Undead Much?

by Stacey Jay

“Don’t curse!”

  “We’re going to have a wreck!”

  “I’ve been driving for decades, Megan, I don’t need—”

  “Yeah, driving like crap. You’re an awful driver, just ask Dad.” I didn’t know why I was taking the argument in that direction. I guess a part of me didn’t want to stay on topic, didn’t want to know the obviously awful secret she was keeping.

  Still, my lips kept flapping, almost against my will. “Does Dad know? Does he know you lied to—”

  “Leave Dad out of this,” Mom said, though she did turn her eyes back to the road and directed the car between the lines. “Your Dad and I agreed I should handle it. He’s not a Settler, and he doesn’t understand how sensitive this situation is.”

  “Neither do I, and I am a Settler. Thanks to you I always will be, whether I like it or not.”

  “God, Megan, don’t start that again. I am so sick of hearing you whine about not being normal. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway, and who wants to be—”

  “I do!”

  “Obviously. And you know what, I wish you were normal,” she said, her volume rising to match my own. “Then all you’d have to think about is clothes and makeup and boys and that fucking pom squad you’re so obsessed with, and you could be even more shallow and selfish than you already are.”

  My mom had said “fuck.” To me. It was shocking enough to bring fresh tears to my eyes, even without the “shallow” and “selfish” comments.

  “I am not shallow or selfish,” I whispered, fighting to swallow the cantaloupe-size lump in my throat. “I work hard, harder than you ever did when you were my age!”

  “Really? And how do you—”

  “I hardly ever get to see my boyfriend, I have no friends since my best friend tried to kill me over Settler crap, and I’ve risked my life at least four times in the past year to—”

  “And how many of those situations were your own fault?” she asked, stopping at the red light two streets before our own.

  “It’s my fault weird zombies keep attacking me?”

  “I don’t know. Is it? You tell me, Megan.” I could tell she regretted the words as soon as she’d said them, but it didn’t matter.

  “I’m walking home.”

  “No, you’re not.” Mom grabbed my arm hard enough to make me wince.

  “Whatever happened to ‘You’re such a great girl, I’m so proud of you’? Was that all bullshit?”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have . . . I didn’t mean . . . I’ve never doubted—”

  “Yes, you have. You just did, and so do Kitty and Barker and Elder Thomas. You all doubt me, even though I’ve done nothing wrong.” I was sobbing now, big, heaving, donkey sobs. Never had I dreamed my life would become this unfair.

  I mean, I still felt guilty over hesitating a few seconds too long before invoking the reverto command tonight, but I had done my best. I wasn’t perfect, but I’d done everything I could to get rid of those RCs and every other OOGP that had ever stuck its decomposing nose into my life. That my mom could doubt that, even for a second, made me feel like my entire world was falling apart.

  “Megan—”

  “So don’t ask me what I was doing tonight,” I said, “or what I’m doing any night until I prove I’m innocent. If you think I’m such a bad person and refuse to be honest with me, then you don’t deserve to know.”

  I wrenched my arm away, flipped the automatic unlock button, and threw myself out of the car. I was sprinting across the newly bulldozed lot next to the Sonic before Mom could roll down her window.

  “Megan Amanda Berry, get back in the car!”

  But I didn’t slow down for a second. All I wanted to do was run. Run and run and run until I was far away from my mom, her doubt, and all our dirty family secrets.

  Whatever those were.

  I was still in the dark, but I wouldn’t be for long. I’d find a way to get those medical records and dig up every little last thing my mom and everyone else didn’t want me to know. And then I’d prove them wrong. All of them.

  I’d make them sorry they’d ever doubted me, that they’d ever thought I was a murderer or a witch. I’d use all that stupid power I’d never even wanted and I’d show them what I could really do, how I could make them hurt, suffer, wish they’d never been—

  “No.” I froze at the edge of the lot, where the road turned residential and tidy streets spun off toward organized little subdivisions, feeling like a dark, wretched thing intruding into the innocent land of suburbia.

