Jenny Undead (The Thirteen: Book One) (14 page)

Jenny stared out of slats from the closet as
they entered. She couldn't see Casey, but knew he was there, hiding
in a cupboard under the counter. There were voices before she could
see anything. A man and a woman were talking. It sounded like an
argument.

“Fuck this,” the woman said as
they came through the door. “I can't take it anymore. He's
lost his shit. You know it's true, Beacon. Don't look at me like
I'm the bitch here.”

It was Lucy.
It was
fucking Lucy
. How the hell could it be Lucy?
Everywhere Jenny went, it was always Lucy. And Beacon was here too.
Was Declan here? It seemed like everywhere she went she saw Declan.
It was like she couldn't escape.

“You're overreacting,” Beacon said,
in his low, quiet voice. Ever calm. The hunger was creeping up on
Jenny. She ground her teeth together. “Let him grieve. They
loved each other for Christ's sake. Let him have time to deal with
it.”

“He's not dealing with it,” she
said. “He's disappearing every day for hours. He's screaming
at everyone. He's picking fights with punk-ass Heathens. When he
does sleep he has nightmares, and when he doesn't sleep he's even
worse.”

“It hasn't been that long,” said
Beacon. “You have to step back.”

“That's what you said
before,” Lucy said, her voice suddenly filled with ice.
“That's what you said to me back then. Give him space and
he'll come back to me, wasn't that it, Beacon? And what good did
that do me? Munro disappears for weeks and comes back with a little
trollop, cute as a fucking button.” Jenny heard her spit.
“And I smiled and pretended it was all cool for five years.
And now it's my turn.
It's my fucking turn!
”

“It doesn't work like that, Luce,”
said Beacon mildly.

“And how the fuck does it work?”
said Lucy.

“That trollop was the love of Munro's
life. You can't just replace her.” Beacon pulled some bottles
down and stuffed them into a bag. “And don't call her a
trollop. Jenny was amazing. We all miss her.”

“You still think it's my fault,” she
said.

“It doesn't matter anymore,” said
Beacon, sounding tired.

“I didn't kill her,” said Lucy.

“You didn't stop her either,” said
Beacon.

“Fuck you, Beacon.
Fuck you!
” Lucy turned and pushed the
large microscope onto the floor with a crash. Jenny balled up her
fist. Casey had managed to grab
the centrifuge before they found hiding places, but all the
equipment could have been used.

She could stop it. She could step out of the
closet and bite the bitch in the throat. Lucy was in a rage. She
was throwing microscopes and beakers across the room. Beacon walked
out silently, but Lucy didn't seem to notice. She wouldn't notice
if Jenny came up behind her either. She wouldn't notice until it
was too late. Jenny's vision went red. She clenched her fists and
tried to will it away. It almost took her, but then another voice
broke through.

“Stop it.” It was deep and familiar
and Jenny took a step back when she heard it, the red draining
away. “You're being ridiculous. These bottles are good for
trade.”

“Fuck off, Munro,”
Lucy said. “You should talk. You think
I'm
the crazy one?”

“I didn't say that, Luce. But you're
acting like an asshole.”

She looked down at the mess she had made. Jenny
saw her smile at Declan. “I'm sorry,” she said, tossing
her dreads over her shoulder. “I'm sorry, Munro. I'm just so
frustrated.”

“Is that what you call it?” he said
coldly. Lucy didn't seem to notice, but Jenny did. It was the same
tone Declan took when someone was trying to rip him off. Lucy
lifted herself up to sit on the counter. She smiled again.

“Do you remember how we were, Munro? We
were good together, weren't we?”

He snorted. “What are you
doing?”

“Just reminiscing,” she said.
“Don't you remember the good parts?”

“I remember you have a temper,” he
said.

“And you have other assets,” she
said. “Come on, Munro. For old time's sake. We can do it
right here and no one would know.”

Declan took a step toward Lucy and Jenny
cringed. “Let me tell you a little secret,” he
said.

“Anything,” she breathed.

