Zombified (9 page)

“You don't have to babysit me,” I said.

“That's not what this is.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“If you're not into it, then you might get yourself hurt,” he said. “Or one of us.”

He had a good point. I knew he had a good point and that his logic was sound, but I didn't want to hear anything logical just then.

“Why don't you keep it to yourself?” I asked. “Since you seem to be so good at that.”

I stormed off, a very dramatic exit, except that I slipped in the wet grass and went facedown. I decided to lie there for a while and hope for the world to disappear all around me. No such luck. Phil kneeled down beside me.

“Let me help you up,” he said. “Please.”

“Fine,” I said, “but don't think this means I forgive you. I just don't want to get too wet.”

He hooked his hands under my arms and lifted me up. I didn't think he'd have been strong enough to do that.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Brandon,” he said. “The way you talk about him sometimes, it seems like you want to forget he exists.”

“That'd be nice.”

“I didn't do it out of spite or jealousy or anything,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I was going to say more, but Warren interrupted us.

“Do you two need to get a room?” He grinned at us and sliced his sword through the air before replacing it in his scabbard. Cody stood beside him and looked at us like he was disgusted by our—or any—display of emotion.

“Really,” he said. “If you two want to start dry humping, we can go on alone.”

“I'm going to hump your butt with Mr. Annihilator here,” I said to Cody and showed him the wrecking tool. He made a disgusted sound. Then to Phil I said, “Let's just go, please.”

We all double-checked our gear. I made sure my pistol was in its holster and hefted my weapon. Then we walked across the field and into the trees.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
s we walked through the trees, the feelings of anger and self-doubt melted away and fear and excitement replaced them. My muscles felt taut, my heartbeat raced—I felt alive. It occurred to me that this was the opposite of taking Vitamin Z, this feeling of being alive.

I wondered briefly why that thought had come to me. Then I stamped on it like a bug and put it out of my head. There was no room to think about anything but the job we had in front of us.

Warren walked lead and he held up a fist. He wanted us to stop. Weeks before, he'd tried to teach us more hand signals to use “out in the field” as he said. That lesson devolved pretty quickly to me and Cody making every rude hand gesture we could think of. We decided after that that we'd just whisper when we needed to communicate out on a hunt.

“Smell that?” Warren asked. He was right; there was a definite tinge of spoiled meat and farts in the air. Call it
eau d'shuffler
. “There's a clearing once we get through these trees. Twenty, maybe thirty yards across. That's where most of the zombies are.” He swiped his arm across his face to get the sweat out of his eyes—even though it was the end of November and cold, we were all sweating. “We rush through these trees, and we'll be in the middle of them. Okay?”

We all made agreement noises. My heart beat fast, all thoughts of Brandon and Phil gone from my head.

Warren held up his hand, his index finger extended. “One.” Without speaking again, he held up a second finger.

Beside me, Phil hunched down like a sprinter on the starting line.

Warren held up a third finger and we all took off running.

Trees whipped past me and I started looking for a clearing full of shufflers. I cut left around a tree in my way and came face-to-face with a Zipp. I barely had time to register that he was around my age and looked pretty clean before I smashed his face in with my wrecking tool. It happened again with a female zombie and again. After the last one, I had to stop for a second to catch my breath. While I sat there willing my lungs to keep working, I looked around. Where was the damn clearing?

I heard shouts from the boys, but nothing I could make out. Panic started to grip me and I shoved it away. I got a firmer grip on my tool and ran toward where I'd heard the shouting.

Despite the cold air, sweat ran down my face and coated my arms and back.

Two more zombies came into view. They must have been going after the shouting, too, because they had their backs to me. I raised the wrecking tool and brought it down on the head of the one closest to me, a wiry dude with a crappy ponytail.

“Take that.” I meant to whisper, but because of my lack of breath, it came out like a sharp barking sound. The guy fell face-first into a tangle of underbrush. The second zombie, a fat girl with half her face missing, whirled around and made a weird chirping noise at me. Her mouth fell open and black drool fell down her chin.

“Come here, sweetheart,” I said and gave the tool a yank. “I've got something for you.” I pulled on the tool again and it didn't budge. It was stuck in the zombie's skull, and no matter how hard I yanked on it, it wouldn't come out.

