Zombified (5 page)

“I am,” I said.

“Hey, Rip Van Ugly,” he called to Cody, “we're ready to go if you're done pouting.”

Cody stalked back to us. “Very funny,” he said. “If any zombies start to gnaw on your ass, don't count on me to save you.”

“I'm officially on my own,” Phil said. “Got it.” He popped open the trunk. “Choose your weapon.”

I grabbed my old standby and swung it once or twice. Phil and Cody did the same. I felt ready to do violence upon some unsuspecting shufflers.

Normally I'd have been creeped out by the walk though the dark field. It was easy to feel lost in the tall grass—cut off from civilization. But we marched along in silence toward the house, which gave me a lot of time to think about the Brandon Situation. Yes, I thought of it in capitals. Technically, I had been asking about him. Asking Crystal and a lot of other people who didn't want to talk to me, sure. It was no surprise that word had gotten back to him. It was also not a shock that he'd reached out to me. But, c'mon, we were both nearly grown-ups, right? I'd just write and let him know that my concern was a more general type and not of the let's-hook-up variety. Honestly, since I had been concerned about him, I should be glad that he'd texted me. At least I knew he was alive.

I decided to drop the capitals; this was no longer a Situation.

“Are you sleeping standing up?” Cody shout-whispered at me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Phil and I have both been jabbering at you,” he said, “and you just stand there like . . . something that just stands there.”

“You've painted a picture with your words, Cody,” I said. “Sorry, I was just wrapped up in my head for a minute.”

“The only thing wrapped around your head is your butt,” Cody replied and then grinned. He looked to Phil and raised his hand for a high five. Phil declined.

“That was funny, but nothing's that funny,” Phil said. “You know how I feel about high fives.”

Cody's arm slowly sank to his side.

Phil looked at me, concerned. “You okay?” he asked. “You up for this?”

I hefted my wrecker. “Let's go, cowboy.” It sounded tougher than I felt.

“Wait a minute,” Cody said. “Do you hear that?”

A slight breeze rustled the grass all around us, and that sounded like people whispering. The three of us stood absolutely still, straining to hear anything out of the ordinary. I was just about to say I didn't hear a thing, and probably call Cody a dumb-ass to boot. Then something did reach my ears. A grunt, maybe? The house we were approaching, a broken-down place with no doors or windows, sat maybe sixty yards away. I concentrated on it. There was another sound—a thud, like an ax in wood, or like a blade in undead flesh.

“You heard that, right?” I whispered.

“Someone's killing our zombies,” Cody said.

“Again,” Phil added.

We broke out in a run toward the zombie nest. I wasn't sure if we were bent on joining the fight against the shufflers, or in taking down the A-holes who'd bogarted two of our kills. Either way, we wanted to get there in a hurry.

The tall grass snagged at my clothing as I ran, slowing me down, and I felt a hitch in my side coming along. I really needed to get in better shape. Pretty soon I'd get outrun by even the slow variety of zombies.

Phil was the first to round the corner to the back of the house and he stopped short. Cody was right in front of me and he stopped, too. Unfortunately, there was no way to stop myself in time and I ran into Cody's back at full speed. We both went down with a thud.

I looked up from my perch on top of Cody and couldn't make out what I was seeing at first. It looked more like dancing than fighting. A head fell to the ground and rolled toward us. Cody gave a little scream and pushed me off him. I sat down hard on my tailbone, but I ignored the pain. It was easier to make out what I was seeing now that I was sitting up.

A single guy dressed from head to toe in black, including a balaclava, stood in the middle of four Zs. It took me several seconds to convince myself that what he held in his hands was an honest-to-God sword. Like from King Arthur or some shit. All of the Zs still standing looked relatively fresh, and fast. They hung back like they were trying to pick their moment. That was probably a smart move since the dismembered bodies of several of their buddies littered the ground.

