by Holly Black
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not.”
“But what if that part of them is still alive down deep and it can still be reached? My mom used to say that nothing, not my worst behavior, not even death, could stop a parent’s love—”
Jeff brought his fist down on the table, rattling the grungy silverware. “Stop it, okay? Just stop.” The diner got quiet, and Jeff took a shaky breath, waited for the prom kids to go back to singing and laughing. Finally he said, “Look. When I was little and we’d go to the store, my mom would tell me that if we got separated, just wait for her. That she’d always come back for me. Always. Well, guess what? She did—and it wasn’t because she loved me. It was because she’d become some fucking animal who would have eaten my brain if I hadn’t wasted her. There was nothing human left. I had to kill her before she killed me. So, you know, whatever concept you have of an unconditional love or God or law or humanity or meaning, you can fucking forget it.” Jeff’s eyes were red, and Tahmina knew it wasn’t the soot or the desert dust. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore. This is too much reality for our reality show. I gotta take a leak,” he said, and walked away.
Tahmina stared at her reflection on the black surface of her coffee. It was her mother who had taught her to love coffee. In the mornings she would drink hers dark and strong from delicate cups that she had managed to smuggle out of the old country, escaping through a secret tunnel that stretched for miles under the city.
“Hmmm, I see your future,” her mother would say playfully as she examined the coffee’s remains like an ancient Persian fortune-teller.
“What is it?” Tahmina would ask, full of belief.
Her mother would tip the coffee-stained cup toward her. “Soon, very soon, you will be washing dishes.”
Tahmina’s mother used to teach at the university three days a week, commuting an hour each way. When the roads had become more dangerous, Tahmina had begged her mother to stay home. But her mother had said that it was important to keep the centers of learning open. To close the schools was to admit to hopelessness. She’d seen that happen in her homeland, and she would not see it happen here in the country of her choosing.
“But what if something happens to you?” Tahmina had asked tearfully as her mother had backed the car out of the driveway.
“I will never leave you,” she’d promised, and Tahmina had watched her car growing smaller as she’d driven away. That night, her mother did not return. There were reports that the campus had been overrun with the undead. Infection was everywhere. Panicked, Tahmina had called her mother’s phone, and it had gone to voice mail. She’d called through the night and the next day, but her mother never picked up.
“Accept the truth,” her father had said, and he’d held her while she’d screamed and cried. But Tahmina couldn’t accept it. If she had seen her mother die, that would have been one thing. What bothered Tahmina was the not knowing. Was her mother out there still, uninfected but maybe hurt or holed up in a safe house, unable to get home? At times these thoughts came down like a sudden hard rain, flooding her with such anxiety that she had to go to the firing range and discharge until her handgun spun with clicks. Some nights she still rang her mother’s phone just to hear her voice.
Jeff plopped down in the booth again, an apologetic smile in place. “Sorry that took so long. But you know what they say—the longer it is, the longer it takes.” He sipped his coffee. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Sure sure?”
“Sure sure.” Tahmina worked up a fake smile. “Hey, how about that butt-ugly dress Tansey had on?”
“O-M-G,” Jeff said, and laughed. “Did you see that shit? Like the unholy union of Hot Topic and mother-of-the-bride.”
Tahmina had thought the dress was pretty, but she knew Jeff would go off on it.
“Too bad the infection couldn’t have done something useful like wiping out her craptastic taste,” Jeff said.
Roxie dropped the check. Under “Total” at the bottom, she had scribbled, Whatever. “Do y’all mind paying up? I’m thinking about closing early so I can go to prom.”
“Sure. What do you need?” Tahmina asked.
Roxie laughed. “Everything. You could mop the back or fix the faucet or get me more coffee beans.”
“I’ll take a look at that faucet,” Jeff said, and headed back to the kitchen.
Tahmina followed the conga line of prom goers out into the parking lot, and waited by the cruiser. Across the road the stadium lights were on dim, the best they could offer. Inside the diner Roxie hung the closed sign and carried her prom dress into the bathroom. A minute later Jeff came out singing an old R & B song his mom used to like.
“Did you fix the faucet?”
“Totally. Sort of. Okay, not really. I tried, though.” He took the pink plastic carnation from his pocket and handed it to Tahmina.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“Prom. We’re going.”
“Right.” Tahmina laughed. And then, a second later, she said, “You’re serious.”
“Indeed.” Jeff opened the trunk, took out a straw fedora. He rolled up the sleeves of his uniform, exposing the muscular curves of his biceps.
“We can’t go. We’re the cops.”
