Undead with Benefits (28 page)

Oh, who am I kidding? It was freaking horrible, like walking through one of those black-and-white POW camps they showed us in history class. I swallowed hard and tried not to make eye contact with any of them.

Reggie caught my expression and, with the same half-apologetic face I'd made when I spoiled Santa Claus for my little sister, reached out to pat my shoulder. I flinched away from him.

“This . . .” I waved my hands. “This is seriously wrong, dude.”

Hearing me, one of the imprisoned humans slapped his palms against the glass and screamed. Others joined him, and others still recoiled or covered their ears or started rocking back and forth in panic. Seriously, I could've joined them in doing any of the above.

“Not in front of them,” Reggie hissed, and dragged me down the hall. We veered into an area dedicated to complicated science labs.

“Get off me, man,” I snapped, shaking loose from Reggie's grip.

He held up his hands. “All right, Jake. Relax. You're not ready to see how the sausage gets made. It's cool.”

“Uh, yeah, I'll never be ready for that,” I said.

“Right.” Reggie nodded, humoring me. “If you say so. Have you taken that cure yet, by the way? You don't smell human.”

I didn't reply. Reggie walked into one of the labs and, after taking a deep, cleansing breath, I followed.

“I bet you still have rules about which people to eat, huh?” Reggie asked over his shoulder.

I thought about my system with Amanda, our unanimous voting on bad guys and assholes. It wasn't perfect, but it was a code. I kept quiet, though, not wanting to give Reggie the satisfaction.

“It's cool,” Reggie continued. “Everyone goes through that shit. Eventually, though, they get hungry. Too hungry.”

“It doesn't have to be that way,” I argued. “Instead of, like, holing up in your zombie city, you could be handing out Kope Juice.”

“Uh-huh.” Reggie laughed, not maliciously, but in a condescending way that annoyed the shit out of me. “Tell me how I can make the world a better place, Disney Channel. I'm listening.”

I folded my arms and shut up.

“The world's changed, man,” Reggie said as he walked toward an observing window on the far side of the room. “The NCD, Kope, and probably dozens of other old, white dudes just like them are—right this second—having meetings on how to monetize the undead. We need to eat them before they eat us. You get that, right?”

I shrugged and walked over to join him. “Whatever, dude. I'm not really into politics.”

“You're a cool guy, Jake, but you're fucking naive as hell.” Reggie tapped on the glass. “Here's your pal.”

There was a normal-looking hospital room set up on the other side of the window—heart monitors, IV drips, leather restraints. In bed, sound asleep or maybe comatose, drooling a river either way, was the Grandfather. His bushy white beard and wild head of hair had grown even more unkempt since the video. A big chunk of his face was covered in heavily bandaged gauze, and I got the feeling there were other bite wounds hidden from view. Bad ones.

“Jeez,” I said.

“Yeah,” Reggie replied, sounding almost sad for the old man. “Here's a guy that tried to change the world and got half eaten for his trouble. I keep him alive because . . . I don't know, exactly. Feels wrong to eat him, I guess.”

“So, you draw your line at heroic-if-wackadoodle scientists?”

Reggie thought about it. “I don't eat dogs either. No dogs.”

I nodded. We were quiet for a while, listening to the muffled beep of the Grandfather's heart monitor. I think we both had the feeling that things were about to change. I certainly did, probably due in no small part to my plans to inject myself with a less-than-stable wonder cure.

But the two injectors back at Reggie's apartment weren't enough.

“So . . . ,” I said, breaking the silence. “You store all your Kope Juice down here?”

“Smooth,” Reggie said, smirking at me. “You gonna try to steal from me, Jake?”

“Uh, no.”

Reggie walked across the room and crouched down over one of the floor panels. He slid it aside, revealing a stainless-steel handle and a digital keypad.

“It's all down there,” he told me. “Locked up tight.”

I took a step forward, but what was I going to do? Try beating the combination out of him? It didn't seem like a sound plan.

I opted for pleading.

“Just give me one more, man,” I whined. “You know she'll get killed if she comes here.”

“Probably.”

“She's harmless,” I said. “Seriously. She's out of the NCD. They, like, kidnapped her mom and shit.”

