A Living Dead Love Story Series (7 page)

T
HE HOUSE IS
quiet after my late-night sneak-out. Unfortunately, so is my entire chest cavity. That's right: no pulse, no heartbeat. By the time I look in my bedroom mirror to make sure I haven't scratched myself or broken an eye socket bone or something, I suddenly realize the reason rain was sizzling when it fell on my scalp: there's a huge black hole burned into the top of my head.

That's when it hits me: Lightning didn't strike
near me;
lightning struck
me
.

I bend down in front of my mirror to examine my scalp. The rainwater on my clothes is dripping steadily on my bedroom carpet, but—guess what?—priorities, people! Where the scalp should have been fish-belly white underneath my hair, it is scorched tough black. A smooth, almost perfectly round circle is sitting right there in the middle of the top of my head.

I reach my pale, pale hand toward it and, after a few false starts, touch it. It feels rough but solid, almost like the top of a quarter. Some hair around the burn hole has gotten singed. In fact, now that I'm inside and my bedroom window's shut tight, I get that first whiff of just-moved-your-arm-hair-too-close-to-the-Bunsen-burner-in-Science-class smell, but it isn't
too
bad. (I mean, not when compared to the pass-out-in-a-mud-puddle-wake-up-with-no-heartbeat thing.)

Then I look at my face. It's muddy, but what's worse than the mud streaking down my cheeks and plugging up my nose (eewwww) are the deep black smudges under my eyes. I mean, I wasn't down
that
long, was I? Not enough to look so …bad …all of a sudden.

I can't take staring in the mirror anymore, so I look at the digital clock on my nightstand instead. Wow, big mistake. It says 1:48 a.m. But that …that can't be right, can it? I mean, I only snuck out at 10:30. So let's do the mental math: 5 minutes up the street, another 15 or 20 minutes or so through back alleys and side roads, 25 minutes or so to make the trip back after the party got canceled, so at the latest it should be 11:30.
Maybe
midnight. Tops. But nearly 2 a.m.? I lean on the vanity, add everything up, and realize I wasn't facedown in that mud puddle for a few minutes; I was there for a few
hours
.

Suddenly everything changes. Seriously, how does one stay alive with her face down in a puddle for a couple of hours? So that means …I
have
to be dead, right? But here I am, back home, safe in my room, looking at the clock, the lights on, my feet on the ground …so how can I be dead and still standing? How can a dead girl walk home from a party she never got to, climb up a tree, slide open the window, climb inside, turn on all the lights in her bedroom, and touch the sizzle hole on the top of her head?

At first I think I must be—don't laugh—a ghost. I mean, how else do you explain getting up and walking away from a direct lightning strike in the middle of the night? But I can't pass through walls like a ghost would, and when I look in the mirror there I am, looking straight back. Sure, a little worse for wear but not exactly ghostly, if you know what I mean. So what
am
I?

How can I be dead—no heartbeat, no pulse—and
not
be a ghost?

What else
is
there?

Well, there's this: I'm not breathing, either.

Not that I do it all that often, but usually when I climb up the old oak tree outside of my window, leap from the top branch into my room, and slide the window shut, I'm out of breath. Not winded like I've just taken the Presidential Fitness Challenge in PE but, you know, definitely exerted. Now?

Nothing.

I didn't exactly realize the no-breathing thing on the way home because, seriously, the no-heartbeat thing had me kind of preoccupied, but now? It's becoming a pretty big deal. I mean, my lungs work but only when I think about it and actively suck in a breath.

I try it. Big breath in, big breath out, like the doctor makes you do every year for your end-of-summer physical. Great. Works fine. I even try whispering: “Testing, testing …one, two, three.” Fine, okay; I may sound stupid, standing in my room at nearly two in the morning, every light on, me still dripping wet, counting to three, but at least I know I can still talk.

Then I do a little experiment: I stand in front of the digital clock, wait until it magically turns over to 1:52 a.m., and hold my breath. That's right: plug my muddy nose, purse my lips tight, make a puffer fish face, and …just …wait.

1:53

Nothing.

1:54

Nil.

1:56

Nada.

2:00

Still
nothing. After a solid 8 minutes (I would go all the way to 10 but I'm starting to get a little bored), I finally open my mouth and—nothing. No big exhale, no big inhale; I don't feel lightheaded, not short of breath, not …anything.

Maybe I should be calling 911 or something. You think? Because it's been, what, 15, maybe even 20 minutes since I got home. (Not to mention the two-plus hours I spent in a mud puddle.) What if I'm in shock? Or hallucinating? What if I
don't
report what happened and I lie down, go to sleep …and never wake up again?

