The Beautiful Dead (23 page)

“John,” I
finally whisper after recovering from the sight of his desperate eating, “I’m
going to get you out of here. I’m not sure how, but it has to be soon, because—”

A scream
echoes down the hall, silencing me at once. I look off for its source, cannot
see a thing.

“Doesn’t
matter,” he says finally.

I turn back to
him. “It does! I need to get you out of here because they’re going to kill you.
Did you hear me?” I squint down the hallway. “What was that scream…?”

“Save
yourself.” He curls up again in the corner of his cell, appearing almost to be
bored. “I was dead the day I came to this place.”

“No.
I
was,” I correct him with a sneer. The scream cuts down the hall again, this
time accompanied by a frightening—something—that appears to be missing half its
chest and arms. The pale, bloated thing comes barreling down the hall with its toothy
jaw wide open like it intends to swallow me. Before I can even decide what the
hell it is, the end of a very long knife comes out the front of its chest—smoke
issuing from the wound—and then it falls to the cement floor, revealing a
little girl with a long black braid for hair standing triumphantly behind it.
In her hand, the shimmery steel dagger that just murdered the screaming monster.

“Who are you?”
I finally ask, still entirely petrified by the strange scene I just witnessed.

“More
concerned with what I am,” she asks, a little lisp creeping into her words,
“and not in the least what that thing was I just slayed? It’s a Deathless, by
the way.” She casually wipes the blade clean with her palm like she just
chopped up an onion. “I’m your neighbor. You don’t recognize me?”

I gape. My
other-other-other neighbor … The little girl who lives down from Jasmine. The
one I saw in the alleyway with Grimsky the night he took me to that restaurant.
The one who was sad, quiet and forlorn.

And a little
creepy. “I never met you, officially,” I point out. “My name’s—”

“I know.” She
sheathes her knife into her belt. “No time for intros. The city’s being
invaded. We need to go.”

“Invaded?”

The girl peeks
into John’s cell. “This the friend?”

I assume the
girl doesn’t recognize him as a Living, and quietly make the word, “Yes.”

“Well, get him
out. We need to make a move.”

“It’s locked.”

The girl rolls
her eyes. “Have you learned nothing with your new body?”

She pulls off
her own finger and, with the ease of a seasoned picklock, wedges the bone into
the lock and twists and pries it until the lock lifts, the door swinging open
like it were never locked in the first place.

“Out,” the
girl orders, annoyed, “and we gotta hurry. You don’t stand a chance of
surviving here, not when they’ve brought the Lock with them.”

“Lock?”

“Don’t worry,
Jasmine told me everything.” The girl squints at me. “She’s my death-mother.
Surely you’ve figured that out by now. We keep no secrets.”

“Told you
everything? What everything?” My mouth is filling with so many questions, I
can’t get them out.

“The Deathless
are here for you,” she says, “and you only. We need to keep you from them, long
as we can.”

“Why me??”
Again, asking the same question I’ve asked Grimsky, asked the Deathless
King-Queen herself, the same question no one seems willing to answer.

“Hurry, now.” The
girl rushes down the hall without further explanation, except to turn her head
and say, “And if you bring the Human, don’t let him hold us back.”

John and I
exchange a look of surprise. Then, the two of us catch up to her, following
miss black-braids out of the Town Hall dungeons, spilling into the lobby. All
around us, people are running from something I cannot see. The girl leading us,
we make it into the streets where the condition is no better. People are
ducking for cover. We trip over bones and fragments of men and women, reminding
me very unfavorably of that night at the tavern when all those Undead were dust
on the floorboards.

“Don’t stop
running,” I call back to John, who just grunts in response.

And then a
building explodes. The wall spills onto the road, wood and brick raining to the
ground and blocking our way. The girl makes a split decision and pulls us down
an alley. John helplessly follows behind. It is the first moment John and I
have spent outside my little house ever since we’ve properly introduced
ourselves.

Too bad we
have to spend it running for our lives.

“Through here,”
whispers the girl, pulling us into another familiar building. Through its doors,
we enter a large gymnasium. There’s others who are already here, hiding under
benches, tables, even gym mats. “There’s an exit out the back that leads
straight to the east Trenton gate,” the girl tells me as we pass a giant weight
machine. “Take this.” She hands me a short, blunt knife. “Will work better than
that ugly ring you call a weapon.”

“It’s not
ugly,” I retort, but John doesn’t seem to hear any of this exchange, keeping up
behind us and heaving with exhaustion. Tis an inconvenient time to be Human.

