Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  My last thought, in the second before they closed in, was that maybe you could train zombies as easily as Pavlov’s dogs.

  At the sound of the bell, circle your prey and eat her flesh.

  I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I’d realized. Despite their increased speed, there was no grace to their movements, no rhythm. Their mouths were open, their bodies jerking as they advanced on me.

  I grabbed the closest one by the arm and wrenched it off with a sickening crack, but the monster didn’t blink, didn’t howl. Instead, it returned the favor, evenly spaced, triangular teeth going for the flesh in my arms.

  I fought—kicked, punched, tore through whatever flesh I could lay a hand on, but no matter how many times I hit them, or how many of them I took down, there were always more.

  I was drowning.

  In sweat, in blood, in the smell of death and the mounting pressure of bodies on mine. Hands on mine. Teeth, mouths, flesh on mine.

  They were above me and below me. They were everywhere, and I couldn’t tell now where my body ended and theirs began. I couldn’t tell how much of the blood coating my extremities was theirs and how much was mine.

  Retreat.

  In all the time I’d been a hunter, that was an instinct I’d never felt before. I’d never wanted to run from a fight, never doubted that I would come out on top.

  I’d never cared that maybe I wouldn’t.

  But right now, in that second, gasping for breath and breathing in rot and raglike skin, I felt like I had to get out of there. Bracing my heels against the ground, I shot forward, lashing out with my elbows and putting enough space between my body and theirs that I could slam the back of my head into something else’s jaw. I felt bones giving way, felt flesh tearing—I saw the opening, and I went for it.

  I crossed the room in a heartbeat, and in a single, coordinated motion, the zombies reoriented. The ones I’d laid low climbed to their feet, bones jutting out every which way. They glanced at one another with those soulless, empty eyes, in a gesture far too human to be comforting for me, and then they spread out—half on my left, half on my right, ready to surround and mob me once more.

  I could feel their saliva working its way through my system. To a human, it would have been fatal, with a brief detour through madness before the final bow—but even my body had its limits.

  I wasn’t losing it. Not yet. But the colors in the room seemed like they’d been dyed neon, and I felt like I was moving in slow motion, each limb weighed down by something soggy and wet.

  I felt myself stumble, forced my body to stay upright.

  “Kali!” Skylar’s voice broke through my haze, and I realized that she wasn’t squatting on top of the safe anymore. She was standing beside it, and it was open.

  I realized, belatedly, that it wasn’t the kind of safe that held money or top secret biomedical plans. It was the type of safe that held guns.

  The sight of weapons sent a familiar thrill up the length of my spine, and unconsciously, my body straightened, my fingers curving inward in anticipation of the way they’d feel against a trigger.

  I’d always preferred knives to firearms, always felt that people like me were made for killing at close range, not at a distance, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and just seeing the weapons laid out before me, I knew them—inside and out, from safety to barrel.

  I didn’t have time to think. I had to move, had to keep moving, because the one thing I had on the zombies was that even though they were faster than any I’d ever seen, even though they appeared to be working as a team and their venom was slowing me down—

  I was still faster than a human. And thanks to Skylar, I wasn’t fighting alone.

  I ducked and dodged, slammed my way through their onslaught, and got close enough to Skylar that she could shove something cool and metallic into my hand.

  Six bullets. Six hits. None of my targets down.

  I dropped the gun, and Skylar handed me another one—longer, heavier, possibly illegal. I didn’t question why Bethany’s father might have one. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  My skin sang with contact. My back arched as I shot. The sound was deafening, the splatter horrific.

  Shot. Shot. Shot.

  There was a rhythm to it, a beauty, and maybe it was sick that I could see that, that I felt each and every bullet like it was an extension of my own body, as they tore through flesh and bone, severing the spinal cord, blowing holes in heads.

  With only a few bullets left, a suggestion flashed through my subconscious, Zev’s mind melding with mine so completely that he didn’t even have to speak. Without pause, I followed through on his unspoken suggestion, aiming at the collars around the zombies’ necks.

