Zombified (20 page)

Phil stood over the bed, unsure what to say or do.

“We need to go, maybe,” he said. “They left him like this. He might . . .”

“I know,” I said. He might turn. I also knew that he'd been left like this deliberately. They left him for me to deal with. Not they, him. Brandon.

I took my pistol in my hand and placed the barrel under his chin.

“I'd never let him have you twice,” I said, and I pulled the trigger.

The shot was loud inside the room. It rang in my ears and the smell of cordite filled my nose. I stared up at the ceiling, refusing to look at what had become of my dad. Not that I would have seen anything; tears filled my eyes, refracting the light and making me blind.

“Get some things together,” Phil said. “You can't stay here.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“With me,” he said. “You'll stay with me and my aunt and uncle.”

I hung my head. “God, after what you just learned tonight?”

“I'm not happy with you right now,” he said, “but I'm not going to abandon you after this. Please, get some things and let's go out and wait for the cops.”

I let him help me up. We went into my bedroom and saw that it had been trashed. Everything had been upended, shattered glass crunched under our feet, and it looked like the mattress and bedding had been ripped to shreds.

“Looks like Brandon was upset to find you not at home,” Phil said.

“I'm going to kill him,” I said. “I mean it, that's not just something I'm saying.”

“I know,” Phil said.

He helped me find my backpack. I picked out a few pieces of clothing that weren't ripped or too covered in glass. Phil helped me get my desk upright and I found my laptop in the drawer where I kept it. It looked like it had made it through unscathed. That went into the bag, too.

All of the drawers had been pulled out of my dresser. I finally found the one with a false bottom—the false bottom Willie had made for me before he was killed by zombies last year. I removed the baggie of Vitamin Z and then threw the drawer down on the floor.

“I still need to get this to Dr. Keller,” I said.

After that, I gathered some stuff from the bathroom.

“Is that everything?” Phil asked.

I thought for a minute. “Nearly,” I said.

I went back into Dad's bedroom, careful not to look at him on top of the bed.

I went to his chest of drawers and opened the one that contained all the stuff he wanted to keep away from me. Underneath a pile of old
Playboy
s, I found the gallon-sized Ziploc full of cash I'd earned in my time selling Vitamin Z for Buddha. Phil's eyes went wide when he saw the money. I put it into my bag.

We walked back into the living room. I didn't hear the screeching sound anymore. Phil must have hung up the phone.

By this time we heard sirens. The cops were finally on the way.

“Okay,” I said, “now I'm done.”

I had just enough time to stash my things in Phil's trunk before the cops arrived. They had surprisingly few questions. Turns out they'd heard most everything I did over the landline phone. Mostly they wanted to know where I'd been at the time of the attack. I told them I was out with friends. Then they wanted to know if I needed a place to stay. I looked over at Phil, who was answering his own questions.

“I have a place,” I said.

The policeman gave me a couple of cards after that. One was for a crisis center that helped people out after losing loved ones to zombies, and another was a service that cleaned up houses after violent instances. That was what he called it, a “violent instance.”

I thanked him and sat in the car to wait for Phil.

When he was done, he climbed in and got us going.

“The police will get Cody home,” he said.

I didn't answer. It didn't seem like anything needed to be said.

Phil drove us to his place, and we didn't speak the entire way.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
thought that losing my two best friends at the end of the previous school year might be some sort of preparation for losing my dad. I mean, years of school had taught me that anything could be dealt with if you just prepared and studied enough, right? Well, that was just stupid. There was literally no way you could prepare for so much loss.

I woke up every morning in the guest bedroom that Phil's aunt and uncle had been nice enough to provide for me, and I experienced the same crushing realization that Dad was gone. Every morning. God, that was the time I really should have learned that Hemingway quote.

The hardest thing I had to do in those first few days, maybe the hardest thing I had to do ever, was to attend the memorial service for my dad. Gene arranged it for me, for which I was super grateful. Since it was standard operating procedure to cremate folks in those days, I didn't have to worry about paying for a burial plot. We just had a little metal urn full of Dad's ashes on a stand up by the lectern, where a priest stood and told everyone how great my dad was even though they'd never met. Yes, we had a priest. Give me a break, I was looking for comfort wherever I could find it.

A whole ton of Dad's coworkers showed up, and a few of our neighbors. Dad didn't seem to have many friends outside of work, but it was still nice to see how many people showed up. It was less nice when I realized that they might all want to talk to me, to express their condolences. That was just one long, sad parade that I barely made it through.

My mom didn't come, but that might have been because I hadn't invited her. Must have slipped my mind.

