Flip This Zombie (14 page)

I stared at the hand on my arm for a moment and then smiled.

“Well, it was truly a team effort,” I said as I looked at Dave. He was also staring at Kevin’s hand on my bare arm. “Right, honey?”

He continued to stare a moment longer and then grunted. “Go Team,” he muttered, the sarcasm dripping from his tone like poison. “So we’d like to get paid, thanks.”

Kevin flinched and I did, too. It seemed so gauche to talk about payment when the doctor was busy congratulating us. Or congratulating
me
, anyway, since Dave hardly seemed to register with him unless he was annoyed. But
the discomfort cleared from his face instantly and he released my arm as he turned toward Dave.

“Of course. Please feel free to use the shower facilities at your leisure. And I have put a store of additional weaponry and ammunition on a wheeled cart near the elevator. I think you’ll find them more than satisfactory compensation.” His smile returned to me. “And Sarah, I hung some new clothing for you in the bathroom stall behind the door. I hope that isn’t too forward.”

Dave sucked in a sharp breath but before he could answer the question directed toward me, I jumped in front of him. “Well, thank you, Dr. Barnes—”

He shot me a look and I smiled.

“
Kevin
,” I corrected myself, swiftly, even as I reached back and patted Dave’s hand since I could
feel
his temper bubbling silently. “I’ll certainly take whatever you found for me, but I’m happy to bring my own fresh clothes in.”

“Of course.” Kevin looked sheepish as he shoved his glasses up his nose nervously. “I overstepped, and I apologize. Next time—”

“Wait,” Dave interrupted, shaking off my hand which was still patting him and coming around to stand next to me. “
Next time
? What the fuck do you mean,
next time
?”

Kevin stared at Dave for a long moment and then he shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

Dave clenched his fists and his voice strained through obviously clenched teeth. “You said you wanted a Goddamned zombie to run your little experiments on. So
we
brought you a Goddamned zombie. That’s it. That was the deal. So what the hell do you mean fucking
next time
?”

Kevin looked at me, then Dave, then back at me. “I’m
sorry if I wasn’t clear. I thought you understood. I’ll need far more than one specimen to do a truly useful test of my curative serum. There are variables to be dealt with and overcome. The more zombies you can bring me, the better.”

My insides clenched as Dave stared at the doctor.

“Getting
one
was almost suicide,” Dave said. His voice was quiet now but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. In fact, Quiet Dave was an infinitely more Dangerous Dave. “And now you want
more
?”

“That’s stupid,” The Kid agreed from behind us and all of us jumped.

He’d been so quiet since we reached the lab, I think we’d all forgotten about him (it didn’t happen often, I assure you). Now I shot him another church glare. He wasn’t making the situation better by encouraging Dave’s anger and resistance to what Kevin wanted from us.

I grabbed Dave’s arm and held tight. Reluctantly he stopped glowering at Kevin and turned his gaze toward me. I smiled as best I could.

“We’re trying to save the world, babe. Even if it means one zombie at a time, right?”

He held my gaze for a long moment and then shook my arm off. With a grunt, he started down the hall toward the bathrooms we’d seen the day before.

“I’m going to hit the showers,” he muttered. “I don’t suppose you left any fresh panties for me, eh Doc?”

He was gone before any of us could respond. My cheeks heated with blood at his comment and I looked at Kevin with an apologetic shake of my head.

“Sorry. He’s a hothead,” I muttered. “He’ll come around.”

Kevin smiled, but there was something kind of pitying about it. “I’m sure he has many wonderful qualities. And I’m sure he was a great help when you caught the zombie.”

My brow wrinkled. “Well, to be fair,
we
caught the zombie.”

But Kevin was already starting away from me and I didn’t think he heard me as he turned the corner and left me standing in the sterile hallway with The Kid watching me, a little smug grin on his face.

