Girl on a Tombstone

by Mia Strange

  People got bit.

  Zombies escaped.

  Lately? Too damn much.

  Still, our crumbling society now hung on to the zombies for as long as we could. At first it was the, run—like—hell—for—the—cure. We even had those little loop ribbons to wear. Charcoal gray ones, complete with silver sparkles. But as our infrastructure disintegrated, and lethal, brutal, power struggles began, the race turned into more like a slow shuffle.

  And now? Under Gov—care? Zombies it seemed had their uses.

  They were used for labor. Dangerous labor no thinking human would ever do.

  They were used for gruesome, illegal sport.

  They were gambled away, traded, sold— collected even. The ‘sickness’ of our new society ran deeper than simply the environment.

  Zombies were used for Gov—sanctioned parties around Halloween, and ended up as the last log on the bonfire. Some were used for fuel along the railways, shoveled into engine furnaces by the thousands. Zombies burned hot and quick, but the gases emitted from the rotting dead were unstable. Unpredictable. Explosions happened. People died. Dr. Dark would never use them for our engine. Never. He couldn’t stomach it. None of us could.

  Plus, we didn’t need them. We had our own specialized fuel for our engine. A trapped and dangerous demon, named Darius. Where we would have liked to say we ran on hellfire and brimstone and the raw, ragged, rage of a demon—because how cool would that be—it was more like Darius and a snow shovel, and didn’t I just love the irony of that, plus a boatload of coal. The demon saved his hellfire for other plans.

  Like frying anyone he didn’t like.

  Which was just about everyone. Especially when he lost a poker hand.

  Which is why he stayed in the engine, you know, the place being fireproof and all.

  But he was our demon, our second, and most important clue collected to solve the puzzle of our dying earth. And Darius knew his role in the puzzle, knew he was an integral, unreplaceable piece. After all, how can you continue to be a demon, when there is no stage to play on? That ‘stage’ being earth.

  So, Darius stayed. As an honorary member of the Troupe. Albeit a dangerous one. And he was not to be trusted. So, the engine room, stayed locked. From the outside.

  Just another of the Academy’s many secrets.

  A flashback reeled through my brain like an antique super 8 film, a scratched and faded homemade movie in black and white, where my best friend and her family starred in a bad horror flick. You know. The one where the family gets eaten by zombies. But for me it hadn’t been movie magic. It had been real life. I shuddered.

  “Nope. Zombies. Never a part of my world,” I repeated. I let my head rest against The Bone Man’s chest. I continued to pant through the pain.

  “Come on, Phil,” The Bone Man said. “Don’t let little ol’ Skye hurt your feelings. She’s always cranky when I find her like this.” He whistled, low and long, and the ants started to march. The Bone Man began to hum a tune about ants marching one by one, as Phil chomped his way through a thigh bone. Raising his head to the tune, Phil followed the soft glow of the path the ants laid out in front of us, and shuffled through the door.

  “Where we goin’?” I whispered with a voice that was fading fast. Along with my vision. And my strength. And my life.

  “Come on, Skye. You know the answer. You’re going to the only guy on this rotting planet that can save you.”

  “Ah, Dr. Dark,” I said. “My savior. Yet again.” My eyelids, now too heavy to stay open fluttered closed. “He’s going to be pissed ya know.”

  The Bone Man sighed before he whispered softly, with words I could tell he did not mean for me to hear.

  “Only if you die, Skye St John. Only if you die.”

  I felt the magic trailing after us, hidden in soft streams of what I knew would be wondrous colored steam. I could smell it. Sweet then sour. Breathe it. Refreshing yet suffocating. And oh man, could I feel it. Warming, and then suddenly, in a single heartbeat, bone—chilling. The magic gave, the magic took away. It promised, it reneged. The cycle continued. Why?

  I thought the magic must be like me. Raw. Wild. Unfiltered. Untrusting. Hey? What about crazy? Maybe. I felt my dry lips rise in a half smile at my little joke.

  But most importantly? I now knew where the magic lived. In the steam.

  Free to go wherever it wanted, go to whomever it wanted. Mm. So maybe, not so much like me after all. The magic was free, and I of course, the chaos girl that had to stay hidden, wasn’t.

