Bad Taste in Boys

by Carrie Harris

  “Damn it, Kate, that was my kneecap!” Jonah yelled. He wrapped his arms around my torso and pulled, but Coach’s teeth were wedged in my shoe and the guy wasn’t exactly light. We didn’t budge. So Jonah pulled harder.

  I could feel my vertebrae popping into place; there’s nothing like zombie chiropractic to take away your back pain. I choked down hysterical laughter as Jonah towed us toward the street, grunting with effort. Coach wouldn’t let go of my shoe even though he was being dragged belly-down through the mud; he was like one of those little yip-yap dogs with a chew toy.

  Once we got to the pavement, Jonah said, “I’ll get my sword!”

  “Wait!” I shrieked. “Don’t leave me with him!”

  But he wasn’t listening. He dropped me. My butt splatted into a big puddle of muddy water, spraying Coach right in the face. He yanked me toward him, mud streaming into his open eyes. He didn’t blink. I dug my fingers into the grating of a convenient sewer drain and held on so he couldn’t drag me away and eat me raw.

  “That sword isn’t going to do jack! Run him down with the car!” I shouted, kicking Coach right on the bridge of the nose. I heard something crack, but he didn’t pause. He was too busy shoving my foot into his mouth. And if that wasn’t gross enough, he began gnawing a hole in my shoe. It was old and worn; the canvas gave way all too quickly. I felt his fingers scrabbling inside as he ripped off the sole, slowly working his way inside to the meat of my foot.

  I realized then that I was still holding on to his foot, so I threw it at him. It bounced off his head but otherwise didn’t really accomplish anything except that now I wasn’t holding it, and that was awfully nice.

  The sole came free with a deafening rip. I shoved his chest with my other foot, but Coach wouldn’t let go. I swore I heard his stomach rumble.

  “Jonah!” I squinched my toes up as high as they’d go as Coach tried to worm his mouth up into the remains of my shoe, searching for flesh. His teeth snagged on my sock. “Hurry!”

  Jonah threw the car into reverse and took off with a squeal of tires, leaving streaks of rubber so long and dark that I could see them clearly despite the cruddy lighting and the rain. I prayed he wouldn’t swerve at the last minute and run me over by mistake.

  He hit Coach fast enough to roll him under the car. Lucky for me, Coach released my foot when the front tires passed over his torso, but the impact still wrenched my ankle around and popped my kneecap out of place. I couldn’t keep from screaming.

  I scrambled to my feet and lurched for the car, dragging the shredded remains of my shoe. My leg shrieked with pain; I had to drop down to the ground and scramble through the puddles on my hands and one working leg. I got soaked through and caked with gunk, but it was better than being cannibalized. I grabbed Coach’s foot off the pavement as I lurched past, because even in a situation like this I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to retrieve a sample.

  I locked myself in the car and immediately performed a zombie status check. Coach was nowhere to be seen. I looked in all the mirrors, mashing my face up against the window and repeating, “Where is he? Ohmygod, where did he go? Where is he, Jonah?”

  My brother put his arms around me and wouldn’t let go until I calmed down.

  “Coach is a zombie, isn’t he?” Jonah asked when I could breathe again.

  I tried to scoff. “Not exactly. If you’re looking for a scientifically accurate explanation, I think he has a virus that—”

  “Bull! He’s a freaking zombie, Kate. I’ve played enough Resident Evil to recognize a zed head when I see one!”

  “Whatever.” I squinted out the window but still didn’t see anything useful.

  “We’ve got to finish him off,” Jonah muttered. I stared at him in disbelief, but he didn’t even flinch. His face was drawn and serious. “If we leave him there, he might attack someone else.”

  I looked down at my leg. I really wanted to tell him I was hurt too badly and he’d have to do it without me. But he’d saved my life. Twice. I couldn’t wimp out on him now.

