A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Every clipping, tied to every string, is about a local kid who’s gone missing. One a month, apparently, since we moved to The Socialite. I count the strings, touching them gently. None of them go too far from where Dane and I live. A few miles at the most.

  I don’t know how freaked out I should be, but I’m pretty. Freaked out, that is.

  Yeah, I know every neighborhood has its strange goings-on, its disappearances and violence, but five in five months? It’s not like we’re in a war zone or something. Sure, we’re not living on Rodeo Drive, but we’re still in the United States.

  I could understand one or two, but even that would be pushing it. Five?

  “So now you know,” Dane says from the doorway, drying his hands with a dish towel. “Why we went through the whole survey-taker charade. Why we had to start tailing Stamp. Why I pressed Val so hard tonight.”

  I let the newspaper clippings slide off the map I’m clutching and back into the drawer, where they settle with a rustle, a straggle of red string hanging over the open drawer.

  “You think she knows about this?”

  He shrugs. “Not knows, exactly, but I think she’s involved, yes.”

  “How?” I drop the map as if it’s poisonous. “Why?”

  “Look at the pattern,” he says patiently, sitting on his bed next to me so close I can still smell the cologne he wore to impress Val. “We’re the red dot, and all the missing people are the black dots. See the dates? Every month, a new kid goes missing. And never farther than a few miles from right where we’re standing. One month gets her closer to the next month and, with each kid, she’s closing in on us. It’s like she’s working her way in, warning us we’re next. Or maybe Stamp’s next. I dunno yet.”

  I shake my head violently. “I get all that. I meant, how could you keep this from me? Why would you?”

  He seems taken aback by the question, his eyes pleading. “Isn’t it obvious?” Then quietly, “I guess I didn’t want to scare you.”

  I snort. “Oh, ‘cause I’m some kind of shrinking violet or something? ‘Cause it’s your job to protect not just Stamp but me too?”

  I stand, clenching my fists, circling him like Val might be circling us. “Who made you the gatekeeper of what I should and shouldn’t know? This is my safety we’re talking about here too, okay? I mean, you saw me freak out about one person going missing. You don’t think it would have helped me to know that four, no, five people have gone missing?”

  He sits there passively, watching me fuss, waiting for me to burn myself out. When I finally do, he says, “Not until I found out why.”

  “And how were you going to do that? No, wait. Here’s what I really want to know. When were you going to do that? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year? When it was too late?”

  “I’ve been trying. It’s hard with—well, I can’t seem to shake you.” He knows he’s done it but can’t take it back.

  I feel my eyes get big but not nearly as big as my mouth. “Oh, so now it’s my fault you haven’t been able to investigate all these missing people. Well, if you’d just told me about them, I could have helped you instead of you having to shake me!”

  I storm from his room, grabbing my kit out of the tiny closet by the front door. The hollow door shakes behind me as it slams, and I feel bad as I triple-lock it. It’s barely 2:00 a.m. Outside there is still a little chill in the March air. As I walk away, I notice a couple of the neighbors have dressed up their doors for St. Patrick’s Day.

  I stride past Dane’s car, the night sky lit up in its usual yellow glow of my zombie vision. I walk through the parking lot, hearing night noises in my wake: a TV blaring some horrible commercial through an open window; house music thumping against a thin wall; a cat scratching at a sliding glass door screen, meowing desperately to be let in.

  I straighten the messenger bag over my shoulder. It’s new, since I left my old one behind, and I haven’t been using it much. It never fit quite right, but what do you expect for three bucks on clearance at the Family Value Mart?

  It’s light blue with pink trim. Not exactly grave-rubbing appropriate but, again, the price was right. There’s some pop star’s face on the front that I guess I’m supposed to know because her name isn’t printed anywhere on it. I guess all of Dane’s smooth jazz has kept me off the pop charts for the last few months. Besides, Hazel was the one who always kept me current on trends, be it lip gloss or sandals or pop stars. Without her, I’m kinda lost. In more ways than one.

