Laughter of the Undead Read online

  “Okay, so from what I remember, we’ll have to put it back in place and then you’ll have to wear a sling for a couple of weeks, but it’ll still hurt for a while.”

  Levi knit his eyebrows. “A sling?”

  “Yeah.” I pushed myself from my chair, ribs and ankle throbbing. “You’ll be able to move it, but you shouldn’t. And it’ll hurt like hell.”

  Levi huffed, “Fantastic.”

  I smiled around my split lip. “So, I’ve never personally done this, but I’ve watched someone do it and I’ve had it done on me, so I think I have at least a general idea of how to do this.”

  I pulled my chair closer to his, maneuvering so I could sit on the side of the dislocated arm. I gripped Levi’s arm just above his elbow and put his other hand on his shoulder beside where the bone should have gone. Gently, earning a hiss of pain from Levi, I turned his forearm out.

  “Ready? You have to stay still. ”

  Levi squeezed his eyes shut and looked the other direction. “Yeah. What’s the likelihood that you’re doing this wrong?”

  I ignored him.

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . . ” he stopped for a long moment. I looked at him expectantly but he just sat there, eyes closed.

  Levi frowned, opened his eyes, and looked back at me. From his shoulder to me, shoulder to me. “What are y— GAHHH”

  I pushed back on Levi’s shoulder while pulling his arm forward mid-sentence, the bone clicking back to place with a strange snap.

  “Son of a bitch, Storming! That hurt!” he yanked back. “But thanks.”

  “You’re wel— ”

  I didn’t get to finish the word before the power went out again. This time it was different somehow. It left the room feeling darker than it should have. I couldn’t see. Panic started to crawl its way up my throat and I had to force myself to breathe. It’s just dark, Connor. You can see, it’s just dark.

  Somewhere through the blood pumping in my ears, I heard Izzy chuckle, “Hey, Tommy. You’re fine.”

  He must have finally followed us in from the living room. He whined something I couldn’t understand.

  I fumbled and found the edge of the table, gripping it so hard my fingers ached. I just needed to breathe. I just needed to let my eyes adjust and I'd be fine.

  “Connor?” Levi’s voice was low and concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh no,” Izzy cursed herself, “I forgot. Connor, I’m so sorry. Levi, turn the light on your phone.”

  “Wha— ”

  “Just do it!”

  He did, and as soon as my eyes adjusted, I could breathe. I covered my face with my hands. “Sorry guys, I'm okay.”

  Tommy left where he’d been clinging to Izzy and crawled awkwardly into my lap. “I want the light back.”

  I wrapped my arms around him. “Me too, bud.”

  The four of us, Tommy included, fell into a silence of breathing and counting the seconds until the lights came back, hoping they would, and hoping this wasn’t it for lights forever.

  Then suddenly, it wasn’t quiet any longer.

  At first, I thought the laughter was coming from inside the house, from the bathroom where what had been my dad had murdered my mother, and where Levi had shot what was left of him.

  Then I realized, and so did the others, that the laughter was coming from everywhere but inside the house.

  The three of us exchanged horrified looks and rushed, as best we could with a toddler and various injuries, to the windows overlooking the front yard.

  I held Tommy’s hand as we stared out into the street in horror.

  The sun had been setting when Levi and I came inside, and since then the sky had gone dark, but there was just enough light left lingering in the sky to see what filled the street.

  There were hundreds of them. Hundreds of the undead cannibal things that had eaten people and that were supposed to be dead.

  They stumbled and laughed in a cacophonous roar that I didn’t understand how I could have missed. The mass of monsters sent a cold shard of fear through my heart and I took an involuntary step back.

  Izzy gripped the window pane and sank down into a crouch, “Oh, my God.”

  I held Tommy’s hand tighter as Levi hissed, “Fuck.”

  “Wh-” Izzy cleared her throat, staring at the hardwood of the kitchen floor beneath her, “what do we do?”

