Eat, Brains, Love (12 page)

“It's okay,” I replied, because apparently my immediate reaction in these situations is to say the dumbest thing possible. Kelly looked relieved, though. I wondered if she'd talked to anyone since the incident.

“I just . . .” She hesitated. “This is gonna sound dumb, but he drove me to school that day. He didn't have, like, a backpack full of guns or whatever. I mean, he was worried about some stupid presentation.”

Ah, crap. A skeptic.
Still, I figured I could just let this one go. It was natural that Kelly wouldn't want to believe that her brother was a school shooter. And she was just a middle schooler—it's not like anyone would listen or care if she started spouting off doubts. It wouldn't be in violation of NCD protocol to let her go on thinking of her brother as not-a-murderer.

“You knew him, right?” she continued. “He's, like, a lazy idiot. What they're saying he did doesn't make any sense.”

“It's what happened, though,” I replied, the words sounding weak when I said them. This conversation was a huge mistake. I needed to bail.

No sooner had I thought that than a black sedan rolled up to the curb next to us. The passenger window rolled down and Alastaire peered out at us. I had the sudden urge to steal Kelly's bike and pedal away as fast as I could.

“Brrr,” said Alastaire. “Sure is cold out. Would you girls like a ride?”

Such a creep. I was about to turn him down, but then Kelly dropped her bike on the sidewalk and climbed robotically into Alastaire's backseat. He'd done something to her—given her a psychic shove. Alastaire adjusted his stupid bow tie, watching me closely.

“Coming?” he asked.

JAKE

“SO, WHAT DID YOU HAVE PLANNED THIS WEEKEND?” I asked Amanda.

“Definitely not this,” she answered.

We watched through the living room window as Grace tackled a short, hairy little man, driving her shoulder into his gut and pinning him to the ground. Right away she mounted him like one of those professional cage-fighters and just started punching the crap out of him. Outside of Roadblock teeing off on Amanda the other day, this was easily the worst beating I'd ever seen.

Amanda looked away. I didn't blame her, really—this was intense. Not zombie-feeding intense, but still.

Apparently, it was all routine for our hosts.

The hairy guy's name was SkiChamp69. That was his screen name anyway, and that's all Grace and Summer knew. They'd lured him here via some chat room. I didn't really want to know the details, but they assured us that he deserved to get locked in the closet and served for dinner.

Outside, Summer crossed the lawn and tapped Grace on the shoulder. She immediately stopped punching SkiChamp69, who looked knocked out. They each grabbed a wrist and started dragging him toward the house.

A thought had occurred to me when I was burying last night's dinner in the backyard, and it hit me again now:
Is this what zombie life is going to be like?

Yesterday, Amanda had gotten me all inspired to be a fugitive and fight the government or whatever the plan was. It was one thing when it was just the two of us, driving cross-country—hell, I would've been down for that experience prior to turning undead. Having Amanda around, even with her shitty taste in music, was pretty much the only good thing that'd happened to me since Friday. But now, watching Grace and Summer shove SkiChamp69 into the closet, it was like . . . maybe this was life now? Maybe the whole road-trip thing was a crappy idea, like we were in zombie denial or something, just trying to outrun our problems.

I mean, it seemed like Grace and Summer had a good thing going here, in a way—a nice, low-key place to live, no government hit squads, food showing up on their doorstep.

But was this it?

“Thanks for your help out there,” Grace said to us as she slammed the closet padlock back into place.

“It looked like you had it under control,” Amanda replied.

“Yeah,” snorted Grace. “Well, eventually, you'll have to start working for your food if you want to keep hanging out here.”

She tossed me a set of car keys.

“At least go see if he's got anything useful in his car before we ditch it.”

I saluted. “Yes, ma'am.”

Amanda and I marched outside to SkiChamp69's car. It felt like Mom sending the kids out to get the groceries, except in this case Mom was a bitter zombie that could probably moonlight as a bare-knuckle boxer. I could tell Amanda was starting to get tired of this whole scene, particularly of Grace. She was carrying herself like the regal ice queen all the time now, not showing any signs of the secret dorkiness I'd been digging that night at the mortician's.

“How long do you want to stick around here?” she asked as we started rifling through the fast-food wrappers and road maps in SkiChamp69's car. There was a bottle of whiskey hidden in the glove compartment. I tossed it into the yard—maybe our hosts would want to raise a toast with tonight's feast.

“I don't know,” I replied, shrugging. “What if this is, like, the best we can hope for?”

