A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Sunlight spills through the high windows and across the gym floor. Vera says Sentinel City (not that she calls it that) used to be a community college. Though the walls are painted a generic light blue now, I can look at the sun dappling the crevices and easily picture taped-up signs saying things like Go, Team, Go! and a big American flag hanging from under the clock.

  Basketball hoops are at either end, but they’re in the raised position now. I’ve never seen them down, which is kind of weird. You’d think the Sentinels would have a team, maybe even a league. The Sentinels versus the Keepers, and the winners could get a bronze skull trophy. I’d pay to see that happen.

  I turn the Eliminator over in my hand, making myself smile at fake team names, like the Sentinel Sizzlers, the Gore Globetrotters, the Crypt Keepers, the Undead . . . Undead . . . shoot. I got nothing basketball related that starts with U. Wait: Undead Underhanded? No, they’d never go for that. I don’t even know if underhanded is a basketball term. Isn’t that softball?

  See, this is what happens when Vera’s not around to stand there in her powder-blue beret, leaning against the gym wall, glaring me into decapitating a bunch of dummies against my will: I spend five minutes naming living dead basketball teams that don’t even exist with words that may not even be basketball related.

  I stretch in my gray sweatpants and matching top. Even when not wearing the actual Trainee uniform, I still have to wear Trainee colors. The Sentinels are big on uniforms. It’s like a prep school where every class wears a different pattern of plaid skirt and matching tie clip or something. It doesn’t get confusing so much as just so routine and blah.

  I mean, just once I’d like to roam the halls and see some zombie shuffling around in skinny jeans and a faded Iron Maiden concert T-shirt under a flannel shirt, you know? Isn’t that what zombies are supposed to wear? Sometimes I think Sentinels take being civilized a tad too far.

  It was better when we first got here and I could roam in civilian clothes, but then Vera talked me into training to be a Keeper, and Dane went all Sentinel brainwash, and now . . .

  It’s just hard to believe how much has happened in one short year; that’s all.

  At first I thought Dad’s rebirthday party was pretty lame, but now, a few days later, it’s sinking in that I’ve been undead 365-plus days. Which, if you think about it, since we zombies never sleep, is more like 730 days. My days are twice as long as they ever were when I was Normal and I can do twice as much, although there’s not a crap ton to do around Sentinel City besides try to avoid Dane and his Support Sleaze.

  In other ways, though, it feels like a lot less time than that. I remember every moment of my last few days alive in vivid detail. What the cafeteria served for lunch the day I got struck by lightning (vegetarian chili and Mexican cornbread), where I bought the bra I wore to Stamp’s party (at that little Flirt store in the mall, but only because Hazel gave me a gift certificate for my birthday), what the first drops of rain smelled like as they started falling on my way out that last night of my life (rain).

  I’ve replayed that moment so many times in my head. It’s like a movie that gets worn down from constant rewinding, but it all feels so real. I can practically reach out and touch it. It’s like if I could just go back to Barracuda Bay and buy another bra from Flirt, I could get some great, cosmic do over and try again.

  Weirdly, I remember those last few moments of being alive much more than the actual exciting stuff I’ve done since being undead. Like, you know, saving Barracuda Bay from a Zerker Armageddon. And rescuing Stamp from Val, the witch. And generally trying to keep Normals safe from the brain eaters and cerebellum slurpers, who are way more common than I ever thought possible.

  And I remember the food! How much I loved food. Real food, junk food, fast food, hot food, Normal food. Dad being the typical workaholic single parent that he was, I did a lot of the cooking, which meant a lot of ordering in or picking up or driving through, and I got to know the value menus of most places in town on a first-name basis.

  Sure, okay, I tried to eat as healthy as possible, but being lazy and rushed for time and always, always hungry, I pretty much ate whatever was fast and hot or greasy or iced or just plain sounded good. Still, there were some major standouts over the years.

  What I wouldn’t give to have a ginger and pine nut smoothie at the Shake Shack or a batch of sweet potato curly fries at the Burger Barn or even a basket of fried mushrooms at Dad’s favorite rib shack, Sloppy Sam’s. Now all I get is preshaped brain bars and chunky brain smoothies and seared brain nuggets.

