Eat, Brains, Love

by Jeff Hart

  “Unflappable,” offered Tom.

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “I was far from that today.”

  “We were both pretty flapped.”

  Tom flashed me a guilty look. “But I’m supposed to be your guardian.”

  I waved my hands, demonstrating my aliveness. “You guarded.”

  “I’ve never seen one of them talk before,” he said. “The girl one talked to us.”

  “Yeah, that was freaky,” I said, although I hadn’t really been thinking about my brief exchange with Amanda. I was more stuck on Jake—the gruesome wound on his abdomen, his wide-eyed look, the way he carried Amanda out of danger. He had seemed pretty unflappable. Were zombies supposed to be unflappable? It was all kind of confusing.

  I had to remind myself—again—that he had eaten a bunch of kids and needed to be put down.

  Anyway, Tom and I stood on the lawn back at RRHS as the chaos unfolded around us. NCD reinforcements had arrived: guys in jumpsuits like mine, other more important-looking ones with cheap suits and earpieces. The local cops had shown up too, manning a perimeter of yellow tape and flashing blue lights. They kept the journalists at bay and gently escorted the crying parents away. We never let the cops near the actual scene—they’d get fed the same cover story as the rest of the civilians, a cover story I’m sure Harlene and her boss back in Washington had already cooked up.

  “School shooting,” Tom said as if he’d read my mind.

  “Seriously?”

  Tom nodded.

  “That’s screwed up.”

  Containment—that’s a nice way to describe killing a zombie—was only part of my unit’s job. The other part, the one that wasn’t nearly as cool as doing telepathic CSI on the freshly eaten, was called “Incident Management.” A bunch of dead kids was an “Incident” and we were here to “Manage” it.

  They handed out the color pamphlet during the second week of NCD training. The cover read AM I READY TO LEARN ABOUT ZOMBIES? and pictured an elderly man with a curious look on his face. Inside the pamphlet were a bunch of pictures of people with similar wondering looks, each of them helpfully labeled, like SMALL-TOWN SHERIFF, or KINDLY DOCTOR, or YOUR MOM.

  In bright-red block letters above each picture was the word NO.

  “The point is,” our instructor intoned, “that our leaders in Washington don’t think the general populace is ready to learn about the zombie outbreak.”

  Oh good, because the pamphlet didn’t make that clear.

  I’ll be honest; this part kind of freaked me out. If I was just an ordinary civilian, I’d definitely want to know if there was a plague that might one day turn my neighbor into a superstrong, decomposing, human-eating machine. That’s what they invented that annoying emergency-broadcasting thing for, right? This is not a test, there are monsters coming to eat you. . . . I’d want to know that. I’d want to know that big-time.

  On the other hand, and this probably doesn’t sound very mature, but it felt like I was in on something. The president himself trusted me with top-secret information. I was the first line of defense between America and the undead. Sort of. That was pretty freaking cool. So what if, in every disaster movie I’d ever seen, government secrecy led to even bigger disasters? This was real life. We were doing the right thing, keeping the public safe.

  One of the other trainees raised his hand. “Is it true that we’ve completely lost Iowa?”

  Our instructor glanced over his shoulder to where Mr. Bow Tie was sitting, hidden behind a newspaper. He’d been observing this class from the start, making everyone including the instructor uneasy. Now, he lowered his paper, neatly folded it, and smiled indulgently at the question asker.

  “Where did you hear that nonsense?” asked Mr. Bow Tie.

  “There are rumors floating around campus,” replied the guy nervously. “People, um, talk.”

  “Of course they do,” said Mr. Bow Tie, motioning for the instructor to resume his lecture.

  “Part of your job will be to make sure the public remains safe, comfortable, and unaware,” the instructor said, ignoring the question. But I was paying more attention to Mr. Bow Tie now. He was still eyeing my too-curious classmate, typing something into his cell phone without looking down at the keys.

  Come to think of it, after that day, I don’t remember seeing the question asker again.

