Laughter of the Undead Read online

  He didn’t say anything, but nodded, slowly, and turned.

  I opened my mouth. Maybe to stop him, maybe to apologize, but nothing came out. By the time I closed it again, he was gone.

  We heard the screen door slam.

  None of us moved, Tommy, Izzy, or me. At least, not until Tommy started crying. When I looked at him, he plopped onto the floor, dinosaur clutched to his chest. He met my eyes and screamed, scrambling to his feet, darting to Izzy and burying his face in her side. Hiding from me.

  “Why did you do that?” Izzy’s voice came out as a robotic monotone, not seeming to notice Tommy clinging to her. “Why did you do that?” Her voice broke, and it was like the words shattered a wall inside her, because it didn’t seem as if she could help it when she started to cry.

  I knew how that felt. She pushed Tommy gently off of her, and he backed up, climbing into the chair in the far end of the living room, sucking on his knuckles, wide-eyed. He’d glued himself to her, and watching her cry must have made it seem like his last pillar was crumbling.

  I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

  I stood like that for a long time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice, “what I said about you— ”

  She pushed herself hard away from me, cutting me off. From the table, I grabbed a handful of tissues from the box and offered them to her. She snatched them out of my hand, wiping at her blotchy face angrily.

  “Do you want to know why I’m wearing Connor’s clothes?” she snapped, though her voice was thick. “While you were gone, we went to the police station, because we thought what we knew about the bug could help people.” She met my eyes, and despite the red rim from crying, there was a fire there. “There weren’t any people at the station. Not any living people anyway. Two of those things were there, covered in the blood of this woman that they had been eating. Well, when one of them pinned me to the ground trying to eat me alive, it got that woman’s blood all over my clothes, and so I stabbed it in the neck and it bled all over me. We were covered in blood that wasn’t ours, so I'm sorry if the fact that we changed clothes hurts your feelings, Levi.”

  I glanced away from her eyes, embarrassment and shame burning in my ears. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not me you should apologize to,” she muttered, glaring at the floor, either angry at me or at herself for crying. I wasn’t sure. Probably both. Definitely both.

  “I know,” I said softly to the floor.

  “I can still feel the blood on my hands, Levi.” Her voice had gone from rage to quiet horror. I looked at her, and she was staring at her hands in her lap where they clutched the tissues. I don’t know why she said it, but I understood because I could still feel his blood too.

  Izzy shook her head and pressed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, breathing deeply until the only sign that she had cried at all were her red eyes.

  “Go find him,” she commanded, her voice sterner than I would have thought possible for someone who had just recovered from crying. “I don’t understand why you said what you said. I don’t know why you even thought any of that. He never did anything but try to help you. Nothing was his fault and you have no reason to blame him or to shout at him. You’ve made everything worse. Go find him and fix it, Levi.” She took a shaky breath, some of her anger melting. “I’m sorry about your friend,” her voice cracked. “I am, and I know it must be hard, but we can’t let ourselves get torn apart, Levi. Feel what you need to feel, but please, try and fix it with Connor.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, my fists at my sides, knowing Izzy was right. I nodded, taking a deep breath in through my nose.

  “He’s probably in the greenhouse,” she said, sucking in deep breaths as if trying to even out her voice. “Where we buried them.”

  I got to my feet and zipped my jacket to my chin. Suddenly, I wished I had buried Alec. The thought sent a pang into my chest so hard, I nearly tipped over. Instead, I grabbed the back of the counter and took a deep breath until it didn’t feel like the weight of my heart was crushing my lungs.

  I glanced at her again, before making my way to the back door. When I opened the door, a gust of frigid wind slammed into me.

  I took in a sharp breath, the cold stinging my lungs. My jacket and hoodie weren’t nearly enough to guard me against the cold, making me envy Connor’s tent of a coat.

  I could hardly see three feet in front of me in the swirling snow. The wind howled in my ears as I tucked my hands into my pockets and trudged through the biting wind, pulling my feet out of the snow which was now ankle-deep, at least two inches deeper than when I had returned barely an hour before.

