Lucy is warm and breathing heavy between us, messenger bag clutched tight against her shoulder as if it’s hiding some nuclear weapon or something.
I slam the door behind me, feeling Val or one of her Zerker pals clanging against it. “Dane, hurry! Find a phone. Call someone. Lucy, get over here!”
She comes to my aid, but I forget she’s only human. And small and soft. The door bangs against our shoulder blades.
Finally, on the far wall, Dane finds a phone. A pay phone. “Are you kidding me?” he says. To the phone. He punches the wall next to it, still conversing with the immobile phone. “Unbelievable.”
“Well, hurry!”
“I don’t have any change,” he says. To me, not to the phone this time.
I dig in my pocket, finding only the Eliminator on one side and Vera’s pen on the other.
“Don’t look at me,” Lucy grunts. “I didn’t know they even had those things anymore!”
Dane twists and turns, eyes closed, groaning, like he can just create dimes and nickels out of sheer frustration.
“There. Dane, look! The vending machine.”
“What about it? Does it sell cell phones?”
The door is silent for a moment. Lucy and I look at each other, faces all, Oh, snap, are six of them getting ready to sprint across the commons and knock it down at once?
I use the relative silence to shout at Dane. “It will have change inside, you stupid dork!”
He shakes his head and nods and walks to it, quickly grabbing the sides and shaking it.
This guy, honestly. Did he become a zombie before they invented vending machines?
“Dane. The coin box inside. Grab—”
Suddenly, there’s a rumble. Violent and low. Not at the door but on the other side of the wall. No. Not on the other side. In the walls.
Dane fiddles with the vending machine, fingers trying to pry it open, unable to move its bulk.
Lucy clings to the door, as if that’s any help.
I stand in the middle of the room, listening, feeling the pounding, and trying to find out where it’s coming from—
Something cracks. There’s a jumble of dust and plaster, and the vending machine slams into Dane, knocking him over and pinning his arm to the ground.
Val emerges, spiky hair filled with dust. She kicks through the last of the drywall like Kool-Aid Man. Then she kneels on the back of the vending machine, triumphant as flippin’ always.
“What do we have here?” she asks, shaking her head.
I look at Dane. From about his shoulder down, his arm is covered by the vending machine.
She sees it, smiles, and rocks the massive metal box. It can’t hurt, not really, but if his whole arm comes off, well, he won’t be much of a Sentinel then.
“Stop, Val,” I shout. “Get off.”
Val snickers as I reach into my pocket. But it’s hard because Lucy clings to my side like a second skin.
Suddenly the door she was supposed to be blocking swings open, and Gingham limps in. One arm at an odd angle, the maroon sleeve of her uniform jacket missing, she snatches Lucy, who screams.
Gingham, voice like sandpaper, laughs. “Scream all you want, brainiac. There’s no one left to hear you!”
Dane grunts, trying to wriggle his arm out from under the massive vending machine, but Val rocks it again.
Lucy squeaks, biting off a scream, and Gingham stretches her arm behind her back.
“Stop, okay? Just stop,” I sputter.
Gingham smirks and squeezes just a little tighter.
Lucy manages a few words: “Stop. Helping. Me. It’s. Not. Helping. Me!”
I turn, looking back and forth between Lucy and Dane.
“Drop it,” Val says, sliding off the vending machine but leaning on it so Dane can’t ease out while she’s not looking. Which seems impossible because it’s like she’s got eyes in the back and on both sides of her head.
“Drop what?” But even as I ask, I’m cringing, thinking maybe I whipped out Vera’s pen. But when I look down, I see I’m holding the Eliminator, ice pick side out.
I don’t even remember doing that.
Still, I want her to think it’s all I’ve got, so I bring it closer to me protectively.
How did this go so wrong so fast? How did she get the drop on us so soundly? Again?
“Ah, ah, ah,” she teases, wagging a finger and rocking the vending machine.
Dane winces with each motion. A few more of those or one big jump, and he’ll be able to count on only five fingers from now on.
