Dawn of the Jed (22 page)

“She always fight your battles? Because I haven’t forgotten the last one.” Robbie stared at Anna. “Not by a long shot.”

“Just go get Tread and we’re gone,” I said. “I know he’s here.”

“That may be true,” Robbie said. “If so, it’s where he’s staying. Unless you do me a favor.”

Robbie leaned close and whispered into my ear.

“Robbie, no way,” I said. “That’s … that’s … it’s wrong. I can’t. It’s not even possible.”

“I think it is, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree for now. See you tonight.”

The door shut, this time with a satisfying slam.

I just stood there, staring at where Robbie used to be.

Anna shook my shoulder.

“Jed, what is it? What did he say?”

“You don’t want to know.”

But she did want to know. And I had to tell her.

I needed to tell her.

I walked around the side of the immaculate house, the flashlight beam bobbing in front of me before it snagged on the side gate. Robbie was supposed to be waiting on the other side, and I desperately hoped he’d fallen asleep. I was wide awake, as if it were the middle of the afternoon instead of the middle of the night.

Several days had passed since Robbie whispered in my ear. It was all I could think about.

“Jed, please don’t go through with this,” Anna said. “There are other ways. We can talk to Robbie’s mom. We can let your parents know what happened. But this, this is the worst thing you can do.”

She was right. This was the worst thing I could do. But it was the only way to get Tread back in one piece.

And I needed to get Tread back in one piece, emphasis on “one.”

“Anna, who in your life would you do anything for?” I asked, resisting the temptation to add “besides me.”

“Besides you?” she said, my heart melting just a little bit.

“Yes, besides me.”

“My mom, totally. She’s been there for me whenever I’ve needed her.”

“Dang, that kind of throws off the comparison I was going to make.” I paused. “But what if your mom was in trouble? Wouldn’t you do anything to make sure she was safe?”

“Of course, but, Jed, you’re talking about a dog. I love Tread, don’t get me wrong. But he’s still a dog.”

I flicked off the flashlight and turned to face Anna, whose amazing eyes lit up the night.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “He’s not just a dog. ‘Just a dog’ is a pet you adopt at a shelter or find on Craigslist. But Tread is a part of me. Not just because of Ooze and the whole zombie thing. He’s there for me and would be 24 hours a day if I needed him. He doesn’t get mad when I’m a jerk, and doesn’t run away if I’m in a bad mood. He’s just happy I’m there. And the one person I really trusted, the guy I always believed in, just walked away because something freaked him out. So no, Tread isn’t just a dog. He’s my friend. My best friend.”

Before Anna could say anything, I thumbed the flashlight and aimed its beam forward. I focused on the task ahead.

A favor for Robbie, but so much more.

I blocked the rest out, thinking only of Tread.

“You didn’t have to come,” I said. “If I remember correctly, I begged you not to come. Even got down on my knees.”

“Jed, I’m pretty sure you suggested I stay home, followed by, ‘I have to be at Robbie’s at two in the morning, so I have to leave my house at 1:47.’ Then you told me you’d be dressed in black and carrying a flashlight.”

“But I did get on my knees.”

“Yes, to show me where you’d be hiding in the bushes if I arrived a few minutes late.”

“Everything’s a blur right now, OK? I just need to get this done.”

We stood at the side gate. I rapped on it with my left hand, which had regained all feeling since reattachment. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Zambrano’s offer to sew it on, so when I got home I asked Mom if she could put it back on with needle and thread.

“My sewing skills are limited to using the Button Up Re-Buttoner your father received a few Christmases ago,” she said. “I’m willing to give that a shot, though. Having an arm that buttons on might be handy. Or a zipper would be even better.”

I just used staples and duct tape, as usual.

There was no answer to my knock, so I tried again. A little harder. The gate swung open.

“Hey, Zom-boy, I thought you were dead, not deaf. Not so loud. The living are sleeping.”

I guess it was too much to expect a “Thanks for coming.”

“I see you brought your girlfriend again, the only person maybe stiffer than you. Wonderful. Anyone else you expecting? Friends? Family? Loved ones?”

I stepped past him, scanning the yard with my flashlight.

“Where’s Tread?” I said, panning the beam back and forth.

The backyard was as tidy as the front. Perfect lawn. Perfect deck. The trees and shrubs were so well proportioned they looked plastic.

I was believing more and more in landscape elves.

I turned back to Robbie and repeated the question. “Where’s Tread?”

“He’s fine. Upstairs. You have more important things to think about right now.”

“No, I don’t. Go get him or the deal’s off.”

Normally such attitude would have sent me headfirst into the nearest receptacle, courtesy of Robbie and his finely tuned garbage-slam technique.

Two things worked in my favor. One, there was not a trash can in sight. I doubted the Zambranos even produced trash. They probably reused everything, like making greeting cards out of cereal boxes. Stuff that would make Martha Stewart say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Two, Robbie needed me. I wasn’t sure if I could do what he asked, but I knew no one else could.

I wasn’t surprised Robbie remained calm in the face of my insolence.

“Wait here,” he said, disappearing into his house.

Anna tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you see it?”

“No.” I kept playing the beam around the yard, dreading what it was going to find sooner or later.

A flash of white in the corner. I aimed the beam in the far reaches of the yard. There, a cross.

“Let’s take a look.” I took Anna’s hand and followed the light, stepping as lightly as we could so as not to mess the lawn.

The cross was two feet high and about two inches wide. Letters were written across its beam. “A” on the left. “B” in the center. “E” on the right.

A-B-E. Some kind of code? Directions? What sort of mystery lingered with these letters?

I centered the letters in the flashlight beam. “What do you think it means?”

“It means ‘Abe,’ you brain-dead douche,” Robbie said from behind me. What is it with this family and making no sound when they move?

