“When I heard that Armand Rosamilia was doing a Young Adult novel from his Dying Days universe, I was interested and a little taken aback. There aren’t many zombies as extreme and as adult as those in Dying Days. Family Ties creates an amazing story perfect for a Young Adult audience, but accessible to any genre reader. This is some of his best work.” — Jay Wilburn
Dying Days: Family Ties
A Zombie YA Novella
Chapter One
by Armand Rosamilia
“I miss my cats,” Emalee said to her brother, Mason, who was busy staring at the dead bloody man below them; it was moving but shouldn’t be.
“I miss perogies,” Mason mumbled.
“What did you say? I can never hear you.”
“Because I’m talking to myself,” he said, even lower than before.
“Stop looking at him. Come over here and help me with this,” Emalee said. She’d been trying to loosen the screws in the vent shaft for nearly an hour and had only managed to crack two of her fingernails and move the first screw half an inch.
Mason walked over, careful not to slip and fall through the holes in the crumbling floor.
Emalee went back to her work. If they didn’t get the cover off, they’d have no way to get off this floor. What was left of it, anyway. She glanced at her brother, who she wanted to be really mad at but could never stay mad at for long.
“This is your fault,” she said.
Mason shook his head and pushed her gently away. “If I hadn’t gotten us up this far, we’d be down there with him. You should be thanking me, Em.”
She refused to. She didn’t want to tell him she was scared, but, by the look in his eyes, Mason already knew. He always knew.
They could talk without saying a word, at times. It had driven mom and dad crazy, but after awhile they had ignored it.
Everyone had ignored it.
The teachers and other students at school. Give Kids the World Village staff when they went to Florida…
“I miss The Snoring Tree,” Emalee said.
“I miss my compound bow,” Mason said and stopped trying to unscrew the vent. He stood and looked around. “We have no weapons.”
“We don’t need any. I’m not going to fight anyone. I’m a kid,” Emalee said.
“We’re not kids anymore.” Mason stooped and picked up a bent piece of metal. It was round and sharp at the edge. He thrust his arm forward a few times.
“What are you doing?” his sister asked.
“Finding us weapons. Duh,” he said and continued to experiment with his dagger. It would have to do until he could find a bow and some arrows.
“I’m going to keep working on our escape since you have gotten distracted, as usual,” Emalee said. “No wonder Ms. Tosha left us.” She turned to see if her brother was going to be mad at her for mentioning what had happened.
Mason kicked a rock and watched it sail off into the sky. He seemed to be ignoring the statement. Mason walked in a circle and found the biggest piece of crumbled wall he could and went back to the edge.
“Be careful,” Emalee said. She didn’t want Mason to fall off the side and leave her all alone.
Mason hefted the block of stone and held it above his head. “If I drop it and he dies again, will you still be able to see him?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” she said.
“I want to find out,” Mason said.
Emalee didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to look over the side and see the zombie because then she’d cry again. She wanted to be done with crying already.
She heard the thud and her brother whooped in delight. Sometimes he was such a baby.
Mason clapped. “I hit it right in the head.”
“It’s a he. Not an it,” Emalee said.
“When they die, they become It. Oh, wait… was Ms. Tosha’s sister still a girl?” Mason asked.
Emalee turned to look at him because she didn’t know if he was trying to get her mad or was genuinely curious. She couldn’t tell by the blank look on his face, though.
“Help me get this loose or we’ll starve to death up here,” Emalee finally said.
Emalee didn’t think they were Its. They were still people, but they were different now. Mean. They weren’t ever going to be nice again but she still didn’t think they were no longer people.
Ms. Tosha’s twin sister was good people. Well, she had been before she died. She still followed Ms. Tosha around and Emalee had slipped and started trying to talk to Mathyu. It wasn’t her real name but she wouldn’t tell Emalee what her real name was before she died.
So Emalee asked Ms. Tosha, and she got really quiet and really mad.
“My sister is dead,” she said as she drove. She kept looking in the rearview mirror but not at Emalee, at her twin sitting next to her. “Why do you want to know her real name? And how do you know I call her Mathyu?”
“She told me,” Emalee said simply. It wasn’t a lie.
Ms. Tosha had pulled the car over and looked at Emalee. “You talked to my sister? She talked back?”
Emalee nodded.
Mason groaned. “Don’t start your weird stuff again, Em. You’re going to scare another grownup and she’ll leave us somewhere.”
Ms. Tosha looked really mad and started driving again.
That night, after they’d found a good spot to sleep in the building above the quiet street, Ms. Tosha had left two bottles of water, a bag of stale crackers and nothing else. She’d left them and Emalee knew Mason blamed her.
She kinda blamed herself.
“I miss watching Battleship,” Mason said. “I love that movie.”
“I don’t miss it. You watched it too much,” Emalee said. “I want to dance to Pink and Katy Perry again.”
“Duh. You can. Just listen to the song in your head,” Mason said.
“Fine. Then watch the movie in your head.”
“I will,” Mason said and picked up another block of the building.
“Be careful. You don’t want the rest of the floor to collapse,” Emalee said.
