Laughter of the Undead Read online

  Next to her lay her husband. His eyes were open too, but nothing was behind them, almost like they’d been lifeless before he’d died. A knife’s handle protruded from under his chin and I could glimpse the gleaming red-stained metal in his slightly open mouth.

  My heart lodged in my throat and I gagged, covering my mouth. I knew what happened here. Alec’s stepfather had turned for some reason and Mrs. Fisher had paid with her life. I couldn’t tell if she had stabbed the knife into her husband as she died or if it had been Alec.

  On the tile floor, right at my feet, a stain of blood-streaked off in the direction of Alec’s room. And there was Alec’s phone, face up with all the texts I’d sent him lighting up the screen.

  For a long moment, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Mrs. Fisher’s one good deep brown eye. I had to resist the urge to throw up or scream or break down in tears. Mrs. Fisher had been like a mother to me. She’d been there for me when my own father wasn’t. And now she was dead. I wanted to cry. I wanted to break down there in the kitchen and pour my heart onto the bloodstained tile, so I wouldn’t have to feel anymore.

  But Alec might still be alive. I couldn’t lose it now if I wanted to save him. Judging by the amount of blood, he had to be hurt. Badly.

  Ignoring the throbbing in the back of my skull, I pushed myself to my feet. The way I stepped past Mrs. Fisher’s body reminded me too much of how I’d stepped over Molly, who I’d also let die. I couldn’t prevent Mrs. Fisher’s death, and it added a stone to my dam of guilt and dread building in my chest.

  The living room was empty, save for the television which still flickered dimly in the gloomy house. I switched it off and darted to Alec’s room. A short hall consisting of two bedrooms and a bathroom branched off from the living room. The door to Alec’s room stood ajar.

  I swung it farther open and I found Alec.

  His eyes were open and fixed on where I stood. For a horrible moment, I thought he looked through me and there was nothing behind his eyes, but then they focused and moved to my face.

  My chest flooded with a mixture of relief and panic, relief that he was alive and panic because of what else I saw.

  I shrugged the gun off my shoulder and rushed over to the bed where Alec lay, falling to my knees next to him.

  Alec’s normally brown skin was an ashen gray and felt clammy to the touch. His jacket and the bed under him were soaked through with crimson. Crimson blood. His blood. His right shoulder and side of his neck were ripped and raw and torn open, much like they had been on his mother. Something had mauled his stepfather. He held one hand over the wound as if trying to staunch the bleeding, but it wasn’t doing much.

  "Hey, Levi," he wheezed, using his voice when we were alone for the first time in years. I supposed he could no longer sign, "Where you been man, have you seen the news? Everything’s so crazy. The school, the hospital, the crazies. I thought you were dead. Hell, I thought I was dead. Levi, what’s happening?”

  He was babbling, but I had no answer for him. For any of it.

  “I thought you were dead,” his voice cracked, and for a second, he squeezed his eyes shut. “After school was all over the news, and you weren’t anywhere . . . ”

  "Hold still," I said, swallowing down what I wanted to say. I placed my hand gently over his where it clutched the gaping hole in his shoulder. “Don’t move.”

  Gently, I pulled his hand away from his shoulder and helped him out of his black jacket. He wore a t-shirt underneath. The shirt was torn around the mauling, the fabric plastered to his skin with the half-dried blood. I pulled the fabric, biting the inside of my lip. He had lost a lot of blood, too much blood, and the wound was huge and seeping even as I panicked. The blankets and his clothes were drenched in everything my best friend needed to survive.

  “What happened?" I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear, but it kept me from melting into a puddle of uselessness and fear. Instead, I scanned the floor for something to bind the wound with. I grabbed a t-shirt, one of mine, and pressed it to the wound.

  "Marcus," he said, gritting his teeth. His stepdad. I had known the man for as long as I had known Alec, but had never liked him.

  "What about Marcus?" I muttered, tone guarded, knowing what he was going to say, but not wanting to hear it.

