Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) Read Free

aren’t my hands—?”
    “It’s quite alright,” I assure him, stealthily swiping up his fallen ear and hoping he doesn’t notice. “That’s what the Refinery’s for. To get your body, uh … working.”
    “Yes,” he seems to agree, though his face now appears twisted into a permanent grimace, what with half of it falling off. To avoid any further decay, I lift him hurriedly to his feet, only to discover that nearly all his clothing has fallen away. He’s completely naked except for a scrap of fabric hanging conveniently at his waist, which were once long ago a pair of pants. His lazy eyes staring out at the world, confused, the ghost-grey one and the brown, he doesn’t seem to notice.
    “One foot in front of the other,” I encourage him.
    Still staring curiously at the sky, he only shuffles, his legs not moving properly. Not wasting a second’s time, I put his arm over my shoulder and help him across the Haunted Waste. His right foot seems to work, but his left just drags along. It’s a good thing we Undead don’t regard weight the way Humans do; John basically weighs nothing to me. Either that, or we’re incredibly strong, despite how ridiculously brittle we can be at times. I still haven’t quite figured out all the mysteries of the obviously conflicting and paradoxical physics of our kind and, quite frankly, I plan never to.
    “The sky is completely grey,” he complains, his voice lilting worriedly. “Is it about to rain?”
    “No, no,” I assure him. “To us, the sky is always … Well, our kind can’t really see the—”
    He loses his grip on my shoulder and tumbles to the ground with a sickly grunt. After a moment of hands and legs and awkward mumbles, I end up taking John’s body in my arms like he’s my damsel in distress, and when I’ve lifted him off the earth, I’m struck suddenly by the dark, heavy memory of carrying him halfway across the world. Of course, when I’d carried him then, he was dead. The John in my arms is not dead, but not quite alive either. Something in between, I guess. Just like me.
    There is something about carrying him in my arms that roots me immediately. I feel a surge of pleasure, even despite the morbid circumstance. With John pressed into my body again, in my arms, I’m swelling inside with a love I’ve been waiting for so long to feel again. This man in my arms, I’ve crossed a world for. This man in my arms, he’s the only man I ever want to love, dead or alive.
    John stares at me, legs dangling, arms dangling. He lifts one blunt brow. “You’re strong,” he observes. I can almost hear humor in his voice. Humor.
    I smile lamely. “You will be, too.”
    The Haunted Waste whispers cruel things at our backs as we depart. The wind hangs on my limbs, dancing around my legs, but I hold John firmly in my arms and carry him toward the Dead Wood, a wall of barren, dying trees that surround my hometown of—
    I stop at the mouth of the woods. My eyes grow and my jaw might literally fall off. What once was a spread of dying trees is now a webbed, overgrown thicket of green. I literally can’t believe the sight my eyes are lending me. Even the soil at the foot of the Haunted Waste where the trees abruptly end bears brave, healthy sprouts of grass.
    Trapped here by my own astonishment, I’m forced to wonder once again a most pressing question: how the hell long was I waiting for John to Rise from the earth??
    “Something wrong?” he asks.
    “No.” I continue my stroll into the woods, undaunted.
    Just before entering, my foot kicks into something. With a glance downward, I see a giant, detached spider leg. Promptly paying no mind to said dead appendage, I step over the vile thing and carry on. The illusory shadows of trees gently brush over us, the subtle streaks of silver light tickling our hair, and I enjoy my embrace of John’s body. I peer through the web of trees, wondering if a sun has dared to show its face to me after all this time of being