Undead with Benefits (9 page)

“You're up,” he said cheerfully. “We were getting worried.”

Amanda turned away from the window to look at me. “Wow. You look shittier than usual.”

“Thanks,” I replied, ready to brush off this typical Amanda greeting. But then I noticed a puffiness to her face, her eyes a little red-rimmed, and my headache-induced grumpiness reared up. “So do you, actually. What were you crying about? Did the hotel not have the right conditioner?”

Amanda stared at me, openmouthed, but couldn't muster a comeback. She just huffed and turned back to the window. I frowned; winning a round with her didn't feel as good as I thought it would.

“Another fun-filled day with the super best friends,” sighed Jake. He squinted at me, lowering his voice a fraction. “So, how's the hangover?”

“Bad headache. Nothing I can't handle.”

From the table next to him, Jake picked up a blueberry muffin wrapped in a napkin, handing it to me. “You missed the continental breakfast,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied, sitting down next to him.

Jake jerked a thumb toward Amanda. “She got it for you. I was, um, running an errand.”

“He was buying pot from some protester,” Amanda explained. Jake did a little fist pump and grinned at me.

“Oh. Well. Priorities.” I picked a sugary piece of crust from the muffin top. “Thanks, Amanda.”

Amanda shrugged in response, turning back around. “Is all this—?” She waved a hand at my face. “Did you really go to town on those drinks? Or is it because of the psychic stuff yesterday?”

“Something like that,” I said evasively.

“Wow, so it really wipes you out,” Amanda said, sitting down on an adjacent couch. “Bummer.”

Jake looked between us with his eyebrows raised encouragingly, like we'd had a major breakthrough talking to each other with this much civility.

“It's just a bad headache, really,” I continued. “I'll be fine.”

“Cool,” Amanda replied, with an amount of sincerity I think was probably painful to produce.

“And there's a plan now, right?” Jake jumped in, looking at me expectantly. I must've told him something along those lines last night, and he must've broached the subject with Amanda. “You figured out a way into Iowa.”

“Yep. That's right,” I said, and stuffed a chunk of muffin in my mouth to buy myself a few seconds. “I can get you over the border today.”

“What're you going to do after?” Jake asked, the thought clearly just occurring to him. “You can't come with us, right? Not if it's as bad as they say. You'll be, uh—”

“A meal,” Amanda finished.

“I think I'll just go home,” I said quickly.

Amanda seemed satisfied, but not Jake. He squinted at me, like he could tell something was up. Before he could ask, Amanda spoke up.

“So what is this plan you suddenly decided to come up with? There is a plan, right? Not just more driving around.”

There
was
a plan. It just wasn't
my
plan.

 

On the astral plane, I imagine myself as the wind. It's like I'm gusting through a city at night, and all the lit windows are minds. Some of them are open—likely because I've come in contact with that mind before—but most of them are closed. I could force my way through the cracks of those closed minds if I wanted to, but that might involve breaking the window, so I don't try. I stick to the minds I know or the minds I'm tracking. I've done this a hundred times.

A hundred times and I've never felt one of those minds suck me in, like a dark cavern on the horizon, a vacuum.

Not until Alastaire.

Suddenly, I stood in my living room in San Diego. All the details were right: the retro shag carpet that my mom loved so much, the creepy plaster gnome next to the television, the working fireplace that no one had ever bothered to light. It had all the sensations of home, but I felt like I'd just become aware of a dream. It felt unreal around the edges, like if I focused too hard, I might snap awake.

Not to mention, Alastaire was sitting on my couch. Right in the spot where I used to curl up for after-school naps. He was dressed in one of his slick suits, bow tie and everything.

“What is this?” I asked, looking around. “How is this possible?”

“This is the intersection of our minds, Cassandra,” Alastaire said, again adopting the whole patient-teacher tone, mansplaining his butt off. “A shared dreamspace, you might call it. Very few psychics are capable of projection at this level. You should be very proud.”

I wandered around the room, forgetting for a moment how skeeved out I was and just basking in this psychic approximation of home.

