The End
“Hurry up, Stevie!” I called from out front.
The door to the apartment opened and he walked out, casting me a dirty look in the process. He had one large bag over his shoulder and another in each hand.
“You coulda helped carry these,” he quipped as he walked up to the cart and tossed them into the back.
“I put mine in last night like I suggested you do.”
I walked over to the team of horses hitched to the cart and gave the one on the right a stroke down its muscular neck. It nuzzled my hand, obviously searching for a carrot or an apple. I reached into my pocket and produced a red, round apple that I had picked off the tree in the front yard just moments before and held it out. The other horse tossed its head and I stepped over to it.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” I whispered as I gave up another apple.
“Thalia!” a voice called and I turned to see a young man just shy of his eighteenth birthday striding across the road that was currently empty of any activity at this early morning.
“Xander,” I returned the greeting.
“I was afraid I might’ve missed seeing you guys off.” He stopped in front of the team of horses and peered over at Stevie who was muscling his bags into the back of the cart.
“Somebody is a little bit woozy from last night,” I stage-whispered loud enough so that I was certain Stevie could hear.
“I think Billy was trying to see how much it would take to get him to pass out,” Xander chuckled. “He is pretty proud of his latest batch of ale. Keeps saying that the alcohol content would have made it illegal back in the Old World.”
“I think it did him some good,” I whispered. “The funeral took so much out of him that I almost thought he was going to back out.”
“Not a chance,” Stevie said from directly behind me, making me jump. I swatted him playfully as he stepped around and greeted Xander with a handshake that morphed into a hug.
I watched him and still had a tough time seeing the young man he’d become before my eyes. It had become just a bit harder the past few days with Melissa’s death and then the subsequent memorial service. According to Sunshine, it had been a peaceful event. Melissa had gone to sleep and simply not woken up the next day. I would never admit it to Stevie, but I was relieved. The past year she had not been lucid, and she refused to believe that Stevie was not his father. It had gotten to the point where he could not go see his mother and could only visit if he stayed out of sight.
“So how long you think the trip is gonna take?” Xander asked as he walked around the cart while Stevie and I climbed up.
“Some folks say you can reach New Seattle in under a month,” I replied. “I’m in no hurry. I have a few places that I want to see along the way.”
“I still don’t understand why you would want to make the trip in the first place.” Xander came to a stop and looked up at me.
“I want to see where it all started,” I said simply. “And now that they are actually letting people travel into Old Seattle, I will be able to see it for myself.”
“I just think it would be cool to see where my dad used to live. We know the name of the old apartments and the general location,” Stevie added.
“Yeah, but it could have all burned to the ground,” Xander countered.
“Won’t know until we get there,” Stevie shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the matter, Xander, you gonna miss me?” He batted his eyes and clutched his hands under his chin for added effect.
“Yeah,” the young man said simply. “You’re my best friend. So, yes, I am going to miss you.”
“Aww, dude,” Stevie hopped back down from the cart and went around to his friend. “I’ll miss you as well, but we’ll be back.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I plan on making it here for the Blackberry Brandy festival,” a voice grumbled.
“About time, Jim,” I said with just a hint of annoyance. “I was afraid I’d have to stop at your place and wake you. That would have put us behind schedule.”
“Schedule?” Jim snorted. “Why do I have to be involved with one of the few people in this world who still holds on to such antiquated ideas as schedules?”
He tossed two bags into the back of the cart and then came around to the bench seat and climbed up beside me. Stevie gave Xander’s hand a squeeze and then joined us.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” he called over his shoulder as we started for the gate. “We’ll be back!”
The End?
There are still many adventures yet to come in the
DEAD
world.
Perhaps YOUR town will be next to be featured in the
DEAD: Snapshot {insert town here}
series
…
Now, turn the page for a sneak preview of…
The Queen of the Zombies
1
Same Ol’ Situation
“Do you have to play this crap so loud?” Lisa said with that petulance that only teen girls can truly master. It’s so sad. When we get older it just comes off as whiny or bitchy.
I pretended not to hear her. Not one thing that she could say or do was going to ruin my mood tonight. I was behind the wheel of my very first brand new car. No little tushies had planted themselves in this seat but mine. I had been assured that I was the very first person to test drive this little baby: A candy-apple red 2013 Corvette.
Now I’m not one of those girls who knows a lot about cars, so most of what the very cute salesman said just didn’t stick. I think he even had a fancy name for the color red that my car was painted. Don’t care.
I flew down the on-ramp that deposited me onto I-5 and went through the gears like I imagine those racecar drivers did when they zoomed around in circles. By the time I actually hit the freeway, I was on the high side of ninety miles per hour.
“Got your seatbelt on?” I asked. I wasn’t planning on getting into a wreck…but who did? Safety first!
“Try to remember that only one of us is guaranteed not to die if you wreck this thing,” Lisa yelled over the strains of the luscious Brett Michaels who was currently begging me to talk dirty to him. Trust me when I tell you, that would be the least of his worries.
