Undead with Benefits (3 page)

“Well?” Amanda prodded, dramatically holding her nose in the air away from me.

“Sorry,” I replied. “I need a second here.”

“The little
X
s are roadblocks we already drove by,” Jake offered, and pointed helpfully at the map.

“Oh, okay,” I said, like I knew what I was talking about.

Unfortunately, I didn't know the first thing about Iowa.

As of last week, I hadn't even known for sure the place was quarantined. I'd heard rumors around Washington, but was never told anything official. I didn't know how big the zone was or what kind of security we'd face. I certainly didn't know how to get us in there.

“Hypothetically,” I started, testing the waters, “what if the route into Iowa I know about isn't, um, open anymore? Or if I can't exactly remember the way?”

They both stared at me. Amanda clenched and unclenched her fists.

“I dunno,” Jake said, shrugging. “Guess we'll figure something else out.”

“Hypothetically,” Amanda added, mimicking me, “we'd have to figure something else out to do with you too. For instance? Face eating.”

“Jesus, Amanda,” Jake groaned, rolling his eyes. “She's kidding.”

I swallowed hard. It occurred to me then that maybe my decision to roll with the fugitive zombies wasn't my wisest. I'd badly wanted to bail on the NCD after my boss, Alastaire, revealed himself to be a zombie-enslaving psychopath, and most of my squad got killed. Going on the run seemed like a decent plan when I was desperate and shell-shocked. I guess I hadn't considered the high probability of getting eaten. Of course, I'd had other reasons for bailing on the NCD, primarily my totally inappropriate psychic crush on the undead guy who, for reasons that I now realized were totally naive, I didn't think would let anything bad happen to me. Depressed, alone, not being around people my own age for about a year, and living in other people's heads—yeah, Cass, sure, you're a good judge of character.

I rolled up the road atlas and clutched it.

“I need some time to figure out the best way in,” I explained. The more I talked, the more unsteady I felt; my knees wobbled like string cheese, and a colony of floaters soared across my vision. “And I think I need some rest.”

“You've been sleeping for days,” Amanda countered.

“Rest outside of a trunk,” I insisted.

“So picky.” Amanda snorted.

I ignored her and appealed directly to Jake. “I'm not one hundred percent. And I'm starving. Do you guys have any food?”

He glanced sheepishly at the car. I noticed a large cardboard box in the backseat. While I watched, something small and furry tried to scramble over the edge but couldn't navigate the flap and fell backward.

“Uh, probably not the kind you'd want to eat,” he answered.

“So we have to feed her now?” Amanda muttered.

A pickup truck rumbled down the road, the driver slowing to gawk at us as he passed. I waved my hand up and down my filthy ensemble.

“I need new clothes too,” I said. “Also, we probably shouldn't just be out in the open like this. We're fugitives, right?”

“We?”
Amanda sneered.

“You think the NCD won't be looking for me after I bailed on them?” I asked, cocking my head at her. “Plus, after that mess at the farmhouse, they'll be looking even harder for you guys. We're not safe until we get into Iowa, and I need to pull myself together before we even think about sneaking in there.”

Jake and Amanda exchanged a look. I noticed Amanda's cavalier attitude briefly slip. I didn't know for sure the NCD would be looking for me, especially with most of my squad dead and Alastaire hopefully bled out in a field somewhere. Without me to track them, though, Jake and Amanda were likely as safe as they'd been since turning undead. Still, it seemed like a good lie.

“She makes some good points,” Jake said.

Amanda sighed. “All right, but we're rolling down the windows.”

Jake grinned at me. “Welcome to the Maroon Marauder! That's what we're calling the car.”

“No we're not,” Amanda said over her shoulder, already ducking into the passenger side.

Jake moved the cardboard box of furry things into the trunk and we got on the road. In the backseat, I tried to ignore all the plaintive squeaking coming from the trunk. I suppressed a shudder. That could've been me back there.

 

I was probably being a little too ambitious when I decided that, out of the two bags' worth of gas-station food Jake bought for me, I was going to eat the microwave burrito first. The cravings of the recently comatose are inexplicable, I guess. After that last bite of chewy tortilla shell and gooey, processed meat, I immediately felt sorry for myself.

