The Beautiful Dead (11 page)

“Proposing?” I
tease him. “I barely know you.”

“It’s just a
gift.” He doesn’t smile. Very seriously he gently pushes my hand away, ring
pressed into my palm. “I don’t want it anymore. You can have it.”

Inelegantly, I
try fitting it on my fingers. The only one that accepts the clunky ring is my
thumb.

“Thanks.” I
hold my hand out. “Looks nice, I guess. Is this your way of paying rent?”

“Thought you
could use some jewelry.” He shrugs. “I never see you wear any, so …”

I don’t look
up at him, wary of what his sometimes-smoldering eyes can do, so I’m staring
somewhere between the floor and his knees when I say, “Never thought you
noticed.”

“I notice
everything,” he murmurs vaguely.

I cross to the
doorway. Without looking back I say, “Life must’ve been nice. I miss it without
having known it at all. Things are so complicated now. Sorry,” I shake my head,
excusing myself. “I won’t interrupt your sleep again. I need a drink … I’ll be
back in the morning.”

“I thought
your kind don’t drink.”

“I don’t know
my kind.”

On my way out
of the bedroom, I see the tiny corpse of a cockroach squished against the
floorboard by the bathroom. I don’t know why seeing it affects me like the
stabbing memory of a friend I’d lost, but it does, and I let it. For such a
little thing to survive the end of the world, only to be victim to the
underside of a shoe.

The Human John
quietly locks the door behind me as I leave—the proper way this time.

An hour or so
later, Grim and I have had two glasses each of his wine, which does nothing for
me. Soon after, we relocate to a remote part of town where a dead tree’s
gnarled branches overhang a circle of benches like an umbrella. Seated at one,
I tell him how wonderfully my first Reaping went. He’s staring at the sandy ground
in silent concentration, his fingers tapping his knees.

“So what now?”
I ask.

He shakes his
head. “I … I don’t know. It will be up to the Judge, I assume.”

“Grim, who was
your Reaper?”

He glances up,
surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“You never
told me.”

“I, well … I
wasn’t Raised here,” he adds patiently. “I was graciously taken in by the
Mayor. I’m from another city. Remember?—I told you there’s others out there.”

“You did,” I
agree, looking him in the eye. “What was it like?”

“My first
home? It was … cramped. I didn’t like the city or its politics. That’s why I
left and, well, I’m thankful to have found Trenton. And you.” He smiles gently,
then changes topics. “I can tell you’re still worried.”

“Is the Judge
gonna put another sword through me?”

Grim laughs—a
little strained, I might add—then puts an arm around my shoulders. “You will be
fine. The Judge may be a harsh woman, but she is virtuous. Her only interest is
protecting the town, protecting you, protecting me. There’s bad people out
there, Winter.”

Again,
reminding me that one of the Judge’s roles is to protect us, I am forced to
remember what John said about the “zombies” with bone and rotting flesh for
faces who eat people … zombies who took away and presumably murdered his
parents. I remember the words of the Judge herself when she took me in for
questioning … when she asked if I were one of the Deathless … before utilizing
that handy steel sword of hers. Fretfully thinking on all this, I’m spinning
and spinning and spinning that ring on my thumb, John’s little gift, my humanly
adornment.

YOU DID THIS
TO YOURSELF.

“Here,” he
says, reaching for my hand. “You’re nervous. You need to—” And then he gasps,
winces and yanks his hand away from mine.

I frown at
him. “What is it?”

Nursing his
finger, he says, “I think your ring cut me.”

I smirk,
studying the clunky gift from John, spinning it on my thumb some more. “Sorry.
It was a … It was a thing I found in town. Might be sharp on the edges.”

“Hey, do you
wanna hang in the tulips again?” he asks, changing subjects again. “That perks
you up.”

“The
Deathless,” I say evenly, steering us right back on topic. “Do they eat people?
Is that true?”

“I told you, I
don’t know anything about them.”

I sigh,
irritated. “For someone who knows an awful lot, you sure seem to know so
little.”

That last
comment might’ve hurt Grim’s feelings, but I don’t care. Why, when one thing
goes right, everything else goes so terribly, terribly wrong?

“There you
are,” says a sour voice.

I look up. Pouty
Helena flanked by Marigold and the Judge, who is herself joined by her two bony
henchmen. This is great. It is such a relief to find that my night will be
getting better and better.

“You weren’t
home,” the Judge tells me unnecessarily. “We’ve been combing the streets
looking for you. You are required to pay penance.”

Of course I
am. “Penance? What penance?—Penance for not being properly trained in the
obviously delicate and clumsy art of raising the dead?”

The gaunt,
tight-lipped Judge smirks for an answer.