  The door to the greenhouse was open. I darted inside and slammed the door behind me. The last bits of the snow that had followed inside twirled to the ground.

  The sudden transition from cold to warm made my stomach twist, churning and mixing with the guilt I already felt.

  It verged on hot inside the greenhouse, not because it was actually hot but because of the frigid air.

  Whatever his mother had been like, I could tell she had been devoted. The time and hard work it must have taken to make this greenhouse what it was, incredible.

  If Connor wasn't here, I didn’t know where he would be.

  I took my jacket off and flexed my freezing fingers. Connor stood in the back corner of the greenhouse, staring out at the snow. Through the glass the patch of mounded earth that must have been the filled-in apple tree hole held Connor’s eyes.

  The hole that was now a grave.

  I made my way between the tables laden with flowers and vegetables and under the hanging pots that dripped vines of leaves like a curtain. I stopped just behind him.

  “What do you want?” he said to the snow.

  “I came to apologize.” I crossed my arms, leaning my hip against the table and watching the back of his head.

  “Apologize for what?” Connor whirled, face a mottle of anger and tears.

  “What do you think?” I snapped back, then softened my voice. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “But you still meant it,” he snapped, tone clipped and tight. “Sorry or not, it was all true, wasn’t it? You still blame me, even if you regret telling me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Maybe I did! I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Just because I wore a football jersey and played sports and my girlfriend was a cheerleader doesn’t make me horrible. I’m so sick of that. People expected so much from me, and when I try to meet those expectations, I automatically become the bad guy.”

  “It’s not like you did anything to play those assumptions down!”

  “I shouldn’t have to! It’s not like you did, either!’

  “What do I have to play down, asshole?”

  “It’s not like I’m the one who talked to all the murderers at school! Which one of us was friends with shooters?”

  You know what? Fuck apologizing. Fuck feeling bad. I wanted to be pissed and I wanted to punch something.

  Fuck Connor, too.

  I punched him in the face. His head smacked to one side and he gritted his teeth, bringing his knee hard into my stomach. I stumbled back into the corner of the table, and he shoved me again. I fell hard on the table smashing a pot with my elbow.

  I braced myself on the corner of the table, ignoring the throbbing of my elbow and kicked him hard in the chest. He slammed back into the glass wall of the building.

  I straightened, glaring at him, back my way toward the walkway between the tables. This was dumb. I don’t think either of us had meant a single thing we had just said, as hurtful as it went both ways. We were both hurt and pissed and wanted to be pissed. This was a great excuse.

  Connor tried to punch me again, but I've been in more fights than him, and I saw it coming. He didn’t move fast enough. I slugged him in the nose. He grunted and shoved me back. He wiped at his nose, blood smearing across his wrist.


  “This is stupid,” I rasped.

  “No kidding,” he said and aimed a blow to my right eye. I didn’t duck fast enough and he collided with my eyebrow. With a right uppercut under his jaw, I sent him reeling, then pushed hard on his shoulders, falling forward with him to the ground. I kneeled one knee on his chest and held his shoulders down with both my hands.

  “Why are we fighting?” I asked, panting hard.

  “You punched me!” he growled through gritted teeth.

  “I know that! To be fair, you deserved it. And I deserved it. We’re both assholes, but that’s not why we’re fighting.”

  “Probably not.” He shoved me hard, my head slamming into the edge of the table. I grabbed his arm as I fell and yanked him back down with me. We grappled, rolling under the table.

  Connor got the upper hand. He may not have been in many fights, but he sure as hell was stronger than I was. I shoved me hard away from him again, and I fell back, my shoulder hitting the table’s leg too hard. Blinding pain ripped through me and my vision went black. I thought for a second I would vomit and the fight would be over, but I managed to stumble to my feet out from under the table, propping myself with my good arm amongst the flowers. I spat out a glob of blood and dirt that had collected there. The arm I'd fallen on was limp and useless by my side, every movement I made sending waves of pain all alone.

