by Michele Vail
“Mrs. Woodbine,” she said. Her voice held a hint of accusation. “Would you like some tea while Molly takes Mortimer for repairs?”
The woman was caught between reacting to my sister’s less-than-friendly tone and the seemingly polite question. Finally, Mrs. Woodbine nodded. “I would love some tea. Did your grandmother make any cookies?”
Sometimes I wondered if she broke Mortimer’s arm on purpose so she could chow down on the almond biscotti Nonna baked fresh every day for customers. Luckily, my grandmother saved the buccellati-fig cookies for us.
Ally gestured toward the seating area and Mrs. Woodbine hurried toward the side table that held dispensers filled with three kinds of herbal tea and two large platters of Nonna’s treats.
I rounded the desk, holding poor Mortimer’s arm, and then grasped the hand of the arm still attached. It was like gripping crusted leather. I felt another surge of anger at Mrs. Woodbine’s poor zombie management skills. “C’mon, z-man. Let’s get you fixed up.”
We entered the same door my sister had flown out of, and she sent me a glare, and hissed, “Hurry!”
“Do you want to take the zombie to Demetrius?” I asked.
Ally eyed Mortimer, and I got the distinct feeling she was imagining some kind of jailbreak. Knowing her and her nutso friends, they probably had a plan for that kind of thing. “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to get grounded because you’re planning zombie intervention.”
“Whatevs. Just go already.” She looked down her nose at me, and then she perched on the stool behind the customer care desk. Her glare tracked Mrs. Woodbine as the woman filled a plate with cookies.
I kinda hoped Ally would do something mean to Mrs. Woodbine, but even Ally had her limits on rudeness. Probably.
I took Mortimer down the hallway, which had one door on the left (employee bathroom), two on the right (supplies, storage) and one at the end (sahnetjar).
Sahnetjar was the ancient Egyptian name for the place where they made mummies and zombies. Necromancers still used the term today, probably because it sounded all fancy and mysterious.
As I led the zombie to the sahnetjar, I felt another pang of pity. I don’t know why Mortimer hadn’t put an Advance Zombification Directive into place. Lots of people had an AZD—and sometimes, their relatives would still try to zombify them. Dad read anyone the riot act who tried to circumvent an AZD—and sadly, a lot of people tried.
A memory pattered me like cold rain. I was in the lobby watching Ally color because I’d been directed to “Look after your sister.” Seemed like I was always watching her, and I was always caught between feeling protective and resentful. Pretty much the way I felt about my sister now.
Dad and Mom were arguing about a customer.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Cyn. You know how I feel about AZDs.”
“But he offered a fortune! And his wife’s dead. Zombies don’t have feelings, Al. She doesn’t care.”
“I do! We honor the wishes of the dying. You give his money back and you de-animate Mrs. Lettinger.”
“You’re such an asshole, Al!”
I missed my Mom. I probably shouldn’t, given that she basically gave us all the finger and took off. What kind of mother abandoned her family? When I was ten, I figured it was something I had done. Something I said or did. I cried and cried, and so did Ally. Dad did everything he could to make us feel better. And then Nonna left New York and came to live with us. Eventually, life got better.
Anyway.
I know my parents tried to keep their fighting away from us, but...yeah, that didn’t exactly work out. I remember that things were always tense, especially right before Mom left. So, I don’t really miss what Ally calls the Angry Times.
Still. The thing that I remembered most about my mom was that she was spontaneous. I think my dad would call it irresponsible, but he’s a lot on the serious side. Being a single dad is hard on him. He worries. Mom didn’t let stuff bother her. She laughed a lot. And she’d do silly stuff like break out into random dancing, or a game of chase around the house, or sometimes, after I’d gone to bed, she’d crawl under the covers and wrap her arms around me and sing softly.
I don’t know why she left. Dad didn’t exactly know, either, so what could he tell two grieving daughters who’d been abruptly, inexplicably, abandoned?
