Darlings of Decay Read online

  A vibrating tuning fork of trembling power welled up inside me. A strange mixture of fear, dread and excitement paralyzed me. My teeth throbbed with the intensity of it. The zombie's hand snaked out, taking hold of the offered forearm. It felt cold against my warm flesh, like iced tentacles. I swabbed a blot of blood, inking it with my index and middle fingers on the zombies forehead, like warpaint. It rolled those empty eyes up at me, its dead bones clinging to my fingertips.

  We shared a suspended moment in time, a terrible beauty of control balanced precariously. “Go back and rest,” I said, feeling that balance reached, that I was choosing for both of us.

  The zombie reluctantly let go of my arm, sand through a sieve, lying down on the disturbed ground while his grave encased him in a shroud of earth.

  I was a corpse-raiser, one of two, and it was not a safe thing to be.

  John and I stared at each other over the grave for a swollen minute, his face showing a mixture of sympathy and dread. He knew what this distinction would mean for me in the world we lived in.

  I was shaking from the intensity of it all, there was no controlling it. This was not the same as Biology experiments and roadkill, this was real, this was huge. Looking outside the cemetery perimeter at two enemies and one friend, I knew it was time to swear the group to secrecy. A trickle of sweat slithered down my back, pooling at the waistband of my jeans, instantly chilling against my fevered flesh. I didn't want the same future as Parker, that loss of freedom was so not a part of The Plan, my plan.

  John and I headed out of the cemetery in a wave of uncertain promise.

  CHAPTER 2

  I smacked my alarm, just five more minutes I thought, dozing off.

  “Caleb!” Mom yelled up the stairs.

  “Yeah?” I yelled back.

  “School!”

  I stumbled out of my bed and looked on the floor for today's clothes... Hmm, what to wear that wasn't too wrinkled. I picked up a pair of jeans and a shirt and took an experimental whiff. Good enough! I jerked the jeans on with a hop and a zip. Opened the underwear and sock drawer, nothing. I ripped open every drawer for socks, ah-huh! Finally, a couple of socks, not matched but clean... happy day.

  I trudged over to the kitchen table, scarred from a thousand meals.

  “You cookin' today?” I asked, hopeful.

  “No, but you're eating.”

  Eating in the morning blows. I was that lazy. I'd open the fridge, nothing. Then the freezer, repeat. I usually ended up cramming a yogurt down.

  Mom looked in the fridge. “What flavor?”

  “Do we have blueberry?” It was the only non-barf fruit I could think about eating this early.

  “Last one.”

  “Where's Dad?”

  Mom and Dad were on the opposite end of the spectrum. She was free-spirited (read: hippie) and thought the mystery of life and choice was taken when the scientific puzzle of the genome mapping was solved.

  It made for an interesting family life.

  “He is working on that new project.”

  Great, hopefully not anything new for kids to rant about. I'd gone through enough being hassled as I was growing up.

  “Does that mean he'll be home for supper tonight? I've got something to talk to him about.” I wisely didn't want to mention the whole corpse-raising episode. Dad was logic and fairness mixed. He'd know what to do. This... I might need some help on.

  “Yes, he will, you know how important meal time is,” Mom said.

  Maybe, maybe not. Science was important to Dad.

  After I wolfed down the yogurt, knowing the beast would awaken again at 10 a.m. in class, perfect timing, I made a 2-point shot at the trash can. Swish! No mess, but that didn't stop the frown forming on Mom's face.

  I moved quickly to grab my backpack but she blocked me and I was forced to look up at her. Every girl in the world was taller than me... wonderful.

  She brushed the hair out of my eyes and it shot back down. “You need a haircut.”

  “No, mom.” A time-sucker was all a haircut was and I had more important things to do.

  Slamming the door behind me I took the stairs two at a time, cruising at a jog. I wanted to reconnoiter with the dudes, get things straight in my head from last night.

  I slowed to a walk. I'd still be there early and I was feeling lazy. Looking up, I noticed the canopy of trees allowing filtered morning light to break through, speckling the ground with sunspots. My head began the familiar thrumming, a buzz seeping into the crevices of my mind as I walked toward the school.

