Zomburbia (22 page)

A huge grin consumed his face. “Oh, my God, Courtney, I
loved it
. I thought it was incredible. I mean, when was the last time you felt free of all the clutter inside your head?”

“Eyes on the road,” I said as we started to drift into the oncoming lane.

“Right, sorry. I mean pot and beer will help your problems seem not so bad, but they're always still there, right? Last night I felt like . . . I felt like not me. It was amazing.”

“What problems?”

He looked confused. “What?”

“You said pot helps you not care about your problems. What problems?”

“What, I'm not allowed to have problems?” The grin was gone, replaced by an ugly scowl. He hunched over the steering wheel and refused to look my way. “I guess only
you're
allowed to have problems, right?”

I ran my hand through my hair. I didn't want to deal with this right now. “Sorry. You have problems. The Z helped you forget them. Go on.”

“It didn't help me forget them,” he said. “While I was on it, my problems didn't exist. Dude, I felt like
I
didn't exist.”

“And that was good?”

“You took it, too,” he said. “You tell me.”

I remembered the feeling of giving myself up, losing my identity and becoming a part of the mass mind of undead outside Buddha's apartment. It had felt good at the time. Now I wasn't so sure.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Bullshit.”

“Don't tell me what I think, Brandon,” I said. Junior Timothy Leary let it drop.

I tried to close my eyes, but every time I did, I saw Sherri in any number of horror-movie scenarios. Each one involved zombies feasting on her guts as she screamed and screamed. Keeping my eyes open became the order of the day.

We finally pulled up alongside my house.

“Thanks for the ride,” I told Brandon as I climbed out.

“Sure,” he said. “Hey, let me know when you hear from Sherri.”

“Do you really care?”

The look he gave me wasn't anger or anything I'd expected—it was hurt.
Oh, shit.

“Sorry,” I said. “Discovering I killed a small animal can make me a real bitch. Of course I'll let you know.”

“Okay,” he said, and I closed the door before he could say anything else. The truck pulled away as I opened the front door to the house. I gave thanks that the curtains were still drawn—of course they were, Dad hadn't been home all night!—the dark felt good on my eyes.

I went into the kitchen and drank about a gallon of water. I knew that I should take a shower and wash out the scratches on my arm or, at the very least, brush my teeth. I felt like ten pounds of crap crammed into a five-pound bag. Somehow, I bypassed the bathroom, went right to my room, and collapsed onto the bed. I tried Sherri's phone and it went to voice mail. I asked her to call me as soon as she could, then I let the phone drop to the floor.

I fell asleep thinking of all the different ways Sherri might have died.

S
unday passed in a cone of dread-filled silence. I jumped at every sound, waiting for Sherri to call me. I kept dialing her—like every five minutes—but it immediately went to voice mail. Until I got a robot voice telling me the mail box was full. After that, I had no choice but to call the landline at her house and risk speaking to the mutants that passed for her parental units.

The phone rang more than half a dozen times and I was about to hang up, but then someone picked up.

“What?” A woman's voice. Sherri's mom.

“Hi, Mrs. Temple,” I said. “May I speak with Sherri.”

“You could if I knew where she was,” she said, and I heard her draw on her cigarette.

“So she's not there right now?” I asked. I fought to keep my voice calm.

“This is Courtney, right?” she asked. “Jesus, Courtney, I think the last time I saw her was . . . what,
Thursday night
.” Another draw on her cancer stick and this time I heard her exhale. “You don't know where she's got off to, do you, Courtney?”

“No, Mrs. Temple,” I said, and, for once when I was asked that question, I didn't have to lie when I answered.

“Yeah, well,” Mrs. Temple said sounding philosophical, “I'm sure she'll come home when she gets hungry.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, and forced a chuckle. “Well, if you see her, please tell her I called.”

“Sure,” Sherri's mom said. “If you see her, tell her it'd be great for her to put in an appearance around here. The lawn needs mowing.”

I promised I'd do that and hung up. It took all my strength not to pick up the phone again and call Brandon. I wanted to demand he take me back to Portland so we could look for Sherri, but I knew what he'd say to that and part of me knew he was right. Where would we even start looking?

I had to have faith that Sherri would just show up soon and laugh at me for worrying about her.

“Jesus,” I could hear her say, “you are such a virgin.”

I needed to take my mind off the situation—as if that were possible—and decided the best way to do that was some busy work.