One of the runners broke from the pack and charged the dude. Too fast to see, Ninja Man moved to meet him and did something with his sword. The zombie fell to the ground, his head still attached but split in two lengthwise. The other zombies moved in then, and the guy danced among them, his sword swinging. Bodies and parts of bodies fell all around him. The last runner, its days of running now a distant memory, fell on its face right in front of us, both arms taken off at the shoulder. It still writhed and snarled and tried to stand up. It stopped snarling just for a second when it saw me and Cody still sitting on our butts. It began to wriggle its way toward us like the world's largest, yuckiest worm.

Then the thing seemed to sprout a two-foot-long length of steel from its head and it stopped moving.

The guy who'd just offed nearly a dozen zombies all by himself stood over us. Even with the balaclava covering his face, I thought I saw a mocking smile.

“Are you Courtney?” the guy asked, and my heart leaped up into my throat. How in the hell did this zombie-killing machine know my name?

He reached up and grabbed the edge of his mask. He pulled it off in one sweeping motion to reveal a really gorgeous black kid who must have been my age. Sweat dripped off his face, and I'm going to restrain myself from saying that he glistened in the moonlight . . .

“Oh,” said Cody beside me. “Hi, Warren.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I
felt like my head exploded into a million tiny shards.

I'd been hearing the name Warren for days now. Everyone I talked to said that some guy named Warren had been asking about me. Now it turned out that Warren was the ultimate zombie hunter of my dreams. I was going to need a minute to process this. In the meantime, I just needed to not say or do anything stupid.

“You are very pretty,” I said. And immediately wished for my death.

“I'm sorry?” Warren said.

“What?” Phil said somewhere behind me.

“I mean,” I said, “I mean, yes, I am Courtney.”

Warren extended his gloved hand toward me. I took it and he pulled me up onto my feet. Based on that one action I started to calculate his strength and to match it with the evident musculature that lay beneath his very tight black clothing. What was happening to me? Someone must have assumed control of my brain, most likely the heroine of a Regency romance novel.

“Well, it's very nice to meet you, Courtney,” he said. “I've heard a lot about you.”

“From who?” Phil asked.

“I think you mean ‘whom',” Warren said. He gave me a little wink. An honest-to-God wink.

Phil's mouth formed a thin, tight line of unhappiness across his face. He wasn't one to make too many grammatical errors and when he did, I usually called him out on them. He never gave me that look, though . . .

“Yeah,” I said to Warren, “so, to
whom
were you speaking when my name came up?”

He flashed me a brilliant smile that worked magic and created dimples where none had been in evidence. I almost looked around to see if the sun had come out because I swear light glinted off his pearly whites.

“Well,” he said, “you did save a large percentage of the senior class from an onslaught of the undead last summer, didn't you? Those people mentioned it.”

“She had some help,” said Cody as he struggled to get himself up off the ground.

“Yeah,” Warren said, “I heard she had help.”

I waited for Cody, or even Phil, to jump on him for calling them help, but instead, they both just exchanged looks and bristled. Cody decided to air another grievance.

“So, what's up with you bogarting our zombies, man?”

Warren's brow creased in confusion.

“Wait,” he said. “Did you want to kill these ones?”

“Yes,” said Phil. “And we wanted to kill the nest you beat us to a few nights ago.”

Warren started to laugh. A deep, rich sound that rang through the mostly silent night.

“Do you think I was jumping your claim?” he asked. He took in Phil and Cody's faces. “You did, huh?” He raised his hands like he was surrendering. “Listen, it's just coincidence, okay? I didn't mean to poke my nose in where it didn't belong.”

“You're saying you didn't follow us around to find zombie nests and then attack them before we had a chance?” Cody asked. Even in the dark of the night I saw that his face was beet red.

“Cody,” said Phil in a soothing tone of voice, “when you say it out loud, it sounds kind of crazy.”

“Yeah,” I said in agreement.

Warren wisely kept his trap shut.

“How else could he have found the exact same nests we were thinking of zeroing?” Cody demanded.

“Great minds think alike?” Warren asked.

Cody glared at him. He opened his mouth to say something and, fearing what awfulness might come out, I jumped in first.

“Listen,” I said, “no matter how it happened, the zombies are dead now, right?” The three boys each eyed me, suspicious, then they slowly nodded. “And that's what we want, right? Dead Zs?”

More nods.

