21
The Z Files

“B-B-BUT THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” Hazel insists a few minutes later, once she’s safe in our cozy breakfast nook and I’ve placed a Christmas mug full of hot cocoa in her trembling hands. “I’ve read all of the articles about those girls from our Home Ec class, and none of them ever mentioned the word brain, to say nothing of zombies.”

“Well, now, they wouldn’t, would they?” Dane says as I pour him and Chloe a glass of Mountain Dew.

“Well, not unless she was reading Fangoria, they wouldn’t.” Chloe laughs, and when Dane joins her, I cut them a hard glance.

Hazel shivers in her chair, outnumbered by zombies—one of which used to be her best (human) friend.

Chloe snorts indignantly, but Dane sees what’s happening and says, “Come on, Chloe, let’s let Hazel …absorb …all this.”

At the sound of her name, Hazel looks up. Her eyes are distant, as if she’s seeing Dane but not seeing him.

Chloe drags him out of my kitchen and toward the front door, and I follow. “We’ll be in the cemetery if you need us,” she says ominously.

Dane looks at me with an apologetic little half smile. “Seriously, though, Maddy,” he says as I linger in the doorway, “you need to make her understand how …sensitive …a situation this is.”

While Chloe pounds stiffly down the sidewalk, Dane and I glance at Hazel, who’s peering into her Christmas mug. “If she’s strong enough to keep a secret, Maddy, I’ll trust you to tell us so. But if she’s going to cause trouble, then I have to know that, too. I mean, you’ve seen the Elders; you’ve seen the Sentinels. You know what’s at stake here.”

I stand back, vaguely insulted at the implications. “She’s my best friend, Dane. I trust her completely.”

“She’s a Normal, Maddy. You keep forgetting; you’re not like her anymore.”

I nod but don’t feel the need to make more promises.

“Fine, Maddy, whatever,” Dane says. “If you trust her, that’s good enough for me. But don’t forget, it’s not safe for either of you with Bones and Dahlia pissed off now. We’ve got to stick together from here on in.”

His words stay with me long after he’s gone, long after Hazel’s untouched cocoa has passed the lukewarm stage and gone straight to cold. Something has changed tonight, something fundamental. Who has to stick together from here on in? Hazel and I: BFFs? Or Dane, Chloe, and I: ZFFs?

As a best friend forever, my loyalty is with Hazel. If she knows, I have to trust her to keep my secret.

As a zombie friend forever, my loyalty is with Dane and Chloe. Long after Hazel and Dad and everyone I know on this planet are gone, they will still be there, watching my back.

We’ve got to stick together. Who’s the “we” in that sentence?

I don’t have to look far for the answer. “Hazel,” I say, shocking her gaze out of the depths of her cold chocolate. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. The zombies, the Elders, they …wouldn’t let me.”

She merely shakes her head. “I knew something was up.” Her tone is filled with failure, with sadness, with disappointment. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you’d …lied …to me.”

I give her the moment; she’s absolutely right.

Then she looks up and says, “Prove it, Maddy.”

“Prove what?” I ask, but already I know the answer.

“Prove what you said; what he said, that creep in the hoodie. Prove you’re a …a …zombie.”

I was afraid of this. I stand up and walk to her and place her hand on my chest, where it stays while I count, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand …”

By the time I get to “forty-two one thousand,” she’s finally had enough and pulls her hand abruptly away. “Okay, so you’re a zombie; that doesn’t mean that Bones guy and Dahlia sucked the brains out of Amy and Sally and Missy. That stuff doesn’t happen in real life.”

“Oh, but your best friend turning into a zombie does?”

She opens her mouth to answer, to dispute, to one-up me, but can’t.

I feel bad for Hazel. I had time to deal with my Assimilation. Well, not much, but still; more than she’s getting.

“What if I can prove to you that those girls didn’t show up in the morgue with their brains intact, Hazel? Will you believe me then?”

She looks up and simply nods.

I don’t even have to sneak into Dad’s office to peep his files. Well, not his work office, anyway, which is fortunate because the county morgue is set up in the sheriff’s office, where there’s someone manning the front desk 24/7/365.

But Dad does have a home office and his computer is linked to the Cobia County Coroner’s Network. I log on to the county website, click on “Current Deceased Files” and, when asked for an account number and password before logging in, simply look under Dad’s keyboard, where I find, on a faded sticky note, account number and password, and all the info I need.

I key both in and, just like that, Dad’s autopsy files for the last six months are at my fingertips. I go to search by name and fill in all three girls’ names, separating them with semicolons: “Amy Jaspers; Sally Kellogg; Missy Cunningham.”

Like magic, the PDF files of their autopsies appear on the screen. Hazel, who’s been standing over me, breathing onto the top of my head, suddenly looks away when Amy’s autopsy photos pop up. I close that link and search instead for Dad’s official findings, which I know from experience have the names of each internal organ and a blank next to each one to record its weight.

I find Amy’s, then Sally’s, then Missy’s and print them out, one by one, before logging out of Dad’s account and clearing his history bar so he won’t see what I’ve been doing while he’s been working another double shift.

From the printer, I grab the three sheets of paper. From the pencil holder, I grab a yellow highlighter. I look around, but Hazel has disappeared and, by the time I’ve highlighted the empty line next to where the weight of each girl’s brain should have been recorded (but wasn’t), I find Hazel sitting in the breakfast nook, her house keys on the table, her big pink purse in her lap.

“Well?”

I lay the sheets out for her, one next to the other, next to the other.

She looks at them skeptically until I point out the highlighted boxes. “So? This could mean anything. The lab misplaced it, the cops couldn’t find it, any number of things could have—”

“That’s why I highlighted Dad’s notes at the bottom, Hazel.”

She glances briefly at the big highlighted box at the bottom of each form before shoving the printouts away.

“Okay,” I say, snatching each one up and reading them in order. “Amy Jaspers, cause of death termed accident. Only anomaly a deep gash in back of skull and her brain ripped out at the stem. Sally Kellogg, cause of death is termed by this coroner to be accidental. Only anomaly a deep gash in back of skull and her brain ripped out at the—Hazel, where are you going?”

“Fine.” She walks toward the door while rubbing away tears from her eyes. “You’ve proved your point, okay? I’m suitably freaked out, all right? So, not only do zombies exist, but my best friend is one. Awesome. And she’s not alone. There are four others in town. Yippee. And two of them are going around eating the brains of our entire Home Ec class, one by one. But thank goodness, the other two are hanging out in the cemetery watching over us, making sure we’re not next. Happy now, Maddy?”

“Me? What’d I do wrong? You think I asked to be a zombie, Hazel? You think I wanted all this?”

She stops at the door, her mascara running, her upper lip shiny with wasted tears. “I dunno, Maddy. I don’t know anything anymore. I know you weren’t very happy when you were alive, so I just hope you’re happier as …as …a zombie.”