The Zondorae brothers said in unison, "That's it."

So easy, Jeffrey thought, I always get stuck with the shit end of the stick. "Then I'm through. You won't need me anymore."

"And you'll be clean, Parker. No more corpses for you."

"I don't know if I trust the system that far yet. Or that I'll be given the right substance."

None of them said the obvious. That maybe he'd be fucked over one more time.

The Zondorae brothers wouldn't care, that was for sure.

An uneasy thought came to mind: no one would care. There was no relatives to weep for his death. Except Clyde. And that was almost funny.

It made Parker feel disassociated in his own skin.

He gladly left the slimeball brothers behind.

Jeffrey moved through the various security corridors, using the embedded pulse-sensor disc behind his ear. The pulse-sensor ensured the doors opened just as he needed to pass through.

Jeffrey thought of the mystery C-M digging the disc out of her own flesh.

He gave a little shiver, not easily spooked. I've done some dastardly deeds in my time, he thought with a small smile, but self-mutilation was not one of them.

Sometimes liberation exacted a price that few people were willing to pay.

Their darling AFTD girl had paid in spades.

He escaped the yawning mouth of the Graysheets like a birth gone wrong, the surrealism of his last mission chasing him like the return of Haley's comet.

Right on schedule.

*

then- senior year

Tiff

Tiff tried to never get caught alone in the halls. She was ashamed at the tremor that started when she drew nearer to her locker and clamped down on her irrational fear ruthlessly.

That fucking Carson had made her afraid.

Which in turn made Tiff mad at herself and ashamed of her physical reaction.

When her shoes became hot Tiff tried to explain it away rationally.

That's what people did when weird shit went down and she was no different.

Except that she was in the girl's washroom. There shouldn't have been anything to explain it.

The pain was unbearable. It felt like someone had stuck her feet in an oven on broil.

Tiff tore off her shoes and threw them into the sink where she'd just washed her hands and the pulse-activated sensor brought the water on.

Her sneakers steamed inside the basin as the room temperature water sprayed over them. Her bare feet slowly cooled on the recycled quartz flooring of the school lavatory. They had reddened from the warmth of the ghost fire that had coated the shoes now smoldering in the basin.

She looked down at her feet; the toenails were hot pink because Sophie had talked her into it. Tiff blinked, sucking in a shaky breath that was just shy of tearful and went to the door of the bathroom, peeking out into the empty hall. She needed to pull up her goddamned big girl panties. Like. Right. Now.

There was no one. Tiff let out another trembling, fear-drenched exhale, shame and anger mingling again.

Somehow she knew that Carson was cooking her shoes. They weren't babies anymore. Hamilton had a level of control that he hadn't possessed when they were freshmen. And she was a nothing but a two-point AFTD. Tiff swallowed past the lump in her throat.

No, he had a handle on shit now and Tiff was on his radar, the asshat. Tiff almost wished she hadn't yanked his chain.

Almost.

She stepped out of the safety of the threshold in a rookie move that made her want to kick her own ass later.

Tiff didn't check behind the bathroom door.

There went the theory on her cleverness.

It wasn't Carson though, it was Diego.

Somehow, that was worse.

"Hey Mouth," he said, gripping her by the hood and hauling her back behind the door.

Without hesitation, Tiff drove her elbow into whatever was behind her.

"Ugh!" Diego grunted, relaxing her hold on him.

She swung and gave her hardest stomp on his foot. Unfortunately, Tiff was no longer wearing shoes.

It was not as effective with a bare foot and then Carson was on her like a fly on shit. He lifted Tiff right off her feet. She swung her head back against him but he was ready for that move. He was a faster learner than she wanted him to be.

Diego came from the front and Tiff swore she had no breath. She could feel the darkness eating at the edges of her mind.

Tiff fought her fear and it was an ugly matter staying conscious.

This was scarier than hunting a murderer, than raising corpses with Caleb, or traveling to another world.

This was real.

Then Jade came into the hall and saw the three of them in a dance of violence and she did what Tiff could never make herself do.

Jade opened her mouth and screamed like a girl. A clear, high-pitched bell-like shriek.

It was the most beautiful sound Tiff had ever heard.

She almost sobbed in relief even as Carson gave her a pinch that deadened her upper arm.

Tiff gasped at the fresh pain that settled there.

"Don't touch her you... shitbag," Jade said in a low voice filled with rage, full of experience and Diego strode to her.

"Don't," Jade said, backing up a step.

Tiff noted she looked very small next to the six-feet plus Diego.

"Or what- you prim little bitch? Ya gonna sick your corpse-humper boyfriend on me? He gonna dump you for a dead chick?" he asked, giving an obscene hip gyration.

Jade gave a circumspect look around for the adults that should be coming and Diego grabbed her by the hair. She yelped as Tiff gave a miserable scream of warning, "Jade!"

*

Caleb

I listened to Smith drone on about our responsibilities to the dead. How they had been living once.

Yeah, I kinda got that.

I glanced down at my beat up Timex and thought that Tiff had made a career out of the bathroom. She was probably trying to take extra time because we were going over review stuff beginning with: Cadaver-Manipulation Etiquette. She'd be All About missing that lecture.

I figured I'd just practice on Clyde with that. He sure let me know when I got it wrong. I chuckled.

My scalp began to tingle like ants were crawling across my head. It was a case of the creeps.

I sat up straighter in my seat.

I thought about it. I didn't normally get those.

Suddenly Jade filled my mind.

My hand shot up.

The creeps intensified and then my friend Worry crawled up my ass.

Smith folded his arms across his chest. "Yes, Mr. Hart?"

"May I be excused?"

