Zombified (14 page)

He and Cody pulled the plywood down and assessed the situation.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I got some scraps in the van'll fix that up. Give me half an hour and it'll be better than new.”

I hoped it didn't look so much better that Dad might notice when he got home, but I wasn't in a position to argue.

“How much will it cost, sir?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was some sort of talking dog.

“Sir?” he asked, then barked out a laugh. “You could learn something from her about manners.” This was directed at Cody, who just rolled his eyes. “Naw, for a friend of this one, no charge. Like I said, I'll use scraps.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

It took him a lot less than half an hour. I was impressed by how efficient he was. Competency is always impressive.

“You never told me your dad was so cool,” I said to Cody. We sat in the kitchen while his dad did his thing in the bedroom. Everyone had an off-brand soda in front of them.

“Yeah,” said Cody, “you caught him in a good mood. Calling him ‘sir' was a good move. Smart.”

“I wasn't gaming him,” I said. “I really was being polite.”

“Aren't they different names for the same thing?” he asked. Phil laughed and Cody smiled at his own little joke. Very little.

His dad called to us from the room and we all went to see his handiwork. I made a big deal of how great it all was. A bigger deal than I normally would have since he was doing the job for free. I figured I'd pay him with appreciation.

He cleaned up and when he left, Cody asked him if he might stay with us.

“Sure,” his dad said. “Just be home for dinner.”

Cody agreed to this and we all went back to sit at the table.

“Tell me again what happened,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and told the story for what felt like the umpteenth time.

“You're sure he overdosed?” Cody asked when I was done. “You're sure he turned into a zombie.”

“Yes to both,” I said.

“Wild!” he said. “This is just so crazy.”

“But not in a good, Gnarls Barkley sort of way,” Phil said.

“So, what are you gonna do about it?” Cody asked.

“Do about it?”

“Your ex-squeeze is running around out there,” he said, “one of the undead. What are you gonna do about it?”

I grabbed their empty cans and carried them over to the sink to rinse them out.

“I don't know if there's anything
to
do,” I said over the running water. “He's another zombie now. If we come across him on one of our hunts, I'll deal with him.” I turned off the water. “But I wouldn't even know how to go about hunting for an individual zombie. It's not like we have a tracer collar on him.”

“We need to tell his dad, don't we?” Phil asked.

That stopped me short. I hadn't thought about his dad. I wondered what their relationship had been like there at the end, after Brandon's becoming a junkie was impossible to ignore. I'd never even met his dad. All I'd ever known about him was that he had a somewhat lackadaisical take on parental responsibility.

“Courtney?”

“I'm trying to think of a way to get out of that,” I said. I leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms. Both the boys looked at me expectantly. I felt resentment welling up inside me. “Part of me thinks I should be the one to do it. Part of me wonders why the hell it's my responsibility.”

Phil shrugged. “He died here. After coming to visit you.”

Right,
that
.

“Want me to do it?” Phil asked.

Oh, God, I didn't even want to imagine how that might go.

“No,” I said. “I'll do it.”

“Well,” Phil said, “if you don't, I won't hold it against you.”

“Yeah, it's not like you owe him anything,” Cody said. “I mean, isn't he the guy who set us up as a zombie buffet last year?”

We all fell silent. The mood hadn't been exactly festive, but now it was positively goddamn morose.

“I hate to leave like this,” Phil said, “but I need to make an appearance at home.” He stood up and Cody did the same.

“And I ought to leave because you probably don't want me to hang out here,” Cody said.

“Want to come over to my place?” Phil asked.

“No,” I said. “I have something I need to do.”

 

We made tentative plans to get together later. I wanted so bad to give Phil another kiss as he left, but Cody was there like a five-and-a-half-foot-tall cockblock. Phil told me to call if I needed to after talking to Mr. Ikaros. I promised to do that.

And then I set about putting off the phone call. I'd never wanted less to make a particular call ever. The only instance that came close was when I got caught shoplifting when I was fourteen and the store manager made me call Dad while we sat in this crappy little office. That was a pleasant chat compared to what this talk was going to be like.

Luckily, I'm pretty good at procrastinating. First, I had to look up Mr. Ikaros's number. While I was doing that, there was a whole World Wide Web to look at. The Army announced that January 2 was the day they'd start to reclaim NYC. This prompted me to update my Facebook status, which I knew from recent experience would be ignored unless Phil happened to log on to the site in the next day or two.

Then I found some cleaning around the house that needed to be done. I was about to put on rubber gloves and attack the hallway bathroom when the ludicrousness of the situation hit me. In the great scheme of things, calling Brandon's dad was more important than scrubbing a toilet that didn't really need it.