  The longing for revenge was understandable, but I’d never use my power to hurt people, not even people who had hurt me. I couldn’t believe the thought had entered my mind, no matter how upset I was. It made me afraid in a way I hadn’t been since all the weird zombie stuff started.

  What if there was really something different about me? Something more than just being extraordinarily strong? What if, deep down, I wasn’t one of the good guys like the rest of the Settlers?

  “Megan, please. I’m sorry. Get back in the car.” My mom pulled up beside me, but I didn’t turn to look. I couldn’t. Not right now, not when I suspected she might see a shadow of that bad person she feared I was still lurking in my eyes.

  “I’m going to Monica’s,” I said, surprising even myself. I’d clearly hit rock bottom if the Monicster’s was the safest place I could think of.

  For a few minutes, the only sound was the purring of the engine and the scratch of something rustling around in the industrial Dumpster a few feet away. Normally that would have sent me racing back to the car, but even the threat of coming face-to-face with a bunch of swamp rats couldn’t persuade me to go a step closer to my mom. I didn’t know who she was anymore. With the rats, at least I’d know what to expect.

  Finally, Mom sighed, a weary sound that let me know I’d won before she even spoke. “Won’t you need clothes, your makeup, other stuff for school?”

  “I’ll just borrow some of hers and run in and grab my backpack on the way,” I said, my jaw tightening. She was giving up. That easily. My old mom would never have let me get away with telling her to butt out of my life or going over to a friend’s house unannounced in the middle of the night.

  Despite the fact that I really didn’t want to go home, I suddenly wished she’d jump out of the car and tell me she wasn’t taking no for an answer. But she didn’t, which I supposed meant I’d won.

  So why did I feel like I’d lost everything that mattered?

  “All right.” Mom paused, and for a second I thought she was going to change her mind. But when I looked over at her, all I saw was a scared woman with the beginnings of a worry line between her eyebrows who didn’t know what to do. With me, or with herself. “Can I at least give you a ride?”

  I swallowed, hard. “It’s only five blocks.”

  “Megan, I—”

  “See you later, Mom.” I ran again, as fast as I could, telling myself the cold wind was the reason for the wetness on my cheeks.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Get up, Berry.” A bony finger jabbed me between the ribs hard enough to make me twitch and seek shelter beneath the covers. “If I have to listen to you snore for another minute I’m going to lose it.”

  With no small degree of effort I cracked open my eyes. According to the clock by Monica’s bed it was six o’clock. I’d only been asleep for about three hours. “Wake me in an hour.”

  “No, you’re getting up now. Get. Up.” The last two words were accented by more finger jabs. Clearly, the sweet, vulnerable Monica from the night before had vanished and the real Monicster had returned to continue her reign of terror. Still, she had let me into her room and offered me clothes to sleep in at nearly three in the morning. I couldn’t afford to be too critical. “Now, freak, or I’m going to cut you with something sharp.”

  “Why not something dull? It would hurt more,” I muttered as I forced myself into a seated position. The room spun dizzily for a moment, either a side effect of too much stress and
not enough sleep, or of the shocking orange and pink paisley wallpaper.

  No matter how tired I was, I was betting on the wallpaper.

  “Here, get dressed.” Clothing smacked me in the face. “Those jeans should fit. They’re too big on me.”

  Ah, an insult first thing in the morning. “I thought you said I was too skinny?”

  “You are, for your body type. Not everyone can have delicate bone structure,” she said, then turned toward the source of the lovely smell filling the room. “You drink coffee, right?”

  “You have a coffeemaker in your room?” I asked, my envy clear though my voice was muffled by the black sweater I was pulling over my head.

