Laughter of the Undead Read online

  "Same, Barry. What are you doing with those guns?" Levi said, stepping in front of me, making clear that he was going to do the talking. His shoulders tensed. They had guns, which either meant they’d taken them from a dead shooter like us or they were shooters.

  "We brought ’em," said the tall skinny pale one. "What about you?"

  They had brought them. That meant . . . my stomach lurched, we were talking to murderers. I couldn’t help but think of that boy, Evan. The one that made me say “Evan is the greatest, singling me out from the group because he knew my name, and then shot that girl when I didn’t say it loud enough. Half of me blamed myself, for her death and for Darren’s. I actually blamed myself for Darren completely, but I hadn't allowed the thought to fully form yet. I knew as soon as I acknowledged it, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I’d drown in guilt. But staying alive came first. Then I could sob and mourn and wallow.

  “Cameron didn’t need his anymore," Levi responded coolly, his voice unwavering. I exchanged glances with Izzy as she twisted her hands together nervously in front of her.

  The darker of the two boys laughed at Levi’s words, not perturbed that he was talking about a dead boy who had once been their friend. But the other two’s expressions wavered a little, their eyes flickering to Cameron’s body.

  "Man," Garrett said, “what are you doing with those two? I mean, c’mon. Sure, you weren’t in on the plan, but that doesn’t mean you have to stoop to their level."

  Levi glanced back at us, his expression impossible to read. "I made some new friends," he said when he turned back.

  I exchanged nervous glances with Izzy, who twisted the baseball bat in her tiny hands. She gripped it so hard her bony knuckles had turned white. She tried a nervous smile, and I tried one back.

  "Bull, dude," protested the darker boy. "You made friends with Storming and Frizzy? You know he’s one of the ones we were after."

  I shuddered as the boy’s hate-filled glare locked on me.

  "I was never part of these plans, Garrett," Levi countered, a sliver of ice creeping into his voice. "This was never a good idea. I’ll tell you what I told Zach. Killing people is not the way to get away from the jerks. You think this will make it better? How? When you get arrested? Like there will be no one in prison to mess with you? Or when you kill yourself like Brian and Cameron?" Levi gestured angrily at the boy still lying dead on the ground behind us. “In what world was this the right thing to do? How does this make it better?”

  The girl gaped at Levi like he had opened her eyes to something. She glanced at the gun in her own hand, expression turning to one of nauseation. The other boy contemplated what Levi had said but wasn’t entirely convinced yet.

  "That’s why you weren’t in on it. For the scariest guy in school, you’re so soft. Delicate like a flower. You’re scared of your own daddy and your best friend’s a charity case. You’re too soft, Levi. Screw good and bad. We gave the suckers what they deserved," Garrett said. "And that guy is one of those suckers," he threatened, waving his gun in my direction.

  This kid was off his rocker. I could hear it in his voice, fractured and cracking. He was going insane if he wasn’t already.

  I felt the sudden urge to hide behind Levi, something I would never admit out loud. Not to mention it was physically impossible, as I am by no means a small person and didn’t exactly tower but I still stood over Levi.

  Levi seemed done with the crazy boy, turning away from his gun with the most badass nonchalance I’d ever seen.

  “Where’s your sister, Barry?” Levi asked the taller light-haired boy in a low voice.

  “What do you mean?” he managed, shifting like the question made him uncomfortable.

  “You know exactly what I mean!” Levi shouted, “Your little sister. Candy. Don’t tell me you let her die too. She's fourteen! You guys killed kids! Your sister is a kid. Imagine for two seconds what she would think of you. You let this happen. You did this. You put your own little sister in harm’s way because you couldn’t get over yourself!”

  “She’s fine. She’s with her assistance lady in the Special Ed room.” Barry didn’t sound certain.

  “For all you know, she could be dead," Levi hissed. “You only care about yourself.”