I sat at the kitchen table and stared at my phone for a long time before picking it up and punching in the numbers I'd found online.

“Marcus and Welles Law Offices,” a woman answered on the first ring. “How may I direct your call?”

“May I speak to . . .” I didn't know his first name. “Mr. Ikaros?”

A pause, then, “Mr. Ikaros is busy at the moment, may I—”

“It's about his son,” I said.

Her tone was different when she answered. “Just a moment,” she said and then I was on hold.

It wasn't long before a gruff man's voice came on the line.

“If this is someone that my son owes money,” he said and I held the phone away from my ear because he was yelling so loud, “you need to know that I am no longer legally responsible for his debts!”

“Mr. Ikaros?” I said.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“My name is Courtney,” I said. “I used to be a friend of Brandon's.”

“And this is about my son?” he asked. I found I wasn't able to speak all of a sudden. “Well?” he prompted.

“Sir,” I said, and my throat caught. I bit my lower lip until it passed. “Brandon is dead, sir.”

Silence on the other end.

“He died of a drug overdose last night.”

“And how do you know this, Courtney?” he asked.

“I . . . I . . .”

“You were with him when he died. Is that it?” His voice was gentle now. Maybe not gentle, maybe just tired.

“Do you know what hospital he's in, Courtney?” Mr. Ikaros asked.

“He's not,” I said. “He died of a Vitamin Z overdose and, uh, and he . . .” My vision suddenly refracted like I was looking through a kaleidoscope. I blinked away tears.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you for calling me, Courtney, but you have to understand that my son hasn't been in my life for several months.”

I bit my lip again, worried that I'd draw blood.

“Brandon has been dead to me for a while, Courtney,” Mr. Ikaros went on. “I've just been waiting for the call to confirm it. Thank you for calling.”

And then the line went as dead as Mr. Ikaros's son.

I put the phone down on the table, lay my head beside it, and cried. I cried like it was a wild beast that needed to get out of me. At some point, I don't remember when, I ended up on the floor. It was him saying, “Thank you for calling,” that did it. I kept hearing that line again and again, delivered like Mr. Ikaros was dead himself, but still remembered the finer points of etiquette.

I stopped again and dragged myself into the shower, where I cried some more. Eventually, I stopped for good and took myself to the movies. I picked the dumbest-looking comedy that was available, anything to take my mind off what I'd just done. I craved something funny, needed it.

I ended up crying through it anyway.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S
aturday I hung out with Phil and Cody at Phil's house. His aunt was in a real tizzy since Phil had
two
friends over. She kept plying us with food and sodas. And not the off-brand crap, either, but actual brands that you might see in a national television ad campaign. It was great.

We all commiserated about the horribleness that was my phone call with Mr. Ikaros. I even told them about my crying jag at the movies.

“How many people were in there with you?” Cody asked.

“Three,” I said. “They left after a while. Which was nice, I guess. They might have gotten the manager to kick me out.”

“Rough,” Cody said.

“Sorry I wasn't there,” Phil said.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm sort of glad you didn't see me. It was a pretty ugly cry.”

Phil spent the rest of the afternoon before he had to go to work drawing. Cody and I sat on the floor reading comics and arguing points of nerd minutia like who would win in a fight between Superman and Thor, and who was the lamest superhero of all time. (The answer is Aquaman, by the way.)

Later, Phil drove us home. Cody brought up going on a zombie hunt later, but I still wasn't feeling up to it.

“How about tomorrow?” he asked.

“Tomorrow might work,” I said. I knew I needed to get my mind off the Brandon thing, and killing shufflers was guaranteed to do it.

“Want to invite Warren along?” Phil asked.

Cody groaned. He rubbed the spot behind his ear where the doctors had just removed his stitches.

“We need to give him another chance,” Phil said.

“Do we?” Cody asked. “Do we really?”

“I think so,” I said. More groans from Cody. “Listen, if he takes a swing at you with his sword again, I'll help you kick his ass, okay?”

“Now I sort of hope it happens again,” he said.

“Okay,” Phil said. “You want to invite him along?” he asked me.

“Uh, sure,” I said. I wasn't sure why I'd been designated the official contactor of Warren, but there it was. I dug out my phone and wrote him a quick text. I got back a reply almost instantly: YES.

“He's in,” I said.

We dropped off Cody, then Phil took me home. He idled out front for a second.

“Want me to come over after I'm done at the cinema?” he asked.

