Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (4 page)

“What?” He smirks, sniffing at an apple. “Surprised?”

“Not really,” I say and realize at the same time.

He palms one of the apples and sinks his teeth deep into it. I watch as his jaw works and flexes, the crunching of sustenance and life filling the room and filling my hungry eyes. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being so fascinated by the simple, boring act of … other people eating. I miss it so, so, so much. Chocolate may not exist anymore, but I suppose the taste of an apple would suffice at this point.

I can’t believe I just said that.

“What’re you looking at,” he asks without turning around, and knowing exactly what I’m looking at.

“You have a cut on your neck.”

It’s really more of a tiny scrape, but he just stands there at the counter crunching away, teeth working on that apple bite-by-succulent-bite, and with his mouth full, he mumbles, “Occupational hazard. Y’know. Of living.” His eyes move to the side of his face, as if looking at me without bothering to turn his head. “Am I bleeding?”

“No.”

“Good. Then you’re not tempted.” He moves past me, pushing into the bedroom. I’m staring at the bowl of fruit on the counter, feeling the imaginary rush of anger crawling up my body like the throat of a volcano.

He made that cruel jape because he knows I’ve tasted Human flesh before. To be fair, I was
tricked
. I didn’t know what I was eating at the time, and after I’d eaten it, it was too late. Only seconds after flesh met tongue, I realized I could, for the first time in my Second Life,
taste
what was in my mouth.
Blood.
I looked and the sky was not a twisting silver nebula for once, but burning blue. For that short, desperate moment, I was almost alive.

Too soon, it passed, the little bite I’d consumed wore off, and I was dead again.

And now John makes some joke that I would, in any capacity, desire
eating
him. No. I think after a hundred lovely mornings full of his moodiness and japes, I’d much rather punch him in the face.

“Not tempted at all,” I retort, my eyes turning dark.

“You sure about that?” he calls back from the room.

In truth, I
did
taste his blood once. He doesn’t know. When he almost died, Doctor Collin told me there was little hope. He was bleeding and I held him so tightly, his blood touched my lips. Suddenly I could taste, and dawn began burning in the window. When John woke, he saw me and smiled, and with his blood still affecting me—just that trace on my lips—we watched the sunrise together.

That might’ve been our last happy moment. If I’d known, I would’ve clung to it a touch longer. “I’m going,” I announce to no one, moving toward the door.

I hear his feet shuffle along the floorboards. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this.”

My hand is on the doorknob when I turn. He’s at the foot of the hallway, the half-eaten apple hanging from a fist, and I watch his jaw moving, flexing, working.

“What?”

“You’re coming with me,” he says, muffled by food.

“You were the one that was summoned, not me.”

“The Chief represents us living. He needs me, sounds like. Helena represents the Undead and she’ll need you.”

I wrinkle my face. “She’s never needed me before.”

“She’s likely too proud to ask.”

I’m still thinking about how blood tastes. I realize it’s sadly the only thing I’ve tasted in this Second Life. Not the sweet tang of an apple. Not the seductive pull and thrill of chocolate’s kiss. Just the metallic, bitter bite of blood.

He persists: “I’m not going alone.”

His brown eyes still melt me, even when I’m so mad at him that I could chew off my own teeth. I unsettlingly realize that I’m actually capable of that. “Alright,” I say, giving in. “I’ll be waiting on the porch for you.”

He watches me dubiously as I go. Then, the creaky rocking chair that overlooks the creaky railing of my creaky porch takes my weight, which is hardly any weight at all, for all the
dead
I’m made of … and I wait.

Just seconds later, John emerges from the house. He looks handsome, smartened up by his recent shave and having donned a semi-professional button-up shirt that hugs his muscular frame. His eyes find mine.

He’s never thanked me. I realize that as we walk. Even just strolling down the street with John at my side—a living, breathing, beating-heart Human—wasn’t possible with our last Mayor. He banned everything and anything in Trenton that lived. I risked my existence by secretly (and illegally) keeping John in my house. With the help of my neighbor Jasmine, we got him food. Before he could just waltz into my house with a sack half-full of crunchy apples, he was starving and desperately in my need.

And he’s never thanked me.

The Town Hall sits across from the pink Refinery building where Marigold is still baking fingers, toes, and bowel parts, no doubt. The Square, against which the biggest buildings of Trenton hug, is everything but calm. Children—I can’t tell which are dead or living—race past our feet, threatening to trip us. Irritable Undead and fastidious Humans push forward in busied groupings. The vendors aren’t seeming any kinder: two dead women are making a trade of decorated ears to other Undead, much to the disgust of the Humans in the tent next to them who are trading pottery. Yet further down the street, Humans have set up a spot to vend water and fruit, but forbid any Undead within ten feet of their baskets.

Trenton is far from the utopia we’d hoped it would become after overthrowing the evil Mayor.

We enter the Town Hall and I silently thank the doors that close off the noise of outside. Seated at the desk, the clerk lifts her frail, sunken-in face and grumbles: “They’re waiting. First room on the left.” John just gives a short nod, knowing the way. I smile at the clerk, who looks about as thrilled to exist as a doorknob, and follow John.

The long rectangular room is lit only by a sputtering, ugly fluorescent I barely notice due to my Undead eyes. Under the light is a long, three-thousand year old wooden table (I’m guesstimating its age here). The Chief is seated at one end, Helena the other.

“Please. Keep us waiting longer,” says Helena dryly.

The Chief rises. He’s a proud Living man, his jaw housing a thick grey-streaked pointed beard pouring off his chin like a bib. He’s grown it out a lot, I notice. His eyes are flecks of blue-grey and his nose a bulb of flesh. He has little head-hair to speak of, and a thick ring of steel decorates each ear. The steel jewelry has become a bit of a fashion trend among the Humans, and for a good reason.