She was referring to the fact that I am a ghoul. Now let me assure you, being a ghoul is absolutely nothing like being a zombie. As if. Zombies are nasty creatures that eat the living. I only eat the dead. See? Big difference.
Lisa Jenkins was a teenage runaway. However, I doubted that her parents would come looking for her any time soon. In the six months that she had lived with me, I learned enough to know that it was unlikely that they were even aware that she had left home. Her father was long gone, and her single mother was busy sleeping with every bus boy, waiter, and bartender at this dirty little all-night place in Southeast Portland.
I’d popped in once and the woman was letting some slob put his hands up her skirt every time she came to the table. When she brought the actual meal to the table and cleared away the five empty beer bottles to make room, I almost lost my proverbial lunch. It was fried chicken, and I know for a fact that he didn’t wash his hands before picking up that drumstick. And considering where that hand had just been…
But back to my dear friend and boon companion. (I don’t actually know what a ‘boon companion’ is, but I heard that term used on some show on the local Public Broadcasting channel where everybody spoke with English accents. It sounded smart, so I claimed it.) I met Lisa one night shortly after my transformation. She had been in a seedy hotel after just giving birth. Her “boyfriend”—a pervy forty-something that actually convinced her to dump the child in the garbage right after giving birth—made the mistake of answering the door when I knocked. Long story short, baby was rescued and eventually given a home, perv was killed
and then
eaten, and Lisa became my roommate.
It was around the time that I met Lisa when I was introduced to a whole part of society that most folks don’t realize exists under their noses. Call it supernatural or whatever you like, but things like ghouls, and ghosts, and vampires—like that snarky little bitch Belinda Yates—exist.
Some have gone on to sustain themselves through books like the one you are reading right now. You see, the best way to hide is in plain sight. You’d be surprised if I told you which of the other books in your collection are real; or at least based on real events in the lives of some of my fellow monsters. Yeah, most of them don’t like the “M” word, but I like to consider myself a bit more progressive.
I actually decided to join the ranks of the writer-types after my first little “adventure” where I was hired to deal with a rogue vampire that had designs on the aforementioned Belinda. Well…not really Belinda, more specifically, her Kiss. (A “Kiss” for the uninitiated is what vampires call their little groups or clubs…whatever.) I didn’t actually have to write, but Lisa thought it would be fun. She worries about the finances like nobody I have ever met and keeps telling me that the payday I got for taking care of Belinda’s “little problem” won’t last forever.
After I saw this car, I finally agreed that we needed an additional source of income. The only problem now was waiting for the next “job” from Morgan. For those of you who didn’t catch my first little attempt at telling a story, Morgan is the psychic for my region. Unlike the ones on television that lie about being able to tell your future, Morgan is for real. Apparently true psychics are able to detect any supernaturals in their district. I don’t know all of the details—mostly because she tells me very little—but I guess they act as some sort of mediator and boss for their given district.
The day I became a ghoul, I received a visit from Morgan. She kind of told me the rules. Mostly she went on about all the stuff I couldn’t do. Of course, it was good old Ava’s door that they knocked on when that vampire came in and started mucking things up.
By the time Billy Idol had told me all about what a great day it would be for a
White Wedding
, and the Go-Gos encouraged me to take a
Vacation
, we were home. And here was the reason we needed Morgan to show up with another job…or people needed to start buying these books. Home was no longer the dirty little apartment that I’d rented while I was a busty waitress with raven-black hair. Now we lived in a sweet little two-story looking down on Lake Oswego. (I never knew there was actually a lake here! Just thought it was a cute name for a town.)
It has four bedrooms! Now I wasn’t ever going to hear the pitter-patter of ghoulish feet, but maybe Lisa might give it a go when she is actually old enough and meets a nice guy. I have a feeling that I will be living vicariously through her.
And there you have it—my word for the day:
vicariously
. Take that Morgan. She always talks to me like I am the idiot child. Well now that I have hired a ghost writer—literally, I seriously have this ghost that comes in and helps, she possesses Lisa when it is time to sit down and put the story together—I get to hear all sorts of big words.
Chantal, my ghostly pal, likes to chat sometimes during the day. She sometimes slips in to Lisa while she is dozing and will chat with me about stuff. At first it was weird having these conversations that Lisa has no memory of, and I have to get it straight who I am talking to or what I have said to Chantal-Lisa and what I have said to Lisa-Lisa.
Hmm, that reminds me. I fiddle with my iPod docking station and thumb to a song. One of my favorite features of this home was the sound system. You can have music—or whatever you are watching on television—piped throughout the whole place.
Head-to-Toe
by Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam starts, and I head for the basement door.
“Back in a few minutes,” I call over my shoulder. I catch Lisa’s face in the reflection of the kitchen window. Her nose wrinkles. If I wasn’t so secure in our friendship, my feelings might be hurt. Hey…a girl’s gotta eat.
My basement is the other feature that really sold this house to me. A serial killer would blow his…well, whatever it is that they blow. You can bet my basement would be the thing that would send said serial killer over the edge.
It is absolutely sound proof. I tested it out early when I brought my ex-husband’s guitar amplifier down here. My actual goal was to check out the real estate agent’s claim that this basement was, in fact, sound proof. If I just happened to blow up his amplifier in the process, that would be icing on the cake.