  I stopped where I stood, the buzzing had become whispering, my heart speeding, my breath quickening in response, my palms dampening.

  The whispering of the dead had arrived.

  I looked around, noticing the paved street, the pebbling of the asphalt worn away by a million cars, the shoulder giving way into the ditch.

  Nothing.

  I started walking again but the whispering grew louder. I followed the dull roar of the insidious voice like a magnet and was rewarded with volume.

  There, on the border of the forest and the soft dirt of the ditch lay a crumpled body, torn and broken, its head at an awkward angle. My hands trembled as the whispering broke through to voices and images, flooding my head like a pulse-screen.

  I heard the thoughts:

  Headlights bursting like twin spots before its eyes as it tried to escape those lights... rushing forward... it sprinted across the street, not timing the advance properly and the twin orbs bore down on it.

  Pain. Intense pain and blinding light.

  The cat thought of its litter, its people... then-- was no more.

  My breath returned in a paralyzing rush, my feet planted at the base of her body. A small body that had shared the last moments of its life with me. A life that was now gone.

  I stood for a moment, taking it in, realizing that life as I knew it was never going to be the same. I wasn't going to breeze through being a teenager.

  Snapping back to reality I realized I was the Pied Piper of road kill.

  Great. Definitely my life-goal.

  This was just the kinda thing that had been happening. The frogs in Biology, there had been so many. I hadn't been able to camouflage that. People would be suspicious. Why couldn't I be developing something righteous like Pyrokenesis? Now that would be tight. At least only Brett and Carson knew the corpse-raising part. Getting them to cooperate with silence, that was another thing.

  I trudged on, my limbs heavy, my head swimming with the heaviness of an undead-moment. I lifted my hands, the fine shaking almost gone. Beaded sweat decorated my upper lip and I wiped it off with the back of my hand. I needed to get a hold of this thing. I was on it. That's what I told myself but my gut churned with uncertainty.

  The familiar doors to our daily prison came into view. I went inside the school, spotting the “cemetery group.”.

  John and Jonesy stood apart from the others in stark contrast to each other. Almost five foot ten, with a shock of frizzy, carrot-colored hair and pale blue eyes, John looked a little freakish but he was my main dude, the go-to guy when things went sideways. I gave Jonesy an unfriendly look, touching my face. He had short, nappy hair and teeth that stood out like white Chiclets in a dark face. He was taller than me too, but built stocky. They'd been with me since Kindergarten.

  The rest of the group was a mixed bag, didn't feel solid here. It would take some clever conniving to get promises of secrecy from the rest. Brett Mason and Carson Hamilton stood side-by-side with identical white-blond hair and height, hard to tell apart unless you looked at them full-on. They'd been with me since Kindergarten too, but not in a good way.

  Edging through the throng of kids I made my way to John and Jonesy first. Jonesy leaned against the locker, arms crossed. John looked ready to explode, not typical.

  Jonesy said, “Sorry about the bludgeoning.”

  “Yeah... what the hell?” I asked.

  “Your face sorta got in the way.”
r />   “Oh... really?” Gee, hadn't noticed that.

  “It was an accident, John and I were discussing...” Jonesy began.

  “... arguing...” John interrupted.

  Jonesy gave him a look. “I changed my mind is all.”

  I raised my eyebrows, Jonesy never switched gears.

  “About the merit of them knowing,” John finished.

  We looked at Bret and Carson. Too late now, spilled milk on the table and dripping on the floor.

  Later, I thought. “I wasn't pulling a hypo in Biology,” giving a hard look at Brett and Carson, the used-to-be-non-believers, “and now APs are coming up.”

  “Yeah, you have your dad to thank for that,” Brett smirked.

  I knew that was coming.

  My eyes caught sight of a grape sized bruise the color of pale chartreuse, the edges fanning to green then finally purple. Brett's smirk faded under my gaze as he shifted his shoulder, his shirt falling over the mark that lingered on his throat. Someone's hand had left that, not my problem, but...

