by Tonia Brown
“And how did the court nerd end up being advisor to the king?”
“I think it’s because I didn’t chase him. I didn’t follow him around or laugh out loud at his jokes or ask him how he was doing every time I saw him, even though I really wanted to. The other guys—and every single girl, of course—all followed him like lambs. Bleating about his every move. But I didn’t. I all but ignored him.”
“Why would you ignore the greatest thing to hit your town in years?”
Jonah looked up to Candy, his stomach twisting with a sudden need to get this off his chest. “Because I knew he wouldn’t want to be my friend. I knew we would never get along. He was too cool for me. Too popular. I was just… just Jonah. But Dale. Dale was something else.”
“But he chose you anyway.”
The words made Jonah smile. She understood. “Yeah. He picked me. Out of an entire school filled with willing lackeys, he picked me.”
“Must have been a shock.”
“You have no idea.” He paused a moment to mull over the shadows of memories that flooded him. Some dark and frightening. Some happy and grand. “You want to know the first thing he actually said to me? I mean, right to me?”
Eyes wide with curiosity, she nodded.
“I was minding my own business, reading a book on my lunch break, when Dale just pops up out of nowhere and says,” Jonah paused, sat up and put on his best serious Dale imitation before he continued. “’Hey! If you’re going to be my new best friend, you have to stop being so boring. Put down the book and try not to look like such a nerd.’”
Candy snorted. “What a charming young man.”
“He was right, though. I was really boring. I still am, compared to him. But I think he picked me because he wanted someone who didn’t fall all over him every time he walked into a room. Deep down, I admired him, was jealous of him, wanted to be him, but I never let him know it. And he made my perfectly boring life a nightmare. Gone was my simple routine. Gone was my dependable schedule. The first thing he wanted to do after he announced we were new best friends was skip school. Me! Jonah Benton, straight-A student and class president, cutting classes? It was unheard of.”
“Did you?”
With a smirk, Jonah nodded. “I tried to argue, but he can be terribly convincing. That, and I think I was tired of being so dull. Dale was anything but dull. He had me doing stuff I’d only read about. You know? Real kid stuff. Like smoking in the boys’ room. Sharing answers to tests. Sneaking into R-rated movies. Peeping into the girls’ locker room… and I can’t believe I just confessed to that.” Jonah covered his face as Candy giggled.
“Average red-blooded American male stuff, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So you just forgot your very important to-do list in favor of his recklessness?”
“It wasn’t just recklessness. It was spontaneity. He was so impulsive, and I loved it. I was a dull kid just waiting for the next dull day, the next dull week, the next dull year. But Dale never lived like that. Even as a kid, he always lived in the moment. You know? Every second mattered to him. He always lived like every day was his last.” Upon reflection, Jonah now knew why.
“He turned your pre-planned life upside down. Sounds like a keeper.”
“Sure, he changed my life, and in some ways it was for the worse… well, most ways actually, but I don’t think I could ever go back to the old Jonah. I don’t even know if there is an old Jonah anymore. Am I making any sense?”
“Yeah, you are. He’s your friend. ‘Nuff said.”
“God, you put it so much better in so much fewer words. You must be tired of listening to me ramble.”
“Not at all. I like a man who can share his life story by streetlamp.”
Jonah gave a nervous laugh as he ran his hands through his filthy hair, wishing he had showered earlier. “See? This is how different we are. This is just the kind of thing Dale wouldn’t do.”
“No?” Candy took Jonah’s hand up again, bringing it to her lap, where she held it tight. “What would Dale do instead?”
Jonah stared down at her hand, hot around his, and gulped. “Well, he would probably tell you how beautiful you are.”
“You already did that.”
“Oh yeah.”
“What else would he do?”
“He would put the moves on you.”
“I see. And just what are these moves like?”
Logic told him to panic, to cut and run, to back off before he made a fool of himself. But for some reason, he was calm, collected and cool. For once in his life, with regard to a member of the opposite sex, he felt like he knew just what he was doing, and just how to go about doing it. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with Candy, but he was pretty sure that, given the chance, he could make love to her. Or rather with her, because that’s what he really wanted. Not just to fuck her brains out, but to make sweet and slow love with her. (Although he couldn’t say with all honesty that he’d be opposed to fucking her brains out after they made sweet, slow love a few times.)
“For starters,” Jonah said, as he looked down at her, “he might try to kiss you.”
Candy tilted her head up to him, her eyes locking onto his. “Would he?”
“Oh, yeah. He would definitely try to kiss you.”
“And just how would that go?”
Jonah took this as an invitation, and brought his mouth down to hers. There he lingered for a fraction of a moment, hovering millimeters above her face, preparing himself mentally for what was about to happen. In seconds, he would show her just how beautiful he thought she was. Electric promise sparked from her plump, moist lips to his, arcing across that fraction of a space, fusing their passion even before their paths converged. The thought of what might follow this simple act got his blood flowing in every direction. There was no going back. This was it.
