Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (25 page)

The next morning, I wake in John’s arms. We’d fallen asleep on a bench in the back of the Town Hall, right outside the room where Megan sleeps. Well,
he’d
fallen asleep while I closed my eyes and continued my little day dream of a life, trying with every dead bone in my body to keep away the evil thoughts—like Claire’s life, and Claire’s death, and all the wonderful and horrible things I couldn’t let myself experience back when I used to do interesting things—y’know, like
breathing
. When I try to slip out from John’s arms, he squeezes, not letting me go. I have to smile, struggle a bit, then manage to free myself.

The Square is quiet and peaceful in the early morning. Humans are already up and about, some of them at their stations, a circle of them at a cooking fire where, I guess, this morning’s breakfast is being prepared. I’m spotted by a few of them, and it doesn’t take an extraordinarily bright individual to deduce that I am
not
welcome in their circle.

The day goes by with little happenstance. A sleepy old woman burns her tongue on a ladle of soup. A man with humungous eyebrows gets into a quarreling match with an Undead boy who strolled too close to a bucket of water, the man worried the boy might contaminate it somehow and render it undrinkable. Two men and a lady instruct a chilly coated-up group in how to best utilize the collected rainwater to care for the vegetables in the greenhouse. A little boy among them, who stubbornly refuses to wear shoes, trips over a stray shovel and lands face-first in the cold dirt. Two women come to console him, one of them muttering that an Undead left the shovel there on purpose. I’m even glared at before I leave, as though I were that very Undead of which she spoke.

Things aren’t polite. There’s no love in the air, only suspicion and worry and anticipation. No Burning Army invades today, and I’m almost disappointed.

Get this over with, Grim.

That evening, we are all surrounding a table in the lobby of the Town Hall. John sits at my side, Helena on the other. Across from us is the Chief, Gunner, Marigold and Megan. Set in the center of the table is the remnants of a plate of food the Humans shared for dinner while Helena and Marigold and I discussed a plan for tomorrow. Now the Chief is weighing in his opinions while John reports the status of the wall in the Burning Quarter.

Helena is in the middle of recounting—in the most boring of drawls imaginable—our food and supplies when suddenly the front doors swing open and a skittish sort of Human quietly steps in to say: “E-Excuse me?”

A short series of quick things happens: the Chief rises, Marigold leans to the side and Helena spreads her arms, all in an effort to keep Megan from sight. Or, at least, the little green secret on her face.

“Yes?”

The man seems occupied for a moment, studying our grouping at the table, before finally saying, “Judy and the Bransons and I would, uh, like a word.” His eyes are still all over us, curious, prodding.

“I will meet you in the Square, as soon as our meeting is concluded.” The man accepts the answer, though he seems to take all the time in the world just to turn around and leave, his snoopy gaze lingering far too long.

As soon as the doors swing shut, the Chief rounds on Marigold, eyes maddened. “I thought you locked up?”

“I had!” she insists cheerily, his fury lost on her.

The Chief rushes to the door, locking it. “I will see to him once we’ve finished our business here.” It is an effort, but the Chief regains his composure and returns to the table to finish hearing Helena’s inventory.

Once we break for the night, Helena gets with Gunner to discuss the Undead positioned along the north walls, Marigold and Megan get lost in a conversation about Brains and something she did today, and the Chief makes his way out to the Square. That leaves John and I in the waiting area where he’s sitting so close I can feel his heartbeat reverberating through my body.

I wish I could always be this close to him. “I’ve made my point to the Chief,” John’s in the middle of telling me. “Several times, and he keeps putting me off.”

“About Garden?”

“Yeah.” He huffs, fed up and frustrated as a boy who keeps getting sent back to bed. “We wouldn’t even have to worry about any of this. No fighting for our lives. No scrounging the deadlands for scraps. The cold is here, and it’s only getting colder, and … Do you think Grimlock’s starving us out? I think we’ll starve before we’re even met by his Army Of Fire. What a cruel joke. A paradise of food and fruit and life beyond our wildest imagination, and we sit here in the cold and wither.”

