Zomburbia (30 page)

F
rom the top of some hill I didn't know the name of, the whole of Salem spread out before me. I thought I might puke.

The day before my senior year starts and here it is my first time out of the freaking house all summer without my dad in my back pocket—except for some late-night vigilante shenanigans that Dad didn't know about—and where does my buddy Phil decide to bring me? To gaze upon the town I can't wait to escape. Needless to say, Phil is not Casanova. On the plus side, he could probably have told me who Casanova was. I think.

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. Jesus, I was acting like a grade-A bitch, even if it was only in my head. I opened my eyes and tried to see our hometown in a more positive way. Obviously Phil liked staring down at it, so I wanted to get in sync with him.

The Willamette River glittered in the sun, cutting Salem off from West Salem. The one surviving bridge was covered in traffic—the other bridge had been blown up years ago in the first days after the dead came back. Downtown was dominated by the capitol building, the Gold Man shining on top. There was the courthouse, a few churches, a big bank or two, all of it dotted with parks and clumps of trees.

Nope, it didn't do it for me. The smell of old cigarettes didn't help much. Whoever owned this car before Phil had been a heavy smoker and we couldn't get rid of the stench. If Phil noticed my deep dislike of this little excursion, he didn't let on. But then Phil seems not to catch too many social cues. It's simultaneously cute and infuriating.

“Why did you bring me out here?” I asked.

Phil slowly blinked his eyes. A tic of his. He has brown hair that's too long and gets in his face. A sharp chin. Good lips and nose, too. I used to think he was plain looking. When I caught myself remembering that, I blushed and mentally backed away from the thought the same way I would back away from a dog that might be dangerous. Again, he didn't seem to notice.

“I thought you'd like it,” he said. He shrugged. “I like it.”

I decided to change the subject.

“How's the movie theater?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. “I like running the projector. It's old and needs constant repair. It's fun.” He smiled and I wondered again how I'd ever thought he was plain.

“Have you been by the Bully Burger lately?” he asked. We used to work there together until we both left for different reasons.

“Nope,” I said. “I haven't been back since I quit. What's up?”

“I was in there a few days ago,” he said. “Chacho said someone was looking for you.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. “It wasn't Brandon, was it?” Brandon had been a boy I was falling for at the end of last school year. Before everything went to hell, that is.

“I don't think so. No one knew this guy's name.”

“Did one of the Olsen twins see him?” The twins weren't really named Olsen, but they were for-real named Mary Kate and Ashley. No, seriously. “Did they at least describe him?”

“No,” said Phil. “And I didn't ask Chacho what the guy looked like.”

“How is Chacho?” I asked. He was the security guard at the Bully Burger, and the only cool adult I knew.

“He seemed okay, I guess,” said Phil with another shrug.

“That's good,” I said, but my mind raced for a while, wondering who'd been asking about me. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but a number of unsavory characters might actually be hunting for me.

“Can I ask you something?” Phil asked.

“You can ask.”

“What's up with you and Brandon?”

This threw me. I wasn't expecting Phil to be aware of anything going on in my social life.

I shrugged.

“You two seemed to be an item last year,” he said.
An item?
Was Phil a character in a
Sweet Valley High
novel? I let it slide. “And then you weren't, and now you act weird whenever his name comes up.”

I slid down in the front seat of the horrible old Ford Taurus Phil had bought over the summer. The cracked leather creaked and made fart noises. I always knew that I'd have to talk about Brandon with Phil at some point. I was just lucky that he hadn't asked me before now.

“Can we get out of the car?” I asked. “Get some fresh air?”

“Is this some sort of stall tactic?” he asked.

“Only sort of,” I said. “Mostly I want some fresh air.” The stale cigarette smell really was getting to me.

Rather than answer, Phil opened his door and climbed out. I did the same but, as I got out, I grabbed my bag and started rummaging through it.

“What are you looking for?” he asked as he squinted at me through the windshield.

