The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  Dennis looked serious, but gave her a nod. “When you get the door open, there will be just enough space for you to move forward. It’ll be a small alcove, with another door that leads into the basement. Beyond that is the door to the tunnel.”

  “Also locked?”

  “Yeah. Of course. But I’ll be able to help you with that combination. Yell up to me, and I’ll come down.”

  “Your hand,” she said.

  Dennis looked at the mess of bandages. “I’ll have to do the best I can, that’s all.”

  They had no other choice. She wanted to kiss him suddenly, and couldn’t. She settled for a smile he slowly returned.

  “I’ll see you at the bottom,” Kelsey told him. “And then we’ll get the hell out of here, yeah?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she let her weight pull her down again. The metal pole dragged on the skin of her thighs while the wall at her back pushed her shirt up and scraped the bare skin there too. The sting was nothing compared to other indignities she’d suffered, and Kelsey gritted her teeth and kept going. With every inch, the air grew more stifling. She could smell smoke, but faintly. She had no idea when she’d reach the bottom, so every few feet she cautiously felt with one foot for a floor.

  Above her, the circle of light and shadow of Dennis’s peering head seemed very far away. Below her, darkness and heat. At last the tips of her toes touched solid ground.

  She stopped moving, but couldn’t make herself put her weight on the ground. What if there was a trap, triggered by weight? What if a hundred stabbing spears shot out and gutted her?

  “What if,” Kelsey muttered, “you moved your ass and got the hell out of this carnival horror show?”

  The pain isn’t unbearable — nothing much is unbearable, Kelsey’s figured that out long ago. But it is excruciating. A metric fuckton of bricks on her chest, pressing, not to mention the stabbing sharp bite and sting along her incisions every time she moves. Her stomach rolls with the pain, though it’s not as bad as it had been when she woke up from the anesthesia.

  The surgery went really well, according to the doctor who came in to check on her, to the nurses who held her hair while she vomited bile into a small, curved bowl. She’ll be recovered in no time. It doesn’t feel that way, lying here in her bare, white bedroom with the radio playing the same four songs over and over. When she can barely get herself up to use the toilet, much less make herself something to eat or drink or to brush her teeth.

  She’d lied about having someone to stay with her, and wishes now she’d hired someone to come. Someone to help her change the dressings, at least. She couldn’t afford it, but at this moment when she grips the back of a chair and tries to keep herself from pitching forward onto her face and crushing the thousands of dollars of work she just had done to her chest, Kelsey thinks any debt would be preferable to this.

  Standing in front of the full-length mirror, what she sees is something from a monster movie. None of the other surgeries have been this extensive, and somehow, oddly, what she’s done to her face and teeth seem to have changed her way less than what she’s had done to her body. The breasts seem comically immense, jutting from her like mountains. Much of it is still the bandages, she knows it, but when she turns to the side to look at her new profile, all Kelsey can think is that she looks like a fashion doll.

  She needs to see them. She needs to see what she’s done to herself. Not irreparable, she tells herself. She can always go back to what she was before. Implants can always be taken out.

  And still, she can’t move to unclip the bandage. Not even when the room spins the longer she stands, and she has to put her head down to keep herself from fainting. She can’t move. She is paralyzed by her own indecision and fear.

  “You promised,” she whispers to nobody. “You promised yourself, Kelsey. You would never let yourself be stuck like this again. Never let yourself be helpless like this.”

  She stares at her reflection, eyes hard, mouth a thin line. “You promised yourself.”

  And, remembering that, with shaking hands she starts to unwind the bandages.

  Kelsey moved. She’d made it this far through the minefield of life without getting herself blown to pieces — some of it was luck, but most of it was just raw determination. If she was going to die at the bottom of a metal tube while fire raged all around her and the shambling undead waited for her outside…well, that was how she was going to go.

  Nothing happened when she lowered herself to the floor. Clicking on the flashlight, she found the keypads. She tucked the light back into its place in her cleavage, letting herself let out one small laugh at how useful these big tits had been, in so many different ways. Dennis had given her the codes, and she could type fast and accurately without looking at her fingers, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Fingers resting lightly on the keypads, she pressed the first two numbers.

  When nothing shot or gouged or burned or sliced her, she let out the breath she’d been holding. Number two. Three. Four. Just before the final set of numbers in the sequence, she took another long, deep breath.

  Push.

  The door in front of her slid open with a creak. Hot air, but thankfully no smoke, rushed in to pummel her. She stepped forward, turning to call over her shoulder to Dennis that she’d made it safely.

  That’s when something that felt like a thousand angry wasps closed on her ankle.

  56

  Three days. That’s how long it would take. Maybe four. But no more than that. Maddy lay in bed, hands folded on her belly, staring up at the dark ceiling. Her bedroom at home had glow-in-the-dark stars on it the ceiling, but here it was only darkness.

  To see the stars, she’d have to go outside.

  It wouldn’t be any easier to get outside than it was for people out there to get in here. Even though Maddy had made a habit of sneaking around down here, she wasn’t quite sure how to make it past the locked doors and barriers they’d set up to keep everyone safe. She’d need an adult for that, and she’d have to do it soon, before Mom became…something else.

  She squeezed her brains out of habit, just to keep the squigglethings in line, but really, they were hardly moving or doing anything right now. The whispering and pictures had faded, replaced by a constant tingling all through her.

  She needed to see the sky. She needed this like she needed to breathe and eat and drink and sleep and go to the bathroom. Maddy ached with her need for the stars.

  Out of bed, wearing her favorite nightgown, the one with the teddy bear on the front, Maddy went into her parents’ room. Dad was snoring, but Mom lay awake with her hands on her stomach the way Maddy’d been laying earlier. She didn’t blink, not even when Maddy leaned over her.

  Mom’s breath smelled so bad Maddy had to hold her nose. “Get up.”

  Mom’s lips parted. With a grimace, Maddy backed up, waving a hand in front of her face. Mom turned her head on the pillow to stare at her.

  “Maddy?”

  “Get up. I need you to do something for me.”

  Mom didn’t move for another few seconds, but before Maddy could tell her again, she sat up. Slowly she put her feet over the edge of the bed. She put a hand to her forehead, then her cheek, like she was checking herself for a fever.

  “Sleep, baby, sleep,” Mama sings as she puts a cool cloth on Maddy’s head to chase away the bad bugs. Maddy got a bug, that’s what Mama said. Chicken Soup and ginger ale will kill them. “Feel better.”

  Maddy can’t sleep. She’s too hot. She throws off the covers and then is cold. She cries out, and Mama’s always there with a cool cloth, something to sip at, a tissue for Maddy’s sneezes.

  Maddy blinked at this memory of being small and sick, of her mother loving her. Her mom had taken care of her for her whole life, and now…The tingling in her fingers and toes became a shock. Lightning raced up her arms and down her spine. It circled inside her skull, stabbing her all over, and Maddy doubled over at the sudden pain.