Cole stiffened. Could he feel her, too? See her?
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I thought that if I stopped warning you of the attacks, you would stop going out to hunt the zombies. Instead they got Pops, just like they got…”
“Who?” I asked, and several people glanced over at me.
Emma turned a sickly shade of white. “Ali, don’t make me…not here.”
“Who,” I demanded, and Nana squeezed my hand to try and settle me down.
“I… Ali, have you wondered what a witness is? It’s someone who has died, who lives in heaven and watches over the lives of those she loved. That’s what I do. I watch you. I cheer you on. I hurt when you hurt. Let this go.”
“I can’t.”
I thought she would leave me then, but she didn’t. She sighed and said, “I’d hoped to save you from this, but I can see your determination is too great. It’s…Daddy,” she whispered. “He’s out there, and he wants to turn you. They tried to get Mom, but she fought the evil and won. She’s up there with me, and she wants you safe, too. Let this go, Alice. For us.” With a sad, soft smile, she vanished.
I could only reel. My father was a zombie. That’s what she’d tried to warn me about before, the thing that would hurt me worse than I’d ever been hurt. My father was a zombie, and there was nothing I could do to help him.
He wouldn’t want my help anyway.
He was coming for me. Hoped to kill me.
I was still in shock when Cole dropped off Nana and me at home. His dad needed him to do something, he’d said, or he would have stayed with me. He’d told me what that something was, but I’d tuned him out. Nana retreated to her room and I retreated to mine. Kat called, but I let her go to voice mail. Cole called an hour after that, but I let him go to voice mail, too. I lay on my bed, lost in a nightmare I hadn’t known I was living in.
My father was a zombie.
My father, whom I’d placed in the line of danger.
My father, whom I had served up on a silver platter.
He was beyond salvation.
How was I supposed to deal with this? With a shaky hand I picked up the journal, flipped through the pages. Answers were in here. I knew they were. If only another passage would morph…into…English.
Even before the thought finished, several paragraphs cleared, hieroglyphics changing into letters.
Throughout your fight against the zombies, you’ll face many hardships. People will call you crazy. Some of your family and friends will be bitten. Some of your family and friends will die.
Never forget that evil is evil. You cannot change it. You cannot lead it to the light. But, if you let it, evil can lead you to the darkness.
You’re probably wondering who I am, how I know what I know—and how you’re reading this. No, it’s not magic. I wrote this for those who are in spirit.
In spirit. I wondered if that meant I would be able to read every word if I left my body. Wondered if the others would be able to read it if they left theirs. Maybe, but at the moment I was too wrung out emotionally to care either way.
If you’re reading this while you’re in the natural realm, then you’re like me, more conscious of spiritual things. If you’re having trouble reading it, don’t worry. When your mind is ready for the rest of the information, you’ll be able to read the passages.
Do you want to know more about the evil? No. No, I think you’re more interested in love. You want to know what you can do to save the people you love. I know, because I hungered for that information, too. Tell them the truth. Teach them. The unseen, unknown enemy is still the enemy. If they know, they can fight. If they refuse to believe you, you’ve still done your best.
My eyesight hazed from a new flood of tears. I wished I had told Pops the truth. I wished I’d taught him to fight. Now, it was too late.
*
I must have cried myself to sleep, because the next thing I knew, a knock was shaking my window.
I wrenched awake, hair tumbling around my shoulders and the journal falling to the floor. I rubbed at my eyes, my heart hammering in my chest. Cole raised the pane and slipped inside my room—but that only made my heart beat harder. He was armed for war. He wore black from head to toe, had the black smudges under his eyes to absorb light, had knives anchored on his arms and hilts sticking out of his boots.
“I’m sorry to do this now, and this way, but you ignored my calls and texts,” he said, “and we need you. We found a nest inside a house about a mile away. We’re going to flush them out, and we need your help. We’ve never seen anyone light up like you did or ash a zombie so quickly, and we hope you can take them all down.”
Fight the enemy. I could do that, no matter how bad I felt. “I need to change.”
“Hurry.”
As I geared up in the bathroom, Cole said hesitantly, “I saw your sister today.”
I stilled, the shirt I’d been pulling on catching on my ears.
“I heard her, too,” he added.
Then he knew. He knew my father could be part of this new nest.