  I’d done my fair share of Incident Management since joining the NCD, but never one as big as Ronald Reagan High School. There was that football game in Cleveland where a fan had transformed and eaten a couple of his pals before being subdued. We’d played that one like a couple of rival fans had got out of control and started a vicious brawl. Most other times, the attacks were isolated and the zombies easily tracked down. In those cases, there wasn’t as much cover-up needed. We leaked stories to the papers about domestic violence, or home invasion, or grizzly bear attacks, or weird new drugs that made people go crazy. As for the people who weren’t so easily convinced—for them, we had “special techniques.” And just like that, our version of events became the truth.

  But this time, there were so many bodies and killers still on the loose. Plus, the attack had taken place at a posh suburban high school. There were a lot of eyeballs on this one.

  We were going to be here all night.

  So, Tom and I sat on the RRHS lawn, waiting for our orders. We shared a Ziploc bag of mandarin oranges Tom had packed that morning, and I kept bothering him about my earworm.

  It was past ten that night when another telepath named Linda came to find me. Tom was dozing in the grass and I was watching the stricken parents milling about the police barricade. There were a lot of kids still sequestered in the school, awaiting NCD questioning.

  “Cass, they want you inside,” said Linda, dabbing at her bloody nose with a crusty paper towel.

  Linda and I had similar jobs, except she was in her thirties and nowhere near as good a telepath. Let’s just say I’d never gotten any bloody noses from overexertion. If they’d flown Linda out from DC, they must’ve really needed all hands on deck.

  “Me too?” asked Tom.

  “Actually, Harlene wants you to go grab some coffees.”

  “At last, a job I am uniquely suited for,” declared Tom before squeezing my arm. “Don’t work too hard, Psychic Friend.”

  Linda led me into the school. We walked down a hallway where a line of students waited, some of them blood-spattered and wrapped in blankets, all of them exhausted. They leaned or sat against the lockers, under the guard of a Jumpsuit holding a submachine gun. I was picking up serious anxiety vibes. How could we make a traumatic day even more traumatic? Just like this.

  I felt like maybe I should say something comforting because I was their age. Like, It’s cool, you guys, we don’t mean you any harm, sorry your friends are dead. But I doubted it would do any good. The kids not huddled together crying were fixing me with suspicious looks. I wasn’t one of them; I was one of the Jumpsuits.

  Harlene had set up shop in one of the classrooms. She sat behind the teacher’s desk, attendance sheets and permanent records piled up before her. We needed to go through every student before they’d be allowed to leave.

  I glanced around the room—there was a big antismoking poster on one wall, all yellowed teeth and cancer-speckled gum lines. Next to that was one of a couple kids in torn jeans and flannels—a total relic of the ’90s—that explained why it was “boss” to wait to have sex.

  “Health class,” I observed. “Ironic choice.”

  Harlene gave me a tired smile. “You up for this, hon?”

  I nodded and plopped down into a chair next to her. Jamison showed in the first kid. She looked like a freshman. She was shaking like a leaf as she slid into the mustard-colored desk-chair combo pulled closest to Harlene.

  “Everything’s okay now,” said Harlene, her voice soothing.

  “When can I go home?” asked the girl.

  “Soon,” replied Harlene.

  The girl’s
name was Victoria. She hadn’t been in the cafeteria when the incident took place; she’d been in math class, struggling with sine and cosine. She’d heard rumors, though, that Amanda Blake, the most popular girl in the school, had eaten a bunch of kids. Some other guy had been involved too. Some stoner dork whose name she didn’t know.

  Of course, Victoria didn’t actually tell us any of that. I picked it up off the surface of her mind.

  Every mind might be like a house, but that doesn’t mean I can just go barging in. Well—I could, except it’s unpleasant for me and even worse for the mind on the receiving end. You have to be subtle: peek in the windows, press your ear up to the door, and pick up whatever stray thoughts you can. It was a lot easier when a person was scared or tired, like Victoria. When you’re that way—unfocused—thoughts have a way of just shooting off your brain like sparks.

  It was just like the psychometric test they gave me back in school. I didn’t know what shapes were printed on the military recruiters’ cards, but the recruiters did, and they were thinking about them. Thoughts close to the surface like that are easy to pick up on.

