Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly & Larbalestier Black Read Free Book Online Page A

second night, you see a bloodstain that covers half the floor. It blends well enough with the carpet and you don’t tell Jack. You’re hungry and you don’t like to remind him of what you are.
    Jack pays for the rooms, and no one asks questions. For a last-minute escape, he’s managed well: a few thousand in cash,a box of emergency food supplies in the trunk, two swords, and three more of those big, black guns. You nearly vomited when he offered to let you use one. Now you just try not to look at them.
    You haven’t eaten human flesh in ten days. You might have snapped before now, but Jack bought a haunch of pork from a local butcher. He couldn’t look you in the eye when he handed it to you. “Second thoughts about your charity case?” you asked, and felt the hollow reward of his silence.
    Pork works. Not as well as warm human flesh, not even close, but at least you can keep away the worst of it, the insanity you remember from those first moments with the prion. Whatever madness you feel, whatever longings you have, are bound up in what you and Jack do late at night on scratchy sheets, and the only music you share is the hum of the hallway ice machine, the occasional rumble of pickup trucks speeding by on the country roads. During the day there are no lingering glances, tentative hand-holding, butterfly kisses. During the day you’re the zombie and he’s your keeper. At night he’s still afraid of his father, but at least he lets you see the fear. It descends like an army. It makes him pace up and down the room, makes him cry, sometimes vomit. You hate what he won’t tell you, and you hate knowing anyway.
    The third night, his father calls. This is not the first time Jack’s cell phone has buzzed, not the first time he’s gone too still and too pale and you’ve wondered how much his ice man father did to him. But this time Jack picks up.
    “I’m not coming back,” Jack says. He’s trying to soundtough, but you can see his fears as clearly as you can see his scars in the moonlight.
    “I trained you for better than this.” Jack likes his speaker volume the way he likes his music: too loud. I can hear every word his father says.
    “You trained me to be a monster.”
    His father is silent for a few seconds. “You’re in room 303 of Jimmy’s Truck Lodge in Osler. I’m about ten minutes away. Let me finish this, Jackson. The boys at the agency have orders to kill that creature
and
anyone with him.”
    “Dad, you’re not—”
    “You should let me finish this.”
    The line goes dead. You wonder for a moment what he’ll do, but Jack doesn’t even hesitate. He rushes you out the door. It’s not hard to leave quickly—everything important is in the car. Jack is steady, so iced and cool that you wonder how much longer before he’s just like his father. Maybe that’s what this is really about—not loving you, not a sense of fair play, but one last, desperate ploy to not become a monster.
    He gestures angrily at you. “Get in!”
    “If I stay behind—”
    “
And anyone with him
, remember?”
    “Your dad wouldn’t …”
    “Will you bet my life on it?”
    “I could bite you. Make it look authentic.”
    “Fuck you, Grayson.”
    “Why does it matter? I’m a fucking zombie! You think even this cure they gave me will last forever? What the hell is wrongwith you? Let your ice man dad kill me, and you can run away somewhere and have a decent life with some decent people.”
    Jack isn’t steady now. He punches the door—solidly, enough to hurt. “You’re the only person—Fuck. You know, don’t you? Get in the car. Please.”
    You knock him out.
    It’s brief and efficient, to the jaw. You know how to incapacitate people. He only has time for one wide-eyed stare before he slumps into your arms, unconscious. You carry him back into the motel room and rip his shirt. You figure the shoulder’s as good a place as any. But when you look down, the light illuminates another scar, still-pink marks