Zombified

by Adam Gallardo

  Phil looked at Cody, confused.

  “It’s a quote from a movie,” I said. “A comedy. You probably haven’t seen it.”

  Phil accepted this and went back to drawing. Cody went back to his comic. I wished I could have done the same, but now I needed to figure out a way to convince Crystal of something she didn’t even want to hear about. Whee!

  The next day, I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say to Crystal, but I knew I wasn’t going to lie to her to get her to meet me. I figured I’d lay it all out while I had her on the phone. If she hung up on me, we’d have to figure out a plan B, but at least I’d keep from wasting a bunch of her time.

  I took my phone out to the backyard with me and sat on the grass in the sun. I punched in her number, hit send, and waited.

  Someone picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi, Courtney!” Crystal said. “How are you?”

  “I’m great, Crystal,” I said. “How are you?”

  “I’m great, too,” she said. “What do you want to do today?”

  I took a deep breath, completely unsure how this was going to go.

  “Crystal, I know you said you didn’t want to talk about zombies,” I said, “but we have to.”

  “Courtney,” she said in a flat tone. She sounded angry. It was the same tone she’d had after we were attacked by some zombies out at Brandon’s cabin the first time. “We really don’t.”

  “We used to be really good friends,” I said. “We used to be super close and we told one another everything. Remember that?”

  Silence on the other end, but at least she hadn’t hung up. That was something.

  “I miss those days,” I said. “And if you miss those days, if those days meant anything to you, you’ll give me five minutes to talk this through.”

  “I don’t know, Courtney,” she said, and I heard the uncertainty in her voice.

  “Two minutes,” I said. “Just give me two minutes!”

  Again, silence. I took that as the go-ahead to press on. My mind whirled. I honestly hadn’t expected to get this far.

  “You know that Brandon was using drugs, right?” I asked, but I didn’t wait for an answer. “It was Vitamin Z, Crystal, you know that—a drug made out of zombie brains. When people die of an overdose from it, they can turn into zombies. I know because I’ve seen it. I was with Brandon when he died, Crystal.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “And when he came back, he wasn’t like any zombies you’ve ever seen. He was fast; he was, I don’t know, aware.”

  “He was a roadrunner,” Crystal said.

  “Have you seen them?” I asked.

  “No, but some of the boys claimed to,” she said. “I didn’t believe them.”

  Others had told her. That was the wedge I needed.

  “Believe them, Crystal,” I said. I stood up and started pacing back and forth across the lawn. “I’ve seen a couple of big, organized attacks. My dad died in one.”

  I let that hang in the air. I hadn’t expected to say it; it just popped out of my mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Courtney,” Crystal said.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “It had nothing to do with you, but this does. Listen, now that you know what’s going on, you can’t ignore it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “If you don’t trust me,” I said, “that’s fine, but what about the other people who’ve told you the same kinds of things? Do you trust them?”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Crystal said.

  “All I want is to talk to some of these guys who’ve seen what I’ve seen,” I said. “Something big is coming. I think I know where and when.”

  “The kegger,” she said.

  “The kegger,” I agreed.

  “These guys, Courtney,” she said. “No matter what you say, they won’t want to cancel the kegger. They’ve been looking forward to it all year long. If you ask them to cancel it, they’ll pretend they don’t believe you.”

  “Crystal,” I said, “I’d never dream of canceling it, or of asking folks to stay away. I want as many people there as possible.”

  We talked a few more minutes, but she’d already made up her mind and I knew it. She rung off saying she’d make some calls and get back to me.

  I went back into the house. I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a big glass of water. My mouth was completely dry and I was sweating. I couldn’t believe that I’d convinced Crystal, but part of me thought she must have wanted to be convinced on some level, even if it was subconsciously. For the millionth time, I wished my dad was around so I was able to talk to him about all of this. I gulped down the water and went off to find Phil and Cody.

  They sat on the floor on opposite sides of Phil’s room. They were tossing a ball back and forth and talking. They fell silent when I walked in.

  “Well?” Cody asked.

  “How’d it go?” Phil asked.

  “I convinced her,” I said. I climbed up onto the bed and curled up. I thought about closing my eyes, but there was still stuff to do.

  “How’d you do that?” Cody asked.

  “Turns out she’d already been hearing some stuff from people she knows,” I said. “Hearing the stuff from me just reinforced what she’d been thinking.”

  “What’s next?” Phil asked.

  “Wait for her to call,” I said. “I don’t think it’ll be too long. In the meantime . . .”

  “What?” Phil asked.

  “Let’s take a trip to a gun store,” I said. “I want to buy you both another late birthday gift. I want one for myself, too.”

  Cody grinned and Phil just said, “Okay.”

  We were driving over to a gun shop on Twelfth Street that was open on Sundays when my phone rang. It was Crystal.

  “Hi,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Phil looked at me in the rearview mirror. I mouthed Crystal’s name and he nodded, then went back to concentrating on the road.

  “I talked to those guys,” she said. “They want to hear what you have to say.”

