Read Online A Living Dead Love Story Series by Rusty Fischer - Free Book Online Page B

moving much lately so I can do lamb’s brains, fresh as of two days ago. How many pounds?”
    â€œPounds?” I hesitate. The website didn’t say how much brains—or even how many—I should eat, only that I should eat them in 48 hours OR ELSE. Why doesn’t anyone pay attention to details anymore? Would it be so hard to add a simple line like,
BTW, Maddy, 3 pounds of brains per week is plenty?
    Seriously, am I the first new zombie ever to ask?
    â€œYeah, honey,” Harvey is saying as I fume at the www.youmightbeazombieif.blogspot.com webmaster. “This is a deli right here; we weigh things by the pound.”
    â€œWell, how many pounds of lamb’s brains can I get?” (Introducing item number one on the list of things I never thought I’d hear myself ask a grown man at 2:27 a.m.)
    He rolls his eyes. “As many pounds as you need, darlin’, but I gotta hear a number before I can start filling the order.”
    â€œTen pounds,” I blurt, half expecting the Butcher Police to come out from behind the gurgling lobster tank and bust me for brain abuse.
    But no, old Harvey merely scratches his hairnet again like I haven’t just asked for 10 pounds of mushy cerebrum meat and whistles softly around a soggy toothpick. “Ten pounds it is.” He says it without judgment, disappearing into the back room through a series of five dingy plastic straps that hang from the top of the metal doorframe to the red-tiled floor.
    I pace nervously in front of the steaks and cold cuts, chicken thighs, and pork loins while Harvey fills my order. Something by The Beatles is playing over the sound system; something instrumental and lame, but I can’t quite figure out what it is. For a song that was most likely written (on rock tablets) the year my dad was born, it’s surprisingly catchy. Lame, but still pretty catchy just the same.
    I’m still trying to figure it out when someone says from behind me, “‘The Fool on the Hill.’”
    â€œHuh?” I turn around to find none other than Chloe Kildare staring back at me, black hair, black eye shadow, black eyeliner, black lipstick, black mole, black eyes, and all. She smiles, her pierced gray tongue flickering behind yellowish teeth.
    â€œâ€˜The Fool on the Hill,’” she says. “That’s The Beatles song you’re trying to figure out.”
    â€œThat’s it!” I say it a little too loudly for the graveyard-in-aisle-9 setting.
    Chloe frowns, looks down the empty aisles to our left and right, and says, “What are
you
doing here?”
    â€œWhat are
you
doing here?” I reply.
    In case you haven’t connected the dots by now, Chloe is Barracuda Bay High School’s resident Goth Princess, so I guess it’s really no stretch at all to find her lurking the aisles of an all-night grocery store at this hour.
    I think of the last time I saw her, back in the graveyard after school, standing beside me and backing down Bones and Dahlia with little more than a finger point. Was she following me then? Is she following me now? And where is her boyfriend, lover, and/or constant companion, Dane? (Even waiting for 10 pounds of brains at 2:27 a.m., you hardly ever see one without the other.)
    I surreptitiously peer into her little green plastic Greenbriers Grocers basket and see about what you’d expect a gaudy Goth poser like Chloe to be buying: cheap white makeup, cheap black lipstick, cheap black nail polish.
    Suddenly Chloe looks down a side aisle, rolls her eyes, and sighs. “Hey, Dane, did you find them yet?”
    Dane Fields, resident Goth Prince to Chloe’s Goth Princess, tosses some cheap black candles and a box of old-school wooden matches into her basket. “Yeah, just like you said, in aisle 6. Hey, Maddy, what are
you
doing here?”
    â€œFunny,” Chloe says as I shuffle my feet and smile up at Dane, “I just asked her the same thing. Still