War Pig began to hyperventilate. He bent into a crouch and flexed, arms extended for battle.
“They get you, promise you won’t eat me,” Estrada whispered to Nero. “Promise you eat someone else.”
Six feet.
“Deal,” Nero said, bracing against the hinges.
This is gonna hurt.
“Oh, man!” Idle whined.
“Word,” Billy said.
Three feet.
The shamblers converged, arms raised, mouths open, in a pack, drooling as one.
And then the doors spread wide.
The boys fell backward in a heap as the doors shut again and the bolt was thrown. Infects slammed against the heavy wood.
Howling with pure rage.
NERO HELPED ESTRADA UP. IDLE AND BILLY scrambled away from the door, which buckled inward. The sounds of frustration and hunger from outside were muffled, the highs and lows cut out, resulting in a steady middle of want. Which somehow made it worse.
The boys took turns flinching with each bang. Especially when Swann’s voice, higher than the rest, keened with fury.
Like an ax that might cleave through the heavy wood.
But the doors, crossed with steel braces, held.
They were in a large room, dark except for a flickering glow. Nero could just make out the walls, but not the far corners. The ceiling was spanned by massive exposed beams. Torn furniture and broken glass was strewn across the floor, legless chairs and stained rugs rolled up and shoved into corners. There was a single staircase leading to a second-floor balustrade that ran along one wall, rusted armor mounted in the eaves. Huge oil paintings, torn and rotting, hung without frames. They were grotesques, headless viscounts and skeletal maidens. Knights-drowned water nymphs. Ghouls knelt among rapt animals, teeth yellowed and ready.
In the center of the room was an enormous stone fireplace.
In the fireplace was a roaring fire.
And by the roaring fire were five girls.
Half an IT van’s worth.
None of them Petal.
Wait, are you sure? Check again.
Joanjet stood in front, purple topknot severe as ever, wiry arms crossed over her chest. Raekwon stood behind her, pink jumpsuit pants hacked off into short-shorts over thermal underpants that clung to her long legs. Her tight cornrows had little shells crimped onto the ends. She held an ancient musket that looked like something Roger Williams conquered Rhode Island with.
The others held fireplace pokers and kitchen knives.
“Right on,” Estrada said.
“Seriously,” War Pig said.
Idle and Billy slapped five. “We must be a couple of dead martyrs, ’cause here’s our seventy-two virgins!”
“Quiet!” Joanjet said.
The boys stopped cheering.
Raekwon raised the musket.
Behind them, Infects continued to pound.
Joanjet gave a half smile. Her jumpsuit top was sleeveless, a strip of pink nylon wrapped around each wrist like sweatbands. “Save that frat routine for someone who gives a shit. If you want to stay in our lodge, you need to learn the rules.”
ZOMBRULE #1O: Girls with muskets make the rules.
“If we want?” Estrada said.
“Your lodge?” War Pig said.
“We know the rules,” Billy said. “We’re fast; they’re slow. They eat neck steak; we —”
“Not the zombie rules, foolio,” Raekwon interrupted. “The Delinquents Are Lucky They’re Not Outside rules. The Complain One More Time and You’re Plateau Buffet rules. The I Don’t Trust You Assholes as Far as I Could Kick a Lemon Pie rules.”
“Oh,” Idle said.
“Oh,” Billy said.
Sad Girl and Lush looked embarrassed, hugging their arms and shivering. Cupcake covered her eyes with a corner of the huge flannel shirt she wore over her shoulders like a cape.
“You’re guests,” Joanjet said. “Where I’m from, rude guests get sent home early.”
“Can you dig it?” Raekwon said.
“Totally,” Nero said.
“Absolutely,” Estrada said.
“What about you, muscle-head?” Joanjet asked, but War Pig wasn’t listening. He was staring at Raekwon.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”
“Good.”
The two groups eyed each other warily.
“There’s only five of you left?” Nero asked, reading the names of the girls from their jumpsuit tags.
