The Beautiful Dead

by Banner, Daryl

“Told you everything? What everything?” My mouth is filling with so many questions, I can’t get them out.

  “The Deathless are here for you,” she says, “and you only. We need to keep you from them, long as we can.”

  “Why me??” Again, asking the same question I’ve asked Grimsky, asked the Deathless King-Queen herself, the same question no one seems willing to answer.

  “Hurry, now.” The girl rushes down the hall without further explanation, except to turn her head and say, “And if you bring the Human, don’t let him hold us back.”

  John and I exchange a look of surprise. Then, the two of us catch up to her, following miss black-braids out of the Town Hall dungeons, spilling into the lobby. All around us, people are running from something I cannot see. The girl leading us, we make it into the streets where the condition is no better. People are ducking for cover. We trip over bones and fragments of men and women, reminding me very unfavorably of that night at the tavern when all those Undead were dust on the floorboards.

  “Don’t stop running,” I call back to John, who just grunts in response.

  And then a building explodes. The wall spills onto the road, wood and brick raining to the ground and blocking our way. The girl makes a split decision and pulls us down an alley. John helplessly follows behind. It is the first moment John and I have spent outside my little house ever since we’ve properly introduced ourselves.

  Too bad we have to spend it running for our lives.

  “Through here,” whispers the girl, pulling us into another familiar building. Through its doors, we enter a large gymnasium. There’s others who are already here, hiding under benches, tables, even gym mats. “There’s an exit out the back that leads straight to the east Trenton gate,” the girl tells me as we pass a giant weight machine. “Take this.” She hands me a short, blunt knife. “Will work better than that ugly ring you call a weapon.”

  “It’s not ugly,” I retort, but John doesn’t seem to hear any of this exchange, keeping up behind us and heaving with exhaustion. Tis an inconvenient time to be Human.

  We pass into the back room which appears to be a dance studio where a man is seated in front of the exit door taking swigs from a bottle. Seriously?

  “Out of the way!” the girl orders.

  When I draw closer, I realize it’s the doctor, Collin. His brother is the owner of the gym. Bottle hanging from his swollen fist, Collin doesn’t budge, just staring off.

  “Collin!” I call out to him, imploringly. “You have any idea what’s happening out there?”

  “Yep.” He takes another swig.

  The girl unsheathes her knife. “I’m not opposed to cleverly getting you out of my way, doc.”

  “Chop away,” he mumbles. “Either you will or they.”

  “Or neither!” I cry out. “You can come with us! Get out of this place, you never liked it much anyway.”

  The look in his dead, glassy eyes … I know no amount of inspiring rhetoric or shoulder-punching words is going to convince him to join us. He’s as good as gone.

  “Out!”

  I glare at the little girl, but she’s right. Time’s wasting, and the violent search party is still trying to locate me, no matter the destruction left in its footfalls. With a calm force, I lift the chair the doctor is seated in—like he weighs less than nothing—and set him to the side. The three of us leave through the door, the doctor alone with his own silent tortures. And us, with our very loud ones.

  “Gates, gates, gates,” she calls out. The iron barriers stand tall over us like giant guardians. We’re hurrying, but as we approach, I realize speed is the least of our concerns: Deathless are guarding the way out.

  The girl rushes up to them, swinging her blade like mad. I nearly have to duck, as close as she got to taking off my ear. With every score to the face of a Deathless, they drop to the ground one by one, writhing in pain like little poisoned insects. “Hurry!” she barks at me, waving me toward the wide-open gates. John and I whip through, rushing into the nothing of the forest ahead. Again, we’ve dodged the strangled clutch of the Deathless horde.

  But it isn’t without cost. For as I break the edge of the woods, I make the mistake of daring one final glimpse behind me … a glimpse just long enough to see the girl turning her steel rod on a stumpy metal-legged man, and her little black-braided figure bursting into bones and dust before the iron gates draw closed.

