Zombified (18 page)

“I'll have to get back to you on that,” I said.

“Great,” Phil said. “Until then, I'm going to close my eyes and hope this pain in my face goes away.”

He dropped off to sleep, and I still didn't have any answers by the time he woke up.

 

We went to my place as soon as we hit Salem to let Phil wash his face. While he was in the bathroom, I started to cook an actual meal. Sure, most of it was frozen stuff that just needed to be opened and thrown in the oven, but it was better than calling for takeout.

When Phil came into the kitchen, the blood was all gone, but that just made it easy to see how swollen his nose was.

“God,” I said, “I'm so sorry.”

He waved it off and went to call his aunt and uncle and tell them he'd be having dinner at my place that night.

Later we sat down to a dinner of chicken strips, tater tots, and formerly frozen peas. It felt very domestic and grown-up. We talked about a few things, school and Cody's goofiness, but we kept coming back to what had happened earlier that day.

“Do you think Buddha made it out of the building?” Phil asked.

“No,” I said. “I just hope he let it fill up with as many zombies as possible before pushing the button.”

“I keep thinking about that girl,” Phil said.

“Precious.”

“What a stupid damn name,” he said.

“She should have gotten out with us,” I said.

“She didn't know us,” he said. “She wanted to be with someone who made her feel safe.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “That's why leaving with you was the only choice for me.”

Phil put down his fork and leaned across the table. I met him halfway and we kissed. After so much death and destruction, it felt like a jolt of life. I felt just the barest twinge of guilt about having kissed Warren a couple of nights ago.

“That was nice,” I said.

“It was,” he said.

“I wish you'd stay the night,” I said. I covered my mouth with my hand. I hadn't expected that to come out of me. I'd just been thinking it.

“I don't know,” Phil said.

“No funny stuff,” I said. “I swear. It's just that after today, I need some closeness, you know?”

He seemed to really consider that. “Yeah, I do know what you mean.” He got up to call his aunt and uncle again.

“Thank God my uncle answered,” he said when he came back into the kitchen. I'd started cleaning up and he joined me. It reminded me of cleaning the dishes with Gene, his uncle.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked as he took a dish from me and started to dry it.

“Did you tell him you were staying over at Cody's or something?”

“Why would I do that?” he asked. “No, I told him I was staying here for the night.”

My mouth fell open and I nearly dropped the plate I was holding. “Phil!”

“What? My aunt and uncle trust me,” he said. “I'm not going to lie to them about what I'm doing.”

“Do you tell them everything you do?” I asked.

He thought about that for a moment. “No,” he finally said, “but I don't actively lie to them unless I have to.”

“So you just said, ‘Hey, Uncle Gene, I'm going to shack up with Courtney tonight,' and he was okay with that?” I asked. I couldn't wrap my head around this.

“I would never say ‘shack up,' ” he said. “Otherwise, yeah. He grilled me about protection and stuff.” He had the good grace to blush at that, and I did, too. “I told him nothing was going to happen.” He gave me a significant look.

Fine, dammit. Though to be honest, I wasn't sure why I wanted something to happen so badly. Sure, Phil made me think impure thoughts, but things were more complicated than that. Part of it felt like it might make up for what I did with Warren. Maybe that was reason enough to just let it go if Phil wasn't ready.

“Nothing will happen,” I said. “Scout's honor.”

“You were never a scout,” Phil said.

“True,” I said, “but I always thought I'd look good in the uniform.”

We decided to watch a movie, and I let Phil choose the DVD this time. Watching him go through the process of picking something was sort of terrifying and fascinating at the same time. He dug out literally every film we had and started making piles. First by genre. Some genres got discarded immediately—good-bye, comedies; farewell, musicals. Then he went through the piles that were left and made discard and keep sub-piles. On and on it went until he'd finally settled on something he wanted to watch.

“Black Hawk Down,”
he said. “I get war movies, you know? The motivations and objectives all make sense to me.”

“I knew you were going to choose that the moment you laid your hand on it,” I said. “The look you got in your eyes.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I still needed to go through the process.”

I didn't have the heart to point out that it had taken almost as long to pick something to watch as it would take to actually watch it. We put it in and snuggled together and I fell asleep almost immediately. When it was all over, he woke me up and I tried my best to dry the huge drool spot that I'd left on his chest.

“Ready to hit the hay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'll take the couch again.”

