A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  “Save it.” I spare her the trouble of making excuses I’m not going to believe anyway. “What’s done is done. My question is what are you doing now to catch her?”

  “We have teams on the ground combing through her abandoned warehouse, checking her cell phones. We’ll find her.”

  “Before she gets to Barracuda Bay? Before she finds my father? Before she tears him apart?”

  “I said we’ll find her.”

  “Not if I find her first,” I say grimly, avoiding her gaze.

  Vera slips her shiny pen out from her breast pocket and studies it. “First you’ll have to get through me, dear.”

  I can’t tell if she’s challenging or threatening me. Does she mean literally get through her, like knock her down and run over her back? Or metaphorically, like she’s going to have to approve my discharge or something? I guess I don’t much care, since both seem pretty far out of reach at the moment anyway.

  “Then tell me what I have to do, Vera. What do you want? I’ll do it.”

  Vera stands. “All in good time.”

  I picture my dad sitting in our cozy breakfast nook, drinking instant coffee out of his cracked Christmas mug, thinking he’s safe when all the while Bones’ sister is heading straight his way, hell-bent on revenge.

  Vera grabs the folder from the table and waits, looking down at me while tapping one booted toe as she stands there, looking triumphant and regal in her uniform.

  “I don’t have time.” I hate the helpless sound in my voice, but I’m just as helpless to stop it. “Val said … she said … she said she’s going to—”

  “Your father is safe. Whether he knows it or not, we have him surrounded. Even more so than usual. Now get up or—”

  “Or what?” I grip the table, ready for a fight. Why not? She said we were safe, and look what happened to Stamp. She said they were using us as bait but then couldn’t even catch Val when she was sitting there, seducing Stamp for two whole weeks. Why shouldn’t we fight after all that?

  I can take this chick. She’s old and thin and wearing that powder-blue Sentinel uniform. How tough can she be?

  She smiles placidly, holding the thick file in one hand and her silver pen in the other. She flicks the pen’s top up and down, up and down, almost … menacingly.

  “You don’t want to make me move you, Maddy. Trust me.”

  “Please.” I chuckle. “I’ve fought bigger and badder and—”

  Vera clicks her pen one last time, then jabs it in my neck as I’m bragging. I have just enough time to think, The hell? before a whiff of ozone, a sizzle of electricity, the smell of burnt meat, and whoosh! I fly like a Mack truck from the chair, across the room and into the wall, sliding down cinder block to the linoleum floor.

  Heaped in a corner, every joint tense and brain fried, I try to speak but my tongue just kind of vibrates.

  “Give yourself a minute, dear,” Vera says as if she’s just served me iced lemonade and sugar cookies. “The juice from my electric pen is still flowing through you. Now you were saying something about, what was it? Oh yeah, bigger and badder?”

  She smiles down at me, eyes not entirely unkind despite the use of her magic, ass-kicking pen, as the juice runs its course through my body.

  Stupid. I was stupid not to know that pen was some kind of weapon with all the clicking and clacking right in front of my face the entire time.

  She helps me stand on wobbly legs, then waits as I steady myself with one trembling hand pressed flat against the nearest wall.

  “I’m sorry, Maddy,” she whispers before she opens the door. “But you left me no choice. I can help you, you know, if you let me.”

  I can’t tell if she’s being serious or luring me in with some good Sentinel/bad Sentinel crap, but I keep my distance until she pockets the pen. I try to unclench my jaw. It takes awhile.

  Electricity is to zombies what silver is to werewolves, what garlic and holy water are to vampires. All we have left, the only juice still running through our veins, is electric current. It’s why brains, which are full of electricity even after they’re dead, are all we need, all we want, to survive. So when something conducts electricity, like the copper at the end of Dane’s stake or a Sentinel’s Taser or Vera’s James Bond electric pen, well, it doesn’t play fair with our zombie insides.

  So forgive me if I’m still a little clumsy on my two left feet as I stumble to the door. Vera walks through and says to the guards, “I’ll escort Ms. Swift to her cell, gentleman. That is all.”

