A Living Dead Love Story Series (39 page)

I turn, half-smiling, just in time to see a giant boy-man-thing crouching over my bag. He smells not of death but of sweat and smoke and booze and bad intentions. His eyes are alive and glassy and young. Fourteen, maybe fifteen young. He is soft and fleshy, but that flesh? There is lots of it, and you can't be weak to carry that much around. I immediately wonder,
What are they feeding him?
He has on a black T-shirt and a gray ski jacket, the puffy kind that budget rappers wear. He has white sunglasses pushed on top of his shaved head.

The older one, though still young, stands, tall and bony, waving a switchblade in each hand. The blades shine in the moonlight, sharp and threatening but nowhere near as cold as the gleam in his angry eyes.

“Stupid,” he says, looking at the crumpled paper beneath my trembling hand. “The other one was fine.”

How long have they been watching me? And why didn't I hear or sense them sooner?

I go to stand, but the bigger one puts a hand on my shoulder. “That would be even more stupid.”

Their voices are dark and menacing, like they've practiced for this in the mirror a few hundred times. They don't sound as young as they look. Then again, if this was happening, say, at Burger Barn at two in the afternoon, they probably would look as young as they are.

The big guy's eyes are half-lidded, his three greasy white chins covered with blond peach fuzz, but he's not
so drunk or stoned or tweaking that it's weakened his grip on my shoulder any.

“Take your hand off me,” I growl, shrugging.

His hand stays clamped right where it is.

They both cackle merrily, the taller one closing in. “Off you?” he says, sliding one of his blades against my cheek. “Babe, we're just getting—”

I snap his wrist happily, snatching the blade out of the air before it can dive into the loamy graveyard dirt at his feet. I don't even give him a chance to scream. I shove the crumpled grave rubbing into his mouth and clamp a hand over it. Tight.

The paper goes in so hard I swear I hear a tooth snap, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Fat boy lurches, yanking me off balance with a hand on my gray hoodie.

I pivot and drive the blade down, deep down, into his grubby sneaker. The scent of fresh blood fills the night air.

He screams until I slap his lower jaw shut, right onto his bleating tongue. A quarter inch of it tumbles to the earth as I scoot my shoe out of splatter range. I snatch the duct tape from my messenger bag and muzzle them both, then drag them one at a time to the cemetery gate.

Their eyes are fearful and pained as they shake their heads.

It feels too good, this strength I have now. And
there's an anger I didn't have before. It comes in a flash, so it gets hard to control myself. I know they're human boys, young guys, despite their size, and still I dispatched them as if they were 200-year-old Zerkers. That can't be good.

Remorse waves over me, expelling the rage, making me feel stupid and vulnerable all at the same time. As I watch them, they get more and more pitiful with each step. Even so, I yank their arms behind them through the bars and use every last inch of tape to bind them tight.

They wriggle. Maybe they'll get free before the church janitor finds them in a few hours, but I doubt it.

I stand in front of them, watching them squirm, sneakers digging into the dirt as they try to get away from me. The night air smells of their fear, of their sweat … and worse.

“Thanks, boys,” I hiss to their wide-eyed, frightened faces. “I needed that.”

I walk from the graveyard, grabbing my satchel on the way.

I hear more footsteps, and this time it is Dane, whose face is crumpled with concern.

“The hell?” He looks at my torn hoodie and bloody hands.

I do too. I hadn't noticed either before.

“A couple of punks jumped me.” I smirk, limbs sore from the effort. “They're fine.”

“You sure?”

I shake my head. “Go check.” I sigh. I know he
won't be happy until he sees I haven't broken their necks and sucked out their cerebellums, boiled-peanut style.

“Go,” I insist, stopping and turning to watch him dodge three gravestones to walk deeper into the cemetery. “I'll wait.”

He goes, shoes crunching on dry leaves and rustling in the thick, black dirt. I hear the sound of skin hitting skin, a soft groan, and then his feet crunching again. He is smiling when he returns, and before I can ask, he brags, “I just knocked them out, you know, to stop the bleeding.”

