Undead with Benefits (24 page)

JAKE

THROUGH THE WINDOWS IN THE SECOND-FLOOR FOOD court, I gazed at the Ramada Tropics, where Reggie said most of the Iowan undead population had decided to stay. In the fading sunset, I could see lights beginning to blink on in some of the rooms.

After a moment, I realized those blinking lights were actually flaming pieces of furniture being shoved out of windows.

There was no shortage of nice things to wreck here in Des Moines. It made me kind of sad to think about someone getting cured, coming back from zombie-life, and finding all their stuff spray-painted and burnt up.

“Hi, Wallflower,” Cheyenne slurred as she sidled up next to me, her hand slithering through the crook of my elbow. “Are you lonely?”

I glanced over my shoulder to where the party was petering out in the food court. Some dumb-ass zombies were trying to surf on fast-food trays down a straightaway slickened with oil spilled from a deep fryer. Clinging to my arm, Cheyenne looked all kinds of wasted.

“How could I be lonely?” I asked, making a halfhearted joke of my discomfort. “This is the craziest party I've ever been to.”

“Drink this and I'll like you better,” she said, and tried to hand me a bottle that wasn't liquor but something yanked right out of a medicine cabinet, the skull-and-crossbones sticker only half-ripped off. When I shook my head—because even I have limits—she shoved me hard, flipped her dreadlocks, and staggered away.

I breathed a sigh of relief and went looking for a new place to hide out. I had some major emotions I was trying to get a grip on.

I'd eaten some of Doug.

His time as a restored human being lasted approximately thirty seconds. The zombies—us, we—fell upon him, ripped him apart. I justified this because I'd been feeling hungry and if I'd gone ghoul, who could say if any of these Iowan nut jobs would've brought me back. Also, Doug had totally eaten people in his time as a zombie, so it was like the circle of life.

The only parts left of Doug were the disfigured gray ones, the dead flesh that Reggie's injection didn't slosh off. So, yeah, the cure kind of sucked. Painful, pukey, and with the possibility of lingering zombie scars.

I sighed. Amanda wasn't going to like that.

The zombies here had a short memory. Doug wasn't even digested before the party broke out. There were zombies everywhere—looting, getting drunk, hooking up. I'd tried to stick close to Reggie, but it was too much. He was constantly surrounded by a throng of zombies that wanted to hobnob with the Lord of Des Moines. For a while I watched from the sidelines as he held court—talking people up and throwing back shots, with Red Bear nearby to scare off any zombie that lingered too long or said the wrong thing. I got bored with that scene after a while and started exploring the mall. That was a couple hours ago. The food court had been peaceful until the grease surfers and Cheyenne showed up.

I was officially the loser looking for a quiet place to hide at a party.

I felt kind of lame for not wanting to socialize with these zombies, but I wasn't yet at a point where I drank poison and set fires for fun. I wasn't ready to embrace the zombie anarchist lifestyle. I was feeling some residual guilt about the Doug eating. Hell, I hadn't even wanted this mohawk—that'd been all Amanda's idea.

I was a total poseur.

Eventually, I found myself in an empty Bath and Body Works. In my previous life I would've avoided a store like that at all costs, but I guess awkward social scenes and zombie apocalypses will make you take refuge in some pretty strange places.

I tried to pick out some girly lotion or body spray or fragrance cannon or whatever the hell that Amanda might like, but I didn't even know where to begin. I ended up just spraying a bunch into the air, trying to find the one that was most her, and possibly permanently damaging my sense of smell with all that berry-dolce-sangria intensity. My eyes stung like crazy.

“What kinda fruity shit is this?”

Red Bear leaned in the doorway sending his most disdainful sneer my way, although the way his face was cut, I'm not sure how many different expressions the dude was capable of. Embarrassed, I hurriedly stuffed the most recent perfume experiment into my back pocket.

“Uh, cherry blossom,” I said. “What's up?”

“The Lord requests your presence,” Red Bear recited. I could tell he didn't understand why Reggie wanted to hang out with me. It was the same look I'd gotten last summer when I crashed one of Chazz Slade's keg parties.
Who invited you?