After I showered and got dressed, I broke open the cellophane brick Buddha had given me and a million little Ziploc baggies fell out. I put those away and put some aside to take with me to work the next time I was on at the Bully Burger. I felt like a hypocritical shit packaging up more Z, but I still needed to sell it and pay Buddha for the stuff.

Dad finally came home and he and I seemed to avoid each other. I knew why I was doing it—I was still in shock a little bit from what happened Saturday night. I had no clue what his deal was, though. I'd walk into rooms that I thought were empty and find him in there muttering to himself. When he noticed I was there, he'd smile at me, kind of embarrassed, and then he'd make some lame excuse about forgetting something in another room. His behavior was slightly bizarre and creepy. To be honest, I was too wrapped up in my own head to ask what was up with his.

The one conversation I had with him was to arrange for a ride to school on Monday since I didn't know if and when Sherri would be back. Dad mumbled that that'd work, we'd just have to go earlier than I was used to. After that we retreated to our rooms and didn't talk for the rest of the day.

I caught up on homework and trolled the Internet for a while. It had been days since I'd looked for news about the Army retaking New York. I resisted looking it up then. I convinced myself a long time ago that the longer I waited to look at the news, the better chance that it'd be good when I did. I knew it was stupid and I also believed it to be true. After I exhausted the wonders of the world wide web, I turned in to bed early.

 

My phone rang sometime in the middle of the night. All I knew was that it was dark outside as I unwrapped my blankets from around my legs. Dad must have forgotten to turn on the air-conditioning because I was sweating like a pig. After groping around long enough that I thought I was going to miss the call, I found the phone and flipped it open.

I must have said something understandable because after a second, Sherri's voice came through the speaker. “Come outside, Courtney.”

“Sherri?” I was wide awake. “Where've you been?”

“Just come outside, shithead,” she said, “and bring your gun.”

“My pistol?”

“Just do it.” And the line went dead.

I clicked on the light and hunted up clothes. I found my pistol laying on top of my nightstand, which is weird because I didn't remember taking it out of my bag before I went to sleep. I picked it up and headed out into the hall.

I paused as I passed my dad's room. Something inside the room scratched on the door. I knew that it wasn't my dad. I knew my dad was in there and that whatever scratched at the door had killed him. The scratching became more insistent, nearly a pounding. I tightened the grip on my pistol and thought about throwing open the door and shooting whatever was in there. I knew Sherri was waiting for me. The thing would wait. I'd be back.

I had to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun. When had it become daytime? Before my eyes adjusted, I started hearing things. Moans and footsteps, shuffling. I knew what would be there once I could see again. Zombies, hundreds, maybe thousands, crowded the streets. They pushed against the fence that surrounded our yard, but none of them tried too hard to get in. Looking up and down the street, I saw that ours was the only yard the shufflers hadn't gotten into. I heard far-off screams, maybe two or three streets away. It didn't bother me. Then I smelled rotting meat behind me and I knew who was there.

“Took you long enough to get out here.”

“Hi, Sherri,” I said, and I turned. This time I wasn't afraid to confront her. Most of her face was gone. How she was able to talk, I'm not sure. One milky eye squinted at me. “I think you need a new moisturizer.”

“Very funny,” she said, and the one side of her face that was still attached pulled back into a smile. “You're gonna need your sense of humor soon,
culo
.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. I planted my hand on my hip and tried my best to look bored. For a second I felt like I was outside myself and watching this scene. I liked this new me, this unafraid me. I hoped I'd keep it up.

“Hell, yeah,” Sherri said.

Clouds covered the sun and the day darkened and grew cold. Then I heard something from a long way off—a kind of roaring sound. I knew what it was. It was the zombie from the lobby of Buddha's building. The one that seemed faster and smarter than a zombie should. It was out there, a long way off, and it was coming for me.

“Laugh it off, girl. I'm here to tell you some important shit.”

No. It was all too much. I knew I was dreaming. Knew it. I hated it. I refused to play along. I sidestepped around Sherri and headed back toward the house.

“Sorry, Sherri. Whatever you have to tell me is going to have to wait.”

But as I got to the front door, I heard that scratching sound again. The one I'd heard coming from Dad's room. Whatever had been in there had gotten out. I made a small mewling sound in the back of my throat. This wasn't fair.

I turned and Sherri stood where I left her. The super-zombie gave another roar and now it was much closer, maybe only a couple of blocks away. Beyond Sherri, the horde of zombies still clogged the streets.

No way was I going to let some monster hunt me down; I was going to go to it and face it. I gripped the pistol more tightly, then I marched past Sherri and threw open the gate that stood between me and the zombies on the street.

