Night Betrayed (21 page)

What would she think if she found out the truth? Would she run in the opposite direction—not because he was too young for her, but because he was nearly three decades older than she?

He’d thought it would be a little amusing to keep the truth from her for a while. He’d let her think he was really a young stud and watch her make all of her excuses for being involved with him. And then he’d tell her the truth, once she realized he cared about her regardless of how old either of them were—or looked. But now, he was more than a little worried that instead of being able to give her everything she wanted in bed, he’d be looking for the extinct little blue pills called Viagra.

Theo took out his frustration and fear on the keyboard, letting his fingers fly over the keys with ease, letting himself sink into that familiar pleasure. There was something soothing about coding. Hacking too. There, it all had to work out. It all had to fit.

Everything in its place. Every answer logical and perfect.

Unlike life, dammit.

After a while, he took a break and started flipping through some of Blizek’s files, using the transparent electronic whiteboard to bring up some of his game prototypes. Sometimes, clearing the mind and rerouting it to come back at a problem from a different direction helped.

Aside from that, looking at screencaps and concept images for new video games from the master was pure pleasure. Seeing how the man’s mind worked, from concept to prototype to even the coding, was fascinating.

He was looking at the files for Jolliah’s Castle, which looked like some sort of sweet adventure game when Theo was jolted out of his zone to see Vonnie standing there, holding a tray in her hands. Damn. He blinked, trying to pull himself out of the zone.

“I thought I might find you up here,” she said.

“Oh. Wow,” he replied, pulling his attention reluctantly from the board, as if awakening from a deep sleep. Connectus interruptus.

He would realize later what a shock it was that Vonnie—the haste-makes-waste Vonnie—had made it all the way into the room and over to his corner without bumping into or dropping anything. In fact, she sounded a bit out of breath—probably from climbing three flights of stairs—but her curly salt-and-pepper hair was smoothed back in place and her round cheeks were only a bit pink. He thought she looked adorable, in a comfortable sort of way.

“You missed lunch, and I thought you might be hungry.” She set the tray down on the table, moving a bunch of circuits and cords he’d laid out . . . just the way he wanted them.

Now, they were all jumbled up.

Theo smiled at her anyway. “Thank you. It smells good.”

It did. And he was hungry. A chicken sandwich on that brown, sunflower-seed-studded bread with tomato slices and soft, fresh cheese oozing out the sides. A ripe pear cut into wedges. Raw carrots and some iced tea. His mouth began to water, and he looked at her again. “Thank you.”

Vonnie was peering at the three monitors he had on, all of them lined up in a row, each with their own keyboard. “I remember some of that,” she said, gesturing vaguely to one of the screens. “It’s long before your time, but we used to have something called Facebook, where you played a game and built a farm. And YouTube. Where you could watch movies—you know, DVDs—right on the computer.”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at him. Suddenly, there was a sharpness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “So, are you going to tell me what really happened last night?”

Working on a mouthful of sandwich, Theo blinked and kept chewing. The way to a man’s heart—or in this case, confidence—was definitely through his stomach. Talk about a bait and switch. “I figure,” he said after he swallowed, “you can probably make a good guess.”

They looked at each other for a moment, neither of them willing to give in. Then he caved and took another bite of sandwich.

Vonnie just glared at him, all traces of mother hen gone and replaced by the principal tapping her foot, waiting for an answer about who had rewired the fire alarms to go off at precisely the beginning of English midterms. Amazing how a woman could quick-change like that. Frightening, really. Theo’s mom had been like that. And so was Selena.

“What happened with Brandon?” he asked stubbornly. “At least give me that.”

“Were you with her out there? At least give me that,” she parroted right back at him. And lifted a pert nose to look down at him just a bit.

“Yes. I was with her.”

Vonnie’s shoulders seemed to deflate. “Thank God. She refuses to let me go with her; and I sleep so heavily, I never hear her leave. I only find out after the fact . . . when it’s time to patch her up.”

Theo filed away that information for future reference—the part about Vonnie sleeping heavily. In the room only two doors down from Selena’s. “She didn’t let me go with her,” he clarified. “I followed her out there.”