  Dane thinks these bags were cheap because they ran a few thousand of them off without the chick’s name. I just think they were trying to be artsy and failed. Whatever. They should have cared less about the starlet and more about the bag and how it hangs too low and jangles too loud.

  I take the sidewalk to the right, walk a few blocks until I’m in the little cemetery behind the big church. It’s a Catholic church, the Church of the Resurrection, which is nice. They always have the best guests, as Dad always called them. It was one of the reasons I asked Dane to choose The Socialite as our new home: the cemetery just down the road.

  It doesn’t have a name, which kind of sucks. I always feel like a cemetery should have a really good name, you know? The Doomsday Acre. Fields of Gloom. Orphanage Alley. I dunno, something Gothic and cool like that. Plus I like to sign each of my grave rubbings and date it and put the name of the cemetery there too. I don’t know why.

  I had to leave my whole library of rubbings at home when we left Barracuda Bay, so I’m starting over and not real sentimental about such things anymore. Still, some habits are hard to break.

  There’s a small gate to get in, and it creaks, so I just step over it. Duh. I guess the Catholics are more trusting than most cemetery folks. Then again, most Normals aren’t as excited by cemeteries anymore. I used to be, but don’t go by me. I was never a normal Normal anyway.

  I stroll through the graveyard, letting the heat from Dane’s comments roll off me in waves. I know what he meant. We do spend way too much time together. I get that. But even though I’m a tomboy and one of the Living Dead doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings.

  He says he can’t shake me. Shake me? You shake someone you want to get rid of, like a cop on your tail or some stalker chick who can’t take no for an answer or a piece of gum on your shoe. You don’t shake somebody you care about, someone you’re supposed to actually love, even if you’ve seen them 24 hours straight every day for months.

  I’m so upset I’m deep in the graveyard before I realize it. I look back and can’t see the gate or the road from here. Even so, I don’t feel scared. I mean, if there are Sentinels or even Zerkers in the area, they wouldn’t want just one of us. It’s the whole banquet they’re looking for, not just the appetizer.

  Besides, Dane will be along soon to apologize. And nowadays I’m scarier than most thugs who’d be out this time of night.

  A medium-sized gravestone is calling my name. It’s graced with a bulging, moss-covered gargoyle right in the middle. I sit in front of it, sliding off my bag and digging inside for a paintbrush I bought at the dollar store. I gently brush off the moss until the stone is clean and dry. Then I take a smaller brush to weed out the cracks, sending dirt and bugs and little moss boogers flying everywhere.

  I pause by the owner’s name: Jace Hawkins, b. 1917, d. 1934.

  Seventeen. Just like me. Seventeen forever. Just like me. Jace. Boy or girl? That name could go either way. Jace. It sounds so Civil War, so Southern.

  I picture Jace in overalls, barefooted, fishing in a stream, a bowl haircut, a freckled nose. Then again, Jace could have been one of those frilly Southern belles. Sheesh, back then, they married you off at 15 or 16. Jace could have had a kid! What did him/her in?

  I let these thoughts fill my mind as I gently tape a poster board—sized sheet of onion skin across Jace’s gravestone, using strips of gray duct tape to fold the edges around the side and keep them secure.

  I grip a piece of fresh charcoal and gently, gent
ly rub the gargoyle from Jace’s headstone onto the onion skin. The charcoal rasps against the paper, revealing an ornate forehead, then lonely eyes, a sharp nose, and fanged teeth.

  Then I go and ruin it, pressing too hard. The thin paper tears, and I have to start again. It’s after I’m through taping the crinkly paper back to the headstone that I hear the footsteps.

  Dane.

  But no. The footsteps are too heavy, and there’s one pair too many. And they sound ugly.

  I realize I’m alone in a graveyard in the middle of the night, and I think fleetingly, Of course there are two pairs of footsteps: Stamp and Dane. Duh.

  I turn, half-smiling, just in time to see a giant boy-man-thing crouching over my bag. He smells not of death but of sweat and smoke and booze and bad intentions. His eyes are alive and glassy and young. Fourteen, maybe fifteen young. He is soft and fleshy, but that flesh? There is lots of it, and you can’t be weak to carry that much around. I immediately wonder, What are they feeding him? He has on a black T-shirt and a gray ski jacket, the puffy kind that budget rappers wear. He has white sunglasses pushed on top of his shaved head.

