I got to work too early, so no one was there but the night staff and the security guards. I was logging into my cash register in Housewares, when I realized there was only one other person in sight. Just this one girl, probably not more than sixteen, with long red hair and a real bitchy face, poking at the blenders with a certain air of not-actually-going-to-buy-anything.

I walked up to her, all ready to give her my snottiest "Can I help you with anything, ma'am?", when I realized something odd. I wanted to see her blood. Really wanted it. Maybe just a little drop of blood, but more would be better. I could picture it in my mind. It would be so red. So wet and warm and just a little bit sticky on my fingers. Blech. I shook my head and decided it would be better to just not talk to her.

That's what I decided, but it's not what I did. Instead, I walked up to the girl and touched her shoulder. I wanted to dig my nails in, to claw deep into the flesh of that shoulder. But I wasn't dumb enough to do it. I just sort of touched her, and she whirled around, gave me the evil eye, and got the hell away from me. No blood. Sad.

But then I started to worry. She was probably going to go and talk to the manager about the creepy employee who touched her. The last thing I needed was to give them an excuse to fire me. Especially since my chances for a new job were as slim as ever. It's hard to make a good impression on an interviewer when you have no pupils, you know?

So I caught up with the girl, and followed her from a distance. She didn't look for the manager, she just wandered aimlessly, with me always one aisle away. First to the CD rack to poke through and sniff haughtily at our cheesy pop selection, then to Sports to bounce all the basketballs, and finally to the jewelry counter. Most of the stuff out in the open was fake, but she went right for the gold. Well, the metaphorical gold; this is S-Mart I'm talking about. It was really only sterling silver, but it was still about sixty dollars worth of earrings, and she stuffed it all in her pocket and ran for the door.

I didn't yell "shoplifter" or set off an alarm. I just ran. I caught up with her outside the store, in the parking lot. And I had the perfect opportunity. There was no one around, I'd just caught her committing a crime, and if she got a little hurt it would just look like I'd been too enthusiastic in the pursuit of justice. I grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her entirely off the ground, and dropped her.

She landed awkwardly, on her hands and knees, and the rough pavement cut her shins.

"That hurt, you stupid fuckchop!" she swore at me, and bled. I took just a moment to look at that lovely red blood before dragging her back to give to the security guards. Just a moment. But it was nice and red. Just the way I'd pictured it.

I have a bad habit of talking to mirrors when I'm stressed. It's getting to be a really bad habit, because sometimes they talk back. Still, it usually helps. So as soon as I'd ditched the girl with the guards, I went to the men's room. It was empty. I faced down the two-handed, no-pupils guy in the mirror, and asked him if he was still Ash.

"Who are we, man? We just grew a new hand, and turned into a Deadite, and whomped some girl bloody for no good reason, and that's not really like us. Is it?"

I answered myself. "Hell yeah. She was shoplifting stuff. And look at you whining. Boo hoo, I got a new hand, waaah, I think I'll cry about it."

"But... but... Ashley, we're dead! Doesn't that bother us?"

"Nah. We're still walking around and stuff. That's not dead enough to matter."

"Wanting to hurt people matters."

"Hey, hey, don't get your panties in a twist. I'm not saying we should hurt people, just that we don't need to whinge about it. How about we actually use our brain for once, huh?"

I hate using my brain. That was okay, I didn't need to. Obviously, I already knew the answer, and was just baiting myself by pretending not to know. "Don't be cryptic with us. Just say it."

"Think; what gets rid of Deadites?"

"Uh, full bodily dismemberment. I think I could find a wood chipper, but..."

I rolled my eyes in contempt. But the fronts looked the same as the backs, so it didn't really show. "Okay, that's technically true. What gets rid of Deadites and isn't as messy?"

"I don't know! Just tell us already."

" Fine then. We're no fun. It's the book. Necronomicon ex Mortis. That damn book can do anything."

I wanted to slap myself. "That's our brilliant idea? That damn book burned up two months ago."