They’d woken to find Ms. Tosha had left them and the half of the building with the door to the hallway had crumbled and fallen in overnight, leaving a big gap and nowhere to go.
Only a lone zombie below, trying to get up to them.
Mason dropped another block and laughed. “I hit it, uh, him. But he’s not dead.”
“He is dead,” Emalee corrected him.
“I get it. Stop saying it,” Mason said. He began searching for another object to drop down.
“You’re so mean. What if he was mom or dad?” Emalee asked. She managed to move the screw out a couple of turns.
“Duh. He wouldn’t be mom,” Mason said.
Emalee shook her head but didn’t say anything. When Mason got into his fighting mode, he would never stop, even when he was wrong. He was the most stubborn boy she’d ever met. Actually, one of the few she’d ever talked to.
People called Emalee and Mason Special behind their backs, as if it was a bad thing. As if they really weren’t Special. Mom and dad knew the truth. It sometimes scared them but they knew what they really were capable of. Someday the world would see.
There is no world anymore. Duh.
Emalee turned to her brother and scrunched her face. “Get out of my head, Mason. I keep telling you to stop it.”
Mason shrugged. “I can’t help it sometimes. I’m bored. I want to go somewhere and not be so hot. I want to find someplace that has electricity so I can watch Battleship. I want to eat perogies.”
“You need to control it,” Emalee said.
“Look who’s talking? You can’t keep quiet about seeing dead people.”
Emalee felt her cheeks burning and turned away so Mason didn’t see her cry.
Whether he was still reading her thoughts or not, he didn’t say another word and went back to looking over the side.
“There are more of them now,” Mason said quietly. “I think I made too much noise dropping rocks.”
“No kidding.” Emalee got the screw turned another time, but there were four in the grate. “Stop letting them see you. They’ll go away if you stop teasing them.”
Mason came over and sat down next to Emalee, using his longer nails to turn the screws twice as fast as Em could, but still too slow.
“Where will we go?” Emalee asked.
Mason sighed. “Ms. Tosha was going south. The north is a mess now. The zombies have had it all to themselves. She was going to go to Florida and lounge on the beach and drink what other adults drink.”
Emalee clicked her tongue. “You read her mind, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” Mason said and grinned. “She thinks about weird stuff I don’t understand. I knew about her sister but you brought her up. That wasn’t good. I think Ms. Tosha was embarrassed but also mad at you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because you could talk to Mathyu. She couldn’t. I think her sister just stared at her all the time and never said a word,” Mason said. He grinned. “Maybe I’ll get lucky when you die and turn into a ghost and you won’t be able to talk to me.”
Emalee punched her brother in the arm and went back to work.
“I’m really hungry,” Mason said after ten minutes of getting his screw loose but far from out.
“Me, too. I told you not to eat everything.”
“You ate half,” Mason said defensively.
“I did before you ate part of my half.”
They were quiet; the only sounds the scraping of their fingernails against the metal and the moving zombies below.
“Why don’t they moan or make noise?” Emalee asked.
“Duh. They have no voice because they’re dead,” Mason said.
“Then why are they walking and biting people? Sometimes you make no sense.”
Mason didn’t have an answer. He got the screw over halfway out and yanked hard on it. The screw came loose and so did the grate from the wall.
The screw Emalee was working at had pulled out a few inches as well.
“Help me with it,” Mason said.
They both gripped the loose side of the grate and tugged on it. At first nothing happened, but then a small chunk of the wall fell off and the third screw came loose, still attached to the grate.
Emalee rubbed her hands. They hurt, especially the fingers she’d used to work on the screws. If Mason had only helped me from the beginning, we’d be out of the sun by now, she thought.
Sorry.
“I told you to stay out of my head.” Emalee stood and stretched her legs.
She walked as quietly as she could to the edge of the floor and peeked down.
The area below them was filled with zombies. She stopped counting after twenty because she was getting upset.
“Even if we manage to crawl through the grate to get to another part of the building, one where we can get out, we still need to get down to the street and it’s filled with them,” Emalee said.
“One thing at a time.” Mason said. He laughed and Emalee turned to see he had the grate in his hands. He held it up like he’d won the spelling bee trophy.
Emalee walked to the vent but Mason passed her.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Watch this,” Mason said.
“Stop acting like a child.”
Mason laughed. “I am a child. So are you. These are the dumb things we can still do and get away with, because we’re children.”
He went to the edge of the floor and held the grate over his head before turning to his sister. “Last chance to watch.”
Emalee hesitated before giving in. Mason was right. They were still kids, and she figured they wouldn’t have too many chances to act like it. She went and stood next to her brother.
“Which one?” Mason asked.
Emalee looked at the zombies below. “How about the one with the gray beard wearing sunglasses? With the red hat with the B on it. He looks creepy.”
Mason tossed the grate and laughed when it hit the zombie in the face, knocking off the glasses and hat.
“This isn’t fun,” Emalee admitted. “Let’s go.”
“I thought it was cool.”
Emalee groaned. “You’re such a boy.”
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Check out Family Ties from Armand Rosamilia. For zombies which are more extreme, pick up the Dying Days main series, complete with nine books.
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