“I’m not that guy,” he says quietly, but seriously.
This close, his eyes are a washed out, friendly hazel.
His ruddy, pink cheeks are covered with stubble the same color as his light brown hair.
I can tell, beneath the extra 100-pounds or so, there is a masculinity very few people ever see, or would even suspect.
“I’m not that guy you think I am,” he insists, quietly but insistently. “I mean, sure, the computers, the games, the movies, the Star Wars club, yeah, sure, it’s fine to pass the time but I’m interested in this in a serious way, Lucy. I mean, I’m seriously interested, like Tara said, in a historical, in a scientific way. Listen, I’m the last guy who wants to be a zombie. I enjoy French fries too much, and breathing, and… warmth.”
He smiles, to show no disrespect. “I just, I mean, I’ve seen a million zombie movies, every one ever made, in fact, and they never say anything. The zombies in them, I mean.”
“Except ‘brains,’ right?” I joke, making a harsh snorting noise that comes from staying away from humans too long; from being too excited to speak to one now.
At least, about this very personal topic.
“That, yeah,” he smiles.
And opens his mouth to say more, to ask more, but then closes it, and shuts his laptop cover, and sits back; preparing to listen, instead.
And because he’s worked so hard, and the plan seems to be coming together, and because we have time before we can actually implement it, I say, “We talk.”
And then I add, “To one another, anyway.”
“But you talk in class, right? You have to, to get a grade, to pass Mrs. Helmsmeyer’s Social Studies final oral report, right? You talk to humans.”
“We talk at humans,” I correct. “It’s just too dangerous to talk to humans, to get to know them, to interact. I mean, witness what happened with Alex. That was stupid; I let my guard down. I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.”
He shakes his head. “It just seems a waste, is all, going through eternity only talking to your own kind.”
I shrug. “Maybe, but… it’s easier that way.”
“You don’t break the ‘8 Unbreakable Zombie Laws’ that way,” he says, using a spooky movie announcer’s voice.
I smile and say, “You got it. But the laws aren’t in place for us; they’re in place for… you guys.”
He makes a quizzical face, his large eyes growing larger.
I say, “For instance, ‘Law # 6: Thou Shalt Not Date a Mortal.’ That’s so we don’t start dating some sweet guy, get all hot and heavy with him, give him a little love bite on the throat and – bam – instant zombie. So to—”
“Hold up, hold up, hold up,” he insists, sitting up, excited now, pink face now a red face, strong deep voice now an excited geek voice. “So you can turn humans into zombies? Just like vampires?”
“No, not just like vampires but, yes, I could bite you – right now – and, after you pass out for an hour or so, you’d wake up—”
“Just like you!” he says hopefully.
“Not quite, Roger. You’d be what we call a ‘zombie light,’ kind of like a half-zombie, at least until we got some brains into you.”
He frowns and jokes, “So I guess this means we won’t be hooking up after we put on our little show in the gym after school today?”
“That’s gross,” says Fiona from the other corner of the room before I have the chance to answer him myself.
“Hey,” says Roger defensively, “stranger things have happened.”
“No,” Fiona corrects, “it’s gross that she has to eat brains to stay alive.”
“ ‘She’ has a name,” Roger corrects back, his voice an octave lower, his eyes a shade darker.
“What?” I ask of Fiona, who has her arms crossed over her small chest. “You’ve never eaten a chicken liver? Never eaten a hot dog? Both are full of internal organs and, what’s a brain but an internal organ?”
“Yeah, but… I don’t eat liver raw. You eat like… like… an animal.”
“We’re all animals,” says Tara quietly, inching her chair away from Fiona as if to avoid guilt by association.
I stifle a smile and say, “Listen, Fiona, we can debate brains versus liver and animal versus human and human versus zombie all day long but, trust me, when the vampires come for you, and they will, there will be no debate. Talk about animals! Those jerks are stone cold killers and they will eat you up and suck you dry and not think twice about it. Ever.”
Tara shakes her head, small lips trembling in a big way. “I just, I… can’t believe it. I can’t believe there are really vampires; that there are really… zombies.”
“I’m sorry, Tara,” I tell her, trying on an uncomfortable smile as the stress of the day – about what’s still to come – finally settles on my shoulders like a hoodie made out of granite. “I really am but, vampires and zombies do exist and now that you know about us, well, things have changed. For all of you.”
She opens her mouth to say something, to maybe ask something, and the door opens.
Immediately I tense, flying out of my seat, shoving Roger’s chair clear across the floor so that he and Fiona and Tara will be clustered; all the better to defend your lives, my dears.
Turning I see Ethan at the door, his arms full of food, his face a mask of concern.
Well, concern and something else.
He walks in quickly, shutting the door behind him and tossing the food down almost distastefully on an empty computer workstation.
As Roger quickly divvies it up and starts eating I pull Ethan to the side and say, “Where’s Dana?”
Ethan avoids my eyes and says in a way that manages to sound somewhat judgmental, “We’re not supposed to be seen together, remember?”
