“He seemed okay, I guess,” said Phil with another shrug.
“That’s good,” I said, but my mind raced for a while, wondering who’d been asking about me. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but a number of unsavory characters might actually be hunting for me.
“Can I ask you something?” Phil asked.
“You can ask.”
“What’s up with you and Brandon?”
This threw me. I wasn’t expecting Phil to be aware of anything going on in my social life.
I shrugged.
“You two seemed to be an item last year,” he said. An item? Was Phil a character in a Sweet Valley High novel? I let it slide. “And then you weren’t, and now you act weird whenever his name comes up.”
I slid down in the front seat of the horrible old Ford Taurus Phil had bought over the summer. The cracked leather creaked and made fart noises. I always knew that I’d have to talk about Brandon with Phil at some point. I was just lucky that he hadn’t asked me before now.
“Can we get out of the car?” I asked. “Get some fresh air?”
“Is this some sort of stall tactic?” he asked.
“Only sort of,” I said. “Mostly I want some fresh air.” The stale cigarette smell really was getting to me.
Rather than answer, Phil opened his door and climbed out. I did the same but, as I got out, I grabbed my bag and started rummaging through it.
“What are you looking for?” he asked as he squinted at me through the windshield.
“My gun,” I said. Technically, it’s a revolver.
“Are you planning to shoot me?” he asked. It took me a second to realize he’d made a joke. They were pretty rare, coming from him.
“Ha,” I deadpanned. “I just want to be ready for any uninvited guests.” I grabbed the pistol and stood, tucking it into my waistband.
He looked around us. We’d parked at the end of a dead-end street on top of this hill. There were a few houses on either side, all of them surrounded by chain-link fencing, and a few trees.
“I don’t think there are gonna be any zombies around here,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” I said, “the last time I thought I’d have a zombie-free evening with a group of friends, I had to deal with a whole army of the suckers.” At Brandon’s year-end party a couple months ago, we’d been attacked by the zombie equivalent of the Golden Horde. That was one of the reasons I’d stopped seeing him. But just one.
He sat on the bumper of the car and I did the same. I waited for him to ask me again, before realizing he wasn’t going to. He seemed happy just to look out over the city I wanted to get out of so badly. I considered not talking, not bringing it up again, but worried what the consequences of that would be. I couldn’t figure out how Phil was doing such a number on my head; was it sorcery?
I noticed that he was sort of gesturing in the air with his hands, another tic. Little movements like he was conducting a symphony or something. I thought about his hands and what they’d feel like on my skin, then put that thought away. Now wasn’t the time.
“As preface to this whole story,” I said, keeping my eyes forward, definitely not looking at him, “I just want to say that I don’t do it anymore.”
“Ominous,” Phil said. “Do what?”
“I used to sell drugs,” I said. “For, like, the last year that I worked at the Bully, I was selling Vitamin Z out of the drive-thru window.”
I waited for a response, but Phil stayed silent. It didn’t feel judgey. And, as a girl raised in the American school system, I know judgmental. I decided I could go on.
“I never tried it myself,” I said, “until I did. Just once.” I glanced at Phil and he nodded slowly. “Brandon was with me. And Sherri.” Sherri had been my best friend since birth, and she’d worked at the Bully Burger with me Phil and me. “While we were high, we got separated from Sherri. The next time I saw her, she was a zombie.”
“The whole episode freaked me out something fierce. I decided to stop selling, and definitely decided I’d never do Z again.”
“I had no idea that’s how Sherri died,” Phil said. I searched for some hint of what he was thinking, but his voice was a monotone. “You never told me.”
“There was never a good time to bring it up,” I said, and cringed. Jesus, I could be pretty lame.
“And now this thing with Brandon,” Phil said.
“And now this thing with Brandon,” I agreed. “He kept on going with it. He had some at his end-of-year shindig and wanted me to smoke it with him. That was right before the zombies made their grand entrance.”