“Great,” I said.

The party had mostly broken up, although there were still a few pockets of zombies up to no good. I guess most of them had gone off to swim in their dirty hotel pool or scavenge for living flesh or whatever zombies do to blow off steam after a busy day at the blood sport.

Red Bear led me to an exit that connected to the skywalk on the far side of the mall. He didn't say a word the entire time, which I appreciated.

In the glass enclosure, lit by the dusky remains of the day, Reggie waited for me. He wasn't dressed in his Lord of Des Moines regalia anymore, but instead in a leather jacket, Stephen King Rules T-shirt, and jeans. The casual despot. He grinned when he saw me.

“Have a good time?” he asked.

“Uh.” I glanced from Reggie to Red Bear, not sure what to say and not wanting to get tackled again, or worse. “Sure. It was a rager.”

Reggie's grin turned sympathetic. “You get used to it, man, I swear. Plus, uh, you happened to be here on one of our wilder days. Sometimes we just have bands play or normal shit like that.”

“How many Cradle of Filth cover bands you got?” I asked. “Like a billion?”

Reggie chuckled. “Maybe you want to be my Minister of Arts and Culture, huh?”

“Whoa, hold up,” Red Bear interrupted. “We have titles now?”

“It was a joke,” Reggie replied, looking suddenly annoyed Red Bear was still hanging around. “You can go,
Gene
. I've gotta talk to Jake.”

Red Bear—aka Gene—cocked his head, his Adam's apple bobbing rapidly. He looked wounded and also like he wanted to hatchet my face, but he didn't do anything, just stalked back inside the mall.

“All right,” Reggie said, clapping his hands, “after all that, you still want the cure?”

I was prepared for this question. It's pretty much all I'd been thinking about while wandering the mall. Maybe the cure wasn't all we'd hoped it would be, but Amanda and Cass still needed it. I wasn't going to pass it up.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I want the cure.”

“You get that it can fuck you up, right?” Reggie asked, surprised. “It knocks the infection out in a hurry and sometimes your regular immune system doesn't come back on in time. You end up looking part-rotted.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “And then someone eats you. I know the risks.”

“Dude.” Reggie frowned at me, still disbelieving. “You might want to check that judgmental shit. I'm trying to do you a solid here.”

“Sorry,” I replied halfheartedly, looking out through the glass wall of the skywalk to the darkened street below.

“Nah. No you're not,” Reggie replied. “That's why I like you, Jake. You're real.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Anyway,” Reggie said awkwardly, reaching into his overcoat. “Here you go.”

And just like that he tossed me two injectors, exactly the same as the one he'd plunged into Doug. Luckily, they were capped, because I fumbled them on the catch. One of them dropped to the floor of the skywalk and I nearly cried out in panic, but it was fine.

Two perfectly good syringes of zombie cure, right in my suddenly sweaty and shaky hands.

I'd done it. We'd be cured. Amanda and I could be normal again.

“Keep those hidden,” Reggie said, noticing that I'd frozen while lovingly gazing upon my prize. “They freak people out.”

Carefully, I slid the syringes into my back pocket along with Amanda's perfume. In terms of side effects, Kope Juice made those boner-pill commercials with their endless lists of life-threatening possibilities look like children's aspirin. Still, horrible pain and permanent disfigurement aside, taking the cure seemed like a solid alternative to a life of cannibalism. Well, probably. Anyway, Amanda and I had traveled halfway across the country for this. I couldn't help feeling a sense of triumph. I tried to play it cool in front of Reggie, though.

“Thanks,” I said in my macho-man voice. “It means a lot, dude.”

“Just so you know, I think you're an idiot to take these. The world is all about people eating each other, now more than ever, and you're choosing to be on the wrong side of that dynamic.”

“Eh,” I replied. “BFD.”

Reggie chuckled. “Man, I'm not done trying to convince you not to take those. But I thought after today you might need a gesture to prove that I'm not a total heartless psycho.”

“You know that's not a thing normal people have to prove to each other.”