  I couldn’t help thinking about what the crazy one, Garrett, had said. How Levi was soft. To me, it sounded like he was human. He’d always carried the worst name amongst all the bad kids, the kids to avoid, the “wrong crowd”. It had always been him people were scared of. But why him? He wasn’t the one anyone was worried about now. Here he was trying to save us when all I’d ever done for him was tell Darren not to call him “the Grave”.

  “See? What did I say? You’re weak, Levi. Soft-hearted and weak. You don’t deserve fear,” Garrett scoffed. “See, they left you alone cuz you scared them. They know about what you’d done. Or at least thought they did. They know about your gang but not about Raul.”

  I heard Levi’s breath catch when Garrett said that name, and while I couldn’t see his face, I could tell it was pained.

  “Still soft,” Garret laughed. “They don’t know you’re nothing without your hair dye and your piercings and your black jacket. You’re just a scrawny ginger nobody who knows how to punch.”

  Beside me, Izzy fumed. “Excuse me?”

  Before anyone realized what she was doing, Izzy pushed past Levi, marching straight up to the lunatic, ignoring Levi’s hand as he tried to yank her back.

  “Who do you think you are?” she snapped, walking right past his extended gun and jabbed him in the chest with a rigid finger. “What right do you have to insult anyone?”

  Garrett seemed as surprised as everyone else.

  Barry, the pale blonde one, pulled himself together first and shoved his friend out of the way, looming over Izzy. “The right of the ones with the guns.”

  Seven

  Levi

  March 4th - 3:58 p.m.

  She was unfazed.

  I felt my heart lodge in my throat as the memory of what had happened to Molly rushed back. It had been my fault she died, and if I didn’t do something, I would have this girl’s death on my hands too. But there was nothing I could do.

  The small, chubby girl put her hands on her hips and glared at the boy. “Yeah, no kidding. And even if you didn’t, I know someone had guns because of all the dead bodies. The dead bodies that are coming back to life and eating people. Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that you’ve got a gun. Congratulations, murderer, now you can shoot more people and make more zombies. Maybe if any of us are lucky they’ll eat you, considering you and your buddies have single-handedly triggered the Brimington apocalypse. Whoop-dee-do, you’ve shot people. Guess what that means? There’s a four-year-old somewhere who was excited about their big sister coming home to play video games, but that’s never going to happen because she’s dead. Oh, wait, you don’t care about siblings, considering you left yours to die.”

  There was a lot of sarcasm and pure bitter rage in her tone, enough that Barry’s weapon lowered. I’m not sure which part struck home, but I could tell it had.

  Barry opened his mouth like he wanted to argue but had nothing to say, but if he did, he never got the chance.

  Izzy punched him.

  It was almost comical, she was so short and he was so tall, but that didn’t make the punch any less real or the sound of the mixture between a crack and smack any less obvious. The punch wasn’t hard enough to send him reeling, but hard enough for his head to jerk.

  Barry clutched his jaw, wide-eyed as he stared at her. His composure wavered and he couldn’t meet her eyes. It broke. Barry sobbed, a big ugly sob, as he sank to the ground. Izzy glared down at him with tears pooled in her eyes.

  Izzy, this wild-haired girl, was one of the few people who wasn’t one of my friends that hadn’t acted like I was about to murder her. The grin from this morning that was meant to reassure me made me protective over her.

  But again, I couldn�
��t do anything to protect anyone. Had Barry wanted to, just now, he could have killed her and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.

  Just like I couldn’t stop Zach from shooting Molly.

  Barry’s weapon fell beside him as he buried his face in his hands. The girl, Kina, lowered her gun arm but didn't drop the gun. Her eyes were distant and glazed over.

  “No one,” she rasped in a far off voice. “Barry and I didn’t kill anyone. We . . . we were just for show. It was a prank, to scare people. Maybe they would kick us out of school, but no one cared. There were seven others. I thought it was a game, but I’m stupid.” Her voice broke. “The moment I heard that first shot, I knew it was real, and I wanted to drop my gun and tell the principal everything,” she sobbed. “I didn’t want anyone to die, but when the people they shot started coming back and laughing at us, I couldn’t put it down. Yesterday I didn’t care what happened to me, but after seeing those things, I was so afraid of dying that I couldn’t stop the killing.”

