A Living Dead Love Story Series (52 page)

Now it's nightfall and I can feel Val in the air, out there lurking somewhere not so far away. I leave the truck where it is and walk into the dollar store next to the thrift shop.

Jangly Irish music plays over the sound system as I walk past the cheesy green plastic beer mugs on Aisle 2 and giant bubble gum gold coins at the end of Aisle 4. I find what I'm looking for in Aisle 9 and buy it with three of my precious remaining dollars. I leave the coins behind on the counter because they'll make too much noise where I'm going.

Then I walk hungrily into the dense patch of woods behind the strip mall. It's pitch black, but I don't mind. In fact, it's better that way. The deeper and darker the woods get, the more intense my zombie yellow vision becomes.

Trees take shape, then leaves, then bugs crawling on the leaves. The ground is not just ground but twigs to walk over and stumps to walk around and broken bottles to avoid. I watch birds settled in for the night on branches high above: some big, some small.

They're all too small for what I'm looking for.

Not if I'm going to best Val anytime soon. And the
cat food? In the end, it did more harm than good, with more chemicals than brains and more sick than energy.

I need living brains, full of electricity, if I'm going to stomp Val into Zerker dust. I stop creeping forward into the woods and find a clearing with a stump I can sit on peacefully. I take the treats from the dollar store out of my hoodie pockets and spread them around; caramel squares in one pile, chocolate-covered peanuts in another, candy corns in the last.

Say what you want about candy corn, but forest rodents straight trip over it. I know because Dane taught me this trick the first week in Orlando, before we hooked up with Iceman. We sat there, Dane, Stamp, and I, in front of our own piles of gooey, chewy treats and had our fill of big, fat, juicy rodent brains.

Gross? Yes.

Survival? Necessary.

I sit back and wait. It doesn't take long. The forest kind of erupts, if you know what to listen for.

The squirrels come first. Fast little nutters, sniffing out the chocolate-covered peanuts with their beady noses and reaching with their tiny little hands as I sit, stock-still, waiting.

Then I erupt, hands blitzing their little necks as they squirm and squeal. Their brains aren't much bigger than marbles—tight, pink, chewy little marbles—but they do the trick. If only in small doses. Still, it's like making
a whole meal of beer nuts. Good for awhile but hardly Thanksgiving dinner.

It's the raccoons who love the candy corn so much. One by one, silently stalking the forest, brave unlike the skittish squirrels or even the much shyer possums. The raccoons' courage is their undoing, at least on this night.

The first goes down easy, perhaps lulled by the surprise of strong, cold hands snapping her neck in two seconds flat. The second is a little more skittish, possibly more wary from the scent of her brother's blood spilled in great, gushing glugs behind my splattered tree trunk.

But it's the third that goes to town, hissing and spitting and scratching at my wrists until, at last, I ignore its neck and simply crack open its still ranting skull, sucking deep the golf ball—sized brain and chewing it until its live, electric juices make me whole once again.

I put the carcasses, all seven of them, into the plastic bag from the dollar store. I feel guilt-ridden but wired. I use the yellow light of my zombie vision to find a puddle of standing water and wipe the gunk from my hands, noting the dull raccoon scratches and timid squirrel bites on my palms.

I wipe gore from my mouth and chin. And then I walk from the woods to find the strip mall closed. I stand in the parking lot and spy the bank sign across the street. It's already 11:00 p.m., but just to make sure everyone's gone home I walk past each store in the strip mall.

Thrift shop.

Dollar store.

Hardware store.

Pawnshop.

Used record store.

All empty.

Even the check cashing place and the take-out pizza parlor are deserted. It's like a ghost town, but that's no surprise. Barracuda Bay always did roll up its sidewalks around 9:00 p.m. (And yes, that
is
my dad's expression, thanks very much.)

But tonight, I'm glad for the Bay's reputation as a sleepy little beach town. In fact, ever since I found out I wasn't going to make it by sunset and hatched Plan B, I've been counting on it. I yank open the truck door (it tends to stick) and push in the old-fashioned cigarette lighter in the dashboard. I dump the brainless carcasses all over the front seat, on the floorboard, even in the glove box. (The squirrels fit perfectly.)

