A Living Dead Love Story Series (17 page)

I get up and go to the door to prove her wrong, dead wrong, but naturally she's there before me by a half second (damn her warm and fleshy human muscles) and whips open the door. The doorstep is empty; no one is there—but, no, that's not quite right, either.

I'm getting ready to shut the door when Hazel stops me and points to the middle of the deserted street, where two figures stand under a streetlamp. One is petite, dressed fashionably; the other is tall, dressed ridiculously—Dahlia and Bones.

“What the—?” Hazel stands stock-still, her hand still on the doorknob. “Aren't those the creeps from Home Ec? What are they doing prank knocking you on a Saturday night?”

I feel her pain. It's not exactly that I'm surprised to see them that's giving me the willies. I mean, after all, they
did
promise to get me alone and I suppose, in a way, I've been waiting for this moment ever since they bushwhacked me, Dane, and Chloe on the way back from our little late-night visit to the Council of Elders. It's the way they're standing there just so, stock-still, in the middle of the street, under that streetlight.

Creepy?

Creepy doesn't even begin to describe it.

I leave Hazel in the doorway for two seconds and reach into the hallway closet, where Dad keeps his weekend softball uniform. Resting underneath it is an aluminum bat. I grab it and walk past Hazel straight out to the driveway. She goes to follow me, and I say, “Hazel, lock the door and call the cops.”

She does neither, following me out to the street instead.

“My, my,” says Bones, not moving, not smiling, his lips barely fluttering as he watches Hazel's red pigtails bounce behind her. “Looks like we hit the jackpot tonight, Dahlia. We came here looking for Victim Number 4 and found Victim Number 5, too.”

“What are they
talking
about, Maddy?” Hazel asks, her always minty breath stale and hot on my shoulder as she crowds next to me for safety.

“Nothing,” I shout, as if her ear isn't two inches from my lips. “These fools are just talking nonsense, as usual.”

“That's right, Hazel,” says Dahlia, dressed in sleek, formfitting black from head to toe. She's done up her eyes and nails to match. “We're just fools, talking nonsense. Nothing to worry about here.”

“N-n-no, no,” Hazel stammers, sounding for the first time in, I think, her whole life somewhat less than confident. “You said something about victims. What were you talking about?”

Bones smiles. “Do we have to spell it out for you, Hazel? After all,
you're
the one who insists our Home Ec class is …cursed.”

And I see the look in Hazel's eyes, and I see her putting things together, and I think of the cold, hard Sentinels in their blue jumpsuits and what they'd do to me—to Hazel—if they found out I let a civilian know about the Zerkers, the Truce, and zombies in general. (Or me, in particular.)

So even though I don't want to, even though it is, in fact, the last thing in the world I'd like to do, I pick up the bat and start moving forward.

Bones is laughing as I walk, stiff but strong, out to meet him in the middle of the street.

Dahlia isn't. She moves swiftly to my side, and while Hazel screams for me to stop, they're suddenly on me, around me, and things move very, very slowly after that.

The bat is powerful in my hand and sounds blissful as I bring it down on Dahlia's shoulder blade with a thwacking, shuddering
crunch
.

She goes down immediately but not for long, and in the meantime Bones reaches for the bat with a long, spectral hand. I thwack it away with the bat, the hollow aluminum cracking along his bare knuckles once, then twice. He laughs, but I see him snatch his hand away and know that if I haven't exactly hurt him, I've at least surprised him.

Meanwhile Dahlia launches into me with a lurching tackle, sending me sprawling onto the pavement, but I have a vise grip on the bat and pound it into her shins as she wrestles me back onto the ground. She shrieks and backs away, hobbling in her big black boots.

Then suddenly Bones is hovering over me, smiling before he kicks me halfway across the blacktop and practically into the tires of my car.

Hazel screams again, kneels to help me.

I murmur, “Hazel, get lost.”

But she doesn't. She sits there, stupidly, as I stand and try to protect her as best I can.

It's freeing, not feeling the pain, but with Hazel right there I know that could all change at any minute.