“Nope,” I said. “You'll sleep with me in the big bed.” When he started to protest, I put up my hand and stopped him. “Listen,” I said, “I promised you no funny business, and I meant it. But after the day we had, I want some snuggle time, and I'm not going to argue about it.”

He heaved a sigh, but didn't argue anymore.

He got ready in the bathroom in the hall, and I used the one in the master bedroom. I thought about trying to sexy up my nightwear, but decided that might be 1) unfair, and 2) impossible. There was only so much you could do with a T-shirt and boy's boxers.

I slipped into the big bed in Dad's room since there was no way my bed could fit the both of us. Phil came in a few minutes later. He wore nothing but plaid boxers. We'd never been swimming or anything, so I'd never seen his body before. It was a good body. Not like six-pack abs or anything, but not flabby or scrawny, either. Just nice. I wondered how I was going to keep my “no funny business” promise.

“You're staring,” Phil said.

“There's a lot to stare at,” I said. “I didn't take you for a boxers kind of guy.”

“Well,” he said, “I need the room.”

I saw that for myself.

I pulled the covers back for him to slide in. Which he did. Then he lay back like a corpse in a coffin.

I snapped off the lamp and lay on my back, too, for a while.

“Screw this,” I finally said. I turned on my side away from him and said, “Snuggle with me.”

He did as he was told. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. Something poked me in the back. That was surprising.

“What are you thinking about, Phil?” I asked.

“Courtney,” he said. His voice had a warning tone that I chose to ignore.

“I can help you with that,” I said.

“Right,” he said and turned over. “You snuggle me.”

I rolled my eyes, which was wasted since it was completely dark and he was faced away from me, but I did it. We settled down and it felt nice to be pressed up against him, my face in the back of his neck, my body wrapped around him.

“I'm glad you were with me today,” I said. “Not that it all happened, but if it had to, I'm glad you were there.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And I know what you mean.”

“I never want to do anything to drive you away,” I said, worried that I already had.

“I'm not going anywhere, Courtney,” he said. “You can forget that particular worry.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll hold you to that.”

Then we fell silent and a few minutes later we were asleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
took Phil home the next day before driving to the airport. I pulled up to our agreed-upon meeting place, and there was Dad. I felt big with love for him. He was so frumpy and potbellied and sweet. How could I not love him?

And of course he immediately asked me if anything had happened while he had been gone, to which I replied, “Not really.” Because the love I had for him meant that I tried to shield him from the shit storm that was my life. As we drove home, he told me all about his conference in exhaustive detail. Or exhausting, whichever.

He eyed the house carefully when we got home. Looking for evidence of a Hollywood-style kegger, I'm sure. I'd tell him that I didn't have enough friends for an actual party to reassure him, but it might have made him sad.

“Did you cook an actual meal here?” he said when he saw the kitchen.

“Yes,” I said. “Phil came over last night and I made him dinner.”

“Did you now?” he asked.

“Don't make it into a thing,” I said.

“Far be it from me to express interest in my daughter's life.”

“I just like him, that's all,” I said, “and if you make a big deal out of it, it'll be weird. So don't.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “As far as you know, I don't care at all about this.”

“Good,” I said. “Keep it that way.”

He took his things down the hall into his room. “Hey,” he yelled and I wondered what he'd found. What had Phil or I left in there that gave us away? “Did you clean my windows?”

Oh, God, the new window glass was too clean. I needed to take the time to have smudged it up.

“Yeah,” I yelled. “I thought it'd be nice to allow sunshine to actually, you know, come into the house.”

“I need to leave town more often,” he said.

We chilled the rest of that day, mostly watching TV and getting takeout for dinner. Surprising absolutely no one, Christmas Eve the next day was more of the same. Neither of us were big on Christmas, so it didn't seem weird to spend the day before Jesus' birthday watching horrible basic cable.

We went to sleep after binge-watching
A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story,
and
It's a Wonderful Life
. You know, life might have moved on after the dead came back, but no one had made a really good Christmas movie since then, either, so maybe we weren't as okay as everyone pretended to be.

We got up early the next day and opened our few presents. Dad gave me lots of gift certificates, which some might see as an admission that he didn't know me very well, but I took it as a sign that he was pretty freaking savvy. I gave him some new clothes in the form of socks, underwear, pants, and shirts. Since he never shopped for himself, it was up to me to keep him clothed.

