The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One by Jared Rinaldi Page A

build, similar to Nan. His hair was salt-and-pepper though he was just shy of fifty, which he wore short and combed back with bee’s wax. His corded arms were lined with tattoos of formulas and equations, a sure-sign the man was a cosmologist. He had the stern face of a soldier but a glint of mischief and curiosity in his dark brown eyes; you’d miss it if you didn’t know the man, but Mercer knew him better than anybody.
    “Pa?”
    “Ah! The dead has risen!” Willis Crane turned around, a mock look of terror on his face. “Oh, sorry Mercer. I thought you were a dead man.”
    “Very funny.” Already, Mercer had forgotten the last sight he had seen in the kitchen, of his Nan’s leg being gone, of her dress being covered in stains of dried blood. “What are you doing?”
    “Watering the tangerine saplings. They are very delicate, but in a few years, we’ll have more citrus than we’ll know what to do with. Trading outposts along the rivers will pay good money for citrus. Did you know that in the old days, they couldn’t grow citrus up at this latitude? Not in the outdoors, anyways. It was too cold. You still can’t grow it in the Broke Tooth Hills, and certainly not in the Aderon Mountains. We’re at the absolute furthest you can go without there being frost or snow.”
    Mercer was listening half-attentively, as he always did when his father went on his diatribes, but he noticed his dad’s face was changing as he spoke. It was becoming thinner, paler, before finally settling on a jaundiced pallor, except for right under the older man’s eyes, which had rings of deep purple.
    “Pa, are you alright?”
    “Me? Oh, no, Mercer. I’m not. Not really. I haven’t been since Tiara died. Death, you see. I can’t seem to figure it out.”
    “What?” Mercer watched as his father’s dilated eyes darted around the greenhouse, as though small demons that only he could see flew about his head, whispering dark things into his ear. “What are you talking about?”
    “We’re all dying, Mercer, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We can surpass death. The old ones almost figured it out. The dead men, you see...”
    Mercer looked around at the greenhouse, at the plants that lined its walls. They were turning brown and withering on their stalks. The tangerine saplings his father had been watering were already shriveled husks. “What is happening?”
    Mercer’s father fell to the ground. His irises had been consumed by his black hole pupils, his breath coming in labored rasps. His skin had lost all its color and tumors were bubbling up under its surface. Willis reached a trembling hand up to his son and beckoned him to lean down to him.
    “They’re coming, Mercer... The dead men... They’re coming... Jai Lin…”
    “Pa! Hold on, I’m going to get_” There was a thud on the side of the greenhouse, the sound of wet flesh on glass. Mercer looked up and saw the silhouette of a pair of arms on the steamy, opaque panes. Another pair slammed against them, then another. They left streaks of blood as they rubbed up and down the glass. They were dead men conglomerating outside of the greenhouse, drawn to the sounds of the living inside.
    “Come on, Pa! We’re going to get out of this…”
    “Get away from me!” Willis Crane screamed, his voice torn to shreds. He swatted his son away as though Mercer weighed no more than a gnat, the younger man crashing into the shelves at the far side of the room in an explosion of dead plants and terracotta.
    “Pa, what are you doing?” Mercer said, staggering back to his feet. He thought the figure before him was an illusion, an image conjured from his hitting his head too hard against the shelves. No, there was no shaking or blinking it away: Willis Crane had mutated into something beastly, something malformed.
    Mercer burst from the greenhouse through the gang of dead men clawing for his skin. He ran back towards the house, stopping when he saw the all-too-familiar chambray