So I rush to meet them back in the street, but they're slippery and know I've found my strength. I drag the bat along the street, liking the harsh, bare aluminum sound it makes on the even harsher blacktop, liking the vaguely startled look in the Zerkers' eyes even better.

Bones winces ever so slightly as Dahlia tries to blitz past me, but I catch her just under the chin when she thinks I'm not looking, and down she goes, pale and momentarily dazed.

But Bones is right there behind me, grabbing me up in his arms until the bat is useless, and he's squeezing me tightly to punish me for laying a finger—make that a
bat
—on his precious, broken Dahlia.

I hear things cracking, things inside me—things I'm pretty sure I'll need later on—and know I'm not strong enough to fight Bones yet. Not like this; not all alone, Zerker-to-zombie. I struggle and squeal, wriggling and kicking and biting and clawing, until, like a gardener who's stumbled on a wasp's nest, Bones finally flings me down, hard, onto the pavement, just to get rid of me before he'd squash me like a bug.

I lie there dazed for a second, thinking of Hazel, and scramble up to protect her. But I'm already too late. At least, too late to save her by myself.

Miraculously, Bones lies on the ground, his neck under Dane's knee as Chloe holds Dahlia high overhead, threatening to crack her like a walnut over her thick, rather unladylike knee.

“Sorry, Maddy,” Dane says, trying his best to keep Bones under control. “We came as fast as we heard.”

“Heard what?” I say, walking up to meet them, grateful and proud that I'm only limping slightly.

“Heard you”—Chloe nods toward the bottom of our hill—”from the graveyard.” Then she looks at Hazel, cowering by the hood of my car in her pink outfit and glitter nail polish and bright red pigtails and frosty crème lipstick and ruby red Converse high tops, and adds, “Or rather, heard Hazel screaming.”

Bones grunts and knocks Dane off him.

Dane recovers speedily and I'm at his side, retrieving my bat from the ground and giving it that extra-noisy pavement slide. Dane gives me an approving, if somewhat startled, glance.

As Bones inches forward, Chloe clears her throat, inching Dahlia a fraction higher as if to say,
Move another inch, and Dahlia won't survive the night
.

Bones grunts. “Fine, fine, put her down, and I'll behave. For now …”

Chloe does, and Dahlia scampers to join Bones. Together they inch back into the spotlight as Chloe, Dane, and I follow closely on their heels.

“Did you think we'd leave her unprotected?” Dane asks with a smile.

“Ah, but you did,” Bones says while Dahlia smirks beside him.

I smirk, too, noticing Dahlia's favoring one of her legs.

“Better yet”—Dahlia leans on Bones for support—”you will again.”

And with that they're gone, out of the spotlight and into the bushes beyond our street. I start to follow, to prove them wrong, to let them know I'm ready to finish this right now, but then I feel Dane's hand on my shoulder.

“Later, Maddy. For now we have to figure out what to do with your friend here.”

“Hazel?” I turn to find her squatting, cross-legged on the ground, crying, and I run to her.

“What's happening?” she asks, fear in her voice. “Who are these people, and why are you holding that bat, and what happened to our weekly movie night?”

“W-w-what do I tell her?” I ask Dane as he stands over us both.

“Tell her the truth,” he says.

“What's that?” I ask.

Chloe has joined us, her expression blank. “The truth? Simple: that you're a zombie, that Dane and I are zombies, that Bones and Dahlia are, well …bad …zombies, that they've already sucked the brains out of three of your classmates and, if we hadn't shown up, would've sucked out your brains, too.”

B
-B-BUT THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE,”
Hazel insists a few minutes later, once she's safe in our cozy breakfast nook and I've placed a Christmas mug full of hot cocoa in her trembling hands. “I've read all of the articles about those girls from our Home Ec class, and none of them ever mentioned the word
brain
, to say nothing of
zombies.”

“Well, now, they wouldn't, would they?” Dane says as I pour him and Chloe a glass of Mountain Dew.

“Well, not unless she was reading
Fangoria
, they wouldn't.” Chloe laughs, and when Dane joins her, I cut them a hard glance.

Hazel shivers in her chair, outnumbered by zombies—one of which used to be her best (human) friend.

