by Molly Snow
TWENTY-NINE
Damien pulled into the school’s parking lot late. He slammed his jeep’s door shut, wearing shades and feeling like hell. For a moment, he wondered if he should get back in and drive away. Ditching could still be an option. Was it worth disappointing his father, though? He couldn’t drive back home, and the likelihood of being caught around the small town, and slapped with a truancy ticket, was high.
Besides his blood shot eyes, side effect of being pepper sprayed by gorgeous-Goth-girl, the rest of him looked fine. It didn’t matter much that he didn’t feel fine. He had dealt with pain enough recently to master ignoring most of it.
What the hay? He rubbed a hand through his dark hair and started toward school.
A guy in a hoodie and shades came out in the open from between some cars. Damien glanced at him then continued his focus on the school. The stranger approached, and said, “Hey,” walking side by side with him.
Instincts told Damien this guy was shady—he should have been wearing a t-shirt, not some sweatshirt. It was summer, and hot out. “Dope dealer,” came to mind. “I’m not interested,” Damien said, waving him away.
“Oh, you’re interested,” the stranger said, his voice unsteady. “Interested in my girl.”
“Huh?” Damien stopped and turned to him, not feeling threatened but confused.
“Stay away from Stella, you understand?” Breath that smelled like a dank crawl space assaulted Damien’s nostrils.
“What do you mean? Are you the dude she went on a date with last night? Because my memory tells me things didn’t end too well.”
“Are you by chance, Damien? The one she told me about?”
His eyebrows raised. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I’m not going to say what she tells me in private. But you can be certain, she does not like you.”
“Yeah, whatever…,” Damien said, moving as if to go around him.
The guy cut in front of him. “I’m serious. Stay away from Stella. Or else.”
“Or else what? You think you can take me on? I say, you better back off or else.”
“I saw you.” He chuckled in a mock tone. “You don’t have your powers anymore.”
How could he know about that? Damien wondered. This guy knew he had been a werewolf? “What?”
“Oh, you know what I’m talking about.” The stranger lifted his shades up and pulled down the hoodie. “Remember me?”
Intense gray eyes had a glint of glee in them. It was Seth? No… “What’s going on? Who are you? Why are you here?” Something dawned on him—at the beach, Stella opened up to him about an ex who stalked her. “Wait a minute—are you that Billy creep that follows her around?”
The guy thrust a cold hand around Damien’s throat and squeezed hard. “It’s none of your business. I’ll kill you, you hear? Leave her alone.”
Oh, Dude was messing with the wrong guy. Damien slammed a fist into his face, and readied himself for another blow. Something nasty, though, caused him to retract. The flesh of Billy’s cheek hung, exposing corroded muscle.
Billy touched at the wound, looking horrified. “I’m not done with you,” he seethed.
Damien rubbed at his aching Adam’s apple while watching the whatever-it-was run off.
*
“Cute boots,” a voice said from behind.
Stella shut her locker with a gasp. She turned to see Damien. He smiled his usual charming smile, with perfect white teeth, and pointed at her Doc Martin’s. So, she couldn’t actually give those up. “Uh, hi.”
“Hello, I’m feeling kinda like a zombie from being pepper sprayed in the eyes by a really cute girl,” he said, wearing sunglasses.
It was too bad, the word zombie stuck out more to her than the word cute. But, that’s right, Damien had no idea about Billy at the bed and breakfast, much less his brain-eating ways.
“…But today’s a new day, and I’m hoping things go better,” he added.
She couldn’t help but notice red spots on his neck. Hickies? Did he already get mauled by some girl behind the bleachers? It was just last night when he begged for a kiss from her. Stella wanted so badly to give him that kiss, but it didn’t seem right. Nothing made sense. And if it was true, if he already made out with some random girl, then good on her for not following through with her desires last night. With a tone of bitterness, she asked, “Are you sure you want to be flirting with me, instead of some other girl?”
A couple cheerleaders passed them by, whispering and casting judgmental glances to Stella.
Damien paused before saying, “I’m going to make things up to you. Go on a date with me? Friday?” He reached a hand out from behind his back. A single red rose.
A gasp stole Stella’s attention to down the hall, where three girls were huddled by lockers, gawking at her. Get this—Damien had said at the beach—don’t ever let me get this close to you again. She had to nip this in the bud, even if her heart was fluttering at his flattering words. Even if she had this crazy desire to just reach up and kiss him right there. They were still from totally different worlds. It didn’t matter if she was now a brunette and wearing dresses. She didn’t like his world, and he was right at the beach; it was about time she started paying attention to red flags, when it came to guys.
Damien raised his eyebrows over his shades, and asked again, “Stella, will you please go on a date with me Friday night?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, feeling her heart drop. “I can’t. No. I’m sorry.”
His expression fell, and his hand offering the rose went limp. “Really?” he asked.
“Yeah… really,” she breathed. Another part of her was screaming inside. She could take back what she just said, and still say yes. It wasn’t too late. But it was like her boots were cemented into the ground, and those words gagged. She just couldn’t say yes to him.
