A Living Dead Love Story Series (57 page)

He asks me the same thing every night. I cluck my tongue and say each time: “Just checking up on you.
Aren't you about ready to clock out for the night?”

He shrugs. “Just making a few more observations.”

Right, with no clipboard, no pen, no sleek digital voice recorder, or so much as an Etch A Sketch to record his thoughts. I shuffle toward him. “What exactly are you observing?”

“This one here.” He juts his chin in Val's direction.

I shake my head wearily. As always, I'm eager to leave five seconds after I walk in. The tension in the air is palpable. I've been in the room less than two minutes, and already my neck is sore from watching my back.

I hate being in the presence of Val, hate talking in front of her, hate that Dad has to spend so much time with her and, what's worse, doesn't seem to mind it all that much.

Doesn't he remember what happened back in Barracuda Bay? The harm she caused? What she wanted to do to him? What she wanted to do to
me
? What she did to Stamp? Then again, maybe that's why he's so obsessed with her. As he always used to say, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

I wave a hand in front of his face. “She'll still be there in the morning.”

He looks at me then, gaze far away, face paler than usual, chin covered with two days of salt-and-pepper stubble. “Let's hope so.”

Finally, I smile. He has to be kidding. I rap a gray knuckle against the solid bars of her cage, yanking back quickly as she saunters forward to investigate. “She may be immortal, but she's no superhero.”

Dad nods, unconvinced. “Did you hear that rage just now?”

“Everyone in Sentinel City heard it.”

He's nodding fast. “That's what I mean. You can't contain fury like that. It
will
get out.”

“Yeah, with a blowtorch, a forklift, and the cast of
The Expendables
, maybe.”

He looks at me, like maybe he's disappointed I'm not taking him more seriously. “Why do you think they keep her here? With me, I mean? Why not just incinerate her in her own device?”

He cocks his head toward the tanning booth from Cabana Charly's in the corner, a dangerous relic where the tubes full of undiluted avotoxia are still hooked up and juiced, just in case the Sentinels decide to do just that.

I shrug. “Sentimental, I guess?”

Dad snorts, a sound from our old life. I think of how many times we stood in our kitchen back home, talking just like this, minus the cages and Zerkers and rage in the air here. “They want to know how these Zerkers tick. And so do I.”

I should care more, I guess, but I know how they tick. The same way cockroaches and spiders and sharks and other killers tick: on cold instinct.

See happy? Squash it.

See good? Kill it.

See Maddy and anyone she loves? End them.

I sigh. “So you're not going to bed, then?”

He smiles, wrinkles creasing around his tired eyes. “Not just yet, dear.”

“Come on. You've been at it ever since we got back from Barracuda Bay. It's the same thing every night. She screams, you stare at her, the rest of us get freaked out. How about you skip the ‘you stare at her' part and fast-forward to tomorrow?”

Dad nods, clearly with no intention of budging. “I'm interested in what she'll have to say when she stops screaming.”

I look back at Val, into these deep dark eyes, so yellow and angry and, after all we've been through, far too familiar. I resist the urge to shiver and instead lean to kiss Dad on the cheek. His skin is so warm I just want to stay there by his side all night, as if I were rubbing my hands over a campfire. But I can feel the stiffness in his posture, the impatience in his breath. He just wants to watch and watch and watch.

Not for the first time, I regret letting Val live.

I shuffle toward Stamp, steering clear of Val's cage. “Stamp?”

He looks toward me as if he figured I'd just walk on by without even saying good night. “Hi,” he says, and I wonder if he's forgotten my name again. His face is blank, with hints of something at the corners of his lips. Happiness? Confusion? Sadness? Gladness? “Maddy,” he adds, but I catch him looking at Dad, who's leaning against the counter, pretending I haven't caught him in the act of prompting Stamp.

I turn back, smiling. “You okay in there?”

Stamp shrugs. “I'd be better if this girl would stop screaming all the time.”

“She will.”

