MaryJane Davidson - Undead and Unpopular

Okay, I'd touched it. And it hadn't been so bad. Okay, it had been crawly and awful—like touching a shirt full of squirming maggots—but there were worse things. Like—like—

I couldn't think of anything worse.

I looked at my hand and saw there was dirt and skin on the tips of my fingers. I started to cry and frantically wiped my hand on my jeans.

“Maybe it isn't trying to kill you,” Cathie said helpfully from right beside me. “Maybe it's trying to communicate. You know, like I was. Maybe it came here because you're the Queen and you can help it. Please stop crying. Betsy, come on. It's not that bad. It's just a zombie. It can't even do anything to you.”

Couldn't do anything? It was hurting me just by existing. It was—my hysterical brain groped for the word and caught it. It was anabomination . It was wrong for this thing to be anywhere, never mind my attic. It went against everything right and good and sane and normal.

It was getting up. It was coming toward me again. It was saying “Nuhhhhhhhhh” again. It was trying to touch me again. I cried harder. It seemed that crying like a B-​movie heroine (the ones who always got saved at the last minute, but who was going to save me?) was going to be the way I dealt with this. Well, that was all right. Crying didn't hurt anybody. Crying never—

“Betsy, will you for Christ's sake do something!”

Here it came again. Here it reached again. Here it was touching me. Here it was showing me its teeth. Here it was pulling on me. Here it was making an odd noise—ah. It was trying to smack its lips, but they had rotted away. Smacking its lips the way a hungry fella smacked his lips as he contemplated Thanksgiving dinner. Or a big steak. Or—

Me.

Its hands were on my shoulders. The stench rose, almost a living thing. I raised my own hands. It pulled me close. I put my hands on either side of its head. It slobbered without saliva. I twisted. But of course it didn't die, of course it leaned in like a grotesque parody of a vampire and bit me, chewed on me, ate me while I screamed and screamed, while Cathie darted around helplessly and watched me get eaten, while—

—it fell down, its head twisted around so that, if it were alive, it would have been looking down on its own butt.

“Now that's what I'm talking about,” Cathie said. “Whew! I thought you were really going to—Betsy?”

I had walked stiffly over to one of the couches. Sat down, almost impaling myself on a broken spring. Cried and cried and rubbed my hands on my jeans. They would never be clean. My fingers would always stink. They would always have dead meat and graveyard dirt on them. Always. Always.

I sat on the couch and looked at the (dead) zombie. I never, ever wanted to get away from a place more than I wanted to get out of that attic, but I couldn't make myself get up and make the long walk to the door at the top of the stairs. The only thing I had the strength for was sitting on a filthy, broken couch that was so dusty I didn't know what color it was under all the dirt. That, and looking at the zombie I'd killed.

I suppose part of me was waiting for it to get up and come at me again. Like Jessica would get up and come at me if I'd gone through with it, if I'd ignored her wishes (as, truthfully, I'd been tempted to do) and made her a vampire. She wouldn't be Jessica anymore if I did that; she'd be a slobbering, crazy vampire. Fast forward ten years, by then maybe she'd have a little bit of control over the thirst. Then her new life would begin: being more careful about meals. Never aging, but getting old just the same. Pulling further and further away from the mortal Jessica, my friend, the older she got. Getting sly, like Eric and Alonzo.

Alonzo. He had made a vampire without a single thought to the consequences: for Sophie or for himself. He had killed her and gone on his way, and he had to pay. That was it, that was how it was: he fucked up, and he had to pay. What if it had been Jessica, dead in some alley in France how many years ago?

And how could I have gone to her room and asked her to let me do that? I deserved a zombie hiding in my attic. I deserved a hundred zombies.

“Why do you think it was here? How did it get in, and get all the way up here without anybody seeing?” Cathie was chattering nervously and looking at me the way you looked at a recent mental ward escapee. “What do you think it wanted?”

“I don't give a ripe shit,” I said, and stood.

It took a long time to find the door.

“Can I tag along?” Cathie asked, drifting beside me.

“I don't care.”

“Well, I just thought I'd ask. Are you okay? You're done crying, right?”

“No promises.” I could hear the phone ringing as I went downstairs. I'd heard Tina and Sinclair come back, which was too bad because it meant somewhere in this big house, Tina was sprinting to get the phone before it clicked over to the machine.

“I'm not here!” I yelled. Sinclair was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking up at me, still in his overcoat.

“It might be important,” he teased, well aware of my antiphone leanings. Then he wrinkled his nose. “What is that smell?”

“It's a long damn story, and I'll tell you all about it on the way—”

“On the way where?”

“But will you just hug me right now?”

“Darling, are you all—” He almost staggered as I flung my arms around him. I tried to squash the traitorous thought

(why didn't you save me?)

and concentrate on the good things: Sinclair's arms around me, his good clean scent, the polar opposite of the zombie.

Cathie coughed. To be honest, I'd forgotten she was there. “I'll just, uh, catch up with you later.” She vanished into the stairs.

Sinclair was rubbing my back. “What is it?”

“Alonzo has to be punished.”

He pulled back and stared at me. “Does this have anything to do with Jessica turning you down?”

Now I was the one staring. “How did you know—okay, apparently I'm traveling through time about half as fast as the rest of you, but how did you know she'd say no?”

“Because,” he replied, “she is a billionaire who works, even though she does not have to. I never imagined she would lie back and let you try to fix anything for her, much less something like this.”

“Well, I don't want to do anything to her.”

His perfect brow wrinkled. “ 'Do' anything?”

“It's part of the long story. But if you were dying, wouldn't you—”

“She maintains she is not dying, only ill. Is it for us to argue?”

“No way. I just wish I'd figured that out a little earlier.” I leaned my head against his neck. “I guess I thought maybe since she saw me get better so fast after Delk shot me—”

“No oneshould decide to be turned based onyour experiences, my darling. You are unique.”

“But maybe a vampire I turned would be like me!” God, what was I saying? Had I learned nothing from the Unpleasant Attic Incident?

No, I didn't want to turn Jessica. But I didn't want to watch her die, either. It was too awful, like having to choose your own manner of death: Ah, Miss Taylor, will you be choosing beheading or exsanguination today?

“No one is like you. You may check the Book of the Dead,” he added, “if you require another source.”

“Ugh, pass.” The Book of the Dead was a tough read.

“So she did refuse you.”

“Repeatedly.” And a good thing, too.

He shrugged. “She has faith in modern medicine. It's not entirely misplaced.”

“Yeah.” I straightened his lapel, which was already perfectly straight, and felt his arm steal around my waist. I pushed him away, gently. “You need to get Tina. I've made a decision about Alonzo.”