A Living Dead Love Story Series (76 page)

I grunt. “It's not just him.”

A second later his girlfriend emerges, dried blood all over, hair still up in a freakishly neat ponytail.

They move forward smoothly.

I think how well Bones and Dahlia, Zerkers to the core, assimilated at Barracuda Bay High. Why not these two? What's to stop them from taking a shower one day soon, putting their uniforms back on, and just showing up at school? They could say they were foolhardy, ran away, spent all their money, came home, and now they'll be all better, just let them back into school and let them do their makeup work, pretty please.

It could work, and it would work, so why are they still shuffling about like horror movie zombies, creepy and obvious to anyone foolish enough to venture out for a late-night stroll?

Suddenly a third Zerker stumbles out, a vision of creep, face scarred horribly, teeth visible on the right side of her jaw line, half a nostril missing on the same side.

And I blink to make sure. It is. It is the girl, the jogger, the one I could have saved.

Unlike the other two, who look plenty bloody but otherwise normal, there'll be no passing for her. Not in this afterlife. The right shoulder of her white track jacket is crimson, her one good eye wide and yellow and searching for brains.

“Stand,” I tell Lucy.

She doesn't even blink. Just does it, and for once I don't mind the gentle whispering of her maroon velour track suit nightmare.

“Get behind me and stay there.”

I should probably tell her to go get Dane and Courtney, even Stamp, but I'm afraid these aren't the only three Zerkers in town. If I let her go alone, she could run into more and not have me or my Eliminator around to help her. The last thing I want is to see Lucy one-eyed and bloody, showing up with a bag of cold moo shu at my door tomorrow.

She stands there at my back, sticking close. I keep the bench between us and the trio of Zerkers, not that it will do much good. But if all it does is buy Lucy a few extra seconds to get away, it's worth it.

The two with their faces still intact pause in front of the stand of palm trees. Jogger Girl keeps walking, stopping, turning for reassurance. The other two hiss at her. Hiss. I'm not even exaggerating. Even I cringe a little. I glance behind me, and Lucy goes pale.

Jogger Girl turns and grits her exposed teeth, walking toward me. No, more like limping. Then I realize why. Her right sock is drenched with blood, her shoe missing.
The
shoe . . . The one I hid beneath the sink the other night.

She's coming right for us.

“What should I do?” Lucy asks, fumbling for her phone. “I'm calling 911.”

“And tell them what? A Zerker is coming? By the time you explain that, we'll both have yellow eyes and matching teeth for the rest of our afterlives.”

“Well, what, then?”

“Just let me handle it!” I hiss, wishing I had asked Dane for his cell number first instead of just running out of the house, half-cocked and jealous.

I look behind me, where the town is dark but the coast looks clear. At this point, screw it. I'd rather have her sprint home and get the others and stand a passing chance at living than keep her here with me. “Run, Lucy! Just get back to Lumpfish Lane. Go get the others. Tell them where I am, have them stay there and shut the door, and don't answer it until one of us breaks it down.”

But she stands there, clueless. Not that I can blame her, but she needed to be gone a few minutes ago if I'm ever going to get any help. But then, that's my fault. I can't be mad at the Normal because I got Vanished and old and rusty in less than a week. I shove her, and she blinks to life, sprinting off on her short legs.

I turn to Jogger Girl, whose bloody socks squish with every step.

“Good. Now we're even.”

She cocks her head, and a little drool runs out the toothy side.

I look over her shoulder and see a few others have joined the Living Dead Cross Country team. Two, three, four, five more. Two girls, the rest guys. Two are still in their school uniforms; another is in a Burger Barn uniform, as if they got him just after he clocked out. This is happening fast. Faster than in Barracuda Bay, faster than I know what to do about.

They all look young, like the faces on the Missing posters lining up on the kitchen counter back on Lumpfish Lane. I'm quite certain, if I could stop the onslaught and poll them one by one, I'd learn they're all from Seagull Shores Prep School. And who else would do that? Who else would turn only students into Zerkers but a twisted, wicked, revenge-fueled chick . . . like Val?

