A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Dane looks unconvinced until Stamp says, “Yeah, my folks took me to Universal Studios a few years ago. They have a whole part of the theme park designated for monsters and makeup effects from the movies. You know, the Mummy, Terminator, Beetlejuice, the Wolfman. We could get jobs there, be a part of the show, not even need to ‘pass’ because we’d already look the part.”

  Dane cracks a smile. “Monsters playing monsters. I like the sound of that. Maddy, we just passed mile marker 23 on Interstate 75. How far are we from there?”

  I look at the map, moving my finger backward until we’re just shy of Tampa. “It’s 70, 80 miles tops. Start looking for signs for Interstate 4 going east, and according to the map it should take us right in.”

  Dane puts on his blinker, although there’s not another car in sight this late at night, gets in the right lane, and turns onto I-4 a few miles later. The road signs for Orlando pop up almost immediately, the billboards a mile or so after that. Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and about a million hotels. I think of a sea of tourists, Hawaiian shirts and sunburns, flip-flops and black socks, camera straps and floppy sun hats, and I smile.

  It sounds like the kind of place you could easily get lost in, like the kind of place no one would ask too many questions. The kind of place where a handful of zombies could start over, make a life, and hide out from the Sentinels.

  At least, for awhile.

  I look at Stamp, who’s smiling, and Dane, who’s also smiling.

  At least, for awhile.

  Then the reality of our situation seems to creep in, and the smile fades; the fear returns.

  In between glances at his rearview mirror, Dane looks at me, trying to put on a brave face. But I know the look in his eyes, I can see the fear lurking there, and eventually he quits smiling altogether.

  For now, at least, the romantic danger in the truck gives way to the immediate danger of armed Sentinels in pursuit. Instinctively I kind of pull away from Dane and slide my hand out of Stamp’s grip (he’s so preoccupied he barely notices). The anxiety is there, buried deep, but it’s a bridge I can’t cross right now—no matter who I end up running to on the other side.

  As the bright lights of Orlando dawn on the horizon, as the sunny billboards promise “hours of fun” and “days of escape,” I see our young, grim faces in a harsher light reflecting back from the windshield. We may be heading in a new direction, but the past is on our heels. And from the look on Dane’s face, it’s only a matter of time before it catches up with us.

  Dedication

  To Martha, as always, who taught me how to believe in my dreams, even if they shuffled along and ate brains for breakfast!

  Published 2013 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 2013 by Rusty Fischer

  Cover design by James Tampa

  Edited by Emily Steele

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  ISBN# 9781605426501

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the support of the many, many (surprisingly many, actually) bloggers, reviewers, librarians, teens, and fellow authors out there who spread the word as its predecessor, Zombies Don’t Cry, was birthed into this world in April of 2011.

  I have been constantly, utterly, and gratefully amazed by the support and enthusiasm of you fine folks and wanted to thank you all—you know who you are—for asking for a sequel.

  You know what they say: Be careful what you wish for!

  Prologue

  Making Up Is Hard to Do

  The monster creeps toward me, bony white arms extended, long cracked nails painted black to match his soulless eyes.

  I strain against the ancient leather straps that bind my throat, my wrists, my ankles. I clutch a short piece of wire I’ve stripped from the rusty bed-springs poking into my back.

  The monster groans as it shuffles in giant shoes and short pants, its hideous white ankles draped in drooping black dress socks: the Living Dead Businessman from Hell.

  He peers not into my eyes but at my throat: raw, exposed, and long-since dead.

  I squirm, fiddling with the stiff wire until it slides into the rusty padlock at my side and, with a quiet click, announces my freedom.

  With my hands loose, I quickly unlock the bonds at my throat and ankles. I slide off the creaking mattress just as Frankenstein Jr. reaches me. He growls, louder now, swinging his long arms, licking his headstone-yellow teeth.

  I laugh as I inch toward the front door. Its frosted window says Laboratory backward in peeling big block letters.

