She shrugs.
“I guess I still just don’t like you very much. No, I shouldn’t say that. I do like you, Lucy; I always have. I just don’t… trust… you.”
“Trust her?” Roger squeaks, rubbing his bruised Adam’s apple. “You trust the guy who’s choking me out on the floor versus the girl who’s trying to save your life?”
“For the four zillionth time, Roger, she’s not a girl!” Fiona says, completely missing the point; again.
I sigh, exasperated, and rustle up the humans as we head for the door.
“How long will he stay out like that?” asks Tara, reaching for the wire on the floor without comment.
She grips it from the rubber end and slips it into her pocket.
I smile, thinking maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for us yet.
“Not long enough,” I spit, grabbing Roger’s laptop and Ethan’s cell phone. “Roger, Tara, grab whatever you need for our little after school project. Wherever Ethan is, Dana’s not far behind, and I can’t spend time fighting off my own kind and an Afterlife Armageddon. We’ve got to go; now!”
“But Ethan said,” protests Fiona as I reach for another spare cord and yank her arms behind her back, tying them as tightly as I can with it. “Ouch!”
“Ethan said,” I snort, mimicking her like an immature fifth grader on the playground; and loving every minute of it. “Ethan said. Roger’s right, Fiona; we’re all dead unless we stick to the plan and turn this around somehow. Once the cameras are on, once there are a hundred civilians involved, all dressed like zombies, the Sentinels won’t have a choice. They’ll have to turn around and head home. They’re not going to waste hundreds of kids, live, on national TV, trust me.”
I’m impatient with them now, watching Roger flail lazily for his camera equipment, shoving it listlessly into a padded black backpack.
“Got it all?” I shout, and still – with all the commotion – the faceless teacher doesn’t move.
Roger nods, zips up and turns around, his face ghostly pale, a speck of blood on his collar.
* * * * *
Chapter 18
“Roger?” asks Tara, concerned.
“Roger,” I shout her down, even more concerned; not just for him, but for all of us. “Get over here right now. We’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” asks Fiona, struggling against her bonds.
I smack the top of her head, gently – okay, gently for a zombie – until she stops and I say, “It’s not safe here for us now. Ethan knows where I’ve been hiding, I told him when I texted Roger’s stupid lunch order. No doubt Dana knows as well and—”
“Don’t forget your boyfriend Alex,” Roger says, his voice soft and croaking, the backpack looking heavy on his slumped shoulders.
“Shoot, Alex! I forgot. That means Piper and Bianca know, too. Let’s go, you guys, follow me.”
Fiona looks cagey and, just before I open the door asks, “Where are we going, I mean, in case we get broken up?”
I smack her on the forehead again and say, “We’re NOT going to get broken up, Fiona. Sorry.”
I open the door a crack, knowing I don’t have long before Roger’s down for the count.
I check my watch; 10 minutes before the next bell rings.
I look back inside, just to check Roger’s temperature and see his foil wrappings from lunch all over the floor.
Suddenly I know the place – the only place – it’ll be safe to go this time of day.
“Come on,” I say, tugging on one of Roger’s backpack straps to get him out of the tiny room. “Let’s go.”
The group falls in, Roger at my side, Fiona out in front, my hands securely on the chord binding hers.
I look at Tara, struggling with a camera bag of her own and say, “Tara, if Roger falls, you’ve got to carry his pack, okay?”
She looks back bravely at me, all five feet and 80 pounds of her, and says, “You got it!”
Fiona snorts and I yank her hands back and up.
She screams and I yank the scarf belt from around her waist and gag her.
The halls are deserted, but not for long.
We pass open doorways, and closed doors with windows in the middle, and each one is a recipe for disaster.
As we approach the commons I see Dean Winters patrolling his grounds; we’ve just missed him, but we’re still too close for comfort.
Fiona could still make a break for it and catch him before I can stop her, or Tara could surprise me and scream out his name.
Neither happens, but Dean Winters takes so long checking open lockers and picking up folded notes from the commons floor that Roger is in danger of passing out before we make it to our final destination.
I think he’s almost gone when he notices a piece of gum on the wall.
As if it’s a matter of national security, he takes out one of his keys and starts slowly, very slowly, very painstakingly, scrubbing it off.
I grimace and see Roger’s eyes fluttering by my side; I can practically hear Tara’s heartbeat as she breathes heavily on my shoulder.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper-urge Dean Winters until, at last, he has gotten all the gum and tosses it in the nearest trash can.
He looks up, looks around and then quickly rounds the corner to D-wing and leaves the commons area wide open.
We cross it quickly, me shoving Fiona ahead and dragging Roger along all the way to the cafeteria.
“But lunch is over,” Tara whispers behind me.