Jeff gestured to the empty parking lot. “Who is there to police? Everybody’s at the stadium.”
Tahmina looked down at her rumpled too-tight navy blue officer’s uniform and bulky black sneakers. She wore no makeup, and her unwashed hair was tucked into a low ponytail. She smelled of smoke, spilled gasoline, and sweat. It was not the way she’d envisioned prom.
Jeff opened the passenger side door with a flourish. “Just for a while.”
Tahmina got into the car and tucked the plastic flower behind her ear, and Jeff closed the door. For fun he turned on the lights, letting the kaleidoscopic red-and-white announce their arrival in style.
The football field swarmed with kids of all ages. Tahmina heard a group of senior guys complaining that lowly seventh graders had crashed the prom, but there was no one to stop them from coming, and the guys went back to passing a vodka bottle around the circle, since there was no one to stop that, either. On the fifty-yard line somebody had set up a battery-powered sound dock to play tunes. The speakers were too small, though, and the sound was mostly swallowed by the giant open space. Girls had taken off their shoes to dance, so that their heels wouldn’t sink into the Astroturf. A line of obviously drunk dance team girls threw their arms across each other’s shoulders for a high-kick routine that ended when they fell down on top of each other laughing hysterically. Up in the bleachers brightly clad teens sat in scattered clumps. They looked like one of those tile-strategy games abandoned midway.
Robin Watson had gotten drunker. Her dress was grass-stained and dotted with dirt. She moved unsteadily from person to person, taking their faces in her hands. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” she’d say before moving on and repeating the gesture and apology. Most people laughed at her. A few girls hugged her. One of the guys copped a feel and high-fived his friends. Robin continued to thread her way through the crowd like an overzealous funeral director.
“Yo, partner!” Jeff shouted. He had found a cluster of dancers and was bouncing inside the circle of them. “Get your ass over here and dance.”
“Sorry, partner!” Tahmina shouted back. “I can’t compete with your promalicious moves. I’m gonna make the rounds.”
“You want me to come with?”
“Nah. It’s okay. You dance.”
“You’re all right, partner. This would be awesome cop-bonding shit for our TV show,” Jeff yelled.
“You guys have a show?” a girl asked him.
“Not yet, but when things get back to normal …”
Tahmina walked away from the dancing, the music, the romance and small pockets of drama unfolding on the field, the sad ministrations of Robin Watson. Under the bleachers she passed the two dru
g dealers they’d busted earlier. They were back in business. The smaller one caught her eye and smirked. Tahmina let it go. She walked to the fence and stared out at the desert. The wind had changed direction, and the smoke was not as strong. The night air was clean and a little cool. She wondered if she should go back and bust up the drug trading. After all, she was the law. The law was a lie, she knew now, but it was a necessary lie, a construction that was needed so that everyone felt safe. Like having parents. Believing they would protect you no matter what, that they would bridge the unknowable distance between you and death for as long as possible. But there were no parents anymore, and everyone dancing on that football field had seen death up close. They had seen that it was not always the end, and that there were far worse things to fear than death, things that would not stop just because you said the prayers and fed the fire and kept the laws.
Tahmina took the night-vision goggles out of her pocket and slipped them on. She put her face to the metal cage and looked out toward the Tower of Silence, where the tunnels were. She had first noticed them three weeks ago, faint scars branching off from the burial site in different directions, all of them snaking toward the town. On subsequent visits she’d seen that they were moving, getting closer. In another two weeks, maybe less, the tunnels would reach them. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not even Jeff. What was the point? The law was an illusion. Tahmina would keep that illusion alive for as long as she could.
A loud bang startled Tahmina. She heard a girl’s scream followed by a succession of hard pops like a hail of bullets. Gun in hand, Tahmina raced out onto the football field. Her breath caught as she looked up. The night sky was on fire with strange weeping flowers of colored light. The firecrackers zigzagged up into the dark with an audible hiss before exploding into tiny pinpricks of red, blue, green, and white that burst out yet again into rippling sparks. The crowd roared its approval.
“Hold on. We’re just getting this party started!” Javier shouted over the din. Grinning, he caught Tahmina’s eye. “Sorry. I had an extra box under the bed. You gonna bust me, Officer Hassani?”
They all turned to look at her. Tahmina shook her head. “It’s prom.”
And then everyone was cheering, shouting “Fuck yeah!” Some of the football players nearby hugged her and offered her a beer, which she declined. Tansey Jacobsen threw her arms around Javier’s neck and kissed him hard on the mouth, leaving a bright red smear of lipstick across his cheek when she pulled away.