“My gun,” I said. Technically, it's a revolver.

“Are you planning to shoot me?” he asked. It took me a second to realize he'd made a joke. They were pretty rare, coming from him.

“Ha,” I deadpanned. “I just want to be ready for any uninvited guests.” I grabbed the pistol and stood, tucking it into my waistband.

He looked around us. We'd parked at the end of a dead-end street on top of this hill. There were a few houses on either side, all of them surrounded by chain-link fencing, and a few trees.

“I don't think there are gonna be any zombies around here,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “the last time I thought I'd have a zombie-free evening with a group of friends, I had to deal with a whole army of the suckers.” At Brandon's year-end party a couple months ago, we'd been attacked by the zombie equivalent of the Golden Horde. That was one of the reasons I'd stopped seeing him. But just one.

He sat on the bumper of the car and I did the same. I waited for him to ask me again, before realizing he wasn't going to. He seemed happy just to look out over the city I wanted to get out of so badly. I considered not talking, not bringing it up again, but worried what the consequences of that would be. I couldn't figure out how Phil was doing such a number on my head; was it sorcery?

I noticed that he was sort of gesturing in the air with his hands, another tic. Little movements like he was conducting a symphony or something. I thought about his hands and what they'd feel like on my skin, then put that thought away. Now wasn't the time.

“As preface to this whole story,” I said, keeping my eyes forward, definitely not looking at him, “I just want to say that I don't do it anymore.”

“Ominous,” Phil said. “Do what?”

“I used to sell drugs,” I said. “For, like, the last year that I worked at the Bully, I was selling Vitamin Z out of the drive-thru window.”

I waited for a response, but Phil stayed silent. It didn't feel judgey. And, as a girl raised in the American school system, I know judgmental. I decided I could go on.

“I never tried it myself,” I said, “until I did. Just once.” I glanced at Phil and he nodded slowly. “Brandon was with me. And Sherri.” Sherri had been my best friend since birth, and she'd worked at the Bully Burger with me Phil and me. “While we were high, we got separated from Sherri. The next time I saw her, she was a zombie.”

“The whole episode freaked me out something fierce. I decided to stop selling, and definitely decided I'd never do Z again.”

“I had no idea that's how Sherri died,” Phil said. I searched for some hint of what he was thinking, but his voice was a monotone. “You never told me.”

“There was never a good time to bring it up,” I said, and cringed. Jesus, I could be pretty lame.

“And now this thing with Brandon,” Phil said.

“And now this thing with Brandon,” I agreed. “He kept on going with it. He had some at his end-of-year shindig and wanted me to smoke it with him. That was right before the zombies made their grand entrance.”

Phil nodded. He'd been there for that part. Not as a guest of the party. He'd just shown up in case there was trouble of the undead variety. Because he really likes to kill zombies and he was pretty sure they'd be showing up like ants at a picnic.

“And he'd smoked it once or twice before that night, too.”

“Why?” Phil asked.

“He said it made him forget himself,” I said. “Not just his troubles, but himself. He liked that, I guess.”

Phil cocked his head and looked at me. “Why did you sell Vitamin Z?” he asked.

I felt a little ember of resentment start to glow in my chest. My fallback position whenever I'm put on the spot is to get angry and let my inner bitch off her leash, but I knew that wasn't fair to Phil. He deserved some answers. I took a deep breath and did my best to grind out that fire.

“I needed it to fund my plan,” I said. My plan to get the hell out of Salem, move to New York City—if the Army ever reclaimed it from the zombies—attend Columbia University, and find a cure for the zombie plague.

I braced myself for him to be horrified. Or at least mildly grossed out. What I wasn't prepared for was him taking it in stride.

“I'm not surprised you don't want to see him anymore,” he said. “Especially since Sherri died because you guys gave her Vitamin Z.”

