Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One)

by Murray, J. L.

  The train car was silent again. She listened for a long time. No sound. She sucked in air, not realizing she'd been holding her breath. The pain in her head was agonizing. Fucking Cora. She didn't realize what she'd done. If Jenny didn't kill her for this, Declan would.

  Declan. He was really going to enjoy telling her he told her so. So she had that to look forward to. Her foot touched a fallen rotter and she stepped over it. Crouching down again, she felt for the gun. She made her way towards the place she had heard it slide. She grasped something solid, but dropped it quickly in disgust. It was a bone. Probably human. Jenny remembered Lily telling her about her father disappearing in the tunnel. Jenny's guess was that Joshua threw him in here. Can't have too many men in his little cult. Wouldn't want anyone to object to him raping his way to exultation. These people were better off without Joshua and his psycho wife.

  She had reached the end of the car. With her outstretched hand she could feel the cool, slick wall. Her hand eased up and she felt the padded seat. Jenny frowned. There hadn't been any other seats. Probably looters or squatters had stolen them. Maybe Joshua. Maybe someone else. Jenny's head was spinning. She grabbed hold of the seat and felt along the floor. She gasped in pleasure as her hand wrapped around something cold and metallic. Setting the knife on the seat and holding the gun in both hands, she found the trigger with her finger. She squeezed, bracing herself for the explosive noise.

  The shot was so loud she cried out. Jenny raised her hand to rub her ear, feeling as if she were underwater. First the dizziness and darkness, now she was deaf. But when the pain subsided, Jenny blinked. Light was coming in through the bullet hole in the window like the beam of a flashlight.

  Jenny put the gun in the holster still fixed to her thigh. Walking to the window, she kicked out hard. She felt the glass give way a little, and though she still couldn't hear anything, she imagined it made a pretty satisfying crack. Her foot went through the glass on the second kick. She could hear a muffled tinkling. Her hearing was coming back.

  The dim light was pouring into the train car. Jenny glanced around. Rotters littered the floor. There were bones everywhere, along with shreds of fabric, probably from the clothes of victims. She looked down at the rotter closest to her. He gave a twitch and then was still. Jenny narrowed her eyes. The rotter's hand moved and her ears had cleared enough for her to hear the scrape of bone against the floor. It was his legs. It was the rotter she'd kicked. One of his legs had snapped off, and the other was broken, jutting out of filthy, shredded cargo pants. He gave a moan as her ears popped, and the scraping was instantly louder. Jenny turned to grab her knife off the seat, nearly tripping on a pile of clothes she didn't realize were there. Grasping the knife, she turned to finish off the last rotter when a noise stopped her cold.

  “Jenny?” It was a hoarse voice and her name came out as a croak. A man's voice. She looked around. Her heart was beating in her ears again. The pile she had mistaken for clothes moved and she realized it was a man. A very thin man draped in larger clothes that hung off of his sallow body. He had been balled up before on the seat. A face blinked at her from his place in the fabric. She hiked up her skirt and took out the gun, leveling it at the man before he could blink again. She flicked her eyes to the knife on the seat next to him. He slowly raised his hands, wincing, like it pained him to do it. His face was emaciated. Shaggy dark hair fell in floppy curls around his ears.

  “Is it you, Jen?” he croaked again. “The light hurts.”

  Jenny frowned. “How do you know me?” Then the man did something strange. Slowly, almost tenuously, he smiled. He fucking smiled at her. His teeth were yellow. How long had he been here? And then she recognized him. All thoughts went out of her head. The arm holding the gun dropped to her side and she heard the gun clatter to the floor. She tried to speak, but no words would come out. She caught a harsh, rasping breath. Finally, she managed two syllables.

  “Casey?”

  “I wasn't sure if you were alive,” he said. He stood up shakily, his clothes barely clinging to him. His tee shirt was brown with something that looked like dried blood.