Val chuckles, then clears her throat.

I know what's coming.

Stamp knows what's coming. He inches closer, curling a finger for me to draw near.

I do, even though I know I can't give him the answer he so desperately wants.

“Can you . . . can you get me out of here?”

“Soon, Stamp,” I say, fake smile fixed on. “Soon . . .”

He smiles, as if he really believes me. As he believed me last night and the night before that.

I smile too because the only good thing about the new Stamp—besides the fact that, you know, he's still here—is that he's too slow to realize when I'm lying.

W
hen do I
get the pen?” I grunt, shoving another ice pick into another waxy rubber ear. I follow it up with a lightning-quick slash across the CPR dummy's throat with a six-inch blade.

After a pause and the snap of the last centimeter of grody yellow artificial neck skin, the dummy's head slips onto the floor, joining at least half a dozen more.

Vera shakes her head humorlessly. “I've told you a thousand times: you have to earn the pen!”

I pause, looking at the smattering of heads along the smooth gym floor, some of them literally still rolling. “You're telling me
that
's not worth a lousy electric pen?”

Vera shakes her head, stiff and serene in her crisp, blue Keeper fatigues and clearly unimpressed with my mad Zerker-killing skills. Her arm, the arm I broke not long after we met, is better now. Not perfect—you can still see it resting at an odd angle if she's standing just the right way—but better.

“Pens are for Keepers,” she tells me for about the two thousand eight hundred seventy-fourth time. “Trainees get the Eliminator. Isn't that enough?”

Eliminator! I love that. She's speaking, of course, about the weapon in my hand. The rubber grip fits perfectly in my palm and, with a quick press of the black button on each end, the scalpel blade and ice pick retract.

It is a nifty weapon, no doubt, and appropriately named. If you're trying to eliminate human-munching Zerkers with their thick hides and general fondness for their heads, yeah, there's no better tool. A quick ice pick to the ear and, snap—out go the lights as the point jams through the brain, shutting one down forever. A razor-sharp blade to dislodge the head, just to be sure, and boom: no more Zerker.

But there's one weapon to rule them all: the
supersonic
, bad-to-the-bone, James Bondesque electrified ballpoint pen Vera keeps on her at all times.

I put the Eliminator in a pocket of my gray fatigues. (You don't get to wear blue until you're an actual Keeper, and gray is about the only color left around this dump.) I slump onto the bench along the wall. “Well, not to sound like an ungrateful brat, but how long does this training last?”

I'm not physically tired. That rarely happens unless I go without brains for too long, which is practically an impossibility here in Sentinel City. I'm just tired of waiting.

Always, always waiting. Back in Barracuda Bay, I waited for the Zerkers to strike. Back in Orlando, I waited for the Sentinels to find us. And now, since they brought us here, to this training center for Keepers and Sentinels, I've been waiting to become one or the other, to get out of here and put my Zerker-killing skills to the test. And since the Sentinels are pretty much a sausagefest, as in no girls allowed, it's either become a Keeper or Sentinel Support or bust.

Vera leans against the gym wall, fingering an unnecessary cotton towel absently. “How long do you think your training should take?”

I groan some more, tapping the back of my head several times against the blue cinder block wall behind me. “Not again with the Jedi mind tricks.”

She makes that Vera face: head cocked, forehead unlined, eyes nearly closed, lips slightly parted, meaning,
Explain yourself, girl.

So I do. “I mean, don't tease me with your half answers. Isn't there some chart somewhere that says if so-and-so trains for such and such a time, they become a Keeper?”

She offers a low, quiet chuckle. “If there were, don't you think I'd have told you about it by now?”

I snort.

She's answered another question with a question. I don't know if she's doing it unconsciously or if she's just some mad genius, majoring in reverse psychology.

“Okay, maybe there is no chart but, man, haven't I been doing this long enough?”

“How long do you think you've been doing it?”

“Months now. Years, even.”

At last, a smile. Few things are as bright in Sentinel City as Vera's smile. “Six months, to be exact.”

