A Living Dead Love Story Series (59 page)

There's a little table off the kitchen, the fold-up kind you bring out when a couple of extra people are coming over for Thanksgiving or maybe to play cards on a Saturday night. It's covered in a green polyester tablecloth. The folding chairs are not very comfortable, but Dad seems happy as he sits across from me, dragging the Twinkie in a bowl with him like a security blanket.

“I can't believe you did that,” I tell him, fiddling with the orange salt and pepper shakers. (No, seriously, they're shaped like real oranges and say
Florida
on the bottom.)

He shrugs. “It's not like I have anything better to do, dear. Besides, I figured you could use a little cheering up.”

I give a faraway chuckle.

“Okay, I mean a
lot
of cheering up?”

I look around the empty apartment. “Well, I know it's my first, but I have to say, this is the saddest rebirthday party I've ever been to.”

He nods and sits back a little. “It's my first too, you know. But maybe they're supposed to be sad. Like New Year's Eve.”

“What? You
love
New Year's Eve.” I picture him back home. He'd get us plastic hats and streamers and noisemakers with the date on them, and we'd eat fancy appetizers like brie,
pâté
, papery
crackers
he said were imported but just tasted stale, and an assortment of butter cookies dipped halfway in chocolate.

We'd sit around and listen to big band Christmas music because Dad said that was the same as New Year's music. Just before midnight, he'd turn on the TV and we'd watch the Times Square Ball Drop. At midnight, we'd whoop and holler, hug, twirl our noisemakers with their funny clatter-
clatter
-clicks, and then stand there awkwardly for a few more minutes before going to bed.

Lame, yes, but aren't some of the best traditions?

He shrugs. “I always loved the
idea
of New Year's, but the reality is, especially when you get old like me, it's a reminder you've got one less year on the planet.”

I rest my chin on my knuckles. “So you'd consider New Year's a sadappy holiday?”

“A what?”

“Go with me here. I'm trying a new word: sad plus happy equals sadappy.”

He frowns. “I think
sappy
is the word you're looking for. But, yes, I always got a little sadappy around New Year's.”

I nod and open my mouth really wide, making big monster hands. “You know, I can make it so you live forever. That way New Year's will never be sadappy again.”

He waves, almost but not quite giggling. “No, thanks!”

He hoists a plastic fork—the Sentinels still haven't gotten him any real silverware—and asks, “So you can't actually eat this, can you?”

I chuckle and slide the bowl closer to him. “It's all yours.”

He smiles, digging in with gusto. “Well, it was more ceremonial than anything else.”

I nod and watch him go to town. He eats the snack cake in four bites and then sits back, patting his tight little belly. He has on brown dress slacks and a blue work shirt, which is all he has in his closet: five pairs of brown slacks, five blue shirts, and two ties, both the most god-awful yellow gold you've seen this side of 1978. As I said, the Sentinels like him about as much as he likes them. And yet he wears the clothes proudly because every care package or hideous tie they bring him is one small victory, I guess.

He pushes the empty bowl back to me. There's some creamy filling left on the bottom. He nods toward it, sounding vaguely fatherly. “You need to have a little of that for good luck.”

He was always big on that luck stuff. Even on New Year's Eve, we'd toast with real champagne, which he'd kill me for any other time of the year. It was just a thimbleful for me and the rest of the bottle for him for good luck. And birthday cake: I always had to have a huge slice, even if I was on a diet, for good luck. And fireworks and lucky pennies (but only if they were heads-up). Suddenly it dawns on me: the dude is completely superstitious.

I nod and dutifully dip my fingertip into the fluffy white cream, then stick it in my mouth for instant sweetness.

Brains aren't sweet. Nothing the Sentinels do to prepare brains is ever sweet, and aside from the occasional soda or sports drink, I haven't tasted anything sweet since I've been here.

It hits my system like a bite of brains—my eyelids fluttering, my tongue sizzling, my synapses firing—and then it's gone. I'd love more, but Vera has warned me, ad nauseum, about eating too much Normal food, as in
any
. I sit back and sigh, almost as contented as Dad after he ate the whole thing.