"Not all of it. That girl had some extra pages in a frame, remember? Some of the pages got thrown into 1300 AD, some of them got shredded. But some of them just got scattered."

I probably would have spent the rest of my shift in the bathroom, but right about then my buddy Ted walked in. He's a tall skinny guy with brown hair and big dorky glasses. We've known each other since before the whole mess with the Deadites; if there'd been space in the car he'd have gone up on the camping trip with me. I'm sure that's one coin flip he's never regretted losing. Anyway, he's one of probably two people who actually believed me about the Deadites, and considering that the other is my mom, Ted's a pretty cool guy.

"Hey Ted, we're past Back To School and the Christmas rush won't start for another couple of weeks. Perfect time to take some days off, you think?"

"I guess, why?" Ted turned and looked at me. "Oh my God! Your eyes, what happened to your eyes?"

I shrugged. "You remember how you were all pissed that Scotty called tails and you didn't get to go down to the cabin in Tennessee with us?"

"Are you answering a question with a question?"

"Am I?" I looked him right in the eyes, and he kind of shivered. "Ted, I think this is your chance to finally get to go see that cabin."

I explained all the crap that had been happening really quickly, and told him my plan; we'd go back down to that cabin, find what remained of the Necronomicon, and try and fix me.

After I was done, Ted shook his head. "Why do I have to be involved in this? Can't you just go down to the cabin yourself?"

"Yeah, but, you know, it'd be kind of creepy. Not that I've got a problem with that or anything. I just thought you might want to finally see it."

He laughed. "Hey, if you're afwaid of the big scawy monsters, I'll be glad to hold your hand while you cry for mommy."

"I'm not going to be half as scared as you are, buddy," I said. "It's just that I can't hold a shotgun and a chainsaw at the same time."

"I dibs the chainsaw."

"Can't do that, I own it so I have infinite dibs."

"Fine. Look, I'll go with you to that cabin, but on one condition."

"What's that?" I asked.

"That you shut the hell up and let me pee already!"

We managed to get the next Monday and Tuesday off, which with the weekend gave us a healthy four days to drive from Michigan down to Tennessee. Waiting until then was a pain in the ass. Because being dead really sucks.

To begin with, I couldn't eat, like I said. I couldn't sleep, either. Like the eating, I didn't need it, but sitting around an empty apartment awake all night is just brain-meltingly boring. I couldn't even... well, I may have been dead, but I sure couldn't get any rigor mortis going, if you know what I mean. No food, no sleep, and no jerking off. There go my three main joys in life.

I couldn't even go out because then I might end up alone with someone, and that seemed to be a bad thing. This whole wanting-to-make-people-bleed thing was getting really annoying. I'm glad it was just for girls. I liked Ted as a friend, but I didn't really want to see his blood. So it would probably be safe for us to be alone together on the trip.

To make a short story really short, I watched a lot of television and didn't bludgeon any more helpless little shoplifters. Although I wanted to.

Friday night, Ted and I loaded up my car. I didn't have anything to bring except for a couple changes of clothes. Well, and my chainsaw and shotgun, of course. And lots of gas and ammo, because sometimes weapons actually do have to be reloaded. And my old chemistry and engineering textbooks, because you just never know. And my CDs, because the radio stations in Tennessee suck.

The drive was pretty boring; since I didn't need to eat or sleep or anything, I just drove straight through the whole nine hours without a break. Ted mostly slept, waking up every now and then to eat Snickers bars and whine about my music. This from a guy who's said "I liked the Weird Al version better" in total seriousness.

Early Saturday morning we were in Morristown. I finally let Ted go to the bathroom, another thing I didn't have to do anymore, I sat with him and pretended to drink coffee while he ate breakfast, and then we got back in the car. From there we headed east on 11E, right on Kidwell Ridge Road, took another right on... yeah, that's enough information. I don't need anyone finding that place.

Not that there's much to find. When we got to the place where the cabin had been, there was nothing there but the stone chimney and some scattered ashes. It had burned to the ground.