He was going to kiss her, and it was going to be wonderful.
“Jonah!” Dale shouted, with what had to be the worst timing ever known to mankind.
Jonah pretended not to hear the zombie, instead leaning forward to complete the intended union. Candy, however, jumped back with a start, leaving Jonah to smooch the air instead of her.
“Jonah!” Dale shouted again.
“Speak of the Devil and his imp shall appear,” Candy whispered.
“Jonah!” Dale shouted a third time. “There you are!”
Ignoring the beginnings of an erection, Jonah stood and turned to find a bare-chested Dale bounding up the walkway from the lobby. Jonah’s lust evaporated as he stared at the ring of red around Dale’s mouth. “What’s wrong?”
Dale stopped mid-bound when his eyes landed on Candy—who now stood beside Jonah, straightening out her clothes as if she had just spent the last ten minutes making out with Jonah instead of listening to him ramble on about the very same person who interrupted what could have been their first kiss.
The zombie stepped back into the shadows as he wiped the blood from his lips and asked, “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Jonah was set to deliver a speech on the virtues of not running about shouting a man’s name in the dead of night, but Candy surprised him by answering first.
“No,” she said. “I was just on my way to bed when Jonah was kind enough to check on me.” She gave Jonah a wink and added, “I’ll see you in the morning. Seven a.m.”
“Good night, Candy,” Jonah whispered to her retreating form.
“Night!” Dale shouted after her.
Watching her disappear into her room, Jonah groaned. “Jesus, Dale. You’ve got lousy timing!”
“What’s eating you?”
“No one now, thanks to you.”
“That doesn’t matter. I need your—”
“Doesn’t matter?” Jonah asked as he whipped about in fury. “Do you know what just happened? What was going to happen? What could have happened? To me? For once—to me?”
Dale threw a furtive glance at Candy’s door, then back to Jonah, then
back to the closed door across the walkway. “I did interrupt something, didn’t I?”
“That has to be the understatement of the century. You have no idea how close I was to… well… being close to her.”
“Jonah, there are more important things in life and death than getting some.”
“Oh, that’s just rich.” Jonah stomped away from Dale, making sure to put extra oomph into each and every stomp. “That’s very intellectual coming from you.”
“It doesn’t matter if you were gonna fuck her or play Twister with her. What does matter is—”
“Of course you’d say that.” Jonah swiped his key with a quick thrust, yanking on the handle the instant the light went green. “You get laid all the time, but when I finally get the girl, it doesn’t matter. When I finally get some action, it doesn’t matter!” He pushed the door open and stomped inside, not caring if the zombie followed him or not.
“Jonah! Man! Would you get your dick out of your ears and fucking listen to me for five seconds?”
Jonah spun around in the doorway and stared down his nose at Dale. “You have exactly five seconds.”
“You can have her. I don’t even want the bitch. What I do want is my thumb back.”
“Bitch? How dare you call her that.”
“Listen, man—”
“No, you listen to me. I’m going to give you one chance to apologize. One chance. I don’t want to get into a fight about this, but you’re slandering the… woman… I might …” Jonah stopped talking when he realized what Dale had said.
Exactly what Dale had said.
He also stopped talking because he finally got a good look at Dale. Not just the splatters of red here and there across the man’s bare chest. Not just the subtle swell of his naked belly. Not just the streaks of blood racing down the zombie’s chinos. No. Jonah’s glance landed on Dale’s right hand.
Or, more specifically, the space that once housed the zombie’s now-absent thumb.
Chapter Sixteen
Green River, Utah
138 hours: 15 minutes: 25 seconds remaining
Dale’s right hand had once sported five digits. Jonah was as sure of that fact as he was of his own name. And now? Now the dead man’s hand displayed pointer and middle finger and ring finger and pinky. But old reliable thumbkin was gone. Just gone. Not even a bloody stump was left. The whole digit, from nail to base, was missing, with just a smear of black left in its place.
“What in the hell happened to your thumb?” Jonah asked.
Dale pushed past Jonah into the room. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, jackass.”
Letting the door close behind him, Jonah leaned against it as he stared hard at the zombie. “Okay. I’m going to ask a question now. And it might seem like a really odd question, but I’m really tired and frustrated and running on empty, so bear with me.”
“Ask away.”
“You… you’ve always had all ten of your fingers, right?”
“Yup.”
“And now one is what, just gone?”
Dale glanced down at his hand, which now sported only four fingers. “Looks like it.”
“How?”
“Oh? Are you done going on about little Miss Thing? Can we talk about my problems now? Or should I wait for you to go get your rocks off first?”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“You sure? She might still be awake. And horny.” Dale proceeded to hump and spank the empty air before him, grunting and grinning and groaning.
“Jesus, Dale.” Jonah took a few steps forward and collapsed onto the bed. “Stop being such an ass and just tell me what happened.”
