Dust Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  BOOK ONE - DRY BONES

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  BOOK TWO - DANSE MACABRE

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  BOOK THREE - RESURGAM

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Hilary Hall.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Turner, Joan Frances.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44290-6

  1. Zombies—Fiction. 2. Gangs—Fiction. 3. Communicable diseases—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.U7643D87 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2010006250

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my mother, Marianne, who first said the

  magic words, “If you want to be a writer, quit

  talking about it and start writing,” and then

  said, “Do I think you can? I know you can.”

  And meant every word. And in loving

  memory of my grandparents John and Laura.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my agent, Michelle Brower, and my editor, Michelle Vega, whose advice, advocacy and inspiration helped make this a far better book. To everyone at The Berkley Publishing Group, Wendy Sherman Associates and Folio Literary Management for all their hard work on my behalf. To Nick Mamatas, who read parts of an early draft and offered very insightful suggestions.

  To the owners and management of the Town Theatre in Highland, Indiana, where I scribbled the first page of notes that eventually became this book. To the staff and volunteers at Deep River County Park in Hobart, Indiana, the Taltree Arborteum in Valparaiso and Marquette Park Beach in Gary, where all the knottiest plot points got wrestled into submission. To Roxann McGlumphy, Ann Larimer and Betsy Hanes Perry for encouragement, support and friendship above and beyond the call of duty. To Mary S. for love, fidelity, first draft read-throughs and every good thing. And to my mother, for everything and then some.

  BOOK ONE

  DRY BONES

  1

  My right arm fell off today. Lucky for me, I’m left-handed.

  In the accident that killed me I rocketed from the backseat straight through the windshield—no seat belt, yeah, I know—and the pavement sheared my arm to nothing below the shoulder. Not torn off, but dangling by thin, precious little bits of skin and bone and ligament. I had a closed casket, I’m sure of it, because they never wired the arm or glued it or any other pretty undertaker trick. I managed to crawl back out of the ground without its help anyway, and of course after nine perfectly uneventful years of fighting and dancing and hunting and getting by fine with the left arm, the right finally shuffles its coil right on the banks of the Great River County Park’s not-so-Great River, smack in the middle of a meat run. Joe, my boy, my backup, was not sympathetic in the least.

  “You’re shaking,” he muttered, as he led the gang along the riverbank, through the clearing that used to be the park playground. “Your arm’s shaking, look. Is the big mean pointy-headed deer that scary?”

  Mags snickered, waddling past the rusty remains of the jungle gym. Ben and Sam were right behind her, sniffing and sniffing for living meat; fat gas-bloated Billy pirouetted in their footsteps, and Linc brought up the rear with Florian, our oldest and dustiest. I gave Joe a shove.

  “Shut it,” I warned him, “or I’ll set Teresa on you.” I’d have to find her first, to do that: Our big chief and cheese never seems to show up for hunts anymore. Maybe she’s sleeping in. Never mind that Florian, who’s got a couple of centuries on her, still hauls his ass without complaining. “Now she’s one mean pointy-headed thing I know you’re too hoo-yellow to fight—”

  Then a phantom dog got its teeth deep into my right shoulder, shaking and shaking, and a tremor shot down to my knees and back up again. The tremor became a whip crack and something snapped painlessly in my shoulder, and my poor useless deadweight arm broke off for good, wet purplish skin sliding off in sheets as it hit the underbrush with a squish and a thud.

  The deer we’d had in our sights, foolish thing too stupid to pick up the stench of death (ours and his), rocketed up and bounded away faster than any undead could chase it. Ben broke into the same slow, sarcastic applause I remembered from when I was alive, when someone dropped a full lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria. An oak tree bowed under Billy’s back as he leaned against it grunting and growling with laughter; Florian’s dry, ancient mouth twitched, Sam and Ben snickered, Mags giggled from deep in what was left of her throat and Joe threw an arm around me, sprays of maggots shooting from the rips in his leather jacket like little grub-worm confetti.

  “Congratulations!” he grunted around the smashed half of his jaw, eyes glinting with a mocking pride. “Nine years of hauling around that useless turd of an arm, and you finally drop it in the dirt where it belongs—she’s a genuine rotter now, how about it? Three cheers for little baby Jessica!”

  The hip-hip-hoorays rained down and I booted his ass, or tried to, while he laughed and stumbled in a mocking little circle. My right shoulder still jerked and twitched. “I’ve been a genuine rotter since I climbed out of the ground—I’ve heard the stories Billy used to tell about you, ant farm!”

