Even the cold water feels warm on my skin. The cherry bodywash smells supersweet and comes out red, the foam it creates turning pink as I lather it all over my gray skin. I spritz some on my hand and rub it against my close-cropped scalp.
They had my longish black hair cut when I first entered Keeper training three months back. No explanation, no questions, just sit in this chair and watch your hair get snipped off, like something out of a boot camp training film.
They tell me as long as I eat fresh brains on the regular, it will grow back eventually, but it still looks just about the same. It feels good, though, stiff and scratchy under my hand as I wash my skin and rinse it all off. The pink foam swirls around the drain, and I linger under the spray.
This is pretty much it for the day, as far as excitement goes. Stamp is still a little delayed, as Dad so delicately puts it. Dane is distracted, as I like to put it. So that leaves me, myself, and I for the duration.
I close my eyes and shake my head, marveling at how I got to this point, here under this showerhead in a zombie locker room full of gray fatigues, looking at a drain full of pink foam and an afterlifetime of hours stretching before me.
Chapter 2
Z Lunch
Dane’s laughter barks through the canteen door, and I flinch. Not because it sounds harsh, which it does, but because I know who’s making him laugh in the first place. And here’s a hint: it isn’t me.
They’re sitting together at a table reserved for Sentinels, and six or seven of them are there as well, black berets on the table, shoulders stiff, but the happy couple huddle away from the others, at the end of the table, hanging on each other’s every word. They don’t even notice me.
I try not to look too obvious as I quick get in line, which is pretty easy to do because there isn’t any line to speak of. Not at this time of day. Well, not at any time of day, come to think of it.
It’s like a regular cafeteria line, like you’d have in school, although there are no big-armed lunch ladies in hairnets behind the glass, dishing out carrots and peas and mashed potatoes with yellow gravy.
There’s nobody back there, period, not that I’ve ever seen. You’d think the brain mousse, brain bars (think protein bar but with no chocolate chips), brain smoothies, potted brain, and brain nuggets just appeared out of nowhere, lined up in their little Styrofoam containers all by themselves. But it’s like the CPR dummy heads and the cherry soap in my locker and the strawberry-covered hand towels: somebody from Sentinel Support must put them out when we’re busy not looking.
I stare at the choices, trying hard to concentrate.
Maybe a dozen people are in here, but the only voice I notice is Dane’s. “No way,” he’s saying, voice supposedly hushed but loud enough for me to hear all the way across the room. “You don’t say?”
I cluck my tongue. You don’t say? That’s something a forty-year-old biologist says to his blind date, the thirty-eight-year-old librarian, before he pushes up his foggy bifocals and rubs his sweaty palms against his seersucker pants for the fifth time. You don’t say?
I shake my head, as if the movement will drown out his husky voice and stupid, stupid, stupid come-on lines and throaty laughter.
The kind I hear only when she’s around anymore.
I choose a brain bar, a bowl of nuggets, and a smoothie, stuff that’ll be easy to down alone at my Trainee table before I bolt away, with Dane not seeing me at all. Hopefully.
Probably.
It doesn’t cost anything—yay, free brains!—but I swipe my ID badge at the register at the end of the line. The Keepers like to keep tabs on what I eat—what and when and how much and how often. I put my card in my gray shirt pocket and look for the nearest empty table, sliding onto a plastic molded bench with my back to the Sentinels and my spork at the ready.
I eat quickly and not just to be gone before Dane looks away from his admirer. I’m flat-out hungry. I don’t know if it’s the constant Keeper training, having nothing much else to do all day, getting older, or what, but the brain hunger is as strong as ever.
The brain bars, nuggets, and smoothie are as much air as they are animal, but I still feel my eyelids flutter and taste buds sizzle with every mouthful. The energy travels throughout my body, filling every cell, as if I’ve just run a marathon and somebody handed me an ice-cold Gatorade in a Dumpster-sized cup.
I got over eating brains long ago. The disgusting factor, I mean. It’s what zombies do, period. There’s no way around it. No brains, no energy, no cell revitalization, no nothing. That, and Vera told me months back that we’re mostly eating animal brains anyway.
