Eat, Brains, Love by Jeff Hart

Author:Jeff Hart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Love & Romance, Horror & Ghost Stories, Action & Adventure, General
ISBN: 9780062200341
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2012-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

I stood outside the factory, holding myself, trying to push back tears and failing. I’d seen dozens of horrific post-zombie crime scenes since joining NCD, but today, in that meat locker, that was easily the worst thing I’d ever witnessed. The Pavlov, the way Chazz almost adoringly looked at Alastaire, seeing an NCD agent I basically worked for callously endanger a girl to prove a point. It was all too much.

I was dumbly waiting around for someone to drive me back to the motel when I had the urge to run. Just flee through this desolate part of New Jersey and hope for the best. It had worked out for Jake, so far. I wondered how far I could make it. Would they come after me? Fugitive status seemed appealing at that moment, but that’d mean bailing on my team—they were good people, totally not zombie-controlling maniacs. I needed time to think this through, to measure what I’d just seen against the good I was doing. Or the good I’d thought I was doing.

“Ah, the idealism of youth,” Alastaire said from behind me.

I jumped. I hadn’t heard him come out of the factory and now he was standing right next to me, like nothing was wrong. I hurriedly wiped my hands across my face and stood up straighter.

“You think I’m a monster,” he stated.

“Are you reading my mind?”

“I don’t need to,” he said, his voice all low and understanding, disingenuous, like I was just some confused kid that needed some fatherly empathy. “We are monsters, in a way.”

“We?” I spat, staring at him.

“Do you know why they administer those psychometric tests in every high school across the country?” he asked.

I was getting pretty sick of the whole Socratic-method thing, so I decided to stay silent. I wouldn’t play along.

“To find the ones like us,” Alastaire continued. “Because before there were zombies to hunt, there was us.”

“What are you talking about? We don’t hurt people,” I replied. “At least, I don’t.”

“No, but we scare them. And when the zombies are gone, who do you think they’ll hunt then?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear this, his screwed-up worldview. Just minutes ago, I’d still been convinced I was helping people, and now it felt like I was just a cog in something big and ugly.

“We’ll never be like them, Cassandra. The normal ones. At best, we’re something they use to solve a problem. At worst, we’re something frightening to hunt.” He paused. “Unless we make ourselves indispensable. Powerful.”

Alastaire touched his forearm where The Pavlov’s nozzle was hidden underneath his coat.

“This is the way we do that,” he concluded. “You might not like it now. It might offend your childish ideas of right and wrong. But when you grow up, you’ll thank me.”

Alastaire walked to the car, leaving me standing on the sidewalk staring after him.

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