Zombies! A Love Story (2 page)

“I just thought–”

“You just thought wrong. Jeeze, Chuck, how about some dating? How about building a relationship first? Huh?” I stood up, crossed my arms over my chest. “How about a little romance for crying out loud?” I was crushingly disappointed. I’d expected so much more.

And then I reminded myself that it didn’t matter anyway. I’d been about to let him down easy.

He got up too, came closer. I turned my back to him, gathering my will. I had to tell him it was over. He put his hands on my shoulders from behind and I tingled in spite of myself. “I’m sorry. You know I’m no good at this. It’s just...I’m pretty sure by tomorrow you’re gonna hate my guts, so I thought at least we could have tonight.”

I frowned and turned to face him, distracted once again. The move made his hands fall away, and I experienced a very brief, very potent stab of regret. “Why am I going to hate you tomorrow?”

“Because I have an irresistible job offer. And you’re not gonna like it.”

Ah, so he got it, too. That should make things easier. “I knew this was coming. It was inevitable. That’s why I–”

“It’s Sonatta,” he said.

My blood ran cold. The feelings for him I’d been fighting, turned into a sickening knot in my stomach. “You...you had an offer from Sonatta? The most hated company on the planet? The people who are genetically modifying our food supply without a clue about the repercussions? The people who’ve patented seeds, and sue farmers they consider in breach?” I paused long enough to take a breath, but only because I had to. “I’ve protested that company, Chuck. I’ve written to congress!”

“I know.”

“You can’t possibly be considering an offer from them. I’ve been planning an all out campaign to drive them out of Bloody Gulch. I–I’ve already designed the flyers.”

He sighed. “You want to lower your voice, Suzy? Maybe give me a chance to tell you about this?”

I looked around. The fire was crackling and pouring its light onto our faces, and several of our oldest friends were standing around looking at us. And I knew what they were thinking.
Here we go, Chuck and Suzy, together again for a few hours and apparently already having a major fight
. A lot they knew. I clamped my jaw, lowered my head. “There’s nothing you can say that will make it okay to work for the devil, Chuck. Not unless you’re just going undercover so you can get close enough to bring them down, that is.”

He sighed and sat down, saying nothing. I knew his mind was composing while I ranted, and he was waiting for me to shut up long enough for him to talk.

I was so mad I was shaking, but I took three deep breaths and sat down too. “Fine, explain if you really think you can.”

He nodded. “In fifty years, maybe less, there’s not going to be enough meat on the planet to feed people.”

“I know that. And we’ll all become vegetarians, and the world will be a better place.” I answered quick, didn’t think first.

“I agree. But that’s going to take more vegetables and fruits than we’re capable of producing at this point. Sonatta is doing work that will make vegetables grow faster in far less space. It’s working to make them hardier, to require less water, to make them insect and disease resistant, to increase the amount of protein and other essential nutrients they provide in each serving.”

“Right, by adding insecticides to our corn, salmon DNA to our strawberries, and refusing to label them. Do you know how sickening that is to a vegetarian, by the way?”

“It’s better than global famine, mass starvation.”

“I really don’t think that’s the only alternative, Chuck.”

“You haven’t seen the research that I have.”

“Probably not. Who produced your so-called research? Sonatta?”

“Yes, Sonatta. They do a lot of research, because they want to ensure that their products aren’t harmful to humans or other living things.”

“Wait, I’m sure I read that somewhere. Oh yeah, it was in their propaganda campaign when they were trolling for local land to lease for their franken-farms!”

“Suz, stop. You’re being stubborn. Sonatta is ready to release a potato that provides more protein in a single serving than twelve ounces of sirloin steak.”

I closed my eyes. “How did they make the potato do that?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t say “I don’t know” just didn’t answer. So he did know.

“It’s top secret, right?” Opening my eyes again, I searched his. But he couldn’t hold my gaze.

“Something like that,” he said at length.