“Then what's it matter who got to them?” I asked.

Phil looked more accepting of this than Cody, but I'd take that because Cody would follow Phil's lead on this like on most things. “Also, hey, new zombie killer, right?”

“You did have some pretty sweet moves,” said Phil with begrudging respect. At that, I saw Cody relax a bit. If Phil was able to cut this guy some slack, who was he to argue?

“Thanks, mate,” said Warren.
Mate?
I almost said something but bit my tongue. Maybe use of the word “mate” was culturally appropriate in this circumstance. I figured I'd better err on the side of caution until I knew for sure I wasn't being a racist asshole for breaking his balls. “Maybe I'll get the chance to check out your moves one of these days.”

“Sure,” said Phil, but he didn't sound very convincing.

“But it's your skills I'd really like to see in action,” Warren said and turned that brilliant smile on me.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I have mad skills.”

Suddenly my mouth and brain didn't work. Dammit. Cody snickered behind me and I was glad there was so little light that night because I felt my cheeks grow hot.

“I meant it sarcastically,” I hissed at him.

“Whatever you say, dawg,” he said and then ran away as I kicked at him.

“This is fun and all,” Phil said, “but since there's no living dead to make just plain dead, we should be getting back to the real world.”

“Yes,” I said too eagerly. “Can we go home?” I really felt it was important for me to be somewhere other than Warren's current location.

Warren nodded as if he sensed what was going through my head. “Yeah, well, I hope I can see you again sometime.” He grinned without turning on the full wattage of his teeth, then added, “To see all of you.”

“Uh-huh,” Cody said.

Phil hooked his finger over his shoulder. “We're this way.”

“And I'm over there,” said Warren as he pointed to the west side of the house, the side closest to a road. With that, he waved, turned his back on us, and strode away. I made a point of not watching his butt as he did this.

“Well, this has been a great night,” said Cody. He was staring right at me as he said it, but I refused to rise to the bait.

“Yeah,” said Phil, “let's just get home before any other great things happen.”

We walked back to the car, Cody griping the whole way. Mostly he didn't like how he and Phil had been relegated to the role of “helpers” in last year's zombie invasion. Phil didn't say anything at all, which worried me a little bit, and since it's easy to tune out Cody, I was once again left alone with my thoughts. I tried to examine my reaction to Warren. I thought there was more to it than just the fact that he was good-looking.
Very
good-looking. I was shallow, but not that shallow. Just about then, I bumped into Phil's shoulder as we walked along and I felt how stiff he was. That was it. Phil was always stiff. In the months we'd been hanging out, he'd barely given me any hints that he liked me.
Liked me
liked me, if you know what I mean. Here I just met a boy who had not only been looking for me since school started, but who'd made eye contact with me, smiled, and made me blush. All within seconds of meeting.

I shook my head. It was wrong to compare the two of them. Wasn't it? Phil was a stand-up guy, considerate, nice, and funny and, admittedly, operating under an impaired set of social skills. Warren, for all his good looks and charm, might be a tool, or a serial killer. I was comparing them again. Crap. Okay, I told myself, I was going to stop comparing them starting now.

We got to the car and all piled in. Phil keyed the ignition and nothing happened. Silence filled the car. The kind of silence you only hear when you're miles from home in a car that won't start.

“Give me a minute,” said Phil even though no one had said anything.

He tried it again and the engine chugged, chugged again, and finally caught. It wheezed to life and we all relaxed.

“Know what was wrong?” I asked.

Phil shrugged. “Maybe I flooded it.”

He put it in gear and we started to bump along through the grass toward the road. As we went along, I started to blink, then sat forward to peer through the windshield.

“Am I slowly going blind?” I asked.

“No,” Phil said, obviously frustrated. “The headlights are dimming.”

“The headlights are what-ing?” Cody asked as he leaned against the back of our seats. “Why are they doing that?”

“Something must be wrong with the alternator,” Phil said.

I was about to ask how he knew that since I didn't even know what an alternator did. Alternated between two or more things, I guess? But before I was able to ask, the lights faded out completely, then the engine died and the car coasted to a stop just as we reached the road.

