Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) (9 page)

"So what do I do?" I asked. "What should I tell him?"

But before he could say anything, the director called to us from over by the cameras. "Rolling!" he called. "And...
action
!" Brad and Christy had arrived.

Gunnar and I and the other computer-nerd zombies bent down and started pretending like we were eating the fake corpse. Ours was a middle-aged fat guy in gym shorts and a T-shirt—the gym instructor (a nice touch, I thought, since we were all computer nerds). The body smelled like latex and Vaseline, but it was eerily realistic-looking: wet and glistening. We could even dig into actual plastic entrails.

For a second, I felt kind of stupid, smelling that latex and making growling noises that I knew no one would ever really hear.

But then a funny thing happened. I sort of got into the moment. We all looked pretty real, and the body did too. So suddenly I
was
a zombie. There was nothing I wanted more than to rip chunks of flesh off the luscious, bloody pile of fat in front of me. I even lifted a bloody arm and started gnawing on it, growling all the while.

It's not like I have this secret hankering for human flesh. Mostly I think it was just fun to not be me for a second.

A minute or so later, the director said, "And...
cut
! Excellent! Good work, zombies!"

And in a flash, I was my old, non-zombie self again. For better or for worse.

I looked over at Gunnar. "Well?" I asked him, meaning the question I'd asked him before, about what I should say to Otto.

He thought for a second. Then he said, "Tastes like chicken."

"Huh?"

He nodded down at the corpse. "The body?"

Finally, I clued in. "Gunnar!" I whacked him on the shoulder. But I laughed too.

"So," he said at last. "You're asking me for relationship advice yet again, huh?"

"Yes," I said, "and I'd appreciate it if this time you skipped the little happy dance and we went right to the advice. You're two for two right now, you know. Don't blow it."

"Well, you're in luck. Because I figured you'd come to me for advice again, so I prepared. How about, 'Love is a great risk, but not loving is the even greater risk'? Or, 'To live without love is not really to live at all."'

"What'd you do?" I said. "Break open a bunch of fortune cookies?"

"Yeah, actually. But I also thought of a story to tell you."

I sighed. "Okay, let's hear it." But to tell the truth, Gunnar was making me smile, as usual.

"You know how my family always goes to Echo Lake for vacation?"

I nodded. This was a little lake with cabins about a hundred miles from where we lived.

"Well," he went on, "a couple of years ago, I was up there, and I decided to go for a walk in the woods by myself. Stupid, I know, but I was fourteen, so what can you do? Anyway, the trail was really faint, but I kept walking all afternoon. Finally, I decided to turn around, but almost immediately I came to this fork in the trail. I didn't remember any fork in the trail, so I started to panic. Which was the way home? I didn't know. The two paths looked exactly the same."

"So what did you do?" I said.

"Well, I knew that buried somewhere in my head was the right answer. And if it wasn't, maybe there was some force outside myself—God or the spirit of the forest or whatever—who could give me the answer. So I cleared my head and stared at the two trails. I stood there for the longest time. And finally I knew. I went down the trail on the right."

"And you'd picked the right one."

"Nah," Gunnar said, "I picked wrong. I ended up in this nettles patch, and that was the time I got those ticks, and then later I got sick, and I was sure I had Lyme disease."

"Gunnar!" I cried. "What kind of story is that! You picked the wrong trail?"

"Did I?" Gunnar said. "I'm standing here, aren't I?"

I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, obviously I made it back to the cabins. I lived, right?"

"Yeah, but you walked through nettles and ticks, and you thought you had Lyme disease! If you'd gone the other way, none of that would have happened."

"Oh, yeah, the other path would have been a much better choice. But at least I picked one. Because if I hadn't, I'd still be standing up in those woods."

Finally, I saw what he was getting at. Sometimes there's a choice you don't think about—the choice of whether or not to decide. At this point, one way or another, I finally had to decide between Otto and Kevin.

I had to admit it once and for all: Gunnar gave damn good advice.

*   *   *

Kevin or Otto. Why couldn't I decide? Well, because it was a
hard
decision, that's why! Give me a break.

But I
had
to decide. Gunnar was right about that.

I loved Otto. He was right for me. That was obvious whenever I spent time with him. And he was such a thoroughly decent guy, the kind of guy who always did the right thing, which was no small matter when it came to boyfriends. But the big "but" was that he lived eight hundred miles away. When you thought about it, that made him not much of a boyfriend at all. He was more like a character in a book—someone you "love," but can't cuddle up to.

