by Jeff Hart
“Sorry, Templeton,” I said. Then I bit his head off. It wasn’t so bad really, no better or worse than eating a banana. A crunchy banana.
As my teeth crunched through bone, I looked down at my hands and saw the little cuts from the rat’s claws turn from zombie-gray to blood red and then miraculously close up and disappear.
Amanda was sitting with her legs out of the open back door, rubbing her calves.
“Rat?” I asked, and reached into the trunk.
“Yes, please,” she said, holding out her hands.
“Think of it as breakfast in bed.”
Amanda raised the rat toward her mouth and as she did her lips turned a bloodless shade of gray, corpse lines spreading from her mouth and along her jaw. It was the zombie coming out again. I wasn’t shocked by it anymore. It was still her. This is just how we looked now.
“Don’t watch,” she said with girly self-consciousness.
Amanda drove us west on I-90 through Ohio, singing along to some terrible Auto-Tuned country crap. If I wasn’t already undead, I’m sure a cross-country road trip listening to nothing but FM radio would’ve eroded my life span. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Amanda bob her head and couldn’t help shaking my head.
“Don’t judge me,” she said, catching me. “This is great driving music.”
I’d been perusing the zombie atlas Grace had given us, running my fingers from location to location, trying to decide on the least unappealing option for lunch. Sometimes you’d do anything for a damn Cracker Barrel, right?
“Hey, we’re going right through Cleveland,” I said. “Let’s stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I always wanted to go there.”
“Really?” asked Amanda. “Seems a little touristy for Jake Stephens, all-knowing music critic and Severed Lung superfan. Would Pitchfork approve?”
“I’m surprised you even know what Pitchfork is,” I snarked back, though I was kind of flattered that she remembered my love of Severed Lung.
“Cool people have the internet too, you know.”
“Anyway,” I said, “I won’t totally respect the Hall’s legitimacy until Iron Maiden gets inducted, but whatever. It’d still be kinda cool.”
“So let’s go.”
“Seriously?”
“Why not?” she asked, shooting me a carefree smile. “My afternoon is open. What about yours?”
Since it was a Monday afternoon, we had the whole Hall of Fame pretty much to ourselves, and didn’t have to be paranoid that anyone would recognize us as the notorious Jersey Shooters. It was nice to be normal again for a few hours, just two kids checking out John’s badass Sgt. Pepper jacket.
“If I was going to steal one thing from the Hall of Fame, it would be that,” I told Amanda.
“What? That dumb coat thing?”
“If you mean that awesome coat, then yes,” I said. “I’d wear it proudly from the back of my trained elephant, leading my army of rock zombies into battle against the forces of evil.”
“I don’t think I’d eat any of the Beatles,” Amanda mused.
“Me neither, no way,” I replied, then reconsidered. “Well, maybe Ringo. They could get by without Ringo, right?”
“I guess,” she answered. “But there’s gotta be a more delicious drummer out there.”
“Good point,” I said.
We stopped by Madonna’s display, pictures of her evolution through the years from skanky Catholic schoolgirl to sort-of-buff New Age chick. Amanda shook her head, a vehement no.
“No way,” she said. “Lifetime no-eating pass.”
“I don’t think we can eat other zombies, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Madonna is not a zombie,” replied Amanda, then squinted at one of the more recent pictures. “Although it would explain a lot, actually.”
There was a life-size statue of Elvis wearing his sequined white leather suit, doing that splayed-leg thing where he stuck out his junk, his hair swept into a huge, black wave at the front of his head.
“Too handsome to eat,” declared Amanda.
I tried to emulate the king’s pose, curling my lips into an about-to-barf sneer, even windmilling an air guitar. Amanda laughed at me.
“Not even close,” she said.
“I’d eat Fat Elvis.”
“I’m not sure you could finish Fat Elvis.”
“I bet he’d taste like waffles.”
“Peanut butter waffles,” added Amanda, nodding enthusiastically. “Fried peanut butter waffles. Okay, you changed my mind.”
