Booger Johnson’s fist flies into my face, making my already black eye even blacker. Is that even possible? Can it be, what, double black? Or maybe it will be purple now? Or blue? Or black and blue and purple, all mixed in together in a masterpiece of pain?
I fall back against the monkey bars, head pounding against the rusty steel, bleeding from the fat lip Booger’s buddy Jimbo gave me when out of the blue Skeeter Morrison trips me with her size 10 hi-tops.
I fall, face first, into the playground sand, blood and boogers and tears mixing together as I try not to chip (another) tooth. I sneak a peek at my digital watch and see one minute and twenty-nine seconds left on the timer.
Dude, does he have to be so literal?
I’ll be a limbless, unrecognizable, bloody pulp by the time he creeps out of his hiding place, and what good will all my weeks of training do me then?
I stumble to one knee, my pinky bent at a really, unnaturally, grossly disgusting angle as I rest my hand on the knee of my torn jeans. I’m out of breath, but I don’t know why. All I’m doing is getting knocked around by Booger and his pals. I mean, it’s not exactly like it takes a lot of effort.
“Stay down,” urges Skeeter, swiping a lock of her straight, greasy blond hair out of her eyes.
She’s got a major Peppermint Patty vibe going on, and not in a feel good, Christmas special, Hallmark moment kind of way. Her faded, greasy concert T-shirt is for a band called “Death Slayer” and shows snakes crawling out of a skull. I’m pretty familiar with it, since she’s worn it the last four times she’s beaten me up.
She’s right, though. I should stay down. Every time they wail on me, she says the same thing: “Stay down.” Not because she doesn’t want to hurt me anymore, but because she’s tired of hurting me.
I use one of the rusty bars to haul myself up and Booger slams into me from behind, knocking the wind out of me as I tumble into the swing sets. I lay, face down, bent over at the waist, bobbing back and forth on the nearest swing, my fingers scraping the sand as I see stars.
I’d throw up, but I haven’t eaten all day because Jimbo stole my macaroni and cheese at lunch. Okay, sure, I did get a few gulps in when he dumped it back on my head, but most of it fell on the table and forget you if you think I’m eating off a cafeteria table.
Skeeter yanks me off the swing and I slump to the ground, head pounding, chest heaving, dry mouthed. I look at my digital watch, cracked now, but still gong: 42 seconds left.
42 seconds and I’ll never get beaten up again. I grab the long pole that keeps the swing set up and haul myself to my feet. Skeeter looks at me, chewing on a grody yellow weed that matches her grimy skin and crooked teeth.
Jimbo and Booger exchange a “can you believe this kid?” look while examining their bruised knuckles. Skeeter abandons the weed and hocks a loogie the size of most house pets, which lands at my feet.
I lean against the swing set, killing time in between ragged breaths.
“Why do you keep looking at that watch?” Skeeter asks, coming closer, the familiar smell of nicotine and cat hair wafting off of her.
I shrug. No reason not to tell her now. “I’m waiting for the cavalry.”
She snorts. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what the word means, otherwise she’d ask “what cavalry,” right? Instead she reaches for my hand, and yanks off the watch.
“Don’t!” I growl, so loud, so fierce, even Booger and Jimbo shuffle over to see what’s gotten into me.
Skeeter looks up at them, all 115-pounds of her. She looks at me and I grumble, “My Dad gave me that, before the first infection.”
Booger laughs. “All my old man ever gave me was a fat lip.”
“Give it back, Skeeter.” I taste the sting of blood every time I talk, my stomach growing nauseous as I stand there, lumped and battered, digesting my own bodily fluids.
“Come and get it, Cyrus.”
She holds it up, tauntingly. I picture my Dad, smiling, pulling the box out from under his butcher’s apron, handing it over with surprisingly clean hands. It was a graduation present, from junior high. I’d made the honors list three years in a row, got a certificate and everything.
He couldn’t close the shop to attend the ceremony, and he gave me the watch two weeks after school let out for the summer, but he gave me the watch.
My Dad. Just before the first outbreak, when the zombies smelled fresh meat and gorged on everything in Dad’s butcher shop, including Dad.
I’ve worn it every day since.
And now this Peppermint Patty looking witch is going to stand there, weed flecks on her lips, and keep it from me?
I scan the tree line, looking for Brody. That’s what I call him, anyway. Or, more specifically, the only name he responded to after, I dunno, I tried 290 or so? Everything from Zed to Zander, and all the other “Z” names, then everything from Brad to Tom to Matt to Sven, nothing. But suddenly, Brody, and he perks up?
But Brody’s not there.
