Eat, Brains, Love (15 page)

CASS

“TODAY, WE ARE ENGAGING TWO HIGH-PRIORITY necrotic targets. The incident at Ronald Reagan High School was our most high profile to date and, with Stephens and Blake still at large, we run the continued risk of public exposure,” intoned Alastaire, standing at the front of the motel's small conference room. “Going forward, there will be some changes to how this unit operates.”

I sat next to Tom in the afternoon briefing, his arm slung protectively over the back of my chair. He'd been staring daggers at Alastaire since he glided into the room, but I don't think Alastaire even noticed. Jamison sat in the row in front of us next to two NCD operatives whose names I didn't know but I recognized from Alastaire's personal squad. Harlene stood at the front of the room with Alastaire, although she hadn't said a word, deferring control of the meeting to her boss. She'd definitely noticed Tom's sourpuss face, though, and kept looking over at him with her plucked eyebrows arched curiously.

“First,” continued Alastaire, “psychic support will now be on-site for all combat engagements.”

“What?” interrupted Tom, almost lifting out of his seat in disbelief.

Alastaire finally looked at him, fixing Tom with that unfriendly smile. “Which part didn't you understand, Thomas?”

“The part where you said you were putting noncombat personnel who may happen to be under the voting age in mortal danger.”

“I think we've seen over the last few days that there's no shortage of danger on the sidelines either,” answered Alastaire coolly. “Your Psychic Friend has acquitted herself quite well, wouldn't you agree?”

Tom bristled at the use of our nickname, his mouth working hard to form a response. Harlene stepped forward, cutting him off.

“Tom, these operational changes have been cleared by Washington.”

Tom sank back in his chair, breathing deep. I patted his knee, willing him to mellow out. I'd had the bad fortune of getting an idea of how Alastaire's mind worked. Wouldn't it just be perfect for him to replace Tom as my guardian with one of his own people? Outbursts like that and I could look forward to traveling around with one of the craggy-faced militia rejects that Alastaire was buddied up with.

“Keep cool,” I whispered. “We'll talk to Harlene.”

“Second,” Alastaire resumed his spiel, “this unit's primary objective will now be to take all our targets alive. So to speak.”

Now it was Jamison who spoke out of turn.

“All due respect, sir, but why the hell would we want to do that?”

I caught Alastaire's handpicked agents exchange a look and then size up Jamison. He was bigger than both of them, and way scarier. It was kind of juvenile, but I couldn't help feeling some pride that our ass-kicker could take down Alastaire's ass-kickers if push came to shove.

“Washington believes—and Harlene and I agree—that the undead are an asset better preserved than slaughtered.”

Preserved to turn into weapons.
So Alastaire's project was moving beyond beta testing. Wonderful.

“You're only to terminate if under the threat of mortal danger,” concluded Alastaire.

“Sir, I signed up to kill zombies, not wrangle them,” Jamison snarled.

“‘Wrangle.' That's a fun word.” Alastaire glanced at Harlene, who'd remained pretty much expressionless. “It's so nice that you foster an atmosphere of open dialogue with your subordinates,” he said dryly.

Harlene swept her gaze across the room, scolding us with her eyes. I felt sort of bad for putting her in this position. She'd never been anything but kind to me and I doubted she even had an inkling of the scary juju her boss was up to. It was like she was the school's one good teacher, and Alastaire was the principal that'd just reinstituted lashings for wrong answers.

“Now,” said Alastaire, “if I may continue. New operational standards mean . . .”

I couldn't help it. Even though I knew I shouldn't. Even though I was in the middle of a Very Important NCD Meeting. Actually, maybe it was
because
I was in the middle of a Very Important Meeting. I went looking for Jake.

When I found him, I was totally jealous.

It figured. Here I was spending my day learning how I'd be on the frontline of the zombie war while
they
were playing hooky at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It didn't seem fair that the zombies should be having more fun than me.

Forget
fun.
It was impossible to ignore the fact that something was really happening between the two of them.
Something
as in, you know, they were obviously about two steps away from jumping each other's bones.

I was a little surprised at Jake. Amanda didn't seem like his type. But I guess you put two functioning boobs in front of a boy and the whole concept of a “type” goes out the window. So, whatever.

It was Amanda who was the real surprise, though. I couldn't see in her mind the way I could his, so maybe I was wrong about what she was thinking. But you don't have to be psychic to read body language. And hers was starting to get seriously cozy.

