A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  I look at the Elder in the middle and smile.

  He clears his throat. “State your name, zombie.”

  11

  The Zombie Pledge

  IWINCE, NOT only at his dagger-sharp voice but at being called a zombie by a true zombie. “Madison Emily Swift, sir.”

  Behind each Elder stands a Sentinel, erect as a two-by-four and ever wary, like we’re at some fancy restaurant and each Elder has his very own personal butler. The Sentinel behind the Elder who asked my name types the answer into a laptop no bigger than most cell phones. The Elders may look last century, but at least their technology is cutting-edge.

  “How long?” asks the Elder in the middle, who must be the ringleader.

  “I turned last night, sir. I didn’t, well, I didn’t know about any of …this …until my zombie friends explained everything to me. We got here as soon as we could.”

  “Ignorance is no excuse,” the Elder on the end says, wheezing.

  “I know that now, sir.”

  He nods, satisfied. So does the Elder in the middle of the table, licking his lips with a dry, dead tongue.

  Though every muscle of my head and neck wants me to look away, I look straight ahead and smile back.

  With a voice as dry as crackling paper, the main Elder asks, “How much did your friends tell you, Madison Emily Swift?”

  “Just, well, that there are rules, laws I must abide by. And those rules and laws are in this book.” I hold up my own personal copy of The Guide to the Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies, 24th Edition.

  He croaks, “Laws are all we have, Madison Emily Swift.”

  His fellow Elders murmur, a few of them nodding so severely I think some heads are going to roll, literally.

  “Laws, Ms. Swift, are all that separate us from the Zerkers.”

  I raise my hand, and the main Elder smiles. Or, I think it’s a smile; either that or his jaw shifted. (I hope he’ll be all right.) “What are …Zerkers?” I ask.

  There’s a slight change in the room; the Sentinels behind each Elder stiffen, the Elders themselves seem to puff up slightly and, finally, the main Elder says, “The Zerkers are the worst of the zombies, Ms. Swift. That’s why we don’t even call them zombies. Zombies can talk, reason, drive, think, communicate, read that book you’re holding, and …care. Zerkers care about only one thing: brains. About feeding their insatiable need for electricity. Read The Guide, Ms. Swift; read The Guide and you will know all you need to know about the Zerkers and how it is every zombie’s duty to wipe them out, one by one.”

  I nod, clutching The Guide for good measure.

  The Council nods, too, and one of them, the one with the powder gray wig says, “Stand, now, and repeat after us.”

  I stand, tempted to put my hand over my heart, but I scan the gym and there is no flag in sight. Instead I kind of hug The Guide to the Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies, 24th Edition like a Bible to my heart as the main Elder says, “I, Madison Emily Swift …”

  Slowly the others join him until the voices, old and creaky and wheezy as they are, sound like one, and I repeat them after each pause.

  “I, Madison Emily Swift …”

  “Do hereby solemnly swear …”

  “To uphold the zombie laws and regulations as published in The Guide …”

  “To the best of my ability …”

  Then comes the final line: “Under penalty of death.”

  “Under …penalty …of death?”

  The Council of Elders stands, with a little (okay, a lot of) help from the Sentinels behind them. With veiny hands that look more like Halloween party props, they manage a bony, mostly silent golf clap as I bow.

  The four Sentinels who brought me in lead me gently back outside. I turn back around before we exit through the double gym doors. The Elders are still staring at me, smiling with their skeletal jaws, some of them still clapping until, at last, their Sentinels guide them slowly, very slowly, away from the table.

  12

  Ambushed

  WHAT’S A ZERKER?” I ask when we’re nearly home. Beyond the dusty windshield of Dane’s truck, the sun begins to rise.

  Dane and Chloe share one of their “how could she be so stupid?” glances.

  Dane says, “Didn’t the Council explain Zerkers to you?”

  “Of course they did,” I say, “but obviously not well enough. I thought I’d eat some brains, hang out with you guys, get used to being celibate for the rest of my life, and that would be that. Now I find out there are these Zerker characters that aren’t like regular zombies. That we’re supposed to hunt them down and eliminate them. What’s up with that?”

  “They’re not just ‘not like’ regular zombies, Maddy,” Dane explains gravely as he signals to turn off the interstate and onto Marlin Way, the main road into Barracuda Bay. “They’re not zombies, period.”

  “Well, what makes a regular zombie a regular zombie then?”

  Dane looks at Chloe.

  Chloe rubs her eyes. “The same thing that makes a kid get to school on time, or follow the rules, or not drown live kittens: a conscience. Regular zombies are like regular people, only dead, reanimated regular people. Zerkers have no conscience; they don’t read The Guide; they don’t visit the Elders, register with the Book of the Dead, or follow the rules.”

  “Why not?”

  Dane says, “The thing about Zerkers is, they aren’t personally reanimated; they’re turned.”

  “Huh?”