  I sigh and tighten my grip on the Eliminator. It looks so dull in my hand, just a black tube about the size of a kid’s bike handle and, like a bike handle, with grips for my fingers on one side.

  I look at the dummies scattershot throughout the gym. They’re affixed to metal stands, their heads about the same height as my own. But they seem funny, these mostly realistic fleshy, rubber dummies on top of these stands that look like bar stools or something.

  They’re tougher than they look. You hear rubber and you think rubber ball or rubber raft, but these are more like rubber cement. I asked Vera once why we trained on such tough mannequins when Zerkers are, after all, human flesh.

  “You’ve battled them before,” Vera said, condescendingly. “You know better. The older the Zerker, the tougher the hide.”

  “But why?” I pressed, just looking for a little rest and knowing the only way to get it was to lure her into a diatribe. For once, it worked.

  “They’re scavengers,” she spat. “Murderers and grave robbers. Their diet is inconsistent and comprised mostly of animal flesh, not brains. While we strive to eat brain regularly, their hides are more like sedimentary layers of their diets. The less brains they eat, the less alive their cells are and the more they petrify. The more they petrify, the tougher their skins. Which is why we train on these CPR dummies, who are as close an approximation to Zerker skin as I’ve ever seen.”

  I stretch my neck, at least as much as I can, then bend at the waist to touch my toes. Fat chance. I haven’t touched my toes in at least nine months; I’ve gotten that stiff since my heart went offline. Still, Vera keeps me as limber as possible with these daily workouts.

  Today she’s meeting with the other Keepers at Sentinel City, so I’m alone in the giant gym. It’s quiet. No one around but me and the dummies, literally. I focus, taking my place under the basketball net at the far end of the gym and crouching.

  I’m in running shoes, which took the Sentinels three months to order for me. They’re a little big, so I’ve tied them real tight and am wearing two pairs of socks. Pink socks because the Sentinels think all girls should wear pink socks all the time. Either that or they must be inexpensive, because the Sentinels are way cheap.

  The sneakers squeak on the shiny gym floor as I move forward, pressing the button at the top of the Eliminator so that the ice pick slides out. With a thick, gassy pop, it plunges into the first dummy’s ear. I pull it out, pressing the other button so the switchblade thwacks out.

  Still moving, eyes open and wary, I slice the blade through the neck, straight through the PVC pipe up the middle, which Vera says replicates a spine, until the blade comes out the other end and—slurp—the head slides off the rubber chest, plopping onto the floor and rolling at my feet.

  I’m about to move on to Dummy #2 when I hear stale clapping behind me. I turn, Eliminator held high, to find Dane standing just inside the double doors. He sees me wielding the lethal weapon and puts his hands up in a mock don’t-hurt-me pose.

  I smirk and press both buttons at the same time, sliding the sharp ends in so I’m not tempted to do just that. I lean against the dummy I’ve decapitated and watch Dane walk toward me.

  His black beret is on tight, sticking like glue to his close-cropped hair. His cheeks are hollow, his eyes brooding, his shoulders looking broader than usual in his black fatigue shirt. The rubber boots give him a few inches of height and make him that much more impre
ssive as he stalks in my general direction. As usual lately, he’s not smiling at me.

  Not even a little.

  “Nice moves.” He nods toward the fallen dummy head, lidless rubber eyes staring back at me mournfully.

  “Thanks.” My voice is as dead as if the dummy’s head just said it.

  He’s close enough to extend a hand now, and I almost reach for it just as he says, “May I?”

  And I know he’s not asking for a dance. I hand him the Eliminator.

  He turns it over affectionately in his hand. “They gave us these the first week of Sentinel training,” he brags, fingertips caressing the buttons on either end. He pushes them both—snap! snap!—and the blades come out, one after the other, catching the waning sunlight in the gym. “Before we got the Tasers.”

