A Living Dead Love Story Series (81 page)

“Don't flatter yourselves.” She chuckles in a villainous way, those eyes getting even wilder. “Like I said, it's not you I want.” A pause and she takes her foot off Dane, looks down at me.

“You know, Maddy, here's an idea: why not just surrender for once? You know, stop being the good guy for a change.” She looks back at me, points at Lucy. “Just give us one willingly. Just give us Lucy, and we'll call the whole thing off.”

“Yeah, right,” I spit.

“I mean it this time. I will take Gingham and Lucy here and the rest of my horde, and we will walk out of town, no questions asked.”

Dane looks as if he's considering it, which I know he can't be. He turned out to be the afterlife's worst boyfriend, but he can't be as bad as this. “And what happens to her? Lucy, I mean?” he says.

Val shrugs. “What do you care? You trade me one measly, skinny Normal, and you get to save the rest of Seagull Shores. No big fight to the death, no big climax, no—”

“No.” My voice is low. “I don't care how many promises you make, I will never willingly hand a Normal over to a Zerker.”

“Maddy, listen . . .” Dane's eyes plead with me.

“No, Dane. And, no, Val. There is no surrender. There is only you and me and win or lose. Only one of us is walking out of here in one piece.”

She tries to look bored, but I can tell she's disappointed. At least just a little. Then she looks at Lucy to say to the only Normal in the room, “You see, I gave you a chance.”

Lucy's voice is resigned as she grunts, still in Gingham's clutches. “I haven't had a chance since you all got to town.”

“All righty then.” She sighs, settling in, leaning against the machine, as if she's got all day. And I suppose she has. She turns back to me and licks her lips in anticipation. “All day, you've been watching me, waiting for me to do something. And all day, every kid I've turned and every kid they've turned has been heading toward the house on Lumpfish Lane to finish what I started back in Barracuda Bay.”

“What's that?” Dane asks.

But I already know. I already knew the last time Val and I faced off like this.

She looks at me, as if she can read my mind. Or maybe just because she wants to see my face when I finally realize why she's here. “Ask her.”

“Stamp,” I say, still on my knees at Val's feet, gripping Vera's pen behind my legs. I look at Dane. “Courtney.”

He looks from me to her and back to me. “But why?”

I shake my head and answer for her. “It's all so simple. All along. Bones. We took her brother from her. All she ever wanted that whole time in Sentinel City was to find a way to hurt us as badly as we hurt her. Stamp for me. And now Courtney for you.”

Dane turns to her, smiling up at her gross face uncertainly. Even I can see it, and I know Val can. “Courtney's a Sentinel,” he bluffs. “And Stamp? He's half Zerker. They'll never fall, no matter how many of your kind you send.”

Val sneers. “She's Sentinel
Support
, Dane. And he's half Zerker, all dimwit, from what I could see from my cage next to his. I doubt they lasted past first period. I doubt, if you ever get back to Lumpfish Lane yourself, you'll find more than a couple of toenails and a few IQ points lying around.”

Dane grunts, squirming like he'd wring his own arm off just to get the chance to grab her by one leg and toss her around the room like a rag doll. Which he totally could, if he weren't buried under a ton of old metal filled with glazed honey buns and powdered donuts.

“Call them off,” he says, the tendons in his neck standing out now. “Get . . .” he grunts, running out of steam. “Get over there and stop them, and we'll do whatever you w—”

“Like hell,” Val says, launching into another soliloquy.

And that's when I jab Vera's pen into her ankle.

She squeals, not from the pain but the shock that I had something other than the Eliminator up my sleeve.

Before I can press the power button on top, she grabs my hand.

“Nice try.” She sneers. She studies the pen, seeming familiar with it. I try to think if I've ever flashed it at her in her cage or if maybe one of the Keepers did when apprehending her in Barracuda Bay. Or if maybe she's like the zombie Michael Meyers and knows everything and anything and will never, ever, re-die.

“Go ahead.” She smirks. “Squeeze that button, and we'll both fry.”

I smile cockily, not even caring anymore what happens to me, as long as nothing happens to anybody else. “That's the general idea, dumb ass.”

