Zomburbia (29 page)

We stood there in the glow of his dad's burning cabin, undead bodies scattered around and police questioning our friends. I couldn't have asked for more in the teen-romance department. I felt bad that I was doing this to him now, but I thought it was best to just be done with it.

“Does it help if I say I'm sorry?”

“Not really. No.”

“That's what I thought.”

I can't believe I'm saying this—I was actually saved by the police. An officer walked up to us. He'd just removed his helmet and his head steamed in the cold night air.

“You Brandon Ikaros?” he asked. “It's your dad who owns this place?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Want to come this way? We have some questions. It won't take long.”

Brandon followed the guy away. I waited to see if he was going to glance back at me. Because, you know, I like to torture myself. He didn't. Which broke my stupid heart.

I found Phil. He and a boy I didn't recognize stood together and talked about the assault rifle that Phil had used—and that the police had taken away from him. They were apparently bonding over weapons of all sorts. I tugged on his sleeve to get his attention.

“Can you drive me home?” I asked. “I mean, assuming you got the keys from Cody.”

“Sure,” he said. “As soon as the police get our contact info, they said we can go. I guess they'll be calling everyone in the next day or two to ask what happened.”

I looked around at the mess. “Seems pretty obvious.”

Phil just shrugged. “We can find an officer and give him our info.”

We found a cop and he wrote down everything he needed. He said we'd get a call tomorrow to schedule a time to go to the police station and answer some questions. I heard a few kids complaining about it. I didn't mind. I figured it was the best possible circumstances under which I would visit a police station.

The police made me give them their blanket back. Phil actually took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders as we walked. Cody's car was a battered old station wagon. It looked totally unsafe. I thought about going back to see if anyone else could give me a ride. I was so damned tired, though, that I just climbed in. After everything else that had happened that night, I figured I was charmed.

Phil steered down a narrow dirt road toward the highway. We rode on in silence for a while. I didn't want that. I needed noise, music, something. I went to turn on the radio and found a gaping hole full of wires where it should be.

“Seriously?”

“Cody bought a new stereo a while ago and ripped out the old one before he made sure the new one would fit.”

“Well, that just seems like the perfect capper to the evening.”

“It was an interesting night,” Phil said. He said it so seriously that I burst out laughing.

“Was that funny?”

“The fact that you don't know that it was funny, makes it
really
funny.” He smiled, just a fast smile—there and gone. “You should smile more often.”

“Should I?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You're cute when you smile.”

He just nodded his head slowly and blinked a couple of times. Same old Phil. “Maybe I'll find some reason to start doing it more often,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, and I turned to look at the darkened road that we were driving down. The headlights could barely cut through the darkness. If you didn't know better, you might think that the world didn't exist beyond the reach of the headlights and it was being created one second at a time as we hurtled forward.

“Something's bugging me,” I said.

“What's that?” Phil asked.

“The zombies.”

“No crap,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Not all of them. Just the runners.”

“The fast ones?” Phil asked. “Yeah, those guys were murder.”

“Where'd they come from?” I asked. “Why were there so many of them? And why'd they look like they hadn't been chewed on?”

“Good questions,” Phil said. “What are the answers, Nancy Drew?”

“You just made a cultural reference,” I said, and he smiled again. “I don't know, but I feel like I know the answer. I just need to put it all together.” I also noticed, though I didn't mention it, that Phil was the first person to not call me crazy for talking about the new runners. Another point in his favor.

The hum of the tires on asphalt started to lull me to sleep. My defenses were down. That's my best guess for why I said the next thing.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Yes,” Phil said.

“Say someone had a plan,” I started, and I laid out my grand scheme for him—New York, the Mailman Center, all of it. And then I told him why I wanted to do it. I left out how I planned to finance the operation.

He didn't say anything for a long time, and I braced myself for the worst.

“It's good to have a goal,” he said.

“That's it?” I asked.

“What else?”

“Most people think I'm crazy when I tell them my plan,” I said.

He frowned a little, then went back to his usual poker face.

“Why would you give a damn what anyone else thinks about it?” he asked. “It's your plan. If it's crazy, you'll figure it out. But watching you handle yourself the last few days . . .” He shrugged. “I can't imagine anything will stop you.”

I stared at him in amazement. I wasn't used to feeling gratitude toward one of my peers and I didn't know what to do with it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You bet.”

I turned to look out the window. Trees barely visible in the darkness flashed by. I smiled, sure he couldn't see it.

We fell back into a comfortable silence. Just like in Crystal's car, I became aware of Sherri's voice again in the back of my mind. This time she was laughing at me because I'd let my guard down with Phil, and because I'd decided to play detective. I figured that was okay, I probably deserved her laughter.

But I knew I'd figure it all out and get the last laugh.

D
ad took the news of the zombie attack relatively well. I mean, sure, he stormed up and down the living room and swore that he was going to sue Mr. Ikaros into the poorhouse. But I say he took it relatively well because when you compare it to how he reacted when I told him I'd been dealing drugs for nearly a year, he'd been a peach about Mr. Ikaros.

He stopped, became absolutely motionless, but his face grew this really frightening shade of red.