Helena sighs.
“Just come with us and let’s get this over with, you ungrateful girl. I’m so,
so tired of this night and these heels are killing me.”

“So be killed.
Aren’t you dead already?”

“I’m not in
the mood for your smarts,” the Judge snaps. “I’m interested in saving a
potentially dangerous girl and preserving what life she may have left to
preserve. You,” she says, pointing at me with unwarranted drama, “are the one
most directly responsible for the girl, and are required by Trenton law to lead
the search party.”

“Search
party??—Are you kidding me? We’re actually going to go and find this crazy
girl?”

No one says
anything for a moment, giving me a second to realize how insensitive my
statement might’ve been. Who knows, had I been abandoned the instant after my
Raise without a moment’s guidance or attention from the Refinery girls, what
state I’d be in?

“I’m sorry,” I
say, amending my outcry. “That was indelicate of me. I … I will help find her.”

“And I,”
Helena adds nastily, reminding me she’s not pleased at having to suffer for my mistake.
I’m neither pleased nor unpleased at witnessing her displeasure.

Grimsky rises
suddenly and stands by my side with purpose. “I’m going too.”

I turn to him,
shaking my head. “No, no. This is my slipup. I’m not having you put out for my
mistake.”

“Oh, how
sweet,” Helena mumbles, rolling her eyes.

Grim puts a
reassuring hand on my shoulder. I try not to look annoyed. “I’m in this with
you,” he says. “I’m helping however I can.”

“I volunteer
too,” Marigold adds with a cheery smile. “I don’t mind at all. I even brought
my kit, should we find the girl and wish to perform any immediate Upkeep!”

“So kind,” the
Judge states, unmoved. “I must follow, if only to lend my sword in the unlikely
case of danger.”

With all eyes
on me, I find suddenly I’m overwhelmed with the excessiveness of this search
party. “Why must
all
of you be involved? I should go alone and find her.”

“I represent
Trenton,” the Judge declares theatrically, “and by extension, Helena of the
Fourth, and by furthest extension, you, Winter of the now-Second. And by my
sword, we will return with the girl, or return dead.”

Any deader
than we already are, we’d be dirt.

“This is going
to be so much fun!” Marigold chimes in, her fingers drumming the wooden casing
of her Upkeep kit excitedly. “Might you recall if it was her left or right arm
that was missing? That’d be most helpful to know!”

Grimsky, I
can’t believe he’s so willing to put himself on the line for me. Again. The
Judge is locked down by duty and has no choice, I assume. And there’s Helena, of
course … my unsworn enemy. You can’t pick your haters any worse than they can
pick you.

“You ready?”
asks Grim privately in my ear.

Or your
lovers.

“Right arm.” I
look Marigold in the eye. “It was her right arm.”

C H A P T E R – E I G H T

Out the north
gates of Trenton, down the path and two lefts later, the seven of us—myself,
Helena, Grim, Marigold, the Judge and her two bony cronies—are in the vastly
dusty lowlands lovingly referred to as the Harvesting Grounds, from where all
this trouble sadly originates. Maybe when I was alive, I was an accountant.

“Lead the
way,” the Judge orders me.

I’m ambling in
the general direction of where I think I may have ended up when I heard the
ominous whispering and was grabbed at the ankle by a dead hand in the ground.
Maybe I was a librarian.

“In which way
did she run?”

“That way,” I
declare, pointing in any direction. How the hell am I supposed to know?

“This way?”
The Judge sounds skeptical.

“That way’s
just as good as any.”

Maybe when I
was alive, I was a wedding planner.

“She will
react to her
name
,” Helena offers agitatedly. Of course she would make a
point in sounding ever-so inconvenienced by this regretful turn in her week. As
if I personally arranged this whole horrible thing.

“Well?” asks
the Judge patiently. “What’s her name?”

I open my
mouth, then realize belatedly that, well …

“I didn’t give
her one.”

The six of
them stop moving at once to collectively gape at me, like I’d just uttered the
greatest offense, second-in-line to the Z-word.

“What now?” I
exclaim, exasperated.

“A person’s
name,” Helena starts, practically gathering her jaw from off the ground as she
speaks, “is the absolute most
important thing you give your Raise!”

“When I was
given Marigold, the whole world came together for me,” Marigold says with a
dreamy smile.

Even Grimsky
quietly chimes in. “It grounds them.”

“How could you
be so negligent?” Helena barks. The angrier she gets, the thicker her accent
grows. “I should just leave you here where I first found you. I should go home
and—and—I am
so
angry right now I could spit!”

“So spit,” I
retort, marching off in the general direction of wherever. Who knows where a
running dead girl could be so many hours later? She might have dashed to the
other side of the world by now, or leapt off that ridiculously-high cliff, lost
to the misty-whatever below.