We wandered through the rest of the Hall like that, riffing on who we’d eat, joking around. It was the kind of day that made the brain-eating seem bearable.
“I needed that,” I told Amanda a couple hours later as we headed back to the car. She squeezed my hand in response, and I realized that Amanda was probably having the same things-are-looking-up feeling that I was and—whoa, hold on, when did we start holding hands? It’d just sort of happened, maybe back when we’d been debating the global ramifications of devouring Bono. Had she gone for it or had I? Did that even matter? It felt perfect, and I didn’t want to get all twisted up thinking about what it meant.
Just let it happen, Jake, I thought. Be cool. Don’t acknowledge it.
“I guess there’s more to being a zombie than running from the law and eating people,” said Amanda.
It was still a lot of eating people.
Just as we were about to walk out the door, I had a thought. “We should buy something from the gift shop. You know. Just to have a souvenir or whatever.”
Amanda smirked. “Yeah, I can’t wait to look back fondly on our time as zombie fugitives.”
Way to dork it up, Jake. I’d had such a nice time with Amanda that I’d almost forgotten the predicament we were in. Just because Mom always insisted on buying the whole Stephens clan cheesy T-shirts commemorating every family trip didn’t mean I should be keeping that tradition alive and nerdy.
“I don’t know,” I said, sounding more disappointed than I wanted to let on. “I guess it’s stupid. Anyway, we should save our money.”
Amanda gave me a thoughtful look. “No,” she said. “I do want to remember today. No matter what happens. And I think now that we’re zombies we can forget about paying,” she added slyly. “What are they going to do? Arrest us?”
CASS
“TODAY, WE ARE ENGAGING TWO HIGH-PRIORITY necrotic targets. The incident at Ronald Reagan High School was our most high profile to date and, with Stephens and Blake still at large, we run the continued risk of public exposure,” intoned Alastaire, standing at the front of the motel’s small conference room. “Going forward, there will be some changes to how this unit operates.”
I sat next to Tom in the afternoon briefing, his arm slung protectively over the back of my chair. He’d been staring daggers at Alastaire since he glided into the room, but I don’t think Alastaire even noticed. Jamison sat in the row in front of us next to two NCD operatives whose names I didn’t know but I recognized from Alastaire’s personal squad. Harlene stood at the front of the room with Alastaire, although she hadn’t said a word, deferring control of the meeting to her boss. She’d definitely noticed Tom’s sourpuss face, though, and kept looking over at him with her plucked eyebrows arched curiously.
“First,” continued Alastaire, “psychic support will now be on-site for all combat engagements.”
“What?” interrupted Tom, almost lifting out of his seat in disbelief.
Alastaire finally looked at him, fixing Tom with that unfriendly smile. “Which part didn’t you understand, Thomas?”
“The part where you said you were putting noncombat personnel who may happen to be under the voting age in mortal danger.”
“I think we’ve seen over the last few days that there’s no shortage of danger on the sidelines either,” answered Alastaire coolly. “Your Psychic Friend has acquitted herself quite well, wouldn’t you agree?”
Tom bristled at the use of our nickname, his
mouth working hard to form a response. Harlene stepped forward, cutting him off.
“Tom, these operational changes have been cleared by Washington.”
Tom sank back in his chair, breathing deep. I patted his knee, willing him to mellow out. I’d had the bad fortune of getting an idea of how Alastaire’s mind worked. Wouldn’t it just be perfect for him to replace Tom as my guardian with one of his own people? Outbursts like that and I could look forward to traveling around with one of the craggy-faced militia rejects that Alastaire was buddied up with.
“Keep cool,” I whispered. “We’ll talk to Harlene.”
“Second,” Alastaire resumed his spiel, “this unit’s primary objective will now be to take all our targets alive. So to speak.”
Now it was Jamison who spoke out of turn.
“All due respect, sir, but why the hell would we want to do that?”
I caught Alastaire’s handpicked agents exchange a look and then size up Jamison. He was bigger than both of them, and way scarier. It was kind of juvenile, but I couldn’t help feeling some pride that our ass-kicker could take down Alastaire’s ass-kickers if push came to shove.
