Grave New World (Book 3): Dead Men Don't Skip

by S. P. Blackmore

  Oh, fuck on a stick.

  He stopped in front of me. “You gave her that shit, didn’t you? You were on duty!”

  “Logan, I didn’t know it would—”

  That was all the admission he required. His good hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist, and before I could resist I found myself twisted against him. I couldn’t even cry out; something cold pressed against my forehead. His gun, he’s got a gun on me, oh fuck.

  I scrabbled against his grip, and he adjusted me, squeezing his arm around my neck and nearly cutting off my air supply.

  “Get McKnight,” Lattimore said to someone.

  No, don’t get McKnight, I thought, but the other medic had already scuttled away.

  If Tony got involved in this, Logan would just try to kill me more.

  I had gotten away from a chokehold like this once before, but hanging limply didn’t make him loosen his grip. If anything, he held on tighter.

  “Stop wriggling,” Logan said. “You killed her. You fucking killed her!”

  “I didn’t! I didn’t know what it was!”

  My air cut off abruptly.

  I tried to suck in more, but Logan had me tight. All signs of grief had vanished, and rage had firmly taken its place. It wasn’t enough that Alyssa had died. Someone had done something to her. So what if she was dying anyway? In his eyes, I might as well have murdered her.

  “Why did you do it?”

  I clawed at his arm.

  He loosened his hold ever so slightly. “Talk,” he barked.

  “Logan—Logan please—”

  Patients were staring. Lattimore stood next to the tent entrance.

  “Where’s her body?” Logan squeezed my neck too tightly for me to make another sound.

  “Specialist, we dispose of the bodies. You know that.” Lattimore sounded patient. Kindly, even.

  “You can’t have gotten rid of her yet. I checked the body drop areas. She’s not there.”

  The gun pressed harder against my head. I found myself wishing he’d just do it so I could be dead and done with this nonsense. Maybe Alyssa would wait up at the River Styx for me or something.

  I heard movement from the other side of the tent.

  “Let her go,” Tony said.

  Oh, great. Now he’d try to do something heroic and that would be the end of me.

  “You’re being a shit, Logan.”

  Logan pressed the gun harder against my temple. I hadn’t thought it possible. He tightened his grip around me again, until even drawing breath became impossible. I kicked out, frantic. I’d escaped this once. I could escape this again.

  I had escaped from a crazed biker, though. Not a trained soldier driven mad by grief.

  Please, I tried to say. Please, don’t do this.

  No words squeaked out.

  “Like that, man?” Logan muttered. “Doesn’t feel good to lose what’s important to you, does it?

  Tony held up his hands. “What is it you want? I can guarantee you, choking out Vibeke won’t get it for you.”

  “Where is Alyssa’s body?” His voice shrilled in my ear.

  “I don’t know…wasn’t Renati taking them? For tests.”

  For a moment, all was still.

  The gun went away. Then the arm. I toppled forward.

  Tony caught me, kept me from smashing to the floor while I coughed and choked and tried to draw air into my lungs. I could just barely make out Logan racing toward the back of the tent, no doubt set on Renaticide.

  “Easy,” he said. “I have you.”

  “He’s going to kill Renati!”

  “Better him than you.”

  I pushed him away and lurched to my feet. My head swam; gold sparkles danced in front of my vision, but I could still make my way toward the back of the tent, where Logan had bolted out.

  Tony came after me, gripping my upper arm. “Don’t do this,” he said.

  I pulled loose and broke into a run, simply ignored the rest of his words. The back courtyard was utterly empty, and its lonesomeness made it seem even colder in the bleak gray light.

  I ran into the lab. Tony came after me, cursing a blue streak.

  Once inside, it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the bizarre new lighting scheme Renati had apparently put together that day. Pale blue and purple LEDs were scattered throughout, and the usual fluorescent bulbs had been switched off entirely. The place looked like a bad rave waiting to happen.

