A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Dane is in the seat behind me, strapped in as well, with his own personal Sentinel sitting beside him, also huge, also silent.

  Two more Sentinels fill the driver’s seat and passenger seat in front of me. They’re so tall their trademark black berets scrape the ceiling every time they move their heads, which is infrequently.

  The rising sun barely penetrates the thick-tinted glass as the driver takes an exit. I can’t see which exit it is, but I don’t care where we’re going or how to get back. We zip off the highway on two wheels.

  As I lean to compensate, I watch the tie dig into my wrist and feel my shoulder rub across the Sentinel next to me. He nudges back, like I did it on purpose. I huff, he huffs, until we’re back on four wheels and speeding forward, ever forward, all over again.

  Two more identical SUVs follow us as we merge from a modern highway to a backwater, two-lane strip of pothole-ridden asphalt near the Florida-Georgia border. I jostle, lips sealed lest I scream Stamp’s name over and over and over again.

  I have to keep my eyes open and stare at the back of the Sentinel in front of me. If I don’t, I’ll keep flashing onto things best never seen again: Stamp’s black-and-white hoodie, arms waving at the bottom of the tank, chains wrapped around his legs, dead sharks and body parts, bloody water on the deck, Dane’s eyes, the look on his face as I came to.

  He’s gone. He’s gone … Dane’s quivering voice echoes in my mind. Why don’t these damn Sentinels talk to each other, just once, to drown it out?

  Things happen quickly after our four silent hours on the road. The SUV approaches a sign: The Crestview Rehabilitation Center. The pine trees and setting sun on the wooden sign seem to say, “Come here and stay … forever.” I wonder if Dane is right: if once the Sentinels grab you, they never let you go. And again, it doesn’t matter.

  I’ll get out. I have to get out.

  Either that or die trying.

  The sign looks weathered as we pass, as does the rehabilitation center itself: a barren three-story brick building.

  The Sentinels pull around to the back to a kind of garage area, where more Sentinels wait. Lots more. They stand in formation, five rows of three Sentinels each, all dressed in black. Their thin lips are stitched together. Not literally but they might as well be.

  This is the point at which Dane or I would normally crack wise, say, “Glad you could bring out the welcome wagon,” or something totally lame like that, but I just watch, lips zipped as tight as the Sentinels’.

  Maybe I’ll become one after all. I feel double dead inside, which is what most of them appear to be. Maybe that’s the kind of rehabilitation Crestview is offering: taking civilian zombies and turning them into fighting, ugly, angry killing machines who apparently need a dozen pockets up and down each leg. But, hey, if that’s the only way I’ll ever get out of here, well, sign me up. I look good in black.

  The engine shuts off, filling the grim morning with even more silence since the Sentinels rarely have anything to say. The drivers get out as the Sentinel next to me reaches into one of his many pants pockets. He pulls out a switchblade, the thuggish kind, and flips it open with a click.

  He looks at me carefully, eyes dead and dark, with the hint of a smile quivering at one corner of his gray lips.

  I look back at him, chin up, eyes just as dead. The smile, if there ever was one, disappears.

  With one slice, he frees my bonds.

  The door next to me slides open, and two Sentinels grab my arms.

  Behind me, as we walk through the garage and into a back entrance, the sounds of boots on asphalt and whispering black pants mingle with Dane’s voice. Little snippets reach me as I’m marched into the building.

  Dane’s voice increases in volume as I’m led ahead: “Where are you taking her? … But she didn’t do anything! … Why can’t we be together?”

  I flinch hearing his desperate tone but don’t look around, not even to wink or mouth the words, “It’s okay. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  The sooner Dane is rid of me, the better. For him, anyway.

  Inside the hospital-smelling building, the floors are squeaky clean. I stare straight ahead, watching white wall after white wall, door after door, corner after corner, until I spot a door marked Intake and know that’s where we’re headed.

  And then … we walk right on by.

  And keep walking, passing through doors and corners and corridors until it seems we’ve been walking for days. I feel like I did with Dane at Splash Zone, running around in circles looking for something, for someone, not there.