Jogger Girl is closer now, a soft keen coming from her jagged mouth. God, she looks worse than some of the masks we'd wear to scare the audience in the
Great Movie Monster Makeover Show
.

“Can you hear?” I ask, gripping the Eliminator, trying to keep her occupied, focused on me, on my mouth, my head, not the hand at my side. “Can you talk?”

“Yeah,” she grunts, soft air moving through the hole in her cheek where I see her pinkish-white jaw muscles flex. It's a reedy sound but weird because her voice is so Zerker deep. “I just don't like to.”

That airiness combined with that hoarseness—I figure probably the gash in her throat nicked some vocal cords when the Zerkers were chewing on her face.

I shiver. “Stop. You don't have to do this. I, I know there are a lot of them, but I have friends too.”

She shakes her head, as if even she knows how stupid I sound. “Just don't,” she says, limping faster now. “It won't work.”

I raise the Eliminator, hoping she'll see it and stop, giving her one last chance. “Don't,” I blurt, my voice raw with guilt. “Don't make me do this.”

“Do what?” she says, three feet away now. She pauses, giving me that creepy half smile that is her full smile because half her freakin' face is missing. Her good eye narrows. “All you're doing is finishing what they started. What you
let
them start.”

“I couldn't,” I sputter, “take them all by myself.”

She cocks her head, drool drizzling onto her shoeless foot. “That's not what she says.”

“She?
Who
she?” I growl. “Tell me!”

But she's walking again. “Why should I help you”—that whistly voice croaks from her mouth and throat at the same time—“when you never helped me?”

I shake my head, begging now. “Stop. Just. Stop.”

She gives me that horror movie half smile. As if she knows what she's doing, as if she's doing it on purpose, and how can I blame her?

When she walks to the bench, just when she's flush with it, I lunge with the ice pick. It slides in a smidge past her ear, slick and stiff all the way. I feel her thick, black, oozing Zerker blood splooge across my hand, but I hold tight.

Her good eye gets big. She drools some more, quivering on the end of my weapon, hands flailing at her side. I'm there when the lights go out, standing just out of range at arm's length. She slumps to the ground, taking me with her, the weapon still half stuck in her skull.

I yank it out and stand above her. The Zerkers on the fringe creep forward now, grumbling. Then they stop.

A voice behind me says, “Finish it, Maddy.”

I turn. “Dane?”

“You have to. To make sure.”

I shake my head, and he snatches the Eliminator from my hand. It's glossed with black Zerker blood, but he doesn't even pause before slicing across her throat, through her spine, until her face lands, horror-mask-side-down, a few inches away.

She looks almost peaceful now, without her exposed teeth shining.

Behind us, without much fanfare, Stamp and Courtney bend toward the playground dirt, using their cold, gray hands to begin digging a shallow grave to hide the Zerker body and its head.

Lucy stands around awkwardly, then kneels to help.

Stamp gives her a smile, like, oh, what fun it is to bury Zerkers in a playground in the night!

Dane hands me the Eliminator, nods toward the other Zerkers drifting into the tree line. With the others busy, he moves closer, wiping Zerker blood onto his khaki pants. “What did she mean just now? About what you let them start?”

I look up at him helplessly, shaking my head. “It's too late now, Dane. And I don't owe you explanations anymore.”

He clenches his jaw but finally nods. “You're right. You don't. I just thought you seemed upset and might want to talk about it.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “This is hardly the time, and you're hardly the person I'd go spilling my guts to now.”

He nods, scanning me from head to toe before turning his attention toward the Zerkers, who are disappearing one by one into the stand of palms bordering the park. “Fair enough,” he grunts, nodding toward them. “How many?”

“Six,” I count on the fly, but they're moving fast.

“Wrong,” he says, pointing a blood-blackened finger at something above their heads.

There, in the shadows, lurks a seventh.

W
hy didn't you
go get them when you had the chance?” Lucy paces in the living room, velour sweatpants whoosh-whishing as she keeps throwing her hands in the air, soap opera style. “They were right
there
!”

