Zombies Don't Forgive

by Rusty Fischer

  Dane says, “Maddy, we’re done here. Give it up.”

  “Look at Stamp. Look at what she did to him.”

  He does. He stops and looks, his eyes big and admiring to see his old friend still alive. “At least she didn’t kill him,” he says gently. “Whatever he is, he’s alive. That’s more than we had before we came back to Barracuda Bay.”

  “I almost wish she had,” I spit, seeing Stamp’s greenish-gray skin and the Zerker muck on his chin.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Okay, but still …”

  We look at each other, months of knowing one another inside and out shared in a single glance.

  “Look, Maddy.”

  “I see him, all right?”

  He smirks that smirk and holds up his left hand. “No, really look.”

  “Your pinky!” It’s back. His pinky. Is back. Well, I mean, most of it. It’s gross and a little gnarly and too pink for his dead white flesh, but it wasn’t there a few days ago and now it is! “How did that happen?”

  “The Sentinels. I told you, they were experimenting with electricity to repair some of the damage from the sharks. Vera says if I keep up the therapy, my pinky will be—”

  “Vera? What does she have to do with your pinky?”

  “Maddy, the Keepers are in charge of my therapy. They’re in charge of everything at the center. Even …” He looks at Stamp, then at me, and smiles. “Even in charge of rehabilitating Zerkers.”

  “You mean—”

  “He means,” says a familiar voice from behind, as Vera drags my father into the warehouse, “that there’s hope for Stamp yet.”

  I turn to Dane, then Dad, then Vera. “But how—?”

  “Vera organized all of this,” Dane says, as if he’s Vera’s biggest fan or something. “She brought us here immediately.”

  I turn to Vera. “Even after what I did to you?”

  Vera looks spiffy in her new Keeper uniform—even if one arm is in a sling. “I broke my own rule. I crossed the yellow line. I paid the price. My pen?” She holds out a hand.

  I give it up reluctantly, somehow certain all this is some dream and the Zerkers are going to break free any minute and rip into us.

  “Maddy,” Vera says, “I’d like to talk to you when we get back about joining us. About joining the Keepers.”

  I shake my head, but Dane moves in. “Maddy, listen to her first. Please. For me.”

  “Why? You said yourself it’s better to be free.”

  Vera says, “I know you two enjoy your freedom. Maddy, joining us at the center isn’t a second death sentence. Besides, I think you would make a good Second Afterlife counselor for Stamp.”

  “Second Afterlife?”

  She has her usual calm demeanor on and says logically, as if we’re not standing in a warehouse full of Zerker bones and Spray Tan Death Ray Booths from Hell and I didn’t, you know, break her arm in half. “When a Zerker comes back from the dark side, Maddy, we call it a Second Afterlife.”

  “You mean you’ve done this before?”

  I see Stamp, still stuck to the wall with Dane’s cane.

  I peer up just in time to find Vera and Dane sharing a conspiratorial glance.

  I look at Dane. “Well?”

  “Yes, Maddy. We have. I have. I—well, this is my Second Afterlife.”

  Epilogue

  All in the Family

  “No, Stamp, I told you already: that’s all the brains you get this week.”

  Stamp huffs in his cell, statuesque but still clumsy in his green Second Afterlife jumpsuit.

  His movements are a little jerky, and he still bumps into things, even though there’s not that far to go and not too many things to bump into.

  “This stucks,” he says, shaking his shaved head.

  I snort.

  He grunts. “You’re doing it again, Maddy. You’re marking me.”

  “Mocking you, Stamp. And no, I’m not, but the word is either stinks or sucks. I think you’re getting them confused.”

  “No,” he whines. “I just wasn’t sure which one I wanted to use, so I said both.”

  “Oh.” I nod, feeling bad now. “Actually, that makes perfect sense.”

  “See?” He humphs and crosses his arms. He looks clean, healthy. The rehab is working. Slowly but surely.

  I tick some boxes off on my clipboard and leave the cell.

  “Where are you going?” he says, pacing just in front of the door the way I used to when it was me in the cell and Vera on the outside.

  “I have to monitor some tests in the lab, Stamp. You know that.”

  I try to keep the impatience out of my voice, but it’s clear from his expression that I don’t succeed. Not entirely anyway.

  He does this crumple-face thing he’s been doing lately. “But, but … I miss you.”

  I stop and clutch my clipboard to my chest. Yes, I know. It sounds all gooey and like an ultimate awww moment, but sometimes Stamp is like a three-year-old in a toy store. Stamp wants this. Stamp wants that. Stamp eat now? Stamp laugh now? Stamp miss you. Stamp love you. You let Stamp out now? And then, just as you’re falling for it, he’ll notice some bug crawling in the corner or that his shoelaces aren’t tied right and he’ll immediately drop you like a hot potato.

  So, yes, he misses me, but he also misses Dane and Vera and the Sentinel who brings him brains twice a week and the guy who drove him here and the janitor Sentinel who never gives him the time of day.

  “I miss you too, Stamp, but … Maddy has more work to do.”

