Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) (12 page)

“Did you know there’s only twenty-one of them left?”

Them. It only now occurs to me that my little coworker buddy is Living. And he thinks I’m Living too.

“No, I didn’t,” I answer quietly.

“Twenty-one! And now, after … what’s her name … the tall bony cold one that always wore black …”

“Helena.” My voice is dark and iron-hard.

“Yes! That one,” he exclaims. “My friend used to work for her in the Mayor’s department. Said she was a rude, snobby woman who never thanked no one for nothing.” He shrugs, all his armor clinking in protest. “I never met her, so I can’t say. Anyway, she was twenty-two. Now there’s twenty-one. They’re dying off one by one, and us Living need to keep our numbers strong, know what I mean? Other than that illness outbreak scare a few years back, we’ve kept strong, don’t you think?”

“Strong,” I agree, looking off over the wall, feeling my fingers tighten and my jaw setting. All I see is an endless green cloud of treetops under a grey sky. I hadn’t realized our numbers were so few. Only twenty-one of us remain? Did that twenty-one include my mother, lost in the world? Or has my mother also crumbled to dust by now?

“At this rate, I doubt the Dead will be around for much longer. A month, maybe less.” He sighs. “Hell, just a week, who knows? Too bad, really … They weren’t all as awful as Helen, whatever her name was. Hey, did you hear about the missing blood? Trying to investigate why there’s blood missing from the supply at the hospital. If you ask me, I think the Undead Doctor there’s drinking it. Wouldn’t put it past an Undead to drink blood, know what I mean? I heard the Crypters used to, long ago. The Deathless, they were called, but I wasn’t alive then.” He chuckles, itches his arm, then adds: “Not that it matters; the Dead can’t taste anything anyway, I heard.”

He doesn’t know. With the exception of only a select few, the Humans do not know what happens when an Undead tastes of Living flesh or blood. They don’t realize it makes us taste and feel and see as Humans taste, feel, and see … even if just for a fleeting moment.

“Alright, I’m off,” he announces. “Sun’s almost down and it looks like my replacement’s here.” He waves at an approaching person jogging heavily toward the stairs that lead up to the top of the wall. “Is yours on the way?”

“Probably,” I lie, not caring to mention I’m actually here for the nightshift and, unlike him, it’s just begun.

“You’ll get your due rest. Oh, I’m Leo, and you’re …?”

Leo. Someone recently mentioned a Leo, but the source doesn’t immediately come to mind. “I’m … Win—Win—Winona.” I smile, then realize he can’t see it through the stupid helmet. “My name’s Winona.”

“I’ll call you Winnie.
My
name’s too short to make into a nickname, so don’t even try it,” he jokes.

Leo. It comes to me at once: Robin’s husband. He and Robin have two little children, Jay and Lil’ Crow—a family of birds. That explains his curiosity about the missing blood in the hospital; Robin likely told him all about it.

“I’m out!” He hops off, trading places with his bulkier counterpart, and disappears down the stairs. I imagine him returning to his wife after
her
long day at the hospital and telling her about his new friend Winona. It’s dumb, really. Don’t all the Humans know each other well enough to recognize when they’ve a newcomer among them? Or, perhaps, has the Living population truly grown so big that they can no longer keep track …?

The new guardsman greets me with a grunt. I do the same, and then the two of us fall into a silent gloom for the remainder of the long, boring night.

When my own replacement finds me, I’m off the wall and hardly make it halfway down the street before I’m tearing off my stupid, annoying armor one stupid, annoying piece at a time. Pitching them into an armchair the second I step foot in my apartment—not bothering in the least to even hang them up—I trade leg-plates for jeans, armor for t-shirt, and don a leather cuff on my wrist. “Leather” they said it is, though I’d be skeptical to hear what animal, exactly, it came from, as the supply of animal is quite short and I imagine we’re more in the business of
preserving
our world and wildlife in all forms than to kill for the purposes of fashioning accessories and lush fur coats.