“What did you say?” he asked. His voice was brittle like cracked glass.

“I wanted to tell you sooner,” I said. It sounded lame even to me. “But it's not the easiest . . .”

“Drugs? What sort of drugs?”

“Vitamin Z,” I whispered.

And then he did the very worst thing I could have imagined. He just sort of crumpled into a dad-shaped ball on the couch. He wouldn't even look at me. His disappointment hung in the air like a fart in church. I would have taken him screaming at me any day.

He was silent and still for a long time, minutes, before I built up the courage to say anything.

“Dad?”

“Are the drugs in the house now?”

I told him they were.

“Show me.”

He stood up and led me to my room. I knelt down and pulled out the drawer with the false bottom and showed him my stash. He held the brick of Z in one hand and a gallon-size Ziploc stuffed with cash in the other.

“What were you planning to do with this?” he asked. “Why would you ever need this much money?”

“I was going to use it to get out of town and pay for college.”

I guess that you could technically describe the sound he made as a laugh, but it sounded more like a bark or a rough cough.

“Can you get a college degree in jail?” he asked. My heart sank. Was my dad really going to turn me into the cops? “Maybe they have correspondence courses . . .”

“Dad?”

He muttered to himself, I didn't catch all of it, but I'm pretty sure he wondered where he'd gone wrong.

“We have to get rid of this,” he finally said loud enough for me to hear it.

We flushed it all down the toilet. It was only afterward that it occurred to me that we probably killed every fish in the Willamette River. I didn't mention that to Dad.

He made it clear that I'd be spending the summer under close supervision. “House arrest” may have been the term he used. And it was a given that I no longer worked at Bully Burger. Which, really, was fine with me.

Dad took the brick of money into his room saying we'd figure out what to do with it later. We went to bed that night with a lot of stuff unresolved—how would I work things out with Buddha? How would Dad keep an eye on me while he was at work? But I knew that we'd talk it all out—talk and talk and talk—over the coming days and weeks.

I turned off my lamp and settled down to a long night of not sleeping when there was a knock at my door.

“Come in,” I said, and Dad opened the door. He stood in the doorway, lit from behind by the hall light and casting a long shadow into my room.

“Courtney,” he said, “even when I'm angry at you, I still love you very much.” That was something he'd been telling me forever. It was easier to believe when he was mad at me because of a broken window or a missed curfew. I had a hard time accepting that he loved me now that I was a proven menace to society.

I wanted to diffuse the tension in the room. I struggled to think of something funny to say.

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that when we make mistakes, when we lose our way, that's when we need the love of others the most.”

“Thank you, Dad. I love you, too.”

“Okay,” he said, “get some sleep.”

He left, shutting the door behind him.

I cried myself to sleep that night, but it felt like a release, it felt like something I'd earned.

 

There was a minor sensation in the local news about the attack. Apparently a lot of people had suspected that zombie attacks were on the rise, and that the zombies themselves were different now—that they were working together in groups, for a very deadly example—this was the first concrete evidence anyone had that it was so. And what was up with some of them being faster and more aggressive?

Even though Professor Keller was still in a coma, I sent him the articles. I'm sure he'd have a science boner over it when he woke up. Hell, he might even come here to study what happened. Maybe he'd be able to come up with a way to help the Army clear the shufflers out of New York. I was still clinging to my hope that I'd get out of Dodge someday.

My dad didn't have to worry about Mr. Ikaros getting his. The parent of every kid at the party, and a lot of people besides, were calling for his head on a stick. Especially since some kids died during the attack. People were making it out like Mr. Ikaros practically invited every shuffler in the county to come to a teenage smorgasbord. One of the national networks came down and ambushed him outside of his work, shoved a mic in his face, and asked him how he felt being as evil as Hitler and Lord Voldemort combined. Mr. Ikaros turned beet red and could barely catch his breath. I seriously worried he might have a heart attack right there.

I felt so bad that I thought about calling Brandon to see how he was doing. I stopped myself. It sucks when simple kindness seems like a bad idea.

 

I started spending every day at my dad's office. Which answered how he planned to keep an eye on me while he was at work. I read and worked on my laptop. My dad gave me the task of researching drug-prevention charities. And that answered what we'd be doing with the money I'd earned over the last year. Maybe “earned” isn't the right word.

After he was done at work, he drove me over to the Bully Burger. He sat in the parking lot while I went inside to hand in my uniform and tell Mr. Washington he'd have to find a new drive-thru register monkey.

Chacho was in a chair reading his newspaper, so that meant that Mr. Washington wasn't around. I guess I could resign to Chacho as well as I could to anyone. I set the bag with my stuff on the table in front of him.

“What's this?” he asked. He pawed through the bag.

I motioned with my head out to the parking lot where my dad sat glaring into the store.

“I'm not going to be working here anymore,” I said. “My dad decided it'd be for the best.”

“Uh-huh,” Chacho said. He looked me over. “You okay? You seem different.

“I've just been through a few things this last little bit.”

“I heard,” he said. “You're like the Terminator for zombies is what I heard.”

I laughed. “When you say I seem different, how do you mean that?”