  "You know how he broke his foot last week?" I nodded in confirmation. "I was in the kitchen getting dinner. He was in the living room eating something out of a ceramic bowl while watching some sports game and dropped the bowl on his foot. He started laughing horribly. It was so bad . . . "

  I put a hand on my friend’s good shoulder, steadying him. "He did this, didn’t he?"

  "Yeah,” he paused to take another rattling breath. “He attacked me and gnawed on my shoulder. Mom came at him with a knife, but he got her." His voice caught and he sobbed. "I somehow managed to-to stab him, and he stopped laughing, but it was too late. Mom was gone. I came in here. I’m gonna die, Levi."

  "No, you’re not, Alec," I said firmly, signing as I spoke to emphasize my point. "I know a safe place I can take you, but we need to get to the hospital."

  He shook his head and pointed shakily with his good arm at the TV which flickered quietly behind me. He always watched television with the sound off. "Local hospital falls to cannibals," the headline read. The moving picture showed the hospital from an aerial view, three of the windows spewed fire and dozens of panicked people ran out of the doorway. Some of them stumbled in a way I recognized from the dead things from school.

  My own hand now shaking, I took his hand and set it back on his chest, squeezing it. He would never make it further. Our own hospital was almost too far, any longer and Alec would be dead. The shirt was already soaked. It wasn’t going him any good.

  "I’ll fix it then," I choked out. "Maybe if I stop the bleeding it will heal somehow."

  Alec laughed weakly. His head drooped to face me. He was fading fast.

  "It won’t heal. I know I’ve lost too much blood. It’s a miracle I’ve survived this long." Alec closed his eyes and turned his head to face the ceiling. “Just long enough to see you, I guess. I get to say goodbye.”

  "No!" I pressed my hand against the wound, trying to do the impossible and stop the bleeding. “You can’t die, Alec, not now. Not ever. I need you.” He hissed in pain and I eased the pressure but didn’t take my hand back. “I’m not letting you go, Alec.”

  Alec opened his eyes and gave me his usual smile, the long-suffering kind normally exchanged over the kitchen table when Marcus was being an ass.

  “Remember our deal, right?” His voice was soft and getting softer. “Don’t let this break you. Just because I am, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go anywhere.”

  "Please." My voice cracked. I put my other hand over his and grasped with both of mine. “You’re the only reason I’m still alive, Alec, please.”

  "See you on the other side, brother," he whispered and closed his eyes.

  For the final time.

  I shook his arm, my world spinning, a scream ripping in my ears, but I couldn’t tell if it was my own.

  The world’s sound vanished, leaving only a horrible ringing.

  A single hard sob escaped me. I felt tears escape my eyes and run down my face. Alec was dead. The best friend I had ever known. Gone.

  I pressed my forehead to the hand I still clutched. “What do I do now, Alec?”

  I wiped at my face bitterly and got to my feet. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t fall apart. I couldn’t let this break me.

  With shaking hands, I covered my friend in his blanket. There was blood on my hands.

  I washed my hands in the bathroom, staring blankly at my red eyes as Alec’s blood swirled down the drain, along with everything that had mattered to me. Alec was my reason for making it through so much, how could I make it through this without him?

  The car was where I left it. The houses all around me were still quiet, and the dog still barked in the dis
tance. But nothing was the same, because Alec was dead.

  I yanked the door to the car open and threw the assault rifle at the passenger’s seat as hard as I could.

  "Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!" I screamed, slamming my fist against the steering wheel until my knuckles busted and there was blood running down my hand. I pulled my hand away shaking, staring at the blood. I flexed my fingers ignoring the pain, and brought my knuckles to my mouth to suck the blood off.

  More blood. More pain. It was the same hand as the bruise,

  Why the hell was I in this car?

  I grabbed the gun from where I’d thrown it and fished the beater’s keys from my pocket. Mrs. Fisher was dead, she didn’t need her suburban-mom-sedan anymore, and it would drive a hell of a lot better in the snow that Garrett’s dumbass beater.

