The Awesome (14 page)

The officer’s eyes flicked over me, from my crappy, long sleeved tee shirt to a pair of jeans so ragged the bottoms frayed. I’d trimmed some of the strings before we left the house for fear of tripping if we had to run. “Aren’t you young to be doing this sort of thing?”

“Nah. I was too young when I was thirteen, though!”

I gave him an ear to ear grin, and my mother shot me a glare. My hand moved up to cover my boob before she could whack it with her elbow.

“Our trade allows for kids to get in on apprenticeships early, Officer. Like farming or something you’d learn in vocational school. There are restrictions in place for her safety, I promise,” Janice said, using that tone of voice she reserved for professional stuff and when people died. It was all sugary and nice and made me want to fake-gag, but I figured she’d pinch me if I acted up so I behaved myself.

Officer Tate forced a smile before motioning at the grave, bringing us back to the matter at hand. “Well, that’s all we have to give you. The empty grave. We contacted her family but they don’t know a thing and the house checked clear. They’re out of their tree upset. The poor kid died of cancer and now she doesn’t get a proper death.”

“I understand. No sightings?” Mom knelt beside the recess, looking down at the crumbled earth and splintered casket. The coffin was broken from the inside out, not the other way around, which would account for us being called.

“Sightings of what?”

“Undead. The walking dead.”

The cop stared at her, incredulous that she’d suggest such a thing. I wanted to point out he’d contacted professional hunters, that he shouldn’t be surprised we’d suggest paranormal creatures. Fluffy kittens did not, in fact, mysteriously punch out coffins. “No. You think someone would resurrect a girl like that? Who’d do that?”

“You’d be amazed.” Mom smiled at the cop, who swept his fingers down the sides of his mouth and grumbled his distaste. Such blatant discomfort was a sign it was time for him to go. Nine times out of ten non-hunter types screwed up a work site, screaming at the wrong time or becoming fodder because they were too stupid to get out of the way. The ensuing splatter was annoying and hard to work around, so Mom almost always sent them off. The officer was no different. He might have a gun, and he might be trained for rudimentary monster issues, but if the concept of someone resurrecting the dead for evil deeds or some weird corpse-humping fetish made him twinge, he wasn’t someone we needed nearby.

“Thank you for calling us, Officer Tate. We’ll contact you with our findings. For now, though, it’d be best if we have the area to ourselves.”

He didn’t seem all that put off by her dismissal. Actually, he looked relieved.

“Sure thing. You have my number?”

“I do.”

He meandered off down the hill as Mom investigated the grave for evidence of ritual goods. Voodoo practitioners usually left animal bones or feathers behind. Witches used runes, certain types of candles, and herbs. Necromancers used blood—lots of blood. The funny thing was, she couldn’t find a damned thing. Either someone knew we’d be called and were meticulous with their clean-up, or something different and new and freaky-bizarre had gone down. I secretly hoped for the last because... well, because I was weird and found this crap fascinating.

“Maggie, look in the grave dirt? There’s nothing by the stone.”

I crouched beside the hole, then decided I’d be better getting into it. I was about to plunge in when a strange stink caught my attention, making me cover my face with the back of my arm. It was nasty. Sweet yet sour and chemically, too, I couldn’t help but associate it with the formaldehyde used in biology class. Well, formaldehyde and rotting meat.

“Ugh. That’s rude!”

“What is?”

“I think I smell her. The dead chick. It’s all gross down here.”

Mom blinked at me before coming over to hover at my side, stooping at the waist to get a waft. Her forehead crinkled as she leaned further in—so far I thought she’d fall in the hole face first. I steadied her with my hand on her knee.

“Nasty, huh?” I asked.

Her lips flattened into a grimace.

“I can’t smell a damned thing.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

C
ONSIDERING ITS PUNGENCY
, Mom’s obliviousness confused me. I trailed it, stooped at the waist, my face only a couple feet off the ground. Every few feet, I caught another waft of corpse, and I zigged and zagged down the hill, until I stood along the street’s edge, traffic buzzing by.

“I think she’s that way,” I said, pointing at the waterfront.