“Right,” Reggie replied, his voice level. “So I give her the cure, she trades it for her mom, and then the NCD has it. Which means they've got no reason not to nuke Des Moines, right? You see my logic here, Jake?”

“They're not gonna nuke anybody,” I said weakly. “Are they?”

“Naive, like I said,” Reggie replied, standing up. “You know, I'm not stopping you from leaving, Jake. You can go cure yourself whenever. Or you can take that Kope Juice I gave you, turn it over to your NCD girl, and endanger the lives of all your zombie brothers and sisters here. But that shit is gonna be on you, not me.”

I shifted from foot to foot. “I mean, it'd sort of still be on you since you gave it to me.”

“Jake,” Reggie said. “Come on.”

I pictured the two vials of Kope Juice I had stashed back at Reggie's apartment, nestled in next to Amanda's perfume. Could I really give one of those to Cass? What would Amanda say? Which one of us would . . . No, I didn't want to think about that.

“You don't think I'll do it, do you?” I asked Reggie.

Reggie shook his head, smiling.

“Man, I don't think you're gonna take that cure at all. Your ass is having too much fun.”

AMANDA

WHEN I WAS A STUPID LITTLE KID, LIKE TEN OR SO, I had this huge crush on Johnny Depp. Not regular Johnny Depp, because he's old and kinda douchey with the whole pretentious French thing. Captain Jack Sparrow. In fourth-grade art class I made a Captain Jack puppet out of a brown paper bag, those stick-on plastic eyes, and lots of felt scraps cut to look like his wild goatee and sexy/crusty hair. I used to sleep with this puppet and practice kissing on it and defend it from my brother, Kyle, who used to chase me around with scissors.

Aww.

So lame, right? Hold on. It gets worse.

I used to write Life Goals on scraps of paper and shove them inside puppet Jack Sparrow's paper-bag body. I actually wrote
Life Goal
on each one. I don't remember the specifics. Mostly, they were names of places I'd seen in magazines and wanted to travel to someday, possibly with the real Jack Sparrow because I was an idiot and thought that was a thing that could happen. They all had a basic unifying theme.

LIFE GOAL: get the fuck out of New Jersey.

Mission accomplished.

Eventually I got over Jack Sparrow, more interested in guys made out of flesh and blood, although in Captain Jack's defense, what he lacked in arms he made up for in not saying dumb shit all the time. Even grown-up, I couldn't throw him out. He was too important to me. I hid him underneath my mattress in a small box with Dad's postcards from the joint and pictures of Penelope (my mother, who I've referred to by her first name since I caught her drunkenly flirting with some of my friends at a party she'd “allowed” me to throw) when she was young/hot. He'd be safe there, I assumed.

After school one day, while I was downstairs listening to Penelope bitch about something, my so-called friend Cindy St. Clair discovered Captain Jack in his box while she was snooping under my bed, probably looking for dildos, the dumb slut. I came upstairs to find my secret Life Goals scattered on the floor and Jack Sparrow shoved onto an unfamiliar hand, making loud donkey noises because Cindy claimed I had big teeth. I vowed on that day to destroy her socially, and a couple years later she was the first person I ate when I turned into a zombie.

That might have been an overreaction.

You think?

Captain Jack went in the garbage after his defilement by Cindy. I didn't stop thinking up Life Goals, though. Considering how my desire to escape lame New Jersey had come true in a roundabout, messed-up way after marinating in the belly of Jack Sparrow, maybe it was time to make a new puppet. Because I was having trouble figuring out what to do next.

LIFE GOAL: find Jake.

LIFE GOAL: stop being a smelly/ugly zombie.

LIFE GOAL: start over.

I stood at the edge of the firelight, gazed out over the darkened farmland, and missed him. I know, right? Like I was one of those stupid lighthouse maidens gazing out to sea waiting for her ship-captain husband to return home. (Enough with the pirates already.) It'd only been a couple days and he talked way too much and was half-retarded and it shouldn't have felt like such a big deal. But it was. I'd felt different since we unzombied in that parking lot. Like I could finally be myself.

