by Jeff Hart
“You know what’s funny?” she asked. “I used to be a vegetarian. Now I’m a flesh-eating monster.”
“‘Monster’ is harsh,” I said, but Summer immediately waved this off. She started back toward the house and I followed a few steps behind.
“My folks were Buddhists,” she said. “They raised me to think of everyone as inherently kind and generous. But now I know that’s not true. We’re all bad, selfish people. You know how I know?”
I didn’t really want to know. This conversation had taken a serious turn for the depressing. But Summer answered without waiting for my reply.
“Because if I wasn’t so selfish, I would’ve killed myself nine months ago. Instead, I just keep eating people.”
Amanda and I drove out of western Pennsylvania after nightfall. Amanda was in the passenger seat, studying a road map in the yellow glow of the dome light.
“This thing is nuts,” she said, shaking her head.
As soon as we told her we were leaving, Grace had become a lot more helpful. She’d found the road atlas under SkiChamp69’s passenger seat and had spent a couple hours marking locations and addresses on it, filling the map with enough potential zombie pit stops to keep Amanda and me fed all the way to Michigan. It’s like she’d already had the information ready, a list of bad people to eat if she ever found herself crossing the country. Meanwhile, Summer had peeled about three hundred bucks off a roll of bills they kept squirreled away, money I assumed they’d taken off the perverts before burying them in the backyard. She’d also donated a spare blanket and a pet carrier filled with rats. I turned up the car radio loud enough so I didn’t hear the little things squeaking in the trunk every time we went over a bump.
“They aren’t even all pedophiles,” Amanda said, squinting at the map. “Like this guy in Ohio—Grace wrote that he stole money from his employees’ pensions and ended up retiring in a mansion after six months in jail.”
I didn’t feel like talking about Grace’s road atlas of victims. I was feeling pretty bummed out; something about the way Grace and Summer had stood on the front steps of their house and watched us go made me feel like we were now really heading for somewhere unknown. It was like a couple of pedophile-murdering parents watching their kids go off to their first day at zombie school. Grace waved good-bye, maybe half sarcastically, while Summer just smiled sadly, her arms clasped around herself. I wondered if we’d see them again. Probably not, right? Summer made it sound like the life expectancy of a zombie wasn’t long—you either get killed by the government or go full-on starving ghoul. Not a lot to look forward to.
“Gotta eat someone,” I replied absently.
“Yeah, okay, but where do we draw the line?” she asked. “Do you know how I knew how to hot-wire that car back in Jersey? Because my dad taught me.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. It’s what he used to do, before he got caught. Now he’s in jail. So would he be on Grace’s list?”
I looked over at Amanda to see if she was screwing with me. She wasn’t.
For some reason, I’d always assumed all the popular kids at RRHS were born to some secret society of rich yacht-club parents, explaining their seemingly natural ability to rise to the top of the social food chain. My head was starting to hurt.
“What about your mom?” I asked. “Is she a car thief too?”
“No,” answered Amanda, looking out the window. “Lucky for me and Kyle, she has her shit together.”
I felt compelled to share something back. “My dad is an accountant. My mom manages a kids’ clothing store.”
“Cool,” said Amanda. “So, we won’t be eating your parents.”
“Uh, no, I hope not.”
“My point is,” she continued, “the vigilante zombie stuff feels like a slippery slope, you know? I’m not sure I want to be making those decisions.”
I sighed. All this zombie talk was getting to be a real drag.
The highway zoomed past, mostly empty with a few headlights headed in the opposite direction. I was trying hard to maintain a positive outlook on all this undead bullshit, but it was tough when talk kept going back to the ethics of eating people.
“Dude. This is making me hungry. Or something. Let’s just have a normal conversation, okay?”
Amanda snorted, but closed the road atlas and looked over at me. “Okay. Topic?”
I thought about it. “You remember that career test the guidance counselor gave us? What did you get?”
“Theoretical physicist,” said Amanda.
“Shut up!” I was so surprised that I swerved into the next lane. The car behind me blared its horn.