  “That’s all you do is work.” He pouts, turning his back to me.

  And I have to admit, he’s kind of right. Ever since returning to the center, I’ve made it my Afterlife’s mission to give Stamp a second one. I think he knows this, which is why he’s not really mad. Just pouty.

  He’s been like that a lot lately, but it’s better than when he first came here, all gross-eyed and Zerkery. Vera kept me away from him for the first week, during what she calls rehab but Stamp always calls The Empty Time.

  From the sounds of it, I’m glad she did. He stayed in the lab, mostly, while I hung around with Dane in the medical suite, replacing his bandages and timing him on the treadmill as he trained so he could rely less and less on his cane.

  “I still think I’ll keep it,” he tells me as he joins me at the end of the hallway, out of Stamp’s hearing range.

  “Why?” I say.

  He twirls his copper cane with the rubber handle Charlie Chaplin style as we nod to Birch, the Sentinel on duty. “It’s cool, don’t you think?” Dane says.

  “Not really,” I say.

  He shrugs.

  I reach for the elevator button.

  Dane pokes it with the rubber tip of his cane instead. “Comes in handy, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Okay, yes,” I admit.

  He pulls me to his side for a hug.

  The doors ding open, and we both step back, spotting a familiar powder-blue uniform.

  “Here to check on your patient?” I ask Vera as we cluster in the alcove outside the elevator.

  She has some coloring books and a vocabulary workbook in her hand—the hand attached to the arm I broke. Vera gushes, “He’s been combining his words lately. Have you noticed?”

  I nod. “His latest is stucks, which I believe stands for stinks and sucks.”

  Vera smiles. “See, that’s why it’s so great that you agreed to be his Second Afterlife counselor. It would have taken me weeks to figure out that Stamp word.”

  “And your arm?” I say, avoiding her gaze as the guilt floods my voice.

  “It’s fine now.” Vera pats my shoulder. “Thanks to your dad, that is.”

  The doors open, we say our good-byes, and Vera races toward Stamp’s cell, eager to explore his growing vocabulary.

  “Stamp word.” Dane chuckles in the elevator. “I like that. He will, too, once he’s back to his old self.”

  “You think he’ll ever get there?” I
say, nuzzling him in the 2.7 seconds we have left before the elevator reaches the ground floor.

  “He’ll get there.” Dane raises his new finger. “Just like Mr. Pinky here! And look at Vera’s arm. If he’s going to get help anywhere, he’s in the right spot.”

  I bite my lip as we exit the elevator.

  We weave through a dozen thuggish Sentinels who all seem to know Dane’s name by now.

  “Wow, that didn’t take you long,” I say, admiring Dane in his sleek, new black Sentinel uniform.

  “What’s that?” he says, after high-fiving a Sentinel so big he nearly has to stoop to enter the elevator.

  “Winning over your sworn enemies, the Sentinels?” I say.

  “I never called them sworn enemies, did I?”

  “Yeah. About 1,000 times. At school, in your trailer, on the way to school, on the way to your trailer, in Orlando, at—”

  “All right, all right.” He grins as we head toward a door marked with this notice: Keep Out! Approved Personnel Only.

  They are double doors, black (though most are red), and guarded by a special six-key entry code. I punch it in—785439, if you’re wondering—and wait for the doors to hiss open. I can hear Dad’s voice even before signing in at the guard station, where a Sentinel named Clive—yes, yes, I’ve finally learned some of their names—does a weird handshake thing with Dane.

  I arch my eyebrows about it while waiting for Clive to key us in to the second set of hissing double doors.

  Dane straightens his beret. “It’s a Sentinel thing. You Keepers just wouldn’t understand.”

  I straighten the cuff of my new powder-blue Keeper uniform and walk through the door, smirking.

  “Listen, Hector,” Dad is saying in his exasperated voice. “You can’t just zap these guys anywhere and expect the therapy to work. You have to address the affected wound directly, like this.”

  Dad puts his surgical mask over the lower half of his face—he always takes it off to berate interns, zombies, whoever—and passes what looks like a bar code scanner over the divot in a young Sentinel’s arm.

  A kind of rosy-pink glow illuminates the wound. Even from across the room I can smell the skin and muscle healing. It’s not like the rotting smell of death but more like … hamburger cooking.

  Hector nods.

  Dad hands the wand over, watching patiently, completely ignoring Dane and me.

  The Sentinel waves the wand carefully over the wound. He looks pro in the medical scrubs, apron, and mask Dad made them special order for him last week.

  “Fine, yes, like that,” Dad says, winking at me. “Just for the next 10 minutes.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Hector says.

  “Talking to my daughter, that’s what!”

  Dad motions for us to follow him into the office he’s set up in the next room.

  As I sit in one of the two chairs on the other side of his desk, I’m struck by how much this office looks like his old coroner’s office back home.

  “How are you kids today?” His rosy cheeks glow on either side of his new, if graying, goatee.

