by Amy Cross
“Die, you goddamn zombie bastard!” Anna shouts as she mashes her fingers against the video game controller and waves it at the screen, where a CGI zombie is being split down the middle by a chainsaw. “Damn it, that was like the worst one yet!”
“Wait 'til you get to the next zone,” Scott replies, smiling as he watches her progress. “Those zombies'll make these zombies seem like a bunch of little girls. Seriously, you're only on the first zone at the moment, and there's like ten of them in total. You're not gonna believe what it's like later on.”
“Isn't there just, like, a giant pit of them I can jump into?” Anna asks, keeping her eyes focused on the screen as she moves her character along the corridor. “I just want to do some cutting.”
“This is so different to yesterday,” Scott tells her.
“Why?”
“You seemed kinda out of it last night,” he continues, “almost as if you didn't like the way I was burning zombies all over the place. I kinda felt like you felt sorry for them.”
“It's only a game,” she replies, feeling a little embarrassed. “Anyway, I was in the wrong mood. Right now I really hate the damn things.” As if to prove her point, she twists the controller; on the screen, the chainsaw cuts through the heads of three zombies at once, dropping them instantly. “Anyway, I'm really getting into the whole zombie-killing thing. I guess I just like seeing them turned to mush.”
“Got some frustrations to take out, huh?”
“Maybe. My friend was... Never mind.”
She continues to play, even though she's aware that Scott seems to be watching her more than he's watching the screen. It's distracting and she's tempted to tell him to stop, but she figures she doesn't know him well enough to be so confrontational, not yet.
“By friend,” he continues eventually, “do you mean the girl you live with? The one with the sword in her head?”
“It's a knife, and yeah, that's the one. Sam.”
“Yeah. Sam. So what's she like?”
“Intense,” she continues, still dedicating at least half her attention to the game. “She's started taking her job really seriously. Sometimes I think she wouldn't leave Rippon even if she could.”
“And she can't?”
“It's complicated.”
“But how did she end up in charge of that place? It seems like kind of a strange job for a girl.”
“That's also complicated.”
“I've got time.”
“I really can't go into it,” she continues as she kills several more zombies on the screen. “God, that feels good. I must've dropped a thousand of those damn things already.” As she leads her character charging into a warehouse, with the chainsaw held up high, Anna briefly recognizes the irony of the fact that she's now embracing such a game. Every time she sees another zombie on the screen, however, she finds herself remembering the way she used to be, and the hideous decomposition of her own body; using the chainsaw to cut down yet another zombie, she can't shake the feeling that she wants to keep going until she's finished the game entirely and then she wants to play it all the way through again, so that she never has to stop killing zombies. “I can't believe I never used to play stuff like this.”
“But your friend Sam,” Scott continues, “she seems... I don't know, almost like she's hiding something. Do you ever get the feeling that maybe she's got something she doesn't want anyone to know about?”
“Like what?”
“I don't know. That's why I was asking.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Anna asks, keeping her eyes on the screen. “Sorry, but Sam was really bugging me earlier and I'd rather just put her out of my thoughts for a while. She's -” Focusing on the screen for a moment, she strikes a couple more zombies down, but suddenly the image become blood red and the controller starts to vibrate. “What's wrong?” she asks. “It's not working!”
“You're dead,” Scott tells her.
“No I'm not.”
“Yes you are. Look.”
On the screen, a zombie's grinning face fills the image, slowly opening its mouth until it consumes everything. The screen turns to black, and finally the main menu returns.
“Sorry,” Scott continues with a grin, “but you ran out of lives. Those zombies can be tricky buggers. They're fast sometimes, too, and that one just came up behind you. Still, you didn't do too badly for a rookie. Another few hundred hours of game-play, maybe some online missions in a few of the minor leagues, and you might actually be a halfway decent player.”
“I want to go again,” she replies, already setting up the next game.
“Sure, but can we do one other thing first?”
“As long as it's quick,” she replies, still watching the screen. “What is it?”
“This.”
He leans closer before reaching up with a hand and turning her head in his direction. Taking her completely by surprise, he kisses her gently, and after a moment their tongues meet. The kiss lasts for several minutes, becoming more and more passionate until finally Anna sets the controller down and puts her arms around him, reveling in the warmth not only of his body but of her own. Having spent the past year as a cold, decaying corpse, she can feel the life flowing through her soul again, and when Scott eventually pulls back from the kiss, Anna's only thought is that she wants it to happen again. At the same time, she's too scared to try, just in case he hated the kiss and wants to get rid of her.
“So that was pretty intense,” he says with a faint smile.
“Yeah.”
“I hope it didn't come out of nowhere.”
“No, it...” She pauses, trying to make sense of the hundred billion different thoughts and feelings that are flying through her mind and bouncing off one another and spinning out of control.
“I've been wanting to do it for ages,” he continues, “and I know this might be a weird night to finally... But you know, I just feel like... This isn't me trying to feel better after what happened to my sister. I just feel like we have this really big connection, and I want to see how that could feel. I know I'm not explaining things very well, but does any of it make sense?”