Phil nodded. He’d been there for that part. Not as a guest of the party. He’d just shown up in case there was trouble of the undead variety. Because he really likes to kill zombies and he was pretty sure they’d be showing up like ants at a picnic.
“And he’d smoked it once or twice before that night, too.”
“Why?” Phil asked.
“He said it made him forget himself,” I said. “Not just his troubles, but himself. He liked that, I guess.”
Phil cocked his head and looked at me. “Why did you sell Vitamin Z?” he asked.
I felt a little ember of resentment start to glow in my chest. My fallback position whenever I’m put on the spot is to get angry and let my inner bitch off her leash, but I knew that wasn’t fair to Phil. He deserved some answers. I took a deep breath and did my best to grind out that fire.
“I needed it to fund my plan,” I said. My plan to get the hell out of Salem, move to New York City—if the Army ever reclaimed it from the zombies—attend Columbia University, and find a cure for the zombie plague.
I braced myself for him to be horrified. Or at least mildly grossed out. What I wasn’t prepared for was him taking it in stride.
“I’m not surprised you don’t want to see him anymore,” he said. “Especially since Sherri died because you guys gave her Vitamin Z.”
I took a deep breath. No one else had blamed me for Sherri’s death and what Phil said pushed all of my defensive buttons. I took another deep breath and decided to let it slide.
“That’s it?” I asked him. “Nothing about me selling it?”
“You stopped selling it after that, right?” he asked. “After you figured out it was bad mojo?” I nodded. He shrugged. “I’ve done too many dumb things myself to start judging people.”
“Are you Christian?” I blurted out. It would explain why he wouldn’t want to judge me. And it would explain why, after months of going out on zombie patrol, he hadn’t made one attempt at kissing me. Or even copping a feel. I’d briefly considered that he might be gay, but my sexuality-detecting equipment wasn’t picking up any fabulous signals. It occurred to me that this was actually the first time we’d hung out together in a non-zombie-killing capacity. I liked it, but I wish we’d decided to do something—anything—else. We could have gone somewhere private, just as an example....
He looked confused. “No, I’m not. Would it matter if I were religious?”
“No,” I lied. As much as I like to be open-minded, churchy-Joes rub me the wrong way. It’s something I needed to work on, okay? “I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“My aunt says, ‘that way leads to madness.’ ” He said it without a smile—smiles from him are rare—but he didn’t seem sad about it, either.
“Your aunt seems to have you pegged,” I said.
A grin almost played across his lips.
His lips.
Man, I needed to get a grip. I stood up and checked that the pistol was still firmly in place.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
“Where?” Phil asked.
I pointed past the end of the street. Where the pavement ended, a small foot trail led down into some trees.
“Maybe we can get a better look at this beautiful city of yours,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Let me get my bat out of the trunk.”
I thought about that for a moment. His bat is of
the ordinary baseball variety—wood and about yea long—except that it had nails pounded through it and was covered in the gore of about a hundred undead. It occurred to me I’d never seen it in full light. I didn’t think I wanted this to be my first time.
“Why don’t you leave it?” I asked. “If we run into trouble, I have this.” I lifted up my shirt to show him the pistol and exposed a good portion of my belly, too. Not that he seemed to notice.
“Okay,” he said, barely glancing at me. “You want to go down first, or me?”
I stifled a bunch of lame double entendres and said, “Let me.” Maybe I’d at least find a zombie who found my body appealing.
I started picking my way down the path, which was steeper than it had appeared from up on the street. A few times my feet tried to get out from under me, but I never actually fell on my ass. So, points to me, I guess.
Once we got down about six feet or so, the ground flattened out a little and I became less worried about falling off the hill. But the trees were a lot thicker and closer than they’d appeared from up above and I started worrying about new stuff, i.e., shufflers deciding I looked like a tasty snack.
