Ted Saves the World
By Bryan Cohen
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Copyright © 2014 Bryan Cohen
All rights reserved.
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Ted Finley was your typical, wise-cracking teenager…
…until an otherworldly force gave him abilities beyond his wildest dreams.
After an unintended public display of his powers, Ted has become an instant celebrity and the target of a gang of undead thugs.
Sixteen-year-old Erica LaPlante was six-feet-under when a blast of blue light brought her body back to life. Armed with the consciousness of a fierce warrior, Erica must keep her teenage urges at bay to protect the newfound hero.
When sparks fly between Ted and Erica, Erica wants nothing more than to hide who she really is and the dangerous mission they must face. But when their school comes under attack, Ted and Erica must use everything at their disposal to save their friends, the town and... well, the world.
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Table of Contents
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART TWO
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
PART THREE
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
PART FOUR
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
PART FIVE
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Legal Page & Acknowledgements
Thanks from Bryan
PART ONE
Chapter 1
The sun shined down on a fallen tree with a splash of blood hidden on the shady side. There were enough stories about horrible tragedies in the area to keep most kids away from the clearing. The tales kept most developers at bay as well, and while the rest of Treasure was suburbanizing with chain restaurants and popular retailers, most of the nearby forest remained untouched. Nature flourished, undisturbed and undisturbing, until the winds from a recent storm shifted the fallen oak to reveal a bloodstained sleeve.
The hand inside the sleeve was pale and decayed, but still manicured and dainty despite the month or so in the woods. It was the kind of hand most teenage boys would want to touch, if it wasn't rotting. The dirt beside the tree had covered up the rest of the body, and she'd remained largely untouched, except for a few stray worms. The girl was wearing a Treasure High cheerleading uniform – a white top and a black skirt, accented by a gaping red hole in the side.
In the distance, a dog barked at a squirrel as a wide beam of blue light came shooting from the sky. The oak shook and rolled over as the worms scattered, digging deeper underground. The light struck the girl's body. Above the ground, her hand began to regain its natural color. Underneath the dirt, flesh that had been torn from her face and abdomen began to rebuild itself. The light continued to work its effect on her body, restoring all functions that had been lost. The girl's heart once again began to pump blood through her body, dormant nerves fired and her eyes opened. She filled her lungs for the first time in 30 days. The cheerleader coughed out some earth and pulled herself out of the mud. She took in a deep breath and viewed her surroundings.
"Always in the ground," she said. "For once, couldn't I just be in a nice casket? Or locked in a closet?"
She thought about her previous crossover into a dead body and shivered. While that body hadn't been buried underneath three feet of earth, the corpse she inhabited had languished for weeks in a watery ditch on the side of the highway. The water was half frozen and she nearly drowned trying to free herself. She recalled her last body was a man's. This anatomical fact stuck out because she was almost hit by a car when signaling for help on the road. It was just her luck that the driver was a Catholic schoolgirl who'd gotten her driver's license one week earlier. The car skidded off the road and into the very same watery ditch she'd just emerged from. Pulling a devoutly religious girl from a ditch while completely naked took some skill. The newfound cheerleader laughed. It was tough keeping the various lives separate in her head when they all ended the same way, with a completed mission and another painful death.
She worked the rest of her body out of the ground. She felt her legs, arms and chest, and then studied the contours of her face with her hands.
"I'd kill for a mirror," she said, noticing the torn and bloody side of her outfit, "And for a shirt without a gaping murder wound on it."
Touching the bloody part of the shirt made her body's regrets come to the surface. This was the part she hated the most about the crossover process. In the seconds before death, most humans bring all their regrets to the surface, and while those thoughts are extinguished when the person dies, they remain within reach during the acclimation process. The emotions bubbled to the top of her brain as the girl tightened her hold on the branch. There were the usual feelings of disappointment that she hadn't accomplished enough in life. Her former inhabitant had wanted to go to college, join a sorority and meet someone who would take her on adventures, but there was another thought that ranked higher – something the body's new occupant didn't expect. In her now-ended life, the girl had chastised and berated her childhood best friend to get in with the older, popular girls. She saw the boy walking the halls at school alone, though his face was obscured. The memory faded, but the idea of the boy stayed in her mind.
"Popularity. Never worth ending a friendship over."
She shook off the negative energy and did her best to focus. She knew that before the memories of her former inhabitant's brain got in the way, she'd need to remember her mission. Crossing over pretty much destroyed short-term memories unless relaxation and concentration took precedence. She breathed deeply through her nose, and remembered the nose wasn't her former inhabitant’s original nose. Memories of the surgery came back to her, but she shook them off and tried to focus. Her hands brushed against her skirt, and she recalled dancing in her cheerleader outfit for a man who had to be a decade her senior.
"Ew," the girl said. "Whoever you were before, you sure had a lot going for you. Until you died. Horribly."
The g
irl took one more deep breath and the mission came back to her. She'd been told she had to find someone like her. Someone who could stop the worst from happening. She opened her eyes.
Time to evaluate what she had to work with. The girl crouched down low and leapt skyward.
"Not a bad vertical," she said. "That's probably the years of cheerleading. Speaking of which...."
The girl leaned backwards and put her hands on the ground. She pushed herself up into a handstand.
"Decent balance."
She placed her feet back on the ground, before running away from the branch in a full out sprint. She did what came natural to her body, which included a cartwheel, several flips and a midair spin before she landed.
"Now that's something I could get used to," she said.
The girl saw a squirrel run by with a dog not five feet behind it. The woodland creature dashed up a tree and its pursuer let out a single bark before becoming bored. It came over to her and she gave it a rub behind the ears. The dog's fur was soft and warm against her hands.
"Hey, boy. Do you know where I can find a new shirt?"
A well-built man in his 40s came into the clearing, shouting the name Leslie. Leslie the dog barked and the owner approached. He was wearing a Treasure Sheriff's Department hoodie. The man's kind look turned into dread when he saw the girl.
"Oh my gosh, are you OK, honey?"
He rushed over to her side and put his hand where the wound used to be.
"I'm fine," she said. "It's an… old wound."
She dreaded the first encounter after she crossed over, wondering what it was she was supposed to say. She used to be dead, but now she was all better?
"Wait a second. Erica?"
It usually took a name to get the memory jogging from her former inhabitant. The man was the local sheriff and she was Erica LaPlante, a cheerleader, a slut and the girl at the top of the popularity food chain. Her mission would be easier if she was low profile, but given Sheriff Norris' reaction, she could tell she'd been on and off the news for weeks.
"Hey, sheriff. It really has been too long."
The sheriff's jaw was on the floor. Erica wondered if he was even more surprised than the time she'd snuck liquor into his house during his daughter Jennifer's 14th birthday party.
"It's been a month. We assumed the worst."
They were right to assume that Erica had died, but this body had a few more tricks left in it.
"I'm glad you found me," she said. "I'm so lucky to see a friendly face."
A lot luckier for me than it is for you, Erica thought.