I say, “Exactly,” shoving open the double doors.
Only; they don’t open.
At least, not the easy way.
I look past the greasy windows in the double cafeteria doors to see if, this late in the afternoon anybody is still polishing tables or washing dishes but the entire room, tables, chairs, window, trash cans and all, is empty.
I look left, no Dean Winters.
I look right, no Dean Winters.
I yank on the door handle, hard, then harder, until it snaps and opens with a lunge.
At that very moment Roger gasps, burps… and passes out cold.
I look at the halls, look at the clock above the commons and know the bell is going to ring in about 30 seconds, releasing a flood of 1,000 kids into the commons and all over my plan.
Tara undoes his backpack, I grab Roger’s feet and with seconds to spare drag him into the cafeteria.
I try to shut the door behind us but, with the way I’ve bent the handle broken it won’t stay flush.
I curse, shove Roger all the way in – and then some – with my toes and yank Fiona’s gag out of her mouth.
It is moist; no, it’s wet!
I don’t care; I can’t care.
She starts screaming.
I don’t care; I can’t care.
I wrap the scarf around the outer handle, thread it through the bar, yank it back inside and tug the doors shut, tying a tight knot on our side of the door through the metal handles on our side.
It won’t last long, but it will keep the doors flush enough so no one walking by will see them bent at an angle and try to investigate.
Only when I’m done, the bell has rung and I’m watching kids flood into the commons from the closed cafeteria doors do I notice Fiona has stopped screaming – and why; she is out cold, Tara rubbing her tiny little fist.
I quickly put two and two together, say to Tara, “Nice, but now you have to drag her” and together we take our two humans – well, one and a half humans – all the way across the shiny cafeteria floor, into the line where you hand your tray over when it’s done and back, back into the kitchen.
The counters are gleaming, the ovens dark now for the day, the walk-in coolers old and cold.
I open the nearest one, shove some lettuce boxes and bags of onions from that day’s shipment out of the way with my sneakers and toss Roger inside.
Tara gasps until I point to the walk-in cooler next to mine and say, “Her turn” pointing to
Fiona.
Tara quickly follows suit, slamming the door shut and clapping her hands dramatically to wipe them off.
“Now what?” she asks.
I smile, perhaps the first time in three or four hours and say, “Now, Tara, we find ourselves some brains!”
* * * * *
Chapter 19
“These?” she asks, holding up – with two hands – an industrial sized can of beef stew.
I shake my head.
“Look for something like potted meat, or meat spread. Look for words like ‘tripe,’ which is the cow’s stomach lining, or ‘offal,’ which is all the internal intestines, in the list of ingredients.”
We have to get Roger some brains, stat, or he’s going to be useless to us.
I know from personal, firsthand experience that, in a pinch – i.e. when the Sentinels are late shipping our latest brain delivery – that any kind of canned, potted, processed “junk meat” would work.
Not for long enough, like weeks, but there’s enough brains in there to get us by for a couple of days; and right now, all Roger needs is a couple of hours.
If we’re lucky.
That’s because, in a sordid little secret humans would get grossed out over but zombies frequently rejoice over, few modern processing plants waste an ounce of a slaughtered animal, meaning your average canned meats, even hot dogs, have plenty of liver, kidneys, spleen and, yes, even brain mixed in.
Not enough to substitute for the real stuff, the fresh stuff, but enough to get a brand new zombie through the first few day or two without wandering around like a complete and utter tool.
“Aha,” says Tara, rising up from a stack of huge cans in the pantry with one marked “potted meat paste product” held triumphantly in both hands.
“Perfect!” I shout, sticking two fingers into the top and peeling back the lid while Tara watches, wide-eyed.
“Groovy,” she says, at least until I use those same two fingers to scoop out a handful and shove it down my gullet, making smacking noises with my greasy, glistening tongue.
Instantly I feel the slight sizzle and charge of brain product found in the soft, pinkish meat spread product thing I’d just consumed.
It’s like when you go to plug in the Christmas tree lights in the dark on December 25th and your finger gets too close to the socket and you feel that not unpleasant surge pass just by your fingertip; yeah, like that, only… now imagine that surge passing through your whole body, stem to stern.
Nice, huh?
Welcome to my Afterlife.
“This’ll do,” I say. “Now, any luck finding that funnel?”
She hands over a white plastic funnel that looks recently cleaned, if you consider “recent” anytime in the last decade.
I shrug – no germs are going to hurt him now – and open up the first walk-in cooler.
As expected, Roger is just coming to.
Lying on the graceless refrigerator floor, one shoe squashing a head of lettuce and his hand resting in a half-frozen pile of last week’s chocolate pudding – please let that be last week’s chocolate pudding – his ironic T-shirt has rather un-ironically slipped up the crest of his belly, exposing an admirable gut that, over the next three weeks will literally fall away as his body converts the fat to hard, gritty, sinewy muscle.