Then I reach for the five gallons of gas in the backseat and douse it all: carcasses, upholstery, steering wheel, brake pedal, even the yellowed owner's manual. When the cigarette lighter pops out, I toss the gas tank in the truck bed and shove the red-hot lighter into the glistening wet upholstery.

It ignites immediately, and I drop the lighter on the floor, slamming the door and stepping back but staying
close enough to rinse, lather, and repeat if the fire goes out. It doesn't.

Just the opposite, in fact. In seconds, the entire interior of the truck is engulfed in flames. We're talking nine-alarm, movie-stunt-gone-haywire fire. In minutes, the whole truck is ablaze, the crackling and hissing of fur and leather and drying bones and breaking glass piercing the night.

I shield my eyes from the flames and heat.

Just to make sure the right people come at the right time, I use the pay phone next to the check cashing place. I dial 9-1-1, and once someone answers, I drop it and just let it hang there.

Now I sit back and wait.

After a minute of dead air, they'll trace the call.

Operation Avenge Stamp is well under way.

I just wish Stamp was here to see it.

T
wo cop cars
at first, requesting backup.

Two fire trucks, one big, the other not quite as.

One ambulance, then two.

More cops filter in, four or five after awhile, the cars scattered around the parking lot. Firefighters hose down the truck till the fire turns the gushing water into hot, white steam.

It's still smoldering when, splashing around in thick black puddles, the firemen pick at the remains with axes.

I stand, dressed in black, behind one of the strip mall columns, unseen and ignored, all according to plan.

At first I think the firefighters will miss it, but then one calls out, “Hey, I got something here.”

I can imagine him, spotting a raccoon jaw or a gnarly, pointy tooth or a burned-beyond-recognition
paw that might be a toe or a pinky finger. It will be enough. It has to be enough.

It is.

The first fireman calls another one over, then one more, and together they huddle, quietly picking around the steaming hunk of smoldering truck with their hatchets and thick, gray gloves.

Finally, one tells a cop, the cops come check it out, they confer with the EMTs, and that's when I hear it: “This is definitely human. Somebody needs to call the coroner.”

The coroner: Dad. My dad will be here. And soon.

Sentinels or no, nothing or nobody—living or dead—is going to keep my dad from a dead body. I stand and wait for 5 minutes. Then 10. Then 15. Then 20. The cops get restless. I mean, there's only so many times you can wind and unwind crime scene tape from around a smoldering truck, you know.

At last I see the tan station wagon barreling down the street, little red siren stuck on top and blaring weakly in the middle of the night.

Dad. My dad! I can see him clearly through the window, balding head gleaming in the light of a passing street lamp, his moustache going gray now, his eyes open and alert behind thick bifocals, his face grim.

God, I never thought I'd see him again. And he's alive, with both his hands on the wheel and, I assume, both legs in working order. And … he's not alone.

Beside him sits a grim zombie, a Sentinel without the uniform. He's dressed instead as an orderly or assistant or something, down to the face mask and surgical cap, to hide his gray skin and thin, liver-colored lips.

But I can see his dead, black eyes glint in the same street lamp that makes my dad's bald spot shine. The assistant's dead dead, all right, the Living Dead. So maybe Vera was right. The Sentinels have found a way to stick with Dad 24/7, even if it means taking off their trademark berets and dressing as a coroner's assistant to get the job done. Maybe I misjudged the old Keeper.

I watch the station wagon turn in to the shopping center parking lot on two wheels.

I carefully scan the street beyond it. Sure enough, a minute or two later a tan van eases past with flattened wheels from the weight of up to four giant Sentinels. It circles around before parking in the deserted fast-food restaurant lot across the street from the cop-covered strip mall.

I scan the road for any other signs of Sentinels and see none.

And I nearly crumple to the ground. One team. One? Team? Vera told me two, three, even more teams were on their way to catch Val, to protect Dad.

Screw Val. She lied to me. That witch!