  I wanted to pity Kina. She sobbed so helplessly, she and Barry, but I couldn’t. I knew them all through high school, and while I was closer to Alec than anyone else, they were still my friends.

  Not anymore. The Kina and Barry I knew were gone and these shells were all that was left of them.

  And certainly not Garrett. Garrett had always been a member of the friend group, but he was always at the edge, on the sidelines, apparently listening but never sharing. Those things he’d said about me . . . they were all true. I’m soft and I'm weak and I'm nothing without my masks. But if being soft kept me from turning into a murderer like them, then yeah, I’m a soft, fluffy bunny rabbit.

  “It sounded like there were way more than eight guns,” I said, managing to keep my voice calm.

  “There were machine guns,” she hiccupped.

  Kina dissolved into sobs again. Connor went to put his hand on her back to comfort her, but instead, she threw her arms around his chest and cried into his shoulder, her gun falling loudly to the ground. Connor awkwardly patted her back, uncertain how else to react.

  “She’s right,” Garrett said, his gun still aimed at Connor’s head. We had all briefly forgotten about Garrett, and that that had been a mistake. “They didn’t know.”

  I clenched my fists at my side. “Garr—”

  “They didn’t know!” he interrupted me, his voice rising louder than before. “But I did. And I think it was right. I think they deserved it. Every last one of them! And now,” he said, shoving the gun at Connor, “I’m going to rid the world of this good for nothing Storming!”

  Kina pulled back from Connor and turned cautiously to face Garrett, lifting her hands to ear level.

  “Garrett, put the gun down. It’s over. We were wrong.”

  “Yeah right!” he bellowed. “Get outta the way, Kina, before I blow both of you to hell.”

  “Garrett,” Barry said softly, his heart-wrenching sobs quieted, “stop.”

  “It’s not over!” Garrett screamed the words in such a way that it must have ripped at his throat, but he was unfazed and kept his wild eyes fixed on Kina and Connor.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Barry’s hand inching toward his gun from his spot on the ground between me and Garrett.

  Garrett caught the movement too, but not fast enough, turning right as Barry stood and brought the heavy end of his gun down on Garrett’s head so hard that he crumpled.

  The rest of us stared at his limp figure for several audible heartbeats.

  Slowly, as if she were afraid he was going to jump up and say “boo” at any second, Kina lowered her hands from where they had remained raised by the sides of her head. She took a quivering breath and turned to me as if meeting my eyes took all the courage she had left.

  “I’m sorry, Levi,” she said, her voice a near whisper. “We broke everything.”

  I didn’t want to say anything. What I wanted to do was go home, make sure Alec was all right, and sleep for the next century until whatever this was that was happening had blown over.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. I don’t know what she wanted me to say. Did she want reassurance or condemnation? I knew why they had done what they’d done, but at the same time, I didn’t know.

  What should I tell them? Why did I have to tell them anything? Couldn’t I just walk away?

  But everyone was staring at me as if expecting some big speech on the rights and wrongs of the world. Kina and Connor and Barry and Izzy. They all wanted me to respond.

  It was my turn to take a breath. “This shouldn’t have happened. Stop thinking about what’s happened to you and look at how what you did made the worst things happen to other people. Hate isn’t good for anyone.”

  Neither of them would meet my eyes, both looking to the ground, ashamed.

  Without saying a word, Kina leaned over and grabbed Garrett’s car keys from his jacket pocket. She extended a flat hand, the keys lying in her palm. “You should get out of here.” She glanced at Connor and Izzy, who at some point had gravitated back to standing behind me again. “Take your friends somewhere safe, Levi.” Her eyes flicked to my face and back to the ground. “You can never forgive me, Levi, and I can never say I’m sorry enough. When the police come, I’m giving myself to them. We don’t deserve freedom.” She glanced at Barry as I took the keys from her hand.