  “Shut up, it's Caleb's ass on the line,” Jonesy said, jamming a thumb at my chest. “You know what happens when you hit the radar as a corpse-raiser. He'd be a government squirrel, like that Parker dude.”

  “Nobody wants to have their life planned by somebody else,” John said.

  “My dad didn't have anything to do with that,” I pointed out.

  “But thanks to him, everyone's tested now because of the mapping. All the do-gooders want to 'realize our full potential'.” Brett made quote signs in the air, “What an ass-load of crap that was.”

  Carson chimed in, “So even if we don't want to be mathematicians or scientists we're on that freight train until it reaches the depot.”

  Carson's murky-green eyes burrowed into mine. This was an old argument. Kinda like being the preacher's kid, you got blamed for everything your parent did, or didn't do.

  “You dickface... yeah you,” Jonesy looked at Carson, whose eyes narrowed. “It isn't Caleb's fault that his dad started that ball rolling with the mapping. If it hadn't been him, it would've been someone else...”

  Carson's fists clenched and flexed, he didn't like being told the obvious. Probably shouldn't have opened his mouth and crammed a foot in there until he choked. Kinda brain dead-- kinda consistent.

  “Listen guys, this isn't helping. It's the now we need to figure out. I don't want to pop a five-point AFTD on the APs. They're what, a week away? My dad,” Carson rolled his eyes and I ignored him, plowing forward, “says that puberty is the exact time they test because scientists have proven that abilities come online then, sometimes for the first time.” Not for me, I added silently.

  The first bell gave its shrill beckon exactly then. I looked at Brett and Carson. “I need you guys to cover for me. At least until the tests are finished.”

  I was appealing to their good side.

  You can't force us to, Hart,” Brett said.

  “Yeah, just because daddy's famous doesn't give you clout,” Carson echoed.

  So much for that.

  “How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?” asked Jonesy, out of the blue.

  “The human thing to do,” interjected John.

  “He's not human.” Carson said, stabbing a finger toward my chest.

  Prejudice at its finest. But what did I expect from these two?

  “You got that right,” Brett agreed, walking off with Carson.

  We watched them move away into the multicolor sea of kids.

  “Did ya see that bruise necklace Brett was wearing?” Jonesy asked.

  Yeah, some people had more than corpse-raising to worry about.

  “It's the dad,” John said.

  Jonesy turned those liquid eyes to me, “Feel sorry for him Caleb? Don't go soft on me bro. You're always giving jackasses the benefit of the doubt.”

  Not yet, I thought, saying nothing.

  Seeing my expression he said, “Yeah, my cup of care is empty too.”

  My conscious teetered on the balance of right and wrong. Brett had it bad, but he chose to act bad. It didn't make things easier, it made it more complicated.

  Jonesy clapped me on the back and John gave me the nod. My friends had my back.

  It was gonna be a hurricane of crap and I was in the eye of it. The Js and I walked off to Shop class. Time to make my mom a heart-shaped box, when my heart was definitely not into it.

  #

  DEATH WHISPERS, book one of the six book Death series, can be found-

  FREE HERE on Amazon!

  *WHISPERS begins as young adult novel with the final three installments firmly in the new adult (17+) genre.

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  Vanessa Booke

  Dead Run

  “The only good human being is a dead one.”

  -George Orwell

  CARLY

  I know his gun is in the top drawer. I’ve watched him place it there. Tonight is the last night I’ll ever let him touch me. I watch his breath rise and fall rhythmically as he sleeps. From where I stand, he doesn’t look so threatening, anymore at least, not compared to how he looked earlier that night. My cheek still burns when I touch it. A bruise is starting to form underneath my swollen skin. I step into the darkened bedroom cautious, as the wooden floors squeak beneath me. He can wake at any moment. My hands tremble as I make my way toward his nightstand. It has to be here, unless…Tom hid it somewhere else. As I pull the top drawer open, I’m relieved to see the gun is still there. It sits shining in the moonlight that cascades down through the cracks of the boarded-up bedroom window.

