Eat, Brains, Love (23 page)

Amanda had gone quiet. We listened and watched together; the night outside was lit by blue electricity fired off from a dozen stun guns. Agents were yelling, sounding desperate and afraid. Over their cries came the fierce snarls of zombies. I could hear them running by outside, the haggard way they tried to breathe through dead lungs, and the wet ripping sounds they made when they fell upon one of the agents.

Tom. Not Tom too.

I jumped when Chazz's body moved. It was Alastaire, crawling out from beneath him. He'd gone deathly pale, the lower part of his arm hanging on by just a strip of exposed muscle.

“Well played,” he said to me, groaning as he tried to sit up. “Do you know how to tie a tourniquet?”

I looked at him with disbelief, sitting there expecting me to help him. Then I looked over at Amanda, her eyes wide above the muzzle, waiting for her zombie friends to come rescue her. I felt nothing but disgust for both of them.

“We can still make it out of here, Cassandra,” Alastaire groaned, groping for his gun with his working hand. “Tonight will be a story we laugh about one day.”

I got my legs under me, ignoring him. Harlene was dead, Jamison was missing, and Tom had been dragged into the night screaming.

There was nothing left for me to do but go.

Alastaire was still calling my name as I walked out the front door of the farmhouse.

JAKE

THE ZOMBIE RUNNING NEXT TO ME TOOK A BLAST OF electricity to the chest. His skin sizzled and popped like cooked meat as he flipped head over heels and crashed down in the dirt. Before the agent could get off another round, he was sideswiped by a zombie with dreadlocks. She tackled him, biting down hard on his shoulder. The agent screamed and that was like a dinner bell, two other zombies running over to help the girl with the dreadlocks divide him up.

I kept running.

I remembered this stupid game they made us play on spring days in elementary-school gym class. It was called Red Rover. The phys ed teacher would take us out to the grass field behind the school and divide the class up into two lines, all the kids in the line holding hands. Then, kids would take turns yelling, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send blah-blah right over,” and if you were the person named, it was your job to charge that other line and try to break through. I think the only reason we played Red Rover was because our gym teacher had a sick fascination with watching little kids clothesline each other. I bet that did look pretty funny, actually.

This one time when my name was called, instead of running at the opposite line, I took off sideways. I ran down the middle of the field and took the long way around the other line until I was behind them, the gym coach blowing his whistle and looking confused.

Anyway, that's what it was like in the field outside the farmhouse, like the most intense game of Red Rover ever, with no one following any of the rules.

The government dudes tried to keep a line, standing shoulder to shoulder, firing their stun guns at us zombies as we came cheering and howling from the wheat field. It just took one agent getting pulled off from the end of the line, though, dragged down screaming by a zombie with huge steel gauges through his ear lobes, for the whole thing to become chaos. These NCD guys might have been zombie hunters but, by the looks of things, they hadn't trained for a massive pack attack.

The Iowa zombies, man, they'd done this before. They were gleeful and whooping in those last seconds as they descended on the agents, sank their teeth into them, and came up snarling greedily and gnashing their teeth.

I watched an agent toss away his stun gun and pull a real pistol from a hidden pocket in his jumpsuit. He shot the first zombie that came close, but there was another one right behind him. The second zombie grabbed the agent by the arms and wrenched him backward, biting down on his neck.

I got lower, running with my head down. I was trying to keep my distance from the agents, not attacking any of them so they wouldn't shoot me, yet somehow I didn't think they'd see the difference between me and the other zombies. Still, I didn't want to get shot in the head before I could find Amanda. Or after, for that matter.

Amanda. I didn't see her anywhere. I really hoped they hadn't killed her. They wouldn't do that, right? Why go through all the trouble of capturing us if the plan was just to blow out our brains?

I skirted around a burly NCD guy using one of their big net cannons to bash a zombie down to the ground. If you've got a big weapon, use it for blunt force. That made sense. The whole capturing thing? Not so much. Why would they bother with all that?

Then again, I was pretty sure they'd sent Chazz after us. Clearly, there was a lot I didn't understand.

There was too much to think about. Besides all this mess with the government, who may or may not have been cultivating their own zombie slaves, there was also this insane gang of zombie warriors to consider. They were disturbingly gung ho about eating people. It seemed like a no-brainer that these were the kinds of bad zombies Grace and Summer had warned us about. Sure, they'd helped me and all, but I didn't really want to get mixed up with them.

I could sort all that out later. I just wanted to find Amanda and get out of here.

