That’s why her brother and his friends liked that movie. Well, Maddy kind of liked it too. Not just the boobies, though definitely when she dreamed about what it would be like to be older she always imagined herself hand-in-hand with her new best friend Kaylee, and never with that gross boy Zac from her class who always looked at her with his mouth open. No, Maddy liked the way the zombies fell apart when you shot them.
Blam!
Kaboom!
Blood and guts and gore, brains splattered all over the place, limbs flying. It wasn’t really like that in real life, though. Real people, she thought with a bit of scorn, held together better than the ones in movies.
The hanging men were starting to fall apart. The one on the far left, with the baseball cap, had been dangling a few feet above the floor originally, but now the toes of his bare feet— they’d taken his boots, because shoes were in shorter supply than other things, brushed the floor. When the overhead vent rattled on, sending a gust of stale-smelling air through the corridor, the three of them all started to twist. Slowly, slowly, so slow you wouldn’t notice unless you’d been staring at them for a long time the way she was.
The ropes creaked.
The one in the middle had pooped his pants. Maddy didn’t like to look at that, even if it was sort of funny. The one on the right was the only one she’d known, before. Now she stepped up to him, eyeing his tongue, which was stuck halfway out of his mouth.
The chairs they’d been forced to stand on were all still in the hall. Two of them were knocked onto their backs, but the third she pulled from its spot along the edge of the wall. She settled it in front of him, then sat on it to unlace her skates. In her sock feet, she hopped up on the chair to study him a little closer.
From her pocket, Maddy pulled a small sewing kit she’d pinched from one of the store rooms she’d passed along the way. The travel kits had been packaged for use in hotels and would be useful someday when the other supplies ran out. She should’ve been more scared to take it, considering she was staring at the face of a man who’d died for stealing from the complex, but Maddy didn’t worry too much about it. She was just a kid, after all. They didn’t kill kids.
The kit had a small piece of paper with needles and pins stuck into it. Three needles, each threaded with a length of different colors, white, black and navy blue. Six pins. There were a couple of buttons tucked beneath the paper, along with a few safety pins.
Maddy took the first needle from the package and looked at the dead man. Then she grabbed the edge of his tongue and pulled it out further to jam the needle, thread dangling, into it. His tongue already bristled with needles and pins, his cheeks adorned with buttons attached to the sagging flesh with safety pins, a few of them sewn directly with thread.
“You shouldn’t steal,” Maddy said solemnly. “And you shouldn’t touch little girls.”
She’d been saving the eyes but must’ve waited too long because when she twisted the biggest needle into it, the eyeball didn’t pop the way she’d imagined it would. A tiny bit of fluid leaked out and the needle sagged for a second before falling out. It hit the floor with a little “plink.”
He groaned.
She was startled but not scared — she’d seen the things outside, and he wasn’t one. It was the rope creaking again, rubbing at his throat and neck. His body weight was pulling him down, and when she tugged his tongue, it had shifted his body enough that the rope now dug so far into his skin she couldn’t see it. The man wasn’t groaning with his voice. It was the passage of air along the gash opening in his throat.
She studied this for a minute or two, waiting to see what would happen. Dad said bodies collected gas as they rotted. Dad had told them all stories of corpses groaning, twitching, some sitting up reflexively on the autopsy table. Maddy could believe anything was possible.
When nothing else happened, the man swinging slowly in silence next to his buddies, she frowned, disappointed, then got off the chair and returned it to its place along the wall. She looked for the fallen needle, but it had disappeared. Then she laced up her skates again and took off, moving fast and faster until she whipped past the doors so fast she couldn’t have seen through the windows even if the lights had been on inside the storage units.
She went all the way to the big double doors at the end. These were padlocked and also had blinking keypads beside them that needed a special code to open. Beyond the doors was more storage, of what, she didn’t know. Someday she thought she might find out, but it didn’t matter now. This was the end of her journey.
Not ready to go back even though it would soon be time for lunch, Maddy practiced spins and skating on one foot. She pretended she was one of those fancy ice skaters she used to watch on TV. She’d wear a costume with fluttery bits on it to make it look like flames, that would be cool. Her stomach was growling by the time she got back to the hanging men. Mom would wonder where she was, and if she missed their lunch slot she’d have to wait until dinner, so Maddy pushed off faster.
With the three blocking the corridor it was tricky getting through without touching any of them. She tried to slow herself but overshot and bounced off the wall a little, knocking into the man on the right. The body swung against its neighbor, setting it swinging harder into the one on the other side. Then back. Like that thing her dad used to have on his desk, the hanging metal balls. You lifted one and it hit the others, back and forth. That’s what the bodies did.
Except bodies weren’t made of metal.
With a sound like ripping wet paper towels, the man on the right’s head separated from the rest of him. The rest of him knocked Maddy to the ground. The stink of him was bad, but that’s not what made her choke and gasp and scream. It was the way his arms fell around her, how he pinned her to the floor.