In a thousand
pieces.

We continue
our trek across the vast nothingness of the Grounds for what feels like hours,
neither producing a dead running girl nor a dead-dead girl. Neither mist nor
fog nor whisper finds us, and we find nothing but endless vast vastness. Even
my eyes are bored.

Grimsky finds
my side. The others trailing behind, I mumble, “This is pointless. We’ll never
find her.”

“It’s
important that we do,” he insists.

“Why? She ran
away from me. Kicked me in the face, I might add, but no one seems too
concerned about that.”

“She knows
nothing of this world. She’s lost and she’s scared, Winter, can’t you see?  She
can’t fend for herself.”

“She doesn’t
need to! We don’t eat! We don’t sleep!”

“But we think,
and we feel, and we fear,” he points out. “For all the things we don’t do
anymore, we do new things. We must find her, and quickly.”

I roll my eyes,
trudging aimlessly on. “Well, shouldn’t we split up or something?”

He shakes his
head no. “That would be too unsafe. Everyone needs to be together when we find
her. There’s no telling what state she’ll be in.”

“What do you
mean? What might’ve happened?”

“It’s not so
much what happens when a Raise is lost. It’s more what can happen
to
them.”

His answers
never answer. They only infuriate and inspire more questions I don’t have the
time or energy to ask. Really, why does a person bother to be so helpful and equally
so unhelpful?

The truth
hidden at the very bottom of all my angst is, I’m to blame. I’ve done this … to
all of us. Regardless of how much I’d enjoy puncturing Helena with a blade of
my own, I’ve not only upset her unnecessarily, I’ve also embarrassed her … and
that’s not even mentioning the danger I’m apparently introducing to this entire
group by throwing us on this quest to find the rogue Raise. Though no one will
bother being straight with me about what “danger” there is out there, other
than these enigmatic Deathless characters who I’ve not even seen. That’s a
curious thing too, considering there once was only a tavern’s bathroom door
between them and I.

Of course, the
very last thing I need to be worrying about, which is often the first thing I’m
worrying about, is the Human in my house. John, who dreams about his murdered
parents.

Ouch.
Something just bit my neck. What was—?

“Run,”
breathes the Judge, which inspires all of us to look at her, alarmed.

“From what?” I
bother asking, but at the sight of seeing everyone bolt in one direction
without asking questions, I find myself running with them, no idea whatsoever
what, exactly, we’re running from.

I keep
stealing a look over my shoulder, but I see nothing pursuing us. We keep
running, the Judge ahead of me, Helena and Grimsky just behind, and Marigold
trying desperately to keep up with the two bony men at her side, her eyes
panicked. “What’s going on??” I cry out to her, but she doesn’t respond,
focused only on the ground before her, I assume to keep from tripping.

Then I feel
something like a bee-sting on my arm. I wince and examine the sudden pinch,
still running. I see a red spot on my skin that burns and itches instantly.
Squinting at it, confused, I’m just about to ask what’s happening when another
sharp needle pokes the back of my neck, surprising me. I grab my neck, puzzled
by the sensation, but keep moving my feet.

Then I start
to feel the needles all over.

“Run, run,
run!” hollers the Judge with force.

All over the
back of my neck, my arms, even down on my legs I feel the tiny jabs of needles,
the almost annoying pinches of pain from a source I can neither see nor hear.
My eyes are desperately searching for something, but I don’t know whether to
look for a swarm of insects, or some sort of poisonous gas, or—

“Right ahead,”
the Judge calls, “there’s cover!”

“Cover from
what??” I yell, but my voice is drowned out by the sudden crack of lightning
that, for one blinding moment, lights up the entire muddy field.

That’s when I
realize what’s pelting me … Rain.

Ahead of us
there is the gnarled stump of a very, very large tree trunk whose roots hang
down like jagged teeth. It’s under that trunk where the seven of us pile,
protected by earth’s umbrella from the rain.

Six of us.

“Drecklor!”
the Judge shouts. “Drecklor! Keep on it!”

Under the
tree, I look back and see one of the bony men—Drecklor by name—flat against the
ground and crawling sluggishly toward us … but he’s still a long way to go and
the killer rain is unrelenting.

“Pull harder!
Pull, pull, pull!” hollers the Judge in an impressively level voice, like a
coach. “Pull, Dreck!”

He claws the
ground in front of him once last time, then collapses, unmoving, dead.

“Get up!
Dreck!” she cries. “Get up, you fool!”

The bony
henchman doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Fool!” the
Judge cries out. Then, to my surprise, she boldly dashes back out into the
storm. With the fell rain pummeling her body, she manages to grab hold of
Dreck’s arms and, with impressive might, jerks him under the partial cover of our
little earthen inlet.