  What would people give for this knowledge? The knowledge of magic living in the steam. How much more blood would be spilled to obtain the impossible? To control the magic, to harness the steam. How do you capture the wind in a bottle? Call the tides to the shore? How, as my mother used to say, do you lasso the moon? How?

  I felt the magic reach out to caress me and once again ruffle my blood—caked hair. I felt its power. Power people would kill for.

  I knew without looking, the magic floated around the ankles of The Bone Man and the soon—to—turn—complete—monster, Zombie Phil. It walked with us, guided us, and kept watch. Magic moved in and out of our little parade of blackened—tin and copper pathway ants, sometimes lifting their little hindquarters right off the pavement. And when that happened, the magic giggled, like a preteen school girl. And only I could hear it. But why? Why now? And, when it reached out and touched my cheek, I couldn’t help but wonder, why me?

  Once again as I hovered between the thin veil of life and death, I wondered if the three of us, all members of Dr. Dark’s Traveling Troupe of Oddities, Misfits, and Freaks, would make it in time to save my life. And if we didn’t? This time? Would I really care?

  After all, when it came to oddities, misfits, and freaks, I held the undisputed title.

  And sometimes, like right now, through all this pain and gore and misery, magic or not, the title was just too damn hard to bear.

  4

  As we made our way out into the deserted, debris— ridden street, the Georgetown Morgue faded into darkness. But its shadow, enhanced by the midnight moon, cast the building in a silhouette that yawned far ahead of us…black, scary, threatening— silent.

  The morgue had been listed on the Seattle Historic Registry, an obscure fact that most people didn’t care about anymore. Dr. Dark cared. Therefore, we had to care. “Call it a history lesson,” he’d said. “You need to know this.”

  “Why?” I had asked.

  “You know the answer. It’s always the same. What you don’t know—”

  “Will kill you,” I chimed in. And okay. Thirteen—year—old me might have rolled my eyes at the time. And now? Of course, I could see, he may be right.

  The Georgetown Morgue almost killed me. Almost. I hated the place, and really, why shouldn’t I? With evil that seeped through walls, dripped from metal drawers along cold stainless slabs until it bore under my skin, there was nothing historical to love.

  I could still hear the echo of the clanking and grinding of metal drawers, opening. Opening. Opening. . .

  I nudged The Bone Man with a sharp elbow. “Hurry.”

  “Ow,” he said. “I liked you better unconscious.”

  “Just saying. Something’s wrong here. Plus, I pretty much hate this place.”

  “You were warned.”

  “Okay. You get an A+ in Site History. I on the other hand, almost died in there. Now if we were graded on pass/fail, I might skate by on location and—”

  “Fail,” interrupted The Bone Man. “Big—ass fail.”

  “Okay. ‘Cause I so needed that pointed out to me.”

  “Truth hurts, right?” He laughed.

  “Funny. But seriously? I’d like some distance from that creep show behind me. In a hurry.”

  “Come on, Sky. Paranoid much?”

  The Bone Man tripped on a gaping crack in the asphalt and went down hard on one knee. I gasped, holding my ribs. The ants stopped. Phil turned, cocked his head and drooled. The
Bone Man sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Sorry,” he said as he struggled to stand. I knew without asking that his fine pinstriped pants were torn. His knee would be gouged and skinned. I smelled the unmistakable scent of fresh blood. Now we were both bleeding. Guilt threaded its suffocating fingers around my heart, and squeezed.

  “No,” I said in a raspy, raw voice. “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll find a better place to hide.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Or a better place to die.”

  “You’ve woken up in worse places,” The Bone Man said regaining his footing. “Remember the Dumpster in Denver? You smelled for days.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the reminder.” What could I say? It was the truth.

  Still, thanks to the Georgetown Morgue, with its bloody past and moments of complete insanity, I was for lack of a better explanation, just creeped out. And yet? I now knew about the magic. A big plus.

  “A miracle for our times,” I could hear Dr. Dark say. “And be careful, that knowledge alone could kill you.”