“God, Chuck, don’t do this. I don’t know what they’re offering you, but just don’t do it. Say no, turn it down, do anything else. Anything. You’ve had tons of companies and research centers courting for more than a year now. You can have your choice.”

“This
is
my choice.” He heaved a huge sigh that made his shoulders slump forward. “I’ve been in orientation for a month already. It’s a seven figure income, Suzy.”

“Seven figures. For the destruction of our food supply. What a bargain.”

He sighed. “I knew you’d be like this.”

“And didn’t care about anything except getting me in the sack before I found out.” I closed my eyes, shook my head, picked up my bag and turned to stomp away.

“Suzy, come on.”

“No amount of money is worth making a deal with the devil.” I sighed heavily. “I was going to break it off tonight anyway. I guess this just validates my decision.”

“That’s a lie. You weren’t–”

“Ask your sister. She knew.” I sighed, but still couldn’t turn to look at him. I’d lose my will if I did. “Good bye, Chuck,” I said, and resumed walking away, moving fast before the tears could take me over.

“Suz. Suzy, don’t go.”

But I kept on walking.

Chapter Two

I COULDN’T SLEEP
for the longest time. And not just because it was kind of creepy, how my mother hadn’t changed my bedroom at all since I’d left. I hadn’t been back in six months, and only a couple of times a year for the two years before this one. And every time, my room was exactly the same. My senior class photo, framed on the wall, my soccer cleats on the closet floor, my music box on the dresser.

Mom, though...
she
had changed. At first she’d been kind of lost and pathetic without me. But then, the last couple of visits home, she’d seemed, I don’t know. Younger. Stronger. She didn’t hang around waiting for me, with a sad attempt at a vegan meal on the table. In fact, half the time when I was home, she was off on some outing or other. Something was definitely up with her.

I kept thinking about Chuck, and the terrible decision he’d made, maybe for all the right reasons. Seven figures must have been hard as hell to turn down. I knew he’d be rich someday, but I’d expected it to take longer. I didn’t really think he cared all that much about money, though. In hindsight, I realized, he probably thought he had taken the job for me, in some twisted way. And I’d shot him down.

He must feel like hell.

It didn’t matter. It was up to him now. He’d have to make his decision based on something besides me. It was over. We were over.

I lay there, drowning in useless tears and trying to envision the future without him. But I couldn’t see anything. It just looked... bleak.

Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up at three a.m. to something scratching on my window. It was probably Chuck. I half hoped it was. (Okay, I
totally
hoped it was, and that he’d say he wasn’t taking the damn job and that he’d figure out another solution and that we would make things work somehow.) Even half asleep I knew it was impossible. Rubbing my tear-tender eyes, I rolled toward the window, then I jumped a foot off the mattress and let out a truncated scream before clapping a hand over my mouth.

Someone was standing on the other side, face and hands flattened to the glass, mouth working weirdly.

Wait, I knew her.

“Amy?” I asked, leaning closer, squinting. Amy Johnson, who’d been in my class all through high school, looked pretty rough. Her blond hair was all tangled with bits of weed and brush and she had what looked like mud smeared all over her face. She kept gnawing at the glass, like she was trying to chew her way through it or something.

“Damn, girl. How much did you drink, anyway?” I took my hand off my chest, grinning at my girl-in-horror-flick reaction, and went to the window again. “What did you do, walk through a briar patch to get here?” I reached for my window, to open it, when a second face mashed up against the glass, right beside Amy’s. I jerked backward, jumping and shrieking. Amy’s boyfriend, Mark. He was as messed up as she was. The same mud on his face and smeared through his hair, eyes not meeting mine, mouth wide and gnawing at the glass.

“Suzy, get away from the window!”

That was my mom. She was standing in my bedroom doorway with a baseball bat in one hand and the phone in the other. “I mean it, get back!” she shouted in a very un-Mom-like manner. “And get some clothes on. Quick.”

