eyes as they walked out of the blood-spattered metal room. The door resembled a walk-in cooler in a restaurant or a butcher shop.
“What is that place?” she said.
“Apparently the museum used it to keep old pelts from rotting,” said Casey. “Least that’s what Fisher says.”
“Fisher?”
“Yeah, you’ll see in a minute. Anyway, we took all the fur stuff down right away and used them for beds.”
“Don’t we need to clean up the blood?” she said, as Casey pulled the door shut tight.
“What for? We’re only here because we were looking for you.”
“Me?” she said. Her brain wasn’t functioning properly. It felt muddy. Her nerves felt as if they were on the outside of her skin and she hunched as she walked. All she could think about was her hunger. “Why were you looking for me?”
“You’re the key,” said Casey, holding her arm and walking her toward a bright light. “It’ll get easier. You’ll stop feeling everything after a while.”
“The key to what?” she said, trying to distract herself from wanting to rip something apart. She felt edgy and angry and sick. Like death warmed over. She almost laughed. Maybe not warmed over, but she had died. Jenny stopped and Casey looked back at her.
“I’m dead,” she said.
“We’ve been over this.”
“I’m fucking dead, Casey.”
He nodded. “Congratulations. You’re part of the club.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sarcasm is not fucking necessary right now.”
“Sorry.”
“I died. Can I have a minute to wrap my head around that?”
Casey softened a little. “You’ll have lots of time,” he said. “Time’s all we got.”
“You should have let me pull the trigger,” she said. “Will I turn into a rotter?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I didn’t. Because none of us did. Trix was the first, right after the Collapse, when the Army disappeared. So five years ago, give or take a few months. And she’s no rotter. You won’t be either.”
“Why were you looking for me?” she said.
“You’re my sister.”
“I abandoned you. You should hate me.”
“You were sixteen,” he said. “And it was worse for you.”
She nodded. “Yeah. But that’s no excuse.”
“I’ve never blamed you, Jen. If you think I’ve been mad at you all these years, you’re wrong. I was happy you got away.”
“That’s stupid,” she said. “I left you there.”
“With good reason,” he said. “Come on. You have to meet them sooner or later. You have to admit what you are. This will help, I promise.”
She shook her head. “What was that you said about me being a link? A link to what?”
He looked at her patiently. “You’re the one who’s going to help us find the others.”
“What others?”
“The other Thirteen.”
“There aren’t thirteen of you now?”
“No,” he said, starting to sound irritated. “There were thirteen in the beginning. From the experiments.”
Jenny stared. For a moment she forgot about the hunger gnawing at her insides. “Experiments. You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I will explain everything,” he said. “But you have to stop stalling and come with me.”
“Mom’s experiments?”
“Jesus, Jenny. Will you just come with me?”
She shook her head.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?”
She licked her lips with a dry tongue. She wished for something thick and salty. Jenny was nauseated by the thought. “What the fuck is the matter with me?” she said. “I’m fucking dead. I’m a zombie rotter who has no business walking around talking to people. I want to eat people. I want to slurp their blood. How is that natural, Casey? I don’t want to meet your zombie friends, I don’t want to be your zombie big sis to pal around with. I don’t want this. I never did. I wanted to die, but you stopped me. So what the fuck is wrong with you? Maybe that’s the better question.”
Casey stared at her for a moment, his jaw moving but no words coming out. Speechless. “Shit,” he said after a while.
“So,” a voice wafted around the corner. A female voice. “You guys know we can hear you out here, right?”
Casey looked like he might laugh. Jenny glared at him. She took a step and poked her head around the corner. Three faces were staring at her: The pretty Asian girl with short hair; a skinny, tall guy with glasses over white eyes and light brown skin, and the big guy who climbed in her window.,.
The Asian girl, who Jenny guessed must be Trix, arched an eyebrow. “Zombies have feelings, too, bitch.”
Casey offered introductions. “Jenny, this is Trix.” He pointed to the big white guy with the crooked nose. “And that’s Fisher.” He moved his finger to point at the skinny guy with glasses. “And Grayson.” The skinny guy gave a sarcastic salute. “Everyone, this is Jenny.”
Jenny stepped out and stood there awkwardly. Everyone was staring at her.
“Jesus Christ, Casey,” said Trix.
“What?”
She got up out of her chair. Jenny noticed for the first time that they were in a conference room. There were no tables, but a dozen mismatched chairs lined the walls, and a few had been pulled into a circle in the middle of the room.
Trix grabbed Jenny’s arm, making her flinch. She shrugged. “Come with me. I’ll help you get cleaned up.” She shot a look at Casey.
Jenny looked down at herself and remembered she was covered in blood. It was drying now, flaking off her skin and what was left of her clothes. It was caked in her hair and crackled on her face. She could even feel it drying in her nose. The clothes Jenny was wearing had been shredded in her apparent frenzy. The Thumper dress she’d put on back at Sully’s tent a lifetime ago was unrecognizable. It hung in tatters around her legs and one arm hung by a thread. The collar was completely gone for some reason and it hung loose and stiff with blood around her chest.
She followed Trix out of the room, feeling dead eyes burning into her back as she went. Trix led her down a hall that was completely missing a roof. It looked as though it had been blown off with a bomb. Thumpers had bombed every scientific facility they could, before all the explosives were used up. Not long after that, bullets became pretty scarce, too. Jenny looked at the floor. Vines were crawling in from outside and in a few places the tile floor was cracked and what looked like the soft tendrils of tree saplings were growing through. Trix deftly stepped around them, her spiked black boots not making a sound, making Jenny’s barefoot, stumbling steps all the more obvious.
“You’ll get used to it,” Trix said over her shoulder, her voice steely. “It’s worse for us. They don’t get it.”
“Us?” Jenny said.
“Women. It’s harder on us. Blood-lust comes naturally to them. We have to learn to live with it.”
“That seems a little sexist,” Jenny mumbled.
“Fuck your sexist,” she said. “I’m a realist.” She wasn’t angry, her voice stayed flat. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Jenny blinked, watching Trix’s back as they walked. Trix walked around a branch that had fallen in.
“Sorry,” Jenny said. “I don’t.”
“It’s okay,” Trix said. “I was a kid. Casey’s age.”
“There were so many,” Jenny said. “In the end. Why are there only thirteen?”
“There are thirteen left,“ Trix said.
“What do you mean?”
“Jesus,” she said. “The rest are all dead.”
Trix stopped outside a door and turned the handle. She motioned Jenny inside without making eye contact. The room was dark, but she flipped a switch and a lamp glowed, revealing a bathroom, though the toilet had been torn out and half the wall was gone. A tube fed in from outside rested inside a large plastic tub that looked like a horse trough. It was filled with cloudy water.
“Rainwater,” said Trix. “We’ll have to start over after you clean up. Probably haul some of that nasty water from the lake.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jenny.
“Why?” said Trix, no note of sarcasm in her voice. Trix shrugged. “You can get cleaned up here,” Trix said. “I’ll bring you some clean clothes.”
“Wait,” Jenny said. She stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Why are the others dead? Did the rotters kill them?”
“No,” Trix said, finally meeting her eyes. Jenny got a shiver looking into those translucent-white eyes in such a pretty face. She could almost make out her darker, original eye color underneath. “Your bitch mother did.”