  “Yeah, Dark,” I whispered. “If it hasn’t already.”

  I looked ahead at the jagged shadows of the crumbling twin smokestacks of the crematorium that crawled along the ground. The shadows seemed to move. “Go away,” I said.

  The Bone Man looked down at me and raised a pierced white eyebrow.

  I twisted in his arms, and I could see the glint of a mirror mounted on the roof of the morgue, a mirror where the keepers of the burning dead had watched the smoke, making sure it wasn’t too black. Who knew there was a right and wrong way for crematorium smoke to look? Dr. Dark did. ‘Too much information,’ I had told him during my Site History lesson. “Too morbid.”

  And really, I’d thought at the time, who in the hell needs to know this stuff?

  Well, I guess I did.

  Because the smoke now coming out of the twin stacks, pausing here and there to dance in front of the moon, was black. Jet black. Which was so not possible. It’s not like it was a working facility anymore. See? Creepy? Nope, I wouldn’t be back to the Georgetown Morgue. Not even dead.

  I collapsed in The Bone Man’s arms once again. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The Bone Man nodded eyeing the moving shadows ahead of us. “For once we agree. Totally.”

  Steam escaped from an old corroded manhole, floating in the moonlight, making the chimney shadows look like long, black, withering snakes. A light Seattle acid rain began to fall. It mingled with the steam, shrouding us in mist.

  Our planet didn’t get clear, sweet rainfall anymore, hadn’t for over a decade. We got variations of pollutants, mixed in acid rain, along with dreary dark clouds that were a constant. Always present, always threatening, always willing to sprinkle us with a little more poison. And on nights like this? Where the moon is full and magic is about? Maybe a lot more poison. Thus, the goggles. You had to protect the eyes. And we never left home, our railcars, without them.

  I couldn’t remember the details, but I knew I had fought bloody hard to keep mine. And, pressing on my knife wound, I knew how well that worked out. I sighed. In this world of ours, owning a pair of goggles was a must. There were no more rainbows or hints of sunshine. No more crystal drops of sparkling dew. And the promise of bright, aqua blue skies, died the day our earth’s core cracked and oozed and bled.

  Plus, you could never count out the zombies. They always go for the eyes.

  As we made our way, the steam magic followed. I hung my arm over The Bone Man’s and trailed my fingertips through it. Soft, seductive, and feathering, the magic was like the press of a lovers kiss. A kiss I had only dreamed about.

  It was false comfort.

  False because nothing in our world was like it should be.

  And false because I could make out twelve shadows, where there should be only three.

  Hey. I may be bleeding to death, but I could still do simple math. Our three shadows subtracted from twelve, left nine. Nine shadows that shouldn’t be there. How is it possible this shit night that had just slid past midnight, could get any worse?

  Guess I was about to find out.

  Our three shadows moved along with us. Twisting and waving like clothes on a line. My shadow was a set of dangling legs and booted feet, hanging from a towering, distorted form of a man so thin, he looked like a stick figure drawing on a child’s notebook.

  Zombie Phil’s shadow shuffled ahead, lumbering at the same uneven pace that was quintessential Phil. The shadow had detached from the zombie, not wanting to be part of him anymore. I couldn’t blame it. Zombie Phil had no soul now. And it was as if the shadow knew it.

  The soul was lost as soon as the bite was inflicted. That much had been well documented. Souls took flight after a bite, immediately. Always. The phenomenon had even been caught on video, before video had disappeared, along with so much other technology. But it was well known. Documented once upon a time, in living color, playing over and over, on YouTube. Zombies were soulless. That was that. End of story.

  I sighed. Guess I needn’t worry about meeting Phil in hell. A soul was after all, not only your get in free ticket, but a requirement.

  I watched the other nine shadows. They didn’t move. This was not good.

  They loomed ahead of us. Forming a wall of sorts. Nine black figures standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting. Just waiting.

  So. Not escaping smoke after all. Escaping ghosts.

  Waiting for us.

  “Babe. You awake? We got us a Shade roadblock.”

  “Awake. And even if I weren’t? The ‘Babe’ thing would have got me there. “Keep it up and I will kick your butt, even if I have to get a ladder to do it.”

