“Thanks.”
“I could take him?”
Edie took a deep breath then pushed it out aggressively, flopping onto her best friend’s lap with a whine. “I dunno. I just really feel like shit.”
“I can tell.” Mercy smiled, patting her friend, and reached for the remote. She wrinkled her cute snub nose before changing the channel. “What were you doing watching the news all night?”
What was she even supposed to tell her? Oh, I just got attacked by monsters only to be saved by a radioactive man. Also, a zombie broke into our house last night and I was too scared to go to bed. Oh, and my hamster maybe died and now his skin is falling off. By the way, your fish is dead. Instead, she just shrugged. “I’m just … really stressed out about Hervey.”
“Mmm.” Mercy looked at the hamster hunkered down in his cage and shook her head. “Edie, you didn’t even ask for this. We were just supposed to watch him for a few weeks and then Kyle, like, forced him on you.”
“I guess,” Edie mumbled, though she knew Mercy was right. She’d never really wanted a hamster in the first place, and she had always just kind of been guessing at how to take care of it.
Mercy slid off the couch, crouching in front of Edie and taking both of her hands. She’d always been the better friend, and she’d always been three steps ahead of Edie in terms of adult life, always prepared and independent and confident in herself. She was lucky on that front. Edie hoped she knew that.
“Listen,” Mercy said, taking off her sunglasses. Her brown eyes were soft. “You’re obviously stressed already, so I’ll take him to the vet, okay? You just hang here, or go out and do something to try and get your mind off it, okay?”
Edie looked away, uncomfortable with the raw concern she saw in her friend’s eyes, especially when she wasn’t telling her the whole truth. She hadn’t even told her about her fish yet. She made a vague noise and chewed on her lip, which Mercy apparently decided to take as consent.
Mercy rose to her feet and turned to Hervey, throwing a discarded towel back over his cage before taking out her cell and dialing the emergency vet’s number. Her conversation with the secretary was a dull drone as Edie curled back up on the couch, pulling her cave of blankets back over her head.
If Mercy left, would the zombie be back? Edie’s heart raced even considering that possibility. Her friend was right; she had to get out of here and do something. There was no way anyone could follow her all around the city. She’d take the subway across town and go to a park or something. She’d spend some time alone—truly alone, with no stalkers breathing down her neck.
“I’m heading out!” Mercy called from the door. Hervey’s cage rattled as she maneuvered it through the doorway
Edie just moaned in response and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that the zombie would be back. She couldn’t stand to be in this apartment anymore.
At least Mercy hadn’t noticed the lingering smell of nail polish remover.
Edie was in the park when she got the call.
The sun was only just starting to go down, and she was just starting to truly enjoy her time alone. And she was sure she was completely alone. That nagging feeling of being watched dissipated for the first time in a couple days.
And it damn well should have. She was in the most comfortable place she could think of outside of her apartment, or anywhere else a zombie might wait for her. Hidden away in a section of one of the city parks, the overgrown path was strewn with rusty playground equipment. The city had stopped paying to have it weeded and mowed a long time ago. She remembered coming here as a kid with her father, and it had been that way then, too—just a forgotten memory off the side of a dirt footpath.
She’d sat herself down on a splinter-ridden bench and had mostly been taking in her surroundings. Her hidden place was in a thicker part of the park, though she was still able to hear nearby traffic. As a kid, her tiny self and wild imagination had always perceived it as being in the middle of a huge forest. She had a lot of memories of running through an endless forest that had really been—as she could see clearly, now—just a small trail in a city park.
But she’d probably leave soon. As strangely secure as she felt here, amidst all this forgotten earth, she wasn’t keen to be out anywhere after nightfall—especially after what had happened last time.
Edie was gearing herself up to go back home. Mercy had texted her a bit ago, saying she’d had to take a detour on the way to the vet, so she probably wouldn’t be back home for an hour or so. If it turned out Edie was alone in the apartment, she felt like she’d be okay after coming here and clearing her head.
That was, until the call came. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and Mercy’s name appeared on the screen.
She held her phone to her ear, expecting the worst. Her stomach was already turning. “Hello?”
“Edie? Where are you at right now?” Mercy sounded shaken up.
“I’m just in the park. Why? Is everything okay?”
“Um … it’s Hervey.”
Edie stood up and gathered her bag, starting along the footpath that led to the more public part of the park. “What’s wrong?”
She heard Mercy turn away from the phone and talk to someone, then come back. “The vet isn’t sure what’s happening to him.”
“Of course not.”
There was a pause. “They said it’s almost like he’s … decomposing.”
Dread set in. That only confirmed what the zombie had said—that she’d brought Hervey back to life. But that was impossible. She’d never touched a dead thing before Hervey, but she didn’t have to in order to know that when things were dead, they just were—forever. She, of all people, would know that.
“Edie? Are you there?”
She was still hurrying along the footpath. “Yeah, I’m sorry. What?”