Phil skidded the last foot or so and he grabbed me to stop himself from falling. His hand slipped around my waist and he left it there for a second after he got himself righted. My heart started to thud in my chest and all thoughts of the undead went right out of my head. I felt like the heroine in a Regency novel that featured monsters, as dumb as that sounds.
“Sorry,” Phil said.
“No problem.” I looked out at the city. Being a few yards closer to it didn’t make it any prettier. So much for my brilliant ideas.
“Let’s go down here,” Phil said as he started walking. “I think there are some big rocks we can sit on.” He paused and grinned at me. “The better to enjoy the incredible view.”
“More jokes,” I said. “You’re like a junior Dane Cook.”
“I hope I’m less douche-y.”
I didn’t answer that and just followed him. We found the rocks pretty easily. Big, flat stones that jutted out of the dirt. They were probably part of the mountain we were crawling all over. It felt good to sit in the sun with a boy I was starting to like. I warned myself that this was only the second time I’d been through this, and the first time—with Brandon—hadn’t turned out well. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Phil, it was that I didn’t trust myself.
We sat there without talking for a while and then, as I’m prone to do, I started mentally picking at something Phil had said earlier.
“What dumb things?” I asked, picking up on what he’d said in the car.
He stared out at the city and frowned.
“Too soon,” he said.
“When?” I prodded.
He turned toward me. “I’m not sure. But I’ll know when it’s the time. If it ever is.”
“And you expect me to be satisfied with that answer,” I said, teasing him.
“You don’t have a choice,” he said, serious as a heart attack. This wasn’t a side I’d seen of him before. I knew he was sort of distant, but I wasn’t really prepared for defensive. He seemed almost like a real boy at this point.
The sun was behind us, but it must have started to set because we were in shadow by then and the air was getting cooler. I rubbed my arms when goose bumps sprang up on them.
“Maybe we should head back to the car,” I said. “I’ve had enough of this scenic beauty for a while.”
“Okay,” said Phil. He stood and turned back the way we’d come, and then he froze. “Oh,” he said.
I didn’t need to ask.
A zombie stood right on the path that led back to the car. Of course. She wasn’t all chewed up and bloody, but her gray skin and the black slime that oozed out of her mouth were good indicators of what we were dealing with. I took a second to admire her Smiths T-shirt. It was the MEAT IS MURDER one. How’s that for irony? She looked like she was our age, maybe a little younger, and used to be pretty. I guessed that maybe West Salem High was missing a cheerleader.
We stood there for a minute, all three of us. She made no attempt to come at us, and we weren’t exactly ready to rush her. I started to look around because the last few times I’d had run-ins with some shufflers, they’d been traveling in packs. But if there were others with her, they weren’t coming out to play.
“Courtney,” Phil shout-whispered at me.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t you have a gun in your pants?”
No, I’m just happy to see you, I thought and grinned despite the situation. I was so scared I felt a little giddy. But he was right, I did have a pistol. I slowly snaked my right hand across my belly and under my shirt. Finding the pistol, I wrapped my hand around it, careful to keep my finger off the trigger so I didn’t shoot myself in the gut when drawing it out. Just as slowly, I moved my left hand up and grabbed my shirt. I took a deep breath, let it out, then simultaneously lifted the shirt and drew the pistol.
Which stuck in my waistband!
I was so confused, I almost shot myself. Looking down to see what was going on, I heard the zombie snarl. The gun’s sight had snagged on something, but I couldn’t tell what.
“Courtney!” Phil shouted.
I looked up to see the dead girl charging me. Yanking the gun free, I felt a searing pain on my belly. Then she hit me like a freaking undead linebacker. We both went over and she landed on top of me. I let go of the gun to grab her arms and keep her off me.
The bitch was inches from my face, snapping her jaws and drooling black goo all over me. I was trying to keep the ooze from getting in my mouth and my arms were already shaking with the effort to keep her up.
“Philip,” I screamed, “grab the gun!”