Peppermint Patty, sorry, Skeeter inches forward, smiling her crooked smile, making her pug nose and all its freckles bunch up like wrinkles in a greasy brown paper bag.
“Go on, Cyrus, take it. I dare ya!”
I clench my fists, even though it hurts my bent left pinky to do so. “Look out, Skeeter,” hisses Booger from the sidelines, his tank top ripped from where I grabbed onto it to stop from falling to the ground after he belted me in the ear. (Newsflash: it didn’t work.)
“Yeah,” urges Jimbo, rattling the chains on the swing set like a monkey in the zoo, “he’s getting all riled up, balling his fists and everything, like a real little man.”
My ears burn whenever they call that. Little man. So, I’m short. So, I’ve always been short. So what? Is it my fault they’re genetically altered primates who were already the size of NFL linebackers by sixth grade and have only gotten bigger since?
I stand up a little taller and grit my teeth, spitting out each word through blood bubbles that form on my fat, broken lip. “Give. It. Back. Skeeter.”
“Come. And. Get—” Just then the alarm sounds, “beep, beep, beep, beep,” making Skeeter flinch for, I think, the first time ever.
Suddenly the bushes behind the carousel rustle and Brody stands, tall and lanky in his favorite Gamma Man T-shirt and those stupid thrift shop pajama pants he likes so much.
“What took you so long?” I wheeze, finally wiping the blood off my lip with the back of my arm.
He shoots me a flash of indignation. Or maybe it’s rage. Or boredom. Or sadness. Or gladness. He basically has three expressions, and they mostly all look alike, so it could be any or all of the above. Or he could just have zombie gas, which he gets when I bring him not-so-fresh brains from the butcher shop.
The hoodie hides most of his face, casting his gray pallor and yellow teeth in shadow. The sleeves are long, too, so they can’t really see his thin, skeletal fingers or the gnarly, broken nails at the end of his fingertips. Of course, he can’t hide the shuffling but, then again, most of the playground is sand and it’s pretty hard to walk straight even if you are still alive.
“Who do we have here?” grins Booger, flexing his muscles as he tenses at the newcomer.
Naturally, Jimbo has to chime in. “Yeah, pal, there’s nothing to see here. Move along and you won’t get hurt.”
“I don’t plan on it,” grunts Brody, dead vocal chords blunt and hoarse, sounding like the world’s best undead Clint Eastwood impersonator.
Skeeter looks up at Brody, then down at the watch in her hands. I can see the wheels in her head spinning, but by the time she’s put two and two together he’s standing right in front of her. Looming over her, is more like it. Being cramped in that messy cooler, I’ve forgotten how tall he is.
She looks up, face ugly and defiant, until he shifts the hoodie back just enough for her to see what’s hiding beneath. Then her face goes sickly and soft. She tries to stumble back but he stamps on her toes. I watch her face as the bones crack
and she crumples to the sand.
Hmmm, I always thought she’d be a lot tougher than that.
Brody turns to me, hood puddled around his broad shoulders, smile grim as he points to the watch in the sand. “Get it.”
Dang, when did he become so bossy? For the past three weeks he’s been cowering in my Dad’s walk-in cooler at the butcher shop, gnawing on bone marrow and meat scraps and whatever lamb’s brains I can cadge from the delivery guys. Suddenly he’s Donald Trump?
Still, there’s something dangerous about his voice, his posture, so I obey.
“Hey,” says Booger, and I’m so intimidated by Brody I barely feel him stepping on my hand. “Leave her alone!”
Booger is tall, and wide, but he’s human and, in the end, built of soft, warm flesh wrapped around surprisingly fragile bones. Brody reaches out and grabs his nearest arm. With one tug, like snapping a fishing line when you’ve got one on the hook, he yanks Booger’s massive arm out of its socket.
Booger crumbles next to Skeeter, tears springing to his eyes, face red as he looks up at Brody. “You… you’re… a zombie!?!” he sputters, stammering, snot streaming out of his wide, pug nose. (Hmmm, so that’s why they call him Booger!)
“Shut up,” hisses Brody, and it’s the first time I’ve heard fear in his voice.
“A zombie!” Booger shouts, looking to Jimbo, waving him off. “Go, get somebody dude. Get the Sentinels, the cops, whatever. Dude’s a zombie!”
Jimbo stands, just north of the swing set. “But… I thought they rounded the last of them up, after the latest outbreak?” He’s talking to himself, mainly, figuring it out as fast as those 87 IQ points will let him. Brody cuts me a warning look.
“Yeah, there… there shouldn’t be any left!” Jimbo says, inching forward.
