“You don’t know what you’re—” Cody started to say.
“Because she’ll kill us if we don’t, that’s what,” Paula shouted. “She doesn’t care at all. It’s her place, so she gets what she wants, and she’ll damn anyone to Hell with her blade if the Death Doll doesn’t get her way.”
All eyes passed between her and their cold-blooded matron, who sauntered up to her until standing face-to-face, that unblinking gaze fixed on her like a poisonous insect. “I do care, but I am not going to be manipulated by everyone’s fear, because that gets people killed.”
“Your way got someone killed,” Paula shouted. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”
Didi drew her sword, which startled Paula. Everyone held their breath. Then Didi presented the handle to Paula with a smirk, her glare never faltering. “Then do something about it.”
Paula eyed the sword with great temptation but figured it had to be a trick. If I reach for it, the Death Doll collects another head for her collection. I’m not going out that way.
Didi sheathed her sword with a snarky grin. “I didn’t think so,” she said, then turned about.
Rage overtook Paula. She snatched one of Didi’s pistols from its holster and aimed right at the monster’s heart.
“No, don’t,” Sean yelled, but as soon as Didi turned, Paula pulled the trigger.
PART TWO
If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.
Numbers 30:2
CHAPTER 14
DEAD TO RIGHTS
No one moved, spoke, or even breathed. They all just stared at the three holes in Didi’s chest that didn’t bleed. That self-righteous Paula’s jaw hung open as she stared over the smoking gun. Her eyes, once filled with cold fury, bore sad wonder as she came to grips with what she had just done—which of course was to ruin everything.
Didi was livid. Bad enough that fat bastard told everyone about her porn career, but her biggest fear had just become reality. “This is my favorite shirt, you bitch,” she yelled, but her voice honked as it did over two years ago, which meant her lungs had been punctured.
Paula’s jaw dropped as her gun hand slowly fell to her side.
Didi wanted to give Paula a good backhand across the face. Instead, she snatched her pistol back, stormed out of the theater, and hit the street.
A few of her rotten peers tried to greet her in their usual way, all too far away to realize she wasn’t on the menu. She cut them each down as they approached, but none brought her any relief. One of the many curses of being dead: calming down often took a long time.
She marched up to the old clothing store on the next block and kicked in the window, but that didn’t satisfy her, either. What she wanted to kick in were Paula’s teeth. How dare that ungrateful bitch try to kill her after all she did?
“Forgive and you will receive forgiveness from the heavenly Father,” she remembered. “Forgive not, and you will not receive forgiveness.” Paula was damned lucky Didi gave what was left of herself to God. Too bad it didn’t calm her down any.
Didi shed her jacket and took off her shirt, long past caring who saw her mutilated unmentionables. She took one last look at the shirt Cody gave her in Rockford and tossed it at a smug-looking mannequin. Wind resistance opened and dropped the wad at the dummy’s wooden feet. The confident pose of the stick figure might as well have been it laughing at her. Damned physics.
She placed her sword on the cosmetics counter and scanned the racks for a decent top. She imagined the looks on everyone’s faces at seeing her in a canary yellow tank, but she ditched that thought when she spotted something bright red. Polo shirts were never to her taste, but that was easy to remedy. She grabbed her sword, liberated the beautiful red of its blah collar, and tossed her new shirt on top of her jacket. Easy breezy.
She glanced over the foundation colors for something in her current hue. She considered a tanned look, but she didn’t want to spend that long in this fiasco of an old clothing store. She came across a foundation that looked about as close to her current choice as her rotting eyes could tell, grabbed a blush brush, and set them next to a nearby mirror. She noticed some perfumes nearby, one of which looked like it had a little basketball on the label. She donned her reading glasses and realized it was a coconut-scented lotion. She missed that fragrance, having long lost the ability to smell. She missed having someone apply her make-up for her, even if only to mess it all up while filming. She even missed the embraces she used to take for granted.