  “You’re going to have to help me pop my knee back into place,” I said. “I can’t run like this.”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  I levered my body around, lifting my injured limb and setting it in his lap. It slanted sickeningly to the right. If it had been someone else’s leg, I’d have been ooohing appreciatively, but I didn’t even want to look at it. I wrapped my fingers around the armrest and held on as tightly as I could.

  “Pull it straight out,” I said. “Hard and fast.”

  “Isn’t that going to hurt?”

  “Do it!” I shouted, and he yanked hard on my leg before the words were even out. The pain was immense; I couldn’t help but shriek. Little white stars danced across my field of vision. Sweat beaded on my upper lip, like I didn’t look icky enough already with the mud coating and all.

  “You okay?” Jonah asked.

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded and tested the knee. It felt like it was back in place and seemed like it would bear my weight, although I wouldn’t want to run a marathon or anything.

  “All right.” Jonah took a deep breath. “I want you to stay behind me, and if I get in trouble, you go for the car and run him over again, okay?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He reached into the backseat and produced his pseudosword. It only took a minute to rip all the stupid foam off, leaving a long length of sturdy PVC. He thunked it into his hand. I tried to imagine it smashing into Coach’s skull but quickly decided I didn’t need the mental picture.

  “I’m going to go hunt some zombie,” he said. It would have sounded pretty cool if his voice hadn’t cracked in the middle of the sentence.

  He got out of the car. The last thing I wanted was to follow him, but I did anyway. I limped forward just far enough to get a good line of sight, but not so far that I couldn’t lurch to the car in the event that zombies tried to flank me. They usually travel in numbers, assuming that Hollywood has it right.

  Jonah shouldered the sword and inched toward the ditch. The closer he got, the more erratically my heart pounded. I started glancing around with barely suppressed paranoia. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that the zombie hordes always came from out of nowhere to descend on the girl when the guy’s back was turned. They weren’t going to sneak up on me, though.

  Jonah leaned over the edge of the ditch, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, I was so scared. I couldn’t keep from snapping at him.

  “Jonah? Have you gone completely mental? If you go down there, you’re on your own.”

  “I don’t see him,” he said, poking around in the underbrush with his sword. “I don’t know where he could have gone.”

  “Probably in that big drainage pipe that goes under the road. And you’re not going in there.” I realized I was still cradling the foot under my arm. There were so many stray body parts around these days that I’d begun to feel pretty nonchalant about them. Either that or I was in shock. “Don’t you remember when the Ludwigs’ dog got stuck down there and the fire department had to get him out? There’s no room to move, and definitely no room to swing at him. He’d tear you apart! Frankly, I’m surprised he fit in the first place.”

  Disappointed, Jonah lowered the sword.

  “If he’s in there,” I continued, “we’re not getting him out without a forklift. Let’s go home. I want to take some pain meds and get cleaned up.”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry.” He shouldered the sword again and offered his arm for me to lean on. He must have been in shock too, because the sight of the foot didn’t faze him either. He just said, “You want me to carry that?”

  “Nah. I’ve got it. I’m getting used to dismembered body parts.”

  He laughed, but I didn’t understand what was so funny. I was being entirely serious.

  could see the glow of our house all the way from the end of the block. “Dad would flip if he saw that you left all the lights on,” I said. L
eave it to me to be worried about energy conservation at a time like this.

  “I didn’t.” Jonah frowned like the lights were a personal affront. Like father, like son. Dad got a little crazy about green issues.

  The front door opened before we could even get out of the car. Dad stepped outside and glowered at us so hard I felt the force of it from a hundred feet away.

  “Katherine Curie and Jonah Salk Grable, get in the house right now,” he said sternly.

  I hobbled up the driveway under my father’s stern gaze. Jonah hurried behind me and joined me inside on the couch. Dad didn’t sit. He loomed over us in that parental way I thought they must teach in secret night classes. Then he folded his arms, as if we hadn’t already gotten the picture that he was pissed.

