Dad and Mom were arguing about a customer.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Cyn. You know how I feel about AZDs.”
“But he offered a fortune! And his wife’s dead. Zombies don’t have feelings, Al. She doesn’t care.”
“I do! We honor the wishes of the dying. You give his money back and you de-animate Mrs. Lettinger.”
“You’re such an asshole, Al!”
I missed my Mom. I probably shouldn’t, given that she basically gave us all the finger and took off. What kind of mother abandoned her family? When I was ten, I figured it was something I had done. Something I said or did. I cried and cried, and so did Ally. Dad did everything he could to make us feel better. And then Nonna left New York and came to live with us. Eventually, life got better.
Anyway.
I know my parents tried to keep their fighting away from us, but...yeah, that didn’t exactly work out. I remember that things were always tense, especially right before Mom left. So, I don’t really miss what Ally calls the Angry Times.
Still. The thing that I remembered most about my mom was that she was spontaneous. I think my dad would call it irresponsible, but he’s a lot on the serious side. Being a single dad is hard on him. He worries. Mom didn’t let stuff bother her. She laughed a lot. And she’d do silly stuff like break out into random dancing, or a game of chase around the house, or sometimes, after I’d gone to bed, she’d crawl under the covers and wrap her arms around me and sing softly.
I don’t know why she left. Dad didn’t exactly know, either, so what could he tell two grieving daughters who’d been abruptly, inexplicably, abandoned?
Well, you know. Not that Dad doesn’t crack a smile, or anything, he totally does. It’s just different, I guess. Dad raised me and Ally—well, he and Nonna did. It was a good life, maybe a little stifling with all the rules about curfew, homework, job and boys. Still. Dad taught me to whisper my prayers to the dead every night, whether they were zombies or not. Some souls choose to move into the next plane of existence, but some don’t, you know. Souls can get trapped in this world. If you die, and you don’t move on, then your soul remains bound to this plane and your spirit can be...er, acquired.
Yeah. You can be attached to a SEER machine, which FYI, is way worse than being a zombie. Zombies are just animated corpses. We need only one teeny tiny part of the soul, the ka, to make that happen. A soul doesn’t need the ka. It’s like a spleen, or an appendix, or wisdom teeth. But if you’re attached to a SEER machine, then your spirit energy belongs eternally to whoever owns it. And if you think people are mean to zombies, you should see some of the stuff spirit slaves have to do. The worst part is that they’re sentient energy. They know what’s being asked of them, and they have to do it. At least zombies don’t know when someone is demeaning them. Spirits have about the same kind of rights as zombies—as in, none. Courts keep ruling that death negates the civil rights of the previously alive. That goes for spirits and for corpses.
Any jerk can have a SEER machine and spirit slaves. But there’s something worse than being stuck to a SEER. You could end up a soul shadow. I totally read about this on the internet. A sheut heka can trap the soul, peel off the sheut and... Ew, I know, right? A sheut is the darkest, most awful part of you, sliced away from morals, conscience and empathy. So you’re like zero-calorie evil, you know? That’s why it’s illegal. I don’t know why there are laws and junk about it nowadays, because as far as I know, there aren’t sheut hekas around. There haven’t been for, like, centuries. I’ve never seen a sheut, but Dem says some exist. Leftovers from way back when there were sheut hekas all over the place. And he says that sheuts can only manifest in the darkness. Shadows need shadows, Molly. Dark needs dark.
Sometimes, Dem is weird.
Anyway...like I said, a lot of people opted for an AZD and chose cremation. Signing a piece of paper saying you didn’t want your corpse zombified didn’t mean thieves wouldn’t steal your freshly buried body. Black-market zombification was big business. Bodies were stolen, shipped off to crappy zombie-making factories and then sold to people who did not read literature regarding the humane care of the walking dead.
Zombies didn’t have souls. Okay, most zombies didn’t have souls. Every so often during a transition, a deadling would wake up with its memories, personality and humanity intact. Probably because the ka heka messed up and put the whole soul back in, or something. Only, a dead body is still a dead body, you know what I mean? Yeah. Gives me the shivers, too. Even though necromancy has been around since forever, it was really the ancient Egyptians who figured out how to separate the soul into the ib, sheut, ren, ba and ka. To make a zombie, you kept the ka inside the body and released the other parts to the afterlife. Only the ka was needed for reanimation.
It’s kinda complicated.
Zombies work mundane jobs and understand simple commands; they don’t need to sleep or to eat, either. Okay. They don’t need to eat, but they love sticking things down their craw. They have unceasing hunger even though they don’t require food. Part of raising the dead includes creating an appetite suppressant. That costs extra, and you gotta reenergize the magic annually, which is why some people chose zombie supplements instead of necro-incantations.
Not feeding a zombie isn’t like not feeding your cat. He. Will. Eat. You. And your cat. People who forget to pick up a case of Ghoul-AID sometimes don’t live to regret it. Capisce?
Finally! I reached the end of the hallway, which took forever because Mortimer wasn’t exactly good at the walking thing. I unlocked the door, waited sixty years for the zombie to shuffle inside and locked the door again. When you’re dealing with zombies, security is important.
We were standing in a tiny foyer. Calling it a foyer was stupid. It was just a little white room with a couple of plastic chairs. I let go of Mortimer’s hand. This was the only way to get to the sahnetjar, and I still had another door to unlock.
“Stay here.”
Zombies don’t often respond, but when they do, they groan. I’ve never met one that can actually talk, although Demetrius says they exist. Sometimes, I think he likes yanking my chain. A talking zombie? For real? Yeah, right.
Mortimer stared at the ground, looking like the most pathetic zombie ever. I sighed as I headed toward the door at the other end of the room. I wasn’t much for my sister’s whole save-the-zombies effort, but I had to admit I wouldn’t mind seeing Mortimer put to rest. I’d bet his wife ran him just as ragged when he was alive. At least now, he didn’t know it.
I tucked poor Mortimer’s leathery limb under the crook of my arm, pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the door that led to sahnetjar.
I heard a noise behind me. Startled, I turned and found Mortimer just inches away, his jaw cracking as his mouth opened impossibly wide. I dropped the keys (duh), backed against the door and held out his severed arm like an old, bent sword.
Then Mortimer tried to eat me.
Chapter 2
“The only way to survive a zombie attack is if you see it coming. Running won’t do you much good since zombies have the unsettling ability to jump long distances. They’re also strong, unintelligent and conscienceless. If one attacks, the best thing you can do is go for the kneecaps. Once it’s down, you have to remove its head. No, really. Zombies are relentless, especially when dealing with the Hunger.”
~Worst-Case Situations, Paranormal Edition
I drew on my powers. Magic tingled in my hands as I aimed them at Mortimer. A ka heka was the most common kind of necromancer and I was only in training, but even so, I still had some control over zombies.
Too