Undead with Benefits (29 page)

Oh, come on. He's charming.

And yet, I couldn't help laughing a little. I covered my mouth, surprised at myself.

Think about the possibilities. You hotwire cars. He drives them really fast. You'd make a good team. Probably have the cure locked up in no time. He's an upgrade, all around.

I felt strange. Maybe it was the smoke and heat from the fire. I stood up, walked around to the other side, and sat down next to Cody. It was better over here, I guess.

“Are you cold?” Cody asked.

“I'm sitting in front of, like, a raging fire,” I replied.

But maybe you're a little cold. Just a chill.

“Okay,” I admitted. “Kinda.”

Cody stood up and unzipped one of the sleeping bags. Gently, he draped it around my shoulders, and then sat down even closer than before. One of his arms lingered around my shoulder, like he was making sure the sleeping bag would stay put. Sure. That old move.

“Uh—” I started to draw myself up, ready to unman this presumptuous hick.

Oh, stop. It's nice. Comforting. Feel those muscles.

“Is this okay?” he asked uncertainly.

“Yeah,” I replied without much conviction.

We sat there in silence, watching the fire flicker and snap. It didn't feel right—being under this blanket, this random dude's arm around me. I couldn't quite figure how I'd gotten into this position. I kept meaning to stand up, to brush him off, but something stopped me.

It's insta-love. Just go with it.

Cody sighed contentedly.

“You know, I spent the last year running for my life,” he mused. “Trying not to get eaten. Sleeping underground. Keeping quiet. Hiding. Watching everyone I know get eaten or . . . change.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, only half listening.

“I would've never dreamed I could have something like this again,” he continued. “Jeez, something simple like making a fire, that would've been unthinkable. The ghouls would get us for sure.”

He looked around. Nothing moved out there in the darkened fields.

“I don't know what I was running from all that time,” he said, almost like he was trying to talk himself into this new life. “It's better, being one of you.”

I tensed up.
I
didn't even want to be one of me.

Take it easy. He's new. He'll see it your way, eventually. They always do, right?

“It isn't always like this,” I replied without any heat.

“No.” He shot a surreptitious glance in the direction of the unmarked graves. “Guess it couldn't be.”

“It can be all right, sometimes. . . .” I thought about the long stretches on the road with Jake, how we—

Nope. Forget him. He abandoned you. Screwed you over, just like Chazz.

Focus on Cody.

“If you've got someone with you.” I finished my thought and pinched the bridge of my nose. My head hurt. The smoke again, probably.

Cody reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, even though it wasn't really in my face or anything. At some point, we'd inched even closer together.

“I can tell you've been through a lot,” Cody said gravely, all overwrought with sympathy for me. Normally, I would've rolled my eyes at a come-on that half-assed. Not this time. Dopey sincerity—that's exactly what I wanted.

I found myself nodding and staring down at the ground between our feet—like, Yes, I've been through so much and it's painful to even think about. Rescue me with your powerful arms and strongly felt feelings, handsome man.

Cody lifted my chin with his index finger.

“I hope this isn't forward,” he started, peering into my eyes, “but I've been thinking a lot since I turned and I've decided, um, YOLO, you know.”

YOLO. Isn't he dreamy?

“But, jeez, I like you, Amanda. I think we could make a go of it, being zombies. We could go to Des Moines and find the others. Try to make the best of it. If you'd want to do that. With me.”

Me and my boyfriend were on our way to Des Moines, I almost said.

But you don't have a boyfriend.

So many things were wrong with this hick's proposal: We just met. This crush of his only blossomed because (1) I'm hot, and (2) he seems like the type to get easily attached. He's got some kind of savior/mother/girlfriend complex going on because I gave him that stupid pep talk after his first undead experience and told him that eating all those people wasn't his fault (which it wasn't, but get over it already, move on). He's used to having someone to protect and he's just stumbled into this new un-life and is flailing for direction and . . .

Don't think about it. You should just . . .

