Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) (11 page)

C H A P T E R – F I V E

D U S T

I found it. They’ve, of course, renovated the entirety of the Necropolis—and thoroughly—but I still recognize the layout of the cages where Helena and I were once imprisoned. It’s now just another gardening area, each of the cages housing a selection of little fruits and sprouts, and all the cage doors have been removed.

“Look,” I say, pretending Helena were here, but I’m just listening to my own voice in the gloom. “This is where we were held prisoner, Hel.” I press my face to the cage, feeling the tiny bars push into my nose and cheeks with all my Undead numbness. I grip the bars and smile into them. “You remember? We thought we’d never be free from this place. We thought we’d never get free and you told me your story and you told me your real name.”

I pull away from the cage, glancing at the one that stands opposite mine.

“And there,” I say, letting the wind that still blows through these narrow aisles carry away my words, unheard. “That’s where Benjamin was kept. This is where I met Bonkers Benny. He’s gone too. He never learned his First Life. Gunner shot him in the face too quickly with a quiver of steel arrows. Pity.”

I move into Helena’s cell to observe the long, shallow baskets filled with the richest soil I’ve ever seen. They’re sprouting strawberries. I hope Helena likes strawberries. I’m sure she did—I’m sure
Anna
did. I lose myself for a long while, just staring at the strawberries and allowing different memories of Helena to find me. I remember glaring at her from across the distance of a restaurant, hating her and resenting her. Grimsky was with me; we were on a date. Helena had made eye contact with me and I looked away, cursing myself. The memory makes me laugh, how stupid and sensitive I was. I laugh and I laugh, thinking on it, letting myself be tickled by it.

I want to remember all of Helena, all of the good and the bad and the cold and the warm. I want to forget the pile of dust and bone she just turned into, and the metal shards left over from some Doctor Collin perma-Upkeep procedure. I close my eyes and try to remember and try to forget. The laughter’s abandoned me.

The wind blows and blows and blows, and for a moment it’s like I’m prisoner here again at the Necropolis awaiting my turn at the Black Tower with the Deathless King, awaiting some horrible fate I did not yet know.

“Mom …” I whisper.

My mother was a very changed, possessed individual back then. Her Reaper gave her the name Malory and she, prettiest in all of Trenton at the time, was named Magnificent Malory. Magical Malory. Marvelous Malory. Until she had her Waking Dream, went crazy, tore off her own face and earned herself the title Mad Malory. When I was told that story, I didn’t realize the reason she’d gone crazy is because she remembered
me
… the daughter she’d lost. In her craziness, she gathered other likeminded, lost and desolate Dead, formed a faction of flesh-eaters, called them Deathless and named herself the Deathless King. It was ruling from that tower that she scoured the scoured earth, looking for her answers, looking for me.

Then she found me. Then she lost me again. Then we met in a final confrontation at Trenton where I chased her to a cliff and decided to have my Waking Dream.

Until twelve years ago when I brought John’s dead body to her side—or what remained of her at the bottom of that cliff—she didn’t even know how I’d died. It was a mystery to her, all this time. Plaguing her, even in the afterlife. So I set my mom’s mind at ease, telling her how I’d died. I gave her the closure that Mad Malory so craved. The closer my mom needed.

“She’s out there,” someone answers softly.

I turn. The woman that Megan has grown into stands there near the cage. She seems to regard me cautiously, her Warlock-blue eye appearing fierce as she studies my temperament, I presume … sizing me up. But if she’s sizing me up right, she ought to see there’s no fight left. I’ve hardly been in this city a week and it’s defeated me.

“Somewhere,” Megan finishes, taking a step toward the cage. “Your mom, Julianne … that’s the name she gave herself … That horrible woman was once our sworn enemy, the Deathless King herself … and yet she’s taken off bravely, daring to hunt the Empress Shee when everyone else quivered in fear. They called her a hero for chasing after Shee. Isn’t that hilarious? They honor her like a hero, running off to save them. They don’t even know they’re honoring their worst nightmare.”