He has a cup of coffee going, brown smudges around the lip of his mug. It has a picture of a sunrise on it and, underneath, the words
Wish you were here
. It's another Sentinel find from the souvenir shop, but I think he's grown quite fond of it.

“So,” he says, putting it down and smacking his lips. “What's got you downer than usual, my dear?”

I shrug, not even denying I've been a full-fledged brat for the last seven days straight.

When I don't answer right away, he smirks. “Well, it can't be Stamp, for obvious reasons, and Vera says you've been getting on brilliantly with your Keeper training, so . . . must be Dane.”

I look up too quickly.

He smiles, knowing he's hit the bull's-eye. “What is it this time?” he manages to ask without rolling his eyes, his feelings on the matter of Dane quite on the record by now.

“
This
time?”

He wags a finger. “Don't look at me like that. Last time he was hanging around with that new blonde zombie; the time before that he was still hanging around with . . . That's it, isn't it? They're still hanging around together?”

I nod, then shake my head, then nod some more. Ugh, this is too much to talk about with Dad, particularly
my
dad. I don't miss my ex-BFF Hazel often, but at times like this I do. Heck, right about now I'd settle for Chloe and one of her get-off-your-butt-and-do-something-about-it pep talks.

“I just . . .” I begin, avoiding his eyes. “We used to talk all the time. He's all I have here, besides you and Stamp. And you're always busy with Stamp, and Stamp's not exactly the best conversationalist anymore . . .”

He arches an eyebrow. “He still loves you, Maddy.”

“Has he said that?”

“He doesn't have to. I see that look in his eyes whenever you walk into the lab at night.”

I frown. “The janitor gets the same look when he walks into the lab.”

“But he keeps it longer when you're around. That's an important distinction to make.”

“Exactly. My point is . . .” I don't really have one. I'm just mad. And sad. And mad. And whenever I'm around Dad, he makes me think of home, and that makes me think of being Normal, and that makes me remember I'm not anymore. “My point is, I guess I thought we'd be together forever.”

Dad shifts in his seat before clearing his throat. “You know, Dane has been a zombie a lot longer than you have. I think . . . Well, maybe he knows a little more about the word
forever
than you do at this point.”

I look past him to the poster of a surfer on the wall just over his head. It's so ridiculous, yet he put it there the minute the Sentinels gave it to him. I guess he figured something is better than nothing or maybe he just wanted to spite the Sentinels or maybe he's a closet surf dawg. Who knows?

I refocus on him. “Forever or not forever, I thought we had something special.”

He nods. “I could see that. Of course you did. You don't go through something like what you kids went through and not have something special. Have you talked to him about your feelings?”

“I haven't had a chance. Courtney's never away from his side.”

Dad narrows his eyes. “He's a Sentinel now. He can certainly choose where and when he roams about.”

“That's my point. I'd like to say it was all
Courtney's
fault, but it's Dane I blame the most.”

He furrows his brows, making the birthday hat on his head shift a little starboard. “Who's Courtney?”

“The blonde zombie.”

He nods, and it lists. “Oh.”

I look in the kitchen and see some extra plates and napkins he never brought out.

His lips purse.

“Did you tell Dane about my rebirthday party?”

“Maddy, listen—”

“Did you?”

“He's very busy. He's not in training anymore, you know.”

I grit my teeth and shove the words out. “Did you
invite
him?”

“Yes, I did. He said they'd be by if they could make it.”

My dead stomach tightens like a corkscrew. “They?”

Dad looks down into his coffee cup, which I
notice
is empty. “He and his Sentinel Supporter.”

I groan. Out loud. Then I do it again, even louder.

He smiles, reaching for my hand. “I just wanted you to have a nice rebirthday party.”

I soften a little; it's not Dad's fault Dane's being a total tool to the nth degree. “I am.”

He snorts, standing to pour more coffee. He looks at his watch and reaches for the cream on the counter.

