A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  Now I know what it feels like to be a Zerker. To hide in the shadows, to live in the dark, to not come out in the light. Every snap of every twig, every tree rustle, every moaning branch I stop, crouching and dragging Stamp down with me. We follow the tree line all night long, down one residential street after another, looking closely at the For Sale signs; there are a lot of them.

  The streets are all the same: suburban and long and neat and clean. Pumpkins flicker on the front stoops, reminding me that fall is here once again and that means I’m an undead year older.

  The houses are mostly new or refurbished or just really, really clean. Most streets have about eight or nine houses on one side, eight or nine on the other, with a cul de sac featuring three or more at the far end. Each driveway has one or two cars, nice ones, a fine layer of dew already misting the windshields, though we’re still a few hours from dawn.

  Every fifth or sixth house seems to be for sale, but I don’t find what I’m looking for until we’re halfway down our seventh street of the night: a postcard Florida street called, naturally, Lumpfish Lane.

  “Here,” I hiss, pulling Stamp behind the plastic trash cans and recycling bins lined up in front of the garage. “This one.”

  “Why?” he asks, not whispering at all.

  I point to the For Sale sign. “That’s why.”

  He looks up and down the street, pointing at three identical signs. “Why not those houses?” His face crumples as he tries to figure it out, but I don’t have time.

  “Because they don’t have that . . .” I point to the magnetic yellow Foreclosure banner slapped kitty-corner across the realtor’s sign.

  He wrinkles his nose. “What’s that mean?”

  I forget about his scrambled brain and curse the Zerker that Dad couldn’t bleed out of him. “It means no one lives here,” I say, dragging him up. We walk along the side of the house toward the backyard. “It means we can stay here and nobody will bother us if we don’t do anything stupid.”

  He stops me halfway down the side of the house to turn back and look at the sign, squinting so he can really check it out. “It says all that? But it’s so small.”

  I chuckle and jerk him forward again. “Kind of,” I mutter. “I might be paraphrasing a little.”

  There is a wooden fence, leaning a bit but in pretty good shape otherwise, with a door where the wood meets the back wall of the house. I unlatch it pretty easily, popping my scalpel out of the Eliminator and sliding it through the crack until the latch pops and the door creaks open.

  I lug Stamp inside and shut the door quietly. There is a lap pool featuring some questionable water, leaves floating on the calm, black surface.

  The house is on a canal, and there is a dock and, lapping quietly next to it in the water, a small sailboat. Every so often there is the soft clink-clink of metal on metal, rigging against mast. Next to the pool is a screened porch with no furniture and beyond that a sliding glass door to an empty living room.

  I stand there, finger on my chin. “Now to get into the—”

  Stamp wrenches the screen door open, and I figure it was probably locked and he just broke it, but you know what? I’ll replace it once we’re able to pass better and I can walk into the nearest hardware store in something other than draggled scrubs.

  The big patio is tiled, and I think how nice it would look with wicker furniture and cute red throw pillows. Not too red, maybe even maroon with oversized black buttons down the middle. And a little table for two where you could sit on cool nights and eat chips and salsa and listen to the river lap against the dock pilings or maybe even some steel drum music oozing from your iPod.

  Crunch goes the sliding glass door lock as Stamp forces it open as well. I sigh and look at the Eliminator I was going to use, retracting the blades and sliding it back into my waistband.

  The house smells musty, as if no one has been here for months.

  Just to get rid of him for a few minutes so I can clear my head, I tell Stamp, “Go check upstairs. Make sure no one else is squatting here.”

  He nods eagerly, as if I’ve sent him on some spy mission full of danger and intrigue and martinis. I hear him clomping heavily up the stairs, the very opposite of secret. I rush through the rooms downstairs: kitchen, dining room, living room, guest bath, two-car garage, laundry room, and guest room in the back.

  Not a stick of furniture was left behind, not a leftover fork or sponge or battery or refrigerator magnet or bottle of bleach. I check the locks on the front door and lower all the blinds.