  The older one, though still young, stands, tall and bony, waving a switchblade in each hand. The blades shine in the moonlight, sharp and threatening but nowhere near as cold as the gleam in his angry eyes.

  “Stupid,” he says, looking at the crumpled paper beneath my trembling hand. “The other one was fine.”

  How long have they been watching me? And why didn’t I hear or sense them sooner?

  I go to stand, but the bigger one puts a hand on my shoulder. “That would be even more stupid.”

  Their voices are dark and menacing, like they’ve practiced for this in the mirror a few hundred times. They don’t sound as young as they look. Then again, if this was happening, say, at Burger Barn at two in the afternoon, they probably would look as young as they are.

  The big guy’s eyes are half-lidded, his three greasy white chins covered with blond peach fuzz, but he’s not so drunk or stoned or tweaking that it’s weakened his grip on my shoulder any.

  “Take your hand off me,” I growl, shrugging.

  His hand stays clamped right where it is.

  They both cackle merrily, the taller one closing in. “Off you?” he says, sliding one of his blades against my cheek. “Babe, we’re just getting—”

  I snap his wrist happily, snatching the blade out of the air before it can dive into the loamy graveyard dirt at his feet. I don’t even give him a chance to scream. I shove the crumpled grave rubbing into his mouth and clamp a hand over it. Tight.

  The paper goes in so hard I swear I hear a tooth snap, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

  Fat boy lurches, yanking me off balance with a hand on my gray hoodie.

  I pivot and drive the blade down, deep down, into his grubby sneaker. The scent of fresh blood fills the night air.

  He screams until I slap his lower jaw shut, right onto his bleating tongue. A quarter inch of it tumbles to the earth as I scoot my shoe out of splatter range. I snatch the duct tape from my messenger bag and muzzle them both, then drag them one at a time to the cemetery gate.

  Their eyes are fearful and pained as they shake their heads.

  It feels too good, this strength I have now. And there’s an anger I didn’t have before. It comes in a flash, so it gets hard to control myself. I know they’re human boys, young guys, despite their size, and still I dispatched them as if they were 200-year-old Zerkers. That can’t be good.

  Remorse waves over me, expelling the rage, making me feel stupid and vulnerable all at the same time. As I watch them, they get more and more pitiful with each step. Even so, I yank their arms behind them through the bars and use every last inch of tape to bind them tight.

  They wriggle. Maybe they’ll get free before the church janitor finds them in a few hours, but I doubt it.

  I stand in front of them, watching them squirm, sneakers digging into the dirt as they try to get away from me. The night air smells of their fear, of their sweat … and worse.

  “Thanks, boys,” I hiss to their wide-eyed, frightened faces. “I needed that.”

  I walk from the graveyard, grabbing my satchel on the way.

  I hear more footsteps, and this time it is Dane, whose face is crumpled with concern.

  “The hell?” He looks at my torn hoodie and bloody hands.

  I do too. I hadn’t noticed either before.

  “A couple of punks jumped me.” I smirk, limbs sore from the effort. “They’re fine.”

  “You sure?”

  I shake my head. “Go check.” I sigh. I know he won’t be happy until he sees I haven’t broken their necks and sucked out their cerebellums, boiled-peanut style.

  “Go,” I insist, stopping and turning to watch him dodge three gravestones to walk deeper into the cemetery. “I’ll wait.”

  He goes, shoes crunching on dry leaves and rustling in the thick, black dirt. I hear the sound of skin hitting skin, a soft groan, and then his feet crunching again. He is smiling when he returns, and before I can ask, he brags, “I just knocked them out, you know, to stop the bleeding.”

  “Hmmm.” I remember the feel of the big one’s hand, hard and insistent on my shoulder, and wonder what might have happened if I wasn’t a zombie, if I could feel pain, if I hadn’t trained with Dane five days a week since moving to Orlando. “I should have thought of that.”