  I stormed back into the house, back to where I’d spotted her purse in the living room, trying hard not to focus on the bodies. I dumped the red leather purse out on the counter, the coins and lipstick and hair clips bouncing off the black and white marble, but no keys.

  I growled, throwing the purse across the room. I didn’t want to. But after the purse, Mrs. Fisher’s pockets were the most likely place for the keys. Where else could they be? I would have to look at the body. Her body. The thought made me want to vomit, but if I tried to drive back through the snow in Garrett’s death mobile, I might not make it all the way back to Connor’s. Luck had gotten me here, but the feeling of blood still staining my hands, from where they’d clutched Alec’s told me my luck had run down.

  I closed my eyes and I knelt by her, feeling the blood soak its way through my pant leg onto my knee. My breath caught. “Damn,” I hissed as I felt along her leg up to her pocket. In one pocket I found the rectangular bulge of her phone, but no keys, so I reached across her stomach to the other pocket and there was the lump of her keys. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and fumbled for a second with my eyes still closed to pull them out.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fisher,” I muttered, pushing the keys into my own pocket as I stood and opened my eyes again. I stared down at her and my breath hitched a little, so I had to avert my gaze to the door. “I love you, Mom.”

  I threw the car into gear and screeched out of the driveway.

  I couldn’t go back to Connor and Izzy. They would be expecting me, but I couldn’t face them. Not like this. Not as broken and entirely shattered as I was at that moment. I couldn’t trust myself to be near them. I couldn’t trust myself with myself, so how was I supposed to face them? I felt like punching and screaming and hating someone or something or everything.

  Well, there was one person I was incredible at hating.

  My dad. I didn’t care what he thought of me. I hadn’t for years. If there was anyone I could scream at, it was him.

  It wasn’t only that fueling my visit home. Alec and Mrs. Fisher were dead. After them, my father was my only family. Family only in the sense that we were related though. Only in that sense. Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb and all that shit. I hadn’t loved him since I was six. But that six-year-old part of me that loved my dad and remembered my obligation to family knew I needed to make sure he was alive.

  My dad never should have been a father. I was born when he was fourteen, and my mom thirteen. But even as barely a teen, my mom managed to take care of me, and finish school. I remember her high school graduation. I remember the cake and the hats, and her friends, who adored me because, at the time, I was five. I also remember the car crash. She was eighteen when she died. Her parents died too.

  I could have grown up with her, or with my grandparents, but after that day, I had to go live with dear old dad, at the time a perpetually drunk nineteen-year-old whose parents kicked him out. I don’t know what in the hell went wrong for me to end up with him, but that was the moment my protected childhood ended, the day the agent closed the door to that house and left me alone with that man.

  He neglected me, beat me, and threatened me with a gun when I didn’t do what he asked the moment he asked. I became his punching bag and his errand boy. His excuse to collect money and spend it on his beer and his drugs and his cigarettes. I was nothing to him other than a tool and a burden.

  I had planned to move out and live with Alec when I graduated. I had dreamed of getting away from him for years. I had every reason to leave him to his fate, but my conscience said he was my dad regardless. I was so close to getting away. Being free, and now . . .

  My house was a long way away from school. Mostly because I got expelled from the two closer. Only one admittedly was my own fault. I got into such a bad fight with another kid that his arm broke. His mother sued the school until I got kicked out. The other was something I didn’t do but got blamed for anyway.

  Eventually, I had Alec, whose mom drove me to school every morning and home some afternoons. I didn’t return home sometimes for days on end. Dad didn’t care.

  Our tiny house sat in the middle of a tiny yard. I pulled into the driveway, gravel popping under the tires. When I stopped the car, I sat for a long moment, staring at the beer can littered yard and dark windows, wondering how dad would react to me. I’d been gone nearly a week this time, and while I’d been at Alec’s house for longer, now was different. The world was trying to end, and Alec was gone.

  Everything was different now, and I wondered if anything could have changed with him.

  I yanked out the keys and stuffed them in the pocket of my jacket beside my phone, which was remarkably still intact after I’d thrown it across the room.

