Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One) (10 page)

“I don't see why you're
so upset,” Casey said, following her inside the museum.
“He's just some guy.”

“Just some guy?” Jenny said.
“Just some guy who nearly got you killed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He told you I was in the subway, didn't
he?” she said.

“Yeah, but you
were
in the subway. Later, I mean. He's just a
dude who hears stuff.”

“We'll see about that,” she
said.

The Thirteen were sitting around, Grayson and
Fisher poring through a dusty pile of what looked like medical
books. Trix was sitting nearby and was in mid-eye-roll when Jenny
came in.

“Who's your Deep Throat?” Jenny
demanded.

“Deep Throat?” said Fisher. Trix
snorted, but looked away when Jenny leveled a glare at her.

She could feel the animals moving around
underneath them and felt a pang of hunger.

“Why are you covered in blood?” said
Trix.

“I killed someone,” said Jenny.
“It was an accident.”

“Someone?” said Fisher.

“Some piece of shit prowler,” said
Jenny. “He was talking about raping rotters.”

“Eww,” said Trix.

“Deep Throat,” said Jenny.

“Can you, oh, I don't know, elaborate a
little?” said Grayson, a smirk on his face and a book resting
in his lap. “Tell me more about this Deep Throat.”

“It's not a fucking joke,” Jenny
growled. Grayson held his hands up.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's try
this. What the fuck are you talking about, Jenny?”

Jenny rounded on Casey. “The guy who's
been feeding you all information,” she said. “Who is
he? He told you I was in that subway before I even knew I was going
there. He told you Declan was bad. He even told you to come to
Chicago. If I had to guess I would even say it was...” Jenny
froze. It couldn't be.

“Look, he never gave his name,” said
Casey. “He just knew all this shit about us, so we figured he
knew what he was talking about.”

“Did he have a ponytail?” said
Jenny, keeping her voice level.

“Yeah,” said Trix.

“A big potbelly?” Jenny said, trying
not to cringe.

“How did you know that?” said
Casey.

“He's a little shorter than me,”
Jenny said. “He wears bifocals to read. He looks like a
kindly uncle, but you get a weird feeling around him. Like
something's not quite right.”

“Shit,” said Fisher. “You know
him better than we do. You know his name, too?”

Jenny sighed, her hunger gnawing her belly
raw.

“Sully,” she said. “His name
is Sully.” Jenny was suddenly very dizzy. Her vision flashed
red and threatened to encompass her again. So soon. She felt like
she'd eaten moments ago, and yet she was starving again. Her teeth
ground together without her even consciously doing it.

“You need to go to the basement,
Jen,” said Casey. “You need to learn to live off
animals.”

“We all have to do it,” said Fisher.
“It's not pleasant, but it's necessary.”

“I don't want to eat a fucking live
animal,” Jenny said. “What happens if I eat regular
food?”

“It's not pretty,” said Grayson.
“It rots inside you. It just stays there. It tastes like
ashes in your mouth and then you can taste the mold for weeks. It's
all you can taste. But the worst part is the pain.”

“Sounds like you're speaking from
experience,” Jenny said.

“When I was new,” he said. “I
was like you.” It was the first time Grayson had spoken to
her in a way that wasn't sarcastic. “I didn't want to eat an
animal, let alone a human being. The thought made me physically
ill. My skin was starting to rot off my arms. I don't even know
what my face looked like. So I ate a can of corned beef hash, I
think it was. When Fisher found me I was curled up under a truck. I
can't ever remember being that sick when I was alive. I think it
might have killed me if I was still breathing. Trust me. No matter
how much you want to, eating regular food is not in the cards for
us.”

“I don't have time for this,” Jenny
said, forcing herself to her feet. “I have to find
Sully.”

“This guy Sully can wait,” said
Fisher. “What's so important about him anyway?”

Jenny didn't fight him as he took her arm, even
though she wanted to. She knew she had to do this. She had to eat.
She couldn't eat another person. The asshole she'd killed might
have been bad, but maybe the next person wouldn't. She had to learn
to live with this...affliction. She also had to talk to Sully. And
if she didn't like what she heard, she didn't want to be hungry
when she found him. She didn't know what she was capable of with
him. She had thought Sully was a friend. She closed her eyes.

