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Major had slept for what felt like a year, and gotten up to drink more brain juice. He was even used to thinking of it that way now. After a few days of starvation, brains no longer sounded disgusting to him; they sounded life-giving and amazing.
He found himself energized, ready to get up and face the world … and rhythms were bouncing in his head in a way he'd never experienced them before. He had to tap them out, with the toothbrush, the fork, a handy pencil—he even found himself drumming on Ravi's shoulder until his roommate growled at him and threatened to slap his hands if he didn't stop.
"Let me guess—drummer brain." Major was bouncing on his toes to the invisibe rhythm, letting it flow through him.
"Unfortunately yes."
"Great! This'll be fun!"
Ravi appeared to be in no mood for fun, so Major left his roommate alone and headed for the door.
"Dinner at Liv and Peyton's!" Ravi called after him. "No going home until we shake the news crews."
"Even better! I'll drum for all of you!"
"Lucky us."
He picked up an electronic drum kit at Radio Shack and lugged it back to the morgue to practice on. And Ravi's best efforts couldn't convince him to leave it there when they headed for Liv and Peyton's.
Over beer, he suggested a little Name that Tune, and didn't wait for agreement before he started tapping out drum patterns.
Peyton did most of the guessing, and ended up about fifty-fifty. He tried another pattern, an easy one, just to see if she'd get it.
"'Billy, Don't Be a Hero'," she guessed, gesturing at him with a cheese puff.
"C'mon! '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'?!" How could she not hear that?
Liv and Peyton both rolled their eyes, but Major didn't care. The sheer euphoria of being out of jail and not starving and not wanting to rip his best friends' heads off to eat their brains—and knowing he could go to sleep tonight and not worry about waking up full zombie—had him high on life. "I'm loving this brain," he told them all. "I'm going to stay on this forever. Okay …" He considered what to try next. "All right, how 'bout this?"
He started pounding on the drum kit, losing himself in the rhythm, stopping only when Liv gasped audibly. He paused in the rhythm, glancing over at her shocked face, pale even for her. Ravi and Peyton turned to look as well, recognizing the symptoms of a vision.
"He's alive. Drake's alive!" She looked at Major. "I just saw your zombies. They're all alive."
Relief flooded him. He might have managed to save them after all. Except— "Wait, where?"
"A lab of some kind. Lots of glass enclosed cells. Like jail, only—more experimental. They're pretty packed in there, too."
"Tacoma."
Ravi frowned at him. "Tacoma has a secret lab studying zombies?"
"Wait, I thought you said Max Rager must have them," Liv said, frowning.
"They do. Their secret lab in the basement? du Clark calls it Tacoma."
Liv nodded. "I saw Vaughn du Clark, too!"
Major was glad to have proof Max Rager had found the zombies—and proof that du Clark had held on to them rather than taking them out on a boat and blowing them up or something. He thought of Natalie. He had really hoped when she woke he could cure her. "What did— How did they look? Are they … hungry?"
Liv considered that one, replaying the vision in her head. "No. Mad, but not starving."
"Well, that's something."
"It's something, but it's not enough. We don't know what Max Rager is doing to them," Ravi pointed out.
"No." It was a sobering thought. "I don't know what experiments they have going on down there. They showed me the place once, as a loyalty test, but no explanations."
Peyton shook her head, taking a pull off her beer bottle. "I doubt Vaughn du Clark really understands it."
"He probably sets a doctor to work and just pretends to know what's going on," Ravi agreed.
"Guys." Major looked around at them. "Please, take it from me. He's a lot smarter and more on the ball than he seems. Crazy, but not stupid."
Liv nodded. "I wouldn't bet on him letting anything going on in his building get by him."
"So what do we do?"
"We get them out."