You Are So Undead to Me

by Stacey Jay

  "Anderson, William." His eyes focused in on me and I could see they had once been quite a nice shade of blue. Nearly as nice as the grin he flashed as the human part of him came online. Even with the dirt in his teeth, you could tell that smile had broken a few hearts when he was alive. "Hey, nice to meet you."

  "Nice to meet you, too." I felt that familiar flash of sadness that always came with dealing with kids my own age who had already met their end. Settlers were a fairly spiritual group, and I'd been raised to believe these troubled souls would be going to a better place after they got their earthly business off their chests… but still, it was sad, especially with people so young.

  "Can you give me your address before death, William?"

  My pen flew across the paper as he rattled off an address not too terribly far away. Then I asked him for a phone number and a list of surviving immediate family. You had to get all the basic details out of an Unsettled before you let them tell you whatever was bothering them so much they actually had to crawl out of their grave and go looking for supernatural intervention. If you didn't, chances were you'd never get the 411.

  Once they spill their guts, zombies can't get back to their graves fast enough, and it's never a good idea to try to slow down a determined zombie. They are freakishly strong. The movies have that right, but the whole eating-brains thing-completely bogus. Only Reanimated Corpses crave flesh, and they don't care about your brains. They'll eat whatever they can get their teeth into.

  I shivered again, wishing I'd worn the matching brown shawl that came with my dress. The scar on my shoulder had faded and hardly anyone noticed it anymore, but I suddenly wanted it covered up.

  Clearing my throat, I did my best to concentrate. Josh could be here any second, no time to angst out. "Now, William, tell me what it is you don't like about your death." Okay, so that wasn't standard lingo. I'd just watched too many Nip/Tuck reruns over the summer.

  "I just wanted to tell my girlfriend, Sherry, that I never went out with that skank at the mall. I mean, I took her to the corn dog shack once, but I'm planning on… I mean I was planning…"

  His voice wasn't sad as much as confused, but I still wanted to give him a hug and probably would have if it hadn't been for the smell. It had to suck coming to terms with your own death. But he kept stinking worse and worse the longer he was indoors, killing my urge to hand out friendly snuggles. That windy night must have been helping air him out while he was still in the doorway.

  "But you were planning to…" I prodded gently. I felt way bad for the guy, but the clock was ticking. Two minutes if Josh was on time!

  "I was planning to tell my girlfriend that I still loved her. And to tell Monica to go back to the Gap and leave me alone, you know?"

  Well, well, if it wasn't old home night at the Berry residence. There was only one skank named Monica who worked at the Gap- my fellow Settler, Monica "I put the psycho in psycho hose beast" Parsons.

  How ironic would it have been if he'd ended up on her doorstep instead of mine? Maybe that was why the powers had summoned me back into service for the night, to spare William the agony of seeing Monica after death. And now everything would go back to normal and I would be spared Settler service until another of the Monicster's victims needed to come get some post-burial business off his chest.

  Riigghht… and Josh is going to show up with flowers and kneel down on one knee before he asks you to homecoming.

  As if summoned by my slavishly devoted thoughts, the doorbell rang.

  He was here! One minute early!

  "Wha?" William jumped, clearly startled by the noise. He stumbled forward, knocking into me hard enough that I bounced off the computer hutch and then back into his undead arms. We fell to the ground in a heap, and by the time I untangled myself, Josh was ringing the doorbell again and my dress was covered in grave dirt.

  Argh! Now I was going to reek!

  "Hey, Josh!" I yelled through the door, hoping he couldn't hear William groaning as he stood up. "I'll be right back! I… forgot my purse!" Frantic, I ran for my room, mind racing as I tried to figure out what I could throw on that was clean and would be even remotely as cute as the word's most perfect sundress.

  I skidded to a stop among the piles of clothes on the floor and started to strip. I was not going to let my first date with an older, cooler, drop-dead-gorgeous guy-okay, I'll admit it, my first real date ever, since I hadn't been allowed to get in cars with boys last year-be ruined by a zombie blast from the past. If Mom was right, if my powers had somehow been reactivated after lying dormant for so many years, then I would deal with it. But I would deal with it later.

