Laughter of the Undead Read online

  He didn’t.

  My collision with the table seemed to have been what woke him. As I pushed myself up, the world still wavering on its axis, I heard Tommy yawn, “Conny?”

  And then he started screaming.

  As fast as my jelly legs would allow I threw myself to my feet. Garrett had Tommy by the back of his pajamas. He turned to me holding my brother aloft like a kitten.

  I gritted my teeth, ready to launch myself at him, but knowing I couldn’t because of the knife he still held in his other hand. “Put my brother down.”

  Garrett looked at Tommy with a strange cat-like, nonchalant curiosity. “He’s a lot whiter than you are.”

  “Put. Him. Down.”

  Garrett looked at me, scanning me up and down before meeting my eyes. “But he’s the best way to get to you.”

  He face re-broke into a grin, and he giggled like a little kid, ignoring that Tommy’s whining whimpers had turned to full out sobbing.

  “Connor, Connor, Connor,” he laughed, “we need to go outside.”

  I blinked, “We- what?”

  Outside, Garrett shook Tommy like a toy, and my baby brother started wailing, screaming and sobbing in fear. On instinct, I took half a step forward, but Garrett’s knife somehow wasn’t a knife anymore. Maybe the world hadn’t settled around me as much as I thought it had, because I missed the moment that Garrett traded the knife for a gun.

  I’d had a gun held on me before, but I liked it even less this time.

  “We’re going outside,” He said, calmer as if reminding me about a picnic we’d been planning. “Turn around and start walking.”

  I wanted to argue, wanted to tell him to go screw himself, but he had a gun and he had my brother, still screaming for me and crying violently. I wanted more than anything to go to him, but instead, I put my hands on the back of my head and started inching toward the door, the barrel of Garrett’s gun following me all the way.

  “Where’re your parents?” Garrett demanded as I started down the stairs, scanning the empty house, the empty bowls of canned soup that had been our dinner last night still on the living room table. I tried not to look at them too obviously. Four bowls. I didn’t want him looking for my friends, didn’t want to draw suspicion to them.

  Instead, I pitched my voice a little louder, hoping they would hear if they were awake because if they weren’t yet, Tommy’s wailing would wake them.

  “My parents are dead.” It was still almost impossible to say out loud without breaking down, but fear crushed my sorrow for the moment, my voice didn’t waver, “It’s just me and Tommy.”

  Garrett laughed behind me. That only increased my desire to punch him in the face as hard as I could.

  “Aw, does Storming miss his mommy?”

  I thought I do miss my Mommy, you asshole. I said, “Yeah.”

  He laughed again.

  Garrett didn’t let me put on shoes or a jacket when we reached the front door. When I tried, he did something that made Tommy scream again, and I put my hands back on my head.

  “Can he at least put on a jacket?” I asked softly, not turning to look at him or my brother. “He’ll get sick.”

  Garrett scoffed, “Like I care. Now go outside.”

  I braced myself as I opened the door to the freezing snow-covered morning. A thin layer of snow covered the steps and coated the front yard in a thick blanket.

  Things happened around me. I could hear them, distant and muffled, shouting and arguing and grunting, but Garrett’s foot had made not so gentle contact with the side of my head and the whole world was spinning. Everything hurt, from my ribs to my arms to my bare feet that were so cold they ached.

  This was never how I’d imagined my first day as a legal adult.

  As the shouting and struggling sound drew to a close, I managed to push myself up a bit, just in time to see Izzy holding a gun to Garrett’s head.

  While I’d been in the fetal position, apparently a whole lot of hell had happened. Beside me, Levi had himself half propped on one elbow, wheezing as bad I was, one hand to his throat.

  I coughed, though it was murder on my ribs, and tried to look at Izzy without wincing, “Did you just . . . shoot someone?”

  She dropped the gun as if it had burned her.

  “He was gonna kill you!” she said defensively. “He was strangling Levi.”

  “Shoot as many people as you need,” Levi’s voice was even more raspy than usual. “I ain’t complaining.”