  “Someone,” he said, “better start talking. Because otherwise, I will be forced to conclude the worst.”

  Confessions were the best way to avoid being punished, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. “About what?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was a complete moron. “Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I meant when I took your keys away. I meant that the car wasn’t to be driven. Particularly by Jonah after dark on a school night, when the only licensed driver in the car might start convulsing any minute. What were you two thinking?”

  “It was an emergency,” I said, and I would have continued if Jonah hadn’t butted in.

  “Yeah, Kate had another seizure at school, and she needed a ride home. It’s not like we ran anyone over or anything.”

  He was lucky Dad was there, or else I would have punched him. The last thing we needed was to inspire Dad to check out the front bumper and discover Coach’s face imprinted on it. Luckily, Dad was focused on the driving itself, so the last sentence didn’t register.

  “So you decided to compound the problem by taking the car rather than calling me for help?” Dad asked. “I’m not impressed by your reasoning, Jonah.”

  “I was worried about her,” Jonah said, mustering more sweetness than I thought possible. “So maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m sorry.”

  Dad softened noticeably, uncrossing his arms and relaxing the ramrod-straight posture just a little. I’d have to ask Jonah to teach me that trick someday. I couldn’t apologize without wanting to repeatedly whack my head on something.

  Dad sighed. “Perhaps I’m overreacting. But if something had happened to you …”

  “Everything’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine. Jonah’s fine. The car is fine. And if something like this happens again, I’ll call you at work, okay? I should have done that, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly either.”

  He took a deep breath and ruffled my hair. “I’m sure you’re upset at this sudden relapse, pumpkin. I can understand that. Just don’t let it happen again, either of you. Okay?”

  Jonah and I nodded like crazy.

  “Good.” Dad gave me a once-over. “Now go take a shower. It looks like you seized in the middle of a mud puddle.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my mud-spattered jeans and soaking wet socks and decided that the best explanation was no explanation at all. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

  I felt much better once I took some painkillers and a shower. It amazed me how a stream of steaming water and some strawberry-scented shampoo could soothe the soul of the zombie-plagued.

  The feeling didn’t last long. I wrapped myself in my periodic-table robe and walked down the hall to my bedroom. My brother was hunched in front of my dresser, pawing through my underwear drawer. And for a minute I had actually started to like him.

  “Jonah!” I shut the door behind me, because I didn’t want Dad to overhear. He was on the alert already, and if I had to say the words “My brother touched my panties” aloud, I’d lose it. “What are you doing?”

  He whirled around. My favorite panties, with I ♥ SCIENCE printed on the butt, fell out of his hand and onto his foot. I was never going to be able to wear them again.

  “You stole my elf ear,” he said, waving a pitiful piece of latex at me.

  “What?”

  “Ear thief. Anatomical kleptomaniac. Body-part pilferer.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you happen to be wrong. I don’t steal ears. I steal fing—”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  “You steal what?” Jonah asked.

  “Nothing.” I muttered. “Get your hands off my underwear.”

  He put the ear in his pocket and slammed my dresser drawer shut. I knew it had been too good to last. He’d worn those stupid elf ears everywhere for an entire year; I’d had to take action before he started high school and I became known as the elf boy’s older sister. Because really, I was geeky enough without my brother adding to it. The ear had been in the back of my underwear drawer for about four months. All my undies smelled like rubber, but it was a small price to pay for an elf-free reputation.

  “You know what? I forgive you, even if it was a cruddy thing to do. I don’t want to fight with you, Kate.” He held his hands up, like an empty placating gesture was going to make up for the fact that his hands had just been on my underthings. “I was just looking for it.”

  “And you thought your ear might be inside your sister’s underwear? You. Are. A. Freak.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he snapped.

  “Well, if your pronoun had an antecedent, I might have some idea what you’re talking about. And you’re still a freak.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, edging closer to me. My panties slid off his foot. I was going to have to burn the contents of that entire drawer and buy all new underwear. “I was looking for the zombie foot. I thought maybe you’d put it in the dresser while you were in the shower. Where’d you hide it?”