She fought him the way she had that first time, but now when she kicked upward, instead of him doubling over in pain from a hit to the nuts, the man only sagged. Limp. Her skates made her feet too heavy to lift far. She jerked a bare knee but it sunk into him, sickly warm, with a squelch.
He had no head, no face, no mouth to try to kiss her with, but the torn edges of his neck and throat hit against her, spilling goo. She rolled as best she could, scrabbling in a panic at the floor. Her nails bent back, and that hurt so bad she screamed.
The body on top of her didn’t fight back when she clawed and kicked and fought. It fell apart, bit by bit, until at last she was able to get out from under it. Breathing hard, Maddy shuddered and spit out the taste of him, but it was all through her. She was covered in sludgy bits of hanged man.
Boy, was her mom gonna be mad.
43
“There’s one.” Borden pointed to the side of the road. “Hey Digger, should we stop?”
They were the last of the convoy, the cleanup crew when necessary, though at this point most of what people had started calling the Resurrected had been wiped out along the highways. They were easy enough to pick off, even though all those zombie movies had lied. A headshot wasn’t enough. You had to obliterate them. Burn them, and even then, the corpses kept walking. That’s why instead of guns, they had flamethrowers.
Digger wasn’t his real name, but his parents had owned a couple funeral homes and he’d joined the crew with the nickname already in place. He eased his foot off the gas, slowing the pickup truck to look out the window. “I guess we could.”
They weren’t Army, those trucks had all gone ahead. Dover Airforce Base was only an hour or so farther, maybe less because the roads were all closed to any traffic but government issue and those soldiers like to roll, and roll fast. He and Digger could easily keep going, nobody would notice.
Except…it was their job. Borden no longer really had any hopes of being paid. Shit had gone down, the world was a different place than it had been a few weeks ago. Still, it was no longer the money that motivated Borden. Food, shelter. Those were more important.That, and wiping out these freaks.
Digger had been closer to death for his whole life
, that’s what Borden figured, that’s why his partner had never seemed as moved by the act of putting these things down. Borden, on the other hand, had lost both parents, a sister and his girlfriend. First in the tornado that had ripped his town apart. Then in the aftermath when they all got sick and tore into each other like a pack of rabid dogs. He’d always known mom and Delia didn’t like Sandy, his girlfriend, and he’d half-expected there to be some hair-pulling someday. He’d never imagined his mother ripping Sandy’s hair clean out of her skull, or his sister holding her down while mom kicked her so hard in the face her teeth shattered.
Borden liked killing these things. They weren’t people anymore, he knew that much. Now as Digger pulled over to the side of the road, the truck ahead of them not slowing, Borden got out to heft his flamethrower.
“She’s dead,” Digger said like an authority. He spit to the side, a stream of brown from the chew he tucked between his cheek and gum.
Borden nudged the woman with his toe. She didn’t move. Face down in the sand by the side of the road, just a few inches from the sea grass covering the dunes, she had no age. Her hair fell over her shoulders in tangles, so filthy it was impossible to tell what color it had been. Her clothes were just as tattered. Her toes were nubs, no shoes. The sun had blistered the backs of her calves and thighs.
“Should we burn her up?”
Digger spit again. “Could set the grass on fire if we did that. It’s damned dry.”
“Weird fucking weather,” Borden agreed and nudged her again. Not a sound, not a twitch. “Think she’s one of ‘em?”
“Could be that crabs got her. Gulls. Look.” Digger pointed to the sky, awhirl with birds that had scattered when they pulled over. “Bet she tastes better than a French fry.”
At that, Borden swallowed a bitter sting of puke. “Christ, Digger. The fuck?”
Digger shrugged. “Just saying.”
“Should we burn her up, or not? If she is one of the Resurrected, she ain’t dead, not really.”
“She ain’t moving, neither.” Digger stretched and looked up at the sun, one eye squinted closed against the glare. “Can the sun burn a dead person?”
“Hell if I know. I heard stories about hair and nails growing after people die. Why couldn’t they get a sunburn, too?”
“That’s a myth. Just looks like the hair and nails grow because the skin shrinks.” Digger shot another stream of brown, hitting the sand close to the woman’s hand.
She didn’t move. Borden and Digger stared down at her for a few seconds in silence. Overhead, the gulls swooped and screamed and shit.
“We should burn her,” Borden said. “Make sure.”
Digger hissed a sigh. “You want to set this whole place on fire?”
“Does it matter? We got the bay on one side, the ocean on the other. It won’t go far.”
“You’ll kill all the wildlife and shit,” Digger said mildly. “And the fire could spread down to where the houses are.”
“Not like there’s people in them anymore,” Borden pointed out.
“You don’t know that.”
“Everyone was evacuated.”
Digger snorted. “Yeah? You think all them rich folks really left? No, they boarded up their houses and pulled down the hurricane shutters. They got the water protecting them good down here, not like in the cities. I bet a whole bunch of them houses have people in them, we just don’t know. And I don’t care, either. I’m getting my ass to the base and letting the Army take care of me from now on.”
It sounded good to Borden too. “What do I care then, if a bunch of millionaires get burned out of their mansions?”
“Man, why you gotta be such a hater,” Digger asked.
