Badass Zombie Road Trip (25 page)

“No,” Dale snapped.

Jonah narrowed his eyes at the sign, then the surroundings. “We have. We were just here. I remember that chain link fence. The one with the missing post there in the middle.”

“Don’t be retarded.” Dale rushed along, not waiting for Jonah to follow.

“Wait a minute. You’re right. We weren’t just here—”

“Told you so.”

“Because this is where we started. Dale! You idiot! We’ve doubled back.”

“No, I followed my finger. It’s not my fault the little bastard brought it back here.”

Raising his hands in defeat, Jonah announced, “That’s it. I’m done.”

“But we’re so close! I can feel it!”

“Really? Are you pulling my leg? You could smell it, now you can feel it?” As he looked to the heavens for help, a familiar sensation overwhelmed Jonah. “My God, I’m such an idiot.”

“No argument there.”

“You’ve been leading me on this whole time, haven’t you?”

“What?”

“You’ve been leading me around on some wild goose chase just for a good laugh. Well thanks a lot, jackass. I could have been asleep this whole time.”

“I’m telling you, it’s real near. I can feel it. You have to believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you. Don’t you worry about that. I believe everything you say. I think I’m ready to believe just about anything. Satan, real? Sure. Hell exists? No problem. How about the walking dead? Why not? But what I can’t believe is that I’ve tagged along for the last three hours while you’ve chased your own freaking thumb across this stupid town.”

Jonah kicked the signpost a few times, seething with ire but unsure how to direct it. He knew where he wanted to channel it, but even hyped up on the adrenaline of his anger, Jonah knew he could never win in a fight against Dale. Dead Dale or living Dale or any Dale in any of the other sixteen states of being.

“What are you so mad about?” Dale asked.

“A thumb!” Jonah said as loud as he could without actually shouting. “I’ve spent the last three hours wandering around looking for a thumb for a dead man who doesn’t even feel the pain of it being gone. And you know the worst of it? I bet you don’t even need it. In fact, I’ll bet my soul that it doesn’t even matter.”

“It matters to me,” Dale murmured.

“Why on earth would it?”

“Because it’s my thumb!”

Dale’s shout echoed across the quiet street, bringing Jonah back to his cautious senses, but not enough to temper his anger.

“Of course,” Jonah whispered. “It matters because it belongs to you. Makes perfect sense for someone so selfish.” Jonah turned on his heel and followed what he hoped was the path back to the hotel. “Christ, this has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Dale’s accusatory voice rose behind him. “What was? Driving me into California after you promised you’d forget about it?”

This stopped Jonah in his tracks, but only for a moment. He brushed off the dig and continued on his way. “Not gonna work. Not this time.”

Dale was hot on Jonah’s heels, yipping like an excited puppy, circling Jonah as he stomped away. “Where are you going?”

“To bed. To sleep.” Giddy from lack of rest, Jonah giggled and added, “Perchance to dream?”

“Come on, man. Just five more minutes.”

“Goodnight, Dale.”

“I swear it’s near here.”

“Good. Night. Dale.”

“Jonah, you gotta help me, man. Please?”

Jonah stopped again and turned to face the dead man, who now stood a few paces away. The ‘please’ was too much. Too personal. The zombie sounded so much like Dale when he said it. The real Dale. With a sigh, Jonah ran his hands through his hair. “Five more minutes, then we cut our losses. I need to sleep a few hours. Okay?”

“Okay!” Dale darted off, and with another tired sigh, Jonah followed.

Once again, they came upon the tool shed to which the precocious pup had, at one point, been tethered. Hours ago, this was their starting point, where Dale had replayed the scene so they could determine the direction in which the dog had fled. Now they stood beside the very same shed as Dale sniffed the quiet air.

“It’s here,” the zombie whispered.

In a low voice, Jonah asked, “If it was here the whole time, then why did we run all over town looking for it?”