  Renati was sitting on his knees, hands pressed firmly to the back of his head. Logan stood in front of him, his gun trained firmly against the good doctor’s forehead.

  Renati seemed remarkably composed, given his situation. “Ah, Vibeke,” he said. “You may want to come back later. I’m a bit…tied up.”

  “Where is Alyssa?” Logan’s hysteria had drained away, leaving only cold resolve again. The hardened soldier was back.

  “I don’t know,” Renati said. “I don’t know them by name, son. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not your son. I won’t have you cutting her open!”

  “What on earth? Why would I do that?”

  “We all know what you do in here with the bodies. Studying the virus when Lattimore doesn’t need you. You’ve had the people who die here carted off to some place where you can pull them whenever the hell you want. You’re sick, dude.”

  Renati gulped…but didn’t exactly deny it.

  “He’s trying to find a cure,” I said. “What the hell is sick about that?”

  “Shut up,” Tony muttered.

  “Not with my sister!”

  “Tell him where the body dump is,” Tony said.

  Logan’s head snapped up, probably not taking the term body dump very well.

  “Renati, tell him!”

  “Out in the back,” Renati said. “By the old school building. Just outside the courtyard. That’s where they’re stored prior to…ah…” he looked up at Logan.

  Prior to disposal? Prior to experimentation?

  “Thank you,” Logan said.

  He took his gun and left the tent.

  Renati sagged forward, his weight landing on his hands. “That poor man.”

  Tony snorted. “Yes, that poor man, running around camp waving a gun and trying to choke people out.”

  “You shouldn’t have told him,” I said.

  “He’s grieving,” Renati said. For once he seemed bereft of an appropriate Shakespearian anecdote. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  I should have left it at that—should have given up and gone home, exhausted, but something was bothering me. It was too quiet: Logan should have been fighting with soldiers sent to stop him, or wailed over his sister, or something. Instead, when I stepped outside the lab I sensed only a strange, unnatural calm.

  So of course I went after him.

  I came to regret it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We followed Logan to a spot behind the medical complex. It was a place free of tents, tucked between two larger, likely abandoned buildings that sported brick walls. It had probably once been a park: brown grass covered most of this square, and benches and playground equipment were set up at particular intervals.

  They had put up a wall around it. A real wall, not like the chain link they’d used to keep us out of other parts of the city. Someone had even installed a proper gate—wrought iron, it looked like—with spikes a good five feet over my head. On a bright, sunny day, this might have been a nice place for a picnic.

  Now it was just a holding pen.

  Logan was standing at the gate, staring inside.

  I started toward him, curious and fearful at the same time. What was he looking at?

  Tony caught my hand. “Don’t,” he said.

  I shook him off and kept moving, though I remained wary of the soldier and his frayed nerves.

  Logan had his hands wrapped around two of the bars, and he peered through the gap between them, staring into the pen. This seemed a surefire way to get bitten if a hungry ghoul was on the othe
r side, but there didn’t seem to be a horde of them waiting to eat.

  I joined him at the gate.

  A pile of bodies lay in the center of the park. I shoved my hand into my mouth to keep from gagging. I’d seen a few piles in my day—in the beginning, when no one knew what was going on and we just wanted to get the dead bodies out of our sight, we tended to throw them into pits and piles—but this one reached at least a dozen feet into the air, taller than anything we’d managed to construct at Elderwood. I couldn’t make out all the faces, but most of them appeared to have red marks on their heads. Taken out. Shot or stabbed through the skull to prevent their return.

  Logan wasn’t staring at the bodies, though.

  He was staring at something on the other side of the park. Something lingering near the opposite wall.

  People.

  I grasped the bars, too, not entirely believing my eyes. But there were people standing there in the shadow of the wall, as far away from the bodies as they could get.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked. “Is this their new brig? Are people misbehaving so much they’re getting locked up with the dead?” Why was I surprised? Keller had already shown he wasn’t averse to stashing people in jail with a zombie. Making them share cell space with actual, proper dead people might even qualify as slightly less repugnant.

