Anyone?

by Scott, Angela

“Does anyone else think this is complete insanity or is it just me?”

  “Toby, seriously. You’re not helping.”

  “Did anyone check her bag?” one of the men asked. “Maybe the cat was inside it and we missed it.”

  “She didn’t have a bag. She came in with only the clothes on her back, and we took all those. She didn’t have the bracelet on either. We would have seen it if she had. Neither of those things was there this morning.”

  “Your daughter is keeping something from us, because there is no way a cat should even be alive let alone here in that room with her.”

  “My daughter’s not a liar.”

  “I’m not saying she is, but if someone came in here with a cat, we need to figure out how they got in and how they got out without anyone seeing them.”

  “Well,” Toby said. “I don’t care how the cat got here. All I know is that ever since it showed up, my sister has started getting better.”

  The other men argued some more, but Dad held his hand up, stopping them. “You guys go figure out how the cat got here,” he said. “As for me and my son, we’re taking a bowl of food and water in for her. Then we’re sitting by Tess’s side until she’s well enough to come out of there. Until then, I’m going to touch her and hold her hand, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.”

  I knew Cole had come to see me. I had proof. I also knew he’d left, like he’d always said he would, having stayed until I fell asleep. I accepted his leaving, because he told me that as long as he didn’t say goodbye, he wasn’t really gone, and since he’d never uttered those words, they could argue all they wanted—Dad, Toby, the others—I didn’t care.

  I already knew everything I needed to know.

  ---THE END---

  Acknowledgements

  Wow! I can’t actually believe I’m writing the acknowledgement section, since this book took me forever to write. This is a glorious feeling. I’m going to pretend I’m holding a gold statue while I write this, so just know I am typing this with one hand while the other is at an awkward angle in the air.

  A lot of people have helped me to get to the point of actually completing this novel. I’m going to list their names, in no particular order (okay, in a bit of an order, but don’t think their contribution is lessened if they’re at the bottom). They know what they’ve done, and they know how much I love and appreciate them for having done it.

  Here goes:

  Scott Cornford, Caden Cornford, Calder Cornford, Callie Cornford, Trudy and Larry Helton, Diana Tracy, Mallory Rock, Stevie Mikayne, Lane Diamond, Merlaine Waldron, Dottie Taylor, Kimberly Kinrade, Amber Armstrong, Kathleen Allen, Ari Evans, Merlin and Zoey (my two furry/feathered writing companions), friends, family, strangers, and most importantly, above all—my fans who kept asking when the new book would be ready and encouraged me to write faster.

  About the Author

  Angela Scott hears voices. Tiny fictional people sit on her shoulders and whisper their stories in her ear. Instead of medicating herself, she decided to pick up a pen, write down everything those voices tell me, and turn it into a book. She’s not crazy. She’s an author. For the most part, she writes contemporary Young Adult novels. However, through a writing exercise that spiraled out of control, she found herself writing about zombies terrorizing the Wild Wild West--and loving it. Her zombies don’t sparkle, and they definitely don’t cuddle. At least, she wouldn’t suggest it. She lives on the benches of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains with two lovely children, one teenager, and a very patient husband. She graduated from Utah State University with a B.A. degree in English, not because of her love for the written word, but because it was the only major that didn’t require math. She can’t spell, and grammar is her arch nemesis. But they gave her the degree, and there are no take backs.

  What’s Next?