Damien stood there a moment longer, obviously surprised, and suddenly the rose looked way awkward in his hands. He finally nodded and opened his mouth to say something else. It took him a moment to say, “I should tell you, I ran into your, um, ex in the parking lot. I think you should know that. He seems very unstable.”
“You did?” Her eyes widened, then looked down at the ground in understanding. “Yeah, he’s still following me around.”
“Just be very careful,” he said.
“I’ve told the police and my mom knows, so…”
Another nod, and he walked off. On his way past a trash can, he tossed the flower.
THIRTY
An envelope slid across the table to Damien. It was in the shape of those birthday cards that are meant to hold cash. Given that there was a cake with eighteen candles sitting in front of him, he didn’t expect anything else. He ripped it open, and glanced up at his uncle, aunt and father each looking at him with smiles. Aunt Loretta snapped a photo, and Damien peeked inside. Two tickets looked back at him.
“What are these?” he asked, already knowing. He could clearly see the logo that matched his new tattoo.
“Deathheads tickets,” his dad said, scooting his chair closer. “Well, what do you think, son? They’ll be playing here in a couple weeks. Should be fun, huh? You can go with your old man. It will be great.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
In bed that evening, Damien thought over his humble birthday party. It was nothing like Tyler’s, where he invited practically the whole school over, blasted some speakers and had five kegs lining the bar of his kitchen. He stared at the tickets some more, before setting them on his nightstand. No, his party wasn’t like Tyler’s; it was more special.
The Teen Wolf movie still leaned against his lamp, and he picked that up instead. With a shake of his head, he popped the movie in his DVD player and watched it. It was really cool how the werewolf could fit right in at school, openly, and everyone accepted him. Oh well, his own days as a werewolf were nothing more than a flash in his past.
Halfway into the movie, his thoughts drifted to the thing th
at attacked him in the parking lot. The thing that tricked him into believing he had once been nothing more than a victim, a grandson allergic to the sun, chased down by some thugs who were going to kill him. After all, it ended up being Stella’s ex.
Stella…
*
The angry banging against Stella’s front door startled her. She dropped her fork, clattering it against her plate of chicken and vegetables. The sound stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving a stillness that was even more disturbing.
Her mother swiftly got up from the dinner table and ran to go check things out, snapping the gun out of her garter. “Who is it?” She turned the porch light on and looked through the peephole.
No answer.
“I don’t see nobody! I said, who is it? Now you answer now, or I will blast you away. Ya hear me?!”
A gurgling moan answered. Stella was at the window, a second later, looking through the curtains.
“Stay back, Stella. I’m gonna shoot at the count of three!” her mother said loud enough for the stranger to hear.
“Mom, wait! Look!” Stella pulled the curtains way back for her to see the crumpled body writhing on their door mat. “I think it’s Gordon!”
Still pointing her gun, her mom creaked the door open. Stella looked over her shoulder. It was in fact Gordon, in too much pain to let either of them touch him. Bruises colored his face purple and red. There was no evidence of his glasses, and his left eye’s lid was swollen completely shut.
Gordon was too out of it to say who hurt him, though it was obvious it was Billy. Stella felt sick to her stomach, seeing her old PAA friend roughed up so terribly. So he had made the moves on her on their date, and taken her to a place Bigfoot was thought to be tramping around, making her livid. It didn’t mean he deserved something like this, and in that moment, seeing him so beat up and helpless, she forgave him.
“You coward!” Stella screeched into the night, knowing the zombie could hear her. “You lurk around, threatening me and hurting my friend here! Well, come and get me!” She stepped over Gordon’s body, casting her eyes around the porch and bushes. “I dare you! Do what you said you were going to do! Come get me!”
“Missy, get back in here!” Her mother nearly dragged her back inside. “Are you crazy? I don’t want to come home one night to you looking like that.”
*
Stella, Kit, Caleb and Maggie hovered around a bed, where an almost unrecognizable version of their friend lay with tubes and wires of all kinds going up his nose, up his arms and down his medical gown. Gordon finally opened an eye and grunted.
Maggie went right over to him and sympathetically held his hand. “Hey, buddy. How you feeling?”
He moaned, then said, “Awful.”
Stella moved over to him, guilt eating at her. “I’m really sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Not… your… fault,” he said.
“It is. It is my fault,” Stella said, feeling tears brim her eyes.
Instantly her friends disagreed, and attempted to console her, but she wouldn’t have any of that. “It is my fault.” Stella eyed each of them, feeling the tears well up more and trickle down her cheeks. “I went on a date with Gordon when I knew Billy was after me. I basically asked for this to happen. This sucks. I suck.”
A doctor came in with his clipboard. “Kids, your friend needs to rest some more. The good news is he just has one fractured rib. He should be able to walk out of here by morning.”
*
Stella quietly clicked around her laptop around 2 a.m., her mother snoring right beside her. She hadn’t seen any other sign of Billy being around, other than tonight, but knew that didn’t mean anything. She had to ask herself what he was waiting for. Why not just finish the job? Turn her already? Then she realized her home was like a fortress, and she was hardly ever alone. He probably was in wait for the perfect opportunity.