After that, it was all about drinking eggnog and watching more Christmas specials.

That was the plan anyway. A little after noon, my cell phone rang. Dad and I both looked at it suspiciously. I finally picked it up. Phil.

“Hey,” I said when I answered it.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Yeah, merry Christmas,” I said. “What's up?”

“What are you doing later?”

I thought of all the glorious, terrible TV watching I had in front of me.

“Nothing,” I said. Dad raised his eyebrows at that, even though he didn't know the question to which I was responding. I got up off the couch and moved the phone call into my bedroom.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Want to go to the movies?” he asked. “I love to go to the movies on Christmas because there's no one else in the theater.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I'd have to ask my dad.”

“You should definitely ask him,” Phil said. He almost sounded chipper.

I assured him I'd do that.

“Also,” Phil said, “I got you something.”

“What?”

“I got you something,” he repeated. “A gift on Christmas. It's a custom among my people.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn't get you anything, Phil. We didn't talk about gifts.”

“That's fine,” he said. “You didn't have to get me anything. Going to the movies is all the present I need.”

I grinned. For someone who claimed not to understand human interactions, he was hitting it out of the park on this one.

“Let me talk to Dad,” I said. “I'll call you back.”

Of course Dad said yes. He said he'd be able to drink all the eggnog and watch all the TV by himself if he had to. The sacrifices that man was willing to make for me.

Phil picked me up later and we saw some action thing. I honestly couldn't tell you what it was about or who the good guys were or what they were trying to keep the bad guys from doing, but Phil seemed to enjoy it. After the movie, he suggested we get dinner.

“Not at the Bully Burger,” he said.

I agreed to eat a non-fast-food meal, and we went to a little place called the Spaghetti Warehouse, which was as charming as you might imagine from the name. It was the kind of place that used a Chianti bottle as a candle holder. Okay, I'll say no more.

After we ordered our food, Phil produced a manilla envelope seemingly from nowhere and handed it over.

“This is a really beautiful wrapping job you've done here, Phil.”

He didn't say anything to defend himself, so I just went ahead and opened it.

I ripped off the top of the envelope and reached inside. I pulled out a comic book. I didn't understand at first. Had Phil bought me a single issue of a comic? Maybe money was tight in his house this year. Then I looked at the cover:
Zombie Hunter
it said in blood-dripping type across the top, and there in lurid color was a portrait of a girl who looked a lot like me facing off against a horde of the undead.
F
IRST
P
ULSE
- P
OUNDING
I
SSUE,
it said in a burst.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “It's your comic!”

“I just photocopied it at OfficeMax,” he said. “But it is the very first copy, and it's yours.”

“This is the best Christmas present I've gotten in years!” I squealed. God help me, I actually squealed. “Thank you. You need to sign it.” That made him blush, but he smiled, too. I knew I was making a proper big deal out of this.

“Well,” he said, “I hope you like it.”

“You're about to watch me read it,” I said, “so you'll be the first to know if I like it or not.”

He started to protest that I shouldn't read it now, but I ignored him. I didn't even stop when the waitress brought my lasagna.

It was all about a girl named Coral and her sidekicks, Bill and Brody, as they hunted zombies around Cherry City. They had an occasional ally, a good-looking black kid named Willis. Though it was revealed at the end that Willis was really a bad guy who mind-controlled zombies and only pretended to be on the good guys' side. I loved it from start to finish and told Phil so when I was done.

“Good,” he said, and smiled. “I'm glad you liked it. I used it as part of my admissions package to the cartooning school.”

This got more squeals from me. I was so happy he'd actually applied.

“It feels like everything is falling into place,” I said. “You're going to go to school and learn comics, and I'm going to get into Columbia. It'll be perfect.”

“It seems like it, huh?” Phil asked.

I'd been sitting across from him, and I scooted over to the chair right next to him.

“I hope you don't mind public displays of affection,” I said. Before he answered, I laid a huge kiss on him. He returned it right away. I heard someone at a table whistle at us, but I didn't care.

When we broke, the waitress stood beside the table smiling down at us.

“Any dessert for you two,” she said, “or did you just have it?”

Phil blushed a deep shade of red, which I thought was adorable. But, honestly, I still wanted dessert.

