A Living Dead Love Story Series (71 page)

She nods, looking at him now and then down to his license. “I just kind of whisked them out of the laminating machine,” she says slowly to me. “I didn't really take a close look, but hubba-bubba.”

“Yeah.” I chuckle.

Then I shake the thoughts out of my head and turn my attention toward the slips of paper. They are school schedules, one for each of us.

“Just in case,” she says, when she sees me still looking at Stamp's.

I nod and focus on mine. According to this, I'm an eleventh grader at Seagull Shores Prep School, locker number C-1601, combination 35, 5, 22. I've got PE fourth period and Chem Lab sixth and B-lunch.

“Ooohh,” I joke. “I've always wanted B-lunch. I always got A back home.” I look down at the future in my hands and then back up at Lucy. “Why?” I ask her.

“What, you want A-lunch?”

I shove her playfully but not so playfully. “No, I mean . . . why are you doing this? Why are you our neighbor, and what were you doing looking in our windows, and how did you get this done so fast, and why are you not freaking out over what we are?”

In the second it takes the blush to rise to her cheeks, I realize two things. One, she's
definitely
not a zombie. And, two, she's not being entirely truthful.

“I told you, Maddy. I know who you are and what you're doing. Trust me, if I thought you were here to eat me, I'd be calling the cops right now. But since I saw you sitting here while the Missing posters say Armand and Cecile were going running that morning, all I can figure is maybe you can help find whoever, whatever's doing this and stop them somehow.”

I want to argue with that, but I can't. “So how are we going to do this? I mean, look at me. I have thrift shop clothes, and I didn't even think to get a backpack. You can't pass among the Normals looking like Little Orphan Annie.”

She rolls her eyes and shoves me back. “You're on the bony side, sure, but I've got some stuff that may fit you, and I have a backpack for every day of the week. No worries. I can pick you up early tomorrow, and we'll swing by the 24-hour Family Value Mart and get anything you still need that I don't have enough of: notebooks, whatever.”

I nod at Stamp, lying back on the pavement now, looking at the stars as his feet dry on the pool deck.

“I got you, girl,” she adds, reading my mind. “I figure I'll take you to school, get you situated, make sure there's no trouble in the front office when you check in. Then I'll duck out of Honors Physics in third period and come check on Stamp. I'll be back by fifth period, no worries. After school we can even swing by the pet store on Wahoo Way and grab some cat food, heavy on the lamb brains, for dinner.”

She has it all figured out, down to what to do about Stamp while I'm at school and how to get us brains, at least the quick-fix kind. I don't know her game, but it's a good one and, frankly, the only one in town.

She's up in a flash, looking at the gate guiltily. “I'm supposed to do deliveries for Dad tonight, so how about I meet you in front of my house at, say, 5:30 tomorrow morning?”

I nod, and she goes without a backward glance. The gate swings shut, and I listen closely for the sound of footsteps on grass, for a car door opening or closing, for an engine to start up and slip into reverse before backing out and peeling away from the curb.

But I don't hear anything.

When I finally get up and slink toward the gate, nudge it open, and look outside, her driveway is empty and the light is still on in the second-floor bedroom.

I
have work
to do before school in the morning. (Wow. The thought of going to school is tripping me out.) But first, I set Stamp up in the bedroom facing the street. There are no lights to turn off, which is a good thing, and none to turn on while I'm gone, which is even better.

He harrumphs and frowns and makes all kinds of new Stamp faces. “Why can't I come, Maddy?” he whines all the way up the stairs.

“I need you here to see if any more Zerkers come down our street.”

“
You
do that,” he counters, leaning against the doorjamb as I ease open the blinds just enough for him to see through—and not an inch more. “And I'll go look on the streets.”

Yeah, that's a great idea. Nothing could ever go wrong with that one. Not even just a little.

“Well, but you see better from a distance,” I totally lie. “So I need you up here. You'll be really helping me out.”

He looks at me as we stand in the middle of the room. Between our yellow zombie vision and the orange street lamp streaming in through the slats, the air is a kind of tangerine glow.