  ZIA THE TEENAGE ZOMBIE & THE UNDEAD DIARIES

  By Angela Scott

  Watch for this young adult zombie adventure, coming in the summer of 2015. For more information on this book, please visit the Evolved Publishing website.

  ~~~~~

  Chapter 1

  Dear Diary,

  I wish I’d been given the whole casket and burial plot kind of death. I even know the type of headstone I’d like. Not the ones that lie flat on the ground; no one sees those. They get mowed over and stepped on. I’d want an upright one in the shape of a heart. It would have a built-in vase for a nice flower or two. Preferably a daisy. My favorite.

  My headstone would say my name, AnnaZia Evans, and my birth date—the day I actually came into the world and not my “rebirth” as many call it: April 16, 1998. And of course, the day I died, July 3, 2014.

  Sing a song. Cry a little. Let me go to the great beyond. But no. None of that for me.

  Today is November 6, 2014.

  The day I died has come and gone and isn’t recorded anywhere. I still walk the earth and do everything I used to do but with a “handicap”—as I call it—and no one cares when I died anymore.

  I remember though.

  Because the day I died was also the day I became a part of the walking dead.

  And also the day my life totally began to suck.

  ***

  I run the brush through my stringy hair and pull it back from my face with a head band. Except, of course, for a long strand that I leave intentionally hanging down over what is left of my right ear and discolored cheek. The only problem: a strand of hair can’t hide the fact that I’m ugly. I used to be pretty, but not anymore.

  Death has a way of doing that to a person.

  “Will you hurry? I need to get in there too!” My stepsister pounds on the bathroom door and rattles the doorknob as if that might make me quicker. It doesn’t. In fact, I slow everything down....

  “I’ll be out when I’m out. Go away!” I hate her. Ever since my dad married her mom and they moved into my house I’ve hated her. I’ve never wanted to eat a person’s brain more than I want to eat hers.

  I look down at the metal band wrapped around my neck and give it a flick with my index finger. Stupid compliance band. I hate it too. I’m a teenager; I’m supposed to hate things. But above everything, even my stepsister Isabelle, I hate the band the worst. I’m hungry all the time and the stupid compliance band won’t let me do a thing about it.

  “Mom!” she yells. “Zia won’t let me in the bathroom!”

  I take a quick peek at myself in the mirror and release a frustrated breath. There’s not much I can do to fix what I see, but I try anyway. I dab a bit of foundation over my gray skin and place a bit of red lipstick on my lips.

  The red is too dark and looks like blood. I quickly grab a tissue and wipe it off. Kids at school would freak, but a part of me wants to wear it anyway. If I didn’t know they’d turn up the voltage on my neckband, I totally would.

  “Zia, darling?” My stepmother Judy coos at the door. “I’m giving you two more minutes and then its Isabelle’s turn, okay?”

  I have to give it to my stepmom. She tries. She tries a little too hard sometimes to keep the peace between Isabelle and me, but she’s not so bad. She makes Dad happy and for that I’m grateful. After my mother left us when I was two years old, Dad deserved to find some happiness. And it just so happens that Judy is the gal for him. Too bad Isabelle was part of the package

  “Sure,” I call back. I’m actually done getting ready for school, but she’s giving me two more minutes to make Isabelle wait, so I’m taking it. Anything to make her suffer.

  Even though I don’t like what I see in the mirror I know it could be a lot worse. I’m missing an ear and my left foot doesn’t work like it used to, causing me to have to wear a brace and shuffle a little. Other zombies—yes, I know the politically-correct term is “living impaired” but I just call it what it is—have it far worse than I do. Some don’t even have a leg at all and have to wear specially designed prosthetics. So my brace is just fine. I shouldn’t complain.

  But no matter what I do, brace, ma
keup, I’m still the girl who was killed in a freak boating accident and whose dad had a witch raise her from the dead with a bit of voodoo magic. I’m the girl everyone fears, even though I’ve never really eaten a brain before or bitten anyone for that matter. I’m rather harmless, especially with my neck cuff. Maybe without it I would be a crazy lunatic—could be interesting—but with it, I’m just like everyone else. Except I’m dead, in an undead kind of way.

  “Time’s up!” Isabelle jiggles the doorknob again. “My turn.”

  This time I unlock it and step aside. She pushes past me and wrinkles her nose. “Jeez, Zia. You smell.”