  Another wave of pain washed past my heart when I remembered the phone had been a gift from Mrs. Fisher so that I could contact her. Daddy dearest never bought me anything other than socks. And food . . . sometimes.

  It wasn’t like he didn’t have a job. He worked in a factory, one of the dozens in a string of jobs he’d gotten and lost over the years, so like my school, his job was nearly an hour away. Maybe this week he fixed cars or worked with a machine that screwed toothpaste lids on, who knew, who cared. He made varying amounts of money, minimal of which he spent on me. We had a house. A tiny shitty house with no actual driveway and crackheads next door. The perfect place to raise a child. The backyard was snow-covered and filled with empty beer cans and spare tires. Lord knows how they got there.

  I grabbed the gun from the seat where it had fallen and swung it over one shoulder as I stood. For once I wanted to be the one with the gun.

  The door was locked when I rattled the handle and it took me a long moment to find the keys in my pocket.

  I opened the door to the sound of the TV blaring through the wall that separated the tiny excuse for an entrance hall from the rest of the house.

  "What do you think your doin’!" I heard my dad’s voice from the next room. "Don’t stop! Get back up!"

  The world may have changed, but my dad was still the same, but at least I knew he was alive.

  Steeling myself, I stepped around the corner. Just as I had left him, dad sat on the couch, clad in plaid boxers and a greasy white tank top, a bowl of chips resting on his round stomach. From where I stood, I could tell he reeked of beer and body odor from three days without a shower.

  I glared at him for a long moment without him noticing, before coughing pointedly.

  When he saw me, he sat up, completely knocking his chips onto the floor.

  "What are you doin’ here, boy?" he demanded, leaping to his feet. "Where the hell’ve you been? I saw that your school got shot. I assumed you was dead!" Then he saw the gun over my shoulder. "You weren’t one of them shooters were you?"

  I backed away inadvertently.

  I shouldn’t have. I was taller than him, not by much, but I was, and I may have been thinner, but I knew I was stronger. He knew it too, but all the years of being the skinny little kid had seared into my mind that he was this huge terrifying person, when he was, in actuality, a short squat guy with anger issues. Issues he’d taken out on a six-ye
ar-old.

  "No, sir," I replied.

  “Good," he grunted, but didn’t sit back down. "You been at that friend of your’s house?"

  "No, sir."

  "Then where the hell have you been?"

  "Somewhere else."

  "Are you back-sassing me?" he shouted, raising one hand. I cringed more than strictly necessary and instantly hated myself for it. I’d never managed to train my brain away from the deeply ingrained fear. As much as I tried, as much as I wanted to fight back, I couldn’t. I looked at him, and suddenly I was minuscule again and he became a giant, a thousand times more frightening than the truth, and I lost all the fight in me. It was a fear I’d never rid myself of.

  Now I never would, because now . . . now I was done.

  "No, sir."

  "Where were you?" he said.

  "Connor’s," I replied. He glared at me.

  "Who the hell is Connor?"

  “Storming." His eyes widened. Even my dad knew Connor. He went to a lot of our school's games, and Connor was well known to him.

  "How does a loser like you know him?" he asked, aghast. I gritted my teeth.

  "I saved his life."

  My dad scoffed. "Sure you did. Is that backyard cleaned? I told you to clean it last week."

  "I’m not staying here," I said. It took all I had to meet his eyes. I was always grateful I didn’t have his eyes, or his face because if I did, I would have hated mirrors.

  "You aren’t?" Dad’s voice was dangerously calm, the calm it was before he snapped. I recognized that calm, and my heart kickstarted, pounding against the inside of my chest.

  "I’m going back to Connor’s.” Somehow my voice didn’t shake, though the hand not on the gun did, and I buried it in my pocket.

  "Like hell you are." He made as if to lunge at me, but I pointed the gun at him. Twelve years of the other way around, now it was my turn.

  "I’m here," I said with painful slowness, hoping the tremor in my voice wasn’t as audible as it felt, "only to get my things."