“Here’s your damn ketchup,” Marjo said, and slid the bottle toward me like a bartender in an old Western saloon. I fielded it and saluted with it, but she was already moving on.
As I drizzled red on my burger, I continued to stare out the window. Jerome. That was a puzzle. Not enough to make me stop eating lunch, though.
Which shows you just how weird life in Morganville is, generally.
? ? ?
I was prepared to forget all about Jerome, postlunch, because not even Marjo’s sour attitude could undo the endorphin high of her burger, and besides, I had to get home. It was five o’clock. The bottling plant was letting out, and pretty soon the diner would be crowded with adults tired from a hard day’s labor, and not many of them liked me any better than Marjo did. Most of them were older than me; at eighteen, I was starting to get the Get a job, you punk stares. I like a good ass-kicking, but the Good Book is right: it’s better to give than to receive.
I was unlocking the door to Eve’s car when I saw a reflection behind me on the window glass, blocking the blazing westerly sun. It was smeared and indistinct, but in the ripples I made out some of the features.
Jerome Fielder. What do you know, I really had seen him.
I had exactly enough time to think, Dude, say something witty, before Jerome grabbed a handful of my hair and rammed me forehead-first into hot metal and glass. My knees went rubbery, and there was a weird high-pitched whine in my ears. The world went white, then pulsed red, then faded into darkness when he slammed me down again.
Why me? I had time to wonder, as it all went away.
? ? ?
I woke up sometime later, riding in the backseat of Eve’s car and dripping blood all over the upholstery. Oh, crap, she’s gonna kill me for that, I thought, which was maybe not the biggest problem I had. My wrists were tied behind my back, and Jerome had done some work on my ankles, too. The bonds were so tight I’d lost feeling in both hands and feet, except for a slow, cold throb. I had a gash in my forehead, somewhere near the hairline, I thought, and probably some kind of concussion thing, because I felt sick and dizzy.
Jerome was driving Eve’s car, and I saw him watching me in the rearview mirror as we rattled along. Wherever we were, it was a rough road, and I bounced like a rag doll as the big tank of a car charged over bumps.
“Hey,” I said. “So. Dead much, Jerome?”
He didn’t say anything. That might have been because he liked me about as much as Marjo, but I didn’t think so; he didn’t look exactly right. Jerome had been a big guy, back in high school—big in the broad-shouldered sense. He’d been a gym worshipper, a football player, and the winner of the biggest-neck contest hands down.
Even though he still had all the muscles, it was like the air had been let out of them and now they were ropy and strangely stringy. His face had hollows, and his skin looked old and grainy.
Yep: dead guy. Zombified, which would have been a real mindfreak anywhere but Morganville; even in Morganville, though, it was weird. Vampires? Sure. Zombies? Not so you’d notice.
Jerome decided it was time to prove he still had a working voice box. “Not dead,” he said. Just two words, and it didn’t exactly prove his case because it sounded hollow and rusty. If I’d had to imagine a dead guy’s voice, that would have been it.
“Great,” I said. “Good for you. So, this car theft thing is new as a career move, right? And the kidnapping? How’s that going for you?”
“Shut up.”
He was absolutely right—I needed to do that. I was talking because, hey, dead guy driving. It made me just a bit uncomfortable. “Eve’s going to hunt you down and dismember you if you ding the car. Remember Eve?”
“Bitch,” Jerome said, which meant he did remember. Of course he did. Jerome had been the president of the Jock Club and Eve had been the founder and nearly the only member of the Order of the Goth, Morganville Edition. Those two groups never got along, especially in the hothouse world of high school.
“Remind me to wash your mouth with soap later,” I said, and shut my eyes as a particularly brutal bump bounced my head around. Red flashed through my brain, and I thought about things like aneurysms, and death. “Not nice to talk about people behind their backs.”
“Go screw yourself.”
“Hey, three words! You go, boy. Next thing you know, you’ll be up to real sentences. . . . Where are we going?”
Jerome’s eyes glared at me in the mirror some more. The car smelled like dirt, and something else. Something rotten. Skanky homeless unwashed clothes brewed in a vat of old meat.
I tried not to think about it, because between the smell and the lurching of the car and my aching head, well, you know. Luckily, I didn’t have to not-think-about-it for long, because Jerome made a few turns and then hit the brakes with a little too much force.
I rolled off the bench seat and into the spacious legroom, and, ow. “Ow,” I said, to make it official. “You learn that in Dead Guy Driver’s Ed?”