IT WAS NOON. OR PROBABLY AFTER, AFTER NOON. IT felt like a Saturday and I guess it actually could’ve been. Weird that a side effect of becoming undead was a total loss of basic calendar skills. Anyway, it was one of those lazy, quiet days where it seemed like everything could wait.
I used to have a lot of those. Before.
So maybe I’d backslid a little bit since coming to Des Moines.
I sat on Reggie’s impossibly comfortable couch and turned the two injectors of Kope Juice over in my hands. I wished they’d glow or something. Fizz and bubble like the test tubes in a mad scientist’s laboratory. But no, they looked as badass as the insulin shots my grandma squeezed into her side flab after Sunday dinner.
I should go find Amanda.
First, I should talk to Reggie. Try to finagle a third injector for Cass. Maybe I’d have to cat-burgle one from wherever he stashed the meds.
Was I up for cat burgling?
Was I up for getting off this couch?
A random memory from a couple years ago hit me. It’d been around Christmastime and I was chilling in the basement playing some shooter when my dad came clamoring down the steps. This was a really unusual occurrence because it was like 1:00 a.m., and my dad was not in the habit of watching me play video games. He didn’t actively take a stand against the time I spent achievement whoring and leaderboard grinding, but I could always tell he was sorta pissed I’d quit, well, everything extracurricular. He never came right out and said anything about it, except this one time he stuck a column from some old movie critic to the fridge that went on and on about how video games could never be art. No duh, dude, but you can’t shoot space terrorists in a painting, now, can you?
Anyway, Dad came all staggering downstairs and I remembered that his office holiday party had been that night, so he was totally bombed. I’d had my own first drink just a couple weeks earlier, stolen from his liquor cabinet, in fact, so I was a recently anointed expert on what wasted behavior looked like.
Those were the days, man. Raiding parental liquor storage with Henry and Adam, not a care in the world. Is it weird to feel nostalgic for sixteen when you’re eighteen? I’m going to say no, but only if you’ve been shot multiple times by a shotgun, stabbed with a pitchfork, and eaten a bunch of people during those two middle years. Simpler times and shit.
Anyway, my dad stood behind the couch, swaying and breathing heavy—kinda zombielike, although that’s not a metaphor that would’ve occurred to me at the time. I didn’t pause my game or anything. I figured he’d drift away eventually.
“Son,” he declared, slurring a little, “one day you’re gonna wake up and realize the best years of your life have passed by and you didn’t even realize it.”
“Okay, Dad,” I replied, my token response for all sentimental fatherly advice. “Whatever you say.”
“Keep your frickin’ eyes open is what I’m saying,” he continued, ruffling my hair like he used to when I was little. “Have the good sense to notice when that time comes along and enjoy it.”
“I am enjoying it,” I said, waving my controller at the TV screen.
“Oh good Christ, not this,” he replied, appalled I could confuse an Xbox all-nighter for these mythological best years of my life. “It’ll be way better than killing pretend things in the basement. Trust me.”
Well, I’d graduated to killing real things, so there’s that.
I wondered what Dad would make of my whole voyage across the country. I mean, outside the gray area of mass murderer. There wasn’t anything lazy or underachieving about the way I’d evaded our corrupt government and found a cure for zombification.
And yet, here I was with my ass planted on the couch again.
Before I could properly psych myself up, heavy footfalls started clanging up the fire escape. I quickly hid my vials of Kope Juice in a bandana I’d borrowed from Reggie, stashing them under the couch with Amanda’s body spray.
Red Bear appeared outside the window. He paused, peeking in, his gaze inventorying all the treasures Reggie had amassed, his face sagging with that look of profound longing usually reserved for dogs that have to sleep outside. He noticed me and started, like I’d caught him at something. He hastily tapped the window with his hatchet, acting as if all along he’d been trying to get my attention.
“He wants us on the roof!” Red Bear yelled, his words muffled by the glass.
I looked up. I’d figured Reggie was still lazing around in his room, but apparently I was the only one being a total bum.
“What for?” I yelled back.
Red Bear pressed his whole face up against the glass, leaving behind a greasy imprint. “Meeting of the Small Council,” he said, then resumed his trek to the roof.
All right. The roof. At least it’d get me off the couch.
Out Reggie’s front door, up one flight of stairs, through a metal door propped open by a loose brick, and there was all of Des Moines spread out before me. On a sunny day like this, from up high, the city didn’t look so bad. I mean, if you really squinted it looked like the citizens had endured a rash of spontaneous combustions with bloody spray patterns and singe marks everywhere. But from up here without scrutinizing too hard? Not so bad. The roaming ghouls could’ve been people on their way to work!
I was relieved to find Reggie dressed like a normal person again—jeans, T-shirt, flip-flops—no leather or goggles or kill trophies. He smiled as I emerged from the building and waved me over to the center of the roof. Red Bear stood nearby, scratching himself with the butt end of his hatchet.
“Dude, you gotta see this,” he said as I joined them, pointing up to the sky. “It’s some George Orwell shit.”
Craning my neck, at first all I saw were clouds. But then it moved, zipping across the sky, leaving behind a squiggly contrail. It looked like a floating trash can. I gasped.
“UFO!” I shouted. “Zombies, psychics . . . aliens. It all makes sense!”
Red Bear made a farting noise.
Reggie laughed. “Nah. That’s a drone. Sent by our pals in the NCD, probably.” He paused thoughtfully. “Aliens would make sense, though, you’re right. Like some human-experimentation shit that got out of hand.”
“That’s stupid,” Red Bear grumbled.
“Man, shut up, Gene. You don’t know shit about sci-fi,” Reggie replied.
“Um.” I surprised myself by being the one to stay on topic. “Do you guys get a lot of drones? Is this, like, normal? Is there going to be an air strike?”
“They don’t have the balls,” Red Bear hissed.
“Haven’t seen one in a while,” Reggie answered casually. “Last time was right before the paratroopers.”
I blinked at him. “Paratroopers?”
Reggie shrugged. “Yeah, they keep trying that shit. They don’t realize it’s like doing a food drop. Like zombies can’t look up or something.”
“Should I get . . . the thing?” Red Bear asked, staring eagerly at the drone.
“Nah,” Reggie replied, after considering for a moment. “It’d be a waste. You know they gotta be up to something, though. We should probably check in downtown, make sure everything’s cool.”
Red Bear nodded and unstrapped a walkie-talkie from his belt. He stepped away to confer with whoever was on the other end.
“What’s downtown?” I asked Reggie.
He grinned at me. “The beating heart of our republic, my man. It’s what those NCD doofuses want to steal. The reason we’ve been allowed to flourish, because they’re too afraid to blow it up.”
My look must’ve been totally blank. Reggie grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Jake, I’ll loan you a tie,” he said, trying to be serious but finding it hard not to smile at his own goofiness. “We’re going to corporate America.”