Long Dark Night

by Janci Patterson

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Free Book Offer!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Thank You from JABberwocky!

  Long Dark Night

  © 2017 Janci Patterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Melody Fender

  Cover images from istock.com/agb25 and istock.com/baona

  Author Photo by Michelle D. Argyle

  For Drew (again)

  Who read this book

  And decided to marry me.

  One

  As I approached our apartment building, I could sense the corpse crouching behind it. He grew in my mind like a fungus, his undead flesh outlined as if covered in a thin coating of dewdrops. This one was thin, with bulky muscles. Perhaps in life he’d been an athlete.

  Out of old habit, I popped a penny into my mouth. Even against my dry tongue, it tasted like blood.

  I ducked inside a bus stop, peering up at our curtained windows. Zeke should have been home by now, but I couldn’t sense any corpses inside the building, and the one behind the building wasn’t him.

  False dawn crept over the rooftop, making my skin twitch and crawl. The sun rose late in Salt Lake City—it had to make its way over the mountains, first. Zeke would be furious that I’d cut it this close getting home. If he had his way, I’d stay locked in the apartment twenty-four seven.

  I flipped the penny over with my tongue. Where was Zeke now? The safest place I could wait for him would be inside the apartment with the door locked. Sunrise was twenty minutes away, at most. He’d be home by then.

  A few buildings away, another corpse shifted. He was moving down the block toward me. That made four stiffs in all—the one behind the apartment, the one half a block down, and two crouching on the other side of the street behind some Dumpsters. I’d have thought I was imagining things, but I’d been feeling Zeke come home from work every night. At first I’d thought it was just the predictability of his schedule, but then I’d started sensing other stiffs, too. Now I could make out their body types, even their facial features, sketched out in crystalline dots. I checked over each of their faces. None of these corpses was Zeke.

  A gust of wind blew into the bus stop shelter, flipping the pages of a magazine abandoned in the corner. I pressed my cheek against the metal frame of the shelter. I knew it was cold, but my skin was colder.

  Waiting wasn’t giving me an advantage. I walked up to the building as confidently as I could. I could feel the corpse behind the building stand, but he didn’t come any closer. I hurried up the staircase toward our second-floor apartment, turning at the top to look toward the back parking lot. The corpse was still there, lurking just around the corner. Corpses passed from time to time, but they didn’t stay, they didn’t lurk.

  Not unless they’d suddenly found a reason to. I moved to our doorway and shoved my key into the lock. I stepped in and shut the door behind me, breathing in the dark. My body hadn’t needed oxygen in six months, but Zeke said it took some corpses as long as fifty years to break their breathing habit.

  Ash and decay reeked from the kitchen. If I’d had a heartbeat, it would have been racing.

  I flipped on the hall light, warding away the dark. I could still feel the corpse in the alley, just a few walls away. Its form was low to the ground, hunched over, waiting. The others across the street began to move toward me. I locked the door.

  I forced my legs to carry me down the hall into the kitchen. Even before I saw him, a cold wave washed through me. It wasn’t an actual chill, of course. I was numb to temperature fluctuations—one benefit of lacking homeostasis.

  Seeing Zeke’s body was enough to make me forget to breathe. The yellow hall light illuminated what was left of him, lying on the linoleum floor. His red t-shirt contrasted sharply with his now-gray skin; his body had turned entirely to ash. His head lay several feet from his body, lying on its cheek, with a trail of ash scattered over the floor between the parts of his severed neck.

  The form of both head and body remained, like papier-mâché castings of his former self, ashes clinging together, monochromatic and crumbly. His chest had already sunk under the weight of his shirt, his legs deflated beneath the waistband of his jeans. As I walked toward him, eddies of air flaked away particles, wearing away at what used to be his arms.

  My knees gave way and I knelt beside Zeke on the floor. I wanted to cry, but my body didn’t produce tears anymore. I was left without expression, like a dry fountain, or a puppet left hanging on its strings.

  There were easier ways to kill us. Anything that could damage the heart would do—a knife, a bullet— silver or otherwise. The best weapon was probably a shotgun—since the shells fragmented and caused massive damage, increasing the odds of piercing the heart muscle. But instead of being efficient, Vance had done this as dramatically as possible, to send me a message, and I knew what it meant.

  Somehow, Vance had found out about Paris.

  My skin crawled. Whatever weapon Vance had used had also torn the collar of Zeke’s t-shirt. Bare threads ran through the ash at his neck in red lines, as if they might have been blood. But of course, there wasn’t any. His body was powder, and the air would slowly wear him away until there was nothing left.

  When Vance had sent me to live with Zeke, I’d cowered in my room, sure he was going to hurt me, just like Vance. But Zeke had never touched me. He’d only wanted to keep me safe.

  My hands shook. Now he was gone. I’d gotten him killed.

  The corpse in the back alley slunk toward the side of the building. I could sense his flesh under his clothing. All of the corpses surrounding me were male.

