Zombified (21 page)

“I'll try,” I said, “but sometimes it just happens. Like tripping....

“Okay,” I finally said when he didn't rise to my bait. “No more of that.”

“Good,” he said. He gave me another hug. “Let's go watch some TV or something. I'm sure my aunt and uncle are wondering what's going on in here.”

I said that sounded like a good idea. Phil stood up. I was sort of bummed that he hadn't just forgiven me outright, but I understood where he was coming from. It was a huge relief to have apologized. I imagined it would have been easy to get addicted to it—apologizing, I mean. I pictured a life where I went around doing terrible crap and then basically got high from saying how sorry I was.

“What's so funny?” Phil asked.

“Just my brain,” I said.

He held his hand out to me and helped me up.

“Well,” he said, “it's nice to see you smile.”

Seemed like someone else had told me that before. I decided to try to do it more often. Which was probably what I thought the last time I'd heard it.

 

Things became nicely uneventful for a few months after that. I hung out with Crystal a few times, and Elsa, too, so that was nice. I hunkered down and got serious about school. My plan was to take a year off after graduation and wait for Columbia to start accepting applications again. I knew that I was setting myself up for a possible disappointment by pinning all my dreams to just one college—a college that might never open again—but there was no way I'd be able to do anything differently. It had been the plan for so long, I couldn't imagine changing it.

The biggest thing that happened during that time was that we celebrated Phil's birthday. Gene and Diane sprang for all of us, including Cody, to go to Phil's favorite restaurant, a Vietnamese place that looked like it was one health-code violation away from being closed, but which actually had really awesome food. I got Phil some really nice pens and some art board—the guy at the art supply shop said it was the kind of paper that comics professionals use. Phil said he was super-excited to try it out.

And a couple of weeks later, we got to take Cody out for his birthday. It was just the three of us; I wasn't sure where his folks were. We went to a pirate-themed pizza place that was filled with really little kids running and screaming all over the place. It was crazy, but that was where he wanted to go. They also had a pretty decent arcade, including black-light laser tag. Phil bought him a collection of
X-Men
comics and I got him a gift certificate to a local record shop—which was exactly what Phil had told me to get him. Cody was so knocked out by all of it that it was a little sad, but I refused to get bummed out thinking about it and just had fun. This included lots of rounds of laser tag where I let Cody “kill” me.

Phil, Cody, and I kept going out on patrol, but we never saw any zombies. Phil thought that maybe a lot of them had been killed in the assault on Buddha's place. He forgot that they were still able to muster enough forces to attack my house and kill my dad. I didn't bring that up, because there was nowhere good it might have led.

“I think they're lying low,” I said. “You know, biding their time, waiting for us to put down our guard. Saving their strength until just the right time.”

It was early May by this time, and we had the windows rolled down as we drove. The sky was cloudless and I thought that the city looked nice right then. In darkness. No way would I ever think that in the full light of day.

“Jeez, Courtney,” Cody said. “They're the undead, not a division of Nazi tanks or something.”

“I don't know,” Phil chimed in. “She's been right about most everything else zombie-related.”

“Thank you,” I said to Phil. Then I flipped Cody the bird and blew him a raspberry.

“I love you, too, Courtney,” he said.

“What do you think they might be planning?” Phil asked.

That was the question, and I had no idea what the answer was. I'd applied all of my power to channel Nancy Drew, but I wasn't able to think of a single damn thing. We'd all noticed that kids at our school had stopped disappearing—something I attributed to the explosion at Buddha's and the fact that Vitamin Z had dried up overnight. Drug dealers in other towns hadn't rushed in to fill the vacuum, either. I think the fact that the Army patrolled the highway made that pretty difficult. At least until these theoretical drug dealers figured out who to bribe, anyway.

I threw up my hands. “I have no idea what they're thinking. But we need to figure it out—they're not going to stay quiet forever.”

And I had a really bad feeling that whatever they did, at least part of it would be aimed at me personally. Brandon apparently held a grudge. Even in the afterlife, he didn't accept that I'd dumped him. He was like the undead version of Billy Zane in
Titanic
.

“We're not going to see any shufflers tonight,” I said. “Let's go to the Safeway and get a soda. The one on Center has one of those magic fountains where you can combine all the flavors.”

No one had any objections, so a few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot. Off in the far corner of the lot, four or five cars were grouped together, and a bunch of kids stood in the beams of their headlights, just talking and laughing. I never really understood hanging out in parking lots, but I know it was a major pastime for a lot of my classmates. We heard kids laughing as we pulled to a stop.

“Have you noticed people seem happier or something at school?” Phil asked.

“Everyone's getting squirrelly for the end of the year,” Cody said. “Finals are in three weeks, graduation is a week after that. We're almost done!”

“If we survive that long,” I said.

“You are always such a ray of sunshine,” Cody said.

We climbed out of the car and headed toward the store.

“Courtney?” someone, a girl, called out. “Is that you?”

This same someone waved at me from the group at the far end of the lot. I had to squint against the brightness of the headlights.

“Courtney, come on over,” she called.

“Crystal?” I yelled.

“Yeah,” she said. “Come say hi!”

“We're going inside to get sodas,” I said. “We'll be right back.”

“Bring a bag of Doritos!” she yelled at me as we went into the store. We all got our drinks—lime Vanilla Coke for me, thanks!—and I grabbed a bag of Doritos. The boys went off in search of Twinkies and I loitered near the front of the store as they completed their quest. As I studied the covers of the magazines at the checkout stand—I'd never lower myself to actually touching one of them—I heard a man call my name.