But what do you say on a call like that? “Yes, Officer, uhhm, listen, I know you're going to think this is a prank and it may sound a little crazy, but I've been dead for a few hours now and I'd
really
like to talk to someone about it. Is there, perchance, a grief officer standing nearby? Or maybe a lightning specialist on call? Perhaps a voodoo priestess or witch doctor on retainer? Or maybe even someone familiar with Ouija boards? What's that? No, actually, I
don't
need the number for Psych Services, thanks very much; I need someone to come out and—hello?”

As I pace my bedroom, shaking my fingers out as if moving my body will somehow kick-start my heart, I feel a shiver pass through me. It isn't quite a shiver, though; not exactly. It's more like someone has turned the thermostat down—inside my body; like I've gone from 98.6 degrees to 68.9 in zero seconds flat.

What.

The.

Hell?

Naturally, I go online. I start by Googling the keyword “lightning,” hoping some site, somewhere, will explain, well …something. You know, like maybe there's a blog out there somewhere called
www.youarenotdeadMaddy.com
that will list all the symptoms of a lightning strike with the final diagnosis being “Have some warm milk, Maddy, get some sleep, and in the morning your heartbeat and lung capacity will return, and by the time you pick up Hazel for school, you'll forget this whole thing ever happened.” (Okay, maybe not
that
personal, but …still.)

Believe it or not, I do
not
find such a site.

I
do
learn a few nifty things about lightning, though.

Case in point: Did you know that the typical lightning bolt contains over 1 million volts of electricity? That some can even have up to
30 million volts?
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, did you know it only takes about 5,000 volts in those little Vaseline-covered defibrillator paddles for a doctor to bring you back to life in the ER?

So, if only a few thousand volts can save a life, why wouldn't one million—let alone 30 million—give you …the afterlife? I mean, could
that
explain why I've got no heartbeat but am still, technically anyway, alive?

But what creature of the undead has no pulse?

Can lie facedown in a puddle for two hours? Doesn't need to breathe?

I know vampires
have
to have a pulse because, let's face it, blood is their god.

And werewolves, well, you
always
see them breathing heavily after chasing some mere mortal down and snorting out globs of phlegm and drool when they attack, so they
must
have some pretty decent undead lung capacity.

Ghosts? Been there. Not that.

Mummy? No Egyptian curses or toilet paper wrapped around my legs.

Frankenstein? No mad doctor anywhere around that I can see.

There is only one remaining possibility, so with trembling hands I Google “what are the physical traits of a zombie?” and, once I get past all the
Night of the Living Dead
links, I discover a helpful little site called
www.youmightbeazombieif.blogspot.com
.

Amazingly, there's a quiz called “You Might Be a Zombie If …” and, unbelievably, I actually take this quiz …with a totally straight face and my tongue out, as if my very life—
Afterlife?
—depends on it.

Here's what I come up with:

After I answer all the questions and hit enter on the final page, the screen goes blank. At first I figure,
Great, no heartbeat, no breathing …now no electricity. What next? A sinkhole's going to swallow up the entire house?
But every light in my bedroom is still on, the air-conditioning is still blowing, and my computer is still humming, so
that's
not it.

Then red spills across the monitor and the following message pops up:

Y
OU KNOW, SURPRISINGLY
, they don't sell a lot of brains in the local 24-hour grocery store around the corner from my house. And, believe it or not, they don't really like it when you ask about them. At least, not the sleepy college kid working the only open cash register the night I become a zombie.

Standing at the counter in my high ponytail, freshly laundered yoga pants, hoodie, and flip-flops, I try to look him in the eye. “Hi, yeah, listen, uh …Tad? Tad, I'm looking for, well, see, my, uhhm …grandfather …is coming into town this weekend, and he really likes, well, believe it or not, he
loves
brains. Don't look at me like that. I guess they ate them on the farm when he was growing up or something, but …do you know where I could find any?”

“Tad,” or so says the name tag on his chest, looks past me, around me, out into the parking lot, and everywhere
but
at me before finally saying, “Very funny.” Then he stares at me, as if to say, without words, “I'm too smart to be punk'd. Even if it is two in the morning and there's not another soul around for miles.”

“It's not a prank, Tad. Seriously. I looked all over the meat department, found tubs of chicken livers, something called ‘chitterlings'—not sure I want to go there—even a big, gray cow's tongue, but …no brains. So …do you know where I could find them? I mean, I'm asking as a customer”—here I hold up the insanely fat roll of $20 bills Dad keeps in a cookie jar in the kitchen in case of an emergency (which, I think you'll agree, this is)—”so I'm really
not
trying to prank you.”

He sighs, reaches for a curvy microphone next to his cash register, pushes a button at the base, and says, “Harvey, I'm sending a live one back to the butcher for a few pounds of, get this …
brains
. Try to meet her there? We don't want her wandering around the store scaring off all the other customers.” He snickers, but I don't care.