  C H A P T E R – S I X T E E N

  L O C K S

  It’s just crunchy leaves and dead twigs for a long time. I try not to compare the sound to snapping bones. It’s an effort.

  “She gave us her life,” I mutter. “She could’ve lived forever. And it’s because of me that she’s dead.”

  John just grunts and says, “She was already dead.”

  I can’t say with any confidence what John is feeling. Surely he’s happy to be free. Grateful, even. Or maybe he thinks he had it better there, confined to my safe little house … safe until it wasn’t.

  I tell him he needs to rest. Despite his insisting that we go on, we stop at a little clearing in the trees where I pull open the bag Jasmine had given me. John picks through it and brings another apple to his mouth … and I try very hard not to watch. Even the sound of a crunching, squishing apple in his teeth is music.

  Jasmine wasn’t stupid. She knew I was housing a Human, and knew I’d someday need this getaway. She must’ve known the whole time and kept it a secret for me. That’s why she said what she said when I’d returned to Trenton. And yes, to answer her question, I was well aware that it was against the law. Punishable by exile. But she sent her daughter to aid us, and now her daughter’s …

  “Are we headed home?” I ask, cutting myself off.

  He lifts his head, addresses me with a squint.

  That’ll do. “I need to know that you’re going to be safe. That we’re heading back to … to wherever you’re from.”

  He licks his lips, says, “I’m from a place that used to be Alabama. But we’re not headed there, because there is no Alabama anymore. There’s no America either … Just death and decay.”

  “Where are we headed then?”

  “To the camp.” He takes another bite. “That’s where my brethren keep watch. We’ll be safe there, though I gotta warn you, I’m pretty sure they’ll try to kill you.”

  “Already dead,” I remind him, then sigh. “She didn’t even tell us her name.”

  He studies my face for a moment. “I didn’t know your kind could … die like that. Just poof, into dust.”

  “Yes, you did. You saw it the day we met.”

  John gazes at the core of apple still in his fist and frowns. Yeah, I don’t look back on that day fondly either.

  “That was the Deathless,” I explain. “I overheard from the Mayor soon after that they had most likely come for me. But also it could’ve been you … He wasn’t sure.”

  John just grunts, squints at me skeptically. “What the hell would those things want from me?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe they were just after me.”

  “What the hell do they want with you?”

  “I think I’m the missing progeny,” I tell him, then can’t help but chuckle at myself. “Seriously, it sounds more ridiculous coming from my own lips than theirs. What the hell is the missing progeny anyway?”

  “A missing creation,” he says. “A missing child.”

  “I know what a progeny is,” I spit back, annoyed. “I just don’t know what it means. Do they think I’m someone’s daughter? Do they think I’m …”

  And then my throat closes up, suddenly arrested by an awful thought I’d almost voiced. That “special treatment” I’d gotten at the Necropolis … if I dare call it that. Being summoned personally by the Deathless King herself. The way she treated me …

  “Does she think I’m her … daughter?”

  John’s grabbed and bitten another apple, his mouth full he mumbles, “Whose daughter?”

  I face my companion, pus
hing away the thought. “John … I’m gonna need you to know a few things.”

  “Like what,” he grunts, chomping away.

  “You need to know what we’re running from … What we’re up against. These terrible Deathless … You and your—people—need to be prepared.”

  He glares. “Can I finish eating first?”

  “No.”

  I can’t hold it in anymore, and the words start to pour. Maybe I’m overwhelmed with the unsettling notion that I might be related to them, to the Deathless. That maybe my Old Life holds more secrets than I’d ever want it to. That maybe that faceless something at the top of the Black Tower could actually be my … you know.

  My Undead Deathless-turned terrorist mom.

