Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3)

by Daryl Banner

  “What’s a dog?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” I warn him uncaringly, though it occurs to me that the little Lock might, in fact, not know what a dog is.

  John is fitted into a breastplate, a horned helmet pulled onto his head. He turns to me and grins through the mouthpiece, as if we’d just given him his favorite Halloween costume. He moves his arms and shrugs his shoulders, getting acclimated to the way the armor moves. He volunteers to carry one of the tents that will laughably protect us, should a stray storm happen our way. Ann helps strap it to his back.

  “Sixteen,” I murmur, counting the leashed Lynx. “Where’s Jasmine?”

  “Stayed behind, I’m sure,” answers Megan. “Likely in her home, oblivious to it all. I haven’t heard from her in weeks. She … keeps to herself mostly. I’m sorry to say, she’s not the socialite she used to be.”

  “You’re not leaving without me,” I hear someone shouting. It’s a clumsily-walking already-armored man with a fat helmet on his head that muffles his words and his jagged breath. Wait … his jagged breath? “I’m not gonna let you go. You deliberately let me nap too long, thinking I wouldn’t notice you gone and, and, and—”

  “Oh, off with it, Jim,” shouts Ann, identifying the man for all of us with question marks on our faces. “I wasn’t going to leave without saying goodbye. Goodness.”

  “You’re not saying goodbye,” he grunts, coming up to her side, his armor clinking awkwardly, “because I’m coming with you.”

  “The hell you are,” she barks back.

  “You need someone to read the skies!” he shouts. He flips up his visor, revealing his knobby, blemished face and a tuft of black stringy hair flattened to his forehead by sweat. “I will read the skies for everyone. I will warn you of daylight and nightlight and I will tell you when rain approaches. I will watch for you all.”

  “And you’ll need sleep,” Ann complains. “And you’ll slow us down when you sleep. And besides, we already have among us a strange Undead anomaly who can read the skies plenty well enough.”

  A few faces turn to John, knowing already. Word spread quickly about his strange condition and, oddly enough, no one’s paid it much mind until now.

  “Oh,” mutters John suddenly, realizing it’s him she’s talking about.

  Jim’s voice is quieter now, directed at only Ann, though we all can still hear him. “B-But the Undead can’t see the skies,” he says, and it sounds like he’s telling her a fact she weren’t already mind-numbingly aware of.

  “John can see light,” she explains to him, as though teaching some big dumb child. “I told you this. Twice now and we even had a conversation about it last night when you were eating dinner.”

  “Oh.” He glances at John, regarding him suspiciously, then returns his dull gaze back to Ann. “You sure it wasn’t somebody else?”

  “Go home, Jim.” He snorts, annoyed. “Oh, right. Jimmy, of course. Go home. We’ll be back and we’ll be triumphant and we’ll have with us a Lock-eye the size of my head. Please, Jimmy. I love you and all that. Go.”

  With that, he yanks off the helmet, throws it into the bin of unused armor, then tramps off, his face flushed. He only looks back over his shoulder once to mumble, “Should’ve died for you,” before disappearing around the bend of the road. The noise of his heavily-armored footfalls is still heard even after he’s well out of view.

  Soon, the Undead have organized, and the gates creak loudly as they part to let us out. I run an anxious hand down the strap that holds the Judge’s sheathed steel sword to my back, laced with unvoiced feeling. Megan is standing aloof, unmoving as a statue, her hands clasped and her eyes solemn as she watches us depart. I don’t want to start Undead-crying, already heavy with emotion as I am, so I give her a simple nod as we pass through the gates. She returns it just as simply, and not once does my lifelong friend look away.

  “Ready to give the dog a nice walking?” asks Lynx, his voice playing smart with me.

  “Ah,” I remark, a trace of genuine surprise finding me. “So you do know the animal.”

  “Your mother told me a thing or two about her time.” Lynx giggles, and it sounds like the hopping of nails in a rusty tin. “I felt so privileged. I learned about houses by the sea, about airplanes and telephones and dogs …”

  “You weren’t privileged,” I snap back. “You were just another tool of hers, doing her bidding. Don’t kid yourself. Whether my dog or hers, you’ve been a dog both your Lives.” He’s angering me and we’re not even two hundred feet from the Necropolis.

