Zombies Don't Surrender by Rusty Fischer

Author:Rusty Fischer [Rusty Fisher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781605427126
Publisher: Medallion Media Group
Published: 2014-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Three's a Crowd

Val?” Stamp and I say it at the same time.

Lucy makes her own crumple face and reaches into her messenger bag once more. I swear to God, if she pulls out another library book about zombies, I’m going to use it to knock her block off. Then Stamp and I can fight over her brain, which, judging from her voluminous knowledge of the undead is probably pretty big.

Instead of a book, she slides out a thin tablet like an iPad but not quite. She taps the screen a couple of times until a slideshow starts. I watch a few grainy shots of a street light shining on a sidewalk. “You know how I’ve been watching you guys creeping around here for the last few nights? Well, that got a little boring, so in between, I started watching the end of our street. And when I saw this, I started snapping pictures.”

The screen shifts to a second picture of the sidewalk, and in the right corner of the screen is a faint shadow. No, not a shadow at all. A foot. The picture changes, and now the foot is attached to a leg, bare and hairless but definitely masculine. A guy’s leg. From the looks of it, a young guy’s leg. Sleek but also firm. The picture changes again, and now there’s more leg, plus some running shorts and the fingertips of a hand, just out of frame.

I look closer and see blood on the running shorts, on the pale fingers. Another screen, another picture, more of the bloody jogger. A hoodie appears, unzipped to a narrow waist, navy blue over a plain white T-shirt also dotted with blood. A strong chest, broad shoulders, and a shadowy face.

Lean and haunted, almost feral.

“Can you stop it?” I ask, but I’m not really asking. “Freeze it, I mean?”

I’ve got my zombie voice on, and as tough as she’s acting, as if maybe she’s holding all the cards, I get the feeling Lucy knows I’m being polite out of curiosity and, if I really wanted to, she’d be joining the anonymous bloody jogger wandering around town at night looking for fresh brains on the quiet streets of Seagull Shores.

Either way, she gets it and taps the tablet twice.

“Can you zoom in on the face?” I say.

Lucy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look up or give me attitude; she just does it. A click here, a scroll there, and the legs, bloody running shorts, and half the background disappear. In their place hovers a grainy young face, distinct but imperfect.

I slide the Missing poster across the kitchen counter and compare it to the grainy picture on the iPad that is not an iPad. The bloody jogger in the picture is definitely the missing boy—what’s his name?—Armand Suit.

And he’s definitely no longer one of the living.

“When did you take this?”

“Two nights ago. Or, if you’re keeping track, a few nights after you two showed up in Seagull Shores.”

I’m still staring at the photo. It’s

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