“I could have told you how to make it through what's coming,” Sherri said behind me.

I wanted to say something clever and mean. Nothing came to mind. Instead I waded into the sea of monsters. They let me pass at first, taken by surprise at my boldness, maybe. But then they started to clutch at me as I strode past. Panic set in then—the dream wasn't doing what I thought it would. By then I was too deep into the mob. There was nowhere to go. They had me. I screamed, sure I'd wake myself up before they could do me any real harm. I kept thinking that until their teeth tore into my flesh.

My dad stood over me, shaking my shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, “I thought you were going to get up early. We have to leave in a few minutes.”

I did my best to pull myself out of the dream and into real life. It was slow going. I faked a smile and told him I'd be ready before he knew it. When he left, I pulled on my standard uniform—one of the benefits of wearing practically the same thing every day—and then ducked into the bathroom to wash my face. After that, I just grabbed my bag and was ready to go.

The ride in with my dad was probably the longest of my life. I had all of this stuff I wanted to either tell him or ask him—my worries about Sherri and what happened Saturday night and wanting to know what the hell he was doing with Z in his drawer, for starters. I'm sure he had things he wanted to tell me or ask me, important stuff. But we passed the whole ride saying stupid, meaningless crap to each other. “Anything exciting happening at school today?” “Nope.” “Hey, can we have stew for dinner tonight?” “Don't see why not.”
Ad nauseam.

The school has a turnaround area that's patrolled by guards with assault rifles for parents who are dropping off their kids. Dad let me out there and we said really lame good-byes and he took off as I was walking through the gate to the school yard.

I kicked myself for not talking to him about anything meaningful, and for not at least saying a real good-bye. Sometimes when I'm being mopey and dramatic, I tell myself stuff like
Well, that might be the last time you see him.
Even if I totally know that's not the case, it's just me trying not to act like I'm in a freaking soap opera.

The whole day passed in this sort of fugue state. Sometimes I'd realize I was sitting in, like, AP English, and I'd have no memory of leaving AP History. Half the time I was really only aware of worrying about Sherri, the other half I wondered why Brandon hadn't sought me out to talk to me.

As I walked down the hall, my attention was caught by one of the gazillion posters advertising the end-of-year dance that was happening this week. I was offended by their forced joyfulness. The theme this year was “Make It Last Forever!” Ugh. Having a dance in the climate at the time? The theme should have been, “Masque of the Red Death.” Not that any of these melon-heads would get it.

At lunch, I sat outside by myself on the bench that was farthest from the school. All my food tasted like wet cardboard, which was, I admit, a step up from what it usually tasted like. I ate mechanically—put food in my mouth, chew, swallow, repeat. I just needed to fuel my body so I could move on to the next thing.

When I finished eating I went over my Trig homework. Normally as entertaining as talking to a jock, this time I lost track of the time. I think I also didn't hear the bell that ends lunch. When I looked up, I noticed that the last of the other kids was now trooping back to the building. I wondered if anyone had tried to get my attention and call me back.

I stuffed my book and notebook back into my bag and I was getting ready to go in when I saw something out past the fence. I started walking that way. I stole a quick look up at the two guard towers that command the back field. I didn't see anyone. A state-mandated nap break, no doubt.

Near where I saw the zombie kid a few days ago, there was definitely someone or something standing out there again. Maybe some of his little zombie friends missed him and had come looking for him. Sorry, little dudes, I think some fascist with a scoped rifle sent your friend to a farm where he could run around and play with other shufflers.

I stopped a couple of feet away from the section of single-layer fence and stood there peering out at the figure in the trees. It was smallish compared to the other zombie, so I guessed it was a girl. I was trying to psychically will her to step out where I could get a better look at her when she actually did what I wanted and emerged from the shadows. I was amazed and proud of the powers of my mind for a whole couple of seconds.

Until I noticed it was Sherri.

I fell against the fence and caught myself from hitting the ground by lacing my fingers through the chain-link. I felt sick to my stomach as I watched her walk closer. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't her but there was no way it could be anyone else. Unlike in my dream, her face was fine. In fact, she looked like she hadn't been touched. Her clothes were intact, even if they were filthy, and I couldn't see any bites or scratches on her.

She walked toward me. My heart beat faster because I thought she must be alive, but as she got closer, I knew I was wrong. Her skin was ashen, her eyes sunken and glassy. Then she opened her mouth and hissed at me and black fluid dripped down her face.