“You,” he said, “will never be
her.”

Lucy jumped off the counter and pulled her gun
out. She cocked it, the barrel aimed straight at Declan. “I
could be better,” she said. “I could be better than
her. She was nothing. Just a kitten you found on the streets. She
was nothing.”

“She. Was.
Everything
,” Declan said, his voice
barely a whisper, but thick with emotion. He reached up and pulled
open his shirt revealing his chest. “Go ahead. Shoot. You'll
be doing me a big fucking favor. Nothing is worth it anymore.
Nothing.”

Lucy stood there for a long time with the gun
aimed at him. Then she started shaking. She was crying. She dropped
the gun.

“I loved you, Munro,” she said, her
voice high and manic. “I've always loved you. I still love
you.”

“But I could never love you,” said
Declan. He shook his head. “Maybe in some alternate reality
you and I would end up together.”

“What kind of alternate reality?”
Lucy said.

Jenny saw Declan's face harden as he watched her
sobbing in front of him. “The one where you didn't kill
her,” he said.

“I didn't fucking kill Jenny,” said
Lucy.

“You might as well have,” said
Declan, his voice flat.

“You're not being fair.”

“Jenny is dead,” Declan said.
“It's been, what? Two weeks? And you think I'm going to fuck
you? I can't even look at you. You killed the only thing worth
living for. Fuck you, Lucy.”

Lucy walked out with her back straight. Jenny
felt something for her. Pity twisted with anger. She had once
considered Lucy a friend. Jenny had always known she had a past
with Declan, but she didn't know it was like this. She watched
Declan. He didn't leave to follow Beacon and Lucy. He sat down on a
stool, his back hunched, like all his strength had been sapped
away. He put a hand on his face and was still. Jenny put her hand
to the slats. Her body was fighting with hunger and a deep desire
to walk out and put her arms around Declan. This wasn't right, this
secrecy. But then, he hopped down from the stool and picked up the
revolver Lucy had dropped. He checked the chamber and Jenny
remembered. He wouldn't hesitate if he saw her. He would just kill
her. In his eyes she was just a rotter using his lover's face. He
would kill her, she had no doubt. And then Jenny would never find
out about the cure.

She felt something on her arm and looked down to
see a large black insect there. She realized with horror that it
was burrowing into her. “Fuck,” she whispered, and
pulled it out with a sucking sound. She felt it crunch under her
soaking wet boot. When she looked back up, Declan was looking right
at her hiding place. She could feel his gaze burning through the
slats.

“Who's there?” he said. He cocked
the gun and pointed it right at her. It was going to hit her right
in the head. He was going to kill her right here. She closed her
eyes for a moment, then pushed open the door.

Declan's eyes widened. His arm faltered and he
lowered the pistol. “Oh Jesus,” he said, his eyes
filling with tears. “No. Not this.”

Jenny opened her mouth but no words came. He
stared at her for what seemed like ages. She realized she was
holding her knife. Declan seemed to steel his resolve and, gritting
his teeth, he raised the gun to point right at her face.

She tried to find the words, but only a sound
like a groan would come out. She'd forgotten to make herself
breathe. She tightened her hand around the knife. Even if she could
get to him before he shot her, she would never hurt Declan. She
forced her tongue and vocal cords to relax as she watched the
trigger being slowly squeezed.

“Stop,” she said finally, the word
coming out as a hoarse whisper. “Stop. Please don't.”
She raised the knife and pointed it at him ineffectually.

Declan's eyes opened even wider. He shook his
head, the gun staying in place. Jenny sidestepped him, easing
toward the door. Tears fell from his eyes and he rubbed them away
with his other hand. He shook his head again, uncomprehending.

“Don't kill me, Declan,” she said.
“Please.”

He kept the gun trained on her. “This is a
hallucination. You're not her. You can't be her. She's
dead.”

“That's right,” she said, the hunger
a pale comparison to the pain she felt in her chest. She felt like
she was breaking open. “Just walk away. You never saw me. Do
you understand?” Jenny looked toward the other side of the
room. “Come on out. We have to go.”