  I looked to the window. Around the edges of the aluminum foil, I could see the pink glow of the false dawn.

  The corpses around me had to be Vance’s men. They’d come for Zeke, and now they were back for me.

  I leaped to my feet, reaching for the envelope of cash on top of the fridge. “Just in case,” Zeke had said. I ran for my room, for my already-packed duffel, stuffing the money into the pocket. I slung the bag over my shoulder. It already had a change of clothes in it, and a few of my father’s old books. There wasn’t much else in my room—not even a bed. We didn’t own much besides the video games. Zeke said too many possessions made you feel like the living.

  I’d need food. There wasn’t time to eat now; I’d have to take it to go. How much blood did we have? Not more than a couple of pints. Vance never gave out more than that at a time, to keep us from running.

  Back in the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator and grabbed two pint bags from the third shelf, dropping them into the top of the bag. I left the organs in the crisper drawer—an appendix or two that Zeke got from our supplier. He liked to have food he could chew—but I couldn’t stomach human flesh,
no matter how much the darker parts of me might crave it.

  As I closed it, the refrigerator door pushed a wave of air over Zeke, shifting the ash enough to obscure the details of his hair, his fingernails. I cringed, but I knew it was pointless to try to preserve him. If I didn’t destroy him, the police would.

  As I left the kitchen, I turned on the ceiling fan, and I didn’t look back.

  Zeke had told me where to go, if anything ever happened to him. I had to find his friend Jack. Jack wasn’t a corpse, so he wouldn’t turn me over to Vance, but he would help me get out of town. Maybe even to Paris, if I was lucky. Zeke had driven me by Jack’s house, so I knew where he lived. I couldn’t run there, not with the sun rising. But if I waited here, Vance would get me for sure.

  My best bet was to find someplace they couldn’t get me without making a scene, and also where I could hide from the sun. The department store at the end of the block was a good bet. That is, if I outran the waiting corpses first.

  As I ran for the front door, the corpse from the alley reached the corner of the building. The dots forming his skin rippled as he moved, a cold spot slinking at the edge of my mind. The ones across the street were moving closer, too, but slowly. They were taking their time. They thought they had me cornered, like they’d had Zeke.

  I had an edge, though. Zeke couldn’t sense corpses, not the way I could. He always got mad at me when I talked about it, like being different was against some corpse code of conduct.

  I looked through the peep hole in the front door, making sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for me out there. I couldn’t see anyone. The nearest stiff was now creeping around the front of the building. That meant I had to head toward the back if I wanted to get away.

  Time to run.

  I opened the door and sprinted down the walkway along the front of the building. Don’t look, I told myself. If I saw them coming for me, I’d freeze.

  Pivoting at the corner of the building, I ran along the side walkway, passing door after door. One of the corpses moved toward the stairs, so I stopped in the middle of the barred railing.

  Don’t think. Jump.

  I grabbed the metal drainpipe at the edge of the balcony, planted a shoe on the bar and hoisted myself over, plummeting feet-first into the alleyway below.

  Landing on my feet didn’t help much. My knees buckled, slamming into the asphalt with a sickening smack. I cringed instinctively, but felt the impact without pain. Already, I could feel the skin and bone of my knee beginning to knit itself back together, always returning to the way it was before. Tiny pieces of gravel fell from my flesh and plinked onto the pavement. I scrambled to my feet.

  A car started on the street. I raced past the parked cars and the Dumpsters to struggle over the back fence, and landed in the parking lot of the drug store behind our building. I wished I’d worked harder at pull-ups and sprints in gym class when I was alive—I’d always been a weakling then, and my strength hadn’t improved any in death. My feet pounded against the pavement as I ran along a back alley. My undead stamina would let me keep running forever, but I’d gotten a C+ in sprinting, and no matter how much I pushed to go faster, my muscles could only do what they did in life.

  I reached the main street on the other side of the drugstore, running along the block. Dawn light gleamed off the few cars in the parking lot. Already my skin began to itch. It had been a long while since I’d felt any pain at all—the only things that caused my body pain now were the things that could kill me, like the sun, or presumably a beheading or stab to the heart. Later my skin would turn red and peel. Fire wouldn’t hurt me, but something about sunlight damaged undead skin when nothing else would. It would be worth it if I could get away. I’d keep running until I got so far Vance could never touch me again.

  I could still feel corpses around me, but I was too panicked to focus on the images. I concentrated on the area just ahead. No one was close enough to grab me. Not yet. That meant I still had a chance.

  A car squealed around the corner, screeching to a stop right behind me. A deep chill sucked at me. More corpses. Vance’s men worked in tandem, hunting me like a pack.

  I ran, my tennis shoes banging on the pavement, duffel slamming into my back with each step. My legs flexed like rubber. The first golden rays of sunlight bounced off an office building, flashing onto me. My skin contracted like shrink wrap. I veered down a dark alleyway, hiding in the shadow of Zion’s Bank. The burn wasn’t bad—just a light sunburn. I could get some aloe for it later.

