be safe. Anyway, it’s better than any alternative you have of trying to survive on your own out there.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“You lead me back to my camp safely, protect me from the zombies.”
“I thought you wanted to die.”
“I did,” she admitted. “But you were right. It’s better to stay alive as long as possible. And I’d rather be alive with humans than alive here under lock and key, being watched over and questioned.”
“I won’t last long out there without preserves,” I said. “How far is it?”
“My brother and I had been out for a few days,” she replied. “I’m not sure exactly how long. I lost track. At least three.”
“I’ll skid by then.”
“But we were lost. And we were looking for our father. We were trying to cover as much of the forest as we could. I know how to get back because I know the way we went. I have a really good sense of direction. Trust me.”
“I can’t.”
“What other choice do you have?”
“If I skid I’ll turn into one of them. A Stiff.”
She nodded. “Okay. Can’t you bring some extra brains or something?”
I sighed. “Maybe. If Trevor helps me. I don’t know. This is crazy.”
“Would you rather die?”
I turned my head to the side and considered it.
“Can I trust you, Morgan?” I asked.
“No,” she said simply. “Not any more than I can trust you.”
She extended her hand through the bars. “But it’s all we have right now. It’s the only chance either of us has.”
I squished my face to the side. Then I extended my hand and shook hers.
“Tonight,” I said. “If I decide to do this I’ll come tonight.”
“Okay,” she said, smirking. “See you tonight, Zellner.”
I released her hand and turned away from her. The human and I had a deal.
26. ZOMBIE ON THE RUN
“Are you really gonna do this, Zell?”
I stepped past Trevor and moved into his mentor’s kitchen. He followed me uncertainly. “I think I have to.”
“What if it’s a trick? You can’t trust humans.”
“I don’t trust her. But it’s my only chance.”
“I can’t help you get out.”
“I know.”
“My mentor would have me expelled.”
“I know.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
I grabbed Mrs. Kushner’s chem dish, poured the contents into a container, and dropped it in my backpack. It would give me a few extra days, maybe a week if I rationed it right. I pulled the hood of my safety gear over my head, threw my backpack over my shoulder and put a hand on Trevor’s shoulder.
“Try to stop me.”
“What?” Trevor asked quizzically as I sidled past him.
“Your mentor needs to know that you didn’t just let me run off with the human,” I said. “Give me five minutes, then go upstairs and get your mentor and tell her that you saw me go into the barn and you think something’s up. And try to stop me.”
“I can’t, man,” Trevor objected. “I can’t do that to you.”
“You have to. It’s okay. By the time you get out there I’ll have her in the van and we’ll be gone.”
I raised my arm in front of his face. Trevor shook his head sadly, then connected his to mine.
“See you around, Zell,” he said hoarsely.
“See ya’, Trev,” I replied, then turned and broke for the front door of the farmhouse. I was afraid to look back, so I stared forward, my sights set on the barn, dark and foreboding against the dull evening sky. I sprinted to the front doors and unlocked the chains, throwing open the barn door and rushing inside. I stepped in front of the stall and fumbled to unlock the door.
Morgan sat up inside the stall. “Is this happening?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling off the lock and tossing it away. “We have to go. Now.”
I pulled open the stall’s barred door and gestured her forward. She hopped up, smiling, her blanket still wrapped around her. “Leave it,” I said.
“I don’t have a shirt,” she objected.
I reached for my backpack and pulled out a balled-up shirt and tossed it at her. It was one of those short-sleeved shirts that had longer sleeves made from the material of thermal wear sewn onto it. It was Trevor’s, but he didn’t wear it that much anymore.
“I’ve got an extra jacket, too, but that’s it,” I said. “How’s your leg?”
“Okay,” she said as she tossed away the blanket and pulled the shirt over her head. “It’s a little sore but I can move it like normal. I’ll deal.”