“Winter,” he greets me evenly.

“Chief,” I recite back. He has a real name, but stopped using it long ago after his wife and twin boys were eaten by Deathless. No one knows his name and no one asks.

“Representative of the Living and his assistant are now present,” announces Helena. “Me and
my
assistant too, so let’s get on with this.”

Say what? Assistant?

John takes a chair by the Chief. Reluctantly, I take the one by Hel. “It’s been a long time, Winter,” notes the Chief, his eyes heavy and bagged. I heard he sleeps with one eye open, cuddling an axe. “How’re you recovering?”

“Oh.” I’m not sure to what he’s referring. An excess of splendidly terrible things have happened to me so far in my Second Life from which I may never recover. “Quite well,” I answer anyway. “I think I might—”

“So what’s this meeting about?” John asks gruffly, getting to the point.

And interrupting me. I shoot him a look.

The Chief takes his seat. “Aside issues of inoperable toilets, sick or dying chickens, and bickering townsfolk, we face a far more pressing matter: the change of season.”

“It’s getting colder outside,” Helena elaborates, noting my puzzled expression. “A lot colder. Not such a big deal for us, but huge deal for them.”

“But you’re all taken care of here in Trenton, aren’t you?” I ask the Chief, confused. “You have walls, warm homes, clothing,
food
—”

“Cold weather is killing the crops,” explains the Chief. “We made the last three winters just fine at our last camp, but our food sources are running thin. The coming winter will kill what’s left.”

“Yes,” says John through his teeth, “and I’ve already offered a solution to this.”

“Garden doesn’t
exist
,” the Chief states, unbothered. “And I’m not gambling all our lives on a
fantasy
. Besides, we have secured a far more realistic solution. Helena has spoken with our Unliving neighbors to the north. A city, in fact, beyond the Haunted Waste—sorry, the
Whispers
. These neighbors of yours are able to supply food, yes?”

I gape at Helena. “We have neighbors??” She just rolls her eyes.

“We need to form a party willing to travel north and negotiate with them. I suggest a party of at least two alive so the food we accept from them is well-handled. I understand it dies when an Unliving touches it.” Helena snorts for a yes. “I nominate John and Gunner as our alive,” he goes on. “Helena, you’ll choose the others. You might find it well to include the one with the garden—”

I’m about to make a point about how we could wear gloves or something when suddenly the door bursts open and the usually-calm clerk shows us a very panicked face. “Chief! Chief and Judge! Emergency!”

Abandoning his seat, the Chief rushes out of the room without a second’s hesitation. I turn to John, sharing a look of concern with him.

Helena just sighs, annoyed. “Whatever is it …?”

Only one way to find out.

At the steps of the Town Hall, there is a commotion. “Quick!” I hear. “Hurry!” someone else shouts. It’s more irritating than alarming, considering I can’t see what the hell’s going on with all the people in the way. “We need the doctor!” I finally make out, someone in the front.

I break through, John at my side. A woman lies on the ground, cradled by what I take to be her husband. When he lifts her at the urgent request of some mouthy Undead, I realize she’s pregnant.

“Everyone, make room,” the Chief calls out. “Get out of the way, please, everyone. We need space.”

“We need a
doctor
,” the woman groans between short breaths. “
H-Hurry!
—Augh!—It’s just down the road!”

Her husband scoffs angrily and spits back: “I am
not
taking you to that Dead Doctor.”

It’s John who intercepts. “Listen, Gill. I get your trust issues, I had them too. But Collin knows what he’s doing. He has
actual
medical and surgical experience from when he was alive, back when the world was whole. He’s the safest hands Laura can hope for.”

The man, Gill, has a face as stern and deadly as a wolf. But even a wolf knows when to bite and when to stand down. “John. Please. It’s our baby … our baby …”

Gill. That name … That’s the name of the boy I went to prom with when I was alive. Obviously it’s
not
the same person, but just hearing the name spoken aloud … Gill was the last person to see me alive.

“She can hardly move,”
this
Gill complains, tears in his eyes. “John—”

“I’ll carry her there.”

It’s me who volunteers.

The Gill man burns me with his oily eyes, reeking of his distaste for the Undead. Yeah, I get it, but what choice does he have? Undead can carry far more than Humans.

“John. You carry her. I won’t have anything touching my wife and that baby boy.”

“Girl,” grunts the wife, huffing and groaning.

Gill doesn’t respond to his wife’s little jest, too focused on the argument of who’s carrying who, and not minding in the least how insulted I am that he just called me an ‘anything’. “John, please. I carried her this far, I can’t carry her farther. My leg—”

“Fine.” John throws an arm around the woman—Laura, I believe he said—and she’s helped out of the Square, step by agonizingly slow step. The Chief is pulling the crowd apart, making room for them. The half-gym, half-hospital is only a merciful minute’s walk away.

I realize Gill is limping, wincing every other step. “What’s with the leg?” I ask, hurrying behind them.

“No one asked you to come,” he spits back.

I saved the city of Trenton and welcomed in all the Humans from the wretched wilderness and
this
is the respect I get. “You’re bleeding,” I point out, noting his soaked-red pant leg.

“Fell on the way out of the house. Dropped my wife.”

John huffs and puffs along with the Laura woman, whether out of encouragement or because he’s struggling to hold up her weight, I can’t tell. Gill is rasping for his own reasons, tears in his eyes; it’s obvious the pain he’s in. Helena, I only just now notice, is following behind.