They stared solemnly at the body in the sand.
“She was someone’s daughter,” Digger said finally. “And look what happened to her.”
“We should burn her. Make sure she’s dead.”
“All these people,” Digger said with a shake of his head. “All these dead people. They should’ve been respected better.”
“Fuck that,” Borden snapped. “Did one of them come after you? Did you watch anyone’s face explode? Did they come at you with their fucking teeth, man?”
Digger turned dark eyes on him. He’d never said much. He’d never faltered when it came time to frying the fuck out of these things, which was why it surprised Borden now that he’d be so against it.
“She’s dead,” he said again. “She ain’t moving. If you blaze her up, you’re gonna catch all this grass on fire, and it will spread. Let’s just go. I’m hungry and I want to sleep in a bed tonight.”
That sounded pretty fucking fine to Borden, who’d woken with a crick in his neck for the past two weeks from sleeping in the back of the truck. A bed, some grub, a hot shower.
He looked again at the woman in the dirt. He kicked her in the ribs, tensing for the moment when she’d leap up at him, claws made of her fingers, and try to tear out his throat. She didn’t move.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”
44
Sneaking her messy, ruined clothes past her mom was going to be hard. Once upon a time, Maddy’d had a closet full of clothes, as many as she wanted, but she’d only brought one small suitcase with them to the complex. If things didn’t change, Dad had said, they’d get into the storage units and find her something new to wear, but for now she had to make do. She couldn’t get rid of them the way she’d done with the sneakers she’d ruined the day she and her old best friend had gone to play in the empty lot in her neighborhood. The ground had been all mud after two weeks straight of rain. She and Emma had thought it would be the most fun, ever, to fool around in the unfinished house. Well, Emma hadn’t thought so, but she always did what Maddy said, because otherwise Maddy would tell everyone that Emma sometimes still wet the bed.
The lot was toward the back of the neighborhood, in a dead end, with no other houses around it. Maddy’s dad had talked at dinner about how the builder ran out of money before he could finish the project, and how it was really too bad with the way the economy was, because Willow Acres was a really nice place to live and now the only way to finish it off would be if they made the houses cheap enough for white trash to move in.
Maddy had no idea what that meant, but she had perked up her ears when Dad started talking about the man’s family, how it was pretty sad for them because the builder had left behind a lot of debts after he “offed” himself. When she asked her dad what “offed” meant, he’d looked at her very seriously. He’d even taken off his glasses.
“It means he committed suicide, Maddy. That means he took his own life.”
“Killed himself,” Ev put in. “Totally gross. He shot himself —”
“Everett,” Dad said warningly. “We don’t take pleasure in the pain of others.”
But later, when Maddy bugged him about it, Ev had been glad to tell her all about how the builder was depressed because he wouldn’t be able to finish his house and pay back the banks, and also because his wife was running around on him, that’s what Ev said. So the guy went into the basement of the unfinished house on the dead-end street, and he shot himself in the face.
“There are bits of him still down there,” Ev said. “And you can see the outline of his face on the basement wall, from the shotgun blast. Like the shadows of those people from the bomb blast in Japan.”
He’d been learning about that in school. Maddy didn’t care much about a bomb that had gone off in the olden days in a country she’d never been too, but a guy’s face splattered on a basement wall? Totally cool.
Maddy waited until they were actually in the house to tell Emma that part of the story. She added some pieces to it. Not lies, though that’s what her teacher Mrs. Blum said she was good at — telling lies. Maddy’s dad said she was just creative and full of ideas, but that’s why next year she was going to be home schooled, because traditional education would try to stifle her.
“That didn’t happen,??
? Emma said with wide eyes when Maddy told her about the imprint of the face on the wall.
“Why don’t we go find out?”
Emma shook her head, backing away. “No, no way. No way am I going down there!”
But she would. Maddy would make her, because Emma didn’t want everyone to know she was a crybaby pee-pants, and because Emma also didn’t want anyone to know that she let Maddy kiss her with open mouth and tongue. Maddy didn’t have to say a word, all she did was look.
The house had two stories, a basement and a roof, but only the outside walls were finished. The inside of the house was still all open. There were no stairs, just a rickety ladder going into the basement. Maddy and Emma looked down the hole in the floor to the darkness below.
“You go first, Emma. I’ll be right behind you.” Maddy squeezed Emma’s hand. First soft. Then hard.
Really hard.
Maddy didn’t believe there really was a face on the basement wall. That was just a story Ev had made up to scare her. He still thought she could be scared. Silly Ev.
At the bottom of the ladder, Emma looked up, her eyes wide. Her face pale. “It’s all wet down here!”
Maddy found that out for herself a few minutes later when she went down. “Cooooool!”
All the rain had turned the basement into a swimming pool. Maddy sloshed her way through the knee-high, muddy water while Emma clung to the ladder, whining. Maddy hadn’t brought a flashlight or anything, so the only light came in through the basement’s two tiny windows and whatever filtered through the hole in the floor above them.
“I want to go home,” Emma said. “My mom’s gonna be mad.”