“No.” She smiled. “I’m screwing with you. I don’t even remember what I got. Something insulting, like secretary. Tests like that are basically a high school version of those what-celebrity-are-you Facebook quizzes. It’s, like, who cares?”
“I didn’t get anything,” I admitted. “I didn’t score high enough to get anything.”
“You failed a career test?” Amanda laughed, then covered her mouth. “Oh, Jake, that’s so sad.”
“Well, think of it this way. I’m really good at flunking tests. It’s a talent.”
“I would’ve wanted to be a lawyer, I think,” said Amanda, tapping her lip thoughtfully. “Or a psychologist. Something to help people, I guess.”
“You’d have made a badass lawyer.”
“Thanks.”
We fell silent, probably both thinking about what we would’ve done if cannibalism hadn’t chosen us. The road less traveled, right?
“Hey,” said Amanda, “pull over.”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
We were just over the Ohio border. It was a densely wooded and dark section of road, no streetlights for this backcountry stretch. I pulled us off to the shoulder and killed the engine. The car was dark except when a passing vehicle rumbled by, shaking us, headlights briefly lighting up Amanda’s face. She rummaged for something underneath her seat.
“I swiped this before we left,” she said, and held up SkiChamp69’s bottle of whiskey. “Want to see if zombies can still get drunk?”
CASS
I EXPECTED ALASTAIRE TO HAVE HIS DRIVER TAKE us back to the motel where the rest of my NCD division waited. Instead, we drove toward the outskirts of town, the peaceful suburbs giving way to eerily quiet blocks filled with shuttered factories and crumbling buildings. It was like the textbook definition of “wrong side of the tracks.” We were near the spot where just a couple days ago my team had let Jake and Amanda get away.
“Ah, the real New Jersey,” mused Alastaire. “So charming.”
I couldn’t figure out where we were going, but I didn’t feel like it was anywhere good. What would a polished suit like Alastaire want in a place like this unless he was up to something dastardly? Like mustache-twirling, petting-a-cat-with-an-iron-glove dastardly.
I told myself I had no reason to feel paranoid—that I worked for the US Government, that the president himself had called my mom. Still, I couldn’t help it. What if Alastaire knew that I’d spent most of the last day secretly hanging out in the psyche of a priority target? What was the NCD penalty for insubordination? Treason? They hadn’t gone over that in orientation.
It certainly didn’t help that Jake’s sister, Kelly, was sitting next to me basically catatonic. She had her hands folded in her lap, eyes straight ahead. I tried to get a feel for her mind, psychically probing as gently as I could, but her brain was like a brick wall.
“Any luck locating the Stephens boy?” asked Alastaire casually. I glanced at Kelly, but she didn’t react at all to the mention of her brother.
“It’s hard—” I began, trying to phrase my answer in a way that wouldn’t necessarily be a lie. “I’m still having trouble focusing.”
“Mhm,” was the extent of his reply. Pretty much impossible to tell whether he believed me or if I was in trouble or what. I assumed trouble.
“Where are we goi
ng?” I asked, trying to sound equally casual.
“Oh,” said Alastaire as if the minor detail of our destination had just slipped his mind. “I want to show you a little project I’ve been working on.”
A few minutes later, our car pulled up to an abandoned factory that looked like it had once hosted a riot, been set on fire, and then been struck by lightning. There were a bunch of NCD guys waiting for us, but not anyone that I recognized from previous missions. They were Alastaire’s private team and they looked different somehow—angrier, more grizzled, with perpetual Clint Eastwood stares. It’s like Alastaire had assembled himself a crew of only Jamisons.
A pair of agents met us at the huge, iron double doors of the factory. One of them escorted Kelly away from us and she followed with wordless, brainwashed obedience. The other one opened up an umbrella, shielding Alastaire from the rivulets of rust-colored water that leaked down from the factory’s ceiling.
“Where’s he taking her?” I asked, watching the agent disappear around a corner with Kelly.
“Interrogation,” answered Alastaire, looking me over. “You’re going to ruin that nice sweater.”