He popped a wedge of pear into his mouth. “Is that what happened with Brandon? He found out about her? Then what? He tried to make her stop? Can’t say I blame the guy not wanting the mother of his child to be torn apart by zombies.”

Vonnie’s pretty face grew soft and sad. “It wasn’t that simple. And I don’t know if I should tell you what happened—”

“I think you’d better,” he replied flatly. “I saw her out there. I don’t want that to happen again. And she . . . well, I get the impression that she wants me to forget about it and leave it alone. And leave here. Is that what Brandon did? He left her?”

“No, oh no. She left him. We all did. Me and her and Sam. We had to.” Vonnie blinked rapidly and stared out the window for a moment. “She tried to explain to them—to everyone—what she was doing. They didn’t really understand, but at least she got them to listen.”

“Who are you talking about? In Yellow Mountain?”

“No, oh no,” she replied. “This was before we came here to Yellow Mountain. We were at Sivs. Over south of here, more than a week’s travel time.” Like Selena, she flapped her hand in a generic direction that wasn’t even close to south. “It took her a long time, but she finally told him—Brandon—what she was doing. That her way was better and kinder to the zombies. He didn’t want to believe her, and he didn’t want her to get hurt. He did love her . . . he just didn’t understand her.”

Vonnie jabbed her finger toward the last bite of his sandwich. “Like, she won’t eat any meat or anything from a creature that’s been killed. It’s her way. And that was one thing he never accepted. He’d try to get her to eat a piece of chicken or a bit of fish now and then. Once he tried to trick her into it by slipping a bit of meat in a stew she was eating. When she found out, she was sick afterward. Really sick. So now she won’t eat anything unless I cook it.”

“I can see that.” Theo was only half following Vonnie’s rambling explanation, but it was interesting nevertheless. Sounded like Brandon was a real asshole. He wasn’t too sad about that. “What happened at Sivs?”

“Brandon found out about what she was doing and tried to stop her from doing it. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. She can’t not do it, she told me. It’d be like her not helping the people dying. She can’t ignore it. Even though it’s hard.”

“How long has she been the Death Lady?”

Vonnie glanced toward the rest of the room, as if to make sure no one was approaching. “She saw her first death cloud when she was five. But she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t realize what she was doing until she was older.”

“Death cloud?”

Vonnie looked uncomfortable. “It’s really not my place to tell you, Theo. But . . . it’s what she sees when someone’s going to die. She guards her secrets well; and if she wants you to know more than that, she’ll tell you. But the last person she told was Brandon, and that didn’t turn out so well. Brandon and the people at Sivs.”

Theo struggled to control his frustration. “What happened at Sivs?”

“Everyone hates the zombies. They’re terrified of them. Everyone’s lost someone to a zombie. Someone they know.”

“Yeah. For sure. That’s why the earth needs to be rid of them. They’re the only creatures on this earth that don’t have a reason for being. They’re evil.” Theo glanced outside, checking the position of the sun. “Abnormal, not a part of the circle of life. Cannibalistic monsters.”

Vonnie bit her lip. “Selena has a different perspective.”

“She kills them—it can’t be that different of a perspective. And she does it in an inefficient, dangerous way. Why the hell doesn’t she use arrows or a bomb or fire or something?”

“Because that’s not her way. It’s more humane, she says, the way she does it. She has to rescue them. Selena can’t bear to see the destruction of life. She won’t let Frank set mouse traps unless they’re cages and the mice can be set free outside.”

Theo shook his head, frustrated and confused. “What zombies do isn’t living. It’s . . . I don’t know what, but it’s not living. It’s evil. They eat anyone or anything; and what they don’t eat, they destroy just for the hell of it. It’s a damn good thing they’re dumb as rocks or we’d have ceased to exist on this earth.” He’d made his way through the carrots and now lifted the iced tea to drink. Ahh. Just the perfect amount of sweet.

Vonnie’s lips pursed. “Well, you’re sounding like Brandon a bit now. But somehow, she convinced him to see her side of it; and when he made a big fuss about her going out at night, they came up with an idea. If the rest of the town would help, they could corral all the zombies and then Selena could do her thing in relative safety.”

