Bad Taste in Boys (11 page)

So I couldn’t be blamed for screaming when someone appeared abruptly in the half-moon of the headlights.

“Jonah! Watch out!”

I had just enough time to see a familiar beefy face topped by a baseball cap before we ran him over.

The car bounced so violently that my teeth snapped closed on my tongue and my mouth filled with blood. Jonah slammed on the brakes, but we were going too fast. The car screeched to a stop, but not before we were tossed around by another thump as the back tires passed over the body too.

“Holy crap!” Jonah shouted.

He threw the car into park while it was still moving. We jerked to a stop, jouncing me around in my seat, and barely missed an ornamental lantern.

“I—I think that was Coach,” I stammered. “I’d been wondering where he was.”

And now I knew. He was decorating the pavement on my street.

“Oh god … I can’t get my seat belt off.”

Jonah didn’t have years of experience stalking the Red Cross like I did. If Coach needed medical attention, I was the logical one to give it.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “I’ll go … check on him.”

“No!”

“Stay here!” I opened the door before he had time to argue any further. “Keep the window open; I’ll shout if I need help. I might need you to bring the car closer.”

I smiled reassuringly because that was what you were supposed to do in situations like this. Then I got out of the car, shielding my glasses from the rain with one hand.

Coach wasn’t in the road; the only thing left on the pavement was his shoe. With shaking hands, I picked it up.

His foot was still inside.

I was remarkably calm. At least it wasn’t spurting; I began to consider the non-gush factor the most beneficial side effect of zombieness. Because standing there in the middle of the street with a severed foot in my hand, I pretty much bought into the whole zombie idea for good.

The virus? It was a zombie virus.

There just wasn’t any other workable explanation.

I was halfway across the street when my cell beeped. I checked out the text just in case. If Rocky was stuck in her house with a million rabid zombies at the door, I wanted to know.

It said,
Almost forgot to ask you to h‑coming. Interested? Aaron.

I stood there and gaped for a second. Then I did the unthinkable. I shut the phone without answering. I’d squeal later, provided we were both still alive. Right now? I had to see Coach for myself. I needed some kind of evidence to prove to everyone else that the zombies were real. If I showed them the foot, they’d just think I was a grave robber.

I shielded my eyes from the rain and inched toward the shadowy ditch. The closest lantern was about twenty feet away, and it adequately illuminated an area about the size of a postage stamp. My heart thumped at breakneck speed, and my instincts screamed that this was in no way a good idea. But I had his foot. He had a total handicap when it came to chasing me down.

I heard a wet rustle in the pile of leaves clogging the bottom of the ditch, but I couldn’t see very well since I was backlit. I took another half step forward and craned my neck like a little head jiggle was going to miraculously give me the ability to see in the dark.

“Coach?” I squeaked.

“Graaable.” Coach’s voice drew out into a rusty croak. Total stereotypical zombie speech pattern.

“What?” No answer from the ditch. “Coach, are you okay?” I spoke slowly and deliberately, like he was stupid instead of undead. Which only resulted in my feeling stupid.

When the response came, it was so quiet that I edged closer to the ditch in an attempt to hear him better. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Bite …”

At this point, I realized I was half stooped in front of a ditch containing a flesh-eating monster, and this was probably a bad idea. That conclusion was only made more obvious when Coach thrashed out of the leaves at me. I scrambled backward, but he grabbed my ankle before I could get away. One jerk of the foot and I toppled into a puddle and sprayed water into my face, making myself even blinder than usual.

When my vision finally cleared, I kind of felt like splashing myself in the eyes again. Coach was still attached to my ankle, and he looked totally freak show. His skin was mottled and his nose was barely attached to his face. Ink still tinted his lower lip blue. An honest-to-god tire track ran across his torso and off his right shoulder, and his left leg ended about midshin, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

He probably outweighed me by about a hundred pounds, so when he tried to pull himself out of the ditch by my foot, we both started sliding down the muddy bank. I scrabbled for a handhold; my fingers raked the soft ground without accomplishing much. Coach snarled and sank his teeth into the sole of my shoe, like he just couldn’t wait to devour me and needed to start while we were in the middle of a miniature mudslide. I kicked and flailed in an attempt to shake him loose and tried to climb back up at the same time. I didn’t have much success on either front.

When somebody grabbed me under the armpits, I thrust my
head back as fast as I could and felt pretty triumphant when it hit something hard. Even if it did hurt like blazes.

“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. Leave it to me to be worried about energy conservation at a time like this.