Free Over Your Dead Body by Dan Wells Page A

thin and even; she was as uncomfortable as I was.
    “Come on,” said Derek, “a hot girl like you needs to loosen up.” He stepped toward her. “Let me help you take that backpack off, it looks way heavy.”
    I stepped forward quickly, inserting myself between them, and Derek backed off, holding up his hands in innocence.
    “Sorry, wow, touched a nerve there. Didn’t mean to move in on your girlfriend.”
    “Please,” Marci whispered, and I knew she was talking to me. Don’t start anything.
    “Do you coordinate with somebody?” asked Paul, oblivious to the mounting tension. “Like, does somebody know what route you’re taking? Or is it literally just ‘go where the wind takes you’? Like, does anyone even know where you are?”
    “I doubt it,” said Corey.
    “Then what the hell is your problem?” demanded Derek, suddenly angry. Hadn’t she gotten him on our side? Weren’t they trying to impress her? Or had they already given up impressing her, and now it was time to punish her for not being interested?
    Derek waved his hand at us, taking in our backpacks, our clothes, everything we had in the world. “A couple of homeless nobodies,” he said, “sleeping in the friggin’ Movie Time Theater, and you think you’re better than us? Can’t have a drink with us, can’t even talk to us? You act like you can’t wait for us to leave.”
    “Can you blame him?” asked Corey, and this time I knew he was looking at Marci.
    Paul giggled, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as alert to the sudden danger as I would be to a cold breeze.
    “Abso-damn-lutely!” shouted Derek, wagging his finger at me before taking another swig from his can. “You’re not an a-hole, you’re just trying to get lucky. You were hoping to tap this chick right here in the theater, while your friggin’ dog watches, and now you can’t because we’re all up in your love nest.” He threw the second beer can and opened a third.
    “What’ll you give us if we leave?” asked Paul.
    Derek looked at Brooke’s body. “What’ll you give us?”
    “I think it’s time for you to go,” said Marci.
    “Oh man,” said Derek. “She wants it too. Can’t wait to be alone. Maybe we’ll hang around and listen.”
    “Or watch,” said Paul.
    Corey was simply smiling, saying nothing.
    I could feel my anger growing as they talked, incensed at the way they looked at the Marci, the way they leered and suggested and filled the air with filth. I wanted to hurt them, to make them scream in pain and terror, but then suddenly all my anger was gone, replaced by a cold, clinical calm. I had killed several Withered in the past few years, but only one human. I’d dreamed about it my whole life, or at least since the first time I made the connection between death and the dead. We don’t always think about that connection, as obvious as it sounds, because death is so common in movies and games and stuff, and so sterilized, but it’s like meat: there comes a time when you realize that bacon, for example, is literally the sliced up flesh of a living thing, an animal that used to walk around and do things and enjoy things, and now it’s dead and you cut it into pieces. The body in the casket at your grandfather’s funeral used to be your grandfather, not because of magic but because he died, because something—maybe old age or cancer or a car wreck or a murderer—killed him. I’m fascinated by that moment, that act of turning a live body into a dead one, and eight months ago I got to do it, and it was … nothing and everything all at once. Disappointing and amazing. Not what I thought it would be, but I couldn’t wait to try again. They say your first time having sex is the same way, but I can’t imagine it would have that level of intensity. People have sex all the time, but killing is … rare. Beautiful, in a way, and I know how that sounds, but think about it. It’s like alchemy, a magic transmutation—not just of