“Sort of like putting a group of wild dogs down one by one after you cage them?” Theo asked. “Still not very efficient, but at least it would be safer for her.”

“Selena convinced them to try it and they built a corral. And they managed to do it—to trick a bunch of the zombies to go in there one night. Locked them in and everything was fine. She took care of a few every night, carefully.”

“Until . . . Aw, crap. Let me guess. They got loose?”

She nodded. “It was ugly. Horrifying. They were trapped inside the walls with the rest of us, and they got out. By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. The zombies were crazed and frightened and wild—and hungry—and they attacked. Selena tried to stop them, tried to help, but by then it was too late. The damage was done. Children, the elderly, even some of the young, strong men who’d been building a solar-powered vehicle were all destroyed. The death count was nearly half of the population of the settlement.”

Theo felt sick. He didn’t really need to hear more; he could imagine it. “What did they do?”

“Well, of course, everyone blamed Selena. As if she’d caused it herself, as if she’d forced those zombies to come out and attack everyone. And Brandon couldn’t even look at her. He wouldn’t listen to her. And she . . . well, of course she took it all on herself. All of it. She needed him and he couldn’t give her what she needed.” Vonnie glanced at him sidewise and Theo felt the pointedness of her glare. “And so, we left. They would never forgive her. She couldn’t go anywhere without being spat on or pushed or ignored or . . . whatever. It was ugly.

“They called her a zombie lover. And it wasn’t a compliment,” Vonnie said, seemingly following Theo’s thoughts along its silent path. “Then they started wondering whether what she was doing out there with them wasn’t really killing them, but somehow hypnotizing them and training them to do her bidding. We had to leave.”

By now, Theo was feeling ill himself. What a horrible story. He could understand both sides, both perspectives of what had happened. It was the same sort of thing that had happened after 9/11—too many people blamed every Muslim for what had been done by a dozen radical ones.

It was human nature: to find a scapegoat, to place blame on someone when something tragic happened.

It wasn’t always right, nor was it the best aspect of humanity, but it was a common reaction.

But he still didn’t have any greater admiration for Brandon.

“But that’s not the last of it,” Vonnie said. “We moved on and stayed at a place called Crossroads for a while; maybe a year or so. Of course after that last experience, Selena wasn’t willing to trust anyone about her mission. She was still helping dying people find their way to wherever their afterlife was, but she wouldn’t ignore her need to help the zombies. So this time, she didn’t tell anyone what she was doing. But, then, people started to see her. Out, in the dark, beyond the walls at night with the zombies. It appeared to them that she was helping or training them, or something.

“Since there’d recently been a rash of zombie attacks against three teenagers, the people of Crossroads became incensed at the thought of someone helping or protecting the zombies. They started calling her horrible things and shunning her, and it escalated there too. Then a young woman was attacked one night beyond the walls, and killed, and that was the end of that. They blamed Selena’s ‘zombie loving’ for attracting the monsters, and an angry group from the settlement came and tried to take her away and lock her up. We left instead.”

Jesus. No wonder Selena didn’t want to talk about it. No wonder she didn’t feel as if she could trust anyone. He understood, but it still bothered him that she wouldn’t trust him.

“So we came here. Actually, we met Frank and he brought us here. That’s why we don’t live in Yellow Mountain, and why she doesn’t go there very often. The less people know about her, the happier she is. To them, she’s just the Death Lady. Not a zombie lover.”

Theo was nodding, but his stomach churned. The stories reminded him of the Salem witch trials—innocent people tainted and judged, even murdered, because of a bunch of superstitious people.

Yet he still didn’t understand why Selena was so intent on making the deaths of zombies so comfortable. Why she risked her life to help them—as if they were her pets that had somehow gone feral.

It reminded him of one of their neighbors when he and Lou were growing up. Mrs. Cloud had had a rottweiler that had attacked and killed another neighbor’s cat.

Theo and Lou had played with the rott many times, and had even seen it be around a cat without showing any aggressive behavior. But this one time, something must have happened to provoke it, and the dog had attacked. The courts had ordered the dog to be put down; and although Lou and Theo had protested and picketed and wrote letters (this was before Twitter and Facebook groups) for the life of the dog, the decision had prevailed.