Tag: Irish

Zombie Apocalypse (pt24)

“Well, you’re probably better equipped to handling this. Good luck, Heherson.”

“Where are you going?” Irish asked as Tim went for the door.

“Uh, home. I’m tired.”

“You aren’t going to leave him to do this himself!”

“Worried about me, yeah?” Heherson asked hopefully.

Irish ignored him, fixing Tim with a glare. “You won’t leave him to do this on his own. Not with the limited time left.”

“Well, what can I do? I don’t have a lead now that my only one has proven to be wrong. A necromancer could be anywhere when not on the registry. How do you track one down?”

Heherson laughed. “Well, you-”

“And if he knows, then he certainly doesn’t need me-”

Irish interrupted him. “Neither of you are going home until this is settled.”

“Heherson’s already home.”

“All three of us will work together?” Heherson looked thrilled. “Ah, man, this will be fun!”

Irish blinked. “I didn’t say I was going to-”

“No one’s going home until this is settled, right?” Tim reiterated.

Irish scowled. “I have a case to- oh, who am I kidding. I won’t have a meeting if this goes through. All right, where do we start?”

Tim should have known she would agree like that and that it would leave him even less off the hook. Swallowing, he looked between the exes – Irish intensely focused and Heherson intensely focused on Irish.

It could have been worse. It could have been the zombie apocalypse.

Wait.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt23)

Irish rested the bat on her shoulder. “That’s not true. It could be. What if someone came from another town or something?”

“That still would have taken enough prep time that the registry would show another one being here. I didn’t get a notice about another necromancer in town. Did you?”

“Nah.” Heherson shook his head. “What I’m saying is that not everyone gets caught on by the registry, right?”

This left Tim with the realization he had nothing. Tonight would end and the apocalypse would come closer. Probably time to tell the police, if he wanted to be locked up for no reason. And it would happen anyway. Too late, and all because his father hadn’t picked up. Tim felt a headache coming on and it wasn’t all because of the night air coming in through the open door.

“I have so much work to do.”

“You have work to do!” Irish looked at him, appalled. “My meeting! There is no salvaging this!”

“I’ll figure it out, Irish, don’t you worry!”

Tim rubbed the back of his head. “Heherson… I hate to break it to you, but… you want to do what now?”

Heherson grinned. “I’ve done my research. Scoping out a necromancer that’s hiding shouldn’t be too hard. So don’t you worry, Irish. I’ll make sure nothing gets in the way of your meeting.”

Irish didn’t look all that comforted, but Tim felt the weight fall off of himself again.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt22)

Heherson brightened up considerably, despite the bat. “Irish! You’re here!”

Irish pointed the bat at him. “You stay back. Tim?”

Tim took a breath. “Nah, it’s fine, Ai. It’s not him.”

Actually, that wasn’t fine at all. Tim didn’t know what to do.

Heherson did keep his distance, but he didn’t seem phased by Irish’s temper. “You did come to see me! I thought so. Did you want a drink? I have some jade tea still, if you-”

“I’m not here for your bullshit!” Irish exclaimed. “What do you mean it’s not him?”

Tim shrugged. “It’s not him. There’s nothing else to say about it than that. He didn’t do it. I was wrong.”

“How can you be wrong?” she demanded. “You two are the only necromancers in all of Saltdale! If someone’s doing necromancy, it can only be you two!”

“Well, that’s not true, right?” Both Tim and Irish looked over at Heherson, who obliviously continued on as if he had been allowed into the conversation. “We’re the only two registered ones. Someone could always not be registered.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Being born a necromancer wasn’t something that could be hidden from the state. Which meant the moment you were born, you were always watched. If he had to think about that too, that could have been another reason he hadn’t wanted to learn anything about it. But that would have required him understanding the concept at a young age. The age when he had already decided he was uninterested.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt21)

“What?” Heherson looked surprised. “Of course not! I got a little distracted, you know? During the research stages. Never even pulled anything together. Never got back to it. When I noticed everything this morning, I thought it was you.”

That was surprising. “Thought it was me?”

“Yeah! Who else could it be, if not me? I mean, hiding the fact you knew anything about necromancy was a nice touch. Everyone would vouch for it.”

“Like everyone would vouch for the fact you’ve never done it in your life either,” Tim pointed out.

“Yeah, but at least I know the difference between a mass apparition raising and a mass body raising.”

The two stared at each other. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t Heherson. Tim didn’t see a reason for him to lie about it, not like this. Not that he’d ever been great at lying
Heherson shook his head with a light shrug. “I’m just saying-”

At that moment, a large crash interrupted them. Tim flinched and backed away as Heherson’s front door swung open, smashing into the wall. Irish stood there, baseball bat in hand and staring wildly about. “Tim! Are you all right?”

Zombie Apocalypse (pt15)

“It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. You don’t even have to go inside.”

Irish stared out the front windscreen, chewing mercilessly at her bottom lip. “Can you go first?”

“Can I go first?”

“Make sure that he won’t be weird when I come in?”

“Wait a moment. You want me to talk to him about you?”

She nodded, finally looking back at him. Tim was keenly aware that something about the set up was a little flipped. Who should be talking to him about a failed relationship and who should be talking to him about necromancy? Nevertheless, if Tim had to talk about anything with Heherson, he certainly would rather talk about Irish than about the dead. Much like how Irish would much rather talk about the dead than what all went wrong between her and Heherson.

