Strange Angels

gun like it’s loaded.

I hoped it was loaded. I knew it probably was—Dad wouldn’t have a piece on his camp chair if it wasn’t. I’ve been shooting since I was nine and even Gran had a gun in her house and I knew gun safety, didn’t I? It was why I was Dad’s helper. I knew the right way to handle a firearm and the wrong way, too, and the thing blundered around the corner, fixing me with its terrible rotting eyes that were now unholy, glowing blue. A spark of red revolved far back in the pupils, and I smelled it.

Zombies smell worse than anything you can imagine if you haven’t been hunting things on the dark side of the world. It’s a ripe, gassy odor, like rotting eggs and meat gone bad, crawling blind with maggots. It’s roadkill and decayed food and body odor all rolled into one package and tied up with puke.

I screamed again, but all that came out was a whistling sound, because my throat had locked up. I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Oh shit.

The safety was on. The thing lunged for me, its atonal bellow rolling free of its throat again—

—and it fell.

Take the goddamn safety off. I scrabbled with the gun as the zombie splatted onto the carpet. It was covered in snow, wet and running with rot, and it wore Dad’s favorite green Army-surplus coat. It had tripped over a box partly blocking the entrance to the living room.

My breath sounded harsh as a crow’s caw as the safety clicked off. I lay on my back and pointed the gun.

Dad’s eyes met mine. The zombie scrambled to its bare, rotting feet—his shoes were gone, where were his boots?—and stretched out its hands, bits of flesh falling and plopping on the carpet. The stink roiled through my nose, filled my head, and I retched as I pulled the trigger.

The first bullet went wide, blowing out part of the living-room wall. I was still screaming and dry-sobbing as the zombie ratcheted forward, falling toward me, its teeth snicking together as its ruined jaw ground shut again and again, practicing the chewing motion that would eat its prey alive. I kept pulling the trigger.

I didn’t even hear the shots, though they must have been deafening. All I heard was my own sobs.

It fell on me. Slime splashed and black blood splatted on my face. It burned like acid. It was cold like the snow outside, and it stank. Its jaws clicked twice, it shuddered, and a gout of something black and disgusting smashed out of its mouth.

I was still screaming. Couldn’t get enough breath, so I was making a high, whining sound. The gun clicked. I was pulling the trigger, but I’d emptied the clip.

The zombie was truly dead. There was a hole in its chest, nicely grouped shots. You have to damage the heart or the thing keeps coming. It’s something about the process of making a zombie, the meaning of the heart keeping the whole body going—or so the books say. But I hadn’t been thinking about the books. I’d been blindly following training, aiming for the bodyshot like he had taught me.

Don’t aim for the head if you’ve got a choice. Don’t pull. Squeeze the trigger, sweetheart. Dad’s voice, in my head. With the never-ending refrain repeated so many times, I could have said it in my sleep: Don’t point that thing at something you don’t intend to kill.

I thrashed wildly, smashing the thing on the head with the gun, hammering on it and struggling free of deadweight. Still making that high, whining sound, I crawled fast as I could across the living room until I reached the corner farthest away from the zombie. My left hand got rug burn. My right was full of the empty gun.

I put my back in the corner and heard myself babbling. Weak, incoherent sounds bounced off the empty white walls. I was cold and covered in stinking, burning goo.

The zombie lay facedown. Runnels of filth caved through its rotting skin. The smell was unbelievable. It wore Dad’s jacket and Dad’s jeans. Once you’ve taken the heart out, a zombie rots real quick. Even the skeleton decomposes into dust.

I started to cry.

The babbling turned into one word, over and over again.

“Daddy? Daddy? Daddy?”

He just lay there.

The zombie just lay there.

CHAPTER 6

The mall was open because the snowplows had come out. The main drags were clean and clear. They took winter seriously around here and had everything salted, sanded, scraped, and plowed to within an inch of its life. The buses were still running, too.

Life doesn’t stop out on the prairies for a little snow. Canned Muzak still has to play, after all, and if they closed the malls, who would play it?

I stared at the small McDonald’s cup. It was full of coffee that had been steaming hot and now just kind of sat there. My eyes burned, full of sand. I’d scrubbed the zombie rot off my skin and thrown some clothes on, shoved all the cash I could find—Dad’s billfold was gone, probably tucked into the truck somewhere or, more likely, taken— into my messenger bag and hightailed it out of the house, stopping only to turn the heat off, for some weird reason. The back door was shattered and the smell was incredible, thick as Crisco in the nose.

Did anyone hear the shots? I didn’t think so—there had been no sirens, and our house was a pariah, set apart like it had a disease. We heard nothing from our neighbors, and that was the way Dad liked it. The snow would muffle everything, too.

If it had killed me, nobody would even know I was dead. I’d be lying there, and . . .

My brain stopped working, stalled like a choked engine. I shuddered, the plastic chair squeaking. The mall was as brightly lit as Heaven and people were wandering around, shopping like there wasn’t a decomposing zombie in my living room. Down on the lower level of the food court a fountain splashed, water rilling musically down squares of Art Deco concrete and sculpted, welded steel.

The Styrofoam cup was a white circle with a brown ellipse inside it, a conical, textured shape. I could draw it. My pad was in my bag, shoved in there with hysterical haste like everything else.

Drawing sounded good, except I couldn’t do it with my hands shaking so bad. I shivered again. I couldn’t have told you what I was wearing, only that I’d changed clothes after scrubbing the zombie goo off me.

I shot him. I shot Daddy.

I kept bumping up against the memory—Dad’s blue eyes with their rotting whites fixed on me, a crimson spark dancing in the depths of the clouded pupil, no longer perfectly circular but fringing at the edges as the tissue died. The gun jolting against my hands. The smell.

I realized I was making the sound again, a low whining at the back of my throat under the fountain’s wet splishing, and killed it. I couldn’t afford to have someone look too closely at me.

I’d just killed my dad.

Hello, Officer? Can you help me? My dad got turned into a zombie. You know, we’ve been traveling around getting rid of things that aren’t real, and this time they hit back. I really need someplace to stay— but can you make sure I have some holy water or something wherever it is? And some silver-jacketed bullets? That’d be sweet. Yeah, that’d be totally cool. Thanks. And while you’re at it, can you tell the guys with the straitjackets that I’m really sane? That would help.

The coffee trembled inside the cup as I touched its rim with two fingers. Soon the mall would start closing down. It was a weeknight. Where would I go? I couldn’t get a hotel room with the ID I had on me, unless I tried the bad part of town, and that would cost more cash than I wanted to spend right at the moment. Speaking of cash, I needed to find a way to get more if I ran out, and—

I couldn’t even think about planning that far ahead.

I shot my daddy. Jesus Christ, I shot my dad. Tears rose hot and thick in my