Lush was Asian, plump, with a schoolgirl bob and a silver nose ring. Sad Girl was tall and angular, a permanent frown battling the manic sparkle in her eyes. Raekwon, even holding the gun (or maybe especially holding the gun), was sleek and hot. And scowling. Cupcake was farthest away, a pale brunette with short bangs and cat’s-eye glasses. She seemed to be in shock — hugging her knees, rocking back and forth and humming to herself.
“Are there only five of you left?” Joanjet answered, as the wings tattooed on her neck seemed to flex in the firelight.
“We lost a few good men on the climb up,” Idle admitted.
“What good men?” Billy said.
“Okay, so we lost a few men on the climb up.”
“Anyway, there’s six of us if you count Pacino.”
“Who’s Pacino?”
Raekwon held up the musket. “My gun.”
“You named your gun?”
“Why not?”
“Hell, it’s the Zomb-A-Pocalypse,” War Pig said. “I had a gun, I’d probably name it too.”
Ask them, already.
“Where’s Petal?” Nero blurted. His voice, raw and desperate, seemed to echo around the room.
Cupcake began to cry, burnt-firewood mascara leaving black trails down her cheeks.
The other girls looked at one another.
“Where do you think she is?” Raekwon said.
The pounding on the door increased, infect weight making the braces bow inward.
“More importantly,” Joanjet said. “Where’s Swann?”
Billy shrugged. “She the one out there sounds like a demented bird.”
Joanjet slipped into the darkness and then reappeared at the window on the second floor.
“Wait. She’s naked?”
“It wasn’t our idea,” War Pig said as Joanjet came back into the light. “She tried to eat us about six times on the way up here.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Skank.”
“Zomb-bitch.”
“It’s not funny,” Estrada said. “People are dead. A lot of them.”
“I don’t think it is, either,” Sad Girl said, taking a step closer to Estrada.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
“Can you at least put down the guns and knives so we can get closer to the fire?” Nero asked quietly.
“Not yet,” Joanjet said. “Are any of you bitten?”
“No,” War Pig said. “We would have turned already.”
The girls shook their heads.
“Some turn faster than others.”
“Either way, we’re not taking any chances,” Raekwon said. “Strip down for a body check.”
“Screw that,” Idle said. “You guys strip down for a hottie check.”
Raekwon pointed the musket at Billy’s chest. The other girls formed a half circle with their knives. Sad Girl looked at Estrada and shrugged.
“That antique even work?” War Pig asked.
Raekwon thumbed the hammer back. “Want to find out?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But not about that.”
Raekwon blushed, lowering the gun until Joanjet glared at her.
“We did a check ourselves,” Lush said. “Okay? First thing when we got in here. It’s nothing personal. Just . . . smart.”
“It’s true, you guys,” Sad Girl said.
“You don’t want to, the exit’s right there,” Raekwon said.
Idle and Billy flashed gang sign. East coast, west coast.
Those boys
about to bust a move. And then it’s gonna get ugly.
“I don’t mind,” Nero said. He stepped forward, took off his boots, and unzipped his jumpsuit — wearing only smiley-face boxers. His lucky boxers.
“For real?”
“You leave your Snoopy ones at home?”
Idle laughed and went to slap five with Raekwon. She shoved the barrel in his face.
“Your turn, honey.”
The other boys looked at one another.
“Hey, why not?” Estrada said. He unzipped his jumpsuit and took off his shirt.
Sad Girl gasped.
Even by the dim firelight, it was clear that he was covered with scars, from his neck to his knees.
He looked like a keloid yakuza. Or a brown whipping post.
“What are you, a pirate?” Joanjet asked.
“More like a galley slave, yo,” Idle said.
Estrada shrugged. He and Nero stood side by side.
Nearly naked.
In front of a burning log.
And five angry girls.