I guess I’ve gotten too involved in loving the brain juices draining into all my body parts. As I’m nibbling the last corner of the brain bar, the chairs on either side of me squeak out and slide back in, filled.
With Dane.
And Courtney.
He has the barest trace of a limp, his therapy with Dad letting him lose his cane two months ago. I kind of miss his hobble. He’s so confident and strong now. Somehow the cane made him vulnerable, I guess. Humble.
Now? Not so much.
“H-h-hey, guys,” I say, eyelids fluttery. I cover my mouth as I chew the last grainy morsel and swallow it too fast. “What’s up?”
Dane avoids my eyes and looks at my empty tray. “Let me guess: Keeper training making you extra hungry?”
I grit my teeth. Even though I’ll never gain another ounce in my afterlife, or so I’ve been told by everyone I’ve asked (and I’ve asked everyone), I don’t want to hear about how much I’ve eaten, especially in front of Courtney.
“Oh, well, you know . . .” My voice is a little high and light. If he were here, Dad would call it my stranger voice, meaning I was putting on airs. I suppose he’d be right.
Courtney is in Sentinel Support, which is kind of like the time Hazel talked me into being a manager for the volleyball team and I spent two weeks folding towels and lining up water bottles on the sidelines before I made up some excuse about my grades dropping in Honors English and Coach let me off the hook.
So basically Courtney provides support for the Sentinels, ordering new black boots when theirs get old, making sure their Tasers are charged before a mission, hemming their stiff black cargo pants if they’re too long—that kind of thing.
There are a lot of Sentinel Support members around Sentinel City. Dane was one, for a time, in the beginning of his training. But now that he’s earned his stripes, so to speak, he doesn’t have to shine his own shoes or patch up his beret.
Now Courtney is there to do that for him.
“Don’t tease her, Dane,” she says now, nudging his shoulder. “I hear Keeper training is really hard.”
She looks at me for a you-go-girl nod, but I resist the urge to give her one. Maybe if she weren’t sitting so close to Dane. But probably not. Instead I rub the dark stubble on my cold head.
She’s wearing the Sentinel Support uniform of black pants and a gray top (because everyone must wear a uniform at all times, apparently, even when they’re not officially anything), and even though her blonde hair is limp, she’s still a new zombie and it’s hard not to envy her full face and even fuller figure.
Not that she looks like a Normal. She doesn’t. Not really. Her skin is as grayish-white as mine, her eyes as dark, her movements as slow, but her cheeks aren’t quite as hollow, her features not as severe. She hasn’t lost all her human fat, as Dad might put it, and around here that makes her a cheerleader in a cafeteria full of mathletes.
She arrived at Sentinel City only a few weeks ago and started sniffing around Dane shortly thereafter. I’d spot her pacing in front of his dorm room, holding a pair of his shiny boots or tossing his fresh-pressed beret like a Frisbee or teasing a lock of hair or licking her thin lips.
I was good with that for a while. (Okay, not really ever.) Every Sentinel needs support, and who would turn down an eager beaver boot licker if she started stalking you all of a sudden with her thrusting ba
zooms and locks of hair and fresh-pressed socks? But then it turned into something else.
For example, Dane and I used to sneak brain bars out of the cafeteria and to the roof, watch the stars, and talk and . . . junk.
After Courtney showed up, every few nights he’d be a no-show. No biggie. It’s not like we’re married or anything. But I’d ding him the next day about it, and he’d look way too guilty.
Then one day Courtney let it slip that they’d been hanging around in the media room, and something kind of clicked inside me. What was cold grew colder, and what was warm fizzled out. Ever since then, Dane and I have been drifting steadily apart.
And now he brings her to my table? And they sit on the same side together? Like two lovesick rednecks in their jacked-up pickup truck, blissfully canoodling under the gun rack?
Don’t be that dude, Dane. Please. Don’t bring your new gal to sit across from your old gal. Be better than that. I know you can.
