“W-w-what confession?” I stammer.
“Just now, when you told me what
really
happened that night.”
What
really
happened?
I sit back, a little stunned. What is she on about?
She opens her leather sack and pulls out a file. I recognize it from the Camp. We each have one, all the new zombies. “In here it says you didn’t retaliate that night, that you didn’t bite anyone else. The neighbor’s death was put down as ‘undetermined,’ but just now, on tape, you said, and I quote, you ‘ripped that dude apart.’ So, my job is done.”
“Job?” I ask.
And that’s when I stop to look around the café. It’s empty. All the couples who’d been sitting there, texting each other when I arrived, gone. Butterfly girl: gone. Her assistant manager, the one with the goatee: gone.
I turn to find Julia standing, file in her bag, bag on her shoulder, smile wider than ever.
“Bye, Reggie,” she says with a little wave of her short, stubby fingers. “I won’t be seeing you around school anymore, I guess. After all, with your confession, you’ll be expunged from the Relocation Camp and taken to the National Center for Violent Offen—”
“Why?” I ask, standing up.
There is movement from behind the counter and out of the corner of my eye I spot a Relocator, clad all in black, carrying one of those long metal poles with a leash at the end, like the dog catchers used to.
That is, before the zombies ate all the dogs.
I inch closer and another one emerges from the bathroom, this time with a stun gun.
She holds up a hand to still them and looks up at me, eyes like slits and mouth pinched with revulsion. “Why, Reggie? Why do you think? I go to sleep one night with a boyfriend, the next morning I hear he’s a…a…zombie? I know some kids at school think it’s cool you have no heartbeat and eat brains for lunch, and I know it’s all legal ever since the Reanimation Act of 2014. I know you’re supposed to be ‘safe’ once your brain intake is regulated by the government, but let’s face it—you’re gross, Reggie. An abomination and, frankly, I’m tired of looking at you. This way, you’re gone, done for. I never have to see you again. Nobody ever does.”
She starts to walk away. Her shoes squeak on the empty café tiles.
I turn. The two Relocators are now standing next to each other, eager for the takedown. I look past them to find a third team member stop Julia at the door, take the white recorder, and escort her to the back of the black van that’s been parked across the street this whole time. Probably to debrief her, get the story before they listen to the tape, see if it all matches up.
Good. That could be good.
I turn back to the Relocators and hold out my hand. “I guess you’ve got me, then.”
The one with the dog leash smiles. “Reggie 4, you are hereby charged with one count of violent assault while zombie, one count of lying to Relocation Camp officials and two counts of applying for re-entry to school on false records.”
He steps forward and I stand, perfectly still.
The other picks up where the first left off. “You’ll be taken to the National Center for Violent Offenders and sentenced for your crimes. From there, you’ll be given an Extermination Date and held until such time. Do you understand the severity of your crimes?”
I don’t answer. I don’t speak. I watch. The noose is in the air, quivering at the end of the long, metal pole. I’ve watched them use it in the Camp, when a zombie goes rogue after falling off his regular brain regimen. I’ve also watched the men who use it. Whatever happens, they always go for the head, meaning they ignore the hands, and especially the feet.
I wait until the noose is over my head before ducking, turning and kicking out at the first Relocator’s knee; it snaps with a sickening
thwack-crack-snap
sound, sending him down to the ground and his pole clattering beside him.
I pick it up and point it at his partner, who smiles cockily. I know what he’s thinking. A Relocator with a stun gun beats a zombie with a leash around his neck any day.
Okay, usually, but not today. I swing the pole at his stun gun, knocking it to the floor. It clatters with a deadening weight, sliding harmlessly under the barista’s counter and landing against the cappuccino machine stand.
I slip out of the noose and turn it around, holding it by the rubber grip on the business end.
Now he looks panicked, running for the door to get his partner to help. I bring the noose down over his neck, yank on the handle, and tighten the clear plastic strap until his face is pink and he’s lying, gasping, on the floor next to his friend.