Casey was next to her in moments, a large white
object cradled in his arms. He was staring at Declan.

“You never saw us,”
said Jenny. “Take the drugs and go.” Jenny kept the
knife pointing toward him, doing no good. Declan didn't lower the
gun, his face a mixture of shock and disbelief. “Back away,
Deck,” Jenny said. He didn't move. “
Back
away!
” she yelled. He jumped and took a
step back. “This never happened,” she said. And she
pulled Casey through the door and into the darkness.

“I don't think he even
followed us,” said Casey, looking through the back window.
“Why wouldn't he follow us?”

Jenny wanted a cigarette. Bad. Not because she had
to have the nicotine, but just for the comfort of it. “I don't
know, Casey. Maybe he thinks he's crazy. He killed all those people
in the Underground.”

“Yeah, but they killed you.”

“Not all of them,” she said.
“Some of them were sweet.”

“Jen, I saw how he was looking at you. I
don't think he was going to hurt you.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I
have to assume he was. I'm not human to him any more.”

“If that's true,” said Casey,
“then why didn't he kill you?”

“I thought you hated him,” Jenny
said. There was no fire in her words, no anger. No emotion.

“I thought I did, too,” said Casey.
“I don't know anymore. That was...intense.”

Jenny didn't reply. There was nothing else to
say.

There were rotters clogging the street. Jenny
honked the horn, but they just kept shambling down the road. She
turned the sputtering car onto a side street and weaved around
potholes. There was a shape up ahead and she squinted at it.
Something was moving near a larger object. Her vision started to go
red before she smelled the blood.

“What the fuck is that?” she
said.

“Don't stop,” said Casey.

“Why not?”

“I could barely handle being around your
boyfriend, Jen. I don't think I can handle this. I'm so hungry.
Please. Just go back to the museum.”

Jenny slowed as they approached. A lone rotter
was hunched over eating something, her front covered in blood.
Scraggly gray hair cut short jutted out at odd angles, the dirty
nightgown the dead woman wore in tatters. And then Jenny saw what
the large object was.

A woman was fixed to a telephone pole, her arms
raised above her. Her abdomen was covered in blood as was her hair,
which hung in ropes. Jenny stopped the car.

“Oh no, Jen. Please,” said
Casey.

“Stay here,” said Jenny. She got out
and walked toward the rotter. The smell of the blood was
intoxicating. The hunger was growing stronger, filling her up. She
took slow steps toward the woman on the pole. The rotter grunted as
she passed. She was eating something red and slimy. The woman was
still alive, Jenny could sense it. Thin red rivulets ran from her
wrists and down her arms. She had been suspended by what looked
like an old railroad spike. The meat around the spike looked like
raw hamburger and flies buzzed around the wound. There were more
flies settling on her abdomen. It looked like she had been torn
open. How was she still alive? Her intestines spilled out of her
like snakes. Jenny looked down and saw she had been staked at the
ankles too, her feet sticking out at odd angles.

She had been crucified, just
like Frank Bierce and a dozen other rotters Jenny had seen. But she
was
alive
. Alive and crucified. This
wasn't a thumper statement. This
was something else entirely. Something dark. Darker than rotters on
poles, darker than Jenny's need for living flesh. This was an
atrocity. But even worse was that Jenny was so hungry. She reached
out to the girl's bloody midsection. She just wanted a taste. Just
one taste and she would leave. The woman gave a pained sigh and
Jenny pulled her hand back. The woman raised her bloodied and
bruised face slowly like every movement was agony. Jenny could hear
her bones scraping against the iron nails in her wrists and ankles.
She saw Jenny and she smiled a watery smile.

“I knew you'd come for me, Jenny,”
she said. “I knew you'd come.”

“Lily?” Jenny nearly fell back but
caught herself.

“He didn't look like a monster,”
said Lily. “You were right. Sometimes they look just like you
and me.”

