The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious

  She had enough water for two or three days and now we’re almost out, though we rationed. Killing zombies makes you thirsty. I’ve checked every relatively safe spot of every floor except one, and so far there’s no water to be found. Grace shows no signs of leaving. I remind myself that this is my fault. I’m not big on Confession, but I’m doing my best to perform an act of contrition worthy of my sin.

  I read a book and eye the water in the bottom of my bottle. Two inches left. I tiptoe into the bedroom. “Grace?” The mound of blankets on the bed moves, sighs. “I’m going to see if I can find some water again, okay? We don’t have enough to stay much longer.”

  A hand comes up through the striped duvet cover and waves me on my way. I don my gloves and leave for the hall. I want to scream, or at least mutter to myself, and neither one is a good idea. Grace is killing us both. Maybe she wants to die, but I don’t. I want to go home.

  It’s starting to feel unreal. Like my belonging anywhere was a fantasy I cooked up in a barren, lonely world. “They’re real,” I whisper.

  I’m talking to myself. This is not good. I’ll give Grace until tomorrow and then insist we go. We can leave a note.

  ***

  The third floor is the only remaining floor I can get onto without dying immediately. The hall is bare, as are most of the apartments, of both zombies and food. I’m sure Logan visited every one of these at some point, barring the one at the end of the hall. I knock on the door and something slams back. It sounds like only one. I can take one.

  I steel myself and turn the knob, thinking it’ll be locked, but the door moves inward and is pushed shut again. I give the now-wild zombie a minute to calm and shove open the door. It falls to the floor—a teenage girl about my size, with dyed black hair and an extra helping of black eyeliner. My chisel sinks through the center of her face in a sick crunch that jars my neck; I was aiming for her eye until she moved.

  I spin at a hiss from my left, but the coming body slams me to the wall before I can run. He’s older than the girl, bigger, with preppy blond hair that swoops over his forehead and high cheekbones that peek through putrefied flesh. I duck out from under him, but he blocks the door. I amend my plan and run for the couch far across the large room, where I can strike from above.

  Halfway there, my foot catches the edge of the large area rug. I trip forward, spinning my arms to stay upright. My chisel flies from my hand. I’m going down, but if I land facedown with him on top, I’m done. I manage to twist and hit the floor back-first with a thud that jostles my brain. His head smashes into my stomach and he slithers up my torso. I wedge my left forearm under his chin before he reaches the exposed skin of my neck and face and buck to no effect. He has extra weight and more strength and no fear to slow him down.

  My right arm is pinned at my side. His elbow grinds into my biceps until my hand goes numb. His mouth gapes above my arm, his teeth chinked with flesh he didn’t swallow, and it’s close enough to taste his rotten breath. If I had a weapon, this would be over. My chisel isn’t far—the handle peeks out from just under the couch with the dust bunnies—but it might as well be a mile with all the hope I have of reaching it.

  He lifts his head and sinks his teeth into my forearm. Pain blossoms all the way to bone, even without breaking skin, but enough grinding and they’ll make it through the leather. Maybe they already have. A shriek builds and then rips from deep in my chest. More follow, one after the other, as keening and desperate as any I’ve heard. I can’t make them stop.

  I’m going to die. Right here, right now. This screaming and the roar in my ears and my utter powerlessness are the horror of being eaten alive.

  He shifts. My right arm frees. I use my weakened hand to push at his forehead until his teeth come loose, then I twist out from under him and drag myself to my knees. There’s no time to get to my feet. No energy to get to my feet. I crawl for my chisel and he crawls after me—prep school boy turned nightmare.

  I can hardly breathe for the fear I’ll miss my chisel. I’ll go for the handle with my numb hand and it’ll skitter all the way beneath the couch. My purple-gloved fingers reach out, and I will them to get this right. I’m dead if they don’t.

