A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  ~ Night Owl Teen

  “Truly terrifying, this is filled with action and a sizzle of romance, along with dances, death, and back-stabbing BFFs.”

  ~ Romantic Times

  “Rusty Fischer does an amazing job of writing a first-person narrative of Maddy Swift’s descent into zombie-hood. Not only does he authentically capture the essence of a teenage girl, but he provides a fun, fresh take on the usual leg-dragging, groaning, brain-craving zombie and pens a fun and entertaining story that is often laugh-out-loud and always grin-inducing—although, brains are still required.”

  ~ Renee C. Fountain, Bookfetish.org and NY Journal of Books

  Reviews from Zombies Don’t Forgive:

  “Popcorn fun for the brain-munching set.”

  ~Kirkus Reviews

  Published 2014 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchase this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2014 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.

  ISBN 9781605426501

  Dedication

  To Martha, as always . . . for always.

  Prologue

  The Violent Kind

  Even from down the hall, through the supposedly soundproof walls, I can hear her, shaking the bars of her cage, gnashing her jagged yellow teeth, wailing as if she’s in pain.

  I wince, subconsciously slowing down as I approach Dad’s lab. Well, it’s not really Dad’s lab, as the Sentinels are always so quick to remind us, but that’s how I look at it anyway. I mean, he’s the only one qualified to study Val in the first place, so Dad’s lab it is and Dad’s lab it shall be and the Sentinels can lump it for all I care.

  It’s nearly midnight, and if we were back in Barracuda Bay, he’d be sacked out by now. But Sentinel City—at least, that’s what he calls it, and now it’s stuck with the rest of us—has a kind of Vegas feel. Since we zombies don’t sleep, there’s always as many folks roaming the halls at 2:00 a.m. as there are at 2:00 p.m. And since the place is short on windows, you pretty much never know what time it is anyway.

  Sure enough, as I rap on the frosted glass in the middle of the lab door, I hear a quick, “It’s open,” in between Val’s shrieking.

  I step in to find the lab brightly lit, as always, the smell of fresh coffee filling the air. Dad, lab coat unbuttoned over his crisp blue shirt and gold tie, leans against the counter across from Val’s cage.

  He is studying her carefully, the way he did dead bodies back in Barracuda Bay, where he was the coroner for Cobia County. I wonder what he thinks now that he’s studying live ones. At least, re-alive ones. From the inquisitive look on his face, I think maybe he likes them a little better. Or maybe, like me, he’s just trying to make the best of a crap situation.

  I stand there, half in, half out of the door, just watching her scream at him. Dad’s face is placid, as if he can’t even see her, let alone hear her. Then I let the door shut behind me, and Val starts, as if she thought this was just a private performance.

  I smirk. It’s kind of nice to see the ice queen flinch. Moment of shock over, she returns to form, coiled evil at five feet nothing. Val’s eyes are Zerker yellow and piercing and, even though I know the bars are three inches thick and solid steel, I shiver and wince and can’t even front that I’m not freaked to the bone just being in the same room with her.

  She stops screaming, pacing, fanning her fingers out from her cold, dead hand and rubbing them along the bars casually, as if it’s the coolest place to be. I avoid her glare, hating myself for looking away but unable to stare back at so much hate.

  In the next cage, Stamp leans against the bars as far away from Val as possible. His eyes, yellow too with a tinge of black, are half closed in boredom, as if he’s heard it all before, ad nauseum, and doesn’t really care if it ever stops. He offers me a weak smile and waves one finger, as if he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than that.

  I smile, wriggle a finger back, and turn away. “Dad?”

  He looks at me, eyes pleading. “Maddy, what are you doing here?”

  He asks me the same thing every night. I cluck my tongue and say each time: “Just checking up on you. Aren’t you about ready to clock out for the night?”

  He shrugs. “Just making a few more observations.”

  Right, with no clipboard, no pen, no sleek digital voice recorder, or so much as an Etch A Sketch to record his thoughts. I shuffle toward him. “What exactly are you observing?”

  “This one here.” He juts his chin in Val’s direction.

  I shake my head wearily. As always, I’m eager to leave five seconds after I walk in. The tension in the air is palpable. I’ve been in the room less than two minutes, and already my neck is sore from watching my back.

  I hate being in the presence of Val, hate talking in front of her, hate that Dad has to spend so much time with her and, what’s worse, doesn’t seem to mind it all that much.

  Doesn’t he remember what happened back in Barracuda Bay? The harm she caused? What she wanted to do to him? What she wanted to do to me? What she did to Stamp? Then again, maybe that’s why he’s so obsessed with her. As he always used to say, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

  I wave a hand in front of his face. “She’ll still be there in the morning.”

  He looks at me then, gaze far away, face paler than usual, chin covered with two days of salt-and-pepper stubble. “Let’s hope so.”

  Finally, I smile. He has to be kidding. I rap a gray knuckle against the solid bars of her cage, yanking back quickly as she saunters forward to investigate. “She may be immortal, but she’s no superhero.”