“Why here?” I asked.

“It's easier if the place is familiar to us both,” he replied. “Stops our minds from quibbling over the details.”

I stopped in front of our cluttered mantelpiece. My mom hadn't been able to decide which photos of my dad to display after he died, so instead she tried breaking the pictures-per-square-inch record. As I looked over the photos, the ones of me and my dad started to shift and twist, like someone had smudged an inky thumb over my dad's face. I stared, transfixed, as the images slowly took shape again, my dad's likeness replaced by Alastaire. There he was, grinning, wearing a bow tie, hands on my tiny shoulders as he taught me how to ride a bike.

“Major quibble!” I shouted, taking a startled step back. “I am so definitely quibbling, you creepy douche!”

“Ah, I'm sorry,” Alastaire said, and I was surprised by the embarrassment in his voice. “Sometimes the id can be difficult to control in here.”

I turned to face him. “Is that how you see yourself? Like a father figure or something?”

“Never mind that,” he snapped. “We have more important matters to discuss.”

“Because you are
not
a father figure to me,” I continued, ignoring him. “You're like the creepy stranger in the van looking for his lost puppy that my actual dad used to warn me about. You're like—”

A sharp cracking sound from behind made me jump. One of the picture frames had shattered.

“Are you quite done?” Alastaire asked.

“Quite,” I repeated. My words were a little shakier than I'd have liked; he still scared me. “What do you want from me, Al?”

“The incident at the farmhouse was not exactly the highlight of my career,” Alastaire began, almost like this was a debriefing. “I lost an entire unit of NCD soldiers, including a field commander and a high-level psychic. Not to mention my Pavlov device proved less than satisfactory in its first field test.”

I snorted, relishing the fact that I'd caused his grotesque zombie-controlling device to malfunction. “My bad.”

“Yes. Your bad, indeed,” he said, nodding in agreement. He paused for a moment to wiggle the fingers on his right hand, looking down at them longingly. “You know, they had to amputate this arm, Cassandra.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, ignoring the tiny pang of guilt I felt for causing this evil jerk to get maimed. “And then did they fire you?”

“No,” Alastaire replied. “But my star has fallen quite a bit within the NCD. So much so that I've been reduced to this. . . .” He waved his hand disgustedly at my living room.

“Feel free to leave at any time,” I said.

He shook his head. “Actually, I believe this humbling experience was in order. I'd gotten ahead of myself, you see. Controlling the undead is still a possibility, Cassandra, but not while their plague spreads across our country unchecked. Something must be done to ebb the tide of chaos or else all our scientific advancements will be for naught. Don't you agree?”

I folded my arms. “It's hard for me to agree with anything you say, ever. Don't take it personally.”

“There is a man stranded in Des Moines who I believe has created a cure for the undead,” Alastaire continued, undeterred.

“The Grandfather.”

“Ah.” Alastaire smirked. “So you've seen his little videos. His real name is Doctor Nelson Fair. He didn't start all this ‘Grandfather' business until his mind broke.”

“So he's nuts?” I asked, feeling a mounting sense of dread about this whole Iowa expedition.

“Indeed. Even so, I have reason to believe he's been successful with his experiments. Once upon a time, during the first years of this plague, when cases were few and far between, we worked together. Since then, I believe he found employment with a company called Kope Brothers Pharmaceuticals.”

I remembered the defaced Kope Brothers billboard we'd seen when leaving Pipestone. “I've heard of them.”

“I always found Doctor Fair's research . . . shall we say, distasteful? Apparently, the private sector does not share my reservations.”

“You? This Grandfather guy skeeved out
you
?”

“No matter what you might think, I am not a monster.” Alastaire leaned forward, studying me. “Speaking of, are you still hanging around that zombie boy? Nurturing your doomed little romance?”

His question caught me off guard. It wouldn't have surprised me if Jake's picture suddenly appeared on the mantelpiece. I wondered if astral projections could blush.