The zombie, thank God she was a slow one, was nearly on me. I stood up and started to back slowly away, the picture of Zen-like calm. At the same time, I got my hand on my revolver and made to draw it. Which was when I tripped over some roots or shit. I went down hard on my butt and bit my tongue hard enough that hot, salty blood filled my mouth. I spit and the zombie's eyes went huge as she looked at it shining black in the moonlight. Then she screeched and threw herself at me, moving way faster than she had before.

I barely had time to actually draw my pistol before the monster was on top of me. Her weight trapped my arms against my chest, but with a grunt, I was able to lift her up a little, her jaws snapping inches from my face, and then snake my gun hand up until the revolver rested under her chin.

I pulled the trigger and her head snapped back. The little bit of light that had been in her eyes went out and she went limp. I let her stay on top of me for a minute and rested. I saw a sliver of sky through the trees from where I lay and I was tempted to stay there for the rest of the night.

Then I heard the shouts of my still very much alive friends. I gave another grunt of effort and threw the dead girl off me. I barely managed it—I guess there's a reason they call it dead weight—and staggered to my feet. I holstered my revolver.

“Phil?” I called as loud as I dared. “Warren?”

I crept over to the zombie I'd killed with my wrecking tool. By putting my foot on his neck and wrenching with all my strength, I was able to pry the stupid thing out of his skull, but it made a sucking/tearing noise that nearly made me spew.

“Courtney?” someone called.

“Phil?”

He emerged from some trees right in front of me.

“You're bleeding,” he said. He sounded as close to panicked as I'd ever heard.

“I bit my tongue,” I said. “I'm fine.” I hardly noticed it, actually, but I knew that as soon as my body wasn't flooded with adrenaline, it'd hurt like a bitch.

He relaxed. “Where are the others?”

I felt stupid shrugging, but it was all I had.

“They're probably in the stupid
clearing,
” he said. “If Warren gets out of this alive, I might just kill him myself.”

“Get in line,” I said and the words sounded thick because of my damn tongue. I spit out another mouthful of blood.

“Pleasant,” Phil said.

Just then we heard a scream somewhere off to our left. It had a distinct Cody-ness about it so we both took off running.

We only encountered one more zombie, which Phil took care of with his nail-studded bat. As we ran on, we started to hear a steady stream of high-pitched shouting, mostly swearing, definitely Cody. Then I heard someone saying “sorry,” but in a way that I knew they were exasperated and annoyed more than sorry. Warren.

The only reason we found them was that Phil nearly tripped over Cody, who was sitting on the ground holding a bloody bandanna against the side of his head. Warren stood over him, his arms crossed over his chest, his sword still in his right hand. He looked disgusted.

“Why'd you sneak up on me, dude?” he asked Cody.

“Sneak?!” Cody screamed. “I was just trying to get through the trees to find that mythical clearing I'd heard so much about, you asshat!”

“I told you about calling me names, little man,” Warren said. He gripped his sword more tightly.

“That's the least offensive name I'm going to call you tonight,” Cody said.

“Shut up,” Phil said and knelt beside his friend. “Move your hand and let me see.” Cody complied and Phil gave a low whistle. “That's not a small gash,” he said. “What happened?”

“Ninja McDouche here tried to cut my damn head off,” Cody said.

Warren bristled at that and uncrossed his arms—a pretty ominous sight since he still had the sword in his hand.

“If I wanted your head off, I'd have taken your head off,” he said.

“Do me a favor, Warren,” I said. “Go ahead and sheath that sticker before you really do cut off someone's head.”

He looked down at his right hand like he was surprised that he still held the sword. Then he put it away.

“Right,” he said.

“So there was some confusion and Cody got hurt,” Phil said, sounding super reasonable. For some reason, that made me afraid.

“Right,” Warren said, obviously relieved.

Phil helped Cody to his feet. “I guess the question we'll have to answer, after we get Cody stitched up, is, what was the confusion?”

“What's that mean?” Warren asked, his voice low, dangerous. I realized he wasn't so handsome when he scowled.

“Where was the clearing full of zombies?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, numb nuts,” Cody said. “Where was it?”

“You guys must have run off in the wrong direction,” Warren said.

“We ran in the direction you told us to.” It took me a second to realize that it had been me that'd said that last bit.
Shit,
I had meant to stay out of this as much as possible.

A hurt look spread across Warren's face as he looked at me.

“Okay, I see how it is,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead and blame me for this—I'm the new kid so it must be my fault.”