A Dead lady as thin as a pole who lives down the hall asks where I’m heading out to. At the stair, I say, “The bar.” She giggles, shouts, “You oughta meet the new bartender! Super cutie.”

I make sure to scathe her with my icecaps as I leave.

The walk is confusing and twisty, but short. At the edge of the Necropolis near the east wall where a church used to squat—a church I specifically remember escaping through when Megan and a bunch of Humans followed me out of the Necropolis—there rests now a bar where Humans and Undead alike can hang out and be merry. That is, of the twenty-one Undead who still exist or whatever. I wonder if the bar actually
is
the church and was simply renovated.

Inside, I’m surprised to find the place occupied by only one other person, who is shrouded in a cloak and stooped over a glass of cloudy, brownish something. When I take a seat at the bar, several away from the silent man, John and who I take to be his trainer, short and bearded, emerge from the back.

John’s eyes light up right away. “Winter!”

“Hey, John.” I try on a smile, prop my elbows on the counter and shrug. “Enjoying your … assignment?”

“It’s … interesting,” John decides, choosing his words. When the short and bearded man returns to the back, John leans over the counter and confesses, “Actually, it’s pretty boring. Haven’t had but three customers all day.”

“You should try sitting on a wall for nine hours.”

“What job makes you sit on a wall for nine hours?”

“Guardsman. I’m a police officer, basically.”

John’s face scrunches up. “Police officer?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m using a term from the … Old World.” John listens to my every word. I’m not sure what I was hoping for in a conversation with John, but it certainly wasn’t discussing the nine-hour tedium from which I’d just freed myself. “Police officers were, um, from
my
First Life, which was … which was a very, very long time ago. I’m a guard. I guard the gates and … make sure the city’s safe, I guess. Maybe the job-assigning fellow figured, what with my history of dismantling Deathless movements and beheading prior Mayors, I must be guardsman material. Anyway, I made a friend on the wall. He …” I meet John’s eyes; he looks almost frightened. “Too much?”

“No, no. Sorry.” He chuckles, waves me off. “No, I’m just … realizing that perhaps I ought to learn more about you.” He smiles tentatively. What a gentleman. “Your First Life was a … was a long time ago?”

“Yes. An indeterminately long time ago.”

“I see.” I watch as John’s mind processes a few things, stewing. Then he asks, “So how long ago was mine?”

Oh. That’s the direction he’s going. “
Your
First Life?”

“Yes. Do you … Do you know? I mean, it’s a fair question, isn’t it? You’re my Reaper, after all.” He smiles, folding his arms on the counter and lifting his brow.

No one’s bothered to help me with this. No one at all. Helena’s gone now.
Mayor
Megan has her
mayor
duties. Marigold is a mess of oblivious merriment and I have so few other friends that still exist. John and I must suffer awkwardly making this transition from former lovers to complete strangers all by ourselves, except I’m the only one between us who’s aware of it. It’s nearly impossible.

But maybe it’s also an opportunity. “I … do know a bit about your … um …” I smirk, gathering my words.

“You
do
know me!” he says suddenly, eyes flashing. “I knew it! I had a gut feeling. Which is funny to say, as I don’t have any actual guts.” He laughs at his joke. I just stare at him blankly and grimace. “So tell me, then. Please. How long ago was my First Life?”

“It was … well, it was twelve years ago.”

“Twelve? Only twelve?”

“Your death,” I clarify. “You … You died twelve years ago, John.”

“Interesting.” He narrows his eyes, leaning over the counter and studying me like a book. I keep my face blank as a stone that just sank in a river, taking with it all my joy as it slowly, lazily sinks. “Interesting,” he repeats, his favorite word of the night.

“So you were born … thirty-four years ago,” I say, doing the math. “Approximately.”

“Approximately,” he agrees, nodding slowly. I see the thoughts working in his eyes, in his setting jaw. His hand catches on a nail poking up from the bar and he winces, despite not feeling any pain. Reaching under the counter, he fetches a hammer and prepares to strike it.