  The pain was so bad, I couldn’t focus on Connor properly, and when he pushed me, I had to twist awkwardly to catch myself with my good arm, falling on my knees.

  Connor brought both fists down hard on my back, sending me face-first into the red-brown soil. I didn’t try to stand this time, the pain sending bile up my throat again.

  He used the same thing on me that I had on him, knee pressed into my back and one hand shoving the side of my face harder into the ground.

  “Are you done now?” I asked, the taste of the dirt collecting in my mouth.

  “Are you?” His nose was done bleeding, but some of the blood he hadn’t bothered to wipe away had dried.

  “Yeah.”

  He took his knee off my back and offered a hand. I took it.

  Most of my face ached and my shoulder hurt like all hell, but I'd felt worse.

  “You punch hard,” I told the ground, gripping my shoulder.

  “You too.”

  “Sorry.”

  Connor shook his head. “Me too. That was uncalled for. But . . . thank you.”

  I took a deep breath and frowned at him. “Why are you thanking me?”

  “For letting me actually feel something other than hopeless. Actually feel it. Not fake it. I needed to be mad.”

  I nodded. “I’m just sorry that being mad meant we actually had to be dicks. And I didn’t mean . . . ”

  “You did, somewhere deep down, but I get it. It’s okay.”

  We stood in silence for several heartbeats, just staring at each other. It wasn’t Connor Storming I had been fighting. It was the world. It was everything that led to me losing Alec. It was the zombies and the shooters and the fact that I’d gotten there too late. Just how Connor Storming was never fighting Levi Graves, he was fighting the world that killed his parents. We both needed to be mad at something because we’d both lost everything.

  There were things I felt for the boy standing across from me that I couldn’t put into words right then. Things I’d known for a long time, that for some strange reason, this mutual fight and mutual need to fight had only amplified. I stared at him for a long moment, tall and tan and beaten to a pulp. Even so, Connor Storming was unfairly good looking.

  Only now did I notice the thick warm blood that dripped down my own face. It must be from my eyebrow. I lifted one hand and pressed two fingers to it, trying to stanch the bleeding.

  “We should go back to Izzy,” I said finally. “She’ll be worried.”

  “She’ll be worried anyway. We look like we went through a war.”

  I took my jacket from where I had left it on the bench. Connor was still in only a t-shirt. “You’ll need more than that to go back.”

  “I have my shirt.” He grabbed his thin long-sleeve gray shirt from the floor and slipped it over his head.

  “Here,” I sighed and threw my aviator jacket at him. He caught it, glancing from me to the jacket and back again.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve still got my hoodie.” I motioned with my good arm to show the black hoodie I hadn’t taken off. “Better than just a shirt.”

  “Fair enough.” He pulled the jacket over his shirt. As big as it was on me, it looked almost tight on him. He made a face and pulled at the collar.

  “Kinda small.”

  I shrugged and opened the glass greenhouse door.

  Seventeen

  Connor

  March 5th - 5:24 p.m.

  I felt better.

  Well, physically, I felt horrible, sore in the face and just aching all over, but I felt a different kind of better. I was mad and hurt and broken over the loss of my parents, and I hadn’t given myself a chance to feel all of it.

  I’d felt the loss, and I’d felt shattering, but I hadn’t let myself be mad.

  And God was I pissed. I’d been pissed for two days and I finally felt better because I’d had a way to channel it. Screaming at and fighting Levi, even if he had nothing to do with the hurt, made everything a little easier. Because being mad was better than being broken.

  I think Levi felt the same way. The pain in the tightness of his mouth had lessened.

  Izzy was waiting for us in the living room, pacing furiously and muttering to herself as Levi and I stepped into the back door.

  “What the hell happened!” she demanded, stomping past where Tommy sat in one of the armchairs playing on my phone and ignoring everything we were doing.

