Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One)

by Murray, J. L.

  The rotter in the sweatshirt came at him first. Declan sent the ax straight through his face. The rotter fell hard. Declan spun around and easily lopped off the blonde's head. Jenny heard it make a wet thudding noise as it rolled into the gutter. In seconds, the two old rotters were disposed of, Declan hardly a blur as he took them out. He stood panting and looking around at them, leaning on his ax. Then, like a horror film, the first rotter, his Northwestern shirt now covered in greasy goo that was pouring out of his face, rose up and walked, seemingly half-paralyzed and dragging his left foot, towards Declan. Declan smiled, then he smashed the ax down on the rotter's head. He fell and was still.

  Declan stood over the fallen rotter. Jenny squinted. Declan looked like he was shaking. Then he raised the ax over his head and sent it smashing down on the dead rotter. He screamed with every blow, like something drawn from deep inside him, raw and broken. Jenny flinched with each blow and if she could have cried she would have. She wanted to go to Declan, to put her arms around him and tell him she was okay. She was imperfect, but alive. Sort of. The rotter was in pieces, his smashed face nothing but a pile of rotten flesh. Declan threw the ax away from him and fell on his knees down on the ground. He started to punch at where the rotter's face used to be. He was saying something over and over, and Jenny strained to hear.

  “You took her. You took her. You took her,” he was saying, his voice growing hoarse after a time. When he was spent he sat back on his heels. He looked at his hand, covered in dark sludge. Jenny thought he was going to cry then, but he didn't. He started to laugh. It was quiet at first, but grew louder and more maniacal, until his laughter echoed down the street and off the houses around him.

  The door of the house opened again and a woman stood silhouetted against the light inside. Declan was silent when he saw her.

  “Is everything okay, Munro?” said Lucy's voice. She sounded strange. Jenny realized Lucy was afraid. Lucy was never afraid.

  “Go back inside,” Declan said coldly. “I don't want you here.”

  Lucy seemed to pause in the doorway for a moment, then the door closed again. Declan sat there in the street, surrounded by rotter guts. He did cry then, deep, racking sobs. Jenny crept through the twilight back to the car where Casey was waiting. Casey opened his mouth to say something, but Jenny shot him a look that silenced him.

  “I don't want to talk about it,” said Jenny. They waited in silence for Declan to go inside. She saw him rise from afar, so small from this distance. He trudged into the house and slammed the door. Jenny started the engine and drove away.

  She wasn't afraid of what Declan might do to her. She was afraid of what she would do to him. Jenny was afraid that if Declan saw her now, it might just break him permanently.

  She gunned the engine and headed back to the museum. She glanced at Casey as they rounded the corner. “Now tell me about this guy of yours.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “I don't see why you're so upset,” Casey said, following her inside the museum. “He's just some guy.”

  “Just some guy?” Jenny said. “Just some guy who nearly got you killed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He told you I was in the subway, didn't he?” she said.

  “Yeah, but you were in the subway. Later, I mean. He's just a dude who hears stuff.”

  “We'll see about that,” she said.

  The Thirteen were sitting around, Grayson and Fisher poring through a dusty pile of what looked like medical books. Trix was sitting nearby and was in mid-eye-roll when Jenny came in.

  “Who's your Deep Throat?” Jenny demanded.

  “Deep Throat?” said Fisher. Trix snorted, but looked away when Jenny leveled a glare at her.

  She could feel the animals moving around underneath them and felt a pang of hunger.

  “Why are you covered in blood?” said Trix.

  “I killed someone,” said Jenny. “It was an accident.”

  “Someone?” said Fisher.

  “Some piece of shit prowler,” said Jenny. “He was talking about raping rotters.”

  “Eww,” said Trix.

  “Deep Throat,” said Jenny.

  “Can you, oh, I don't know, elaborate a little?” said Grayson, a smirk on his face and a book resting in his lap. “Tell me more about this Deep Throat.”

  “It's not a fucking joke,” Jenny growled. Grayson held his hands up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let's try this. What the fuck are you talking about, Jenny?”