  Jenny shook her head. She couldn't wrap her mind around this. “How are you...” She staggered back, suddenly feeling dizzy again. She caught herself against something soft and rank-smelling. A musty groan in her ear. Panicked, she tried to clamber away from the rotter. She kicked back with my boot, but it grasped her shoulders; it was weak, but Jenny was off-kilter and fell back against it. She felt something tear at the back of her neck. The fabric of her dress. Thrusting back with her elbows, she felt something brittle give way. But the rotter just grunted.

  “Casey, help me!” she screamed. “The knife!”

  Jenny saw him look back where she had pointed and reach for the knife. And then there was pain so intense that her vision went white again. She didn't know when she started screaming, but she couldn't stop. She felt her shoulder become warm and realized vaguely it was from her own blood. There was more tearing, but it wasn't her dress. It was her. The rotter was ripping away a piece of her neck. She felt herself growing weak. And then she was falling back. Casey was standing over her with the knife and the rotter wasn't moving any more.

  There was more ripping, but this time it was her dress again. Casey came up with a wad of fabric. He must have cut the hem of her dress with a knife. It seemed funny to her for some reason and she laughed as he pushed the fabric into the wound in her neck. Then she looked at his face. Those brown eyes. They were paler than she remembered, but it was his eyes she'd seen all these years in her dreams. Leaving him had been the most horrible thing Jenny had ever done. She touched his arm. He looked on the verge of tears. He was so thin he almost looked like one of them. Like a rotter.

  “I'm sorry,” Jenny said.

  “For what?” he whispered.

  “For leaving you. I shouldn't have left you.”

  “It's okay, Jen. We have to get out of here. Can you stand?”

  “It doesn't matter,” she said. She felt wetness on her cheeks. “None of it matters. I'm dead now, Casey. You have to go.”

  “Shut up,” he said, helping her up. He staggered as he pulled. His nostrils flared as she fell against him. He shut his eyes for a moment before he put her arm around his stick-thin shoulders. He got Jenny to the broken window.

  “Can you climb out?” he said.

  “There's no point,” she said.

  “Just fucking do it!” he said.

  “Okay!” She put one leg out, but there was a short drop and she ended up tumbling out and falling on the concrete, catching herself with her hands. Casey dropped easily beside her. He offered a hand and Jenny stood up, her limbs feeling like jelly. Her head was pounding. Casey suddenly froze and she looked up to see what had spooked him.

  A line of people stood against the tarp. Jenny blinked. Gradually she saw it was nearly all of the Righteous from the camp. She saw Lily staring at her, wide-eyed and crying, her fist pressed against her mouth. Joshua was staring at them, too, his eyes flicking from Jenny to Casey and back again. Cora stood beside him. Her eyes were hard, but her mouth was pulled down in a frown at the corners.

  Jenny felt Casey raise his arm. She looked to see he was holding the gun. He aimed it at Joshua.

  “Don't try to follow us,” he said.

  Joshua nodded.

  “Kill him,” Jenny said, her voice breathy. Her whole body hurt. It felt like her nerves were on fire. “Kill him and his asshole wife who put me in there.”

  Joshua looked at Cora.

  “No, let's go,” said Casey, pulling her. “No one needs to die.”

  “I'll do it,” Jenny said. “Give me the gun.” She held up her hand, but she was shivering. Her teeth chattered. She swallowed and her throat felt raw. The wound on the back of her neck was pulsating and she could almost feel infection spreading through her body. She was dying. Her eyes watered. Cora had killed her after all. Jenny looked at Cora then.

  “You're all going to die now
,” Jenny said, her voice like shards of glass. “You know that, right? It won't be me. I'll be dead soon. I was the only thing standing between you and Declan Munro. He's going to kill all of you for this. I can't stop it any more. And I don't want to stop it. You killed everyone when you pushed me in.”

  Cora straightened and raised her head proudly. Joshua was staring at Jenny now. “Munro?” he said. He looked at Cora again. “What have you done?” Cora looked back at him, suddenly shaken. She frowned, confusion clouding her face.

  “Come on, Jen,” Casey said urgently. “You don't understand. We need to get away from here.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. Her eyes fell on Lily, though, as she turned to leave. The girl's shoulders were shaking with sobs. She met Jenny's eyes.