He reaches over and feels the burr that was once my hair. “I still can’t get used to your new do.” His voice is so light and infectious—so Dane—that I almost forget the vaguely voluptuous new chick sitting next to him.
“What did it look like before?” Courtney asks, as if she cares. And she asks him, not me, which is like three thousand shades of wrong and completely stabworthy.
And then this thing happens: he cocks his head and snorts and says, “Come to think of it, I can hardly remember.”
And that clicking thing, that ticking timer dial that’s been leaning toward Done for the last few weeks, finally switches all the way over. Ding. It’s so loud I’m surprised nobody else hears it.
I stand abruptly and reach for my tray.
“Hey,” Dane says, “where are you going?”
I don’t answer. I don’t even look at him. Much. I just swivel on my sneakers, the ones I have to clean myself, thank you very much, and head toward the tray return area.
I half expect him to follow me, to run me down, chew me out—anything—which would be better than what he does, which is nothing. I hear them murmuring behind me, soft hisses and whispers and not a single boot squeaking on the floor to catch up with me. Not even hers, which might have been a classy touch.
I swing through the red double doors, nearly taking out a squad of Sentinels on their way out. They grumble but note my spiffy Trainee fatigues and let me by without tearing my head off my neck.
I stumble around for a while, muttering to myself, fists clenched at my sides, until I realize I have no idea where I’m going and no real desire to get there.
Chapter 3
“And Many Morgue . . .”
Dad’s dorm is twice the size of mine and thirty times more civilized. I guess I feel like everywhere I stop is a temporary roof until I figure out what to do with my afterlife, so why bother decorating it? So I don’t. But Dad is Dad. He keeps asking the Sentinels for more accessories. You know, like dishes and cups and knives and forks and throw rugs and lamps and clown pictures for the wall (don’t ask). Partly it’s to make it feel like home, I guess, but mainly he doesn’t like the Sentinels much and likes to bug them with as many requests per week as he can.
Unfortunately, the Sentinels don’t like Dad much either. Either that or they simply won’t—or can’t—travel farther than the nearest souvenir stand to grab the items on his list, so his place looks like a cheesy roadside hotel room circa 1974.
I stand in the doorway, a little calmer now after six circuits of the track behind the gym.
Usually Dad keeps office hours, in the sense that he’s in his lab from 8:00 a.m. till 6:00 p.m. and then comes back to his dorm suite, where we share a meal (he eats, I watch); then he slips back into his lab coat and drifts away for more late-night studies on Val, the Zerker everyone loves to hate.
I can’t blame him, really. What’s he gonna do? Watch six hours of The Lawrence Welk Show and stumble into the halls looking for a Sentinel to do the polka with?
The lights are off, and I wonder if maybe he’s taking a catnap. But, no, I see candles flickering in his kitchenette. Has the power gone out? Has he blown a fuse? I smirk. Maybe the Sentinels finally had enough of his penny-ante requests and pulled the plug, just to show him who’s really boss.
I don’t see him, so I creep in, using my yellow zombie vision. “Dad?”
I hear him chuckle and clear his throat. Then his thin voice sings out, “Happy rebirthday to you. Happy rebirthday to you. Happy rebirthday, dear Maddy. Happy rebirthday to you.”
I shake my head, wondering what’s gotten into him.
He comes around the corner, carrying a Styrofoam plate bearing a Twinkie with a candle sticking up from the middle. He’s got on a pink-and-green birthday hat, another dollar store wonder that probably took three weeks of constant requests of the Sentinels to secure.
“And many morgue . . .” There’s a twinkle and something wet in his eye.
There’s a small lump in my throat too.
He used to sing that back home, where he was chief coroner for the Cobia County morgue. Every birthday for as long as I can remember, whether the two of us were celebrating alone in the breakfast nook or with a couple of friends and a cake I’d made from scratch, he’d add his little joke: “And many morgue . . .”
Sometimes if he wasn’t actually carrying the cake, he’d do jazz hands like some bad dinner theater actor and double the embarrassment factor, just for grins and giggles.
