The bat is powerful in my hand and sounds blissful as I bring it down on Dahlia’s shoulder blade with a thwacking, shuddering crunch.
She goes down immediately but not for long, and in the meantime Bones reaches for the bat with a long, spectral hand. I thwack it away with the bat, the hollow aluminum cracking along his bare knuckles once, then twice. He laughs, but I see him snatch his hand away and know that if I haven’t exactly hurt him, I’ve at least surprised him.
Meanwhile Dahlia launches into me with a lurching tackle, sending me sprawling onto the pavement, but I have a vise grip on the bat and pound it into her shins as she wrestles me back onto the ground. She shrieks and backs away, hobbling in her big black boots.
Then suddenly Bones is hovering over me, smiling before he kicks me halfway across the blacktop and practically into the tires of my car.
Hazel screams again, kneels to help me.
I murmur, “Hazel, get lost.”
But she doesn’t. She sits there, stupidly, as I stand and try to protect her as best I can.
It’s freeing, not feeling the pain, but with Hazel right there I know that could all change at any minute.
So I rush to meet them back in the street, but they’re slippery and know I’ve found my strength. I drag the bat along the street, liking the harsh, bare aluminum sound it makes on the even harsher blacktop, liking the vaguely startled look in the Zerkers’ eyes even better.
Bones winces ever so slightly as Dahlia tries to blitz past me, but I catch her just under the chin when she thinks I’m not looking, and down she goes, pale and momentarily dazed.
But Bones is right there behind me, grabbing me up in his arms until the bat is useless, and he’s squeezing me tightly to punish me for laying a finger—make that a bat—on his precious, broken Dahlia.
I hear things cracking, things inside me—things I’m pretty sure I’ll need later on—and know I’m not strong enough to fight Bones yet. Not like this; not all alone, Zerker-to-zombie. I struggle and squeal, wriggling and kicking and biting and clawing, until, like a gardener who’s stumbled on a wasp’s nest, Bones finally flings me down, hard, onto the pavement, just to get rid of me before he’d squash me like a bug.
I lie there dazed for a second, thinking of Hazel, and scramble up to protect her. But I’m already too late. At least, too late to save her by myself.
Miraculously, Bones lies on the ground, his neck under Dane’s knee as Chloe holds Dahlia high overhead, threatening to crack her like a walnut over her thick, rather unladylike knee.
“Sorry, Maddy,” Dane says, trying his best to keep Bones under control. “We came as fast as we heard.”
“Heard what?” I say, walking up to meet them, grateful and proud that I’m only limping slightly.
“Heard you”—Chloe nods toward the bottom of our hill—”from the graveyard.” Then she looks at Hazel, cowering by the hood of my car in her pink outfit and glitter nail polish and bright red pigtails and frosty crème lipstick and ruby red Converse high tops, and adds, “Or rather, heard Hazel screaming.”
Bones grunts and knocks Dane off him.
Dane recovers speedily and I’m at his side, retrieving my bat from the ground and giving it that extra-noisy pavement slide. Dane gives me an approving, if somewhat startled, glance.
As Bones inches forward, Chloe clears her throat, inching Dahlia a fraction higher as if to say, Move another inch, and Dahlia won’t survive the night.
Bones grunts. “Fine, fine, put her down, and I’ll behave. For now …”
Chloe does, and Dahlia scampers to join Bones. Together they inch back into the spotlight as Chloe, Dane, and I follow closely on their heels.
“Did you think we’d leave her unprotected?” Dane asks with a smile.
“Ah, but you did,” Bones says while Dahlia smirks beside him.
I smirk, too, noticing Dahlia’s favoring one of her legs.
“Better yet”—Dahlia leans on Bones for support—”you will again.”
And with that they’re gone, out of the spotlight and into the bushes beyond our street. I start to follow, to prove them wrong, to let them know I’m ready to finish this right now, but then I feel Dane’s hand on my shoulder.
“Later, Maddy. For now we have to figure out what to do with your friend here.”
“Hazel?” I turn to find her squatting, cross-legged on the ground, crying, and I run to her.