When they'd waltzed into the gift shop, and Amanda had stolen him a Rolling Stones T-shirt right off the rack—a mischievous glint in her eyes as she told him, “Hey, it'll look great on you!”—it was pretty easy to see what was up. She had stopped thinking of him as the loser from English class. Now he was the loser from English class who would look pretty sexy in a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

And maybe he wasn't such a loser after all.

I jumped out of Jake's mind just in time to hear Alastaire dismiss the meeting. My face was hot—analyzing zombie romance via the astral plane had made me start blushing. Great. I looked around; no one had noticed that I'd been spaced out.

“Off to Pennsylvania,” sighed Tom, standing up. “Let's get this over with.”

Oh yeah. And the location I'd given for Jake and Amanda? Totally outdated as of yesterday. Our team plus Alastaire's reinforcements were expecting to find a pair of high-priority targets.

Instead, while those annoying lovebirds were off making eyes in Cleveland, I was serving the NCD two lesbians with a penchant for pedophiles.

 

An hour later, we were back in our SUV. Tom had barely said a word since the meeting, and I could tell that he was still fuming.

Harlene turned around in the passenger seat.

“You all good, Sweet Pea?”

I nodded. Tom turned away from me, glaring at Harlene.

“She shouldn't even be on this mission,” he snapped.

“Agreed,” said Jamison from the driver's seat. It was the first word he'd said since the briefing. He kept his eyes on the road, looking more grim than usual as he followed the other black SUV driven by a couple bulked-up NCD guys Alastaire had loaned us for the operation.

“She'll do just fine,” Harlene answered. She had a sympathetic smile for me, but her words had a heavy edge of authority. “You'll make sure of that, won't you, Tom?”

Tom glanced down at his lap where the pistol they'd outfitted him with rested awkwardly. They'd given him a holster, he just chose not to wear it because it bulged uncomfortably inside his suit. The piece made it official; he was combat personnel.

“Yeah, of course,” said Tom, not exactly sounding like the pillar of confidence I'd hope for in a guardian.

He'd pulled Harlene aside after the meeting, but wouldn't tell me what she'd said. I could tell by his face that it hadn't gone well. She hadn't come and asked me about any of Alastaire's crazy plans, which could mean only one of two things: either she didn't believe my story, or she already knew.

We drove on in silence. Harlene absently rubbed the bandage on her forearm, probably trying to figure out how to get us acting like a team again.

 

A few hours later, our SUV rolled to a stop in front of the unfinished house in this neglected corner of suburbia. The place looked like a dollhouse that some deadbeat dad had gotten too drunk to finish assembling. The neighborhood was empty, with not so much as a squirrel moving. Of course I knew why that was; the rodent population around here was greatly diminished. Harlene turned around to face me.

“Hon, could you confirm our targets are inside?”

I already knew Jake and Amanda had lit out the night before. Still, I unfocused my eyes, trying to put on the faraway look that I'd seen other telepaths get when they were tracking.

“There are two inside,” I said, then added somewhat quietly, “just not the two we're looking for.”

“What?” asked Tom, giving me one of those oh-no-you-didn't looks. I think he knew that I'd kinda sort of let Jake and Amanda slip away.

“Other zombies,” I said, ignoring Tom, trying to play it off like I'd just accidentally led our team to a minor victory. Grace and Summer
were
zombies, after all. “Two girls.”

“Huh,” said Harlene, frowning. “Some luck.”

“Zombies are zombies,” grunted Jamison, then pointed to where Alastaire's two agents were already out of their SUV and approaching the house. “Look at these overzealous idiots.”

That was a serious insult coming from run-and-gun Jamison. One of Alastaire's guys carried a standard-issue long-range stun gun, the other this big contraption that looked like it should be used to kill a whale but that Alastaire had explained was a high-powered net-chucker. He had a more technical military term for it, but whatever, it was a net-chucker. He'd given the same set of zombie-capture toys to Harlene and Jamison, yet I couldn't help noticing that when Jamison climbed out of our car he was toting his usual big-ass shotgun. Harlene didn't say anything about his choice of weapon.

“You stay put, okay?” Harlene said to me and Tom as she followed Jamison.

“Obviously,” replied Tom.

“Oh crap—!” I yelled, remembering the vision of Grace I'd picked up from Jake's psyche. “Crossbow! I forgot to mention the crossbow!”

Harlene and Jamison were just a few steps away from the car when one of Alastaire's agents kicked down the house's front door. He staggered backward immediately, soundlessly, and flopped down on his butt.

There was a crossbow bolt sticking out of his eye socket.

