Badass Zombie Road Trip (8 page)

“I see.” Jonah shouldn’t have been surprised. He expected something underhanded, but this was just wrong. And stupid. “So essentially you want to reenact some road trip version of Weekend at Bernie’s?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, the movie where they drag around—”

Satan held up his hand to silence Jonah. “Yes, yes, I know the plot. Ugh, I try so hard to forget about that celluloid disaster. Thanks a lot for reminding me about it. Whatever happened to good movies? That’s what I want to know. Actors used to have such pride in their profession. And now, it’s all flash-in-the-pan dead humor. Every pun intended.” Under his breath, but just loud enough for Jonah to hear, Satan added, “Why is it every time I try to get someone to carry around a dead body, they always bring up that damned movie?”

Sensing a sore spot, Jonah smirked, then lowered himself to a crouch over Dale’s corpse. He picked up a limp arm and said, “Maybe I can rig a wire to make him wave at passing cars.” Jonah wiggled Dale’s dead hand at Satan.

“Don’t be so gauche. I’ll tell you what. Let’s make this a little easier on both of us. Shall we?” With a slight grunt, the Devil nodded at Dale’s corpse.

Jonah waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

At least nothing immediate.

“How are you going … to … make …” Jonah started, but his words trailed off when he realized the dead hand he held was twitching. He lowered his gaze to Dale’s corpse just in time to see the body jerk once. Then twice. Jonah dropped the now-thrashing arm and leapt back, crawling up the hood of the Focus, recoiling in horror.

Dale groaned a long, low moan before he flopped over onto his back. There, the corpse writhed, bones cracking, cartilage creaking, as the body twisted into shapes most unnatural. Under the heat of the afternoon sun, Dale’s mortal coil danced macabre on the blacktopped shoulder of the California highway, wriggling and wiggling, shucking and jiving, shaking and baking, until, as if its dime had been spent, the thing fell still again.

Jonah held his breath, hoping that was the end of the gruesome display, but inexplicably confident that it wasn’t quite finished. Something was to follow. Something terrible. Something ominous. And given all the time left in the universe, with an extra Sunday to boot, he could never have guessed what that something was. What happened next not only surprised the young Jonah, it almost killed him on the spot with the shock of it all. As Jonah looked on, the corpse’s eyelids shot open, wide and wonderful, and the corpse sat up.

And the once-dead Dale declared, for all the world to hear, “Whoa. Did anyone get the number of that bus?”

****

Still on the shoulder of I-80, California

Not expecting the corpse of his best friend to sit up, much less to speak, Jonah did what any young man in his situation would have done. He screamed. And it wasn’t just a simple little shriek, either. No. He screamed long and loud and with a slight feminine timbre that would have embarrassed him had it been played back on a recording. But in that particular moment, he didn’t care. The scream came from a place deep within. A lot of passion and communication went into that scream. It not only conveyed certain emotions—which included but were not limited to fear—it also implied at least one of a variety of statements.

The scream said something like, “I am not pleased with this turn of events.”

Or perhaps, “This was a bit unexpected. Please excuse me while I sort this out.”

Or maybe the presumptuous, “Oh, what is this now? Really? This whole corpse revitalization thing is just passé. Yawn. Where’s Mary Shelley when you need her?”

But most likely, the scream said, “Holy fuck! My dead best friend just came back to life and is talking to me! What in the hell is going on? I think I might be crazy!”

“Calm down,” Satan demanded.

Jonah ignored the Daddy of Demons and kept on screaming.

“Yeah, buddy,” Dale said, as he got to his feet. “Calm down.”

Jonah almost choked on his own scream at the casual tone of the corpse’s request. His eyes bugged as he coughed and sputtered and squirmed on the hood of the Focus, until he finally gained enough composure to put forth a retort. “Calm down? Calm down? You were dead ten seconds ago, and now you’re not, and you want me to calm down?”

Dale scrunched up his face, wrinkling his nose and narrowing his eyes as he touched a fingertip to his chin and stared off into the distance. He stayed like this for what seemed to Jonah an unnatural amount of time.

