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On the sidewalk, Juliet’s bedtime snack opened his eyes and blinked He looked up the street, then down, then toward the Deadtown checkpoint His shoulders sluone He pulled a scarf from his coat pocket, wrapped it twice around his neck, and walked toward the human checkpoint back into Boston I couldn’t tell for sure because the Jag’s ere rolled up, but he looked like he histling Nothing like a vaood mood

"They should let zombies use the express lane," Tina coood for us, either"

"Yeah, but zoh If I get sunburn, e-splotched for life"

She sighed, and I kneere thinking the sa: whatever "for life" means to a zombie

THREE YEARS AGO, THE ONLY PEOPLE IN BOSTON WHO believed in zo Dead a few too ue hit

At the ti out of the closet, out of the coffin, out fro up, when someone like me had to keep my true nature hidden I knew about my own kind, of course, but back then I had no clue that vampires and olves were o, in Boston and a few other cities around the country--Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Mianition and social acceptance They were led by Alexander Kane, olf and lawyer Oh, and my sometiht roave hioal was full legal equity at the federal level for hu to Kane, don’t say monster Say Paranorroup to further the cause: olves, vampires, even a few humans But no zoue

I was there when it hit I was on htbulbs before a lunch date with Kane Funny how you rehtbulbs One minute, I was in the middle of a crowd of lunchti alone on the sidewalk, surrounded by fallen bodies It was as if, on cue, everyone aroundI bent to the wo facedown at o; I’d admired her leather jacket Now, her neck arers could find no trace of a pulse I turned her over Her eyes were open, their whites bright red, and thin trails of blood trickled fro I checked another body, then another They were all the same--whole and warm, with red eyes and dribbles of blood And very, very dead

I screa; all I kneas that I had to get away before the sa happened to me But there was no "away" Every corner I turned, every block I ran doas the saround like trash at a landfill So left in the entire world

Then I sawA woroup, a olf, stood in thein slow circles She stopped when she saw me We stared I was afraid that if I blinked, she’d disappear The next thing I kneere holding each other like shipwreck survivors clinging to a raft in a shark-infested sea

As scientists learned later, the virus was a one-in-a-billion mutation that happened to hit don Boston, the only place in the world to be so lucky Only humans were vulnerable to it The rest of us--olves, vampires, and yours truly, Boston’s only active shapeshifter--were i that could’ve happened to human-PA relations in Massachusetts Suddenly, the huather up the dead Every PA in Boston ca up yellow DO NOT CROSS tape and spray-painted DED, for "Disease Enclosure District," on every available surface around the perimeter (More than one norm noticed how DED could be pronounced as dead, and so Deadtown got its name Well, from that and the fact that there were a couple thousand corpses within its borders) We kept away the morbid thrill-seekers; nobody knew then that the virus had already athered the dead and stored the lists of the names and addresses of nearly two thousand huainst possible invasion, since there were ruical attack--a theory that’s never been proved

Then, three days after the plague, the zoan to rise And Boston has never been the same

I LEFT TINA AT THE GROUP HOME SHE SHARED WITH FIVE other teenage zoy textbooks before school the next night Then I parked the Jag in the clie I rented two blocks frohborhood where the residents possessed both superhuood for , and Deadtoas quiet The sun was high enough that all the va behind blackoutshades Deadtown, the area where the plague had hit, looked pretty much like any other part of Boston Shops, offices, apart on; restricting all of Boston’s PAs--two thousand zombies and several hundred assorted other monsters--into such a co Offices got converted to studios, and high-rise apart was silent now, of course All the work happened at night

A figure passed on the other side of the street, wearing a wide-brilasses, and a scarf wrapped around its neck and the lower half of its face, looking more like a scarecrow than the zorates when touched by direct sunlight--the "zombie sunburn" Tina had ht look like walking piles of laundry I turned the corner to ood it would feel to crawl between the covers and sink into my mattress Work was so busy I hadn’t had a decent day’s sleep all week

And then there was a sight that et about sleep--but not about crawling into bed

On the sidewalk in front ofon a cell phone and gesturing At the moment, his back was to me, but I knew that back, broad and well muscled beneath the expensive wool coat Kane Pleasure shivered through race of his ht Kane’s hair was silver--not gray but really and truly silver It gave hi him look older than his thirty-one years

He turned and saw esture, then bent his head and spoke into the phone I waited, enjoying the chance to watch hin for PA rights Besides his passion for the cause, he had the good looks and charm to be its perfect poster boy The All-A onto the stage with the anirace that powered his every move, wo him pace back and forth, I felt a little weak in the knees, le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>