introduction
“The Council of Zombies has confirmed the attack on Huck Lane two days ago was, indeed, a human terrorist attack.” The siren readjusts her bird wings as her serpentine fish tail rests atop the water around her waist, the microphone carefully kept above the surface. “They attempted to release a toxin known as H-Z47 onto the zombies in that area. We have reports that the toxin has killed fifty zombies since the attack, side effects including blurred vision and slurred speech. The Councils of Myth have suggested the survivors head to your nearest ER to get a checkup.
“There has been an outbreak of humans with DNA from various creatures such as unicorns and elves to take advantage of their healing properties, but few of them can survive on their own. Those that do are taken captive when found by our police force and questioned. Many of these hybrids have taken their own lives to keep from revealing where the humans are hiding and what other experiments they have been carrying out on themselves, and possibly, other second worlders.”
The siren’s eyes turn serious, glittering with the bias of her own kind. “Humans once ruled, but the stronger species have prevailed time and time again. No longer do we second worlders live in fear of the mortals. Quoted from our zombie President, Yvonne Berland, ‘Humans need to stand down because this world is no longer theirs.’
“This is Katrina from Seven O’clock News, signing off.”
Click.
“Humans,” my father spits, glaring at the now-blank television as he stands from his seat. “Wish we could just kill them all on sight. That would solve zombie starvation in a heartbeat.”
I watched him from my position on the floor, the monster truck in my hand in mid-flip. I didn’t know what he was talking about, really; I was too young. Humans? I’d only heard about them in school and on the news. But there was no way I would notice one when I passed them on the street. Not unless I got close enough to check their pulse.
Vampires, elves, gnomes, satyrs—easy to tell from humans with one glance. It’s the same way with other creatures like griffins and minotaurs, of course, but with zombies…
Our body temperatures are only slightly lower than humans; the same goes for our pulse. We zombies take up seventy percent of the world’s population, whereas humans… there’s no way to tell how many of them there are.
Then there are the anomalies called Bleeders—zombie abominations that straddle the line of the dead and the living, never truly dead but never truly alive. A pulse twice as fast as a zombie. A hunger like a flame that can never be smothered. A body that can never be killed.
Truly undead.
Humans may be terrorists, but Bleeders are nightmares. All it takes is one scratch… then the scratched zombie begins to bleed.
For centuries, the fae and the “mythical beings” (as the humans had called them) lived in a world hidden to the mortal eye. A whole dimension filled with creatures, colors, and abilities beyond any human’s wild imagination—the second world.
Humans attacked the wizards who kept control over the cloaking barriers that hid the second world, as legend has it, and it broke the wizards’ concentration. The barrier then arced with a surge of power as the remaining wizards struggled to fix what the humans shattered, causing catastrophic changes to humans similar to radiation, forcing corpses to raise from their graves, hungry for the flesh of their origins.
This created the apocalypse.
The newly raised zombies killed off two-thirds of the human population around the world. About a thousand people and zombies a year later contracted a strange string of the zombie mutations that turned them to Bleeders, or ghouls as the humans first called them to distinguish between the two creatures.
Once the surge from the wizards settled, about two years later, the barrier between the human world and the second world waned, several species bleeding into the human’s realm, tired of hiding themselves from the bipedal mortals and finally at a number advantage to take down the humans.
Desperately trying to stop the impending war, the wizards attempted to reform the barrier, but what once was an army of one-hundred wizards had dwindled down to five.
They could not repair the barrier that kept the second world hidden, and it violently crashed into the first.
Humans disappeared from the map. They became endangered; they became food. Society forced humans they captured to reproduce and became like cattle, labeled as criminals and terrorists if they were free. Making humans become cattle was their punishment, and they were—and are—treated worse than any farm-raised animal. They punished humans for oppressing the mythical creatures. For having weapons that can single-handedly destroy thousands of fae. For thinking they were superior to all other sentient beings.
For breathing.
The Bleeders were treated worse. Contained. Starved. Isolated.
Never killed.
Bleeders are between life and death.
And eternally so.
I had a force-fed view of humans my entire life: dangerous, stupid, crazed, insane. I’d never officially met one before, so the media, my peer’s opinions, and my own diet warped my opinions on the mortals. Those views stayed with me over the years and wriggle in the back of my mind as I descend the steps to somewhere I never should have been to impress a girl I’ve had a crush on for five months now. A girl I was best friends with.
Gleeful screams of people winning bets echo up the stairs.