  In rapid fire, the glowing red lights went out. Like someone had doused a fire, the eerie human quality drained out of the zombies’ eyes. Instead of focusing on me, they grappled with one another, undead teeth tearing through undead skin, nails making mincemeat of already shredded flesh.

  Without thinking, I shoved Skylar back toward the safe, and with an empty shotgun still in my hand, I surged forward, driving the butt of the gun into a straggler’s forehead as another ripped a chunk out of my right shoulder.

  My right hand shot out backward, grabbed the biter by the neck, twisted, tore—and soon there was nothing.

  Nothing left in my hands.

  Nothing left to fight.

  Nothing but corpses.

  Don’t look now, Zev said, but you’ve got an audience.

  I looked up. Elliot and Bethany were standing in the doorway. Skylar had climbed back on top of the safe, and her legs were dangling over the front.

  Absolute silence.

  I knew how this must have looked, how I must have looked, drenched in blood with bodies spread like petals at my feet.

  My heartbeat slowed. I followed Elliot’s gaze—steady, intense—from my chest to my stomach, my stomach to my arms. There was a hole in my side, bits and pieces missing from the fleshy parts of my arms and legs. My jeans were tattered, my body bruised. Bite marks dotted the surface of my skin, like bloody flowers just beginning to bloom.

  Swish. Swish. Swish.

  The sound of my heart was deafening. The sound of their silence was louder. Pressure built inside my head. The room closed in around me.

  I stumbled and started to go down, but Elliot moved forward to catch me. He held me up, his gaze guarded, his eyes on Bethany’s across the room.

  Vaguely aware of the fact that one bite from a zombie was enough to drive a human mad, I looked down at my own body, at Elliot’s hand on my arm.

  At the gaping hole in my shoulder and the muscles just starting to knit themselves back together.

  Bethany took a step toward us, her green eyes every bit as glassy and far away as her mother’s. “You went through the windshield,” she said shrilly. “You broke your neck. The chupacabra didn’t kill you. And those things, they tore you to pieces.…”

  This wasn’t the way I’d imagined telling them my secret—and I hadn’t imagined telling Elliot at all. But all of a sudden, I couldn’t hold the words back, couldn’t deny the obvious for a second more. My brain was muddled from poison, my body numb, my eyes dry. Every safeguard that had once stood between me and the outside world crumpled and fell—useless, dead, gone. There was no hiding it, no denial, nowhere else to run.

  “I’m not like other girls,” I said, the words coming out in a whisper. “I’m not normal. I don’t feel things, I don’t fear things.” I held out my bloodied hands, palms up. “I don’t die.”

  Sometimes, the biggest truths were the simple ones—inescapable, undeniable, pure. I’d worn my secrets like a robe, and now I was naked. I was bleeding and visibly healing and utterly exposed.

  Heat spread out from my torso. My head felt fuzzy, light. I blinked and my eyes wouldn’t open. Elliot let go of me, and I went down.

  I’d been bitt
en so many times. There was so much poison in my system.

  “I don’t die. I don’t die. I don’t die.”

  I heard the words, heard someone saying them over and over again. I didn’t recognize my own voice, didn’t realize until later that it was me.

  I blinked and my eyes didn’t open. I’d finally told someone the truth, and fate was conspiring to make me a liar.

  I don’t die, I’d said. I don’t die. I don’t die. I don’t die.

  But people like me? Sometimes, we did.

  I’m in the room again—the room where it hurts. Sometimes it’s loud and sometimes it’s bright and sometimes I have to sit still. Mommy swabs my cheek. Daddy gets out the polka dots—dot, dot, dot all over my head. I make a face at him.

  “EKG is clean,” he says.

  I know those letters. E! K! G! I know lots of letters. So does Mommy.

  “DNA.” She says other things, too, but they aren’t letters, so I don’t listen much.

  EKG. DNA.

  I don’t think those are good letters. I want to go home.