  I roll my eyes. Stupid Sentinels and their Tasers, like it takes a ton of skill to stick an electric socket into a person’s neck and squeeze a trigger until their eyes bug out and they slump, slack jawed, to the floor. I’m pretty sure even Stamp could do that. I’d say something clever, like Whatever, but I’m not really speaking to him at the moment.

  He holds up the blade, looks at the row of dummies, and heads for the nearest one, sticking the switchblade into the ear and trying to slice through the neck with the ice pick. I snort and cover my mouth, but luckily the sound of him butchering the poor dummy’s face covers up the sound.

  Two minutes later, he’s still chopping away at the PVC spine like it’s a giant block of ice and he’s an 1890s housewife trying to keep the milk and eggs cool.

  I walk up behind him, careful to avoid the rain of rubber dummy chunks and say, “It’s okay. You’re just out of practice.”

  He smirks and gives up.

  If only to put the poor dummy out of its misery, I grab the Eliminator and use the scalpel end to slice the rest of the head clean off, just like that.

  “Guess so,” he mumbles, shuffling over to the bleachers and taking a seat on the bottom row. He pats the seat next to him.

  I roll my eyes and remain standing, thanks very much.

  He leans back, resting against the bench behind him. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, that deal at Z-lunch yesterday, huffing off like that? Rude.”

  “What’s rude, Dane, is that happened three whole days ago. You’ve waited this long to chew me out about it. Used to be a time you couldn’t wait three hours to chew me out. Wait. That didn’t come out right . . .”

  His face is frumpled, almost like Stamp’s for a minute there. “Three days?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. Well, still, friends don’t treat friends like that.”

  “I agree.”

  Surprise slowly forms across his face. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Friends don’t bring their new friends to sit with their old friends and practically lick tonsils at the lunch table. No, they don’t.”

  Suddenly, it dawns on him. (And I thought Stamp was the slow one.) “That’s what this is all about, then, is it? Courtney?”

  “You tell me!”

  His eyes get big.

  I look down to see the Eliminator, locked and loaded, in my hand. When did that happen?

  “Take it easy,” he says, waving his hands.

  I shake my head and click the blades back in, sliding the weapon into my pocket to avoid the temptation to stick an ice pick in his ear.

  “I’m just saying, I can’t believe you’d think there’s anything between me and Courtney.”

  “I don’t,” I snap. “There isn’t anything between you and Courtney, because she’s always stalking you so hard there’s not even room for air between you.”

  “Very funny.”

  I shake my head, emotion choking me. “That’s just it. It’s not funny. Whatever you’re doing or not doing, it’s not even anywhere near funny. You don’t just drop people like that. Like . . . like . . .” I sweep my hands toward the corners of the gym, then back at myself. “Like this!”

  He looks up at me, sad. “I’m not dropping you, Maddy. How juvenile. Things are different now. I’m a Sentinel. You’re a Trainee. Stamp’s . . . Stamp. Everything’s changed. Forever. You can’t expect it to be like it was back then.”

  His words hit me so hard I take a step back. Literally, I stagger as if one of these dummies has come to life and nudged me. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  He avoids my gaze again, making things even worse. “I just mean things change. People change. We’re changing. Right now.”

  I can’t believe this. Is he dumping me? Out loud? Without actually saying he’s dumping me? Can he be that ludicrously chicken? “Have you changed? ’Cause I certainly haven’t. Have you changed so much that you can’t even come right out and tell me what you’re talking about right now?”

  Holy crap, this just keeps getting worse. How is this happening? Is this some joke? Is he sorry he didn’t come to my rebirthday party the other night so he’s punking me and any minute he’ll smile and pull a Twinkie with a flickering candle out of one of his cargo pants pockets?

  And he’s so cool about it all, just sitting there, back against the bleacher, like we’re talking about who gave the best pom-pom at the pep rally. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Say the truth!” I hate the high, panic-stricken sound of my voice as it echoes off the gym walls. “Who are you all of a sudden? You’re acting like we’re strangers or something!”

  Just then the gym doors open and Vera walks in, blue beret in hand. Dane is kind of obscured from her view by a dummy, and she’s looking at just the one head on the floor.

