Dee’s frown sharpened. “Hell yeah, I mind. That’s my last pack.”
Brix tapped a cigarette out anyway and wedged it into a corner of her mouth. She snatched Dee’s lighter from the other side of the table and lit up. “Too bad.” She exhaled her own cloud of smoke, pointedly aiming it away from Dee. “Normally I don’t smoke, but it’s been kind of a stressful day.”
“How awful for you.”
Brix just smiled. “Sarcasm. How unexpected. But you’re right. It’s been awful. My boyfriend was killed not even an hour ago.”
“So? Am I supposed to pity you? Or empathize with you? We’ve all lost people. It doesn’t make you fucking special.”
Brix exhaled another stream of smoke and gave that a moment’s thought. Dee had a point there. And, truthfully, she wasn’t sure what she was hoping to accomplish here, except that something inside her made her want to confront the girl’s enduring hostility head-on.
“You’re right. It doesn’t make me special. And I sort of get your anger, I really do. But you know what? We’re here now. It’s a done deal. You should get over it and try to make the best of it.”
One of the men who had tried to come to Dee’s aid—a thin guy with glasses and longish hair—was still standing between the rows of booths. He nodded at this. “She’s right. No point in crying over—”
Dee cut a thin-slitted glare at him. “No one asked you what you think, Jeff, so shut the fuck up.”
Jeff’s eyes widened behind his glasses. Brix could see the hurt there. The guy had a bit of a crush on Dee, she guessed. The poor idiot. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Instead, he closed his mouth and turned away from them to slide into one of the booths lining the wall.
Dee made eye contact with Brix and mouthed a single word.
Pathetic.
Brix didn’t visibly react.
But it drove home just how much of an unrepentant bitch this Dee person was. Really, it went beyond mere bitchiness. She seemed borderline sociopathic.
Brix heard a shriek from somewhere behind her and shifted position on the bench to turn her head in that direction. Jason and Ben were behind the bar. Jason’s arm was extended outward and Ben was pouring vodka from a bottle into the wound. As she watched, Ben dumped out more vodka and Jason cringed as it splashed onto his arm and dripped to the floor.
“Fucking stings like a motherfucker!”
Ben set the bottle down and reached under the bar to pull out a white scrap of cloth. “Means it’s working. You don’t want that shit getting infected.” He tied the scrap of cloth around the bicep of Jason’s still-outstretched arm, then picked up the bottle again and took a healthy slug from it. He tipped it toward Jason and nodded. “To your health.”
Jason snatched the bottle from him and took several deep gulps of his own. “Fuck. That hits the motherfucking spot.”
Brix raised her voice. “Any beer back there?”
Ben glanced her way. “Plenty. None cold, though.”
Brix shrugged. “Don’t matter. Snag me some on your way back, Jase.”
Jase?
Did I really just call him that?
Weird,
she thought, as she turned and faced Dee again. She and Jason weren’t too many hours separated from having loathed each other on sight. And now here she was calling him by a nickname, the way a friend would. She guessed he was the closest thing she had to a friend now. Which was all kinds of sad.
Dee was smirking again.
Brix had a feeling she knew what was coming.
“Too bad about that dead boyfriend. But, hey, at least you already had a replacement lined up.”
Yep. There it was.
Brix wanted nothing more than to lean across the table and knock the smirk right off the cunt’s face. But she had a hunch an immediate, violent reaction was precisely what Dee hoped to provoke.
Not falling into that trap, bitch.
So she forced a smile instead. “So how long have you and your friends been holed up here?”
“Long enough. And by the way, I really don’t wanna talk to you.”
The tattooed man in the next booth chuckled and leaned far enough over to put his face in Brix’s field of vision. He extended a hand and said, “Pay her no mind. Dee’s a singer. Her mission in life is to come off as a lesbian Axl Rose. I’m Cade.”
Lesbian?
Hmm. She might have to rethink some of her assumptions about Dee.
Brix gave his hand a brief shake. “Brix.”
“The fuck kind of name is that?”
“Mine.”
Cade laughed. “Fair enough.”
Brix stubbed the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. “So, Cade…are you saying Dee is all bark and no bite?”
Dee grunted.
Cade laughed again. “Well…I wouldn’t say that exactly. I mean, she
did
take a swing at you. Girl doesn’t lack for guts. But sometimes she lets emotion override her common sense.”
Dee raised a middle finger. “Go to hell, Cade.”
Jason set four unopened, tall cans of PBR on the table and slid into the booth next to Brix. “Miss me?”
Yeah. I did.
But rather than admitting that, she rolled her eyes and reached for one of the cans. She popped its tab and took a healthy slug of warm brew before saying anything. Then she set the can down and glanced at him, eyeing the cloth wrapped around his bicep. “You gonna be okay?”
He grabbed one of the cans and popped it open. “Shit. Fucking alcohol in the wound hurt more than actually being shot.”
Dee laughed. “You assholes got lucky. Tucker’s usually a better shot than that. He nailed the last dozen or so people to come through that intersection.”
Brix frowned. “Tucker?”
Dee opened one of the beers, smirking at Brix. “Only fair. Beer for a smoke.” She popped the tab. “Tucker’s the shooter. Ex-marine.”
“You know him?”
“No, I’m fucking psychic. Of course I know him, dummy. He was my roommate and drummer before all this zombie apocalypse shit went down.”
“And how do you know it’s him doing the shooting?”
“Because we’ve all seen him walking around out there with his fucking rifle. He knows not to come too close ’cause we’ve got a couple guns of our own. But with that rifle, he doesn’t need to come close. It’s got a scope.”
Brix sipped more beer. “So why is he shooting at us?”