  “Take you, for example,” Dane says. “You wake up yesterday morning, all was right with the world. You go to school, eat your lunch, gossip with Hazel; you’re the All-American Girl. But for whatever reason you stupidly decide to go jogging in a thunderstorm and, zap, you’re struck by lightning. That’s Reanimation in the First Degree. You, personally, received a pure dose of millions of volts of electricity and went from being alive to being undead. However it happened to us—to you, to me, to Chloe—we were all three Reanimated in the First Degree.”

  “Zerkers,” says Chloe, “aren’t born; they’re made. In other words, some zombie who was Reanimated in the First Degree turned them. So they’re not born of pure energy; they’re Reanimated in the Second Degree.”

  “Sort of like when a vampire turns one of us, and we’re never as strong as he is, or powerful, or—?”

  “Not quite,” Dane says with a sour expression. “For one, there are no vampires. What are you, crazy? That’s pure fiction. Second, Zerkers are usually more powerful than we are because rather than ordering animal brains from Harvey at the all-night deli, they get them straight from the source.”

  “What, like, the cattle processing plant?”

  “More like some poor soul’s skull,” Chloe says. “Zerkers rob fresh graves; they dig up the dead; and, when they’re feeling really destructive, they feed on the living, too.”

  “You mean, Zerkers kill …people? Like, real, live …human people?”

  “Not just human people, Maddy.” Chloe rubs the spot between her eyes right above her nose. “Zerkers like to stalk people; they actually enjoy killing people. They pick somebody close to them, say, a neighbor, or a cashier at their favorite grocery store—”

  “Or someone in their Home Ec class,” Dane says pointedly, but I’m too overwhelmed, too shocked, to process that particular scenario.

  “Or someone in Home Ec class,” Chloe continues. “And they’ll toy with them for awhile, you know, like a cat with a mouse. Stalk them for a few days, bump into them in class, pop in on them in the graveyard—any of this sounding familiar yet? Anyway, they basically try to scare the pants off of them, and then when this person—or student—can’t take it anymore, when their brain is literally frazzled, the Zerker strikes, chomp, and …good-bye, brain.”

  Dane takes over. “They say the hunt, the chase—all that fear—makes the brain more electrified so that when they finally crack open their victim’s skull and scoop it out, the brain is twice as powerful as if they’d snuck up on some
body and conked them over the head.”

  Suddenly I’m thinking of Hazel, of all those empty seats in Home Ec, of the Curse—and who might really be behind it. “Who would do such a thing?” I ask, not really expecting an answer.

  Dane slams on the brakes and the truck fishtails, the end swinging around to the left as we dig into a slide in the middle of the road. I look to see what made Dane brake, only to see Bones and Dahlia standing in the middle of the road.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Chloe says, flinging open her passenger side door and leaping into the road before the truck has even stopped moving. “You’re looking at ‘em.”

  “Fancy meeting you three here.” Bones cackles, rubbing his large, pale hands together like he’s getting ready to dig into an all-you-can-eat brains buffet.

  Beside him, Dahlia looks petite but powerful in her all-black outfit and higher-than-normal heels. Under the waning moonlight, their skin is almost porcelain white, the hollows under their eyes deep pools of sadness, fear, and death.

  “What do you want, Bones?” Dane says, rising from the truck almost casually and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chloe. There’s a relaxed but practiced manner to their movements, like maybe they’ve done this before. I join them on the road, hanging slightly back, just in case.

  Bones takes a step toward me. “Why, what we’ve wanted all along, Dane. Her, of course.”

  Chloe steps in front of me while Dane moves to my side. “Nice try,” Chloe says. “She’s already been assimilated, Bones. You’re too late, as usual.”

  “Assimilated,” Dahlia says, as if she’s uttering a curse word. “Like that matters.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter to you Zerkers,” Dane shouts, “but it matters to us zombies.”

  “Please.” Bones stands his ground, his white track suit shiny and his eyes grim under his soft white ski cap. “Let the Elders make their rules and we’ll make ours. You’re in Barracuda Bay now, Dane. The Elders can’t help you here.”

  “Maybe the Elders can’t, Bones, but the Sentinels sure can.”

  Bones and Dahlia laugh.

  “The Sentinels.” Bones mocks. “The Keystone Cops is more like it; they couldn’t catch a Zerker with two hands tied behind his back.”

  “Or her back,” Dahlia says indignantly.

  “Too right,” says Bones distractedly. “Too right. Besides, we’re through playing nice. Give us the girl, or the Truce is off.”

  “What Truce?” Dane says, spittle flying from his mouth as he steps forward threateningly. “You think we’re blind, Bones? You think we don’t know what’s been going on around here?”

  Bones opens his mouth, and a scary smile spreads across his stiff, white face. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

  “The students, Bones,” Chloe says. Then she starts ticking them off one by one, as if she’s crawled inside my head and onto my bedroom wall and is reading them off my very own grave rubbings. “Amy Jaspers. Sally Kellogg. And now Missy Cunningham. Are you guys that stupid? It’s not bad enough you go cracking skulls in Barracuda Bay High School, but you have to pick them all from the same class? You didn’t think anybody would notice?”

