Zombified (16 page)

“Okay,” he yelled. “I get it, I get it. I'm sorry!”

“Sorry for which?” I asked. “Sorry for kissing me when I was vulnerable, or sorry for threatening to rape me?”

“Rape? Jesus, Courtney!”

“That's what I'd call it,” I said. “But right now, I don't want to have a semantic argument with you. Right now I just want you to unlock my damn door before I blow your pecker off.”

Unable to take his eyes off the pistol in his groin, Warren reached toward the control panel and fumbled around until I heard the doors unlock.

I reached behind me, found the handle, and opened the door. Cold night air flooded the car and covered me in gooseflesh. Keeping the pistol trained on him, I got out of the car. He kept his arms up like he was being robbed. Good, him being scared was exactly what I wanted.

“Now go home, Warren,” I said. “And I doubt we'll be calling you to go on any more zombie hunts.”

He put his arms down. His mouth was a tight line of anger. As he keyed the car to life, he said, “Fine. Whatever, you stupid—”

I thumbed the hammer on the pistol. It was an obviously deadly sound.

“Whatever word follows that is probably bad for your health,” I said. “Just shut up and leave.”

I reached out with my foot and kicked the door closed.

He immediately put it in drive and slammed on the gas. The car fishtailed as it screeched away from the curb. As he rounded the corner, the window rolled down and he screamed, “Bitch!” I considered running and trying to put a couple of shots in his rear window, but I was too tired. Honestly, I felt like I deserved it. Although his lack of creativity in name calling was somewhat disappointing.

And then I was left all alone, and suddenly I felt exhausted. I'd never been so tired. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to make it back into my house. I considered just lying down on the sidewalk and letting zombies find me. But I knew that was defeatist thinking. So, I got into the yard and made my slow way up to the house. It felt like I was lifting concrete blocks every time I took a step.

When I got inside and locked the door behind me, I let myself sort of melt onto the couch.

I took my phone out of my pocket and started to compose a text to Phil. Which I deleted. I must have written a hundred texts to him that night, each one explaining what had happened and how sorry I was. I'd violated his trust in me, and now I was no longer worthy of it, or of him and his affections. I deleted every single one.

Oh, God, I was like the character in a Brontë novel. I threw the phone away. I heard it clatter along the kitchen floor with its maybe-linoleum flooring.

Why did I want to tell Phil anyway? To relieve my own guilt? Well, screw that. I was going to feel guilty for a while. I deserved it. I welcomed it.

I wanted to cry. I felt like a big, emotional release would have done me a world of good. But either I was all cried out or I was further punishing myself on a subconscious level. There was no way to force tears to come. It reminded me of that Johnny Cash song about a man who couldn't cry. If I'd had the strength, I'd have gotten up and put that song on. Instead, I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
here's this line in a Hemingway novel, I can't remember which one. I can't even remember the line, exactly, but it's about how the character lay in bed for a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken. I wish I'd had the luxury of forgetfulness the next day, because the moment my eyes opened, I remembered that I'd broken Phil's heart. He just didn't know it yet.

I decided for the sake of the rest of humanity that I needed to hide away by myself. I spent that day finishing the last bit of my holiday homework and moping, with occasional bouts of guilt-induced napping thrown in. People underestimate how much you can sleep when you're depressed, but if you really work at it, you can doze through fifteen or sixteen hours in a day.

Phil texted and asked how I was doing at one point. I wrote back that I was feeling under the weather. Then it occurred to me that he probably thought I was hung over, so I immediately wrote and told him that Warren and I hadn't ended up drinking.

A few minutes later, he texted back:

Man, I'd forgotten about going up to see Buddha the next day. I wrote that I'd still be up for it, but he didn't have to come along if he had better things to do.

Better than hang with you? Don't think so
, he texted back, and I felt the guilt knife twist in my gut.

Okay
, I texted back,
I'm going to try and get some more rest. See you tomorrow
.

Which was the actual truth, because the next thing I did was climb into my Bed of Remorse and mope my way back to sleep for the night.

I woke up early the next day, my heart pounding, my body drenched in sweat. I'd been having some sort of nightmare, but the moment I opened my eyes, it evaporated. I lay there long enough for my heart rate to get back to normal, then got out of my nest and showered and dressed.

The next thing I did was difficult. I had a mini-war over whether or not I even wanted to consider it. If I'd been in a cartoon, a little angel and devil would have appeared on my shoulders. I'm not really sure which of them won the argument, but in the end I marched into my dad's room and broke into the huge bag of cash he'd been keeping in there ever since he took it from me after I admitted how I'd earned it.