  Jenny rounded on Casey. “The guy who's been feeding you all information,” she said. “Who is he? He told you I was in that subway before I even knew I was going there. He told you Declan was bad. He even told you to come to Chicago. If I had to guess I would even say it was...” Jenny froze. It couldn't be.

  “Look, he never gave his name,” said Casey. “He just knew all this shit about us, so we figured he knew what he was talking about.”

  “Did he have a ponytail?” said Jenny, keeping her voice level.

  “Yeah,” said Trix.

  “A big potbelly?” Jenny said, trying not to cringe.

  “How did you know that?” said Casey.

  “He's a little shorter than me,” Jenny said. “He wears bifocals to read. He looks like a kindly uncle, but you get a weird feeling around him. Like something's not quite right.”

  “Shit,” said Fisher. “You know him better than we do. You know his name, too?”

  Jenny sighed, her hunger gnawing her belly raw.

  “Sully,” she said. “His name is Sully.” Jenny was suddenly very dizzy. Her vision flashed red and threatened to encompass her again. So soon. She felt like she'd eaten moments ago, and yet she was starving again. Her teeth ground together without her even consciously doing it.

  “You need to go to the basement, Jen,” said Casey. “You need to learn to live off animals.”

  “We all have to do it,” said Fisher. “It's not pleasant, but it's necessary.”

  “I don't want to eat a fucking live animal,” Jenny said. “What happens if I eat regular food?”

  “It's not pretty,” said Grayson. “It rots inside you. It just stays there. It tastes like ashes in your mouth and then you can taste the mold for weeks. It's all you can taste. But the worst part is the pain.”

  “Sounds like you're speaking from experience,” Jenny said.

  “When I was new,” he said. “I was like you.” It was the first time Grayson had spoken to her in a way that wasn't sarcastic. “I didn't want to eat an animal, let alone a human being. The thought made me physically ill. My skin was starting to rot off my arms. I don't even know what my face looked like. So I ate a can of corned beef hash, I think it was. When Fisher found me I was curled up under a truck. I can't ever remember being that sick when I was alive. I think it might have killed me if I was still breathing. Trust me. No matter how much you want to, eating regular food is not in the cards for us.”

  “I don't have time for this,” Jenny said, forcing herself to her feet. “I have to find Sully.”

  “This guy Sully can wait,” said Fisher. “What's so important about him anyway?”

  Jenny didn't fight him as he took her arm, even though she wanted to. She knew she had to do this. She had to eat. She couldn't eat another person. The asshole she'd killed might have been bad, but maybe the next person wouldn't. She had to learn to live with this...affliction. She also had to talk to Sully. And if she didn't like what she heard, she didn't want to be hungry when she found him. She didn't know what she was capable of with him. She had thought Sully was a friend. She closed her eyes.

  “He's the reason I died,” she said. She opened her eyes and saw her brother watching her. Everyone's eyes were on her. She tried for a smile. “Lead the way to the goats,” she said. “I guess I'll have mine rare.”

  EIGHTEEN

  It was bad, but not as bad as she thought it would be.

  The animals were kept in the sub-basement. She could feel them becom
ing frantic when the others went down. She waited in a side room, which smelled like old blood. She could see smears on the off-white walls and the brown and white checkered tile of the floor. On the metal shelves that had once been stocked with supplies, there were still some boxes sitting on the top shelf.

  The door opened and Fisher came in, carrying a clearly terrified goat in his arms. It was bleating loudly, its eyes rolling in its head, trying unsuccessfully to escape Fisher's firm hold on it. Jenny looked at Fisher.

  “I can't,” she said.

  “Were you a vegetarian before?” he said, tensing as the goat made another valiant scramble to kick him. He held the animal's legs.

  “My meat didn't move around,” she said. “It didn't scream either.”