Cody started in with a steady stream of curses from the backseat. Phil just sat behind the wheel, staring off into the distance. I wasn't sure why, but I thought his reaction was a lot scarier than Cody's.

A short horn blast came from right in front of us. A sleek black car sat out there. I knew who it was and I felt a mixture of relief and dread wash over me. Relief that I wouldn't be walking home tonight and dread that more interaction with Warren might just push our little group right over the edge.

“You guys need a ride?” Warren called to us.

Cody and I looked to Phil to see how he'd react.

“I guess we'd better,” he said. I'd never heard him sound so defeated.

Before I was able to say something to make the situation better, he got out of the car. Considering how often I actually made things better versus how often I made people cry, it was probably for the best. I climbed out of Phil's car and approached Warren's. I don't know a lot about cars and don't really care to know more, but looking at the sleek black thing that he drove, I knew it was either reverse-engineered from an alien spacecraft, or it came from the future. It was so much nicer than Phil's that it seemed doubtful they were even the same species of technology.

For some reason, Phil and Cody both climbed into the backseat. It was probably a better location from which to pout was my guess. Warren leaned over and opened the passenger door from the inside. This is probably the cool-kid version of getting out and opening the door for a girl. It might fly with the jet set, but it didn't earn any points with a dainty flower such as myself.

But then I planted my butt on the bit of heaven that was the leather bucket seat and I was prepared to forgive everything. It was like having your cheeks cupped by angels.

Warren turned on that smile and I couldn't help but notice the very dimple-ness of his face.

“Who's first?” Warren asked.

“First?” I asked.

“He wants to know who to take home first,” Cody called from the backseat. “What the hell did you think he was asking?”

“Of course I knew that's what he was asking,” I said. “Screeched” might have been more accurate. “I'm not mentally deficient.”

“We'll take your word for it,” Cody shot back.

I turned to glare at him, but he'd already forgotten me as he and Phil whispered with their heads together. I sat back in my seat and restrained myself from delivering an audible harrumph.

“From here,” I said to Warren, “Phil lives closer than me. Cody does, too . . .” I realized I had no idea where Cody lived.

“Take Courtney first, if you don't mind,” Phil said. “I'll have you drop me at Cody's house. Tomorrow he can drive me to the auto parts place for a new alternator.”

“When were you gonna let me in on this plan?” Cody whined. “Maybe I had things to do tomorrow.”

“
Do
you have things to do tomorrow?” Phil asked.

There was a long pause during which I did not turn to sneer at Cody.

“Yeah,” he finally said, “take Courtney home and then take Phil to my house.”

Warren did something complicated-looking to the gear shifter. “Okay,” he said, “how do we get to your house?”

I gave him basic instructions with lots of unasked-for help from the whisper twins in the backseat. Once we'd gotten it hashed out how to get me home, we settled into an uneasy silence.

After a mile or two, Warren cleared his throat. I recognized this for the conversational gambit that it was.

“So you were probably wondering why I'd been asking about you,” he said.

I tried to play it casual. You know,
Oh, had you been asking about
moi?
I simply hadn't noticed.
What I said was, “Hmm?”

He flashed a grin even though he kept his eyes on the road. “One of the first people I met when I moved here was Crystal Beals. She mentioned what happened out at that kid's cabin last year. I thought to myself,
Warren, you've got to meet that girl
.”

“Why?” I asked, skeptical.

“Because I've never known anyone else my age who was great at hunting Zs.”

Putting aside the fact that he'd just proclaimed himself great—which seemed sort of grandiose—it was sort of flattering. Then a small, nagging voice told me to come clean about something.

“That night I just did what I had to to save myself and my friends,” I said. “Truth is, I never hunted shufflers in an organized way until I hooked up with these two knuckleheads.” I hooked my thumb behind me.

“Thank you,” Cody said instantly like he'd been waiting for me to give him credit.

“Then I'm happy to meet you guys, too,” Warren said. “I hope we can hunt together sometime.”

“Crystal didn't mention them?” I asked.

“I don't think so,” Warren said and he frowned a little. Good God, he even had dimples when he frowned.