  I'd struggled into a tightish pair of Seven jeans and was flinging tank tops in ten different directions, searching for something that wasn't too schoolish looking for date wear, when I heard the crash.

  "Crap!" I ran back to the front door, pulling on the shirt I'd had in my hand as I went. A quick look down at my chest revealed I'd had the misfortune to choose the Looking for a Sugar Daddy shirt I usually only wore to dance class.

  Great, real classy choice. But there was no time to change now. William was careening around the living room like a college freshman at his first kegger, banging into things, knocking Mom's Lladrу porcelain collection to the ground. I was so dead. William was even now crushing beneath his feet the collectible mommy figurine Dad had given Mom when she was pregnant with me.

  Of course, if I skipped out now, hoping Josh wouldn't notice the weird undead person roaming around in my living room when I opened the door, I would be in even deeper monkey-flinging poo than collectible destruction could ever cause. I would never be forgiven for leaving my zombie unattended.

  And probably never allowed out of the house either.

  Groaning inwardly, I raced back to the door. This was so horribly unfair! I was going to have to tell Josh I couldn't go out and deal with William. Grr! Couldn't this dйjа zombie action have waited until our second date? Or at least until Josh had already asked me to homecoming like I'd dreamed he would do tonight over a greasy bucket of popcorn?

  "Josh?" I shouted at the door, wincing as another Lladrу crashed to the ground behind me.

  "Um, yeah. Are you… coming out, Megan?" he asked, his voice so perfectly sexy I was fairly certain I was going to pass out from disappointment.

  "I can't. I… I've got… My family has guests and I can't leave."

  "But I thought you said you forgot your purse?"

  "Um, no! I said I forgot the… worst… the worst thing I had to tell you. Which was that I couldn't go out with you tonight." William was moaning now. I had to make this quick with Josh no matter how stupid I sounded. If I didn't finish up with William, he was going to go Rogue and then I would be dead.

  Because my mother would kill me if I let a zombie of mine go all rabid and start terrorizing the populace because I'd forgotten to send him back to his grave. Rogue zombies weren't like Reanimated Corpses. They weren't hungry for blood, but they could cause a hell of a mess and scare the average population to death if they got loose.

  "So anyway, I'm so, so sorry. I'll call you later, okay?"

  "Can't you at least open the door? Come out for a few minutes?" he asked, sounding-justifiably-like he thought I was nuts.

  Crash. Groan. And then William was headed toward the back door. Ahh! "Nope, can't come out talktoyoulaterbye!"

  I dashed to the back door, scrambling after William as he fell down the porch steps, one of his arms falling off along the way. Leaping over the appendage, refusing to waste time puking, I lunged for him, managing to get a hand on his other arm.

  "Thank you, William. I'll take care of telling Sherry you still love her and thought Monica was a skank-now go rest in peace!" I shouted. Immediately he calmed down, his groans transforming to one long, satisfied sigh.

  Then he was gone like a flash, moving with the preternatural speed of any naturally Unsettled. Which would have been fabulous… if he'd remembered to take his arm with him.

/>   Great. This was going to be a lot of fun. Before I recorded his info in the book Mom was hopefully finding, I was going to have to take his arm back to his grave-which I had no idea how to find. Even staying home and calling Jess for a sulk session over missing my date would be more fun than this. Of course, having my gums resurfaced would probably be more fun than this.

  Hurrying inside, I grabbed a garbage bag to hide William's arm in, not bothering to tell the parents buried in the closet where I was going because I knew Mom would freak. Then I headed out to my bike, praying Josh was far away and wouldn't see me trolling around Carol on my bicycle. If my weirdo behavior at the door hadn't turned him off, thinking I'd lied about not being able to leave the house certainly would.