  “What about the guy you just ate?” he said. “Did he hold still for you?” He seemed like he was leveling with her. “I know it was an accident, and I'm not judging you. I know this is hard. But it has to be done. If you don't get used to the goats, you're going to hurt someone. And trust me, it's a lot harder to live with hurting someone you care about than the memory of hurting a goat.”

  Jenny thought about Declan. She wondered if she would have hurt him if she hadn't attacked the prowler. She wondered if Declan would have fought back, or if he would have let her kill him. Jenny shuddered.

  “You can go for the throat,” he said. “You have to eat fast, because once it's dead, it's no use to you. Once you start, though, you forget what it is you're doing. That first drop of blood is all you need.”

  She looked at the goat. It was practically shrieking, its body shaking and trying to kick at Fisher with its bony legs.

  “He's going to have a heart attack if you don't do something,” Fisher said.

  Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. “How do I start?”

  “Just grab it,” he said. “The rest comes naturally.”

  “I don't want to do this,” she said.

  “I know,” said Fisher. “But it's for the best. You'll thank me later.”

  Jenny stepped up to the animal. It stilled for a moment when it saw her there, then, its nostrils flaring, it struggled even more.

  “I'm sorry,” Jenny said to it. The truth was, the hunger was too much to handle with the animal so close. She blinked red away. The gnawing feeling was so painful that she fought the urge to clutch at her chest. And there was a scent in the air that wasn't like livestock. It smelled like food. She reached out shaking fingers to grasp the animal, her hand going to its throat. Under soft fur she could feel blood pumping, a pulse throbbing, a heart beating. She couldn't hear its screams any longer. Something like wind was in her ears. A noise guttural and primal escaped her lips.

  She wanted this.

  Without even realizing she had done it, her hand was clenching the meat at the goat's throat and she had her face buried there. She felt the thick, meaty blood spurting down her throat. She felt awake. Alive. She tore meat away and it calmed her as it went down. She felt a tingling all over her body. Her skin felt strange, as if electricity were flowing through her.

  When the goat was dead, she knew it. She looked down at the animal in surprise, coming out of a trance. She had cleaned the meat completely off the animal's neck and one shoulder, as well as down one ribcage. Jenny stepped away, staring at what she had done. There was blood on her lips. She licked them even though she hated herself a little for it.

  The whooshing sound in her ears stopped. She had come back to reality.

  “See?” said Fisher, dropping the carcass. “Nothing to it.”

  Jenny wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It came away red. She stared at the dead thing on the floor. She felt oddly comforted by the sight of it.

  “How do you feel?” said Fisher.

  “Scared,” she said.

  “But?”

  “It's different,” she said. “The animal is different from the...the person. I felt more in control.”

  “You can't afford to feel anything else,” said Fisher. “You can't lose control. Not ever. Don't think of it as killing an animal. Think of it as saving a human being. Because, like it or not, you'd end up killing another person if you didn't eat this little guy.” He nudged the carcass with the toe of his boot. “You can't help it. It's your nature now. The red takes you places you don't want to go. The hard part is coming to terms with that. Finding a sort of uneasy peace.”

  “Have you found it?” said Jenny. “An uneasy peace?”

  “In my own way, I think I have,” said Fisher. He looked at her ruined clothes. “You'd better go get cleaned up. I'll take care of this mess.”

  Jenny nodded. “Okay.” She started for the door, then turned to look at Fisher. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “You're not like I thought you'd be.”

  “You expected a meathead?” he said. “So to speak.”

  “I don't know what I expected,” she said.

  He smiled. “I like you, too, Jenny.”

  She opened the door and made her way to the washroom.

  There was a mirror in the bathroom Jenny hadn't noticed before. She turned away from it, afraid of what she'd see. She took off her clothes and rinsed them, hanging them on metal rod set into the wall. Then she rinsed herself off. The blood was drying, and smeared when she rubbed at it, turning the water dark. She put her still-wet clothes back on. It wasn't like she could catch a cold.

  Hesitantly, she stepped up to the mirror.