I plugged in the pretty green guitar that was still in my closet despite the fact that we had been divorced long enough for that cheating bastard to remarry and have a pair of twin snot factories…err…I mean a lovely set of boy and girl twins. (I can never remember which is fraternal and which is maternal…not like I actually care.) Anyways, I plugged that guitar in, turned every single knob on the amplifier to “10” and strummed. I forgot all about my super-sensitive ghoul hearing.
For almost a week I was absolutely deaf. Thankfully I have the ability to heal. Supposedly, I can take a shotgun blast to the chest and not die. I’d just as soon not test the theory, but it is kind of nice to think that that little bit of insurance is in my tool box. To actually kill me, you need to either sever my head, or pierce my heart with a weapon made from cold-treated iron—whatever the heck that is. I feel comfortable sharing that with you because you will either dismiss this as just another one of “those” stories that are so popular right now, or you just won’t ever feel the need to go out and hunt down a ghoul that is trying to make the world a better place.
So once I could hear again, Lisa assured me that she did not actually hear a thing. She was really glad when my hearing came back. I guess I am one of those women with a naturally loud voice.
So back to my basement. As I told you, I am a ghoul. I eat the dead. To be clear, they have to be “unprocessed.” I don’t know if you are aware of what they do to a person before spray painting them and stuffing them in a box, but no ghoul would ever touch a body after a mortician got ahold of it. I keep about a half dozen corpses on ice for those times when I can’t go out and hunt down a fresh meal.
This is another of the perks from that job I did for Belinda-the-vampire-bitch. She occasionally has one of her minions bring by a thrall that might have been snacked on a bit too heavily or the chance human version of a monster that they might stumble across. I had no idea that so many icky beasties maintain human form and transform under whatever weird circumstance is their trigger: full moons, high tides, the opening day of football season.
Opening the walk-in refrigerator, I pull the first body out and set him on the huge table. Already the smell is causing my mouth to water. I know it will just be a moment—
“Mrrgl.”
Oh yeah. Sharkmouth makes the scene and I dig in. I can’t really explain it better than that. When I smell a dead body—something that you would probably find repulsive—it is like being in Martha Stewart’s kitchen on Thanksgiving. The smell is beyond delicious.
My mouth does this thing that sort of defies biology. It stretches out several inches and these three razor-sharp rows of needle-like fangs drop. I become the human equivalent of one of those wood chipper thingies. I can down a whole body in less than ten minutes. The only part that is a bit icky for me is regurging up the clothes. To my credit, I strip the bodies that are put in my fridge. However, I don’t exactly have control over my appetite. When I encounter a dead body out and about, I just can’t help myself.
The best thing I can equate it to is what used to happen with those spray cans of whip cream. I couldn’t open my fridge when one of those things were in there back when I was alive without grabbing it, popping the top, and shooting a mouthful of tasty, sweet whipped cream into my mouth.
So anyways, I got my Sharkmouth going, and made short work of my dinner. I think we found this one under a bridge. Probably not the solution to the homeless situation that they were thinking of with
Comic Relief
; but, in my defense, he was already dead. Being out in the elements is really not something that we are designed for in our human form.
When I was finished, I went back upstairs. Lisa was already asleep. She was sprawled on the couch, the remote slipping from her fingers. I glanced at the screen long enough to decide that if I ever got the chance, I might break my rule about eating a live human if I ever met the ‘Sham Wow’ guy. I turned off the idiot box and pulled the blanket that was draped over the back of the sofa across Lisa and headed upstairs.
My room is a marvel. It has shutters that allow in absolutely no sunlight. That way I didn’t have to stay in a rickety closet like I did back in the apartment. One of the drawbacks of being a ghoul is the vampire-like aversion to sunlight. For some reason, it burns like acid if it touches my tender, gray skin. (Although I do keep it airbrushed a golden bronze most times when we are going out in public.)
“Is this your idea of living a low key life?” a familiar voice whispered from the darkness.
I did my best not to shriek. However, I have this thing that happens when I get scared. My toenails and fingernails turn to three-inch claws. I’ve ruined more shoes in the past several months…
“Morgan, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I managed to say. Sometimes I went all sharkmouth, too, depending on how scared I got.
So that brings me to another of my abilities. I can totally see in the dark. And not Paris Hilton sex-tape vision. I can
see
in the dark like a normal person can in the daylight. However, for some strange reason, Morgan is invisible to me when she chooses. It is like she wraps herself in the darkness and vanishes. Also, I can hear. I’m talking footsteps of a fly on the other side of the wall type stuff. It is like having a radio tuner in my head. I just scan the area, and I can pick up on things as far as a few blocks away. (I know this because Lisa and I played this game one night where she kept walking and talking in a whisper until I couldn’t hear her.) However, like her ability to evade my sight, Morgan can also be so quiet that I can’t hear her so much as breathe. (And she does, because I watched her chest one time to see if it rose and fell…it did.)
“And I will remind you that I am the authority in these parts and keep my own council.”