Arizona Afterwards - a Zombie novel

Chapter 38

Jay could tell right away that Beth was bound and determined to get out of the truck.  She and Dean had been going out for a long time, after all.  She wasn't a bitch, not by any stretch, but that didn't mean she was just going to sit there and let Jay and Hattie make decisions on her behalf.

Especially not when they were involving Dean.

"You don't have to leave," she said.  "Just open the door and I'll climb over you."

"No."  Jay was surprised to find that, when he glanced at Dean again, his brother was looking at him and not Beth.

Maybe sisters have a code too.  Jay thought they did, especially if all that Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants crap was true.  He knew brothers did, though, because he and Dean had one down pat.

They'd tried a number of them out before settling.  Sign Language had been high on the list, but it was too complicated for them when they were younger and too easy to just use a middle finger when they were older.  Igpay Atinlay was much too common, more a game than any real method of concealment.

So they'd settled on sarcasm, and not just any breed.  Only pureblooded, I-mean-exactly-the-opposite-of-the-words-I'm-saying-right-this-very-minute sarcasm would do.  Thus began long car rides where Dean really thought that Jay was the kindest and smartest brother in the whole wide world and in which Jay assured Dean that he absolutely positively did not smell like shit.

Good times.

Dean was probably too far from the dump truck to have made himself heard by the three in the cab, but he sure had the Zombies' attention.  They were watching him like hawks.  Frank had said that the Zombies had acted differently when Dean had let him out of his cell, and Jay figured that what he was seeing was something like that.

Jay reached for the shotgun at the same time that Hattie handed it over.  He didn't have time to be grateful she was on the ball, just took the weapon from her and rolled down the window so he could aim it at his brother.

"No closer, Dean," he said.  He still wasn't sure what Dean could and couldn't understand, but even the wildest of them seemed to react when you aimed a gun in their direction.

Dean held his hand up a little in the don't-shoot pose all brothers have perfected over time.  "If the three of you come down, I can keep you safe," he said.  "Nobody'll harm so much as one hair on any of your heads.  Especially Beth."  His gaze slid past Jay to his girlfriend, who'd frozen in place with her hand reaching for the door.

And then he winked at her.

Shit.  Jay bumped Beth out of the way and slid the shotgun back to Hattie.  "We're going," he said.  "Buckle up.  He's telling us to get the hell out of here."

Beth tried for the door and he batted her hand away and rolled the window up at the same time.

"I know about you guys and your little opposite talk, Jay.  If he really isn't one of them anymore let's just haul him in here and go!"

Jay shook his head.  "They'll butcher us."

She reached over toward him.  He thought she was going for the door handle again, so when she grabbed the keys and twisted them out of the ignition he didn't have a chance to clock her.  They came free, and the engine gurgled and died.

"We won't get away from this throng no matter what.  They could have swarmed us if they wanted to.  They don't."

"Not yet," Hattie said, and Jay found himself nodding.

Dean had been a lot of things to him, sometimes more Father than brother.  They'd fought, but mostly that was because fighting was about the only way Jay knew how to start a conversation and Dean knew how to end one.

Jay could remember a time when the school board had gotten into something they’d decided to call “Living History”.  It was essentially an excuse to parade an endless line of old people into the classrooms, war veterans and the odd Holocaust survivor, mostly.  One of the guys who’d been a prisoner of war had told them a story that even Jay had found harrowing.  This guy had been tormented so badly and for so long that even Jay’s teacher hadn’t flinched when the old fella used the word “gook”, like he’d earned the right to it.

He told them his story, which essentially consisted of various failed escape attempts, each of which resulted in something brutal, near-drownings or amputated fingers or hobbled ankles.  When none of that stuff broke him, they started in on the mental stuff, sleep deprivation and water torture.