Pathogen: Ch. 12

Marnie rolled the car up to Bianca's house a little after seven. It was chugging on fumes by then, all but collapsing like a cartoon in the wide, circular driveway. She didn't see any other cars except for Bianca's SUV, which was a relief. Wrestling a zombie from one vehicle to another would be hard enough without Bianca's parents around to witness it. Marnie glanced into the back seat cautiously, hesitating before cutting the engine. Zombie Trevor had passed out again - thank goodness - looking very serene in his nest of beef stick wrappers and empty jerky bags. Once she was sure he wouldn't wake up and wig out, she turned the car off with a heavy sigh. The second she did, the front door of Bianca's house swung open.

Bianca's pretty, dark face peered back at her from the porch, her pink and blue braids swishing across her shoulders as she checked either end of the street. When her gaze locked on Marnie again, she beckoned them toward her with a frantic wave.

"Get in here already," she hissed, "before anybody sees you! And park that hunk of junk in the garage!"

"Good morning to you, too," Marnie mumbled under her breath.

It took her less than a minute to clip Zombie Trevor's leash on and cover his head with a towel. He didn't like being roused from his slumber one bit, but thankfully he seemed more grumpy than homicidally hungry at the moment. Marnie made a mental note to always keep a few bags of jerky on her person from that moment forward, as so far it was the only thing able to tame Zombie Trevor's ravenous and otherwise insatiable hunger.

The moment he saw Bianca, Zombie Trevor's grouchy, hung-over-from-sleep attitude changed drastically. He stood up a little straighter, twisting his face into a gruesome approximation of a smile, then threw his arms straight out like Frankenstein's monster.

"Bee," he gurgled, sounding almost gleeful. Before Marnie could tug on his leash to stop him, he sprinted forward without warning - tearing it from her hand - and grabbed Bianca in a bearhug. "Gurr-frenn... Bee," he purred, nuzzling the top of her head with shocking affection.

Bianca gasped sharply at the hug, swallowing hard to hide a retch. "H-Hey, Trevvie," she squeaked, her voice strained like she was trying to hold her breath and talk at the same time. "It's... s-so great to see you again, Baby. Did... ugh... D-Did you have a nice sleepover at Pistol's?"

"Don't ask," Julian sighed. "C'mon, Trev; let's go inside. I'm sure Bee's got some nice snacks ready for you."

Zombie Trevor seemed reluctant to let go of Bianca, but he obediently followed Julian through the front door. The minute he was more than two feet away from her, Bianca exhaled deeply and pressed her knuckles to her nose. "Forget the snacks," she groaned. "Take him upstairs and put him in the shower. Like, now! Extra soap and hot water!"

Julian cringed hard, looking from the zombie to Bianca and back a few times. "Why me?" he whined. "It's your house!"

Bianca's face turned maroon with a deep blush. "Uh, because you're a guy!" she shot back. "Thought that was obvious!"

"Yeah," Julian grumbled, "...but you're his girlfriend!"

Bianca's eyes narrowed and her jaw jutted forward, her arms folding across her chest. "What are you saying, exactly, Theater Dork?" she growled.

Julian opened his mouth and took a breath to answer, but his jaw slowly closed again a few seconds later. "Never mind," he muttered, grabbing Zombie Trevor's leash sullenly. "C'mon, Stinky: it's bath time."

Once Julian and Zombie Trevor were out of sight, Marnie's eye instinctively traveled to Bianca. Her arms were still folded across her chest, but her head was tilted down, studying the oversized school ring on her left ring finger.

"I know what you all think," she murmured. "Everyone at school thinks it too." Her intense, dark eyes lifted to meet Marnie's then, and - to Marnie's surprise - there were tears in them. "I may be a cheerleader," Bianca said quietly, "and popular, and gorgeous... and I'm dating one of the best high school athletes in the state... but that does not make me a skank."

Marnie blinked a few times, stunned, then shook her head. "Bee... no," she said quickly. "I-I don't think that at all. Hell, I barely even know you!"

"Whatever," Bianca muttered, twisting the ring around her finger again before shuffling back indoors. "Meet me in the dining room once you're done moving your car. We've got a lot to do before my parents get back."

Within half an hour, Marnie and Bianca were seated at the breakfast table, enjoying a tense, awkward silence. Marnie was still nauseous from the incident at the gas station, leaving her unable to eat a bite of the bagels and cream cheese spread Bianca had laid out. She'd just taken another sip of coffee - the only thing she could stomach - when Julian led Zombie Trevor into the room. They scared her half to death, too, mostly because she'd forgotten for a minute they were even in the house. It didn't help that Zombie Trevor was walking around in nothing but a towel, either.