She nods.
“It's getting late,” he replies, checking his watch. “You can stay here if you like.”
“I don't have far to walk.”
“I know, but...”
He pauses, as if he's waiting for her to say something, or to do something, or maybe even just to realize something. The silence persists, stretching out until it seems as if some huge unspoken truth is expected at any moment.
“Oh,” Anna says finally, as the penny finally drops.
“I don't know if you want to do anything like that right now,” he continues, putting a hand on her leg. “I'm totally not putting any pressure on you, either. I just figured that if you wanted, you could stay and we could just... get to know each other better. Away from the zombie stuff. We don't even have to go all the way, we could just, kind of, fool around and see how things develop.”
“Totally,” she replies, although she can't help thinking about the fact that the leg upon which his hand is resting is not, in fact, really her leg. Then again, she figures there's no way she can explain to him that she hacked off his sister's limbs and borrowed them for herself, so she tells herself that he can't be upset or grossed out by something he doesn't know. Besides, all the important parts are still her originals, so it's not weird. It's definitely, definitely not weird.
“You look terrified,” he says after a moment.
“I'm not terrified, I just...” Reaching down, she takes his hand and moves it further up her leg, so that it's closer to her hip. “I guess I'm over-thinking things, that's all, but I'd love to stay. Like you said, it's cool to get away from the zombie stuff. I mean, who likes zombies, right? Not me! I hate them so much, I want to rip them up and...” Realizing that she's rambling, she forces herself to shut up. “Yeah, anyway, I'm not terrified. Definitely not.”
“My parents are out again
,” he tells her as he edges closer. “I think they don't like being in the house at the moment. Probably something to do with what happened to Ruth and the way everything reminds them of her. I guess it's kinda sad, but the bonus is that we've got the place to ourselves. I didn't plan it all out like this, I'm totally not that slick, but...”
“That's okay,” she replies.
“You've done this before, right?”
She nods.
“Me too,” he tells her, reaching over taking her hand. “I wanted to kiss you from the first moment I saw you, but I wasn't sure how to let you know. I guess I should have realized, there's only ever one way to let someone know you want to do that.”
And with that, he kisses her again, except that this time he gently eases her down against the sofa cushions and they start to slowly remove one another's clothes. Over by the other wall, the television screen is still on, with the game still showing an image of rampaging zombies tearing innocent victims apart. Neither Anna or Scott pay any attention, however, as they start to make love, being watched all the while by a raven sitting on the window ledge.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Come on,” Sam mutters as she turns the page of the large, fragile old book that Faraday left behind when he died, “somewhere in this damn thing there has to be something useful.”
For the past couple of hours, she's been sitting at the kitchen table, poring over the text in an increasingly vain hope that she might find something relevant. For all his faults, Faraday was the only person in Rippon who might have been able to help, but when he died he left a few books and documents that Sam had hoped might contain something of use. So far, however, this book seems to be filled with vague allusions to the importance of the cemetery and a few handwritten notes about gardening.
“Nothing,” Sam says finally, closing the book and sitting back. She turns to look over at the window, and she listens for a moment to the silence of the cemetery. “Not even an index,” she adds with a sigh. “What kind of book doesn't even have an index?”
Getting to her feet, she heads to the door and pulls it open, stepping outside to take a look at the stone angel nearby. Sparky has been gone for a year now, having – in his words - “headed inside for a while” to recover from the events that occurred when Fenroc was around. Sam had assumed that he wouldn't be gone for too long, but now she was starting to wonder if he would ever come back. She was starting to really miss him, especially at times like this when she could really use advice from someone 'in the know'.
“So are you actually in there?” she asks, as a cool evening breeze blows past them both. “Can you hear me?”
Sparky's impassive stone face remains completely still.
“If you are in there,” she continues, “I'd really appreciate some kind of help. Like, if you could just come back for a few minutes so I can bounce some ideas off you? You always seemed to know what was going on, and I could really use someone like that right now. No offense to Anna, but she knows even less than I do, and that's quite an accomplishment.”
She waits.
Nothing.
“Or give me a sign. I don't know, make an apple fall on my head or something. Just some kind of sign that I'm headed in the right direction, or the wrong direction, or any direction at all. 'Cause right now, I feel as if stuff's happening and I'm too inexperienced or too dumb to recognize it. How can I fight back if I don't even know what's going on? So far, it just seems like a bunch of angry birds are out to get me, but there's something else, isn't there? There's something I'm missing. It's all linked to the ravens, isn't it?”
Taking her torch from her pocket, she switches it on and shines the beam straight at Sparky's face.
“Fine. Just promise me one thing. Promise me that if things get really bad, you'll come back and help. Just promise me that, okay? That I can rely on you if things ever get really bad. 'Cause I don't think I can deal with 'really bad' alone.”
She waits, with the light from the torch dancing across Sparky's impassive stone features.