I really didn't feel good about it. I knew I was violating my dad's trust by doing that, but I also knew I needed two hundred dollars to make it past the checkpoints along the highway. I also knew that Dad would never even know the money was missing just by glancing at it. He'd have to count it all. I wondered if he ever had. I sure had. Somewhere in my room, I had a notebook with the figure down to the dollar. I tried not to think about it. This money was supposed to be my go-away-to-college fund, but it had all been earned by selling Vitamin Z. I understood why Dad had taken it from me. But I still regretted it.

I counted out ten twenty-dollar bills and folded them into two little bundles for easy bribing. Those went into the front pocket of the flannel shirt I wore over a black T-shirt. I did my best to put everything back in the drawer the way it had been. Let's see, I'd replaced one broken window in here, now I'd taken out cash I didn't want him to know about. What else might I do in that room that I'd have to hide from him? It was best not to think about it.

I then went into my room, strapped on my pistol, and I was ready. I really wished I had something more badass to climb into than a Subaru wagon, but you can't have everything. I sent a quick text to let Phil know I was on my way and then I was off.

He was waiting for me on his front porch when I got there, and I barely had to stop the car and wait for him to climb in before I was off again.

He gave me a meek smile after he got his seat belt done up.

“How are you?” he asked.

I almost asked him what he meant when I remembered I'd told him I was feeling sick.

“Better,” I said. “Just a little tired. What'd you tell your aunt and uncle you were doing today? I'm sure you didn't tell them what you were doing for real. Did you?” I worried that Phil being Phil, there was at least an outside chance he'd told them the truth.

“I just said we'd be hanging out,” he said.

He reached into his backpack and started rummaging around in it.

“I brought road goodies,” he said. Pulled out Red Vines and cans of Pepsi.

“You may road-trip with me anytime, Phil,” I said.

“These are sort of a way to apologize,” he said. I started to get a weird feeling in my gut, but didn't say anything. “I acted like sort of a tool last night. I shouldn't have. So”—he held up a can of soda—“sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And there's really no reason to be sorry. You should be able to say you don't want to do something without me acting like a bitch about it.”

“So you didn't end up drinking with Warren,” he said. “What did you do?”

I squashed the urge to get defensive—
What do you mean, what did we do?
Defensiveness was a dead giveaway.

“We just talked for a little in his car, then I went in to bed.” This was factually accurate with just one tiny omission. Namely, the fact that Warren and I had made out for a good five minutes. But I figured life might be better for everyone if I kept that detail to myself.

“What'd you guys talk about?” Phil asked in a sort of distracted way. I was crossing some lanes of traffic just then, and he seemed to take issue with my traffic etiquette. I wasn't sure what he was so worried about, our conversation had me so distracted that I was unable to obsess about the road, and I thought I was driving better than ever.

“We talked a little about you,” I said. “And me and you.” Again, this was true.

“Good things, I hope,” he said.

“Of course!” Okay, this was veering toward lying territory again.

Thankfully, we were coming up on the freeway on-ramp and I slowed the car. The conversation would have to wait.

“Just sit back and don't say anything,” I said.

I pulled to a stop and a soldier walked up to the window, which I rolled down. I didn't recognize this guy. Of course, after six months, the dude I used to deal with had probably been transferred or had gone back home or something.

The soldier, a Latino kid not much older than me, leaned over to look in the car.

“May I ask the nature of your business, ma'am?” he said.
Ma'am?

“I'm headed up to East Portland to visit a friend,” I said. “His name is Buddha.”

At the mention of the name, the kid looked at me sharply. “License, please,” he said.

I dug my license out of my shirt pocket and brought one bundle of twenties with it.

“Here you go,” he said.

The soldier barely glanced at my license, but he made sure to count the money. He smiled as he handed the ID back and stuffed the money in his pocket.

“You're a lot nicer on the eyes than the kid who usually goes on this run,” the guy said. Phil stiffened in the seat beside me, but he didn't say anything. “Just head north to Exit—”

“I know the routine,” I said to the kid. “Thanks.”

“Okay, then,” he said and he motioned to a Humvee that blocked access to the road. The huge vehicle backed up just enough for us to squeeze past, and then we were back on our way. This time on the freeway with only a few freight trucks for company.

“That was interesting,” Phil said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They're always like that.”

“Well, he got one thing right,” Phil said. “You're pretty easy on the eyes.”

Joy won out over guilt, and I flashed Phil a smile. “Are you flirting with me, sir?” I asked. “Because it might just work.”

“Easier on the eyes than Brandon, anyway,” Phil said.

