Panic rose as I searched everywhere I could think of and still couldn’t find any brains. I’ve been here too long, I told myself, nearly sobbing at the realization that I was going to have to leave empty-handed.
Maybe he hadn’t planned on giving me any. I forced myself to consider the thought. But the whole brain thing was his business, which meant he had to have some saved up somewhere, right? Maybe they were at his house—wherever the fuck that was.
I made myself go back into the hallway, somehow avoiding stepping in the pool of blood while I tugged Kang’s wallet out of his back pocket. I memorized the address on his license and replaced his wallet. I just had to hope the address was current.
Grabbing a towel, I hurriedly wiped down every surface I could have possibly touched before I’d pulled on the gloves. I cautiously peeked out the back door to make sure no one was nearby, walked oh-so casually to my car, pulse slamming in near panic the entire distance. There wasn’t another soul around—I was so hungry that if any living human had been within fifty yards I’d have been able to smell them. Great, one more zombie super power—I was a goddamn life detector when I was hungry enough.
I dropped the towel into the back seat, peeled off the gloves, got the hell out of there. I drove in random directions for about fifteen minutes, gritting my teeth against the awareness of brains all around me. I finally ducked behind a grocery store and tossed the gloves and the towel into a dumpster.
I drove away, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly as the hunger thrashed and growled. A glance at myself in the rear view mirror sent a chill through me. Skin was peeling off my forehead, and my complexion had a greenish-grey cast. My left eye was starting to cloud over, which explained why I was having some trouble seeing out of it. Thank god it was dusk. Somehow I’d completely lost the flesh off the pinky and ring fingers on my right hand. Probably when I’d pulled the gloves off.
Brains. The thought consumed me. I drove hunched down in the seat to keep anyone from seeing me, operating the car on instinct more than anything. Luckily I was familiar with Kang’s neighborhood. I wasn’t sure I had the mental focus right now to be able to read a map.
Slowing at a corner, I watched as an elderly woman pulled a wheeled cart of groceries down the sidewalk. She’d be easy to take down. Probably couldn’t run or anything. I could break her neck before she could make much noise, drag her into that backyard. There was no one else nearby right now. I could bust her skull open with a brick or one of those stones bordering the flowerbed. God, it would taste like heaven.
The honk from behind me jerked me back to myself. My gaze shot to the rear view mirror to see a Lexus and a glowering man behind the steering wheel. To my shock I realized that I’d opened my door. Oh god . . . I was about to do it. I was going to attack that woman.
The man behind me honked again. I hurriedly slammed my door shut and stomped on the gas, terror and panic briefly overwhelming the hunger. Get to Kang’s house, I repeated to myself, clinging to that thought like a lifeline. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t give the hunger a reason to take over. This was how a zombie went rogue. Now I understood. With terrifying clarity, I understood.
I managed to maintain enough self-preservation to park on the next street over instead of pulling into Kang’s driveway. Tugging my jacket down over my rotting hands, I stepped out of the car. There were a few people in the area, but no one outside. Hopefully no one was looking out a window. Walking as casually as I could, I ducked between the houses. A ditch separated Kang’s backyard from that of the house behind his, but daylight was almost gone and there were trees which would give me some cover.
I paused before covering the distance to his back door, took a deep breath, scenting. No one in the house as far as I could tell. No one in the adjacent houses either. A couple of houses down there was a man in his backyard having a smoke behind a privacy fence.
“Get to Kang’s,” I muttered, forcing myself forward instead of toward the man in his backyard. I’d never had anything resembling willpower before now. Never been able to convince myself to stop taking the pills, or keep a job, or clean up my house. But I was going to fucking break my willpower in right now. I won’t become a monster. I can’t.
The back door was solid, but also had window panes in it. Silently praying that Kang didn’t have an alarm system, I pulled my jacket sleeve all the way over my hand and punched through the glass in one of the panes. Reaching through to unlock the door, I could feel dimly that the glass had sliced into my hand and arm. But it didn’t hurt. Dark, thick blood welled up sluggishly from the slices then stopped. I tucked my arm further up into my sleeve. I wasn’t about to put myself in any danger of dripping blood anywhere.
I wasn’t greeted with a shrieking siren when I pushed the door open, and I didn’t see a control pad anywhere, so at least that much was going all right. I made my way to the kitchen and went straight to the fridge. He had it well-stocked and it was obvious that he enjoyed cooking, but my zombie super-sense of smell didn’t twig to any stash of brains in there. Still, I opened every container and took a deep whiff to be sure. I checked the freezer next, heart sinking at the sight of about a dozen boxes of frozen pizza but no bags or containers or anything that could hold brains.
This didn’t make sense. Where the hell did he keep his stash? Fighting panic, I prowled through the house, searching for anything that could function as a cooler or a fridge. I thought I struck gold when I found the deep freeze out in the garage, but disappointment threatened to crush me again when I saw that it was full of more frozen dinners.
I stumbled back into the house. If I’d been able to cry I’d have been sobbing in frustration. This couldn’t be happening to me. He had to have brains somewhere. What if he kept them somewhere else? A storage unit or something like that? If that was the case, I was totally fucked. I couldn’t go outside again. I barely made it in here without giving in to the hunger and killing someone. I slowly sat down on the kitchen floor, staring dully at the high quality pots and pans hanging from the rack above the range. Maybe it would be for the best if the zombie killer got me, I thought dully. I didn’t want to be a murderer. Best to take me out before I killed anyone. It wouldn’t be hard to find me. Follow the brains. Hell, if I was hunting zombies, that’s what I’d do—find their food source.
Food.
I clambered back to my feet. Why the hell would someone who loved to cook have so many frozen dinners? I pulled the freezer open and yanked the top box off the stack, noting absently that it was for some sort of diet entrée. Moron. That should have been your first clue. I ripped the top of the box off, pulled the plastic open, inhaled. I hadn’t smelled it earlier because they were frozen and sealed in plastic, but now I knew I’d struck gold.
I didn’t bother heating it. I didn’t care if they were frozen, though I giggled stupidly as I shoved the frozen brains into my mouth. Brain freeze! Sensation returned in my mouth first, protesting the cold that I was forcing into my body. I was dimly aware that there was real food mixed in—rice and meat and flavoring. Properly heated it would probably be fantastic. I didn’t care about fantastic at the moment. The real food in it was almost annoying since it got in the way of the brains, but I continued to cram it into my mouth as fast as I could. Slowly the bliss began to spread through my body, and I found myself crying from the agonizing relief. I felt like one of those shirts that only show color in sunlight—and I was getting a tan now, baby.