Born Lucky: A YA St. Patrick's Day Story Read online

Born Lucky:

  A YA St. Patrick’s Day Story

  By Rusty Fischer, author of Zombies Don’t Cry

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  Born Lucky

  Rusty Fischer

  Copyright 2013 by Rusty Fischer

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Cover credit: © Stephen VanHorn – Fotolia

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  Author’s Note:

  The following is a FREE living dead short story. Any errors, typos, grammar or spelling issues are completely the fault of the zombies. (They’re not very patient with the editorial process!)

  Anyway, I hope you can overlook any minor errors you may find; enjoy!

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  Born Lucky:

  A YA St. Patrick’s Day Story

  “How did you find me?”

  He stands, just inside the warehouse door, grey eyes quietly illuminated in the darkness beyond.

  I hold up a little metal cross, about the size of my thumbprint, one of about a dozen lying around the warehouse door. “You have these in the bottom of your shoes most every day,” I tell him.

  He blinks his gray eyes, inching forward. It’s still early, the light at my back an almost purple shade of blue and orange. “I do?”

  I nod, readjusting the backpack strap on my shoulder. “Yeah, you do. Can I come in?”

  He blinks again, slowly, like he does most everything. “I still don’t see how that led you here.”

  “My Dad worked in this warehouse for almost twenty years. These little things followed him home most every day. They got in the carpet, in the garage, scratched up Mom’s hardwood floors something awful. She’d call him ‘Jesus’ sometimes, because she said he was always dragging home a cross or two.”

  The memory brings a smile to my face. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked about them, either of them.

  He sighs. “I thought I was being so careful.”

  “I don’t know what the big deal is,” I say, when he finally steps inside, leaving the door wide enough for me to follow. “So what if a Normal knows where you live?”

  He shuts the door behind us, bolting it six ways to Sunday. “Not all Normals are like you… Mindy.”

  I smile. He remembers my name. Well, almost. Then I remember, it’s on my Nightshade High Student ID Badge. “Mandy,” I correct him gently, looking around the place.

  He’s got the whole warehouse to himself, but he’s kind of living in the northeast corner, where a small office used to be. A small lantern sits on the floor, behind an umbrella. I stand near it and ask, “What’s with this?”

  He nods toward the blacked out window in the office door. “It’s so you can’t see the light outside, but I can still see inside.”

  “Smart,” I say.

  “We’re not all dummies,” he snaps.

  I arch an eyebrow because, undead attitude much? “Did I say you were?”

  He looks me up, then down, then up again. He’s still in his Zombie Employment Department, or Z.E.D., uniform. It’s garbage truck green with yellow stripes down the side, so you can spot them more easily. Like you’d miss Calvin and his cement gray skin, yellow teeth and black-gray eyes.

  He’s not tall but he’s taller than me, and wiry, like so many of them are, with about zero-percent body fat and 100% muscle. The custodian’s uniform sags off him, and his leather boots are too big.

  There is a chair facing the lamp, and I hear bagpipe music playing somewhere. I scour the cleanly swept warehouse floor until I spot a radio on an overturned milk crate. Figures, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and the only radio station in town has been playing bagpipe music, or fiddle music, or bagpipe and fiddle music, since I got up this morning.

  Then again, if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, as if reading my mind.

  I sling the backpack around and hold it up in front of him. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Calvin!” I beam, just like I’d practiced about 100 times in front of the mirror in my room back at the Shelter this morning before school.

  “What’s so happy about it?” he asks, slumping into his chair and not offering me a place to sit. I drag over another milk crate, flip it over and slide down next to him anyway.

  I’ve come this far, no grumpy zombie is going to stop me now.

  “You know,” I say, nudging his knee. He growls a little, but doesn’t move. I nod, hands up in a “surrender” stance. “Tonight you get to stay out past curfew.”

  He arches one eyebrow, rich and black against his smooth, gray skin. I bet, once upon a time, he was handsome. I try to picture him alive, with full skin, young muscles, thick hair, green eyes. I wonder what he was like, back then. I wonder how it happened.

  Maybe, if this whole plan works, he’ll tell me one day.

  If we live that long.

  “Who says?” he asks.

  “Everybody,” I say, tempted to nudge him again but stopping myself at the last minute. “It’s pretty much an unwritten rule that as long as you dress up in all green, and behave, no one can tell whether you’re a zombie or not.”

  He frowns his zombie frown. “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Cuz you live like a hermit, that’s why.”

  “None of the other ZED workers said anything about it.”

  He sounds almost hurt, like maybe they were hiding it from him or something.

  “Well, if you’re a downer like this all the time, why would they?”

  He stares back at me, unblinking. I sigh and plop the backpack down between us, unzipping it to reveal his “present”: a goofy green clown wig, green face and hand paint, a long sleeve “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-shirt and green track pants with white stripes up the sides (no yellow).

  “Who’s that for?” he asks, frowning.

  “You,” I say, sliding out an identical, if smaller, version of the same get-up. “And this one is for me.”

  He looks away, as another Irish song plays on the radio, sounding just like the first one. Or maybe it IS still the first one, I can’t tell anymore. “Why are you here again?”

  I stand, so he can see me, pacing in front of him. He looks up, smirking. “Don’t you want to get out of here?” I ask, twirling around in the vast, open space of the old washing machine manufacturer. “Don’t you want to walk the streets after dark, see which other zombies are out there, strolling around town?”

  “Not particularly, no,” he lies, long, gray fingers fiddling with the knees of his work jumpsuit.

  I slump back down onto the milk crate, puffing out my lower lip, working my trembling chin, giving him the full treatment. He fidgets in his seat, trying to avoid looking at me as long as possible, before finally turning to me, gray eyes soft and wide.

  “What… what are you doing?”

  “I just, well, I thought I was doing a good thing, tracking you down, inviting you out. I thought… I thought you were a good guy. Now you’re just like all the rest…”

  “I’m not a guy,” he says, softly, looking at the ground.

  “Yeah, you are. Just because you’re… undead… doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a little fun now and then.”

  He looks up at me. “Yeah, it kind of does. I’ve done… I’ve done bad things. To people. To people who are no longer here, or if they are, wish they weren’t.”

  I look back at him, blinking. Stupid zombies, they think they’re the only ones affected by an outbreak. “You think I haven’t? You think I’m here because I d
idn’t slice and dice my way through about two dozen of… you?”

  He sits back in his chair a little. I notice it’s a beach chair, and it creaks whenever he moves. “So, if you hate zombies so much, why are you—”

  I groan and yank on one of my red pigtails. “I don’t hate zombies, dude. Would I be here if I hated zombies? I just said, the world being what it is, we’ve all done bad things to each other. Tonight is about forgetting all that, getting dressed up so nobody knows who, or what, you are, and going out on the town. So, are you in or what?”

  He sighs, and finally shrugs. “You… you can change in there.”

  He points, one large bony finger directing me to a kind of office with a door. I clap my hands and take my outfit and slink inside, slipping out in under five minutes. Unfortunately, I forgot that zombies are slow ass zombies and he’s still slipping into his track pantts, so I get a shot of the tighty-whities stretched across his bony gray butt cheeks. (Thank God he’s not going commando or, Jesus, I don’t think I’d be here writing this today!)

  “Oh,” I grunt, blushing, before slipping back into the office. I wait a few ticks then, just as I’m getting anxious, hear a slight tapping on the door. I