“What’s happening?” she asks, fear in her voice. “Who are these people, and why are you holding that bat, and what happened to our weekly movie night?”
“W-w-what do I tell her?” I ask Dane as he stands over us both.
“Tell her the truth,” he says.
“What’s that?” I ask.
Chloe has joined us, her expression blank. “The truth? Simple: that you’re a zombie, that Dane and I are zombies, that Bones and Dahlia are, well …bad …zombies, that they’ve already sucked the brains out of three of your classmates and, if we hadn’t shown up, would’ve sucked out your brains, too.”
21
The Z Files
“B-B-BUT THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” Hazel insists a few minutes later, once she’s safe in our cozy breakfast nook and I’ve placed a Christmas mug full of hot cocoa in her trembling hands. “I’ve read all of the articles about those girls from our Home Ec class, and none of them ever mentioned the word brain, to say nothing of zombies.”
“Well, now, they wouldn’t, would they?” Dane says as I pour him and Chloe a glass of Mountain Dew.
“Well, not unless she was reading Fangoria, they wouldn’t.” Chloe laughs, and when Dane joins her, I cut them a hard glance.
Hazel shivers in her chair, outnumbered by zombies—one of which used to be her best (human) friend.
Chloe snorts indignantly, but Dane sees what’s happening and says, “Come on, Chloe, let’s let Hazel …absorb …all this.”
At the sound of her name, Hazel looks up. Her eyes are distant, as if she’s seeing Dane but not seeing him.
Chloe drags him out of my kitchen and toward the front door, and I follow. “We’ll be in the cemetery if you need us,” she says ominously.
Dane looks at me with an apologetic little half smile. “Seriously, though, Maddy,” he says as I linger in the doorway, “you need to make her understand how …sensitive …a situation this is.”
While Chloe pounds stiffly down the sidewalk, Dane and I glance at Hazel, who’s peering into her Christmas mug. “If she’s strong enough to keep a secret, Maddy, I’ll trust you to tell us so. But if she’s going to cause trouble, then I have to know that, too. I mean, you’ve seen the Elders; you’ve seen the Sentinels. You know what’s at stake here.”
I stand back, vaguely insulted at the implications. “She’s my best friend, Dane. I trust her completely.”
“She’s a Normal, Maddy. You keep forgetting; you’re not like her anymore.”
I nod but don’t feel the need to make more promises.
“Fine, Maddy, whatever,” Dane says. “If you trust her, that’s good enough for me. But don’t forget, it’s not safe for either of you with Bones and Dahlia pissed off now. We’ve got to stick together from here on in.”
His words stay with me long after he’s gone, long after Hazel’s untouched cocoa has passed the lukewarm stage and gone straight to cold. Something has changed tonight, something fundamental. Who has to stick together from here on in? Hazel and I: BFFs? Or Dane, Chloe, and I: ZFFs?
As a best friend forever, my loyalty is with Hazel. If she knows, I have to trust her to keep my secret.
As a zombie friend forever, my loyalty is with Dane and Chloe. Long after Hazel and Dad and everyone I know on this planet are gone, they will still be there, watching my back.
We’ve got to stick together. Who’s the “we” in that sentence?
I don’t have to look far for the answer. “Hazel,” I say, shocking her gaze out of the depths of her cold chocolate. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. The z
ombies, the Elders, they …wouldn’t let me.”
She merely shakes her head. “I knew something was up.” Her tone is filled with failure, with sadness, with disappointment. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you’d …lied …to me.”
I give her the moment; she’s absolutely right.
Then she looks up and says, “Prove it, Maddy.”
“Prove what?” I ask, but already I know the answer.
“Prove what you said; what he said, that creep in the hoodie. Prove you’re a …a …zombie.”
I was afraid of this. I stand up and walk to her and place her hand on my chest, where it stays while I count, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand …”
By the time I get to “forty-two one thousand,” she’s finally had enough and pulls her hand abruptly away. “Okay, so you’re a zombie; that doesn’t mean that Bones guy and Dahlia sucked the brains out of Amy and Sally and Missy. That stuff doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Oh, but your best friend turning into a zombie does?”