“He's the reason I died,” she said.
She opened her eyes and saw her brother watching her. Everyone's
eyes were on her. She tried for a smile. “Lead the way to the
goats,” she said. “I guess I'll have mine
rare.”

It was bad, but not as bad as she thought it
would be.

The animals were kept in the sub-basement. She
could feel them becoming frantic when the others went down. She
waited in a side room, which smelled like old blood. She could see
smears on the off-white walls and the brown and white checkered
tile of the floor. On the metal shelves that had once been stocked
with supplies, there were still some boxes sitting on the top
shelf.

The door opened and Fisher came in, carrying a
clearly terrified goat in his arms. It was bleating loudly, its
eyes rolling in its head, trying unsuccessfully to escape Fisher's
firm hold on it. Jenny looked at Fisher.

“I can't,” she said.

“Were you a vegetarian before?” he
said, tensing as the goat made another valiant scramble to kick
him. He held the animal's legs.

“My meat didn't move around,” she
said. “It didn't scream either.”

“What about the guy you just ate?”
he said. “Did he hold still for you?” He seemed like he
was leveling with her. “I know it was an accident, and I'm
not judging you. I know this is hard. But it has to be done. If you
don't get used to the goats, you're going to hurt someone. And
trust me, it's a lot harder to live with hurting someone you care
about than the memory of hurting a goat.”

Jenny thought about Declan. She wondered if she
would have hurt him if she hadn't attacked the prowler. She
wondered if Declan would have fought back, or if he would have let
her kill him. Jenny shuddered.

“You can go for the throat,” he
said. “You have to eat fast, because once it's dead, it's no
use to you. Once you start, though, you forget what it is you're
doing. That first drop of blood is all you need.”

She looked at the goat. It was practically
shrieking, its body shaking and trying to kick at Fisher with its
bony legs.

“He's going to have a heart attack if you
don't do something,” Fisher said.

Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. “How do I
start?”

“Just grab it,” he said. “The
rest comes naturally.”

“I don't want to do this,” she
said.

“I know,” said Fisher. “But
it's for the best. You'll thank me later.”

Jenny stepped up to the animal. It stilled for a
moment when it saw her there, then, its nostrils flaring, it
struggled even more.

“I'm sorry,” Jenny said to it. The
truth was, the hunger was too much to handle with the animal so
close. She blinked red away. The gnawing feeling was so painful
that she fought the urge to clutch at her chest. And there was a
scent in the air that wasn't like livestock. It smelled like food.
She reached out shaking fingers to grasp the animal, her hand going
to its throat. Under soft fur she could feel blood pumping, a pulse
throbbing, a heart beating. She couldn't hear its screams any
longer. Something like wind was in her ears. A noise guttural and
primal escaped her lips.

She wanted this.

Without even realizing she had done it, her hand
was clenching the meat at the goat's throat and she had her face
buried there. She felt the thick, meaty blood spurting down her
throat. She felt awake. Alive. She tore meat away and it calmed her
as it went down. She felt a tingling all over her body. Her skin
felt strange, as if electricity were flowing through her.

When the goat was dead, she knew it. She looked
down at the animal in surprise, coming out of a trance. She had
cleaned the meat completely off the animal's neck and one shoulder,
as well as down one ribcage. Jenny stepped away, staring at what
she had done. There was blood on her lips. She licked them even
though she hated herself a little for it.

The whooshing sound in her ears stopped. She had
come back to reality.

“See?” said Fisher, dropping the
carcass. “Nothing to it.”

Jenny wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
It came away red. She stared at the dead thing on the floor. She
felt oddly comforted by the sight of it.

“How do you feel?” said Fisher.

“Scared,” she said.

“But?”

“It's different,” she said.
“The animal is different from the...the person. I felt more
in control.”

“You can't afford to feel anything
else,” said Fisher. “You can't lose control. Not ever.
Don't think of it as killing an animal. Think of it as saving a
human being. Because, like it or not, you'd end up killing another
person if you didn't eat this little guy.” He nudged the
carcass with the toe of his boot. “You can't help it. It's
your nature now. The red takes you places you don't want to go. The
hard part is coming to terms with that. Finding a sort of uneasy
peace.”

“Have you found it?” said Jenny.
“An uneasy peace?”

“In my own way, I think I have,”
said Fisher. He looked at her ruined clothes. “You'd better
go get cleaned up. I'll take care of this mess.”

