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Little as he wanted to have to kidnap the girl from the bar, Vaughn du Clark wouldn't wait forever. And it was better for Major to make her disappear than to let du Clark do it. He went to her house, sneaking into her garage and watching her through the window, hating how creepy he felt. Kidnapping was one thing; stalking a woman was quite another.
She was wearing jeans and an oversize cardigan and a cheery red top, and he was right—she looked just as good in them as she had in the dress at the bar. She hummed a little to herself as she refilled her bird feeders. Then she retrieved plastic sheeting and a tree stand and went inside. She was decorating for Christmas. He, Major Lilywhite, was about to kidnap a woman who was decorating for Christmas. There would be coal in his stocking for sure.
He looked around at the neat garage filled with a lifetime of memories, most of them in neatly labeled boxes. Flipping off the lid of the nearest one, he opened the green leatherbound photo album that lay at the top of its contents and opened it. The girl's face stared out at him, heavily made up for some kind of costume. Princess, judging from the shiny fabric. There were high school photos of her being goofy, and college photos of her with a best friend that reminded him of Peyton and Liv.
Inside the house, she was putting the tree in the stand, and Major really, really didn't want to do this. Not today. Not ever. Damn Vaughn du Clark, anyway.
If only any of it was up to him.
It took him until dark to work up the nerve, alternately looking through her boxes and watching her decorate her tree, but at last he climbed in through her bedroom window, crawling across her bed, feeling badly about the wrinkles he was making in the bedspread. She was so neat, this girl, everything carefully chosen and equally carefully tended.
Ignore that, he told himself, pulling the trank gun out of his hoodie pocket. Time to get it over with—he had mooned around long enough.
He moved quietly through the house, taking note of the decorations in blue and silver and green, with hints of red, that festooned every room. Just enough, not too much. He was out of place here, in his black kidnapper getup.
Looking into the living room, he saw that the plastic sheeting was draped over the couch. That was odd. He had thought it would be for the tree, to catch the needles. Then, coming around the corner of her chimney, he saw what the sheeting was really there for: The girl was seated on the couch, facing her beautifully decorated tree, with a gun to her head.
Major didn't stop to think. He leaped forward and knocked the gun out of her hand, landing at her feet as she gasped in shock.
Because she was a zombie, shock turned into anger, which turned into red-eyed, pale-faced, veiny rage. She was growling in a very classic zombie fashion, moving toward him, and he shrank back closer to the tree, talking as soothingly as possible. It occurred to him that Peyton had first seen zombie Liv this way, and that he never had, and how jarring that must have been—and would be for him when it inevitably happened. This brought home the zombie thing to him like he had never thought about it before.
She was holding him down, her grip on his neck incredibly strong, and Major was begging for her to stop, trying to get enough breath to explain the situation. At last he managed to get it out. "These people—they're forcing me to hunt zombies or they'll kill my girlfriend. She's a zombie, too."
Some part of that got through. The grip on his neck eased, and the girl sat back, her face returning to normal. "So … you're the boogeyman?"
"Boogeyman?" he repeated.
"The person taking out zombies. My pimp told me there's a boogeyman out there thinning the zombie herd."
"Your … pimp."
"Yeah." She took a deep breath and blew it out. "You want some tea?"
"Sure. Tea sounds … nice."
Major lay there getting his breath while she went into the kitchen. He trusted her not to be calling her pimp, or anyone else, and was only a little surprised when she emerged from the kitchen with actual mugs of tea in her hands.
"I was a call girl. The normal human kind," she explained, handing him a mug. "Upscale clientele. Then this mystery man contacts me, we have our date, and next morning I wake up and guess what sounds tasty to me."
"Brains."
"Exactly. Then this john drops back by, welcomes me to 'Team Z', and explains that I was a zombie now, and in exchange for the brains I needed to survive, I would have to service his zombie clients."
As bad as Liv had had it, Major hadn't really thought about how much worse it could have been. "That's horrible."
"Yeah. I literally got screwed into becoming a zombie hooker."
He couldn't help admiring her sense of humor.
"Before that," she went on, "it was all on my terms. I'd screen like crazy, weeded out the skeezoids, had some generous regulars, work a little, make a lot, live my life. Pre-zombie, I went to Japan. Twice. Cambodia. Malta." She pointed to the wall, and Major turned to look at the photographs framed and hung there. They were good. Really good. "I spent three weeks taking pictures of the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro."
"So you took all these?"
"Yeah. Maybe my choices were different from most people's, but … they were mine. I liked my life."
"And I guess you can't just get on a plane now, can you?" Major asked, seeing so clearly the ruin zombieism had made of her happiness.
"Even if I could, my savings are gone. I get paid in brains. I have sex for food. Try living with that for a while. These zombie men have me whenever they want me, and I spend the rest of my time hating myself. And showering. So." She put the mug down next to her and stood up. "If you wouldn't mind giving me my gun back, and then skedaddling—"
Major was not about to let this smart, vital, interesting woman lose her life that way, not if there was a possibility she could be cured. "You don't really want to do that. How badly could you want to die if you spent an hour untangling Christmas lights?"