  I know she can’t see him when she says, “Maddy, everything all right?”

  “No,” I blurt, voice cracking, something it hasn’t done in months. “No, it’s not.”

  Vera flashes me a quizzical look.

  Dane stands then.

  She looks at each of us. Slowly, as she does every-thing. Then it seems to click, and the fire comes into her severe eyes. “May I help you, young man?”

  Dane takes off his beret quickly, and suddenly I remember. As a Keeper, Vera totally outranks his ass!

  “No, no, I was just leaving.”

  “I’d say so,” she huffs, watching him go. She turns back to me as the double doors crash in his wake. “Don’t you have some heads to lop off?”

  At first I’m kind of disappointed that she’s not all girl talk and women’s lib and We are family and asking me about my man, but I nod and release the blades from the Eliminator.

  Slicing through flesh-colored rubber up and down the gym floor, I realize a little decapitation is just what the doctor ordered.

  Chapter 6

  Scapegoat

  I’m in the library, guiltily reading one of those Why Women Like Men Who Don’t Like Them Back and Never Will books behind a women’s magazine when a Sentinel team shows up. In the library. The quiet library. Loud and clacking and clomping.

  Like . . . one of these things is not like the other.

  At first I think they’re friends of Dane’s coming to break up with me on his behalf, since he never actually said the words the other day, or maybe even to sing me one of those he’s-so-sorry-he’s-a-dead-guy sing-a-gram viral video things, but they’re in full battle gear with Tasers pulled and gleaming black shoulder pads (Dane once bragged they were his idea, and back then I believed him) clattering in the silent library.

  The shortest one steps forward. His eyes are so glossy I can see myself in them, his cheeks so hollow I could cut the pages of my magazine with them. “Come with us.”

  I take an involuntary step back, shielding myself with the self-help book I’ve been hiding. “What? Whoa. What for?”

  They’re not playing. They lurch forward, and I freeze like some clueless chick in a B movie. Just like that. All my Keeper training bolts the minute I’m faced with three Sentinels and their snapping Tasers and cold eyes.

  In seconds they’ve got my ha
nds behind my back, one of those plastic zip ties slapped on so I can’t move except to shuffle as they lead me out of the library and down the hall. The short one’s out front; the taller ones are on either side of me. It’s an easy formation, and I can tell they’ve practiced it a million times.

  Dane too, probably, and I wonder why they didn’t send him to get me. Or did he send them to get me? Does he have that power yet? To order Sentinels out to pick up his ex-girlfriend and scare her into forgiving him? And why does part of me—the dumb part, obviously—think that would be kind of a romantic gesture?

  Out in the clamorous halls Sentinels are everywhere, all with their stun guns at the ready, all glowering at me like I’ve stolen the brain smoothie machine from the mess hall or something.

  But this is no joke. Even the air feels serious, like the atoms themselves know not to play games. No one speaks, not so much as a word. Or grunts, which is the preferred means of Sentinel communication. Even their rubber boots barely squeak on the linoleum floor.

  I’ve never seen it like this before. There must be some kind of drill all through Sentinel City, but did they have to actually cuff my wrists? They could have just said, “Here—wink-wink, nudge-nudge—walk with us and put your hands behind your back and pretend to be cuffed. It’ll all be over in a minute.” I would have been all over that. But no. Stupid Sentinels have to do everything by the book.

  I see a blue blur of Keeper uniforms ahead of me in the midst of all the black Sentinel suits, but there’s no Vera. I don’t know any of the rest of them, and nobody’s looking at me anyway, and it wouldn’t matter if they did spot me, because my escort is just speeding along, stopping for nobody and nothing at all.

  We pass the empty cafeteria, media room, gym, and locker rooms. Just as we’re heading toward my dorm wing, we turn toward a hall I’ve never been down before.

  It’s quieter here, with fewer Sentinels and no Keepers in sight, but I soon see why. Half a dozen tall cages are at the end, gleaming metal like the ones inside Dad’s lab that they keep Val or Stamp in.