Well, screw it. She wasn’t getting them back anyway.
She wondered what the camp was saying about her as she pulled her little repair kit from her jacket pocket and set it next to the mirror. She figured Cody had to be neck-deep in shit explaining what she was as she pulled open her Velcro chest flap and removed some of the polyurethane filling her torso, where two of the bullets had ended up. She hated leaving him alone with those people, but she knew the Panel would keep him safe. She had to believe God wouldn’t give her a man—a friend—like Cody only to waste him like that.
She had a hard time finding that third bullet. Though her dexterity improved through a lot of desperate practice over the last two years, she still had trouble digging around in her own chest. Craig and Cody were the best at that. If anything happened to either of them or the rest of the Panel, she might be forced to make the exception she swore to Cody she wouldn’t.
No, she couldn’t. She swore to God not to eat anyone again, and she meant it.
She finally found the third bullet lodged in her lung. It barely grazed the little bellows under her abdominal muscles that acted as her diaphragm. She removed the metal slugs and stitched her wounds shut. That curved needle was a huge blessing all around.
After stuffing and closing herself up, she applied the concealing foundation to the wound sites on her chest. All the while, she thought of the first time she took to this as a form of camouflage. It’ll help you blend in, Craig had said. It would reduce your chances of getting taken out by some random yahoo, Cody had said, like Craig almost did that day. Never mind the fact that she didn’t breathe or blink. Forget how unnatural her contacts looked over her milky cataracts. The fact that the only hairs on her that didn’t fall out were in her ears wasn’t the problem, either, and don’t mention how fake her stitched-in wig and eyebrows looked. No, it was paramount that she conceal her grayish skin—which she couldn’t feel anyway—so that some country bumpkin didn’t randomly insert that final brain buster.
Like Pat and his headless horse-fucker.
She took a moment to remember what it was like to feel anything beyond the unending pain in her head or the rush of flesh and blood in her mouth that used to ease it before she quit cold turkey. Having a lot of experience being close to a man, she found her frame of reference and it sent her mind soaring. She focused on feeling a warm chest against hers, firm hands caressing parts of her that no longer existed, the way a smooth tongue lapped against her neck as soft lips suckled it. She wondered what Cody’s suckling might have felt like. Despite what she told him long ago, she wished she had met him before the plague hit. How wonderful it would’ve been to feel the warmth of his—
A guttural growl interrupted her reverie. She spotted a bonehead limping her way from a back room. Annoyed, she grabbed her sword and hacked the thing’s head off. She put the sword back down and scooped up the coconut lotion bottle.
*****
It took a lot for Cody to keep everyone inside the auditorium, even if most of them wanted to rip him a new asshole. The Panel was helpful in both regards, especially Jerri’s tearful pleas. He agreed to answer every one of their questions as long as they weren’t all thrown at him simultaneously. When everyone finally settled into their seats, he sat on the edge of the stage for what promised to be a long ass-chewing.
“What is that thing?” Isaac barked over the dying chatter.
Cody huffed out as much frustration as he could. “She’s what you think she is.”
“A zombie?” Roy shouted. All Cody could do was nod. A lot of yelling followed, but Roy griped the loudest. “You had us traveling with that thing all that time? Living with it?”
Cody really wished Didi had stayed to defend herself, but it was probably best they know as much as possible before she returned—so they didn’t shoot her again. He hoped.
“Why is she different from the others?” Sean asked while shielding his very confused wife.
Cody exhaled the tension, pulled the small steel case from his pocket, and opened it. “I call it a Neural Stimulator Unit,” he said as he plucked the amber backup device from its fitted foam. “I came up with it when I learned a certain level of electricity can reawaken a dead brain.”
Isaac cringed. “Why would you want to do that?”
Despite vowing to come clean, he stuck to the necessary details. “Back in Chicago, I used the dead to help me raid their homes or offices for useful items, like meds and weapons. In return, I offered to end their pain.”
“And they just let you?” Sean asked.
