“Where are we going?” Edward asked.
“My place for now,” the woman said.
“I don’t suppose you can get me something to eat when we get there?” Edward asked. Ringo and the woman both tensed noticeably. “What?”
The woman raised her rifle slightly like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to aim it at him again or not. “And what exactly are you hungry for?”
Edward shrugged, and one of the last memories from before everything went hazy came back to him. “I don’t suppose you guys still have brats, do you? They haven’t just sort of vanished into history over the last fifty years?”
Ringo let out a single “Ha!”
The woman raised an eyebrow but grinned and lowered the rifle again. “This is Wisconsin. Of course we still have brats.”
“What,” Edward said, “you expected me to want brains?”
“I’ve never known a zombie to be too particular about what part of a person it eats,” the woman said. “But I guess I sort of thought something like that.”
Truthfully, what really started Edward’s stomach rumbling was the thought of raw brats, but he didn’t think that would go over too well with these two just yet.
Ringo and the woman led him back to the truck, and Edward was grateful that at least the woman’s guard seemed to be down. Ringo still looked edgy about being so close to an unrestrained zombie. Even though the man hadn’t been completely terrible to him yet, Edward was starting to not like the man so much.
Ringo went around to the back of the truck and fussed with his keys for the lock. “Okay. In you go.”
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to argue with armed people, but Edward was starting to get annoyed at this treatment. “Why do I have to get in the cage again? Haven’t I proven yet that I’m not going to do anything to you guys?”
“There’s not room enough for three people in the front,” Ringo said. “And besides, you may not be acting much like a zed but you still stink like one. I ain’t having you sit up there and stain the seats with your zombie muck.”
He was probably right, but that didn’t keep Edward’s anger from flaring up. This was all getting ridiculous. The woman must have seen this, because she spoke up.
“I’ll get in the cage with you, if you want.”
Ringo’s jaw dropped. “Why the flying hell would you want to do that?”
“It’ll give me and Edward the chance for that talk he wants.”
“Are you a complete fucking idiot?” Ringo asked. “I’m not going to lock you alone in a cage with a fucking zed.”
“I don’t think I have anything to worry about from him,” the woman said to Ringo. “And even if he does try something?” She patted her pink rifle. “I think Spanky can take care of me just fine.”
Ringo gave an unhappy snort and went back to opening up the cage. “Right. Fine. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Edward stared at the shockingly pink rifle. Ringo could hope all he wanted that she knew what she was doing. Edward simply hoped that she didn’t have an itchy trigger finger.
Chapter Nine
The woman told him to keep low in the back of the truck as it started up and backed out into the street. Made sense, Edward supposed. He already looked suspicious enough as it was. It would look even stranger if someone saw that the cage held not only a regenerating zombie but also a normal human who didn’t look the least bit afraid. She stayed on the opposite side of the cage and kept “Spanky” pointed at him the entire time, but she left her finger off the trigger.
“I’m Rae Neuman,” the woman said.
Edward gave a half-hearted salute. “Edward Schuett.”
“Right. You already said that.”
“I also said I’m not a zombie, but… maybe you guys were the ones who were right on that one.”
“Yeah,” Rae said. “I figured you haven’t actually had a good look at yourself yet, so I had Ringo grab a mirror before we came out to get you.” She reached into her pocket and gingerly pulled out a piece of glass that looked like it had once been part of a car’s rear-view mirror. She held it out to Edward, and he took it, careful not to look in yet.
“I’m not sure that I actually want to see,” Edward said.
“I really think you should,” Rae said. “It might be kind of a shock, but just be grateful you’re seeing yourself now rather than earlier.”
Edward nodded and took a deep breath. He might have stopped denying that he had, at some point, been a zombie, but acknowledging that and seeing the proof of it were two different things. Everything up until now had almost felt like a dream to him, a terrible dream that just wouldn’t end, but seeing what he looked like would likely finally drive home the reality of it. A part of him wanted to hold onto the hope that it was a dream for just a while longer.
He remembered Dana again, and her myriad little cuts and bruises from random acts of childhood. He’d always told her the best way to remove a Band-Aid was to rip it off quick and get all the pain over with. If he didn’t get this over with and look then Dana would have a hypocrite for a father. Wherever she was, if she was still alive somewhere (and the memory of her disappearance before Julia had bit him gave him hope that she could still be out there in some shape or form) then he wanted to continue being a good influence for her.
He held up the shard of mirror in front of his face and forced himself to stare. The shard was small enough that he couldn’t see his entire face at once and doubtless didn’t get the full effect, but he was absolutely grotesque. He inhaled sharply and fumbled with the shard, almost dropping it, cutting the tips of his fingers when he caught it again. The blood that welled up from the cuts was probably darker than it should have been, but he didn’t pay it much mind. He was still trying to accept what he had just seen. With another deep breath he raised the mirror again, this time forcing himself not to look away.
His eyes were the first thing he saw. The irises looked like they were the right color, but the whites were more of a dark gray, almost black in places. It dawned on him that they were probably bloodshot, but the dark color of his blood kept them from looking pink like they should. From there he moved the mirror, carefully chronicling all the disturbing details of his current face. He had not been an ugly man at all when he was younger, although he supposed to anyone other than Julia he would have been considered average rather than handsome. So he hadn’t been terribly vain. But now he couldn’t believe that he was actually allowing anyone to see his face. His skin was pale grey with veins of blackish green running through. His cheeks were sunken in, and in several places the skin was pitted with deep open sores covered in dark dried pus. His hair was patchy on his head, looking like a field of dead grass that had been salted in random places to keep life from growing on it. His lips were ragged and uneven, like something had eaten them away in places, and he supposed that was very likely exactly the case. His gums were black and several teeth were missing, leaving the broken ones that were left to poke out in random directions.
For all these horrible details, however, he could clearly see that everything seemed to be healing. From his blackened gums several small, shiny bits of bone shown through that appeared to the beginnings of new teeth. A few of the pits on his cheeks looked like they were not so dry as they had once been, and where the pus flowed a little more freely the skin might have been knitting itself back together. The open patches on his skull had the slightest hint of peach fuzz to suggest a new head of hair in the future, even in the places where he had already been bald. And all of this was hours after Ringo and Charlie had first noticed that he looked to be healing. Edward couldn’t guess yet the rate that these changes were occurring, but he didn’t think he would look anything like this by this time tomorrow. Even the cuts on his fingers tingled like they were healing faster than they had any right.