Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One) (5 page)

“Fuck!” A new rivulet of blood
trickled down her neck. She stabbed with her right hand and the
knife ripped through a thick, brittle skull this time. Its head
made a sickening noise like a rotten pumpkin when she brought her
boot down.

It was eerily quiet. For a golden second she
thought she'd gotten them all. Then she heard a scraping sound to
her left. She turned, barely breathing. A creak like old leather.
The smell of it permeated the air as she listened to it take each
scraping footstep. She waited, still and listening.

A hand grasped at her dress, weak and slow. The
rotter's teeth jangled together softly. The knife went in quick and
smooth, and as she twisted the blade, she felt it go still. It
dropped lightly onto the floor.

Jenny took a step back and her boot slipped on
something hard. She caught herself on the pole and heard something
slide across the floor. The gun.

The train car was silent again. She listened for
a long time. No sound. She sucked in air, not realizing she'd been
holding her breath. The pain in her head was agonizing. Fucking
Cora. She didn't realize what she'd done. If Jenny didn't kill her
for this, Declan would.
Declan. He was really going to enjoy telling her he told her so.
So she had that to look forward to. Her foot touched a fallen
rotter and she stepped over it. Crouching down again, she felt for
the gun. She made her way towards the place she had heard it slide.
She grasped something solid, but dropped it quickly in disgust. It
was a bone. Probably human. Jenny remembered Lily telling her about
her father disappearing in the tunnel. Jenny's guess was that
Joshua threw him in here. Can't have too many men in his little
cult. Wouldn't want anyone to object to him raping his way to
exultation. These people were better off without Joshua and his
psycho wife.

She had reached the end of the car. With her
outstretched hand she could feel the cool, slick wall. Her hand
eased up and she felt the padded seat. Jenny frowned. There hadn't
been any other seats. Probably looters or squatters had stolen
them. Maybe Joshua. Maybe someone else. Jenny's head was spinning.
She grabbed hold of the seat and felt along the floor. She gasped
in pleasure as her hand wrapped around something cold and metallic.
Setting the knife on the seat and holding the gun in both hands,
she found the trigger with her finger. She squeezed, bracing
herself for the explosive noise.

The shot was so loud she cried out. Jenny raised
her hand to rub her ear, feeling as if she were underwater. First
the dizziness and darkness, now she was deaf. But when the pain
subsided, Jenny blinked. Light was coming in through the bullet
hole in the window like the beam of a flashlight.

Jenny put the gun in the holster still fixed to
her thigh. Walking to the window, she kicked out hard. She felt the
glass give way a little, and though she still couldn't hear
anything, she imagined it made a pretty satisfying crack. Her foot
went through the glass on the second kick. She could hear a muffled
tinkling. Her hearing was coming back.

The dim light was pouring into the train car.
Jenny glanced around. Rotters littered the floor. There were bones
everywhere, along with shreds of fabric, probably from the clothes
of victims. She looked down at the rotter closest to her. He gave a
twitch and then was still. Jenny narrowed her eyes. The rotter's
hand moved and her ears had cleared enough for her to hear the
scrape of bone against the floor. It was his legs. It was the
rotter she'd kicked. One of his legs had snapped off, and the other
was broken, jutting out of filthy, shredded cargo pants. He gave a
moan as her ears popped, and the scraping was instantly louder.
Jenny turned to grab her knife off the seat, nearly tripping on a
pile of clothes she didn't realize were there. Grasping the knife,
she turned to finish off the last rotter when a noise stopped her
cold.

“Jenny?” It was a hoarse voice and
her name came out as a croak. A man's voice. She looked around. Her
heart was beating in her ears again. The pile she had mistaken for
clothes moved and she realized it was a man. A very thin man draped
in larger clothes that hung off of his sallow body. He had been
balled up before on the seat. A face blinked at her from his place
in the fabric. She hiked up her skirt and took out the gun,
leveling it at the man before he could blink again. She flicked her
eyes to the knife on the seat next to him. He slowly raised his
hands, wincing, like it pained him to do it. His face was
emaciated. Shaggy dark hair fell in floppy curls around his
ears.

“Is it you, Jen?” he croaked again.
“The light hurts.”