I clasped both my hands over my mouth to stop from screaming. Sure, I didn't know that agent and, by the looks of him, Alastaire had probably found him burning villages in a Third World country, but he was still a person. A person shot in the face with an arrow. “Uh, maybe you shouldn't watch this,” Tom said, and I could tell he was considering just covering my eyes.

I shook my head. I'd brought us here. Basically, I'd decided to swap Grace and Summer for Jake and Amanda. Whatever happened was on me. I was NCD combat personnel now and I was going to have to see what our missions really looked like.

The agent with the net-chucker didn't have time to fire before Grace was driving her shoulder into him, sending him flying backward down the steps. Their path clear now, Grace ran, holding Summer's hand as she sprinted behind her, the two of them making a break for the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac.

I watched as Jamison lifted his shotgun, took careful aim, and fired.

One second, Summer's mane of hair was flowing behind her in the wind like streamers off a maypole. The next, it was gone. A pinkish mist lingered in the air where Summer's head used to be. Grace skidded to a stop, still holding Summer's hand as her girlfriend's body collapsed to the ground. She screamed.

“Alive!” Harlene was screaming at Jamison. “We're taking them alive!”

“I was in mortal danger,” he replied curtly.

Grace had reversed course, now sprinting right for Harlene and Jamison. Escape was off her mind; she was consumed by pure animal rage now and the adrenaline was starting to turn her: her skin had taken on that fetid gray pallor, and her lips were curled back over her teeth in an inhuman rictus.

Harlene let loose with her net-chucker. It was like seeing a spiderweb slung through the air at incredible velocity. It reached Grace, flipped her over at an impossible angle, and pinned her on the ground. I could see a jagged edge of bone sticking out of her collar.

Still, she kept coming. Or trying to, at least. The net had to be almost fifty pounds; even firing the gun had nearly knocked Harlene down. Grace clawed her way across the ground, inch by inch, all gnashing teeth and zombie rage now, still trying to reach Jamison. I wondered if she even knew what had just happened. I was too afraid to try touching her mind.

Jamison walked over to her. Grace's fingers squeezed through the netting, digging fruitlessly at the toe of his boot. She sputtered and gnashed, trying to bite his ankle through the netting.

For a moment, I thought Jamison might just shoot her, but then he turned away in disgust.

“Does this look like an asset to you?” he snarled at Harlene.

I decided not to watch anymore.

JAKE

WE STOPPED AT A TRUCK STOP PAST CLEVELAND. I went inside to pay for the gas and ended up grabbing some other essentials. I could have stolen them, I guess, but after our “shopping spree” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I felt like it might be a good idea to avoid attention for a while. We had enough money left from what Grace and Summer had given us, and I figured when we needed more we could always just rob a bank or something.

There were cheap
CLEVELAND ROCKS
hoodies for sale, thick white socks, and discounted tighty-whitey underwear. I'd never seen underwear for sale at a gas station before. I didn't want to think about why it was necessary.

Back outside, a potbellied trucker that looked like he spent his cross-country journeys squishing moist towelettes into his swampy armpits stood a few feet from where Amanda was pumping gas, looking her up and down wolfishly, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. He chomped on a hand-rolled cigarette.

“That offer's only good if you're eighteen,” the trucker was saying. I was sort of glad that I hadn't heard what the offer was. Amanda ignored him as she hung up the gas nozzle, and he glanced over at me as I tossed my newly purchased wardrobe and some disinfectant wipes—to help clean off the rat guts, of course—into the backseat.

“This your faggy little boyfriend?” he asked Amanda. “That's cool. He can hang out.”

I opened up the passenger door but didn't get in.

“Are you smoking a cigarette at a gas station?” I asked the trucker.

“Living dangerous, son,” he said, winking at me.

“More than you know,” I told him, glancing over at Amanda. She was studying the trucker. I heard her stomach growl.

“God damn, girl.” The trucker grinned. “You hungry? I'll fill ya up.”

“Does your wife know you pick up teenage girls at rest stops?” Amanda asked.

The trucker wiggled his thick fingers in the air, showing there was no ring. “You think a stallion like me could ever be tied down?”

Amanda nodded, as if that's what she expected to hear, and got into the car. I followed, slamming the door on the last heartfelt propositions of the trucker. He wandered away, toward the store.

“I'd eat him,” announced Amanda.

“Really?” I asked, watching the trucker go. “He's just a gross idiot.”

“Exactly. No one will miss him,” Amanda countered.

I picked up the road atlas. “We've got this if you're hungry. We can go find one of Grace's handpicked perverts. Maybe tide yourself over with a rat on the way.”

