by Jeff Hart
Weirder still was that she walked right by those two zombies and they didn’t seem to notice. She stopped for a second, letting a screaming NCD agent run by with a zombie hot on his heels, and then kept right on walking, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
She looked up, noticing me noticing her, and her face scrunched in confusion. Then, she walked over and hugged me, squeezing me tight, her blood-covered face pressed into my chest. I think she was crying a little bit.
“Jake,” she said, her voice distant and lost like she’d just woken up from a dream. “You’re here.”
I patted her back awkwardly, not really sure what to do with this NCD creeper that had very clearly lost her marbles.
“Uh, hey,” I said.
She peered up while still holding on to me and it was like something clicked in her mind, like she’d suddenly remembered where she was and realized we were, like, ankle deep in a bloodbath. She dropped her arms down to her sides, looking embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I’m Cass.”
“Hi,” I said, awkward because I didn’t know the protocol for meeting someone in a situation like this. Not to mention, even though she wasn’t shooting guns or flinging nets, she was very clearly part of the NCD. Should I ask her what school she went to, maybe make some small talk about hunting zombies?
Gunshots. Like, right next to my ear. An NCD agent with a pair of guns fired action-hero style at a trio of zombies, pushing them backward. One of the zombies fell to the ground, a smoking hole in his forehead.
The agent was within arm’s reach of me. It would’ve required less effort on his part to turn and shoot me than it would’ve to tie his shoe.
But the agent didn’t even look at me. He just kept on shooting at the other zombies, marching in their direction like the definition of going out in a blaze of glory.
“They can’t see us,” explained Cass. “Not if I don’t want them to. I’m psychic.”
Okaaay.
“But wait,” I said. “Why can I see you?”
Just then, a zombie detached from a nearby agent and charged right at Cass. He was within inches when an agent, bleeding out on the ground ten yards away, shot him in the back of the head. The zombie dropped dead at our feet. Cass looked down at him.
“I haven’t quite mastered it yet,” she explained.
A bullet whizzed by my face. That dying agent had taken a shot at me too.
Before he could take aim again, I grabbed Cass around the shoulders in an awkward hug-like move and dragged her toward the farmhouse. She didn’t put up a fight; she was like a rag doll in my arms.
“I’m not going to eat you,” I told her, feeling like I should reassure this glassy-eyed space case.
“I know,” she said.
“Because you can see the future?”
“That’s not how it works. I just, uh, have a good feeling about you, okay?”
On our right, Red Bear leapt on top of the agent that had taken a shot at me. He looked over as he gulped down a bite of the agent, and waved.
“That’s the spirit, new guy!” Red Bear shouted, apparently assuming Cass was my dinner selection and approving.
I ignored him. We were only a few yards away from the farmhouse, most of the fight now behind us.
“I can help you get into Iowa,” said Cass, her face in my armpit. “If you help me get out of here. And promise not to eat me on the way.”
“But you work for the scary government.”
“I quit tonight.”
If the plan was still to go find that old man in Des Moines—and I seriously didn’t have any better ideas right then—my options were either join up with these crazy, scary zombies or trust in this fragile, seeming way-too-familiar psychic.
I looked over my shoulder. Red Bear dragged the struggling NCD agent along by his ankle. He brought the agent to where the zombie girl with the dreadlocks waited, smoking a cigarette. Red Bear stepped on the agent’s neck so that he couldn’t squirm away while he and the girl kissed, all tongue and hair pulling. Then, they started eating the guy. Was that the kind of zombie life I wanted to lead?
No way. I’d take my chances with the psychic.
“Deal,” I said. “But I’m not leaving without her.”
Cass didn’t reply as I dragged her into the farmhouse, letting her go once we’d crossed the threshold.
There was a dead lady inside, laid out on the blanket Amanda and I had spread with such care, like, an hour ago. Chazz Slade was there too, or what was left of him, most of his head missing, his body looking like it had been rotting for weeks.