Cody nodded. “None of them wanted to live like that.”
“Except Didi,” Paula said, to which Cody nodded again. “Why?”
Despite the firing squad he faced, he stuck to his principles. “You’ll have to ask her. It’s not my place to say.”
Several questions erupted all at once, but it was Pepe’s question that Cody understood over the noise. “How did you meet her?”
“She helped me loot a place,” Cody went so far as to say while he put the spare NSU away, “and we stuck together ever since.”
“Like, boyfriend and girlfriend?” Pepe asked, cringing.
“No,” he replied—or laughed, really. “Despite her enhancements, we’re just friends.”
Chuck flinched. “Enhancements?”
Craig stepped ahead of Cody and filled in that blank. “I used to do taxidermy. After they rescued me in Albert Lea, I offered to help mask her appearance. I removed most of her insides, treated her skin, preserved her lungs to restore her voice, and made her indistinguishable from the living. I couldn’t do anything permanent for her skin, so she uses make-up. Once we got it right, she never got a second glance.”
“Unless you notice she don’t blink,” Isaac added.
Cody waves over his eyes. “She tried that. It just knocks out her contacts.”
Paula crossed her arms. “So, being dead is her excuse for acting the way she does?”
That pissed Cody off, but he refused to be baited. “Her mind is a different animal. Other reanimates can only act on their most primal instincts; like hunger and fear. Didi’s NSU restores her memory, even if not all of who she was, so she feels everything at once. In many ways it’s like she’s autistic: detached, blunt, reactionary, and she can be a bit sensitive about it.”
“You’re saying that thing has feelings?” Paula asked disgustedly.
“Emotions come from the mind,” he replied with as much restraint as he could, “and her brain is the only thing she can physically feel, so her emotions can be very intense for her. She does genuinely care for us; so much that she avoids us to keep from accidentally infecting anyone, or being tempted to feed. When you’re down, she’ll try to comfort you. When you’re in trouble, she’ll protect you,” Cody grinned at Craig and Isaac, then seriously faced the crowd again. “But, when she’s threatened, she will react. It took us some time to curb those reactions to where they are now.”
Paula threw her arms out to her sides. “Is that why she’s so condescending all the time?”
“Consider her side of it. She’s at the top of the food chain, but she refuses to eat a bite. Her brain wants relief her body can’t give, which is why none of the others wanted to continue. Can you imagine living like that?” He paused to look for sympathy but found none. He moved on. “It’s affected her general outlook and sense of humor, which can be dark and uncomfortably predatory, but she never forgets what we swore to do, which was to protect the living.”
“She didn’t protect David,” Clarissa snapped. “What did she do to him?”
Being this close to a camp riot made Cody wary of his next words. “Didi’s NSU malfunctioned, and she attacked him. We got it working again before—”
“She malfunctions?”
“We’ve improved her systems, so it shouldn’t happen again. She knows feeding doesn’t satisfy her, so she vowed never—”
“You all knew about this,” she snapped glaring at each member of the Panel, with particular ire aimed at Jerri. “Even you?”
“It was why the Panel was formed,” Bob said.
“I found out later,” Jerri said, “and I was sworn to secrecy to keep everyone safe.”
“Banish them all,” Roy shouted, to which most of the room stood and agreed.
“She saved all of your lives,” Cody reminded them. “You owe her.”
“For making us her slaves?” Rusty yelled.
“Making us live in fear?” Clarissa added. “How can we feel safe around her if she can just breakdown? She has to go.”
The crowd loudly agreed and chanted for her expulsion. Cody tried again to assuage the mob, but realized he had completely lost control.
“No, wait,” young Jake shouted over the others, which quieted them down. “If she wants to be so helpful, then let’s let her, but under our control. See how she likes being our slave now.”
Several started to agree with him.
“Why bother?” Didi challenged everyone as she strode toward the stage with daring in her eyes, a red shirt on her body, and smelling of coconut. “Let’s just burn the bitch.”