  “The foot? Oh crap!”

  The delightful, relaxed postshower feeling evaporated immediately. We were back to full-on panic mode.

  “Kate, you’re killing me here.” He folded his arms. “I want to know everything. How did you find out about the zombies? Did you know before we ran into Coach? His foot just fell off by itself, didn’t it?” Then he let out some weird snort-cackle combo. “I totally can’t believe my sister is a kick-butt zombie hunter. Wait till I tell the guys!”

  “Jonah, you can’t tell anyone I stole a foot,” I hissed. “I’ll get arrested.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” His face fell momentarily, but nothing was going to rain on his undead parade. “Well, can’t I see the foot one more time? Come on. I didn’t really get to look at it before.”

  I rubbed my head. “I think I left it downstairs. On the table. With Dad.”

  “You forgot the foot?” Jonah grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, as if scrambling my brains was going to help anything. “How could you?”

  “Jonah, I was attacked by zombies twice today. I had a seizure, and now I’ve got the beginnings of a monster migraine. So excuse me if I’m a little discombobulated.” I couldn’t believe I was justifying myself to my brother. “Like you were any better? You practically advertised the fact that we ran someone over with the car. Why not take him outside and offer to show him the skid marks while you’re at it?”

  He frowned. “Well, we can stand here and yell at each other until Dad finds the foot and decides we’re grave robbers, or we can do something about it. When did you have the foot last?”

  I thought back. After we got in the car, I’d wrapped the foot in a Country Kitchen grocery bag that was on the floor. I’d placed the bag on the coffee table while Dad was interrogating Jonah and me. I was almost sure of it.

  The operative word there was almost. Normally I wouldn’t space out like that, but I was so tired. And hurt. And stressed. My brain was practically dribbling out my ears.

  “All right,” I said. “You check the car. There’s a chance I left it in there. I’ll check the living room, which is the other best possibility. Meet me in the basement.”

  “Okay.”

  Jonah thundered down the sta
irs.

  The living room light was off and the room empty, which made my life easier. It would have been a lot more difficult to remove a foot-shaped bag from right under Dad’s nose. I could probably have managed, but it was nice not to have to worry about it. I flicked the lights on with a feeling of relief.

  The bag wasn’t there.

  I swallowed. It wasn’t like the foot would walk off on its own. Or would it?

  stared at the empty table and tried not to panic. The missing foot wasn’t going to suddenly come to life and stomp my family to death, right? That kind of thing only happened in horror films, in which case I would have been a lot blonder and more buxom. It was one of the few situations in which my geekiness was reassuring.

  The foot was probably in the car. I stared at the door to the garage, expecting Jonah to bound through triumphantly at any moment with a plastic bag full of foot. It didn’t happen.

  I heard Dad pounding away at the keyboard in his study down the hall, Armstrong growling as he worked on his nightly rawhide chewie. Personally, I could think of better things to do than sit on Dad’s smelly feet and chew rawhide, but it was Armstrong’s favorite activity in the world. He was really going at it tonight too. The snarly noises he made were almost comical.

  Then it hit me. Oh my god. Armstrong had the foot.

  All of Dad’s work stuff had been on the table too. He’d probably grabbed the bag by mistake, and Armstrong got hold of the dismembered body part somehow, and now he was chewing it into bits.

  I ran down to the study. Dad looked up from the computer with an expression of mild puzzlement.

  “What?” he said, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. “Is there a fire?”

  “No. I …” I looked around wildly. “Um. I forgot to take Armstrong out for a walk. Is he in here?”

  Dad glanced at his dog-covered feet. I needed to distract him before he discovered what Armstrong was really chewing on.

  “Dad!” He jerked at my shout. “Sorry. I just don’t want to disturb you. And I know Mom would be upset if she came back from her trip overseas to find the carpet all yucked up.”