Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One)

by Murray, J. L.

  “Why am I here?” Jenny said.

  “We needed to put you somewhere safe,” he said.

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Not really what I meant,” he said. “You're not the one I was worried about protecting.”

  She touched her hair. It was still in braids in the Righteous style, though most of them had come free and were standing at odd angles all over her head. They were stiff with liquid drying on them.

  “What's wrong with me?” she said.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “No,” Jenny said. “I don't. Why can't I talk normally?”

  “Dead people don't breathe,” he said. “You have to relearn how to do it.”

  “I'm not dead,” she said. She could hear the panic in her own voice. “That's not possible.”

  “What's the last thing you remember?” Casey said. His voice was gentle.

  “I was in a bed,” Jenny said. “Declan was there. He was crying. Why was Declan crying? He doesn't cry.” She looked at Casey, who was staring at his hands resting on his knees. He was quiet. “I was sick,” she said. Even if she'd been able to speak normally, the words would probably have come out as a whisper. She'd been sick, wounded. Her neck had hurt so badly. Jenny reached up and felt the chunk missing from the back of her neck. Oh, Jesus. What the fuck is happening?

  She tried to stand, to get away, but she was weak and the floor was covered in blood.

  “Jenny...” Casey said.

  “No!” she said. “You were a hallucination. You weren't there.”

  “I was there,” he said.

  “This isn't possible,” Jenny said. “I can't be a rotter. Rotters don't think. Rotters don't do anything. They just exist.”

  “And then there's us,” Casey said.

  “This is insane,” she hissed.

  “Jen,” Casey said. “You're sitting in a lake of goat blood.”

  “That is a valid point.” There was an edge of hysteria in her words.

  Casey took her hand gently. “Breathe,” he said.

  “I can't.”

  “It doesn't come naturally, but you have to learn to do it to talk. Just pretend you need the air. Suck it down deep into your lungs. Trust me, you'll feel better.”

  Jenny tried to breathe in air, but it felt as though she was sucking in water, drowning. Casey held her hands tight, which calmed her a bit. After a few tries, she managed to breathe in a puff of air. There was pain low in her chest, on either side.

  “It's okay,” Casey said. “It's just your lungs.”

  Jenny forced herself to inhale several more times, and the pain subsided. She looked at Casey. “I can't do this,” she said, the words coming easier. “I can't be this way.”

  “We're not like the others, Jen,” he said. “We think and talk. We feel emotion, and sleep, and do the things everyone else does.” He gave a shrug and the corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile. “We're just not exactly alive.”

  “We?” she said.

  “Yeah,” He said. He stood up, pushing his back against the wall. He held a hand out to her. “Let me show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “The others,” he said, pulling her to her feet. Jenny's knees were weak, but she managed not to fall over. “Come meet The Thirteen.”

  TWELVE

  The light hurt her eyes as they walked out of the blood-spattered metal room. The door resembled a walk-in cooler in a restaurant or a butcher shop.

  “What is that place?” she said.

  “Apparently the museum used it to keep old pelts from rotting,” said Casey. “Least that's what Fisher says.”

  “Fisher?”

  “Yeah, you'll see in a minute. Anyway, we took all the fur stuff down right away and used them for beds.”

  “Don't we need to clean up the blood?” she said, as Casey pulled the door shut tight.

  “What for? We're only here because we were looking for you.”

  “Me?” she said. Her brain wasn't functioning properly. It felt muddy. Her nerves felt as if they were on the outside of her skin and she hunched as she walked. All she could think about was her hunger. “Why were you looking for me?”

  “You're the key,” said Casey, holding her arm and walking her toward a bright light. “It'll get easier. You'll stop feeling everything after a while.”

  “The key to what?” she said, trying to distract herself from wanting to rip something apart. She felt edgy and angry and sick. Like death warmed over. She almost laughed. Maybe not warmed over, but she had died. Jenny stopped and Casey looked back at her.