  They curl around the wooden handle. I take it up two-handed and hack into his head with more screams, though I’m not sure I ever stopped. I bring my chisel down over and over, until there’s more brain on the rug than in his skull, and then sink to the floor beside his body. I can’t summon the strength to move. I’m sure Grace doesn’t miss me. My eyes roam over the pictures of the girl and boy with their parents. She was blond as a little girl, like the rest of them.

  In the end, thirst gets me to my feet. A gallon jug of water sits on the kitchen counter. Maybe they were waiting for their parents. I remove my gloves, open the top and gulp down the liquid. That was the most scared I’ve ever been, alone and struggling with that boy on the sisal rug, wondering if I’d die. And if Grace would care if I did. If anyone would.

  I head into the girl’s room. Everything is black—the clothes, the comforter, the shoes, the Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees posters. She was Goth in a big way. I find a pair of broken-in boots in my size. Black, of course, with silver buckles and steel toes. New jeans and an extra shirt. I don’t think I’ll have need of the fishnet stockings or black corset, so I take the jug of water, their jar of peanut butter and bag of stale pretzel sticks, and leave.

  In the apartment, Grace has come out of hiding to rest her head against one of the large living room windows. She doesn’t ask where I’ve been or why I’ve changed clothes.

  “I found water,” I say, my voice raspy from my raw throat. “Are you hungry?”

  Her head squeaks on the glass as it moves back and forth. I dip a pretzel into the peanut butter. Grace doesn’t move. Finally, I tire of watching her at the window and open a book.

  ***

  I wake before dawn and listen to Grace in her bedroom. Every sob is an accusation. The sky turns gray, then yellow-orange, then a dusty blue with ugly yellow clouds. I pull the blanket over my head, already aware I don’t have the courage to ask her to leave today. I shut my eyes. If I fall asleep, I won’t have to think about it.

  When I wake again, the sun is overhead. The battery-run clock says one o’clock. Grace was up; the can of beans has been opened and now sits in the sink. She’s eating. I use the toilet in the apartment next door, since we can’t flush, and read. Next time she ventures out, I’ll tell her we have to leave tomorrow.

  Finally, at seven o’clock, she resurfaces. Her hair is knotted and her puffy eyes move over me without interest. She uses the apartment bathroom and shuffles toward her bedroom.

  “Grace?” Her pajama-clad legs stop and she stands with her back to me, waiting. “I wrote a note about Sunset Park so they can find us. I think…we need to leave tomorrow. We don’t have enough water, and we’ll need some to get back.”

  Her slight shoulders rise and fall. Then her head moves up and down before she walks into her room and shuts the door.

  At first light, I’m ready and wondering if Grace will show when she comes out in her clothes and backpack. She walks to the table and sets a piece of paper facedown next to my note.

  “They’re not alive,” Grace whispers. She wraps her arms around her waist and keeps her eyes on the table. “I know they aren’t.”

  People are alive. We’re alive. Maybe in a week, a month, a year, she should decide they’re gone, but not just yet. I touch her shoulder. “Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”

  She pulls away with a look of such loathing that I shrink from her. “Don’t tell me what I know.”

  “I just meant that—”

  “If I hadn’t been at the hospital with you, I would’ve been with Logan. I would be with my parents.” Her voice is venomous and she gives a harsh little laugh. “You don’t have anybody, Sylvie. You never have. You don’t have any idea what this is like.”

  Everything—the eagerness to go back, the belief
that I belong there—coalesces into a rock in my stomach. Even if I’ve thought it, even if I told myself that she thought it, I don’t know that I believed she did. I didn’t trick her into coming to the hospital. I never would have done that to her, even if she is all I have.

  I tell myself this is grief coming out as anger. I’m an easy target. But she’s taken the one thing that hurts more than anything and used it against me. I want to say a million awful things, but I will the tears from my eyes and open the door.

  She follows, not that I wait to see.

  Chapter 79

  The way back is a blur. I’m not sure I want to go there, but we don’t have a lot of choices. I wanted to believe that I could be different, but this is what happens when you do away with your armor. After all these years of holding that particular dagger, Grace has rammed it home.

