Undead with Benefits (11 page)

“What is that?” Amanda asked, pointing toward a chrome band that'd appeared on the horizon.

“Grace and Summer mentioned a wall,” I said, remembering what the mostly friendly undead lesbians had told us. “With, uh, guys on top shooting at them.”

Grace and Summer also warned us to stay out of Iowa, but now didn't seem like the time to bring that up. We were kinda committed.

The wall stood at least twenty feet tall and stretched across the highway and into the fields. I couldn't tell what it was made out of—chrome, steel, some kind of shiny metal. At this distance, I could make out wisps of barbed wire along the top and some blocky protrusions that my inner
Call of Duty
master identified as gun turrets. I didn't see any men to operate them, though. I didn't see any signs of life at all.

“Pull over here.” Cass spoke up. We were still a good two miles off.

I did as she said and we all sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the huge structure before us.

“So? What do we do now?” Amanda asked.

“Wait,” Cass replied, squinting toward the horizon.

It was way too quiet out here. I could hear the guinea pigs rustling around in the trunk, conducting stupid guinea-pig business. I tried the radio, but every station was static.

“All right,” I said, “songs with
wall
in the title. I'll start. ‘Another Brick in the Wall.' Pink Floyd.”

No one said anything.

“Okay, I took the easy one. ‘Wall of Toddler Skeletons.' Severed Lung. It's a B-side.”

“‘Wonderwall,'” Cass said. “Oasis.”

“Oh! Cass gets on the board first,” I said way too enthusiastically.

Amanda sighed dramatically. “‘Wall to Wall.' Chris Brown.”

“Ugh,” I replied. “Negative points.”

Ignoring me, Amanda twisted around to stare at Cass. “I don't like this. What
the fuck
are we waiting for?”

“Him,” Cass responded, all cool, pointing through the windshield.

We stared in the direction of the wall. A dark shape had detached from all the glinting silver and started careening toward us. Even at this distance, I could hear the guttural belching of a motorcycle.

“This
Easy Rider
guy is your friend?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Cass answered, keeping up the whole tight-lipped secret-agent shtick she'd been pulling since the hotel lobby. She opened the back door and struggled out of the car, like her body was cramped up. “You guys should stay put.”

“What if we don't want to?” Amanda snapped.

“Calm down,” I whispered to her. “You're just nervous.” She fixed me with an electric death stare and I decided to shut up.

Cass leaned back into the car. “If you don't, this guy will probably blow your head off.”

I hit the power locks.

The motorcycle guy came to a stop down the highway, a safe distance from us. The sun and that shiny-ass wall were behind him, so I couldn't pick too many details out of his burly shadow. His motorcycle was one of those low-slung chopper types with the high handlebars, and he was the kinda guy to ride it without a helmet while smoking a cigar. He straddled the bike and waited, staring in our direction.

“All right,” Cass said, trying to sound like she wasn't nervous. “Be right back.”

“Be careful,” I said. Amanda said nothing, just stared at the motorcycle man, her body clenched like at any moment she could duck for cover under the dashboard or make a break for it.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Cass stopped outside my window. “You guys need to pretend to be my zombie slaves. Okay, bye.”

I rolled up the window so Cass wouldn't have to hear Amanda screaming at her.

CASS

HE SMELLED. THAT WAS THE FIRST THING I NOTICED. AS I walked toward him along the highway shoulder, his stink came bounding out to meet me. It wasn't like forgot-deodorant-on-a-hot-day smell either. He smelled how I imagined cavemen probably smelled—the unsuccessful ones who got eaten by dinosaurs because their stench gave them away.

He sat astride his motorcycle and smoked a cigar. He was big—tall and wide—but stretch marks and saggy skin pockets gave the impression he used to be bigger. It looked like he'd spent the last few months foraging for food on a deserted island, and the experience had left him sunburned, sinewy, and filthy all over. He had two guns slung over his shoulders—a long rifle with a scope, and a sawed-off shotgun. His belt had to be some kind of special-order survivalist thing because it had more than a dozen compartments and pockets, many of them bulging with what was probably ammunition, totally compromising the theory that belts should hold up one's pants. His hair was prematurely gray, long, pulled back in a greasy ponytail. He wore a leather vest with no shirt, ripped and bloodstained jeans, and surprisingly clean running shoes.