  I tell him everything that happened at the Necropolis. I tell him about the young boy named Benjamin and how they took his legs to stop him from escaping. I tell him about my last moments with Helena, my maker. The seeming days I was kept in their prison, and the Humans I found and freed there, including a little darling girl named Megan. I tell him about Grimsky and how he was a traitor all along, yet at the last minute turned traitor against his own kind to let us escape—I still don’t know which side he’s on. I tell John about the short metal-legged man with the power to render our kind unconscious, and the fact that after being stabbed by Grim, he’s obviously still survived—we caught a glimpse of him as we narrowly escaped Trenton … the one who took that girl’s Final Life before our eyes.

  “I’ve never seen him turn someone to dust,” I admit. “In fact, I’d not known he was one of the ones capable of that. But apparently he is, and I’m scared of him.”

  “Locks,” says John.

  “What?”

  “Locks,” he repeats, tossing the core of his apple aside. “The little girl we were with, she mentioned a Lock. That’s short for Warlock. I’ve heard of them before. My people talk about them like—no offense—but like they’re our saviors. They can control the dead.” He picks at his teeth, shakes his head. “Necromancers. They’re Human. I can’t explain how they … do what they do … but—”

  “You never mentioned this before,” I say, trying not to sound accusatory.

  “I didn’t know they existed. It’s just myth and wishful thinking, that’s what I believed. While our people were being killed or eaten by the zombies, we were praying for Locks. We thought one could protect us.”

  “Well,” I retort, annoyed, “looks like a Lock joined the wrong ranks. That man belongs to them, not to you.”

  “And I know Megan.”

  I was gonna say more, but his words cut me off. My jaw just hangs with half an unspoken word.

  “She’s from the camp,” he continues. “When her brother was taken from her, it was a dark day for us all. She went off on her own to avenge her brother, got taken.” He sighs, stares off into the sky and adds, “What a relief it is to hear she’s survived … after all this time.”

  “She’s a strong kid,” I finally confess.

  “She survived because of you.”

  I guess that much is true, though with all recent things considered, it’s difficult to accept credit for anything. Right now, I feel to blame for everything.

  “Imagine a place,” he says quietly to the air, “without death. A place that thrives. Grass doesn’t poke sparsely from the earth, it bursts. Trees reaching tall as mountains. Flowers and roses and bushes and fruit twisting around and up every tree trunk, every stone. Hills of green that go on and on. Just imagine for a sec, a place like that.”

  I do.

  He turns to me and says, “That’s Garden. Whether it exists somewhere in the world, a place that the rot hasn’t touched, I don’t know. It may very well be just another story we tell ourselves, like Warlocks and fairies.”

  “Except Warlocks exist,” I point out softly.

  We both lay back, staring up into the wash of silver sky. Well, silver to me anyway. Not even a breeze blows through the clearing. My imagination adds in the sounds of wildlife that aren’t there … birds fluttering, squirrels and chirping crickets, rustling leaves on long branches that sway. Anything to ease the usual tomblike silence.

  “I could live a life there,” I croak, not daring to disturb the peace too much.

  “No death,” he adds. “No dead anything.”

  “Except me.” I turn to see his face. Laying like this, I’m reminded for a moment of Grim and I in our little patch of greenery, and the tulip I killed. What a terrible thought; I could never step foot in Garden … I’d kill it.

  “You’re not all dead.” He doesn’t look away as he talks into my eyes. “You didn’t ask for this. You weren’t expecting your whole comfortable second existence to be turned upside-down by my … selfish needs.”

  “I had my own selfish needs.” I don’t look away either. His unshaven face, his tense eyes. “I liked having someone living near me.”

  I didn’t realize until just now how close our hands are. I can feel the tip of his finger against the side of my arm. For one self-conscious moment, I’m ever so thankful my skeleton-exposed side is not the one closest to him.

  I go on. “And if I don’t get to enjoy any more of my eternity … If the Deathless catch up to us and I’m taken away and ended … I just want to say, thank you for your kindness John.”

  “I made a terrible roommate.”

  “Yes, but you made a better one than the cockroach.”