I stand over them, grinning. I don’t know why they always send humans for this kind of thing. They should train zombies to do this instead. It’d be a much fairer fight. But then, what do the humans know? They’ve only had a few years to deal with us, ever since that first outbreak in 2014.
It will take time, I suppose, until they figure out that camps and extermination are only driving us—zombies and humans, I mean—further and further apart.
I step behind the counter and reach down for the stun gun. I’ve never held one before, though I see them used often enough in the Camp.
I turn back to the men and look down at them.
They squirm, but don’t try to run anymore.
“Did she know?” I ask, cocking my head in the general direction of the black van still parked across the street.
The one with the leash around his throat looks confused. It could be from lack of oxygen. I roll my eyes and loosen it, just a little. But even after I do, he still seems clueless. Who knows, maybe they’re not used to zombies fighting back.
Maybe they should be.
I glance at the other one and ask, “Did she know? The girl?”
“About what?” he spits.
“About the Extermination? Did she know I’d be put to death?”
“Did she know?” He chuckles. “She wanted it in writing before she set up this interview.”
My fingers clutch tight around the stun gun as I head toward the door.
I hear scrambling behind me, more chuckling and then, “I don’t know what you did to her, pal, but it must have been something. She came to us, Reggie 4. They never do that. She came to us—”
I turn back to find them helping each other to their feet.
I smirk, take two steps and stun them, both, twice in the back of the neck. I watch them drop, one by one, to the cold tile floors. I take the noose off the one guy, pull their arms behind them, and replace it around all four of their hands, cinching it tight but not too tight.
I should have done that from the very beginning. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking; I guess I was just acting. I’ll have to be more careful from now on.
I study them for a second. They both wear belts around their waists, and little pouches hold cans of mace, the other one’s stun gun, and knives. No radios, no cell phones. I stand back up and smile.
As I turn to leave, I spot something shiny on the floor. Keys.
Nice
.
I slip the stun gun in my back pocket, twirl the keys around one ice-cold finger, and walk from the café. There is a crowd around the corner, and they gasp when they see me, but nobody does anything. They just stand behind the wooden barrier and gawk.
I see butterfly girl out of the corner of my eye and she’s smiling, wickedly, like maybe I’m not so bad after all.
I smirk and turn toward the black van. I look left while crossing the street, waiting for a second team of Relocators to speed around the corner at any moment. So far, so good.
I turn to my right and it’s the same deal. Nothing and nobody. At least, not yet.
I walk up to the back of the van. There are two windows, both tinted, but I can see through them in the early evening twilight. Inside, Julia is seated on a kind of metal bench bolted to the side wall of the van. Across from her, clueless, the third Relocator asks her questions and takes notes in a pad that looks a lot like the one from her messenger bag.
I nod and look down. There is a knob on the left van door. I reach out and twist it, tight, then tighter, until it snaps off and leaves the door practically welded shut.
There is movement inside and as the van rocks to and fro, I watch Julia’s face while the third Relocator rushes to the door, frantic to open it. He shoves and budges and launches his broad shoulder into the door panel. Nothing.
I smile, letting Julia see me smile.
I open the driver’s side door, slide in, and look in the rearview mirror. There is heavy wire grating between me and Julia, the kind you’d see in a cop car, only two or three times thicker.
Sweet.
The engine turns over smoothly, and I pull away before the crowd can react. The wheels are big and fat and make short work of downtown traffic as I take the exit going north and hit the freeway doing eighty.
The nearest Relocation Camp is twenty miles in the opposite direction. If I can keep this pace, at least for the next hour or so, I can reach the Free Zone, where the Relocators have no say and the zombie laws don’t apply.
Of course, that’s because no humans live there, but by the time we arrive, it’ll be okay. There will be no humans in the van to complicate matters.
The grate behind me is steel, but mesh. I can hear Julia plotting with the other Relocator, cursing him because the only radio is up front, which reminds me.
I find it, grip it, and yank it from the dashboard. It rides shotgun, next to the stun gun, just in case my two passengers start any funny business. I drive and drive, and keep my eyes open for a rest stop, someplace with quick off and easy-back-on access where I can stop the van, yank open the back door, and bite a couple of scumbags before I get to the Free Zone.