  I clomp up the stairs to find Stamp looking out a guest bedroom window, peering at the street below. He looks so peaceful I hate to bug him.

  “What’s up?” I ask, touching his shoulder gently.

  He doesn’t even flinch. “I thought I saw someone under that street light.”

  I scoot him out of the way and look through the blinds. A street lamp sends down a cone of orange light in the predawn darkness, but I don’t see anyone now. Still, we both know that doesn’t mean anything.

  “Did it look like one of us?”

  He studies me and thinks for a second. “No, not really.”

  We watch for a little while more, but nothing happens. “It could have been someone out walking their dog,” I suggest, backing away from the window. The space is small, like a child’s room, and I think it’s a good fit for Stamp.

  He furrows his leathery brow. “Without a dog?”

  I shrug and drift away to see the rest of the upstairs: another small bedroom right next to Stamp’s, a guest bathroom, a small loft overlooking the downstairs, and then the master suite, twice as big as Stamp’s room with its own little balcony and master bath.

  It has hardwood floors and lots of room, and the balcony overlooks the pool and river. Again, I find myself decorating in my mind, wondering if I’ll ever be able to walk into a Pottery Barn and buy a throw pillow and bring it to a home I live in and put it on a chair I own.

  Stamp trudges in and taps my shoulder, a mischievous smile on his face. “How do you like my room?”

  I look around at all the space and frown. “Your room?”

  “Yeah, I called it.” He sounds indignant, like how dare I even ask.

  “When?”

  He avoids my gaze. “When you were downstairs. Didn’t you hear me?”

  I shake my head and shrug. It’s the perfect end to one of the worst days of my afterlife.

  Chapter 17

  B & E and ME

  I keep track of everything in a little notebook I found by the cash register. Yes, I feel bad for breaking and entering. Yes, I feel terrible for stealing. But if we don’t get regular street clothes, we may never be able to pass among the Normals, and this thrift shop was the only place within walking distance of the house on Lumpfish Lane that looked like it didn’t feature sixteen surveillance cameras and a silent alarm and booby traps on the fire escape out back.

  Stamp is at home, sitting in his room, waiting for me. At least, I hope he is. God, please let him be. I made him promise not to go anywhere, but he’s so unpredictable now.

  We’ve been sitting in that silent house on Lumpfish Lane for almost two full days. I couldn’t take it anymore. After talking Stamp out of coming with me, which took half an hour, here I am, a felon, skulking around in the dark.

  I hurry through the thrift shop, grabbing a backpack and a duffel bag, stuffing them both to the gills with anything that looks like it might fit, writing it down in the little notebook, tallying the little cardboard price tags dangling off each sleeve or cuff or shoelace or belt loop.

  As I work, I picture Stamp getting restless cooped up in the house, ignoring my instructions and walking outside, knocking on the neighbors’ front doors, asking everyone on the street where I might be and could he come in and wait a while and, oh, by the way, do they have any brains, and if not, that’s okay; the ones in their skull cages will do just fine, thank you very much.

  I bring some clothes into a dressing room and
slip them on. Yes, I know I could stand naked in the middle of the store and no one would see me at this time of night, but old habits die hard.

  It’s nothing fancy, just some fresh underwear, an olive tank top, maroon track pants, and a gray-and-black-striped hoodie. I slip on some of those footie socks and a pair of off-brand walking shoes, a little snug but they’ll do. I’ll wear them in while walking around Seagull Shores in the dark for the next few nights, I’m sure.

  Outside of the dressing room, I spot a rack and grab a few hats, remembering my burr head and what it might look like to the Normals. There’s a ball cap for some local team, the Seahorses or whatnot, and I slip it on and shove the rest in my pack.

  There are sunglasses by the cash register, and I grab some of those as well, just in case. By the time I tally everything up, and I keep rounding up because I’m sure I missed a few things along the way, it all comes to $126. Yikes.