  Going deeper than that top layer of thoughts, or staying linked to someone like I was with Jake, that was harder. Physical contact helped, or an object like The House of Mirth. Something to focus on. And I couldn’t keep up that contact for long. I could still feel Jake out there, in the back of my mind, but that link would grow fainter soon. It’s why we tried to track down the zombies as quickly as possible.

  But for now, we had to deal with Victoria and the rest. Incident Management was tonight’s top priority.

  “I’m sorry to keep you here so late on such a horrible day,” Harlene said to Victoria, her voice gently authoritative. “We’ve just got to talk to every student about the shooting.”

  “Shooting?” asked Victoria, her eyes widening.

  Harlene laid out the story. Frustrated popular girl and her secret, unpopular boy-toy hatch a plan to get revenge on a school that never took them seriously. Guns purchased on the internet, a cold-blooded killing spree, a cowardly escape. Honestly, it’s not something that would pass the smell test. It sounded like the plot from a bad after-school special.

  That’s why I was there.

  I closed my eyes and slipped up against Victoria’s mind, being as gentle as possible. It was sort of like playing Operation on the astral plane. Don’t push too hard or the alarm buzzes and everyone gets a migraine.

  As Harlene laid out the details, I nudged Victoria toward believing them.

  Imagine every piece of information you hear entering the labyrinth of your mind via one of two doors: “truth” and “bullshit.” (It’s actually a lot more complicated than that; there are doors for “things I want to believe” and “things I believe to make myself feel better”—hundreds of doors, really.) Anyway, my job was to make sure our cover story entered Victoria’s mind the right way.

  When I was satisfied that Victoria had accepted Harlene’s version of events, I opened my eyes and gave Harlene a subtle nod. She smiled and dismissed Victoria.

  I rubbed my temples. Even though I liked to think of myself as some kind of telepathic prodigy, massaging Victoria’s psyche was harder than I expected after such a nutso day. Tracking Jake and now this . . . I was definitely going to need a fistful of Advil in the morning.

  Harlene watched me. “You let me know when you’re tired, hon. Linda’s here and we’ve got the rest of the telepaths in from Washington too—you’ll work in shifts.”

  “I’m cool,” I said, not wanting to get shown up by any B-teamers. “Getting tired of telling that shooting story yet?”

  Harlene looked mournfully at an empty paper coffee cup. “You’ve got no idea.”

  “Hey.” I hummed a few bars of the song that was still stuck in my head. “That sound familiar?”

  Harlene shook her head. “Not a good time for that, Sweet Pea.”

  The next kid Jamison showed in was nearly as big as him: he was the kind of guy who looked like he’d gotten his first gym membership sometime around kindergarten. Someone had thrown a blanket around his shoulders, probably to hide his blood-spattered white T-shirt.

  “Chazz Slade,” said Harlene. “Have a seat.”

  Chazz squeezed his bulk into the little desk, remaining slightly doubled over. He was holding his stomach and looked pale, with dark circles around his eyes. I really hoped he wouldn’t vomit. That guy could probably hold gallons of gross cafeteria food.

  “So,” began Harlene, “I understand you were dating Amanda Blake.”

  Chazz nodded dumbly, keeping his eyes focused on the scratched surface of the desk in front of him. I realized Harlene had said that more for my benefit; it would be harder to massage our lie into someone like Chazz who had a more intimate understanding of our runaway zombie bimbo. Also—not to sound catty or anything—but after seeing Amanda, it totally made sense that this guy would be her boyfriend.

  “We’re soul mates,” Chazz mumbled.

  I had to contain a snort at the way the big lug so casually played the soul-mate card. Chazz sure didn’t look like the type to get all poetic.

  “I see,” replied Harlene. “So you weren’t aware of her relationship with Jake Stephens?”

  “Who? What the fuck, lady?” Chazz clutched himself tighter and, as he did, his stomach let loose a seismic rumble. A thick vein on his neck throbbed. “Ugh—I need to go, I’m gonna be sick.”

  Chazz wasn’t taking this well; convincing him that his high school sweetheart had made a death pact with some other guy was going to be a tough sell.

  Harlene glanced at me. “Just another moment, Mr. Slade. We need to discuss Amanda.”