I nodded my silent understanding and turned away from her. I opened the water and feed bins and began filling some containers with the contents. One was a pencil case Trevor never used, another a larger bottle that had been filled with human medicine, and a couple of storage containers Mrs. Kushner used for keeping extra bandages and towels. We didn’t keep a lot of containers with lids, mostly because we didn’t need to preserve anything that way. I threw the filled containers into my backpack, hopeful that would be enough to keep Morgan alive until we reached the human safe zone.
“Come on,” I said, zipping up my backpack. I grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the barn, dragging her through the field toward the front of the house where Mrs. Kushner’s van was. It had been low on gas when we had gotten back last night. I didn’t know how far it would take us, but it was better than trying to go on foot. Most of the Wakes in town would be in hysterics if they knew a human was on the loose.
We sprinted to the driveway and I threw open the driver’s door. “Get in,” I said. “Hurry.”
She climbed in and I went after her. She shifted to the passenger’s seat as I closed the door behind us and put the key in the ignition and revved the van into action, the engine sputtering as I did. I glanced out my window. Trevor was rushing out of the farmhouse and Mrs. Kushner was just behind him, a terrified look on her face. I winked at Trevor, then shifted the van into gear like I had seen him do last night and slammed my foot on the gas pedal. The van’s tires squealed in the dirt, then the car lurched forward and bumped wildly down the driveway. Morgan and I bounced in our seats and the van rocked dangerously. I could hear Mrs. Kushner wailing behind us as I swerved the van out of the driveway and down the paved street, the vehicle swaying dangerously to one side.
“Oh my God, where did you learn to drive?” Morgan spat as she reached for her seatbelt and snapped it over her.
“I didn’t,” I said, pulling off my hood so I could see better.
“Oh great,” she mumbled.
“It’s better than walking.”
“Not if we die. Slow down.”
I let up off the gas a little, trying to get used to it. The car jerked forward and Morgan gave me a vicious stare. Trevor said you were supposed to use one foot for both the gas pedal and the brakes, but I couldn’t get out of the habit of using a separate foot for each. I let up off the brake pedal and tried to coast smoothly. There weren’t any traffic lights, but vehicles, when used, which wasn’t often, were supposed to slow down at every intersection to look for oncoming traffic. I failed to do so, finding it too difficult, and coasted through every crossroad.
“You drive like a maniac,” Morgan grumbled.
“You think you could do any better?” I demanded.
“We don’t have the luxury of motor vehicles at camp,” she replied cynically. “It’s nice to see zombies are getting good use of them.”
“We don’t use them a lot,” I said. “Only for long trips across town or transporting stock.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Kind of. I remember some stuff. Not everything.”
“How can you even see anything? It’s pitch black!”
“Zombies have way better vision than hums. We can see really well at night.”
&n
bsp; “There’s no end to the wonders of being undead, is there?” she asked scornfully.
“The advantages just keep piling up, don’t they?”
She shook her head and looked away from me.
“You know, you’d have made a good Wake,” I said as I coasted down the street path.
She looked sideways at me. “Well, I’m sure you were a good human before you were killed and turned into this.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Don’t you ever think about it? Your life before you became a zombie.”
“No. I like being a zombie. I never gave much thought to what it was like to be a human, any more than you give thought to what it was like to be a fetus. That was just what happened before my real life began.”
“If you say so,” she replied. “Where are we going?”
“Zone F, near the bus station I took you to last week. It’s across town, but that’s the only way we’ll figure out how to get back to the human safe zone. We always believed that it was nearest to that part of Revenant, but no humans would ever confirm it. But the activity level of both Stiffs and humans had always been a lot more there than anywhere else, so it made sense. We could never figure out where the humans were hiding themselves, though.”
“Our camp is pretty secure,” Morgan said vaguely. “We have a few zombies that wander by but they don’t really bother us.”
“They won’t unless they see a lot of movement or smell blood,” I replied.
She nodded. “Yeah, we figured that out. One time there was an accident and one of our members got cut pretty bad. Then a couple zombies attacked us, but we managed to take them out. That’s one of the reason we bury the bodies away from the camp. The smell lingers and it attracts zombies.”