  Tony and Renati came up behind us.

  “I see her,” Logan said.

  I scrutinized the pile of bodies, but I couldn’t differentiate one corpse from another. Still, Logan knew his sister better than me. “So she’s there,” I said. “She’s…she won’t come back.”

  He tightened his grip around the bars.

  “Alyssa!”

  Oh. Oh, fuck, he was going off the rails.

  One of the figures at the wall detached itself from the group, and began making its way over. It walked slowly, almost gingerly, like it was afraid it might topple right over.

  It came toward us. As it got closer, I realized it was a woman; a short one at that, seemingly drowning in an oversized, sweatshirt and baggy jeans.

  The same sweatshirt Alyssa had worn.

  Tony sucked in a breath.

  This was a mistake. This all had to be a terrible, terrible mistake.

  “Alyssa,” Logan said. “Jesus, what are they doing with you out here?”

  She was barefoot. I recognized the little blue anklet I had put on her, bouncing along on the top of her foot with every step.

  Not dead, then. Not dead at all. Just locked up in this shithole—why? What the fuck was Lattimore or Keller or anyone else thinking? My relief gave way to confusion, then anger. How dare they do this to her? To anyone?

  She got close to us. She wasn’t walking quite right: her limbs seemed stiff, and she swung her legs ponderously. But her lips curved into a slight smile. She was still smiling, even locked out here.

  “Alyssa,” I said. “Holy shit. Holy shit, what happened?”

  She opened her mouth, and for a moment no words came out. She seemed to have to force herself to draw breath, and when she did so it rattled. Christ, she needed a doctor and a warm bed and all the antibiotics they could find. “They stuck us in with the dead people,” she said, very slowly.

  “Renati.” Logan’s voice had turned to ice. “Renati, I will fucking kill you.”

  “I…I had nothing to…to do with…this…” The doctor’s voice came out in choked, strained clumps.

  The chill had seeped into Alyssa. She shivered, and her feet were coated in a thin layer of ash. Her gaze roved past her brother and landed on me. Smile aside, she seemed largely expressionless, her dark eyes grown pale in the cold.

  Wait. Outdoor temperature didn’t change eye color.

  I looked closer at her eyes, my brain furiously making useless notes on what, exactly, was wrong with them. Her pupils weren’t adjusting. They were tiny pinpricks in a flat wash of ice. That’s not the point, I screamed at myself. They’re glazed. They’re nearly white. She has dark eyes, not light ones!

  “Vibeke,” she said. Her voice had a strange, grating quality to it. Like she’d screamed herself hoarse.

  Or her vocal cords were drying out.

  No. This isn’t happening.

  “Jesus,” Tony whispered.

  “Vibeke, please, tell the doctor she was wrong. I’m fine. We’re fine.” She pointed behind her, at the group of people standing under the wall. At least a dozen of them were clumped together, staring at us. “It’s so cold out here…”

  There had been a mistake.

  But her eyes. Her eyes.

  Logan stood there, silent as the dead. Or silent as the dead should have been.

  My stomach twisted, nearly hurling itself up into my throat. I stepped back, clamped my hands over my mouth, and nearly crashed into Tony.

  “Doc?” Tony asked. “Doc, she’s…she’s…”

  Renati joined me at the fence, a quiver going through him. “There’s…how many?”

  I could not count all of them, but it looked as if there might be eight or nine others by the other side of the wall.

  Watching us.

  “Doctor…” I had to fight for words. “Doctor, is this…did they all get that drug?”

  He nodded.

  “What did we give them?”

  “It wasn’t meant to…I don’t think, anyway…he must have mixed a new batch before…” He sounded dazed now, as horrified as the rest of us. “

  “Logan?” Alyssa looked at him, uncertainty etching itself across her features. “What’s wrong? I know I look bad. It’s this…this flu…”

  I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid if I did breathe, I’d vomit.

  Logan continued to stare at her. “Lys, hon, how do you feel?”

