A Living Dead Love Story Series (55 page)

I fight frantically, kicking and jabbing and yanking, and get nowhere.

His left thumb is bent and he's limping. One eye looks wonky, and something brown and green oozes from his nose.

I'm no farther from the Zerker cage, and he's lots closer!

“Stamp,” I plead, if only to lull him with my voice.

It doesn't work. He's gurgling at the other Zerkers in the cage, and they're frickin' gurgling back. They're almost like apes talking.

And I wonder, not for the first time, why zombies are so much like us and zombies who've been bitten by Zerkers are so much like animals.

Stamp reaches for the cage, and I kick him in the elbow.

He turns and growls, upper lip covered with Zerker slime, drool running down. And then something catches his eye just to the left.

I turn because I'm figuring it's Val.

It's not. Not even close.

U
mph,” Dane groans,
shoving his cane through Stamp's arm so hard it gets stuck in the corrugated tin wall of the abandoned warehouse. Stamp goes limp immediately, almost like the cane was made out of …

“Copper!” Dane says proudly, clapping like you do when you've done something thoroughly amazifying. Which he has! “I had the Sentinels build me a new one made all out of copper. With a rubber handle, of course.”

I crush him in a hug. “Why on earth would the Sentinels build you a new cane? I mean, last I checked you were in handcuffs!”

“Yeah, well, that was before you escaped and I told them I knew exactly where you were going. Sentinels tend to like things like that. Got me a few brownie points and this shiny copper cane. Oh, and a ride here.”

“How did you find me?”

He shrugs, trying in vain to pull his copper cane out of Stamp's arm. It's stuck not just through Stamp's bicep but deep into the wall behind him.

Dane grunts and gives up. “Well, I didn't think I would. I just lied to the Sentinels to get out of there and come after you, but they have this police scanner in their vans. So when we found out about the fire in the dollar store parking lot—nice touch, by the way—and then heard the cops squawking about one of their cars being stolen, well, I put two and two together and started looking for you.”

“But the weeds,” I cry. “I thought I hid myself pretty well.”

“You did, only you gave your dad the keys before you locked him in the backseat. He let himself into the front seat and turned the cruiser's lights on.”

“Dork,” I say, but I don't really mean it. I don't even really know what I'm saying. I'm just … wiped out. It's too much, with the Stamp dying and the Stamp living and the Zerker Stamp trying to kill me and Dane—
Dane!
Too much.

“But how can you be here? Smiling? Saving me? When I betrayed you like that, back there at the center?”

He sighs. “Maddy, I knew you would break out of there the minute you didn't turn back to say good-bye when they first split us up. I don't blame you. I just wish I could have gotten here sooner.”

I turn, dead heart 10 degrees warmer, and watch as a team of Sentinels—real Sentinels this time, not yellow-eyed Zerker ones—flood the building. They look severe and ignore us as they open up the cage and make quick work of the Zerkers, zapping them in the necks so they fall like cordwood to the factory floor.

I turn, looking for Val, and see her trying to limp out a side window but cursing the thick, steel bars that even she can't break.

Another team of Sentinels catch her and shackle her wrists, then her ankles, then chain all four together, bending her at the waist.

I walk toward them.

Dane says, “Maddy, we're done here. Give it up.”

“Look at Stamp. Look at what she did to him.”

He does. He stops and looks, his eyes big and admiring to see his old friend still alive. “At least she didn't kill him,” he says gently. “Whatever he is, he's alive. That's more than we had before we came back to Barracuda Bay.”

“I almost wish she had,” I spit, seeing Stamp's greenish-gray skin and the Zerker muck on his chin.

“You don't mean that.”

“Okay, but still …”

We look at each other, months of knowing one another inside and out shared in a single glance.

“Look, Maddy.”

“I see him, all right?”

He smirks that smirk and holds up his left hand.
“No, really look.”

“Your pinky!” It's back. His pinky. Is back. Well, I mean, most of it. It's gross and a little gnarly and too pink for his dead white flesh, but it wasn't there a few days ago and now it is! “How did that happen?”