I want to tell him:
Grimsky
. It’s
Grimsky
, not—but I hold my tongue and instead I say: “We could go right now, if you wanted.”

Pressing into his side, warmed by the hope, I notice Gunner stealing a quick glance at us, even from across the room where he’s discussing things with Helena. I realize that broadcasting our little relationship might be risky, considering the Human-Undead relations thing, and I find myself slackening my grip on John’s arm.

“Steal supplies and make a run for Garden?” John snorts derisively. “That’s exactly what I did the last time, back at camp. Took supplies and headed off in pursuit of the dream. Oh, the luck I had. That’s how I ended up here.” He peers at me coyly through the side of his face.

Yeah, I remember every detail of that day. I remember hearing John’s heartbeat from across that tavern.

“Maybe in time, the Chief will see the sense in it.” I sigh. “It doesn’t change the fact that Grim is out there, his green eye set on anything alive. Garden will be his target, whether tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. Until someone stops Grim …”

“Everything will slowly die,” John finishes.

At that moment, the door to the Town Hall opens and my favorite Undead in the world right now, Ann, rushes in and slams shut the door. Clearly heated and in no nice mood, she rushes up to Helena to talk to her. The words are hushed but furious. After a short exchange, Helena lifts her pointy chin to me. “Winter. We have a problem. Mister bright-as-can-be Jim has—”

“Jim told his
parents
,” Ann finishes through gnashed teeth. “About
Megan
and I told them it wasn’t true, but now they’re telling other people, and the Chief is getting in the middle of it—the Bransons, the Greys, Larry, Lena and Margie, Willis—”

I’ve gotten to my feet and my fingers have magically made fists at my sides. “I
told
you what would happen. You and Jim run off to conduct this
deed
with Megan’s eye, all the while rubbing your
fling
in everyone’s face—”

“It’s not a fling!” Ann cries out. “You’re one to talk, you big hypocrite.
Everyone
knows about you and John.”

I’m dumbstruck. “That doesn’t even compare, Ann.”

“It’s the exact same thing! You two even
live
together! You ought to hear what they say about you,” she spits at me, shaking with rage.

“Stop, both of you.” John’s come up to my side. “We have a worse issue on our hands. They’re all fighting, Ann? Where are they fighting?”

“Right outside, if you’d just
listen
,” she snaps back.

John doesn’t hesitate a second. Hurrying to the door, he lets himself out. I take a quick glance at Helena, who appears quite unsettled by all of this herself, then follow John out of the Town Hall to survey our damage control.

The evening crowd in the Square is nothing pretty. A handful of Humans are banded together, shouting at the Chief and a number of Undead. To my surprise, John rushes down the steps and inserts himself right into the argument. I can hardly make out any of the words, for all the shouting and heated debate.

I focus suddenly on the faces of Ken and Bonnie who appear like two ice cubes in a pond of unstill waters. Finally, Ken is able to gather enough of the crowd’s attention for his demand to be heard: “Show her to me.”

This is all I hear. It’s all I need to hear to know the whole thing is doomed. Ken and Bonnie will take one look at their deformed daughter, and all hope we ever had of reconciling and coexisting with the Humans will be gone in a single glance.

“Show her to me,” he repeats.

The Chief looks back at me, meeting my eyes, and then he seems to peer beyond me. The crowd is struck silent all of a sudden. I’m confused by why until I bother to turn around myself and see who else has joined us.

Megan. And she is not alone. Walking slowly behind her: Brains. Marigold has repaired Brain’s face, though there is plenty of room for improvement. Also, there’s a development of extra fingers protruding from the back of Brain’s neck, as well as extra hands on her shoulders and down her hips. They almost appear like feathers, except for the unsettling way they seem to wiggle and twitch. If this isn’t strange enough a sight, the Deathless ghoul that is my Raise is wearing a collar and a leash, which Megan gently holds, guiding her.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

“It’s okay,” Megan explains timidly to the spread of Humans and Undead in the Square. No one at all seems convinced. “It’s perfectly okay. I’ve been training my powers. I can speak to them. I can.” She looks up at Brains, hope in her eye. “Tell them your name.”