I swat away his weak excuse and say, “The cat’s out of the bag, Ethan, in case you hadn’t noticed?”
I use my hand to take in the whole room, as Roger and Tara and, of course Fiona, look back at him with absolutely no surprise in their eyes whatsoever.
“What, you told them?” he asks, stepping back from me, toward the door.
I watch his eyes change, watch them darken, and I know he’s turning the page on me, even as we speak.
That, like Dana, he’s distancing himself from me.
So when the time comes, when the Sentinels interrogate him – and they will – he can say, “It was all her, sir; it was all Lucy’s idea!”
It doesn’t sound like Ethan, at least, not the Ethan I know and could (secretly) love, but right about now it sure looks like the new Ethan; the self-protective Ethan.
So to salvage the situation, to bring it into perspective for him, to try to show him I’m not selling him – or Dana or any of us – out I say, “Ethan, they’re helping us. We’ve got it all planned out, a way to make it so the whole school, the whole town, thinks this was one big joke and make it so the Sentinels—”
“What plan, Lucy? You can’t just plan something without telling Dana and I about it. You can’t just tell civilians about us, trusting them to keep our secret. We’re a team, Lucy, and we work like a team. Your allegiance is to us, always, forever, not… them.”
The way he says “them” it’s like humans are cockroaches; bugs to be squashed under foot.
I’m not the only one who senses it.
Looking around the AV Club I can literally see the faces of these kids change; from high expectations of meeting another new zombie (one like me) to dread, to fear (like they’ve suddenly tuned into a zombie movie on late night TV they can’t turn off).
They’re not alone.
I take a step back, involuntarily, as if a quick blast from a hot furnace has leapt out too far and threatened to singe me.
“I k-k-know, Ethan,” I stammer, unused to this kind of stubbornness, “and… I’m sorry, really but it was an emergency. But if you just listen, if you can just trust me until after school, we’ll have this all fixed. It’s my faul
t Fiona touched me, it’s my fault she figured it out, that she put two and two together, I just want to make it right.”
Ethan’s eyes are empty; empty of anything we may have ever felt about each other, for each other, with each other.
The friend he’s been, the constant companion, the savior, the buddy, I see all that receding with the grimace that curls across the bottom of his admittedly scary face.
“It’s too late for diplomacy, Lucy; it’s too late for your little human geeks to ‘save the day’ with whatever hare-brained scheme you four have cooked up while you’ve been hiding out here all day—”
* * * * *
Chapter 17
“Hiding out?” I snap, inching toward him to make this a more private affair. “Hiding out? Ethan, I’m in here trying to save your butt, and Dana’s butt and, yes, my butt, too! But I can’t do it alone, these ‘humans’ are helping us, Ethan. They know the risks; they’re ready to help. I’m not hiding from anything, Ethan; neither are they. We’re doing something, something BIG here, in this room, that’s going to help save us all, even Fiona!”
He ignores me, ignores my pleas, ignores my rationale and continues as if I haven’t said anything at all, “Forget Fiona, forget these… these… clowns. I need you out here, with us. Piper and Bianca and the rest of the vampires aren’t going to wait until after school to make a move on us. You know that, Lucy.”
His chest moves forward and back with the exertion of his tough talk, and he looks again at the three humans scattered around the room.
“And as far as trusting your new ‘friends,’ Lucy, don’t; you can’t. One of them’s already turned on you, and don’t think Piper and Bianca weren’t waiting for him with open arms, either.”
“Who?” I ask, not even thinking, not even guessing, not even realizing who it could be, who it must be, who it almost certainly has to be.
“Alex,” whispers Tara from her corner of the room, and she says it so quietly, so reverently, it’s like she can’t believe it, either.
She looks at Ethan, despite her obvious fear, and dread, and confusion, and sadness she looks at Ethan and says, “Alex sold us out, didn’t he?”
Ethan cocks his head, like looking at a lab specimen under glass and says, “Yeah, he did. So whatever little plans you have, whatever little scheme you’re running, forget about it. Lucy, we need you out here, with US, now; right now.”
I look at the seriousness in his eyes and know he’s right; know his plan is right… for US.
Yes, we could fight off the vampires at Barracuda Bay right now; yes if we banded together – Ethan, Dana and I – we could fight our way out of this and escape to live another day; another decade; another century.
But it’s not just about us anymore; there’s a room full of kids in here whose days are numbered if I leave them alone for one tiny second.
Ethan knows this; he’s not stupid.
And he’s not usually selfish, either; but for whatever reason, he’s more interested in saving his own butt right now than these shivering, quivering kids.
And it’s not like I’m any big hero, either; trust me.
I’d love nothing more than to cut bait and run right now, just like Ethan.
But now that I know these kids, now that I’ve sat with them, talked to them, I just can’t do that anymore.
Even if it means turning my back on Ethan, and Dana; even if it means the wrath of the Sentinels and, yes, even the Council of Elders.