I glanced down at myself. The leaky ceiling had already dribbled a couple light brown stains on my new outfit. Alastaire gestured for me to stand under the umbrella with him, even offered me his arm. My whole being recoiled—it was like he’d flopped a slimy tentacle at me—but I remembered Tom’s advice to be on my best behavior and decided to try to heed it. For now. Cringing inwardly, I slipped my hand through the crook of Alastaire’s elbow and we made our way across the factory floor like a lord and lady on the worst stroll in recorded history.
“They used to process meat here,” said Alastaire. “Isn’t that interesting?”
“Very,” I said dryly, my eyes following moldy conveyor belts to stripped-down machines that looked like big blenders.
“The conditions aren’t ideal, I’ll admit,” continued Alastaire, sounding like a tour guide. “But I’ve been looking for an opportunity to field-test some of my work, and this is the best we could come up with here in New Jersey.”
It didn’t look like Alastaire’s skeleton crew of NCD goons was doing much work. They stood around under the sections of ceiling that leaked the least, polishing weapons and glowering. Alastaire led me past them without a word.
“I’ve thought long and hard about this country’s zombie problem,” Alastaire lectured. “On the one hand, they’re monstrous beasts that present an imminent threat to our quality of life. On the other hand, they have certain qualities that I find appealing.”
“Like all the brain-eating?” I asked, the words out before I could bite my tongue like a good little psychic trouper. Alastaire smirked.
“They’re just animals,” he said. “Animals with heightened strength and speed, animals with miraculous healing abilities. I want you to remember that, Cassandra.”
They’re sick people, I wanted to say, but I managed to hold my tongue this time. I felt like my view of zombies was starting to move away from the official NCD doctrine, like maybe they hadn’t given us all the facts in training, but I definitely didn’t want to have that discussion with Alastaire. I especially didn’t want to let on that last night I’d been in Jake Stephens’s mind and had found it very un-animallike. Except for the part where he and his friends ate that guy. But everyone had their flaws, right?
“Like all animals,” continued Alastaire, “I believe they can be trained.”
We approached a heavy steel door at the back of the factory. A meat locker. The NCD guards manning the door stepped away discreetly as Alastaire approached.
“There’s a line of red tape on the floor of this room,” he said. “Don’t step over the red tape.”
The door squealed on its rusty hinges when Alastaire pushed it open. As we walked through, the guy with the umbrella peeled off. Now it was just me and Alastaire. The room was lit by halogen bulbs that flickered and dimmed constantly; freestanding metal shelves made two rows down the center of the room, broken in places with jagged edges. I itched for a tetanus shot just looking at them. Between the shelving hung metal hooks on chains. The whole place still had a rotten-meat smell to it.
I looked down at my feet to check out this red line Alastaire had put down. My toes were right against it.
When I looked up, a zombie was charging at me.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I screamed. I’m less embarrassed to admit that I immediately jumped behind Alastaire, using him as a human shield.
There was a clang of metal snapping taut, and the zombie jerked to the ground, falling just inches short of the red line. I breathed a sigh of relief. He was tethered to the far wall by a chain that was attached to a collar around his neck. The chain was shiny, new steel—it was probably the only shiny thing in this whole factory.
The zombie scrambled to his feet, snarling at us and snapping his teeth at the air. His skin was gray and saggy, his eyes yellowed and sunken. He was so corpselike that it took me a minute to recognize him.
It was Chazz Slade.
I stayed a half step behind Alastaire, just in case that chain wasn’t bolted into the wall properly. Alastaire didn’t seem at all concerned, standing with his toes on the line, watching the muscles in Chazz’s neck strain as he tried to bull toward us. When Chazz reached out, his grasping fingers nearly brushed Alastaire’s bow tie. It was sort of thrilling to be this close to a creature that wanted to eat you alive but couldn’t, like getting right up against the glass of a lion’s cage at the zoo. I had to force myself to look away from Chazz and his thoughtless stare of hungry rage.
“Why is he here?” I asked.
“I told you, it’s very difficult to take them alive,” said Alastaire. “Back in Washington, I was running out of test subjects. The procedure I’ve been developing is dangerous, you see. At least for them. Aneurysms mostly, but sometimes a persistent vegetative state. Sometimes the procedure just doesn’t take, and the subject has to be terminated.”