  I get that all the time. It comes with the territory of being dead. I still rot. I still decay. No one has quite figured out how to stop that process. I fear someday I will be nothing but a walking skeleton wearing a neck band. It sucks being me.

  “I showered,” I say.

  “Did you use the special soap?” Isabelle runs the tap and dips her toothbrush into the cold stream of water.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you still stink. Maybe you should wear a car freshener around your neck.” She sticks the toothbrush in her mouth.

  I really don’t like her, but I don’t say anything. I grab a bottle of body spray from the top shelf and give myself a good squirt of its fruity freshness.

  “Ahh! Now you just smell like rotting apples. You made it worse!”

  I don’t know what else to do. I can’t cover the smell and I can’t eat her either, so I do what I normally do and just walk away.

  “The bus will be here any minute, girls! You need to hurry!” Judy calls from downstairs.

  Yippee. I can’t wait. I’m totally being sarcastic here.

  I grab my backpack off my bed and slip it onto my shoulder. My shoulder cracks as it pops out of socket, but I don’t feel a thing. The noise and the fact that I can’t move my arm clue me in that something is wrong. Perhaps that’s one good thing about being a zombie: I no longer feel pain, physical anyway. Emotional is a whole other matter that I try to suppress.

  “Judy!” I yell. “I did it again.”

  Isabelle walks past my room and scowls at me while shaking her head. She doesn’t stop to assist me. Heaven forbid she’d ever come to my rescue. She avoids me like the plague. She pretends I don’t exist at school and has even gone so far as to tell me not to talk to her in public, ever. That’s okay. She’s not very interesting to talk to. Besides, I didn’t talk to her before I died, so why in the world would I start now?

  “Oh, goodness!” Judy steps beside me, removes my overstuffed backpack, and gives my arm a good tug and push. My shoulder snaps into place no worse than it was before. “There you are. Good as new.” My ste-mother smiles and gives me a gentle hug.

  I would have argued with her that my being “good as new” wasn’t all that great, but I didn’t. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  She pushes the hair from my face; she doesn’t like the hanging strand, but I quickly rearrange it back into place. I have to hide the ear. Even I know a missing ear is disturbing.

  “I want you have a wonderful day,” she says. “Make some real friends. Smile at people. You have a beautiful smile and I’m sure if everyone can see how friendly you are, they’ll climb all over one another to be your friend.”

  She gives me this same pep-talk at least once a week. I tried smiling. But there is a fine line between a zombie smile and a zombie who wants to eat your face. Most of my classmates don’t like my smile. They cringe and move to other side of the hall—the usual reaction.

  The bus sounds its horn and Judy gives me a gentle pat on my arm. “Your thermos is on the table by the door. Don’t forget it.”

  How can I?

  My raw ground-up animal meat, fresh fish guts, coagulated human blood, and “special vitamins made especially for zombies” all blended together in a nice thick warm shake. It’s what I have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s not all that bad, really. It at least staves off the hunger somewhat, though it never truly satisfies.

  Judy makes it for me every day, changing up the meats for variety. Never once has she complained, but Isabelle and Dad did. They said the smell was awful and so now Judy makes it for me in the garage. And if I sip it through a straw in a hole in the top of the thermos, no one else can really smell it so I’m allowed to eat it at school and at family meals. But I have to make sure I brush my teeth right after. It makes for some gnarly bad breath. Worse than the normal undead breath.

  I slip my backpack on once more using my other arm, and lumber down the stairs to catch the bus. I grab the thermos and follow after Isabelle, staying several feet behind her—her rule—which seems silly since everyone on the bus know we live in the same house and are related by marriage.

  I’m not sure who she’s trying to kid. I’m a zombie, for crying out loud. People tend to notice me.

  I struggle to climb up the steps of the bus, which annoys the driver, but he never says anything. He just shakes his head and makes a face. It’s a wonderful way to start off my school day.

  No one says hi as I pass down the tight aisle to the back of the bus. This is usual and so it doesn’t faze me anymore. I find my normal spot and sit down. Even though it’s November I crack the window next to me—another rule.

  I slump in my seat with my backpack on my lap and stare out the half-opened window. The next few bus stops are uneventful, but the third one, the one I look forward to, Gunner climbs aboard and makes his way down the aisle toward me.

