Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One) (13 page)

“This is a bad
idea,” said Casey.

“You think everything is a bad
idea,” said Jenny. She tapped the fuel gauge, trying to get
it to rise off Empty.

“Did you ever consider that you are full
of bad ideas?” he said.

“If you don't want to come, you don't have
to,” said Jenny. “Grayson and Fisher are watching
Sully, Trix and the new guy are who-knows-where doing
God-knows-what. I can do this on my own. You don't have to
come.”

“If I don't come, who's going to be your
moral compass?” he said.

Jenny smiled, then let it fade. “You know,
I used to think I was a good person. I mean, no one's really good
any more. Everyone's sinned in one way or another. But I tried to
be good. I tried to be kind. And now look at me.”

“You're still good, Jen,” said
Casey. “You're just overwhelmed. It'll pass. The hunger gets
more...manageable, I guess. You won't be pissed off all the time
after a while. The cravings never really go away, but it's like
when you quit smoking, you know? You always want one, but it gets
easier to not drive to the store and buy a pack of
smokes.”

“Smokes aren't as easy to get any
more,” said Jenny.

“You know what I mean.”

“I can't imagine not being angry,”
said Jenny, her voice quiet. “I think I'll always be like
this. After everything that happened, all that I lost...”

“I know it's hard right now,” said
Casey. “It'll pass. Just give it time.”

“How long has it been for you?” she
said.

“Since I was bitten?” said Casey.
“A year. Give or take.”

“I'm sorry I wasn't here for you,”
she said. “I shouldn't have run away. I should have stayed
with you. Protected you.”

“I keep telling you I'm not mad at
you.”

“Yeah,” said Jenny, “but maybe
I'm mad at myself. It was a shitty thing to do to you.”

“Honestly?” said Casey. “You
running away was the best thing that could have
happened.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “It's not that I don't
love you, or I didn't miss you like crazy. You were my hero. You
were always so brave, even when you were going through hell. I
wanted to be brave like that. But when you ran, the old man lost
interest in us. The tests stopped. And then, one day, I woke up and
he was gone. He left us alone. And then Mom took me away. She was
so sad for so long, but it was better than the lab.”

“What Sully said,” said Jenny,
“about Dad...”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think they killed him?”

“I don't know,” he said. “But
if they did, it wasn't on you. If someone had Dad, they would have
killed him anyway. He wasn't like them. I just can't see the
connection between Mom's work and Dad. I mean, he was an engineer,
wasn't he? Unless he knew something about, you know. The disease
getting out. But even if he'd stayed, I don't think even Dad could
have saved you.”

“Do you think it's true? All of it?”
said Jenny. “I mean, do you think I really died back
then?”

“Jen, this Sully guy is some kind of
sociopath. He got you killed. And now you're letting him get in
your head. You can't think like that. Besides, how is it even
possible for you to die and come back? I mean, sure, after you were
bitten, after you died, I can see it. But when you were still
living? How would that even work?”

“How does any of it work?” said
Jenny. “We're fucking zombies, Casey. And here we are driving
a car around and having a nice chat. None of it makes
sense.”

The road was blocked ahead with cars and debris
and Jenny stopped the car.

“Hasn't been cleared up here,” she
said.

“It's okay, it's only a little way
more,” said Casey. “We can walk.”

The cars were covered in vines and had a thick
layer of dirt and ash on them, but Jenny could still see inside
most of them. Rotting corpses sat in some. Most were completely
empty. Skeletons with arms still held in front of ghastly skulls,
their jaws still open in their last screams. It hadn't been just
the rotters in the last days. People had gone out armed into the
streets. They hadn't just killed rotters. They had shot at
everything. Most of the shooters had been Righteous ready for the
Rapture. Some were just crazies who wanted an excuse to kill. It
was before Jenny had met Declan, before she was strong, or even
knew how to fight very well. She had cowered in a parking garage
with some other people she'd met on the street, aware that any
moment one of them could turn around and start killing. The rapes
had been bad back then, before the Heathens united. The Heathens
didn't have rules, but you had to toe the line if you wanted to get
into Expo: No murders, no rape, no stealing. There were always
those who lived on the edges. The dregs.