“May I have the tiramisu?” I asked. Phil ordered the spumoni and we ate our desserts sitting side by side, holding hands under the table. It must have been nauseating to witness, but I didn't care. Actually, it might have been the first time ever that at least half my brain wasn't taken up with wondering what other people were thinking of me. It was a feeling I wanted to get used to.

It was getting late after that, so Phil drove me home. I was eager to repeat this date, so I asked Phil, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Oh,” he said. He looked embarrassed. “I didn't tell you? My aunt and uncle always rent a place on the beach, and we get together with some family friends the week after Christmas.”

“No,” I said. “You didn't tell me that.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I meant to.”

I tried really hard not to get mad. I didn't want to spoil the evening. But man, I was pissed. How could he forget to tell me something like that? How does that just slip your mind?

“When will you be back?”

“We always come back the day after New Year's,” he said.

Great, so I had to go a whole week without seeing him. “We can do something that day,” he said. “And we'll have that whole weekend before school starts again.”

I knew he was trying to make me feel better, and I let him believe he'd succeeded. I smiled, and laughed at his jokes, and let him kiss me good night, but inside I was in a deep funk. Part of me was angry at myself for taking it this way. This was Jane Austen territory—the mooning heroine, pining for her wayward paramour. Screw that.

I just wished my resolve matched my mood. I moped through the whole week. I wasn't really sure how Dad put up with me. Actually, toward the end of the week, he stopped putting up with it and went into the office to take care of “something.”

Phil called a couple of times from the coast, but I let it go to voice mail. After the third or fourth attempt to get me, he just left a message that said I should call him if I wanted to talk. Now I was caught in a spiral where it was up to me to act like an adult. Every time I picked up the phone, though, I'd find some reason not to punch in his number.

I did text him once, though, because texting is the passive-aggressive enabler that humanity had been waiting centuries for.

I looked at that message for a long time before I hit send. Was it possible to compose a lamer message? I didn't think so. It might actually win some sort of award . . .

I finally overcame my pettiness and called him on New Year's Eve.

He answered on the first ring.

“If you wanted to get back at me,” I said, “you would have let it go to voice mail.”

“If I wanted to get back at you,” he said. “Mostly I wanted to talk to you.”

I heard party sounds in the background—laughing, music, drinking. I swear I heard drinking.

“I don't want to keep you,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Phil said. “I've been waiting to talk to you for a week. I'm not going to let you go so easily.”

I'd called him a few minutes after ten, and we were on the phone for hours. He told me everything he'd been up to with his family and their friends since the moment they'd arrived in Seaside, and I told him about my many adventures moping around the house.

“Jesus, Phil,” I said, “I drove my dad away. The most understanding man I know had to leave the house because of my crappy attitude!”

At one point, there was a burst of cheering in the background.

“Oh, man,” I said. “I made you miss the New Year.”

“I've always thought,” he said, “that you need to spend the turning of the year doing what you want to do for the rest of the year. So I'm glad I spent it talking with you.”

It was so corny, and yet I felt a lump form in my throat and tears well up in my eyes.

“Why are you so nice to me?” I asked.

“Must be because I like you,” he said. “Go figure.”

We talked a bit longer, but really that was the end of the conversation because with those six words, Phil had managed to kill me. Must be because he liked me. Yep. I was done.

We made vague plans to go kill zombies the night he got back. I'd have agreed to do anything with him then. Then we said good night and I went to bed and slept better than I had since I'd started acting like an idiot. Oh, I was still an idiot, but at least I knew I hadn't ruined things with Phil.

 

Two nights later, I sneaked out of the house and ran to Phil's car waiting at the curb. I wore a heavy jacket and thick wool socks inside my Dr. Martens because it was freezing. They'd actually predicted snow, which was pretty rare for Salem despite how much it rained.

I slid into the front passenger seat. I wanted to throw my arms around Phil's neck and start making out with him, but Cody sat in the backseat.

“Hey, Courtney,” he said. “How was Christmas and New Year's?”

“Good,” I said. “How about you?”

He shrugged. “You know what I got for Christmas? Oh, it was a banner year at the old Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me and said, ‘Hey, smoke up, Johnny.' ”

Phil looked confused. “What?”

“You know,” I said, “I never liked that movie. I know that's sacrilegious or whatever, but there it is.”

“Oh, a movie,” Phil said. That meant he felt safe to dismiss it. He pulled the car away from the curb. “Did you get ahold of Warren?”