“Jesus, Lily,” said Jenny.
“I'm going to get you down.” She looked up at the spike
holding Lily's wrists. She grabbed onto the head of the nail and
tried to pull it out of the wood, but it was sunk deep into the
pole. Lily gasped every time Jenny brushed against her, and Jenny
ached with everything inside of her with hunger. But this was Lily.
She wasn't going to touch Lily. She'd kill herself first.

“You can't,” she said, her voice
barely above a whisper. “He was too strong.”

“I can save you,” said Jenny.
“Hang on, I'll go get my brother.”

“No,” she said, her voice louder.
She flinched and tried to swallow. She looked at Jenny and tried to
smile, but it turned to a grimace on her pretty face. There were
dirty track marks on Lily's cheeks where she had cried. “I'm
going to die.”

“I can save you,” said Jenny.
“I can take care of you, Lily. Just like I said I
would.”

She shook her head gingerly. “I'm ready to
go. I'm going to go to Heaven and all my suffering will be over.
It's not going to hurt there. There will be no Joshua or Cora, and
there won't be rotters or...or him.”

“Him?” said Jenny.

“He looks like a man, but he's not,”
she said. “He was going to help me. He said he could. But he
cut me instead. Over and over. He sliced me away until I stopped
screaming. I couldn't scream any more. I prayed, though. I prayed
hard. He didn't like that, so he stuck me with a needle. I went to
sleep and woke up here.”

“Oh my God,” said Jenny.

“I don't think he was a person, Jenny,” she said, her
eyes sad and haunted. “I think he was the Devil.”

Jenny felt something bump against her and turned
to see the rotter coming back for more. She took out her knife and
in one smooth movement lopped its head off. The body fell with a
dull thud. Jenny turned back to Lily. She was smiling sadly
again.

“You were always so strong, Jenny. I
always knew you were strong. I listened, you know. What you told
me.”

“What did I tell you?” said Jenny.
It was hard to look at Lily. She was barely older than a child, and
even now she was so beautiful. Jenny covered her mouth so Lily
wouldn't see the horror on her face. The hunger was growing. The
smell of blood and Lily's insides were tantalizingly close. Jenny
didn't know how long she could stand it.

“You told me to run,” she said.

“Lily...”

“I did it, Jenny. I ran. I was so
brave.”

“I did this to you,” Jenny
whispered. “It's my fault.” Lily could have been killed
quickly with a bullet in the Underground along with all the others,
but Jenny had told her to run. The girl had suffered unimaginable
pain all because of her.

Lily's face turned to a mask as her features
began to relax. “They took my baby,” she breathed.
“That rotter you killed. She ate it. How can God let this
happen? Why has He left us?” Her eyes found Jenny's.
“But now I think maybe He didn't leave us.”

“He didn't?” Jenny said weakly.

“Maybe He sent you to save us all.”
Lily's body shuddered and her eyes rolled up into her head until
they looked completely white. And then she was gone. The hunger
started receding, but Jenny stood there for a long time, staring at
Lily's angelic face. Jenny reached up and closed the girl's eyes
with her fingers, ashamed she had almost done something
unforgivable. If it hadn't been Lily, she probably would have
bitten her. Jenny looked up. She couldn't let her turn. Not Lily.
She took out her knife and placed the point on Lily's pale,
delicate throat. It was the only part of her not caked with blood.
She shoved the knife upwards with a wet tearing noise. Lily would
never suffer again if Jenny had anything to do with it. She
wouldn't come back as a rotter.

She pulled the knife out of her friend and wiped
the shockingly red blade on the dead rotter's nightgown. She put
the blade back in its sheath and raised her face to the sky. Puffy
white clouds glided over the sun. Lily was the only being in this
world Jenny thought was truly good. She had been a child. Her
father had been murdered, she'd been raped, abused, impregnated,
and just when she thought she had escaped all the horror, this
freakshow had stuck her with knives and needles and left her to be
eaten alive. Jenny closed her eyes.

And then she started to scream.