Phil's aunt and uncle tried to make things as easy for me as possible. I mean, they opened their home up to me and told me to stay as long as I needed. They knew about my mom, but they also knew there was some complicated history there. I really had no interest in moving to Seattle halfway through my senior year of high school. I was guessing that they didn't know that I'd messed up and complicated my history with their nephew, too. I wonder how openly they'd have welcomed me if they did. I guess I was just lucky that Phil wasn't petty. It felt like he and I were starting from scratch, sure, but he didn't denounce me like I was the junior version of Hester Prynn.

Maybe things would have been easier somehow if he had been as hard on me as I was on myself those days. I blamed myself for everything—my rocky relationship with Phil, my dad's death, the rise of a new zombie breed. Man, that was a lot of blame for one girl to shoulder.

Even though things were bad in the months following Dad's murder, there were some good things, too. Things that are easier to point out in hindsight than they were at the time. I mailed the Vitamin Z sample off to Dr. Keller, along with a note asking that he please not ask me where I got it—so I felt like I was helping in the anti-zombie effort. I hated like hell that I wasn't going to see him up in Portland, but there was no way I could have done it just then with everything that was going on.

The Army actually started reclaiming New York City. This basically meant they had to go building by building and door to door in a city that used to hold eight million or so people. I followed the news a lot in those days, and I took every bit of it personally. If the Army had a good day, I'd think it was a sign that things in my own life were getting better. If they experienced a setback of some sort, like when they lost a whole company of soldiers to a nest of zombies, then I believed that meant I'd never be able to make amends for all the things I'd done. It was crazy, but that was where I was.

The school insisted that if I didn't go to a support group, I'd have to at least visit with the school counselor. Ms. Bjorn and I had a history. When I was caught smoking Vitamin Z at the end of the previous year, I'd been ordered to visit with her about it. She was nice enough and I got that she meant well, but she'd told me right up front that she was required by law to disclose any criminal activities I might talk about. That made it difficult to talk at all, since criminal activities were the only kind I'd been involved in back then.

But after my dad died, it was different. I still had to avoid talking about selling drugs, but since I wasn't doing it on a daily basis, it was easier to talk. Boy, did I talk. I told her everything I could. Once a week, I found myself in her cramped little office, sitting across from her, a desk piled high with student files between us. She was really interested in my zombie-hunting exploits and why I felt compelled to do it.

“Well,” I said, “zombies are pretty evil. I mean, look, they killed my dad.” Also, I felt responsible because I had gotten a lot of people hooked on a drug that created new zombies. That part I didn't say.

“I know they killed your father, Courtney,” she said. “But they hadn't killed him when you started hunting them. There must have been some motivator before that. How about if you journal about what that might have been?”

I actually took the journaling seriously—given that there were certain subjects I didn't dare write about—and it did help me figure some things out. Whenever I found myself reluctant to sit down and write, I'd hear my dad's voice telling me that someone who wanted to get better had to trust in the process of healing, and then I'd get to work. Even in my imagination, Dad was full of psychobabble.

Something else that helped ease the pressure—really, two something elses—were that Crystal Beals and Elsa Roberts each approached me at different times to tell me how sorry they were that my dad had died. It was nice to have her talking to me again. She even told me she was sorry for getting so mad at me about Brandon and Vitamin Z.

The whole time she talked, I remembered Brandon talking about her, and I wondered if they were a thing. Somehow, I just couldn't bring myself to believe it.

“It was terrible of you to sell it,” she said, bringing us back to the subject of my moral shortcomings, “but it was his stupid decision to smoke it and get hooked, you know?”

Gee, thanks,
I thought.

“Anyway, he was the one making decisions,” she said. “It was wrong of me to take it out on you.”

And Elsa was a friend of a more recent vintage. She'd stopped talking to me when I experienced a temporary bump in social status as a result of dating Brandon last year. But both of them suggested we should get together sometime, and that made me feel good. Or at least it made me feel better. Good was probably a long way off.

It took the police about a month to wrap up their investigation. They decided that Dad had died by misadventure. I thought that was an interesting term for being ripped apart in a coordinated zombie attack.

The day after the case was closed, I got a call from a lawyer. Dad had left everything to me, and this lawyer, Rudy Alvarez, would handle all of it until I turned eighteen. I had to go to his office downtown and sign a bunch of papers. Alvarez had a slick smile and equally slicked-back hair. He looked like he'd just gotten back from his bus-stop-bench photo shoot. Gene went with me, which I really appreciated. Signing everything, I felt like I was pretending to be a grown-up. I expected someone to pull off my mask any moment, like on an episode of
Scooby-Doo
. Gene and the lawyer talked a lot about finance stuff. The lawyer was going to take care of getting the house cleaned, and he recommended hiring a management company to take care of it and to rent it out. He figured that there were always college kids looking for housing.