He sighed. “All right. I’ll loosen him up for you.”

“Don’t phrase it like that.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Zombie Apocalypse (pt14)

Which was, of course, when the situation changed again.

Irish pulled up across the street, hands gripping tightly to the wheel. “Tim?”

“Yeah, Ai?”

“I don’t want to do this.”

Tim shook his head. “No one wants to do this, the situation sucks. Hopefully the trouble this has put us through will be enough to convince him not to do this again.”

“No.” Irish parked the car, turning the engine off. “I… I don’t want to talk to him yet.”

Tim rubbed at a shoulder. “It’ll be fine. You just have to get him to stop the raising. Tell him how it will ruin your meeting, your day. Or how it will ruin most people’s lives. That might be a good one.”

“You can do that!” Irish shot back.

At this point, Tim felt as though she was unreasonably upset, but wasn’t about to back off now.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt13)

Tim quickly tried to salvage her perspective on the matter and what all tabs he did still keep on his father. “The seminar was still in town though. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be at home right now. As soon as he wakes up, he’ll get it. It’s just…”

“Tired after a full day? He’ll wake up when his alarm gets him ready for the last day of the seminar. Which might be a little late for him then to drop everything to drive over here.”

Tim chuckled. “Well, yeah. It’s why I’m up in the middle of the night trying to get someone to do something.”

“And you can’t do something?”

“Again. What? What I can do is try to convince Heherson to stop, right? So I went to get the person I thought could best accomplish that. I’m not trying to make your life more difficult, Irish. I’m trying to make sure you can even have that meeting of yours tomorrow.”

Irish bit her lower lip. “Oh, fine. I will talk to him about it.”

Neither of them moved. She messed with his button some more, obviously wanting to grab a needle and get to work on it, but there was no longer time for that. Tim sipped the rest of his chocolate down. “Thanks.”

“Promise me?”

“Hm?”

Irish finally looked back at him, scowling once more. “To come with me. I’ll talk to him, but I’m not going over to his place alone. Come on Tim, the man has started to summon a horde of the dead! Why would I go alone?”

“Eh.” Tim shrugged. “Well, you’re the one with a car. Leave the button be for now, Irish. Go get dressed.”

With a sigh, she left his coat on the table and returned to her bedroom. Tim stood back up and washed out his mug. Well, this had gone as well as he could have expected it too. With the pressure mainly off of him, Tim felt much more confident that the next day would have significantly less zombies in it than it had the potential earlier this evening to have. With that load off his mind, he waited patiently for Irish to get dressed. They got into her car and she drove them both to Heherson’s house.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt12)

“Why don’t you talk to him about it?” Irish demanded. “You’re the other necromancer. Shouldn’t you be the one to talk to him about it?”

If it were possible, Tim frowned more. “Uh… no? In what way does my heritage make me more qualified? I barely know as much as you do.”

“You recognized it as happening in the first place.” Irish waved at the window, finally reaching over and taking his jacket off of the back of the chair, checking how much connection that button really had with the front of the fabric.

“Yeah. That doesn’t mean anything. I couldn’t stop it, even if I had access to everything. I tried calling dad, but he hasn’t called back yet.”

“Wasn’t he going to be at a seminar all week?”

Tim’s shoulders drooped. He had completely forgotten about that. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Honestly. I think I keep more tabs on Mr. Martin than you do.”

Zombie Apocalypse (pt11)

“I’m not saying…” Tim shook his head, dropping that. “That doesn’t matter, because you certainly aren’t interested in him anymore like that. But if he’d listen to you about this, maybe you could get him to stop?”

“Why on earth do you think he’d even listen to me? He barely listened to me when I left him.”

Tim frowned. “I thought you left him because you couldn’t tolerate how disorganized he was.”

“Of course that’s why I left him. But he didn’t get that. He wasn’t listening. Kept saying how things would get better. I’d already talked to him about how his messiness and spontaneity wasn’t cutting it for me. It took weeks before he really accepted the fact I’d moved out, remember?”

He didn’t really remember that, because Irish had very promptly put it behind herself and didn’t spend much time talking about it. Once she had broken up with Heherson, Tim hadn’t seen as much of the man. They had a lot in common, he and Heherson, but the only thing that had really brought them together was Irish.

Zombie Apocalypse (pt10)

It was no secret that Heherson was still completely heads over heels for Irish. The breakup hadn’t been his decision, solely Irish’s. “He would totally listen to you.”

“No. He would totally look at me with big puppy eyes.” Irish frowned, looking rather uncomfortable. “If I went to talk to him now you know he’d get the wrong idea. I don’t want to deal with that.”

That a mass influx of dead people might hit the streets seemed a bit more important to Tim. However, he couldn’t ignore the idea. “He’d probably think you’re impressed. Considering your first reaction was that it’s bad timing but a big deal, he wouldn’t be wrong.”

Irish glowered. “Hey. I don’t think there should be a mass raising of the dead ever. That’s just insensitive.”

Tim rose an eyebrow. “‘That’s impressive’.”

She rolled her eyes. “It is impressive. That doesn’t mean anything.”