  “Coffeemaker and espresso machine.” She poured a large cup from the pot sitting on top of the little refrigerator/microwave combo in the corner. There was also a sink, a few feet of counter space, and two cabinets above the mini kitchen. The Monicster’s room was even more tricked out than Ethan’s dorm. “But there’s no way I’m making you a latte, so don’t get any ideas. Cream or sugar?”

  “Both.” I leaped from the bed and struggled into Monica’s jeans—which were still a little too tight, so there was hope my butt hadn’t fallen off completely.

  “Here, drink. I need your brain functioning in the next ten minutes,” she said, handing me the coffee and tapping her booted foot.

  For the first time, I noticed she was already dressed, complete with makeup and flatironed hair. What time had she gotten up? And why did the fact that Monica was a morning person make me suspect her of greater evil than ever before?

  “What’s happening in ten minutes?” I gulped coffee, not caring that it burned the back of my throat. What was a little pain when there was such sweet, coffee-y goodness to be had?

  “Ethan’s coming to get you to take you to school. He called last night looking for you. Good work forgetting your cell.”

  “I didn’t forget it—I had reason to believe it was tapped.”

  “What?” Monica’s brow wrinkled.

  “The Enforcers are getting sketchy with their methods. Ethan’s phone was tapped too.”

  “Wow. He was calling from a new number,” she said, then shrugged as if phone tapping were an everyday affair. “Still, it’s probably a good idea to bring your phone with you next time you sneak out of the house in the middle of the night. Better overheard than dead. And it will keep your parents from calling your boyfriend on the Settler dorm phone at one in the morning when they can’t reach you on your cell.”

  Oh, crap. Why hadn’t Mom said she’d tried to call Ethan? Now I had to figure out what I was going to tell him, and quick. I took another deep pull on my coffee, praying the caffeine would dash straight to my weary synapses.

  “He made me promise to call if I heard anything.” Monica straightened the orange bedspread with quick, efficient motions. Who would have thought Monicster had such a taste for pink and orange? I would have pegged her as a black-like-her-soul kind of decorator. “I waited to call him back until this morning since I thought you needed sleep. Otherwise, I’m sure Prince Charming would have been over here in the middle of the night, and my dad would have lost his shit if he’d seen another guy in here.”

  “Another guy?” My eyebrows lifted above the rim of my cup.

  “And I really didn’t want to deal with that fallout.” Monica ignored my question, and I resisted the urge to make a joke about the string of men she invited back to her lair, figuring I couldn’t afford to alienate one of the few people on my side. Besides, my curiosity about what she was pulling from under her bed was sufficiently intriguing to banish all thoughts of boy-themed interrogation.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a dry-erase board.” Her pointed “duh” look inspired another big gulp of coffee. Obviously she was serious about the whole brain-functioning thing. “I thought a visual aid would help organize the information.”

  “Okay.” I perched on the edge of the bed, squinting at the chart Monica had drawn. “What exactly is this?”

  “It’s everything I could find on Settler-specific forensic evidence down in the archives at the SA library in Little Rock. I was there until almost midnight last night, and believe me, my parents weren’t too happy,” she said, circling various sets of letters on the board. “If they hadn’t been so trashed on cheap wine from that fund-raiser thing, I never would have gotten out of the house. You so owe me one.”

  “Or two or three,” I agreed, though I still had no idea what I was looking at.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re grateful now, you’re totally going to offer me your firstborn in a few minutes.” She turned back to me with a satisfied smile.

  “I didn’t think you liked kids.”

  “I don’t, but you do,” she said, her pity for me and my breeder’s heart apparent. “I bet you and Ethan already talk about how many puppies you’re going to squeeze out by the time you’re thirty.”

  “Ew. That’s a really gross way to put it.”

  “Not as gross as researching the differences between Settler sperm and normal guy sperm. Do you know that Settler men have little hooks on the end of their sperms’ tails?” she asked, her lip curled in disgust, even though I could tell she was totally intrigued by weird Settler spooge. “It looks the same as sperm mutated by a fungus, so human doctors have never gotten suspicious but—”

  “And the reason we’re talking about this is?” I asked, earning myself another “duh” look from Monica and an eye roll for good measure.