I smirk, as if it’s exactly what I wanted when I hear Lucy scream, “Maddy, look out!”
I half turn in time to see Gingham, with her one good arm, shove me to my knees, right at Val’s feet.
I smile, using the graceless fall to tumble and toss the Eliminator halfway across the room.
Val rolls her eyes at this obvious display. “Gingham?”
The redhead dutifully limps toward it, slow as molasses, which works just fine for me.
In a headlock, Lucy grunts and slides along by her side.
We share a look, and in her eyes is utter fear. It makes me wonder how long she’s been a Sleeper and what training she had for the job, if any.
Then again, look at me. All the Keeper training in the world couldn’t stop Val from surprising me so thoroughly, even though we were pretty much expecting her this whole time.
“Let’s go, Val. Come on,” Dane spits, grunting with his arm pinned. “Do what you’re gonna do to us, and let the Normal go.”
Val gives me a can-you-believe-this-schmuck look.
On my knees, I look at her, hating that I look subservient but definitely wanting her to think I’m right where she wants me to be.
“Why would I want to hurt you two?” she purrs, stroking my cheek.
I pull away. “You know why,” I seethe. “We all know why.”
Gingham has retrieved the Eliminator, and Lucy’s kneeling in front of her. Gingham turns the weapon over and over, calling out to Val, “Hey, look at this. I think I like it.”
Val smiles. “Good. It’s yours.” She looks at me but talks to Gingham: “When it’s time, I hope you’ll figure out how to use it.”
The two cackle. Seriously. Like the witches they are.
I’m trying to ESP, Don’t worry; I’ll take care of these two, to Lucy, but Val grabs my ear.
“Pay attention to me, Maddy.”
I twist away, half expecting her to be holding my ear in her fingers. Fortunately, it’s still attached to my head. For now.
“This was never about rekilling you two,” she says to me and Dane via me. “It was about making you suffer. And the best way to do that is to kill the ones you love.”
I smirk. “You had the chance to kill Dad when you broke out of Sentinel City. Why didn’t you just do it then and be done with it?”
“My sentiments exactly!”
Ugh, she has this dramatic way about her I’ve forgotten I can’t stand. I mean, as big of a part as Val has played in my afterlife, it’s amazing how little face time we’ve had over the past year.
Her eyes get twice as crazy now. The veins stand out above her open collar, her black tie loosened and dangling. And with her spiky hair—blech—she’s like the annoying schoolgirl from hell.
She’s leaning there, Dane’s arm pinned, waiting for me. For some kind of response.
“I . . . I don’t know what that means.”
She frowns, disappointed that I ruined some big moment she’s probably been planning for weeks. Months, even.
“I mean, Maddy, I didn’t want to finish it right then. I wanted it to last and last and last. Killing your dad would have been too easy. I know that now. The people you spend the most time with, the ones you’ll have around forever, are the undead. I see that now.”
She winds down her soliloquy and looks at me pointedly. “I went about it all wrong last time. This time I made sure you were all together: every undead person you
cared about.” For emphasis, she taps a boot on Dane’s trapped shoulder.
“Fine, great, you’ve made your point. So get it over with. Kill me now, and—”
Dane interrupts, outcroaking me, looking like he just lost a wrestling match with a vending machine. “Just kill me, Val. You know you want to. That’s what this has all been about from the very beginning.”
“Don’t flatter yourselves.” She chuckles in a villainous way, those eyes getting even wilder. “Like I said, it’s not you I want.” A pause and she takes her foot off Dane, looks down at me.
“You know, Maddy, here’s an idea: why not just surrender for once? You know, stop being the good guy for a change.” She looks back at me, points at Lucy. “Just give us one willingly. Just give us Lucy, and we’ll call the whole thing off.”
“Yeah, right,” I spit.
“I mean it this time. I will take Gingham and Lucy here and the rest of my horde, and we will walk out of town, no questions asked.”
Dane looks as if he’s considering it, which I know he can’t be. He turned out to be the afterlife’s worst boyfriend, but he can’t be as bad as this. “And what happens to her? Lucy, I mean?” he says.