“Hey, welcome to the Hum-fights, my dudes!” A goblin guy with a weirdly placed nametag elbows through a group of bipedal seven-foot tall werewolves to greet us at the door. “Place your bets over at the bar but save some money to grab a drink too, because we have the best alcohol you’ve ever tasted.”
“I’ll pass,” Cayla says, lifting her hand and scrunching her nose as we hand over the entry fee. Neither of us can have anything that doesn’t come from a human. Delicate zombie organs.
Eyeroll.
“Not me,” Etem grins as he pushes past us, the horns jutting out from either side of his green-skinned jaw glinting in the light as he pounds his broad chest with the low bass shaking the walls. “We ogres can eat tables and be fine.”
The last person in our little trio, Etem the ogre, bounds through the crowd and toward the glowing bar, everything in a misty haze as fairies drift overhead, fog billowing from their tiny bodies. Roots and weeds grow through cracks in the underground building, the air smelling of bad dog breath and even worse body odor. There is the soft smell of something rosy, like the whole place had been drenched in perfume beforehand to mask the smells, but it definitely isn’t working. Too many dogs and goblins.
“You sure this is a good idea?” I ask Cayla, glancing around nervously. “One good elbowing from one of those minotaurs and we’re gone.”
She scoffs, her gray eyes glinting with excitement. “With how careful we are? Yeah, right. They’d have to hit us pretty hard to make us Mindless. Besides, don’t you want to see a human? A real, live human, here in the real world? Not in movies or in old music videos. Not cut up into pieces and packaged for us. Breathing. Alive.”
My eyes find the ring through a gap in the crowd, the glinting of short platinum blonde hair switching my dormant hunting instincts on. I can’t smell the human, but I was able to get one glimpse.
I’ve heard that sometimes that’s all it takes.
My pulse lowers, my pupils dilatate, my fingers itch to move. The predatory instincts are there, but they’re dulled. Zombies have not needed to use them since stores began packaging the organs and bones of humans like pigs and cows.
Loud cheering.
I push down the instincts.
Turn to Cayla.
“I don’t see any other zombies here.”
She shrugs, carefully beginning to move through the crowd. “What’d you expect? Sometimes there are riots in these places.”
Carefully, we move past bodies, overly aware of the swinging arms and elbows. We zombies are such fragile creatures. How I wish I could join a mosh pit or even jump around without the fear of getting knocked in the head. Man, and if tonight, if I don’t get the courage to ask Cady out or if she rejects me, I’ll definitely need a way to let off steam. I won’t even care if I’m thrown into a mosh pit—I’ll happily shove everyone and won’t mind going Mindless.
“Keep an eye out for Etem. Alcohol doesn’t do well in smaller ogres.”
I nod, my anxiety spiking. I’m in an illegal, dangerous place with the girl I like and I don’t know how to process that.
My irritation flares.
“Why’d you want to come here, of all places for y’all’s birthday?”
We find an empty spot up front, two werewolves letting us by, afraid of injuring a zombie. Turning one of us Mindless has a hefty penalty. It’s treated like killing someone.
To turn a zombie Mindless, all someone really has to do is give a good blow to our head and we become like the zombies in those movies humans used to watch. Dumb and dull to all senses but hunger, unable to form any sounds but grunts and bloodcurdling shouts.
Long story short, it’s hard to get car insurance when you’re a zombie.
I lean against the poles before me, two humans in the makeshift ring, blood splattered against the rough concrete below, fighting for their lives. Whichever human loses, they get their brains cut out and whoever wants a piece of them feasts on their remains. The brains are for the highest bidders… a delicacy. Sure, human-eating creatures like zombies can survive on frozen corpses or the human meat sold in stores, but nowadays most of them are artificial, causing a ton of health problems down the line. It’s nothing like the real thing.
Around the edges of the underground are a handful of haughty elves who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, probably complaining about how filthy this place is, noses turned upward. They’re an arrogant species.
“Yeah. It was Etem’s idea. He thought it’d be cool because he wanted free drinks.”
“And you?” I ask, shifting my stance as I lean on the horizontal poles before us, the Hum-fighting ring inches from my feet. “Why did you agree to it?”
“To taste a fresh human,” Cady says, her smile plastered on her face. Then she turns to me. “And because I wanted to spend some time with my best friends.”
Someone bumps into me, knocking my gut hard into the poles. I grunt, gritting my teeth, and spin around to face whoever it was, fists clenching. A tall and gangly man with no mouth or nose stares down at me with hollowed-out eye sockets, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. I could probably take him if I wasn’t so fragile. I work out. This stick-armed creepy dude wouldn’t hold a candle to me.