Well, you know. Not that Dad doesn’t crack a smile, or anything, he totally does. It’s just different, I guess. Dad raised me and Ally—well, he and Nonna did. It was a good life, maybe a little stifling with all the rules about curfew, homework, job and boys. Still. Dad taught me to whisper my prayers to the dead every night, whether they were zombies or not. Some souls choose to move into the next plane of existence, but some don’t, you know. Souls can get trapped in this world. If you die, and you don’t move on, then your soul remains bound to this plane and your spirit can be...er, acquired.
Yeah. You can be attached to a SEER machine, which FYI, is way worse than being a zombie. Zombies are just animated corpses. We need only one teeny tiny part of the soul, the ka, to make that happen. A soul doesn’t need the ka. It’s like a spleen, or an appendix, or wisdom teeth. But if you’re attached to a SEER machine, then your spirit energy belongs eternally to whoever owns it. And if you think people are mean to zombies, you should see some of the stuff spirit slaves have to do. The worst part is that they’re sentient energy. They know what’s being asked of them, and they have to do it. At least zombies don’t know when someone is demeaning them. Spirits have about the same kind of rights as zombies—as in, none. Courts keep ruling that death negates the civil rights of the previously alive. That goes for spirits and for corpses.
Any jerk can have a SEER machine and spirit slaves. But there’s something worse than being stuck to a SEER. You could end up a soul shadow. I totally read about this on the internet. A sheut heka can trap the soul, peel off the sheut and... Ew, I know, right? A sheut is the darkest, most awful part of you, sliced away from morals, conscience and empathy. So you’re like zero-calorie evil, you know? That’s why it’s illegal. I don’t know why there are laws and junk about it nowadays, because as far as I know, there aren’t sheut hekas around. There haven’t been for, like, centuries. I’ve never seen a sheut, but Dem says some exist. Leftovers from way back when there were sheut hekas all over the place. And he says that sheuts can only manifest in the darkness. Shadows need shadows, Molly. Dark needs dark.
Sometimes, Dem is weird.
Anyway...like I said, a lot of people opted for an AZD and chose cremation. Signing a piece of paper saying you didn’t want your corpse zombified didn’t mean thieves wouldn’t steal your freshly buried body. Black-market zombification was big business. Bodies were stolen, shipped off to crappy zombie-making factories and then sold to people who did not read literature regarding the humane care of the walking dead.
Zombies didn’t have souls. Okay, most zombies didn’t have souls. Every so often during a transition, a deadling would wake up with its memories, personality and humanity intact. Probably because the ka heka messed up and put the whole soul back in, or something. Only, a dead body is still a dead body, you know what I mean? Yeah. Gives me the shivers, too. Even though necromancy has been around since forever, it was really the ancient Egyptians who figured out how to separate the soul into the ib, sheut, ren, ba and ka. To make a zombie, you kept the ka inside the body and released the other parts to the afterlife. Only the ka was needed for reanimation.
It’s kinda complicated.
Zombies work mundane jobs and understand simple commands; they don’t need to sleep or to eat, either. Okay. They don’t need to eat, but they love sticking things down their craw. They have unceasing hunger even though they don’t require food. Part of raising the dead includes creating an appetite suppressant. That costs extra, and you gotta reenergize the magic annually, which is why some people chose zombie supplements instead of necro-incantations.
Not feeding a zombie isn’t like not feeding your c
at. He. Will. Eat. You. And your cat. People who forget to pick up a case of Ghoul-AID sometimes don’t live to regret it. Capisce?
Finally! I reached the end of the hallway, which took forever because Mortimer wasn’t exactly good at the walking thing. I unlocked the door, waited sixty years for the zombie to shuffle inside and locked the door again. When you’re dealing with zombies, security is important.
We were standing in a tiny foyer. Calling it a foyer was stupid. It was just a little white room with a couple of plastic chairs. I let go of Mortimer’s hand. This was the only way to get to the sahnetjar, and I still had another door to unlock.
“Stay here.”
Zombies don’t often respond, but when they do, they groan. I’ve never met one that can actually talk, although Demetrius says they exist. Sometimes, I think he likes yanking my chain. A talking zombie? For real? Yeah, right.