Val shrugs. “What do you care? You trade me one measly, skinny Normal, and you get to save the rest of Seagull Shores. No big fight to the death, no big climax, no—”
“No.” My voice is low. “I don’t care how many promises you make, I will never willingly hand a Normal over to a Zerker.”
“Maddy, listen . . .” Dane’s eyes plead with me.
“No, Dane. And, no, Val. There is no surrender. There is only you and me and win or lose. Only one of us is walking out of here in one piece.”
She tries to look bored, but I can tell she’s disappointed. At least just a little. Then she looks at Lucy to say to the only Normal in the room, “You see, I gave you a chance.”
Lucy’s voice is resigned as she grunts, still in Gingham’s clutches. “I haven’t had a chance since you all got to town.”
“All righty then.” She sighs, settling in, leaning against the machine, as if she’s got all day. And I suppose she has. She turns back to me and licks her lips in anticipation. “All day, you’ve been watching me, waiting for me to do something. And all day, every kid I’ve turned and every kid they’ve turned has been heading toward the house on Lumpfish Lane to finish what I started back in Barracuda Bay.”
“What’s that?” Dane asks.
But I already know. I already knew the last time Val and I faced off like this.
She looks at me, as if she can read my mind. Or maybe just because she wants to see my face when I finally realize why she’s here. “Ask her.”
“Stamp,” I say, still on my knees at Val’s feet, gripping Vera’s pen behind my legs. I look at Dane. “Courtney.”
He looks from me to her and back to me. “But why?”
I shake my head and answer for her. “It’s all so simple. All along. Bones. We took her brother from her. All she ever wanted that whole time in Sentinel City was to find a way to hurt us as badly as we hurt her. Stamp for me. And now Courtney for you.”
Dane turns to her, smiling up at her gross face uncertainly. Even I can see it, and I know Val can. “Courtney’s a Sentinel,” he bluffs. “And Stamp? He’s half Zerker. They’ll never fall, no matter how many of your kind you send.”
Val sneers. “She’s Sentinel Support, Dane. And he’s half Zerker, all dimwit, from what I could see from my cage next to his. I doubt they lasted past first period. I doubt, if you ever get back to Lumpfish Lane yourself, you’ll find more than a couple of toenails and a few IQ points lying around.”
Dane grunts, squirming like he’d wring his own arm off just to get the chance to grab her by one leg and toss her around the room like a rag doll. Which he totally could, if he weren’t buried under a ton of old metal filled with glazed honey buns and powdered donuts.
“Call them off,” he says, the tendons in his neck standing out now. “Get . . .” he grunts, running out of steam. “Get over there and stop them, and we’ll do whatever you w—”
“Like hell,” Val says, launching into another soliloquy.
And that’s when I jab Vera’s pen into her ankle.
She squeals, not from the pain but the shock that I had something other than the Eliminator up my sleeve.
Before I can press the power button on top, she grabs my hand.
“Nice try.” She sneers. She studies the pen, seeming familiar with it. I try to think if I’ve ever flashed it at her in her cage or if maybe one of the Keepers did when apprehending her in Barracuda Bay. Or if maybe she’s like the zombie Michael Meyers and knows everything and anything and will never, ever, re-die.
“Go ahead.” She smirks. “Squeeze that button, and we’ll both fry.”
I smile cockily, not even caring anymore what happens to me, as long as nothing happens to anybody else. “That’s the general idea, dumb ass.”
Her eyes get big but not for long.
Suddenly my finger is on the button, grinding it down, and she sizzles like a piece of bacon. But . . . so do I. Our teeth clatter, and our muscles tense, and our bones shake, but I’ve had a little more practice with Vera’s pen than Val has, and I watch her eyes flutter back in her head until mine do too.
I squeeze until I can’t feel anything else, and the world goes dry and cold and black.
The next thing I know, someone’s kicking me.
I kick back, grunting, fried and angry and disoriented, until I hear, faintly, as if it’s in the next room: Something, something, “. . . it’s me.”
