The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  She looked up, up, up. To the sky. To the stars.

  To the star.

  Brighter than the others, steady and not twinkling. Everything inside her knotted tight at the sight of it. Her mouth opened, and a noise came out of her. Low, buzzing, not a song, not words, it tickled her throat and the inside of her nose but made everything else fade away but the sight of that bright and steady light in the sky.

  From far away, she heard her mom saying her name, but Maddy ignored her. The star was singing to her, sweeter than any lullaby her mom had ever sung. Better than anything, ever.

  And when it stopped, Maddy’s mouth closed. She blinked and blinked. She looked at her mother, who was still coughing into her hand.

  “It’s ready now,” Maddy said. “It’s all ready now.”

  TEN

  59

  Sometimes there’s a warning before something extraordinary happens, but most of the time the world changes around you before you have more than a couple breaths of time to prepare. If Maggie had known this morning that everything was going to change she’d have worn something other than a pair of ratty jeans and an ancient, wash-worn men’s button-down shirt rolled up to her elbows. She’d certainly have slicked on some lipstick instead of wearing nothing but last night’s smudged mascara and the under-eye circles of a restless night. Instead she was up to her elbows, literally, in soap suds. On her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when the door bell rang. When she answered it and saw the man standing there, she instantly understood two things.

  One, if Jake had come for her, the world was about to end.

  And two…so long as he was there, she didn’t much care.

  “Promise me,” Maggie says. “Promise that if you ever find out it’s going to happen, you’ll find a way to let me know.”

  It’s the talk of lovers, whispered on a summer-hot night against the sleekness of his bare skin. She presses her face to his belly, breathing in the scent of him. She can’t get enough of it.

  “I promise.”

  “I mean it.” She pushes herself onto one elbow to let her fingers trail along his chest and lower, to his belly where she’s just finished kissing him. Everything about him is still so new. It will always be new.

  He stretches under her touch, offering his body to her greedy gaze. Her needy hands. “I promise you, if I find out the zombie apocalypse is coming, I’ll let you know. I’ll do better than that. I’ll come for you.”

  And then there’s no more talk of the end of things. There’s only love that feels like a beginning.

  But of course that had been a reminder to them both of just how unlikely that would ever be. How it would take the end of the world before he could make that leap from the tangle of sheets and the sweat-salt taste of lust into something more, or before he’d allow it from her. Now here he was on her front porch, and time had passed but Maggie was both ashamed and unsurprised to discover that her feelings for him hadn’t changed, not even with time and distance to soften all the jagged edges of her love.

  They stood and stared at each other, and she remembered how once they’d been able to share so much with just a look.

  She couldn’t read his face now, however. His hazel eyes were without spark, his face expressionless, no hint of the ready smile she’d missed so much all these long years without so much as an email or a text. She’d thought of that smile more than anything else, though the truth was, she’d given up remembering him the way you give up booze or cigarettes or sugar, a hard-won self-denial that was supposed to be better and never really was.

  “Hi.”

  The last words they’d ever spoken to each other had been bland and nondescript, the weight of what was not being said heavy on her tongue. So it was no surprise to her that the first thing he said to her after so long was equally as unexciting. Even so, the sound of his voice left her so stunned that at first, she couldn’t reply.

  “Can I come in?”

  “What? Of course.” She stepped aside to let him in, holding the door and sucking in a breath as he pushed past her.

  She closed the front door behind him. He stood in her foyer. Taller, somehow, than she remembered. Broader. Still so beautiful it made every part of her ache.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  “No. Bill’s here. He’s downstairs.” Simply saying her husband’s name aloud to him sent home the fact that all of this was different.

  Things had changed.

  “Good. I was worried he might be at work.” Jake hesitated. Put a hand to his forehead for a second. She wasn’t used to him looking uncertain. “Shit. What is today? I’ve lost track of time. I got on the road as soon as I knew for sure.”

  “Oh, God. So it’s true? Something is happening?”

  “Yes. Or it will be, soon. Have you been watching the news?”

  She usually didn’t. Too much shit in the world, too many bad things. But she knew what he was talking about now.

  “The tornados?” There’d been a lot of them recently, a spate of odd, out-of-season or unusually located storms. The devastation had made national news, hitting even her limited radar.

  “Yes. Can I get something to drink?”

  She felt instantly stupid. Embarrassed. “Of course. Water? Soda—”

  “Liquor. Whatever you have. I need a drink.”

  This gave her pause. Jake didn’t drink. He’d been sober for fifteen years when she met him, and he’d worn his sobriety not like a cloak or a shield, not like something to either shame or laud him, but simply as the most important part of him. Jake did not drink alcohol. That was who he was.

  Maggie went to the liquor cabinet anyway and found an ancient bottle of Bushmill’s that had been a gift from a long-ago Christmas party. She wiped the dust off it and poured him a healthy dose. No ice.

  The first sip sent a shudder through him. The second seemed to warm him, and with the third he drained the glass. He held it out for another shot. She hesitated, but poured.

  He didn’t drink this one right away, but lifted the glass and held it to the light, turning the glass as though inspecting the contents. He looked her in the eyes. “More than storms are coming.”

  60

  Maddy skated. And skated. And skated. Up and down the corridors, in and out of every room that was open to her — and they were all open to her, because she was the boss. She had the keys. She was in charge.

  She skated into Mom’s room, where Mom lay in bed, her face turned to the side. She’d coughed and coughed until Dad said she had to go to bed. She’d coughed and coughed until blood came out. Dad saw it. Maddy saw it. Nobody else saw it, because Dad had made her go to bed, and he’d closed the door. Dad didn’t want anyone to know what was going on with Mom.

  People might panic, Dad said. The ones who’d been here since the beginning, but there were new people here, too. They’d come in from the outside. They weren’t supposed to let people in, that’s what Dad said, only the ones who’d paid to be here were supposed to get to stay, but Maddy had found the others upstairs and outside, and she’d brought them in because they smelled of…of…the stuff that was inside them all. And because the stars had been singing inside her and them, too, nobody else heard it but Maddy did.

  Maddy heard it.

  Something was coming from up there in the sky. It was where everything had started from. Nobody had told her this, no picturewords or soft hushhush voices. Maddy’d figured it out. Something had come from up there and spread around down here, and pretty soon, it would be everything. All.

  Other.

  Maddy skated closer to look at Mom’s face, or rather what was left of it. The squiggle things had burst out of her a day or so before. Maybe she was dead. It was hard to tell. She couldn’t moved much because Dad had used a lot of duct tape to stick her tight to the bed. He’d put more tape over her mouth and nose and eyes, too, even though Maddy could’ve told him it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t keep the squiggle things inside if they wanted to get out. All the t