  And yet I’ve been around Sentinels before. They never do anything or go anywhere without a reason. Maybe they’re running us around in circles because they want us to feel confused and disoriented. Or maybe this place just has a really crappy layout. I dunno.

  Finally we come to a wide, clunky service elevator in the back. It has tan doors and no music inside. We ride to the top floor. The door dings and opens onto green walls instead of white.

  We walk the long corridors. It’s not so much a maze as a track, one that never really seems to go anywhere.

  The hallways are wide, like in a nursing home or Dad’s morgue, and now once in awhile Dane and I can see each other if we glance to the left or right. Whenever I do, Dane is watching me carefully, as if I might crumble at any moment. I remain expressionless, even though I know a smile would ease his mind.

  Still, it feels wrong to smile this day. My clothes are still damp from the place where Stamp was slaughtered. His killer is still somewhere out there, footloose and fancy free, heading to my hometown—where my dad lives, where he’s vulnerable.

  Gradually, though, Dane and his Sentinel guards slow down. They’re still with us—us being me and a Sentinel on either side of me—but no longer beside us. I haven’t seen Dane’s face in many minutes.

  He calls my name but is quickly muzzled by the thump of what sounds like an elbow to the stomach, or maybe the head, and then … no more. I still hear his footsteps, softer, quieter than the Sentinel’s, but even they begin to fade out.

  Finally we get to a large room with one table and two chairs. It looks like one of those interrogation rooms you see on cop shows. The Sentinels bring me inside and sit me down. I don’t resist.

  They stand there for a minute, and I’m waiting for one or both of them to chain me to the table somehow, but they don’t. They are as silent and grim as ever. Then they simply walk out of the room and stop.

  I turn to face them a little, just to see what they’re doing, and it’s basically … nothing. I see the backs of their heads through the Plexiglas windows on either side of the door. I shrug and turn back to face the wall.

  It’s cinder block, like the rest of the place, and painted a generic off-white. Not quite tan, not quite white. After awhile I no longer even see it. Maybe that’s the point.

  I look down at my lap, which is covered in the goop of the heads of the security guard and dolphin trainer. And I wonder how many Splash Zone employees Val turned just to slow us down on our way to the shark tank.

  The goo has dried and stained my jeans, even though they were black to start with. That’s how black Zerker blood is—blacker than black. After I stare for several minutes, the stain looks like one of those inkblot tests they give you in the counselor’s office when you act out after your mom runs out on you in sixth grade. If I stare at it long enough, it changes like a cloud: first a pirate ship, then a proper lady’s face, then a grizzly bear.

  I’m glad, in a way, that I never got Stamp’s blood on me. I couldn’t handle that, having it on me, staring at it, watching it grow and shift and merge into odd shapes.

  I look away, back to the white-not-white gloss of the opposite wall.

  Dane said Stamp didn’t feel anything, and logically I know that’s right. Dead nerve endings mean no pain. I’ve been punched, kicked, knocked in the head with a bat, shoved around, and none of it ever actually hurt, not one second. But I knew what was g
oing on. I might not have felt the pain in my skin or muscles or bones, but I felt it in my soul.

  I’ve felt scared and anxious and apprehensive and hurt and betrayed and hopeless pretty much every day since I got this way, and no one’s ever going to tell me that I wouldn’t feel all that to the 900th degree if, say, a shark or four or five were tearing me apart and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  I shake it off, quit blinking so I can stop seeing Stamp’s hand lying there, bitten in half, on the wet deck of the shark tank. I keep my eyes open and listen to the squeaking from down the hall.

  It’s purposeful but slow, almost cautious.

  It sounds like someone wearing Sentinel boots, but the footsteps are softer, lighter than a Sentinel’s. I wonder if maybe since Dane was wetter than me they’ve given him a change of clothes, including boots, and now he’s coming to sit with me while we wait for something else to happen.

  But I know when the door shuts behind me and only one pair of footsteps approaches the table that I’m wrong. I won’t be seeing Dane again today.