  Then not only would tonight not be my entree into the realm of popularity, it would be the nail in the coffin of my terminal uncoolness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Judging from the path he'd taken out of my backyard, I figured there was only one cemetery William could have gone to. And of course it was the one farthest from my house.

  I was dripping with sweat by the time I reached Mount Hope- which is not on a mountain, so I don't know what the people who named it were smoking. Mount Hope is a pleasant little patch of green not too far from the river that, thankfully, has almost no trees, so I could see well enough to read the names on the headstones in the fading light.

  It was going to be dark soon, however, so I wasted no time. I hadn't been out after dark by myself in five years, and I wasn't ready to start now.

  Flinging my bike to the ground, I dashed through the cemetery, searching for fresh graves. There were only two, and the second headstone I checked belonged to William Peyton Anderson- Beloved Son and Grandson, Taken Too Soon. My heart did a little flip as I read the inscription, but I refused to cry. Now that he had his earthly business off his chest, that beloved son would be going to a better place. And all I had to do was get his arm back to him and I would be too: home, with my secret chocolate stash.

  After quickly scanning the cemetery to make sure I wasn't being watched, I pulled William's arm from the bag, trying not gag at the combo of stiff skin and smushy stuff underneath. I wasn't going to think about smushy stuff or the slight wriggling I could feel coming from the decomposing flesh. Maggots happen. It's a fact of life.

  I set the arm on top of the dirt, then sat back on my heels. I rubbed my shaking hands on my jeans, even though I knew the smell wouldn't come off until I'd had a nice long shower. Man, I wished I'd thought to bring hand sanitizer! The whole Settler gig was so gross. No wonder I'd done my best to forget all the repulsive details.

  Okay, okay, now I just had to relax and think. What was the command that would make the arm sink through the dirt to rejoin the rest of William? I closed my eyes and dug back through my mental files, searching for any spark of inspiration, but all I got was brain static. Brain static and a few images from the night of my attack-the red eyes, the graying teeth tearing through my pajamas, the feel of those strong hands gouging into-

  "Errr!" I groaned through my tight jaw, eyes flying open.

  Why couldn't I remember anything but those freaking Reanimated monsters? I was sure I'd known the second-stage dissolution spell at one point, even though I wasn't supposed to have been studying those things until I was at least thirteen. What had happened to all those memories, to the mental files of the girl I'd been before the attack? In my dreams I always remembered the commands I should use to work the different spells, but by the time I woke up in the morning, they were gone.

  Of course, it wasn't like I'd been trying to stay current with the Settler lingo. The very opposite, in fact. And now I was going to pay for being in Denial with a capital D.

  I could still remember bits and pieces of my former life and knew the basic stage-one Settler stuff my mom had made me stay fresh on for the last five years. But for the most part, I drew a big freaking mental blank where Settler lore was concerned. Which meant the only way I was getting rid of this dead person's arm was the old-fashioned way.

  I was going to have to dig. With my hands, because I. Didn't. Bring. A. Shovel.

  "Shit!" I cursed, grabbing a handful of grave dirt and flinging it at the arm.

  "Nice language."

  I spun around, heart pounding, doing my best to hide the arm with my body as I checked out the guy who'd snuck up behind me. He was tall, but not Josh tall, and was dressed a little like one of the emo skaters who hung out near the Dairy Queen, his lean frame made even leaner by his fitted black jeans and striped sweater. His dark blond hair hung down over one eye, obscuring his face, but not so much I couldn't tell he was totally hot.

  Like, Abercrombie model hot. Hot enough that I probably would have had issues thinking up something to say to him even if I hadn't been scared to death he would see William's arm and turn me in to the police for grave robbing or worse.

  "Um, I was just-"

  "Just trying to dispose of some unwanted body parts?" he asked in his deep, manly voice, taking two steps forward before he squatted down in front of me. He was close enough I could tell that his eyes were a gorgeous shade of green and that he was not a happy camper. In fact, he looked pissed, and I could only assume he was pissed at me. "Um…"

  "I'm going to need something more than 'um.'" His voice got even deeper and would have been terrifying if it weren't weirdly familiar.