I keep my mouth clamped shut before my temper can get away from me, irritation resonating in my chest. I don’t want to snap at anyone in here. They’re probably not afraid to make a zombie Mindless.
Even if I don’t care right now.
“Whoa, no way can she beat that dude,” Cayla exhales, her hand fluttering to her mouth as I turn my attention back to the ring, willing my chest to loosen. I size up the two humans in the ring, startled by how much they resemble us. There really is no way you’d be able to tell a zombie from a human—aside from our rancid smell and dull hair. And yellowed nails. Older zombies start to visibly rot.
There’s a short girl with short platinum hair, wearing skin-tight pants and a loose tank top with a big pink A on the front. Her sun-kissed skin glistens in the fluorescent lighting and her green eyes pick apart her opponent like she’s done this several times before and can see his weaknesses.
On the other side of the ring is a rather large male, an assortment of blood splattered across his chest and his tree-trunk arms—blood that I assume isn’t his own. Sweat prickles his chocolate skin and there’s a scar through his right eye, completely closing it.
In the middle of the ring is his torn-off eyepatch.
So he’s been in here for a few fights. The girl must be the challenger.
“I can almost smell the blood on him,” Cayla mutters, staring at the man. There’s a glint in her eyes that I recognize: zombie hunger. The same slight rush of instinctual predatory craving I’d had when I got the first glimpse of the girl’s hair from the brief parting of the crowd. “Ugh, I hope we can get same of the remains.”
“Have you been here before?”
She shakes her head. “No, but Etem has, and he’s told me a lot about the Hum-fights. Fresh flesh. Nothing better for a zombie. You know, since humans are the only thing we can eat.”
I nod.
“Get ready, though. Etem said that once the fight is over, the ref cuts out the human’s brain and then the crowd is allowed to frenzy. First come, first serve.”
The gangly dude bumps into me once more as he walks away, his long elbows knocking against my shoulder. The idiot better stay away from my head, or I’ll rip his off.
Maybe I can rip off and arm and give it to Cayla as a present when I ask her out. Would that work?
“You’re going down, princess!” the man shouts at the girl with a crazed smile. That kind of smile that shows the fear of death. Cockiness blends with it, confident he’ll crush his opponent with one blow.
She gives a sideways grin, her eyes glistening with the rush of a fight.
“The last person who called me princess no longer has access to their tongue. I prefer ‘Queen’.”
The man laughs heartily, taking a few steps toward her and lifting his club, rough and stained with red.
“Say your prayers, little girl,” the man says as he rushes her.
Another smirk tugs at her face. “I’m not the one who needs to.”
She darts forward at full speed, her face still plastered with that cocky grin. Just before the club meets her head, she drops at breathtaking speed, rolling to grab a nail-studded bat just to the left of the man, and is back on her feet in a blink. The nails sticking out of the bat glint in the light and she brings it around, the loudest smack I’ve ever heard ringing over the crowd as it connects with the man’s skull, the nails spilling blood all over the ground.
He crumples like tin foil underfoot, his lifeless body hitting the ground.
I grit my teeth. The odds were against her. The math doesn’t add up.
She got a lucky hit.
The crowd roars to life, several carnivorous creatures impatiently shaking the fencing, waiting for the say-so of the vampire referee who steps into the ring. Nothing can pierce his flesh, nothing can beat his speed, so he’s one of the best creatures to have as a ref in this situation.
Gently, he checks for a pulse. Upon finding none, he announces the girl is the winner.
She beams with triumph… and perhaps a bit of insanity.
The crowd grows in cheers as the vampire slowly bends over and opens the man’s head, revealing a blood-stained brain, pulling it out and cutting it from the cord, backing up from the dead body and standing before the girl to protect her from the oncoming frenzy.
He then smiles.
“Those who wish to feast… feast.”
Chaos.
I leap over the railing just after Cayla, but she beats me to the corpse as I’m shoved backwards, my head barely missing the railing as several other wolves and various flesh-eating creatures rush by me, pouring into the ring. When I get to my feet and move toward the body, it’s picked clean, leaving behind nothing but bones. Several witches gather around, screeching and mumbling to each other about how they can use the bones in several recipes and spells. The irritation from the lanky guy carries over and I grit my teeth. There isn’t even a shred of skin left. I’d jumped too late.
The monster I am is unsatisfied. I wanted that meat. That flesh. I’d never tasted it fresh before and it isn’t fair that everyone else did. That the girl I like did.
