“Oh, no,” I practically moan. It's Nate's voice and Nate's body slamming down to its knees but my growing fear that can't stop saying, “No, no, no, no ...”
I reach out and roll the body over.
There's no mistaking the generous curves and dark curls, or the dress, for that matter. I bought it on sale from my favorite website, Pretty Kitten, along with a cheap pair of cherry earrings that broke during shipping.
This isn't just any body.
It's me.
20.
I'm dead.
Really, truly deceased.
Well, this is unexpected.
I wish I had the time to summon up the proper amount of terrified arm-flailing the sight of my own body sprawled gracelessly across an unwashed pile of Nate's forgotten laundry truly deserves. But at least I can think clearly enough through the startling shock to understand that now's not the time to moon in stunned fear over my own unfortunate demise. Now I have to get out, and fast, and I'll be damned if I'm leaving my body behind when I do.
“It's a good thing this bodyswapping nonsense isn't confusing,” I mutter sarcastically to my prone corpse.
If Nate's still in there, he's certainly not up for responding right now.
The saving grace of occupying Nate's body right now is that the casual masculine strength makes up at least a little bit for the lack of teleporting ability. I swing my own body into a simple fireman's carry with less effort than I expect, leaving me to devote most of my concentration to ignoring the distinctive pungent smell wafting off the body.
Exhibiting an impressive measure of caution considering whose body I'm currently inhabiting, I head for the entrance to the apartment and crack open the door to peer down at the elevators. Only one elevator appears to be occupied, the numbers above it steadily lighting up in tarnished orange-red as the elevator rises towards Nate's floor. John has no reason to take the stairs, not when Nate lives on the twentieth floor and theoretically hasn't seen him coming. He doesn't need to sneak around. Chances are he's in there.
I don't even allow myself to question what I do next. I simply bolt across the hall and flip the switch for the fire alarm.
I'm not sure it's going to work, but Nate wouldn't live in a place like this unless it possessed a certain something to make up for the lousy interior design in the lobby. The eleven-hundred block of Labyrinth Drive features an expensive variety of apartments and condominiums known mostly for their state-of-the-art security systems. Their tenants range from heroes and supervillains to crooks and celebrities of a more pedestrian and human social set. If you're not quite sure you won't wake up any given morning kidnapped and sold to intergalactic slave traders, you move to Labyrinth Drive.
I'm betting any fire alarm outside a superhero's apartment would have its own special purpose other than just to warn of fire, and my bet pays off.
Throwing the alarm is enough to freeze the elevators where they are – along with every other door in the entire building. The lights dim, casting the halls in the eerie glow of the neon blue emergency strips along the ceiling, and the door to Nate's apartment slams shut on its own, locking firmly.
Angry voices begin to rise all over from the surrounding apartments. I ignore the worrisome noises to take a knee and rifle through my pockets for Nate's wallet. It's hard to do while holding onto a rather heavy body slung over my shoulders, but I manage to extricate Nate's SLB security clearance out from between his voter registration card and his lock-picking kit.
A quick swipe of the security clearance past the keypad next to the stairwell door sends a loud click emanating from the lock.
I grin and kick the door open with one booted foot, descending the stairs just as the aggravated screams in my father's voice rise from the elevators.
Luck stays with me all the way down to the building's dimly lit parking garage. I pull out of the rear exit ramp in Nate's wee chocolate-brown Cooper with my sickly ripening body in the passenger seat just as the interior lights in the first-floor lobby reappear in my rearview mirror.
I only barely resist the urge to laugh in triumph as I speed towards home.
The ride itself is as painfully silent as you would expect. Obviously, intelligent conversation – or really, any conversation at all – is out of the question, unless you count my occasional one-sided complaints about the smell to distract me from where exactly the pungent scent of rotting flesh originates. I debate turning on the radio, but decide against it when I realize just how many songs there are that could pump through the stereo speakers to make this entire situation even more unbearably awkward.
Tucking a blanket that Nate keeps in the backseat around the body, buckling it in, and pillowing my battered denim coat under its head does wonders to make my wayward corpse pass for a simple sleeping passenger. But it didn't do much to eliminate the uncomfortable absence of sound.
I wonder briefly if Nate's even still in my body, but quickly stifle the thought. That's one road that will only lead to a hefty serving of guilt followed by a heaping slice of fear, neither of which I have the metaphorical appetite for right now.
It begins to drizzle not far from home, just as I'm turning off the interstate onto the long winding country road that meanders for a while before finally deciding to cross through town. I zip through the familiar territory at just the right speed, fast enough to reach town as soon as possible, slow enough to keep from hitting any deer that might wander out into the middle of the road. The drizzling rain mists the windshield, barely heavy enough to worry about windshield wipers.
The body shifts in the passenger seat, and I reach out instinctively to steady it, my hand landing on the bare fleshy skin of what would, under normal circumstances, be my very own forearm.
I don't know what in heaven's name I'm even
doing
.
I don't know why I'm driving home. I don't know why I cradled my dead body in my arms and buckled it into Nate's car and left the city so quickly I may have left skid marks from the exit to the parking garage to the city limits.
I don't know ...
“Oh, for heaven's sake,” I hiss, and gun the gas pedal to the floor.
I'm barely within sight of the main drag before I nearly hit a zombie with Nate's car.
The car screeches to a halt when I slam on the brakes, and the seat belt is the only thing that keeps the corpse next to me from sliding into an embarrassing heap on the floor. I might be more concerned about the state of the body I'm hoping to return to eventually somehow, but … well, it's hard not to focus on the walking dead. They make themselves very hard to ignore, particularly the one currently licking at the glass of the driver's side window.
I wish I could say I'm surprised by this particular turn of events, but it's been one of those weeks.