  Someone howls—such an old joke—and several other guys join in. Gunner is a lot better at this stuff than me and so he turns to the guys making fun of him. “You call that a howl? Maybe for a Chihuahua, but you have a long way to go to be a big dog. Who knows? Maybe with a little practice you can become a big dog someday, too.”

  Corbin, one of the football jocks, stands up. “You threatening me? Because you know what happens when you threaten a human, right?” Corbin pretends to be electrocuted and shakes all over as if that is the funniest thing ever. His cronies join in and shake all over too.

  If it bothers Gunner, he doesn’t show it. He watches their antics play out and when Corbin stops moving, Gunner just shrugs. “When I threaten you, you’ll know it.”

  Before Corbin can say anything else, the bus driver yells to Gunner to move it to the back. He waves at the driver and continues down the aisle and slides in the seat beside me. Supposedly he smells too—like a wet dog, that’s why he’s banished to the back—but I don’t smell a thing.

  “How’s it going?” he asks.

  “It’s going okay, I guess.” I nod toward the jocks. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve dealt with worse. A few idiots howling at me is no big deal. Try having someone come after you with a pitchfork or a torch. That tends to put things in perspective.”

  I nod. I guess it would. Besides being teased, no one has tried to destroy me, so I should consider myself lucky.

  I notice the bands on his wrists. They’re very similar to my neck band. Gunner has been a werewolf longer than I’ve been a zombie so it’s understandable that his bands are worn and the silver tarnished. He told me that as long as he wears them, a full moon doesn’t affect him like it used to. My band is made from the toughest titanium and is screwed right into the base of my neck, attaching to my brain stem. His are made from silver—for apparent reasons.

  I’m pretty jealous of him, not to the point it has ruined our friendship, but jealous non-the-less. He’s a pretty handsome guy, rugged and muscular, though I’d never think of him as anything more than a friend—we living impaired, or L.I.’s or short, don’t mix, so we have been instructed. I’m jealous because he can still walk among the humans without being detected. If you didn’t know him, or notice his bands, you’d mistake him for human.

  I will never be mistaken for anything other than what I am. I can’t hide the fact I’m undead.

  We have one more stop before w
e reach the school, and this is my least favorite stop. This is where Willow gets on.

  Sure enough, she climbs aboard, all dressed in her usual black garb. Today she even makes her presence worse by wearing dark sunglasses that cover her eyes and she’s dyed her once golden hair completely black. Even her lips are painted the same dark color. There is no hint of anything but black on her anywhere, which only emphasizes her already pale features.

  Even though she hides behind the black, she’s still beautiful. Extremely so. I’m pretty jealous of her, too.

  We used to be best friends, back before she changed and way before my accident. But now, she won’t even look at me. I suppose that is my fault. When she was fifteen and was bit and changed to a blood sucker, my father did what parents who are afraid for their children tend to do: he prohibited me from ever hanging around with her again. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain my sudden disappearance from her life. I was just forced to stop taking her calls.

  Karma has a real funny way of making you pay for being unkind. Look at me. I’m a zombie. The lowliest monster of them all. My own friends—Becky, Amy, and Danielle—no longer have anything to do with me. Just thinking of them turns my attention to the front of the bus. Becky is hanging all over Tyler. He looks like he’s enjoying the attention and my own non-beating heart breaks a little more. Rumor has it that my ex-best friend and my ex-boyfriend are going steady. But as I watch them together, it looks as though the rumors aren’t rumors at all.

  I look back to Willow. No one teases her. She’s lucky that way. I think a lot of it has to do with her striking beauty. Everyone can see it despite her attempts to hide it under all that black.

  She’s trying to hide her beauty; I’m trying to hide my ugly.

  We have a lot in common. If only she’d acknowledge me, but she never does. She walks to the back of the bus, not because she smells, which she doesn’t, but because that’s where all the L.I.’s have to sit, and she slides onto a bench opposite of mine. She doesn’t say anything, not to anybody, and she pulls her dark hood up over her head and stares out the window.