I didn’t hear him respond. Where the hell was he? I knew I couldn’t last much longer. A whimper escaped my throat and I cursed myself for that. There was no way I wanted to go out crying in front of a goddamned zombie.
Just then something flew across my body and knocked the dead girl off of me. Phil had tackled her and was now wrestling on the ground with her. He’d ended up on top, but I could tell that he couldn’t let her go or try to get away without the risk of getting bitten. At least she wasn’t leaking zombie tranny fluid all over him.
Despite just wanting to curl up into a ball, I got up on my hands and knees and started searching for the gun. Rocks and other junk dug into my knees and the palms of my hands as I probed under bushes and scanned the area. I didn’t see the damned pistol anywhere.
“Courtney!”
Phil was now lying flat on his back, the dead girl contorting every way she could to try to get her teeth into him. His eyes bulged, his face and neck were a scary shade of red. I knew he wouldn’t last much longer. Screw the gun.
I found the biggest rock I was able to palm. It felt good in my hand—jagged and heavy. I scrambled over to where Phil tangled with the zombie, stopped, and raised the rock high in the air. Phil’s eyes turned toward me and something like relief washed over his expression. If this were a movie, this would be the point where I said something ironic, but I couldn’t think of anything.
“Do it!” Phil screamed.
The dead chick turned to look at me and hissed through blackened teeth.
I brought the rock down with all my strength right on her nose. I felt more than heard the sickening crunch of her nose caving into her face, then more black ooze squirted from the wound. She screamed and let go of Phil to clutch at it. She fell over backward as Phil bucked her off him.
I immediately collapsed onto her chest and, with my free hand, pushed her arms out of the way. She looked up at me with one ruined eye and I almost hesitated because of what I saw there. Almost. Instead, I brought the rock down on her face and felt/heard another crack. Then I did it again, and again. I lost track, but soon the crack was replaced with a sucking, squelching sound.
I felt fingers close around my wrist as I raised the rock again. Phil stood ov
er me, his blank expression taking me in, then looking toward the zombie’s busted gourd.
“Okay, Courtney,” he said. “She’s done.”
“I should have let you bring the bat,” I said. The last few words came out strangled because I started to cry. I was only marginally less embarrassed to cry in front of Phil than I had been about squirting a few in front of the shuffler.
Phil pulled me off of her and helped me walk back to the rocks. We sat there for a few minutes while I got myself together and the last of the sunlight disappeared.
“We need to get out of here,” Phil said. “Just in case there are more.”
“My gun.”
“You can buy a new one,” he said. “C’mon.”
We made our slow way back to the car. My knees were killing me, and something happened to my hip that I was just starting to feel. Also, I had a deep gouge across my stomach where the pistol’s site scratched me. After a lot of tripping and sliding, we made it up the steep embankment and over to the car.
I sank into the seat and tried to ignore the pain. Phil flipped on the dome light and we examined each other for gouges and bites. None that we could see. There wasn’t much we could have done at that point if there were any. We’d be zombies before we could get to a hospital.
We sat back down and Phil started the car. Elvis Costello, Phil’s favorite, came pouring out of the speakers. As Elvis sang about the terrible state of the radio, I sat there thinking about how earlier I’d been fantasizing about Phil’s hands on me. Well, he’d just pawed me all over, and I couldn’t think of anything less sexy.
“Thanks,” he said, “for saving me. I wasn’t going to last much longer.”
“You bet,” I said. “Do me a favor in return?”
“Anything,” he said.
“Never bring me to this place again.”
“Done,” he said.
He put the car in reverse and turned around.
We didn’t talk. What can I say? Killing undead teenagers always make me feel somber. I thought about what I saw in the dead girl’s eye right before I hit her with the rock. Usually the word used to describe a zombie is “lifeless,” right? But she’d shown some spark, some hint of recognition that threw me for a second. I couldn’t tell you what that meant, or why it was there, but something about it made me shiver.
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