  “Run,” Jenny said, remembering Declan's words. “Just fucking run. Get as far away as you can. Save yourself, Lily. Save your baby. God doesn't live here anymore.” Then Jenny let Casey pull her away from them up the tunnel, and they headed into the light.

  SEVEN

  Casey drove. Jenny couldn't, the sick was hitting her hard. Casey kept looking at her.

  “I'm dying, Casey,” she said.

  “I know,” He looked back to the road. He seemed twitchy, uncomfortable. Every once in a while his nostrils would flare. “I have some people,” he said after a while. “They can help you, Jen.”

  “No one can help me.” She stared at him. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Jenny's head was heavy and her eyelids burned. Every bump in the road felt like her bones were jangling together. Her nerves felt raw and gnawed upon. She took a heavy breath that burned like fire. “No one can help me,” she said again, softer this time. “I want to see Declan.”

  “No.” He didn't look at her.

  “Did you just say no?”

  “Jenny, you have to trust me. I've got people who can help you. Munro will kill you.”

  “You know Declan?” she said.

  He snorted. “Everyone knows Munro. He's a killer.”

  “Everyone's a killer.”

  “Yeah,” said Casey. “But not everyone's a big, psycho motherfucker.”

  “You don't know him,” she said.

  “You think you know him,” said Casey. “But he will kill you, Jen. He'll kill you without even having to think about it. You don't understand what's happening here. You don't know what you are.”

  “I understand that I got bitten,” she said slowly. “I understand that I am fucking dying. I understand that after I'm gone I'll turn into one of them. What I don't understand is how you were stuck in a train car full of rotters for shit knows how long, and you're still here.”

  He swallowed hard. “I told you there are things you don't understand.”

  “Make me understand.”

  He looked at her, then back at the road, making a left turn and swerving the car around a fallen rotter. “They did something to us, Jenny,” he said. “When we were kids. We're not like other people.”

  “They tortured us,” Jenny said.

  “I don't think so,” he said. “I think they were trying to help us.”

  “I can't do this, Casey.” She closed her eyes. The inside of her eyelids felt like they were covered in acid and her eyes teared up. Her stomach was starting to tighten up and she could taste the bile in the back of her throat. “I can't talk about them. I don't have the energy.”

  Casey pursed his pale lips. He stopped the car in the middle of the abandoned street. Jenny looked around. She knew where they were. The house where Declan lived was only about two blocks away. “What are you doing?” she said.

  He turned in his seat to look at her. His eyes were bruised hollows, his irises too pale. Jenny blinked. She was hallucinating. It looked like there was film on his eyes. Like he was dead. “Wake up, Jen,” he said. “You know why the rotters didn't bother me in that train.”

  “No,” she said. “I don't have any idea.”

  “Have you seen me?” he said, his voice rising. He shook his head. “You must be able to tell what's happened here.”

  “You've just starved for a while,” she said. She couldn't comprehend what he was trying to say. Her brain felt like it had been replaced with thick, black sludge. Had Casey gone crazy since she'd seen him last? A lot of people did. Not everyone could adapt to their world.

  “I'm fucking dead,” he yelled. “I'm a rotter, a zombie. I'm dead and I'm still me. Because of what they did to us. Mom and all those scientists. They gave us something that made us... I don't know. Not immune, but, different.”

  “That's insane,” Jenny said. “Casey, just come with me. Maybe Declan can find you someone to help you. You know, after I go.”

  “You're not going to go, Jen,” he said, his voice high and loud. He laughed. “You're going to die, but you'll come back. You'll be different, but you'll still be you.”

  “You sound like those thumpers,” Jenny said. She felt like her heart was breaking. All this time, all these years looking for her little brother and he was batshit insane. It was her fault, of course. But she was dying. She couldn't help him. If he wouldn't come with her to Declan, there really wasn't anything she could do for him. Unless she could force him.