  He just laughed harder, looping arms around my waist from behind and whirling me until those poor maggots were light-headed. “Ant farm?” H
e grinned. “That the best you can do? And you know Billy’s a gassed-up liar—”

  “I told her you cried yourself to sleep every morning after you tunneled up, wailing for your mommmmmm-meeee.” Billy smirked, rubbing his swollen blackened hands together eagerly anticipating a fight. “Weeping and wailing like a worthless little ’maldie full of embalmer’s juice—”

  “Yeah?” Joe just grinned wider. His brain radio, the waves of telepathic sound that help us talk around rotted throats and tongues, veered into a hard fast electric-guitar screech that could have been real anger, could have just been the need to fight. “We’ll see who’s spitting up formaldehyde by the time I—”

  He grabbed me hard enough to snap bones, hauling me straight off my feet. I shrieked, groped behind me for his neck and throttled until I heard rattling teeth, felt blowflies and carrion beetles turn to mush and juice beneath my fingers. He wrenched my hand away and threw me in the damp riverbank dirt, trying to straddle me, but my legs are stronger and a few kicks sent him sprawling on a layer cake of dead leaves. The gang surrounded us to watch, the eagerness for good bone-breaking fun stronger than any flesh-hunger—all except Linc, who hung back drawn and worried. Linc’s a sweetheart, he is, but however book smart he was alive he’s got no clue about anything that matters. I turned to give him a little don’t-worry glance, and that distracted second was all Joe needed to flip me over and force-feed me a heaping mouthful of dirt.

  “Y’fuggr!” I coughed and spat, horse-kicking as Joe tugged at my elbow like a sailor hauling anchor. “N’my urrm!”

  “What’s that?” Joe laughed, a groaning guttural sound that would make a human crap bricks, and yanked harder. That dog-bite tremor was happening again, up and down my left side this time, and he was too excited to care. “Didn’t catch that—”

  He tugged more and I kicked more, and he pulled so hard that I felt vibrations through my arm socket and something close to panic. “Nuh! Stuppit!”

  I finally found my legs again, rolling onto my back and getting a foot so hard in his chest I heard something snap and deflate. He gasped in pain, growled and pulled back, ready to kick something loose inside me. The whole gang roared with glee.

  “All right.” Linc stumbled over, gave Joe a shove. “That’s enough.”

  Not the whole gang, then. Joe was on his feet again, looming over small skinny Linc like the biker bully he’d been while he was alive. “Says who, baby boy? You? Let’s hear it.” Silence. “Well? Let’s hear it!”

  “Easy there,” murmured Florian, holding up a flesh-stripped hand, but with Teresa away or asleep we had no Fearless Leader, no rules to stop us. Not that she cared much either. Linc stood his ground, glaring. Joe let out a wet, congested hiss from deep in his throat, the warning of a worse beating than he’d ever given me or anyone else, and as he crouched ready to spring on Linc, I touched his shoulder.

  “Joe.” I used my low growling voice, the one he liked. “Stop.”

  We could all hear it in our heads, Joe’s brain radio cycling down from hard screeching electric guitar to a soothing acoustic strum; right off, when I touched him, his fists started uncurling. That’s what Linc just doesn’t get, never will, about Joe and me. Linc glanced at my remaining arm, making sure it was still attached, then buckled to Joe’s and my seniority and turned away. His own brain radio never changes: a lonely one-handed piano, each plink, plink a teardrop of notes splashing down. Awkward and silent now, a group blind date turned bad, we left my arm lying at the riverbank and wandered deeper into the trees.

  We hadn’t gone two hundred yards when Linc let out a sudden excited arpeggio, still hollow and lonely, and we all caught the scent: Deer. Again.

  Linc stood waiting, silently challenging Joe not to let him go chase it. An indifferent little skrrrrrit! on Joe’s guitar strings, hunger beating back rage, and the tension broke; Linc turned and vanished after that good meat smell. We stood there, shaking, waiting.

  The hoos like to make fun of how we walk and it’s true, we can’t really run, can’t manage much past a stagger. But Linc is just that little bit faster, fleeter, than the rest of us, and he knows his business. We gathered in a tight semicircle, freeze-tagging shoulder to shoulder, still as winter trees. Waiting.

  A big beautiful stag rushed terrified into the clearing, Linc right behind it as it bounded the wrong way in its panic. One great roar in all our ears, eight earsplitting dissonant brain-radio symphonies of triumph and we closed the circle tight around that deer, broke legs as it tried jumping over us, tore away antlers when it tried barreling through us, groaned triumph over its rising screams of pain before Joe wrapped a hand around the stag’s neck and stopped all sound with a single, effortless crack.

