I tried to tell her it wasn't her fault, but the words froze in my throat.

Something moved to my right. I turned my head as I tried to lift myself up. It was more solid, this thing moving quickly through the front yard. It was a Reaper, and it scampered up the gutter and positioned itself onto the roof. I didn't know for sure what was about to happen, but when I saw another one jump along the back fence of the School for the Deaf, something about the way it was moving made me think of an Australian collie.

Reapers reminded me of something I'd seen in an old EC comic when I was a kid. It was a story about a grave hopper, this lanky wiry old man turned ghoul with tattered cloths and bare feet that hopped through the cemetery from grave stone to grave stone, occasionally stopping to perch atop one, knees at the chest. Reapers had the agility to move at astonishing speed. They never walked upright anymore, but scampered and jumped from perch to perch.

The creepiest thing about them though was that they had no lips and they communicated in a code akin to morse by chattering their teeth. The sad thing about them was they'd all been death runners at one time. If you survived long enough, you eventually became a Reaper. It was the price you payed for the extra time.

The death runners could feel their presence and started to scatter, the temperature rose drastically and by the time I'd made it to the door, it was almost balmy.

Shutting the door behind me I listened as at least two Reapers scampered back and forth across my roof, chattering their tactical strike. Back in the dinning room I hovered over the map and watched the whole sick thing play out. There wasn't anything I could do. There's a number of things you learn along the way, the first is never say the tall man's name, and coming in a close second is you never fuck with a Reaper when they've got work to do.

I soon realized why the Reaper on the fence had made me think of a collie. On the board there must have been twenty Reapers running the perimeter of the Island. They could be discerned from the death runners because in this particular conjure, they appeared on the map as small balls of light while the death runners were still just wisps of smoke.

I heard Em pull a deep breath, or at least the sound of one, when she picked up on their plan too.

Oh Aubrey, they're herding them to the River.

Well, you go to give 'em credit, it's a quick solution.

Only a few stragglers were able to penetrate and move through the Reapers lines, the others moved like lemmings to the final pull of the Tennessee. Some seemed to take it in stride and walked of their own accord into the final current. Others seemed to struggle and fight to the last minute. The worst was the three or four the reapers surrounded at the end. These poor bastards would never make it to wherever the final country lay. They were the prize the Reapers got for a job well done.

Reapers needed to eat too.