He glanced at Tiff's empty seat, then his eyes shifted to the pulse-clock.

"I don't like two students absent for lavatory trips... however, perhaps you can see what's taking Tiffany so long?"

"K, thanks." I hopped out of my seat smoothly and made my way to the restrooms. Just as I was thinking I'd become paranoid, I felt the sensation of crawling insects grow horribly intense just before my hair felt like someone was pulling it out at the roots.

What the fuck?

I didn't think, I ran.

*

Jade

"Caleb!" Jade shrieked in an agonized wail, her hair torn from her scalp, black strands trailing from Diego's hand.

He backhanded her, spilling her to the floor.

As he jerked her up by her hair again she bit the hand that held her as hard as she could.

"Bitch!" Diego seethed, dragging her behind him as he shook her until her teeth rattled.

"Oh no," Tiff moaned, feeling guilty beyond anything she'd ever known. She had defenses, Jade did not.

"Drag the bitches in here," Carson said, indicating the boys restroom.

Tiff fought and was subdued.

In the end, she was not strong enough to get away and was soundlessly taken into the restroom with a bleeding Jade.

*

Caleb

I threw myself around the corner, my scalp throbbing like a banked fire and saw....

Nothing.

There were no people. It was the middle of the school day.

I closed my eyes and let everything else recede to a pinpoint, my sense of urgency had heightened, not quieted.

The empty hallway didn't fool me for a moment.

The heartbeat of the dead I located in about three seconds, they breathed out of sync with my searching.

Then, faintly a beat of something else captured my seeking fingers. It was familiar somehow. But like a muscle that was seldom used it didn't last for long.

It was the whimper that alerted me instead of my paranormal sense.

Boys' bathroom, I thought, taking three strides to the door and tearing it off its hinges.

Oh shit, I thought upon witnessing the scene in front of me. Carson was on top of a beaten Tiff, his pants long gone.

I ran and things got fuzzy after that but he was beneath me moments later, my fist beating his nose into a bloody pulp.

It was scary how naturally beating came to me.

"Caleb!" Jade cried out in warning as Diego landed on me.

He had the advantage of surprise and rolled me over. He started whaling on me like I'd just done to his buddy Carson.

The call to the dead left me as easily as a sigh.

I didn't know what was coming but... gawd, Tiff... I couldn't think of it.

The consequence couldn't be seen.

It didn't matter.

They came. It was December but the black bears that laid low in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains had yet to bed down for the winter.

One had been crushed by a vehicle that day as twilight made the landscape flat and indiscernible. It was just outside the boundaries of my school, waiting for the road kill pick up crew.

Later I would be told that it threw its body against the door to get to me.

To us.

I slammed a free leg into Diego's chest and his fist glanced off my knee on his downstroke.

I got up on my knees in one motion with blood clouding my eyesight. My hand shot out in a stiff knuckle strike, taking him in the throat and he made a satisfying gagging choke.

Then the bear lumbered into the bathroom.

It saw me and went for Diego, swatting him with a huge paw. He arced, flying into one of the stall doors that was ajar and landing in the commode face down.

Perfect, I thought numbly, spitting out a spray of blood on the ground beside Carson.

Who had decided it was a swell idea to torch my bear.

Until the second joined the first.

I swiped blood out of my eyes and looked for the girls, letting my zombies take on Flame Boy.

Diego was out of commission.

Jade slammed into me the minute I stood and I took stock of her face. "I didn't know," I said as the bears roared behind me.

"Yes you did, you came," she cried against my chest and my eyes swept the room.

Tiff.

She was curled up in a corner, her clothes thrown into a pile on the floor.

Oh no, I thought, not Tiff.

Chen burst into the boys' bathroom, took one look at Carson and a cooling water of nothingness flowed from her outstretched hands.

It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of icewater on everything.

Carson's fire stopped.

My bears turned to me, their eyes dead plums in their expressive faces.

They were waiting.

Zombies were hell on time lines.

"Caleb Hart," Chen said, eying the Wonder Twin Bears.

"In. My. Office- NOW." Then she looked at Carson, her eyes taking in a half naked and nearly catatonic Tiff.

"The police are coming, you stay where you are," she said to him.

"Fuck you, Chen," he said with promise.

She shook her head. "I think it is you who will have that honor, while you're in jail, Mr. Hamilton."

They scowled at each other and I tucked my distraught girlfriend underneath my arm.

So much for peace.

I took it for the omen it was.

CHAPTER 7

then-early winter

John was such a cool as a cucumber dude that to see his unraveling after the Tiff incident was a slice of surreal I never wanted to relive.

Watching Sophie be solicitous toward Tiff would've been hilarious under different circumstances but now was just sad. Gone was the lippy, sarcastic, fiercely brave girl that had tag-teamed my success with the dead.

Where had Tiff gone?

She couldn't be this shell of a girl who kept her head down and clutched her pulse-reader in front of her like a shield.

John had tried, following her around until she turned on him and hissed, "I don't need a bodyguard, Terran!"

He looked like he'd been punched. I'll never forget his words.

I'd looked at my best friend, his eyes thick with tears that no self-respecting guy would shed and he said, "It's my fault. We should have known this was happening... that bruise, the weird way she was acting..." he began miserably as he watched her small body weave through the sea of kids, the bruises long gone.

Though the scars remained.

I clapped Terran on the back. "I was there, pal. How do you think I feel?" I felt like hammered dog shit, was what. That fucking Diego had laid hands on Jade before I could get there. Of course, Hamilton had a nice scar on his chest from my zombie bear. I'd taken care of Diego later too. I wasn't proud of it, but it got things done.