"I was setting the mood." She stepped a little closer, her voice so soft he could barely hear it. "Being a zombie hooker is horrible. Being a zombie hooker when you've eaten the brain of a Benedictine nun, or a man with dementia? That is … an extra level of devastating. A few weeks ago I shot a deer," she went on, her voice breaking. "I started being a vegan when I was sixteen, and hunter brain made me kill Bambi. You have a zombie girlfriend—I'm sure you've seen what these brains do to her."
"It's coming into sharper focus." He felt vaguely guilty that it took another woman's pain for him to begin to understand what Liv went through every day, without factoring in how it affected his life.
"I'm either being controlled by a pimp or being controlled by a brain." There were tears gathering in her eyes now. "I've had it. My gun?" She held her hand out for it. When he didn't reach out to give it to her, she asked, "What? You want the honors?"
"No. Look, it doesn't have to be this way."
"If there's another option, I'm all ears."
"There is. I … well, I'm not killing the zombies I'm taking. I'm—freezing them."
"Does that work?"
"Yes. Someday I'll thaw everyone out. Someday when there's a cure."
Her eyes brightened. "A cure? You think there will be?"
"I really do. I—" It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that being turned into a zombie had saved his life, and that Liv had given him the cure that had been meant for her, but he felt strange about it. "A friend of ours is working on one. He's going to succeed, I know it."
"And until then, you do this?"
He took a deep breath, not sure how much he should tell her. But she was going to die if he didn't convince her to try it his way, and god, how he wanted to get this off his chest, to tell someone what was going on. "I told you I got into this because these people are forcing me to hunt zombies, and threatening my girlfriend's life if I don't. They've given me a list of suspected zombies, and they expect regular progress reports."
"Suspected zombies? How do they make that list?"
"Credit cards, mostly. Spray tans, hair dye … hot sauce."
"Smart." She nodded. "Which people are these, exactly?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." He slid off the couch, settling on the floor and leaning his head back with a sigh.
The girl sank down next to him. "Try me."
"Max Rager."
"You're joking."
"Not even a little bit."
She laughed. "Well, there's irony for you. Do you know how much Max Rager I used to drink? I kept them in business for years."
"Then you're part of the problem," he said, deadpan, and she laughed again. She had a beautiful laugh, and a beautiful smile. "Now I'm making my way down this list as slowly as possible. I mean, I'm 99% sure that when I get to the end, they'll just kill me and my girlfriend, too."
Her sympathy with his plight was evident. She frowned thoughtfully, trying, as he had, to work out an escape hole. "There's got to be something you can do."
"The guy who owns the company thinks he walks on water, that he can charm anyone, so I'm trying to figure out a way to use that."
"You sound like the sort of quality boyfriend I'd only heard about."
Liv's distressed face from their fight this morning came to mind. That had been on her, yes, but he hadn't been overly sympathetic to the struggle going on in her brain, either. "Yeah … I wouldn't be too sure about that."
"You're doing all of this to keep your girlfriend safe. She's got to appreciate that."
"She doesn't know. I can't tell her. Liv would try to stop Vaughn. I'd end up getting her killed, and … I can't risk that. I won't risk that. It's like a cult over there, and he's their messiah offering up immortality in a can. I'm working on a plan, but in the meantime, I have to keep abducting zombies, taking them away from their families, and proving I'm a good soldier." Saying it out loud felt good. Really good. And made it all the more clear why he could never tell Liv—she was all black and white, so few shades of grey. She would never understand the waiting game he was playing. "And I'm pretty sure that Liv would find that … reprehensible." He was silent for a moment, then felt moved to be completely honest with this girl, who had listened so patiently. "I know I do."
"You're not ripping me away from my life or loved ones. I have no one, and I already want to die." They both laughed a little, as if it was funny, and she reached out and put a hand on his arm. "This could be your easiest job."
God, he hated to do this, to put this girl on ice with no idea how long she would be there. But he had to, and she was offering, and it would be a kindness to take her away from the life she'd been leading and give her hope that she could go back to the life she had loved, someday.
"Okay. Let's do it."
They closed up her house, carefully enough that her things wouldn't be damaged, but not so carefully that it looked deliberate, and taking his usual precautions, he took her to the storage unit. She was remarkably calm about it all, even about stepping up and into a freezer already occupied by several other frozen zombies.
Then she hesitated, looking up at him. "I have a favor to ask."
"Anything."
"If this doesn't work, if the cure doesn't happen—"
"It's going to."
"But if it doesn't. I don't want to come back as a zombie. Not like this. And definitely not like one of those mindless drooling monsters you see in the movies."
"Well, there's going to be a cure," he promised her. There had to be. "And you'll be sending me postcards from Tasmania—"
"But if there isn't," she insisted. "You'll make sure?" When he couldn't answer, she pressed him again. "Promise me."
"I promise," he said at last, hating that he had to, hating that he understood why she needed it.
She smiled, relieved, and he tranked her and eased her gently into the freezer. He stood there for a long time with the freezer door open, looking down at her beautiful, peaceful face, before he could bring himself to close her up inside the box.