I stopped in front of his motorcycle. He pushed a pair of mirror aviators down his nose and gave me a skeptical look. Then he wet his chapped lips, snorted like something funny had occurred to him, and put the glasses back on. He didn't say anything and it didn't seem like he had any intention to do so anytime soon.

As far as hard-ass mercenary types went, this guy reminded me a little of Jamison, the heavy hitter in my old NCD squad. Except with Jamison I could always tell there was an off switch, that he used to be a regular person before getting swept up in the zombie-killer lifestyle. I didn't detect any of that muted humanity from this guy. He looked like he was born mean, probably stubbed out cigarettes on his mom during breast-feeding.

I wished I'd worn my black hat. I was afraid it'd make me look silly—which it did—but I could've used some of its power. It felt like I was entering a place where looking crazy would be an advantage.

“You're my guide?” I asked, breaking the prolonged silence. I tried to keep my voice from squeaking. “I'm Cass.”

“Truncheon,” he said, his voice scratchy, like emphysema wasn't far off.

I gave him a weird look, not sure if that was some password I was supposed to recognize.

“Like the club,” he clarified. “It's what people call me.”

“Oh.”
Nice to meet you, Mr. Truncheon,
I thought, but didn't say. For some reason, I didn't think cute would play well with a guy nicknamed for a weapon.

Truncheon looked up at the sky, like he was trying to discern something from the position of the sun.

“You're late,” he said at last. “I'd started to think I'd imagined the whole thing.”

“Sorry. We had problems getting out of Omaha.”

Truncheon didn't seem interested in my excuse. Now that we were past introductions, he seemed excited to talk to me. Like it'd been a while since he had a conversation.

“That bow-tied dweeb comes to me in a dream last night,” Truncheon said. “You believe that? Haven't heard from him in months, figured maybe someone'd finally done the world a mercy and offed him. He tells me he needs me to pick up one of his operatives. Got some special mission he's on about. Tells me, if it's a success, he can clear up some . . . legal complications for me back in the real world, make it so I don't have to live in the Deadzone anymore.”

I glanced toward the wall, surprised. “You
live
in there?”

He grinned at me with teeth like pads of butter. “Honey, I
like
it in there. I ain't trying to go back to the real world. I asked our mutual friend, ‘What else ya got?'”

I folded my arms, wishing the government could come build a giant wall between me and this guy. A smell-canceling wall.

“What did he offer you?” I asked, regretting the dread in my voice. I needed to push that down and get tough. Today was going to be a messy day and I needed to be ready for it.

“A squad,” he replied. “I used to be NCD, kid.”

“You're joking.”

Truncheon grinned, like he was glad not to be recognizable as a government man. “Still am, according to the paperwork. But no one pays me much attention except our mutual friend. He's a jumped-up prick, but he's got a real appreciation for the unorthodox.”

“That's one way of putting it,” I replied, thinking of zombie slavery, my hostage mom, and trademarked bow ties. “Why do you want a team?”

“The jumpsuits and the bureaucracy they can cram up their asses, but I love me some NCD brainpower. He promised me autonomy and a new psychic.” Truncheon shrugged. “Plus, it gets lonely in there.”

My throat constricted. “A
new
psychic?”

“Yeah. My last one sorta broke.”

I was pretty confident Alastaire was too attached to the idea of me as his psychic prodigy to ship me off to Truncheon's smelly postapocalyptic boarding school. Even so, I felt the growing urge to get as far away from this NCD lone wolf as possible, preferably to a place that sold lice shampoo. Truncheon wasn't even paying attention to me, though; he gazed over my shoulder toward the car.

“He said I could probably have the girl too,” Truncheon said, referring to Amanda. “She looks fresh, unlike most of the rot on the other side of the wall. He said I'd be doing you a favor, taking her off your hands. Not sure what he meant by that, exactly. Cryptic jerk-off. All this is after the job is done, of course.”

