Eat, Brains, Love (13 page)

“What about your mom?” I asked. “Is she a car thief too?”

“No,” answered Amanda, looking out the window. “Lucky for me and Kyle, she has her shit together.”

I felt compelled to share something back. “My dad is an accountant. My mom manages a kids' clothing store.”

“Cool,” said Amanda. “So, we won't be eating your parents.”

“Uh, no, I hope not.”

“My point is,” she continued, “the vigilante zombie stuff feels like a slippery slope, you know? I'm not sure I want to be making those decisions.”

I sighed. All this zombie talk was getting to be a real drag.

The highway zoomed past, mostly empty with a few headlights headed in the opposite direction. I was trying hard to maintain a positive outlook on all this undead bullshit, but it was tough when talk kept going back to the ethics of eating people.

“Dude. This is making me hungry. Or something. Let's just have a normal conversation, okay?”

Amanda snorted, but closed the road atlas and looked over at me. “Okay. Topic?”

I thought about it. “You remember that career test the guidance counselor gave us? What did you get?”

“Theoretical physicist,” said Amanda.

“Shut up!” I was so surprised that I swerved into the next lane. The car behind me blared its horn.

“No.” She smiled. “I'm screwing with you. I don't even remember what I got. Something insulting, like secretary. Tests like that are basically a high school version of those what-celebrity-are-you Facebook quizzes. It's, like, who cares?”

“I didn't get anything,” I admitted. “I didn't score high enough to get
anything
.”

“You failed a career test?” Amanda laughed, then covered her mouth. “Oh, Jake, that's so
sad
.”

“Well, think of it this way. I'm really good at flunking tests. It's a talent.”

“I would've wanted to be a lawyer, I think,” said Amanda, tapping her lip thoughtfully. “Or a psychologist. Something to help people, I guess.”

“You'd have made a badass lawyer.”

“Thanks.”

We fell silent, probably both thinking about what we would've done if cannibalism hadn't chosen us. The road less traveled, right?

“Hey,” said Amanda, “pull over.”

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

We were just over the Ohio border. It was a densely wooded and dark section of road, no streetlights for this backcountry stretch. I pulled us off to the shoulder and killed the engine. The car was dark except when a passing vehicle rumbled by, shaking us, headlights briefly lighting up Amanda's face. She rummaged for something underneath her seat.

“I swiped this before we left,” she said, and held up SkiChamp69's bottle of whiskey. “Want to see if zombies can still get drunk?”

CASS

I EXPECTED ALASTAIRE TO HAVE HIS DRIVER TAKE us back to the motel where the rest of my NCD division waited. Instead, we drove toward the outskirts of town, the peaceful suburbs giving way to eerily quiet blocks filled with shuttered factories and crumbling buildings. It was like the textbook definition of “wrong side of the tracks.” We were near the spot where just a couple days ago my team had let Jake and Amanda get away.

“Ah, the real New Jersey,” mused Alastaire. “So charming.”

I couldn't figure out where we were going, but I didn't feel like it was anywhere good. What would a polished suit like Alastaire want in a place like this unless he was up to something dastardly? Like mustache-twirling, petting-a-cat-with-an-iron-glove dastardly.

I told myself I had no reason to feel paranoid—that I worked for the US Government, that the president himself had called my mom. Still, I couldn't help it. What if Alastaire knew that I'd spent most of the last day secretly hanging out in the psyche of a priority target? What was the NCD penalty for insubordination? Treason? They hadn't gone over that in orientation.

It certainly didn't help that Jake's sister, Kelly, was sitting next to me basically catatonic. She had her hands folded in her lap, eyes straight ahead. I tried to get a feel for her mind, psychically probing as gently as I could, but her brain was like a brick wall.

“Any luck locating the Stephens boy?” asked Alastaire casually. I glanced at Kelly, but she didn't react at all to the mention of her brother.

“It's hard—” I began, trying to phrase my answer in a way that wouldn't necessarily be a lie. “I'm still having trouble focusing.”

“Mhm,” was the extent of his reply. Pretty much impossible to tell whether he believed me or if I was in trouble or what. I assumed trouble.

“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound equally casual.

“Oh,” said Alastaire as if the minor detail of our destination had just slipped his mind. “I want to show you a little project I've been working on.”

A few minutes later, our car pulled up to an abandoned factory that looked like it had once hosted a riot, been set on fire, and then been struck by lightning. There were a bunch of NCD guys waiting for us, but not anyone that I recognized from previous missions. They were Alastaire's private team and they looked different somehow—angrier, more grizzled, with perpetual Clint Eastwood stares. It's like Alastaire had assembled himself a crew of only Jamisons.

A pair of agents met us at the huge, iron double doors of the factory. One of them escorted Kelly away from us and she followed with wordless, brainwashed obedience. The other one opened up an umbrella, shielding Alastaire from the rivulets of rust-colored water that leaked down from the factory's ceiling.

