Undead Much (21 page)

  “Okay.” He paused, his brow wrinkling as he gave Cliff another subtle once-over. “As long as you’re going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for all your help,” I said, praying he would just leave already.

  Aaron completely freaked me out. One second I was sure he was a creep, and the next he had me wondering if I was the one who was insane. Maybe I simply had issues. After all, I’d had these panicky moments with my own boyfriend, someone I loved and was definitely attracted to. Maybe
I
was the freak, and nothing weird had been going on at all. “All right. Well… take care.” Aaron smiled before walking around to the driver’s side. “And let me know how things go with your dad.”

  “I will.” It was only after his car had disappeared that I realized I was clenching Cliff’s hand in a death grip. “Sorry, I didn’t realize-”

  “Don’t worry about it. Are you okay?” He gripped my fingers when I tried to let go and brought his other hand to my face. It was another inappropriate touch from a guy who wasn’t my boyfriend, but Cliff’s touch didn’t make me afraid. It only made me want to touch him more.
Need
to touch him more.

  “Not really.” Before I consciously decided to close the distance between us, I’d pulled Cliff into a hug. But once his arms were wrapped around me, I stopped thinking about whether holding him was smart. The wave of dizziness came, but underneath was the buzzing, wonderful feeling of being right where I was supposed to be. “Glad you were here.”

  “I had a feeling you’d come back after last night, so I waited around. Sorry I ran off. I just knew things would go seriously awry if the cops found out I didn’t have a pulse.”

  “It’s okay. You were right to run.” I’d been angry last night, but Cliff was one hundred percent right. He couldn’t let people know what he really was. What I’d learned this morning at the SA meeting made me even more sure of that.

  He hugged me tighter. “What were you doing with that guy, B?”

  “He was giving me a ride, and he knew some nurses here.” I sniffed and buried my nose in Cliff’s neck. He smelled so much better than Aaron, smoky like a campfire and other warm, safe things. “He was helping me.”

  “It sure didn’t look like he was ‘helping.’ That dude’s got some seriously disturbing personal energy.” Cliff’s hands smoothed in comforting circles on my back. “Seeing him touch you made me want to cut his hands off.”

  I pulled back to look Cliff in the face. “So it
was
creepy?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course it was creepy.” His hand cupped my face again as he gave me that see-straight-through-you look. “You’ve got to trust yourself, trust your instincts.”

  “But maybe he didn’t mean to make me uncomfortable. Maybe I wasn’t making it clear that I-”

  “You were backing away from him like he had the plague.” Cliff glared at me and his fingers dug a little into my hair. But this time, the firm touch didn’t make me afraid. At least not afraid of Cliff. The fact that I could be thinking more-than-friendly thoughts about him again after vowing never to do so only a few hours ago was another matter entirely. “Why the heck did he think it was okay to keep pushing you? He knows you have a boyfriend, right?”

  I didn’t say a word, just stared into Cliff’s face, now only a few inches away from mine. It didn’t take long for him to get the message. He flushed a deeper shade of pink and stepped away, shoving his hands into his pockets. If I needed any confirmation that Cliff’s feelings weren’t purely platonic, I had it.

  Holy crap. How did this happen? How did I manage to get an Unsettled crushing on me? More importantly, how did I let a part of myself start crushing right back on him?

  I was an awful girlfriend, an unprofessional Settler, and as soon as I got my life back on track, I had to get Cliff back in his grave. Maybe, once I’d figured out what was in those medical records, I-

  “Oh no! The medical records. I left them in my backpack.”

  “And your backpack is… ”

  “In Aaron’s car,” I said, kicking at the ground. “He took it and threw it in the backseat.”

  “Well then, let’s go get it.” Cliff grabbed my hand, but then thought better of it and let me go. Thankfully the awkward pause only lasted a second. “We can head up to your school and break into his car.”

  “Or I could just ask him to let me in, Mr. Delinquent.”

  “Fine,” he said, though it was clear he didn’t like the idea of me exchanging two words with Aaron. “You can ask him to let you in and I’ll hide out somewhere close to make sure he behaves himself. Then we can look over the records on the way downtown.”