She read up as much as she could take in about zombies, until her eyes begged for her to stop. Lastly, she opened her email and typed, “I’m back in the PAA.”
*
Caleb sprinkled some Reese’s Pieces across the grange’s parking lot.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asked. “That’s some good food you’re wasting there.”
Stella shook her head and wrapped her cardigan tighter around her body, as they approached the dark destination. She knew what Caleb was up to. “Billy’s a zombie, not E.T.”
“That’s not funny,” Kit told her boyfriend, reprimanding him further.
Gordon chuckled, his arm in a splint, still looking pretty bad.
“Besides,” Stella continued, “we don’t want to lure him until we’re ready.”
Needless to say, there was no table filled with paranormal books, no sharing time, and no Halloween lights strewn along the walls. The PAA took a sharp turn in another direction—preparation for kicking some zombie butt.
After what happened to Gordon, it was something they could no longer run from. Stella had been running for over a year, so she knew that wasn’t the answer anymore. No longer would she be the scared little girl. “As you all know,” she said to her team, “I was the zombie addict. This means I read up on all the latest zombie fiction. But it didn’t mean I studied alleged first-hand accounts with the monsters. I didn’t believe they existed, so why would I?
“Now I know they exist. So let’s talk strategy.”
Gordon spoke first. “Zombies, as far as my studies have shown, are stronger than Hollywood makes them out to be. What we see is these decrepit beings limping around graveyards, like in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It’s apparently not like that at all. They’re strong. Really strong. And, yes, they decompose, but at a very slow rate. It can take a couple hundred years before they start to walk funny.”
“How can that be?” Kit asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“There’s a toxin in their bodies that also acts as a preservative. It’s pretty fascinating, actually.”
“Wow.” Stella was seriously impressed. “I should have cut right to asking you about them, instead of wasting hours of studying last night.”
“His brain really is an encyclopedia,” Maggie said, this time without any contempt or sarcasm. “Go on, Gordon. What should we do?”
“Well…, it’s not that simple. Killing them is actually the hard part. Again, Hollywood has misled us. Not even a bullet would kill them; they don’t have blood.”
“What about Mrs. Partridge?” Kit demanded. “She seemed to die pretty easily if you ask me!”
Gordon nodded. “She did. It’s my guess she was a pretty old zombie. I would say maybe even a thousand years old. Her insides had turned to jelly, and her brain was basically shrunk to near nothing. I’d say she was definitely on her way out already.”
“She sure looked ancient!” Maggie surmised.
“Yeah,” Gordon agreed, “but looks have nothing to do with how old they are. It is just an indicator of what time in their life they turned. She must have turned while well into her eighties.”
“And how does someone get turned?” Stella had to ask. A shiver went down her spine.
“Oh, I know the answer to this one!” Caleb raised his hand high in the air. “Okay, so… it means a zombie attacked them, but they escaped before their brains were eaten! Right? Right?”
Gordon agreed. “Precisely. So back to the topic of how to kill these things. They literally need to be torn to shreds and then their remains burned. The quickest way to finish the job is to blow them up, cause an explosion.”
“What, pray tell, happens if all their remains aren’t burned?” Maggie asked.
“You’ve seen The Addam’s Family?”
“Of course.”
“You know Thing?”
“What? The hand?”
“Yeah…”
Everyone got the picture.
Stella squirmed in her seat over the next question nagging at her. “Can zombies fall in love?” She knew it sounded absolutely ridiculous.
“I don’t see why not,” Gordon said, like it was a normal question. “They have a range of feelings, it seems. Hatred for me, being one of them.” He pointed at his black eye.
Kit cut in. “I don’t see how this is feasible. That we are going to somehow overpower some superhuman being, shred him to bits and light every piece of him on fire. I know I’m not comfortable with that. If this was as easy as a stake to the heart or a silver bullet, then sure. This is much more involved, though, and I’m not about to enlist some Jeffrey Dahmer onto our team to take care of the job, because I know none of you would be up to it either. Who here is willing to shred piece by piece something that looks like another human being? Raise your hand or say I.”
Everyone was silent. “The question we should be asking,” Maggie said, “is if we are willing to let this thing kill one of our friends.”
“Good point. Good point,” Caleb said. “I’d be willing shred it to bits to save you.”
“Ew,” Kit said.
“Someone’s got to do it,” he assured her.
“What makes you think you can shred a guy to bits?”
“Chainsaw Massacre?”
“Oh, gross! You guys, this sounds really dangerous. And I don’t trust Caleb with a chainsaw.”
“There’s only one other way…” Gordon stopped himself, shaking his head at the thought.
“What?” everyone asked.
“We find a werewolf.”
Maggie nodded like she knew that answer already.
“Oh, easy. We’ll just post some wanted ads around town on telephone poles,” Kit said sarcastically. “We’re in over our heads.”
“…Maybe not,” Gordon said.
“What do you mean?” Stella asked.
“I think we all know a werewolf.”
THIRTY-ONE
“You look beautiful,” said a woman. The stitches going all around her face looked more like baseball threads. “Is this your first?”
“First what?”
“Marriage,” she said.