There was Red Bear, standing over a dying NCD agent. He had his tomahawk out, eating a slab of flesh he'd cut from the NCD agent right off the blade. When he saw me, he held out the tomahawk, the fatty part of a thigh glistening tastily at me.

“Bite?” he offered, his voice husky and wet, like we get when we're feeding.

I hate to admit that it looked appetizing. Luckily, I'd just eaten, so my zombie urges were under control. I shook my head. “No thanks.”

Red Bear shrugged and went back to his meal, the agent managing a weak scream as Red Bear raised the tomahawk above his head.

There was a gunshot and Red Bear pitched forward, staggering. Another agent a few yards away had shot him in the shoulder. Red Bear let out a frustrated groan and charged the second agent.

I ran in the opposite direction, not waiting around to see if the agent's aim was better than Red Bear was quick.

There were bodies everywhere; agents and zombies fighting. I didn't see Amanda outside. I figured she must be in the farmhouse and started that way, taking a looping route away from the action.

I wanted to call Amanda's name, but thought that might attract too much attention. When I found her, I was definitely going to teach her a birdcall or something. We needed a signal for future hell-on-Earth situations.

I skidded to a stop. A few yards in front of me, a couple zombies had overwhelmed an agent and thrust their hands into his stomach, pulling his guts out, looking like a morbid version of
Lady and the Tramp
as they gnawed on the same section of intestine. Gross, yeah, but it wasn't what made me stop.

It was the brown-haired girl I'd seen in the back of the SUV chasing us in New Jersey, the same one that appeared in that wacked-out dream I had. She looked pale and shell-shocked, which I guess was a normal reaction to a scene like this, and it looked like she'd just had a rock-star nosebleed.

Weirder still was that she walked right by those two zombies and they didn't seem to notice. She stopped for a second, letting a screaming NCD agent run by with a zombie hot on his heels, and then kept right on walking, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.

She looked up, noticing me noticing her, and her face scrunched in confusion. Then, she walked over and hugged me, squeezing me tight, her blood-covered face pressed into my chest. I think she was crying a little bit.

“Jake,” she said, her voice distant and lost like she'd just woken up from a dream. “You're here.”

I patted her back awkwardly, not really sure what to do with this NCD creeper that had very clearly lost her marbles.

“Uh, hey,” I said.

She peered up while still holding on to me and it was like something clicked in her mind, like she'd suddenly remembered where she was and realized we were, like, ankle deep in a bloodbath. She dropped her arms down to her sides, looking embarrassed.

“Sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I'm Cass.”

“Hi,” I said, awkward because I didn't know the protocol for meeting someone in a situation like this. Not to mention, even though she wasn't shooting guns or flinging nets, she was very clearly part of the NCD. Should I ask her what school she went to, maybe make some small talk about hunting zombies?

Gunshots. Like, right next to my ear. An NCD agent with a pair of guns fired action-hero style at a trio of zombies, pushing them backward. One of the zombies fell to the ground, a smoking hole in his forehead.

The agent was within arm's reach of me. It would've required less effort on his part to turn and shoot me than it would've to tie his shoe.

But the agent didn't even look at me. He just kept on shooting at the other zombies, marching in their direction like the definition of going out in a blaze of glory.

“They can't see us,” explained Cass. “Not if I don't want them to. I'm psychic.”

Okaaay.

“But wait,” I said. “Why can I see you?”

Just then, a zombie detached from a nearby agent and charged right at Cass. He was within inches when an agent, bleeding out on the ground ten yards away, shot him in the back of the head. The zombie dropped dead at our feet. Cass looked down at him.

“I haven't quite mastered it yet,” she explained.

A bullet whizzed by my face. That dying agent had taken a shot at me too.

Before he could take aim again, I grabbed Cass around the shoulders in an awkward hug-like move and dragged her toward the farmhouse. She didn't put up a fight; she was like a rag doll in my arms.

“I'm not going to eat you,” I told her, feeling like I should reassure this glassy-eyed space case.

“I know,” she said.

“Because you can see the future?”

“That's not how it works. I just, uh, have a good feeling about you, okay?”

On our right, Red Bear leapt on top of the agent that had taken a shot at me. He looked over as he gulped down a bite of the agent, and waved.

“That's the spirit, new guy!” Red Bear shouted, apparently assuming Cass was my dinner selection and approving.

I ignored him. We were only a few yards away from the farmhouse, most of the fight now behind us.