I'm suddenly standing.

“Leaving so soon?” he asks, already grabbing his lab coat.

I smile. “I thought we could go see Stamp. Didn't you say Zerkers have an easier time eating Normal food? Something about their metabolism?”

He grabs another Twinkie and a spare birthday hat from the kitchen counter. “They pretty much burn through everything we give them,” Dad says excitedly, leading me into the hall.

The bright fluorescent lights reflect off the foil in his own birthday hat, which I conveniently forget to tell him he's still wearing.

“So, yes, a Twinkie is certainly not going to clog his pipes, if you know what I mean.”

I
keep the
Twinkie behind my back the whole time they're moving Val to the observation bay in the back wing of Dad's lab. It takes Dad two random Sentinels plus his lab partner, Hector—a
giant
Sentinel he recruited his first week in Sentinel City—to wrangle Val from her cage.

There are chains and handcuffs and a big
leather
muzzle involved. Val watches me the entire time, not blinking, not smiling, not screaming like she was. Even with all the precautions, Dad steers clear.

Suddenly her back is to me and she's doing that awkward ankle-chain shuffle you see prisoners do when they're walking out of the courthouse on
Gavel TV
. She's in hospital scrubs, green and ill fitting, and her white-blonde hair is limp and soft and fine against her scalp. She looks small between the two towering Sentinels, particularly Hector, who is like Lurch on steroids. But I know firsthand that looks can be deceiving and behind those yellow Zerker eyes is a mind burning with ways to tear me—and everyone else in the room—limb from limb.

But not tonight, biotch. Not on my rebirthday!

When Val is in the other room, Dad turns around and nods at me, then shuts the door behind him and locks it tight.

Suddenly it's just me and Stamp in the outer lab. I tap in the six-digit code on his keypad, and the cage door hisses open.

He looks at it doubtfully, as if he doesn't believe I'm here or he thinks it's all a trick.

I sit back on a stool next to the table across from his cage, finally sliding the snack cake out from behind my back. I look at it, frowning. It's all mashed up. I must have gotten a little tense there, watching Val led away, her eyes on me the entire time. I thought I was immune to it, or at least used to it, by now. All these months after she tried to kill Stamp and me, I guess I'm still a little stressed out over the whole thing.

But Stamp doesn't know any better. And, really, can you actually
damage
a Twinkie? I tear open the plastic wrap.

At the first smell of sugar and pastry and God knows how many preservatives, Stamp inches from the cage, no longer suspicious, and reaches for it greedily. His hand stops just above the cake, and he looks to me for approval.

I know Dad and Hector have been working on his manners, so I nod and say gently, “It's okay, Stamp. It's yours. It's for you.”

Say no more. He snatches it up, neon-yellow crumbs flying everywhere as he jams it into his maw, smacking and slurping like it's his first taste of brains after I yanked him out of his grave and fed them to him from a picnic basket.

The Twinkie's gone in a heartbeat. Finding nothing left, he licks his fingers, then the plastic wrap. He picks a few crumbs off his scrubs, which are white now to signify he's in recovery.

I don't know exactly how one recovers from being bitten by a Zerker, but if anyone can, it's Stamp. I used to think he was just another jock chump, a pretty boy with good manners and a roving eye, but now I know that beneath his broad shoulders and hairless chest lies a heart that would stop at nothing to keep beating.

Or
not
beating, as the case may be.

I've been through some pretty harsh stuff in the last year but nothing compared to poor Stamp. He stands here, nothing left to lick, looking me up and down as if I'm his next Twinkie. I spot the spare birthday hat Dad left on the slate counter and hand it to him.

He holds it gently, rolling it over in his hand. It's pink and green, all shiny foil with glitter sprayed
everywhere
. Dad must have asked for birthday hats and the Sentinels came back with the most ghastly, girly, neon, 1970s things ever. That anyone could still be making these horrid hats kind of boggles my mind. I wouldn't put it past the Sentinels to literally build a machine and go back in time just to spite Dad.