Jenny nodded. “Okay.” She started
for the door, then turned to look at Fisher. “Thank
you.”

“No problem,” he said.

“You're not like I thought you'd
be.”

“You expected a meathead?” he said.
“So to speak.”

“I don't know what I expected,” she
said.

He smiled. “I like you, too,
Jenny.”

She opened the door and made her way to the
washroom.

There was a mirror in the bathroom Jenny hadn't
noticed before. She turned away from it, afraid of what she'd see.
She took off her clothes and rinsed them, hanging them on metal rod
set into the wall. Then she rinsed herself off. The blood was
drying, and smeared when she rubbed at it, turning the water dark.
She put her still-wet clothes back on. It wasn't like she could
catch a cold.

Hesitantly, she stepped up to the mirror.

“Could be worse,” she muttered to
herself after staring for a few seconds by the light of several
uneven candles. Her eyes had taken on the same cloudy, white sheen
as the others. The rest of her, though, looked human. Far paler
than usual, so much so that her skin was almost green, but she
wasn't wasting away. In a dark alley, she would be mistaken for
human. Hell, in the daylight with some dark glasses she could
probably pull it off.

“I have an idea,” Jenny said as she
emerged. Trix had a smear of blood on her cheek. She was down
on the floor looking through books with Fisher and Grayson. Casey
had a book on his lap in a nearby chair.

“You look better,” said Casey.

“Thanks,” she said. “We can
get into Expo.”

“Shut up,” said Trix. “That's
suicide.”

“I know how they work,” said Jenny.
All we need is sunglasses. Maybe some perfume.”

“I'm not wearing perfume,” said
Fisher.

“Not you,” said Jenny. “Casey
and Trix.”

“Why not us?” said Grayson.

“Have you ever done anything besides read
about the blood?” said Jenny. “I mean, have you ever
looked at it?”

“I cut myself the other day,” said
Grayson.

“No,” said Jenny. “Like, under
a microscope.”

“What's the point?” said Fisher.
“We don't know what we're looking at.”

“You don't need to understand how the
rotters work,” Jenny said. “All we need to figure out
is how we're different from them. The rotters and the living. If we can figure out what makes us different, maybe
we can figure out what my mom meant. If we really are the
cure.”

“Will that work?” said Trix, looking
at Fisher. “Seems like it should be more complicated than
that.”

“It is a lot more complicated,” said
Fisher, looking at Jenny. “We don't have training. We don't
know how to prepare slides, what to look for. We won't know what
any of it means.”

“It's a hell of a lot better than this
shit,” said Grayson. “It's worth a try. How do you
suggest we start?”

“There's a room with all kinds of
microscopes and stuff,” Jenny said. “I saw it
earlier.”

“Yeah?” said Trix.

“You boys ever used a microscope
before?” she said, looking from Grayson to Fisher.

“A bit,” said Fisher.

“Not since school,” said
Grayson.

“Get used to them,” said Jenny.
“Enough fucking reading. You've done more reading than a med
student. Time to do something. Enough bullshit.”

“The princess has spoken,” said
Trix. But she looked more lively than Jenny had seen her since
they met.

“What equipment?” said Grayson.

“Fuck if I know,” said Jenny.
“You'll figure it out.”

“You think we should take samples?”
said Fisher.

Jenny smiled. “Yes. I think that's a great
idea.”

“Blood samples?” said Casey.

“It'll be more like ooze samples in the
case of the rotters,” Grayson said.

“That's all fine and good for us and the
rotters,” said Fisher, “but if we get within a few
paces of the living, someone's going to lose it. You know how we
get around them. Someone's going to get killed.”

“I'll bring some back,” said Jenny.
“I know just where to get it.”

“You want to bring us living blood?”
said Grayson. “You just killed someone.”

“Yeah, so I won't be as tempted this
time,” Jenny said. “Besides, they know me
there.”

“Know you where?” said Trix,
suddenly sitting up, alert.

“Expo. You're the oldest,Trix. You think
you'd be able to control yourself?”

“Better than these bitches,” she
said. She looked Jenny over. “Better than you.”

“What am I supposed to do?” said
Casey.

“You're coming with me, stupid,”
said Jenny. “You have to keep me steady.”

Trix stood up. “How do you know you can
keep it together, cheerleader? How do you know you won't fuck it
up?”

Jenny shrugged. “I don't. But I know Expo.
I can get us in.”