“We aren't normal people, Jake,” Reggie replied, then slung his arm around my shoulders and started walking me down the skywalk. “So, you can go running back to your friends and life as a boring, edible, scab-covered human tomorrow, right? Tonight, we play
Street Fighter
.”

It was hard to keep the giddy grin off my face. I started to walk with Reggie, figuring I could give him one more night of nerding out—the dude seemed lonely and he'd basically just saved my life. A few steps down the skywalk, I stopped in my tracks.

Friends. He'd said
friends
.

“Shit,” I said, tapping my back pocket. “I need one more of these.”

Reggie cocked his head at me. “Oh, right. For the little NCD psychic you're hooked up with.”

“Um, ex-NCD. Yeah.”

“Here's the thing,” Reggie explained, all silky and reasonable sounding as he stamped out my good vibes. “For a fellow zombie like yourself and your zombie girlfriend, who I'm sure is also cool, I'm like a humanitarian. You want the cure? I don't recommend that shit, but it's yours. You're my people, you know? But for some little secret agent with magic powers? Well, damn, Jake, I've never met one of those before. She's trespassing in my territory, man. Least she could do is come by and say what up.”

I tried to imagine Cass walking down the streets below with all those loose ghouls, or hanging around the mall with the packs of bloodthirsty cosplayers. It didn't end well.

“I don't think that's gonna happen,” I told him.

“Oh well,” he said nonchalantly, resuming his walk with his arm around me. “I've got Kope Juice to spare for your psychic, Jake. She's just gotta come get it.”

CASS

UM, CASS? ARE YOU OUT THERE IN PSYCHIC LAND listening?

Is this how it works?

This is stupid.

It's like praying.

My fingers are on my temples FYI. If that helps.

Amanda is going to be so psyched! She is going to make out with you so hard!

Not you, Cass. Sorry. Me. Off topic.

He wants you to come here, Cass. To Des Moines.

I'm stoned. Probably not helping.

Sun's almost up. What time is it in your part of Iowa?

I'm wasted. And beat.

She's going to be all like, ohhh, my hero!

What I'll do first is give her the perfume. Like, this is all they had at the mall. Sorry I disappeared for three days.

And then OH WAIT ALSO THIS AWESOME ZOMBIE CURE.

Cass, I don't think Reggie's totally evil. Maybe on the sinister side.

But he's not too crazy about humans.

He wants to meet you and I don't think his intentions are like one hundred percent chill.

He seems pretty set on it. For the cure.

Sorry about your mom. That sucks.

Not sure what to do.

I'll try to talk him out of it. Or get another vial of the stuff.

I'll try.

Okay, you're not listening.

Amanda is going to be PUMPED.

I'm definitely going to do that perfume bit.

It's going to be great.

 

I snapped awake or, more honestly, leapt out of Jake's totally scattered and deeply discouraging mind. I didn't even have time to consider what I'd learned—that he'd acquired the cure, but not enough; that he was devoting the same amount of brainpower to his reunion with Amanda as he was to helping me save my mom—because something seriously weird was going down in the physical world.

Tara had crawled into bed with me. Her feet were freezing and pressed against my legs. Her stale breath gusted against the side of my face. For a moment, I remembered creeping into bed with my big sister as a kid and felt oddly comforted by the physical contact.

“That's right,” Tara whispered. “We're basically sisters.”

That killed it. I recoiled, both physically and mentally.

“This is not okay,” I hissed, trying to put some space between us in the tiny cot.

“Daddy wants to talk with you,” she replied, unperturbed by my obvious discomfort. “He wants you to stop being stubborn.”

I glared at her, angry at the multiple violations of personal space happening here, until I noticed the thin tendril of blood snaking down from her nose.

“Maybe you should stop talking to him too,” I whispered. “It's hurting you.”

Tara shook her head and snuffed her nose. “Can't. It's my job.”

“You should quit. I did.”

And look how well that's working out,
I stopped myself from adding.

Tara ignored me, her eyes glazed over. “He wants me to tell you that they're coming.”