“They think maybe he has some kind of infection. They said we should leave him here for … tests? To be honest, I don’t think they know what’s going on either. That’s my sense, anyway.”
“I’m sure it’s just some freak thing,” Edie said. It was definitely a freak thing, but she was starting to doubt it was an illness. “Did they say anything else?”
“Well … yeah.”
Edie jogged across the footbridge that separated the trails from the rest of the park. There was a group of teenagers hanging out nearby and a mom and her kid walking up toward the nearest subway entrance, but other than that, it was relatively empty. She decided not to follow the mom, instead taking the long way around the park to give Mercy time to talk.
“They said he’s probably in a lot of pain. Like … if they wanted to remove this necrotic flesh, they’d have to take most of his … skin? … off? I think they really want you to put him down.”
Edie sighed and rubbed a hand over her forehead. Would that work? If she had somehow managed to … resuscitate him … would they even be able to put him down again? “Yeah. I agree with them.”
“I’m gonna go home, ’cause they said the tests might take a while, and they won’t put him down without you signing a bunch of papers in person.”
She passed a peeling gazebo and a little copse of trees, and Mercy’s voice turned to a drone as something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. It looked like white figures standing in the distance, and for a second, her heart threatened to leap out of her chest and run for the hills.
Then she recognized the shapes: headstones. There were a lot of random little groups of headstones around this part of the city, usually in meandering clusters of five or six with no other plots for blocks. It was an antiquated detail, speaking of years long past, when farms had thrived here and families had buried loved ones on their own land. Now, everything was so close together. It made the austere little graveyards seem almost sweet. To her, anyway.
And she’d never been happier to see them than at this moment. Anything but those monsters from the other night, whatever they had been. Never again.
Damn. She’d been so startled that she’d forgotten Mercy was even on the line. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just text me when you get home, okay? I’ll pick him up later. Gotta go.”
“Okay. And remember, we have a gig at that new place tonight!”
Edie mumbled an okay, hung up, and pocketed her phone.
Chapter Nine
Poor Hervey.
Edie didn’t like the idea of putting him down. He was a cutie pie, usually, when he wasn’t rotting and whatnot. But it had to be done, for his sake.
It was probably best that Mercy go home anyway. She was sensitive when it came to the circle of life, and being there when Hervey passed—again?—wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for her. Edie had never thought too deeply about those kinds of things; her family had never been religious. She knew moving on was hard for Mercy, though.
Edie adjusted her bag over one shoulder and continued down the path toward the subway station a couple blocks down. The dirt walkway passed right by the small graveyard that had freaked her out so badly before. Now that she got a closer look at the graves, she felt silly for being scared of them.
The last time she’d sat in one of these tiny graveyards had been on a date with a guy from out of town, and he had remarked that he’d never been in a city that had simply built around old graves. They usually just moved them to a bigger cemetery.
Of course, then Edie had had to explain that the city had moved some of them, and the ones that remained were just there because of disputes over land, and had been allowed to stay where they were because it was easier than arguing and spending money.
He hadn’t called her for a second date.
Besides that disaster of a date, she had a lot of good memories in graveyards—which seemed odd to most people, considering they were where humans went when they died, generally. The end of the line. Yet they had been her playgrounds as a child; her father had always been taking her out grave-reading, the older the better. Mom always said that was why Edie had ended up so weird: because of Dad.
It was true; he had been weird. But he’d been a good father, there for Edie no matter what. Whenever she spoke to her mom about him, she got the feeling they hadn’t had the best marriage, but Edie had never understood it. She couldn’t remember even one bad moment with him.
She stopped, walked across the grass until she reached the cluster of headstones, and knelt. The lights from the buildings and traffic nearby were still enough to make her feel safe, even as the sunset made way for twilight.
“End of the line,” she mumbled as she scanned the graves.
The moment she spoke to the twilight, it was as though it came alive.
That feeling of finally being left alone was gone, and the watching eyes were back, stronger than ever. Rigidly, she turned and looked behind her. The park was completely empty now, and she suddenly realized she couldn’t hear the traffic.
There was only the drum.
That same drum, the same whispering, the same skim of ghostly fingers against her. With a start, she pulled back from that which she couldn’t see, hairs standing on end as she stepped away from the headstones. Something was stirring beneath her; somehow, she could feel the very earth roiling with power as she stepped over it, and every step away from the graveyard somehow increased the feeling, rendering it more unbearable.
She felt hunted, and she couldn’t even see what was hunting her. It was … below her, somehow. But what was there? Nothing but dirt and rocks. It was a park, for god’s sake. It was—
She staggered as something caught her eye. She thought she saw something … no, someone … weaving through the trees of the nearby copse. She stared for a long time until, finally, the figure moved through the trees again. A hooded—
To her left, she heard something burst through the soil. The sound of crumbling stone reached her as the beating of the drum came louder, louder, louder, until it felt almost as though the drum was the heartbeat of whatever slumbered in the ground.
Or slumbered no longer. She closed her eyes tight.