“Dale?” Jonah finally asked.

“Shhh,” Satan hissed. “Can’t you see he’s busy?”

Jonah went quiet for a few more seconds, staring hard at the screwed-up face of his once-dead best friend. “What’s he doing?”

Satan nodded at Dale and said, in a very serious voice, “He’s trying to think.”

“Think?” Jonah asked, and with the question, he knew something was amiss.

More than anything, Jonah wanted Dale to be alive. He wanted this whole terrible affair to be over and done. And if he had been just a wee bit less clever, he might’ve assumed that that very thing had happened. He might have thought that the Dale standing before him, the Dale scrunching up his face and putting every synapse in his surely tired mind to work, was the old Dale. The regular Dale. His Dale. But even as he wished it, even as he longed for it, Jonah knew it wasn’t true—despite the fact that the man in question was scratching his ass with one hand while adjusting his junk with the other, both very classic Dale moves. But regardless of this characteristic ass scratchery and junk shiftery, one simple fact remained.

Dale Jenkins—at least, the one Jonah knew—didn’t think.

With a trembling finger, Jonah pointed to the glowing beer bottle in Satan’s hands and asked, “If Dale is still in there, then how can his body be all—umm—up and about?”

Satan laughed aloud, amused by Jonah’s confusion. “You ain’t gotta have a soul to walk and talk. I think quite a few mortals have proved that in the past.”

“No soul,” Jonah echoed, trying hard to understand what that implied.

“Yeah. But trust me, you’ll hardly notice the difference.”

The newly risen Dale ignored the pair and continued his deliberation.

“What’s taking him so long?” Jonah asked in a whisper.

Satan whispered in return, “Thoughts move much slower when one is dead.”

That was it, then. Dale wasn’t alive. He was dead. Jonah thought as much, but to hear it put in such final terms made it seem, well, final.

Final, but still unreal.

And still unbelievable.

“You’re telling me Dale’s body is still dead?” Jonah asked.

“Nope,” Satan said. “He’s undead.”

The words didn’t make any sense to Jonah. But then again, nothing made sense to him anymore. He was beginning to believe that he was in the throes of one very long, very silly nightmare. That, or Dale had slipped another hit of LSD in his apple juice and they were both still back at the house, tripping balls. “Undead. That’s preposterous. Either he’s alive or dead. There is nothing else.”

“Yes, there is,” Satan insisted. “There are sixteen states of being, son. ‘Alive’ and ‘dead’ are just party tricks compared to the others.”

Forgetting the dead-undead dilemma for a fraction of a moment, Jonah asked with genuine interest, “What are the others?”

“That’s too theological for me to get into with the likes of you.” Satan grinned and shook his head, obviously pleased at keeping such secrets to himself. “Besides, theology ain’t my bag. Ask the Man Upstairs. He just loves shit like that.”

Jonah decided to back up and try again. “Is Dale alive?”

“No.”

“Then he’s dead.”

“No, he’s undead.”

Jonah grunted. This was frustrating. Like some twisted, unholy Abbott and Costello routine. He lay back against the windshield of the car and heaved a long sigh before he spoke again. “Okay, from the top. That is a corpse.”

“Yup.” Satan stowed the bottle in his jacket again.

“And physically—just physically speaking—it is dead.”

Satan produced another cigar and lit it as he answered. “Dead as a can of ham.”

“But it’s talking.”

“Yup.”

“And standing of its own accord.”

“It would seem so.”

Jonah sat up and eyed the corpse, which was still frozen in mid-thought. “And it’s thinking.”

“Actually,” Satan corrected between puffs, “I do believe I said he’s trying to think.”

“Trying. Yes. I see the difference. Then—and forgive me for seeming so adamant about this—but based on the whole walking and talking and trying to think thing, logic dictates that he’s not dead.”

“Which he isn’t.”

Jonah smiled for the briefest of moments, almost sure he had a grasp on what was happening. Then Satan went and ruined it by opening his fat mouth.

