Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [40]
Dave clenched his fists, but there was no arguing with that logic.
“Stay here tonight and I’ll help you load up all your new materials for the fresh hunt tomorrow.”
Dave snorted. “I don’t think we’ve even established we’re going on a new hunt for you tomorrow, Doc.”
Barnes cocked his head. “Oh, I’m sorry. I understood from Sarah that you would be.”
Dave turned toward me with a glare. “Did you now?”
“Dave—” I started, but he turned away.
“Well, she is the braaaains of our operation, right? Guess the brawn better get to bed and leave you two to plan our next step.”
He took off down the hall toward—well, I don’t really know where he was going, but he was pissed. Barnes’s attempt to help had only made things worse.
But as I turned toward the doctor, I guess to apologize again, I caught the end of a smug smile on his face. It was gone almost instantly, but there was no denying its existence.
And that made me wonder what ulterior motive this guy had for causing problems. And how hard I’d have to work to solve them in the morning.
Dave put our fully loaded van into gear and drove away from the warehouse with morning sun glinting off the windshield cheerily. He hadn’t spoken… not one fucking word… since we woke up.
I settled back in my seat and turned my head to look at him. I’d slept like a baby in the comfortable twin bed Kevin had provided, but Dave looked like hell. The circles under his eyes told me everything I needed to know without asking that good ol’ sitcom conversation starter, “How did you sleep?”
“So you want to become dear Doctor Kevin’s zombie hunter professionally now, eh?” he finally asked. “I thought you said we shouldn’t confuse the ‘brand.’ ”
I shut my eyes. With The Kid still in the back of the van, I really didn’t want to go into this, but apparently this was going to be the moment we hashed it out.
“Come on. You know all that brand stuff is bullshit now,” I muttered.
He shot me a look. “You didn’t think that before Barnes… I’m sorry, Kevin started asking you for favors. You were all about killing zombies for as much profit as we could manage.”
“But that was when I thought all that was left was this,” I said, waving my hands around at the empty desert. “In a wasteland, why not destroy, destroy, destroy? But now… I mean, come on, David. You saw what that serum did to the infected guinea pigs. You know that if Barnes could translate that to infected people it just might change everything. Don’t you think that’s nobler than just killing a bunch of zombies?”
He blew out a humorless laugh as he got off the freeway and made his way toward the camp. He had an answer on his tongue, but before he could say it, The Kid stuck his head between us and pulled his blindfold down away from his eyes. When he saw where we were, he gasped.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked Dave.
I flinched. “Language!”
He ignored me, of course. Dave looked at him. “What? Where the fuck do you think we’re going, Robbie? I’m taking you to the camp. You’ll be safe there.”
“No fucking way!” The Kid responded. “I’m not going to that camp.”
I turned on him and the stress finally took over. “Look, you little brat, we’re not taking you with us, so forget it. In the camp you’ll be taken care of. Why the hell wouldn’t you want that?”
He folded his arms. “Have you ever seen the way they treat kids in the camp? Oh yeah, some of them, the little ones, get taken by some nice lady who lost her own brats. But most of them get put into one big fucking tent. Sometimes some religious jerk comes in and tries to teach us to pray or whatever. But we don’t get to do shit. And we can’t leave. It’s prison. And I’m not going to fucking prison.”
He touched the gun in his waistband and suddenly I felt a scene from Boyz n the Hood or something coming on. I rubbed my eyes with my fists hard enough to see stars.