Jenny frowned. “How do you know me?”
Then the man did something strange. Slowly, almost tenuously, he
smiled. He fucking smiled at her. His teeth were yellow. How long
had he been here? And then she recognized him. All thoughts went
out of her head. The arm holding the gun dropped to her side and
she heard the gun clatter to the floor. She tried to speak, but no
words would come out. She caught a harsh, rasping breath. Finally,
she managed two syllables.

“Casey?”

“I wasn't sure if you were alive,”
he said. He stood up shakily, his clothes barely clinging to him.
His tee shirt was brown with something that looked like dried
blood.

Jenny shook her head. She couldn't wrap her mind
around this. “How are you...” She staggered back,
suddenly feeling dizzy again. She caught herself against something
soft and rank-smelling. A musty groan in her ear. Panicked, she
tried to clamber away from the rotter. She kicked back with my
boot, but it grasped her shoulders; it was weak, but Jenny was
off-kilter and fell back against it. She felt something tear at the
back of her neck. The fabric of her dress. Thrusting back with her
elbows, she felt something brittle give way. But the rotter just
grunted.

“Casey, help me!” she screamed.
“The knife!”

Jenny saw him look back where she had pointed
and reach for the knife. And then there was pain so intense that
her vision went white again. She didn't know when she started
screaming, but she couldn't stop. She felt her shoulder become warm
and realized vaguely it was from her own blood. There was more
tearing, but it wasn't her dress. It was
her
. The rotter was
ripping away a piece of her neck. She felt herself growing weak.
And then she was falling back. Casey was standing over her with the
knife and the rotter wasn't moving any more.

There was more ripping, but this time it was her
dress again. Casey came up with a wad of fabric. He must have cut
the hem of her dress with a knife. It seemed funny to her for some
reason and she laughed as he pushed the fabric into the wound in
her neck. Then she looked at his face. Those brown eyes. They were
paler than she remembered, but it was his eyes she'd seen all these
years in her dreams. Leaving him had been the most horrible thing
Jenny had ever done. She touched his arm. He looked on the verge of
tears. He was so thin he almost looked like one of them. Like a
rotter.

“I'm sorry,” Jenny said.

“For what?” he whispered.

“For leaving you. I shouldn't have left
you.”

“It's okay, Jen. We have to get out of
here. Can you stand?”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. She
felt wetness on her cheeks. “None of it matters. I'm dead
now, Casey. You have to go.”

“Shut up,” he said, helping her up.
He staggered as he pulled. His nostrils flared as she fell against
him. He shut his eyes for a moment before he put her arm around his
stick-thin shoulders. He got Jenny to the broken window.

“Can you climb out?” he said.

“There's no point,” she said.

“Just fucking do it!” he said.

“Okay!” She put one leg out, but
there was a short drop and she ended up tumbling out and falling on
the concrete, catching herself with her hands. Casey dropped easily
beside her. He offered a hand and Jenny stood up, her limbs feeling
like jelly. Her head was pounding. Casey suddenly froze and she
looked up to see what had spooked him.

A line of people stood against the tarp. Jenny
blinked. Gradually she saw it was nearly all of the Righteous from
the camp. She saw Lily staring at her, wide-eyed and crying, her
fist pressed against her mouth. Joshua was staring at them, too,
his eyes flicking from Jenny to Casey and back again. Cora stood
beside him. Her eyes were hard, but her mouth was pulled down in a
frown at the corners.

Jenny felt Casey raise his arm. She looked to
see he was holding the gun. He aimed it at Joshua.

“Don't try to follow us,” he
said.

Joshua nodded.

“Kill him,” Jenny said, her voice
breathy. Her whole body hurt. It felt like her nerves were on fire.
“Kill him and his asshole wife who put me in
there.”

Joshua looked at Cora.

“No, let's go,” said Casey, pulling
her. “No one needs to die.”

“I'll do it,” Jenny said.
“Give me the gun.” She held up her hand, but she was
shivering. Her teeth chattered. She swallowed and her throat felt
raw. The wound on the back of her neck was pulsating and she could
almost feel infection spreading through her body. She was dying.
Her eyes watered. Cora had killed her after all. Jenny looked at
Cora then.

“You're all going to die now,” Jenny
said, her voice like shards of glass. “You know that, right?
It won't be me. I'll be dead soon. I was the only thing standing
between you and Declan Munro. He's going to kill all of you for
this. I can't stop it any more. And I don't want to stop it. You
killed everyone when you pushed me in.”