Sighing, I swerve around the zombie still tripping over himself in the middle of the road and drive towards town.
“I am definitely going to have to take up alcoholism when this is all over,” I murmur to myself.
The closer I move to town, the more of the walking dead I spot shuffling around people's yards and stomping through the woods in aimless circles. Approaching the heart of Main Street in Nate's Cooper does nothing to diminish the sheer number of zombies that trudge in slow but persistent paths across the road. They ramble between hastily abandoned vehicles and terrified passersby, the majority of the town's inhabitants appearing to have enough sense to stay indoors.
I'm not the least bit shocked to see Hazel among the crowd refusing to duck for cover when they could be doing a little amateur zombie-wrangling, warding off a moaning female zombie so that a trio of screaming high school boys twice her size can duck into the safety of the town library.
Shaking my head, I park the car on the opposite side of the street and get out.
I lock the doors behind me. I don't expect the undead to try to turn my body into a buffet, but I'm certainly not taking my chances.
Hazel doesn't see me at first, too busy storming through a groaning huddle of zombies. The metal snow shovel in her hands swings with impressive force considering it's being wielded by someone who appears to weigh less than the shovel itself. One of the zombies tumbles to the ground, still gnawing at the air with its blood-stained maw.
Hazel doesn't even flinch. She presses the business end of the shovel down on the zombie's neck, the edge of the metal sharp against its graying skin, and steps down on the upper curve, putting all her weight into it.
The body lacks blood. The only indication she's succeeded in stopping it is the way the zombie's jaw ceases its futile biting as it tumbles towards the gutter.
Hazel doesn't even give herself a moment to savor the kill, giving the head a good thumping with one foot before moving on to tear a zombie away from little Timmy Collins.
So much for respecting the dead, I suppose.
I stalk towards her, pausing to punch a severely rotted cape-wearing zombie I sincerely hope is neither one of my grandfathers which attempts to take a bite out of my neck as I pass. Timmy Collins bolts towards the library as Hazel whacks a zombie's head into a messy splatter on the sidewalk. As I walk up, I catch her sighing a tired breath and reaching up to run a hand through her unkempt hair, only to stop herself as she grimaces at the gory spatters on her fingers.
“Need help?” I blurt out.
She turns to me in the middle of wiping her hand off on her ink-stained jeans, the muck blending in far too well with the numerous stains of faded tattoo ink. “Not even a little, but thanks anyway.”
I can't resist a grin at that.
Recognition dawns in her eyes, and for a moment she casually ignores the irritatingly slow chaos rippling through town around us. “Hey, you're that guy from the Nobles' party.”
“Only physically,” I crack, and frown as it occurs to me that there has to be an easy way to explain this to her without starting an argument or dodging thrown appliances. Never mind that there aren't any random kitchen appliances nearby for her to pitch my way. I'm sure she could force them to appear out of thin air if she were truly angry enough, preferably directly above my head just to save herself the energy of tossing them at me.
Her eyes narrow at the face I make, and she steps closer to study me.
“Vera?”
I almost flinch backwards, wondering if maybe while I was gone she suddenly developed a raging case of telepathy.
She's just that good,
a voice in my head jokes, but it's true. It's so very uncomfortably true. “You are remarkably good at this game, you know that?” I say, and when I speak my words shake.
She takes another step closer. “How did you get in there?”
“Can we talk about this later?”
Frowning, Hazel gives the lumbering zombies currently touring Main Street at roughly the speed of strawberry jam a dismissive look. “We could talk about this now, really. This is easier than I thought it would be.”
My gaze drops to the old clunky tool in her hands. “A shovel?”
“I'm not as good a shot as Gram is,” she says with a shrug. “She took the shotgun.”
A shot rings out from the opposite side of town, and someone hoots and hollers in celebration. Hazel beams at the sound, absently twirling the shovel around in her hand like an expert ninja with a bo staff.
“You are having way too much fun with this.”
“I didn't realize there was a limit of fun to be had during a zombie invasion.”
“I suppose you wouldn't,” I say wryly.
Hazel bounces up and down a little on the balls of her feet, her itch for a fight thrumming excited energy through her veins as she searches for another zombie to take down. Her bright eyes dim somewhat when she spots something over my shoulder. “Is that your face trying to gnaw through that car's window?”
I sigh heavily at that, but don't bother looking back. With a question like that, I can just imagine what she's seeing inside the Cooper without having to verify just how accurate my imagination can be. I'm not sure what's causing this zombie infestation, or whether or not it's simply a coincidence that it's happening now, of all days, but watching my reanimated self lick the windows in the Cooper is not something I particularly want to witness. “Long story,” I say.
She pales, her freckles standing out in sharp relief against her skin, and the muscle in her jaw flickers an ominous warning. “Your body's … dead,” she says, and I can almost swear I feel our usual argument tap me on the shoulder and question if that's its cue to arrive.
“Is that the most important thing you want to fixate on right now?”
Hazel freezes. “Depends. Where did she go?”
I whirl around, knowing as soon as she says it just what's occurred. Sure enough, there's no body in Nate's Cooper, reanimated or otherwise. Zombies aren't exactly the most dexterous of creatures, so unlocking the doors to get out is a bit out of its range. However, it seems like using my superhuman ability to teleport down the block to fumble its way towards elderly Mrs. Tomasso isn't outside of its skill set even after death.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I say.
I'm about to head down the street after it when I freeze in place. I lift one of my hands to stare at a palm lacking scars and lines. I study my body, not the one I'm trapped in but the one tramping towards anything that moves in my red silk dress. It bounces with deft superhuman power from one place to another with no firm grasp on landings or execution, more often than not tumbling to the ground as it materializes once again.
I still have power, in more ways than one.
“I wonder if that would be crazy enough to work.”