  “I’m sure you would have. Minus the shock and all.”

  He lingers at my side as we weave through the rest of the headstones. I keep waiting for him to take my hand, but he never does. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, I don’t think, just that it’s not his style.

  I’m not defending him. He doesn’t need me for that. He’s just never been a chocolate and flowers and sweater-over-his-shoulders, hand-holding guy.

  I wipe the guys’ blood on the side of my jeans and stoop to rinse off in a puddle of standing water in the church parking lot.

  “What happened?” Dane says.

  I shrug. “Nothing much. Just common late-night thuggery. This neighborhood seems like it gets worse every day.”

  “Then it’s good you’re here to keep Normal grave rubbers safe, right?”

  I figure he’s joking, but when I look up, I know he’s not. He has his thoughtful face on: lids half-shut, cheeks sucked in, lips tight. Stamp always called it Dane’s grim face.

  The thought of Stamp makes me smile.

  We walk back to the apartment, then past it. Dane pauses at the entrance, standing in the silhouette of a dozen broken Christmas lights wrapped around The Socialite sign, still waiting for someone to take them down before it’s time to put them back up again.

  “I need to think,” I tell him when he follows reluctantly.

  “Okay, yeah, good idea. Listen, Maddy, about the map. I’m sorry. I just—”

  “You know what I was thinking of?” I interrupt, ignoring him. “When those guys jumped me back there? I was remembering the first time Bones and Dahlia did the same thing back in Barracuda Bay.”

  “And?” he says when I don’t immediately deliver the punch line.

  “And it got me thinking,” I huff, waiting for him to catch up. “I don’t think Val’s a Sentinel, Dane. I think … I think she’s a Zerker.”

  12

  Val’s His Gal

  This is awkward.” Stamp smiles as we sit in the same booth at his favorite café. It’s midway between work and home, but that’s not why he likes it. They serve carbonated espresso shots, and he’s as addicted as a zombie can be to something other than brains.

  The place is one of those funky, poser, retro coffee shops with floor-to-ceiling windows and stark, uncomfortable black chairs and matching tables, black-and-white framed art of random couples kissing in France, and baristas who haven’t bathed in days and are damn proud of it.

  They all know Stamp by name and have his order practically waiting for him when he walks through the door, while they
look at me and my Mountain Dew Voltage as if I’ve just ordered fried chicken at a vegetarian buffet.

  It’s not just that I’m undead. It’s that I’m unhip. Stamp, in his endless effort to pass among the Normals, has managed to expertly navigate a world I’m still trying to understand. Even months after being reanimated, I’m still experimenting with the right layering of my makeup, trying not to look too pale or too gray or too orange or too fleshy. I’m still working on finding long-sleeved shirts that don’t look dorky and leggings that don’t make me look 12 years old.

  But Stamp? He’s mastered this world. Not just the living world but the teenage world. I keep forgetting I was never hip when I was alive, and Dane could never be anything other than a bad boy—good for making your dad mad, bad for dinner parties and cafés and poser clubs.

  But Stamp was already heading toward permanent cool before he died. Now he’s just made it his life’s mission to belong. And here, in a place like this, with funky so-retro-its-hot-again remixes of old ’80s songs on the overhead speakers and hipster baristas with stringy beards and carbonated espresso, it’s like his home turf and I’m the sore thumb.

  It’s after work and he’s dressed for another long night out, in snug black leather pants and a shiny gray shirt that manages to make his skin only vaguely pale. His favorite black-and-white hoodie is tossed across one corner of the table, his shiny cell phone resting atop it.

  He looks good, but I know that’s mostly because he wants nothing to do with me.

  “Awkward how?” I say, pushing my soda away. “Because I didn’t order some froufrou coffee drink to impress all your friends?”

  He smiles charmingly, complete with dimples. How can he still have dimples with, like, 0.002 percent body fat? Whatever. It’s just another of life’s little mysteries, like why he can still pull female digits at Mach 10 while guys literally (no lie) cross the street to avoid me.

  “Uh, because we haven’t been alone since Dane went in to pay for gas on our way out of Barracuda Bay.”