  Dad nods, unconvinced. “Did you hear that rage just now?”

  “Everyone in Sentinel City heard it.”

  He’s nodding fast. “That’s what I mean. You can’t contain fury like that. It will get out.”

  “Yeah, with a blowtorch, a forklift, and the cast of The Expendables, maybe.”

  He looks at me, like maybe he’s disappointed I’m not taking him more seriously. “Why do you think they keep her here? With me, I mean? Why not just incinerate her in her own device?”

  He cocks his head toward the tanning booth from Cabana Charly’s in the corner, a dangerous relic where the tubes full of undiluted avotoxia are still hooked up and juiced, just in case the Sentinels decide to do just that.

  I shrug. “Sentimental, I guess?”

  Dad snorts, a sound from our old life. I think of how many times we stood in our kitchen back home, talking just like this, minus the cages and Zerkers and rage in the air here. “They want to know how these Zerkers tick. And so do I.”

  I should care more, I guess, but I know how they tick. The same way cockroaches and spiders and sharks and other killers tick: on cold instinct.

  See happy? Squash it.

  See good? Kill it.

  See Maddy and anyone she loves? End them.

  I sigh. “So you’re not going to bed, then?”

  He smiles, wrinkles creasing around his tired eyes. “Not just yet, dear.”

  “Come on. You’ve been at it ever since we got back from Barracuda Bay. It’s the same thing every night. She scre
ams, you stare at her, the rest of us get freaked out. How about you skip the ‘you stare at her’ part and fast-forward to tomorrow?”

  Dad nods, clearly with no intention of budging. “I’m interested in what she’ll have to say when she stops screaming.”

  I look back at Val, into these deep dark eyes, so yellow and angry and, after all we’ve been through, far too familiar. I resist the urge to shiver and instead lean to kiss Dad on the cheek. His skin is so warm I just want to stay there by his side all night, as if I were rubbing my hands over a campfire. But I can feel the stiffness in his posture, the impatience in his breath. He just wants to watch and watch and watch.

  Not for the first time, I regret letting Val live.

  I shuffle toward Stamp, steering clear of Val’s cage. “Stamp?”

  He looks toward me as if he figured I’d just walk on by without even saying good night. “Hi,” he says, and I wonder if he’s forgotten my name again. His face is blank, with hints of something at the corners of his lips. Happiness? Confusion? Sadness? Gladness? “Maddy,” he adds, but I catch him looking at Dad, who’s leaning against the counter, pretending I haven’t caught him in the act of prompting Stamp.

  I turn back, smiling. “You okay in there?”

  Stamp shrugs. “I’d be better if this girl would stop screaming all the time.”

  “She will.”

  Val chuckles, then clears her throat.

  I know what’s coming.

  Stamp knows what’s coming. He inches closer, curling a finger for me to draw near.

  I do, even though I know I can’t give him the answer he so desperately wants.

  “Can you . . . can you get me out of here?”

  “Soon, Stamp,” I say, fake smile fixed on. “Soon . . .”

  He smiles, as if he really believes me. As he believed me last night and the night before that.

  I smile too because the only good thing about the new Stamp—besides the fact that, you know, he’s still here—is that he’s too slow to realize when I’m lying.

  Chapter 1

  Zerker Killing for Dummies

  When do I get the pen?” I grunt, shoving another ice pick into another waxy rubber ear. I follow it up with a lightning-quick slash across the CPR dummy’s throat with a six-inch blade.

  After a pause and the snap of the last centimeter of grody yellow artificial neck skin, the dummy’s head slips onto the floor, joining at least half a dozen more.

  Vera shakes her head humorlessly. “I’ve told you a thousand times: you have to earn the pen!”

  I pause, looking at the smattering of heads along the smooth gym floor, some of them literally still rolling. “You’re telling me that’s not worth a lousy electric pen?”

  Vera shakes her head, stiff and serene in her crisp, blue Keeper fatigues and clearly unimpressed with my mad Zerker-killing skills. Her arm, the arm I broke not long after we met, is better now. Not perfect—you can still see it resting at an odd angle if she’s standing just the right way—but better.

  “Pens are for Keepers,” she tells me for about the two thousand eight hundred seventy-fourth time. “Trainees get the Eliminator. Isn’t that enough?”

  Eliminator! I love that. She’s speaking, of course, about the weapon in my hand. The rubber grip fits perfectly in my palm and, with a quick press of the black button on each end, the scalpel blade and ice pick retract.

  It is a nifty weapon, no doubt, and appropriately named. If you’re trying to eliminate human-munching Zerkers with their thick hides and general fondness for their heads, yeah, there’s no better tool. A quick ice pick to the ear and, snap—out go the lights as the point jams through the brain, shutting one down forever. A razor-sharp blade to dislodge the head, just to be sure, and boom: no more Zerker.

  But there’s one weapon to rule them all: the supersonic, bad-to-the-bone, James Bondesque electrified ballpoint pen Vera keeps on her at all times.