Brains looks out at the crowd. Half her hair is missing and her nose is an inch too far to the left, and her right ear appears to be sewn on upside-down, and she opens her mouth and says, “I am Deathleblghalbmgblghglh.”

Her tongue deposits itself onto the Town Hall steps.

“MEGAN!” cries out Ken, or maybe it was Bonnie, I can’t be sure, because suddenly Brains is making an open-mouthed lunge at Megan’s neck.

Several things happen. I jump forward to intercept the two at precisely the same time an arrow is loosed from somewhere in the crowd. The arrow—intended for Brains—lands in me instead, and I scream out, feeling an otherworldly agony that I cannot hope to compare to anything I have in this existence felt. At the same time, the Humans are trampling over the Undead, cursing and screaming, steel swords bared and axes lifted and arrows nocking.

I can’t see anything, curling up on the steps in agony. For a solid handful of seconds, I don’t even try to dislodge the arrow because I can’t even tell where it landed; my entire body is in unrelenting pain.

Suddenly the arrow’s been yanked free—it was in my right shoulder, by the way—and even as the steam rises, Helena seems to pay it no mind, yanking me back onto my feet. I find Megan racing into the crowd in pursuit of Brains, who’s gotten away from her. The sights I witness are so horrifying, I don’t know what to look at or how to look away.

A man’s struck an axe into another’s back—an Undead I should hope. The other is countering with a blunt knife.

Two women are climbing over each other, trying to be the first one to reach a sword that’s fallen to the ground between them.

There’s a bleeding child screaming, clutching a doll.

“Winter, you’ve got to move your legs!”

The pain is still lancing its way up and down my body. Doesn’t anyone notice the chimney that’s been made of my shoulder?

Helena’s grabbed a hold of me, rushing me through the crowd. I cry out John’s name. The horror surrounds us as Helena plunges through. Metal clangs against metal. Screams are cut off mid-scream. I hear a boy shouting for his mommy and I hear an Undead cry out in the name of Trenton, and I want to ask, wasn’t this city supposed to be all of ours?

Helena slams her back against the wall of a building, trapped by people fighting, unable to proceed further, and she says, “Girl, we have ourselves a battle sooner than we’d planned.”

That’s when I see it. “Hel, look!” I cry out, drunk by the pain that’s twisting through me. “Look, look, look, the bird!”

I’m watching the sky, insane with agony, seeing the beautiful thing approaching. “Quiet your mouth,” Helena shouts back at me, freaked out. “Focus, and tell me if—”

“There,” I whisper. “Hel, tell me you see it!”

She squints into the sky, indulging me, and then her face fills with awe. Mine too, as I realize only now that there’s
more
than
one
. “Birds,” I say, disbelieving my eyes. It’s such a beautiful sight, I forget that I’m even hurting. Or maybe the pain’s gone away. “They’re coming …!”

I’m not the only one who sees them. The fighting in the Square has ebbed practically to a standstill. A lady brandishing a shovel looks up, her eyes wide. A boy too, breath turning to mist before his jaw-dropped mouth. Soon, the whole courtyard is silenced by the approaching flock. They all see it. I smile broadly, awed, overcome with the vision in the sky. Have the birds come to free us from chaos? Have they come to remind us that life is still something to hope for? All is not lost.

Then I watch the awe in Helena’s face as it slowly dies. “Winter. Those … aren’t birds.”

Confused, I squint at the closest of the birds, watching it flutter closer, closer, closer … and then realize with mounting horror that Helena is right. The thing flying in the sky … is
not
a bird. None of them are. The size of the flying—things—are already large from a distance. They seem the size of an eagle. Then the size of a vulture as they draw closer. And then the one in front grows to the size of a person as it approaches.