“So what if I
do
see a bunch of Zerkers coming, huh? What do I do then, huh?”

I cringe. “Don't say
huh
, Stamp. It makes you sound mean.”

He grins. “Maybe I am feeling mean.”

“No, you're just feeling left out, which is different than mean.”

He sighs and leans against the wall next to the window, peering outside. Then he looks back at me. “Actually, right now, I
am
feeling mean.”

I chuckle. “Okay, yeah, I get that. But in general,
huh
is kind of an ugly word.”

Big eye roll from Stamp. Then, an honest question: “Well, how long will you be gone?” He sounds half hurt, half pretending he's not.

I reach out and touch his shoulder and am happy when he doesn't shrug it off. “I'll be back in a couple of hours,” I lie, knowing from experience that Stamp doesn't have the greatest sense of time. “You just watch the street and count how many Zerkers come, okay?”

He nods. “You're sure this is big-time important stuff, right, Maddy?”

“The biggest, Stamp.”

He grunts but is already looking away, out the window, where I know he'll stand, tall and true, until he hears me walk back in the back door downstairs, even if it's two days from now.

Meanwhile I walk downstairs, sliding Vera's pen into a pocket of my black thrift shop jeans and the Eliminator into the other. I grab the a gray-and-black-striped hoodie and slip it on, creeping out the back door, through the gate, and out along the side of the house.

I linger near Lucy's place. I know she said she had to work tonight, but the house is unusually silent. Not a single TV playing, not a dishwasher grinding, not a dryer tumbling.

The light in the second-story window is the only one on. I want to look inside, but despite being dark as sin outside, it's still a little too early for me to be pushing my dead gray nose against anybody's living room window to see why the downstairs is so quiet.

Instead I stick to the sidewalk, hood up, hands in my pockets, just another surly teenager walking off another post-dinner fight with the fam. It's kind of nice, being alone and out of doors for only the second time since we snuck into Seagull Shores a week ago.

With my new ID in my back pocket and the hood covering most of my face, the night sky dark and the street lights few and far between, I feel vaguely safe. Not Normal, by any stretch, but close enough to walk around without wanting to stick an ice pick into everything that moves.

I still have a couple of twenties left over from the thrift shop till. I walk into a gas station and buy a cheap grape soda, just for the sugar. The girl behind the counter is college age, kind of pretty, and I freak for a moment until I see her talking on her Bluetooth and barely even acknowledging me.

I walk out the door with the soda and sip it while I walk, feeling almost Normal. There's not much going on at 10:30 p.m. in a place like Seagull Shores, but there's enough to keep my eyes busy.

A sushi place on the strip is still open, and I watch a family inside celebrating something: a birthday or a graduation or a raise. The grown-ups keep taking sips out of little white sake cups. The younger ones—college age, maybe—drink beers from tall glasses. They're the only ones in the place, and the guy behind the sushi bar keeps saying apparently funny things to them and bowing.

I walk down the strip. All the shops—the souvenir stands, the stationery store, the drug store, and the antiques stores—are closed, dark and quiet, except for the one dress shop that left an electric jack-o'-lantern plugged in. Its neon-green eyes stare at me as I walk past. Cars pass quietly, slowly. The streets are wide and new and lined with palm trees, and there are benches every few yards on the freshly poured sidewalks.

Seagull Shores is cleaner than Barracuda Bay, maybe even newer, but it feels a little cold and distant. At least back home people said hi to each other, and you'd always see skater boys hanging out on street corners, slouching around in their neon-pink hoodies and white sunglasses, just passing the time and whistling at the bikinied girls driving home. The sidewalks might have been a little more cracked, and there were fewer benches and street lights on the main drag, but at least it didn't feel like every trash can was going to turn into a robot and laser beam your arm off just for littering.

I walk in circles, first around the whole town, then in tighter loops, cutting out the main drag and the school and the fire department and walking around the neighborhoods, then just the neighborhood that borders where Stamp and I have holed up.