Mortimer stared at the ground, looking like the most pathetic zombie ever. I sighed as I headed toward the door at the other end of the room. I wasn’t much for my sister’s whole save-the-zombies effort, but I had to admit I wouldn’t mind seeing Mortimer put to rest. I’d bet his wife ran him just as ragged when he was alive. At least now, he didn’t know it.
I tucked poor Mortimer’s leathery limb under the crook of my arm, pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the door that led to sahnetjar.
I heard a noise behind me. Startled, I turned and found Mortimer just inches away, his jaw cracking as his mouth opened impossibly wide. I dropped the keys (duh), backed against the door and held out his severed arm like an old, bent sword.
Then Mortimer tried to eat me.
Chapter 2
“The only way to survive a zombie attack is if you see it coming. Running won’t do you much good since zombies have the unsettling ability to jump long distances. They’re also strong, unintelligent and conscienceless. If one attacks, the best thing you can do is go for the kneecaps. Once it’s down, you have to remove its head. No, really. Zombies are relentless, especially when dealing with the Hunger.”
~Worst-Case Situations, Paranormal Edition
I drew on my powers. Magic tingled in my hands as I aimed them at Mortimer. A ka heka was the most common kind of necromancer and I was only in training, but even so, I still had some control over zombies.
Too bad Mortimer didn’t know it.
He grabbed me with his one good arm and jerked me into his stank embrace. Whew. He probably hadn’t been washed since he died. Okay. I could handle this. So what if he was strong? And smelled as if he’d been rolling around in poop?
I aimed my magic at him again. Black sparkles drifted down like lazy snowflakes and melted away.
That was bad. My heart skipped a beat, and icy fear dripped down my spine.
Mortimer’s horribly large mouth descended...and panic exploded. I struggled harder against him, but it was like trying to wrestle with a marble statue. His teeth clamped onto my shoulder. Ow!
Pain and terror clawed through me. Oh, my God. I was gonna get eaten by a zombie. Before I turned sixteen. Before I had my party. Before Rick kissed me.
Then I was yanked backward.
“Bamo!” cried a new voice, much stronger and deeper and more Jamaican than my own. Demetrius! Relief tangled with my hysteria.
The zombie stopped attacking and cocked his head as if he was a cute cocker spaniel instead of a dead dude in the grips of the Hunger. Demetrius dragged me through the door, shut it and barred it. He whirled me around.
“You okay, child?” He took the zombie arm, and for a second, I didn’t let go. Then I realized what I was doing and gave him the limb.
My shoulder throbbed and my shirt was ripped. I looked down in shock. “He bit me!”
Demetrius led me to a table and lifted me by the waist. For an old guy, he sure was muscular. He pushed the material over my shoulder and peered at the wound. He walked to the medicine cabinet on the other side of the table. I thought about Mrs. Woodbine scarfing down all that biscotti while her husband had been trying to scarf me down. Bitch.
Demetrius returned with a jar of ointment that looked like black tar and smelled like puke. I crinkled my nose.
“Where’s the other stuff? The ointment we sell to our customers? Ugh! What is that?”
“’Dis de good stuff. My own concoction. Gonna heal the bite in no time.” He rubbed the cold, greasy gel into the place where Mortimer’s disgusting teeth had gouged my skin. “Zombie bites are nasty business.”
A bite or a scratch doesn’t turn you into a zombie. I mean, I know every zombie movie ever made says different. Gah! Who thought of that ridiculousness? Soooo unbelievable. Anyway. Zombie mouths are filthy and filled with germs and all kinds of ick. An untreated bite could get infected quickly, and boom, you’re lying in a hospital bed breathing through a tube.
“You know bamo isn’t exactly a necro incantation,” I said. Not that you needed words to perform magic. Sometimes, using a word or phrase was helpful to get the focus going, but if you had any heka gift, you could access it pretty easily and without acting like you just graduated from Hogwarts.
“It’s Jamaican for ‘go away,’” said Demetrius, his lips splitting into a gap-toothed grin. “You know it’s not the words, but the power you give them.” He glanced at my torn shirt. “Go home and change. I’ll deal with Mr. Woodbine.”