Despite fearing for his friend, Cody smiled at her.
CHAPTER 15
THE FIRING SQUADS
Didi walked across the stage with her hands on her sword and a grenade. The room painfully echoed with all the shouting. Why didn’t you tell us? How can we trust you? After all she had done for them? The living.
Cody smiled at her, but she saw the fear in his eyes; fear of the riot they long feared would happen. The crowd grew louder and slowly advanced toward the stage. It was a good thing only the Panel was armed, but the remaining Isolation weapons weren’t far away and she was still quite vulnerable to a tightly-grouped mob.
She shouted for everyone to shut up and, with great surprise, they did. Shock, maybe, but it worked. “We’re about to be in serious shit here, and you’re bitching at me about being dead?”
“Who are you to talk to us like that, you dead bitch?” Roy yelled back.
“She’s the one who saved all of your lives,” Craig said.
“To do what,” Clarissa yelled, “eat us at her convenience?”
“I don’t eat people anymore,” Didi said.
“How can we believe that after what you did to David?”
Cody pointed at Clarissa. “In the two years you’ve been here, we’ve only lost six—all to their own choices. Didi didn’t—”
“We lost Xi Xing today,” Rusty said. “Maybe she did it.”
Jerri about lunged at the big man. “That was not Didi.”
“It might as well ‘a been,” Ben said. “We can’t trust no ‘ungry rotter.”
Several others supported Ben and Rusty, whose excessive weight always puzzled her. The ungrateful bastard easily tipped three hundred in a land where food was scarce, and he thought he could run this place better? He should’ve been glad she didn’t take the weight off of him.
“Jerri’s right,” Cody said. “Didi and I have been—”
“You mean Death Doll, don’t you?” Roy yelled. “Ask her what happened to her last group.”
“I don’t have to. I was there.”
That drew a lot of surprised and suspicious looks. Probably not his best defense.
Rusty pointed at Cody. “Then you helped her.”
Roy pointed at Cody like Doctor Frankenst
ein. “He’s been supporting her the whole time.”
“Maybe he’ll help her chow down if we step out of line,” Ron shouted.
Maybe I should, you ingrate, she really wanted to say.
“Get rid of them both,” that little prick Jake shouted, who would’ve been a skeleton in Sioux City if she hadn’t found him and Ben, yet everyone but the Panel readily agreed with him. They even started chanting against her like they were at a baseball game or college campus.
Didi drew a pistol and fired into the air. The crowd quickly shut the hell up. “Try to remove us. I’ve already cut down the dead masses out there. What’s a few dozen people to a monster like me? That’s what you think of me, right?” She locked onto every blurry pair of eyes, daring them to do something yet hoping to get through to them that she wasn’t the bad guy. “One little detail and you completely disregard all I’ve done for you up until now? Forget the fact that we were just probed by a spy; no, I’m the problem here.” She shook her head. “It amazes me you haven’t figured out your fear and greed create the worst monsters.”
Jake threw his hands out at everyone. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get her. She can’t take us all.”
Didi aimed at the little twerp’s chest and he froze like a Popsicle. “You want to join me first, kid?” she dared him. She drew another pistol and aimed around at a few choice critics. “What about you, Roy? Ron? Chuck? Clarissa? If it weren’t for me, you’d all be dead like me.”
A few of them looked over the ones she named, but no one made any other indication of backing down. So, she spelled it out for them.
“If you’re unhappy here you can leave, but no one is threatening the lives in this camp. As long as my friends live here, I’m not going anywhere.”
With that, she holstered her pistols and marched promptly out of the auditorium.
*****
After another tense half hour in Assembly, Cody found Didi in their private quarters, hugging her knees on his bed like she did whenever she lost someone. He never understood why she still did that when she couldn’t feel any of her limbs. Old habits really died hard, he guessed. Still, this meant she wasn’t just pissed or scared of the mob; she was hurt.
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