ANGIE JESKEY LOOKED A LITTLE LIKE PETAL. But harder. Less refined. More like a sketch of Petal on a bar napkin. A bad sketch that had gotten wet, some of the marker bleeding toward the edges. Still, when Annabelle Lu came up in the caf and said, “Angie Jeskey likes you,” Nick listened. In fact, he doubled up on some balls and called her that night. But Angie wouldn’t answer. Her mom picked up and went, “Sorry, Nicholas, Angela is not available,” even though he could practically smell her grape gum through the phone. Angie most certainly was available, right there, at the kitchen table, shaking her head I’m not here.
It wasn’t until he’d given up, actually pretty relieved about it, that she started to text him in class, text him in the hall, text him in gym, inviting herself over to study.
“Okay,” Nick said. “I guess.”
Angie laughed and the next afternoon was sitting in his room wearing an orange sweater, a turtleneck, and a ponytail. Blond with black roots. She slipped off her shoes. There was a hole in one of her stockings. They looked at her calculus book for about twenty minutes while her toes rubbed his beneath the desk, and then she leaned over. The book fell to the floor. The binding split open. They started making out.
Her lipstick on his lips, her lipstick on his teeth. The lipstick that was on his teeth back on hers.
Tongues swirled clockwise, counterclockwise. Rhombus. Tetrahedron. Ellipse. Push, pull. Her mouth tasted like chips and gum. She’d obviously had a lot of practice, running him through the paces like a quarter horse getting his morning workout.
They shifted neck positions. Banged teeth. Soft kisses, hard kisses, long kisses, short kisses.
But no matter what Nick tried, she didn’t taste like Petal.
At least what he was fairly sure Petal tasted like.
Angie put his hand on her leg and then pretended to push it away. She slid his fingers into her waistband and then angrily pulled them back out.
He accepted this paradigm as their clothes began to come off, item by item, sure she would soon rear back, shake her mane, clip him with a hoof, and then gallop off over the hills, never to be seen again.
Which he was half hoping for.
It felt good to be holding someone, but she was the wrong someone. In every way. He wanted to stand up, make some excuse, but couldn’t find the strength. He knew if his friends could see him, they would laugh, call him a pussy. “What, you gonna turn that shit down?”
The skirt came off. Nick could see the top of her panties, green with a pink frilly trim. They didn’t look new. There were little pills of thread balled at the hem, like an old friend he’d never been introduced to and wasn’t sure he ever really wanted to meet.
Angie put one hand on Nick’s shoulder and stared into his eyes like an actress in a lawyer show trying to remember her lines.
Nick’s pants dropped, gathering around his ankles, for the first time in his life almost naked in front of someone besides the guys on the track team.
Just a pair of boxers between them.
A thin layer of fabric holding back the elemental truth.
They made out standing up. Angie locked on to him like a remora. Nick couldn’t breathe. He started to push back, to groan, which she took as encouragement and wrapped even tighter. Her mouth was too warm, tiny bumps of tongue rubbing sourly against the grain. He managed to lever his forearm against her chest, about to shove, when the door swung open, pinning them in a coffin of hallway light.
Amanda.
She stood there behind ridiculously thick glasses, eyes magnified to enormous size, holding the Palmbot against her thin dress.
“Nick? Why in your boxers, Nick?”
Angie screamed. She let go, grabbing a pillow off the floor to cover up with.
“Why the girl scream, Nick? Huh? Nick?”
“God,” Angie said. “Can’t you put her in her room or something?”
“A-dog, buddy? Think you can go back downstairs?”
“Too loud, Nick? Want to play? Up here?”
The Dude was in the kitchen, arguing with the blender.
“What’s he doing?” Angie asked.
“Probably making a smoothie.”
“Nope? Homemade? Suntan lotion?” Amanda said.
“I swear, your family is so fricking weird!”
Amanda lay down on the floor next to Nick’s bed, in her usual spot. There was a divot practically worn into the floor. She got comfy, popped in a disc, her arm lying over Angie’s foot.
Which caused Angie to scream again.
There were footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.
The Dude cursing.
Angie pulled on her sweater and stuffed her bra into her backpack. When the Dude reached the doorway, she pushed past him without a word. A minute later, the front door slammed.