Cora straightened and raised her head proudly.
Joshua was staring at Jenny now. “Munro?” he said. He
looked at Cora again. “What have you done?” Cora looked
back at him, suddenly shaken. She frowned, confusion clouding her
face.

“Come on, Jen,” Casey said urgently.
“You don't understand. We need to get away from
here.”

“Okay,” Jenny said. Her eyes fell on
Lily, though, as she turned to leave. The girl's shoulders were
shaking with sobs. She met Jenny's eyes.

“Run,” Jenny said, remembering
Declan's words. “Just fucking run. Get as far away as you
can. Save yourself, Lily. Save your baby. God doesn't live here
anymore.” Then Jenny let Casey pull her away from them up the
tunnel, and they headed into the light.

Casey drove. Jenny couldn't, the sick was
hitting her hard. Casey kept looking at her.

“I'm dying, Casey,” she said.

“I know,” He looked back to the
road. He seemed twitchy, uncomfortable. Every once in a while his
nostrils would flare. “I have some people,” he said
after a while. “They can help you, Jen.”

“No one can help me.” She stared at
him. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Jenny's head
was heavy and her eyelids burned. Every bump in the road felt like
her bones were jangling together. Her nerves felt raw and gnawed
upon. She took a heavy breath that burned like fire. “No one
can help me,” she said again, softer this time. “I want
to see Declan.”

“No.” He didn't look at her.

“Did you just say no?”

“Jenny, you have to trust me. I've got
people who can help you. Munro will kill you.”

“You know Declan?” she said.

He snorted. “Everyone knows Munro. He's a
killer.”

“Everyone's a killer.”

“Yeah,” said Casey. “But not
everyone's a big, psycho motherfucker.”

“You don't know him,” she said.

“You think you know him,” said
Casey. “But he will kill you, Jen. He'll kill you without
even having to think about it. You don't understand what's
happening here. You don't know what you are.”

“I understand that I got bitten,”
she said slowly. “I understand that I am fucking dying. I
understand that after I'm gone I'll turn into one of them. What I
don't understand is how you were stuck in a train car full of
rotters for shit knows how long, and you're still here.”

He swallowed hard. “I told you there are
things you don't understand.”

“Make me understand.”

He looked at her, then back at the road, making
a left turn and swerving the car around a fallen rotter.
“They did something to us, Jenny,” he said. “When
we were kids. We're not like other people.”

“They tortured us,” Jenny said.

“I don't think so,” he said.
“I think they were trying to help us.”

“I can't do this, Casey.” She closed
her eyes. The inside of her eyelids felt like they were covered in
acid and her eyes teared up. Her stomach was starting to tighten up
and she could taste the bile in the back of her throat. “I
can't talk about them. I don't have the energy.”

Casey pursed his pale lips. He stopped the car
in the middle of the abandoned street. Jenny looked around. She
knew where they were. The house where Declan lived was only about
two blocks away. “What are you doing?” she said.

He turned in his seat to look at her. His eyes
were bruised hollows, his irises too pale. Jenny blinked. She was
hallucinating. It looked like there was film on his eyes. Like he
was dead. “Wake up, Jen,” he said. “You know why
the rotters didn't bother me in that train.”

“No,” she said. “I don't have
any idea.”

“Have you seen me?” he said, his
voice rising. He shook his head. “You must be able to tell
what's happened here.”

“You've just starved for a while,”
she said. She couldn't comprehend what he was trying to say. Her
brain felt like it had been replaced with thick, black sludge. Had
Casey gone crazy since she'd seen him last? A lot of people did.
Not everyone could adapt to their world.

“I'm fucking dead,” he yelled.
“I'm a rotter, a zombie. I'm dead and I'm still me. Because
of what they did to us. Mom and all those scientists. They gave us
something that made us... I don't know. Not immune, but,
different.”

“That's insane,” Jenny said.
“Casey, just come with me. Maybe Declan can find you someone
to help you. You know, after I go.”

“You're not going to go, Jen,” he
said, his voice high and loud. He laughed. “You're going to
die, but you'll come back. You'll be different, but you'll still be
you.”