  “It wasn’t my being anyone’s dog that gave me such intelligences,” he responds. “It wasn’t even the green rock in my face nor the offputting metal of my leg.” His words are slick as slime, no matter the gravel-like unpleasantness of his voice. “Ha, ha … I find that I learn the most by doing quite a … simpler … thing.”

  The gates groan, the noise of them tearing through the woods. The sixteen of us stop for a moment to watch, appreciating the force of those huge, heavy metal things squeezing shut. When the last sliver of the city is closed off between those ugly doors, the thud they make is not unlike the slam of a judge’s gavel. All of us, sentenced to the journey ahead.

  “What’s that simpler thing?” I bother to ask.

  He answers: “I listen.”

  C H A P T E R – E L E V E N

  J U B I L A N T

  The green of this new, thriving world engulfs us.

  John’s made it to my side now, appearing wondrous and peering in all directions as we walk. Some dialogue about the boldness and courage of “Julianne the Jubilant” is being carried on ahead of us, and it takes everything in me to hold my bitter tongue. I only get a single nervous glance from Ann up ahead, one of the only keepers of the secret besides John. Marigold seems chipper as the rest, humming a tune and poking at trees as we go. I might even feel a speck of any of their peace, but I can’t, not at all, and I have a sneaking suspicion it has everything to do with a little leashed man at my other side.

  Five times he’s tried to strike up a conversation with me. He’s trying to get into my head, I just know it. We pass a tree and he’ll say it reminds him of Old Trenton. A gust of wind pushes through us and he says it reminds him of the Deathless King when she’d grow angry. Every little thing, every little way, every little word the dwarf can possibly utter to creep more and more under my skin, he utters.

  “Hold your tongue,” I warn him coolly, “or I’ll cut it out of your mouth and hold it for you.”

  His presence is not easily received by the others, either. The moment the gates of the Necropolis draw out of sight, Bill and Will give him a piece of their mind, calling him a demon who turned their friends to dust during the Battle Of Trenton over twelve years ago. Will bothers to fling mud at him too, scoring right on his forehead. Lynx just keeps marching, unfazed.

  At another point, one of the teen girls—the long one with the bony arms—stoops down to hiss in his face. He doesn’t flinch even flinch as the girl shouts curses and horrible words. Sara, her name, says, “You’re the reason I’m no longer alive. You despicable, evil person.”

  When she’s off to join her friend, Lynx lifts his brow and says, “At least that one called me a person.”

  I snort. “I wouldn’t take it as flattery. You have no friends among us. You’ve done horrible things.”

  “Hmm, ha, ha … Curious for you to say that.”

  I’m not going to bite his bait. I’m not going to go for it. It’s not going to happen. “What do you mean?” I ask. Ugh, I’m so weak.

  “Well, Winter, have you not done an assortment of horrible things?” A tiny spider is hanging from his nostril.

  “Doesn’t compare,” I retort, looking away, disgusted. “Whether it was at the Deathless King’s request or not, you’ve committed crimes that are far beyond forgiving.”

  “The Deathless King told me all about her little girl.”

  I was about to say something, but the words catch i
n my mouth.

  “Her daughter wasn’t a terrible person,” Lynx goes on, and I know he knows full well he’s talking about me and my First Life. “She just wasn’t a very good one. Her daughter was selfish and greedy. She was jealous and spiteful and she kept no friends. She was spoiled rotten and when her mother’s legs broke, the only thing her daughter cared about was the party she missed.”

  I’m over it already. “There was a lot more to her than the horrible things she did,” I say evenly.

  “Oh, like the time she abandoned her best friend? Or maybe the time she let her puppy get run over by a car?”

  It’s infuriating. How could he possibly remember so much of what my moronic mother told him during her time as Deathless King? “Every person makes mistakes.”

  “Am I your new puppy?” Lynx’s voice is toying and unpleasant. “Are you gonna let me get run over by a car?”

  “I doubt that’s in the realm of possibility here.”