“Because it wasn’t here before, smartass. I think he’s been running around with it. He’s been leading me on. But it’s here now. Oh yeah, it’s here now.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I just know.” All at once, Dale snapped his attention to the end of the fence. Raising his finger in accusation, he whispered, “There’s the little furball.”

At the end of the chain link fence, in the halo of a flickering streetlamp, sat the very creature for which they had spent three fruitless hours looking. Jonah understood Dale’s trouble describing the beast, for he, too, had a hard time discerning the dog’s breed. True to Dale’s description, the dog was indeed both brown and small, with knotted layers of fur and the saddest little eyes ever to appear on an animal. The best description Jonah could manage for the poor thing was ‘mutt.’

This mutt stared at them from the sidewalk, as if wondering what in the world they were doing hanging around his fence in the middle of the night.

“Give me back my fucking thumb!” Dale yelled.

“Keep your voice down,” Jonah warned in a fierce whisper. “The last thing we need is to be picked up for suspicious behavior. And I can’t think of anything more suspicious than two strangers in a small town, sneaking around in the middle of the night.”

“I can.” Thankfully, Dale didn’t elaborate on this as he took off down the length of fence.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna wring the little shit’s neck ‘til he stops moving.”

Jonah lunged forward and grabbed the zombie before he could make good on his word. “Stop. Just stop and think a minute. Okay? If you spook him, we might lose him again.”

The zombie whimpered. “But he has my thumb. I just know it.”

 
“I don’t think he does.” After giving the mutt a quick visual once-over, Jonah suggested, “Unless, of course, he ate it.” He regretted the words the moment they came out of his mouth.

In the moonlight, Dale’s yellow eyes lit like sparklers on the Fourth of July. “Of course! Jonah, you’re a genius. I bet he swallowed the damned thing. I bet it’s swimming around in his little belly right now. Come on, I’m gonna tear it apart with my bare hands.” The zombie set out again, surely intending to commence said barehanded tearing.

Jonah held Dale back once more. Even though he had spent half the night looking for the zombie’s thumb, Jonah now found himself on the side of the dog. After all, it wasn’t the poor pup’s fault that Dale was such a hungry, hungry jackass. “We need to be careful. We should try to coax it over, or it will just run again.”

“Okay. Coaxing first. But then wringing and tearing.” Dale accentuated his words with a quick pantomime.

A wave of nausea arose in Jonah at the sight of the zombie wringing an imaginary dog’s neck, then tearing the imaginary pup limb from imaginary, bloody limb. “I’m sure we can get it back another way.”

“How?”

“We could just wait for it to reappear.”

“Reappear,” Dale echoed, as if unsure what Jonah meant.

“Yes. Reappear. You know.” At the continued confusion in Dale’s eyes, Jonah motioned to his own backside and added. “Naturally?”

Dale wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Gross, man. I don’t want it back after some dog shits it out. Won’t it get digested anyway?”

“Will it?” Jonah asked, stalling for time. “Does zombie flesh digest easily? We should wait and find out.”

“Fuck that.” Dale dropped to a squat, patting the ground as he called out to the animal. “Here, you little shit. Come on now. Come to Dale. Come here so I can rip your stomach out through your asshole.”

The dog, wiser than the dead man, took a few wary steps backward.

“Shit,” Dale hissed. “Smart little fuck, ain’t ya?” He stood and nodded at Jonah. “You try.”

Jonah bent double and did his worst to make the dog come to him. He waggled his hand in the air, just over the ground, as he called out, “Come here, little doggy. Here, boy.”

To his surprise—and his dismay—the dog wiggled its stump of a tail and came a-running.

“No!” Jonah cried.

The dog tried to jump back at the warning, but not before the zombie was able to snatch it up by the scruff of its neck.

“Gotcha!” Dale shouted.

After yelping in surprise, the animal turned to nip at the dead man. But Dale, more cautious this time, kept the animal at arm’s length, where it wriggled and writhed, but couldn’t land a single bite. Soon it stopped struggling, and the night air was filled with a soft puppy whimper.

