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Major looked down at the bed, where the fruits of his purchase lay like so many pieces of exercise equipment. Except that the only muscle these were going to exercise was his trigger finger. Was he really doing this? Could he do this? Shouldn't he wait for the results of the tests on the brains Liv had taken?
He remembered, as vividly as if it was still happening, Julian's red eyes. Remembered the feeling of shooting him in the chest and watching him fall, knowing that he, Major Lilywhite, had killed a man … and then the feeling of looking at that bare floor with Clive, wondering if he had gone mad. Whatever was going on at Meat Cute, it was bad. They were zombies. Incredible, unbelievable as it was, it was the only explanation that made any sense. And because it was so incredible, so unbelievable that even Liv hadn't been able to take him seriously at first, he couldn't ask for back-up. If someone else got hurt in the process, he wouldn't be able to live with himself.
No. He was doing this. He was doing this by himself. For Liv. For Peyton. For Ravi and Clive and the kids at the shelter and the people in Blooming Grove, and the rest of Seattle—and the world, for that matter.
And he was freaking terrified.
Major pulled out the chair from his desk and sat in it, facing the array of guns on the bed. Yeah, he was scared. Could he do it, even if he was scared? He thought so, but … it was easy to think you could do something, and a lot harder in the moment to actually get it done. He was glad he'd bought the self-help tapes. Okay, so they were pretty hokey, but since he could hardly go to anyone he knew and tell them what he was planning—even Liv, since her first response would either be to not let him go or to insist on coming with him, neither of which he could allow—better to have a disembodied voice trying to talk him out of his fear than nothing at all. He wasn't even sure he was afraid to die. Life was good … or, had been good, but now there was really nothing ahead of him. No Liv, no job. Maybe that would all pass, or maybe it wouldn't. Either way, he was okay in the long run with trading his life for the death of a nest of zombies. As okay as you could be, he supposed. But what if they caught him? He was kind of afraid of a slow, painful death, if he was being honest with himself. And—even more honest—he was even more afraid of being turned. Scratches, bites, he wasn't sure how it happened, but he didn't want it to happen to him. Life as Major Lilywhite, failed fiance and washed-up counselor, was bad enough. Life as a zombie? Eating people's brains? Not being able to look at Liv, or anyone he loved, and see them for anything beyond his next meal? No. Too bad there wasn't a zombie vaccine.
Still, afraid or not, it had to be done. By him, since no one else seemed to have found them out for what they were. Which meant he would have to do it very quickly, very clean, and very well.
He remembered his junior high football coach's favorite saying: Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Mostly he remembered it because of how hard they had all rolled their eyes every time he'd said it, and not because his junior high team had been known for any kind of good performance on the field … but it wasn't wrong. Resolutely, Major got to his feet and loaded the guns and the grenade into his gym bag. He would drive by tonight and case the place out, and then when everyone was gone, he would walk himself through a dry run, visualizing every move.
The tapes spouted their positive, fear-free message at him as he drove over, taking an extra couple of loops ostensibly to allow time for the shop to shut down, but really to keep listening, and to put off the moment he had to start making the real plan. At last he told himself what a wuss he was and forced himself to drive to Meat Cute, to park across the street, and to start thinking about how he would do it. In the front door with the shotgun, preferably when as many of them as possible were in sight. He didn't know for sure how to kill a zombie, but given the obsession with brains, he figured shooting them in the head was probably the way to go. He hoped Julian was there—he really owed that guy a shotgun shell to the cranium.
A car pulled up and parked behind him, the headlights reflecting off Major's rearview mirror, and he winced at the brightness, waiting for the lights to turn off and the guy to go away.
Instead, he got out of his car, leaving the lights on. Through the glare, it was hard to see, but he looked like a big guy. And he was coming toward Major's window. Major prepared a casual smile and a quick story about waiting for a girlfriend who was at the salon in the next block—but he never got past the smile, because the driver's side door was yanked open and a large fist collided with his nose, and Major lost consciousness only seconds after recognizing the beefy guy pulling him out of the car as Julian.
He came to with a gag in his mouth, and his hands bound above his head … in a freezer. In the meat freezer at Meat Cute. Great, Lilywhite. Just great.
So, he was their prisoner—but he wasn't dead. Why wasn't he dead? Because he had something they wanted, he realized. The coolers. They must have been valuable. Valuable brains? Maybe they were the brains of someone famous. That would be a thing, right? If you were a zombie, maybe a rich zombie, you'd want to eat special brains. Cool brains. Yeah. That had to be it. So if he didn't tell them where the brains were, maybe they'd leave him alive long enough for him to figure out how to get out of here. Or to come up with a way to contact Liv, or Clive.
He heard footsteps outside the locker, and then the door opened and the owner of Meat Cute, the one with the bleached white hair, came in, with Julian just behind him. God, how Major wanted to kill that guy. He imagined taking his bonds down and wrapping them around Julian's neck until his eyes popped out. Wait, did zombies breathe? He watched the bleached blond. Yes, it seemed like they did. Good.
The blond nodded at Julian, and that was when the hitting started. Major took it as well as he could, despite the pain in his face and his shoulders and arms. It stopped for a moment, and the blond got up close and personal. "You wouldn't know anything about some brains, would you?"
Gagged as he was, all his quips would be wasted, so Major instead concentrated on breathing through the pain, ignoring the question.
"Brains. In boxes. Little plastic boxes, in little yellow coolers. Look, guy, we know you took 'em. We just want 'em back, that's all."
Yeah. Of course. That was all. Give the brains back so they could be fed to zombies. Too late, Major thought how much smarter it might have been to follow the delivery person and figure out where the brains were going first. Maybe next time, he told himself, before Julian's fist connected with his solar plexus and pain was all he could think of.
After a while, they decided to freeze the answers out of him. At least they took him down, took the gag off. That was something. For now, it was enough, Major thought, curling into a ball around his pain, trying to keep as warm as he could. Somehow, he was going to get free, and then he really was going to kill them, and he wasn't going to be afraid now. Now, after this, he was going to enjoy it.