Her eyes get big but not for long.

Suddenly my finger is on the button, grinding it down, and she sizzles like a piece of bacon. But . . . so do I. Our teeth clatter, and our muscles tense, and our bones shake, but I've had a little more practice with Vera's pen than Val has, and I watch her eyes flutter back in her head until mine do too.

I squeeze until I can't feel anything else, and the world goes dry and cold and black.

The next thing I know, someone's kicking me.

I kick back, grunting, fried and angry and disoriented, until I hear, faintly, as if it's in the next room: Something, something, “. . . it's me.”

My eyelids open, and I see the break room ceiling high above, water-stained tiles and fluorescent lights and yellowed tape, probably from where they've hung Christmas ornaments or paper snowflakes in the past. I look left and see Val, splayed out unnaturally, eyeballs smoking and one leg bent at an odd angle.

To my right, Dane is still kicking me.

“Stop it.” I say. “Stop now.”

I stand, wobbly, as if I've just stuck my finger in the world's biggest light socket after drinking six cases of cheap champagne. “How are you still jammed under there?” I slur, reaching down to help him. I just assumed the click on Vera's pen would solve everything. “Push harder,” I tell him.

“I've tried that.” He gasps. “Don't you think I've tried that?”

I look around the room slowly. Things are
blurry
still and rough around the edges.

Lucy is struggling with Gingham, but after whatever Dane cracked in her, it's hardly a fair fight.

Still, we don't have much time. Val will be up soon, and in my condition, I'll need his help if I'm going to finish her for good.

I find a chair with metal legs and jam it into the back of the machine, pounding furiously, until I can feel the thin metal panel give way. Then I jam it in some more.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Just wait!” I feel like I'm hungover and he's asking me for directions to Toledo at the top of his lungs.

The back panel is crushed in the center, the seams lifting at the sides.

I toss the chair to the floor and tug one end of the panel until it peels off like wrapping paper.

Inside the guts of the machine, it's just a patchwork of those spiral rings the treats hang from. I grab a couple: sleeves of powdered donut thumping down. I reach for three of the metal rings coiled together and tap, tap, tap them against the glass of the vending machine. It shatters all over, chip bags ripping, stale cookies flying as I wrench half a dozen more spirals out and toss them away to give him room.

When there's enough space, I tell him, “Reach in and pull yourself through.”

He does. Just like that. He pops up, like a rabbit out of a hole. He's favoring one arm, twirling it like a swimmer before the 400-meter backstroke, but grinning just the same. “Who
are
you all of a sudden?”

I look at him, teeth still smoking, probably from Vera's pen. “I'm badass; that's what I am.”

He shakes his head. “You're power drunk is what you are.”

Val stirs, kicking one leg out, and I reach for the nearest metal coil from the vending machine. It's like one long corkscrew. Just as she's opening her eyes, I jab one in, straight through an eye socket and her skull and—boom—into her cerebral cortex.

Lights out, Val.

Nighty-forever-night.

I keep jamming it down until I hit the floor, then keep pushing it straight through the linoleum.

Dane tries to pull me off. “Come on,” he says, as if he knows jack squat about Zerker killing. “Let's go. That's enough.”

“That's what every stupid good-looking kid says in every stupid bad horror movie film.” God, when will I talk right again? This is nuts. “I'm not being that. I'm not being her. Help me.”

“Help you what?”

I shake my head, as if it will clear the fog, and you know what? It does. It really does. “Tear her apart, Dane. What else?”

He looks from me to Lucy, who's sitting on Gingham's back, repeatedly bashing her head into the tile floor.

“Don't look at me,” she huffs, eyes cloudy with violent intent and mouth upturned in a curious smile. “I'm busy!”

T
he school is
silent. Even the fire alarm's quit ringing. It must be on a timer or something. Having been trapped in the teacher's lounge with a maniacal Zerker spewing the world's largest guilt trip, I suddenly can't remember hearing it go off. Or ringing, for that matter.

The halls are empty and bloody. Some of it's red: Normal blood. Some of it's black and gooey: Zerker blood. Lockers are open, and backpacks and books and papers are scattered everywhere.

