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When Major came home that night, Liv was there, sitting on the couch with Ravi while he powered through a few levels of their favorite zombie-hunting game. As Major shut the front door behind him, he heard her say "Major has a proven willingness …" and then something about sex, which made him think he had heard her completely wrong. Surely Liv wasn't sitting on his couch talking about his sex life, which at the moment was not only nonexistent but not really possible. Even quickies took time, and that was something Major really didn't have.

"The willingness to do what?" he asked, wondering what Liv had actually said.

"Oh! Major." Liv looked uncomfortable, making him wonder if she really had been speculating about his sex life. She got up, holding out her phone. "Do you want to meet a new friend of mine? She's a lawyer."

Over Liv's head, Major met Ravi's eyes. "Matchmaker brain?"

"Yup."

"Nailed it." He held out the box he had picked up on the porch. "Hey, it's addressed to you."

"Ooh!" Ravi bounded up off the couch to take the box, while Liv fiddled with her phone.

"I have a picture of her."

She really was gone on this brain if she thought there was a chance he was interested in any kind of matchmaking right now. "Uh, Liv, I appreciate the thought, but unless this girl can get a massive quantity of brains into the city overnight, I think I'll pass."

He wanted to think there was some relief in Liv's face as she put the phone away, but the matchmaker had clearly taken over and left none of the Liv Major still hoped was in love with him, somewhere deep in there.

"I'd put a ring on it if she had some tainted Utopium. Peyton would understand." Ravi had grabbed a knife from the kitchen and he bent to slit open the tape on the box.

"That reminds me … Does the name 'Beanpole Bob' mean anything to you?"

Ravi and Liv looked at each other, mystified, and shook their heads.

"No. Why?"

"The name came up in an intel file. The Da Vinci of Utopium, apparently."

Liv turned to look at him as though that had sparked something in her memory, but Ravi continued to look blank. "Uh … I can ask Clive," he offered. "See if he knows a Beanpole from his vice days."

He finally had the box open, and he removed an electronic contraption from it and pulled it on over his head.

Major frowned. "Night-vision goggles?"

Ravi lifted the visor on the goggles. "Because the CDC couldn't find any trace of tainted Utopium in the vial I sent, I had the bright idea to sneak into Blaine's mansion and steal back my cure with the assistance of a cat burglar brain and a pair of …"

"Night-vision goggles," Major repeated. He had to give it to his roommate, it was worth the try. At least, it was something they had never considered before, and if they could get the cures back, maybe there would be a way to replicate them. Not soon enough to save New Seattle from going full Romero, but maybe it would help the rest of the country once Seattle's zombies got through the wall and the disease started spreading.

Ravi gave him a thumbs-up sign.

"You know I command a para-military force, right?" Major asked him. "I could've gotten you those for free."

Removing the goggles and returning them to the box, Ravi sighed. "They were only eight hundred bucks. And with UFreightEze select membership, you can get literally anything delivered to your doorstep in under twenty-four hours." He delivered the line like a cheesy TV commercial actor, and Liv and Major grinned at him.

But then Major stopped grinning, because he needed things delivered to his doorstep in under twenty-four hours, and UFreightEze seemed like it might just be the outside—or rather, inside—the box solution he had been looking for.

UFreightEze, fortunately enough for Major, was headquartered in Seattle, and thus had a vested interest in keeping the population fed. Hard to run a business while half your staff was slowly losing their minds in their desperate hunger for brains.

He was glad for once for his exalted, if thankless, position, because it meant he got an interview with Tyler Griss, the CEO of UFreightEze, first thing the next morning. Griss didn't sit down the whole time, and they ended up all over the facility putting out fires. Major liked a CEO with his fingers personally in the running of the company, but it was difficult truly laying out his proposal while on the move.

Once he understood where Major was coming from, Griss shook his head. "I want to help this city in any way I can, Mr. Lilywhite, but this sounds like it's beyond even me."

"It might sound like it, Mr. Griss, but … See, we've disassociated with Blaine DeBeers, and our alternate brain supplier is too difficult."

"Well, I get it. You need a supplier. But here's the problem as I see it: I have no clue how to get thousands of brains. I mean, we'll get you a TV in a day, but our deliveries have the advantage of being legal." He turned to Major, finally standing still for a moment. "I'm not a smuggler. I wouldn't know where to begin."

"What if I told you none of that mattered?"

Griss looked intrigued for the first time.

They put out the ad campaign, promising that UFreightEze was taking care of the brain business from now on, and then Major sat at his desk and waited.

Right on schedule, he had Don E and Stacy Boss in his officec. Hat literally in hand.

Major launched into his glowing review of Fillmore Graves' new relationship with UFreightEze. "And UFreightEze will handle both the supply chain and shipping. Which is, of course, their specialty." It was hard to keep his smile from edging past triumphant into smug.

"I'll give you this, Lilywhite," Boss said. "You got moxie. But we both know Ty Griss can't handle this volume of brains."

"Well …" Major leaned back in his chair. "He doesn't have your network of third world hospitals to plunder, but he's going heavily into western healthcare. And he's including a brain donor card in every package. There's millions of customers a day getting a direct appeal from one of the world's greatest philanthropists." He added the cap, and yes, he was pretty sure his smile tipped into smug territory. "And he'll do it all for ninety percent of our original deal with Blaine. So. Unless you've got a better—"

He didn't even have the words out before Don E, always impatient, jumped in. "We'll do eighty percent."

Boss glared at him, Don E glared back, and Major looked up at both of them, all innocent curiosity. "Is that an official offer?"

Unhappily, Boss confirmed it.

"Hmm." Major considered the proposal, as the three of them looked at each other in silence. At last, Major said, "The billboards stay up. We need a new face on the brain business. I'll let the brain plant know to expect your next delivery tonight."

Boss nodded. He wanted to say something, to salvage a win out of this loss somehow, but he was well and truly boxed in, and he knew it.

"That's all," Major told them.

Sour-faced, the two of them left his office, and Major returned to his work, feeling suddenly like Kenny Rogers. You had to know when to hold 'em, didn't you? It felt damned good to win for a change.