“Abe?” I asked.

“Yeah, that was his name.”

“You named your dog Abe? Really? Why not Dan? Or Bob? Or another really uninspired name?”

I didn’t have to look at Robbie to know he’d pulled back his fist. I stared at the cross, daring him.

Until I felt something brush against my leg.

“Tread! Tread, how you doing boy?” I bent my legs to kneel, letting go of Anna’s hand so I could scratch Tread’s neck. But all I scratched was air.

Robbie yanked him back, Tread giving a choked yelp (which was pretty normal, being pulled or not).

“Not so fast, Zom-boy. We had a deal. Here’s my end, a safe and sound Tread. Well, safe anyway. I’m not so sure how sound he is.”

Robbie turned and headed back to the house. “Follow me.”

“Wait, I thought you wanted me to, you know.”

“Exactly. Over here.”

“But isn’t this where—”

“No,” Robbie interrupted. “Seriously? You have any idea what would happen if it was?”

I did. That was my biggest fear. After all, months had passed.

I fell into step behind Robbie and Tread. I assumed Anna was behind me, but I focused on what was directly in front of me.

Hoping I could do this. And hoping just as much that I couldn’t.

Robbie stepped up to the deck, Tread’s nails clicking on the wood. Curling his fingers under the top of the wrought-iron patio table, he tilted it back and slipped Tread’s lead under the exposed leg, lowering the table slowly back to the deck.

Tread whined as if knowing what was about to come.

“I’ll be there in a minute, boy,” I said. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

“It better be,” Robbie said, stepping off the far end of the deck and bending over.

He returned with a large plastic cooler and placed it at my feet.

Now it was making sense, and me very ill.

I felt a hand in the small of my back, Anna’s whisper in my ear. “Jed, no. This isn’t right. Not if what’s in there is what I think is in there.”

Robbie kneeled in front of the cooler, flipping the plastic latch with soft “click.” He lifted the lid. I aimed the flashlight at the thick layer of ice cubes on top.

“Gimme that,” Robbie said, snatching the light so quickly my hand almost went with it. He put it aside, the beam just enough to light the scene.

Robbie plunged his hands inside the ice and fumbled around, looking for something.

Not “something.”

Abe.

His hands stopped and began to ascend through the cubes, some rising above the rim and tumbling to the deck. A dark clump arose, maybe two feet across. He placed it gently on the deck.

The dog was mostly dark brown, with a streak of black on the nose and along the spine. A lighter brown covered his stomach. The tail was black, the fur much fluffier than the rest of his bristled coat. Abe’s face looked like a bear cub, but with a longer muzzle and pointy ears. He was maybe thirty, thirty-five pounds.

“Cancer,” Robbie said. “He was just seven-years-old.”

“I’m sorry,” I said without knowing why.

“You know what to do. So shut up and do it.”

As soon as Robbie told me about the price to return Tread, I knew why he was so interested in my dog. It had nothing to do with Tread being an abomination, or a monster, or an insult of nature (things I often thought Robbie believed of me).

Tread was proof I could bring back a dog. Or at least make a dead dog an undead dog.

“I don’t know if I can,” I said. “You know what happened with Tread. He was dead maybe a few seconds. Not like this. Not … on ice.”

“Robbie, you know deep in your heart this is wrong,” Anna said. “Think about it. Think about Abe. Is this what he would want? He was in so much pain, he was probably ready to go.”

“You,” he said, pointing to Anna. “Shut the hell up. Another word, you never see Tread again. Trust me.”

He swiveled his finger to me.

“And you. I know this is possible. You have, I don’t know, just some weird stuff going on. You’re a zombie. If anything shouldn’t be happening right now, it’s you. You should not exist. But look.”

He snatched my left hand and twisted it one hundred eighty degrees, my palm facing backward.

“With anyone else, that’s surgery and six months rehabilitation,” Robbie said. “But you?”

Without letting go of my hand, he twisted it again, back to normal. He released his grip.

“Good as new in two seconds. Who knows what’s possible with you?”

Anna again. “Robbie—”

“What did I say, girl? Shut … the …
HELL
… up. This is between me and your boy here, and this needs to get done. Now.”

He looked back at me.

“I took every precaution,” he said. “As soon as Abe died, I put him on ice. I knew I had to keep him, you know, fresh.”

I looked at the cross. “Your mom thought you buried him.”

“Made the most sense. I told them I wanted to do it alone, that I needed my space. But I knew I could use the freezer in the garage. Put him under the burgers and hot dogs they always buy at the warehouse and then never get around to eating. I knew he would be fine.”

I made a note to never come over to Robbie’s for a barbecue.

“There’s a lot about me I don’t understand myself,” I said. “But I am positive I can’t help you. Abe’s been dead for, what, three months? And frozen all that time? Maybe Tread wasn’t even dead, just really injured when, well, it happened.”

“You mean how you got Ooze on him. And he came to life. Right then. There were even these weird sparks when it happened.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

“Your good buddy Luke was more than happy to fill me in.”

It made sense. Luke was one of the few to see it all, to know that Ooze mixed with my tears, to figure out that the glow meant something very unusual was happening.

I turned toward Anna and saw it in her eyes. Sympathy. She knew I might have lost a friend.

But Robbie wasn’t done.

“Who knows just as much about who you are, what you can do, than the kid who’s been by your side the whole time? Who’s seen whatever it is you’re capable of, from losing limbs to holding your breath for hours? When he saw you bring that dog to life, that’s when Luke realized you were not supposed to exist. I think he even got a little scared. Next thing you know, the No Zombies Now Network is campaigning against your very existence. Coincidence?”

“Shut up.”

“Fine. Get to work.”

I was shaking. I could feel Ooze on my forehead, so thick it was beginning to drip like sweat.