“Where's he taking her?” I asked, watching the agent disappear around a corner with Kelly.

“Interrogation,” answered Alastaire, looking me over. “You're going to ruin that nice sweater.”

I glanced down at myself. The leaky ceiling had already dribbled a couple light brown stains on my new outfit. Alastaire gestured for me to stand under the umbrella with him, even offered me his arm. My whole being recoiled—it was like he'd flopped a slimy tentacle at me—but I remembered Tom's advice to be on my best behavior and decided to try to heed it. For now. Cringing inwardly, I slipped my hand through the crook of Alastaire's elbow and we made our way across the factory floor like a lord and lady on the worst stroll in recorded history.

“They used to process meat here,” said Alastaire. “Isn't that interesting?”

“Very,” I said dryly, my eyes following moldy conveyor belts to stripped-down machines that looked like big blenders.

“The conditions aren't ideal, I'll admit,” continued Alastaire, sounding like a tour guide. “But I've been looking for an opportunity to field-test some of my work, and this is the best we could come up with here in New Jersey.”

It didn't look like Alastaire's skeleton crew of NCD goons was doing much work. They stood around under the sections of ceiling that leaked the least, polishing weapons and glowering. Alastaire led me past them without a word.

“I've thought long and hard about this country's zombie problem,” Alastaire lectured. “On the one hand, they're monstrous beasts that present an imminent threat to our quality of life. On the other hand, they have certain qualities that I find appealing.”

“Like all the brain-eating?” I asked, the words out before I could bite my tongue like a good little psychic trouper. Alastaire smirked.

“They're just animals,” he said. “Animals with heightened strength and speed, animals with miraculous healing abilities. I want you to remember that, Cassandra.”

They're sick people,
I wanted to say, but I managed to hold my tongue this time. I felt like my view of zombies was starting to move away from the official NCD doctrine, like maybe they hadn't given us all the facts in training, but I definitely didn't want to have that discussion with Alastaire. I especially didn't want to let on that last night I'd been in Jake Stephens's mind and had found it very un-animallike. Except for the part where he and his friends ate that guy. But everyone had their flaws, right?

“Like all animals,” continued Alastaire, “I believe they can be trained.”

We approached a heavy steel door at the back of the factory. A meat locker. The NCD guards manning the door stepped away discreetly as Alastaire approached.

“There's a line of red tape on the floor of this room,” he said. “Don't step over the red tape.”

The door squealed on its rusty hinges when Alastaire pushed it open. As we walked through, the guy with the umbrella peeled off. Now it was just me and Alastaire. The room was lit by halogen bulbs that flickered and dimmed constantly; freestanding metal shelves made two rows down the center of the room, broken in places with jagged edges. I itched for a tetanus shot just looking at them. Between the shelving hung metal hooks on chains. The whole place still had a rotten-meat smell to it.

I looked down at my feet to check out this red line Alastaire had put down. My toes were right against it.

When I looked up, a zombie was charging at me.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I screamed. I'm less embarrassed to admit that I immediately jumped behind Alastaire, using him as a human shield.

There was a
clang
of metal snapping taut, and the zombie jerked to the ground, falling just inches short of the red line. I breathed a sigh of relief. He was tethered to the far wall by a chain that was attached to a collar around his neck. The chain was shiny, new steel—it was probably the only shiny thing in this whole factory.

The zombie scrambled to his feet, snarling at us and snapping his teeth at the air. His skin was gray and saggy, his eyes yellowed and sunken. He was so corpselike that it took me a minute to recognize him.

It was Chazz Slade.

I stayed a half step behind Alastaire, just in case that chain wasn't bolted into the wall properly. Alastaire didn't seem at all concerned, standing with his toes on the line, watching the muscles in Chazz's neck strain as he tried to bull toward us. When Chazz reached out, his grasping fingers nearly brushed Alastaire's bow tie. It was sort of thrilling to be this close to a creature that wanted to eat you alive but couldn't, like getting right up against the glass of a lion's cage at the zoo. I had to force myself to look away from Chazz and his thoughtless stare of hungry rage.

“Why is he here?” I asked.

“I told you, it's very difficult to take them alive,” said Alastaire. “Back in Washington, I was running out of test subjects. The procedure I've been developing is dangerous, you see. At least for them. Aneurysms mostly, but sometimes a persistent vegetative state. Sometimes the procedure just doesn't take, and the subject has to be terminated.”

“Um, what procedure? What are you talking about?”

Alastaire shrugged out of his suit jacket. I noticed for the first time that he carried a gun—a silver thing holstered under his armpit, big enough to impress even Jamison. Alastaire draped his jacket neatly over his arm and held it out to me.

“Would you mind holding this?” he asked.

I took his coat, too frazzled by the scene in front of me to do anything but comply.

