Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(130)

The large lady murmurs agreement, kneading something gritty into my skin like I’m dough. The one called Roxie winces in her own form of concurrence. The twelve-year-old just purses her lips, like the idea of remembering her life tastes bad.

“That looks like it should hurt,” I point out, staring at the large lady and the tool she’s poking into my foot. “I feel it, but I don’t. Is that normal?”

“Perfectly,” one of the girls behind me mutters. “Now keep still.”

The questions start coming like a wave of nausea, I can’t help it. “What are you doing exactly?—Where’s half my arm?—Are those my bones?”

“Helena,” one of them grunts, annoyed.

“Listen to me,” says Helena, pulling my face toward hers and away from my own innards. “This new life you’ve been given, your Final Life, it’s all that matters now. You’re one of us.”

“One of us?” I ask. “One of what?—A zombie?”

Wrong word. The large lady drops the tool she had in her hand. Roxie steps away from me so quickly I might as well have burst into flames. An icy hush has covered the room. My gaze moves from one horrified set of eyes to another. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“We,” Helena says, steels herself, then finishes, “are not zombies. We are people, and we have standards, and we have flesh, and for the love of God we do not eat brains! We are a dignified people, all of us. Even you.”

I look around the room, my eyes meeting each person before I speak again. “I’m sorry. This is all very new to me. Obviously. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.”

After a very lengthy moment passes in which I’m pretty sure the ladies in the room would gladly toss me back to the foul earth from which I’d been yanked, the large one finally sighs, if just a little, takes up her tool again and says, “It’s okay, honey. I’m sure I said something equally as awful on my first day, which was far too long ago if you ask me. Which you didn’t.”

“You’re all dead,” I whisper, like I’m just now discovering this.

“Undead. Every last one of us,” she agrees. “I doubt there’s a Living left in the world.”

Looking at each of them, it’s dawning on me what world I’ve been brought into. A dead world. Ageless. No one breathes here or ever will again. Souls being fetched from soil and made up into fake-alive people, like me. A world full of … silent chests.

“Now,” she says, gripping my foot tight, “hold still while I make you a new pinkie toe.”

I don’t remember what else she or the Roxie girl or the twelve-year-old do to me. I don’t remember having my right ear reshaped, or my nose reset, or color fused into my lips by some weird kind of gun-shaped mechanism. Even though Helena claims otherwise, I don’t remember choosing Icecap Blue for my eyes.

“And now, girl, meet Winter!” Helena’s guided me over to the first mirror I’ve seen since my Raising. The maybe-twenty-year-old face in the mirror is one I should probably recognize since it’s my own, but I don’t. She has eyes like arctic pools. Hair that falls like a soft mist, veiling half her face. Her skin is a sea of satin. Her nails are little polished glass shards. Her lips, a subtle pink, with cheeks gently blushed the same. The person in the mirror is a person I do not know.

“What do you think?” the large woman asks me, obviously proud of her work. “Can you live with this?”

My left hand falls off.

“Roxie!” the large woman yelps. “Adhesive, honey! Proper, level-four-grade adhesive!—I do swear!”

A lot of shuffling, a slight shove from my left side, and I’m whole again. I wiggle my fingers and they seem to work. For how long, who knows.

“Should we try another blush?—another eye color?” the large-in-charge offers sweetly. “We have enough time before our next appointment.”

“This is fine,” I say, defeated somehow. “Icecap Blue is fine. My name is fine. Whatever.”

Winter. I didn’t even choose my own name.

And so this is where Winter was born, and how. Whoever she is.

Then I’m given a tour of where I’ll live for the rest of forever. The heart of the city is the Town Square, surrounded by rings of streets that hold businesses, stores, tall apartment complexes. It’s all very downtown. Then on the outskirts of the city you’ll find clusters of trailers, shacks and little houses. One of them is mine, apparently.

Helena tells me living here is entirely free. No bills or rent will ever be collected because, in her words, “money is a bother.” Consequently, no one is required to work or hold a job, even though many do. Some people form pretend-families with one another, maybe for comfort, maybe for fun. Fun, they call this.

Oh, and yes, there are children here. A short girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, lives somewhere among my circle of houses with another lady who pretends to be her mother. This is all very normal and accepted. The girl has long black braided hair and Helena tells me I’ll be happy to meet her someday. I would never wish this on a child, but I guess I didn’t have a choice either.

Trying for some levity, I ask where all the stray city cats are. Helena replies, “What’s a cat?” I ask her, where are all the birds in the sky. She’s like, “What’s a bird?”