Turns out, the you that eats people is the truest version of yourself.

Since I'd been with Jake, I didn't worry so much about what Dad called
the angles
. I didn't care about how every little thing would reflect on me, what other people would see, how they'd use my actions against me. I didn't look at every interaction as a stepping stone to something better. Yeah, maybe a certain amount of social burdens had been stripped away when I'd eaten all my important peers. But something else had changed too. I liked who I was when I was around Jake and I wanted that back. I wanted our easy rhythm back. I wanted us to be all right. I wanted—

Okay, stop thinking about him.

Behind me, the campfire crackled as Cody poked it with a branch.

“I don't think she's coming back,” he said, interpreting my distance gazing as keeping watch for that snotty psychic sucker-puncher.

“She better not,” I said quietly.

Ooohhhh.

The smell of Cody's bonfire reminded me of the burnt odor my skin had been giving off earlier. The blistered, gray electrical burn on my chest had healed with the help of one of our last guinea pigs, yet the smell still lingered on in my brain. A shame stench. I wouldn't be letting that one go anytime soon. I'd let my guard slip and Cass had gotten away. She was my only surefire way of finding Jake and now she was gone, leaving me stranded here in shit creek with no clear course of action. I never trusted her; should've never let Jake guilt me into being civil. Who knows what nefarious shit that little government lackey was up to now. I hoped the ghouls got her.

Forget about Cass. You don't need her. Start thinking about the angles again. That's more you.

I sighed and joined Cody at his bonfire. It made sense he wouldn't want to stay in the bomb shelter after the mess he'd made in there, but if I had my way, we'd be spending the night in the adjoining house. Cody didn't want to do that either, spouting some shit about respect for the dead. He'd been brooding/sulking all day until he found out I had camping equipment in the car.

Even during his whole glum
woe is me, I'm a zombie
period, Cody's eyes had been on me pretty much nonstop. I was used to that. At least he was handsome and polite, qualities that in my experience very rarely went hand in hand, but maybe they did things different out in the country. He looked eager to talk, his eyes all moony with need, and I realized maybe I'd done too good a job comforting him after he first turned zombie. He looked all attached. Wasn't going to happen, duder.

But he is really, really good-looking. And strong. He'll make for a great zombie partner, don't you think? He'll be useful. He's your type.

I caught myself staring at him. Cody smiled at me with his perfect white teeth. He'd changed out of his bloody clothes and into a clean pair of jeans and form-fitting blue T-shirt. He reminded me a little of Chazz, actually, but with all the rough edges sanded off. Here was a guy who wouldn't just park his Camaro on the curb and lay on the horn. My man would come in and introduce himself to Mom.

“I love the outdoors,” Cody said. “It feels so natural out here.”

“Cool,” I replied. I mean, it was a nice night, but we didn't need to talk about it.

“You like camping?” he asked me.

“Um, no,” I replied.

Too harsh. Be nicer.

“I mean, I've never really been before,” I clarified.

“Gosh, I miss it,” Cody said, shaking his head. “I used to go every other weekend before all this.”

“Yeah, you really know your way around building a fire.”

I hadn't really meant it as a compliment—who cares about building fires? We aren't cavepeople anymore—but Cody beamed from ear to ear like I'd just pinned a blue ribbon on his prize sow or whatever. Iowans.

He's sweet, though. And wouldn't it come in handy to have a partner who knows how to do things not involving video games? Practical, real-world skills that might keep you alive? Think about the possibilities. The angles.

“What else can you do?” I asked him suddenly, then immediately rephrased the question. “I mean, um, what else do you
like
to do?”

He thought about this. “I used to race cars,” he replied.

“Like, street racing?”

“Lord, no.” Cody laughed. “Amateur circuit. Stock cars.” He looked at me, trying to gauge my interest. “Some figure eight, that's the most dangerous thing I've done. No street racing.”

“Figure eight?”

“The track shape,” Cody said, drawing an eight in the air with a flaming stick.

“Don't you crash?”

“Not if you're good,” he replied, and shot me a wink that was more cheeseball than lecherous, yet still violated my strict prohibition on winking and/or eyebrow wiggling.