My eyelids open, and I see the break room ceiling high above, water-stained tiles and fluorescent lights and yellowed tape, probably from where they’ve hung Christmas ornaments or paper snowflakes in the past. I look left and see Val, splayed out unnaturally, eyeballs smoking and one leg bent at an odd angle.
To my right, Dane is still kicking me.
“Stop it.” I say. “Stop now.”
I stand, wobbly, as if I’ve just stuck my finger in the world’s biggest light socket after drinking six cases of cheap champagne. “How are you still jammed under there?” I slur, reaching down to help him. I just assumed the click on Vera’s pen would solve everything. “Push harder,” I tell him.
“I’ve tried that.” He gasps. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that?”
I look around the room slowly. Things are blurry still and rough around the edges.
Lucy is struggling with Gingham, but after whatever Dane cracked in her, it’s hardly a fair fight.
Still, we don’t have much time. Val will be up soon, and in my condition, I’ll need his help if I’m going to finish her for good.
I find a chair with metal legs and jam it into the back of the machine, pounding furiously, until I can feel the thin metal panel give way. Then I jam it in some more.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Just wait!” I feel like I’m hungover and he’s asking me for directions to Toledo at the top of his lungs.
The back panel is crushed in the center, the seams lifting at the sides.
I toss the chair to the floor and tug one end of the panel until it peels off like wrapping paper.
Inside the guts of the machine, it’s just a patchwork of those spiral rings the treats hang from. I grab a couple: sleeves of powdered donut thumping down. I reach for three of the metal rings coiled together and tap, tap, tap them against the glass of the vending machine. It shatters all over, chip bags ripping, stale cookies flying as I wrench half a dozen more spirals out and toss them away to give him room.
When there’s enough space, I tell him, “Reach in and pull yourself through.”
He does. Just like that. He pops up, like a rabbit out of a hole. He’s favoring one arm, twirling it like a swimmer before the 400-meter backstroke, but grinning just the same. “Who are you all of a sudden?”
I look at him, teeth still smoking, probably from Vera’s pen. �
��I’m badass; that’s what I am.”
He shakes his head. “You’re power drunk is what you are.”
Val stirs, kicking one leg out, and I reach for the nearest metal coil from the vending machine. It’s like one long corkscrew. Just as she’s opening her eyes, I jab one in, straight through an eye socket and her skull and—boom—into her cerebral cortex.
Lights out, Val.
Nighty-forever-night.
I keep jamming it down until I hit the floor, then keep pushing it straight through the linoleum.
Dane tries to pull me off. “Come on,” he says, as if he knows jack squat about Zerker killing. “Let’s go. That’s enough.”
“That’s what every stupid good-looking kid says in every stupid bad horror movie film.” God, when will I talk right again? This is nuts. “I’m not being that. I’m not being her. Help me.”
“Help you what?”
I shake my head, as if it will clear the fog, and you know what? It does. It really does. “Tear her apart, Dane. What else?”
He looks from me to Lucy, who’s sitting on Gingham’s back, repeatedly bashing her head into the tile floor.
“Don’t look at me,” she huffs, eyes cloudy with violent intent and mouth upturned in a curious smile. “I’m busy!”
Chapter 35
SpongeBob Square Stamps
The school is silent. Even the fire alarm’s quit ringing. It must be on a timer or something. Having been trapped in the teacher’s lounge with a maniacal Zerker spewing the world’s largest guilt trip, I suddenly can’t remember hearing it go off. Or ringing, for that matter.
The halls are empty and bloody. Some of it’s red: Normal blood. Some of it’s black and gooey: Zerker blood. Lockers are open, and backpacks and books and papers are scattered everywhere.
“What happened?” Lucy asks, clinging to her messenger bag as we leave Val and Gingham and their various body parts behind.
“Val got what she wanted,” Dane says, stretching his injured arm. “A town full of Zerkers.”
“You mean . . .”
“Full infestation,” I say, limping beside her. “Day of the Dead stuff, all right.”
A Living Dead Love Story Series Page 61