  “I'm dead,” she said.

  “We've been over this.”

  “I'm fucking dead, Casey.”

  He nodded. “Congratulations. You're part of the club.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Sarcasm is not fucking necessary right now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I died. Can I have a minute to wrap my head around that?”

  Casey softened a little. “You'll have lots of time,” he said. “Time's all we got.”

  “You should have let me pull the trigger,” she said. “Will I turn into a rotter?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I didn't. Because none of us did. Trix was the first, right after the Collapse, when the Army disappeared. So five years ago, give or take a few months. And she's no rotter. You won't be either.”

  “Why were you looking for me?” she said.

  “You're my sister.”

  “I abandoned you. You should hate me.”

  “You were sixteen,” he said. “And it was worse for you.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. But that's no excuse.”

  “I've never blamed you, Jen. If you think I've been mad at you all these years, you're wrong. I was happy you got away.”

  “That's stupid,” she said. “I left you there.”

  “With good reason,” he said. “Come on. You have to meet them sooner or later. You have to admit what you are. This will help, I promise.”

  She shook her head. “What was that you said about me being a link? A link to what?”

  He looked at her patiently. “You're the one who's going to help us find the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The other Thirteen.”

  “There aren't thirteen of you now?”

  “No,” he said, starting to sound irritated. “There were thirteen in the beginning. From the experiments.”

  Jenny stared. For a moment she forgot about the hunger gnawing at her insides. “Experiments. You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “I will explain everything,” he said. “But you have to stop stalling and come with me.”

  “Mom's experiments?”

  “Jesus, Jenny. Will you just come with me?”

  She shook her head.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

  She licked her lips with a dry tongue. She wished for something thick and salty. Jenny was nauseated by the thought. “What the fuck is the matter with me?” she said. “I'm fucking dead. I'm a zombie rotter who has no business walking around talking to people. I want to eat people. I want to slurp their blood. How is that natural, Casey? I don't want to meet your zombie friends, I don't want to be your zombie big sis to pal around with. I don't want this. I never did. I wanted to die, but you stopped me. So what the fuck is wrong with you? Maybe that's the better question.”

  Casey stared at her for a moment, his jaw moving but no words coming out. Speechless. “Shit,” he said after a while.

  “So,” a voice wafted around the corner. A female voice. “You guys know we can hear you out here, right?”

  Casey looked like he might laugh. Jenny glared at him. She took a step and poked her head around the corner. Three faces were staring at her: The pretty Asian girl with short hair; a skinny, tall guy with glasses over white eyes and light brown skin, and the big guy who climbed in her wind
ow.,.

  The Asian girl, who Jenny guessed must be Trix, arched an eyebrow. “Zombies have feelings, too, bitch.”

  Casey offered introductions. “Jenny, this is Trix.” He pointed to the big white guy with the crooked nose. “And that's Fisher.” He moved his finger to point at the skinny guy with glasses. “And Grayson.” The skinny guy gave a sarcastic salute. “Everyone, this is Jenny.”

  Jenny stepped out and stood there awkwardly. Everyone was staring at her.

  “Jesus Christ, Casey,” said Trix.

  “What?”

  She got up out of her chair. Jenny noticed for the first time that they were in a conference room. There were no tables, but a dozen mismatched chairs lined the walls, and a few had been pulled into a circle in the middle of the room.

  Trix grabbed Jenny's arm, making her flinch. She shrugged. “Come with me. I'll help you get cleaned up.” She shot a look at Casey.

  Jenny looked down at herself and remembered she was covered in blood. It was drying now, flaking off her skin and what was left of her clothes. It was caked in her hair and crackled on her face. She could even feel it drying in her nose. The clothes Jenny was wearing had been shredded in her apparent frenzy. The thumper dress she'd put on back at Sully's tent a lifetime ago was unrecognizable. It hung in tatters around her legs and one arm hung by a thread. The collar was completely gone for some reason and it hung loose and stiff with blood around her chest.