Then I felt carsick.

Amanda didn't want me puking in the backseat or anywhere in her field of vision, so we cut the day's drive short. They bought two rooms for us at a seedy motel just off the highway in western Wisconsin. I didn't want to know where they'd gotten the money for the food and the rooms; I just wanted to get someplace dark and with better air circulation than a trunk so I could get rid of this throbbing headache and maybe, if my brain pains allowed it, come up with a plan.

I drew the blinds in my room and stretched out on the lumpy motel bed. It felt amazing; my bones and muscles seemed to gradually uncrinkle, like how a dried sponge expands when you pour water on it.

I must have dozed off. I woke up when someone knocked on my door. Still half-asleep, I expected to find Tom standing outside with orange juice and donuts. Instead, it was Amanda with a bag of clothes from a nearby outlet mall. My heart sank—those days of NCD-managed TLC were over—but I kept my face stony for Amanda.

“Here,” she said, handing me the bag. She didn't wait for a thank-you, immediately breezing off to the room next door, where Jake waited for her. I was actually glad she kept it short and bitchy; she'd eaten Harlene, and a pile of clothes that ranged purposefully from boring-as-heck to straight-up dorky wasn't going to make up for that.

At least they were clean. I did appreciate that.

I spent the rest of the day poring over Jake's road atlas. It looked to me like the highways in western Iowa terminated before Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. I made a line in the road atlas, connecting the roadblocks, estimating where this mythical zombie barricade would be. It encompassed most of the state's eastern area. There were fewer towns in northern Iowa along the Minnesota border, and more hardly trafficked rural routes. That seemed like a good place to try slipping through. They couldn't have locked down every road into the state, right?

“Gotta start somewhere,” I said to myself. My headache had started to clear and I could feel that familiar tickle of the astral plane out there, beckoning to me.

I wondered what Jake might be thinking.

No. None of that. No spying at all, in fact.

I tried not to listen to Jake and Amanda's muffled conversations through the wall. I think they were getting drunk. I also tried not to overthink my decision to stick with the zombies. I owed Jake and had nowhere else to go. Simple as that.

It was a long, lonely night.

And by midafternoon the next day, we were going nowhere fast.

“Well?” Amanda asked, catching my eyes in the rearview. She drove while Jake napped in the passenger seat.

“Keep going until you see the exit for route fifteen,” I answered, studying the road atlas that was open in my lap. “We'll try that one.”

“Try,” repeated Amanda dryly.

“Well, at least we're in Iowa,” I said defensively.

“Iowa wasn't the deal,” she replied. “
Infected
Iowa: that's what we want. And anyway, I think we crossed the border back into Minnesota.”

We'd spent all day hopscotching across the Minnesota-Iowa border. I had made a lot of fresh
X
s in the road atlas and was steadily running out of northern routes to try. At least we knew that the NCD quarantine didn't extend across the Iowa border in a perfectly straight line, although that seemed like a pretty trivial detail. More important was the frightening scope of the NCD's operation.

Some of the highways led into detours that just kept on in a circle, always more phantom roadwork to keep you doubling back toward Minnesota. Others ended in roadblocks formed by government standard-issue black SUVs. We were always too cautious to approach those, but I didn't need binoculars to recognize the NCD jumpsuits turning away cars. We hadn't seen anyone get through.

It was the biggest Containment job I'd ever seen. How they'd been able to make such a massive space disappear without anyone asking questions made my skin crawl.

I used to think playing psychic spin doctor for the NCD made sense—we wouldn't want to start a panic after just a few isolated zombie attacks—but if we'd lost an entire state? That should be on the news, the president doing that whole somber “My Fellow Americans . . .” thing.

Five minutes of uncomfortable silence later, the familiar orange detour signs started to pop up. Amanda disgustedly shook her head and stepped on the gas. I added a fresh
X
to the road atlas.

“Have you even been to Iowa?” she asked me.

“Not personally, but they briefed us on emergency access points. We just have to keep looking,” I replied, trying to make this lie sound official. Then, for some reason, I kept talking. “I'm from California, originally.”