  Her voice is crisp and not at all how she talked to me inside the room. It almost sounds, though I know it can’t be true, like Vera’s their boss. But if there’s one thing Sentinels hate more than Zerkers, it’s women. I’ve never seen a female Sentinel and, according to Dane, there’s never been one.

  So how can Vera be their boss?

  They grumble and make a move to follow, but apparently that powder-blue suit isn’t as lame as it appears, because one cluck of Vera’s tongue and the Sentinels scatter as if she’s just stuck her pen in both of their necks at the same time. I watch them go, wishing I could see the looks on their faces.

  I can see Vera’s, though. She smiles and leads me down another hall.

  At the end of it is a hulking Sentinel sitting at a cheap, metal desk like you’d see in any high school counselor’s office. There is nothing on it except his hands, which he raises in a stop, do not proceed motion.

  Vera says, “I’m here with the detainee.”

  Hmm, that sounds kind of … innocent. Not prisoner, not customer, not client, not inmate. Detainee. Kind of like detention but with a zombie guard keeping watch over the door instead of, you know, some pudgy assistant principal.

  But then I wonder, is detainee better than prisoner? Or worse?

  The Sentinel grumbles and starts to rise, but Vera says, “I have a key.”

  He sits heavily, as if relieved.

  From a hip pocket Vera slides out a key and quickly slips it into a round metal lock. There’s a resounding click, and the tan-colored door hisses open.

  Inside is a long hall. It’s brightly lit with flickering bulbs but narrow. A yellow line—I can’t tell if it’s painted on or just really good tape—stretches in front of a row of cells, maybe eight in all.

  Like, real cells.

  Jail.

  Cells.

  Detainee or no, it’s clear I’m a prisoner of some sort.

  Vera and I stop in front of one.

  “I thought you were joking.”

  “Why would I be joking, Maddy?”

  “Isn’t this”—I rack my brain for the name on the sign we saw while pulling in earlier—”the Crestview Rehabilitation Center?”

  “That? That’s just so Normals keep on driving by and don’t get in our hair. This is one of a dozen containment facilities the Sentinels operate around the country. It houses detainees from the southeast region mostly: Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, a few from Tennessee.”

  “Detainees?” I say—anything to stall going inside that cell.

  She nods, reaching in one of her pockets for the same key she used to open the door at the end of the hall. “Sentinels that have gone rogue, zombies who refuse to meet with the Council of Elders, zombies who have been caught eating human flesh—that kind of thing. And Zerkers, of course. If we rehabilitate anything here, it’s them.”

  “You can do that?” I say, and not just to stall. “Rehabilitate Zerkers?”

  Vera bites her lower lip, the way Dane will when he’s not sure whether to tell me the truth. “Not all. But we’re working on some interesting techniques that may hold out hope for the future.”

  I try to picture a future where someone like Bones or Dahlia or even Val could be rehabilitated. “Is that something we even want?”

  Vera looks at me with something like respect or at least interest. “I’m not sure. But … don’t you think we should at least try?”

  I start to answer, but the thought of Stamp’s black-a
nd-white hoodie floating among the circling sharks closes my mouth. How do you rehabilitate someone who could do something like that?

  She takes my nonanswer as an answer and reaches into a pocket.

  I flinch, expecting to get a jolt from the pen again.

  Instead she flashes the key to make sure it’s the right one.

  To buy myself another minute or two, I say, “W-w-well, for such a big place, it sure seems empty.”

  “It is empty.” She slides the key in the last lock and eases the cell door open on smooth, oiled hinges. “Except for you.”

  She steps aside, and I walk in. What’s the point of delaying the inevitable any longer, right?

  The cell is wide, if not long. There is no cot, like in the movies, or toilet or even sink. Because, well, what do I need with any of those things? One table and two chairs stand in the corner. That’s it. They’re steel and bolted into the cinder block wall, so I can’t even pick one up and clobber a guard over the head with it.