  She followed Trix out of the room, feeling dead eyes burning into her back as she went. Trix led her down a hall that was completely missing a roof. It looked as though it had been blown off with a bomb. Thumpers had bombed every scientific facility they could, before all the explosives were used up. Not long after that, bullets became pretty scarce, too. Jenny looked at the floor. Vines were crawling in from outside and in a few places the tile floor was cracked and what looked like the soft tendrils of tree saplings were growing through. Trix deftly stepped around them, her spiked black boots not making a sound, making Jenny's barefoot, stumbling steps all the more obvious.

  “You'll get used to it,” Trix said over her shoulder, her voice steely. “It's worse for us. They don't get it.”

  “Us?” Jenny said.

  “Women. It's harder on us. Blood-lust comes naturally to them. We have to learn to live with it.”

  “That seems a little sexist,” Jenny mumbled.

  “Fuck your sexist,” she said. “I'm a realist.” She wasn't angry, her voice stayed flat. “You don't remember me, do you?”

  Jenny blinked, watching Trix's back as they walked. Trix walked around a branch that had fallen in.

  “Sorry,” Jenny said. “I don't.”

  “It's okay,” Trix said. “I was a kid. Casey's age.”

  “There were so many,” Jenny said. “In the end. Why are there only thirteen?”

  “There are thirteen left,” Trix said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jesus,” she said. “The rest are all dead.”

  Trix stopped outside a door and turned the handle. She motioned Jenny inside without making eye contact. The room was dark, but she flipped a switch and a lamp glowed, revealing a bathroom, though the toilet had been torn out and half the wall was gone. A tube fed in from outside rested inside a large plastic tub that looked like a horse trough. It was filled with cloudy water.

  “Rainwater,” said Trix. “We'll have to start over after you clean up. Probably haul some of that nasty water from the lake.”

  “I'm sorry,” said Jenny.

  “Why?” said Trix, no note of sarcasm in her voice. Trix shrugged. “You can get cleaned up here,” Trix said. “I'll bring you some clean clothes.”

  “Wait,” Jenny said. She stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Why are the others dead? Did the rotters kill them?”

  “No,” Trix said, finally meeting her eyes. Jenny got a shiver looking into those translucent-white eyes in such a pretty face. She could almost make out her darker, original eye color underneath. “Your bitch mother did.”

  THIRTEEN

  The water was room temperature and cloudy, but Jenny emerged feeling far better than she had going in. The clothes Trix left in a pile outside the door. were a little skimpy for her taste, and at least a size smaller, but after being stuck in a wool dress in high summer in Chicago, Jenny wasn't about to complain. She didn't have a towel, so she air dried and then pulled the clothes on. Trix left boots, too: Tall and shiny black leather and actually the right size, Jenny thought as she stepped into them. But most important, Trix had also left the bowie knife, long, clean, and freshly-sharpened. Jenny strapped the sheath to her thigh and slipped the blade into the leather. She felt more like herself.

  Jenny wasn't sure how much Trix actually knew about her mother. True, Dr. Anna Hawkins became an obsessive monster at the end, but Jenny had always blamed that on her grandfather. She couldn't have been responsible for the deaths of all those kids. Not after what had happened. She wouldn't make things worse.

  Jenny started walking back down the hall, towards the waiting room where she'd left the others. She could hear their voices carrying as she came closer.

  “...shouldn't have told her that,” Casey was saying. “She's already scared enough right now. You didn't need to add to it.”

  “Who died and made you king of the freaks?” Jenny heard Trix say. “You left, remember? We didn't know where you were for two weeks. Two fucking weeks, Casey. We all thought you were dead. For real dead. You can't come back with some bitch and start telling everyone to walk on eggshells around her.”

  “Trix, don't call Casey's sister a bitch,” said a dry male voice.