Chloe snorts indignantly, but Dane sees what's happening and says, “Come on, Chloe, let's let Hazel …absorb …all this.”

At the sound of her name, Hazel looks up. Her eyes are distant, as if she's seeing Dane but not seeing him.

Chloe drags him out of my kitchen and toward the front door, and I follow. “We'll be in the cemetery if you need us,” she says ominously.

Dane looks at me with an apologetic little half smile. “Seriously, though, Maddy,” he says as I linger in the doorway, “you need to make her understand how …sensitive …a situation this is.”

While Chloe pounds stiffly down the sidewalk, Dane and I glance at Hazel, who's peering into her Christmas mug. “If she's strong enough to keep a secret, Maddy, I'll trust you to tell us so. But if she's going to cause trouble, then I have to know that, too. I mean, you've seen the Elders; you've seen the Sentinels. You know what's at stake here.”

I stand back, vaguely insulted at the implications. “She's my best friend, Dane. I trust her completely.”

“She's a Normal, Maddy. You keep forgetting; you're not
like
her anymore.”

I nod but don't feel the need to make more promises.

“Fine, Maddy, whatever,” Dane says. “If you trust her, that's good enough for me. But don't forget, it's not safe for either of you with Bones and Dahlia pissed off now. We've got to stick together from here on in.”

His words stay with me long after he's gone, long after Hazel's untouched cocoa has passed the lukewarm stage and gone straight to cold. Something has changed tonight, something fundamental.
Who
has to stick together from here on in? Hazel and I: BFFs? Or Dane, Chloe, and I: ZFFs?

As a best friend forever, my loyalty is with Hazel. If she knows, I have to trust her to keep my secret.

As a zombie friend forever, my loyalty is with Dane and Chloe. Long after Hazel and Dad and everyone I know on this planet are gone, they will still be there, watching my back.

We've got to stick together
. Who's the “we” in that sentence?

I don't have to look far for the answer. “Hazel,” I say, shocking her gaze out of the depths of her cold chocolate. “I'm sorry I didn't say anything before. The zombies, the Elders, they …wouldn't let me.”

She merely shakes her head. “I knew something was up.” Her tone is filled with failure, with sadness, with disappointment. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you'd …lied …to me.”

I give her the moment; she's absolutely right.

Then she looks up and says, “Prove it, Maddy.”

“Prove what?” I ask, but already I know the answer.

“Prove what you said; what
he
said, that creep in the hoodie. Prove you're a …a …zombie.”

I was afraid of this. I stand up and walk to her and place her hand on my chest, where it stays while I count, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand …”

By the time I get to “forty-two one thousand,” she's finally had enough and pulls her hand abruptly away. “Okay, so you're a zombie; that doesn't mean that Bones guy and Dahlia sucked the brains out of Amy and Sally and Missy. That stuff doesn't happen in real life.”

“Oh, but your best friend turning into a zombie does?”

She opens her mouth to answer, to dispute, to one-up me, but can't.

I feel bad for Hazel. I had time to deal with my Assimilation. Well, not much, but still; more than she's getting.

“What if I can prove to you that those girls didn't show up in the morgue with their brains intact, Hazel? Will you believe me then?”

She looks up and simply nods.

I don't even have to sneak into Dad's office to peep his files. Well, not his work office, anyway, which is fortunate because the county morgue is set up in the sheriff's office, where there's someone manning the front desk 24/7/365.

But Dad does have a home office and his computer is linked to the Cobia County Coroner's Network. I log on to the county website, click on “Current Deceased Files” and, when asked for an account number and password before logging in, simply look under Dad's keyboard, where I find, on a faded sticky note,
account number and password
, and all the info I need.

I key both in and, just like that, Dad's autopsy files for the last six months are at my fingertips. I go to
search by name
and fill in all three girls' names, separating them with semicolons: “Amy Jaspers; Sally Kellogg; Missy Cunningham.”

Like magic, the PDF files of their autopsies appear on the screen. Hazel, who's been standing over me, breathing onto the top of my head, suddenly looks away when Amy's autopsy photos pop up. I close that link and search instead for Dad's official findings, which I know from experience have the names of each internal organ and a blank next to each one to record its weight.