She opens her mouth to answer, to dispute, to one-up me, but can’t.
I feel bad for Hazel. I had time to deal with my Assimilation. Well, not much, but still; more than she’s getting.
“What if I can prove to you that those girls didn’t show up in the morgue with their brains intact, Hazel? Will you believe me then?”
She looks up and simply nods.
I don’t even have to sneak into Dad’s office to peep his files. Well, not his work office, anyway, which is fortunate because the county morgue is set up in the sheriff’s office, where there’s someone manning the front desk 24/7/365.
But Dad does have a home office and his computer is linked to the Cobia County Coroner’s Network. I log on to the county website, click on “Current Deceased Files” and, when asked for an account number and password before logging in, simply look under Dad’s keyboard, where I find, on a faded sticky note, account number and password, and all the info I need.
I key both in and, just like that, Dad’s autopsy files for the last six months are at my fingertips. I go to search by name and fill in all three girls’ names, separating them with semicolons: “Amy Jaspers; Sally Kellogg; Missy Cunningham.”
Like magic, the PDF files of their autopsies appear on the screen. Hazel, who’s been standing over me, breathing onto the top of my head, suddenly looks away when Amy’s autopsy photos pop up. I close that link and search instead for Dad’s official findings, which I know from experience have the names of each internal organ and a blank next to each one to record its weight.
I find Amy’s, then Sally’s, then Missy’s and print them out, one by one, before logging out of Dad’s account and clearing his history bar so he won’t see what I’ve been doing while he’s been working another double shift.
From the printer, I grab the three sheets of paper. From the pencil holder, I grab a yellow highlighter. I look around, but Hazel has disappeared and, by the time I’ve highlighted the empty line next to where the weight of each girl’s brain should have been recorded (but wasn’t), I find Hazel sitting in the breakfast nook, her house keys on the table, her big pink purse in her lap.
“Well?”
I lay the sheets out for her, one next to the other, next to the other.
She looks at them skeptically until I point out the highlighted boxes. “So? This could mean anything. The lab misplaced it, the cops couldn’t find it, any number of things could have—”
“That’s why I highlighted Dad’s notes at the bottom, Hazel.”
She glances briefly at the big highlighted box at the bottom of each form before shoving the printouts away.
“Okay,” I say, snatching each one up and reading them in order. “Amy Jaspers, cause of death termed accident. Only anomaly a deep gash in back of skull and her brain ripped out at the stem. Sally Kellogg, cause of death is termed by this coroner to be accidental. Only anomaly a deep gash in back of skull and her brain ripped out at the—Hazel, where are you going?”
“Fine.” She walks toward the door while rubbing away tears from her eyes. “You’ve proved your point, okay? I’m suitably freaked out, all right? So, not only do zombies exist, but my best friend is one. Awesome. And she’s not alone. There are four others in town. Yippee. And two of them are going around eating the brains of our entire Home Ec class, one by one. But thank goodness, the other two are hanging out in the cemetery watching over us, making sure we’re not next. Happy now, Maddy?”
“Me? What’d I do wrong? You think I asked to be a zombie, Hazel? You think I wanted all this?”
She stops at the door, her mascara running, her upper lip shiny with wasted tears. “I dunno, Maddy. I don’t know anything anymore. I know you weren’t very happy when you were alive, so I just hope you’re happier as …as …a zombie.”
22
Formerly Yours
MY FIRST WEEK as Barracuda Bay High School’s newest Goth doesn’t exactly go very well in just about every department. Lots of stares, lots of finger pointing, daily lectures from Ms. Haskins, from Hazel, and, well, let’s just say it goes downhill after that.
By A-lunch on Wednesday I’m so ticked off—with everybody, everywhere, in every class, during every period—that the thought of suffering through another of Hazel’s insufferable lectures about the difference between glam and Goth literally has my stomach turning.