  “I killed the cockroach.”

  “I know.”

  Nothing more is said for a while. We also don’t look away, neither of us. Our eyes locked for the longest time, I completely forget what I am. I forget what world we’re hiding in, that the trees all around us are dead, that the ground beneath us is dirty and ashen and bare. I forget all that’s happened, all that’s to happen. All I know are his two intense, watery eyes and mine.

  “Winter,” he says.

  I’m incredibly close to his face. I don’t know how that happened.

  “John.”

  “Good night, Winter.”

  I have to be alive. I have to be alive, because every part of my body is electric. The closeness of my hand to his hand. Our faces so near, our mouths so close I feel sick to my stomach with joy … like prom night. I have to be alive, because this is not what a dead person feels like.

  And then his eyes shut, and sleep takes over.

  I look away.

  In the dead of night, I stroll about the clearing with only my thoughts for company. A few things occur to me in these silent hours, toying with the ring on my finger. I know I’ll have to share them with John when he wakes. Watching his breath rise and fall in the night, I realize this security of ours is an illusion, only a temporary comfort because a dead thing can hunt forever. It’s a matter of math, really: The Deathless will find me, and with them, harm will come to John and his people. Until the King is felled or I am found, we will never be free and happy.

  While I’m with him, he will never find Garden.

  What I presumed to be the rest of the night passes by, hour by crawling hour, until the brighter spot of silver pulls itself over the horizon and with it, morning sings.

  I don’t waste time. Soon as we’ve gathered everything and continue on our way, I share my thoughts of the night. We need to give the Deathless what they want, I tell him, because I don’t want any more innocents hurt.

  “And considering I’m the one they’re after,” I point out, “it’s only logical that I—”

  “No.” John shakes his head stubbornly. “You aren’t turning yourself in. You could be the key to winning this whole thing. You’re an asset, not a liability. Once the camp learns that, we will figure out our next step.”

  “But John—”

  “That Warlock has no power over the living,” he says, looking me hard in the eyes. “The camp will join us because we’re the perfect army. We’ve nothing to lose.”

  “Anyone with a heartbeat has more to lose, John.”

  “They tried to t
ake me once. They failed.”

  Something catches his attention, and he rushes excitedly ahead, abandoning our dialogue. Through the clearing of dead trees lies a large colorless lake, its water so calm it appears as a giant glass floor in the middle of the endless grey expanse. As I draw closer, I see some actual vegetation near the water including stalks from the ground and a few trees that bear fruit. The sight is so colorful in contrast to the barren surroundings, it inspires a smile from me without doing a thing but existing.

  This must be the lake Jasmine once spoke of, a body of water from which she gathered. In essence, this same food source was feeding John all along.

  “Look familiar?” I ask, my smile still helplessly affixed as I watch him. He’s pulled something from a branch of the tree, takes one big brutish bite from it and grins, juice in his teeth.

  “So sweet,” he says, shuts his eyes. “It’s been so long.”

  The sound of words muffled by food in his mouth, it reminds me of all the time we’d spent in my house.

  When I approach the water, I observe it pulling away from me like my mere presence inspired an ebb of tide. I look down at my feet, glance back at where I walked. Blades of grass are bent away from me as if in fear, their color already drained just by my passing through.

  The sight of it breaks my mood. In fact, it make me angry. I understand on some level why a person might find me repulsing … but plants?

  “Here,” John says, plucking another fruit from the tree. “Put this in our bag. We’ll need to bring back as much as we can.”

  And before I can stop him, he’s tossed the fruit to me. The moment it lands in my palms, it begins to rot before our eyes. John watches as the poor thing wrinkles, collapses like a deflated balloon, then drops to the gritty ground as though it were suddenly seven months expired.

  The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame …

  After a moment, I whisper, “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” He’s staring at the rotted thing on the ground. “It’s okay. It’s alright.”

  We’re both still staring. It’s not okay. It’s not alright.