  I pull the gun from the drawer, but pause midway. My stepfather’s snoring has stopped. Fear paralyzes me, and I freeze, still. Is he awake? Is he watching me? I hold my breath, my eyes squeezed closed, waiting. Several seconds pass, and then like clockwork, I can hear the sound of his snoring again. I look down at the handgun and then back at my sleeping stepfather. I shiver in disgust at the memory of his hands on me; no amount of soap could ever wash away how dirty he makes me feel. My stomach rolls at the memory of the way he whispered how I would always be his.

  Not anymore. I step into the hallway, shutting the bedroom door quietly behind me. A small sense of relief washes over me. I did it. Before I know it, I’m all the way down the hallway of our one story home. Tonight is our last night behind the safety of the community fences. It frightens me to think about what’s waiting for us outside, but staying isn’t an option anymore. I stare down at the gun in my hands. I’ve never held one until tonight. The sound of a soft voice catches my attention.

  It echoes down the hall. Michael must be awake. I slip the gun behind me. There’s no reason for him to see it; it will only scare and confuse him. He’s been pretty quiet these past few hours. He keeps asking for our mother. I don’t have the heart to tell him that she’s gone. The only thing left is a shell of the woman she used to be. It’s been seven days since she became infected.

  I made her a promise when it happened. I promised her that no matter what, I wouldn’t let her become one. I know what I have to do, and despite what my stepfather Tom tells me, I know my mother is sick and she isn’t getting better.

  Our home is made up of three rooms. Tom sleeps in the master bedroom. I share a bedroom with Michael, and my mother is in the guest room. We live in a town sectioned off from the outside world. It’s better than what most survivors have, but it’s temporary. Our emergency supplies were never meant to last past six months. We’re going on our seventh month and our food and water is nearly gone.

  Tom keeps my mother isolated from everyone here. A cold draft hits me as I enter her bedroom. I can hear her heavy breathing, her lungs crackling as she inhales. Small white clouds of air escape her mouth. It’s freezing in here. I switch on the emergency lantern near her nightstan
d. The fluorescent light reminds me of a hospital room as it chases away the darkness. I gasp at the sight of her; she’s gotten worse. Her eyes are bloodshot and her pupils are dilated. I touch her skin to check for a fever, but she feels ice cold. I grab her hand and place it in mine. Her skin is pale yellow and she’s starting to bloat like the others. She has a day at most, maybe less. The bloated skin on her finger engulfs her wedding band. It’s the one my father gave her before he died.

  It wasn’t the infection that took him away from us. He was in a motorcycle accident when I was fifteen. He suffered an injury to the head and went into a coma.

  I twist the ring off her finger.

  My mother sold our old house to pay for his medical bills. She didn’t have the heart to pull the plug. Not too long after his accident, they flew him to a fancy medical hospital in Colorado. I thought he died. She told Michael and me that he did, but a few days ago I found some old hospital bills stashed in a shoebox. She lied. For the past three years she’s been paying to keep him alive. At least, she was until the outbreak happened.

  “Mom.”

  She stares at me blankly, making it clear she no longer recognizes her own daughter’s face. I’m sure in her eyes I’m only a stranger, someone she’s never seen before. I reach down for the wash pan at the foot of her bed, and I cringe at the sight of the brown, murky water inside it. Tom refuses to bathe her with any of our clean water, and instead subjects her to the dirty-brown, rusted water from the faucets. As far I know it isn’t hurting her, but she deserves more than that. Tom wants to keep her around because of the food rations. Each person in the community is given a certain portion of food, no more, no less. He takes hers for himself. I hate seeing her like this.

  A moan escapes her lips. I pull the gun out from behind me, fearful that she’s turning. I have to do what she couldn’t for my dad. I have to let her go. I have to.

  I raise the gun toward the front of her face. My hands tremble, the gun is heavier than I expected. Through her confused and sickened state, she looks up at me as if she has a moment of clarity. I close my eyes and turn my face. I picture her as she was before the outbreak. In my mind, she stands radiant and beautiful as she smiles down at me. I can almost hear her saying everything will be all right. They say goodbye is the hardest thing you’ll ever have to say. So I don’t say it. I breathe in and pull the trigger.