Badass Zombie Road Trip (11 page)

Swish! Swish!

Jonah tried to smile, as sexily as he could manage, at the tall redhead in the gravity-defying heels. She not only ignored his smile, she actually turned her nose up as she passed him. But when she saw Dale, she slowed down and seemed to pack a few extra swishes in her sashay. In yet another way, the undead Dale matched his living counterpart. It seemed even Dale’s corpse could attract more attention from the opposite sex than a live Jonah.

Dale growled under his breath as the redhead passed. “I wonder if hungry and horny are related. Maybe I should just eat some pussy.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being so crass?”

“No,” Dale said with a smirk. “Do you get tired of being such a wuss?”

Jonah chose to ignore the dead man for the rest of their short walk.

A few minutes later, as they approached the apartment complex, Dale asked, “What if he recognizes me? What do you want me to say?”

With a shrug, Jonah said, “I don’t know. Wing it, I guess.”

“Sure thing, buddy.”

Jonah tried to swallow the rising worry as he pressed the button for penthouse three-eleven, the address on the envelope. The intercom gave an annoying high-pitched buzz, followed by an eerie silence. Jonah waited a moment, then pressed it again. Once more there was a buzz, then nothing. The worst had come to pass.

“He’s not home,” Jonah said.

“Well, shit,” Dale said. “What now?”

“We wait. Find a place to put our feet up for a few hours. I’m getting sleepy anyway.”

“Good,” Dale announced as he rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get some food, find us some women and get back to a hotel room. Chicken and chicks, then hit the bricks.” The zombie gave a low laugh at his own silly rhyme.

“Dale,” Jonah groaned. “Hitting the bricks means going out, not going to bed. And we aren’t doing either. We’re going to catch a meal then nap a few hours in the car and try again first thing in the morning.”

“Hotel.”

“Car.”

Dead Dale squared his shoulders and drew closer to Jonah. “I said hotel. I need a shower.”

Jonah decided that perhaps the zombie much larger than he and with no life to lose should be given at least one concession. “Okay, then. Hotel it is. But no women.” He proceeded to punctuate his meaning by stomping away. He was a king of the stomp-away, both of the righteous and angry varieties, each of which he employed now.

“Aw, man!” Dale whined as he followed Jonah back to the car.

“Sorry, but we don’t need the complications women will bring. They might start asking questions, and it could get … well … messy.”

“It doesn’t have to be complicated. Or messy. I’d actually prefer messy, but we don’t have to pay for either if you don’t want.”

This brought Jonah to a stall in his stomp, where he whipped about in place to shout at Dale, “Pay for it?”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay for messy. You can pay for complicated.”

“Dale! We aren’t paying for anything!”

“Well you sure ain’t getting it for free with that attitude.”

“I don’t want it for free. I don’t want anything. Why can’t you go just one night without getting laid?”

“Because sex does a body good. Even an undead body. Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that. Would you?”

Jonah gasped at the implication, as did several others. To Jonah’s surprise and embarrassment, a small crowd had gathered to watch the ongoing argument. The fact that no one gasped at the word ‘undead’ didn’t surprise Jonah. Why worry about something so strange when there was something even weirder in their midst?

Dale turned to an onlooker and commented, almost offhandedly, “Twenty-four, and he’s only been laid three times. Says he wants to wait until he’s in love before he fucks again. Can you imagine that?”

The group chuckled at Jonah’s shame.

Though, to Jonah, in his heart of hearts, it wasn’t a shameful thing.

It wasn’t that Jonah never thought of sex. Like all other healthy young men, he thought about it a lot. Quite a lot. A
lot
a lot. But those were just fleeting fantasies on the backs of erotic dreams when compared to the possibility of being with someone he loved. Jonah’s three experiences with sex were all brief and awkward, filled with lots of fumbling and apologies, and each ending with an embarrassing, and not to mention premature, mess. It was after the third time—a ten-minute romp in a closet at a party with a half-drunk friend of a friend who denied she had slept with Jonah the next day—that Jonah decided to wait for a real relationship before he attempted sex again. He wanted to wait and share his body with someone he loved.

He knew most other men—make that all other men—felt differently on the matter, but he didn’t care. Dale often said Jonah’s uptight attitude about sex confirmed that he was indeed super gay, but Jonah didn’t care about that either. Because one quiet night a while back, when Dale was blasted out of his gourd on weed and booze, he confessed to Jonah that he too thought the idea of waiting for real love was a beautiful thing.

‘A beautiful thing,’ his best friend had called it.

Now here the same man was debasing him in front of a load of total strangers.

Except that it wasn’t the same man. Not really. It was then that Jonah realized that this soulless Dale was indeed a morally depraved version of the live one. The living Dale would never have made light of Jonah’s shyness. Jonah’s timid nature. Jonah’s desire to wait. Sure, the man made jokes in private, underhanded jabs or lighthearted quips. But Dale never brought it out to be scrutinized by passing strangers. Dale had never, in all of the time they had been friends, mocked of Jonah for it in front of others.

Jonah had nothing to say on the matter. He just grunted, then left the zombie alone with his filthy thoughts. Before he could reach the car, Dale was at his heels again.

“Come on,” Dale said. “You know I was just kidding.”

Employing a stomp that was not only righteous but very, very angry, Jonah ignored the corpse and fumbled for his keys. They were still a block from the car, but he wanted to be ready the moment he reached it. Ready to jump inside and lock the zombie out. The beast could look for his own damned soul by himself.

“Come on, buddy,” Dale said again.

“Don’t ‘buddy’ me,” Jonah said.

“What? I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You’re the one always going on about how proud you are of it!”