Gene told me that was a good idea—it would be a good monthly income. Not that I'd need it. Apparently, Dad had a rider on his insurance that paid out a crapload of money if he was killed in a zombie attack. I guess lots of people had that in those days.

The two of them decided to set up a bank account for me. They'd put a certain amount into it every month, and if I needed more than that, I had to contact the lawyer. I didn't know what to say for a minute—it wasn't every day you figured out you're a trust-fund baby profiting off your dad's untimely death.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “help me convince this guy to take money from me every month for rent.” I hooked my thumb at Gene. “Because I know he'll say no.”

Which he did. The lawyer finally brought him around by telling him that I could more than afford to help with household expenses. “Especially because she's asking to,” Alvarez said. “She wants to contribute, it seems to me.”

Gene agreed and I walked out of the office feeling better than when I'd walked in. At least now I knew I wasn't freeloading.

One night, about a month later, as I helped Gene clean up after dinner, the phone rang. Diane came into the kitchen and answered it.

“Hello,” she said. She listened for a while without speaking. At one point she turned and looked at me and I got a chill. Finally, she said, “Just a moment, please.” And she held the phone out.

“It's for you, Courtney,” she said. “It's your mother.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn't really expected her to call for some reason.

I took the phone and stood there staring at the receiver as Diane hustled Gene out of the kitchen.

Finally, I took a deep breath and put the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I said.

“Oh, baby,” said a woman on the other end. She sounded like she'd been crying. “Courtney, I just heard about your dad. I'm so sorry, sweetie!” I didn't bother to point out that nearly two months had gone by since Dad's death.

“Thanks,” I said. That felt sort of lame, so I added, “Thanks for calling.”

“Of course, baby,” she said. “I'd have called sooner, but I just found out. You know your dad and I weren't really close anymore.”

You hadn't called in five years and you're reminding me that you weren't close with Dad? You don't say?

“Is there anything you need?” she asked.

I honestly couldn't think of anything I wanted from her.

“No,” I said. “I'm fine. I'm staying with the family of a friend.”

“Oh,” she said, “that's great! I would have offered to have you come up here, but it's not a good time right now.”

“No, that's fine,” I said.

“You know, Bill and I are moving into the bigger house,” she pressed on, talking to me like I knew all of this garbage she was spewing. “And then we need to get the nursery ready.”

“The nursery?” I asked, and I immediately regretted it.

“Oh, you haven't heard,” she said, breathless with excitement. “You're going to be a sister, Courtney! Isn't that exciting? I'm due in June.”

I wondered if she remembered that
my
birthday was in June.

She blathered on for a while longer, but I had stopped talking. I don't think she noticed. I kept coming back to the fact that she was relieved when I told her I wouldn't be moving up to Seattle with her. Probably glad I wasn't going to be spoiling her nice new family.

I managed to hold it together while I was on the phone with her, but the moment I grunted good-bye and hung up, the tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks. I sat on the floor and just wept. For years I'd imagined finally talking to my mom, telling her very calmly how upset I was with her, cataloging her sins against me, Dad, and the world. Instead, I'd sat there and let her tell me all about her perfect little life. She probably thought I was excited for her!

I felt so dumb and small and useless.

At some point I heard someone walk into the kitchen and stand over me. After a second, he got down on the floor with me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. Phil. He didn't try to comfort me by telling me it was going to be okay. That would have been a lie anyway. Instead, he just let me know he was there. He waited to hear what I needed from him.

“She didn't even want me,” I finally choked out.

“We want you,” he said. We. Not
I
want you, but “we.” I'd take it for the time being.

He stayed there until I stopped, then he squeezed me one last time and let me go.

“I'm sorry about your mom,” Phil said. “If she doesn't want you around, then she's an idiot. I can't believe you think she might have saved the world.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Sorry for crying?” he asked.

“No, Phil,” I said. “I'm not sorry for crying in front of you. I'm sure I'll be doing more of it.” I took a deep breath. “I cannot believe you're making me say this,” I then said. “I'm sorry about what happened with Warren.”

He nodded, but didn't say anything.

“I was just frustrated and angry and hurt,” I said, “and stupid. Can't forget that.”

“Does seem kind of dumb,” Phil said.

“And I've regretted it ever since it happened.” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt, which I'm guessing wasn't super attractive. “I know it hurt you, and I didn't ever want to do that.”

“I know,” Phil said.

“Can you forgive me?” I asked. I was so afraid of what his answer might be.

“Forgiving is easy,” Phil said. “All you had to do was ask.”

“I hear a ‘but' coming.”

“But,” Phil said, “I'm still trying to trust you again. That's going to take a while longer.”

“Anything I can do to speed up the process?”

“Just keep doing what you're doing,” he said. “And don't make out with Warren anymore.”

It took me a second to realize he was joking. I smiled at him and he returned it.