“Who asked?” she snapped, and turned on the radio.

I went back to studying the road atlas, not sure why I'd bothered to share a detail about myself. I guess I expected more talking on my cross-country drives, but then maybe I'd seen too many '80s road-trip movies. There'd been only one conversational highlight so far, which at least proved life among the undead didn't have to be constantly miserable.

It just required Amanda not be around.

 

We'd stopped at a gas station that morning and I'd decided to stock up on provisions while I had the chance. I had the sinking feeling that microwaved convenience food was going to be my primary diet for as long as I stuck with the zombies. Lucky for me, this minimart had a better selection than most—single-serving boxes of cereal! white-cheddar popcorn!—so I was really loading up.

I noticed that Jake was wandering the aisles behind me. He must've come in to pay for the gas. I stopped to watch him run his fingers longingly across a package of beef jerky. He let out a deep sigh that I interpreted as profoundly sad.

“Um, you all right?” I asked, stepping closer with my armload of people food.

“Huh?” I'd startled him out of some daydream. “Yeah, I'm cool. Just sorta jealous of all your options here.”

“Oh,” I replied hesitantly. “Yeah, gas-station burritos are really enviable.”

Jake looked at me seriously. “They are.”

I guess when you're used to eating small, furry animals to stave off human-sized hunger pains, you'll take anything. I tried to think of something that might make him feel better.

“Well, I'm a little jealous that you get to eat, uh . . .”

“Guinea pigs?”

“I'm jealous of the guinea pigs,” I said quickly.

Jake grinned. “You're a bad liar.”

“Where did you even get so many?” I asked, thinking about the huge cardboard box that occupied my former residence in the trunk.

“Pet stores,” he replied, like that should've been obvious. “Actually, if you see one while we're driving, let us know. You can never have too many.”

“Okay, sure.” I paused, not wanting the conversation to end, but flailing for something to say. “Why guinea pigs anyway?”

“Cost-effective. And they're surprisingly dense, like, meatwise.” I could tell Jake wanted to change the subject. He grabbed a package of Oreos from a shelf and looked at them longingly. “If I were you, I'd get these.”

“Um, I'm more of an oatmeal-raisin girl.”

Jake narrowed his eyes at me. “Oatmeal raisin? Ugh, you're ruining the vicarious eating experience here.”

“Vicarious eating?”

“Yeah.” He sheepishly rubbed the stubble growing in around his mohawk. “Yesterday I was watching you eat that pepperoni Hot Pocket and it was, like, I don't know, a spiritual experience. Is that weird?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing. I was secretly aghast that Jake had watched me eat a Hot Pocket that I'd probably barfed up soon after, but also flattered. I think I might've blushed. “But I, um—I don't mind if you watch me eat,” I added quickly. Then mentally smacked myself.

Where's a conversation supposed to go after that? Right into an awkward silence. Jake put the Oreos back and picked up a package of oatmeal raisin. He raised a dubious eyebrow at me.

“Ready?”

“As I'll ever be!” I chirped enthusiastically. Apparently, all that time focusing on psychic connections had rendered my social skills totally cornball.

Jake smiled at me, like he didn't notice or didn't care what a dork I was being. We paid and returned to the car. I made sure to angle myself so he could see me in the rearview while I ate my cookies. I couldn't really tell if he was watching me or not, and eventually he started snoring. He'd been asleep ever since.

I brushed some crumbs off the road atlas. What was I doing here?

I watched as a glimmer of drool formed in the corner of Jake's mouth and tried to figure out why I liked him. As if there weren't other, uninfected fish in the sea. As if I couldn't do better than cute-but-decomposing. He was cuter before he let Amanda shave that mohawk onto his head too. I should've gotten over this infatuation by now. Maybe I'd been lonelier than I thought in my eighteen months with the NCD. Maybe it was some kind of psychic sympathy—he was my age, his thoughts fun to spy on, and I needed a friend. Who knows? I could plant a feeling or thought in someone else's mind, but I couldn't explain exactly why Jake had taken root so firmly in my own.