“You sound like those thumpers,” Jenny said. She
felt like her heart was breaking. All this time, all these years
looking for her little brother and he was batshit insane. It was
her fault, of course. But she was dying. She couldn't help him. If
he wouldn't come with her to Declan, there really wasn't anything
she could do for him. Unless she could force him.

Suddenly he had hold of her left wrist and
yanked her sideways, thrusting her fingers to his neck.
“Feel!” he said. He was angry. Jenny wondered if he was
capable of killing her. She was so weak that it would be easy. She
put her right arm on the console in the middle to brace herself,
and her hand came down on something cold. She wrapped her fingers
around it. Casey was pushing her hand into his neck. Jenny decided
she must have been feverish because it felt like he was cold as
ice. She tried to pull away, but he was holding her fast. He moved
her hand to his chest. “Do you feel that?” he said. He
seemed on the verge of absolute hysteria.

“Feel what?” she said, not sure what
he wanted her to say.

“Exactly! There's nothing there. No pulse.
No heartbeat.
Do I feel alive to you?
”

She pulled her hand back and he let go. Pushing
herself to the far side of the seat, Jenny put her back against the
door. “I'm not myself right now,” she said, shaking her
head. “That's not possible. A rotter is a rotter. You can't
be one, Casey. Rotters don't think. They don't talk. And they sure
as hell don't drive fucking cars. You can't be one of
them.”

He seemed to compose himself. He closed his eyes
for a few seconds and when he opened them his expression was flat.
Calm. “There are more of us,” he said quietly.
“There are thirteen of us, but, including you, we've only
found five.”

“The Thirteen,” Jenny said.
“Are you fucking telling me that you are part of The
Thirteen?”

“Yeah,” he said, pleased. “I
am.”

“This isn't real,” she said.
“I'm hallucinating. You're probably not even here.”

“It's real, Jen. I'm going to take you
where we can help you.” He shifted into drive and Jenny
raised a shaky hand. He looked at her gun as if it were something
alien he didn't recognize.

“I want,” she said, her breath shaky
and rasping, “to see Declan Munro. Now.”

“You're too weak to use that thing,”
he said.

“Maybe,” she said. She cocked it.
“Maybe not.”

“You'd shoot your own brother?” His
face was emotionless. He just looked at her with those dead
almost-brown eyes.

“You said it yourself, you're a
rotter.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And you will
be too.”

“No,” she said. “I'll never be
a rotter. Declan will take care of me. Take a right up that alley
and drive for two blocks.”

“Jenny...”

“Fucking drive!”

He worked his jaw, then eased the car forward.
“I'm going to come back for you,” he said.

“Hallucinations can't save
people.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Can they
drive?”

Jenny frowned. She couldn't hold it together
much longer. There was a hollow feeling in her throat like she was
going to vomit. “Stop,” she said, recognizing the tall,
rotting fence on the left side of the alley. “This is
it.” It took all her strength, but she kept the gun trained
on him. On her own brother. But the brother she had searched for
was gone. This brother wasn't real. He couldn't be. And Jenny could
only think about one thing: she had to be with Declan before she
died. To tell him it wasn't his fault. She opened her door just as
hot, rancid stomach acid started rushing up her esophagus. She
wasn't sure how she got there, but she found herself hunched over
and puking in some overgrown bushes on the side of the alley. She
heard Casey yell something, but her body had abandoned her. She was
on her knees, her only function seeming to be to lose everything in
her guts. Casey yelled again and Jenny heard the deep rumble of the
engine revving up. She felt the dirt spray up onto her back as he
took off. “No,” she managed, but her body was heaving
again, bringing up nothing but air and saliva. And then she felt a
gentle hand on her back. Someone had come out of the gate. Wiping
her mouth with the back of her hand, she turned to see Lucy, her
usual sneer gone from her face, her green eyes gone soft.

“Jenny,” she whispered. Her eyes
went to the back of Jenny's neck.

“I wasn't fast enough,” Jenny said,
then her knees gave out and she fell, barely catching herself, the
cut on her hand opening up as it hit the hard ground. “I
wasn't fast enough,” she repeated, as Lucy helped her to her
feet.

As Lucy half carried Jenny into the house, Jenny
thought she heard her say something under her breath. Just before
she passed out, she realized what it was.

Lucy was saying
I'm sorry.