“Seriously?” She sounded offended by the very idea. “Personally, I don't want to spend my undeath re-creating
Dateline
specials.”

“There's free food here,” I countered.

“For now. You heard Grace.” Amanda slid out of SkiChamp69's backseat, disgustedly brushing her hands off on the backs of her jeans. “You think they'll keep feeding us forever?”

“Summer might,” I said, shrugging. “She's a hippie. They're nice like that.”

“And Grace still looks at us like she might put an arrow in us at any time.”

“Bolt.”

“That's what I'm suggesting.”

“No, I mean, they're called crossbow
bolts
. Not crossbow
arrows
.”

“Who gives a shit, Jake?” Amanda sighed. “Stay on topic.”

There wasn't anything exciting in the car. I sat down on the trunk, looking out over the half-finished houses. Amanda sat next to me.

“You still want to go to Michigan?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “First there, and then I want to check out Iowa.”

“What? They made it sound like a total shit-show,” I said, thinking back to the evasive way Grace and Summer had talked about the Midwest last night.

“They mentioned a cure.”

“Psshh—haven't you seen
any
zombie movies? There's never a freaking cure.” I waved back toward the house where Grace and Summer were waiting. “They even said it was bullshit.”

Amanda looked unconvinced. “I'll take bullshit over the alternative. Staying here in our little zombie commune of four, finding people to eat over email. You don't think someone's going to come looking for these guys? Like gross-ass pedophiles don't have families? We'd be safer on the road.”

She made some good points. But then, she always seemed to make good points. I would've put it down to just the hotness factor—like, I'm sure it was easy for girls like Amanda to win arguments and get their way—but I think I'd started to build up an immunity to her good looks. She really had done all the thinking so far. And meanwhile, all I could think about was how much I didn't want to think about being a zombie.

Amanda had it all figured out and maybe I was slowing her down. Like, if she'd ditched me back in Jersey she would've already unraveled a government conspiracy and turned Iowa into a zombie utopia. Or maybe cured the plague. I wouldn't put it past her.

It's just . . . I didn't share that can-do attitude. I wanted my basement, my bowl, my Xbox. I wanted normal.

“You know what I had planned this weekend?” I asked her, totally changing the subject, thus avoiding any big zombie-plan decision. “
Nothing
. I was just going to hang out in my basement and do nothing. And I was so, so, so cool with that.”

Amanda studied me for a second, trying to figure out where the hell my mind had gone. Then she shrugged and decided to play along.

“I didn't have any big plans.”

“Seriously?” I asked, stunned. “No big party at Cindy St. Clair's house?”

“I was kinda off those parties since Chazz started being all stalkerish. I probably would've stayed in, worked on my college applications, hung out with my mom . . .” she trailed off, her voice a little shaky.

“Wow,” I said. “I never knew popular girls were so boring.”

Amanda elbowed me. “Says Mr. Cool over here, chilling in his basement. Were you just going to do that for the rest of your life?”

“Huh,” I replied, actually thinking about it. “Yeah, I guess that sort of was my plan.”

“Sad plan, Jacob Albert. Time for a new one.”

 

“If it's because of Grace, I promise she's not always like this,” Summer said. “I think she feels a little threatened. It's been just the two of us for a while. Well, the two of us and our houseguests.”

I'd told Summer that Amanda and I planned to leave as we picked our way through the woods behind the housing development, looking for snacks. We took a zigzag route through the trees, stopping every twenty yards so Summer could bend down to check the snares and traps they'd set. So far, we hadn't come across any squirming wildlife to add to their basement stockpile.

“We don't think staying in one place is a good idea for us, that's all,” I replied. I'd only met Summer yesterday, but I still felt weirdly guilty telling her we were bailing. I guess bonds form quickly when you devour people together. Also, it felt comforting to know there were other zombies out there, making a go of it.

“I never asked, how long have you guys been zombies?”

“I don't know about Grace,” answered Summer, examining an empty loop of rope and then burying it beneath a blanket of leaves. “She doesn't like to talk about it. Nine months for me.”

“That's it? You guys have such a system, I figured it'd be longer.”

“Nine months is long for our kind,” she replied. “You know, you guys aren't the first other zombies we've met.”

I didn't want to ask what happened; I had a feeling that it involved men in black SUVs with heavy artillery. Summer's mind was off someplace, though, not even paying me much attention as we wandered through the woods.

“Grace and I were part of a couple larger groups that made it to Iowa about the same time. The place was crawling with ghouls so bad it's all you could smell.”