“He’s undead.” Gnawing on the cigar a moment, Satan gave Jonah a sideways glance, as if measuring the mortal’s worth. “I thought Dale said you were smart. You talk like you’re smart, but I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Look, is that Dale or not?” Jonah asked. “That’s all I want to know.”

“Yes and no.”

Jonah screamed in frustration and drummed his fists against the hood beneath him. “Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”

Satan’s smile was harsh and empty as he repeated his tired mantra. “Now, what would be the fun in that?”

“Okay.” Jonah slid down the hood of the Focus, shoulders slumped in defeat before his shoes touched the gravel. “I get it now. This is all just a game, and you’re very amused by my confusion. I get it. Ha, ha. Joke’s on me.”

The cold grin melted, not into a warm smile, but instead into a pout. Satan patted Jonah on the back. “Aw, come on. Don’t take it so personal, kid. I know this is rough, and I must seem like a complete jackass, but trust me. This is what you wanted. Better yet, it’s what you needed.”

“But … why?”

Satan shrugged. “You said you couldn’t drag a corpse around the whole U.S. while looking for me. Now you don’t have to.”

“But that thing is dead.”

“No, he’s …” Satan started, then shook his head as if thinking better of it. “You know what, forget about semantics, okay? He’s dead. Dead, dead, dead. Right?”

Jonah nodded.

“But dead or not, he’s able to carry his own weight. Which, from the looks of your pitiful physique, is bound to be a bonus here. He’s able to walk. To talk. He should be able to hold a conversation, as long as the topic isn’t too engaging.”

Jonah smirked. “So he’s just like the real Dale then?”

“Good one, kid!” Satan chuckled. “And you’ll need that sense of humor too, because without a soul, that beast is totally unfiltered. He has access to Dale’s memories and thoughts and lusts, but he lacks that spark that helps you guys struggle with morality issues.”

“No moral filter? He’s sounding more and more like the regular Dale.”

“Think of him as Dale squared. Maybe even Dale to the fourth power. He’ll be more aggressive than necessary. He might say the wrong things at oh-so-wrong times. He’ll have trouble curbing those delicious human urges.” The Dark Lord’s dark eyebrows waggled most distastefully.

“You’re kidding.” The thought of Dale’s urges turned Jonah’s stomach.

“Okay, then let’s accentuate the positive. He should be able to drive. That will help, yes?”

“Drive?” Jonah snorted as he shot a nasty glance to the corpse, which was still mulling over a question Jonah had long since forgotten. “You think I’m going to let that drive me around? In a car? On the highway? Uh-uh. I don’t think so.”

“I’m telling ya, he’s more useful this way than full-on dead. No body to drag around. Someone to talk to—”

“What use is talking to him if he has to think every question over for a half an hour before he can answer?”

“Oh that? Just let him get warmed up a bit. He’ll be right as rain before you know it.”

“Even the real Dale wasn’t as right as rain. He wasn’t as right as anything. If that is Dale, only Dale-ier, how can it possibly be better?”

“Fine,” Satan said, crossing his arms and setting his jaw. “I thought I was being a good sport. I thought I was being helpful. But obviously you don’t want any help. I should have learned eons ago how selfish you mortals are. Give a man fire, and how does he pay you back? He burns down your fucking house. That’s what I get for trying to be the nice guy here. You know, just forget about it. The whole thing’s off. By all legality, Dale’s soul belongs to me. You can go fuck yourself for all I care.” He turned on his expensive heel and started to walk away.

“Wait!” Jonah shouted.

Satan turned in a slow circle to stare at Jonah.

In all of their lighthearted banter, Jonah had almost forgotten whom he was dealing with. Satan might have possessed all the charm of a standup comic—or even worse, an improv comedian—but the fact remained: he was still the Lord of Darkness, and he still had Dale’s soul. “I’m sorry. Please. I’m just …” Jonah let the words trail off as he searched his weary mind for excuses. “I’m nervous. Yes. And tired. But this is great. Really. This …” he paused again as he eyed the undead Dale, “… undead thing is just great. Thanks. Really. Thanks for this chance.” Those dark eyes narrowed at every word, leaving Jonah with the suspicious feeling that Satan wasn’t buying a bit of it.