12
Ambushed
“WHAT’S A ZERKER?” I ask when we’re nearly home. Beyond the dusty windshield of Dane’s truck, the sun begins to rise.
Dane and Chloe share one of their “how could she be so stupid?” glances.
Dane says, “Didn’t the Council explain Zerkers to you?”
“Of course they did,” I say, “but obviously not well enough. I thought I’d eat some brains, hang out with you guys, get used to being celibate for the rest of my life, and that would be that. Now I find out there are these Zerker characters that aren’t like regular zombies. That we’re supposed to hunt them down and eliminate them. What’s up with that?”
“They’re not just ‘not like’ regular zombies, Maddy,” Dane explains gravely as he signals to turn off the interstate and onto Marlin Way, the main road into Barracuda Bay. “They’re not zombies, period.”
“Well, what makes a regular zombie a regular zombie then?”
Dane looks at Chloe.
Chloe rubs her eyes. “The same thing that makes a kid get to school on time, or follow the rules, or not drown live kittens: a conscience. Regular zombies are like regular people, only dead, reanimated regular people. Zerkers have no conscience; they don’t read The Guide; they don’t visit the Elders, register with the Book of the Dead, or follow the rules.”
“Why not?”
Dane says, “The thing about Zerkers is, they aren’t personally reanimated; they’re turned.”
“Huh?”
“Take you, for example,” Dane says. “You wake up yesterday morning, all was right with the world. You go to school, eat your lunch, gossip with Hazel; you’re the All-American Girl. But for whatever reason you stupidly decide to go jogging in a thunderstorm and, zap, you’re struck by lightning. That’s Reanimation in the First Degree. You, personally, received a pure dose of millions of volts of electricity and went from being alive to being undead. However it happened to us—to you, to me, to Chloe—we were all three Reanimated in the First Degree.”
“Zerkers,” says Chloe, “aren’t born; they’re made. In other words, some zombie who was Reanimated in the First Degree turned them. So they’re not born of pure energy; they’re Reanimated in the Second Degree.”
“Sort of like when a vampire turns one of us, and we’re never as strong as he is, or powerful, or—?”
“Not quite,” Dane says with a sour expression. “For one, there are no vampires. What are you, crazy? That’s pure fiction. Second, Zerkers are usually more powerful than we are because rather than ordering animal brains from Harvey at the all-night deli, they get them straight from the source.”
“What, like, the cattle processing plant?”
“More like some poor soul’s skull,” Chloe says. “Zerkers rob fresh graves; they dig up the dead; and, when they’re feeling really destructive, they feed on the living, too.”
“You mean, Zerkers kill …people? Like, real, live …human people?”
“Not just human people, Maddy.” Chloe rubs the spot between her eyes right above her nose. “Zerkers like to stalk people; they actually enjoy killing people. They pick somebody close to them, say, a neighbor, or a cashier at their favorite grocery store—”
“Or someone in their Home Ec class,” Dane says pointedly, but I’m too overwhelmed, too shocked, to process that particular scenario.
“Or someone in Home Ec class,” Chloe continues. “And they’ll toy with them for awhile, you know, like a cat with a mouse. Stalk them for a few days, bump into them in class, pop in on them in the graveyard—any of this sounding familiar yet? Anyway, they basically try to scare the pants off of them, and then when this person—or student—can’t take it anymore, when their brain is literally frazzled, the Zerker strikes, chomp, and …good-bye, brain.”
Dane takes over. “They say the hunt, the chase—all that fear—makes the brain more electrified so that when they finally crack open their victim’s skull and scoop it out, the brain is twice as powerful as if they’d snuck up on somebody and conked them over the head.”
Suddenly I’m thinking of Hazel, of all those empty seats in Home Ec, of the Curse—and who might really be behind it. “Who would do such a thing?” I ask, not really expecting an answer.
Dane slams on the brakes and the truck fishtails, the end swinging around to the left as we dig into a slide in the middle of the road. I look to see what made Dane brake, only to see Bones and Dahlia standing in the middle of the road.
“Who would do such a thing?” Chloe says, flinging open her passenger side door and leaping into the road before the truck has even stopped moving. “You’re looking at ‘em.”
“Fancy meeting you three here.” Bones cackles, rubbing his large, pale hands together like he’s getting ready to dig into an all-you-can-eat brains buffet.
Beside him, Dahlia looks petite but powerful in her all-black outfit and higher-than-normal heels. Under the waning moonlight, their skin is almost porcelain white, the hollows under their eyes deep pools of sadness, fear, and death.
“What do you want, Bones?” Dane says, rising from the truck almost casually and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chloe. There’s a relaxed but practiced manner to their movements, like maybe they’ve done this before. I join them on the road, hanging slightly back, just in case.
Bones takes a step toward me. “Why, what we’ve wanted all along, Dane. Her, of course.”
Chloe steps in front of me while Dane moves to my side. “Nice try,” Chloe says. “She’s already been assimilated, Bones. You’re too late, as usual.”
“Assimilated,” Dahlia says, as if she’s uttering a curse word. “Like that matters.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you Zerkers,” Dane shouts, “but it matters to us zombies.”
“Please.” Bones stands his ground, his white track suit shiny and his eyes grim under his soft white ski cap. “Let the Elders make their rules and we’ll make ours. You’re in Barracuda Bay now, Dane. The Elders can’t help you here.”
“Maybe the Elders can’t, Bones, but the Sentinels sure can.”
Bones and Dahlia laugh.
“The Sentinels.” Bones mocks. “The Keystone Cops is more like it; they couldn’t catch a Zerker with two hands tied behind his back.”
“Or her back,” Dahlia says indignantly.
“Too right,” says Bones distractedly. “Too right. Besides, we’re through playing nice. Give us the girl, or the Truce is off.”
“What Truce?” Dane says, spittle flying from his mouth as he steps forward threateningly. “You think we’re blind, Bones? You think we don’t know what’s been going on around here?”
Bones opens his mouth, and a scary smile spreads across his stiff, white face. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
“The students, Bones,” Chloe says. Then she starts ticking them off one by one, as if she’s crawled inside my head and onto my bedroom wall and is reading them off my very own grave rubbings. “Amy Jaspers. Sally Kellogg. And now Missy Cunningham. Are you guys that stupid? It’s not bad enough you go cracking skulls in Barracuda Bay High School, but you have to pick them all from the same class? You didn’t think anybody would notice?”
Dahlia smiles, giving nothing—and everything—away. “So what if we did crack a few skulls, Chloe? Like we told your little friend there, they were girls nobody would miss. I mean, it’s not like they were popular or anything. And even if they were, what are you going to do about it?”
Chloe takes a step toward Bones. “Maybe we can’t do anything about it on our own, but the Elders sure can—”
Bones shouts, “Enough with the Elders. So what if we broke the Truce? So what if a few local girls have a few …accidents? Nobody’s putting two and two together; nobody’s come asking questions, and the Elders couldn’t care less. We want the girl, Dane, and we want her now. If you don’t hand her over right now, there will be consequences.”
“Not happening, Bones,” Chloe shouts just as loudly. “And if you break the Truce again, know this: there will be consequences.”
Bones and Dahlia look at each other and shrug.
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you, zombies,” Bones says as he retreats back into the woods near the side of the road.
“Just remember, Maddy,” Dahlia whispers forcefully before following Bones. “They can’t protect you all the time. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to face us alone. And then whose empty stool will Hazel be staring at in Home Ec?”