“Ghouls?”

Summer shrugged. “My name for what happens when we don't eat for too long. Just dead bodies walking around aimlessly, trying to bite anything warm. When you reach that point, I'm not even sure feeding will bring you back.”

“Did you go to Iowa because of the whole cure thing?”

“At that point—I don't know—we were just going. Just to keep moving. The others talked about some doctor there, but it was just talk. Something to keep our spirits up. I guess even zombies need to believe in something.”

“Oh,” I said, sounding disappointed.

“If you're thinking of going there—don't,” Summer said, her eyes wide with fear as she remembered. “The government—I guess that's what they were—they'd set up, like, a blockade and were shooting the ghouls from up there. When they saw us, realized what we were, they shot at us too. Killed everyone except Grace and me.”

“That sucks,” I replied, and even though I totally meant it sincerely, it was the exact same half-ass condolence I gave Henry Robinson when his pet lizard crawled under the dryer and cooked itself. Heavy situations were sort of difficult for me.

“Yeah,” said Summer, turning away. “But the group I was with, they'd feed on anyone. Like you with the gas station attendant. They weren't the best crowd to be hanging around with, anyway.”

“Right,” I said, guiltily kicking a tree branch.

“Grace went a little over the top beating up that guy today,” continued Summer, “but he's bad. He deserves to be eaten. We have to eat or our minds shut down, our instinct takes over, and then who knows how many people we hurt. Animals don't always sate the hunger. But the way Grace and I go after humans, we figure we do the world a favor with every meal, and we keep ourselves in control.”

I scratched my head, not totally sure how to respond to that outpouring of zombie philosophy. It was like Summer had been practicing that speech—maybe using it on herself a lot.

“You know what's funny?” she asked. “I used to be a vegetarian. Now I'm a flesh-eating monster.”

“‘Monster' is harsh,” I said, but Summer immediately waved this off. She started back toward the house and I followed a few steps behind.

“My folks were Buddhists,” she said. “They raised me to think of everyone as inherently kind and generous. But now I know that's not true. We're all bad, selfish people. You know how I know?”

I didn't really want to know. This conversation had taken a serious turn for the depressing. But Summer answered without waiting for my reply.

“Because if I wasn't so selfish, I would've killed myself nine months ago. Instead, I just keep eating people.”

 

Amanda and I drove out of western Pennsylvania after nightfall. Amanda was in the passenger seat, studying a road map in the yellow glow of the dome light.

“This thing is nuts,” she said, shaking her head.

As soon as we told her we were leaving, Grace had become a lot more helpful. She'd found the road atlas under SkiChamp69's passenger seat and had spent a couple hours marking locations and addresses on it, filling the map with enough potential zombie pit stops to keep Amanda and me fed all the way to Michigan. It's like she'd already had the information ready, a list of bad people to eat if she ever found herself crossing the country. Meanwhile, Summer had peeled about three hundred bucks off a roll of bills they kept squirreled away, money I assumed they'd taken off the perverts before burying them in the backyard. She'd also donated a spare blanket and a pet carrier filled with rats. I turned up the car radio loud enough so I didn't hear the little things squeaking in the trunk every time we went over a bump.

“They aren't even all pedophiles,” Amanda said, squinting at the map. “Like this guy in Ohio—Grace wrote that he stole money from his employees' pensions and ended up retiring in a mansion after six months in jail.”

I didn't feel like talking about Grace's road atlas of victims. I was feeling pretty bummed out; something about the way Grace and Summer had stood on the front steps of their house and watched us go made me feel like we were now really heading for somewhere unknown. It was like a couple of pedophile-murdering parents watching their kids go off to their first day at zombie school. Grace waved good-bye, maybe half sarcastically, while Summer just smiled sadly, her arms clasped around herself. I wondered if we'd see them again. Probably not, right? Summer made it sound like the life expectancy of a zombie wasn't long—you either get killed by the government or go full-on starving ghoul. Not a lot to look forward to.

“Gotta eat someone,” I replied absently.

“Yeah, okay, but where do we draw the line?” she asked. “Do you know how I knew how to hot-wire that car back in Jersey? Because my dad taught me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. It's what he used to do, before he got caught. Now he's in jail. So would he be on Grace's list?”

I looked over at Amanda to see if she was screwing with me. She wasn't.

For some reason, I'd always assumed all the popular kids at RRHS were born to some secret society of rich yacht-club parents, explaining their seemingly natural ability to rise to the top of the social food chain. My head was starting to hurt.