None of that mattered now. What happened,
happened. Jenny knew there was no way to change it. And now she
wasn't even alive, but if she had the chance to end the ugliness,
she had to take it. She had to find out what made them different.
And if that didn't help, she had to find her mother. If Sully was
telling the truth, her mother's people would come looking for Sully
to give him another message.

A question nagged in the back of her mind: Why
hadn't her mother come looking for her? If Anna Hawkins knew where
she was, why had Sully been the messenger instead of Jenny? Nothing
made sense.

“It's right up ahead,” said
Casey.

“You sure you know where to find one of
these things?” said Jenny. “Maybe someone else took
it.”

“I saw it the last time I was here. It was
just like the one Mom had. I don't think anyone else knows about
this place. I just sort of stumbled onto it when I was looking for
Mom's office.”

“Where's the office?” said Jenny.
“Nearby?”

“In a basement about a half mile from
here,” said Casey. “We can go there after we're done
here if you want. I don't think you'll find anything, though. We
were pretty thorough. There was nothing there.”

“There's always something,” said
Jenny. “Let's just get to this place. One task at a
time.”

There were no living in this part of town. Jenny
was thankful for that. It took away the sharp edge the hunger
always seemed to lean on her. She felt like she had more room to
breathe, so to speak.

Casey stopped in front of a nondescript, squat
gray building.

“This is it,” he said. “All
kinds of weird shit in this place last time I was here.”

“We only need one thing,” said
Jenny. “Let's just get out of here as soon as possible so
Sully can start looking at the blood.”

“You really trust that guy with our blood?
You think he'll do what you ask?”

“A month ago I wouldn't hesitate to say
yes,” said Jenny.

“You thought he was your friend,”
said Casey.

“It doesn't matter.”

“I'm sorry he hurt you,” said Casey.
Jenny smiled. “What?” he said.

“It's just that I'm, well, fucking dead,
Casey. But you're worried about my feelings. It's sweet.”

“I'll always look out for you,” he
said. “Just like you'll look out for me.”

“Okay, little brother,” said Jenny.
“Let's get in there before someone else snags our
thingamajigger.”

Jenny brushed cobwebs away from her as they
entered the smashed door, glass still sparkling through dirt and
plant life. There was a smell like stagnant water somewhere nearby.
Mosquitoes buzzed by Jenny's ears, but they didn't touch her.

The hall was overgrown with vines
and strong-smelling weeds. They passed room after room, waiting
rooms for doctors' offices mostly. There were a few diagnostic
labs. Dentists. The glass in the doors had been broken in most
cases, debris and broken equipment scattering the offices and
waiting rooms. A few rooms were overrun with green algae, growing
in ponds of stagnant water. The roof was
intact. A water line had probably broken a long time ago. Jenny
only saw a few corpses, rotted away until the bones showed
through.
“Should we search these offices?” said Jenny.
“The doctors might have stuff.”

“What they had is long gone,” said
Casey. “I checked. We're going below, though.”

“Below?” said Jenny. “If it's
bad up here...”

“Yeah, it's pretty disgusting down
there,” said Casey. “You up for it?”

Jenny shrugged. “Disgusting is my life
now.”

They pushed their way down the hall. Fat, shiny
beetles crawled along the vines and Jenny could hear a deeper
buzzing than the mosquitoes nearby. They came to a peeling orange
door made of heavy steel.

Casey pulled hard and the door swung open.
Moist, rancid air hit her in the face. There was a sound like
trickling water coming from the darkness. Jenny could make out the
first few slimy, green stairs. She looked at Casey.

“I don't think anyone else has been down
here,” he said happily.

“You don't say,” she said, and took
a careful step into the darkness.

They moved down the
stairs in silence, lifting their
feet out of the muck, and feeling the water running into their
boots. Jenny thought about the prowler she'd killed, or, more
precisely, ripped apart with her teeth. She was starting to feel a
slight twinge of remorse about that.