“That's okay,” I said. “I think I'll just eat some dinner and go to bed. I'm still feeling pretty wrung out.”

“Okay,” Phil said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will,” I said, “but I'll be fine.”

I climbed out. Before I shut the door, I leaned into the car and kissed Phil's startled face. It felt just as good as the first one.

“Have a good night,” I said.

“I think that pretty much guaranteed it'll be good,” he said. He wore an honest-to-God smile as he put the car in gear and drove away.

I know I'd told Phil I'd be okay, but I spent the whole night feeling like someone was watching me. I know we've all had that feeling before, but this time it was so strong I kept getting up to open the front door and look out at the street, half-expecting someone to be standing out there watching the house. Even after I closed every drape and curtain in the house, I still felt it. I started to become certain that I'd turn a corner, or open a door
inside,
and find someone waiting for me there. It was freaky, and I almost called Phil several times. But I told myself he'd laugh at me. I think I knew, deep down, that this was untrue, but it kept me from calling him.

That night, I slept with my pistol right on my bedside table.

 

I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard furniture dragging out in the kitchen. Like, a chair scraping across linoleum. Were floors still made of linoleum? I shook my head to try to clear it. I grabbed my pistol and slowly opened the door to the hall. My vision dimmed until I was nearly blind, but the kitchen light was on. I distinctly remembered turning it off when I went to bed.

As silently as I was able, I crept down the hall, the pistol in two hands. I imagined I looked like the heroine in a TV cop show. A show I'm sure would have been canceled before the first season was done.

I got to the corner of the hall that opened up into the kitchen and paused. I quickly put my head around the corner, but didn't see anything. Whoever was in there must have been behind the opened fridge door. I pulled my head back and took several deep breaths—preparing myself.

Before I decided just to head back to the room to call the cops, I jumped into the kitchen and raised the pistol. I aimed it right at the fridge door.

“Come out of there, asshole!” I screamed.

Sherri screamed in return and popped up from behind the door. In one hand she held a jar of pickles. With her free hand, she covered her heart like she was the world's youngest heart attack victim.

“Jesus, Courtney!” she yelled at me. “I'm just here getting a snack. Put the gun away, Hopalong.”

“Hey, Sherri,” I said, like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be there in the middle of the night. Considering she was dead and all. I flopped into one of the kitchen chairs and set the gun on the table in front of me. My heart still raced, but it was starting to settle down.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I said. “I thought you were a burglar.”

“Sorry,” she said around a mouthful of something. “I've just been starving.”

“Not feeding you where you are?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You know,” she said, “the diet of worms and all.”

And there it was again, that feeling of being watched. I looked across the living room at the front door. I knew—knew!—that if I got up and opened it, I'd find someone or something there waiting for me.

“Goddammit, Sherri,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, “I brought a friend. But you invited him along.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked. I couldn't see too well again. I knew the lights were still up, but I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, and I wasn't really able to maneuver my head to look at Sherri when she spoke.

“Did you know,” Sherri said somewhere near the fridge, “that the definition of
nemesis
is, ‘the inescapable agent of one's own downfall'?” Her eating sounds were really getting to me. They seemed too loud, too close. I couldn't see her no matter how I tried.

“What is this, Sherri?” I asked. “You usually try to give me advice. What's going on this time?” My eyes wouldn't open properly, and I couldn't move my head. I felt like I was a quadriplegic because of how little control I had over my body.

“In tragedies, the hero almost always creates the circumstances of their own downfall,” Sherri went on lecturing.

“Is this about Brandon?” I asked.

At the mention of his name, the scene changed. I no longer sat in the kitchen chair; now I sat under a fat, full moon on a huge throne of some sort. Or a stump or tree root that was shaped like a throne. I was tied to it somehow. A stiff breeze threw my hair into my face, and leaves fell through the air in a complicated dance.

Sherri stood in front of me, looking like the last time I'd seen her—freshly zombified, minus the gaping head wound.

“Let me go, Sherri,” I said. “You delivered your message. I've been properly Scrooged. Now, let me go!”

No matter how I fought, I wasn't able to break whatever bonds held me. The rough seat beneath me dug into my skin every time I shifted. I imagined all of these tiny abrasions all over my backside. The smell of blood traveled far on the night air.

And then everything stopped. The leaves froze in midair, the swaying branches stopped, and the world was filled with a huge silence.

“He's here,” Sherri said in her graveyard voice. “I know he's been waiting a long time for this. He won't be disappointed.”

A hand snaked around my body from behind. A withered, desiccated hand. It settled on my breast and gave it a cruel squeeze.