  “They . . . they aren’t going into any houses . . . or anything,” I managed, as Tommy started pulling on my arm, wanting to stare out the window too.

  “So if we stay here and stay quiet,” Izzy said, “we should be fine.”

  “For now,” Levi muttered. “What about later? Will we be able to leave?”

  Izzy pulled Tommy into a hug now that she was on his level and rested her chin on top of his head. “Aren’t they walking?”

  They were, like a huge herd of murder cows, slowly, awkwardly, yet still menacingly, making their way down the street. They moved in the same direction as if they all knew where they wanted to go.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then maybe they’ll leave.”

  I backed away from the window. “Well . . . uh . . . well, then we should definitely wait them out, far away from the window.”

  As I said it, the lights flickered back on.

  All of them.

  The front yard lit up like a beacon and apparently we were the only house still occupied because it was only our yard.

  “Shit! Turn them off!”

  I limped toward the front door as the laughter outside reached a different pitch. They had caught onto the lights.

  I fell against the front door, injured ankle screaming. I could hear the laughter through the door, inches away from my head. I slammed the lights off.

  “I got the kitchen!” Izzy shouted.

  With the lights off, the thing on the other side of the door seemed to lose interest and the sound of laughter dissipated.

  The three of us released a collective sigh of relief.

  “Let’s just stay quiet and away from the windows,” Izzy whispered after I made my way back into the kitchen.

  Levi and I nodded.

  After a long silence, interrupted only by the horrific laughter we could still hear, Levi turned to me, shooting me a lopsided grin.

  “Maybe now,” he said, “wouldn’t be the worst time to quietly watch a movie.”

  Eighteen

  Levi

  March 5th - 9:24 p.m.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lay flat on my back in the bed, staring at the ceiling I could barely see with no light filtering through the window from the snow speckled night.

  My arm in the sling Connor had found in a closet ached, and my mind wouldn’t settle. Wouldn’t stay where I wanted it to. Every time I turned it away, it would just go back to Alec’s lifeless face, his bloody hands holding mine. His last words. The last ones he would ever be able to say: “See you on the other side, brother”. Words I would never forget.

  And as soon as I took my mind from that, it went back to the last thing my father had said to me, so different from Alec’s.

  “First you think you're a vampire and now you’re a runaway. I should never have agreed to raise you, you ungrateful little shit."

  I wish you hadn’t, Dad, I thought bitterly.

  His sneering face haunted me. Just as it had always haunted me. Even after leaving him behind, he still managed to follow me. I told myself I was never going back, that I would never have to witness his horrible face with it’s horrible, knowing sneer. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. James Ableman was dead to me. Dead and gone and nothing more than a memory. It’s what I’d wanted for years. Getting away from him and here had been a years-long goal that was finally achieved. But not like this. I never wanted this.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Wasn’t fair that Alec had died, but my father lived. I would have gladly traded his life for Alec’s in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d have traded my own life for his. Alec deserved to live more than anyone in my l
ife. For the last four years, he had been the one that made my life bearable. He’d saved my life. But not from the laughing, flesh-eating monsters.

  Alec had saved me from myself.

  I closed my eyes and pushed my father out of my head with the memory of that day.

  For the second time in two years, I’d been expelled from middle school. Another school another blot on my record, another afternoon of being told to put my hands down and let him hit me because I deserved it.

  So I ran. Again. The late November evening had been sharpening. Its winds were ice shards and now they dug into me as I walked down the street. I tried to remind myself to breathe and thinking that I wouldn’t have to remind myself for much longer.

  The sharpness of the frigid air matched the sharpness of the sting in my cheek, a sting that mingled with a dull throb that pulsed with my every step.

  I knew exactly where I was going.

  Another particularly cold gust of wind slammed into me and I veered a little, running into a boy I recognized. Dark, dark skin sprinkled with big dark freckles and coarse black curly, curly hair sprouting from his head in a small afro. I knew him, but not his name, and not enough to greet him, so I kept my head between my shoulders.