  I easily pick the old-fashioned brass lock and swing the door open just in time to feel hands around my neck. I stumble back, escaping the weak grasp. Now what?

  In the room are two shuffling creatures. One is tall and looming. The other is my height but hulky. Both are hell-bent on my ultimate destruction.

  Frantically I search the shelves and tables lining the back wall of the ancient lab. All I find are rows and rows of dusty, odd-shaped beakers and flasks locked away. I need some type of weapon.

  Meanwhile two pairs of giant feet straggle in my direction. I peer back to see the pursuers’ mouths agape. Their teeth are broken. Their hands are outstretched.

  I hold up my quivering piece of rusty wire. It’s pitiful in the light of day. It’s harmless, except to this 100-year-old padlock in front of me. The lock clatters down, and I reach for the nearest beaker, dropping it. I pivot on one bare foot and watch it shatter to the floor. The liquid hisses and spits smoke. I’m engulfed in a whirl of thick fog and …

  END SCENE.

  The lights go up, the small midday crowd roars its approval, and on either side of me Stamp and Dane doff their ghoulish Frankenstein Jr. masks. The guys bow dramatically and wink at the family of chubby English tourists sitting in the front row.

  The ushers hand out our cheesy black-and-white head shots, and we autograph a few. The three of us in costume mug for the cameras.

  The last of the crowd file out of the small, musty auditorium and into the bright Florida sunlight.

  I shove Stamp playfully as he tugs off his latex monster gloves. “Maybe you can break both my feet next show. I could use a week or two off.”

  He smiles, shouldering me as we head toward the tiny dressing room just off the wooden stage to the left. “Maybe you should mind your marks”—he gives me that toothy grin—”and your toes will stay out of trouble.”

  “You were both off your marks,” Dane growls as he slumps into the scarred wooden chair in front of his vanity mirror. With a tissue he swipes the grease paint from around his eyes. He carefully folds the blackened sheet and sets it on the trash overflowing from the can at his feet.

  “Sorry, De Niro.” Stamp leaves on his heavy black eye shadow for effect ‘cause that’s how he rolls these days. “It’s kind of hard to see with a 10-pound mask on your head, but I guess it’s easier for you since you have no hair to weigh you down.”

  Dane sneers, but Stamp is already up and putting on a gray hoodie to hide most of his pale face. He steps into the suede slippers he’ll wear until he has to get back into his giant Frankenstein shoes for our next show in less than an hour.

  He zips up the hoodie, and I marvel at how he’s taken to the Afterlife so quickly. Not that I’m much older among the undead, but still. It’s been four months since the Fall Formal that killed him, and he hardly looks a day older. But then, I suppose th
at’s the point of being undead; you never actually get any older.

  Sure, his skin’s a little grayer, his eyes a little darker, his teeth vaguely yellow—but apart from that, he could be the hot guy with a (really) bad cold at any high school in the country. His little trademark Superman curl is gone, but he’s still got all his hair. He mousses it messy, finger combing it over his broad, unlined forehead. “To look younger,” as he puts it.

  In the mirror I see him fiddling with the hoodie’s zipper, his long, pale fingers fluttering while he sneaks a peek at my back. I resist a wink, partly because Dane is there but partly because, let’s face it, I’ve never been very good at winking.

  Stamp looks toward the employee exit.

  “Is Greta on break already?” Dane’s chair is facing mine. Clearly he’s been watching me watch Stamp. “I thought the puppet show didn’t get off until one.”

  “Greta’s training the new girl this week,” Stamp says abruptly, probably eager to get to his new squeeze or just away from us, “so her schedule’s a little more flexible.” He walks toward the door.

  Dane nods and says for the thousandth time, “Be careful. Just because we didn’t check in with the Elders and just because the Sentinels haven’t found us yet doesn’t mean we don’t have to follow the laws.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Stamp walks out the backstage door.

  The early afternoon sunlight streams in and reflects in 100 different directions off our vanity mirrors.