“Did you sniff out...”

“Shut up, Mom.”

She was good enough to close her trap as we jogged across the street and down towards a small park with a bridge and a flock of ducks. The scent got stronger, leading me to a stone bridge with a hidden alcove. There, surrounded by a dozen headless duck and pigeon corpses, was our missing rotter.

Normally, the undead were slathering, brainless messes—pretty much carbon copies of anything you’d see in a Romero movie. This one seemed rather aware for the newly risen. She chewed on a pigeon head, which was pretty off-putting on its own, but as soon as she saw us, she paused, wiping her lips across the back of her arm. She wore her funereal garb: a pale pink dress, a string of pearls, and ballet shoes. Her hair was dark and pulled back into a bun, her skin pale. Besides some sunken eyes and too-prominent cheekbones, she looked pretty good.

Well, for a corpse anyway.

“Hi. Sorry, had to stop for a snack. I’m starving. So hungry. And pigeons seemed easy.”

It talked. It wasn’t supposed to talk. That was a level of brain function that shouldn’t happen. Mom’s hand went inside of her vest, likely for her gun, but she was stalled by the girl standing and wiping the feathers from her dress. It was such a human, non-aggressive gesture. We hunted monsters, yeah, but only the bad ones. Friendly, agreeable ones were tagged and re-released into society according to DoPR law. Except I didn’t think there’d ever been a friendly, agreeable zombie before, so the protocol was hazy.

Okay, not hazy. Nonexistent.

“They’re messy. Pigeons. There has to be a better way to do this.” She chewed her bottom lip before looking at us. “I’m Lauren, by the way. I think I died last week but they had me on so many pain medications, I can’t remember much. I was sick, though.”

“You are,” Mom said. “Were. Lauren Miller, I mean.”

“I
know
that. I’m dead, not stupid. Who are you?”

Mom dropped her hand and cast me a look that said, “I have no idea what the crap to do with this one.” I probably mirrored the expression. This was off-the-charts.

“I’m Janice. This is Maggie.”

“Hi. Nice to meet you. Do you have a car? I need a ride home. God, I’m starving.” One moment Lauren-The-Zombie stood there smiling at us, the next she was a swooping Valkyrie of duck death, grabbing an unsuspecting fowl from the water and biting into its neck. A squawk, a squirt of blood onto her dress, and it was over. The local wildlife had succumbed to a snack attack.

“Okay, that’s messed up,” I said, watching her chow down on duck head as casually as a normal person would eat popcorn. “Don’t you want, like, a hotdog?”

“Mmm. No. Too processed. I want it fresh. It’s gross, isn’t it?” Lauren said between bites. She sounded dazed, like reality hadn’t hit her yet. I supposed that accounted for her calm. If I woke up zombified, I’d be ripping out my hair and drowning puppies.

“I want the head cheese, too,” she continued. “Like, brains and stuff. You smell delicious, by the way, but eating people’s wrong so... “ She waved the limp duck at us before chucking the carcass into the water. “I’ll make do.”

I gagged and glanced over at my shell-shocked mother. She opened her mouth like she’d talk, but then she shook her head. “Sure. I mean, I can get you home, but I’m not sure how your family will... I don’t think I can take you home ’til we know if you’re...” She dropped the thought and sighed. “Do you remember how you were raised? Necromancy’s illegal. If you’re a victim, we need to find the asshole who did this. Erm. Practitioner. Sorry.”

“Language,
Mom
,” I said, echoing the tone she used with me whenever I cussed at a job site. She biffed me upside the head.

Worth it.

“I don’t think anyone raised me. I woke up. I was alone when I crawled out, anyway. And getting out of the casket was terrible. Good thing I’m strong right now or I’d be stuck down there for who knows how long.” Lauren shuddered. “It was a nightmare, climbing out.”

“Strong? How strong?”

Lauren walked over to one of the park benches nailed down in concrete, gripped the iron frame, and yanked. There was the awful squeal of bending metal, a flourish of cement spray, and she held aloft a bench that she’d plucked from the ground like a buttercup. “Like, that’s pretty easy.”