  “Anything is in the realm of possibility here.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “Just like how my dismantling you piece by piece and thrusting you into a bag for the rest of the journey is, just as well, within the realm of possibility. And please, for the love of anyone within sight of you, do something about those spiders that are trying to crawl out of your face. Seriously. I have no functional stomach to speak of and I am queasy just looking at you.”

  “My friends?” he mutters. “I think I’m growing an entire family of them in my belly. I don’t need my innards so … who am I to deny them a lovely, dark home?”

  “Next stop we make, I’m ending your ability to talk.”

  To that, the slimy little Lock only grins, flattered that he’s disgusted me beyond repair, I guess.

  Half an hour of walking later, I hear the two teen girls asking Marigold where we’re headed. Marigold gives them a cheery explanation of what we might hope to find in Old Trenton that can help with pointing us in the right direction. I’m certain her explanation includes squishy fake intestines and toenails.

  We break into a familiar spread of green, wavy grass. The sky is a whirling wash of silver, but I know for a fact that it is now the dead of night. We may not be able to see light properly, but we can hear, and the sounds of the night have now become vastly different than the day. Where once a buzzing silence took the world, now I can hear the tittering of distant crickets. Our band of sixteen passes by a murky, mushy marsh where, at the bank, a pair of frogs lazily croak. One of them hops away, its slimy limbs slapping against the mud and disturbing the moss-ridden surface of the pool.

  I overhear Ash making a point to the Chief, asking if we’d be able to hear the sirens of New Trenton, even this far away. The sirens were absurdly loud and surely can be heard for miles, should a storm approach. The Chief shook his head, pointing out that the sirens are all directed inward toward the center of the city. Sure, within a certain radius the sirens are obviously audible beyond New Trenton’s walls, but we’re too far from its reach to hear the warning now. Ash doesn’t seem convinced, mentioning something about how Helena once heard the siren’s call when she was halfway between Old Trenton and New. The Chief’s reaction to hearing Helena’s name is to shut down completely, not caring to respond to any more of Ash’s claims. I study the Chief’s face, curious why he reacts so coldly. Twelve years have done a number on everyone; I imagine, during their time of training Megan to be the Mayor, the Chief and Helena—former Judge—must have grown close. Perhaps that’s it. He’s grieving silently, just as I am. Two silent grievers in a world that’s steadily, certainly losing its undeathly silence.

  When we start pushing through a thick maze of hand-holding trees, I idly begin recounting heads, making sure we are all still together. Fifteen, sixteen … seventeen? Wait, I’ve done it wrong; I think I counted Ann twice. I start over. One, two, three …

  “Trenton’s near,” Ann calls out, leading us from the front.

  Seventeen, again. Who do I keep counting twice? I squint, studying the backs of everyone’s heads. With all the armor we’re donning, it’s difficult to keep track of who’s who. Irked, I restart my count one more time …

  “RAIN!”

  I have no idea who’s shouted it, but suddenly our group is running. There’s no rain yet, but just the word set a fire in all our legs. Why everyone’s chosen to run instead of setting up our tents, I don’t know, I just start running too. Then, mercifully soon, a mossy wall meets us, and we hurriedly follow its short length to a wide-opened gate. I breathe relief as we pour into Old Trenton, rushing to the opened doors of the nearest building, overgrown in vines up its bricked face.

  Inside the wide building, which once might have been a store or lobby of some kind, we find a tree somehow growing through the floor in the center of the room, tearing a hole in the roof and exposing us to the sky. John and I share a look of concern. How is it possible for a tree to grow so large in only a few years? Even Lynx glances worriedly at me. All of us surely wonder if we ought to seek a different building.

  Then it is too late. In an instant, the world shatters into rain. Outside, the water pours, and right in the center of the room, the tree is showered before our eyes.

  Everyone’s instinct is the same, as though we all share a communal brain: we flatten against the walls of the room. The rain is so loud, it sounds like screaming. I quickly count everyone in the room. Fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. We’re all here. How I kept counting one extra earlier, I can’t possibly explain, but—

  “LENA!!” screams Ann, nearest to the door.