“I'm hungry now,” said Amanda, and I could tell by the way her lips had started to turn a grayish blue that it was coming on fast. “What if we go to one of those addresses and the guy has turned his life around, has a blind puppy he takes care of or something?”

“Then we'd pick someone else,” I said.

“What if I start to lose control?”

I thought back to the way Amanda had thrown herself at the old man that tried to help us back in New Jersey. Sure, the hunger was getting easier to control, but we didn't know our own limitations yet. If we let ourselves get that hungry again, who knows who we might end up eating?

“We should just eat this guy,” she said. “He's probably in the road atlas anyway for torturing hitchhikers.”

“Jeez, what did he say to you?”

“Nothing I haven't heard before,” she replied. “He's just super convenient.”

The trucker
was
convenient. A jerk that nobody would miss. I tried to think of a downside.

“What if he's transporting valuable medical supplies and when he doesn't show up a bunch of orphans die?”

Amanda glanced at the truck. “I think it's beef jerky.”

The trucker emerged from the store then, but didn't head back to his ride. He had a magazine tucked under his arm and was headed for the bathroom around the corner. A lot of disturbing things had probably happened in that dimly lit truck-stop toilet. What was one more, right?

“Look,” said Amanda gently, “we won't do it if you don't want to. It has to be unanimous. That'll be our rule.”

“Okay.” I nodded, coming to a decision. “Let's eat him.”

Amanda glanced into the backseat. “Bring the baby wipes.”

 

Afterward, with full stomachs, we stood back-to-back in the truck-stop bathroom and changed out of our bloody clothes. We did it in front of the sink where there was an island of clean floor—well, clean in that it wasn't smeared with the trucker's viscera. Most of what was left of him stayed in the handicapped stall where we'd found him, his dismembered hand still clutching the latest issue of
Hustler
. All class until the end, dude.

“We really need to stockpile some more freaking clothes,” said Amanda as she pulled the ugly pink Cleveland hoodie I'd bought over her head. I tried not to watch her reflection in the smudged mirror over the sink because that wouldn't be at all gentlemanly, but, come on.

She caught my eyes in the mirror as she pushed her fingers through her hair, flipping it free of the sweatshirt's hood. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. We'd just eaten a guy in what had to be America's grossest gas-station bathroom. And yet, despite the less-than-ideal ambiance, I still found myself checking her out. Not one-track-mind-horndog checking out either (okay, maybe a little of that). This was like poetic-appreciation checking out, like thine beauty doth shine even whence thou cheweth yonder intestines. What was wrong with me?

“Come here,” she said, opening the tube of baby wipes. Amanda made me lift my chin and she wiped specks of blood off the underside of my jaw. “You did a really shitty job cleaning up.”

I looked over at the bloodstained sink and the pitiful bar of soap. “These, uh, amenities aren't up to my usual standards.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, finishing up with my neck. “How am I?” She tilted her face back and forth so I could see all the angles.

“You're good.”

“I feel like I've just been on the weirdest first date ever,” she said casually.

I made an exaggerated look around. “This is your idea of a date?”

“We did an activity. We had dinner. Kind of a date.” She thought about it. “Haven't had a good one of those in a while, actually.”

“So it was good?” I asked, trying not to sound eager and failing miserably.

“Eh, not bad,” she said with heartbreaking nonchalance. “You were kind of a messy eater. And you didn't even pay.” She patted her back pocket, where she'd stuck the trucker's wallet after we'd eaten the rest of him. He'd been traveling with cash—there was five hundred bucks in there. Not a bad score, when you got right down to it.

“Yeah, well, you, uh, chew loud—” I stammered, waving my hands around because I didn't know what the hell else to do with them. We were standing really close together.

“Good one,” she said. “Ready to go?”

“Sure,” I replied.

But she didn't move. And I didn't move. We just stood there, looking at each other, and I'm pretty sure she was giving me a version of those c'mere eyes from the car, so screw it—trucker breath and all—I went for it.

I kissed Amanda. She kissed me back.

My first lame thought was:
Oh man, the guys will never believe this happened.

But then I remembered I'd eaten all my friends, that I had no one to tell about this, and that just made me want to kiss her more. The kiss went from soft and tentative like every first kiss in recorded history to something else, like hungry and desperate, both her hands on the sides of my face, my arms reaching around her hips.

I suddenly felt hot. Not like a good make-out hot, but a weird sizzling sensation that started in my head and shot down through my body like an electric shock. I shuddered and jerked back, had time to utter a highly romantic “ugh,” and then barfed chunks of barely digested trucker down the front of Amanda's new sweatshirt.