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Armed with his new list from Max Rager, Major headed for Shady Plots. He couldn't help thinking how odd his routine was these days—he spent most of his time in a morgue, a funeral parlor, and an energy drink company. And the morgue felt the safest. Not a lot of people could say they felt safe in a morgue. There was something to be said for being unique. Or just messed up.
There appeared to be no one home at the funeral parlor. What if Major had wanted to buy a burial plot? Plan a funeral? Steal a coffin? He leaned toward the last one, personally. It sounded like more fun. Why had they never done that back in his football days? Steal a casket, throw a party, have a blow-up doll inside it and pop the lid at an opportune moment? He missed college some days. Everything had been so simple.
He called for Blaine a couple of times, but there was no answer. Still thinking back to college parties and imagining the effect of a coffin at one, he thumped the nearest casket with his fist. Even as he did so, the hair rose on his arm. Was there a zombie hiding in the coffin? That seemed like a good way to scare off customers, Major thought, but who knew what kind of schemes Blaine might have for tricking people into buying. Zombie pops out of a coffin, touring grandma drops dead of a heart attack, Blaine gets an immediate sale? He put a hand on the coffin, wondering if he should open it. Half-turning, he saw Blaine standing directly behind him and jumped back in shock.
"What's the word?" Blaine asked softly. "Boo?" He seemed … paler than yesterday. And it didn't look like make-up.
With dismay, Major did the math, looking at his arm, where the hair still stood on end. Damn it. "This is you? You're a zombie again?"
"Yep. Back on the brain gang. Dang."
"Crap."
Blaine nodded his agreement with Major's assessment.
"I got the impression we might have longer."
"Yeah, I don't think Ravi factored in mitochondrial metabolism and the effect on the interaction."
Major frowned at him. That was kind of science-y for Blaine, and completely lacking in his trademark whimsy.
"Whoa. I'm … so sorry," Blaine said. "This nerd brain I ate is so annoying." He sighed. "Um, bottom line is—"
"I'm gonna end up a zombie again." The last thing he wanted. Those few minutes as one had been … soul-destroying. Like everything he was and everything he wanted to be had been taken away from him, leaving—nothing. Emptiness. A hunger for brains. A dulling of the senses. He didn't want that again, not even for a few minutes.
"And then die. That's part of it, too, apparently. Heavy, right?" They looked at each other in dismay, momentarily bonded by their shared totally crappy fate. Then Blaine's general good cheer and eye for what he could get out of a situation reasserted itself. "Anywho, don't worry your pretty little head about it. We got our best minds working on the cure. Now, I assume you're here because you need another zombie for your freezer?"
With some effort, Major pulled himself out of the spiraling unhappiness that had taken hold of him, pulling the new list out of his pocket. "Yeah." He looked it over, prepared to make suggestions, but Blaine was ready for him.
"Drake Holloway."
A quick scan confirmed it. "On the list."
They nodded at each other, and Blaine stepped back, waving Major toward the door. "It's nice doing business with you."
"Yeah," Major whispered, pushing past Blaine toward the door.
'Nice' wasn't exactly the way Major would have put any part of his interactions with Blaine. Convenient, perhaps, but not nice. And certainly nothing about today had been nice. He'd just been given his death sentence. If Blaine was a zombie again, and they had received the cure on the same night, only hours apart, Major couldn't have more than a couple of days left. A couple more days of being human, and then … how long after that? How long until the combination of zombieism and the cure for it killed him? Long enough for Ravi to come up with a new cure?
Panic filled him. He wanted to scream, to tear his hair, to go to Liv and throw himself into her arms—or, alternatively, wring her neck for getting him into this mess. But really, he was the one who had burst into Meat Cute and shot up the place and gotten shot himself, so maybe … maybe he should just be glad for the time he'd had. Time he otherwise would have lost.
Could he do that? Could he go into this dark, unknown future focusing on appreciating the time he had left, rather than allowing his fear of the return of zombieism to drag down every one of his remaining moments? Or did he have a choice? He had to continue his work for Max Rager, or du Clark would kill him anyway, no passing zombie or collecting brains on a plate. At least this way, he was doing somebody some good.
He scanned the list for the Drake Holloway entry, going over Rita's notes on known associates and hang-outs. This guy shouldn't be too hard to find. Might as well get back to work and stop worrying about everything else.