  If Grace had been with Logan, with her family, she’d be where they are, and it doesn’t look as if they’ve made it. But Grace is right: I don’t know how it feels. Maybe she’d rather be dead. Anything, as long as she’s with them. The fury makes the uphill ride easy. I zip past the remains of houses, zombies and motionless bodies—blur, blur and blur.

  We cross the final avenues and wheel our bikes and ourselves into the yard. I jump at Grace’s hand on my shoulder. I’ve barely looked at her except to make sure she’s alive. She stands behind me, tear-stained and wiping her nose with a balled-up tissue. “I’m sorry, Syls. I didn’t mean that.”

  I want to forgive her, but she’s crossed into no man’s land. I’ve always been painfully aware that no one loves me best. I know it and she knows it, but sometimes your sanity is predicated on pretending something isn’t true, and to have her say it aloud is the ultimate betrayal. It says I deserved my shitty mother and absent father, that no one else has ever loved me. That I’m unlovable—that my biggest fear, and what I’ve always suspected, is true.

  At least I’m used to the feeling. This is new for Grace, and a small, mean part of me wants her to know how badly it hurts. I focus on the wall I can put between me and the hurt. Grace doesn’t have that wall. “You were right,” I say with a shrug.

  She shakes her head. “I—”

  “You were. Not a single person gives a shit if I live or die. And now you know how it feels.”

  Grace flinches from the wound I’ve inflicted. Her face crumples. I stalk toward our brownstone, already regretful but unwilling to apologize. If you hurt me, you get hurt. Self-preservation is something I’ve mastered.

  The back door slams open and everyone spills out. Maria, Eric and Jorge wear coats and gloves. Leo runs to grab my legs in a hug. I pat his head and don’t look at the others. I don’t like myself very much right now, and I know they wouldn’t like me either—this me, the real me. I gently disengage from Leo’s grip. “I have to go, squirt.”

  I sidestep everyone and head to the roof. I don’t want to use the outside ladder, so it involves going through Eric’s bedroom, where I want to laugh at having entertained the thought I could have a normal relationship. It’s those tricky middles—I did have a middle with Grace, a long one, and I still managed to tack on an explosive ending.

  I watch the city skyline while I hold back tears. I’m not sure if they’re tears of anger, sadness, or frustration. Maybe all of the above. Footsteps sound on the tar paper and then Eric sits beside me, arms on his knees.

  “I like to go up high to think,” he says. “A new perspective, you know?” I don’t answer. “I guess you didn’t find them.”

  I shake my head and keep my eyes on the view. I need to get away from here. I could live at Guillermo’s, but that might not be far enough. Maybe I can get to Manhattan somehow. Stuyvesant Town. Find people who don’t know anything about me and be a different person.

  “What’s going on with you and Grace?” he asks. “You shouldn’t be fighting now.”

  The last part is said in a helpful fashion. Like I don’t already know this and decided to pick a fight with Grace for fun. I turn to him. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture. You can sit here or you can leave, but don’t talk about shit you know nothing about.”

  I’d hoped it would make him retreat, but he shows no sign of movement, or even annoyance. “Duly noted. Don’t talk about Grace.”

  I go back to imagining who I could be. A marine biologist, maybe, but then they’d want all kinds of fish expertise I don’t have. A maker of artisanal cheese because they can’t possibly have cows. But they might, and I’d be screwed. Maybe a party clown—they’d never believe that one after a minute in my company.

  “So, what can I talk about?” he asks.

  “I don’t care.”

  “You do care, obviously. So, before I make another social gaffe, I was hoping we could cover all the unmentionable topics.”

  He’s doing it again—finding a way past whatever wall I’ve thrown up. But I want to stay back here for now. I close my eyes. “Eric, please, just go away.”

  “No. I’m bored. Maria’s with Grace, Jorge went to Guillermo’s to tell them you were back, and Paul isn’t as sparkling a conversationalist as you.”

  “What are you, three years old? Read a book. Dig up some grass. Build a bridge out of the city using popsicle sticks. I’m sure you can find something to do.”