  Barry glanced at me. “Me too. I’m . . . I’m gonna go find Candy and get her home, and turn myself in to the police.” As an afterthought, Barry picked his gun up from where he had dropped it on the floor and extended it to me. “If more of those things are out there, you’ll need this.”

  I nodded and took it.

  I stared at it for a long moment, knowing what else I needed to ask but not even wanting to put the horrible thought into words. “Was Lena . . . ”

  Kina shook her head before I could finish. A sick expression filled her face. She and Lena had been a couple for as long as I’d known them. Kina must realize she’d ruined that, too, if Lena wasn’t dead.

  “No,” she managed. “She didn’t know anything. Derek either.”

  I managed a hard breath before I could force the name out. “Alec?”

  Kina turned her eyes to the ground and shook her head. “You know better than anyone he wasn’t a part of this. He couldn’t be.”

  I cleared my throat. “I hope Lena’s okay.”

  I turned without another word and motioned with my head for Connor and Izzy to follow me.

  They did, glancing back at my sad excuses for friends, who just stood watching us walk away.

  “What about those two?” Connor said quietly.

  I glanced at him. “What about them?”

  “Are we just going to leave them here, no car and no gun?” He motioned to the keys I held in my hand and the gun in the other.

  I stopped, the other two stopping with me. Izzy was lost somewhere deep in her mind, and judging by her expression, it was a scary place.

  “Yes,” I said to Connor.

  “Isn’t that cold?”

  “They got people killed. They could have stopped who knows how many people getting shot today, but they chose not to. Isn’t there someone you wished they might have stopped from dying?”

  His mismatched eyes wavered but didn’t leave mine. “They didn’t shoot anyone. Yeah, they deserve to be punished, but they are still . . . ” He waved his hand as if hoping to find the right word there. “ . . . human. They’re still people. Bad, messed up people, but they’re people.”

  I worked my jaw. “Kina has a car, and they still have a shotgun and whatever it was Garrett had. They’ll be fine. Let’s go before more of those things break down a door.”

  Connor considered me for another long moment before nodding in agreement. I started off again and Connor followed. Izzy, however, didn’t move, eyes still vacantly fixed on the floor. She’d dropped the baseball bat back with Kina and Barry and now only clutched her sleeves over her hands at her sides, her shoulders slumped in tow
ard herself, making her seem incredibly small for someone who just took on three gunmen with nothing but pure undistilled rage. But the anger that had fueled her moments before was gone. Maybe she’d realized just how close she’d been to getting shot.

  I stopped again and turned back to watch Connor step beside her.

  “Hey,” he muttered, “you okay?”

  She blinked at him, but her eyes still had a vacancy.

  “Come on,” Connor smiled at her reassuringly and took her hand, leading her toward me. I nodded to him and kept going in the direction I knew Garrett’s car to be.

  Snow punched me in the face the moment I opened the door and I had to turn the collar of my jacket up so that I could breathe without inhaling snowflakes.

  The car was right outside the door, but walking the ten feet felt like a mile through the burning cold wind.

  Unlike the last time I’d laid eyes on it, Garrett’s car looked awful. Not simply like a beater most teenagers had, but like someone had taken heavy metal objects to the side in anger. And shot at it. The chrome that must have at one point been silver was now faded and dinged, and covered in blood. Much of the black paint had been scraped away or caked in grime and the windows were all covered in spider web cracks.

  Connor made a face. “Do we seriously have to get in that thing?”

  “Yes,” I said, “we do.”

  As I fished in my pockets for the keys, Izzy stepped past me and put her hand on the handle, so the moment I pressed the button to unlock the car, she pulled it open and froze, going rigid.

  “What is it?” Connor peered over her shoulder into the car. “Well, shit.”

  “What?” I shoved him out of the way and blinked at what I saw in the passenger seat. At first, I thought it was just a wooden crate, but my stomach flopped at what was in the crate. Long red cylinders wrapped in rubber bands were stacked inside, curly wires from each tied together.

  Dynamite. Garrett had a crate filled with dynamite in his car.

  Without skipping another beat, Izzy grabbed the crate gingerly by its handles and walked away toward the sidewalk.