  “Okay,” I said, “that’s good. Thank you. I’ll figure out a place to meet sometime this week. Soon, I hope, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “And, hey, listen,” I said. “I’d still like it if we got together sometime. Maybe after all of this bullshit is done and we won’t mention zombies once.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “Let me know when and where to meet.”

  We said our good-byes and I hung up. I lay my head back and closed my eyes. I was exhausted. I liked it so much better when people either did what I told them to or when I just went off and did my own thing without worrying about anyone else. I was not cut out to be a negotiator.

  “Sounds like that went well,” Phil said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They want in. We need to talk to everyone and figure out a time we can all get together.”

  “Sure,” Phil said.

  He turned left and the bumping of the car told me we’d pulled into a parking lot.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me a second.”

  I opened my eyes and sat up. I pulled my backpack up off the floor and unzipped it. I pulled out the bag of drug money. I could have used the debit card that was tied to my bank account for this shopping trip, but I didn’t really want the lawyer, Alvarez, to know about it.

  When he saw the money, Cody’s eyes grew about ten times larger than usual.

  “What the hell, Courtney?” he asked.

  “Just some walking around cash,” I said.

  I counted out more than I thought I’d need, then I counted out some more. I really had no idea how much high-quality weaponry cost.

  “So what exactly are we doing here?” Phil asked.

  “We’re all going to pick out the finest firearms we can find,” I said. “And it’s my treat. Come next Saturday, I want us all coming away from our little reenactment of the gun
fight at the OK Corral. How are your aunt and uncle fixed for guns?” I asked Phil.

  I counted out some more money.

  The inside of the Gun Wrack—yeah, it was misspelled, I have no idea why—was so brightly lit that I had to shield my eyes even after having been outside in the full sunlight. Maybe being temporarily blinded discouraged shoplifting.

  Every square foot of the place was crammed with deadly weapons. Rifles, both for hunting and the automatic kind that are only meant for killing humans and the formerly human; all sorts of shotguns; bows and crossbows. It was like a candy shop for Second Amendment aficionados.

  “How can I help you kids?” the guy behind the counter asked. He was a big, beefy guy. Bald and red like he spent all day in the sun rather than under fluorescent lights. Behind him on the wall hung some less conventional weapons: AK-47s, assault rifles, something that looked like a grenade launcher.

  “Well, sir,” I said, “my friends and I were thinking of buying some shotguns. Some top-of-the-line stuff.”

  “I already have a shotgun,” Phil said.

  “That thing Buddha gave you?” I asked.

  I held up a Benelli M4. It looked like a shogun that was created by the same evolutionary process that produced the wasp.

  “Wouldn’t you rather have one of these?” I asked.

  “Well . . .” he said.

  “And did you kids bring your folks along with you?” the guy asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I did bring my uncle Benjamin.” I took a huge wad of cash out of my pocket. “And a bunch of his friends, too.”

  “Was that supposed to be clever?” the guy asked.

  “I had hoped yes,” I said.

  “Listen,” he said, “do you know how much trouble I’d get into, selling weapons to minors? I’d lose my license. Now run on home and come back with a grown-up.”

  I decided to stop acting like an idiot and go the polite route. I wished I’d done that to begin with, but I had poor impulse control.

  “Actually, sir,” I said. “I’m an emancipated minor. I can make decisions and purchases on my own.”

  “What about them?” he asked.

  “We’re both eighteen,” Phil said. “We can show you our driver’s licenses.”

  “And I’m sure they’re not fakes,” the guy said.

  “Who gets a fake ID to show that they’re eighteen?” Cody asked. “Wouldn’t we have some that say we’re twenty-one so we could drink?”

  “Right,” the guy said. “That makes a lot of sense. Well, let’s see what we can kit you out with today.”

  Cody had made a convincing argument. This was turning into a really interesting day.

  After he got over being annoyed with me, the clerk really got into helping us. He loved talking about guns and showing off how much he knew.

  In the end, I got the Benelli that I’d shown Phil. It was similar to the one I’d used during the zombie attack last year and I knew I’d been happy with it. The boys both bought nice Remingtons. Phil went with a more traditional model, but Cody chose a tactical model with a pistol grip and folding stock. I got the clerk to put shoulder straps on all of them, then sprang for ammo belts that strapped across our chests, and enough shotgun shells to sustain a small war. Which was probably what we were walking into.

  “How are you all fixed for handguns?” the guy asked. He showed a glass case filled with any kind of pistol you might have wanted.

  “I’ve got this already,” I said and showed him my revolver. He made noises like he approved.

  “How about you boys?” he asked Phil and Cody.

  “The shotgun will be enough for me,” Phil said. Cody looked like he was on the verge of asking to look at something from the case. Phil nudged him in the ribs. “Isn’t the shotgun enough?”

  “Yeah, right,” Cody said. “That’s plenty. Thanks.”

  “If you say so,” the guy said.

  He totaled everything and even threw us a volume discount. Still, the total was pretty impressive. Cody whistled low when he heard the figure. I counted out bills and laid them on the counter as I went. When I was done, the clerk shuffled the stack into a neat pile.