I kissed him. He seemed a little surprised. Hell, I seemed surprised. But it wasn't a bad kiss. Not too much tongue. A real gentleman, all the way. Then we were falling backward in the sleeping bag, his arms curling tightly around me. Kissing with more heat.

There. Isn't that better?

And part of me knew that I shouldn't be doing this—didn't even
want
to do it, actually—but I shut that part away. I couldn't quite grasp why this was wrong. I couldn't think of a reason why I shouldn't hook up with this beautiful new zombie, in front of this romantic fire he'd built with his own hands, under the stars.

It's perfect, isn't it?

Yes.

This way, everybody's happy.

JAKE

REGGIE PUNCHED HENRY ROBINSON HARD IN THE shoulder.

“I told you, man,” Reggie said as he slammed his locker shut. “I don't eat dogs.”

“Ow, sorry,” Henry complained. He bent down to pick up a couple of the
LOST DOG
fliers that he'd dropped when Reggie hit him. “I just had to ask. You guys are unpredictable.”

“You really are,” Adam DeCarlo chimed in, rubbing the spot on his neck where I'd gnashed open his jugular. “Seriously.”

I wasn't paying any attention to my friends. We were gathered around Reggie's locker like we always were before homeroom, in perfect position to watch the daily Procession of the Bobbleheads. I was locked in, of singular purpose. This was the day that I'd talk to her.

“Here they come,” I whispered. The guys all groaned or rolled their eyes, but I didn't care.

The doors to the parking lot flew open and in walked the Bobbleheads, fresh from a prehomeroom session of cigarettes and car revving. They were beautiful and glowing, all of them, in their letterman jackets and cheerleading skirts, their gaping bite wounds all bandaged with branded Abercrombie gauze. All of them except for their leader—Amanda Blake—she was something else entirely.

Unlike her tanned and perfect-skinned brethren, Amanda possessed that ashen, newly dead look that really got me going. She flipped her blonde-and-black-streaked hair over her shoulder, plucked a licorice-colored piece of chewing gum out of her mouth, and smacked it onto the freshly polished glass of the RRHS trophy case. She kept her eyes straight ahead the whole time.

“Oh, to be that gum,” I said longingly.

I started forward hesitantly, my planned opening gambit something about a geography assignment we could help each other with.

“Uh, hey, durrrrr—”

She didn't even glance in my direction. Maybe I wouldn't make my big move today after all. The vibe didn't seem right.

I shrank back to where my friends stood, but they were gone, off to class. The Bobbleheads passed in a stampede of polo shirts and jeggings, and then the hallway was empty except for me and some brown-haired girl digging through her locker across the way. The bell rang. We were late.

Vaguely, I became aware of a tickling sensation on my upper lip. At the same time, I realized this was a dream.

The brown-haired girl closed her locker and turned to face me. It was Cass, looking more normal and healthy than I'd ever seen her. No giant bags under her eyes, no doped-up space-cadet gaze, no crusty, bloody nose remnants. Her hair was brushed and pulled back in a cascade-y ponytail. She was dressed in a retro-looking button-down blouse thing and a funky skirt, way nicer than any of the crappy thrift-store stuff from the road. I shouldn't say that I realized how cute she was for the first time right then—obviously I'd noticed if she was manifesting in my dream this way—but whoa. Right on, Cass.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. Her voice was clearer somehow than the voices of my friends had been, like she cut through dream static or something.

“Hey yourself,” I replied. I was happy to see her.

I felt a strange sizzling sensation in my brain.

“Don't freak out,” Cass said, as if reading my mind.

“You're in my dream,” I said. “In my head.”

“Sort of,” she replied. “Technically, I've pulled your unconscious mind onto the astral plane with me and this is how you're processing it.”

“You're like Freddy Krueger.”

“It's actua—”

“Uh, hold up,” I said, staring at her as something potentially disastrous occurred to me. “Can you see, like, all my thoughts?”

“Well, it doesn't work exactly like that, but—”

Suddenly, every dirty movie I'd ever watched began playing out simultaneously inside my old high school. It was like one of those dreams where you show up to class naked, except on ecstasy and in stereo. Loud moans and cheesy jazz music spilled out from every classroom. Cass grimaced.