“I’m gonna pull you apart,” Dale snarled at the mutt. “Piece by furry, fucking piece.”

The dog whimpered again, and Jonah had had enough.

“Stop it,” Jonah demanded. “You’re scaring him.”

“I’m gonna do more than that to it.” Dale shook the animal to the tune of a warbled whine from the dog.

“Cut that out.”

“What? It has my finger.”

“Give him to me.” Jonah held out his hands and waited.

“No. You’ll just let it go again, because you’re a pussy. I’ll do what needs to be done.”

“I won’t let him go. I promise. Just let me look at him first. Before you … you know.”

After a few seconds of deliberation, Dale shoved the dog in Jonah’s direction. “Go ahead, but if you let him get away, I swear I’ll tear you apart, too.”

Again, Jonah was fairly sure the zombie would remain true to his words, if given the chance. The dog all but leapt into Jonah’s arms and buried its little head in his shoulder. There, the trembling animal continued to whimper and whine. Jonah couldn’t fault it. He had wanted to both whimper and whine for two days now.

“It’s okay,” Jonah cooed as he stroked the animal’s back. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

Dale snorted, but said nothing.

“Good boy,” Jonah said. “You don’t bark or anything, do you? You’re just a good little doggy. Aren’t you?” Jonah held the dog to him, petting and stroking until the thing, at last, fell still. Once he’d calmed the poor creature, Jonah shifted the dog’s weight onto one arm, holding the animal out so he could take a better look at it.

One error became immediately apparent.

Jonah chuckled. “Well, it seems we were both wrong.”

“What?” Dale asked.

“She’s not a he.”

“Who gives a fuck? Did it swallow my thumb or not?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

Jonah ran his hands along the animal’s belly, which felt swollen enough to have indeed swallowed a dead man’s thumb. But, he supposed, it could’ve also been a case of her eating something equally dead. Or deader. Or perhaps the dog just had plain old worms, or even puppies on board. Jonah was about to announce this, when he noticed the beast’s paws were covered in muck. He looked down at his now-dirt-covered shirt, then back to the dog, an idea catching his mind. Spreading a paw out in the streetlight, Jonah frowned at the clumps of grass and damp soil caught between the dog’s claws.

“What are you doing?” Dale asked. “Planning a manicure for it?”

“Her feet are covered in dirt.”

“It’s a dog, Jonah. It runs around in the dirt for a fucking living. Of course her feet are covered in the stuff.”

“No, I mean it’s really caked on. Like she’s been, I don’t know, digging up something.” Jonah gave Dale a worried look before he added, “Or burying something.”

Dale’s mouth dropped open as a look of complete surprise took him. “She buried my thumb?”

“Maybe.”

“Where?”

“You’re the one who said it was here.”

“Yeah,” Dale agreed, looking around. “But where is it here?”

Jonah scanned the area, but didn’t see any likely candidates for hiding spots. “I don’t know. Maybe she has a secret place she takes stuff.”

“No. It has to be near here. I feel it!”

Jonah hissed Dale back into silence. “Keep your voice down. We’ll find it. Show me exactly where she was tied up again.”

Dale led Jonah—and their new furry friend—back to the scene of the crime. The shed rested to the left of a well-kept back yard, butted against a tall slatted fence that edged the adjoining neighbors’ yard. The hole in question was just under a corner of the structure.

Dale pointed a little to the left of the hole and said, “I found her standing right there.”

Something about the scene struck Jonah as odd. How he had missed it before, he wasn’t sure. The chain, which once had bound the dog to the shed, wasn’t itself actually connected to said shed. Instead, the chain snaked off into the darkness of the hole underneath. A hole that probably led into the neighbors’ yard. A hole just big enough for the dog to crawl through.

A sudden understanding crept over Jonah, and from the look on Dale’s face, he knew the zombie had just drawn the same conclusion. Without a word between the pair, they stepped to the adjoining fence, leaned up on tiptoes and peered over. There they stared across a modest, moonlit back yard, riddled with numerous small mounds of dirt.