A Living Dead Love Story Series (63 page)

“
Just
Hector and you?” Vera's eyes narrow.

He flashes her an impatient look. “Yes, we had called for the Sentinels, as always, but when they didn't show after a few minutes, we decided to move her ourselves.”

Vera shakes her head. “But that's not protocol.”

Dad and I both look at her.

“Are you kidding me?” he blurts. “Is it protocol for the Sentinels to take so long? Is it protocol for me to have to check with them every time I tie my shoe or zip my pants? I'm doing important work here, and they've never respected it. Not once. I can't test Val properly if she's in a cage all the time.”

Vera stands, smirking. “Well, she's not in her cage anymore, Dr. Swift.”

“I know that.” Hand on his scalp, he shakes his head miserably. “Don't you think I know that?”

“Dad,” I say, reaching out to touch his knee, “who is that back there in the tanning booth?”

“Hector,” he moans, looking at me through swollen eyelids. “He tried to put the muzzle on her while I put her handcuffs on, and she bit him, tore his thumb clean off, and swallowed it whole before she had him on the floor, his Taser in hand. She made him take the tarp off the tanning booth and get inside, and the second the door slammed shut, she sprayed him, sizzled him down to the bones. I thought she'd do the same to me, but she tied me up and shoved me where nobody could see me.”

I look up at Vera. “See, it
was
an accident.”

“Of course it was an accident,” he sputters, looking from me to her and back at me again. “Who said it wasn't an accident?”

“Dr. Swift, when exactly did this happen?”

“At 10:17. I noted the time on her chart before we opened her cage.”

Vera turns to the Sentinels.

They snap to attention before she even speaks.

“Alert the border patrols that she's been gone for over two hours. Clear the halls. I want every available Sentinel after her immediately, no excuses.”

They grumble, and one finds a walkie-talkie and relays the message.

While Vera coordinates, I lean in. “Dad, the other cage. It's empty. Where's Stamp?”

He smiles, then nods toward the second supply closet.

I feel another wave of relief shudder through my dead cells, a distant Normal emotion trapped in there somewhere like phantom adrenaline haunting my veins.

I stand and make a move to open the closet.

Vera yanks me back. “Let them do it. When will you get it through your head that he's still a Zerker?”

“Not as much as he used to be,” Dad croaks. “That's . . . What do you think I've been doing here? Why do you think Val was so important to me, to you, to everyone here? By studying her cellular structure, I've been able to isolate some of what makes zombies and Zerkers so different from each other. I've been working with Stamp, giving him regular injections at his brain stem to phase out the Zerker cells, healing him, in effect. Not curing him, exactly, but as close as he'll ever get, I'm afraid.”

He looks at me, almost apologetically, before turning back to Vera. “I think that's why she left him behind this time. She could tell they had nothing in common and he was of no use to her anymore.”

The Sentinels have the door open and Stamp is there, not tied up, not gagged, just standing quietly in the corner of the supply closet, waiting next to a yellow mop handle. As if he knew we'd be there all along. He looks so shy and sad.

“Stamp,” I cry, lurching for him.

Vera yanks me back again.

“It's okay, Stamp,” I say from the sidelines. “You're safe now. It'll all be fine.”

He offers me a small smile before the Sentinels gather him up. They are rough, and the anger starts in the back of my throat, a kind of low, dull hum.

Dad notices and reaches for my hand.

“Maddy, I'm sorry.”

Vera looks down at us both, a note of sadness in her voice. “Dr. Swift, I assure you, you have no idea what sorry means, but you will.”

I stand, turning to her. “What does that mean?”

She swivels, signaling to the Sentinels. In less than ten seconds, I have my hands behind my back again, my wrists tied. We all do: Stamp, Dad, and I. They lead us out of the shattered lab. The Sentinels in the halls pause, letting us pass, watching us with hooded eyes.

They take us back to that long passageway, the dark one with all the cages. They put Dad in the first one, skip one, put Stamp in the third, skip one, and put me in the fifth.