  “Almost done, baby.” Mommy smiles, tickles my chin. I reach up to tickle hers.

  And that’s when it’s time for my shot.

  I blinked, but the world around me didn’t settle into focus. Everything was bright and blurry and warped around the edges.

  “I think she’s awake. Kali? Can you hear me?”

  I tried to separate the sounds into words, but couldn’t do it. My body felt … heavy.

  Without the Nibbler, you’d be dead.

  Zev’s voice was low and serious, and I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that I’d lived through attack after attack, that I could have survived anything—but one bite from a zombie was enough to kill a regular person, and I’d been bitten, scratched, and clawed dozens of times.

  Even my body had its limits.

  “Dead,” I repeated out loud. The word came out sounding garbled.

  “Dead? Dead? Oh, no. You don’t get to tell us something like that and then die.” Bethany put her face right next to mine, and it came into focus.

  More or less.

  “That’s not how this works, Super Girl. You don’t get to go to sleep. You don’t get to pass out. You don’t get to die. The only thing you get to do is wake up and tell us what the hell is going on.” Beth’s words were harsh, but her touch was gentle as she pressed something warm to my skin—a warm washcloth, damp and soft. “And then,” she added, working the cloth across the surface of my body, “we’re going to have a nice, long chat about lying to the Bethany. Surface wounds, my ass.”

  My last thought before I drifted back into darkness was that Bethany appeared to be referring to herself in the third person.

  This could not possibly be good.

  “Do you know what this is, Kali-Kay?”

  Mommy is in a good mood. I think. I look at the object in her hand and then shake my head.

  “Nuh-uh,” I say. I stick my fingers in my mouth and give them a light chew. “What?”

  Mommy gently takes my hand out of my mouth. “This is a gun. Can you say gun?”

  “Gun,” I repeat dutifully.

  Mommy takes my still-damp hand, brushes it over the surface of the barrel. It is cold and hard. It feels like a doorknob. It looks funny, too.

  “Do you want to play a game, Kali?”

  Mommy and I play lots of games. Secret games. I am her secret girl.

  “Close your eyes and count to ten,” Mommy says. I close my eyes and count to four. I like four.

  “Okay, now open your eyes.” Mommy smiles, but it does not reach her eyes. It makes my tummy hurt. “Where’s the gun, Kali?”

  I can’t see the gun anymore. She hid it, and I don’t know where it is. I wish I did. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could be good.

  “Find the gun, baby.”

  I’m not good at this game, the secret game. I put my fingers back in my mouth. We have lots of secrets, Mommy, Mama, and me.

  This time, when I woke up, the world was the right color and the right shape, and I recognized the person looking down at me instantly.

  Vaughn.

  It figured—the almost invincible girl gets hurt, and they call a vet. Given that the others had seen me tearing through a zombie horde like a wild animal, it seemed highly appropriate—if a bit insulting.

  You’re not an animal. They’re human. You’re more.

  Maybe I was just in a bit of a mood after being zombie chow, but instead of warming me from the inside out, Zev’s words made me want to roll my eyes. I’d never asked to share my brain with a two-bit motivational speaker.

  I hadn’t asked for any of this.

  “Your vitals are good. Your wounds are healing, and based on your body temperature, I’d guess your system is burning through the mortis bacteria instead of allowing it to shred your brain.” Vaughn paused, his brown eyes searching mine. “How do you feel?”

  I felt fine, naked, and thirsty—in that order. I remembered the looks on my friends’ faces when I’d made my confession all too well. Physically, I was doing okay, but I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so open to attack.

  So vulnerable.

  So much for keeping my back to the wall.

  “I’m fine,” I said, not meeting Vaughn’s eyes. “Thirsty.”

  I very purposefully did not specify what, exactly, I was thirsting for.

  Hunting without feeding is ill-advised, Zev told me, undeterred by my response to his last comment. Healing you makes the Nibbler that much hungrier. You’ll have to feed it soon.