“Would they turn?” she said.

“What?”

“If we bit someone and they got
away,” she said. “Would they turn into rotters or would
they be like us?”

“I don't know,” Casey said.
“We should probably assume they'd be rotters, though. We
spent time in a lab having who knows what shoved into our bodies.
That might be what makes us different. The rotter that bit you
wasn't special. Neither was the one that got me. The virus is the
same. It's us who are different.”

“If we're the cure,” Jenny said
slowly, “do you think we can cure them?”

“The rotters?” said Casey. “Do
you really think all these dead things are going to magically come
back to life? It's just the living we're saving. The dead are going
to stay dead, no matter what we do.”

“You can't know that,” she said.

“No,” he said. “But just don't
bite anyone else, okay?”

“What about us?” she said.
“Will we be saved?”

It was a long moment before Casey answered.
“I don't know.”

“You think we're going to stay
dead.”

“I'm trying to remember where this place
is. Can we just stop talking?” said Casey.

“No,” said Jenny. “Do you
really think we're going to stay like this? Even if we save
everyone?”

He turned awkwardly, his feet not complying
because of the muck. “We are already dead, Jenny. All of us.
We died the second Mom walked us into that lab. Hell, if you listen
to Sully, you died a shitload of times. It would be stupid to go
around thinking we're going to make it out of this in one
piece.”

“I think we are,” Jenny said
defiantly.

“Well, you've got a lot more faith than I
do,” he said. “Come on, I think it's over here. There
are a bunch of rooms over here somewhere. Feel for a
door.”

Jenny felt along the slimy wall, shaking bugs
and salamanders away. But eventually she felt a lump in the
vegetation. She dug her hand through the moss and growth scumming
up the wall and wrapped her fingers around a door handle.

“Found it,” she said. “Help me
pull.”

It took both of them pulling with all their
strength before there was a tearing sound and the door opened and
light from the other side blinded them.

“Did all that grow since you were last
here?” she said.

“Of course not,” he said. “I
came in from the other side last time.”

“Are you kidding me?” she said.

He smiled. In the light she could see he had a
smear of green on his forehead. “I thought it would be fun to
come the other way,” he said.

“What the fuck, Casey?”

“There's no living here,” he said.
“And you needed time away from everyone else.”

“Whatever,” she said. “You
suck. I liked these boots.”

“Sorry,” he said, not looking sorry
at all. “If it makes you feel better, it was quicker to walk
through the building than around the building.”

“It doesn't,” she said.

It was dry and bright. Tiny windows enforced
with iron bars were set into the wall near the ceiling. The floor
was raised and their shoes squeaked and sloshed on the relatively
clean tile. The whole place was clean. Jenny had to blink a few
times. Nothing was ever clean.

“Fuck the museum,” she said, looking
at the pristine counters and shining microscopes. “We should
set up shop here.” One microscope, much larger than the
others, stood in the corner on its own table. There was a lot of
equipment here, probably all of it working, too. She looked up to
see hundreds of bottles on narrow shelves built into the wall.
There was a closet with its door wide open, displaying rubber
aprons hanging from hooks. “What was this place?” she
said, grabbing boxes on the lower shelves and peeking inside. She
found a small plastic container filled with syringes and tucked it
under her arm.

Casey shrugged. “No idea. Might have been
set up in the end. First group of scientists to cure the virus
would have been set for life.”

“Are these bottles chemicals or
drugs?”

“Both, I think,” said Casey, then
shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Where did you come in before? The last
time you were here, I mean.”

Casey pointed to another door on the other side
of the room. “On the other side of that door there's a
staircase that goes right outside. It's sort of hidden from the
street.”

“It's open,” she said.

“What?” he said looking at the door.
It was ajar about an inch.

“Did you leave it open?” she
said.

“No,” he said. “I don't think
so. Maybe.”

Thump thump thump thump.

“Shit,” said Casey.
“Living coming.”

“And there's more than one,” said
Jenny.