  “Downtown?” I asked, following him toward the bus stop.

  “Yeah, we need to take a walk by the river. I’ve… realized a few things, and there’s something I want to show you.”

  I sighed. “Cliff, I have to go to school.”

  “You’re not at school now.”

  “But I will be, and if I hurry I won’t miss more than first period, so maybe the principal won’t call my parents. Besides, I’ve told you, I can’t keep Settling you. There are rules about this type of thing, and I have other responsibilities to-”

  “What responsibilities? You haven’t had another Unsettled since I showed up by your boyfriend’s car that night,” Cliff said, looking as frustrated as I felt.

  He was right, though I hadn’t really thought about how weird that was until just now. “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Megan. I haven’t made any secret of that, so don’t look at me like I’m some kind of psycho stalker.”

  “Oh, right. Wouldn’t want to do that.” I rolled my eyes, angry, though I couldn’t say at exactly who, or what. Cliff was frustrating, yes, but he wasn’t a bad guy, and he’d done nothing but help me. Still, I was just sick of my life being so crazy, sick of things I couldn’t explain, and Cliff was a big one of those things.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, it’s obviously not nothing.” He stopped a few feet away from the awning that covered the bus stop and turned to face me. “Listen, you can try to push me away, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m supposed to be here, and I’m supposed to help you. There’s a reason you haven’t had any other Unsettled and I’m it.”

  “You are?”

  “There’s something I know, something you need to know that-”

  “What? What do you know? Just tell me!”

  “I will,” he shouted back. “Just come with me and I-”

  “I don’t have time for field trips. I need answers.”

  “I’m giving you answers! What about those records? You never would have thought to take them without me.”

  “And I still don’t know if whatever is in them will help me or not,” I said, gaining momentum. “All I know is that my life was going okay before you and those other weird zombies showed up. And now a girl is dead and I’m in the biggest trouble I’ve ever been in and nothing is-”

  “What? You think I have something to do-”

  “Maybe. It’s an awful big coincidence, isn’t it? I mean, how do I know I can believe anything you say?” The hurt in his eyes made me cringe, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “So just leave me alone. I don’t need-” My new cell buzzed in the pocket of my coat, making me jump. I fished it out and flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “Megan, it’s Ethan, where are you?”

  “I’m in Little Rock, but I’m on my way back to Carol, what’s up?” I asked nervously, turning my back on Cliff. I couldn’t look at him, not and hope to conceal my guilty conscience from Ethan. Even over the phone he would be able to tell something was up if I wasn’t careful.

  “I think I’ve got a lead, and if we hurry we can check it out and get you back at school before lunch. Stay where you are and I’ll come pick you up.”

  I gave him directions to the McDonald’s down the street from the Pleasant Mountain clinic and hung up, not bothering to ask what his lead might be. It had to be something good or he wouldn’t advocate skipping more class. The Enforcement selection board looked closely at school attendance records and conduct reports when they were interviewing new recruits. They didn’t want anyone who couldn’t handle real life infiltrating their ranks, and I knew Ethan wanted me in those ranks with him someday.

  Speaking of handling real life, was lashing out at one of the few people trying to help me just because he was a freak of Undead nature and filled me with confusing feelings really “handling” anything?

  I turned slowly around. “Listen, Cliff, I… ” My words faded away. Cliff was gone, which made me way sadder than I wanted to admit.

CHAPTER 16

  “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but-”

  “That’s seriously messed up,” Ethan said as we swung through the drive-through at Micky D’s fifteen minutes later. I hated to admit that Aaron was right, but I did need more than donuts for breakfast. “So the Elders have always known what causes SRUs?”

  “Guess it’s something they’ve passed down through the ages or something, and why SA stopped working with human governments back in the Dark Ages,” I confirmed. “But they don’t tell the little Settlers about it unless they screw up like Monica and I did last night.”