  The door swings shut, and I turn to Dane with a wicked smile. “How long do you give this one?” I dab at the last of the stage makeup with my towelette, not that it makes much difference but it does make me feel all Inside the Actors Studio.

  “One week longer than the last.” Dane cracks his neck. He’s removed his bulky Frankenstein jacket, the dusty gray one with shoulder pads, as well as the tear-away monster pants. He’s handsome in his tight white T-shirt and those gray sweatpants that hug his tiny waist, the ones that look like they were cut with kid scissors to make jagged pirate edges. “You know he’s playing with fire, right?” he says in that paternal tone he uses whenever Stamp, or pretty much any zombie law topic, comes up. Or our apartment. Or what seasoning to put on our brains. Or what color lipstick I should wear.

  “Yeah, Dane, I do, but … I’m not his mother, okay?”

  “He listens to you.” Dane rubs the top of his stubbly head.

  “Yeah, not so much anymore.” I slip into my worn flats. “Not since we broke up on Valentine’s Day,” I add unnecessarily.

  He sighs but can’t hide that crooked smile. “What did you think was going to happen?” He puts on his hoodie and brings up one knee to tie his battered black sneakers. “The guy was a jock through and through. Just because he’s a dead jock doesn’t mean he forgot his jock ways. They’re trapped deep in his DNA, where the Z-disease can’t quite penetrate.”

  I shrug and admire Dane’s black eyes and hollow cheeks. How familiar his face is to me, how distant we’ve become since Stamp and I broke up a few weeks ago. I’d expected Dane to rush into my arms, declare his love, breathe a sigh of relief that we could finally be together, and … and … so far, nothing.

  Of course, he could be punishing me for making it official with Stamp in the first place, but what did he want me to do? I’d gotten the guy killed after all. Should I have spurned his affections, dropped him like a hot—er, cold—potato the minute Barracuda Bay was in our rearview mirror and we landed in our skuzzy apartment in Orlando? I had to date Stamp. He knew that, and you know what? I wanted to date Stamp. Most of the time. Kinda. Sorta.

  To this day, despite my schizoid feelings before, during, and after, I don’t regret a second with Stamp. He was fun, spontaneous—the exact opposite of Dane. But he was also a kid, a goof, and so much of what made him likeable also made me jealous and bitter.

  While Dane and I used our sleepless nights to paint the apartment, troll around town for used furniture or wall art, or exercise to stay limber, Stamp prowled the Orlando club scene, partying all hours and latching onto a new group of friends who didn’t mind his cold skin, his stiff limbs, or the dark circles under his eyes.

  I warned Stamp he wasn’t supposed to pass quite that well with the Normals (i.e. heartbeating human beings), but would he listen? Hell, no. He drifted as a boyfriend, as a friend, as a zombie, until that fateful Valentine’s night when he didn’t come home at all.

  There I sat for hours, waiting for some romantic gesture. You know, something zombie sweet, like a pound of brains in a red velvet heart-shaped box or a can of cat food with brains as the main ingredient with a dusty red bow on top. Anything. Something.

  Instead, Stamp stumbled in the next morning, carefree and clutching some blonde bimbo in torn fishnet stockings and a black bra, her obligatory maroon lipstick smeared—most of it all over Stamp’s face!

  I stormed off, he apologized, Dane took the chick home—but it was over. All of it.

  Maybe I was secretly glad Stamp turned into the boyfriend from hell, but I can’t say I don’t miss him. Then again, we all still live together in a dumpy three-bedroom apartment not far from the theme park, so miss him isn’t exactly the right phrase.

  It would probably be easier to take if he wasn’t already on Girlfriend Number 3 since our little breakup. Or is it Number 4?

  Or if Dane would give me the time of day. Yeah, he helps me rehearse my lines. He takes me garage saling for his favorite oval mirrors to match the one in the living room. But that’s about it.