  So hot they almost steamed, those good fresh deer guts, and warm dripping blood and the solid meaty muscle of a heart still beating as we tore the carcass open, venison like you never tasted it on your little hoo-barbecue with the charcoal smoke making it filthy. Linc snatched the first mouthful of the liver, the best and sweetest meat of all, and Joe kicked him away from the rest and Billy kicked Joe and why’s everyone fighting when it’s so good to feed, it’s so good, you can’t stop and you can’t think and you can’t do anything but chew and swallow and want to bust out sobbing you feel so wonderful? Sam grabbed at the bones, fought Ben over the marrow. Should we save some for Teresa? But by the time we got it out of the woods and across the field and past the old mill and out to the gazebo how fresh would it be, anyway? Snooze, lose.

  I was a vegetarian when I was alive, not the fish-and-chicken kind either. No leather shoes, no honey. I drove my mom crazy. All those years of good rich meat going to fly-blown carcass waste, just remembering it now made me want to weep. How was I ever such a fool? There’s nothing in this world, nothing, that’s as honest or as beautiful as meat and blood, beautiful as this bone gnawed white and stripped clean, this shredded hide, those hanks of flesh and tooth scrapings of veined yellow fat still stuck to the fur—

  Ben shoved me away and I sat down hard on the ground, panting, letting him have the remnants of the rib cage. Billy and Mags were still working on the guts, tearing off greasy handfuls and shoveling them in like potato chips; Florian nibbled at bits here and there, too old to have much appetite anymore. Sad-sack Sam gave me a big happy grin as he licked the fat from his fingers. Linc looked half asleep as he shoveled in leftover shreds of meat. There was a red haze over everything and a stench permeating the air, the heavy fast-moving odor of life bursting out and spilling away.

  Joe, good humor restored, sidled up looking embarrassed. Like always. “Your arm okay?”

  “Fine.” I wiggled my fingers. “No thanks to you.”

  He touched the empty shoulder socket like it might shatter. The maggots and blowflies and watch beetles feeding off him head to toe pulsed with the hungry sucking and clicking of thousands of little mouths: shuck-shuck, in rhythm, and then crrnc-crrnc, biting down. They’ve been feeding off him for decades now, feeding on bits of nothing, between bouts of silent stasis. Do we attract a special kind of bug? It never takes dead hoos who stay dead this long to get flesh-stripped, and I never heard of hibernating maggots. He shrugged, his notion of apology. I glared at him.

  “The next time you decide to rip me into kindling,” I said, “give me fair warning first so I can take out your eyes.”

  He let off an angry guitar chord. Blinding isn’t funny—when Lillian, one of our seniors, lost her remaining eye in a gang fight, Teresa made me and Joe be the ones to take her into the woods and kick in her skull. Can’t hunt if you’re blinded, can’t do anything. Even Florian couldn’t argue with it, though he tried to. “You even try it,” Joe said, “you’ll end up with your teeth all over the ground. But you wouldn’t try it.”

  “Because you’re so big and strong?”

  “You said it, I didn’t.” He grinned and started rubbing my back, a soothing apology. “And you said yourself, your arm’s fine.”

  “Try that again, Joe, I wi
ll gouge your eyes.”

  “I’ll knock out your teeth.”

  “I’ll smash what’s left of your skull.”

  “I’ll pop these gasbags like balloons—” We wrestled again, shrieking, and this time good Samaritan Linc just gave us a lazy smile. When I shoved Joe away he just lay there, eyes closed. I wanted to drop off too, but it was close to dawn and if we stayed away during the big sleep we’d never hear the end of it: Teresa likes us where she can eyeball us. Too near her to hatch secret plots and plans, which is how she overthrew old Lillian and got to be gang head in the first place. I was trying to shove Joe to his feet when Sam stepped in, pulling himself upright with a grunt.

  “C’mon, kids.” He was just a little older than Teresa but already as stripped-down as Florian, all exposed bones and dried-out leathery skin shreds that the bugs didn’t want anymore. “Time.”

  Groans, jeers and mouthfuls of bloody spume didn’t dissuade him, and we retraced our steps in a ragged, complaining line back toward the riverbank. My arm lay in state on the boggy grass, jarringly clean white bone and soft, blackened distended flesh. If you looked closely, you could still see tiny chips of polish on the nails. Fuchsia pink.

  “Wait’ll the hoos get a load of that.” Mags snickered, doing a lurching little dance around it. “They’ll faint.”

  Even Linc laughed. “They’re not stupid enough to come here. Whose woods these are, I think they know.”

  Ben muttered something under his breath. He hates it here or keeps saying he does, out in Hicksville with Fearless Leader dogging our steps, but he’s had a thousand chances to run off with a city gang and hunt humans every day of the week and he never does. Still too hoo for his own good, Billy says. That feeling, I think I know. I’d rather stay where things are wide open and quiet.