  I turn from exploring the room to find Vera closing the door gently, then pocketing the key. She stands there, file in hand, key and pen in pocket.

  I say what’s been on my mind since we parted:

  “What about Dane?”

  “Don’t worry about Dane right now. There is you, there is me, and that’s all you need to worry about right now.”

  I shake my head. “So what now? I’m supposed to rot in some cell while a crazy-ass Zerker makes tracks for Barracuda Bay, and you think I’m going to stand for that?”

  “What choice do you have?”

  19

  A Black Belt in Bitchery

  There are no windows in the cell, naturally, but none in the hall either. I’ve been pacing for, I dunno, hours or days since Vera walked away.

  I keep waiting for her to come back, to bring Dane along with her, to drag me to the Council of Elders, to experiment on me, to question me, to execute me—something. Anything would be better than this.

  This not knowing, this not doing? Florida is a big state but not that big. Anyone with a lead foot and a dead bladder could make it from one end to the other in a day, easy. Someone like Val, a motivated, deadly, cunning, and gleeful killer? She’s probably already there.

  And after the Sentinels dropped the ball with Stamp, how am I supposed to believe Dad’s safe, as Vera said? Fact is, I don’t. The thought of Val in the same town, in the same state, as my dad makes my dead skin crawl. But for all my zombie strength, the bars are too thick to bend and walk through. So I’m stuck for now. Perhaps even for awhile.

  The cell is exactly 14 paces wide, and I walk them over and over again as I fume. I picture Dane, black T-shirt still damp from trying to save Stamp, and how he knocked me out in order to save me.

  I think of his missing pinky and the gaping gash in his calf and the dreadful look on his face as he waited for me to come to. How long had he sat there, dripping wet, black goo oozing from his missing digit, surrounded by dead sharks and pieces of Stamp? One minute? Ten minutes? Twenty?

  I drift back to Barracuda Bay and remember the first two Zerkers I ever encountered. I can clearly picture Bones, so tall in his shiny white tracksuit, so crafty and clever. His partner in crime, Dahlia, so petite and full of fury. They were a good match, the two of them combining their strengths to be double the trouble for the good zombies who lived in my hometown.

  In Val, it’s like both were reincarnated on crack with a PhD in mean and a black belt in bitchery.

  I shake my head, clench my fists, and pace, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in here and she’s out there. It was a mistake to run. I know that now. I wonder if Dane does. I wonder if Stamp did all along. We should have stayed and taken the heat. For better or worse.

  We were stronger together back then. Dane and Chloe were a force to be reckoned with, like Bones and Dahlia. Two heads were better than one. Dane with his hard angles and rough edges and complete lack of empathy for anything Zerker. Chloe with her utter badassery. Nothing and nobody could get by her. Until, of course, someone—or something—did.

  And me? I was so eager to please Dane, so diehard in wanting to protect Stamp, I’d have done anything to keep us all safe and re-alive.

  If Val had shown up then, with all three of us on our game, she wouldn’t have been able to touch us. Not a chance. Back then Stamp still trusted me and Dane still respected my opinion, and together we managed to stop an undead army complete with footballer zombies, Living Dead cheerleaders, and even a legion of undead teachers.

  A punk Zerker like Val? She would have been worm food in 10 seconds flat.

  Then we ran, and everything changed.

  It was like, as the school burned down in our rear-view mirror, we left part of ourselves behind. The best part of ourselves.

  By the time we got to Orlando, almost as soon as we crossed the city line, everything shifted and none for the better. I chose Stamp, and Dane melded into the background. He became more father than boyfriend, and the more time I spent with Stamp, the more he knew my heart belonged to Dane.

  And the more Stamp knew, the more he changed. Withdrew. He became hurt, and once we broke up for good he was distant. He became less like a friend or even an ex and more like a roommate.

  Him staying out all those nights, with some new crowd we didn’t know, made him worse than hurt. It made him vulnerable. Bait for a chick like Val and her charms, whatever those might have been.