Meanwhile, Kevin was real. Maybe the only reason I wasn't choosing him was because I didn't want to feel guilty about Otto. But guilt was no reason to stay together with a guy. On the other hand, Kevin was flawed. He was charming and handsome, which are not the worst boyfriend-qualities in the world, but he wasn't strong. I'd trusted him once before, and he'd really jerked me around. Sure, he'd come out to the whole school, but when push came to shove, he usually didn't do the right thing.

I knew what I needed to do. I had to talk with Declan McDonnell. Yes, I wanted just to bask in his presence again. But I also wanted to ask him what to do. He'd already proven to be pretty wise, my own bathroom angel. He alone would have the answer I sought. (And maybe he could also tell me what the hell a "brain zombie" was!)

I went back to the restroom where we'd met those two times before. This time I was certain that he would be there.

He wasn't. I was all alone.

"Great," I said out loud. "Just great." It echoed off the cold tile. Well, at least I could try again later in the day.

I turned to go, but as I did, I caught a glimpse of something along the wall.

A zombie watched me gloomily.

It wasn't Declan McDonnell or one of the other zombie extras. It was me, in full zombie makeup, reflected in one of the bathroom's cracked and cloudy mirrors.

And that's when I knew the answer. Otto or Kevin? It was so obvious!

I had to tell the guy I had chosen. But I couldn't do it at the film shoot, with other people around. No, I'd do it that night, when we could meet and finally have some time alone.

*   *   *

There was just one problem. It happened when I got home that night, right after the film shoot. My parents were in the kitchen eating ribs from a bucket. Their fingers and faces were covered with barbecue sauce. I hadn't wanted to join them, but I did have to eat.

"Where were you?" my dad asked.

"What do you mean?" I said. "You know where I was. I was on the movie set."

"I don't mean that. I mean last night."

"Last night? You know that too. I was over at Gunnar's."

"Who else was over at Gunnar's?"

"What do you mean?" I was trying to evade the question again, but I was pretty sure where this was heading: my parents had learned about Otto. I guess their sources of information were moving faster now. It had taken them eight months to learn that I was gay, but only three days to figure out that Otto was in town against their wishes.

My mom slapped the table. "Damn it, Russel! Tell us the truth!"

"Okay, okay," I said. Like I said, I didn't lie to my parents. "We'd been planning this visit for months," I went on. "But at the last minute, you say he can't stay here. Fine. Well, he isn't staying here. You didn't say he couldn't stay at Gunnar's. And even if you had, I don't see what business that is of yours."

My parents stood up from the table at exactly the same time.

"So you've been
seeing
him?" my mom said accusingly.

"Of course," I said.

"Russel, that is
not
acceptable!" my mom said.

"Like I said," I said, "I don't see what business that is of yours."

This probably wasn't the smartest thing to say. Whether it was their business or not, they could
make
it their business, since they were my parents.

Sure enough, my mom said, "Russel, you are
grounded
! You are not leaving this house for a month!"

In other words, I'd finally made a decision between Kevin and Otto—only now I couldn't be with either one!

Could there possibly
be
a worse time to be grounded?

But the thing is, I'd made my decision. I knew who I wanted to be with. I had to tell him. My parents thought they could stop that by grounding me? Well, in a nutshell, they were nuts.

I know I've said all along I was a good kid. But in this case, I simply had no choice except to sneak out of the house without their knowing.

*   *   *

Kevin. That's who I needed to see. I IMed him and told him to meet me at the stinky picnic gazebo. I also told him to give me a few minutes because I needed to build a dummy of myself out of clothes and put it under the covers of my bed. That way, if my parents peeked into my room, they might think that I had gone to sleep early. I'd read about this in a book. I doubted it would work—it hadn't worked in the book!—but the consequences of my disobeying my parents and sneaking out the window were so harsh that I figured I should at least
try
to avoid them. Lucky for me, my bedroom was on the ground floor, so it was easy for me to sneak out the window.

My bike was in the garage, which was impossible to open without making a ruckus, so I had to run to the stinky picnic gazebo. I was out of breath by the time I got to the park. I could see the gazebo on the other side of the long soccer field. It looked smaller than I remembered, like a piece in some antique Christmas diorama.