  Dahlia smiles, giving nothing—and everything—away. “So what if we did crack a few skulls, Chloe? Like we told your little friend there, they were girls nobody would miss. I mean, it’s not like they were popular or anything. And even if they were, what are you going to do about it?”

  Chloe takes a step toward Bones. “Maybe we can’t do anything about it on our own, but the Elders sure can—”

  Bones shouts, “Enough with the Elders. So what if we broke the Truce? So what if a few local girls have a few …accidents? Nobody’s putting two and two together; nobody’s come asking questions, and the Elders couldn’t care less. We want the girl, Dane, and we want her now. If you don’t hand her over right now, there will be consequences.”

  “Not happening, Bones,” Chloe shouts just as loudly. “And if you break the Truce again, know this: there will be consequences.”

  Bones and Dahlia look at each other and shrug.

  “Don’t say we didn’t warn you, zombies,” Bones says as he retreats back into the woods near the side of the road.

  “Just remember, Maddy,” Dahlia whispers forcefully before following Bones. “They can’t protect you all the time. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to face us alone. And then whose empty stool will Hazel be staring at in Home Ec?”

  13

  Cloudy with a Chance of Gray Matter

  WE’RE ALL STILL silent when Dane pulls the truck onto Pompano Lane. A few houses before ours, I say, “Here’s fine,” and he stops; no arguing, no fussing, just applies the brakes.

  I move to my left to get out of the passenger side, but Chloe is showing no signs of moving anytime soon. Although I have all of eternity stretching out in front of me, I’m still pretty impatient to get out of this truck once and for all tonight.

  Dane sighs and slides out of the driver’s seat. He extends a hand to help me out, and I take it, feeling once again how cold it is.

  “Is mine that cold, too?” I ask self-consciously.

  He nods slowly, almost like he’s embarrassed to admit it. “Here’s the thing I’ve found, though,” he whispers. “If I’m going to meet someone new, and I know it ahead of time, I rub my hands together for a few minutes first or, if that’s going to be too obvious, I’ll sit on them; that way at least they warm up enough not to raise suspicions.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” I say sincerely.

  Then there’s this awkward little moment when we’re both still standing there, with no reason to be and nothing to say. The sky is turning a kind of amber as the veil of darkness lifts and the blue of morning takes its place.

  It’s quite beautiful, actually, and the stark light causes dramatic shadows to form under Dane’s prominent cheekbones. They’re so beautiful I want to touch them, and I almost reach out a hand to, but then …I don’t.

  And just like that, the moment is over. He climbs into the truck and slides away without a sound.

  I watch them drive off and then hear a quick blurt of brakes followed by a low whirr of reverse as the truck swings back into view. Dane backs up, slows to a stop, and holds out the little cooler through the window.

  “Don’t forget your brains.” He smiles before driving off again.

  As I round the corner, I’m crossing my fingers that Dad will have been called out on an early run and his car won’t be there and, and …there it is, snug and sound. At least when I get in he’s in the shower, singing some old ‘80s pop song at the top of his lungs, which gives me time to unload the brains, empty the cooler, hide it in the garage, and prepare to be totally, thoroughly disgusted.

  The brains are cold (thanks for all that ice, Dane) and big, much bigger than I’d imagined them to be. Harvey has sliced them up nice and thick. I cut off what looks like a pound of brains onto a paper plate. Then I look at it and think, Okay, no.

  I mean, not that I won’t eat the brains—because I have to, right? But …brain accessories, please? I know I’m not supposed to cook them; I get that part, but The Guide doesn’t say anything about not using spices or herbs.

  So naturally I dash on a little light soy sauce for good measure, throw on some things I find in the spice cabinet over the stove: oregano, thyme, salt, pepper from a grinder—you know, all the Food Channel basics. There’s some crushed garlic in the fridge, a little relish to go on top of that, some olives, and a tube of sesame seeds, until, finally, it looks like the poor little pound of brains is wearing a spice helmet.

  So I stop and even scrape off a few of the dozen or so garlic mounds, swirl the seasonings around, and …chomp. Now, here’s the thing about brains: they’re chewy. And not like fun, sweet, enjoyably chipper bubble gum chewy, either.

  Like, gristle chewy; plastic-straw chewy; piece-of-shell-in-your-crab-salad chewy; shoelace-tip chewy (not that I would know, but still, you catch my drift).

&n
bsp; And as for the taste? Kind of earthy; you know, like liver pâté or dark meat when you’re having seconds of Thanksgiving turkey and it’s all that’s left because your stupid uncle Harvey is a pig and the hostess, your aunt Harriet, is too cheap to buy a bird big enough for eight people.

  Now, the brain’s an organ, right? So why shouldn’t it be chewy? Still, chewy or not, once I start chewing, I can’t stop; I mean, suddenly I realize I haven’t eaten any human food since my grilled cheese sandwich the night before and I. Am. Famished.