  It’s gonna take a lot of picking pennies up off the street and checking soda machines for spare change to pay that back. Or who knows? Maybe I can pawn the sailboat behind the house on Lumpfish Lane or something. I’ll figure it out one way or another before we leave town.

  I slip the backpack and duffel bag over my shoulders, climb on top of a shelf in the middle of the store, and slip through the ceiling tile opening I entered through forty minutes ago.

  I replace it, hoping no one will notice the stuff I took. Okay, maybe they’ll catch the three twenties I took out of the deposit bag from the manager’s office, but maybe the bank will blame the manager and the manager will blame the bank and it will all end in a draw: he said; she said. No harm, no foul.

  I just don’t want anyone mad at me is all. I may be Vanished, one level of zombie above a Zerker, but that doesn’t mean I have to turn into some lawless punk taking good money away from innocent Normals just trying to run a business.

  The air-conditioning vent on the roof is a tight squeeze, but I’m smaller than I used to be and not so panicked about the side of the thin metal tube pressing against my chest as I pull, pull, pull myself up and out of it. When I’m standing on the roof again, I slide the round top back on the vent and walk to the edge.

  I’m in downtown Seagull Shores now, standing above something like a main street or just off it. There’s a post office at one end, a bank at the other, a drug store and a men’s store and a women’s store and an ice cream parlor—and no one is around. The clock on the bank says in big, red digital numbers that it’s 4:43 a.m., and that feels about right.

  I smell the salt air and hear the crash of the waves to my right as I step down the fire escape to the street below. I grab my bags’ straps atop each shoulder and look both ways before slinking through the same alleys I crept up to get here.

  There is a convenience store between the thrift shop and the house on Lumpfish Lane. A bench sits out front between two newspaper machines. I shove my bags under it, pull down my Seahorses ball cap, and walk inside, the three twenties from the deposit bag crisp in my hoodie pocket. The lights are bright, which is good. Not because it makes me look better, but it makes everyone else look bad, so hopefully I won’t stand out too much.

  The clerk is tall and thin with short, red hair and big, black glasses and a tan-and-red Stop N Go vest. He barely looks up from his girly mag as I walk in and head for the drink aisle. I grab some generic grape soda, something sweet and cold, and make for the pet food aisle, looking past the name-brand stuff to the cut-rate cat food, smiling when I see lamb brains down the long list of ingredients on the back of the can.

  It’ll do for now.

  I walk to the register and slide the items next to the guy’s magazine, which isn’t full of naked girls, as I first thought, but muscle cars. I stand there, money out while he reads the last paragraph and looks up.

  “Oh, hi,” he says, meeting my gaze.

  I wait for him to grimace, but he doesn’t. I can’t imagine he gets many supermodels in the joint in the middle of the night, and even undead I probably look better than half of his regular customers.

  He rings the stuff up so slowly I have time to notice the pumpkin-scented candles on display by the cash register. I ask him to add a few of them to my bill and then grab two 99-cent cigarette lighters at the last minute.

  It comes to $12.79, and I hand him one of the stolen twenties, taking the change while he double-bags my stuff. “Quite the midnight snack,” he says, shoving everything in one bag.

  “My cat Trixie got hungry.”

  He doesn’t even flinch, just slides the bag across the counter and goes back to his magazine.

  I nod and take the bag, divvying up the items between the backpack and duffel bag so they’re easier to carry through town. I save one bottle of cheap grape soda, sipping it slowly on the way back to the house on Lumpfish Lane, my dry, dead cells welcoming the sugar rush that will last a few minutes until, like everything else we eat, it evaporates in the endlessly hungry wastelands that are our innards.

  I finish it under the street light beneath our window, looking up. When I shield my eyes against the weak orange light, I see Stamp looking out between the slats.

  He seems happy to see me. Or maybe it’s just the soda bottle I have in my hand.

  Chapter 18

  Ground Rules

  Feel better?”

  Stamp burps, wipes the cheap grape soda off his lips, and nods.