“The Sentinels. I told you, they were experimenting with electricity to repair some of the damage from the sharks. Vera says if I keep up the therapy, my pinky will be—”

“Vera? What does she have to do with your pinky?”

“Maddy, the Keepers are in charge of my therapy. They're in charge of everything at the center. Even …” He looks at Stamp, then at me, and smiles. “Even in charge of rehabilitating Zerkers.”

“You mean—”

“He means,” says a familiar voice from behind, as Vera drags my father into the warehouse, “that there's hope for Stamp yet.”

I turn to Dane, then Dad, then Vera. “But how—?”

“Vera organized all of this,” Dane says, as if he's Vera's biggest fan or something. “She brought us here immediately.”

I turn to Vera. “Even after what I did to you?”

Vera looks spiffy in her new Keeper uniform—even if one arm is in a sling. “I broke my own rule. I crossed the yellow line. I paid the price. My pen?” She holds out a hand.

I give it up reluctantly, somehow certain all this is some dream and the Zerkers are going to break free any minute and rip into us.

“Maddy,” Vera says, “I'd like to talk to you when we get back about joining us. About joining the Keepers.”

I shake my head, but Dane moves in. “Maddy, listen to her first. Please. For me.”

“Why? You said yourself it's better to be free.”

Vera says, “I know you two enjoy your freedom. Maddy, joining us at the center isn't a second death sentence. Besides, I think you would make a good Second Afterlife counselor for Stamp.”

“Second Afterlife?”

She has her usual calm demeanor on and says logically, as if we're not standing in a warehouse full of Zerker bones and Spray Tan Death Ray Booths from Hell and I didn't, you know, break her arm in half. “When a Zerker comes back from the dark side, Maddy, we call it a Second Afterlife.”

“You mean you've done this before?”

I see Stamp, still stuck to the wall with Dane's cane.

I peer up just in time to find Vera and Dane sharing a conspiratorial glance.

I look at Dane. “Well?”

“Yes, Maddy. We have. I have. I—well, this is
my
Second Afterlife.”

N
o, Stamp, I
told you already: that's all the brains you get this week.”

Stamp huffs in his cell, statuesque but still clumsy in his green Second Afterlife jumpsuit.

His movements are a little jerky, and he still bumps into things, even though there's not that far to go and not too many things to bump into.

“This stucks,” he says, shaking his shaved head.

I snort.

He grunts. “You're doing it again, Maddy. You're marking me.”

“Mocking you, Stamp. And no, I'm not, but the word is either
stinks
or
sucks.
I think you're getting them confused.”

“No,” he whines. “I just wasn't sure which one I wanted to use, so I said both.”

“Oh.” I nod, feeling bad now. “Actually, that makes perfect sense.”

“See?” He humphs and crosses his arms. He looks clean, healthy. The rehab is working. Slowly but surely.

I tick some boxes off on my clipboard and leave the cell.

“Where are you going?” he says, pacing just in front of the door the way I used to when it was me in the cell and Vera on the outside.

“I have to monitor some tests in the lab, Stamp. You know that.”

I try to keep the impatience out of my voice, but it's clear from his expression that I don't succeed. Not entirely anyway.

He does this crumple-face thing he's been doing lately. “But, but … I miss you.”

I stop and clutch my clipboard to my chest. Yes, I know. It sounds all gooey and like an ultimate awww moment, but sometimes Stamp is like a three-year-old in a toy store.
Stamp wants this. Stamp wants that. Stamp eat now? Stamp laugh now? Stamp miss you. Stamp love you. You let Stamp out now?
And then, just as you're falling for it, he'll notice some bug crawling in the corner or that his shoelaces aren't tied right and he'll immediately drop you like a hot potato.

So, yes, he misses me, but he also misses Dane and Vera and the Sentinel who brings him brains twice a week and the guy who drove him here and the janitor
Sentinel who never gives him the time of day.

“I miss you too, Stamp, but … Maddy has more work to do.”

“That's all you do is work.” He pouts, turning his back to me.