“Well there is, obviously,” shrieks Skeeter. “Go, Jimbo, before—”
Brody kneels down in the sand, grabs a handful and shoves it in Skeeter’s mouth. He smiles as he does so, and when he yanks his hand back to grab some more, I see a bloody tooth fall from his grip.
Skeeter mumbles and muffles and Booger starts to scream, “Zom—” before Brody gives him the sand treatment as well. Booger’s face turns purple and Brody just watches him, stuffing in more and more sand as the brute has to start breathing through his big, fat, flaring nostrils.
That’s when I hear Jimbo whimper. When I look up, he’s turning to run. “Go,” says Brody, shoving me. His hands are cold, and not just from three weeks in the cooler. “Go before he tells someone about me.”
“I… I can’t,” I gasp.
His expression is unforgiving. “You must.”
I get up. I run. Jimbo is fast, but you can tell he’s spent his whole life chasing people rather than being chased. I catch up to him in six paces, but then what? I leap on his back, because if he tells anyone – anyone – about Brody, we’re cooked. That’s it. Game over.
Not just for Brody, who’ll be rounded up and sent off to some Rehabilitation Camp on the outskirts of town, but me, too, for “aiding and abetting” one of the living dead. I’ll get sent to reform school or something, or maybe even locked up like that one family who kept their little kid zombie in the dog house for two weeks, before she eventually got out and killed the neighbors.
I get an elbow in my windpipe which, if you’ve never felt it, hurts like a Mack truck rolling over your eyeball. Twice. I roll over and climb to my knees and get a sneaker in my ribs for the effort, landing against a tree. But at least Jimbo is looking down at me, and not over at the rundown apartment complex down the block.
His fists are balled, dangling at his side like any self-respecting Neanderthal’s. I inch away, trying to lure him back to the monkey bars. He takes a step or two, then remembers where he’s supposed to be going.
I panic, picturing me in a cell surrounded by even bigger, nastier Neanderthals than Jimbo. “Hey, scumbag.” That gets his attention, but not on me. He’s looking at something, or someone, just over my shoulder. I turn and see Brody there, smiling down at me.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.”
“I thought you were supposed to be helping me.”
He smirks. “I am.”
Grass crumples and Jimbo pivots, turning toward the apartment complex. “Hey!” he shouts, waving his arms. It’s late afternoon, with no traffic on the street. But that could change any minute. “Hey! Zombie Alert! Over here. Hey!”
He starts inching away when Brody tackles him, moving faster than I thought was zombie-ly possible. I hear more bones crunch and Jimbo winces as Brody turns him over and starts shoving fists full of dirt and grass into his mouth to keep him quiet. When he’s done, when Jimbo is muzzled with miracle grow lawn products, Brody tells me to drag him back to the playground.
“You drag him,” I huff.
“Fine,” says Brody, turning away. “Let someone drive by and see him here, waving his arms and come investigate.”
He starts shuffling away. I get up, dust the grass stains off my jeans and grab Jimbo by the shoulders. His eyes are big and his face is purple and he squirms and I can only move him an inch at a time holding onto his grody T-shirt, but I do it.
Somehow, I do it. He wriggles and fights the whole way, kicking out tufts of dirt as his shirt rides up his waist and his eyes bug out over his mouth full of turf. But his right arm is bent at a funny angle and his left is limp.
I step in mud, and wonder if the sprinklers have gone on while I was gone. I turn from dragging Jimbo, breathless and spent, only to find puddles of blood everywhere, and no bodies anywhere.
Well, no intact bodies anyway.
“Dig,” says Brody, handing me Skeeter’s shoe. Out falls a toe and, after belching up bile, I use its sturdy rubber heel to dig. We bury what we can and I don’t ask where the rest of the pieces-parts went, assuming they’re resting safely inside Brody’s bottomless pit of an undead stomach.
Jimbo lies there, limp and swallowing dirt. I heave and huff and ask, “Now what?”
Brody sits with his knees up in front of him, his back to the monkey bars, bloody hands on his knees. It’s getting dark now. Others will be here soon, the after dinner crowd of cool kids looking to chill, smoke pot, make out, maybe drink a stolen beer or two before curfew.
Brody looks relaxed now, like he did the first time I fed him raw meat off of Dad’s counter. I’d found him out back, middle of the night, sniffing around the dumpster. It was a few days after the last roundup, a full week after the latest outbreak. All the zombies were supposed to be gone, corralled, dissected, whatever it is they do with them.