The drum stopped.
For a few moments, everything was eerily silent and still. Edie opened her eyes wide, listening for a moment before tucking her arms across her chest and turning.
What in the hell?
She looked in the direction of the street, far off, still flooded with lights and beautiful civilization. The drums were gone; the dizziness was over, along with the strange power that had emanated from the ground. She looked to the copse of trees. No one there. Absolutely nothing.
Something rasped and dry-heaved behind her.
She didn’t have to look. She knew what it was. And she could feel that she hadn’t raised it.
Terror mounting, she scrabbled forward, trying to ignore the throaty moans behind her as she searched for something she could use to fight it off. There had been a group of teenagers hanging around near here, and she’d seen one of them chasing the others with a huge stick. Please, god, tell me they didn’t take it with them.
Edie trotted forward, fumbling with her phone flashlight and swinging it until she finally found the stick a few yards ahead. The thing behind her groaned and wailed weakly as it noticed her—fuck—and she darted forward, the hair on the back of her neck standing at attention. She dropped her phone in her bag and dove for the stick.
Gripping her new weapon with two hands like she was winding up to hit a home run, she turned toward the zombie.
Her courage faltered. She could feel herself start to freeze again.
It was much closer than she had anticipated, first of all. And it was different from the other zombie—Calcifer. At least he had moved like a human, emoted. There had been a soul in his eyes. This … was different.
It was nearly fleshless and moved loosely, like its limbs might pop off at any second. The eyeless hollows in its skull stared straight ahead, torn and bruised and expressionless. Its dusty jaw fell slack against its chest, and its limbs jerked and twitched like a puppet’s. And when it started for her, nothing stopped it—neither the uneven ground nor its own crumbling joints.
It only focused on her.
She gripped the stick tighter and swung as hard as she could, aiming for anything that could slow it down. The stick connected with its side, staggering it, and Edie felt a kernel of hope blossom in her chest. She could take this thing on her own; all she had to do was knock it down and make sure it didn’t get up again. Just keep hitting. Easy.
The zombie righted itself, its torso rolling on its hips, then turned on her sluggishly. Its stomach and chest were convulsing.
She stuttered. “What are you d—”
It vomited. It just opened its mouth and spewed an acrid, greenish fluid on the ground at her feet; then it looked up at her, squawked, and heaved again.
She barely ducked in time. The substance missed her hair by an inch, so pungent her eyes watered. Another acidic stream shot past her left side, and she stumbled back, falling on her butt. The vomit hit the grass next to her, hissing and turning it black and wilted.
Edie dropped her stick. No. Uh-uh. The living dead were one thing—puke was another.
She scrambled to her feet, leaving her shoulder bag behind, and booked it down the footpath until she breached the treeline and made it to the paved walkway. The zombie staggered as it followed her. It dragged its withered limbs, compelled by some otherworldly force to come get her.
She knew she could outrun it—the zombie was slow, and she could jog for a couple miles without stopping—but the thought of it slowly, surely following her was almost worse than something making a break to kill her. She had to rest eventually. She had to sleep. Somehow, it knew where she was, and it would keep going. It would come.
A shriek built up in her throat, a strange, primal reaction to being chased. But she couldn’t let it out. She was already beating feet through a metropolitan area; running around screaming was sure to get the cops called on her.
When she reached for her phone, she only found an empty pocket. Shit. It had been in her bag. It was possible to retrace her steps and find her way back to the apartment, but was it wise to go there? Would the zombie follow her that far?
Edie stopped for a moment and looked behind her. It was probably pretty far behind by now, but the dread of its presence still weighed her stomach down like lead. A zombie—an honest-to-god undead thing—had been summoned by someone in that park and was now chasing her. Was it really possible that something long-dead had clawed its way out of the ground to ... what, kill her? She wasn’t sure what it wanted with her, but the possibilities did not bode well. And who had raised it?
She must have been standing there, watching and waiting, for longer than she realized. Suddenly, to her left, a moist screech cut the silence, drawing a yelp from her. What, had the zombie found a second wind or something?
She turned toward the noise and found herself facing the mouth of an alley. At the end, there was a figure. And then another slithered into view.
And another.
All three were wiry-framed and hunched, off-balance, swaying slightly.
Oh my god, he brought friends.
Edie bolted without waiting another second, pumping her arms and legs like an Olympic runner, faster and faster, shouldering through thin crowds of people. Behind her, she could hear shuffling, growing fainter but no less haunting as she ran—more slow ones, but not as slow as their friend. And at intervals, new shrieks greeted her. It was like someone had called ahead to every corpse in the city and told them where they could find a fresh girl dinner.
An executive decision had to be made. She took an unexpected left turn at Veteran Street and jumped a low wall to run through the courtyard garden of some government building, effectively putting a few blocks between her and her new boyfriends. Her lungs were aching, and her legs were becoming weaker with each block. Where was even safe? Who would believe her?
Rune Awakening Page 6