I notice Vera's not with us. She must've stayed behind in the lab.

The Sentinels lock us in and storm off.

All but one. A tall, grim specimen who looks like he's been dead a long, long time. He watches us carefully, looking from one to the next, then back again.

I look down the hall, to the first cage. “Dad?”

He mumbles something that sounds like
sorry
twice, then nothing more.

“Dad!” I need him to talk to me.

After the third or fourth “Dad!” Stamp turns to me, eyes yellowy black. “Leave him alone,” he hisses, inching as close to me as his cage will allow. “He'll talk when he's ready. Can't you see he's not ready?”

T
hey come for
Dad first.

It's night. Or day. I can't really tell anymore. I tried counting for a while but gave up after I got all the way to 4,987 seconds and Stamp said something pointless to wreck my concentration.

We've been showered and fed in preparation of our appointment, as Vera keeps calling it. Now we're in gray hospital scrubs, all of us, even Dad. His are a little snug, and he keeps fussing with his shirt where it rests awkwardly on his little potbelly. Every time he does, my eyes go to the plastic ties around his wrists and I wince, half guilty, half angry.

Guilty for bringing him to Sentinel City in the first place; angry that they think he had something to do with Val escaping. It's been less than a day since the first team of Sentinels yanked me out of the library, which means this must be a pretty big deal. I don't think the Elders usually move this fast.

The Elders don't stay here at Sentinel City all the time. They're too valuable to keep all in one place—in case the Zerkers ever found out. Dane says they're from all over the south—Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina—so they must have some pull to get here this fast. Either that or a few private jet pilot zombies on standby at all times.

“Maddy?” Dad says in a trembling voice, the first word he's spoken to me since they caged him.

It's hard to hear over the clanging of the keys and the door and the clattering of the Sentinels' shoulder pads.

“Honey,” he shouts, high and strange. I can't tell if he's mad or scared. “I'm fine. Don't worry. I didn't do anything wrong. Nothing's going to happen to me. To Stamp. To you. Nothing at all.”

“I know,” I shout, wishing Stamp would move out of the way a little so I could get a better view of what's happening. I hear the clomping of the Sentinels' boots, the jingling of keys, Dad grunting as they drag him out roughly, the way they do everything all the time.

I see a shock of gray hospital scrubs amidst all the Sentinel black, the back of Dad's balding head, but that's about it.

“Vera,” I shout, seeing a flash of powder-blue beret in the mix. But as I inch closer to my door, I see it's not her at all, just some other Keeper who doesn't even look back as Dad's pulled away.

“Dad! Say something.”

But he never does. Or, if he does, they have him muzzled or, worse, a Sentinel is clamping his dead hand over his mouth, which isn't much fun when your lips are the same temperature but has to be absolutely grosstastic when you're 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Sentinels never frisked me. I don't know if that was Vera's doing or if it was because I'm a girl or if they're just lazy, but either way I still have my Eliminator on me, wedged into the little fold at the top of my hospital scrubs. Although I can't reach it with my hands tied in front of me this time, I can rub my wrist against it every so often. I know it probably wouldn't help against a team of Sentinels, but it makes me feel good just to have it there, slim, sturdy, and violent.

I pace my cage. The hall's empty except for Stamp, who paces with me.

“Quit doing that,” I hiss.

He gives me his surprised look, as if he didn't think I'd get ticked off at him matching me step for step. “I will when you will.”

So I stop, thinking he'll lose interest, like a kid you've played peekaboo with too long and now they want to play Marco Polo and then hide-and-seek. But I can't stand still and start pacing again. He follows, loping with his long cricket legs.

God, how I wish he were the old Stamp, even the jerk Stamp I lived with in Orlando. At least I could talk to him then, in between the living skanks he rotated through like a rock star. A cup of coffee here, a morning walk there, a break between performances of the
Great Movie Monster Makeover Show
. We could at least converse, share a few civil words, even a smile, though we were exes.

I try, just to see what might happen. I stop pacing and lean toward the bars of my cage that are closest to his. “What do you think they're doing to him, Stamp?”