I frowned and backed up a little, standing now, between my bed and my mother, my eyes glued to my friends outside, my ears attuned to Mom’s conversation with, I presumed, a 911 operator.

“They’re all around the house,” she said. “I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with them.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans, a tank top, socks. “Bath salts,” I said. “Some idiot must have brought bath salts to the party.”

Mom met my eyes, and I could see she disagreed. “I tried calling Chief Mallory at home, ma’am,” she said to the dispatcher on the phone. “There was no answer. This is a one-cop town. You need to send in the State Police.”

I was getting scared, dropped my running shoes and quickly shoved on my black pleather hiking boots.

Mark lifted a hand and slammed my window with something. As he pulled back and hit again, I saw what he was using as a weapon and backed into my mom so hard I almost knocked her over, shouting, “It’s an arm it’s an arm it’s an arm!”

Glass shattered. Mark and Amy started clambering through, dragging themselves over dagger-like shards that should’ve killed them. Their flesh tore away, but they kept on coming, and the gurgling groaning sounds they made were more animal than human.

“They’re inside! We’re getting out of here!” Mom threw the phone at Amy, clocking her in the forehead. It didn’t even faze her. We lunged into the hallway and I slammed my bedroom door closed behind us, wishing it would lock from the outside. I was gripping Mom’s arm for dear life as we ran down the hall. Her bedroom door was closed, and I could hear pawing and groaning from the other side of it as we ran past, into the living room.

“Mom, what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!”

We headed for the front door, but before she could open it, I planted my heels, skidding us both to a stop. “Wait!” I crept nearer and looked through the window pane. “There are more of them out there. Just dragging themselves up and down the street.” My breath steamed the glass, and I wiped it with my hand. They all looked familiar to me. They were all my age. They’d all been at the party, at least a lot of them had.

God, where was Chuck? And Sally, what about Sally?

“How many are there?” Mom asked.

I shook my head. “A dozen. Then the two in my room–”

“Three in mine, that I know of,” she said.

“That’s seventeen.” But I hadn’t seen Chuck among them. The banging from the bedroom doors got louder. “They’re going to come through those doors, Mom. We have to get out of here.” And I had to find Chuck. I had to make sure he was all right.

“We’ll go out through the garage, take the car.” Mom handed me her baseball bat and stopped at the living room closet, reaching for something on its upper shelf.

“Mom, we don’t have time to pack.” I heard wood splintering. “They’re breaking through the bedroom doors. Mom!”

She pulled down a shoebox, and fumbled with shaking hands until the lid fell off and she held a hefty silver handgun.

“Holy crap, Mother, where the hell did you get that?”

She shrugged and to my utter shock, my little four-foot-eleven, formerly scared of her own shadow mom jammed a clip into the gun’s hollow handle and worked the action. “I’ve been alone out here while you’ve been going to school. I took precautions.” She stuffed the gun into the waistband of her mom-jeans, gathered three more clips and a huge box of bullets, then took her purse from the hook on the inside of the closet door and shoved the ammunition inside.

She yanked my denim jacket from the closet and threw it to me, then pulled on her own leather one and gave me a nod.

I put my jacket on, checking for my cell phone in its pocket, clutched the baseball bat tight, and took Mom’s hand. We crept through the house toward the back door, and I took the car keys, both hers and mine, just in case, from the key rack in the kitchen, then peered out the back windows.

“More of them,” I whispered. “They’re all over the back yard. Weird, Mom, they look blue, don’t they?”

She was digging her glasses out of her purse. “Sad blue or Smurf blue?”

“Death blue.”

She put her glasses on and looked up at me slowly. I’d never seen her as afraid as I did just then. But even with that, she wasn’t falling apart. The Mom I’d left behind two years ago would’ve been sobbing in the corner by now. After Dad had walked out on us when I was fifteen, she’d been kind of...broken. She’d never really put herself back together again. At least, she hadn’t, last I knew.