“Hmmm.” I remember the feel of the big one's hand, hard and insistent on my shoulder, and wonder what might have happened if I wasn't a zombie, if I could feel pain, if I hadn't trained with Dane five days a week since moving to Orlando. “I should have thought of that.”

“I'm sure you would have. Minus the shock and all.”

He lingers at my side as we weave through the rest of the headstones. I keep waiting for him to take my hand, but he never does. It's not that he doesn't want to, I don't think, just that it's not his style.

I'm not defending him. He doesn't need me for that. He's just never been a chocolate and flowers and sweater-over-his-shoulders, hand-holding guy.

I wipe the guys' blood on the side of my jeans and stoop to rinse off in a puddle of standing water in the church parking lot.

“What happened?” Dane says.

I shrug. “Nothing much. Just common late-night thuggery. This neighborhood seems like it gets worse every day.”

“Then it's good you're here to keep Normal grave rubbers safe, right?”

I figure he's joking, but when I look up, I know he's not. He has his thoughtful face on: lids half-shut, cheeks sucked in, lips tight. Stamp always called it Dane's grim face.

The thought of Stamp makes me smile.

We walk back to the apartment, then past it. Dane pauses at the entrance, standing in the silhouette of a dozen broken Christmas lights wrapped around The Socialite sign, still waiting for someone to take them down before it's time to put them back up again.

“I need to think,” I tell him when he follows reluctantly.

“Okay, yeah, good idea. Listen, Maddy, about the map. I'm sorry. I just—”

“You know what I was thinking of?” I interrupt, ignoring him. “When those guys jumped me back there? I was remembering the first time Bones and Dahlia did the same thing back in Barracuda Bay.”

“And?” he says when I don't immediately deliver the punch line.

“And it got me thinking,” I huff, waiting for him to catch up. “I don't think Val's a Sentinel, Dane. I think … I think she's a Zerker.”

T
his is awkward.”
Stamp smiles as we sit in the same booth at his favorite café. It's midway between work and home, but that's not why he likes it. They serve carbonated espresso shots, and he's as addicted as a zombie can be to something other than brains.

The place is one of those funky, poser, retro coffee shops with floor-to-ceiling windows and stark, uncomfortable black chairs and matching tables, black-and-white framed art of random couples kissing in France, and baristas who haven't bathed in days and are damn proud of it.

They all know Stamp by name and have his order practically waiting for him when he walks through the door, while they look at me and my Mountain Dew Voltage as if I've just ordered fried chicken at a vegetarian buffet.

It's not just that I'm undead. It's that I'm unhip. Stamp, in his endless effort to pass among the Normals, has managed to expertly navigate a world I'm still trying to understand. Even months after being reanimated, I'm still experimenting with the right layering of my makeup, trying not to look too pale or too gray or too orange or too fleshy. I'm still working on finding long-sleeved shirts that don't look dorky and leggings that don't make me look 12 years old.

But Stamp? He's mastered this world. Not just the living world but the teenage world. I keep forgetting I was never hip when I was alive, and Dane could never be anything other than a bad boy—good for making your dad mad, bad for dinner parties and cafés and poser clubs.

But Stamp was already heading toward permanent cool before he died. Now he's just made it his life's mission to belong. And here, in a place like this, with funky so-retro-its-hot-again remixes of old '80s songs on the overhead speakers and hipster baristas with stringy beards and carbonated espresso, it's like his home turf and I'm the sore thumb.

It's after work and he's dressed for another long night out, in snug black leather pants and a shiny gray shirt that manages to make his skin only vaguely pale. His favorite black-and-white hoodie is tossed across one corner of the table, his shiny cell phone resting atop it.

He looks good, but I know that's mostly because he wants nothing to do with me.

“Awkward how?” I say, pushing my soda away. “Because I didn't order some froufrou coffee drink to impress all your friends?”

He smiles charmingly, complete with dimples. How can he still have dimples with, like, 0.002 percent body fat? Whatever. It's just another of life's little mysteries, like why he can still pull female digits at Mach 10 while guys literally (no lie) cross the street to avoid me.