“Because he’s using this whole breakdown of society thing as an excuse to get back at me. He’s wanted me for a long time and I never let him be more than a friend. Stupid motherfucker. He knows I like girls. But some guys think they can get past that anyway. So now he’s keeping me penned up and isolated in here. It’s really fucking obnoxious.”
Jason nudged Brix with an elbow. “You know why that crack shot missed us, right?”
Brix thought he was cracking wise in his usual way until she noted his sober expression. “Well…no, I’ve got no idea. Why?”
“It’s because we’re the heroes of the movie.”
Brix looked confused for a moment—and then awareness dawned. “Oh.”
Jason nodded. “You get it, right? It’s the way it is in any flick. The bad guys take out people left and right. Until the protagonists come along and suddenly they turn into the worst shots ever. Like, can’t-hit-the-broad-side-of-a-fuckin’-barn bad.”
Now it was Dee who looked confused. “The hell is he babbling about?”
Jason ignored her and kept looking at Brix as he pursued the point. “The ones who do get killed? They don’t matter. They’re like extras, just part of the scenery. You’re seeing the pattern, right? Like how that Wednesday 13 song came on as soon as that car we jacked started?”
Brix thought it sounded crazy.
But she also thought she was seeing the pattern, now that he was laying it out like this. This world they were trapped in didn’t merely mirror the world of
Rise of the Dead
. She and Jason were actually living out the movie—or living
inside
the movie—and somehow had the starring roles.
Lucky for us. If we had been extras, we’d be dead by now.
Then it hit her.
Trevor.
He hadn’t been one of the stars of the movie. Maybe he hadn’t been something as lowly as an extra—after all, he’d featured in a few scenes prior to his demise—but he had clearly not filled one of the top-billed roles. And in the end, he’d only played a small part in moving the story along.
Just part of the scenery.
Molten anger possessed her at this thought. She wanted to find whoever was responsible for this strange experiment and tear his fucking head off. Or
its
head off, if it turned out the responsible party was not human.
Dee shook her head. “Awesome, Ben. You saved a couple of fucking crazy people. Happy?”
Ben and the man whose name she still didn’t know—a heavyset short guy in a Melvins T-shirt—were standing next to their booth. They exchanged an unreadable glance. Then Ben shrugged and said, “Dunno, Dee. Don’t sound too crazy to me. Ain’t we all seen a million fuckin’ zombie movies.” He scratched his beard and looked thoughtful. “This shit
is
sort of like livin’ in a movie.” He looked at Jason. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”
Dee shook her head again. “I don’t think that’s what they’re saying at all.”
Brix looked at Jason, hoping he could read her carefully composed expression and the warning in her eyes—
don’t say another fucking word about this shit.
Evidently Jason got the message because the next thing he said was, “Of course that’s not what we’re saying. We’re just tired and stressed. It’s been a long fuckin’ night.”
Dee still didn’t look like she was buying it, but she didn’t pursue the subject further. Brix had a feeling she was holding any further comment in reserve as ammunition for later. The girl was playing the long game. She would wait for just the right moment, maybe a moment when paranoia among her friends was running high, and then she would revisit this exchange. And sow seeds of distrust among the rest of them.
Brix and Dee exchanged a long look.
Dee’s by-now familiar smirk was in place again.
She was definitely a Grade A bitch. That look also told her Dee didn’t give a damn that Brix knew, because there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. It was in that moment that Brix decided she and Jason had to get out of here and away from these people as soon as possible. Because Dee’s manipulations posed a threat every bit as dangerous as the zombies wandering the streets of this ruined city.
Maybe more so, because of the malicious intelligence behind it.
Tired of looking at Dee’s smirking, knowing expression, she shifted her attention to Ben. “Speaking of the zombies, what’s up with them? They converged on the last place we were holed up in and forced us out. Why isn’t that happening here?”
Ben opened his mouth to reply.
Dee, of course, cut him off. “It’s Tucker. He’s picking off any that come near the bar.”
Brix reluctantly glanced her way again. “But why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He doesn’t want the fuckers getting to me. If anyone’s gonna kill me, it’s gonna be him.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“He doesn’t give a shit. He’ll kill any of you if he gets a clean shot.”
The conversation petered out from there for a bit. Brix soon felt the call of nature and nudged Jason to let her out. There was a short hallway to the left of the bar. Brix headed in that direction, assuming that was where the bathrooms were located.
The assumption was correct.
She entered the door with a unisex symbol. The bathroom was cramped and dark and, she sensed, not very clean, which made her grateful for the darkness. She left the door very slightly ajar, so she could see a bit by the flickering candlelight from the bar.
She found the room’s single toilet, confirmed the seat was down by touch, and dropped her jeans to sit down. She tried not to sigh too audibly as her bladder drained. When she was done, she felt for the paper roll she knew had to be there, found it, and tore off a few squares.
She was just zipping up again when the door opened and someone else came into the room. The door was open marginally wider now and she could see a bit better as more candlelight filtered in. Brix and Dee stood there staring at each other for a long and very tense moment.
Then Brix cleared her throat. “Step out of the way, please.”
But Dee didn’t move.
What kind of weird shit was she pulling now? Brix didn’t know and didn’t really want to know. The sooner she was back in the main room with the guys and away from this creepy chick, the better. She started to brush past her, but Dee slipped her arms about Brix’s waist and pulled her into an embrace.
The taller girl bent Brix backward as she leaned in, thrusting her tongue between Brix’s lips as their mouths suddenly merged. Brix stood limply in Dee’s embrace at first, too stunned by this turn to resist.
Dee went on kissing her.
And then Brix did something that surprised her, that went against any urge she had ever suspected she harbored. Her mouth started moving against Dee’s mouth. And her hands went to Dee’s back. Dee reacted with a groan and the kiss intensified.