  I probed Chazz’s mind. I expected to find anger and confusion, maybe some stifled feelings of inadequacy or the urge to go punch a smaller person in the face—you know, typical emotions for a cheating-girlfriend situation. Instead, I found a cold place. A mind rapidly going numb.

  While most minds are labyrinthine, Chazz’s mind only had room for two thoughts just then: fight it and eat them.

  Oh my god. He was one of them. Right on the verge of full undead mode.

  “Harlene!” was all I managed to scream before Chazz lunged across the desk. Harlene was just quick enough to get her arm up, Chazz’s teeth sinking into her forearm instead of her throat. He tore off a chunk of flesh, and Harlene fell backward in her chair.

  Chazz tossed his head back, gulping down the bite he’d taken out of Harlene. The throbbing vein in his neck had turned black under his suddenly paper-white skin. He’d gone full zombie. His eyes were sunken in his head, dark and empty.

  And staring right at me.

  I heard Harlene shouting for Jamison, but even though he was just in the hallway outside, I knew he’d be too late. Chazz would tear me apart before Jamison had even unholstered his gun. Two zombie massacres in one school on the same day? At least I’d be part of some NCD record.

  As Chazz lumbered toward me, I acted instinctively. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing—probably like those moms you read about who lift cars off their babies. I reached into his mind as hard as I could, ignoring the cold and clammy feeling touching that dead organ sent shooting through me, and basically just thrashed around. Like groping for a light switch in a dark room. When my astral fingers came up against something, I yanked with all my mental might.

  Chazz collapsed to the floor inches in front of me, unconscious, just as Jamison burst through the door with his gun drawn. Mere seconds had passed since Chazz had bitten Harlene.

  I felt dizzy, like I’d gotten up too fast, and then white spots flashed across my vision and my head started aching like I was being stabbed repeatedly in the brain. I fell to the floor next to Harlene, who was clutching the wound on her arm, blood squeezing through her fingers.

  “What did you do?” she wheezed. Her words sounded like they were coming from underground and I couldn’t make my mouth form an answer, even though that answer would have been “not a fre
aking clue.”

  Jamison peered curiously down at Chazz’s body, then cocked his pistol. He looked to Harlene. “Should I?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  The voice came from the doorway. At first, I thought I must be hallucinating, some weird side effect of whatever telepathic mojo I’d just worked on Chazz. But then I saw Tom, holding a tray of coffees and looking more nervous than he had facing certain death that afternoon, standing right next to Mr. Bow Tie. Whoa. I hadn’t seen him since training, didn’t think he was even the kind of NCD bigwig to leave Washington. If he was here, we must really be in crisis mode.

  Mr. Bow Tie strode into the room, the heels of his fancy loafers sounding like thunder to me as they crossed the floor. He spared a brief glance for Harlene, then crouched over Chazz’s body. He laid a hand on Chazz’s head, as if trying to feel the brain beneath.

  “Hm,” he said, then turned and knelt in front of me. Everyone in the room was quiet, watching, as the big, scary boss from Washington handed me his handkerchief. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  Unlike Harlene’s, Mr. Bow Tie’s voice was totally clear, cutting precisely through the layers of fuzz suffocating my brain. I took the hanky and pressed it to my face. So much for never getting a nosebleed.

  Mr. Bow Tie patted my shoulder. It was a gesture of approval, like you might pat a dog after it successfully rolls over. Come to think of it, I felt like rolling over right then and just sleeping for days. He started to stand up but then looked back at me, a thin smile on his lips.

  “‘The Way You Look Tonight,’” Mr. Bow Tie said. “That’s the song.”

  I felt pretty out of it, but I can say with some certainty that I wasn’t humming.

  JAKE

  I WOKE UP IN MY OWN BED. IT’D ALL BEEN A REALLY heinous dream. Everything was fine and I’d definitely never eaten a person. The end.

  And then I realized that this wasn’t my bed. My bed at home—my comfortable, amazing bed where I should have been waking up with a full agenda of video games and comic books to look forward to—did not smell like old-lady arthritis cream. My room didn’t have a giant yellow water stain shaped like Abraham Lincoln spread across its ceiling. There wasn’t a stern-looking, black-and-white picture of a turn-of-the-century dude holding a pitchfork hanging on my bedroom wall.