“What does that matter?” I asked, going for sharp, but honestly worried what he might want from Jake.

“It's a stroke of good luck,” Alastaire said, nodding approvingly. “You'll need the boy to get close. Doctor Fair appears to be a prisoner of war, so to speak.”

I snorted, shaking my head. “Jeez, relying on me and my zombie friends. You sure the NCD didn't fire you? Why don't you just send in the marines or something?”

“I've already tried that.”

That raised my eyebrow. “Um, what?”

“A highly trained black-ops team parachuted into Des Moines two weeks ago with the intention of extracting Doctor Fair and his cure.” Alastaire paused dramatically. “They didn't make it out. And they weren't the first team sent in.”

“So, you're telling me I'm a better bet than black ops now?”

“I believe an undead agent working in concert with the NCD would be better positioned to acquire this cure from an overrun city in the grip of a zombie warlord, yes,” Alastaire replied dryly. “Perhaps, if my field tests hadn't been disrupted, a zombie with my Pavlov device could have been sent in. Instead, I'll be relying on you to do the mind controlling the old-fashioned way.”

I tried not to let my disgust register. I'd sworn off any kind of mind control where Jake was concerned, but Alastaire didn't need to know that, not while he was holding my mom hostage.

“How did you geniuses let it get so bad?” I asked. “I mean, a whole state . . .”

Alastaire frowned, like I'd offended him. “The Kope Brothers were subcontracted to develop an undead vaccine. Doing so entailed a certain amount of human testing. When that got out of hand, beginning with a massive incident in Des Moines, it was in everyone's best interest to cover it up until the issue could be resolved. Reputations were on the line, and so forth.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “But it hasn't been resolved.”

“No, it has only gotten worse,” Alastaire replied. “Which has necessitated further cover-ups, larger quarantines, bigger subcontracts. It wasn't until Kope's headquarters finally went dark that the NCD's policy went from isolation to intervention.”

“Man,” I said. “You guys all freaking suck. Seriously.”

“Some of us more than others,” he said casually. “With subtler options having failed, there are those within the government who believe the next step to our undead epidemic is a military one. Soon, the full might of the United States military will descend on Iowa. You see, there's no need to cure that which is rendered extinct. No one will be spared, not even Doctor Fair. The risk of further infection is too great. I'm using what little pull I have left to delay this militaristic inevitability. However, you'll want to be quick about our work.”

I stared at him. Basically, he was offhandedly describing an entire state worth of people—undead or otherwise—getting murdered.

“You—you're serious?”

“Barbaric, I know,” he replied. “And too little, too late, if you ask me. Certainly not the course of action I'd have recommended, but then, one of my subordinates saw fit
to have a zombie chew off my arm
.”

And suddenly, Alastaire was right in front of me. He didn't move like normal; he didn't have to, not on the astral plane. His hand was under my chin, jerking my face upward, so I had to look right into his eyes, burning with an anger he'd been keeping at bay. I was distantly aware of a warm sensation on my face—a geyser of a nosebleed for my physical body.

“This is your mission, child. I've arranged for an operative to meet you at the border. He'll get you past the NCD. Use your new zombie friends to find the doctor. Do whatever you have to do. Acquire the cure. Rip it out of his goddamn mind if you have to. Bring it to me. Or else, I'll let you watch through my eyes as I butcher your mother. And she'll never even know why.”

I tried to look away, but his dark eyes held me. The living room was getting smaller and smaller around us, the walls closing in.

“Okay,” I gasped. “I'll do it.”

“Good,” he said, and let my chin slip. “Then our business is concluded.”

 

“A friend of mine will meet us near the Deadzone,” I told Jake and Amanda in the hotel lobby, still picking at my muffin. “He'll get us past the NCD presence and you'll be free to do whatever on the other side.”

“A friend of yours?” Amanda asked. Even Jake looked a little skeptical.

“An, uh, NCD person,” I explained, wishing my head wasn't throbbing so I could coat these half truths with some psychic sugar. Even though I'd promised not to mess with their heads, circumstances had changed.