“Quick, quick,
Marigold,” she urges with a snap of her gaunt fingers. “Your kit.”

Marigold
dutifully whips out her wooden case, flicking open its locks and producing
tools I can’t even begin to identify.

“His back and
the top of his head, quickly.”

“Yes, Judge,”
says Marigold, hauling the lifeless body up closer to her—blocking him from my
view now—and she begins to work … doing whatever it is she does.

Steam rising
from the bony man’s exposed back and head, I lean closer to Grimsky and ask,
“What the heck kind of rain was that …?”

“The normal
kind,” the Judge barks, irritably pulling her disheveled hair up into a tight
bun while watching Marigold do her work.

I gape,
staring outside our covering of tree trunk and twisted roots as the rain
assaults the soil with its blameless bullets for raindrops. “Rain?” I say, uncomprehending.
“Just normal rain is harmful to the Undead?” Helena rolls her eyes, then winces
at a drop that lands on her hand from a root above. “Why wasn’t I told this?” I
ask, looking at Grimsky for an answer, then at Helena, beseeching her. “And
what’s going to happen to him?—to Drecklor?”

“Nothing, if I
can help it,” Marigold answers in a soothing voice. “Dreck, dearie, can you
keep still? Your back is falling off your back.”

“It doesn’t
rain in Trenton,” Grimsky explains to me. Helena masks an irritated sigh,
turning away and glaring outside our trunk of a cave. “Wherever the Undead
live, no one can explain, but it never rains. In fact, anything living is, more
or less, repelled by our inhabitance.”

“But we have
water in Trenton,” I say, still not following. “Doesn’t that come from rain, in
part? How is that not poisonous to us?” Helena tries hiding another petulant
sigh. I face her. “What’s your problem?”

“Same problem
as it’s ever been,” she says flatly. “The problem I’ve had ever since the day I
harvested you.”

“How
interesting,” I bite back, “that my problem seems to be so similar to yours …
The fact that no matter what I do, no matter what I say or ask, I have the love
and respect of my Reaper, Helena Prim, to comfort me. How very lucky I am.”

“Helena
Trim
,”
she corrects me scathingly.

“Helena
Prim-And-Proper.”

“SWORD!” the
Judge cries out. “NOW!”

All of us turn,
startled. The Judge reaches out urgently toward Grimsky. “Quick. Hand me my
blade.” Grim peers down at the sword that rests by his foot, uncertain.
“Quickly!” the Judge shouts.

I look to
Grim, concerned. “What’s wrong, Grimsky?”

After another
indecisive moment in which he just stares at the thing, the other bony henchman
grabs the blade instead and tosses it to the Judge, who steps to the front
boldly brandishing it.

It’s then that
I look up to see what threat has moved the Judge to take such action. To my
surprise, the rain has abated entirely, and from the misty distance marches
forth a wide row of figures. Figures that look less like people and more like …

Like
skeletons.

“Stay back,”
Grimsky commands, his usually-even tone shaking with fear. “Keep behind me.
Don’t move.”

I hide behind
him as instructed, eyeing Helena who no longer appears smug, but wide-eyed and
panicked.

Maybe when I
was alive, I knitted scarves all day.

Marigold has
taken pause to her mending methods, anxiously watching the oncoming row
of—somethings—that march with conviction toward us. The Judge remains in front
like a shield, her steel sword in hand, ready for something that’s about to
happen, of which I know not. Grimsky is so tensed up, I feel the muscles in his
slender back turn to stone, like a gargoyle.

“We have no
business with you!” the Judge calls out all dramatic, her voice—even in these
circumstances—remarkably composed and self-assured. “I behold a blade of pure
steel. If you wish your lives spared, walk no further!”

The marching
army of skeletons persist, on and on, unaffected by her apparently weightless
threats.

“Walk no
further!” she calls out again.

And then she
collapses, like a puppet clipped of its strings. After all that showing of
bravery, has she just fainted?—Seriously? A little delayed in reaction,
Marigold gasps with horror, placing a tentative hand on the Judge’s arm, then
looking up at the approaching army. She steps up to the mouth of the cave and
calls out, “Please! We mean you no harm! Please!—We are only—”

Then Marigold,
too, drops dead to the ground.

“What’s
happening??” I cry out to the three still-standing companions of mine, grabbing
hold of the back of Grimsky’s shirt much tighter now.

“Keep back,”
he breathes, trembling all over.

The remaining
bony henchman wrests the sword from the hand of the fallen Judge, stands
gallantly before us, only to drop to his knees before getting one word out,
then in seeming slow-motion slumping face-first into the wetted soil, the sword
fumbling out of his grip.

The army has
nearly reached us. Mere meters separate our little hollow from the looming
advance of skeletal terrors.