Free The Whispers by Daryl Banner Page B

foggy white snakes, and the scream that bellows from the pale boy’s mouth is enough to stir the Dead awake in a three mile radius.
    “Tell us!” I demand, calling out over his screams. “Tell us who’s coming!”
    The shadows part with the soft crunching of footsteps. Dana and East and I back away, terrified by whatever it is that comes our way—something that even the flesh-eating Dead boy is afraid of. I mourn the lack of a weapon. I find myself uttering a hundred silent prayers under my breath. I beg for a last sip of my favorite beverage before I die.
    Then, a sweet face emerges. A big, bright-eyed, perky-lipped, powdery-white woman’s face, framed with yellow hair that curls at the chin. Her lips create a perfect O, and this strange woman says, “Oh my! That noise!”
    “I … I’m so sorry,” I tell the woman, studying her with curiosity. “We … We didn’t mean to disturb you, or your woods, or your …” She looks so beautiful. For a Dead person, that is. “See, we accidentally spilled water on this boy’s feet. I apologize for his screaming, but I—”
    “Oh, no,” says the woman calmly through the boy’s agonized cries. “It isn’t his noise I hear. It’s yours!” she says merrily, then turns her face to East and Dana. “And yours! And yours! Ooh …” Her big lips pucker up at the sight of John. “And most definitely yours , the noisiest of all! My, my, you’re handsome.” She giggles suddenly, her eyes shyly drinking in the sight of John, and then she addresses me. “Heart Beaters! You’re all Heart Beaters!”
    I bring a hand up to my chest protectively, as if I’ve suddenly become self-conscious of my being alive.
    The woman’s expression changes, a flash of hurt crossing her face. “Oh, my poor little Heart Beaters. Don’t be afraid. We love your kind. You make us Undead feel so very special. Please, come with me to the city.”
    Instantly, my body tingles with excitement and all of my breath is stolen away. Is this the Beautiful Dead I’ve been looking for all along? “C-City? You have a c-c-city?”
    “And walls, too! The woods are much too miserable. Hasn’t the gloom sucked out all your happiness yet? Oh.” She pays mind to John suddenly. “Don’t worry, you strong, strapping, handsome young man, you,” she says, her eyes turning coy and silly again. “We will take care of the savage that tried to harm you.”
    The word “we” sends a jolt of alarm through me. Two large figures spill from the darkness, but they, like her, look nothing like the Dead we’ve encountered. One is a brawny man dressed only in jeans, his big bare chest exposed. He has a bald head and a beard with a ring hanging heavily from his nose. The other is a man just as big and bare-chested, but he has a head of long black hair to his shoulders and his eyes are oddly colorless. The two men approach the pale boy and, the moment John dares to back away from them, the men have hold of the boy who still moans in agony from the steam that dances off his ankles. The men drag him into the darkness beyond the woman, whose expression is a sad one. Soon, the sound of the men and the boy is but a whisper of an echo through the dead woods.
    “I’m certain we can find a place for you to rest in our city,” the woman goes on, unfazed and still appearing full of wonder as she observes us—particularly when she looks at John, who I think she’s fast forming an Undeadly crush on.
    “How do you expect us to go with you?” asks John, his voice bleeding with mistrust. “Your kind eat our kind. We’ve just narrowly escaped—”
    “No, no, no.” She shakes her head, wrinkling her lips in disgust. “No, no, no, no. They eat your kind. That boy we just took away. They are the little thorns in our fingers, I’m afraid. The people of my city do not practice that sort of … archaic practice.” She shudders. “Our kind do not need to eat a thing to survive. Besides, you’ll be in the company of other