I glanced back at the car. I could see Jake and Amanda in silhouette, her making animated gestures and him slowly nodding. I swallowed a lump of revulsion before turning back to Truncheon. Tried to make my shrug as nonchalant as possible; I didn't want to give anything away—not my psychic powers and not my relationship to my zombie passengers.

“Whatever,” I said. “Can we get on with it?”

“She nice to talk to?” Truncheon asked, running a hand over his crusty, bristled chin. “Companionable?”

I glanced back at the car again. It looked like Amanda was yelling now.

“Not particularly, no.”

He shrugged. “Not that it matters. Your standards get real low on the other side.”

I tried not to shudder, to keep my posture loose and detached, like I was ordering a pizza instead of brokering the rights to a pretty, young zombie with this gruesome survivalist in the shadow of a wall that shielded humanity from the country's one and only undead party zone. No big deal. I let my head loll around, insolent and bored. Truncheon frowned at me, then gazed down at himself like he'd only just realized his disgusting state.

“It's a different world on the other side,” he said grimly. “You'll find that out soon enough.”

“Cool story,” I said. “Can we get on with this?”

Truncheon jabbed a thick finger in my direction. “You know, you remind me a lot of
him
. Same shitty attitude about polite conversation. Same judgmental psychic eyes.”

“What? I'm not a psy—” Without some telepathic nudging, the lie sounded feeble. A bark of laughter from Truncheon cut me off before I could even finish it.

“I was only guessing, sweetheart,” he sneered, and tapped his temple. “We don't all need magic powers. Some of us are just keen observers of the human condition.”

“Guess that's why you choose to live with the zombies,” I replied, deadpan.

“Yep,” Truncheon said. “Exactly right.”

Truncheon reached around to the back of his motorcycle, where a burlap knapsack was strapped. He tossed it toward me. I made no move to catch it; the sack landed with a puff of dust at my feet.

“Stuff you'll need is in there,” he explained.

I knelt down and checked the contents. Handcuffs and chains. Muzzles. A handheld version of the stun guns NCD agents had recently started carrying around. The ones I'd seen before had all been rifle sized; this one fit neatly in the palm of my hand. Turning it over, I noticed MANUFACTURED BY KOPE BROTHERS emblazoned on the grip. Like the Deadzone itself, the weapon was another gift from the NCD's favorite corporate benefactor.

I shoved the stun gun into the front of my jeans, hidden under my shirt. Truncheon watched me with one eyebrow suggestively raised.

“You know how to use that thing?”

I'd never actually fired one, but he didn't need to know that. He already knew more than I was comfortable with. I nodded.

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “What happens next?”

Truncheon jerked his thumb toward the wall. “The boys know I'm bringing you through. All the same, they get jumpy. You just keep up appearances and let me do the talking.”

I shouldered the knapsack with some effort, the chains inside clanking around. Keeping up appearances meant getting Jake and Amanda to put on those chains—not exactly a conversation I was looking forward to having. But what other choice did they have at this point? I'd brought them too far. For that matter, what other choice did
I
have?

“What's your plan once we're in the Deadzone?” Truncheon asked. “You going with the soft touch or the hard?”

“Soft,” I answered quickly. “Definitely soft.”

My plan was to ask Jake and Amanda really nicely if they'd sneak into Des Moines and steal a zombie cure for me. That's what they were trying to do anyway, right? Alastaire favored playing the zombies until they'd gotten the cure and then ripping them off, but all that Machiavellian crap hadn't worked out for anyone so far. I'd decided to try honesty. We could share and my mom wouldn't get killed. Everyone wins. Except for Amanda, I guess, but we could work that out later, once the cure was in hand.

“Hard touch works better in there,” Truncheon warned. “You'll learn that soon enough too.”

I touched the stun gun hidden under my shirt. “You'll know if I change my mind.”

My backup plan was to hold Amanda hostage and make Jake go into Des Moines alone. But that was only if things got desperate, if they refused to help me, which I just couldn't see Jake doing.