He stops too, leaning in. “Doing what? To who?”

I stare back at him, unblinking. “To Dad. To
my
dad, who's been taking care of you all this time.”

He nods, eyes growing small. “I know that.” Then, a few seconds later, “I knew that already.”

I grunt. So much for that. I turn to pace again.

He mumbles something.

“What'd you say, Stamp?”

He glowers at me. “I said, I wonder how
he
likes it in a cage.”

I smack the bars, close to his face.

He doesn't flinch. Not even a little.

“That's not nice, Stamp. Not nice at all.”

He doesn't say anything.

I turn, afraid I will. Then I turn back: “He was just trying to protect you. That whole time. Me too.”

He glares back, indifferent, unmoving.

I wave him off and walk away.

We pace some more, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. It's hard to tell with no windows or watches or doors. I hear the clomping of Sentinel boots down the hall before he does, so I'm watching his face until—pop—his eyes open wide when at last he hears them too.

“Hey,” he says, moving closer. “Hey, Maddy, I'm . . . I'm sorry.” His fingers are out as far as they will stretch from his side of the cage.

I push mine out until our fingertips touch the outside of the empty cage between us, barely. It's almost like we're really touching. Better, probably. Less sad this way than feeling his cold skin against my own.

“I know you are.”

“Away,” a Sentinel says, rattling his keys to open Stamp's door.

I back up, thinking it might be better for Stamp, but now he clings to the bars of his cage, looking at me, eyes wide as the Sentinels pry him off and drag him out the door.

I expect him to cry out, but once he leaves the cage, a sense of calm seems to wash over him and he never turns back.

The blur of black Sentinel shoulder pads and Stamp's bristly hair masks a quiet blue presence lurking at the end of the hall.

It inches forward after Stamp's removal.

“Vera?” I ask, sagging against the bars as if the afterlife's just gone out of me.

I told myself I'd be strong. That whatever was happening, I'd be tough for Dad and Stamp. I'd act like I knew what was going on, that it was all normal procedure: nothing to see here, move on. But after Dad left and didn't come back, and now Stamp, I've got nothing left.

I just slouch there and wait for her to say something, anything.

“Yes, Maddy.” She appears across from my cage door, leaning against the off-white cinder block wall.

“Where's Dad? Where are they taking Stamp?”

“For sentencing. The Council of Elders is giving sentence. You know that. I told you.”

I stand up straight, pacing again. “And what's the sentence?”

She shifts against the wall. “You know I can't tell you that.”

“Then why are you here? If you can't tell me anything, I mean.”

“I came to check on you. Before . . .”

I stop pacing.

She pushes off the wall, steps closer.

We both hear the Sentinel boots trudging down the hall toward us.

“Before they come for you.” She sounds almost glad.

I look to the right of me, to the empty cages where Dad and then Stamp once stood. Before they came for them.

“I'm not coming back here, am I?”

She shakes her head, looking toward the Sentinels' footsteps.

“Good.” I'm pressed against the bars now, her face an arm's reach away if only I could fit more than a few fingers between these stupid bars and wire mesh. “Because whatever happens, Vera—outside these bars, down that hall, with the Elders, whatever it is, whatever the sentence—no one's ever going to put me in a cage again.”

Vera looks at me as she opens the door, voice as cold as her ashy skin. “Be careful what you wish for.”

T
here are no
CPR dummies in the gym this time. The air of finality that fills the vast room means there probably aren't going to be a whole lot of CPR dummies in my future.

Midafternoon sunlight filters in from the windows high above the raised basketball hoops. Vera and a team of Sentinels lead me inside so slowly, as if we're at some kind of funeral or something. And maybe we are. Who knows?

As always, I shiver at the sight of the withered Elders seated at the far end of the gym at fold-up picnic tables well below their station in life, or afterlife. Behind them, just as with the first time we were introduced, stands an elite team of what I call Super Sentinels, kind of like Elder Bodyguards. All they do is follow the Elders around.