“Um, what procedure? What are you talking about?”
Alastaire shrugged out of his suit jacket. I noticed for the first time that he carried a gun—a silver thing holstered under his armpit, big enough to impress even Jamison. Alastaire draped his jacket neatly over his arm and held it out to me.
“Would you mind holding this?” he asked.
I took his coat, too frazzled by the scene in front of me to do anything but comply.
“It has taken some years of trial and error,” explained Alastaire, “but I believe I’ve finally perfected it. A procedure that will let us control the zombies.”
My mouth hung open, eyebrows raised. Alastaire smiled at me, amused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘control’ them?”
“They’re savage beasts that think of nothing but their hunger,” answered Alastaire, “but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn some very basic concepts. That food comes when they behave. That they shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds them.”
I was considering upgrading Alastaire from creepy bureaucratic overlord to full-fledged mad-scientist psychopath. His whole spiel was out-there, even for the NCD. I wondered if Harlene and Jamison knew about his experiments.
He rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. On the underside of his forearm I saw a plastic implant, like a nozzle, surrounded by fading pink scar tissue. It reminded me of the long-term chemo tube the hospital had put in my father. Just looking at it made me queasy.
“Observe,” Alastaire said.
He picked up a piece of translucent silver tubing from one of the nearby shelves. I hadn’t even noticed it draped there. The tube was about six feet long, the width of a dime, and screwed perfectly into the nozzle on Alastaire’s forearm.
I noticed that Chazz had stopped snarling and biting. He watched Alastaire with the zombie equivalent of fascination—only one eye rolled back in his head.
“You see the way he looks at me?” asked Alastaire,
glancing from Chazz to me. “He knows me.”
Alastaire stepped over the red line. I put out a hand to stop him, my instinct to avoid seeing anybody turned into zombie lunch overriding my revulsion for him, but he was out of reach.
Chazz watched Alastaire approach with his head cocked, a low growl rumbling in his throat. That he didn’t just attack right away was already mind-blowing enough. Then Alastaire spoke.
“Kneel,” he said.
Chazz swayed back and forth for a moment, made a plaintive groaning sound that ended with a string of black phlegm spilling down his chin, and fell on his knees. I covered my mouth to keep something stupid and horrified from tumbling out.
Alastaire circled behind Chazz. He put his hand on Chazz’s head and shoved Chazz’s chin down into his chest. I could see it then, a node drilled into the back of Chazz’s head just like the one on Alastaire’s wrist. Of course, the doctors hadn’t taken nearly the care with Chazz’s surgery as they had with Alastaire; the flesh was blackened and swollen around the node, rotten even for a zombie.
“I’ve been working on this for some time,” said Alastaire, tapping the node on Chazz’s skull. “I call it ‘The Pavlov.’”
I nodded dumbly, vaguely remembering the guy with the dog and the bell, still stunned to see someone walking around a zombie so casually, touching it, commanding it.
Attaching himself to it.
Alastaire screwed the other end of the hose attached to his wrist to the back of Chazz’s head. My skin crawled.
“The Pavlov gives our boy Chazz his reward,” continued Alastaire. “It lets him know he’s been a good boy. After he’s been fed a few times this way, he begins to bond with me.”
Alastaire pressed a small button on his wrist. He grimaced briefly, though he hid it well. I watched—stomach roiling—as a dark substance flowed down the tube, out of Alastaire and into Chazz. Was that blood? It seemed to please Chazz, the zombie letting out a happy gurgle.
“It isn’t just The Pavlov that keeps Chazz from attacking me,” said Alastaire as the blood continued to pump. This whole thing was more like a lecture to him than a freaking horror show. “There’s a great deal of psychic manipulation at work. You’ve seen what zombie minds look like—it’s not the most pleasant place. I’ve made some mental tweaks with Chazz to make our bonding possible. Of course, my work doesn’t leave much of the original Chazz behind. But that was mostly gone anyway, of course. The feeding is just enough to keep him in the state we prefer—strong, fast, and pliable. And because it’s my blood that he’s bonded with, he’s inclined to follow my instructions quite easily.”