  "Listen, I know this looks bad, but-"

  "It doesn't just look bad. It is bad." His eyes narrowed, and my heart raced in response. I was suddenly aware of how very large he was, at least compared to my five-four and a hundred and change. He could kill me with his bare hands and have me buried in the fresh dirt behind me without breaking a sweat. "You really messed up, Megan."

  And he knew my name! He was probably a psycho stalker serial killer of teen girls who had been waiting to add me to his list of | victims… or something equally scary. Crap! Didn't I know by now that I should never leave the house without parental permission? I'd only snuck out two times in six years, and both times I'd found mortal ' danger.

  "… only get worse. Do you understand me?" he asked. He'd evidently been talking for a while, but I'd been too freaked to hear. "Shit," I whispered, my voice shaky.

  "Last time I checked, that wasn't an official command," he said with a sigh. "And aren't you a little young to have a mouth like that?"

  His eyes drifted to my mouth and for a split second I thought he was checking out my lips. Even weirder, for a split second, I really kind of hoped that he was checking out my lips and that he might consider an even closer inspection.

  I was having make-out fantasies about a serial killer. The realization was enough to snap me out of my inspection of the dude's own lips.

  Grip! Must get grip! "I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said. You're kind of freaking me out," I confessed.

  "Elder Pruitt saw your Unsettled run across the football field without a halo," he said, as if the halo thing should make any sense to me.

  So he was a Settler. He must have been if he was in touch with the Elders from Settlers' Affairs, the ruling body that kept the rest of the town Settlers in line. This was good news, mostly. At least he wasn't going to report me for grave robbing. But what he'd said did make me wonder why an Elder from Settlers' Affairs would be hanging around the Carol High football field. I would have asked for the 411 if I wasn't still more than a little worried.

  I mean, I knew he wasn't going to kill me, but I could still be in deep trouble if I'd somehow broken the SA rules. "Um, listen, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. I had an accident when I was still a first-stage Settler and I-"

  "Yeah… I know," he said, looking at me with a mixture of confusion and frustration. Didn't this guy have any expression that wasn't colored by massive amounts of negative emotion? He really needed to work on his happy face.

  "So I don't remember what I'm supposed to do. I mean, I never really learned what I was supposed to do as a second stager, so wh
en this guy showed up on my doorstep, I was a little unprepared for-"

  "You shouldn't have been unprepared. Jennifer should have made sure you weren't." Whoa! Now this guy was dissing me and my mom? Where did he get off? "Just because you weren't manifesting for a few years didn't mean you wouldn't start. You needed to know how to handle second-stage Settling without screwing it up."

  "That's Mrs. Berry to you," I said, getting angry. "She's way older than you are, so I think the first-name thing is out. We do live in the South, and manners are expected, in case you hadn't noticed."

  "Manners aren't going to do you much good if you get reprimanded by SA or your family gets relocated because you got caught running around town with random body parts."

  "Fine, then I'll talk to Mom about catching up or something," I said, even though that was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn't want to catch up-I wanted out. Forever. "But it might not even matter; this might have been a fluke. I might go back to normal and never see a zombie-"

  "Unsettled, have some respect," he said, obviously even angrier. "And you have gone back to normal. Being a Settler is normal for you."

  "How would you know?" If he wanted to escalate this little confrontation, that was fine with me. "Who are you, anyway?"

  "Ethan." He gave me a hard look, as if his name should mean something to me, then continued with a sigh. "I'm with Settlers' Affairs, Protocol Division, the people SA calls when screwups need an attitude adjustment."

  I stared into his undeniably gorgeous green eyes, mind racing as I tried to remember where I might have met him before. The name did niggle something in the back of my mind, but I couldn't concentrate on the niggle when the rest of my brain was thinking about the whole "Protocol" revelation. This guy was the equivalent of a Settler cop, and I was truly in deep trouble if he'd been called in. Some backpedaling was clearly in order.