“What happened?” Lucy asks, clinging to her messenger bag as we leave Val and Gingham and their various body parts behind.

“Val got what she wanted,” Dane says, stretching his injured arm. “A town full of Zerkers.”

“You mean . . .”

“Full infestation,” I say, limping beside her. “
Day of the Dead
stuff, all right.”

Dane stops at a classroom, shoving the door wide open. Inside, the chairs are overturned, a bloody handprint on the chalkboard. He turns back and looks at me, then at Lucy.

She looks pale, drained, scared in a way she didn't back in the teacher's lounge, scrapping with Gingham like a straight-up Sentinel wannabe.

“We're about to find out,” I say, grabbing her sleeve and guiding her toward the student parking lot.

It's a mess of open car doors and bloody sneakers and purses. Her car is there, right up front, pristine and waiting, as if we were the only ones still stuck inside when everyone else got out. We get inside, finding our familiar seats by now: Dane in the back, me riding shotgun.

Lucy turns the key and, after all that's gone wrong, after all we've screwed up, I'm surprised the car actually starts. We pull out of the lot, dodging vehicles parked every which way: on the school lawn, out in the street, windows broken, one hood up as if somebody stopped to check the oil in the middle of a zombie infestation.

“Jesus,” Lucy says, both hands on the wheel as she goes as fast as possible toward the house on Lumpfish Lane. “Jesus.”

A tan, drab van passes us going about twice as fast, in the opposite direction, nearly plowing into the Go, Seagull Shores Spartans! sign across from the school.

Dane and I look at each other.

Sentinels.

Two more vans race by, careening after the first, tinted windows unable to hide the grim, gray faces.

“But if Val crushed your phone, who called?”

“Don't look at me,” Dane says, favoring his arm. “Maybe Courtney got through.”

“Maybe,” Lucy mumbles, turning off the main drag toward the house. “Maybe one of the cops around here is a Sleeper too.”

Dane barely notices. “A what?”

“Forget it,” we say at the same time.

“Look at this place,” Dane adds. “It's a war zone. Hell, they could have been watching CNN in the day room back in Sentinel City and seen it live and in person.”

“Lucy,” I say through gritted teeth, nudging her shoulder. “Let's go. Pick it up.”

I picture Stamp, wondering if we're too late. Wondering if we were too late by second period or even when Val walked us into homeroom when the day started.

Lucy slides onto a sidewalk to avoid an overturned ambulance and says, just as grittily, “I'm trying!”

I attempt to see the world, her world, through her eyes. But I can't. It's pretty screwed for both of us. Despite being a Sleeper, is this her first real encounter, up close and personal, with the living dead? “Okay.” I pat her rigid arm. “Okay, I know you are.”

We see the first Zerkers in a shopping center, feeding on . . . something. Two of them wear school uniforms; one of them looks like a housewife.

Lucy slows down while I shoot Dane a look.

He quickly shakes his head.

“Keep going,” I urge, looking away.

She flashes panic. “But shouldn't we help?”

“Whatever they're feeding on,” Dane explains from the backseat, “was done the minute they bit into it. It's too late for them. It might not be for our friends. Please.”

But it is. Too late for them, I mean.

After drifting through a town full of overturned cop cars and fog, fire, and steam, Zerkers shuffling and occasionally feeding, we pull up in front of the house on Lumpfish Lane.

There's no one here but a few Sentinels.

“Anything?” Dane asks, going to the nearest one. It's amazing, and a little disturbing, how
quickly
he slides back into Sentinel mode.

I don't wait to hear an answer, but I can sense, as I walk past them into the living room, what he's saying. And it isn't good.

Zerker blood is everywhere, but I also see Tasers on the floor, shoulder pads torn in two, scenes from an epic battle between the good zombies and the bad. How long the Sentinels were here, I can't say, but it doesn't look like they all made it out re-alive.

I stomp upstairs, and it's more of the same in every room. Shattered glass, broken closet doors, blood and more blood—all black. I look everywhere twice, even under the kitchen sink, and there's nothing, nobody anywhere.