I turned and saw a middle-aged Latino guy standing there in shorts, flip-flops, and a Western Oregon University sweatshirt. He had a cart piled high with food, and a little boy in the kid's seat. I sort of smiled, not sure if I knew the guy.

I took in his Fu Manchu mustache. Then my mouth fell open. “Chacho?”

“Took you long enough,” he said. “Do I look that different out of my uniform?”

“Yes!” I said. You look like a human dad, not a killing machine.

I walked over to where he was, and his little boy—a beautiful little kid with huge brown eyes and an unruly mop of brown hair—tracked my every move.

“Is this your boy?” I asked, even though there was no one else who could have fathered the kid.

“My youngest,” Chacho said. “Say ‘hi,' Anthony.”

“Hi,” the boy said, and I nearly wet my pants from cuteness overload.

I kept wanting to stare at Chacho. The reality of the situation was a function my brain refused to compute. Running into him out in the real world was like seeing one of your teachers outside of school, but times one million because I'd never seen any of my teachers wearing riot gear and smashing in zombie skulls.

“What are you up to tonight?” Chacho asked.

“Just hanging out,” I said. “Wasting my youth, stuff like that.”

“Good for you,” he said. “Waste it while you got it.” He raised his hands to indicate the cart and all its contents and, by implication, all the responsibilities of adulthood. It was a very eloquent gesture.

“Well, I gotta go,” he said. “Gotta get this one to bed.” Anthony started shaking his head. “Yes,” Chacho said to him in mock seriousness, “it's bedtime when we get home.” The kid giggled like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'll see you around.”

“Sure,” Chacho said. “Oh, that reminds me. I'm having a barbeque next Saturday. You should come. Bring your little boyfriend.”

My little boyfriend. “Um, maybe, sure.”

“You still have the same number as when you worked at the Bully?”

“I do,” I said.

“Okay, I'll text you the address,” he said. “I'm gonna grill up a tri-tip. My wife is making potato salad, a pot of beans. We'll start fattening you up.”

I touched my belly. I didn't know if I liked the sound of that.

“Have a good one, Courtney,” he said as he pushed the cart away. “Don't get into too much trouble tonight.”

“I already tried and it didn't take,” I said. “See you later.”

Phil and Cody walked up, Cody slurping on his soda. Phil watched Chacho walking away.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

“That was Chacho,” I said.

Phil did a double-take that made my whole night.

“That's not Chacho,” he said. “That guy's wearing flip-flops. Chacho would never wear flip-flops!” He sounded offended at the thought.

“And yet,” I said.

“Who's Chacho?” Cody asked.

“He's like the Terminator's cool older brother,” I said.

“Which variety?” Cody asked skeptically.

“T-100,” Phil said, “obviously.”

Cody seemed suitably impressed, and we went to the ten-items-or-less—which really needs to be the ten-items-or-fewer—line to pay for our stuff. My treat, since I suddenly found myself in a much higher income bracket than anyone else I knew.

After we made our purchases, we headed for the exit.

“You guys ready for this?” I asked the boys.

“Sure,” Phil said. “Why not?”

“Ready like Freddy,” Cody said.

“If you say anything else that dumb when we're with those people,” I said, “I
will
make you wait for us in the car.”

He had the gall to look hurt.

“Let's do this,” I said.

Crystal whooped when she saw us emerge from the store, and she ran toward us as we got close. I thought she was just super-excited about the Doritos I'd bought her, but she actually threw her arms around me and gave me a huge bear hug. Or the closest thing to it she was able—a cub hug? That close, I smelled her breath. She'd been drinking. That explained a lot.

“It's so great to see you,” she said as she tore herself away. “Come say hi to everyone!”

“Everyone” turned out to be a bunch of people I vaguely knew from school. There were a few folks I knew going all the way back to grade school. To those people, I said hi. Everyone else got the standard chin nod by way of greeting.

“This is my friend Phil,” I said, indicating the person standing next to me.

“Oh, I know Phil,” Crystal said. “We're in English together.”

“That is true,” Phil said. “Hi, Crystal.”

“And who's your other friend?” Crystal asked. “What school do you go to?” That last question was directed at Cody.

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I go to school with you. I was in History with you all last year.”

She squinted at him in a really exaggerated way, but I knew that she wasn't picking up any hits from her memory.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Before he exploded, Phil guided Cody away to another pod of people. Phil apparently knew them. As they walked away, I heard Phil say, “She's drunk, Cody.” He sounded like that cop who talks to Jack Nicholson at the end of
Chinatown
: “Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.”

“Courtney, do you know Gabe Toye?” Crystal asked me.

Gabe was one of those kids I'd gone to school with since first grade, something Crystal might have remembered if she was sober. He was a good-looking kid, in a beefy all-American way. He stood there grinning at me in a way that I immediately disliked. It was patronizing or condescending or something.

“I think we've met,” I said, and that patronizing smile grew bigger.

“Gabe just found out today that he got accepted to . . . Where was it, Gabe?”

“University of Montana,” he said. I did not roll my eyes.

“He's going to study making movies,” Crystal said.

“Media theory,” Gabe corrected her.

“Wow,” I said. I sipped on my soda so I wouldn't be expected to say anything else.

“Gabe was just telling me about his application essay,” Crystal said. “Tell Courtney what you wrote about.”

“Scooby-Doo,”
Gabe said.

The answer was so unexpected that I burst out laughing. That patronizing smile faltered a little bit.

“What about
Scooby-Doo,
exactly?” I asked.

“I wrote about how the show is a rationalist anti-fairy tale,” he said. “It basically teaches children that there are no such things as monsters or the supernatural.”

I waited to see if there'd be more, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back. His trademark smile was back.