Undead Ed and the Fingers of Doom

Undead Ed and the Fingers of Doom

My name is Ed Bagley—and I’m dead meat. Literally. You could go outside right now, dig through the trash can, and find fish corpses that look better than me.

You may think you’re ugly or that you smell or that you’re having a really bad hair day. Well, get over it.

I’m uglier.

I’m smellier.

And I’m having a bad hair life . . . except that I’m not actually alive any more.

Walking. Corpse.

That’s right, I’m a zombie—an unearthly freak in a crazy, bad world of blood-sucking, flesh-eating critters from the underworld.

Only it’s not a complete nightmare for everyone—oh, no. Vampires are drop-dead gorgeous (see what I did there?), werewolves are all emotion and fury, ghosts are stylish with beautiful singing voices, and ghouls don’t care what they munch on as long as it smells better than their own feet.

But zombies are a different story.

Here’s the download of my current problems in five points, so all of you can understand them:

1. I stink like your grandma’s toe jam.
2. My fat keeps falling off in lumps.
3. I’m going to end up like the skeleton hanging in your science teacher’s classroom.
4. All my friends hate me.
5. Did I mention I stink?

That about covers it. For those of you who’ve followed my hideous, depressing story from the beginning, I don’t need to tell you how much trouble I’m in right now. For the rest of you, here’s the quickest recap in the history of books:

Born.

Lived.

Hit by a truck.

Died.

Woke up a zombie.

Hope that fills in some of the blanks for you. If not, I’m really sorry about that. No, wait . . . I’m over it.

I’ve got my own problems, and they’re far worse than yours.

Let’s go back to number four on that list: all my friends hate me.

They didn’t before, but they do now. I used to have two of the best friends a walking corpse could hope for. Then I did something really, pants-wettingly crazy and lost them both forever.

I killed someone—someone they both loved and respected. Someone even I loved and respected.

His name was Evil Clive, and like me, he was a zombie—but he was probably the nicest, most caring dead guy I ever met.

Before I evicted him, that is.

Eviction: that’s death for the undead. No one (not even the ghosts, the ghouls, and the phantoms) knows what happens when a soul is evicted from its undead shell. I’m not in any hurry to find out, myself. I’ve died once—I’d prefer not to die twice.

Of course, I didn’t mean to evict Clive.

His murder was actually the work of my evil left arm.

Er . . . I told you about that, right?

OMG, I didn’t. Right, here goes: hold on tight for the quick version.

I was normal.

Left arm was normal.

Left arm got possessed by the demonic spirit of Kambo Cheapteeth.

I died, came back as a zombie.

Left arm decided we were growing apart and went out on its own like a talented drummer in a really lame rock band.

However, it tried to kill me first.

A lot.

It’s the
Devil’s Work

Apparently, no one in the undead community knew when the cell was built or who it was built for. All anyone knew for sure was that it was there, and trust me, that knowledge alone was bad enough.

Of course, there have always been tunnels under Mortlake. There are tunnels under pretty much every town here: sewer tunnels, wartime tunnels, old train tunnels.

Mortlake has all three. Beneath the town, there are the air-raid runs and the sewers. Below the sewers, there is the abandoned subway. And—deeper still—there is something called the Well.

The Well is basically a giant vertical drop with stairs that snake down around the outside. At the bottom is a single long, dank tunnel that runs to a door so well fortified that it might as well be made of the rock that surrounds it.

And behind that door . . .

. . . was me.

I sat in the darkness, my face streaked wet with grime and the tracks of my tears, wondering if my life could actually get any worse.

Of course, I’d had the odd visitor. Max and Jemini, my former best friends, had both been down to see me at various times—but the conversation was always a bit awkward. If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think either of them trusted me anymore, and who could blame them? I was surprised anyone bothered to come and see me at all.

CLUNK.

Speak of the devil.

CLUNK.

CLUNK.

CLUNK.

The irregular and nearly deafening sound of the bolts sliding back signaled either a visitor or lunch—and considering I didn’t eat . . .

Sure enough, the door yawned open and in stalked Max Moon, the werewolf.

Typically, my oldest and best friend in the world of the undead didn’t look me directly in the eye, choosing instead to focus on a point about three centimeters over my forehead. I couldn’t tell if this was because my jawbone was now completely bare of the tattered flesh that covered the rest of my face, or because he just couldn’t bring himself to really lock eyes with such a mindless, moronic loser.

“Hey, Ed,” he muttered. “Er . . . I’ve brought you some news from town.”

I looked up at him and sniffed a bit. “Good news or bad news?”

“It’s more like—bad and worse. Sorry, but it’s mostly grim.”

Max smiled weakly, but there was no humor in it. I guess he felt as awful about the whole situation as I did.

“There’s a big movement of hard-line Clive supporters who want to kill you for what happened. They’ve got a lot of ghouls, werewolves, and vampires working for them, too. They’re at war with the council over it, and the whole thing’s turning really violent.”

“Awesome,” I muttered, looking down at the floor. “I guess it’s no more than I deserve. Anything else?”

Max swallowed a few times, and I knew whatever was coming was going to be bad.

“Yeah, kinda. The under-council had a meeting, and they’ve decided to do this ancient test thing to find out whether your arm killed Clive or you did.”