“That’s smart,” I said.
“We’ve learned from experience.”
We drove along in silence for a while. I tried to remember how Trevor had come last night, which turns he had made and how he had gotten back on track after he had gotten lost and had to creep out into the night to ask for directions. Morgan gazed out her window, squinting into the darkness at the buildings we passed as we drove through Revenant.
“This is a nice town.”
“Thanks.”
“My father said most of the bigger towns and cities in the area had been overrun with zombies. It’s not safe to go in them. We only go into smaller towns, but even those have zombies now.”
“Revenant had been infested with Stiffs too. The Wakes who founded it managed to drive them out, then built a perimeter to keep them from getting in.”
“A town for zombies. That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“It’s better than wandering from place to place. It’s nice to be settled down. You can build a life. This area used to have a lot of human camps around it.”
“I know,” Morgan said. “We used to meet to exchange resources, food, guns, ammo, clothes, water ... everything. Then the camps started getting smaller and people started moving on.”
“Why did you guys stay?”
“I guess we were afraid to leave. We were settled in. Nobody wanted to go back on the road. And we still felt safe. And since we’re the only camp in the area, all the resources from the smaller towns or that we get by hunting go directly to us. There’s no competition, except from the zombies. But they aren’t very good hunters anyway.”
“They’re too dumb to catch anything small and fast. Humans are the perfect prey, though.”
“I thought you said that you need to eat humans to survive.”
“Their brains. Yes, we do.”
“But if all the camps have left this area, how are you going to make it? There’s nothing left.”
“We’ll find a way. We always have. We have some breeding programs going on. And we’ve got rations still.”
“Breeding? You breed humans?”
“Yeah. My friend Trevor is training to be a human breeder. It’s kind of hard to get them together, but loneliness and fear can be pretty powerful motivators. They can make a human want to breed with anything.”
“Gross.”
“That’s humans.”
She shrugged. “I guess sex can make you feel alive. Like blood is still flowing through you, and you’re still capable of feeling pleasure.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said flatly.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I mean, I didn’t know you’ve never had sex.”
“Zombies can’t breed.”
“There’s more reasons for having sex than to breed,” Morgan replied with a laugh.
“Such as?”
“Pleasure. Fun. Excitement. To feel your heart beating faster than it’s ever beat. To feel sensations inside yourself that you’ve never felt.”
“I’ve never felt my heart beat,” I said.
“You just don’t remember it.”
“I mean as a zombie.”
“Maybe you’ve had sex. When you were a human. You look like you were pretty cute before you died.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“Are you blushing? Oh my God, you totally are! I made a zombie blush!”
“No,” I said, turning my burning face from her. There was still enough blood in the skin around my face for that involuntary human reaction. Even in living death, I couldn’t shed every semblance of humanity.
“Too bad you aren’t alive,” she said. “It seems like you used to be a nice guy.”
“I am a nice guy,” I replied. “I did stick my neck out to save you. You’d have been eaten alive in the Stockade or that forest if it wasn’t for me.”
“Maybe.”
“I was trying to keep you alive. You were trying to kill me.”
“No I wasn’t,” she said sharply. “I just wanted to get away from you. You scared me. You still do.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re dead. It isn’t right. It’s creepy. I mean, I guess you do seem like a nice guy. For a zombie. Anyway, you’re the only friend I have now. Even if you do eat brains.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” I smirked.
“No thanks,” she said. “If only you could remember what it was like to be human.”
“It doesn’t matter. What happened to me when I was human isn’t important.”
“Can zombies even have sex?” Morgan asked. “I mean, because you don’t really have much blood, right? So can you even, you know, get it up?”
I gave her an unappreciative stare. “Sex is a hum thing,” I returned. “Love, romance, that’s all stuff humans invented.”
She gazed at me with blank, wide eyes, her head tilted at an angle.
“What?” I asked.
“I feel so sad for you,” she said.
“Why?”