“Uh, because we haven't been alone since Dane went in to pay for gas on our way out of Barracuda Bay.”

I blurt on autopilot, “That's not true.” But it mostly is.

He starts to say something, obviously sees there's no fight left in my eyes, and stops. “It was always him, wasn't it?”

I cluck my tongue.

He fiddles with his spiky black hair. “I know, I know. We've done this to death, but—”

“It wasn't always him. It was you, first and always. And then, well, things changed.”

“No, they didn't,” he says, turning his dark eyes toward me. Oh, how I used to love looking into those baby blues. But for all of us, whatever eye color we had has long since bled out. Now we have the same dark eyes, with Stamp's just a little lighter than most because they were so darn blue before. “Things never changed between us because they never really got started, Maddy. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't my fault. It just happened. But quit trying to pretend it didn't.”

“I'm not pretending. I don't have all the answers either, okay? About what we are or who we love.”

“Maybe not, but you and Dane sure act like you've got all the answers now.”

“Why? Because we're careful? Because we're trying to stay off the radar and you're doing everything to get noticed?”

“Like what?” he barks.

“Like going out every night, exposing yourself to all those humans—”

“Hey, just because you and Stamp want to hide away and pretend you're not one of the Living Dead, don't try to—”

I shush him, leaning in. “Why don't you say it a little louder? I don't think the barista's cousin in Wyoming heard you.”

“Why shouldn't I?” He kind of stiffens, contorting his fine features into something feral. “I'm tired of hiding. Or what do you and Dane call it? Passing?”

“Yeah, Stamp, we know.”

“I am careful.” He says it like he's trying to convince me.

I shake my head. “You can't be. Not with all these new friends, all these new girlfriends. Not with Val.”

“You don't know anything about her.”

“Do you?” I snap, ‘cause now he's just pissing me off.

“Sure. Lots.”

Liar.

“What, then, Stamp? Besides her address.”

He shrugs. “I know that she likes monster movies and frozen lemonade and thongs and—”

“Give me something real,” I say, trying hard to erase the mental image of Val in a thong. “Like, oh, where does she come from? How does she afford an entire warehouse? What does she do for money? Where is her family? Who is her family? Who are her other friends?”

He shrugs. “She doesn't know that stuff about me either.”

“Don't be so sure.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's supposed to mean that you have to be more careful. That we have to be on guard for Sentinels posing as hot young club chicks.”

“Are you kidding me? You really think Val is a Sentinel?”

“Or worse,” I say, but he's so self-righteous he doesn't stop to hear.

“Please. That's the dumbest thing you've said all night, and you've been tossing off some doozies, lemme tell ya.”

“Have I? They only sound like doozies if you're living in dreamland and refuse to come back down to earth.”

He shakes his head, avoiding my eyes because, deep down, he's got to know I'm right.

“What do I need to be careful for anyway? I've got you and Dane to show up to interrogate her for me, right? Isn't that what you clowns were doing last night? And
don't think she didn't know it. She was really upset.”

“Who cares if she knows it? That's what friends do. They look out for you, even when you don't, or won't, look out for yourself.”

“Whatever,” he says, waving a hand.

I grab it fiercely. But not because I'm pissed, exactly. “What are all these rings?” There's one on every finger. Silver, mostly, or fake silver. Skulls, one spider, a claw, the usual Goth crap. I only ask because he wasn't wearing them at work, and I've never seen him wear a ring at home.

“When in Rome,” he says casually, yanking back.

I still hold on tight, making him really work to get that hand back.

“You should see some of these clubs and what the guys wear. This is tame by comparison.”

I bite my tongue. Yeah, well, I'm about to find out. Without him knowing it.

Just then his phone rings, belting out some rancid heavy metal ringtone that elicits frowns from the other customers.

As he slips it from atop his folded hoodie, Stamp still looks miffed—until he sees who it is. “It's Val,” he whispers excitedly. “Hey, babe, guess who I'm sitting here with? No. What? I barely know that guy. No, it's Maddy! You know, from last night? Right, the census taker—”