And I have to admit, he's kind of right. Ever since returning to the center, I've made it
my
Afterlife's mission to give Stamp a second one. I think he knows this, which is why he's not really mad. Just pouty.

He's been like that a lot lately, but it's better than when he first came here, all gross-eyed and Zerkery. Vera kept me away from him for the first week, during what she calls rehab but Stamp always calls The Empty Time.

From the sounds of it, I'm glad she did. He stayed in the lab, mostly, while I hung around with Dane in the medical suite, replacing his bandages and timing him on the treadmill as he trained so he could rely less and less on his cane.

“I still think I'll keep it,” he tells me as he joins me at the end of the hallway, out of Stamp's hearing range.

“Why?” I say.

He twirls his copper cane with the rubber handle Charlie Chaplin style as we nod to Birch, the Sentinel on duty. “It's cool, don't you think?” Dane says.

“Not really,” I say.

He shrugs.

I reach for the elevator button.

Dane pokes it with the rubber tip of his cane instead. “Comes in handy, though, doesn't it?”

“Okay, yes,” I admit.

He pulls me to his side for a hug.

The doors ding open, and we both step back, spotting a familiar powder-blue uniform.

“Here to check on your patient?” I ask Vera as we cluster in the alcove outside the elevator.

She has some coloring books and a vocabulary workbook in her hand—the hand attached to the arm I broke. Vera gushes, “He's been combining his words lately. Have you noticed?”

I nod. “His latest is
stucks,
which I believe stands for
stinks
and
sucks.”

Vera smiles. “See, that's why it's so great that you agreed to be his Second Afterlife counselor. It would have taken me weeks to figure out that Stamp word.”

“And your arm?” I say, avoiding her gaze as the guilt floods my voice.

“It's fine now.” Vera pats my shoulder. “Thanks to your dad, that is.”

The doors open, we say our good-byes, and Vera races toward Stamp's cell, eager to explore his growing vocabulary.

“Stamp word.” Dane chuckles in the elevator. “I like that. He will, too, once he's back to his old self.”

“You think he'll ever get there?” I say, nuzzling him
in the 2.7 seconds we have left before the elevator reaches the ground floor.

“He'll get there.” Dane raises his new finger. “Just like Mr. Pinky here! And look at Vera's arm. If he's going to get help anywhere, he's in the right spot.”

I bite my lip as we exit the elevator.

We weave through a dozen thuggish Sentinels who all seem to know Dane's name by now.

“Wow, that didn't take you long,” I say, admiring Dane in his sleek, new black Sentinel uniform.

“What's that?” he says, after high-fiving a Sentinel so big he nearly has to stoop to enter the elevator.

“Winning over your sworn enemies, the Sentinels?” I say.

“I never called them sworn enemies, did I?”

“Yeah. About 1,000 times. At school, in your trailer, on the way to school, on the way to your trailer, in Orlando, at—”

“All right, all right.” He grins as we head toward a door marked with this notice: Keep Out! Approved Personnel Only.

They are double doors, black (though most are red), and guarded by a special six-key entry code. I punch it in—785439, if you're wondering—and wait for the doors to hiss open. I can hear Dad's voice even before signing in at the guard station, where a Sentinel named Clive—yes, yes, I've finally learned some of their names—does a
weird handshake thing with Dane.

I arch my eyebrows about it while waiting for Clive to key us in to the second set of hissing double doors.

Dane straightens his beret. “It's a Sentinel thing. You Keepers just wouldn't understand.”

I straighten the cuff of my new powder-blue Keeper uniform and walk through the door, smirking.

“Listen, Hector,” Dad is saying in his exasperated voice. “You can't just zap these guys anywhere and expect the therapy to work. You have to address the affected wound directly, like this.”

Dad puts his surgical mask over the lower half of his face—he always takes it off to berate interns, zombies, whoever—and passes what looks like a bar code scanner over the divot in a young Sentinel's arm.

A kind of rosy-pink glow illuminates the wound. Even from across the room I can smell the skin and muscle healing. It's not like the rotting smell of death but more like … hamburger cooking.