  I put the Eliminator in a pocket of my gray fatigues. (You don’t get to wear blue until you’re an actual Keeper, and gray is about the only color left around this dump.) I slump onto the bench along the wall. “Well, not to sound like an ungrateful brat, but how long does this training last?”

  I’m not physically tired. That rarely happens unless I go without brains for too long, which is practically an impossibility here in Sentinel City. I’m just tired of waiting.

  Always, always waiting. Back in Barracuda Bay, I waited for the Zerkers to strike. Back in Orlando, I waited for the Sentinels to find us. And now, since they brought us here, to this training center for Keepers and Sentinels, I’ve been waiting to become one or the other, to get out of here and put my Zerker-killing skills to the test. And since the Sentinels are pretty much a sausagefest, as in no girls allowed, it’s either become a Keeper or Sentinel Support or bust.

  Vera leans against the gym wall, fingering an unnecessary cotton towel absently. “How long do you think your training should take?”

  I groan some more, tapping the back of my head several times against the blue cinder block wall behind me. “Not again with the Jedi mind tricks.”

  She makes that Vera face: head cocked, forehead unlined, eyes nearly closed, lips slightly parted, meaning, Explain yourself, girl.

  So I do. “I mean, don’t tease me with your half answers. Isn’t there some chart somewhere that says if so-and-so trains for such and such a time, they become a Keeper?”

  She offers a low, quiet chuckle. “If there were, don’t you think I’d have told you about it by now?”

  I snort.

  She’s answered another question with a question. I don’t know if she’s doing it unconsciously or if she’s just some mad genius, majoring in reverse psychology.

  “Okay, maybe there is no chart but, man, haven’t I been doing this long enough?”

  “How long do you think you’ve been doing it?”

  “Months now. Years, even.”

  At last, a smile. Few things are as bright in Sentinel City as Vera’s smile. “Six months, to be exact.”

  God, has it been that long since we captured Val and brought her back here?

  She wags a lecturing finger. “But you’ve been a Trainee for only three, don’t forget.”

  “How could I?” I look at my gray fatigues, where a big black T is stitched on every possible pocket flap, collar, and sleeve.

  Vera points to a supply closet full of dummies. “One more round?”

  I shake my head and raise my palms in surrender.

  “You know, the more you train, the closer you get to your goal.”

  “I don’t know if it is my goal anymore,” I say, holding a hand out for her help.

  She frowns but takes it anyway. She is small but powerful with all her hidden reserves of fiery anger. Her once-black skin is now ashy like mine.

  “What else would you do?” she asks on our way across the gym floor, picking up heads and dumping them in a mesh bag like Coach Potter used to do with the dodge balls after PE back at Barracuda Bay High.

  “I don’t know,” I say, holding up a rubber face for emphasis. “Melt the heads back onto the dummies?”

  “Be serious,” she scolds, like a French tutor who’s not paid enough per hour. “That’s not a goal. That’s a chore.”

  “Somebody has to do it.” I put the mesh bag into the supply closet, where by magic someone from Sentinel Support will pick them up, melt them back onto the dummies, and line them all up for tomorrow’s practice. “Why is that less useful than anything a Sentinel does? Or a Keeper, for that matter?”

  She looks vaguely offended. “It’s a great honor to be a Keeper. Do you think what I do is unimportant?”

  We pause by the locker room door, where we’ll part for the day.

  “I have no idea what you do, other than ride me all day.”

  She tut-tuts. “Just as someone rode me all day once upon a time many years ago.”

  I pounce at the chance to find out how old she is. Keepers, I’ve foun
d, even regular zombies, are protective of their ages. “Yes, but how many years ago?”

  “Finish your training,” she says, rolling her black eyes, “and you might find out.”

  I groan. “Okay, well, can you tell me if I’m at least close to being done?”

  She winks, a rarity. “Look at it this way: you’re one day closer than you were yesterday.”

  She turns, her generic black sneakers squeaking.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I call.

  She takes a few stiff steps across the giant gymnasium, dotted now with a dozen headless torsos.

  She takes a gray hand out of a pocket and waves backward. “You’ll thank me one day,” she says without turning around, her voice echoing.

  I frown and shoulder the locker room door open. I don’t need a shower, exactly. I don’t sweat and, by now, lopping the rubber heads off stationary dummies isn’t exactly taxing. Still, some things you do just to feel human again, if only for a little while and even if they don’t make sense.

  I open my locker and slip out of my gray fatigues, carefully folding them on the bench behind me. Inside the locker is a pink towel, some cherry bodywash, and a washcloth with strawberries all over it. I don’t know who shops for this stuff, but the girls’ supply shed looks like it was stocked by a gaggle of ten-year-old Girl Scouts whose troop leader was either Strawberry Shortcake or a My Little Pony. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Even zombies need girly stuff every now and then. But they could stand to take the edible-red-fruit theme down a notch or two.

  There are eight metal towers in the shower pit, with rounded tops and four spigots surrounding each. I press the cold water button because there is no hot water in Sentinel City.