Amanda was lying next to Chazz, not moving, so at first I thought she was dead too. For a moment, my heart dropped. She stirred when the floorboards creaked under my feet and looked up at me. Her hands and feet were shackled, half her face hidden behind a muzzle. She breathed a long and shaky sigh of relief.
“You came back,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice. “You’re alive. I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”
“Of course,” I said, my voice cracking right when I was trying to be all macho. “We’re a team. I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of this, but I know there’s no way we’re doing it alone.”
I knelt down and helped Amanda sit up. I pulled at the shackles, but there was no give at all.
Cass kept her distance. She looked obsessed with this huge trail of blood on the floor. It started near Chazz, then continued all the way to the back door of the farmhouse. Cass followed it, peering out the back door, maybe searching for one of her government pals.
Cass crouched down and picked something up from where the blood trail met the back threshold. I couldn’t really make out what it was; it looked like a piece of blood-spattered fabric. Maybe a bow tie? Cass looked it over for a moment, then tossed it aside.
“What’s she doing here?” hissed Amanda.
“Helping us,” I said.
“Fuck that. They killed Chazz. They’ll kill us too. Or worse, do to us whatever they did to him.”
I glanced over at Chazz’s body. Did it make me a total dick that I didn’t feel anything that Chazz had gone and gotten himself shot in the head? I guess it was different for Amanda; they’d actually had a relationship and all that. Even if they’d broken up, seeing him killed had to be a shock. I tried to look solemn for her benefit.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, tugging at her shackles again to quickly change the subject. “How do we get these off you?”
“Check her,” said Amanda, jerking her chin toward the dead lady on the blankets. “She was some kind of boss.”
“Don’t touch her,” snapped Cass, returning from the back door, looking more pale than before.
I held up my hands like, Whoa, calm down. Cass crouched over the dead lady, gently rifling through the pockets of her uniform. After a moment, she tossed me a ring of keys. Then she neatly folded the lady’s hands across her chest.
The third key I tried unlocked Amanda’s shackles. They clattered to the floor, Amanda rubbing her wrists. She unstrapped the muzzle on her own.
She stood up and looked me in the eyes. She didn’t blink and she didn’t look away. Her eyes were glittering with rage.
“We are going to make it,” she said in a low, hoarse voice. “We’ll eat every fucker who stands in our way. What we can’t eat, we’ll burn to the motherfucking ground. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what we have to do or how we have to do it. We’re going to make it. And we’re going to make it together.”
My heart was thumping in my chest. She was right. The only direction we could move was forward. But we would get there. “I love you,” I said, caught up in the moment, sure, but it was true.
Kissing her zombie mouth, I felt as alive as undead gets.
When I broke away from her and turned around, Cass was gaping at us in horror. Amanda stared daggers at her.
“Okay,” I said, using that calming tone of voice the school guidance counselor trotted out during
peer mediation. “I’m feeling some tension.”
Amanda strode toward Cass, glaring at her. I’ll give the little psychic some credit; she stood her ground. Back at school I’d seen plenty of freshman girls and even some dudes turn into blubbering idiots in the face of that white-hot Amanda Blake stare. But Cass looked more tired than frightened as she used her sleeve to wipe dried blood off her upper lip. She returned Amanda’s gaze impassively.
“Amanda,” I said, not sure what I’d do if she started attacking our new best hope for Iowa, really not wanting that to happen. “Come on. . . .”
Amanda shoved the muzzle into Cass’s chest, forcing her back a step.
“I should make you wear that,” said Amanda, sounding hard and bitter.
Cass didn’t make a move to take the muzzle, just let it fall to the floor. She didn’t say anything back, which was probably a wise move and, after staring her down for another couple seconds, Amanda flipped her hair dismissively and walked over to the doorway.