I simmer as I saunter back over to Cayla, blood smeared across her cheeks and her pupils dilated as she cleans herself up with napkins Etem had grabbed for her. She barely notices me as I hop back over the fence and lean against the railing, trying to calm myself down. Etem flirts with a girl to his left.
She sighs, leaning against the poles as the creatures return to their respective places. Across the way, I see a rich-looking, mold-crusted zombie that looks like he’s seen three generations munching on the brain, his eyes rolling back with euphoria.
Fire flares within me.
Zombies don’t feel many emotions, but anger… anger is probably the most potent.
“That was amazing,” Cayla breathes, appearing drunk as she sways into me gently, fanning the flame. “I’ve always wanted to try a fresh human one.”
She licks at her bloody fingers, moaning.
Jealousy grips me, cold and hard. Doesn’t matter if I like her. Right now, my anger is being pointed directly at her happiness. I wanted a taste.
I stare at the spot the man had been only minutes before.
Hunger.
The vampire, wiping his hands on a white cloth, saunters over to the human female, nodding in her direction. Craze fills her eyes as the vampire turns to the audience.
“This was the last ranked fight of the night,” the vampire says, his voice echoing around the room as he speaks into the small microphone on his lapel, pushing his short black hair back with one long-nailed hand. “We will free this human from our captivity if she so chooses, should she win the championship in a few weeks at the hub of our operations, unless there is anyone here who would like to fight against her. Perhaps a zombie or wolf that didn’t get a taste of the undefeated tank this young girl took down.”
There’s a stiff silence in the crowd, murmurs loud against the shuffling of feet.
I feel something bump me.
Looking over my shoulder, it’s the same dude. The tall, lanky, slender-man-looking-dude.
I grit my teeth.
Raise my hand.
The zombie within is hungry.
Starving.
“I’ll do it.” My voice is loud, snapping Cayla out of her trance.
“What? No, what are you doing? You’re a zombie! She went for a headshot for that guy. Are you nuts?”
“I know how to fight,” I argue, my eyes dead-set on the vampire in the center of the ring.
“Yeah. From the internet. And movies you grew up watching.”
“Better than nothing,” I spit, venom making my tongue tingle.
“Don’t be dumb, dude,” Etem advises, leaning over Cayla to grab my arm. “You can come back next time. Now you know what this place is about and you’ll know what to expect.”
I grit my teeth, my heart slowing and my pupils dilating as they fall upon the girl. She glowers at me, her smirk taunting.
“She’s mine.”
The words are like a snarl out of my mouth as I hop over the bar, shaking off Etem’s careful hold. I walk right up to the middle-aged vampire, his smile revealing his impressively sharp canines, his red irises gleaming with a thousand curiosities.
“A zombie?” he breathes on a hum, a small smile tweaking the corners of his mouth. “I am not sure if this is idiotic or the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I’m sure you’re terrified after witnessing what she did to the tank.”
“Yeah, well, I’m hungry.” My eyes catch on the girl, whose green eyes sparkle with anticipation. She licks her teeth and spins the bat around once, blood flicking off the nails. “And zombies don’t register fear.”
The vampire nods as the toxins continue to seep from my gums, a paralyzing-agent zombies use to stun their prey like a spider. It’s instantaneous and painful—so I’ve heard. If not treated within twenty-four hours—if the human isn’t eaten before then—they change into a zombie, too.
I smile.
I guess it’s time to test out the instincts that have been lying dormant within me for twenty-three years.
Zombies are at the top of the food chain, next to vampires and werewolves (if we were to actually hunt, that is). Werewolves can be killed with silver. Vampires with stakes, most with holy water, and all with too much sunlight. Zombies… we only need a headshot.
“What is your name, zombie boy?”
“Zeke,” I tell the vampire. “And don’t forget it.”
“Zeke the zombie,” he nods, wearing an amused smile. “Very well. You may begin once I leave the ring.”
I watch him in my peripherals as my instincts kick in, hard and heavy.
Venom fills my mouth. My heart rate lowers. Eyes dilate and focus on the target, my other senses sharpening. Zombies are fast when they’re young.
And I’m twenty-three years young.
“Your brain is mine,” I mutter to the girl as I hunch down, waiting for her to attack.
Her eyes widen as glee fills them.
“Yet another victim,” she laughs, rushing toward me with her bat held high.
I dart to the side, barely missing her swing as the wind from her bat brushes my face.
Thank you, old high school track team.