“Okay.” At least my dad wasn’t here to fret over the zombie bite. If he’d been around for Mortimer’s attack, I’d be on my way to an emergency room right now. Dad panic was like, ten levels above regular people panic, so good thing my dad was up in Reno checking out locations for a second zomporium. Unfortunately, he’d promised that he would be back tomorrow. For my b-day. Sigh. He’d said he wouldn’t interfere with my party, but I wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay away. He was itching to play songs from ’80s movies soundtracks. Oh, yeah, I’m named after Molly Ringwald. In particular, because my dad totally crushed on her. Ugh. I’m telling you now that if he plays anything from Pretty in Pink, I’m throwing myself off the roof.
“Do you want me to call da Empress?”
That’s how Demetrius refers to Nonna Gina. Like everyone else, he has a healthy respect for my grandmother. It isn’t just the rolling pin, either. She just has a way about her. A scary, obey-me way.
I shook my head. “I’d rather walk home than get into a car with her.”
In Nevada, you have to be fifteen and a half to get a driver’s permit. I’d counted the days until I was officially 15.5 and went off to get my permit (under parental protest, I might add). I’d finished the required driver’s education courses over the summer and kept a clean driving record. After all, I had to drive with Dad or Nonna, which was as fun as it sounded. As in, not.
But on Monday, I would go get my driver’s license.
Woot!
It was only three weeks into the school year, and soon I’d have my own ride. Well, Nonna’s ride. She had this huge boat of a car that she didn’t drive very often, mostly because she didn’t see so well anymore and hit stuff like mailboxes and curbs. I’d saved up some money, but nowhere near enough to get a decent car. Rick Widdenstock had turned sixteen over the summer. The first day of school, he’d arrived in a new black-and-silver Mustang. That car had just upped his hotness factor. I’m aware of how shallow that makes me sound, but hey, I can live with it.
Demetrius helped me off the table. “If the wound’s not healin’, you tell me.”
I nodded. A zombie bite was nothing to blow off. I’d just have to figure out a way around the stink. I looked toward the barred door and saw the shadow of Mortimer flickering against the frosted glass. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Put him to rest, child. Like he want.”
I frowned. “He’s a zombie, Dem. How can you know what he wants?”
Demetrius shook his head, and I felt like I’d disappointed him. Hey, I paid attention during our lessons. I just didn’t remember anything about zombies having feelings or
thoughts. ’Cause they don’t.
“You don’t know everything yet, child.”
Well, duh. “Mrs. Woodbine is gonna be pissed.”
Anger slashed his expression. “Don’t you worry. I deal with her.” He patted my non-injured shoulder. “Go on now.”
The sahnetjar was made up of several rooms. Zombification took time and skill and there were stages to the process. The room we stood in now with its gleaming silver table, wash area and cabinets was used for assessment. The other rooms included the materials needed for each part of the zombifying. So far, Ally and I had been allowed to train only in the first stage, which was the part where we took out organs, rubbed the body with netjer—also called natron—wrapped it loosely with linens and prepared it to receive its ka, what the ancient Egyptians had called the life spark. Soul work is tricky. The zombification process has to be completed within seven days of death. After that, there is no getting the ka back to reanimate the body.
Sheesh. You didn’t think it was easy, did you?
Like all necromancers, Ally and I had been born with heka gifts. Probably because Mom was a ka heka. Dad didn’t have any powers. He was just a regular guy.
Mom wasn’t much on actual instruction. She didn’t like us being in the back rooms, and she didn’t really talk about the magic or the process too much. But Dem was a zombification master. He taught us how to draw on the magic and use it, usually with already-made zombies. Ka hekas can control the ka (um...duh), so we can control zombies. Usually. Sometimes, I wondered if Mom would’ve showed us the cool things we were learning from Demetrius.
We had a back door that led to a loading dock, where we took in supplies and bodies. The bay was closed, so I went out the side door. Then I realized my keys were on the floor with Mortimer. Crap. I couldn’t lock it. I dug in my front pocket for my cell phone to call Ally to do it. Then I realized I’d left the phone, along with my purse, at the front desk.