“There are procedures,” Dane says coolly, leaning against the kitchen counter. Behind him, Courtney casually spoons fresh brains from one of his plastic Sentinel-sanctioned to-go containers.

I wonder how she can be so poised about it. It kind of makes me wonder if the Sentinels eat the real thing a lot more often than the rest of us do.

Dane levels his gaze at Lucy and continues, “It's more complicated than that. What if there were more in there, hiding, waiting for us to rush back, guns blazing? A
lot
more? What if they wiped us out our first week in town? What if nobody were here to call in the Sentinels until it was too late? Then where would your precious Seagull Shores be?”

She paces some more, nodding. “Okay, okay, I guess. But what now? What if those goons are ransacking the town as we speak? Going house to house?”

Dane shakes his head. “We've already put in a call to the Sentinels. They're aware of the situation and on standby. But without a confirmed sighting of Val, they're not willing to commit any reinforcements. For now, it's just us.”

She shakes her head, hands up in a can-you-believe-this-shit motion, but no one nods in an I-know-right way because we've all been there, done this before.

The Sentinels suck; let's face it. There's a reason undead folks call them zombie cops. Like real cops, they're never around when you flippin' need one.

Dane looks at Courtney spooning her brains. Then at me. Then at Stamp. Then at Lucy. “Listen. It's late. Your parents must be freaking out.”

I watch her face, but it's fairly placid. Like,
No big deal that it's nearly midnight and I almost just got bushwhacked by a half-faced undead jogger and I'm the only person breathing in the room, and, oh, by the way, there's a chick eating brains right out of the fridge.

He adds, “Get some rest. We'll walk the streets tonight, make sure nothing else happens. Tomorrow we'll all go to school, see what develops. Maybe one of them will show up or slip up and we can find out where they're staying and track them down.”

Lucy nods, as if this is a good idea.

It's not, but maybe she doesn't know that yet.

“Come on.” I grab her messenger bag from the counter. “I'll walk you home.”

“No. Really. It's just next door. Don't be silly.”

Dane nods at me.

“Yeah, well, we were just in the park, and look how much trouble we got into there.”

She bites her lip and frowns as I slide open the back door and walk to the patio. “Come on.” I stare her down, giving her no way out, waving her outside like a puppy who has to go number one.

I wait for her at the gate. Looking up, I see the light in the same second-story window, the rest of the house as dark as the midnight sky that surrounds it.

“Thanks,” she says, shutting the gate behind her. In the yellow dark of my zombie vision, I see the dirt stuck under her fingernails from digging a grave for Jogger Girl. “I'm fine. Just watch me from here. Really.”

Her voice is insistent, which turns up my radar another notch.

I shake my head and take her arm a little more forcefully than I intended. I forget sometimes that she's a Normal. Then again, nothing's really been normal about this Normal since we met. Which is kind of why I want to meet the parents who spawned this little type A go-getter. Once and for all.

“I'd like to see your folks,” I say, dragging her toward the front stoop. “Thank your dad for all that awesome moo shu.”

“Oh, he . . . won't be home yet.”

“You don't say.” I knock on the front door. Pound on it, to be more exact. “Well, maybe I can apologize to your mom for keeping you out so late tonight.”

“No, he and Mom . . . work late. Every night.”

I nod. Try the door. It's locked. “Then I should probably stay with you, just tonight. Make sure no Zerkers get you.”

I'm expecting a nervous chuckle, a shake of her head, something.

Nothing.

She stands there on the front stoop, clutching her messenger bag, not rooting around for the key, not moving, not speaking.

I sigh, turning the knob, turning, turning until—snap and crackle—the door pops open.

I wait a beat for the sound of a distant TV or someone calling out,
Lucy, is that you, dear?
For a kitchen light to turn on or a pot of tea whistling or a grandfather clock ticking in the foyer.

Nothing.

Inside it's dark and empty. No easy chair for Dad to sit in after a long night over the wok. No TV for Mom to watch her soap operas on. No dinner table. No chairs. No Halloween decorations.