  He coughed, hard enough that he was forced to brace himself against the ground.

  I turned slightly to him, still wincing at the pain that laced through my chest, “You got strangled?”

  He frowned even through his coughing. “A little bit, yeah.”

  I nodded, unsure of what else to say. “Metal.”

  Izzy rolled her eyes. “You almost got murdered, and when Levi tried to help you, he almost got murdered.”

  I kept nodding, “Metal.”

  Levi finally seemed to get his breath back. “You’re welcome.”

  I tried to stand, but my ribs didn’t seem to want that, and I collapsed back onto my hands and knees, groaning.

  Izzy put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right? How are you feeling?”

  I gave a half laugh as she offered an arm to help me rise, “Well . . . my eyebrows don’t hurt. That’s about it.”

  I didn’t see her roll her eyes, but I could guess she did by the tone of her sigh as she looped her arm around my waist to brace me so I could stand, this time successfully.

  Grimacing, I clutched my side as she offered her other hand to Levi. Still coughing he waved her away and pushed himself to a stand.

  The three of us stood for a moment, staring at Garrett who lay unconscious, his blood staining the ground under him.

  I shivered a little, looking at him, thinking about the hate in his eyes when he threw me to the ground and held Tommy like a wasted doll. My ribs twinged at me and my grip on Izzy’s shoulder tightened a little.

  “So . . . ” Izzy started, clearing her throat, “do we just leave him?”

  “If we leave him, he’ll just attack us again.” Levi’s voice was grim. “So, we have two options, neither of which you’ll like.”

  Izzy’s arm tightened against me. “There’s always more than two options,” her voice verging on panicky, and I could tell she understood what he was saying just as well I did.

  “We can’t kill him, dude.”

  Levi glared at me. “He was going to kill you. He didn’t care. He nearly killed me.” A well-timed coughing fit broke his sentence and he had to put a hand on Izzy’s shoulder to brace himself before he could continue. “We can’t just let him go.”

  Izzy was shaking her head. “Levi, we could . . . ”

  “What? Tie him up and lock him in the basement? Feed him once a day like a prisoner? We shouldn’t waste what we have on a fucker like this.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I could say, “He has a point, Izzy.”

  “Murder is not a point!”

  “If anything, it’s self-defense.”

  “Would you just shut up already?”

  I could feel Izzy stiffen against my side as we all realized our mistake. In our bickering, Garrett had regained consciousness and his gun.

  He wasn’t pointing it at us, not yet, but lying flat on his back with the gun held almost lazily. “You got no backbone, bitch.”

  Izzy let out what was almost a growl. “Don’t call me a bitch, asshole. Sorry if I don’t sink to your level.”

  Garrett half laughed, half coughed. “Levels don’t matter anymore. Look around you. The world has ended. Who cares?”

  “Dude,” I almost wanted to roll my eyes, almost more annoyed that I was afraid, “there’s three of us and one of you.”

  To my surprise, he grinned and dropped the gun.

  “What are you-” Izzy started, but he ignored her, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out what I t
hought for a second was one of those old fashioned phones that became a meme about never dying, Nokia or something, but after a moment, I realized there’s no way a Nokia would have a big red button instead of a call button.

  Garrett’s grin didn’t fade as he showed us the flashing ten on the not-phone's screen. “You’ve got ten minutes. Figure out the code, find the bomb, or get blown up.”

  Garrett pressed the button and the numbers started their countdown.

  My heart dropped through the ground and my head whipped to the house. There was a fucking bomb.

  I pulled myself away from Izzy, who stood frozen in shock and limped toward him, ignoring the aching in my side. “Tell me the code.”

  It came out calm the first time, but then he smiled and I remembered that Tommy was in the house. “Tell me the code!”

  I wasn’t close enough to react when he made the movement, not close enough to stop him when he reached for the gun.