Kevin was under the gazebo waiting for me. But there was someone with him—a guy with broad shoulders in some sort of overcoat. Was it his dad? I'd never seen a teenager dressed like that before. The acoustics of the park were strange, especially at night, and I could hear the mumble of them talking across that long expanse of lawn, but I couldn't make out anything they were saying.

Suddenly Kevin spotted me. He uttered something to the guy with him, who said something back, then hurried off into the woods.

What was this? I wondered.

I sprinted across the grass.

When I reached the gazebo, I immediately asked Kevin, "Who was that?" I was out of breath from all that running.

"Huh?" he said. He brushed away an insect.

"That guy I saw you talking to. Who was it? He looked older."

Kevin stared at me hard. "He
was
older," he said at last. He thought a moment more. "In his twenties. He was hitting on me. I've seen him here before."

I was thoroughly confused. "Kevin, what are you talking about? What do you mean you've 'seen' him here?"

Kevin slouched. "What do you
think
?"

Was Kevin saying what it sounded like he was saying? That he'd been out cruising the parks at night?

"Russel, relax," Kevin said. "I haven't done it that many times."

"'That many times'? Are you serious?" I admit it: Kevin was shocking me. We were standing under a gazebo, but
The Sound of Music
this wasn't. I thought I'd known him. Never in a million years would I have thought that he'd be out in parks at night with guys (other than me, I mean).

Suddenly Kevin was impatient. "Look! What'd you want to see me about?"

"Well, I'm confused," I said. "Last week you were all moony-eyed over me. You came out to the whole school so we could be together. Now you tell me you've been out picking up old guys in parks?"

Kevin shrugged, but it was really more of a squirm. "Well, it's not like we were together then. And it's not like that has anything to do with us anyway. That's just sex."

"Kevin!"

"
What
?"

I didn't know what to say. Was it possible that I had misjudged him so thoroughly? Last summer, before I'd gotten together with Otto, I'd fallen in love with a guy at camp who I'd thought was perfect. And he had turned out to be a complete creep.

But Kevin wasn't a creep. Was he? True, I'd known that he was weak—that when push came to shove, he did the easy thing. He'd come out at school, but eight months too late, and probably only to get my attention anyway. And that guy Kevin had been with at the movie shoot? Maybe he hadn't been hitting on Kevin—maybe Kevin had been hitting on
him
.

"You know," Kevin said, "this is getting to be a real bore. When did you get such a stick up your butt?"

I was speechless. I
had
been wrong about him, just like I'd been wrong about that guy at camp. Boy, was Kevin weak! He couldn't even wait for me in a park without getting it on with another guy? I suddenly felt like I had with my parents when they'd confronted me about being gay, like he was pulling off a human mask to reveal the true monster underneath.

"So it was all lies?" I said. "When you said you still loved me? You were just messing around?"

He squirmed again, like a man in a straitjacket. "Hey, I'm an athlete. It's a game. And this was one game I wanted to win. I lost the first time around, so I wanted a rematch. I wanted to prove I could win. And I did. I got you to pick me over Otto. But that's all it was. Just a game."

I didn't answer. The truth was, I hadn't picked him. I'd picked Otto. That's what had been so obvious when I'd stared in that mirror at school, when I'd seen the reflection of that zombie glaring back at me. Being a zombie was about being dead, about the past, about a life already lived. Kevin was about the past too. He and I had had our chance, but that moment was gone. We couldn't go back—everything was different now. Being human, being a high school student, that was about the future, about promise, about all the life yet to be lived. It was exactly like Declan McDonnell had said. I didn't have a jeweled dagger like Brad, the hero of the movie, but Declan McDonnell had given me the insight I needed to vanquish the past once and for all. The right choice for me was the guy who represented a new life, and the future—Otto, no matter the difficulties.

I'd come here to tell Kevin that he and I really were over. I'd wanted to tell him before I said anything to Otto, because I didn't want any unfinished business when I finally laid it on the line with him. I was choosing Otto with all my heart and soul, and if he didn't want me anymore, fine. I didn't want to keep Kevin as sort of a fall-back boyfriend.

But I didn't tell Kevin any of this. What was the point now, since I was never going to talk to him again? In a way, I was grateful. Because he had made it completely clear that by picking Otto, I had absolutely positively made the right choice.

"Good-bye, Kevin," I said, and I turned to go.

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbled.

