Zombified (26 page)

We all thanked him and stepped outside. Phil opened the trunk and we stowed our new arsenal in it.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“Let's go break in these bad boys,” Cody said. “We can go out into the hills and shoot some stuff.”

“I think I need to go home,” I said, and Cody immediately grew a pouty bottom lip.

“Finals start tomorrow,” I told him. “I don't know about you, but I want to study a little more. I mean, we may actually have a future beyond Saturday.”

“Maybe Friday after our last final we can go out and shoot these,” Phil said. “We'll want to be at least a little bit familiar with them before we use them to, you know . . .”

We all knew. If we wanted to live to see graduation the following week, we'd all need to be ready to kill a lot of zombies. A lot of our former classmates, I was guessing.

“Yeah, fine,” Cody said. “We can go shooting later in the week. But I don't even know why you're worried about it,” he said to me. “As if you'd ever fail a test.”

I smiled at him. “That is the sweetest thing you've ever said to me, Cody. Thanks.”

“You're welcome?” he said.

We all piled into the car and headed back home.

I thought about all of the firepower in the trunk and I hoped it might be enough to get us past next Saturday alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
only had one final on Monday, and that was for Organic Chemistry later in the afternoon at the community college. The boys and I spent the morning talking to people, arranging a time to meet. We gathered phone numbers for everyone and sent out group texts.

After several rounds of texting, we decided on Wednesday night after school.

“Where do you want to meet?” Phil asked me after that was settled.

I thought about it for a few minutes. We needed a public space; parents might get suspicious if all of us showed up at someone's house. But we needed to be able to have privacy, too.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “The IKE Box.” That was a local coffee shop. The location had originally been a funeral home, believe it or not, and there were lots of rooms on the main floor that people used for meetings. The owners just asked that everyone coming in for a meeting buy something.

When we sent that suggestion out to the group, the response was almost immediate, and everyone said yes.

I stared at the screen of my phone for a minute, not quite believing we'd actually pulled off arranging a meeting of all the various cliques at school. It was like we'd put together a UN summit for the Middle East or something, only a lot more of the delegates would be wearing Axe body spray than at the real UN. I hoped.

“We did it,” I said. “Unbelievable.”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “Great job.”

“You, too,” I said and bumped him with my shoulder.

“Now we can concentrate on our finals,” he said. “So, you know, yay?”

It was a relief to have it all planned out and to be able to concentrate on something as mundane as standardized testing. So that's what we did for the next couple of days.

I think Phil's aunt and uncle suspected there was something going on, but they must have chalked it up to us being nervous about finals. I mean, there was no way they'd have suspected what it really was.

Wednesday rolled around, and the four of us went over to the Ike Box to claim a room and wait for everyone else to show up. Yes, there were four of us. Cody's girlfriend, Hannah, insisted on coming with us. Now, I didn't really have anything against her, but I didn't know her very well, either, so I wasn't too comfortable around her. Then there was the fact that she'd had sex with Cody and every time I looked at her, I imagined it. It wasn't pleasant.

People started to trickle in not too long after we settled in, all of them with cups of coffee. We made several attempts at small talk, but really, there was nothing for us to talk about except for the one thing that had brought us together. And there was no point in talking about that until everyone showed up.

Elsa and Brandi and a few others from my former peer group showed up. Elsa was the only one to make a point of coming over to say hi. Everyone else settled on giving me the stink-eye. It was very neighborly.

The last folks to show up were Crystal and the jock delegation. I recognized a couple of the guys. Michael and Dillon, two of the dudes who were organizing the kegger; Zander Matthews, the captain of the football team; and Gabe, the guy who thought he was so clever writing about
Scooby-Doo,
and the one I'd made look pretty dumb in front of Crystal. He didn't look too happy to see me. I hoped he wouldn't be a problem.

“I think that's everyone,” Phil said, and he got up to close the door to the room.

As he swung the door shut, a hand reached in and stopped him. The door swung out again and Warren stepped in, looking cool in all black Chucks, jeans, and a T-shirt. He grinned at us, then found a seat. I noticed that he hadn't bought a drink.