He studied me. He frowned really deeply, too deeply to be real, and he stroked his chin.

“Relaxed,” he said. “You look relaxed, maybe on your way toward being happy. I'm not used to it. You took my advice and you're getting squared away.”

I laughed again and he smiled at me.

“Well, I think you better get used to it,” I said. “Me being happy, and all.”

He nodded, smiling. “If you say so,
chica
.”

I thought about the hard and shitty stuff ahead of me. Telling Buddha I wouldn't be selling for him anymore. Oh, right, and I needed to pay him for the drugs currently swirling around in the river. And I still needed to settle things with Dad. That was just for starters. I knew I'd be miserable while I was going through all of it. Then I thought about when I had all these awful tasks behind me.

I bet that I'd feel free.

“Hell, yeah, Chacho,” I said. “Get used to it for sure.”

“Okay, Courtney,” he said. “Listen, you need anything, you give me a call. You're one of the good ones.”

Rather than tell him how wrong he was about me, I asked him if Phil was working tonight.

“Naw,” Chacho said, “he quit, too. I thought it might have had something to do with you.”

“Not me,” I said. “It must have been his own bonehead idea. Well, I'll see you around, Chacho.”

“I hope so,” he said.

I didn't bother to say good-bye to anyone else.

 

Later that night, or early the next morning if you want to be technical, I woke to the sound of pebbles hitting my window. My first thought was that it was zombies and I grabbed my pistol. Then I got my head together and realized I was in the middle of a teen romance cliché instead.

I opened the window and Phil stood out there in his combat gear. He held some papers in his hand.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey.”

“I heard you quit the Bully Burger.”

“Wow,” I said, “news travels fast.”

He shrugged.

“Chacho told me the same thing about you,” I said.

“Yeah, I got a better deal at the Cinema.”

“Nice,” I said. “You'll look good in the corporate-mandated vest.”

“The pay is better and I won't be running a deep fat fryer,” he said.

“There is that,” I said. I realized he was still just standing there. “Want to come in?”

“I better not,” he said. “Cody's waiting to go on patrol.” He pointed off toward some bushes by the chain-link. Sure enough, there was Cody, all done up in camo, too.

“Hey, Cody,” I whisper-shouted. “You feeling better?”

He gave me a thumbs-up.

“How come you quit?” Phil asked.

The question caught me off guard a little.

“What?” I stammered. “Oh, I'll tell you later. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “Hey, I have something for you,” he said. He handed the sheet of paper to me.

Actually, it was two sheets, one on top of another with a hinge made out of masking tape, like a cover. I switched on the lamp and opened it. It was a drawing of me. The style was somewhere between the realistic drawing of Sherri that he'd done and his usual cartoony stuff. It was me holding a shotgun in one hand, the barrel resting against my shoulder. Smoke came out of the barrel. I had one foot planted on the head of a fully dead zombie. I had on the outfit I'd been wearing on Saturday night. There was some decorative stuff behind the main image and it sort of made me think of old Norman Rockwell paintings. The thing that totally got me was my expression. I had a sneer/smile that didn't make me look too mean. I looked like a complete badass, like I could take anything that came my way.

I set the drawing down on the table.

“Come here,” I said. He got close and I leaned out the window and threw my arms around his neck. I felt his body go stiff and he never relaxed. He must have hated it, so I let him go after a minute.

“Thanks, Phil. I really like it. If, you know, you couldn't tell.”

“I'm glad. It was fun to draw.”

“You said you had another one of me, didn't you?”

“Yeah.”

“I'd like to see it,” I said. “Maybe I could see all your drawings?”

A smile, unsure at first and then bigger, spread across his face. I could have been mistaken, but I think he blushed a little. I had been right the other night. He
was
cute when he smiled.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Yeah, that'd be great.”

“You know what else?” I asked. Phil recognized it for a rhetorical ploy and didn't answer. “I think some night I'd like to go out with you and Cody. On patrol.”

“Yeah?” he asked again.

“Yeah.”

“That'd be great,” he said. “You'll be a badass zombie slayer.”

“I'll do my best,” I said. “It might be a while, though. I'm sort of in hot water with my dad.”

“Why's that?” he asked.

“I'll tell you another time.”

Great. Another thing to add to my ever-growing list of things to do.

“Okay,” Phil said. “Well, we'd better get to it.”

“Kick some zombie butt,” I said. “Don't die.”

“Never,” he said.

He hopped over the fence and the two of them took off into the night. How weird was my life that I accepted that as normal? And that I knew I'd be joining them sometime soon? Would I really be as badass as Phil thought? I hoped so because I'd spent a good part of my life avoiding being eaten by shufflers.

It was true that I'd been through a lousy few days, and that there was more lousy ahead of me, too, but I knew that things would get better. Hell, even though they looked bad on paper, I knew I was still better off than I'd been. I wasn't selling drugs, I wasn't lying to my dad anymore, and my dad didn't hate me because of it.

No matter how rotten things got in the next little while, I knew they'd pass. I knew that they'd get better. I knew that I'd
make
them better.

So, score one for me, I guess.