“It has taken some years of trial and error,” explained Alastaire, “but I believe I've finally perfected it. A procedure that will let us control the zombies.”

My mouth hung open, eyebrows raised. Alastaire smiled at me, amused.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘control' them?”

“They're savage beasts that think of nothing but their hunger,” answered Alastaire, “but that doesn't mean they can't learn some very basic concepts. That food comes when they behave. That they shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them.”

I was considering upgrading Alastaire from creepy bureaucratic overlord to full-fledged mad-scientist psychopath. His whole spiel was out-there, even for the NCD. I wondered if Harlene and Jamison knew about his experiments.

He rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. On the underside of his forearm I saw a plastic implant, like a nozzle, surrounded by fading pink scar tissue. It reminded me of the long-term chemo tube the hospital had put in my father. Just looking at it made me queasy.

“Observe,” Alastaire said.

He picked up a piece of translucent silver tubing from one of the nearby shelves. I hadn't even noticed it draped there. The tube was about six feet long, the width of a dime, and screwed perfectly into the nozzle on Alastaire's forearm.

I noticed that Chazz had stopped snarling and biting. He watched Alastaire with the zombie equivalent of fascination—only one eye rolled back in his head.

“You see the way he looks at me?” asked Alastaire, glancing from Chazz to me. “He knows me.”

Alastaire stepped over the red line. I put out a hand to stop him, my instinct to avoid seeing anybody turned into zombie lunch overriding my revulsion for him, but he was out of reach.

Chazz watched Alastaire approach with his head cocked, a low growl rumbling in his throat. That he didn't just attack right away was already mind-blowing enough. Then Alastaire spoke.

“Kneel,” he said.

Chazz swayed back and forth for a moment, made a plaintive groaning sound that ended with a string of black phlegm spilling down his chin, and fell on his knees. I covered my mouth to keep something stupid and horrified from tumbling out.

Alastaire circled behind Chazz. He put his hand on Chazz's head and shoved Chazz's chin down into his chest. I could see it then, a node drilled into the back of Chazz's head just like the one on Alastaire's wrist. Of course, the doctors hadn't taken nearly the care with Chazz's surgery as they had with Alastaire; the flesh was blackened and swollen around the node, rotten even for a zombie.

“I've been working on this for some time,” said Alastaire, tapping the node on Chazz's skull. “I call it ‘The Pavlov.'”

I nodded dumbly, vaguely remembering the guy with the dog and the bell, still stunned to see someone walking around a zombie so casually, touching it, commanding it.

Attaching himself to it.

Alastaire screwed the other end of the hose attached to his wrist to the back of Chazz's head. My skin crawled.

“The Pavlov gives our boy Chazz his reward,” continued Alastaire. “It lets him know he's been a good boy. After he's been fed a few times this way, he begins to bond with me.”

Alastaire pressed a small button on his wrist. He grimaced briefly, though he hid it well. I watched—stomach roiling—as a dark substance flowed down the tube, out of Alastaire and into Chazz. Was that blood? It seemed to please Chazz, the zombie letting out a happy gurgle.

“It isn't just The Pavlov that keeps Chazz from attacking me,” said Alastaire as the blood continued to pump. This whole thing was more like a lecture to him than a freaking horror show. “There's a great deal of psychic manipulation at work. You've seen what zombie minds look like—it's not the most pleasant place. I've made some mental tweaks with Chazz to make our bonding possible. Of course, my work doesn't leave much of the original Chazz behind. But that was mostly gone anyway, of course. The feeding is just enough to keep him in the state we prefer—strong, fast, and pliable. And because it's my blood that he's bonded with, he's inclined to follow my instructions quite easily.”

Alastaire unhooked the feeding tube, placed it back in its spot on the shelf, and grabbed Chazz by the chin, his fingers tantalizingly close to his mouth. He lifted his face.

“You're perfect, aren't you, boy?” Alastaire asked Chazz, like he would a dog. The affection in his voice made my skin crawl. Then he let Chazz's chin drop and stepped back over the red line.

I managed to croak out a question. “What're you going to use him for?”

“Right now, Chazz is still in beta testing. I'm not yet sure of the limits of my control. Shall we test them out?”

“Um, that's okay.”

Alastaire ignored me. He waved to a camera mounted in the corner of the room and, seconds later, the meat-locker door swung open for an NCD agent escorting Kelly Stephens.

“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “What's she doing here?”

“I told you,” replied Alastaire. “Interrogation.”

Kelly still moved like a sleepwalker, not even registering the copious amounts of macabre all around her. The NCD agent marched her right up to the red line. Chazz watched, sizing her up, a strand of drool dangling from his chin. Alastaire unclipped his tube from the back of Chazz's skull and smiled at Kelly.

“Hi, Kelly,” said Alastaire.

“Hi,” she replied dreamily, like she was hypnotized.

“Where is your brother?” he asked.