(You’re welcome, Roger!)
He sits up as we approach, squinting into the light that bathes our backs and must make us look downright angelic to him.
That is, until I bend down, push his head back onto the floor, insert the semi-clean funnel into his mouth and, as directed, Tara spoons most of the giant, industrial-size can of potted meat paste product down his gullet.
He resists at first, like most “Fresh Meat,” i.e. brand new zombies, but once his body gets that first faint fizzle of food borne electricity he sits up and chows down.
He knocks the funnel away and soon Tara is spoon-feeding him as Roger licks greedily at the empty spoon.
I shove his hands away and say, “Enough, big boy; we don’t want you on overload!”
Then I take the rest of the industrial size can and scoop out what’s left for a little midweek pick-me-up.
Like Roger, I suck greedily at the spoon then, when the can is practically empty, abandon it for two probing fingers which latch onto each and every morsel of meat byproduct to be found inside.
When I’m done I wipe my fingers on Roger’s socks.
He sits up, burps and slurs, “Quit it.”
“Ah,” I smile. “You can already speak; I knew there was a reason your head was so big!”
He cocks his head and looks around and says, “Why aren’t I cold?”
I smile and say, “Trust me, Roger, you ARE cold; but I stuck you in here to help you get better adjusted. Do you think you’re ready to join us outside the cooler? Because pretty soon I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
* * * * *
Chapter 20
Roger follows me out of the cooler on wobbly legs, Tara following him with a critical eye.
I can’t tell if she’s scared of him, amused by him or simply curious as to see how Zombie Roger will compare to Nerd God Roger.
“What happened while I was out?” he asks greedily, as hungry for information as he was for brain byproduct back in the cooler.
“Not much,” I admit. “We got you from there to here, that’s about it.”
Tara slides up onto a kitchen counter, her feet high above the clean tile floor and says, “Well, she’s leaving out just a tad; like the way she used this—” and here she whips out the copper wire plus protective rubber handle and adds “and turned that dude Ethan’s lights out.”
Roger cocks his head and reaches instinctively for the pretty copper wire; just as instinctively, Tara yanks it back.
Both look at me, like frightened schoolchildren when the man from the zoo brings the pretty, but deadly, poisonous snake for a class visit.
I shake my head and say, “Careful with that, Tara. And Roger, don’t even think of touching it.”
“But why?” Tara asks as Roger examines it more closely with his new zombie eyes. “What does it do?”
“You know how vampires hate having stakes shoved through their hearts? Well, that’s because the stake interrupts their life flow. Blood is what keeps vampires alive; energy is what keeps zombies alive. We eat brains because brains are full of electricity; that’s all the brain is, really, just a big battery for your body. We don’t need blood because our hearts don’t work; we don’t need air because our lungs don’t work. We just need brains for the electric charge. And what does copper do, class?” I ask, leaning back against the same counter where Tara is sitting, her legs dangling.
“Conducts electricity?” offers Tara.
“Conducts electricity,” says Roger, a tad more sure of himself.
“Right, so when you touch a zombie with copper, it short-circuits their whole electrical system. It can be any kind of copper; shiny copper wire, like the innards of that power cord, or copper tubing; heck, I’ve seen zombies forget and try to pay for a tube of maroon lipstick with a penny and zonk out right there at the makeup counter.”
Tara smiles, holding the copper wire aloft like a magic wand and saying, “So if I were to touch either of you two with this right now, boom, you’d fall to the ground like Ethan did back in the AV Club?”
“Yeah,” I say nervously, inching away from her, “so be careful.”
Instead she smiles devilishly and says, “I like this; I’m going to keep this.”
And that’s exactly what she does.
Better yet, it gives me an idea.
“Roger, let’s try something really quick. See that white fridge over there?” He looks, slowly – I’m going to have to remember he’s not quite all there yet, at least for awhile – before nodding. “Can you walk over and turn it around for me?”
He looks back at me with wide eyes already going from a sweet shade of hazel to a
dull but intense black.
“By myself?”
I nod and watch as he dutifully plods over to the dim white fridge by the shiny silver sink and grabs it by the side.
Hesitantly at first and then, as if it’s on wheels, he kind of whips it around until the back is facing us.
He kind of stands next to it, smiling.
“Wow,” he remarks. “That was really, really easy!”
Then, getting cocky, he turns it around again; and again.
“Roger,” I say. “Roger!”
He’s got the fridge halfway up off the floor when he finally registers and drops it, hard, on the tile floor.
Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! A YA Paranormal Novel Page 11