“I can help you get into Iowa,” said Cass, her face in my armpit. “If you help me get out of here. And promise not to eat me on the way.”

“But you work for the scary government.”

“I quit tonight.”

If the plan was still to go find that old man in Des Moines—and I seriously didn't have any better ideas right then—my options were either join up with these crazy, scary zombies or trust in this fragile, seeming way-too-familiar psychic.

I looked over my shoulder. Red Bear dragged the struggling NCD agent along by his ankle. He brought the agent to where the zombie girl with the dreadlocks waited, smoking a cigarette. Red Bear stepped on the agent's neck so that he couldn't squirm away while he and the girl kissed, all tongue and hair pulling. Then, they started eating the guy. Was that the kind of zombie life I wanted to lead?

No way. I'd take my chances with the psychic.

“Deal,” I said. “But I'm not leaving without her.”

Cass didn't reply as I dragged her into the farmhouse, letting her go once we'd crossed the threshold.

There was a dead lady inside, laid out on the blanket Amanda and I had spread with such care, like, an hour ago. Chazz Slade was there too, or what was left of him, most of his head missing, his body looking like it had been rotting for weeks.

Amanda was lying next to Chazz, not moving, so at first I thought she was dead too. For a moment, my heart dropped. She stirred when the floorboards creaked under my feet and looked up at me. Her hands and feet were shackled, half her face hidden behind a muzzle. She breathed a long and shaky sigh of relief.

“You came back,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice. “You're alive. I knew you wouldn't leave me.”

“Of course,” I said, my voice cracking right when I was trying to be all macho. “We're a team. I don't know how we're going to make it out of this, but I know there's no way we're doing it alone.”

I knelt down and helped Amanda sit up. I pulled at the shackles, but there was no give at all.

Cass kept her distance. She looked obsessed with this huge trail of blood on the floor. It started near Chazz, then continued all the way to the back door of the farmhouse. Cass followed it, peering out the back door, maybe searching for one of her government pals.

Cass crouched down and picked something up from where the blood trail met the back threshold. I couldn't really make out what it was; it looked like a piece of blood-spattered fabric. Maybe a bow tie? Cass looked it over for a moment, then tossed it aside.

“What's she doing here?” hissed Amanda.

“Helping us,” I said.

“Fuck that. They killed Chazz. They'll kill us too. Or worse, do to us whatever they did to him.”

I glanced over at Chazz's body. Did it make me a total dick that I didn't feel anything that Chazz had gone and gotten himself shot in the head? I guess it was different for Amanda; they'd actually had a relationship and all that. Even if they'd broken up, seeing him killed had to be a shock. I tried to look solemn for her benefit.

“I'm sorry,” I told her, tugging at her shackles again to quickly change the subject. “How do we get these off you?”

“Check her,” said Amanda, jerking her chin toward the dead lady on the blankets. “She was some kind of boss.”

“
Don't
touch her,” snapped Cass, returning from the back door, looking more pale than before.

I held up my hands like,
Whoa, calm down
. Cass crouched over the dead lady, gently rifling through the pockets of her uniform. After a moment, she tossed me a ring of keys. Then she neatly folded the lady's hands across her chest.

The third key I tried unlocked Amanda's shackles. They clattered to the floor, Amanda rubbing her wrists. She unstrapped the muzzle on her own.

She stood up and looked me in the eyes. She didn't blink and she didn't look away. Her eyes were glittering with rage.

“We are going to make it,” she said in a low, hoarse voice. “We'll eat every fucker who stands in our way. What we can't eat, we'll burn to the motherfucking ground. I don't care anymore. I don't care what we have to do or how we have to do it. We're going to make it. And we're going to make it together.”

My heart was thumping in my chest. She was right. The only direction we could move was forward. But we would get there. “I love you,” I said, caught up in the moment, sure, but it was true.

Kissing her zombie mouth, I felt as alive as undead gets.

When I broke away from her and turned around, Cass was gaping at us in horror. Amanda stared daggers at her.

“Okay,” I said, using that calming tone of voice the school guidance counselor trotted out during peer mediation. “I'm feeling some tension.”

Amanda strode toward Cass, glaring at her. I'll give the little psychic some credit; she stood her ground. Back at school I'd seen plenty of freshman girls and even some dudes turn into blubbering idiots in the face of that white-hot Amanda Blake stare. But Cass looked more tired than frightened as she used her sleeve to wipe dried blood off her upper lip. She returned Amanda's gaze impassively.