I stare off, feeling the wind tickle and dance through my hair, wisps of white flicking in front of my eyes. If I were to close them, I’m certain I’d be transported to that moment long ago, that moment when Helena was in the cage to my left, and a screaming Megan was in the cage to my right. The memory is almost kind.

“I think your mom wanted to redeem herself.” Megan smiles; it looks more like a smirk. “Or at least that’s what I would like to think, despite how much I still hate her. Maybe she, like you, didn’t fit in here. Maybe she couldn’t stand to be here with the memories of the horrors she’s done, even if no one knew it was her … even if her secret was kept. Maybe it’s too heavy a lie for even
her
to carry.”

I move my gaze back to the strawberries. Carelessly, I pluck one of them. The rich, juicy red thing does not rot between my fingers. What a brave little thing, this piece of fruit. I bite it, feeling the helpless thing pop between my teeth. I chew and I chew. I taste nothing but I chew anyway, chewing, chewing, chewing, then I swallow it, letting it drop into my stomach where it’s likely to stay there for all the rest of eternity. I flick the puny stem across the cage, feeling like I’d won some decisive battle.

“That was unnecessary,” remarks Megan.

“Very,” I agree, wiping my hand off on the blue dress I’d decided to wear to my welcoming party that’d been cut short. Didn’t even get to try Marigold’s cake.

“You realize this area has no covering for your kind,” Megan points out gently. “It’s not safe, should the sirens sound.”

“So let the rain take me,” I declare, bitter. “We’re all going to crumble eventually anyway. Helena did. Collin’s friend did. Who knows who else did.” I sigh, running my hand along the cage, drawing myself to the door. “Why have we been handed this Second Life if the planet only means to take it right back? I feel like I’ve hardly been here long, already my clock’s ticking.”

“I don’t have the answers.”

“No, you don’t,” I agree, narrowing my eyes. “Funny, really. I feel more alive now than I ever did. I’m just as finite as you now, Megan. My next death is as imminent as your first one.”

Megan nods solemnly. “True. From dust we came, to dust we go. I came here to say I’m sorry.”

Her apology touches me, albeit coolly. “Alright.”

“I should not have … taken my anger out on you. Really, it wasn’t fair.” Megan’s jaw tightens, as though this admittance of wrongdoing were the most difficult task in the world, even more difficult than taking out her own eye and replacing it with a rock. “You deserved more of my respect than that. If I recall, I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for your generosity and … heroism.”

“Heroism,” I repeat, scoffing at the word.

“It was right here,” she says, strolling over to the cage that was, long ago, the one next to mine. “Remember?”

“You were crying so horribly, I threw a shoe at you.”

Megan chuckles dryly, staring at the cage and, I’m quite sure, recalling the whole horrible experience vividly. “These Crypters had taken my brother from me and, well, ate him. I was certain I was to meet the same fate.”

Her eyes move to me, and she smiles. In that smile, for this brief moment, I see the young Megan, the girl Megan, the little Megan who’d rush up to me and squeeze me so hard I thought all my Undead bones would break.

“You changed my fate,” says Megan.

“Alright, well, let’s spare getting all dramatic about it.” I shrug, looking away. “I mean, really, I was just lucky most of the time. And you—”

A pair of arms wrap around me. Megan’s arms. She’s come up to me and she’s embracing me, squeezing me. I close my eyes and let her. Then at last, I allow my own arms to enclose her, returning the Human warmth she’s lending me. I listen to her heartbeat, feeling it drum between us for as long as this hug may last.

She pulls away. “It’s called a Final Sight.”

“What?”

“Ever since the first Undead experienced it, we named it the Final Sight. Seems to happen just before they turn to dust … Their eyesight suddenly takes in all the sunlight and the darkness and the—whatever else it is that your Undead eyes seem to block out or disregard entirely. The Final Sight, a glimpse of truth or … or whatever you might see it as.”