  “Forensic evidence. You know, hair, DNA, spit, sperm, blood . . . ”

  “Blood.” Even if she hadn’t emphasized the word, it made sense.

  Blood was the only one of those things used to raise zombies. “You found out something about our blood?”

  “Your blood in particular. I did a little reading about the other stuff, but I figured the forensic evidence the Enforcers had on you had to be blood.”

  “Blood they found on the graves of the weird zombies or at the morgue or wherever.”

  “Right. So I did a little digging, trying to find out how Settler blood is different from normal blood, and how super-Settler blood might be different from either.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, starting to get excited. Monica was definitely on to something. There had to be a difference between my blood and normal Settler blood, and that was why SA was so positive I was the person raising these weird zombies. “So what did you find?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled, and for a second I wondered if the evil Monica had made a reappearance. “There isn’t anything weird about Settler blood. Nothing you could see under a microscope or learn from a lab test, anyway. Whatever makes our blood special seems to be more magical than scientific.”

  “But then why did Kitty want a blood sample last night?”

  “What? You didn’t tell me that.” Monica glared down at me from where she stood at the end of the bed. “How am I supposed to help you if—”

  “I couldn’t find you. I was going to tell you today. She said she wanted a fresh sample and that it might keep me out of jail for another twenty-four hours.”

  “Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes. “And it might. Or longer.”

  “How?”

  “See all these letters?” Monica pointed to her chart. “They stand for different blood types found in people with paranormal powers. People who can move things with their mind, psychics, witches, fire starters, things like that.”

  Psychics?

  Cliff was psychic. I wondered if that meant he had weird blood, and if that might somehow be responsible for keeping him out of the ground for so long? It was almost enough to make me spill the beans to Monica, but I held my tongue. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about Cliff, at least not until I figured out whether it was somehow my fault that he couldn’t rest.

  “Anyway, none of these blood types are found in normal people or Settlers, and they can’t be detected with human medicine, only with special te
sts, and only on fresh blood. And are you ready for the real kicker? Bad little Settlers and witches and people like that have a major jones for this stuff. Supernatural blood types mean big magical bang for your buck. So whoever is raising these super zombies has to be using some of it, whether they got it from you or someone else.”

  Someone else. Someone like . . . Cliff? Oh God, I didn’t even want to think about that. Cliff would never betray me, I was sure of it. As sure as I could be of anything these days. Besides, I wasn’t psychic, so why would Cliff’s blood and my blood be at all similar? In fact, if my blood matched whatever the Enforcers had found, I didn’t see how any of this information was going to help. “I’m sorry, Monica. I really appreciate all your work, but I don’t see how any of this makes a difference.”

  “Don’t you see? You must have one of these blood types.”

  “But my mom’s just a Settler, she’s not—”

  Monica sighed and let her chart drop to the bed. “So maybe your dad or somebody has one of these types of people in his family and you’re getting mojo from both sides. Maybe that’s why you’re so much more powerful than the rest of us.”

  My dad was the least mojo-y person I knew, but I was willing to entertain the possibility, not that it really mattered. “Let’s say you’re right. But even if Kitty does her test and it shows something the first test didn’t—like that I’m part fire starter or whatever—how will that prove it isn’t my blood that was used to raise the weird zombies?”

  “It would prove that it’s different!”

  “Not really. If the test can only be performed on a fresh sample, then the stuff used to raise the zombies wouldn’t show the hidden blood type even if it was there. It won’t do any good.”

  “But . . . I . . .” Monica sat down heavily in the orange computer chair behind her. “You’re right. I hate to say it, but you’re right.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing how much those words had cost the Monicster. “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She sighed and ran a hand through her perfectly flatironed hair. “Bet you wish you hadn’t given Kitty that sample last night now, huh?”