But it doesn't matter. In fact, it's even better this way. Fewer Sentinels on the ground in Barracuda Bay mean fewer Sentinels to mess with my plan. I keep my
eyes on the road, watching carefully, until I see what I've been waiting for all along: one lonely car going slow, then slower, as it spots Dad rushing to the smoking truck.

The car turns around in the bank down the street and cruises past under the nearest streetlight. And that's when I see her in profile. Val's spiky hair. She's turned to watch the scene, cruel yellow eyes focused on my dad.

The car she's driving is a small black import, tinted windows, fancy rims on the tires. Knowing Val she probably stole it from the school parking lot just to look cool. Before she can spot me, I slip into the phone booth. The phone is one of those heavy, metal boxes, screwed to the metal part of the booth. I grab it on both sides and yank on it once, twice, until it pulls free.

The cops are still milling about, the light bars atop their cars flashing, the firemen putting their tools back, eager to get to the station so they can beat each other on
Halo 16
or something. It's now or never. If I don't cause a ruckus, they'll be gone before I know it.

I hoist the heavy phone unit onto my shoulder and walk unseen until I'm in front of the check cashing place. There's a sign over the door: Premises Monitored 24/7. I hope so. I really, really do. I raise the phone high, then launch it through the plate glass window in the front.

It's loud but not loud enough. But that's not the diversion I was looking for anyway. It comes in a split second: an alarm that has me running for the nearest
column. And now the cops and even the firefighters come sprinting from their cars and trucks, passing the column where I cling and flooding into the store.

Once they're all inside, guns drawn, backs to me, I run to the nearest cop car. It's still idling, door wide open, lights flashing—and it's mine. All mine.

I get behind the wheel, strap myself in, and slam it into drive. It bucks like a wild bronco, leaps forward, and nearly pins Dad against the smoldering pickup truck as he continues sifting through the ashes, trying to identify a body that never was.

The Sentinel senses trouble, but he's still in the station wagon, eager to retain his anonymity.

I pull up more gracefully, until my open window faces Dad.

He turns, perturbed until he sees me. Really sees me.

“Maddy?” he gushes.

“Get in,” I shout. “In the back, and don't ask questions.”

He gets in and doesn't ask a single question.

“Buckle up,” I say, and the minute he does, I drive right past the Sentinel still struggling to get out of Dad's station wagon with his surgical mask half on, half off, his liver lips frozen in a silent scream.

Inside her little car, Val obviously hears me before she sees me and speeds up as I slam over the curb and into the street.

But her little import is slow, and my cop car is big
and bad and fast. God knows how many horses are stampeding under this shimmery black hood. I nail her car sideways, smashing her right taillight, spinning her around so that she's facing the parking lot.

Her expression is both shocked and evil, and that's before she sees it's me behind the wheel. When she does, she morphs to downright apocalyptic: yellow eyes burning, gray teeth gritting, mouth cursing.

Her slurs drown in our dueling revving.

She guns it. Smoke spews from the friction of one of her tires on the dented undercarriage.

“Maddy,” Dad scolds.

But I ignore him, bearing down on Val's little stolen car as it flees into the night.

M
y teeth grind
as I stay on Val's tail no problem, turn after turn, her one working brake light winking with each clamp on the brakes as she tries desperately and fails to shake me.

A few turns into the chase, Dad says calmly, “Lights.”

The flicker of a smile crosses my face. Of course the first thing he says—the first real thing—is a reminder.

Still, I ignore him (uh, a little busy at the moment) until he says it again: “Lights.”

“Dad, what?”

I check him in the rearview, and he's actually grinning. “I don't know who you're chasing or what they did to you or what you intend on doing to them, but if you don't want the rest of Barracuda Bay's finest to spot you in a stolen police car, you need to turn off your lights.”

I snort. “Good thinking.”

Have you ever tried finding the button to turn off the police lights while speeding down an empty street in the middle of the night at 80 miles per hour, trying to keep up with an angry, panicked Zerker who wants nothing more than to trick you into driving straight into a light pole? Then you know it's not so easy.