  We’re in the kitchen, sitting cross-legged on the tile floor, a pumpkin spice candle flickering between us, and it looks so ’80s B movie that I half expect one of us to whip out a Ouija board any minute. The shades are drawn in every room, as tight as they can clench, but still I don’t want to risk being seen on our third night in the house on Lumpfish Lane.

  A few seconds later, he adds, “Much.”

  And it’s been so long since I asked him, I think, Much what? Then I realize he means much better. I shake my head. Talking to Stamp is like being on a seven-minute delay.

  I wonder, as I watch him tidy up his cat food tins and empty soda bottles, if he and Dad ever just sat and talked like this back in the lab. I bet they did. Speech therapy, as Dad called it, was a big part of their work together.

  He’s kind of in a trance, moving slowly but purposefully. When he catches me looking, he smiles shyly, as if we hardly know each other. “Do you think she’ll find us?”

  My back is to a row of kitchen cabinets, and he’s in front of the kitchen sink. “Who, Val?”

  He nods.

  “I don’t know. I imagine she’s far away from here by now.” Half of me truly believes that, or at least wants to, and the other half just doesn’t want to worry him.

  Too late. He shakes his head pretty adamantly. “No, she isn’t.”

  “What do you mean, Stamp? She broke out of Sentinel City almost a week ago by now. Why would she stick around that long when she knows every Sentinel in Florida is looking for her?”

  “Stop talking so fast.” His tone is soft, but his words are hard.

  I blink a couple of times. “What?”

  “I mean, I can’t keep up with you when you talk like that.”

  I nod. That makes sense. “I’m sorry, Stamp. I’m used to talking to . . .”

  He nods. “Dane, I know. And Dane is fast, I know. But I’m not anymore, so slow down please.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  The pumpkin smell is strong. I don’t know if it’s my zombie sense or a really strong candle, but I blow it out. We don’t really need it anyway. I just thought it would be nice to live like Normals for a change, lighting a candle in the dark, having a picnic on the kitchen floor.

  Guess not.

  We sit silently while our eyes adjust. In a few seconds, the room glows a soft, gentle yellow even without the flickering of the candle. Zombie vision, I call it. Dad could never explain it, said there’s no good reason why a dead thing’s eyes should see better than a living one’s, but here it is just the same. It’s been this way ever since Barracuda Bay.

&nb
sp; Stamp moves his hand in front of his face. “I almost forgot we could do this,” he marvels, like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “We can do a lot,” I remind him. “We’re the good guys, remember?”

  “Not me.” He’s pouting. I can see his features, harsh in the hazy yellow glow. “Not anymore.”

  “That’s not true. You’re here with me, and nothing’s gone wrong, right?”

  “Not yet.”

  I raise my voice. “Stamp, listen to me. Look at me.” I wait until he does. “You’re a good zombie. You’re not like Val. You never could be, even if Dad hadn’t sucked half the Zerker out of you.”

  “You say that now, but just wait. You don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to know. If a guy like you can go bad, then . . . I don’t want to know. Don’t you remember, back in Barracuda Bay, how you saved me from Val?”

  He leans in, as if getting a better look at me will help him remember. Finally, he rests his back against the cabinet and shakes his head. “I was all bad then. I forget a lot.”

  “Well, I don’t. I remember, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  “Really?”

  I reach across and touch his knee. “Really. If you hadn’t saved me, Val would have torn me limb from limb.”

  He nods but scoots back a little, so that my hand falls to the floor. “Maybe, maybe I can save you again when Val comes.”

  “She’s not coming,” I hiss.

  He nods. “You’re right.” Then, after another seven-second delay that feels like two minutes, he adds, “She’s already here.”

  “You saw her?” I’m ready to get up, grab my Eliminator, and cut the next tiny blonde witch I see.

  “No, but I feel her. She’s part of me, remember.”

  “She bit you. You’re not linked or something.”

  He shrugs. “You don’t know that.”

  “I pretty much do. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

  He cocks his head. “This isn’t how dead is supposed to work either.”