“They’re all dusty. Dusty, Lumpy, Ugly, Slowpoke, Shambler . . . take your pick. Got to call ’em something.”
The girl climbed out of the pickup and stood on the far side, with the whole truck between her and both boy and corpse.
Jolt hopped up onto the hood of a car as if he had springs under his shoes. The zee took another swipe at him, but Jolt dove into a handstand, ran up the windshield, and, once he was on the roof, flipped back to his feet. It was the strangest thing, like watching the bizarre antics of a character in a dream.
“I—” she began, but then she heard a scuff behind her, and she spun as a fat gray woman with bullet holes in her chest reached for her. Without thinking, the girl parried the grabbing arms and ducked low to slash the tendons on the creature’s ankles. As it buckled down to its knees, the girl grabbed the zee’s filthy hair, shoved its head forward, and drew back her arm for a knife-thrust that would have severed the brain stem and sent the monster into the final darkness of absolute death.
“No!” cried Jolt with unexpected force and passion.
The girl froze, looking over her shoulder as the boy leaped like a monkey from the hood of the car to the hood of the pickup and flipped down to the ground beside her. He shoved her knife arm away and pushed the zee in the other direction.
“What are you doing?”
They both yelled it at exactly the same time.
“There’s no reason to hurt it,” said Jolt, his smile gone.
“It was trying to bite me,” she fired back.
“So what? You telling me that you can’t get away from a fat old zee like her without killing her? I had you figured for a fighter with a little bit of skill. Guess not.”
Her face felt like it was about to catch fire. “And I figured you for someone with a handful of wits under all that blond hair,” she yelled back, “but I guess a handful isn’t enough.”
“Whoa, wait—didn’t we just save your life? Or am I thinking about a totally different psycho bald chick?”
The girl slipped the knife into its sheath and then shoved the boy as hard as she could with both hands. If she expected him to fall she was disappointed. He took a single backward step but turned it into a pivot and bent his knees to slough off the force. As he straightened, he got right up into her face.
“Don’
t do that again,” he said quietly. “We’re trying to help.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“But you got it, so that song’s sung.”
The crippled zee was crawling toward them. The girl and Jolt looked down at her, and she truly did seem to be helpless and pathetic. Over by the shoulder of the road, the zees called by Gummi Bear’s siren were shuffling back toward the cars.
Toward them.
“We can stay and argue,” said Jolt, “or we can get the heck out of here.”
He touched her shoulder to try to guide her away, but she shook him off. “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay,” he said, “for the record, you touched me first. You shoved me.”
“Didn’t neither. Y’all touched me first when you swatted at my arm like it was a skeeter.”
He considered. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter. We can get out of here, or we can rub steak sauce all over each other and go dancing with the lunch crowd.”
“Why in tarnation do y’all talk like that?”
He smiled. “That question may be funnier than you know.”
“I’m thinking of kicking you in a bad place.”
Jolt held up his hands, palms outward in a “no trouble” gesture. “Okay, come on, let’s not do this. Besides, it’s going to get crowded again. We should go.”
She looked at the approaching dead and then around at the densely packed cars. “Which way? Out into the desert?”