  For a second, I thought he was going to shoot me, but I guess that would have been nicer. That way Levi and Izzy could have gotten the code out of him and save Tommy and my house but that’s not what Garrett did.

  He held the gun limply, staring at me for a long moment before he smiled again and said, “I hope you’re in there when it happens. Maybe I'll come back.” Then he stuffed the gun’s barrel in his mouth.

  “No!”

  He left his brains in the snow.

  I turned away and covered my mouth, bile rising in my throat and stomach convulsing in protest to what I just watched. I’d seen the missing scalps of the few who had killed themselves at school, but I hadn’t watch it happen. I’d never watched or thought I would ever watch, someone commit suicide.

  “Oh my God,” Izzy managed. “Oh my God, what do we do?”

  Levi coughed again, voice still a raspy disaster. “We’ve got nine minutes to get our shit and get as far away from the house as possible before we figure out whether or not Connor is the seventh seal of the apocalypse.”

  I thought that theory sounded pretty cool, being the seventh seal of the apocalypse, but I wasn’t willing to die to find out how true it would turn out to be.

  “Tommy needs to be our top priority,” Izzy said after a moment, her voice wavering. “I'll get Tommy, you get things we need.”

  Levi nodded and Izzy didn’t wait for my response before rushing into the house.

  I couldn’t pull my eyes from Garrett, or the flesh and blood and bone that had moments ago been him.

  He tried to kill me. I’d contemplated killing him, but now that he was dead, I hated it. Death sucked, and so many people I knew had died.

  Levi placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Connor, we gotta hurry. Can you walk?”

  I yanked my eyes back and nodded. “I can limp.”

  Twenty-Four

  Izzy

  March 20th - 9:47 a.m.

  Tommy was still hiding under Connor’s bed, just like that first day in this house. I flattened myself on the ground alongside the bed.

  My heart was pounding against the inside of my chest and that had more to do considering the house was going to explode in approximately eight minutes than with the fact that I’d run up the stairs.

  “Tommy, honey, we’ve gotta go . . . like now.”

  “I don’t wanna! The scary guy’s out there.”

  “No, he’s not. I promise, please, Tommy.”

  Reluctantly, the toddler scooted his way toward me. It took every ounce of will power in my body not to yank him out by his arm and throw him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  I did exactly that the moment he sat up, having fully emerged from under the bed. I shoved myself to my feet and grabbed him, shoving his dinosaur and coat I found on a chair into his arms.

  “You stay right there,” I commanded and darted to the room I’d slept in just long enough to grab my own jacket and shove my feet into my shoes.

  Against my command, Tommy had followed me, but it didn’t matter because that just meant I could get us out faster. I picked him up and ran back down the stairs.

  I met Levi at the base of the stairs and exchanged a panicked glance. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting Connor some shoes. We’ll be fine. He’s getting food, you just go.”

  My eyes widened and I readjusted my grip on the toddler, ignoring his whining protest. “How long do we have?”

  “It doesn’t matter, just go!”

  I growled in the back of my throat. I was tired of being told to “go” but he was right.

  I ran. The front door was still open and I pressed Tommy’s face against my shoulder as I stumbled through the front yard so he wouldn’t see the gore from Garrett’s suicide.

  I ran across the yard, and the next yard and the next after that, breath coming in short gasps that felt like glass shards, the cold stinging my still under covered arms and legs. My pajama pants were long but my sockless ankles throbbed in the snow I kicked up, and my arms where I had yet to shove them into jacket sleeves were going numb, both from the cold and Tommy’s weight as I carried with me while I ran.

  I ran until I felt like I was going to fall over. Which wasn’t far because I've never been much of a runner. We were a good five or six houses away though. Far enough I figured it would be safe to pause. I set Tommy down, who was still complaining excessively.

  “It’s cold, Zie zie. I want to go home.”

  “I know, Bud,” I panted out. Over the last two weeks, Levi and I had adopted Connor’s method of speaking to his brother. Bud, buddy, little man, with the occasional, baby and sweetheart. Pure affection shielded in attempted manliness.