“Jake,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I joined her and we watched in silence as the NCD made their last stand. The few remaining agents had hunkered down back at the cars—our car included—using the doors for cover, keeping their backs to the vehicles. The zombies had them surrounded like a pack of jackals, one occasionally darting in to snap at an agent and being driven back by gunfire. The zombies were toying with them.
“Who are these guys?” asked Amanda.
“They’re from Iowa,” I answered.
“Why can’t we just go with them? What do we need her for?”
An NCD agent made it inside an SUV, trying to start it. There was Red Bear, leaping onto the hood, smashing the windshield with his tomahawk.
“I don’t think we want to be friends with them,” I answered, looking away as Red Bear dragged the agent, screaming, out through the windshield. “I’m pretty sure they’re the bad kind of zombies. And Cass says she can get us to Des Moines.”
“You believe her?”
“I do,” I said.
Amanda nodded, sweeping her gaze over all the mangled bodies outside.
“Okay,” she said, grabbing my hand. “I trust you. But, for the record, I’d eat her.”
I looked over my shoulder. Cass had sat down next to the dead lady, in her own little world. I felt sorry for her.
“I wouldn’t,” I replied.
We couldn’t go back to our car, and I didn’t want to go back through the wheat field to where some of the Iowa zombies had stayed behind to guard Jamison and their other NCD “provisions,” so we went sideways, into an endless stretch of tallgrass field. I figured if we just headed in a straight line, we’d find civilization eventually and there’d be a car for Amanda to use her master criminal skills on. Then we’d be on our way. No problem.
We walked along in silence. Amanda made Cass walk a few steps in front of us, treating her like a prisoner. I wasn’t worried that she’d run off, though; she looked like she barely had the energy to keep walking.
We passed through a field where a couple of bored-looking horses grazed. I’m not sure if they were wild or if that meant there was another farm nearby. I stopped walking.
“Want to ride these horses?” I suggested.
Amanda looked at me, rolling her eyes. “You can’t ride a horse.”
“I don’t know that I can’t ride a horse.”
“Okay,” she said. “I know you can’t ride a horse.”
“Oh, come on. I’ve seen people in movies do it. You just hop on and go, ‘Yah yah!’”
Amanda opened her mouth to pour more rain on my horse parade, but was cut off as gunshot thundered through the night air. We both flinched, spinning around to see who’d shot at us.
Twenty yards away across the open field, a lone NCD agent stood with his gun pointed in the air. He didn’t look like much. Not like one of the hardened soldiers from back at the farmhouse; he was way too skinny and polished looking for that, even if he was covered in blood from a bite wound on his shoulder, another one on his calf, and probably others I couldn’t see. Maybe he was the guy that got coffee for the real soldiers. He’d straggled far from the chaos back at the farmhouse, though, so props for that, dude.
“Tom?” shouted Cass with disbelief, the first words she’d spoken since the farmhouse filled. Then, she repeated herself, disbelief replaced by joy. “Tom!”
This Tom guy looked like he was one strong breeze away from falling over. He pointed his gun at us, at me specifically, his hand shaking.
“Get away from her,” he shouted across the field.
I held up my hands. “Okay, man, calm down.”
“Tom,” said Cass, taking a shaky step toward him. “You’re alive!”
“I’m hanging in there, Psychic Friend,” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.” Cass nodded. “I thought you were . . .” she trailed off.
“O ye of little faith,” replied Tom. Then he looked at me. “She’s coming with me and we’re getting out of here. I don’t care what you do after, just don’t hurt her.”
I looked at Cass and shrugged, because at this point I just wanted to take a break from having guns pointed at me.
“Yeah, dude. Whatever.”
But Cass didn’t move. I’d felt Amanda tense up next to me when Tom first started talking. Now, she walked sideways, slowly, her body hunched over, giving Tom as little target area as possible. She looked ready to pounce.
Tom swung his aim from me to Amanda, then back to me.
“Stop moving or I’ll shoot,” Tom shouted.