“Yeah, between you and me. That doesn’t mean I want it announced to a street full of strangers!”

“Why? Like they care. No one will remember that shit tomorrow.”

“No. They won’t. But I will. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“Why are you being such a pussy about this? It was just a joke.”

Jonah whipped around again and stared at the zombie. “A joke? I guess when you’re dead everything seems funny. I don’t know who you are, but the real Dale would’ve never …” His words faded away as his gaze fell across Dale’s shoulder and onto an amazing sight: a man crossing the street and heading toward the building just a few yards behind them.

A very familiar-looking man.

“Jonah?” Dale asked.

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Jonah whispered.

As if he could hear Jonah, the man stopped at the apartment door and looked down the street. His gaze fell on Dale. The man’s eyes widened, his jaw opened a bit, then the fellow looked away, and slipped into the building without a second glance. But it was far too late; Jonah knew who the guy was. He would have recognized the man anywhere.

Save for a little age, and a little extra weight, the man was the spitting image of Dale.

****

Sacramento, California

162 hours : 35 minutes : 25 seconds remaining

Jonah pressed the buzzer a third time, but still there was no response. “I know he saw you. He had to have recognized you. You guys look exactly alike.”

“Not exactly,” Dale grumbled, obviously insulted by the comparison. “I’m in much better shape.”

“You know what I mean.” Jonah pressed the buzzer again. “Boy, the apple didn’t fall far from that tree, did it?”

“Whatever,” Dale said, then yawned. “Hey, if you don’t care, I’m gonna wait in the car. Okay?”

“What happened to the need to feed? Besides, now that he’s seen you, it might make it easier to talk to him.” Jonah laid on the buzzer. “Why won’t he answer?”

“Ya think maybe it’s
because
he saw me?”

Jonah froze with his finger against the button. “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Dumb ass.”

“I wonder why he wouldn’t want to see you. I mean, he sent you that letter and everything.”

Dale shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I hate to abandon you on your little Scooby Doo quest here, but I really need to walk around a bit more. My legs and arms are getting really stiff, man.”

Before Jonah could warn him not to wander off too far—and for God’s sake, to keep away from women—the door behind them gave a soft click. Jonah looked to Dale, who only shrugged as if it were no big deal.

“Three-eleven it is, then,” Jonah said, and went inside.

Dale, either curious or bored into the act, followed Jonah.

The apartment was laid out much like a hotel. ‘Three’ meant the third floor. ‘Eleven’ was the last door on the left, which they found standing open as they approached it. The pair of them paused at the threshold for a moment, Jonah gathering his courage to enter, and the zombie … well, doing whatever it was zombies did in this kind of situation. Jonah held his hand out to the door, signaling for Dale to enter first. After all, it was Dale’s dad they were there to see. But Dale furrowed his brow at Jonah, shaking his head in confusion. Jonah tapped Dale on the chest and pointed to the open door again. Dale stared at the door and then narrowed his eyes at Jonah, clearly unsure of what the signal meant.

“You first,” Jonah whispered.

“You first,” Dale whispered back.

“He’s your dad.”

“Yeah, but this is your fault.”

A deep voice rolled out of the open door. “Just come inside, already. I don’t have all night.”

After shooting one another a matching set of surprised looks, they did just that.

The apartment was sparsely furnished, but what little décor was there looked expensive. Any single piece was bound to be worth more than what Jonah made in a year. Mahogany bookshelves. Leather-bound furniture. A state-of-the-art entertainment center. There was also a rack of top-of-the-line guitars. It seemed that the musical gene ran in the family.

Jonah pushed away the pangs of jealousy that the fancy household roused in him.

Dale wasn’t as successful at hiding his awe. “Wow.”

“I suppose I should say the same thing,” a man said.

Jonah, who had been distracted by Mr. Jenkins’s things, now saw the man himself seated on the white leather couch. His feet were propped on the coffee table in classic Dale fashion.

Dale’s dad stood and stared at the pair with a tired look. “Been a long time, son.”

Jonah waited for Dale’s response, worried the zombie might say something that would get the pair of them kicked out before they could get the information they came for. Dale, however, said nothing. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at his dad. He was rummaging through the man’s DVD collection.

“Dale,” Jonah whispered.

Dale snapped his attention to Jonah. “What?”

Jonah dipped his head in the elder Jenkins’s direction.

Dale shook his head in confusion again.

“Your
father
is talking to you,” Jonah said. He was worried that he had placed too much emphasis on the word ‘father’, because the elder Jenkins raised an eyebrow.

“Hi,” Dale said, lifting his hand to his dad before he turned his attention back to the rack of movies.

Jonah groaned. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jenkins. He’s … well … Dale.”

“Don’t worry, young man,” the elder Jenkins said. “He never paid me much attention when he was younger. Why start now? Can I get you some coffee? Or do you want something stronger?”

“Oh, coffee is fine, thanks.”

“How do you take it?”

“He likes his coffee like he likes his women,” Dale said without looking up from his crouched position in front of the DVDs.

It was a favorite old joke between them, but it wasn’t the most appropriate punch line to air in front of an estranged man you were trying to befriend.

“Not now, Dale,” Jonah hissed.

“Okay then, how does he like his women?” the elder Jenkins asked, a smirk lurking about his lips.

Usually, normally, on an average day when they were joshing and fooling about, the joke was funny. Dale would say the punch line in a Groucho-esque voice and end it with a little soft shoe shuffle to lighten the terrible implications of the words. But today, tonight, in this veritable stranger’s home, the punch line was less of a punch to the funny bone, and more of a punch to the gut.