  Eric’s chuckle takes me by surprise. I try not to smile. I think there might be a gate in the wall with his name on it, and only he knows the location. “We were coming to look for you and Grace,” he says. “In fact, if you’d been ten minutes later, you would’ve missed us.”

  They were coming for us, for me. “Why?”

  “Because we were worried. Because we want you here.” He pauses a beat. “Because I want you here.”

  His words fill me with promise at the same time as they make me want to run far away. I want to hide from the middle part even though—and maybe because—I want it more than anything. This could be my final opportunity to make something good; I don’t want to fuck it up. I don’t think I could stand to fuck it up, and in that case it’s better not to take the chance. I can’t fail if I don’t try.

  I have no response, witty or otherwise, so I ask, “Did you look at our words?”

  “Only the one on the day you left. It was Peripeteia: a sudden or unexpected reversal of fortune or turn of events. Like all of us ending up here when we should be dead.”

  “Except it’s usually in reference to a tragic literary work. The turning point where everything goes to shit.”

  “Really?” he asks with a groan that’s equal parts laugh and sigh. “Well, that’s not what it means for us.”

  I think we’re likely heading for the tragic definition, but I hope not. I care what happens to these people I’ve known for such a short time. Somewhere along the way they’ve lit a flame in my heart, and while I’d appreciate a shot of vodka right about now, I don’t need it for that.

  “Did you use it?” I ask.

  “It wouldn’t be any fun without you.”

  “You and Paul could’ve played.”

  I wish I didn’t have to argue. To be so needy. I can receive confirmation that something is good, believe it’s good, and then a minute later it’s as if it never happened. Grace was right when she said I test and test people until they give up. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to be given up on.

  “Paul isn’t into word games,” Eric says, his voice light. “But, you know, he’s like family.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It is nice. Which is why you and Grace shouldn’t be fighting. You need each other, especially now.” He raises a hand at my warning glance. “I know I’m not allowed to discuss it, but I had to say that.”

  “She doesn’t need me.” I press my lips together once the words slip out. Written words can be edited and polished and thrown away without ever seeing the light of day. Spoken words are different—once they’re drifting out there in the breeze you can’t call them back.

  “Yes, she does. I’ve been watching you. Whenever s
he looks upset, you make her smile. I don’t think you know how much she depends on you.”

  “You’ve been watching me? That’s creepy.”

  Eric elbows me. “What happened out there?”

  I’m silent.

  “Right. Unmentionable. Oh, random question I wanted to ask. You never told me—do you write stuff that’s not for corporations?”

  I give him the blank stare. Eric is not to be deterred, this much is obvious. He throws out a smile that assures me he knows just how annoying he is and asks, “Is this another one of those unmentionable topics? Maybe we should backtrack. Start at the other end and lay out the mentionable topics first.”

  I look away, but I can feel his gaze. I wrap my arms around my knees and inspect my new boots. “Every part of your body screams go away,” he says. “Even a zombie wouldn’t mess with you right now.”

  “So it’s working?”

  “It’s not. I’m still here.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

  His deep laugh rings out. “We’re going to be friends, Sylvie.”

  “I don’t need friends.”

  “Everyone needs friends. And family.”

  “But not everyone has them,” I whisper. There go some more words out into the universe. It started with the night I had to talk to him and now I can’t shut my mouth.

  “No, not everyone does,” he says quietly. “But you can make them. Jorge showed us his coin. I don’t think you know how much it means to him. And Maria was beside herself when you were gone.”

  I don’t answer, though a tingly warmth flows through me. There are threads between me and the others, and I want to see where they go. Maybe, like a spider spinning a web, I can create more and more until they’re sturdier and intertwined. It strikes me that for the first time ever, I have something when Grace doesn’t. She has this, too, but the loss of what she had before might be too great to appreciate it. There’s no satisfaction in getting a leg up on her. I want her to be part of this. I want to hold on to this feeling and not revert to thinking I mean nothing to them, or to anyone.