Before the hammer comes down, he freezes. A look of sudden recognition strikes his eyes, his muscular arm poised and the hammer ready to fall. He stares at the nail, his world coming to a stop before his eyes. I realize I’m staring too, transfixed by the sudden change of expression on his face. Is he remembering something?

The hammer. The metal nail. I wonder if the smith buried deep in him is surfacing. His face frozen, his eyes intense and focused, the hammer never comes down.

The cloaked man snorts loudly, breaking the moment. We both turn, snapping out of our joint trance. The man doesn’t budge from his slouched position, hunched over a drink and otherwise silent.

“Do you need a refill, sir?” John asks the man, his hammer still hovering in the air. No response.

“John?”

He turns back to me. “Yes?”

“The hammer,” I say, prompting him.

“Oh.” He brings it down on the nail. The nail vanishes like it were never there. “Yeah, was just feeling like … a strong sense of …” He chuckles, plays it off. “I don’t even know.”

“Tell me about it,” I encourage him, desperate. “Go on, please, tell me what you were thinking.”

He smirks. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. That guy’s been here all day,” he says, pointing at the cloaked man. I sigh; the man isn’t what I wanted John to talk about. “His name’s Brock. He’s Undead, like us.”

Despondently, I glance at the cloaked man. “Three of the twenty-one, right here in this room,” I mutter, letting the thought marinate and considering where exactly the other eighteen are in the city. Headless Ann. Marigold. Chief. Jasmine. There are so few of us left, the world suddenly feels so small.

“Do you know … how I died?” he asks in half a grunt, his face bending into something between a frown and a smirk. He’s playing with the hammer now, picking at it, studying it.

He’s still trying to figure it out. And while I welcome encouraging him to remember it all—if a Waking Dream can even be encouraged—I hate how flippant he’s being about the whole thing, like his life and his death were this big funny joke or some neat story I could tell him over coffee and croissants. “You’ve been told by now what a Waking Dream is, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Whenever I have mine,” John recalls, “I’m going to … I’m going to remember it all, right? I’ll remember all of my First Life in one quick dumb instant?” He chuckles, finding it funny, I guess.

“Yeah. You’re studying that hammer very intently.”

“I like the feel of a hammer in my hand,” he admits.

Is he remembering? Keep him talking. “And when you have your Waking Dream, you’ll—John, you’ll …” I look away, suddenly unable to finish the sentence. Why is this so hard? I’m simply not prepared for this conversation.

And quite unexpectedly, a new voice decides to help finish the sentence: “You’ll remember it all, John.”

We turn to the cloaked man. He snorts again, pushing his drink away and sighing. A curtain of dust seems to fall off his cloak as he shrugs, moving for the first time since I entered the bar. He doesn’t turn nor does he draw the heavy hood that hides his face. He only clasps his hands, which I notice are gloved.

John grips the hammer tight. “Remember what?”

“You’ll remember Garden first,” says the man, “as it’s the last thing you’d remember. You died there. You’ll remember the camp and the people whom you called family, though none of them were your blood family. No, your mother and father died long before that. They died after cursing you with the dream of seeking the Perfect Place On Earth … Paradise … Garden. Little did they know you’d find it and die among its flames.”

He turns to us at last, and I see the face of Chief.

“And you’ll remember another man who cursed you, too. A man you called Chief. But my real name is Brock.”

“Chief,” repeats John, shaking his head. “No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“And it won’t. Not until you’ve Woken, as I did.” The Chief’s heavy eyes fall on me. “Winter. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen the likes of you.”

“You too,” I say quite importantly to the Chief, one of the first Humans who accepted my help when John and I first happened on the camp, long ago. I owed a lot to him alive, and it’s quite an experience to see him now as an Undead. He seems … paler. “Brock.”

“That’s the name.” He rises from his stool. John’s gaze follows the Chief—Brock—as he strolls across the room and places a hand on my shoulder. “Helena was a fine, beautiful woman, inside and out, and—and—” He chokes, his fists clenching and unclenching. He seems overcome with an emotion that’s somewhere between anger and tears. “Helena was a—” He chokes again.