  “Just trying to get your attention. You know, the waking you up slowly kind of thing before you get swallowed up by Shades.”

  I used what little strength I had and lifted my head higher, squinting at the inky forms ahead.

  Exhausted, I dropped back into the crook of his arm. I managed a half smile. “Appreciate it. A girl always likes a heads up just before she dies. Gives her time to put on a little lip gloss for the last big show, ya know?”

  He chuckled. Nice to know The Bone Man had kept his sense of humor in the face of impending doom. I was not being dramatic here. The diva attitude in me? Long gone.

  Oh, with a Shade there would be drama all right. But not the kind that allowed me to pout, toss my hair and have a bit of fun like I did on stage. No. One Shade was serious business. Deadly business.

  And we were facing nine.

  Great.

  I pressed back into The Bone Man’s arms and shook my head. “I felt ghosts in the morgue. I hoped I was wrong.”

  “I just wish it were only ghosts.” The Bone Man shook his head.

  “Me too,” I whispered back.

  “Just when I thought the worst of this night might be over. Skye? I’m not gonna lie. You used to be a lot more fun.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Tell me.”

  The Bone Man whistled low for the ants. Their tiny metal feet stopped short, their little antennas with the soft yellow glow, turned off one by one. The Bone Man’s second whistle was for Phil. Earsplittingly painful, the shrill sound pierced the night, tearing down the deserted street and echoing through empty buildings. I swear, it sounded like it bounced off the moon and back again. I cupped my ears and squeezed my eyes shut against the sharp pain that invaded my brain. It felt like a hot tattoo needle jabbing into my temples.

  It was a zombie call.

  And no one did the call better than The Bone Man.

  But of course, Phil kept going. Because, well, that’s what Phil does. The Troupe had often joked about Phil not being the fastest shuffler in the horde. The Bone Man shook his head. I rolled my eyes, plugged my ears, took a deep breath, and yelled, really yelled, for maybe the last time in my rapidly fading life.

  “Phil. Get your saggy, gray butt over here.” Phil stopped, turned, and headed back toward us. I collapsed back into The Bone Man’s arms, panting. �
�That hurt,” I said, gasping for breath. “That really, really hurt.”

  “It worked.” The Bone Man grinned down at me. “Here he comes. I’ve always said he has a crush on you. Look. He’s jogging.”

  Zombie Phil? Jogging? This I had to see. I struggled to raise my head for a look. Phil was so not jogging. He shuffled toward us with that endearing limp of his, caused by his left foot that turned out at a ninety—degree angle. He stopped to pick up a rock, tried to eat it, and broke a tooth.

  “Aw, Phil,” said The Bone Man. “You cannot afford to lose anymore teeth, buddy.” Phil dropped the rock and continued toward us. I looked ahead at the ominous black figures that blocked our way.

  Guess I had disappointed the Shades by not dying. Or at the very least, I had said something that pissed them off. Must have been when I was delirious, swearing up an old school blue streak. Okay. Not so delirious. I really had to work on my personality. This one wasn’t working out too well.

  It was one thing to piss off the living. But now the dead? Come on. Guess I might need a little guidance. I wondered if Miss Manners was still around. No. I think I’d heard somewhere she’d been eaten by a zombie back east. Now that’s, just rude.

  Still, love me or hate me, why couldn’t the Shades just stay put? Why were they out of the morgue and here on the street? Did they think this was a road trip? Did they think they could just tag along?

  You know what? No.

  Just no. This was my party. An admittedly bad one, true. But no one invited them. They didn’t even have faces to remember them by.

  Plus, I’d been terrorized enough for one night. As if getting knifed and practically bleeding to death wasn’t bad enough. But that didn’t change the danger I was in. And it wasn’t just me anymore. The danger we were all in.

  And whose fault was that? I shook my head.

  “I’m so sorry, Bone Man,” I said.

  “I know,” He sighed. “I know.”

  “Does it help to know I’d do the same for you?”

  He gave me a halfhearted smile. Still, we both knew he was much too level—headed to get us into a mess like this. And he was too good a friend, to point it out.