  She had to pause. To think? To remind herself how to feel?

  “Cold,” she said. “It’s so cold out here.”

  Renati pushed past me, grasping the bars as Logan had. “Miss,” he said, his voice infused with warmth, “let me take your temperature.”

  Alyssa obediently came forward. The strength went out of my knees. Tony caught me and kept me from hitting the ground.

  Renati hesitated only a fraction of a second before pressing his hand against her forehead. “Nice and cool,” he said.

  He turned and looked at me, then shook his head ever so slightly. His meaning was clear enough: Alyssa was probably icy cold.

  His returned his attention to her, and carried on with a cursory examination. His hand drifted to her cheeks, then paused at her throat. “Swelling in the glands has gone down,” he said. But I saw where his finger was actually resting. He was checking her carotid artery.

  I watched his face. His forced, strained expression of calm had given way to something else. Something frightened.

  “Alyssa,” Logan said again.

  Renati still had his hand on her neck. Waiting for a beat, I thought. Waiting for some telltale sign that she wasn’t fully gone. A slow heartbeat we could manage. Everything else could be explained away, at least eventually.

  It never came.

  “I’m cold,” she repeated. “Can I have a blanket?”

  She was looking at me.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll get you a blanket, Alyssa.” My gaze landed on the others in the park. The pen. The prison. All of them had to be as cold as she was. “I’ll get blankets for everyone. And we’ll…we’ll take care of this.”

  Why the fuck are you telling her you’re going to take care of this? You don’t even know what’s going on, you can’t fix this shit. Vibby, this is above your pay grade.

  Man, my inner Tony was having a field day.

  The real Tony tried to pull me back a step or two.

  Alyssa continued to study me. Maybe she wasn’t really staring; maybe this was just her curious look now. Fine muscle control had gone the way of her pupils, the tiny, fleeting expressions that gave a human face so much of its character utterly removed.

  Yet I could not call her a revenant.


  “Are you all right, Vibeke?” she asked. She slurred slightly on the Vib. Drying tongue couldn’t wrap around it, maybe. “Are you sick?”

  Oh, God. Oh, God, what if I was sick and I was going to come back like her, blank-faced and staring? Tony needed to finish me off if that ever happened.

  I seized his jacket. “Tony—”

  But wait. I couldn’t just say that in front of her. That would be rude.

  He turned me away from her, pulled me against his chest, and wrapped his arms around me. Free of her stare, I finally felt like I could think again, but my mind instantly collapsed into muddled soup. I wanted to cry—wanted to sob—but was too afraid. It would be like uncorking a dammed-up river. If I started now, after all this, I might never stop, might drown us all in tears.

  Tony rocked me back and forth. “Doc,” he said, his voice pinched, “you gonna tell us what the hell’s going on?”

  “I could make something up,” Renati said. “Do you want me to do that?”

  Yes. I wanted him to make something up. To give us a reason besides the obvious. They’re dead. They’re dead but their brain isn’t dead, so now they’re not mindless ghouls. They’re mindful ghouls.

  Oh my God, was that worse?

  Tony’s chin came to the top of my head. “Shit, man.”

  “Not shit,” Renati said in wonder. “Science.”

  Science.

  Science.

  “Science?”

  I heard the fury in Logan’s voice, followed by a heaving sound. By the time I tore myself away from Tony, the soldier had the researcher slammed up against the gate, dangling a good foot off the ground.

  “You son of a bitch! Undo it! Undo it now!”

  “You know how to do that?” Renati gasped. “Because I don’t.”

  Logan snarled, then let him go. Renati toppled forward, landing on his hands and knees. The soldier lifted up a fist, likely intending on slamming it against the doctor’s skull.

  “Logan,” Alyssa said. She couldn’t get her voice up all that high, but she stretched a pale, stiff hand through the gate. “Logan, don’t.”

  The fist fell against Renati’s head with a dull thunk. He slumped forward, bringing his hands up to cover his temples.