We pass into
the back room which appears to be a dance studio where a man is seated in front
of the exit door taking swigs from a bottle. Seriously?

“Out of the
way!” the girl orders.

When I draw
closer, I realize it’s the doctor, Collin. His brother is the owner of the gym.
Bottle hanging from his swollen fist, Collin doesn’t budge, just staring off.

“Collin!” I
call out to him, imploringly. “You have
any
idea what’s happening out
there?”

“Yep.” He takes
another swig.

The girl
unsheathes her knife. “I’m not opposed to cleverly getting you out of my way,
doc.”

“Chop away,”
he mumbles. “Either you will or they.”

“Or neither!”
I cry out. “You can come with us! Get out of this place, you never liked it
much anyway.”

The look in
his dead, glassy eyes … I know no amount of inspiring rhetoric or
shoulder-punching words is going to convince him to join us. He’s as good as
gone.

“Out!”

I glare at the
little girl, but she’s right. Time’s wasting, and the violent search party is
still trying to locate me, no matter the destruction left in its footfalls.
With a calm force, I lift the chair the doctor is seated in—like he weighs less
than nothing—and set him to the side. The three of us leave through the door,
the doctor alone with his own silent tortures. And us, with our very loud ones.

“Gates, gates,
gates,” she calls out. The iron barriers stand tall over us like giant
guardians. We’re hurrying, but as we approach, I realize speed is the least of
our concerns: Deathless are guarding the way out.

The girl rushes
up to them, swinging her blade like mad. I nearly have to duck, as close as she
got to taking off my ear. With every score to the face of a Deathless, they
drop to the ground one by one, writhing in pain like little poisoned insects.
“Hurry!” she barks at me, waving me toward the wide-open gates. John and I whip
through, rushing into the nothing of the forest ahead. Again, we’ve dodged the
strangled clutch of the Deathless horde.

But it isn’t
without cost. For as I break the edge of the woods, I make the mistake of
daring one final glimpse behind me … a glimpse just long enough to see the girl
turning her steel rod on a stumpy metal-legged man, and her little
black-braided figure bursting into bones and dust before the iron gates draw
closed.

C H A P T E R – S I X T E E N

It’s just crunchy
leaves and dead twigs for a long time. I try not to compare the sound to
snapping bones. It’s an effort.

“She gave us
her life,” I mutter. “She could’ve lived forever. And it’s because of me that
she’s dead.”

John just
grunts and says, “She was already dead.”

I can’t say
with any confidence what John is feeling. Surely he’s happy to be free. Grateful,
even. Or maybe he thinks he had it better there, confined to my safe little
house … safe until it wasn’t.

I tell him he
needs to rest. Despite his insisting that we go on, we stop at a little
clearing in the trees where I pull open the bag Jasmine had given me. John
picks through it and brings another apple to his mouth … and I try very hard
not to watch. Even the sound of a crunching, squishing apple in his teeth is
music.

Jasmine wasn’t
stupid. She knew I was housing a Human, and knew I’d someday need this getaway.
She must’ve known the whole time and kept it a secret for me. That’s why she
said what she said when I’d returned to Trenton. And yes, to answer her
question, I was well aware that it was against the law. Punishable by exile.
But she sent her daughter to aid us, and now her daughter’s …

“Are we headed
home?” I ask, cutting myself off.

He lifts his
head, addresses me with a squint.

That’ll do. “I
need to know that you’re going to be safe. That we’re heading back to … to wherever
you’re from.”

He licks his
lips, says, “I’m from a place that used to be Alabama. But we’re not headed
there, because there is no Alabama anymore. There’s no America either … Just
death and decay.”

“Where are we
headed then?”

“To the camp.”
He takes another bite. “That’s where my brethren keep watch. We’ll be safe
there, though I gotta warn you, I’m pretty sure they’ll try to kill you.”

“Already dead,”
I remind him, then sigh. “She didn’t even tell us her name.”

He studies my
face for a moment. “I didn’t know your kind could … die like that. Just poof,
into dust.”

“Yes, you did.
You saw it the day we met.”

John gazes at
the core of apple still in his fist and frowns. Yeah, I don’t look back on that
day fondly either.

“That was the
Deathless,” I explain. “I overheard from the Mayor soon after that they had
most likely come for me. But also it could’ve been you … He wasn’t sure.”

John just
grunts, squints at me skeptically. “What the hell would those things want from
me?”

“Maybe
nothing. Maybe they were just after me.”