I took a deep breath. No one else had blamed me for Sherri's death and what Phil said pushed all of my defensive buttons. I took another deep breath and decided to let it slide.

“That's it?” I asked him. “Nothing about me selling it?”

“You stopped selling it after that, right?” he asked. “After you figured out it was bad mojo?” I nodded. He shrugged. “I've done too many dumb things myself to start judging people.”

“Are you Christian?” I blurted out. It would explain why he wouldn't want to judge me. And it would explain why, after months of going out on zombie patrol, he hadn't made one attempt at kissing me. Or even copping a feel. I'd briefly considered that he might be gay, but my sexuality-detecting equipment wasn't picking up any fabulous signals. It occurred to me that this was actually the first time we'd hung out together in a non-zombie-killing capacity. I liked it, but I wish we'd decided to do something—anything—else. We could have gone somewhere private, just as an example....

He looked confused. “No, I'm not. Would it matter if I were religious?”

“No,” I lied. As much as I like to be open-minded, churchy-Joes rub me the wrong way. It's something I needed to work on, okay? “I'm just trying to figure you out.”

“My aunt says, ‘that way leads to madness.' ” He said it without a smile—smiles from him are rare—but he didn't seem sad about it, either.

“Your aunt seems to have you pegged,” I said.

A grin almost played across his lips.

His lips.

Man, I needed to get a grip. I stood up and checked that the pistol was still firmly in place.

“Let's go for a walk.”

“Where?” Phil asked.

I pointed past the end of the street. Where the pavement ended, a small foot trail led down into some trees.

“Maybe we can get a better look at this beautiful city of yours,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Let me get my bat out of the trunk.”

I thought about that for a moment. His bat is of the ordinary baseball variety—wood and about yea long—except that it had nails pounded through it and was covered in the gore of about a hundred undead. It occurred to me I'd never seen it in full light. I didn't think I wanted this to be my first time.

“Why don't you leave it?” I asked. “If we run into trouble, I have this.” I lifted up my shirt to show him the pistol and exposed a good portion of my belly, too. Not that he seemed to notice.

“Okay,” he said, barely glancing at me. “You want to go down first, or me?”

I stifled a bunch of lame double entendres and said, “Let me.” Maybe I'd at least find a zombie who found my body appealing.

I started picking my way down the path, which was steeper than it had appeared from up on the street. A few times my feet tried to get out from under me, but I never actually fell on my ass. So, points to me, I guess.

Once we got down about six feet or so, the ground flattened out a little and I became less worried about falling off the hill. But the trees were a lot thicker and closer than they'd appeared from up above and I started worrying about new stuff, i.e., shufflers deciding I looked like a tasty snack.

Phil skidded the last foot or so and he grabbed me to stop himself from falling. His hand slipped around my waist and he left it there for a second after he got himself righted. My heart started to thud in my chest and all thoughts of the undead went right out of my head. I felt like the heroine in a Regency novel that featured monsters, as dumb as that sounds.

“Sorry,” Phil said.

“No problem.” I looked out at the city. Being a few yards closer to it didn't make it any prettier. So much for my brilliant ideas.

“Let's go down here,” Phil said as he started walking. “I think there are some big rocks we can sit on.” He paused and grinned at me. “The better to enjoy the incredible view.”

“More jokes,” I said. “You're like a junior Dane Cook.”

“I hope I'm less douche-y.”

I didn't answer that and just followed him. We found the rocks pretty easily. Big, flat stones that jutted out of the dirt. They were probably part of the mountain we were crawling all over. It felt good to sit in the sun with a boy I was starting to like. I warned myself that this was only the second time I'd been through this, and the first time—with Brandon—hadn't turned out well. It wasn't that I didn't trust Phil, it was that I didn't trust myself.

We sat there without talking for a while and then, as I'm prone to do, I started mentally picking at something Phil had said earlier.

“What dumb things?” I asked, picking up on what he'd said in the car.

He stared out at the city and frowned.