You Are So Undead to Me Read Free Page A

time, but I could tell he worried where we might be sent if we were discovered again. Settlers’ Affairs doesn’t mess around when it comes to being discovered. If you break cover, they decide how fast you run and how far.
     
    Apparently Dad didn’t want to find out if we’d be relocating to Outer Mongolia if my movie date met up with my zombie date. He was back in a flash with pen and paper. “I’ll go check on your mother. If you hurry, you can have this guy out the back before I dig her out of the Closet.”
     
    “But she gets pissed if I let them walk through the house,” I said, though something other than violating Mom’s house rules was bothering me. I hadn’t done this in so long. What if I forgot something?
     
    “I’ll vacuum after you leave for your date.” Dad smiled and disappeared, and I couldn’t help but smile back. For a man who had been adamantly opposed to letting his not-quite-sixteen-year-old go out with a senior, he was being incredibly cool.
     
    Right! Screw doing things the Settler way. I had to get this guy out of here and get on with my real life.
     
    Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the dearly departed. Hopefully, I still remembered how this was supposed to go.
     
    “Welcome to your after-death session. My name is Megan. May I have your name, last name first?” The words rolled off my tongue with the same practiced ease they had years ago. And here I’d thought I suppressed all that zombie stuff.
     
    “Anderson, William.” His eyes focused in on me and I could see they had once been quite a nice shade of blue. Nearly as nice as the grin he flashed as the human part of him came online. Even with the dirt in his teeth, you could tell that smile had broken a few hearts when he was alive. “Hey, nice to meet you.”
     
    “Nice to meet you, too.” I felt that familiar flash of sadness that always came with dealing with kids my own age who had already met their end. Settlers were a fairly spiritual group, and I’d been raised to believe these troubled souls would be going to a better place after they got their earthly business off their chests . . . but still, it was sad, especially with people so young.
     
    “Can you give me your address before death, William?”
     
    My pen flew across the paper as he rattled off an address not too terribly far away. Then I asked him for a phone number and a list of surviving immediate family. You had to get all the basic details out of an Unsettled before you let them tell you whatever was bothering them so much they actually had to crawl out of their grave and go looking for supernatural intervention. If you didn’t, chances were you’d never get the 411.
     
    Once they spill their guts, zombies can’t get back to their graves fast enough, and it’s never a good idea to try to slow down a determined zombie. They are freakishly strong. The movies have that right, but the whole eating-brains thing—completely bogus. Only Reanimated Corpses crave flesh, and they don’t care about your brains. They’ll eat whatever they can get their teeth into.
     
    I shivered again, wishing I’d worn the matching brown shawl that came with my dress. The scar on my shoulder had faded and hardly anyone noticed it anymore, but I suddenly wanted it covered up.
     
    Clearing my throat, I did my best to concentrate. Josh could be here any second, no time to angst out. “Now, William, tell me what it is you don’t like about your death.” Okay, so that wasn’t standard lingo. I’d just watched too many Nip/Tuck reruns over the summer.
     
    “I just wanted to tell my girlfriend, Sherry, that I never went out with that skank at the mall. I mean, I took her to the corn dog shack once, but I’m planning on . . . I mean I was planning . . .”
     
    His voice wasn’t sad as much as confused, but I still wanted to give him a hug and probably would have if it hadn’t been for the smell. It had to suck coming to terms with your own death. But he