But tonight I’m not embarrassed. I’m just plain sad. Or happy. Or sad. Or . . . I dunno. Happysad. Hasappy? Sadappy? Sappy? Is that what that word really means—a cross between sad and happy?
I figure bittersweet is close but not quite right either. It doesn’t sound happy or sad enough. Whatever. Dad seems happy, and that’s all that really matters anymore. He holds the bowl out for me. I blow on the candle, or try anyway, but either he’s being nice or we’ve just plain forgotten that I’m fresh out of breath. He blushes a little, brings it back in front of his face and blows it out quickly. A stream of smoke floats to the ceiling.
He puts the bowl on the kitchen counter, and something comes over me. I give him a giant bear hug and, glad zombies don’t cry, whisper in his ear, “But it’s not my birthday. Don’t tell me you’re going senile on me.” I let him go.
When he catches his breath, he smiles and straightens his party hat. “It’s not your birthday. It’s your rebirthday. I took out the calendar the other day, backtracked, and, with a little help from your friends, pinpointed the day you became a . . . well, a . . . you know—and it’s today! So happy rebirthday!”
There’s a little table off the kitchen, the fold-up kind you bring out when a couple of extra people are coming over for Thanksgiving or maybe to play cards on a Saturday night. It’s covered in a green polyester tablecloth. The folding chairs are not very comfortable, but Dad seems happy as he sits across from me, dragging the Twinkie in a bowl with him like a security blanket.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I tell him, fiddling with the orange salt and pepper shakers. (No, seriously, they’re shaped like real oranges and say Florida on the bottom.)
He shrugs. “It’s not like I have anything better to do, dear. Besides, I figured you could use a little cheering up.”
I give a faraway chuckle.
“Okay, I mean a lot of cheering up?”
I look around the empty apartment. “Well, I know it’s my first, but I have to say, this is the saddest rebirthday party I’ve ever been to.”
He nods and sits back a little. “It’s my first too, you know. But maybe they’re supposed to be sad. Like New Year’s Eve.”
“What? You love New Year’s Eve.” I picture him back home. He’d get us plastic hats and streamers and noisemakers with the date on them, and we’d eat fancy appetizers like brie, pâté, papery crackers he said were imported but just tasted stale, and an assortment of butter cookies dipped halfway in chocolate.
We’d sit around and listen to big band Christmas musi
c because Dad said that was the same as New Year’s music. Just before midnight, he’d turn on the TV and we’d watch the Times Square Ball Drop. At midnight, we’d whoop and holler, hug, twirl our noisemakers with their funny clatter-clatter-clicks, and then stand there awkwardly for a few more minutes before going to bed.
Lame, yes, but aren’t some of the best traditions?
He shrugs. “I always loved the idea of New Year’s, but the reality is, especially when you get old like me, it’s a reminder you’ve got one less year on the planet.”
I rest my chin on my knuckles. “So you’d consider New Year’s a sadappy holiday?”
“A what?”
“Go with me here. I’m trying a new word: sad plus happy equals sadappy.”
He frowns. “I think sappy is the word you’re looking for. But, yes, I always got a little sadappy around New Year’s.”
I nod and open my mouth really wide, making big monster hands. “You know, I can make it so you live forever. That way New Year’s will never be sadappy again.”
He waves, almost but not quite giggling. “No, thanks!”
He hoists a plastic fork—the Sentinels still haven’t gotten him any real silverware—and asks, “So you can’t actually eat this, can you?”
I chuckle and slide the bowl closer to him. “It’s all yours.”
He smiles, digging in with gusto. “Well, it was more ceremonial than anything else.”
I nod and watch him go to town. He eats the snack cake in four bites and then sits back, patting his tight little belly. He has on brown dress slacks and a blue work shirt, which is all he has in his closet: five pairs of brown slacks, five blue shirts, and two ties, both the most god-awful yellow gold you’ve seen this side of 1978. As I said, the Sentinels like him about as much as he likes them. And yet he wears the clothes proudly because every care package or hideous tie they bring him is one small victory, I guess.
A Living Dead Love Story Series Page 44