  I think “hell” was the closest I’d heard Izzy get to actually cursing and the thought made me grin unintentionally.

  “What are you smiling about!” she demanded. “This is not a funny situation, this is serious! You're bleeding!”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Izzy! You cussed.”

  She stared at me, flabbergasted, mouth slightly agape like she had no idea how to respond.

  I glanced at Levi. She was right to be worried, we did look pretty bad. A streak of blood ran down the side of Levi’s face from where his eyebrow had split and his lip was swollen.

  “Why is he bleeding?” she demanded, pointing to my blood-encrusted nose, but glaring at Levi.

  He cracked a smile, a small one but a smile nonetheless. “He’s an idiot.”

  “I wasn’t aware idiocy could cause nose bleeds.”

  “It’s an epidemic.”

  “Why do you think I'm bleeding?” I frowned. “Was bleeding? Have bled? . . . whatever.”

  “You beat the crab cakes out of each other?” she suggested,

  “Pretty much. But I think he did more of the beating on me than I did on him.”

  “You got me,” I said, wincing, and touched my lip tentatively, checking my fingers for blood. “Just not as much on the face. And Izzy, you have the weirdest cuss words.”

  “How,” Izzy’s voice rose as if she were yelling at unruly children, “are you guys talking about a legit fistfight like you were playing Pokemon!”

  I shrugged. Izzy groaned in exasperation, glowering up at the ceiling as if asking it “why me”.

  Snickering again, I turned to Levi. “Come on, there’s a first aid kit in the dining room.”

  I started in that direction, but paused and grimaced at Izzy. “I’m going to need your help.”

  She gave me a wide-eyed deer-caught-in-headlights kind of look. “You . . . are? I don’t know— ”

  “You’ll be fine.” I smiled a little, wincing when it reopened my split lip. “I’m not asking you to perform surgery.”

  I limped my way to the nearest dining chair and pointed out the first aid kit to Izzy as Levi lowered himself into the chair next to mine. His shoulder seemed to be b
othering him more than I had at first thought, and he let his entire left arm hang stiffly at his side as if any kind of movement at all hurt him.

  As Izzy set the first aid kit down on the table, I frowned at Levi’s arm. It was hard to judge the damage through his hoodie. “You need to look at his shoulder first.”

  Izzy frowned. “How do I do that?”

  I turned to the box and started pulling out anything that looked useful. “Help him out of his hoodie.”

  “I’m fine, Con— ”

  “You are not fine,” she interrupted him. “You’re wincing and holding your arm like it’s not attached to you. Connor’s right, what if he broke it?”

  Levi gave her a long steady look and sighed heavily in a put-upon way. “Fine. Help me.”

  “Connor,” Izzy started, wrestling Levi as gently as she could out of his hoodie and ignoring his soft curses, “why do you sound like you know so much about this kind of thing?”

  “I was a football player, Iz,” I muttered, half-listening to her, half-digging through the box for alcohol wipes. “I got hurt all the freakin' time.”

  Izzy yanked the jacket off his bad arm with a hiss and loud exclamation of “fuck” from him.

  “Oh damn.”

  It was bad. Even with the baggy t-shirt he was wearing, I could still tell that his shoulder did not look how shoulders were supposed to look.

  Izzy rolled his sleeve to his elbow, showing just how not like a shoulder it looked.

  It was hard to tell for certain, but it wasn’t broken. Just out of place. It was like his entire arm was an inch too far forward, the bone not in its socket but pushing out the skin right in front of it, giving his shoulder a weird extra bulge.

  “Can you move anything on this arm?” I asked. Levi wiggled his fingers and bent his elbow a little, grimacing before letting it fall back limply beside him.

  “Barely. It hurts like hell.”

  I frowned at the ground. It wasn’t like I’d never encountered a dislocated shoulder before. I’d dislocated my own shoulder about a year before, and I’d seen when other guys had during practice or games. I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything that went into taking care of it.