Eat, Brains, Love (11 page)

“Then what? Who is it okay to eat?”

Grace took a ring of keys out of her pocket.

“Come on,” she said. “I'll show you.”

They led us to the padlocked door. Summer held a candle while Grace unlocked the door and lifted the wooden bar.

Inside, huddled on the floor, was a middle-aged man. He was dressed in a suit, his hands and feet wrapped in duct tape, a strip also slapped across his mouth. A trickle of dried blood wormed its way down from his nose, across the tape. He looked like any other boring corporate dude: receding hairline, kinda pudgy, horrified to see teenagers.

“Perverts,” announced Grace. “We eat perverts.”

CASS

TOM STOOD NEXT TO MY BED HOLDING A BOTTLE OF OJ and a stale blueberry muffin from the motel's weak continental breakfast. He was already dressed in a silk tie and sleek charcoal suit. That would definitely help him stand out from the other boxy-looking G-men still hovering around the motel. I wondered how many suits he'd brought with him. We'd already been in New Jersey longer than I expected, and I'd been wearing the same clothes since we got here. “Maybe one of these days you could bring
me
breakfast in bed,” he joked, handing me the muffin.

“Sorry,” I said, taking a small bite. “Are we getting out of here today?”

“Not yet,” he said, chewing his lip. “They've got something else they want you to do.”

“Ugh,” I replied, setting the muffin on the nightstand and burying my face in a pillow. “I'm not sure I'm up for it.”

“Your head still bothering you, Psychic Friend?”

“Um, yeah. It's killing me.”

“Luckily, I don't think today's task is too intense,” he said. “Well, hopefully not.”

I lifted the pillow up a bit to squint at Tom. “What is it?”

“I think I should let Harlene explain it.”

I tossed the pillow aside and sat up straight. It wasn't like Tom to keep things from me. He'd seemed really uncomfortable when I filled him in on the details of my visit to the hospital with that skeev Alastaire, and he was still acting spooked. I didn't like to see Tom like this. He was supposed to be the one reassuring me and making things seem almost normal.

“What's going on, Tom?”

“I ran and got a change of clothes for you,” he replied, holding up a shopping bag. “We'll be downstairs when you're ready.”

“Secret Agent Tom is kinda freaking me out right now.”

Tom sighed. “I'm sorry, it's just—things are a little heavy with this one. We need to be on our best behavior.”

“You mean
I
need to be on
my
best behavior.”

Had Alastaire said something to Tom about last night? Did he complain that I'd psychically rebuffed him when he tried to worm his way into my mind? Because I was pretty sure being my boss's boss didn't give him the right to go molesting my thoughts.

Tom stopped just in front of the door and turned to look at me, really considering his words.

“You were talking in your sleep last night,” he said.

“What?”

“You said his name,” Tom continued. “Jake. You said it a lot.”

I felt my face getting hot. “Just a weird dream. Stop watching me in my sleep, psycho.”

“Okay,” Tom said, rolling his eyes. “Just remember: best behavior.”

Tom closed the door and I immediately sank back into bed, letting my mind drift out of my body.

So I wasn't totally honest with Tom. My head wasn't really killing me; my brain was sore, just not in the same way it had been after I'd knocked out Chazz. Now it was like a pleasant ache, like that feeling after you have a good workout and can just tell your body's gotten stronger.

Also, I hadn't really been having weird dreams. It's just that . . . I couldn't stop thinking about Jake.

It was like Alastaire said. I could still feel Jake out there. After that first time at the hospital last night, it became easier and easier to push myself across the astral plane and slip right into his thoughts. When I'd gotten back to the motel I'd wanted to see if I could do it again and it was easier than I thought it would be: I slipped into Jake's mind right as some scary girl was putting a crossbow in his face.

I only stuck around for a second before I jumped back out quickly, feeling nervous and giddy. I was getting more powerful. I had to resist kicking my feet in celebration, worried I'd wake up Tom, who was already asleep in the bed next to mine.

Of course, I couldn't sleep after that. I told myself I'd just take one more peek. A quick one, to make sure that girl didn't shoot an arrow in my new favorite zombie fugitive.