  “Hey, sorry.” He glanced at me as I went to push past, but blinked when he realized he knew me. “Levi?”

  His eyes fell from mine to the long mottled purple bruise on my jaw and the peppered bruising on my throat, where my dad hadn’t quite strangled me. His dark eyes widened and flicked up, taking a half step away from me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Leave me alone,” I muttered and went to push past him again, but he grabbed my upper arm.

  “Hey, I heard what happened. That’s not true, is it?”

  It wasn’t. What had “happened” was someone accusing me of selling weed in the school bathrooms or at least trying to. They’d been believed and I hadn’t. So now here I was, out of school and out of hope that anything would ever get better.

  “What do you care?” I growled. “I got expelled. Whatever happened, I’m done.”

  “You . . . people have been talking about you all week, but no one knew where you lived . . . we wanted to make sure you were okay, but . . . ”

  “Whatever.” I ripped my arm away. What he had said, what should have made me think twice, didn’t pierce the dark clouds thundering around my head and in my heart.

  “Levi, wait!” he called after me.

  I shook my head, not looking back, but he was still following me, calling my name. People on the street were turning to glare at me and the obnoxiously loud person on my tail.

  I broke into a run. He shouldn’t care enough to follow.

  But he followed me.

  Spitting a curse, I skidded around a corner into a narrow alleyway, dodging cardboard boxes and leaping over a sleeping homeless man.

  I nearly fell, slipping on something unknown as I angled my feet around another corner, dashing into a street flea market, smacking into a middle-aged round woman, knocking her basket filled to the brim with apples from her hands. I ignored her curse and jumped over the falling fruit, pushing her a little out of my way.

  I heard Alec shout “sorry” as he too leaped over the basket.

  Ducking through a tent of fabrics, I crawled under the table ignoring the shout from the owner. I glanced over the edge to watch Alec turning back and forth frantically scanning the crowd. I made it to the other side and leaped up and started running again.

  As I turned into another alley I ran up a flight of metal stairs behind an apartment building. I ignored the rattling. The garage building would be unreachable. This would have to do. I made it to the top and stopped for a moment to catch my breath, surveying my surroundings. The flat top of the apartment building was at least ten stories.

  I heard the rattling of the stairs as he followed.

  By the time Alec’s feet struck the rooftop at my back. I was already on the ledge, looking down at the empty alleyway far below my feet.

  “Levi . . . ” Alec’s low and cautious voice barely reached my ears over the sound of my blood pumping in them like a drum against the inside of my skull. “Levi . . . What are you doing?”

  The question seemed pointless. What I wanted was obvious. Why else would I be here, alone? Why else would I be staring at the alley below?

  I didn’t want the alley to be the last thing I ever saw. Maybe I would look up at the cloud overcast sky when I jumped. Maybe the sun would smile at me one more time, maybe . . . but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t want to care about anything anymore. My useless life was going nowhere, I would never be anything and never matter to anyone, so why not go where the one person who cared for me was. Death, that’s where she was. My mom, Daisy Graves, who would make everything better. All I had to do was get to her.

  “Levi, I can help you . . . ” His voice was closer now, at my back, but not close enough to touch me.

  I laughed wryly, no humor in it. “Help me? What makes you think I need help?”

  “Look where you’re standing.”

  “Trust me,” I almost laughed again, not tearing my eyes away from the asphalt and the trash bags lining the walls, “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  “Are you?”

  I didn’t have a response. Instead, I took my jacket off, letting the late autumn air hug me and make my teeth chatter. I threw it down into the alleyway below, watching the fabric catch the wind and drift a little before landing. I wouldn’t need it in a minute.

  “Are you just gonna stand there?” I snapped, glancing over my shoulder at him, standing with one hand outstretched like he wanted to touch me but didn’t dare. “Or are you gonna wait till I'm a pancake?”