“There a problem here?”
The Dude had smoothie on his chin. He smelled like a barrel of coconut oil.
“No, no problem.”
“Smiley faces?” he said. “For real?”
Nick looked down at his boxers. “Well, yeah. You know.”
Amanda paused her game, Jack Drac and the Guzzleblood Six.
“Different disc, Nick? This one? Boring?”
The Dude went back downstairs, chiding the handrail the entire way. Nick handed Amanda one of her favorites, Multilevel Smurf Target Practice for Small-Caliber Weaponry, and then sat on the bed, head in hands.
There were two hours before his next shift.
And then eight hours of chopping up chickens.
Tiny little bodies.
Pluck, gut, quarter.
Bread, pack, freeze.
Plenty of time to come up with something to say to Petal.
Something besides, “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I totally couldn’t stop thinking about you pretty much the entire time my tongue was clamped inside Angie Jesky’s mouth.”
THEY STOOD THERE BY FIRELIGHT, NEARLY naked.
Everyone staring at Estrada’s scars.
“What happened to you?” Sad Girl finally whispered.
“I got an uncle into discipline.”
No one said anything.
“Had an uncle,” Estrada clarified, pulling his clothes back on.
“I don’t understand,” Cupcake said.
“You don’t have to,” Nero said.
Estrada looked at him and nodded as Joanjet examined the gash on Nero’s hand.
“This is fresh.”
“It’s a cut, not a bite. It has stitches, not teeth marks.”
It really should have teeth marks, though, shouldn’t it?
Joanjet frowned but let it go.
War Pig stripped down. Raekwon whistled. The other girls all turned to look. He was lean, cut, with abs like a run of moguls. A knot of red hair gathered at the center of his chest and ran in a line down to the elastic band of his underwear. He looked like a guy who wanted to kick sand in your face and then kick you in
the face for swallowing his sand.
Joanjet, unimpressed, checked him carefully for bites.
“Okay, you’re good.”
Idle stepped up next, tan and smooth, no muscle to speak of, rocking Yves Saint Laurent underwear. He grinned, a mouthful of chrome, posed and flexed.
“Okay. Clean.”
Relatively, but could probably use a quick taint scrub.
Billy was the same, down to his silk Hilfigers. He walked fierce and thigh-first, hand on hip, then spun and returned like a runway model. Sad Girl and Lush giggled.
“Clean.”
The boys put their clothes back on and then knelt by the fire.
“So now what?” Estrada asked as the pounding outside became rhythmic, call-and-response. The noise reverberated through every wall, the lodge surrounded.
“That’s what we been talking about since we got here,” Raekwon said. “Rest? Run? Fight? Dig a freaking tunnel?”
“I think we should separate,” Joanjet said. “Girls on one side of the room. Boys on the other.”
How . . . Catholic.
“Wait, what?” Estrada said.
“No,” War Pig said. “Why?”
“I don’t want to separate,” Sad Girl said.
“Me neither,” Lush said, her nose ring twinkling in the firelight.
Joanjet looked at Raekwon, who looked at War Pig, who shrugged.
“We’re staying together,” Nero said. Everyone stared at him. He cleared his throat. “It’s just, you know, the more of us the better. No one wandering off alone into the darkness.”
“Thank you,” Raekwon said, flexing her calves. “Splitting up is just a cheap way to kill off the secondary cast, and I am totally part of the first cast.”
Everyone laughed.
“But sooner or later there’s going to be too many Z for that front door to hold,” Nero said. “There’s got to be something we can do besides just wait for them to bust in.”
“What if the whole country’s like this?” War Pig said quietly. “Surrounded. Maybe even the whole world. For an escape plan to work, there has to be somewhere to escape to.”
“But won’t people come?” Cupcake asked, her bangs pasted to her forehead. “Like, someone in a Jeep? In a uniform? And tell us what to do?”
Billy laughed. “Yeah, right. There ain’t gonna be no rescue. No news crew. No one even knows we’re here.”
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