  Right now Dane looks wistful, none too eager to roam the theme park between shows. We will, of course, if only to feel the warm sun on our faces and stretch our legs for awhile, hiding in plain sight among the crowds, but for now he seems content to stare over my shoulder at the stage beyond our tiny dressing room.

  “Do you miss her?” I say quietly.

  “Who? Chloe?”

  When I don’t answer, when I don’t have to answer, he nods. “Sure. We were partners for a long, long time.”

  “I miss her too.”

  “Really?”

  I shrug. “Sure. She was there for me too, you know. When it counted. She wasn’t quite as tough as she acted.”

  I picture Chloe now, stomping around school, scowling all the while. The only thing she really did to pass as a living student was to scare everybody out of mentioning how dead she looked. Harsh as she was, she was only trying to protect the sad little life she’d created for herself and Dane.

  “I know. She would be tougher on Stamp, though, if she were here now. She wouldn’t let him date or socialize so much. She’d have him on lockdown.” He gives me that look again, not the smoldering one I see sometimes when he thinks I’m not looking but the regretful one he wears far more often these days. The one that says he wishes I hadn’t brought Stamp back after all. Not just for our sakes, maybe, but for Stamp’s as well. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about him.”

  “What can we do?” I say, scrubbing my brain of the same regret.

  “I dunno, but this whole Playboy of the Living Dead act isn’t working. We’ve gotten lucky these last few months, finding a place, landing these jobs, staying under the radar. But now. I don’t know. Stamp’s getting too comfortable. He’s passing too well. If he keeps it up, someone’s bound to find out.”

  My mind, like our lives, is uneasy. Up; down. Happy; sad. Mostly, I’m afraid. Of what’s around the next corner, who’s in the next audience, who might show up at our door, who Stamp might bring home next.

  Who knew that the battle, the bloodshed would be the easy part?

  That living in the real world would be the hardest part of all?

  1

  The Culturally Confused Convenience Store

  The bodega across from our apartment complex isn’t crowded this time of day. A Spanish love song plays on the radio, and incense burns in the corner shrine where a Buddha sits among oranges and bottled water.

  The shelves are lined with dusty cans and
exotic fruit drinks in funky bottles. The posters on the wall are these kind of funky ads from the 1960s for sodas that don’t even exist anymore, like Raspberry Ripple and Orange Fizzy Bottom and Lovely Lime. They all sound kind of good right about now.

  Stamp hates coming to The Culturally Confused Convenience Store, as he calls it. Dane doesn’t like it much better, although he’s pretty sure there are brains involved in some of the crazier canned items, like the braised beef chunks on Aisle 3 or even in the way, way, way off-brand cat food on Aisle 6.

  I grab a soda from the clanking cooler in the back of the store, next to open cardboard boxes filled with onions and dirty potatoes. Gargantuan Grape. That’s really its name. It has twice as much sugar as a regular grape soda and not just because it’s twice as big.

  I take it to the cashier, this thin guy with a sweaty moustache and a fiery boil under one of his ears. He hands me a phone card without even asking, which is one of the reasons I try to never come in here with Dane. I’m afraid the cashier will do that in front of Dane and then? Game over; the jig will be up.

  “Ten dollars on the card enough this time?” he says without much of an Asian accent. He’s got on crisp new blue jeans and one of those button-down Cuban bowling shirts with a palm tree on the pocket. His black fedora looks heavy on his sweating head.

  “That should do it,” I say, just like every time. I pay in cash, as always, and drop the coins in the Leave a Penny, Take a Penny cup by the register. If anything, Dane’s sense of hearing is better than mine—that’s saying something—and he’d get suspicious if I came home jingling a ton of change.

  The guy nods and turns back to his hot rod magazine.

  I leave the store slowly, hand in pocket, feeling the plastic card there. I look across the street for signs of Dane. I kind of feel like Stamp with one of his girlfriends. What I’m doing isn’t exactly illegal, but according to Dane it’s not smart either. Still it has to be done, and what Dane doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I walk to the little ice cream stand on the corner.