Mom and I said “shit” in unison.

“So why can’t I go home again?” Lauren tossed the bench aside. It landed in the pond with a splash, startling the birds brave enough to linger near the Ted Bundy of duckdom.

Mom pulled out her cellphone. “Because people aren’t supposed to raise themselves. You’re a potential danger ’til we know how you got out. We don’t know if you’ll regress and eat people. And I can’t put you in a halfway house. There aren’t any for your kind. Good Christ. Let me...”

Mom wandered off, her thumb tripping over numbers on her cellphone keypad. I assumed she called the DoPR for instruction. The werewolf, fae, and vampire communities were good enough to fund halfway houses for their brood. The shelters offered job training, instruction on how to operate in society, food, and beds. If Mom deemed a monster a non-hazard, he or she was brought to see a counselor. Because every other type of undead thing was either a mindless slave to a magic type or attempting to stuff kindergarteners into its maw, this lonely smart zombie was screwed. There wasn’t a place for her.

I eyeballed her, and she shuffled her feet. I supposed she could turn into a frothing flesh-eater any moment now, but she looked so damned uncomfortable standing there. She kept smoothing her dress and tutting at the dollops of blood all over. Every few minutes, she’d cast guilty glances at the pile of dead birds behind her.

“... maybe she should kill me again,” she said quietly. “I’m a freak.”

“Uhhh.” I had no idea what to say to that, so I bumbled for words and hoped they sounded smart. “Well, do you want to? I mean die. Again.”

“Not particularly, but maybe it’s for the best? My family doesn’t... well, maybe they do. I miss my mom.”

I felt sorry for her, though I wouldn’t say so aloud. Pity was a funny thing—welcome or not depended on the recipient, and I wouldn’t hedge my bets. Still, it had to suck for her. Lauren Miller knew her fate hinged on a phone conversation happening not fifteen feet away in hushed whispers, and she could do nothing about it. She was a walking dead girl who might be exterminated for no other reason than the government said so. But instead of running away in fear or picking me up and stretching me apart like a piece of human taffy, she waited, lost, confused, and willing to accept whatever sentence my mom passed.

Those were not the makings of a societal threat.

Apparently, the government agreed, because Mom flipped closed the phone and motioned us over with a wave. She looked stressed and annoyed. Worried, too, if the fingers twisting the ends of her pink hair were any indication.

“Lauren, the DoPR is opening a case on you and will send a specialist on Wednesday, but for now you’re coming with me to my safe room.”

“What safe room?” I asked, completely aware that no such room existed. We’d talked about installing one in the backyard a few years back, but having a huge steel box for monster containment was a zoning nightmare in residential neighborhoods.

“The spare room in the basement.” Mom offered Lauren a manufactured smile. “We’ll clean you up and get you some clothes ’til we have a better plan. I’ll contact your mother when we get to the house, okay?”

“Wait,” I said, incredulous we’d collected our own stray zombie. “We’re taking her home? For serious?”

“Yep.”

“But...”

“Later, Maggie.”

It was a tone that told me to can it without actually saying to can it. I understood—Mom was on the DoPR’s payroll, so if they said we housed a dead girl for a few days, that’s what we’d do—but it was pretty screwed up. What if her brain rotted out and she went insane and mauled us in our sleep? What if she was a great actress and wanted to get us somewhere private before she snapped off our arms and sucked the marrow from our bones?

“Crap. What are we going to feed her?”

“I like meat,” Lauren offered.

“No shit. Really?” I frowned at Lauren, and Mom jabbed me in the side.

“I’ll stop by the store on the way home.”

I eyed Lauren. “You’re not going to eat the neighborhood pets, are you?”

“Margaret!”

W
ALMART YIELDED TWO
full carts of ground beef and some tee shirts and jeans. Lauren kept apologizing for imposing, and my mom kept saying not to worry about it.
I
worried about it, though. Lauren was a monster, and monsters were for hunting, not inviting into the house. I understood she was different than others we’d encountered but she was still a zombie who’d openly admitted to
wanting
to eat people. That made her dangerous and scary. Home was a sanctuary, a safe place.