I laughed pretty hard because the joke had been so unexpected. Then I started to slap at him with my free hand. He was laughing, too, then a truck honked at us because I was weaving all over the road. That sobered us up.

“Punk,” I said as I regained control of the Subaru.

“That reminds me,” Phil said and he went back to his backpack. He brought out a big stack of CDs. “Travel music!” he said.

“It's only a forty-five-minute trip,” I said eying the mountain of tunes.

“True,” he said, “but I don't know what you like, so I brought a little of everything. This is music that I listen to as I draw.”

Turns out that Phil had angry taste in music. It was all punk bands. The Ramones, The Clash, Black Flag, Misfits. I thought about giving him some guff by asking if he had any Green Day, but I didn't want to push things. We ended up listening to The Cramps. I don't know if I really liked it, but it was so loud that there was no way for us to talk, so that was a plus.

Phil was about to throw another CD into the player when I told him to hold up.

“There's Portland,” I said as we negotiated the weird freeway interchange that took us to the 405. The city is split in two by the Willamette River. The west side is completely shut off to humans—well, humans who are sane or aren't running criminal empires. Folks still get into the east side sometimes, mostly to shoot at zombies across the river, but there were no people out that day.

Phil pressed his face against the window as we drove.

“My aunt and uncle talk all the time about how they used to come up here,” he said. “They'd go to restaurants, shows, parks . . .”

“My dad does that, too,” I said. “Portland sounds like it used to be pretty cool.”

“I've only ever seen it from the freeway,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “you'll get a lot closer look today.”

I found the exit and drove past another Humvee. The soldier behind the wheel gave us a mock salute, and then we were in the city: two of maybe a couple dozen humans among all those walking dead.

It took me a minute to remember how to get to Buddha's place, but then things started to look familiar again and I got us where we were going. We parked up the hill from him, at a dilapidated baseball stadium visible just over the horizon. When we got out of the car, I checked my pistol and pulled my flannel closer to my body. I wished I'd brought a coat. Even though the sun was out, it was still pretty cold.

“We'll leave the doors unlocked,” I said to Phil. I whispered. Just because we didn't see any zombies didn't mean there were none around. They more or less owned the city after all.

“Makes sense to me,” he said.

Phil joined me on the street. “We're going to walk down this hill,” I told him. “When we get down there, you'll see a big brick apartment building to the right. That's Buddha's building. Last time I was here, there was a big mob of zombies we had to get through. I hope that's not the case this time.”

“Me, too,” Phil said. He looked a little queasy.

“Let's go,” I said, “and let's be quiet.”

As we walked down the middle of the road, I realized that Phil wasn't carrying his nail-studded baseball bat. That was why he looked uneasy when I mentioned zombies. He hadn't expected to encounter any. Well, I hoped he was right.

We paused at the top of the hill to look down at the apartment building below. No sign of shufflers. Excellent. I waved Phil on, and in just a few minutes we stood in front of the building's entrance—a door equipped with a keypad and an electronic lock. The last time I'd been here, with Brandon and Sherri, this door had been ajar and the lobby full of Zs. That was not the case this time, thank God.

“I hope he hasn't changed the code,” I said as I punched in numbers. There was a very satisfying
click
as I hit the last number. I held the door open for Phil and made sure to close it behind me.

I stood for a moment, looking out at the trees that lined the opposite side of the street. I thought I'd seen something over there. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say that I felt like I'd seen something. But no matter how hard I stared, I didn't see anything more.

“Is there a problem?” Phil asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Just jitters.”

“This is a pretty jittery place,” he said.

The elevator doors slid open when I pushed the up button and we climbed inside. Buddha told me once that he'd disabled the Muzak system in here as soon as he became the building's sole occupant. I thought about that every time I rode in that elevator.

We got off when the doors opened on the sixth floor.

“There's only one door in the hallway?” Phil asked.

“Yeah,” I said. There used to be a few apartments, but after everyone left, Buddha had all the walls knocked down and turned it into one huge space.

“You ready for this?” I asked as we stood in front of that one door.

“Doesn't really matter,” he said. “We're here now.”

“Phil,” I said, “you're a philosopher.”

I knocked. We heard something going on on the other side of the door. Someone walking around, maybe people talking, and something else I couldn't quite make out.

The door opened, and I was surprised that a girl was the one opening it. I'd been let in by some of Buddha's thugs before, guys with mean eyes who never smiled, and of course Buddha had let me in plenty, but this was the first time I'd ever seen another female. When I called her a girl, I wasn't exaggerating. I don't think she was much older than me and Phil. She was gorgeous—tall and thin, with brown skin and dark eyes. I blushed when I realized she was wearing a man's button-up shirt and nothing else.