I’d been sleeping in the stock room of Dad’s butcher shop ever since, well… ever since. I heard scraping, stumbling, and looked out the window. That’s when I saw him; scrawny, pale, half-naked, bloody, basically empty. They get like that, when they haven’t fed.
The zombies, I mean.
I limped out of the cot I’d set up back there. Booger had pounded on me that day after school, like always, so bad I could barely walk home. I was already thinking of him – of what I’d do to him – when I saw the zombie.
I grabbed a ham steak from the cooler. It was slightly past due and I knew the rotten stench would get the zombie’s attention with the quickness. I thought of where to stick him, to hide him, so I could train him. I opened the back door and lured him inside.
He sniffed me, first. I had a butcher’s knife in my free hand, just in case. He ignored it, ignored me, and yanked the ham steak out of my fingers. He devoured it, but I knew meat alone wasn’t going to satisfy him. They teach you that in school now, the zombie anatomy. So you know what to do if you ever meet one.
I grabbed another steak, a fresh one this time, prime rib, if you really want to know, and tossed it in the cooler. Just far back enough so he’d have to wander in to investigate. He looked skeptical there by the back door, for all of about two seconds, before following it in. As soon as his back was to the c
ooler door, I slammed it and locked him in.
He didn’t really fight or complain. He just sat there, gnawing on that steak, staring at me through the foggy window inside the door. I stared back until he started freaking me out, then tried to sleep.
The next day I asked one of the delivery men for some brains. Said I had a “special order” for one of my favorite customers. He said the government was stamping down on brains lately and made me give him an extra twenty bucks, under the table, before he’d give me any.
After Brody ate them, he relaxed. He even talked. A little. He seemed mad, me tricking him like that, but even when the cooler door was open and I was busy trying not to get brain juice all over myself, he never tried to leave.
After that I got him brains twice a week, and he slowly became more… human. We could have conversations, real ones, with words and everything. After a week or so, I even opened the cooler door while we talked. He didn’t even try to run, or bite off my ear to suck my brains through the hole.
I told him he’d be stupid to attack me, anyway. That if he behaved, if he did what I wanted, this one little thing, he could live in my cooler forever. That he could eat all the lamb’s brains he wanted until the end of time. And I meant it, too. Maybe that’s why he finally agreed, because he knew I wasn’t trying to trick him anymore.
Suddenly he grunts, kicking sand onto my shoe and bringing me back to the present. As if reading my mind, he says, “Lamb’s brains aren’t enough, you know?”
I nod. “Somehow, I knew they never would be.”
“I did what you wanted,” he sighs. “I did what you asked.”
“Thanks?” It comes out like a question because, no, not really. What I’d asked him was to “rough” Booger and Skeeter and Jimbo up, not tear them apart and feast on their rubbery cerebellums. Now I’ve got two missing kids on my hands, and one with a mouthful of sod, and everyone knows they’ve been bullying me since the third grade.
“You’re welcome.”
I snort. “That’s called sarcasm, by the way.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t think zombies get sarcasm.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re smarter than these three combined.”
He grunts. “That’s supposed to be a compliment?”
“No, not really. So, now what?”
“Now you have a choice.”
Now it’s my turn to grunt. “Oh, so now you’re calling the shots?”
“Not really, I just know I can’t spend the rest of my afterlife in your cooler.”
I look at his bloody chin, the new fire in his eyes, the way his skin seems fleshier now, his torso filled out as well. It’s like he’s a water balloon and the faucet’s still on, plumping him up by degrees. “No, I guess not. I mean, what do I do now?”
He smiles, and I think I see a piece of flesh between his teeth. “You can go back to your Dad’s butcher shop, wait for the cops to come, or the Sentinels, or you can come with me.”
“That’s not really much of a choice, is it Brody?”
When he doesn’t respond, I ask, “Where are you going?”
“Away from here. Wherever my kind went.”
“Your kind? The Sentinels, the cops, they got all your kind.”
“They didn’t get me. I can smell the others, not too far away. I can’t stay here anymore. You shouldn’t, either.”
“Me? Why? You did what I asked. You took care of my problem.”
“Did I? Look at how hard it was to handle Jimbo on your own. What about tomorrow, at school? You think this is the end of being bullied? You think it stops with two bullies, even three?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
He shakes his head. “Bullies aren’t your problem, Rex. You’re your problem. You get bullied because you think you should get bullied. I don’t know why, and we don’t have time to find out. All I know is, if you come with me, I can promise you a life without fear. I can promise you a life where you’re the strong one, you’re the hunter, not the prey. You’re the—”
“Zombie?” I gulp. I do, I literally gulp. As scared as I’ve been in my life, and I’ve been pretty scared, I’ve never actually “gulped” before. “You mean, where I’m the zombie?”