  “Could be worse,” she muttered to herself after staring for a few seconds by the light of several uneven candles. Her eyes had taken on the same cloudy, white sheen as the others. The rest of her, though, looked human. Far paler than usual, so much so that her skin was almost green, but she wasn't wasting away. In a dark alley, she would be mistaken for human. Hell, in the daylight with some dark glasses she could probably pull it off.

  “I have an idea,” Jenny said as she emerged. Trix had a smear of blood on her cheek. She was down on the floor looking through books with Fisher and Grayson. Casey had a book on his lap in a nearby chair.

  “You look better,” said Casey.

  “Thanks,” she said. “We can get into Expo.”

  “Shut up,” said Trix. “That's suicide.”

  “I know how they work,” said Jenny. All we need is sunglasses. Maybe some perfume.”

  “I'm not wearing perfume,” said Fisher.

  “Not you,” said Jenny. “Casey and Trix.”

  “Why not us?” said Grayson.

  “Have you ever done anything besides read about the blood?” said Jenny. “I mean, have you ever looked at it?”

  “I cut myself the other day,” said Grayson.

  “No,” said Jenny. “Like, under a microscope.”

  “What's the point?” said Fisher. “We don't know what we're looking at.”

  “You don't need to understand how the rotters work,” Jenny said. “All we need to figure out is how we're different from them. The rotters and the living. If we can figure out what makes us different, maybe we can figure out what my mom meant. If we really are the cure.”

  “Will that work?” said Trix, looking at Fisher. “Seems like it should be more complicated than that.”

  “It is a lot more complicated,” said Fisher, looking at Jenny. “We don't have training. We don't know how to prepare slides, what to look for. We won't know what any of it means.”

  “It's a hell of a lot better than this shit,” said Grayson. “It's worth a try. How do you suggest we start?”

  “There's a room with all kinds of microscopes and stuff,” Jenny said. “I saw it earlier.”

  “Yeah?” said Trix.

  “You boys ever used a microscope before?” she said, looking from Grayson to Fisher.

  “A bit,” said Fisher.

  “Not since school,” said Grayson.

  “Get used to them,” said Jenny. “Enough fucking reading. You've done more reading than a med student. Time to do something. Enough b
ullshit.”

  “The princess has spoken,” said Trix. But she looked more lively than Jenny had seen her since they met.

  “What equipment?” said Grayson.

  “Fuck if I know,” said Jenny. “You'll figure it out.”

  “You think we should take samples?” said Fisher.

  Jenny smiled. “Yes. I think that's a great idea.”

  “Blood samples?” said Casey.

  “It'll be more like ooze samples in the case of the rotters,” Grayson said.

  “That's all fine and good for us and the rotters,” said Fisher, “but if we get within a few paces of the living, someone's going to lose it. You know how we get around them. Someone's going to get killed.”

  “I'll bring some back,” said Jenny. “I know just where to get it.”

  “You want to bring us living blood?” said Grayson. “You just killed someone.”

  “Yeah, so I won't be as tempted this time,” Jenny said. “Besides, they know me there.”

  “Know you where?” said Trix, suddenly sitting up, alert.

  “Expo. You're the oldest,Trix. You think you'd be able to control yourself?”

  “Better than these bitches,” she said. She looked Jenny over. “Better than you.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” said Casey.

  “You're coming with me, stupid,” said Jenny. “You have to keep me steady.”

  Trix stood up. “How do you know you can keep it together, cheerleader? How do you know you won't fuck it up?”

  Jenny shrugged. “I don't. But I know Expo. I can get us in.”

  NINETEEN

  They could have gotten in without the sunglasses. By the time Jenny, Trix and Casey approached the gates, the crowd inside was so rowdy Jenny could barely make herself heard to the guy at the gate, and it was so dark the oil torches did nothing to penetrate the muggy, clouded-over night. It wasn't Tyler or Kevin, but a mean-looking guy who looked like he wanted to tear someone's head off. When they got close to him, Jenny could feel all three of them tense up. Casey's eyes flicked around behind dark glasses and Trix scowled as she looked around hungrily.