Even at a distance, Marnie could already detect an astounding improvement in Zombie Trevor's aroma post bath. If not for the bluish-grey tint to his complexion and his filmy eyes, he looked almost alive again. Julian, however, had not benefited from the bath at all by the look of him. He was soaked from head to toe, with a fresh bruise forming around his right eye.

"Next time, you're on bath duty," he muttered, directing the barbed comment at Marnie. "I'd rather bathe a rabid hyena than do this again!"

Marnie cringed apologetically and got up from the table, offering Julian a kitchen towel from the sideboard. "You did a good job," she said, although it didn't sound half as complimentary as she meant it to. "Now all we have to worry about is finding him something to wear. Bee, you wouldn't happen to have anything in his size, would you?"

Bianca didn't answer, making Marnie think she was still pissed. When she looked over her shoulder to repeat the question, however, she realized Bianca was catatonic from shock. The other girl stared wide-eyed at the zombie boy, her jaw agape in horror. Marnie wasn't sure she was even breathing.

"Bee?" she asked quietly, growing more nervous and worried by the second. "Bianca... you okay?"

Instead of answering, Bianca rose up from the table and walked right up to Zombie Trevor like she was in a deep trance. Her eyes were glued to his pasty chest, which was when Marnie figured out what had her so rattled. Two long lines of sutures stretched down Zombie Trevor's chest, starting at his shoulders and coming together in a point at his sternum. A third branched off from the other two and ran down the middle of his stomach, forming a "Y". Marnie had seen enough cop shows to guess what it was: remnants from where the coroner cut him open to figure out why he'd died. The sutures didn't phase her much, or Julian it seemed, but Bianca was another story.

"My poor Trevvie Bear," she whispered, running her fingers down the right fork of the Y-shape. "Why did this have to happen to you? It's just not fair: you had your whole life ahead of you... our whole lives."

Zombie Trevor tilted his head slowly, studying Bianca's face with the innocent curiosity of a child watching ants crawl along a log. His hand moved up to her cheek seemingly on its own, clumsily wiping a tear off it. After looking at her face again, and the droplet of salty water on his fingers, he seemed to understand.

"Bee... sad?" he garbled. "Wuh... Why?"

Bianca laid her cheek on his scarred chest with a sniffle. "Because... you're dead," she moaned. "I just wish I knew how this happened to you. Maybe then, I could figure out how to fix it. Oh, Trevvie... If I could go back in time and stop whatever horrible cosmic accident did this to you, I would in a heartbeat!"

"It wasn't an accident," Julian said somberly.

Bianca's head snapped up, turning to Julian with a look of alarm and confusion. "What?" she sniffed, her eyes narrowing into a scowl. "How do you know that?! Spill it, Dork: I want answers!"

"Jules," Marnie warned, but Julian held up a hand to stop her in her tracks.

"She has the right to know, Pistol," he said. He took a deep breath and stole a swallow of Marnie's coffee, taking an empty seat at the table. "We don't know the whole story," he admitted, picking at his cuticles nervously. "Pistol's mom works for the military, and... she sort of inferred that Trev was... made... into a zombie. She wouldn't tell us how or why, though... and honestly, she seemed pretty freaked about the whole thing."

Bianca led Zombie Trevor to the table by the leash, her eyes studying the ring on her finger. After taking a few minutes to process, she sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Then we make her tell us," she decided. "If we have to, we'll take on the whole damn government! Whatever's going on here can't be good. We owe it to Trevvie - and the world - to get to the bottom of this!" She laid her hand on the table, looking from Julian to Marnie with fire in her eyes. "Are you in... or not?"

Julian leaned back in his chair with a shrug, trying to appear nonchalant. Marnie knew him well enough by now to know he was scared out of his wits. "Sure," he said, clearing his voice a second too late to hide a voice crack. "Why not? I don't have any other plans today. Taking down the government sounds... f-fun." To seal the deal, he laid his hand on top of Bianca's, then both turned their gaze to Marnie.

Marnie squirmed in her seat, feeling her guts twist up in knots. What Bianca was suggesting sounded not only dangerous but incredibly stupid. On the other hand, they could be looking at a world-wide zombie apocalypse if they didn't figure out who or what turned Trevor into a zombie. Reversing Zombie Trevor's condition didn't seem possible, but they might be able to keep a lot of other people from suffering the same fate. On paper, it seemed downright heroic.

With a heavy sigh, she added her hand to the pile on top of Julian's, but the knot in her stomach only tightened. "This is gonna suck," she groaned.