  This is what they wanted: divide and conquer. It was too much, too good, to think they’d let us stay together. Maybe later, after they’ve done what they’re going to do. But now? Now they’ve got us right where they want us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

  “Madison Emily Swift?” says a stern voice.

  I turn to find a tall woman standing next to the table. She’s so regal, so prim and proper, that I almost feel like standing up. Almost.

  “My name’s Vera. I’ll be your intake counselor.”

  Vera’s dressed in Sentinel garb—thick boots, pocket pants, long-sleeved shirt with lapels on the shoulders, even a beret—but it’s all light blue. The color of suits that little boys will sometimes wear on Easter Sunday. Powder blue, my mom would have called it if she were still around.

  “How do you know my name?”

  She sits, in all her blueness, and slides a thick green file folder on the table. In her free hand is a shiny silver pen. She clicks the top nervously, as if maybe she doesn’t want to be in the room with a chick who’s just watched her ex get swallowed by some hungry sharks.

  “Why wouldn’t I know your name?” She cocks her head, still clicking her pen.

  Vera’s black hair is close cropped, her skin a kind of coppery gray, her eyes a silken black.

  “Well, I mean, the Sentinels probably gave you my purse, but the ID inside is fake, so …”

  The woman stares at me without a readable expression. With those black eyes and not a wrinkle on her face, I can’t tell if she’s mad, glad, about to shove a copper stake in my eye socket, or what.

  Finally she taps the folder and says, “Maddy, this is all yours. Every last page of it.” For proof, she flips open the top of the folder and slides out several news stories from the Barracuda Bay Bugle, featuring my latest yearbook photo. And then an actual page from my yearbook, copied, with my photo coated in yellow highlighter. There’s a copy of my old driver’s license, family photos from one of Dad’s albums, a picture of Mom.

  Mom? Dang, how far back does this file go anyway?

  But then Vera keeps flipping through the pile. Buried underneath are more photos. More recent ones. Surveillance photos of Dane and me at our apartment in Orlando, in the parking lot at work, on the stage. A copy of my employee ID badge and fake driver’s license.

  I sit up a little straighter. “Wh-wh-where did you get those?”

  Vera offers her version of a smile. “You think the Sentinels were going to let you run away from Barracuda Bay without a chase? You think we didn’t find you or follow your dad or listen to your calls every month?”

  “But we were so careful. We never saw a Sentinel the whole time we were in Orlando. Not once.”

  Vera flips one of her blue lapels with a long finger. “You think we can’t change out of these and put on a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a ball cap and a camera strap around our necks and blend in enough to snap some pictures of you in some monster makeup show? Or at the midnight movies or the mall? Please give us a little more credit than that.”

  “Well, then why didn’t you pull us in sooner?” I say, confusion turning to concern. “I mean, if you knew where we were, where we worked, where we lived, why didn’t you just snatch us right away?”

  Vera avoids my gaze for the first time and says coldly, “Early in our investigation of the events in Barracuda Bay, we determined that allowing you to remain free would facilitate the apprehension of several Zerkers who were, shall we say, following you.”

  I nod, the temperature in my body dropping even more. It’s not bad enough the Zerkers want us dead. The Sentinels were willing to let them get close just so they could catch them.

  “So we were bait?”

  “Not precisely.” Vera rushes to defend herself, clicking her pen closed and slipping it in one of her powder-blue top pockets. “Like I said, we had you under surveillance 24/7 and could have easily pulled you in if Val hadn’t led you on that wild goose chase tonight.”

  “You were there?” I sit up. “At the warehouse? At the club? At Splash Zone? The whole time?”

  Vera nods without expression. “We couldn’t show our hand too soon. We had to wait for an extraction team, had to be sure Val was alone, that it wasn’t a trap we couldn’t get out—”

  “How soon was too soon?” I snap, sitting up just a smidge. “Before Val lowered Stamp into the shark tank? Before Val released the sharks? Was one shark too soon? Two sharks? Three? Four? How many limbs did Stamp have to lose before you had enough Sentinels to snatch one tiny Zerker?”