I ended up psychic eavesdropping on an entire zombie-orientation class, right up until Jake and the others started to eat some accountant-looking dude that was tied up in a closet. I broke contact for that part. I wasn't ready to share Jake's feelings of satisfaction as he burrowed his face into warm human guts. That was a little intimate, even for mind reading.

But the rest of it had all seemed so normal, just kids sitting around talking. I mean, sure, they were talking about undeath, but I'd had so little contact with people my own age lately that I'd take what I could get.

My mom used to tell me that I had an obsessive personality. She said when I was a kid she never needed to buy me a lot of toys because I'd always get hooked on one. I remember having this toy animal hospital where all the animals had those big Japanese-style googly eyes. It was like the only thing I played with for a year.

It was the same way when I got older. I never downloaded just a single track, always the whole album, and if the music was any good I would wear that album out, listening to it straight through until I was sick of it. I watched my favorite movies over and over too. I'm pretty sure I could do all the Gwyneth Paltrow scenes from
The Royal Tenenbaums
from memory.

So now that I knew how to do it, I couldn't help popping back into Jake's mind . . . over and over. It was like watching a movie that never ended. Yes, he was a zombie. But also? Sort of a cool guy. He reminded me of someone I might have liked before I went all governmental.

But I couldn't really explain that to Tom. Or anyone else. Spying on Jake's mind would have to be my secret, which made it seem kind of stalkerish and also more alluring.

Now, as soon as Tom left me to change, I found myself wanting to check in just one more time. So I did. I've never been one for self-control.

This sucks. How are we supposed to dig a hole when the ground is almost frozen? It's way harder to dig a grave in real life than they make it seem on TV. Those mafia dudes must be out there for hours whenever they have a body to bury. Stupid Grace and her stupid rules. At least she's out here digging too. So . . . ha.

There isn't even that much left of that dude from last night to bury, just gristle and bones and stuff. Gristle. That reminds me.

“Okay, take my mind off this manual labor. Top five Severed Lung tracks.”

Grace has to think about it. Any true fan would have a Top Five ready to go in an instant. Or maybe she just doesn't want to talk to me. “Number five: ‘Ejaculate Gristle at Sunset.'”

“Oh, no way. That's my number one.”

I let go of Jake's mind, feeling guilty. What was wrong with me? I needed to get this telepathic addiction under control. Tom said they were waiting on me, I couldn't just stay in bed all day being a fly on the wall of Jake's brain. And maybe it wasn't the best idea to get to know a zombie that it was my job to track and help kill.

Even as I thought that, I knew I'd check back in on Jake later.

I got out of bed and opened up the shopping bag Tom left for me. A modest-looking black dress waited for me along with a gray cardigan sweater. It wasn't really my style, and it was definitely a far cry from my usual NCD jumpsuit.

Me wearing a dress, and Jake burying a body. I wondered which of us would have the weirder day.

 

The gang was assembled in the motel's shabby conference room. Some suited-up NCD agents milled around one side of the room, picking over a box of donuts and waiting for someone to give them an order. Tom and Jamison stood talking quietly with Harlene, who I hadn't seen since Chazz attacked her. Her arm was in a sling, the place where Chazz had taken a piece out of her wrapped in bandages, but otherwise she looked like her usual peppy self. Her makeup was done with the usual beauty queen flourishes, maybe a little heavy on the rouge to make up for lingering blood loss.

Harlene's grin was a thousand watts when I entered, but from the guilty look the others all had on their faces, I could tell they'd just been talking about me.

“There's my heroic Sweet Pea,” bubbled Harlene as she wrapped me in a one-armed hug. “You really pulled my bacon out of the fire the other night.”

“I'm just glad you're okay,” I said, careful of her arm as I squeezed her back. “You are okay, right?”

“This?” said Harlene, raising her sling. “Pff, believe me I've had worse, baby doll.”

I'm not really sure what could've been worse than a zombie bite, so I just smiled and nodded, letting Harlene do her fearless leader thing. It was nice to have her back. I hoped it meant Alastaire was on his way home to Washington.

“And look at you, all gussied up,” she said, looking over the clothes Tom bought for me. “Your handler sure knows how to pick out a dress.”

“I feel like I'm going to a funeral,” I replied, feeling a little uncomfortable.