“Washington believes—and Harlene and I agree—that the undead are an asset better preserved than slaughtered.”
Preserved to turn into weapons. So Alastaire’s project was moving beyond beta testing. Wonderful.
“You’re only to terminate if under the threat of mortal danger,” concluded Alastaire.
“Sir, I signed up to kill zombies, not wrangle them,” Jamison snarled.
“‘Wrangle.’ That’s a fun word.” Alastaire glanced at Harlene, who’d remained pretty much expressionless. “It’s so nice that you foster an atmosphere of open dialogue with your subordinates,” he said dryly.
Harlene swept her gaze across the room, scolding us with her eyes. I felt sort of bad for putting her in this position. She’d never been anything but kind to me and I doubted she even had an inkling of the scary juju her boss was up to. It was like she was the school’s one good teacher, and Alastaire was the principal that’d just reinstituted lashings for wrong answers.
“Now,” said Alastaire, “if I may continue. New operational standards mean . . .”
I couldn’t help it. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. Even though I was in the middle of a Very Important NCD Meeting. Actually, maybe it was because I was in the middle of a Very Important Meeting. I went looking for Jake.
When I found him, I was totally jealous.
It figured. Here I was spending my day learning how I’d be on the frontline of the zombie war while they were playing hooky at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It didn’t seem fair that the zombies should be having more fun than me.
Forget fun. It was impossible to ignore the fact that something was really happening between the two of them. Something as in, you know, they were obviously about two steps away from jumping each other’s bones.
I was a little surprised at Jake. Amanda didn’t seem like his type. But I guess you put two functioning boobs in front of a boy and the whole concept of a “type” goes out the window. So, whatever.
It was Amanda who was the real surprise, though. I couldn’t see in her mind the way I could his, so maybe I was wrong about what she was thinking. But you don’t have to be psychic to read body language. And hers was starting to get seriously cozy.
When they’d waltzed into the gift shop, and Amanda had stolen him a Rolling Stones T-shirt right off the rack—a mischievous glint in her eyes as she told him, “Hey, it’ll look great on you!”—it was pretty easy to see what was up. She had stopped thinking of him as the loser from English class. Now he was the loser from English class who would look pretty sexy in a Rolling Stones T-shirt.
And maybe he wasn’t such a loser after all.
I jumped out of Jake’s mind just in time to hear Alastaire dismiss the meeting. My face was hot—analyzing zombie romance via the astral plane had made me start blushing. Great. I looked around; no one had noticed that I’d been spaced out.
“Off to Pennsylvania,” sighed Tom, standing up. “Let’s get this over with.”
Oh yeah. And the location I’d given for Jake and Amanda? Totally outdated as of yesterday. Our team plus Alastaire’s reinforcements were expecting to find a pair of high-priority targets.
Instead, while those annoying lovebirds were off making eyes in Cleveland, I was serving the NCD two lesbians with a penchant for pedophiles.
An hour later, we were back in our SUV. Tom had barely said a word since the meeting, and I could tell that he was still fuming.
Harlene turned around in the passenger seat.
“You all good, Sweet Pea?”
I nodded. Tom turned away from me, glaring at Harlene.
“She shouldn’t even be on this mission,” he snapped.
“Agreed,” said Jamison from the driver’s seat. It was the first word he’d said since the briefing. He kept his eyes on the road, looking more grim than usual as he followed the other black SUV driven by a couple bulked-up NCD guys Alastaire had loaned us for the operation.
“She’ll do just fine,” Harlene answered. She had a sympathetic smile for me, but her words had a heavy edge of authority. “You’ll make sure of that, won’t you, Tom?”
Tom glanced down at his lap where the pistol they’d outfitted him with rested awkwardly. They’d given him a holster, he just chose not to wear it because it bulged uncomfortably inside his suit. The piece made it official; he was combat personnel.
“Yeah, of course,” said Tom, not exactly sounding like the pillar of confidence I’d hope for in a guardian.