Finally, Cass stepped forward and at first I thought she was going to walk to Tom. I didn’t plan to stop her. Instead, she planted herself between me and Tom’s gun.
Amanda kept circling, getting closer to Tom as she did. It was getting harder for him to keep us both in his sights.
“Amanda!” I yelled. “What the fuck?”
“He’s the one, Jake,” she seethed. “He’s the one that killed Chazz.”
“Oh, come on, so—” I cut myself off before I finished the big so fucking what I had for Chazz’s untimely demise. “You—we killed people too, Amanda.”
“It’s not the same!” she barked. “They did something to him, and when it went bad, this guy just shot him in the head!”
Now Tom was aiming exclusively at Amanda.
“I got pretty good with this thing tonight, sister,” he said, shaking his gun at her. “Don’t try me.”
“I’m not going back, Tom,” interrupted Cass, the words bursting out of her like she’d just come to a major decision. “I can’t go back there.”
Tom tried to look at Cass out of the corner of his eye, still watching Amanda prowl closer.
“We can fix things,” Tom pleaded. “I promise I’ll fix things, Cass. I saw what Alastaire did. We’ll file a report.”
Cass shook her head manically, her hair falling across her face, catching in the dried blood.
“You can’t protect me,” she said shakily, like she regretted the words as soon as she’d said them.
Now Tom swung his gun back in my direction. His eyes were wide, hurt, maybe a little panicked.
“And he can?” yelled Tom, pointing at me. “He is not your friend, Cassandra.”
As soon as Tom took the gun off her, Amanda charged. She didn’t have far to go, yet it was just long enough for Tom to jumpily point the gun at her.
“Shit! Stop!” I screamed, feeling helpless.
I felt it then, like a shock wave in the air, and Cass was the epicenter. It’s hard to describe because I couldn’t see it. In fact, I couldn’t even feel it like you normally feel things. It was like that dizzy feeling you get when you stand up too fast, except this time it came on with the force of a wave crashing on the beach—and it all happened inside my brain.
Amanda fell on her face, midcharge, like a puppet with the strings cut.
Tom collapsed too, the shot he had meant for Amanda flying wild into the nigh
t.
I was stunned silent. Well, for like half a second.
“Holy fuck! Did you just kill them?!”
Cass turned to me, looking groggy, a fresh and thick trickle of blood pouring out of her nostril.
“Knock—knocked them out,” she stammered, and then collapsed into my arms. “I managed not to hit you. We need you to help us. To help me. Promise not to eat Tom. Promise, promise, promise. . . .”
And then she was out too.
“Okay, I promise,” I said, and set her down in the grass.
I looked around. Three passed-out bodies in the middle of nowhere; one the beautiful undead girl I was nurturing a raging crush on, one a psychic chick that I’d made multiple promises to tonight, and then that Tom guy.
Well, Jake. What now?
CASS
I’M NOT SURE HOW LONG I WAS OUT FOR. IT HAD TO BE a while. I’d never pushed myself like that before.
I didn’t dream. I was glad for that, worried what I might see.
Jamison running into the wheat field, never to return.
Harlene’s cold body, forgotten on the floor of the farmhouse.
The pained look in Tom’s eyes when I told him that he couldn’t protect me.
Alastaire. Anything involving Alastaire.
I woke up in a tight space. It was hot and smelled like gasoline. I was thirsty, my mouth like a desert, the back of my throat sore. My tongue was like a dried sponge in my mouth and yet I could still taste blood.
My clothes felt stiff and gross. I was sweating and my head was throbbing like it had never throbbed before. I tried to reach out to the astral plane, to find the minds around me, maybe get some clue where I was, but it hurt too much. I had a migraine and my migraine had an ax and my mind was made of wood.
I was in the trunk of a car. That much I had worked out.
That was a bummer. Still, I felt lucky to be alive.
I bumped along for a while. The ride didn’t do my head any favors.