“Get ready! This is the best one yet.” Javier stood back and lit the tail on another firecracker. It shot straight up. For a split-second nothing happened. Tahmina craned her neck to the sky, anxious for the heat-quickening bang, for the moment of wonder. She couldn’t stand the waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Robin Watson said into the unbearable silence. “I’m sorry.”
And the sky exploded with new light.
About the Authors
LIBBA BRAY is the author of the New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy and is the recipient of the 2010 Michael L. Printz Award for Going Bovine. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and two cats of questionable intelligence. She has always found zombies to be vastly entertaining dinner companions who will eat just about anything, whereas unicorns are vapid bores who complain a lot and never bring good wine. You can visit her online at LibbaBray.com.
MEG CABOT (her last name rhymes with “habit”—as in “her books are habit-forming”) is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-five series and books for both adults and tweens/teens, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide. Visit her website at MegCabot.com.
CASSANDRA CLARE is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of the young adult urban fantasy series The Mortal Instruments. She is also the author of the upcoming prequel trilogy The Infernal Devices. She lives in western Massachusetts with her fiancé and two cats. She was once suckered by a unicorn into a real estate scam in Florida and now she doesn’t trust them. Visit her online at CassandraClare.com.
KATHLEEN DUEY grew up in the Colorado mountains and now lives in Southern California. Kathleen’s young adult trilogy, A Resurrection of Magic, began with Skin Hunger, a 2007 National Book Award Finalist. The second book, Sacred Scars, was a 2009 Cybils finalist. Both books were honored as Kirkus Reviews “Best of YA” picks, featured in Locus, and are on state Teen Read lists. Kathleen is working on the third book now. You can learn more at KathleenDuey.com.
ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON lives and writes in New York City, whose many charms do not include its smells or its weather. She is the author of the Spirit Binders trilogy, the first two books of which are called Racing the Dark and The Burning City. (Book three is in the works.) She has also written the entirely unrelated 1920s vampire novel Moonshine. You can find out more about her on her website: AlayaDawnJohnson.com.
MAUREEN JOHNSON is the bestselling author of several young adult novels, including Suite Scarlett, Scarlett Fever, Devilish, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and its upcoming sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope. She lives in New York City, where she eagerly awaits the zombie apocalypse. You can visit her online at MaureenJohnsonBooks.com.
MARGO LANAGAN has written three short story collections: White Time, Black Juice, and Red Spikes; a novel, Tender Morsels; and a novella, “Sea-Hearts,” published in the anthology X6, edited by Keith Stevenson. She has won three World Fantasy Awards, two Printz Honors, four Aurealis Awards and four Ditmar Awards, and found herself on the shortlists of numerous other awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Shirley Jackson. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia, and is currently working on another novel and a fourth collection. She can be found online at AmongAmidWhile.blogspot.com.
GARTH NIX’s novels include the award-winning fantasies Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen, and the young adult science fiction novel Shade’s Children. His fantasy books for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of the Seventh Tower sequence; and the seven books of the Keys to the Kingdom series. His books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Australian, and his work has been translated into thirty-eight languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children. Learn more at GarthNix.com.
NAOMI NOVIK is the New York Times bestselling author of the Temeraire series and winner of the Campbell Award. She studied English literature and computer science and worked on computer games before writing His Majesty’s Dragon, the first of the Temeraire novels. Her latest, Tongues of Serpents, is the sixth. Naomi lives in New York City with her husband and six eight a large number of computers. Her website and LiveJournal are at Temeraire.org.
DIANA PETERFREUND is the author of the four books in the Ivy League series, as well as Rampant and Ascendant, two books about killer unicorns and the kick-ass girls who hunt them. She lives in Washington D.C., so she has first-hand knowledge that zombies aren’t as scary as folks think they are. Visit her website: DianaPeterfreund.com.
CARRIE RYAN is the author of two novels set decades after the zombie apocalypse: The Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead-Tossed Waves. The third in the trilogy, The Dark and Hollow Places, will be released in Spring 2011. She lives with her husband in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they are not at all prepared for the inevitable zombie uprising. Visit her website: CarrieRyan.com.
SCOTT WESTERFELD is the author of many novels for both adults and teenagers, including the Uglies, Midnighters, and Leviathan series, and a vampire-zombie apocalypse duology, Peeps and The Last Days. He keeps well-stocked bunkers in both New York City and Sydney, Australia. Visit him online at ScottWesterfeld.com.
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