“Zeke, be careful!” Cayla calls, worry in her voice. It’s true that we might not feel fear, at least in the same way humans would, but can feel other emotions. Specifically anger, love, sadness, envy… we feel basic, potent emotions, and they rarely overlap each other.
It does gives me a high, however, knowing that she’s worrying about me.
“Dude, are you stupid? You’re gonna get killed!”
Etem’s voice brings me back down to reality as the girl turns around, anger flashing through her eyes for a moment.
“You’re fast,” she breathes, the bat dragging against the ground as she looks me over, biting her bloodstained lip in thought. “But I’m faster.”
I roll up my sleeves. Button-down. Mom’s buy for me.
“You underestimate how quick we can snap our jaws,” I tell her as she lifts the bat once more.
Her smile broadens, her teeth glistening with a weird light red tint.
“You underestimate what a human can do when it’s fighting for its life.”
She rushes toward me again, faster than before. I easily dodge but she digs in her heels and spins, the bat only inches from my head before I lift my arm to block it. The nails dig into my skin and rips my arm open, the smell of my rotting body increasing as bone and meat hang from the open wound. Black goo falls from the cut, an acidic smell filling my senses. My brain tells me I’m hurt and I feel a deluge of rage filling me. The black goo is a countermeasure if something bites us; it’s also something we can puke up if needed. Kills whatever it touches instantly. It’s a replacement for blood. Zombies don’t bleed.
And zombie wounds don’t heal.
I grit my teeth. I’ll have to hide that from my parents for the rest of my life.
The blow sends me back a few inches and I hear my friends cry out, my bones reverberating from the blow.
The girl brings her bat back again and swings.
I duck.
That hit was so powerful. Do humans really have the muscle power to hit like that? No wonder zombies were hesitant to take them down alone in the Bloody Ages, after the Bleeders began to fight alongside the humans in the war.
With the threat of becoming Mindless, I sidestep her next swing. She grits her teeth as I shiver, struggling to control my instincts with common sense. The crowd shouts, cheering for one side or the other. I note the different weapons lying about, all dangerous to humans.
“You’re a zombie,” she spits, “aren’t you supposed to be slow and dumb?” she gives a sick smile. “You can’t block my blows. You can’t even hit me. You’re fragile.”
“Sure,” I say with a shrug, taking a step back as she swings the bat around again and lifts her foot to kick me.
I block it with my knee, feeling something crack. I grit my teeth, no pain reaching me. Just a slight rush of increased rage.
I kick her in the stomach and she stumbles back, startled by my strength. She trips over a spiked ball and falls on her butt, glowering.
“But I’m pretty fit for a zombie.”
She stands up as I reach down and grab a plank of wood at my feet just as she brings the bat up, planning to bash my head in once more. The plank takes the hit and I back up out of her reach as the blow splits the plank in half.
The rage fills me and I see red.
I toss one plank at her and she smacks it away with the bat, distracted as I come up on her and lift the sharper part of the wood high into the air, plunging it deep into her chest, feeling her ribs crack.
She screams in pain and the bat falls to her feet as the crowd goes wild. Blood spills off her tongue and her wound as she looks up at me. I swear her eyes go completely black as she reaches around to punch me, her last attempt at staying alive as life drains from her body. At the last second, she extends her fingers, her long nails digging deep into my cheek and raking across it, a futile attempt to take me out with her. She drops to her knees, sputtering and coughing as I take a step back and smile.
I let go and lift a bloody hand to my face, placing one finger in my mouth—the first taste of my victory.
I spit it out.
It’s the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.
She grins, blood seeping out from between her lips as she yanks the plank out and struggles to stand, wobbly and hanging onto her life by a thread. I can hear her heartbeat over the crowd, my instincts zeroing in on it. It’s slowing, slowing…
Nearly ready to devour.
Starving!
She lifts a blood-covered finger to point at my face, that crazed glint still in her eye.
“You’ll regret that,” she chokes as she staggers to the side.
I move forward, my hands flared at my sides and the venom dripping from my lips. The taste of her blood doesn’t matter. I will finally taste fresh flesh. I’m finally—
She smiles, her eyes fixated on mine as chaos erupts around us, no one paying any more attention to the ring as sirens ring out, authoritative voices commanding obedience.
“Looks like dead men can bleed.”
Something warm trickles down my cheek, the smell of copper filling my senses.
I lift my clean hand to my face and bring it up. A swirl of feelings I’ve never felt before twists within my abdomen. Dread. Fear.
My entire body tingles with nerves as my eyes blur and then focus on my fingertip.
Red. Glistening. Clotting.
Blood.
I’m bleeding.