So I avoid the cafeteria altogether and head out past the quad to the track and field, where B-lunch is still sweltering through a mild October noontime as their PE class winds down. Hey, as far as lunch-times go, it’s not a bad way to spend half an hour.
There are lots of strapping young guys in tight gym shorts and tighter tank tops, but I don’t really even notice them as I climb into the bleachers and fume in my new Goth wear. I’ll give you this much, though: the sun feels good on my face. I blink and put my sunglasses on top of my head, Princess Grace style, and stare off into the nothingness behind my thick gray eyelids.
“Maddy?”
Seriously? Now?
His legs look funny in shorts. Don’t get me wrong; they’re still hot. It’s just …funny to see them so bare and so …close. “Stamp?”
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he says sincerely, sitting down backward on the bleacher bench in front of me. “Your car was already gone when I came by this morning, you haven’t been to your locker in forever, you keep ditching Art class; it’s like …like you’re avoiding me or something.”
Bingo! But not for the reason he thinks. “Stamp, I’m not avoiding you, really. I just—”
“Is that black lipstick?” He reaches to touch it.
I don’t want him flinching from the cold of my skin, so I instinctively shrink back.
He doesn’t seem hurt, just …more curious. “And, why are you, I mean, when did you go …Goth?”
“What? You don’t like it? Well, you don’t have to like it, Stamp. What, just ‘cause you ask me out to a party—once—you think you can tell me how to dress? What to wear? Who to hang out with?”
He smiles, then laughs. “No, no, not at all. It’s just, one day you look like little miss bookworm with the beret and the scarf and the stack of homework, and now, all of a sudden, you look like …like …a vampire chick. Actually, it’s kind of …hot.”
I tilt my head. With the sun blazing right behind him, it kind of looks like he’s wearing a halo. “Really?” I ask hopefully. I mean, if a guy like Stamp can go for the Goth look, maybe there’s hope for me passing among the Normals yet.
“Yeah,” he says, inching forward. “I mean, I always thought Goth chicks were kind of sexy.”
“Yeah? Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“All the girls in Wisconsin were so …blonde,” he says. “And, I mean, they all looked the same. I dunno, I just, I’m digging the new look.”
Oh boy; this is going to be harder than I thought. “Listen, Stamp, about the other day—”
“Tell
me this,” he says, idly fingering the laces of my new black boots. “Are you going to wear this when we go to the Fall Formal on Friday?”
My stomach falls, and my mouth drops, and my eyes close, and I think, Great. Your first official week as a fully Council-of-Elders-approved zombie, and you’re about to break the Number 1 Rule of All Zombie Law Ever: “thou shalt not date Normals”?
“I can’t,” I say, inching back like maybe I just saw a bug scamper across his thigh.
He blinks—twice—but never stops smiling. “Sure you can, Maddy; just say ‘yes’ and we’re good to go. I mean, it’s just a dance.”
“No, I mean, I can’t go, Stamp.”
“Look, if your dad’s not cool with it, I can talk to him and make him see …” He keeps blathering, the little black curl dangling over his forehead moving with each smarmy come-on.
No matter how attractive he’s making it sound (and look), I have to shut him down completely, no questions asked. It’s not even a Zombie Law thing so much as a common courtesy thing.
Even if it wasn’t against the Law to date Normals, why would I? Why would I take a kid like Stamp and lead him on when it can’t go anywhere? I mean, what am I going to do when it’s time to go to second base? (Or is it third? I always get them mixed up.) Make sure it happens not merely near a sauna but in a sauna?
And what about after that? What if it’s really the real thing and he wants to get married? Have kids someday? Can zombies even have kids? I’m doubting it since they have no heartbeat—and don’t nutrients move through the blood?
And no, just …no. This has to stop. Now.
Whatever Stamp is saying, I shut him down in the worst way possible. “I don’t mean I can’t go to the dance, Stamp. I mean I can’t go to the dance with …you.”
Ouch. And now his eyes go soft, not tearful soft, just …hurt soft. Great. So now I’m the creep at the end of White Fang? Tossing sticks at the wolf to get him to go away because I know he has to go live in the wild but he doesn’t know that?
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