He’d pulled Harlene aside after the meeting, but wouldn’t tell me what she’d said. I could tell by his face that it hadn’t gone well. She hadn’t come and asked me about any of Alastaire’s crazy plans, which could mean only one of two things: either she didn’t believe my story, or she already knew.
We drove on in silence. Harlene absently rubbed the bandage on her forearm, probably trying to figure out how to get us acting like a team again.
A few hours later, our SUV rolled to a stop in front of the unfinished house in this neglected corner of suburbia. The place looked like a dollhouse that some deadbeat dad had gotten too drunk to finish assembling. The neighborhood was empty, with not so much as a squirrel moving. Of course I knew why that was; the rodent population around here was greatly diminished. Harlene turned around to face me.
“Hon, could you confirm our targets are inside?”
I already knew Jake and Amanda had lit out the night before. Still, I unfocused my eyes, trying to put on the faraway look that I’d seen other telepaths get when they were tracking.
“There are two inside,” I said, then added somewhat quietly, “just not the two we’re looking for.”
“What?” asked Tom, giving me one of those oh-no-you-didn’t looks. I think he knew that I’d kinda sort of let Jake and Amanda slip away.
“Other zombies,” I said, ignoring Tom, trying to play it off like I’d just accidentally led our team to a minor victory. Grace and Summer were zombies, after all. “Two girls.”
“Huh,” said Harlene, frowning. “Some luck.”
“Zombies are zombies,” grunted Jamison, then pointed to where Alastaire’s two agents were already out of their SUV and approaching the house. “Look at these overzealous idiots.”
That was a serious insult coming from run-and-gun Jamison. One of Alastaire’s guys carried a standard-issue long-range stun gun, the other this big contraption that looked like it should be used to kill a whale but that Alastaire had explained was a high-powered net-chucker. He had a more technical military term for it, but whatever, it was a net-chucker. He’d given the same set of zombie-capture toys to Harlene and Jamison, yet I couldn’t help noticing that when Jamison climbed out of our car he was toting his usual big-ass shotgun. Harlene didn’t say anything about his choice of weapon.
“You stay put, okay?” Harlene said to me and Tom as sh
e followed Jamison.
“Obviously,” replied Tom.
“Oh crap—!” I yelled, remembering the vision of Grace I’d picked up from Jake’s psyche. “Crossbow! I forgot to mention the crossbow!”
Harlene and Jamison were just a few steps away from the car when one of Alastaire’s agents kicked down the house’s front door. He staggered backward immediately, soundlessly, and flopped down on his butt.
There was a crossbow bolt sticking out of his eye socket.
I clasped both my hands over my mouth to stop from screaming. Sure, I didn’t know that agent and, by the looks of him, Alastaire had probably found him burning villages in a Third World country, but he was still a person. A person shot in the face with an arrow. “Uh, maybe you shouldn’t watch this,” Tom said, and I could tell he was considering just covering my eyes.
I shook my head. I’d brought us here. Basically, I’d decided to swap Grace and Summer for Jake and Amanda. Whatever happened was on me. I was NCD combat personnel now and I was going to have to see what our missions really looked like.
The agent with the net-chucker didn’t have time to fire before Grace was driving her shoulder into him, sending him flying backward down the steps. Their path clear now, Grace ran, holding Summer’s hand as she sprinted behind her, the two of them making a break for the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac.
I watched as Jamison lifted his shotgun, took careful aim, and fired.
One second, Summer’s mane of hair was flowing behind her in the wind like streamers off a maypole. The next, it was gone. A pinkish mist lingered in the air where Summer’s head used to be. Grace skidded to a stop, still holding Summer’s hand as her girlfriend’s body collapsed to the ground. She screamed.
“Alive!” Harlene was screaming at Jamison. “We’re taking them alive!”
“I was in mortal danger,” he replied curtly.
Grace had reversed course, now sprinting right for Harlene and Jamison. Escape was off her mind; she was consumed by pure animal rage now and the adrenaline was starting to turn her: her skin had taken on that fetid gray pallor, and her lips were curled back over her teeth in an inhuman rictus.