  “Forget us. What’s with you scolding a real, live Sentinel like that? You do know Hector could rip you into little pieces that would fit inside one of your desk drawers, right?”

  Dad waves dismissively. “Listen, Maddy, the Sentinels asked me for help with their electric therapy program, okay? If they want to do it right, then techs like Hector need to know how to do it right. It’s in their own best interest to learn, right?”

  I sigh. “Yes, it is, of course, but just remember you’re human, okay?”

  “How could I forget?” He pours coffee from his new two-cup coffeemaker. I smile to see him adding cream and sugar in the old, cracked Christmas mug he brought from home. “It took them five days to install a toilet, for Pete’s sake! It’s barbaric to make a grown man go in the woods, Maddy!”

  “Well, Dr. Swift, you know zombies don’t actually need toilets, right?” Dane smirks, fiddling with one of the pockets on his legs.

  “Yes, Dane, I know that perfectly well, but couldn’t they have installed just one toilet when they built this place? I mean, just in case?”

  “I can’t imagine they were ever planning on inviting humans inside, Dad.”

  “Yes, well, as the first human to ever become a Sentinel, I hope to make a few more changes around here before I’m done.”

  “Okay, Dad.” I groan, rolling my eyes at Dane. “We just stopped by to see how you were doing.” I start to get up.

  Dad motions me back down. To Dane he says, “Son, could you go check on Hector for me, please? Make sure he’s not starting a fire with the bedsheets again?”

  Dane chuckles and winks at me. The doors hiss behind him as he walks back into the lab.

  “Dad, obvious much?”

  Another dismissive wave. “Dane doesn’t care. Besides, how much can you two see of each other anyway? Twenty-four hours a day isn’t enough? He can spare your old man a few minutes, can’t he?”

  I shrug. I really do need to spend more time with Dad. Ever since we dragged him back to the center, we’re both knee-deep in work during the day. And since he still has to sleep, he’s always zonked out by the time I actually have an hour or two to hang out with him around, say, three in the morning.

  I smile.

  “So how are you, really, Maddy?”

  “I’m good, but I’m used to all this. How are you doing?”

  “I’m still working with dead bodies. Only, these ones are walking around.”

  “I’m sorry it turned out this way. I tried to keep you out of it. Really, I did.”

  He shrugs. “I got tired of you keeping me out of it. Frankly, I’d rather have a zombie for a daughter than no daughter at all.”

  “Ah.” I crack a joke, if only to not choke up. “That’s the nicest thing a human ever said to me.”

  We chuckle.

  “You talk to many humans lately, Maddy?”

  We make small talk for a minute or two, just like back home. He looks so comfortable with his rumpled lab coat and his coffee mug. I can’t help but be happy to see him here. Time will tell if he’ll ever be happy, but … was he ever?

  Even back home, with his house rules and his concerned face, the only time he seemed really happy was when he was reminding me how scary, creepy, and unhappy the real world is. Now he knows there’s a real world beyond the real world, and that’s given him even more reasons to be happily unhappy.

  Jingling a key chain from the top of his desk, he says, “Do you want to see how Val is doing?”

  I shrug.

  He stands and leads me through the lab, motioning for Dane to follow. “Hector?” he shouts, pausing before the double doors.

  “Going strong, sir.”

  Dad shoots him a frown.

  Hector shakes his head. “Sorry. Going strong, Doctor.”

  “Better,” Dad says, mostly to himself.

  Dane and I follow dutifully as Dad leads us down the hall toward a green door marked Keep Out.

  “Ignore that,” Dad says, sliding in his single key. It’s about the same size and heft of the one I stole from Vera to escape to Barracuda Bay.

  Inside are two doors. One is a cell, the other clear Plexiglas. Val is in the cell, strapped to a bed. She turns her head toward us, blonde hair no longer spiky but extra greasy instead. Though her eyes blaze a healthy, angry yellow, her mouth is covered by a thin leather strap locked tight at the back of her head.

  “We had to muzzle her,” Dad explains. “I can’t imagine why, but she kept trying to bite me.”

  “She didn’t, did she, Doc?” Dane says with a mock-worried expression.

  Dad slaps his shoulder.

  I roll my eyes, though it’s nice to see them getting along. Dad was always Team Stamp, after all.

  “How is she doing?” I say. “I mean, really doing?”

  Dad frowns. “She’s not taking to the therapy as well as Stamp, obviously. Frankly,
I’m not sure she’ll ever be completely Zerker-free.”

  “Is that what this is for?” I turn to the second door, the Plexiglas one that fronts the second mobile spray tanning booth from the Cabana Charly’s warehouse.

  Dad looks at it regretfully. “I suppose so. I was against the Sentinels moving it here when we left Barracuda Bay, but apparently they’re trying to isolate the avotoxia chemical and use it in some kind of anti-Zerker weapon.”

  Dane nods toward Val, who’s suddenly gone quiet. “Are you sure you should be sharing trade secrets in front of her, Doc?”

  Dad smirks as he hustles us both from the room. “Val? Look where she is. She’s not getting out anytime soon.”