Thank you for reading!
Without much other choice in the matter, Major figured he might as well get the dirty work over with. Little as he liked visiting the storage units in the daytime, it was going to have to be done. Blaine was not a patient man, and the last thing Major wanted was to give him time to rethink the deal, or to decide to send Major some kind of message to make sure he stayed motivated.
So he backed carefully up to the door of the unit, opening the door only enough to be able to duck inside, so no one could see him reaching into a big chest freezer and rearranging frozen bodies while he dug out the one he needed. He stared down at the frosty face for a moment, thinking he should have known. There was an arrogance in this man's face that more than matched the arrogance in his son's. He bet they shared other delightful personality traits, too. He devoutly wished he had put an actual bullet in this particular zombie's head … except that if he had, he couldn't have used the guy as a bargaining chip and he, Major, would currently be dead. And he didn't really want to be dead, so there was that … although some days it was hard to remember why.
He wrapped the body in a body bag, raised the door of the storage unit enough to be able to open his trunk, and wrestled the body into it as quickly and quietly and discreetly as possible. There appeared to be no one around, for which he was grateful—but really, when you were at the beck and call of two men who liked to know everything that was going on, it was hard to be too paranoid about being followed, watched, bugged, videotaped, and generally violated right in the privacy.
It was easier once he got to the funeral home. After all, this was a place designed to receive dead bodies. Maybe not frozen ones, but what difference did a few degrees really make?
He found the big zombie, Chief, hanging around outside and let him know what he was here for, and as he had hoped, Chief helpfully took the feet of the frozen corpse. Major could have wished maybe he would have taken the heavy end, but any help was useful at this point. Frozen zombies were heavy.
"Warning," he said when he saw Blaine sitting on a stool inside the embalming room, "your dad's still frozen."
Blaine got up and came toward the bag with a delighted smile on his lips. "Okay, someone's gotta make an obligatory pop-sicle joke, right?"
Chief rolled the eye not covered with a leather patch. Not a fan of puns, then. So few people were, Major reflected. He appreciated a good pun … but not from Blaine. He really didn't appreciate anything about Blaine.
Looking between the two of them, clearly disappointed by their lack of reaction, Blaine frowned. "No? When did it get so high-brow in here?"
Major couldn't help but notice Blaine was looking a lot more zombie-like than he had the last time they spoke. There was a woman there who must have been doing Blaine's make-up. And why? he wondered. Did Blaine's clients think he was still a zombie? He supposed that was probably good for business. "Hey," he said, gesturing to his face and then to Blaine. "This isn't for my benefit, right? I still know you're not a zombie."
"Well, that's only a matter of time, though, isn't it? If we're on the same path as Ravi's test rat? Might as well get comfortable with it."
He couldn't decide which he liked less—that Blaine was privy to the secrets of the lab, with Major's roommate and his ex-fiance, or that they shared the same likely fate. Either way, he really didn't like that Blaine was using it as some sick kind of bonding material.
Without waiting for Major's response, Blaine unzipped the body bag, leaning over and looking down at his father's frozen face. "Oh, they're so cute when they're sleeping."
"So," Major said, wanting to get the hell out of there, "I held up my end of the bargain. You?"
Blaine stood up, gesturing to his face. "Why do you think I went to all this trouble? Give me a minute, will you?"
"Sure. A minute." Major stood back and crossed his arms.
"It was a figure of speech, big guy. He's on his way."
It was more like fifteen minutes—fifteen of the longest minutes of Major's life, watching as Blaine cooed over his father's body in triumph—before the doorbell upstairs rang.
Blaine ushered in a portly reporter whose face Major remembered seeing on his list, and distracted him with his makeup girl dressed up in a satin and lace corset. Major didn't let them get too far before he tranked the guy—it seemed like the least he could do for all of them, since the reporter seemed like a hell of a sleaze. It was also apparent that he had been one of Natalie's clients, which made Major even happier to put him on ice. He'd put him in a different freezer than Natalie, though. Putting them in the same one just didn't seem right.
"You see?" Blaine asked, when the reporter's body hit the floor. "Wasn't that easier?"
Then he and the makeup girl took off, leaving Major alone with the sleeping undead. "Little help here?" Major called after them. "Where's the big zombie?"
But it appeared that he was on his own with this one. God, this week just kept getting better and better, he thought, grabbing the shoulders of the guy's jacket and dragging him toward the back door, where his car was parked. Seriously, this job just didn't pay enough for all this trouble.