Nearafter (D.E.A.T.H. bk. 1)

Chapter Ten [Gustav]

Gustav hadn't meant to bring them all back... but there was just something...intoxicating about the brooch. After he'd brought back Janice Allen, the dead college girl who used to bag groceries on the weekends and during the breaks, he could barely resist the urge to not bring back Ms. Keenly and Mr. Chandler, the fat man and the two others. But he still couldn't bring himself to pull out Jenny's gurney. He wasn't ready for her. She had to be perfect.

Including the pair of jocks that Gustav had brought back earlier in the alley, seven zombies staggered about in the embalming room. Yes. Zombies. That's what he started calling them because that's what they were. There was no sugar-coating the truth. They were all clumsy and stupid, bumping into shelves and racks of tools, knocking over cabinets and buckets of chemicals. They were uncoordinated and unintelligent. They groaned and growled, hissed and, occasionally, screamed for no discernible reason, which always startled Gustav.

Gustav had never had a pet dog before but if felt like he'd just adopted over half a dozen full grown mutts in one night. They were loud, surprisingly active, broke things, and made messes, especially the ones that he hadn't yet been embalmed. The pair of jocks bled everywhere they managed to stagger to and the Janice Allen chick kept vomiting every half hour. The embalmed ones were fine, but there were only two of them.

He thought about embalming the others, but that would take ages, plus none of them seemed to want to sit still for long enough. They twitched and jerked like spazzed-out psych patients fighting rigor mortis. So, even if he ordered them to play dead, which you would think wouldn't be much of a stretch for a reanimated corpse, sadly somehow, they couldn't even do that. The zombies were quickly becoming more of a hassle than they were worth.

He tried giving them orders, and they followed them for the most part. Though he learned he had to keep his directives short and simple, like giving commands to a dog. And Jeremiah wasn't around to help. He seemed to pick and choose when he decided to show up. But Gustav managed. He got them all dressed before experimenting with commands. He wanted to see what they could do and what they couldn't. They would try anything he told them to do, and there was something gratifying about that.

Gustav also tried to reverse their resurrections, but that seemed impossible. He thought maybe if he just wiped away his blood from their skin, then they would again die, though this wasn't the case. But he needed to find some way to return them to the dead anyway because it was early, and his father would be getting up soon to start work on Jenny and the others. His phone told him it was already five 'o clock in the morning. It was still dark out, but the first signs of light were already bleeding through the navy-blue sky. Gustav had an hour to hide the living dead.

He instructed Ms. Keenly and the others to lay still on their gurneys as he locked them all in their steel cocoons, so even if they wanted to get out, they couldn't. He told the pair of jocks to climb into a nearby dumpster, and they did. He shut the lid on them and returned to the embalming room feeling a small bit of relief beginning to creep back into his bones. But he still had to clean up the embalming room. He swept and mopped and scrubbed everything. He returned the various tools to their shelves and locked the back door before flicking off the lights and heading upstairs.

Gustav went into the bathroom just as his father's alarm clock sounded off. He could hear it from all the way down the hall. He expected the sound to stop at any moment, for there to be some abrupt end to the noise, though the alarm kept ringing. Gustav washed his hands and shoved the brooch into his pocket. He splashed cold water on his face and toweled off. He could still hear his father's alarm clock wailing from down the hall. Gustav stood just outside his door, frowning, confused and hesitant. It wasn't like his father to sleep in, especially when he had a job to do. He was a morning person.