“What the hell
do they want with you?”

“I think I’m
the missing progeny,” I tell him, then can’t help but chuckle at myself.
“Seriously, it sounds more ridiculous coming from my own lips than theirs. What
the hell is the missing progeny anyway?”

“A missing
creation,” he says. “A missing child.”

“I know what a
progeny
is,” I spit back, annoyed. “I just don’t know what it means. Do
they think I’m someone’s daughter? Do they think I’m …”

And then my
throat closes up, suddenly arrested by an awful thought I’d almost voiced. That
“special treatment” I’d gotten at the Necropolis … if I dare call it that.
Being summoned personally by the Deathless King herself. The way she treated me
…

“Does she
think I’m her … daughter?”

John’s grabbed
and bitten another apple, his mouth full he mumbles, “Whose daughter?”

I face my
companion, pushing away the thought. “John … I’m gonna need you to know a few
things.”

“Like what,”
he grunts, chomping away.

“You need to
know what we’re running from … What we’re up against. These terrible Deathless
… You and your—people—need to be prepared.”

He glares.
“Can I finish eating first?”

“No.”

I can’t hold
it in anymore, and the words start to pour. Maybe I’m overwhelmed with the
unsettling notion that I might be related to them, to the Deathless. That maybe
my Old Life holds more secrets than I’d ever want it to. That maybe that
faceless something at the top of the Black Tower could actually be my … you
know.

My Undead Deathless-turned
terrorist mom.

I tell him
everything that happened at the Necropolis. I tell him about the young boy
named Benjamin and how they took his legs to stop him from escaping. I tell him
about my last moments with Helena, my maker. The seeming days I was kept in
their prison, and the Humans I found and freed there, including a little
darling girl named Megan. I tell him about Grimsky and how he was a traitor all
along, yet at the last minute turned traitor against his own kind to let us
escape—I still don’t know which side he’s on. I tell John about the short
metal-legged man with the power to render our kind unconscious, and the fact
that after being stabbed by Grim, he’s obviously still survived—we caught a
glimpse of him as we narrowly escaped Trenton … the one who took that girl’s Final
Life before our eyes.

“I’ve never
seen him turn someone to dust,” I admit. “In fact, I’d not known he was one of
the ones capable of that. But apparently he is, and I’m scared of him.”

“Locks,” says
John.

“What?”

“Locks,” he
repeats, tossing the core of his apple aside. “The little girl we were with,
she mentioned a Lock. That’s short for Warlock. I’ve heard of them before. My
people talk about them like—no offense—but like they’re our saviors. They can
control the dead.” He picks at his teeth, shakes his head. “Necromancers. They’re
Human. I can’t explain how they … do what they do … but—”

“You never
mentioned this before,” I say, trying not to sound accusatory.

“I didn’t know
they existed. It’s just myth and wishful thinking, that’s what I believed. While
our people were being killed or eaten by the zombies, we were praying for
Locks. We thought one could protect us.”

“Well,” I
retort, annoyed, “looks like a Lock joined the wrong ranks. That man belongs to
them, not to you.”

“And I know
Megan.”

I was gonna
say more, but his words cut me off. My jaw just hangs with half an unspoken
word.

“She’s from
the camp,” he continues. “When her brother was taken from her, it was a dark
day for us all. She went off on her own to avenge her brother, got taken.” He
sighs, stares off into the sky and adds, “What a relief it is to hear she’s
survived … after all this time.”

“She’s a
strong kid,” I finally confess.

“She survived
because of you.”

I guess that
much is true, though with all recent things considered, it’s difficult to
accept credit for anything. Right now, I feel to blame for everything.

“Imagine a
place,” he says quietly to the air, “without death. A place that thrives. Grass
doesn’t poke sparsely from the earth, it bursts. Trees reaching tall as
mountains. Flowers and roses and bushes and fruit twisting around and up every
tree trunk, every stone. Hills of green that go on and on. Just imagine for a
sec, a place like that.”

I do.

He turns to me
and says, “That’s Garden. Whether it exists somewhere in the world, a place
that the rot hasn’t touched, I don’t know. It may very well be just another
story we tell ourselves, like Warlocks and fairies.”

“Except Warlocks
exist,” I point out softly.

We both lay
back, staring up into the wash of silver sky. Well, silver to me anyway. Not
even a breeze blows through the clearing. My imagination adds in the sounds of
wildlife that aren’t there … birds fluttering, squirrels and chirping crickets,
rustling leaves on long branches that sway. Anything to ease the usual tomblike
silence.