By the time we had all showered (The Kid protested loudly, but we insisted. Two words for prepubescent boys: Pee. Ew.) at least a couple of hours had gone by. So when I stepped from the bathroom, my hair still damp and freshly dressed in a new t-shirt and cargo pants, I was surprised to see Dave waiting for me, arms folded, in the hall.

“Ready to load up?” he asked, his tone no longer the angry one from earlier.

I tilted my head. “What do you mean, load up?”

“I mean get the fuck out of here.” He rested his head back against the wall with a heavy sigh. “Go to camp, get some rest. Get rid of The Kid and move on with our lives. Whatever.”

I stared. “Dude, it’s pitch black outside by now. There’s no fucking way we’re going out on the road now.”

He pushed off the wall to face me. “Wait, are you suggesting we stay in Dr. Weird’s Lab of Secrets for the night?”

I smiled, reaching for some kind of levity. “That sounds like a Harry Potter title.”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing it, Sarah. I’m not staying here.”

“Why?” I burst out in exasperation. “Because you don’t like him? That’s a stupid reason to go out to certain death and you know it.”

When he didn’t deny that, I moved closer and slipped my arms around his waist. With a smile, I leaned up to kiss him.

“Jealous Dave may be a Neanderthal, but he has to know he’s the only boy for me.”

Dave tried not to smile as he kept staring at the ceiling, but he failed. “Yeah,” he said, “But Neanderthal Dave doesn’t like his woman wearing other man’s clothing.”

I laughed. “Well, you can take them off…
if
you agree to stay here tonight like a good boy.”

“Sarah is right.”

Dave instantly tensed as Barnes’s voice drifted from down the hall toward us. I sighed as the doctor approached us. So much for that hint of a good mood (and maybe even some nookie later).

“Thanks, I don’t need your advice,” Dave said as he let me go and glared at Barnes.

“You do if you’re thinking of leaving. You can view the monitors yourself. Right now night vision shows twenty to thirty of those creatures at the warehouse entrance and I have no intention of wasting good ammo on them. Even if you got through, God knows how many hundreds stand between you and the camp.”

Dave clenched his fists, but there was no arguing with that logic.

“Stay here tonight and I’ll help you load up all your new materials for the fresh hunt tomorrow.”

Dave snorted. “I don’t think we’ve even established we’re going on a new hunt for you tomorrow, Doc.”

Barnes cocked his head. “Oh, I’m sorry. I understood from Sarah that you would be.”

Dave turned toward me with a glare. “Did you now?”

“Dave—” I started, but he turned away.

“Well, she
is
the braaaains of our operation, right? Guess the brawn better get to bed and leave you two to plan our next step.”

He took off down the hall toward—well, I don’t really know where he was going, but he was pissed. Barnes’s attempt to help had only made things worse.

But as I turned toward the doctor, I guess to apologize again, I caught the end of a smug smile on his face. It was gone almost instantly, but there was no denying its existence.

And that made me wonder what ulterior motive this guy had for causing problems. And how hard I’d have to work to solve them in the morning.

Dave put our fully loaded van into gear and drove away from the warehouse with morning sun glinting off the windshield cheerily. He hadn’t spoken… not one fucking word… since we woke up.

I settled back in my seat and turned my head to look at him. I’d slept like a baby in the comfortable twin bed Kevin had provided, but Dave looked like hell. The circles under his eyes told me everything I needed to know without asking that good ol’ sitcom conversation starter, “How did you sleep?”

“So you want to become dear Doctor
Kevin’s
zombie hunter professionally now, eh?” he finally asked. “I thought you said we shouldn’t confuse the ‘brand.’ ”

I shut my eyes. With The Kid still in the back of the
van, I really didn’t want to go into this, but apparently this was going to be the moment we hashed it out.

“Come on. You know all that brand stuff is bullshit now,” I muttered.

He shot me a look. “You didn’t think that before Barnes… I’m sorry,
Kevin
started asking you for favors. You were all about killing zombies for as much profit as we could manage.”