  He swallowed. “Don’t talk like that . . . ”

  “Are you going to stop me?”

  “No.”

  “Then leave.”

  “No.”

  “We aren’t friends. I don’t have friends. I don’t even know your name. Leave.”

  “I’m Alec Fisher.”

  “Well,” my voice dripped with bitter sarcasm, “it’s nice to meet you. Please, just . . . let me— ”

  “Die?”

  I pursed my lips and turned on the ledge to face him, spreading my arms a little to the side for balance. “Yes.”

  Alec had lowered his hands but still had them raised like at any moment he would dive and try to catch me. Yet, his face was a calm rivaling the tenseness in his muscles. We stared at each other for a long moment as wind buffeted my back and chest and Alec slowly started shaking his head. “How old are you, Levi? Thirteen? Statistically, that’s barely a seventh of the way through your life. Don’t you think that in the sixty years you have left in your life that maybe whatever is wrong now might get better? No, it won’t fix itself, but you can get help, Levi.”

  I looked down at the roof and laughed. “Help? Who is going to help me? What could make this,” I waved a hand over my head, “go away better than that?” I pointed to the drop at my back.

  “It won’t go away. It’ll just be you wishing you hadn’t somewhere else. Waiting for no one because you couldn’t wait here for it to get better. Because it gets better.”

  “You believe in an afterlife, Alec Fisher?”

  “I believe that dying now isn’t going to make it better. It’ll either get worse or it’ll all just stop and you’ll never get to do anything. Haven’t you ever wanted to do anything more with your life? If you can make it through now, you can get to then.”

  I didn’t want to jump. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted the pain to go the fuck away, but my face was still stinging, and throat still raw.

  Jumping would hurt. Maybe death was instantaneous if I jumped, but how long was an instant? And it might not even work. I might end up in the hospital, and have to go home again with another bill I'd have to wait for dad to beat me for. Just like last time.

  I turned back to the drop, and I heard Alec gasp, possibly unint
entionally. I looked down and closed my eyes. “Can you help me?” my voice broke. “Please?”

  I felt his hand on my arm and he didn’t have to say anything. Without looking away from the drop, I stepped down. I took a deep breath, reaching over to grip his arm. I didn’t know him, only just learned his name, but he was here. Where no one else had followed me, where no one else bothered to notice I was going.

  For a second I thought he was shaking, but then I realized it was me, gripping his arm so tightly it was making him tremble. My breath, which had a moment before been nearly even, hitched and I sank to my knees, pulling him down with me.

  “I-” my voice cracked, “I’m not easy to deal with. I’m not easy to help . . . ”

  “Has anyone even tried?” he asked, voice low, letting me press my weight against him as I shook my head.

  “Not in a long time.”

  “Well, I’ll try.”

  Tears threatened to come, but I didn’t want to let them, so instead, I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t want to go home.”

  Alec didn’t say anything, and I could almost hear him thinking about my bruises and the gears clicking into place. Instead of mentioning it, he said, “Y’know, my mom’s ordering pizza for dinner. Do you like pizza?”

  I broke a half-smile. “Who doesn’t?”

  Alec stood and offered me a hand which I took and let him pull me up. I let go of his hand and tucked mine under my armpits, trying not to meet his eyes.

  “You need this more than I do.” I glanced up to find him holding his oddly colored leather jacket. I wanted to protest, but I was freezing and it looked so warm, so I took it.

  Alec was the first person to give a shit about me in a long time. He stopped me from killing myself when he had no obligation to do so. He had taken me to his house and we ate pizza with his mom, who, after Alec had told her what happened while I waited in a different room, cried and hugged me and called me her “sweet pea”. I didn’t protest. I’d had no mother since I could remember, and I accepted her love. She told me I would never have to think about doing that again because I had someone that would be my new mom.