“I mean,” Sherri said, “you make such a delicious bride.”

Thin light crept in around the edges of my blinds when my eyes fluttered open. I brought my hand up to wipe my eyes and hit myself in the nose with my pistol. Great, I'd been gripping a deadly weapon in my sleep; no way that might have gone badly.

I sat up and put the gun back in its holster, then put it in the drawer of my bedside table. When it was safely away where I couldn't hurt myself with it, I lay back in bed.

Those freaking dreams. If there was an afterlife, I'd have to find Sherri and apologize for giving her the starring role in them. She deserved better.

The clock said it wasn't even seven in the morning yet. I checked my internal freak-out-o-meter, and it told me there was no chance I was going back to sleep anytime soon. Great.

Well, that was what crappy basic cable was made for, right?

 

A full day of sleep-deprived awful TV left me in the mood to really kill something.

I'd been dozing on the couch when my cell phone started to buzz on my chest. I opened one eye and looked at the screen.

“Phil,” I said after I hit the accept button. “Please tell me you're here.”

“We are here,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

“I have been dressed and ready for hours,” I said.

I killed the call and went outside. Warren's ninja-mobile waited on the corner. Seldom have I been so relieved to see a carload of teenage boys.

We spent a couple of hours driving around looking for any signs of zombies and came up empty. We even went back to a couple of spots where we'd seen some Zs in the past, but none had returned.

“If we don't find any walkers soon, let's call it a night,” Warren said. “Walkers” was apparently what they called shufflers where he'd come from. It was definitely not catching on with us, but he kept using it. I felt like Regina in
Mean Girls
. “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch' happen!”

“My folks had a Christmas party this weekend,” he went on.

“And you didn't invite us?” Cody asked. He did a good job of pretending to be hurt.

“And I swiped some beer from there,” Warren continued as if no one had spoken. “Let's go somewhere and chill out.”

This plan had a lot of appeal for me, personally. It had been a long time since I'd done anything like that—just sitting around with friends, talking smack, and drinking. It used to be how I spent every weekend. You know, back when my friends were still alive.

“Let's do it,” I said.

“Yeah, maybe,” Cody said.

Phil didn't say anything. That surprised me because even though he misses some social cues, he usually isn't rude.

“Hey, Rain Man,” I said and nudged him.

“What's that?” he said and sort of pointed with his chin out into the darkness.

Warren slowed the car to a crawl, and we all stared out the window. We were on a residential street. We'd been driving around so long, I honestly had no idea where we were. This part of town was a lot more run down than we were used to. A lot of yards didn't even have fences, just makeshift barriers around the front doors.

Huddled underneath the shadow of a tree, we saw two or three figures. As the car went past, the figures stepped farther into the darkness.

“Suspicious,” said Warren.

“Definitely,” said Phil.

“Are we thinking zombies?” Cody asked.

“I hope to God you aren't serious,” I said.

“What?” Cody asked. “What did I say?”

Warren turned the corner, then the next, and parked the car.

“Let's grab our gear out of the trunk and investigate,” Warren said.

Investigate,
like we were some sort of league of junior detectives. Like we were the Scooby gang. I claimed dibs on Velma. But we did like he said.

When we all had our weapons in hand, Phil asked Warren, “What are you thinking?”

“We head up this street, 'cause it's farther away from the walkers,” Warren said. “Less chance of being seen. Then we just try to sneak up on them. Which means we need to be
quiet
.”

“Why are you looking at me when you say that?” Cody asked.

“No reason.”

In just the couple of minutes it had taken us to hear the plan, I'd already started going numb from the cold. I didn't know how ninja-like I could be with arms and legs that were numb. The zombies would probably see our breath as we approached. I didn't mention any of this out loud because I was trying to be positive.

Warren took point and we headed off up the street. As we got to the intersection, he had us stop for him to check where we'd seen the zombies. They were still there. Warren waved us on, and as fast and quiet as possible, we ran across the street and grabbed a dark shadow of our own to squat in.

We regrouped behind an SUV parked in a driveway. Phil poked his head up and checked out the situation.

“I don't think they heard us,” he said. “I think they're still there.”

So we made our slow way from driveway to driveway, hiding behind cars and old washing machines and whatever other junk we found in the yards. Finally we were in front of the same house as them. I really just wanted a chance to kill something because the exercise might warm me up.

“On three,” Warren said. He held up three fingers. When he hit “one,” we all jumped out from behind the old pickup where we'd been hiding and rushed the zombies under the tree. I gave my war whoop as I ran, and raised my wrecking tool.