“But that was when I thought all that was left was
this
,” I said, waving my hands around at the empty desert. “In a wasteland, why not destroy, destroy, destroy? But now… I mean, come on, David. You saw what that serum did to the infected guinea pigs. You know that if Barnes could translate that to infected people it just might change everything. Don’t you think that’s nobler than just killing a bunch of zombies?”

He blew out a humorless laugh as he got off the freeway and made his way toward the camp. He had an answer on his tongue, but before he could say it, The Kid stuck his head between us and pulled his blindfold down away from his eyes. When he saw where we were, he gasped.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked Dave.

I flinched. “Language!”

He ignored me, of course. Dave looked at him. “What? Where the fuck do you think we’re going, Robbie? I’m taking you to the camp. You’ll be safe there.”

“No fucking way!” The Kid responded. “I’m not going to that camp.”

I turned on him and the stress finally took over. “Look, you little brat, we’re not taking you with us, so forget it.
In the camp you’ll be taken care of. Why the hell wouldn’t you want that?”

He folded his arms. “Have you ever seen the way they treat kids in the camp? Oh yeah, some of them, the little ones, get taken by some nice lady who lost her own brats. But most of them get put into one big fucking tent. Sometimes some religious jerk comes in and tries to teach us to pray or whatever. But we don’t get to do shit. And we can’t leave. It’s prison. And I’m not going to fucking prison.”

He touched the gun in his waistband and suddenly I felt a scene from
Boyz n the Hood
or something coming on. I rubbed my eyes with my fists hard enough to see stars. Seriously, the drama boys create…

“Well, what do you want us to do, Kid?” I finally asked as calmly as I could. “We can’t just leave you running around in zombie hell. You may not like to hear it, but you’re eleven years old. You’re too young to make it on your own.”

He shook his head and suddenly I saw just how determined he was in his eyes. “My mom died on the first day the zombies hit Phoenix. My dad… well, he’s a whole other story. But the point is, I’ve been taking care of myself since the first moment this started. I didn’t need a babysitter then. I don’t now. So forget it.”

Dave slammed on the brake and swerved to park at the side of the deserted road. He turned in his seat and stared at the scraggly little boy who had somehow taken over our van and apparently our lives.

“And what will you do if we just pull into the camp and drop you off? You know I could get that gun from you if I wanted to.”

The Kid swallowed. Hard. He stared at Dave like he was sizing him up and by the pallor to his skin I’m guessing he knew he wouldn’t win in a fight. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought Dave would ever take it that far, but now I wasn’t so sure. He might not have been bluffing.

“Well, I guess I’d have no choice but to tell everyone what you’re doing,” The Kid said softly, and the hardness was back in his little boy eyes. “About catching zombies and cures and warehouses that hide labs somewhere, what… out past Sedona Street?”

I spun around in my own seat to look at him. The Kid had been wearing a blindfold both in and out of the warehouse, how the hell had he figured
that
out?”

He smiled like he was a mind reader. “I counted the turns,” he explained even though I hadn’t asked. “Point is, even if I just have a tiny clue of the location of your big, bad secret lab, somebody will figure it out. And then your doctor guy won’t be so protected anymore.”

“You little hustler,” I breathed, though once again I was impressed by The Kid. Most people didn’t figure out blackmail and extortion until they were in their teens, at least. But I guess zombie apocalypses make you grow up fast.

Dave sat for a long moment just looking at The Kid. Then he slowly faced forward again, let out a deep sigh, and put the van in gear. To my surprise, he swung it around on the wide road and turned away from the camp and back toward the Badlands.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Unless you want to put your precious Kevin in danger, not to mention our own asses, I guess The Kid is right. He holds the cards.”

I slid down deeper in my seat as I muttered to myself about jerk kids and birth control. But David was right, anyway. At this moment, we had no choice but to keep the brat with us.