“Try not thinking about that, please,” Cass yelled over all the fake orgasms, some of which were still buffering even in my dream space.

I tried not to think about all my lurking sex memories, which involved putting both my fingers to my temples because that's how you control psychic powers. Just like that, RRHS was quiet again and we were alone.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing a hand awkwardly through my curly, non-mohawked head of hair.

“It's okay,” Cass replied, blushing. “The id can get a little gross sometimes, I guess.”

I didn't know what the hell an id was, but I made a real, concerted effort to control my thoughts, which isn't actually something I have a whole ton of experience with. I focused on Cass.

“So, you can just pop into my brain whenever, huh?”

She looked away from me. “Um, yeah.”

“And do you?”

Cass didn't answer right away. My mind spiraled away from me, matching what I felt now—I can only describe it as
itchy frying-pan brain
—with past incidents, like on the highway when I'd stopped Cass from collapsing in front of Truncheon. It was as if I'd just chugged a bottle of ADD pills. Connections were being made. The opposite of my id brain, the analytical, nonpervy part, was working overtime.

I blinked, uh, mentally, and Cass and I were no longer in RRHS. We were in a gas-station bathroom filthy with trucker viscera, and we were standing really close together. I was holding her face, actually, like we'd just finished kissing. She was covered in my barf.

“Ew,” she said. “Come on.”

“Whoa!” I yelped, letting go of her face and stepping back. “You were in my head
then
?”

Cass hesitated. I saw it flicker across her face because my signal-picking-up was way more finely attuned here. She considered lying to me.

“It was my job, Jake,” Cass said, trying to sound blasé about it, but I could tell recalling this moment, my first kiss with Amanda, really bugged her. “I was tracking you. I just happened to peek in and . . .”

Cass trailed off. She looked down at her puke-stained outfit, focused for a second, and was back in the new duds she'd been rocking at RRHS.

“For the record, I'm not really cool with that,” I said. “The peeping, I mean.”

“I know. You shouldn't be,” Cass said quietly. “I'm really sorry. For what it's worth, I've stopped doing it.”

“Well, all right,” I said. Because what else could I say? I didn't have any precedent for how long to stay mad after psychic violations. Anyway, I had more important theories to test out.

I gazed down at myself and tried to picture my body in polished, blue-and-white Mega Man armor.
Bloop.
It appeared. And it wasn't even heavy!

“Also for the record,” I added, “this lucid dreaming shit is amazing.”

Cass smiled at me, looking relieved that I wasn't mad at her. I mean, maybe if I'd really chewed on it, I could've gotten myself worked up about the whole invasion-of-privacy thing. But she hadn't, like, done anything bad with my brain access. A little snooping, sure, but I'd be all up in everyone's business if I had psychic powers. And if she could sift through all my weird-ass thoughts and still want to hang out with me, well, that was kind of flattering, I guess.

It also occurred to me, now that the initial shock of dream chatting had passed, that maybe I should be serious. If Cass was dipping into my subconscious, something could be wrong. Just like that, my preposterous armor was gone and I found myself clad in my normal jeans and T-shirt.

“So, you guys are safe, right?” I asked. “You're not, like, a dream ghost?”

Cass shook her head. “There's no such thing as dream ghosts.”

“Oh, that's where we're drawing the line on crazy things existing? Good to know.”

Cass laughed and walked to the bathroom door. I followed her and we stepped onto the football field behind RRHS. Once upon a time, Amanda and I had sprinted across this field in a full-on zombie frenzy. That seemed like so long ago.

“We're fine. Safe,” Cass said hurriedly, like she wanted to get off the subject. “How are you?”

The two syringes of the Kope Brothers' magical, slightly horrible mystery cure appeared in my hand. At first I tried to conceal them behind my back, but what was the point? I had to break the news sometime and considering the level of psychic oversharing I was prone to in here, I figured it'd be best to get on with it.