  I saw the first of them up ahead, waiting for me. A tall man, with dark glasses and black hair licking out from beneath a wide brimmed hat. He wore gloves that ran under his sleeves. He’d stepped out of the sun, which meant that his suit and hat must be made to block the rays. Vance kept his sunsuits for his lackeys, of course. He didn’t share them with the rest of us.

  I felt a corpse round the corner behind me. Without turning, I could see the silvery outline of his face. He was waiting in the shadow of the alley, blocking my escape.

  How did they know where I was? Could they feel me the way I could feel them?

  Vance’s voice rose from the pocket of the corpse with the hat. “She’s right between you. Very close.”

  Maybe they couldn’t, but Vance could. Was he nearby, waiting for me? If he was, I couldn’t sense him.

  The men both kept to the shadows, stepping closer. There were no exits between me and them, no side streets. I looked up for something to climb, but the walls rose on either side of the alley like two sheer cliffs. Sunlight spread along the sidewalk at either end of the alleyway. Even if I managed to get by them, my skin would fry in the light.

  One of the corpses raised a radio to his mouth. “We have visual,” he said. “She’s got nowhere else to run.”

  I slumped against the wall. My breaths came fast, but not from the exertion. A limo rolled into the alleyway, and parked behind one of the corpses. Even the windshield was tinted against the sun. The back doors opened, and two more of Vance’s clones stepped out—corpses he’d specially made to accompany him. One of them was a lousy look-alike, though. His face was too fat. Vance ought to have starved him a bit before he turned him. I hoped that the sunlight would peek over the buildings and scorch them all, but looking up I could see it would be hours before the sun rose high enough to reach us.

  Then Vance stepped out of the car. I could tell him from a look-alike anytime. None of them quite had his hawkish nose, his flawless skin, or the sense of pride and power that rolled off him like crashing waves. He pulled off his sunglasses, watching me with cold eyes.

  “I see you packed,” he said. “Excellent. I’ve come to collect you. You’re too young to be alone.”

  I stood absolutely still, every muscle tense. Vance took a step toward me, and my body jerked reflexively.

  “What’s this?” he asked. “I know it was a lifetime ago, but don’t you remember? We’re friends.”

  It was a lifetime ago. But he was wrong. No matter what I’d thought back then, we’d never been friends.

  Vance shook his head at me, holding out his hand. “Come.” His voice was soft, like he was here to rescue me.

  He was the one I needed rescuing from.

  My knees shook, and I braced myself against the wall for support. I’d been a fool to run down this alley. I should have stayed in the sun. Burning would have been better than going with Vance.

  But my skin flinched at the thought. The pain of dying from a sixth-degree sunburn would be overwhelming. I didn’t have the will to destroy myself that way. Just like I’d been too weak to run from Vance that last time. I should have screamed. I should have fought. If I had, I wouldn’t be here now.

  My limbs refused to move, even to shrink away. Vance could kill me right here, do anything to me, and just like before, my traitor body was going to let him.

  “You’ll come with me, won’t you April?” Vance asked. He stepped aside, motioning to the limo doors.

  I avoided
looking him in the eyes. The other corpses stood stiff around us, waiting for Vance’s command. They’d follow him anywhere, do anything he said. Even Zeke was like that sometimes.

  Everything in me screamed to struggle. To make up for the way I just lay there when he changed me. I could still feel the force of his cold grip. It came to me in flashes sometimes, when I was alone in the dark.

  But once again, I couldn’t move. I remained there, braced against the wall.

  Vance came toward me, laid a hand on my shoulder, and pulled me forward. My feet stumbled a bit, carrying me toward the limo. I felt like my mind had unplugged from my body, and no matter how loudly my brain told it to run, it wouldn’t go.

  Then again, if he thought I was compliant, he wouldn’t watch me as closely. That might be my only chance.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  I climbed into the limo, edging as far away from Vance as I could. Not that it would stop him from touching me. Not if he wanted to.

  Vance sat next to the door, across from me. The limo started, pulling down the alley and out into the street, leaving his men behind.

  “I’m sorry about Zeke,” Vance said. “But he wanted to take you away from me. I couldn’t let him do that. You’d both starve, out on your own.”

  I hugged my knees. We should have left before Vance decided to take an interest in me again. It didn’t matter if I fought. Vance would always be faster and stronger than I was. Our bodies didn’t deteriorate, but they also didn’t grow or change. I’d passed my sixteenth birthday a month ago, but I’d be in my fifteen-year-old body for the rest of my undeath. I couldn’t even cut my hair shorter; it’d regenerate to its shoulder-length crop, like the rest of my body did when it was injured. Vance was larger and fitter than me when he died, so I’d never be able to best him.

  I closed my eyes. It was like that line from Tennyson’s poem, my favorite one from my dad’s old books: Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die. A stronger person would have ended it, and believed that what came after was better, but I couldn’t. I was too afraid.