Harlene frowned at me. “Oh. Tom didn't tell you?”

 

It was standing room only in the town's big mega-church for the RRHS dedicated Day of Prayer and Remembrance. Kids and their parents crowded into the pews, all of them dressed in black, a lot of them crying. A big screen at the front of the church displayed a montage of photographs, smiling high school kids blissfully unaware that one day they'd be zombie food. Morbid imagery, I know, but thinking like that helped me stay detached from all the grieving; I needed to treat this place like just another crime scene. The dead bodies I'd encountered I could deal with. The live ones, on the other hand . . .

A lady from the PTA stood by the door handing out armbands in the red and gold RRHS school colors, each with a black 27, memorializing the final victim tally from Jake and Amanda's rampage. I took an armband but didn't put it on—it felt phony to do that. It was bad enough I was here spying on these people while they were mourning. I stood in the back with some other latecomers. No one noticed me.

My mission was to take the town's psychic temperature. As far as I knew, the NCD had never had to create a cover story this huge before, and I was here to make sure it had taken root. I opened up my mind and let the thoughts cluttering the room drift in, scanning for any stray memory of flesh-eating zombies.

During NCD training, they told us that some telepaths have problems functioning in crowds, that they find the crush of other people's thoughts overwhelming, but I'd never had that issue. Letting all those grieving minds into my own was rough, though. Sampling the sadness of, like, three hundred people all at once definitely isn't something I'd recommend.

There was Keith DeCarlo's mind—father of the late Adam DeCarlo. He'd come alone, his wife unable to get out of bed. He'd known Jake since childhood and couldn't believe the same boy they'd had over for hundreds of sleepovers would do something like this. He hated him for it.

There was Eliza Brady's mind. She'd been in the same clique as Amanda Blake but was sort of a hanger-on. Her lesser position at the lunch table had probably saved her life. She accepted that it had been a shooting: she remembered the blood and guts, but she couldn't remember actually seeing Amanda shoot anyone. It had all happened so fast.

It was like that in all the kids' memories. There were fuzzy gaps that any good telepath would notice as psychic screwing around, but I doubted whatever grief counselor the school hired would be trained in the brainwashing arts. As for the parents, they hadn't been there, so they believed the official story. No one was thinking about zombies. Most of them were totally focused on their grief.

It was becoming overwhelming, that sadness, seeping in with every mind I scanned. I felt tears well up in my own eyes; my breath got short; my legs started to tremble.

It was too much. I needed to get out of there. I staggered to the door, wiped my eyes on my sleeve, and burst out into the cold air. I could still feel echoes of sorrow bouncing off the walls of my brain even as I walked quickly away from the church, swearing to myself that I'd examine a thousand of the nastiest zombie crime scenes before I'd go back to a funeral like that again.

The street was empty outside the church.

And then I saw someone, a lone girl sitting astride a bicycle across the street. She watched the church apprehensively, a knit hat with a brim pulled down almost over her eyes. There was something familiar about her. Her mind radiated something different from the people's inside the church—it was sadness, but also guilt and anger.

Maybe I was still feeling all emotional after the buffet of human suffering I'd binged on in the church, or maybe part of my subconscious recognized this girl before I even realized it, but I found myself crossing the street to talk to her.

She saw me coming and immediately hopped on her bike, starting to pedal away. I realized then who she was and, not really thinking that this was probably a major violation of NCD conduct, I waved and shouted her name.

“Kelly!” I yelled at Jake's sister, jogging after her. “Hey! Hold on!”

Kelly stopped reluctantly, eyeing me. She looked nervous. I'd never considered what the whole school-shooter narrative might mean to Jake's little sister. She definitely wouldn't be a popular person in town.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

I answered without thinking. “I know your brother.”

“My brother, the school shooter,” she spit, looking away.

“Um, yeah.” I realized this was probably a really bad idea. What was I doing talking to Jake's sister? I mean, I did kinda feel like I knew her brother, but that was literally all in my head.

“Were you there Friday?” Kelly timidly asked. “During the whole . . .” she trailed off.

“No.” I shook my head. “I was home, sick.”

“Lucky you,” Kelly replied. “Look, I'm, uh, sorry, if my brother killed any of your friends or anything.”