“Who else can we blame?” Cody hissed, then he wobbled and Phil had to steady him.

“Let's worry about assigning blame another time,” Phil said. “We need to get Cody to urgent care. He's losing blood here.”

“Right, sure,” Warren said, but he said it all petulant, like a three-year-old who'd just lost an argument.

“One of you help me with Cody,” Phil said. He had one of Cody's arms draped across his shoulders.

I pushed past Warren. “I'll help.”

“I can do it,” Warren said.

“You can guide us back to the car,” I said. I bit back a few choice insults. In a rare display of maturity, I chose not to make the situation worse.

He gave an exasperated sigh and then did just that. We had Cody back to the ninja-mobile in about five minutes.

Warren hesitated before he unlocked the doors with the little key-fob thing.

“What's up?” I asked.

“Is he gonna get blood on my seats?” he asked.

“What?” Phil asked, anger rising in his voice.

“If you're asking if the head wound you gave him is still bleeding,” I said, “then the answer is yes.”

“Do you have a towel?” Cody asked. “I'd be happy to bleed into a towel.”

“Yeah, hold on.” Warren popped the trunk and before we all threw our weapons inside, he pulled out an old beach towel. It didn't look like it had been laundered recently. “Let him rest his head against this.”

“Well,” said Cody, and his voice sounded faraway and dreamy, “if you're nice to me, I'll just start expecting it.”

“Let's just get him to urgent care,” Phil said. That got Warren to unlock the car.

By the time we got Cody out of the car and under the fluorescent lights of the urgent care parking lot, he was looking pretty pale. The towel was a goner. When the staff saw him, they rushed him right in to be taken care of. They didn't even ask how he was going to pay, so he must have looked bad.

Warren went off to find a vending machine, and Phil and I sat in the too-bright waiting room. The security guy at the door kept giving us looks, which I accepted as our due since we'd brought in a dude with a huge head wound and I had blood all down my front. I chose to ignore him and focused my attention on the religious programming that ran on the TV set bolted to the wall.

“Sorry about the whole Brandon thing,” Phil said. He didn't take his eyes off the set.

“Doesn't seem as anger-inducing anymore,” I said. My tongue hurt like a mother and it seemed to take up too much space in my mouth. I wasn't able to move it at all without it rubbing painfully against my teeth. “But don't hide things from me anymore.”

“I wasn't hiding it,” Phil said. This time he turned away from the TV and fixed me in his gaze. I had a hard time not turning away. “I just didn't realize it was something you'd want to know about.”

“Okay,” I said. “But now you know, right?”

He nodded. “Now I know.”

We both went back to watching the televangelist. The sound was off so I had no idea what his wild gestures meant. I pretended he was doing an impromptu interpretive dance.

“What was the good news you had earlier?” Phil asked.

“I'll tell you when my tongue doesn't hurt so much,” I answered.

“Fair enough.”

He wrinkled his nose and glanced around the room as he sniffed dramatically. I'd noticed that the place smelled weird, too—antiseptic, sure, but kind of rotten, too, like the cleaner wasn't able to cover up the smell of sickness. It wasn't pleasant.

“I've been talking to my aunt and uncle about you,” Phil said and the very un-apropos-ness of that statement made my jaw hang open. Then I snapped it shut and caught my tongue again. I stifled a scream and doubled over. The sensation was a lot like what I imagined chewing on red-hot nails might be. I wondered what the security guy was thinking then.

I grabbed a tissue from the table next to me and spit into it. No new blood. So there was that.

I crumpled up the tissue and put it in my pocket.

“Are you okay?” Phil asked.

“I'm sorry, you were saying something about your aunt and uncle?” My heart raced like I was about to run into a nest of shufflers.

“Yeah,” Phil said. “They're always asking if I've made any new friends, you know?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded. Of course I knew. That question was a regular part of the nightly interrogation one experienced at the hands of one's parental captors.

“The last time I had an answer for them, it was Cody.” He let that fact sink in for a minute. “Yeah, so, the last time they asked, I told them about you. They seemed pretty excited.”

I tried to imagine what he might have said to his aunt and uncle that would have elicited
excitement
as a response. The word “lies” popped up into my head, but I squelched it. I was willing to accept that Phil might have given me a completely glowing review that he believed to be true. Rather than stroke my ego and ask him what he told them, I said, “That's nice.”