Phil recovered. “Thanks for coming, everyone,” he said as he sat down. “I think it's pretty cool that we can all come together like this and, you know, have a common cause. Seems like we don't all see eye to eye about many things.” He shrugged. “That's all I had to say. Now I think Courtney ought to talk.”

I cleared my throat, but before I said anything, Dillon spoke up.

“Before you talk,” he said, “I need to say something. I already told Crystal this, but I'll say it to you.” He looked right at me. “Any talk of shutting down the kegger, and I'm out of here.”

If this was the UN, Dillon had just proclaimed himself China. Okay, I'd find a way to work with that.

“I don't want to shut down the kegger,” I said. “Believe me. I think we need to encourage as many people as possible to be there, in fact.”

“That's what I'm talking about,” Dillon said, and he bumped fists with Michael. Charming.

“Okay,” I said. “I think you all know, or have heard about, what the three of us did last year when Brandon's party got attacked, right?” Everyone looked at Phil, Cody, and me, and they nodded. “And some of you were there.” I looked at the jock contingent. “You know, you saw it. We were able to organize a counterattack and then start moving folks out of the house and to the cars and safety.”

“Not everyone made it out of that house alive,” Zander said.

“Yeah, but that had nothing to do with us,” Phil said. “They'd been sent into the room at the back of the cabin before we ever showed up with extra guns and ammo.”

Zander considered that for a minute, then his body language relaxed.

“That's true,” he said.

“Over the last school year,” I went on, “you've all either seen or heard about a new kind of zombie. A smarter, faster zombie. Right?” Everyone agreed. “We think these zombies are smart enough to organize and give and follow orders. Phil and I saw them—saw maybe a hundred of them—attack an apartment building up in Portland.”

“What were you doing up in Portland?” someone asked.

“Yeah, how'd you get past the Army roadblocks?” Gabe asked.

“That might be a topic for later,” I said, “or for never, since the answer might get us into hot water with the police. But please believe us that we were there and that we saw this. Can you do that?”

Everyone agreed they could. They were all a lot more reluctant, but they still agreed.

“Good,” I said. “It's important that you believe us about that attack. Because we think we know where they plan to attack next.”

“The senior kegger,” Dillon said.

“Right,” Phil said.

“But you don't want us to cancel it?” he asked.

“We don't want to cancel it,” I said. “We don't want people to stay away from it. In fact, our plan depends on as many people coming to the kegger as possible. Hell, we may even want to invite the juniors and sophomores to come.”

“But not the freshmen,” Phil said.

“No, probably not the freshmen,” I agreed.

“Okay,” Ray, the king of the goths, said. “So, what is this plan?”

“The plan is really simple,” I said. Then I laid it out for them.

It was just about fifteen minutes later before everyone got up and started filing out of the room. That had included time for questions and answers.

“I think that went pretty well,” I said to Phil. I noticed he wasn't looking at me.

Warren still sat at the table grinning at us. I really wanted to slap that grin off his face.

“You didn't ask, but I thought it went good,” he said.

“Well,” I said.

I took a lot of joy in watching his grin go down a notch.

“What the hell do you want?” Cody asked.

“I heard about this little powwow,” he said. “And I thought I'd see what it was all about. I thought I'd get invited, but I guess that got lost in the mail.”

“Why would we invite you?” Cody asked.

“Why would you invite me?” Warren parroted back. He looked totally offended.

“Cody's right,” I said, “which is something I never expected to say.”

“Thanks,” Cody said.

“We invited people who'd be able turn around and get other people to join in and help us with the plan,” I said. “Last I checked, the only person you could get to follow you anywhere is . . . Who exactly?”

He leaned his chair back and crossed his arms. “You seemed ready to follow me some interesting places.”

Phil started to stand up, but I put my hand on his arm and he sat down.

Warren chuckled like he thought it was funny. Like he wasn't threatened at all by Phil. Maybe he didn't realize that if he started something with Phil, he'd have to deal with me and Cody, too.

“That's another thing,” I said. “You are absolutely the biggest douche I know. Maybe the biggest douche I have ever met.”