  “Don’t they think we should all know the possible consequences of being observed
before
we unleash a zombie epidemic?” Ethan asked, proving we were soul mates. And then, proving it yet again, he leaned out the window and ordered me a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit with no egg. We’d only eaten breakfast together a few times, but he remembered my hatred of egg and egg products.

  “That’s what I said. They’re crazy, but this proves we’re not dealing with SRUs. They would be acting like Rogues, not zombies raised to attack a certain person. So there has to be some other reason these things are so hard to get rid of.”

  He grunted his agreement; then we both fell silent as he paid for and collected our sandwiches.

  “So you really think you were followed?” I asked, keeping my voice to a whisper just in case there were Enforcer operatives lurking behind the plastic Ronald McDonald or the trash can where Ethan paused to throw away the bag that our sandwiches came in.

  I was really getting paranoid, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Between our phones being bugged and my mom withholding evidence, I had reason to be suspicious.

  “Barker pulled into the parking lot of the hospital just as I was pulling out. I had glasses on, but my car is pretty distinctive.”

  I started in on my sandwich but found myself unable to swallow the food I’d chewed until Ethan pulled out of the parking lot. “Yeah, you should invest in a windowless white van if we’re going to keep with the lurking and sneaking.”

  “Not a bad idea.” He gunned it through the red light ahead and turned east on Highway 11, heading out to less populated areas. “I could think of a few things a windowless van would be good for.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  “Right.” I smiled and tried to laugh, but it came out as more of wheeze. Thankfully, Ethan was too busy finishing his own breakfast and checking all the mirrors to make sure we weren’t being followed to notice my minor malfunction.

  “So what did you find out?”

  “A lot, but… there’s something else you need to hear first.”

  “Okay? This is a bad something?” I asked, wadding up the last few uneaten bites of my sandwich in its paper, suddenly losing what was left of my appetite.

  “I called Kitty,” he said, making a swift right and then a left, presumably to ditch a tail if we’d acquired one. I hadn’t seen my SA spies since I’d snuck out the back of the donut shop, but he was probably right to be careful. “About the DNA test for you and your mom.”

  “Ethan! I should have been the one to do that. I wanted to-”

  “I was just trying to help. I knew you probably hadn’t had time to call, and I thought the sooner they got started the sooner you’d be able to breathe easy, you know?”

  “But I’m not going to be able to breathe easy?” I asked, heart clenching in my chest.

  He sighed. “She wouldn’t tell me anything except that there wasn’t going to be a DNA test because a DNA test was impossible.”

  “What?” I barely resisted the urge to hit something. “That doesn’t make any sense! They’re just being pigheaded, stupid-”

  “Maybe not. I called Monica after I hung up with Kitty and told her to go back and look through that list of blood types she was researching last night. I don’t remember for sure, but I think some of those can cause mutations in DNA.”

  “Mutations that would make DNA tests impossible?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I thought Monica said these blood types could only be detected with fresh blood and only with Settler tests,” I said, the pieces of the puzzle not adding up in my mind. “If my DNA is gimped up, wouldn’t a normal medical test be able to detect-”

  “I’m not sure,” Ethan said, a little too fast for my liking. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was hiding something. “Let’s wait and see what Monica finds out. She’s going to call me back as soon as she gets a chance to look through her notes.”

  I looked out the car window and wondered briefly where he was taking me. We’d turned off the old highway and were moving further west than I’d ever been before.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling the tight rope of hope I’d been walking on snap and send me plummeting into the mouths of the alligators beneath. There wasn’t going to be a DNA test, which meant I probably only had a few more hours before Kitty got that blood test back and came to arrest me.

  It was looking like I hadn’t just been a jerk to tell Cliff to get lost, I’d been an idiot as well. What if he really had information that could help? I had to think of a way to mend the rift between us, and it was past time for me to tell Ethan about my Undead friend.

  “Listen, we’re going to figure this out. I think I’m getting somewhere with the rest of the investigation. You’re not going to believe what I found at the hospital,” Ethan said, a note of forced optimism in his voice that I appreciated even if I didn’t completely buy it. “I’m not sure
I
believe it, and I saw it all myself.”