  “You kids aren’t gonna use those to rob banks now, are you?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We won’t tell the police where we got them.”

  Big piles of cash seemed to improve the guy’s sense of humor because he laughed pretty heartily at that.

  He threw in some soft gun cases for us to carry our purchases out in and he showed us the door.

  “I do believe I may close early today,” he said. “You kids have a good day!”

  We all thanked him and stepped outside. Phil opened the trunk and we stowed our new arsenal in it.

  “Where to now?” he asked.

  “Let’s go break in these bad boys,” Cody said. “We can go out into the hills and shoot some stuff.”

  “I think I need to go home,” I said, and Cody immediately grew a pouty bottom lip.

  “Finals start tomorrow,” I told him. “I don’t know about you, but I want to study a little more. I mean, we may actually have a future beyond Saturday.”

  “Maybe Friday after our last final we can go out and shoot these,” Phil said. “We’ll want to be at least a little bit familiar with them before we use them to, you know . . .”

  We all knew. If we wanted to live to see graduation the following week, we’d all need to be ready to kill a lot of zombies. A lot of our former classmates, I was guessing.

  “Yeah, fine,” Cody said. “We can go shooting later in the week. But I don’t even know why you’re worried about it,” he said to me. “As if you’d ever fail a test.”

  I smiled at him. “That is the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Cody. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome?” he said.

  We all piled into the car and headed back home.

  I thought about all of the firepower in the trunk and I hoped it might be enough to get us past next Saturday alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A Common Cause

  I only had one final on Monday, and that was for Organic Chemistry later in the afternoon at the community college. The boys and I spent the morning talking to people, arranging a time to meet. We gathered phone numbers for everyone and sent out group texts.

  After several rounds of texting, we decided on Wednesday night after school.

  “Where do you want to meet?” Phil asked me after that was settled.

  I thought about it for a few minutes. We needed a public space; parents might get suspicious if all of us showed up at someone’s house. But we needed to be able to have privacy, too.

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “The IKE Box.” That was a local coffee shop. The location had originally been a funeral home, believe it or not, and there were lots of rooms on the main floor that people used for meetings. The owners just asked that everyone coming in for a meeting buy something.

  When we sent that suggestion out to the group, the response was almost immediate, and everyone said yes.

  I stared at the screen of my phone for a minute, not quite believing we’d actually pulled off arranging a meeting of all the various cliques at school. It was like we’d put together a UN summit for the Middle East or something, only a lot more of the delegates would be wearing Axe body spray than at the real UN. I hoped.

  “We did it,” I said. “Unbelievable.”

  “Yeah,” Phil said. “Great job.”

  “You, too,” I said and bumped him with my shoulder.

  “Now we can concentrate on our finals,” he said. “So, you know, yay?”

  It was a relief to have it all planned out and to be able to concentrate on something as mundane as standardized testing. So that’s what we did for the next couple of days.

  I think Phil’s aunt and uncle suspected there was something going on, but they must have chalked it up to us being nervous about finals. I mean, there was no way they’d have suspected what
it really was.

  Wednesday rolled around, and the four of us went over to the Ike Box to claim a room and wait for everyone else to show up. Yes, there were four of us. Cody’s girlfriend, Hannah, insisted on coming with us. Now, I didn’t really have anything against her, but I didn’t know her very well, either, so I wasn’t too comfortable around her. Then there was the fact that she’d had sex with Cody and every time I looked at her, I imagined it. It wasn’t pleasant.

  People started to trickle in not too long after we settled in, all of them with cups of coffee. We made several attempts at small talk, but really, there was nothing for us to talk about except for the one thing that had brought us together. And there was no point in talking about that until everyone showed up.

  Elsa and Brandi and a few others from my former peer group showed up. Elsa was the only one to make a point of coming over to say hi. Everyone else settled on giving me the stink-eye. It was very neighborly.

  The last folks to show up were Crystal and the jock delegation. I recognized a couple of the guys. Michael and Dillon, two of the dudes who were organizing the kegger; Zander Matthews, the captain of the football team; and Gabe, the guy who thought he was so clever writing about Scooby-Doo, and the one I’d made look pretty dumb in front of Crystal. He didn’t look too happy to see me. I hoped he wouldn’t be a problem.

  “I think that’s everyone,” Phil said, and he got up to close the door to the room.

  As he swung the door shut, a hand reached in and stopped him. The door swung out again and Warren stepped in, looking cool in all black Chucks, jeans, and a T-shirt. He grinned at us, then found a seat. I noticed that he hadn’t bought a drink.

  Phil recovered. “Thanks for coming, everyone,” he said as he sat down. “I think it’s pretty cool that we can all come together like this and, you know, have a common cause. Seems like we don’t all see eye to eye about many things.” He shrugged. “That’s all I had to say. Now I think Courtney ought to talk.”

  I cleared my throat, but before I said anything, Dillon spoke up.

  “Before you talk,” he said, “I need to say something. I already told Crystal this, but I’ll say it to you.” He looked right at me. “Any talk of shutting down the kegger, and I’m out of here.”