“No, Ethan, I can’t… I can’t do that. Not now; not… anymore.”
“It’s not a request, Lucy.”
He holds up his cell phone, his old school flip phone and says, “The Sentinels have been in touch. They’re on their way. They say,” he looks now to the humans, the Normals, with one last trace of humanity of his own and adds, more quietly, as if they might not hear in this little tiny room with his deep, commanding voice, “the Sentinels say if you hand over the humans, all of them, everyone who knows, they’ll let us go. They’ll relocate us, forgive us, no matter how many laws we’ve broken. No matter how many laws you’ve broken, Lucy. That’s a good deal; that’s a fair deal.”
“No, Ethan, it’s not fair. Not to me, not to you, not to us, and certainly not for them.”
He shakes his head, inching closer to me.
I stand my ground, hands busy in my pocket, where I’ve been scratching the black protective coating off of one of Roger’s spare video cables ever since Ethan walked in.
(Luckily, he’s too busy being Mr. Self-Righteous to notice.)
“Look around you,” he says. “You’re not like them; you’re like us. When are you going to get that through your head, Lucy? You’re dead; you’re not living. You can’t date human boys, you can’t have human girlfriends. It’s me, it’s Dana and it’s you. There’s no room for Alex in your life, Lucy.”
I start, my eyes big, but he doesn’t even pause long enough to let me defend myself.
“Yeah,” he sneers, “don’t look so shocked, okay? I knew, Dana knew; we all knew. Piper, Bianca, every immortal in this school knew you were getting ready to break about a dozen undead laws and start macking on Alex as a full-time hobby. We get that. But that’s over now, Lucy; in more ways than one. But we’re not. Don’t you see? You and me and Dana, we can still stay together, the Sentinels promised. The Three Musketeers, just like the last three years. Think about what you’re doing, Lucy. Think about what you’re throwing away by aligning yourself with these, these—”
“They’ll never let you live,” says Roger authoritatively from his desk chair.
His voice has surprisingly grown firm, almost… masculine; almost… commanding.
Ethan makes a dismissive “tssking” sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth, like you would when someone’s just taken your parking space at the mall.
“What do you know, Hungry, Hungry Hippo?” he growls.
“It’s simple arithmetic,” Roger explains patiently, as if he’s talking to one of his fellow Star Wars geeks and not a walking dead person who could pop his head open with two fingers. “We know too much, sure, I get that; we’re goners. But so are you. You’ve screwed up, broken a bunch of laws, they’ll never let you live. They’re just telling you that to get you to do what they want.”
Ethan looks him up and down with a mocking glance and says, “You a big expert on the Sentinels now, lard butt?”
“Hey!” I shout, tempted to unleash my pocket protector a tad too early.
Roger just chuckles. “I’ve been called worse, Lucy, trust me. And, Ethan, no, I don’t know the first thing about Sentinels and I’m just learning about zombies but I do know that this is Scary Movie 101. You’re toast, too. The Sentinels will get here, waste us, or kidnap us, or eat us, whatever it is they do, and they’ll turn to you and say, ‘Good job, Ethan; we’re so grateful. Now we just need to debrief you back at headquarters before we give you your new reassignment. Please get in the back of this big, scary car and don’t mind those big, lethal zombie ninjas hiding on the floorboards.’ Only, there is no reassignment, Ethan; there is no trip back to headquarters for you. Or Dana, and certainly not for Lucy here. They’ll find the nearest graveyard and bury you six feet deep – again – and no one or nothing will ever hear from you again—”
I’m so impressed with Roger’s soliloquy, with his logic, that I’m not prepared when Ethan has had enough and launches himself at Roger with lightning speed.
At least, lightning speed for a zombie.
Roger still manages to get up from his chair – at least, halfway – but Ethan slams him back down in it, hard, to the point where one of the chair legs snaps and the chair itself lists to the right.
Roger gasps as Ethan chokes off his air supply with those big, pale hands, but the big guy isn’t going out without a fight.
Ethan is stronger, stronger by far than any human, big or small, but Roger has momentum on his side, tipping the chair to the right and slamming Ethan into
the ground with all 350-plus pounds of his soft, warm, flabby human weight landing on him belly first.
Ethan growls a pure zombie growl and I know what’s coming next.
As Ethan opens his mouth, bares his teeth and lashes out at Roger’s throat I strip the last of the protective coating off the copper wire in my pocket, raise it up in my hand and am about to jam it into Ethan’s neck when Fiona says, “Ethan, look out!”
He whips around, arms flailing, but it’s too late; I jam the copper into his shoulder blade and out he goes, as if I’d just given him three vials full of horse tranquilizer all at the same time.
I release my grip on the inch or two of protective rubber coating that’s stopped me from getting shocked myself and the wire drops to the ground.
Roger grunts, rolls Ethan off of him and stands up abruptly.
“Fiona!” I snap. “Why’d you do that? We’re supposed to be on the same team!”
Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! A YA Paranormal Novel Page 10