“The moment of clarity,” I say, feeling the humor on my tongue and glancing back fondly at the cage. “It’s what Helena called the final moment of a First Life. Just before you die as a Human, you experience a ‘moment of clarity’ … when everything makes sense in an instant.”

“A moment of clarity,” she echoes, tasting the words, smiling and nodding. “It sounds a bit peaceful. I’d really like for my last moment to be … peaceful. I wonder what I’d realize in my … moment of clarity.”

“It’s a far better term,” I insist. “I mean, it’s so much less doomy than ‘Final Sight’ … Goodness, can we
think
of any words more ominous?”

“Is that a challenge?” Megan smirks, the humor finding her. “I propose: Last Look On Earth
Ever
.”

“A Glimpse Before The Axe Falls,” I throw back.

“The Final-Final Death!”

“Gloom Vision!”

“Doom Vision!”

“Vision Of Finalness And Death!”

“The Deathly Sunshine Of Doom!”

Back and forth we issue worse and worse names for the so-called Final Sight until we lose all traces of our ever-pesky maturity and fall into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. She’s cackling like a moron and I’m rolling on the ground. Our howls and cackles ricochet off the sides of these buildings of horror, snake through the cages that once held scared-to-death prisoners, and defy the breathy howl of nature’s wind … and we don’t care. The world spins and spins and spins, and here we are wasting all our precious time on this planet laughing and cracking jokes and being silly, stupid girls again. How dare we? I could turn to dust right now and the last thing I’d be doing is laughing. I could turn to dust right now with a smile on my face and laughter in my eyes.

Let them see it. Let Mother Nature herself throw her worst storm at me in this beautiful, fleeting moment of joy. Let everyone pay witness to Megan and Winter, the greatest, stupidest, most hilarious fools the Living or Dead worlds have ever known.

C H A P T E R – S I X

W A R R I O R   W I N T E R

My interview at the Job & Business Blah, Blah, Long-Name Headquarters is a brief one. I suspect those in charge had already made up their minds long before I stepped Undead-foot into the room, but I went in jobless and came out a guardsman.

When Headless Ann learns my assignment, she gives an uncharacteristic squeal of such exhilaration her head almost falls off. “I can’t believe you’re one of
us!
”

“Just like you.” I smile lamely. “Except I don’t have the unique capability of removing my head.”

“Neither do I anymore, technically.” She gives her neck two knocks; I hear the tinny protest of metal against knuckle. “Titanium.”

“Titanium,” I agree.

The most of my evenings and nights will now consist of being perched somewhere upon the walls of the Necropolis overlooking the terrain. “
New
Trenton
,” Ann corrects me gently, and I roll my eyes. Our perches are all covered and, therefore, protected from sudden onslaughts of rain. Every week or so, I will trade positions with a guardsman who polices the streets.

For as much action as that seems to promise, I find on my first day sitting upon the wall that I’m so bored I literally consider pulling out my hair one strand at a time as a means to count the passing minutes. “Maybe I can fashion a paintbrush by sunrise,” I jape at myself, curled up in my watcher’s chair and picking at my nails.

I haven’t seen John since the party. Through Ann, I did learn the location of the bar at which he’s been assigned. I’m not sure if anyone’s pointed out the irony in his being assigned the position of bartender, as the two of us happened to meet in a Trenton tavern women’s bathroom for the first time, but I consider whether to visit him after my shift is over.

“Do you know why the Dead watch the walls at night?” asks my fellow wall-watcher, a man swallowed in the black, bulky armor of our position.

“Their talent of seeing well in the dark?” I reckon, answering through the muffled helmet we’re made to wear. The armor is annoying and makes my arms move clumsily. We’re Undead and basically unbreakable; why do we have to wear all this extraneous crap?

“No.” He scoots a bit closer, shuffling along the wall from one covered part to another. “The Dead have more to lose than the Living.”

I squint, shifting a bit in my armor to face him. “What do you mean?”