Waking Up Dead

supple, yet deadly, she was now showing him something else. She had killed hundreds of the waking dead without so much as a murmur. He had watched mesmerized as she swung Mandy through limb after limb, but now, because this one still wore the skin of a child, she hesitated. He wanted to rally at her for being weak, but he knew deep down that it was not weakness. It was compassion, something she had buckets of underneath her hard exterior. “You realize that makes no sense.”

“Promise me, Luke.”

Luke gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the soft inflection of her voice. He was often helpless against it and she knew it, damn it!

“Fine, we won’t kill her. But we need to leave.”

“After we check,” she insisted. “Something feels off and it’ll bug me until I find out what. The dress, the hair, the doll…” She paused. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“You planning on asking her those questions yourself? As she tries to eat you?”

“I just want to look. Something isn’t right, Luke. Please. Don’t make me beg or threaten.”

He growled. “Holy hell, Jack, we’re a few hours at most from the end goal. We don’t need this now. If something is wrong here, I don’t want us to get in the middle of it. Looking isn’t going to give you any answers.”

“Please, Luke,” she asked again, laying a gentle hand on his, and with that he was helpless to say no. She was so in sync with him! Their physical relationship only added to the mental one that was already well established. He had a nasty suspicion that she’d have been able to wrap him firmly around her finger in the prezombie world. Hell, he was barely hanging on now.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll drive past slowly. As soon as we confirm she’s a zombie, we’ll gun it and go. Just in case.”

“We won’t behead her?”

“No.”

“Okay then.”

Slowly he pressed down on the gas, edging forward carefully. He intended to give the girl a wide berth, use the other lane. That way when she turned, snarled and came after them, he could get them away without breaking his promise to Jackson.

“Luke, wait…”

He eased off the gas and opened his mouth to say something but didn’t need to. It was obvious what was happening. As slowly as he’d pressed on the accelerator the girl rose. Her movements were smooth, not jerky, and as she stood, her dress fluttered around her knees.

“Oh my God,” Jackson breathed.

The child’s legs were tanned, ending in frilly white socks and black patent-leather shoes. Bit of mud clung to the lace, to her dress, her hair, but Jackson had been right. Underneath all that dirt there were no weeping wounds, no blood splatters—she looked like a normal little girl. She was a normal little girl.

For a moment Luke had no idea what to do. A human girl, alone, on a deserted street… How could it be?

“It’s a trap,” he whispered, knowing somehow that the words were true the moment he said them. “It can’t be anything else.”

The girl lifted her head then and her eyes found them. Bright blue eyes, in a muddy little face. No. Terrified blue eyes, in a human face. Tears tracked down her eyes, she shook her head, and then the little girl ran.

…

Jackson didn’t even think before she opened the door. Her hand grabbed the handle, pulled and pushed, and then her feet were hitting the road, Mandy in hand.

“Jack, what the fuck?”

She heard Luke’s hissing voice, of course she did, but the only thing she could think about was the small child running in front of her. Four yards, five—she needed to move, and quickly.

The road was almost melting in the heat, making the air undulate oddly and Jackson’s heart went out to the child who had no doubt baked half to death on it. No parent would leave a child out alone in this weather. The girl was there for an entirely different reason. One that screamed danger.

But she was just a girl, and Jackson could not leave her.

She pulled her gun from her waistband as she sped up, so that both of her hands were weaponed up. Part of her wondered if that would scare the child, a ridiculous thought considering. God knew what the child had seen.

The child in question swerved as she headed not for the front door like Jackson had expected, but toward the garage. Even as she ran, Jackson’s heart gave a horrible lurch. Spaces that had not been prechecked were bad news in so many ways, especially in this heat. But she couldn’t leave the girl, damn it. She was human, and a child. Just a little girl. It was ridiculously impossible that she was even alive!

“Wait,” Jackson shouted, then regretted it immediately when her voice rang out in the silence—only her own rapid heartbeat a counter point to it.

The little girl turned slightly and shook her head, making her braids fly about, and then she crouched down and slipped under the half-open garage door.

“Fuck.”

She heard Luke’s footsteps behind her, about the moment she skidded to a halt.

“Jack…” Luke hissed, grasping her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We need to get her out.”

“It’s a trap!”

Jackson bit down on her lip and took a deep breath. Her heart was racing and sweat was already gathering along her back. She needed water. No doubt the child did too. The child had been waiting in the street, the heat baking her poor little body. How long had she sat out there waiting to lure someone in?

She sighed and gripped Mandy tighter. “I know, Luke.”

He growled, his eyes darting everywhere. “Then what are you doing? You can’t go in there.”

Despite the fact she knew it was an ambush, Jackson knew too that without a doubt she could not leave the child. Something was screaming hard at her and she had no choice but to listen to it. “I will not leave the girl here.”

“I know it’s totally fucked-up,” Luke said, “but Jack, you go in there, you get eaten. You know it, I know it.”

“Get eaten?” She shook her head at the words and then gasped. “You think…the zombies…”

Luke started. “Who else?”

“I thought people.”

“No, Jack,” he said quickly. “It’s them. I can feel it.”

His words made vomit rise and Jackson almost gagged. The idea of a houseful of feral survivors was bad enough, but the idea of one of the dead braiding the little girl’s hair, pus dripping, skin flicking off, was infinitely worse.

“But the girl—”

He growled again. “I’ll do it. I’d have told you that if you’d have waited. Stay here. Now,” he said, and then before Jackson could even stop him, Luke ran around her, sprinted across the sidewalk, bent down, and shimmied under the garage.

Her heart gave a horrible lurch and for one moment dizziness hit. Jackson gripped harder on both weapons to gain her equilibrium, before she ran after them. Her foot slipped as she hit the space where the parched lawn met the concrete, and Jackson looked down. What she saw there made her breath catch in the back of her throat.

A hole. A deep hole. Just like the one at Creepyville.

Head spinning she jumped over it, ran up the path, and toward the garage. The smell hit the moment she got close. Mold and ammonia, and oh God…she turned to look at the house…the windows did not have any fucking glass in. The same feeling slithered down her spine as it had all those weeks ago, and Jackson’s chest heaved as she bent down and entered the garage.