Then again, I could just show up with them in the back, and let the zombies do their worst. The thought makes me smile, and I cruise on it awhile longer.
Either way, it’s nice to be in the driver’s seat for a change. And I wonder, after so long in the Camp, how it will feel to live without bars from now on.
I’m thinking, probably pretty good.
I smell Julia’s breath before I hear her speak. It’s like warm coffee on the back of my neck. “They made me do it,” she blathers, grating in my ear. “The Relocators, I mean. They never believed you, not from the—”
“The less you talk,” I interrupt, “the longer you live.”
“Seriously, Reggie. You know I’d never do that to you, to…us.”
“Like I said, Julia. Talk less, live longer.”
“W-w-what are you going to do, Reggie?”
I look up into the rearview mirror. Her eyes are like brown beacons beaming out of the dark recesses behind the wire. “You wanted a story, right, Julia? I’m going to give you one. You get to decide whether it has a happy ending or not.”
She slides back in the dark, mouth quivering, unsure.
But that’s a lie. I’ve already seen the sign for the Mount Crestview rest stop, twenty miles up. It’s just dark enough now; I can pull off, do the deed and get back on the highway without losing too much time.
I wonder, idly, as I drive through the night, if Julia’s eyes will still look as cold when she’s undead.
I mean, they couldn’t look any colder….
***
The exit is empty this time of night. An hour earlier and it would have been crawling with rush-hour traffic, and an hour from now, it will be steady with folks stopping off for a quick cup of coffee from the automated vending machines.
For now, not so much.
I cruise around behind the building, by the picnic tables, and back the van in behind a cluster of trees. You can see it, if you’re close enough, but not until you’re right on top. I can hear Julia whispering to the third Relocator, her voice low and urgent.
I ignore her and turn off the van.
“Hey,” I grunt through the mesh wire grate. “Hey, you, come here.”
Julia looks at the Relocator as if to say, impatiently, “He’s talking to you.”
He inches forward, uncertain. I wave him closer in.
“Closer,” I say, voice low. “I want to ask you what to do about her—”
He’s taken the bait. The minute he gets close enough, his ear to the grate, I jam the stun gun into the wire and send a jolt of current through his brain. He slumps to the floor and before I can let Julia’s screams distract me, I leap from the driver’s seat and sprint to the back of the van.
It’s shaking. I can hear her in there, feel her, panicking. That’s good. I wait until her anxiety has reached a fever pitch before yanking open the back door, wincing as the twisted metal scrapes against itself before finally swinging open.
She is standing, mid-stride, eyes wide as hubcaps.
“No, Reggie, no!”
There is real fear in her voice. It may be the only real thing about her. I don’t waste time or prolong her pain. Hard as I hate her, it’s not worth it. Her skin is soft beneath my teeth and her blood, so young, so alive, fills my cells with life of its own.
I have to stop myself, physically, after only a few bites, otherwise I’d devour her. It’s almost too good to stop.
She slumps, soaked in her own blood, in the corner of the van. I use thick plastic strips from the Relocator’s belt to tie his hands behind his back and leave him be.
For now. It takes a few minutes for Julia’s body to reboot, for her cells to die off and be reborn into something dead, but different. She comes to with a snort, her eyes already dark, her soul cooling.
She blinks at me with recognition, then disinterest. I’m not what she wants. At least, not yet. I watch her nostrils flare as she sniffs out the human meat. She looks toward me, as if for permission, and when I make no move to stop her, she begins gnawing on the young man’s head.
Forget the fact that he’s wearing a black ball cap. She chews right through that until she reaches flat skull. Then she chews through that as well. I wince and step outside the van, shutting the door over but still hearing the sound of my ex-girlfriend chowing on the poor Relocator’s brain.
She steps from the back of the van a few minutes later, still wiping the gore from her chin. She is settled now; she’ll be fine. Even so, the stun gun is behind my back, just in case.