He shrugs. Gets up, dusts his pajama pants off. “Come with me, Rex. It’s not so bad.”
“No thanks.” I’ve seen Brody up close, smelled him, fed him. It is bad, actually. Pretty darn bad. “No thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He turns and starts away.
“Hey, what about Jimbo?”
At the sound of his name, as if suddenly remembering where he is and what’s been done to him, Jimbo struggles, rolling over, getting to his knees.
Brody almost smiles. “Take care of him yourself.”
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“Consider this… a new deal.”
I turn. Brody is there, only a few steps away. He looks strong now, alive, in charge. I know he’s right, about being zombie strong, but I can’t do that to myself.
Can I?
“Help me,” I beg. “Just help me get rid of him and I’ll never ask you anything else again.”
He shuffles back, nods. I smile, and turn away from him so I don’t see him coming. His bite is like hot power in my shoulder, like an electric knife buzzing through my skin. I smell his breath and my blood and fall to my knees, jerking like my finger’s in an electric socket and there’s no way to pull it out.
“No,” I hear myself gurgle, blood in my mouth, as my eyes close. I feel dizzy, open them again, find that I’ve fallen down. No, wait, I’m sitting up. Suddenly it’s dark, the moon is out, and high. I go to rub sand out of my eyes and smear blood across my face. It smells good; real good.
I look down and see a foot at my feet, gnarled and naked, bite marks on the toes. Brody sits on the swing set, patiently, rocking back and fro like little kids do, his thrift shop sneakers scratching the sand.
“What… what happened?”
“I helped you, Rex. Just like you asked. You’ll thank me one day.”
“I?” I look down, see not much left of Jimbo, see my stomach bloated, blood all over my Star Wars shirt. “I did this?”
“All by yourself.” He stands, helps me up. His skin doesn’t feel so cold anymore. Is that because mine is, too?
My head feels light and I can hear the sand cascade off the knees of my pants. He holds my hand and leads me off the playground. It’s hard to walk, and now I know why he shuffles so. It’s like the signals from my brain don’t quite reach my feet.
We’re a sad lot, but I’m not actually sad. Or mad. Or glad. I’m none of those things, but I am this: fearless. I don’t care if the cops come, or the Sentinels, or the ghosts of Jimbo and Booger and Skeeter or even another zombie.
For the first time in my life, I feel no fear. The shadows don’t haunt me, the moonlight doesn’t make me reach for the nightlight in my room and my shoulders aren’t permanently hunched, wondering who’s going to give me a wedgie next.
We head through the trees, slowly, until I get my bearings. I see the plastics factory on the edge of town, silent now, and beyond that another forest, and beyond that… who knows. I’ve never left Nightshade before, never had any reason to before.
“I can smell them,” I say, my voice hoarse, like his. My throat is as dry as the blood caked on my lips and chin. Jimbo’s blood.
Brody cracks that crooked smile. “Who, your friends back there? Wipe your lip.”
“No, your friends, out there.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few steps. Sorry, shuffles. Then, “They’re your friends now, too, Rex.”
I follow him, and feel the dried blood on my face crack with my smile. What would that be like, I wonder, to have friends?
“Is that your real name?” I ask him. I figure, if this is it now, if it’s me and him and the zombies against the world, I should know his real name. “Brody, I mean?”
“Naw, it was Phillip.”
“Phillip? You don’t look like a Phillip.”
He pauses, near a tree. I lean against it, just to stay balanced.
“Not anymore I don’t.”
“So why would you only answer to Brody, in the beginning?”
“I guess I wanted a new start.”
That sounds good. “Me too.”
“Yeah, like what? What’s a new start name?”
I smile, cracking more dried blood. “Thor.”
He snorts, covering his yellow teeth. Oh God, will mine look like that, too? “Thor? Really?”
“Yeah, Thor.”
He walks a bit and I follow. A few trees later I punch him, in the shoulder.
He rolls his eyes. “What was that for?”
“I’m Thor, that’s my hammer of justice.”
“I don’t think that’s what it’s called.”
“Yeah, what’s it called then?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not ‘hammer of justice,’ I know that.”
“How does a zombie know that?”
He turns, frowning. “I wasn’t always a zombie Rex. I mean, Thor. In a lot of ways, before all this, I was just like you.”
I nod and start to walk, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Just remember, later, if you can, who you were. Just remember who you were.”
I nod, but I already know I won’t do that. That I don’t want to do that. I’m too busy walking forward now, even if that means shuffling, to look back on who I was…