“Okay,” she continues finally, “so that's a deal. Good. I feel much better now. I'll hold you to it, though.”
She turns to head back inside, before checking her watch and realizing that it's almost midnight. With a sigh, she realizes that she still has one more thing to do before she goes to bed, and it's the thing she always dreads. She has to go and check that the crypt is safe for another night.
***
“Heads up!” she calls out as she makes her way along the subterranean tunnel a few minutes later, with the torchlight shining ahead of her to light the way. “I'm coming through! If you're doing anything embarrassing, now's the time to stop and pull your pants up!”
Reaching the entrance to the Devil's chamber, she aims the torch at his tomb. The light picks out the edges of his glass coffin, as well as the side of his blackened, shriveled and burned corpse. She always finds the sight of his body to be both fascinating and hideous, which in turn means that she's simultaneously compelled to look closer and run away screaming. Whatever happened to him right before he was placed in the glass coffin, it's clear that he was pretty much burned to a crisp.
“Another night, another check,” she continues, sounding a little less confident and a lot more nervous. “You know how it is. I have to make sure nothing untoward is going on down here. Can't have you fooling around, can we? They don't call you the Devil for nothing.”
Taking a few steps closer, she looks down at the glass lid and sees that everything seems to be in order. She sometimes has nightmares about huge cracks splitting the glass open, but as she reaches out and taps her fingertips on the top of the tomb, she tells herself that nothing like that could ever actually happen. She doesn't understand exactly how the Devil was killed or why a simple glass coffin is enough to hold him, but she figures Faraday and the other gardeners knew what they were doing. Still, she's fairly sure there'll be another nightmare tonight, and another the night after that, and on and on, maybe forever.
“You wanna know the worst thing?” she asks. “Apart from Anna, you're probably the person I spend the most time with. That's sick and wrong on so many levels, right? I don't even know what's worse: the fact that you're dead, or the fact that you're the Devil.” She pauses. “It's the Devil thing,” she adds finally. “Definitely that.”
She pauses, leaving a gap for him to speak even though she knows he's dead. It just seems like the polite thing to do.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Goodnight, Satan.”
With that, she turns and heads back to the entrance. Another day done, another -
And then she hears it.
A gasp.
She stops, her mind racing as she tries to tell herself: No, it wasn't a gasp, it was... air. It was the crypt settling at night. It was something else, anything else, but it definitely wasn't a gasp coming from the coffin.
And then she hears it again.
And this time it's definitely a faint gasp.
She listens, and now she can hear it properly. It sounds as if someone is waking up behind her, and she can feel the hairs on the back of her neck starting to stand up.
Slowly, she turns and looks back at the glass coffin, but to her relief there seems to be no movement. Wide-eyed and with her heart pounding in her chest, she stays completely still, telling herself that she's simply misinterpreting some other kind of sound. She waits for a cat to leap out at her, like in a horror movie, or maybe just a mouse or a bird or something, anything, that could explain the sounds.
Silence falls.
Complete and total silence. Such a vast, absolute silence, that eventually she starts to hear her own heartbeat.
And then the gasp again.
Coming from the coffin.
“No,” she says out loud suddenly, surprising herself. “Don't you play games with me. Don't you dare start making noises now.”
She steps toward the coffin, determined to confront her fear.
“This is all
just a dream,” she continues, “I want to wake up right now.”
She reaches up and pinches the side of her neck, convinced that the pain will disrupt her sleep and she'll suddenly find herself in bed. As she squeezes harder and harder, however, the pain merely builds, until finally she lets out a gasp of her own as she feels her fingernails slice through her flesh. Shining the torch down at her hand, she sees blood on the nails.
“Not a dream, then,” she tells herself. “Dammit, that hurt.”
Shining the torch directly at the glass coffin, she stares at the Devil's burned face. As far as she can tell, nothing has changed, nothing has moved at all, but she still has a deeply uneasy sensation running through her bones. All her feelings of discomfort seem to be crystallizing, as if everything has been leading to this one moment.
Suddenly she hears Charles Raven's voice in her head, his words ringing out from their conversation earlier: “I do not believe that a sparrow could funnel my restorative abilities in this way. It would have to be something much stronger.”
“No,” she says out loud.
She keeps the torchlight shining on the Devil's face.
“No,” she says again.
And that's when, slowly, the Devil's eyes start to open. Tiny flakes of burned black flesh are stuck in his eyelashes, and the eyes themselves are simultaneously yellowed and bloodshot, swimming with a kind of clear liquid that quickly starts to spill over onto his charred eyelids.
“No,” Sam says again, her heart thumping in her chest so hard, it feels as if it's trying to escape.
The Devil blinks a couple of times before his eyes turn to look straight at her. His pupils are like pinpricks, but after a moment they open fully before settling at a halfway point. With flecks of ash still floating across the surface of his eyes, he stares expressionlessly at Sam from behind the glass coffin's lid, as if he's waiting for her to make the next move.
All she can do, however, is stand completely still and stare at him, as a sense of absolute panic starts to rise through her body.