The streets are quiet but well lit, flickering pumpkins on the porches, cars quiet and cool in the driveways, the blue lights of TVs or computer screens flickering in living room or home office windows.

A few streets away from the house on Lumpfish Lane, I hear scraping behind me. On instinct, I leap into the row of bushes between two houses and stand perfectly still, watching. A minute or two later, a jogger goes by, breathing heavily, heat radiating off her in waves. She's as human as Lucy or Dad or the chick in the convenience store just now.

I watch as she glides down the street, so sleek, like a Nike ad come to life and poured into the street all glossy and glowing. Her chestnut ponytail bounces with her peppy stride, white earbuds fixed to the iPod buried somewhere in her taut white track jacket. She's about my age, probably goes to Seagull Shores Prep with Lucy.

I watch with envy until I hear more scraping.

Fast and hard at the end of the street.

I stand, hidden, the Eliminator in hand.

The scraping intensifies, shoes on the pavement, rough and clunky but fast. Faster than I would be.

Faster than I
could
be.

Human fast; living fast.

The girl is deep in the cul de sac now, running between orange pools of street light, steady in her pace, oblivious to the danger following her. I don't know if she can't hear the other shoes scraping or if she's ignoring them, but then I remember the earbuds. The street isn't very long, but I'm at the top of it, and she's at the other end.

She moves effortlessly, as if she's one big muscle in pink running shoes. I see the glints of eyeballs, yellow and fierce, under the next street light. One pair, then two, then three.

Three of them. Here. In Seagull Shores. Already. In under a week. They scrape clumsily along the sidewalk, lurking in the shadows, but they can't hide their eyes, hunting her like a wolf pack.

I inch closer to the street but not entirely away from the safety of the thick hedge. I'm close enough for the Zerkers to sense, if they cared to, but judging by the scraping and sniffing, it's clear they only want fresh meat.

I'm torn between leaping out and confronting them, but they're Zerkers. I'm no wimp, but I'm alone.

I've never been alone before. Not really. There's always been Dane around to help or Stamp or at least the Sentinels lurking in the background.

Now it's just me. I'm Vanished. No one to help me, no one to hear me, no undead cavalry to rush in and save me at the last minute. Stamp is three streets away, too far to see what's going on. Besides, he's so literal I know he's looking down on only our street, period, because I told him to. Even if a mushroom cloud flared just to the left of his field of vision, he'd ignore it.

I stand there, watching the girl, her face blissful and serene, so happy and carefree. They strike faster than I would have expected and in tandem. While the third lurks in the shadows, the boy—Astrid or Harrington or whatever his name is—still in his running shorts, strikes her high on one bare shoulder, crunching down so hard I see a flash of white bone beneath the spurting blood and the torn sleeve of her track jacket.

She screams, but the girl—Chelsea or Chalice, whoever—is on her, mouth over the girl's mouth, chewing and chomping on her face.

I can't help myself. I leap from the shadows, Eliminator in hand, sprinting down the street, but I'm no track star. I'm stiff and zombie slow, watching in vain as they drag her into the shadows, crunching and chewing, branches cracking and twigs snapping.

By the time I get to the first blood splatter, they're gone. Deep into the shadows, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

I go left a few yards, smelling nothing but grass and the ocean breeze. By the time I turn back to go right, the blood trail is cold on the salt air, the dark maroon drops smaller and smaller as they disappear into a vacant lot between two streets, and a dozen more streets beyond that one.

I stand in the middle of the lot, watching, listening, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. They could be lying in the tall, unkempt grass three feet away or at the bottom of the retention pond. They could be picking their teeth in somebody's garage five streets over, for all I know.

I curse myself and turn back toward the street. It is still and silent—the lights on in the houses, the cars dewy in the driveways—as if nothing happened.

In a beam of street light, lying on its side, laces bloody, is her shoe. I look around, waiting for someone to come out of a house, point at me, call me out, tell me I let it happen, but nobody does.