The picture Dale painted was almost as vulgar as his smack talk about Candy.
The zombie, hungry beyond control, had immediately hit the first dumpster he came across, which of course belonged to the hotel. But the dumpster had a disturbing lack of vermin. Dale had been about to go in search of another source, when he discovered the reason for the scarcity of rats. A fat tomcat watched Dale from the alleyway, healthy from years of eating free-range dumpster vermin. Deciding that perhaps it was time to expand his food sources, Dale had gone after the cat.
“You didn’t?” Jonah asked.
“Oh yes, I did,” Dale assured him. “You said I like eating pussy.”
“Ugh. So crude.”
“But wait, it gets better.”
The cat fled at the sight of Dale, perhaps out of instinct for self-preservation, or perhaps because he just didn’t like the looks of the dead man. Dale pursued the animal for several blocks, chasing the cat under cars and over fences, determined to have the feline for supper. At once point, the cat fled under a shed, into a hole too small for Dale to follow. But, to his delight, there was a dog tied up to the very same shed.
“Dale,” Jonah scolded. “Not a dog.”
“Why not?” Dale asked. “You said no people. What’s wrong with a juicy doggy?”
“That’s just… sick.”
“And eating rats isn’t sick?”
The whole point was moot, however, because Dale never got his hands on the dog—though the dog did get ahold of the dead man’s hand. Thinking the small pup would be easy prey, Dale had undone the dog’s chain from its collar with one hand while he reached out to snap the animal up with the other. But the dog was quicker and ready for a fight. The dog nipped at Dale’s oncoming hand, cleaving the zombie’s thumb away in one clean bite. And because Dale had let the pup free first, it immediately ran off, taking the finger with it.
“It bit off your thumb?” Jonah asked.
“It came after me all of a sudden, man,” Dale said, rubbing his wound. “I was lucky it didn’t take my whole hand.”
“Can you blame it? You did want to eat the poor thing.”
“What makes a dog a ‘poor thing’ when a rat is dinner?”
“I don’t know, Dale. I don’t make the rules. Did you go after it?”
“I wanted to, but I was way too hungry for that shit. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t, you know, eat the first person I saw. Luckily there was a dumpster just across the road. So I hit it and came back as soon as I was done.”
“What kind of dog was it?”
“A pissed-off one.”
“I meant what breed?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.” Dale held his hands apart, trying to shape the size of the dog from memory. “It was brown and small.”
“Little and brown? The way you tell the story, I thought it was a freaking Doberman.” Jonah glanced down at the zombie’s blood-streaked chest. “Where did your shirt go?”
“I tossed it. Trust me, you don’t want to see it, and I don’t want that thing back.”
“This is going to get old.” Jonah groaned as he rubbed his temples. “Can you at least try not to make such a mess when you eat?”
“I can’t help it,” Dale pouted. “The little bastards wiggle a lot, and it’s hard to keep the blood from squirting on your clothes when you bite down—”
“Jesus, we’re going to end up spending a fortune in clothes if you keep getting blood all over them and throwing them out.”
“I guess I could always eat in the nude.”
Jonah considered the image of the naked zombie rummaging around in a dumpster, looking for rats to eat. He considered it in the same way he considered a punch to the balls. With extreme horror. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Just do your best to stop ruining your clothes. Or, at the very least, don’t throw them away.”
“Sorry, man, but I was pretty sure you would be with Candy when I went looking for you. She definitely didn’t need to see that.”
“What do you mean you knew I would be with her?” Jonah asked.
Dale grinned a mouthful of crimson-tinted enamel. “Come on, man. I knew you couldn’t just go to bed without at least talking to her for a few minutes. I just didn’t think you’d be making out already. That was a pretty fast hookup. I’m impressed.”
Jonah wanted to strut and cluck and crow, but he pushed those urges aside in favor of decorum. Besides, there would be plenty of time to rub his hookup in the living Dale’s face when this was all done. And once he actually hooked up. “Just so you know, we weren’t really making out. Just talking.”
The zombie didn’t seem to hear him. “Oh, man, she’s so hot. Did you get to second base? Are those tits real? I bet they are.”
“Dale! Get your mind off her tits and back on your thumb.”
“I’d rather think about her tits than my thumb. Or better still, my thumb playing with her tits.” The zombie’s remaining thumb jumped at the prospect, twitching in the air as Dale stared into the distance, lost in his fantasy.
Jonah wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t blame Dale. Candy was just so sexy. With a sigh, Jonah agreed, “Me, too. But fantasizing about fondling Candy’s fantastic breasts all night is not going to help that.” He pointed to Dale’s missing digit.
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. What can we do?”
Dale scrunched his face up in thought, and, for a moment, Jonah supposed that the zombie was going to be at it for a while. But only a few seconds into his thinking, Dale announced, “Satan.”
“What about him?”
“Maybe he can fix this.”
Jonah stared at the empty space where Dale’s finger used to be. “What makes you think he can do that?”
