pallid sheen to it... although that might just be fear and loathing.” Outside, endless shelves of camping gear flashed by at fifty-miles-per with maybe two inches clearance on either side. The steering wheel jiggled back and forth on its own, the Wound making constant micro-adjustments while Trip chain-smoked and played Tetris on a first-gen GameBoy Rudy had converted to draw power from contact with skin. “But maybe I should just put one in your brain now as a precaution.”
Rudy slumped back. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” His hand slipped under his t-shirt to turn his nipple up all the way.
“And hilarious.” Trip returned his attention to the game. “Plus, it’s win-win, either way.”
Rudy’s brow crunched. “How you figure that?”
“If it doesn’t heal, we know you’re not a zombie, and my trust in you will be restored — I’ll even say as much during your eulogy. But if it does heal itself, sure, you’re a zombie, but you might come out better for the deal. Maybe the nanochines can fix the damage from that time you got dropped on your head when you were six months old.”
“Oh, you mean the time you dropped me on the head when I was six months old?”
“Yes, okay, that time.” Trip winced as an L-block landed the wrong way up, cutting off a Tetris he’d been constructing. “But don’t go blaming that on me. Blame mom. Who gives an 18-month old an infant to hold, anyway?”
“She needed her hands free — we were kinda in a firefight at the time.”
“So it’s no surprise I dropped you.”
“More like threw me at the bad guys.”
“Only as a diversionary tactic to save myself. And that’s another thing... who takes her kids on a hit?”
“She couldn’t find a sitter. Again, all your fault.”
“Sure, bite one sitter’s tit and you’re blackballed for life.” Trip tossed the GameBoy onto the dash. “You didn’t see me raising a stink about her boobs being dry wells, did you?”
Rudy crossed his arms over his chest. “She was in her sixties.”
“Still had a nice rack, though.” Trip grabbed the rear-view, re-adjusted it to point into the back seat. Bob the Zombie and Bernice were sitting as far apart as they could, eyeing each other suspiciously over the pile of beer jugs stacked up between them. Bob was tightly bound in loops extension cord, his arms immobile. “So, Bob, what can Rudy expect in his new life as a zombie?”
“Knock it off, will ya?” Rudy sunk further down into his seat, crossing his arms over his chest and sulking.
“Knowing is half the battle,” Trip said back, nodding at Bob to answer the question.
Bob shrugged, kept his eyes on Bernice. “Well, it’s actually not all the bad... when people aren’t shooting or stunning or hitting you.”
“Which reminds me...” Trip balled his right hand into a fist and shot it out at Rudy’s left temple.
Rudy screamed. “What the fuck was that for?”
Trip chuckled. “Just trying to keep you human, bro.”
“Asshole,” Rudy snarled out, rubbing his temple with the palm of his hand. “You don’t get to hit me. Anybody’s doing anything to me, it’s Bernice.”
Trip shook his head. “Oh, no, you’d both enjoy that way too much. — But that does remind me... Bernice?”
Bernice smiled, reached over the beer jug pile and shoved the snapping and sparking business end of Rudy’s shock baton into Bob’s shoulder, holding it there for a count of three before withdrawing it with a full-toothed smile. Bob went into convulsive spasm, the faint trace of glowing spiderwebbing around his eyes retreating. “Damn it,” he said after catching his breath, “you have to lay it on so hard?”
“Stop being such a baby,” Bernice told him. She laid the baton on her lap, opened a fresh milk jug of beer. “Okay, here’s a question for you, zombie. Where’d the All-Mart come from?”
“What do you mean?” Bob asked warily.
Bernice took a slug then handed the jug over the front seat to an appreciative Rudy. “The Tome of Speculation says the All-Marts were corporate weapons used to aggressively capture market share in Central America, way back in Megacorp War II: The Revengening. But that war ended forty years ago, and long before that all the All-Marts had been neutralized and torn down. But then this one just pops up out of nowhere ten years back — and a couple thousand miles north of Central America — and starts spreading out over the wasteland. Why? The Tome doesn’t even speculate.”
“Give the zombie a break, Cleavage.” Trip