  Suddenly he had hold of her left wrist and yanked her sideways, thrusting her fingers to his neck. “Feel!” he said. He was angry. Jenny wondered if he was capable of killing her. She was so weak that it would be easy. She put her right arm on the console in the middle to brace herself, and her hand came down on something cold. She wrapped her fingers around it. Casey was pushing her hand into his neck. Jenny decided she must have been feverish because it felt like he was cold as ice. She tried to pull away, but he was holding her fast. He moved her hand to his chest. “Do you feel that?” he said. He seemed on the verge of absolute hysteria.

  “Feel what?” she said, not sure what he wanted her to say.

  “Exactly! There's nothing there. No pulse. No heartbeat. Do I feel alive to you?”

  She pulled her hand back and he let go. Pushing herself to the far side of the seat, Jenny put her back against the door. “I'm not myself right now,” she said, shaking her head. “That's not possible. A rotter is a rotter. You can't be one, Casey. Rotters don't think. They don't talk. And they sure as hell don't drive fucking cars. You can't be one of them.”

  He seemed to compose himself. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and when he opened them his expression was flat. Calm. “There are more of us,” he said quietly. “There are thirteen of us, but, including you, we've only found five.”

  “The Thirteen,” Jenny said. “Are you fucking telling me that you are part of The Thirteen?”

  “Yeah,” he said, pleased. “I am.”

  “This isn't real,” she said. “I'm hallucinating. You're probably not even here.”

  “It's real, Jen. I'm going to take you where we can help you.” He shifted into drive and Jenny raised a shaky hand. He looked at her gun as if it were something alien he didn't recognize.

  “I want,” she said, her breath shaky and rasping, “to see Declan Munro. Now.”

  “You're too weak to use that thing,” he said.

  “Maybe,” she said. She cocked it. “Maybe not.”

  “You'd shoot your own brother?” His face was emotionless. He just looked at her with those dead almost-brown eyes.

  “You said it yourself, you're a rotter.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And you will be too.”

  “No,” she said. “I'll never be a rotter. Declan will take care of me. Take a right up that alley and drive for two blocks.”

  “Jenny...”

  “Fucking drive!”

  He worked his jaw, then eased the car forward. “I'm going to come back for you,” he said.

  “Hallucinations can't save people.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Can they drive?”

  Jenny frowned. She couldn't hold it together much longer. There was a hollow feeling in her throat like she was going to vomit. “Stop,” s
he said, recognizing the tall, rotting fence on the left side of the alley. “This is it.” It took all her strength, but she kept the gun trained on him. On her own brother. But the brother she had searched for was gone. This brother wasn't real. He couldn't be. And Jenny could only think about one thing: she had to be with Declan before she died. To tell him it wasn't his fault. She opened her door just as hot, rancid stomach acid started rushing up her esophagus. She wasn't sure how she got there, but she found herself hunched over and puking in some overgrown bushes on the side of the alley. She heard Casey yell something, but her body had abandoned her. She was on her knees, her only function seeming to be to lose everything in her guts. Casey yelled again and Jenny heard the deep rumble of the engine revving up. She felt the dirt spray up onto her back as he took off. “No,” she managed, but her body was heaving again, bringing up nothing but air and saliva. And then she felt a gentle hand on her back. Someone had come out of the gate. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she turned to see Lucy, her usual sneer gone from her face, her green eyes gone soft.

  “Jenny,” she whispered. Her eyes went to the back of Jenny's neck.

  “I wasn't fast enough,” Jenny said, then her knees gave out and she fell, barely catching herself, the cut on her hand opening up as it hit the hard ground. “I wasn't fast enough,” she repeated, as Lucy helped her to her feet.

  As Lucy half carried Jenny into the house, Jenny thought she heard her say something under her breath. Just before she passed out, she realized what it was.

  Lucy was saying I'm sorry.

  EIGHT

  Jenny woke up in a bed. She could hear a noise somewhere in the room, but couldn't focus enough to look for the source. Her skin crawled and stung like there were tiny, biting insects all over her. The back of her neck felt hot, burning, and her stomach was doing flips. Jenny blinked and wiped something sticky out of her eyes. She tried to sit up and the noise stopped. Immediately, she lay down again as a shrill buzzing filled her head and the pain and nausea threatened to knock her out again.