And so I just walked away. It wasn't like the last time I'd left him behind in this gazebo, when I really had been torn, looking back at him as I went.

Still, when I reached the opposite side of the soccer field, I did look back. I couldn't believe it! Kevin was already back in the arms of the old guy in the overcoat. I'd thought the man had run away, but he hadn't. He must have been hiding in the bushes all the while, listening to Kevin and me. Now he and Kevin were hugging, and probably kissing. Kevin was even weaker than I'd thought.

I couldn't watch. I hurried away. It was the funniest thing, though. As I reached the street at the edge of the park, I swear I heard the sound of someone sobbing. It echoed out above the grass. I couldn't see Kevin anymore, but I knew it couldn't have been him anyway, because of the way he'd acted. I figured it was just the strange acoustics of the park—that someone in one of the surrounding houses was crying in a bedroom with the window open.

*   *   *

I went straight to Gunnar's house.

"Oh!" he said when he opened the door.

"Is Otto here?" I said. "I really need to talk to him."

He flashed me a grin. "Oh, good! I was hoping you'd pick him." I hadn't meant to let him know the reason I'd come, but somehow Gunnar had seen it on my face.

Otto stepped into the hallway behind Gunnar.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," he said.

"Want to go for a walk? I have something I want to tell you."

"Sure," he said. "Let me get my coat."

As we were waiting, Gunnar leaned forward and whispered, "Don't worry about ticks, Russ. If you get any, they're really not that big a deal."

*   *   *

We didn't go anywhere near the stinky picnic gazebo. That had been the place for Kevin and me. (And I definitely didn't want to run into Kevin and his new "friend"!) Meanwhile, the place for Otto and me was a moonlit lake way up in the mountains. So, thinking we needed some new romantic spot, I took Otto to a different lake—really more of a pond—on the outskirts of town. I'd played there as a kid, but I'd never been there in the dark.

It looked completely different at night, all soft-focus and muted lighting, like the Rivendell scenes in the movie version of
The Lord of the Rings
. It was as if we'd stepped right into the reflection on the surface of the pond, and everything around us was silver and shimmering. The cattail fronds glowed, and above us, the stars and moon seemed to ripple in the air. Surrounding us, a ring of trees, their bare branches protectively intertwined, shielded us from the outside world. The air was clean and wet, and I could smell Otto's musk as well, even from five feet away. It may have been another swamp, but there was no hint of methane here.

"Otto," I said as we walked. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

"I knew it," he said. "You're breaking up with me, aren't you?"

"Huh? No. No!" I stopped him. "That's not it at all." I took a breath. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being distant these last couple of days. It was just something I needed to figure out. But it was stupid, because you came all this way, and we only had this short time together." I figured there was no reason to tell him about Kevin because (a) it was probably kind of obvious what had been going on with me, and (b) that was all over now anyway.

"You're not breaking up with me?" Otto said. Like the pond, he looked different in the moonlight—lighter, a white marble statue come to life. His scar made half of the statue look rough, unfinished.

"Nope," I said. "You're not getting rid of me that easy. But I did want to talk about what we do next."

"What do you mean?"

I explained how I was grounded right then, and that even if my parents didn't find out I'd snuck out without their permission, they were going to do everything they could to keep him and me apart. As hard as it would be to see each other under normal circumstances, my parents were going to make it much, much harder.

"They might not even let me go to camp next summer," I said. "They know that's where we met. They could even send me to one of those 'ex-gay' camps instead. That's how nuts they are about this."

"Damn, Russel, I'm sorry."

"Screw 'em! I love you, that's all that matters. But I wanted to let you know all this, and ask if you still wanted to be with me."

Otto rolled his eyes. "Of course I do."

I stepped forward and kissed him. The moment my lips touched his, I was once again living in my skin—the skin on my body, and the "skin" that somehow contained my aura or soul. When we'd kissed before, it had felt like our souls were touching, but tonight I wasn't sure where his soul ended and mine began. Same for his mouth and tongue. I finally knew what they meant when they talk about lovers becoming one.

"So what do we do?" I said, later. It may have been ten minutes, or it might have been an hour—I wasn't sure. "How do we make this work?"

"I'm not worried," he said. "We'll just have to get creative."

We stayed near that pond for a long time. In fact, I didn't get home until almost 5 A.M. After all, we only had this one night together in who knows how long?

What did we do in all that time? Let's just say Otto and I made the most of our time together, and leave it at that.