  I turn, quite close to the doorway myself, and am horrified to witness Lena sprawled on the ground outside and being pummeled by the rain. When I notice her mouth parted and her outreached hand shaking, I realize it isn’t the rain that sounds like screaming. It’s her.

  Someone shouts at Ann to stop, but it’s too late. Ann, armored, charges into the rain. The effect is instant. Even clad from head to foot, she collapses halfway to Lena, her body thrown into convulsions, like a seizure, and now there are two ladies screaming in the road.

  “Ann!” screams a boy who, when he flips off his helmet, I realize is Jimmy—the false seventeenth I kept counting. He charges into the rain—even he, a Living, reacts with two stumbles of his feet and a shout of pain—and he throws his hands on Ann, pulling her back toward the building, shielding her as best as he can. In the process of dragging her, she seems to slip out of her armor like a snail out of its shell, wet and slick.

  When he returns to the room, he’s carrying a helmet. The visor drops and the wetted, detached head of Ann is in his arms. “I got you, I got you, I got you,” he keeps repeating, panting and panting. “I got you, sweetheart.”

  “LENA!” shouts Ash, her face pressed to the window of the building.

  Jimmy, startled by the apparent news that Ann wasn’t the only one out there, hands Ann’s head off to John like it were a basketball, then plunges once more into the torrent of rain and collapses near Lena’s now-motionless body. He pulls on her leg and it comes right off. He makes a grab at her other leg, it pulls off just as easily. Screaming for some reason, Jimmy reaches for Lena’s unarmored head and I can’t look away quick enough—I watch as her head falls apart between his big, clumsy hands, dropping to the road in three sodden chunks. My face pressed into John’s shoulder now, I clench shut my eyes, shaking to the core and breathing heavily, in and out and in and out with one pointless lungful after another. I don’t see when Jimmy’s returned, but I hear him, and his agonized sobs say enough. The only words he says is, “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts…”

  The rain seems to shift left, pushed by a potent gust of wind most likely, and blowing into the room. John and I catch a spray of rain and I scream out, the rain stinging me like acid, like what I’d imagine lava to feel like if I’d ever been sprayed in the face with it.

  It is not a sensation I’d wish on my worst enemy. Not even Lynx and his belly full of spiders. Not even Grim on my dar
kest day. I shudder and shudder, the wetness on my face feeling as if it wishes to eat through my skull, to eat through my brain, to eat through my memories. I know touching it will burn my hands worse, so I’m left simply to endure it, waiting, waiting …

  We are as far away from the doorless doorway as we can manage now, so as to avoid any extra sprays, and the tree in the center of the room that has no business being there—a tree that, in no natural way possible, has sprouted through an entire building in the years—sways with the push and pull of the violent rain outside.

  Through the noise of the storm, I hear someone ask, “Is it over?” Her voice is small, grief-stricken, tortured. “Please, please, is it over?”

  My face pressed into John’s shoulder, I feel his arm wrap tight around me. I’m shaking and the tiny splash of rain still stings my cheek like a million needles.

  I dare myself to look up. Jimmy’s leaning against the wall on the wrong side of the door, staring across the doorway at the helmeted head of Ann in John’s arm with a look of great horror in his eyes. He’s breathing heavily, in and out and in and out with one very necessary lungful after another. He never looks away. His lips curl in and I watch as he cries, sucking in his big pouty lip, his face flushed and his black dabs-for-eyebrows pulling in.

  “Please,” cries the voice again, cutting through the rain. “Is it over? … Is it over?”

  I glance at the little Lock to my side. The fear in his eyes is sobering; even Lynx is afraid. “It’ll never be over,” I whisper, and only he seems to hear.

  C H A P T E R – T W E L V E

  A N I M A

  It is the longest rain I’ve known yet. Even when the rain vanishes in that unnatural, instantaneous way it tends to, we are all glued to the walls. The silence in the room is thick and horrible. Ash, who was notably the closest to Lena, is first to move, her armor clinking heavily. John, with a strange sort of reluctance, hands Ann’s head off to Jimmy who cradles it like a baby. His eyes are still swollen with tears, his nose puffed up and red as a clown’s.