“You aren’t just not living. You’re not human anymore. You don’t even know what you’ve lost. It’s like you’ve been ... been ... lobotomized.”
“Maybe all those human things you think are so important aren’t really,” I suggested. “You don’t need them.”
“Maybe not. But I wouldn’t want to not have them,” she said. “Because then what kind of life would that be? It would be so boring.”
I gazed at her uncertainly. I couldn’t figure out if she was right. I knew I didn’t want to die, but would I be happier if I was alive? Yeah, Morgan was vulnerable, and weak, and so manipulative. But she could also feel her heart beat, and the warmth of the sun on her skin, and she could have sex. I’ve heard that’s pretty awesome. Maybe life is better when you’re alive. Maybe that’s why Revenant had bored me so much. Escaping from this town with this vibrant, living human girl was the most alive I had felt in my entire death. Maybe there was something to this living thing Morgan kept going on about.
She rested her head against her window and closed her eyes. I looked over at her, examining her soft, white freckled skin and the short strands of strawberry blonde hair that fell over her face
. I watched her stomach moving in and out rhythmically, in a way mine never did, because my lungs were dead, and I didn’t need to breathe.
It made me wonder what it was like to breathe, to truly breathe naturally and not to suck in air forcibly through my dead lungs. It made me wonder what it was like to feel pain, or pleasure, or to have sex. I wondered if it was worth it. Mortality. I wondered if it was worth it to be human.
Then I got tired of thinking about it and returned my focus to finding my way back to Zone F. After all, I was a zombie, and that was hum stuff. I had so much more going for me, if only I could keep myself undead.
27. WORSE THINGS
The van sputtered to a stop near the boundary of Zone D. I put it into park and told Morgan we’d have to walk the rest of the way. It wasn’t that far, maybe an hour away on foot, and I had a better idea of where I was going now. I had only gotten off track a few times along the way, but managed to get going the right way again without having to stop for directions. I knew it wouldn’t be long before messages were sent to each zone that I had run off with a human. If I was on my own no one would care too much, but removing a living human from the town’s borders was cause for immediate disposal, even if she was infected.
Shouldering my backpack, I led Morgan down empty alleyways and lonely streets. It was a bit after curfew, so there weren’t many Wakes out, and I made sure to avoid any that were. From a distance we would just appear to be two Wakes about town.
“How’s your leg holding up?” I whispered into the darkness.
“It’s okay,” she replied. “It’s still a little sore, but it’s not that bad.”
I nodded. She didn’t seem to be favoring her other leg. Mrs. Kushner had done a good job patching it. I was thankful for that. We couldn’t afford any delays, especially once we left the town borders. A delay with Stiffs involved usually meant absolute death.
I kept my eyes open for patrollers as we went. As we were making our way through zone E, I glimpsed a couple down the street from us and I quickly led Morgan to an old building, some human store that hadn’t been reoccupied after Wakes took over and rebuilt the town. There were a lot of abandoned buildings like that, broken down structures that no longer had any use in the world. I pulled her through the open doorway and we pressed against the wall near a window. I peeked out, watching as the patrollers shuffled past, glancing around.
“None here,” one of the patrollers was saying.
“Can’t believe a human got out. Doesn’t surprise me it came from zone A, though. That place doesn’t have any good security.”
“They said a Wake sprung it.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“I guess your courier didn’t have as much information as mine. Come on. Keep looking.”
They disappeared down the street. I waited a few minutes, then crept out of the building, pulling Morgan behind me. “We have to be careful,” I whispered. “They’ve already gotten the message out to the patrollers about what happened. We have to get out of here as soon as possible.”
We continued on, keeping a lookout for any pedestrian Wakes. There weren’t enough patrollers to really scour the whole town, and a lot of them probably hadn’t gotten the message yet. Most likely only the off-duty ones were contacted and sent out. The others might not get the message until they reported back to their headquarters. That made it easier to escape.
A couple hours later, we finally arrived at the zone F bus station, where Trevor and I had gotten off a week ago to go human tracking. Thankfully