God, has it been that long since we captured Val and brought her back here?

She wags a lecturing finger. “But you've been a Trainee for only three, don't forget.”

“How could I?” I look at my gray fatigues, where a big black
T
is stitched on every possible pocket flap, collar, and sleeve.

Vera points to a supply closet full of dummies. “One more round?”

I shake my head and raise my palms in surrender.

“You know, the more you train, the closer you get to your goal.”

“I don't know if it is my goal anymore,” I say, holding a hand out for her help.

She frowns but takes it anyway. She is small but powerful with all her hidden reserves of fiery anger. Her once-black skin is now ashy like mine.

“What else would you do?” she asks on our way across the gym floor, picking up heads and dumping them in a mesh bag like Coach Potter used to do with the dodge balls after PE back at Barracuda Bay High.

“I don't know,” I say, holding up a rubber face for emphasis. “Melt the heads back onto the dummies?”

“Be serious,” she scolds, like a French tutor who's not paid enough per hour. “That's not a goal. That's a chore.”

“Somebody has to do it.” I put the mesh bag into the supply closet, where by magic someone from Sentinel Support will pick them up, melt them back onto the dummies, and line them all up for tomorrow's practice. “Why is that less useful than anything a Sentinel does? Or a Keeper, for that matter?”

She looks vaguely offended. “It's a great honor to be a Keeper. Do you think what I do is unimportant?”

We pause by the locker room door, where we'll part for the day.

“I have no idea what you do, other than ride me all day.”

She tut-tuts. “Just as someone rode me all day once upon a time many years ago.”

I pounce at the chance to find out how old she is. Keepers, I've found, even regular zombies, are protective of their ages. “Yes, but how many years ago?”

“Finish your training,” she says, rolling her black eyes, “and you might find out.”

I groan. “Okay, well, can you tell me if I'm at least close to being done?”

She winks, a rarity. “Look at it this way: you're one day closer than you were yesterday.”

She turns, her generic black sneakers squeaking.

“Thanks for nothing,” I call.

She takes a few stiff steps across the giant gymnasium, dotted now with a dozen headless torsos.

She takes a gray hand out of a pocket and waves backward. “You'll thank me one day,” she says without turning around, her voice echoing.

I frown and shoulder the locker room door open. I don't need a shower, exactly. I don't sweat and, by now, lopping the rubber heads off stationary dummies isn't exactly taxing. Still, some things you do just to feel human again, if only for a little while and even if they don't make sense.

I open my locker and slip out of my gray
fatigues
, carefully folding them on the bench behind me. Inside the locker is a pink towel, some cherry bodywash, and a washcloth with strawberries all over it. I don't know who shops for this stuff, but the girls' supply shed looks like it was stocked by a gaggle of ten-year-old Girl Scouts whose troop
leader
was either Strawberry Shortcake or a My
Little
Pony. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Even zombies need girly stuff every now and then. But they could stand to take the edible-red-fruit theme down a notch or two.

There are eight metal towers in the shower pit, with rounded tops and four spigots surrounding each. I press the cold water button because there is no hot water in Sentinel City.

Even the cold water feels warm on my skin. The cherry bodywash smells supersweet and comes out red, the foam it creates turning pink as I lather it all over my gray skin. I spritz some on my hand and rub it against my close-cropped scalp.

They had my longish black hair cut when I first entered Keeper training three months back. No explanation, no questions, just sit in this chair and watch your hair get snipped off, like something out of a boot camp training film.

They tell me as long as I eat fresh brains on the regular, it will grow back eventually, but it still looks just about the same. It feels good, though, stiff and scratchy under my hand as I wash my skin and rinse it all off. The pink foam swirls around the drain, and I linger under the spray.

This is pretty much it for the day, as far as excitement goes. Stamp is still a little delayed, as Dad so delicately puts it. Dane is distracted, as I like to put it. So that leaves me, myself, and I for the duration.