“Hey,” he said, “I wasn't the one who kissed you.”

“This doesn't have anything to do with the kissing,” I said. “I accept full responsibility for that. No, what makes you a tool is that you then tried to use that to drive a wedge between me and Phil. What made you do that?”

“Maybe I did it because—”

“You're an ass,” I said. “We've established that. Listen, you want to show up at the kegger, we're not going to stop you. Heck, we can use you there, but don't think you're somehow going to become our best buddy or something.”

He rocked his chair forward and stood up. I thought he was going to say something, but he just turned and walked out of the room.

We all sat there for a while to recover.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Phil.

“Why?” he shot back.

“Because I gave that guy the ammunition he's been using against us.”

“If it hadn't been”—he stopped and cleared his throat—“if it hadn't been you kissing him, it would have been something else eventually. Some people are only happy when they're creating chaos in everyone else's lives.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I'd still rather it had been one of you two doing something rather than me.”

“I don't think either of us would make out with him,” Cody said.

“Speak for yourself,” Phil said, his face deadpan. “He may be a jerk, but he's still pretty dreamy.”

“You guys are a regular comedy duo,” I said. “Like Martin and Lame-Ass.”

“I'm Martin,” they both said at the same time. Then they cracked up. Okay, that had been sort of funny.

“All right, smart-asses,” I said. “Let's get home. Some of us still have some finals to study for.”

“How can you study knowing what's coming up on Saturday night?” Cody asked as we got up.

We gathered the cups and plates that people had left behind.

“I can study because I know that I'm going to be alive on Sunday,” I said. “And those test results are going to be important.”

“Makes sense,” Cody said. “But I still don't think I'm going to study too much.”

I guess we all dealt with the impending apocalypse in our own ways.

 

Over the next two days, I had three finals—including one out at the community college. I was pretty sure that I did okay. I was more or less done with school after I put my pencil down on that last test. Sure, we'd all still be coming to campus next week, but all we'd be doing was a bunch of looking-back-on-your-school-career type stuff. There were assemblies planned, a field day—a field day, like we were in elementary school! We'd get our last yearbooks. All of this pseudo-nostalgic bullshit. As if most of us couldn't wait to get the hell away from the place and never come back. The worst part was that if we skipped, they might withhold our diplomas come graduation on Friday night.

It just felt like one last opportunity for the school district to bully us.

Fine, whatever, I'd take another week of this place if it meant I got to escape at the end of it.

That Thursday, we took Cody out to shoot our guns like we'd promised. He brought along a bunch of oversized stuffed animals that he'd bought at Goodwill.

“What are those for?” I asked.

“Target practice,” he said, plainly disgusted that he'd had to actually say out loud something so obvious.

We drove out north and found a large field that wasn't fenced in. We walked into it a ways, each of us carrying a couple of ridiculous novelty animals. Once we got far enough away from the road, we arranged the animals and stepped back away from them.

“I feel weird about shooting Mr. Cuddles,” I said.

“It's your fault for naming him,” Cody said. Then he raised his shotgun, quickly aimed, and pulled the trigger. A giant blue cat tumbled through the air, spewing stuffing as it went. Cody howled and danced around.

Then it was my turn.

I felt bad about how good it felt to shoot Mr. Cuddles. We didn't stop shooting until all that was left of the animals was some brightly colored fur and our memories of them.

 

I saw Ms. Bjorn, the counselor, one last time the next day.

I sat across from her, the desk between us, and she stared at me for a while.

“What have you been up to?” she asked.

I got suddenly paranoid. What did she suspect? Worse, what did she know?

“I'm not sure what you mean,” I said.

“You just seem different,” she said, and I relaxed. She was just saying the same thing Chacho had said a while ago; it had just taken her a lot longer to notice it. I guess that was one reason she was stuck here in a high school rather than a real psychologist's practice.

God, that seemed bitchy even to me.

“Just taking charge of my life, you know?” I said.

“How so?” she asked.

“I'd messed up a while ago,” I said and she raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt. “I hurt someone close to me and I finally owned up to it and apologized. Things have gotten a lot better.”