  Vera looks back, undeterred. “You don’t understand. We have procedures in place. Rules, protocols. You might have known that if you’d waited for us back in Barracuda Bay rather than running away before you could explain yourselves.”

  “So this is our fault? We were protecting ourselves! The Zerkers were killing kids in Barracuda Bay. Not zombies. Kids. Live kids. One here, one there. Should we have just stepped aside and let that—”

  “Dane and Chloe knew the rules, Maddy, even if you didn’t. They knew what to do, and they ignored us. We could have stopped the Zerkers in Barracuda Bay before things got out of hand. Before you lost your football team, your cheerleading squad, and half the faculty. Then you ran away from us. Did you not think there would be consequences for your actions?”

  “Yeah.” I snort, crossing my arms and breaking my no-emotion rule, because this witch right here has gotten under my zombie skin. “Consequences like, I dunno, a medal? A ticker tape parade, maybe? Free teeth whitening for life? Vera, we destroyed the Zerkers in Barracuda Bay. We saved countless lives, and what did we get for it? A life on the lam.”

  Vera starts to speak, then closes her mouth and her eyes. She shakes her head. “Now is not the time or place. Nor, frankly, are you in a position to argue. You are here now, and that is all that matters. I will be your intake counselor, and I alone will determine when you are to be released. If you are to be released. We’ll start with a brief interview and—”

  “If?”

  Vera’s eyes are big again. “Yes, if. You are out of options. Like it or not, we are the law, and the laws can’t be broken. If it is determined that you played a larger role in Barracuda Bay than my records indicate, then your Afterlife sentence will be, shall we say, extreme.”

  “Afterlife sentence?”

  “How long you remain here at the center, incarcerated, before we feel it’s safe to let you walk among Normals again. I have to warn you, some Afterlife sentences are extremely—”

  “Whatever, Vera. Sentinels, Zerkers, intake, outtake, release, Afterlife sentence—whatever. Doesn’t matter. I’ll do what you want from now on. I couldn’t care less about freedom anymore. All I want to know is this: Who the hell is Val, and what the hell did she want with Stamp?”

  “Why, I thought a girl as smart as you would have figured it out by now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?�
�

  Vera shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in me, in Dane, in us. “Val wasn’t after Stamp, honey. She wasn’t even after Dane. She was after you.”

  “Me? Why? What the hell did I ever do to her?”

  “Not to her. To her brother.”

  “Her brother? How the hell could I know her—?”

  Vera finally nods, cracking a vaguely sinister, almost pleased, smile.

  “Bones?” I sit at the edge of my seat. “You mean Bones was Val’s brother?”

  18

  Zerker Runs in the Family

  Why do you think we took so many risks before trying to apprehend her?” Vera says, suddenly seeming to take an interest in my damp clothes and mascara-streaked face.

  “Trying?” I blurt, beyond myself with disbelief. “You mean the witch got away?” I shake my head. God, Sentinels suck. Seriously.

  “Unfortunately, yes, she was able to escape before the extraction team was fully prepared to apprehend her and—”

  I slam the table, if only to stop her excuses.

  The folder pops closed, and some of the pictures shift.

  “She’s five feet nothing. Weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, and I just rode here with about 2,000 tons of Sentinel fun. Couldn’t anyone stop her? Hell, the way she was teasing us from that DJ booth, she was practically begging to be caught. What’s the use of tailing us, using us as bait, if you’re not even going to catch the Zerker who’s been stalking us?”

  Vera shakes her head, absently sliding the old photos back into the thick file. “As I said, we have procedures—”

  “Then your procedures got Stamp killed. All those Sentinels waiting outside Splash Zone, and the whole time Val was letting the sharks loose. Dozens of men with their Tasers and big muscles, and they just stood by while those sharks tore him to pieces.”

  I stop, not because I don’t have more to say but because I can see the wheels going round in her head, waiting for my mouth to stop moving.

  “Maddy, I know you’re upset. I don’t blame you. But you don’t know the full story. We didn’t have dozens of Sentinels in place while Stamp was, was—”