  And now Stamp was gone forever, and Val won. The thought of her, that blonde spiky hair, that stupid red boa, her voice over the loudspeaker at Splash Zone, teasing us. I close my eyes to drive it all away, but it only makes it worse.

  I know my heart is dead, but my chest hasn’t forgotten the flutter of anxiety that happens when I’m so mad I could burst. I swear I can feel it beating in there, or maybe it’s just the electricity left over from Vera’s mighty pen.

  Vera. She’ll be back. She’ll want to talk, to discuss more of what’s in my file. She’ll bring her pen and her key. They will be in her pockets. The pockets of her powder-blue Sentinel uniform. If I can just remember which pockets they’re in, if I can just grab them, then I can get out.

  And Val can be mine.

  20

  Human No More

  You’re going to have to talk to me sometime, Maddy.” Her tone is halfway between demand and request, equal parts mother and prison maiden.

  “I’ve talked. I’m talking. What more do you want to know, Vera?”

  We’re back in the little room where she first questioned me. I can’t tell if it’s been one day, two days, two weeks, or only two hours. There are no windows here or in my cell or in the long hallway leading to my cell.

  It feels like daytime, or maybe that’s just because the room is so bright. There are no Sentinels waiting gigantically outside the door this time. Either Vera thinks she doesn’t need them anymore or they were just for window dressing the first time.

  I eye the electric pen in her hand just the same. I think she wants me to.

  She doesn’t answer right away, just sits there staring at me. I can’t tell if she’s supposed to be the good zombie, the bad zombie, or both, but I’m not worried much either way. Talk is cheap. Only revenge matters anymore.

  Her left hand, the one without the lethal pen, rests gently on my file.

  I nod toward it. “Have I been that bad?”

  Vera arches an eyebrow but doesn’t reply.

  “It looks like my file’s gotten so big you’ve had to add a second one to fill with all my misdeeds.”

  She smiles softly before apparently remembering this is supposed to be some kind of interrogation. “Actually, this is someone else’s file. I thought …” Her voice, usually so confident, drifts off midsentence as she looks above my head at the window behind me. I turn, expecting to see someone—a team of Sentinels, maybe, or even Dane—but there’s nothing but more off-white cinder blocks and bright, white lighting.

  Then she fixes her eyes on
mine and continues more confidently: “I thought if you saw it, it might help you understand a little of what makes her tick.”

  “Her?” I snap, sitting up immediately. “What her? That’s Val’s folder?”

  I reach for it, and she clicks the pen once over my hand.

  I yank my hand right back. Yeah, I’m not proud of it, but it beats getting knocked clear across the room again.

  “I’m not stupid,” Vera insists, removing the pen but watching my hand carefully. “I know what you’re thinking. I know that nothing I say matters, that you’re only thinking of the day you can get out of here and find the person who killed Stamp. But I’m warning you: Sentinels don’t take kindly to escapees, and if you think you’re in trouble now, just—”

  “Can I see the damn folder or not?” My voice, like my jaw, like my fingers on the side of my chair, is tight.

  She hears the tone, her eyes get a little bigger, and then she slides it across.

  Now that it’s in front of me, I’m hesitant to read it.

  I’ve been staring at the mental picture of Val’s face so long I’m almost afraid to look at a real picture of it. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but it stops me from opening the folder right away just the same.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I just … I really hate her, you know?”

  Vera pauses as we both stare at the unopened file sitting on the table just so in front of me.

  “Maybe you won’t after reading the file.”

  “The hell does that mean?”

  Vera doesn’t even flinch. If anything, she leans in. “It means that once you get to know Val as a person, you might not be so quick to—”

  “She’s not a person. She’s a Zerker, remember?”

  Vera ignores my tone and softens hers: “Not always. Like you, she started out as—”

  “Val was never like me. Never.”

  She nods curtly, says, “You didn’t kill all those Zerkers out of revenge?”