  Well, forgive me for having been too busy being eaten by zombies and trying to kill them dead to stop and think about drinking their blood to keep the parasite inside me plump and well fed.

  Anyone ever tell you you’re cranky when you almost die?

  There was a retort on the tip of my mental tongue, but I realized that Vaughn was giving me a very odd look, and I wondered if a bevy of emotions had passed over my face with Zev’s words.

  The last thing I needed was for the vet to think I’d caught some kind of zombie-induced insanity. He’d be forced to report me for quarantine, and I’d spend the rest of the day unable to do a thing to save Zev.

  “I know this probably seems really weird to you,” I told Vaughn, thinking understatement all the while, “but I’m okay. Nothing hurts. Nothing’s broken. And I’m about as sane as I get.”

  I waited for Vaughn to ask me how my recovery was possible, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “I’d tell you to take it easy,” he said, “but based on the pile of bodies in the basement, I’m guessing that ‘easy’ isn’t really your style.”

  There was a light note of censure in his voice—though I was pretty sure he disapproved more of my aversion to bed rest than to the fact that I’d dispatched a horde of zombies to the great beyond.

  “What time is it?”

  Giving voice to the question felt like showing my hand, but I wasn’t used to not knowing, and today, more than any other day, each minute, each second, was crucial.

  Every second I lay here was another second that Chimera Biomedical had Zev—another second that they could be coming for me.

  “You were out for just over an hour,” Vaughn said, “assuming Skylar’s timeline of the ‘you-know-what incident’ is somewhere close to the mark.”

  My lips curved upward at the idea of Skylar referring to zombies as “you-know-whats,” but the second my brain registered the fact that I was smiling, a wave of nausea passed through my body, bringing with it a kind of bleak hopelessness I recognized as regret.

  Skylar.

  Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I liked her. She was brave and openhearted and insane—and now she knew. She knew what I was, or—more to the point—what I wasn’t.

  I wasn’t normal.

  I wasn’t human.

  I was a liar.

  I shouldn’t have cared what she thought about me. I should have been more worried about who she and the
others might tell, but instead, all I could think about was the fact that they’d hate me now.

  They’d have to.

  “Hey.” Vaughn’s voice was soft as he chucked me under the chin. “None of that.”

  “None of what?” I said, wiping all trace of emotion from my face.

  “Don’t go working yourself up over nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I was incredulous.

  “You should rest.” With those words, Vaughn stood, and I followed his gaze to the doorway. Elliot was standing there, his face as unreadable as his brother’s. Beside him, Bethany had both arms crossed over her chest. Her mascara was smeared, her clothes torn, and I knew just by the way she was holding her chin that she wasn’t going to be giving in to tears again any time soon.

  From somewhere behind them, Skylar pushed her way into the room. “You’re okay,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically low. “I was pretty sure you would be, but you never really know, and then when you wouldn’t wake up …”

  I tried to say something, but the words stayed in my throat, unspoken, unsure.

  “I am so, so sorry Kali. I swear, I didn’t mean for you to have to save me. I heard a noise downstairs, and Bethany was all ‘see yourself out,’ and so I did … via, you know, the basement. I thought I was supposed to be there. I had a feeling, but maybe it was a bad feeling, because the next thing I knew, there was a zombie. And then there were two. And then there were three.…”

  “Skylar,” Elliot interjected. “Breathe.”

  Obediently, she took a breath.

  “So I climbed on top of the safe, because I knew I just had to wait. I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d … do something.” Skylar frowned. “But I didn’t know it would be like that. I didn’t know they’d hurt you. I didn’t!”

  “Skylar.” This time, I was the one who interrupted her babbling. “I’m fine.” She didn’t look convinced, and I felt compelled to elaborate. “It didn’t even hurt.” Realizing how close I was treading to the edge, to speaking words I’d never said out loud, I looked down and made a thorough study of the back of my hands. “I can’t—when I’m like this, nothing hurts. I could take a bullet to the gut, and I wouldn’t even feel it.”