“I could live
a life there,” I croak, not daring to disturb the peace too much.

“No death,” he
adds. “No dead anything.”

“Except me.” I
turn to see his face. Laying like this, I’m reminded for a moment of Grim and I
in our little patch of greenery, and the tulip I killed. What a terrible
thought; I could never step foot in Garden … I’d kill it.

“You’re not
all dead.” He doesn’t look away as he talks into my eyes. “You didn’t ask for
this. You weren’t expecting your whole comfortable second existence to be
turned upside-down by my … selfish needs.”

“I had my own
selfish needs.” I don’t look away either. His unshaven face, his tense eyes. “I
liked having someone living near me.”

I didn’t
realize until just now how close our hands are. I can feel the tip of his
finger against the side of my arm. For one self-conscious moment, I’m ever so
thankful my skeleton-exposed side is not the one closest to him.

I go on. “And
if I don’t get to enjoy any more of my eternity … If the Deathless catch up to
us and I’m taken away and ended … I just want to say, thank you for your
kindness John.”

“I made a
terrible roommate.”

“Yes, but you
made a better one than the cockroach.”

“I killed the
cockroach.”

“I know.”

Nothing more
is said for a while. We also don’t look away, neither of us. Our eyes locked
for the longest time, I completely forget what I am. I forget what world we’re
hiding in, that the trees all around us are dead, that the ground beneath us is
dirty and ashen and bare. I forget all that’s happened, all that’s to happen.
All I know are his two intense, watery eyes and mine.

“Winter,” he
says.

I’m incredibly
close to his face. I don’t know how that happened.

“John.”

“Good night,
Winter.”

I have to be
alive. I have to be alive, because every part of my body is electric. The
closeness of my hand to his hand. Our faces so near, our mouths so close I feel
sick to my stomach with joy … like prom night. I have to be alive, because this
is not what a dead person feels like.

And then his
eyes shut, and sleep takes over.

I look away.

In the dead of
night, I stroll about the clearing with only my thoughts for company. A few things
occur to me in these silent hours, toying with the ring on my finger. I know I’ll
have to share them with John when he wakes. Watching his breath rise and fall
in the night, I realize this security of ours is an illusion, only a temporary
comfort because a dead thing can hunt forever. It’s a matter of math, really:
The Deathless will find me, and with them, harm will come to John and his
people. Until the King is felled or I am found, we will never be free and
happy.

While I’m with
him, he will never find Garden.

What I
presumed to be the rest of the night passes by, hour by crawling hour, until
the brighter spot of silver pulls itself over the horizon and with it, morning
sings.

I don’t waste
time. Soon as we’ve gathered everything and continue on our way, I share my
thoughts of the night. We need to give the Deathless what they want, I tell
him, because I don’t want any more innocents hurt.

“And
considering I’m the one they’re after,” I point out, “it’s only logical that
I—”

“No.” John
shakes his head stubbornly. “You aren’t turning yourself in. You could be the
key to winning this whole thing. You’re an asset, not a liability. Once the
camp learns that, we will figure out our next step.”

“But John—”

“That Warlock
has no power over the living,” he says, looking me hard in the eyes. “The camp
will join us because we’re the perfect army. We’ve nothing to lose.”

“Anyone with a
heartbeat has more to lose, John.”

“They tried to
take me once. They failed.”

Something
catches his attention, and he rushes excitedly ahead, abandoning our dialogue. Through
the clearing of dead trees lies a large colorless lake, its water so calm it
appears as a giant glass floor in the middle of the endless grey expanse. As I
draw closer, I see some actual vegetation near the water including stalks from
the ground and a few trees that bear fruit. The sight is so colorful in
contrast to the barren surroundings, it inspires a smile from me without doing
a thing but existing.

This must be
the lake Jasmine once spoke of, a body of water from which she gathered. In
essence, this same food source was feeding John all along.

“Look
familiar?” I ask, my smile still helplessly affixed as I watch him. He’s pulled
something from a branch of the tree, takes one big brutish bite from it and
grins, juice in his teeth.

“So sweet,” he
says, shuts his eyes. “It’s been so long.”

The sound of
words muffled by food in his mouth, it reminds me of all the time we’d spent in
my house.

When I approach
the water, I observe it pulling away from me like my mere presence inspired an
ebb of tide. I look down at my feet, glance back at where I walked. Blades of
grass are bent away from me as if in fear, their color already drained just by
my passing through.