  “I call everyone a bitch,” said Trix. “I call you a bitch all the time, Grayson.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And I really don't enjoy it.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Stop being such a bitch.”

  “What does she know?” said a soft-spoken male voice. There was silence.

  “Let's ask her,” said Casey. “What do you know, Jen?”

  Jenny stepped out of the hall. All four faces stared at her again. “About what?” she said. Her voice was harsher than she meant it to be. Still hoarse and cracking, but angry. She was angry. She didn't know exactly why. She was the one eavesdropping. She could smell animal blood nearby (Oh, Jesus. How did she know it was animal blood?) and had to close her eyes for a moment. She felt a hand on her arm. Casey was looking at her.

  “Jen, sit down.”

  “I'm fine,” Jenny said.

  “Please,” he said. There was a gentleness in his voice that reminded her of how he used to be, before he was an undead freak. Before Jenny was an undead freak, too. She sat down on a chair in the circle. Casey sat next to her. Trix had her feet planted in the seat of the chair across from them and was sitting high up on the back. She was staring at Jenny with her creepy eyes. Jenny stared right back.

  “It'll pass,” Casey said.

  “What?” Jenny snapped, then pursed her lips. “Sorry. What will pass?”

  “What you're feeling,” said Fisher. He raised his eyes to her. He was leaning against a pillar nearby. His quiet voice didn't match his appearance at all. He looked like a football player, a jock who had gained weight over hard-earned muscle. But there was sharp intelligence there. “The pent-up rage. The hunger that feels like it's going to swallow you whole. It doesn't last.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Grayson. “I'm always hungry.”

  “I'm always angry,” said Trix.

  “You were angry before you changed,” said Casey. “It's just your personality.”

  “Part of my charm,” Trix scowled.

  Grayson smiled at that, but it faded when he looked at Jenny again. “It's not easy at first,” he said. “But you can manage it.”

  “Why do this?” Jenny said, looking at each of them. “Why go on living this way?”

  “You mean why don't we all just kill ourselves?” said Grayson, putting his finger to his head l
ike it was a gun. He made a noise like an explosion with his mouth. “Just turn out the lights?”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said defiantly. She hated the way she sounded. There was an ache in her chest that was growing more insistent. It wasn't the claw on her insides she'd felt while dying, but a cold hurt of emptiness. “This isn't any way to live.”

  “None of it is any way to live,” said Fisher. “What makes us so different? Did you live any differently before you died?”

  She raised her eyes to him. She felt cold.

  “Oh, I see,” said Fisher. “You had someone. That makes it different, doesn't it?”

  Jenny shook her head and looked away. “It doesn't matter any more. I can't go back.”

  “Why?” said Trix.

  “Why what?” Jenny said. She was getting angry again at all the questions. They were useless. “Why can't I go back to being alive?”

  “No,” she said, not catching Jenny's edginess. “Why can't you just tell him what happened? If he loves you, he'll get it.”

  “He won't,” said Casey.

  “What do you know about love?” said Trix, glowering at him.

  Casey looked at Jenny. “It's Munro,” he said. “She's in love with Munro.”

  “You're lying,” said Trix.

  “What the hell is this thing you've got with Declan?” Jenny said, glowering at Casey. “Just shut the fuck up about it.”

  “He's a killer,” said Grayson.

  “We're all fucking killers,” Jenny said, the anger flaring up. “We are all killers. There isn't anyone in the world who lives Above and isn't a fucking killer. What makes you people so special? You think just because you eat goats instead of people that you're somehow better? Bullshit. You've all hurt people. I'd bet anything that most of you have killed people. Even if it was before you became...whatever the hell this is.” Her mouth tasted bitter. She stood up. None of them looked shocked or offended. Fisher stared off into space. Grayson and Trix watched her without expression, like they were watching a TV show in the old days. The only one who looked like he felt anything was Casey, who had folded his arms across his chest and was working his jaw.