  I fumbled with his jacket. “I know, but come here, you’ve got to get this on, okay?”

  He pouted about it, but he was shivering, and he obliged, sticking his little arms in the sleeves and letting me help him. I zipped him up to his chin and forced my own arms into sleeves as well.

  Tommy grabbed my hand. I pushed myself to my feet again, debating on continuing to run, or waiting here for Connor and Levi to emerge. I squinted at the house through the gloomy morning light. Nothing moved.

  What if they didn’t get out on time? What would I do then?

  I squished down those thoughts, and as far as I was away, I figured no harm could come in trying to get farther out of blast range.

  At that moment, the situation fully hit me. The house was going to blow up unless Garrett was somehow bluffing. Blow up. It would be gone. Everything inside, all our food, all our clothes, all our shelter, if that house blew up . . . we’d lose everything.

  I shook my head and turned my back to the house. As Connor said, we’d burn that bridge when we got to it.

  I grabbed Tommy again, and this time started walking farther away, not running. I stepped with purpose as if I were going somewhere, trying to convince myself that was the case, that I wasn’t fleeing.

  Connor and Levi will get out and put enough distance between them and the house and everything will work out.

  I wasn’t as convincing to myself as I would have liked.

  “Where are we going Zie zie?” Tommy demanded, pushing on my shoulder with his tiny hand, “Where’s my brudder?”

  I opened my mouth to answer something reassuring, but nothing came out. At that moment, the house decided to explode.

  A shredding BOOM tore through the air, loud enough to send me spinning, and followed a millisecond later by a blast of warm air on my back. The shock and the grumbling of the ground under my feet sent me to my knees, and on instinct, I wrapped one arm around Tommy as we rolled through the snow. Without glancing back I leaped to my feet. I had to pause for a millisecond to coax Tommy to follow and rise from his huddled position. Once he was back on his feet, I pulled on his arm, gripping his hand in mine as we ran farther away. We were full-on running now. However far we’d gotten didn’t feel far enough.

  Another explosion shook the ground beneath my feet, causing Tommy to stumble and nearly fall once more.

>   I yanked him upright, ignoring his protests. A few scrapes and bruises would be easy to fix, but dying would be irreversible.

  I glanced behind me. Connor and Levi were nowhere in sight. A third explosion billowed a plume of fire nearly a hundred feet into the air.

  “Connor!” I shouted, kneeling on the ground and shielding Tommy with my body. “Levi!”

  Another blast was all that answered me. Bits of the house went flying, shooting flaming shrapnel into the air, landing in the snow, hissing as the frost melted, leaving charred remains on the ground and growing patches of long-dead grass peering through the white like blemishes.

  There was nothing left of the house. Blackened structure and burning walls showed what had moments before been our home. Our safe haven. The plumes of the crimson and orange flame spitting from remnants of Connor’s home licking the gray sky.

  “Connor!” I shouted again. “Levi! Damn it, where are you!”

  They said they would get out on time. Levi said they would be fine. They were just grabbing a few things and running as I had. They had to be fine. They had to be. Over Tommy’s head, I watched the house burn to the ground, wishing I could find them, wishing I knew they were okay. All I could see was the fire.

  Twenty-Five

  Connor

  March 20th - 9:49 a.m.

  Every step sent searing pain through my ribs. I don’t know why the universe had decided to make me it’s personal punching bag, but some almighty being was fucking with me. My arm had barely healed and now I had something broken. Or if not broken, badly bruised.

  I used the counters as crutches to limp myself to the pantry. Limping was counterproductive, especially with a life or death time crunch going on, but I couldn’t go any faster without losing the ability to breathe.

  I shoveled random shit off the shelves and into one of my mom’s reusable shopping bags. Levi appeared as I slung the bag over my shoulder with a painfully slow motion. He had a jacket, the leather one he’d given me, and my tennis shoes in his hands, his own coat and shoes hastily adorned, “Come on, man! We need to get out.”