Zombies vs. Unicorns Read Online Free PDF

place is a little intense. It’s a stone mansion on a cul-de-sac of its own, with Pentagon-style security. One ten-digit code to get through the gate outside, a
different
twelve-digit code to get through the front door. You half-expect the knob to check his fingerprints.
    “Dude,” you say when the fort seems to have been breached, “this place is scary.” There’s not so much furniture, but everybeige and mauve piece looks like it cost a fortune.
    Jack shrugs, a little uncomfortable. “My dad,” he says. “He’s obsessed with security. His friends keep calling him about some escaped nutcase that might be in Colorado. He’s gotten paranoid.”
    You feel sick, but try not to show it. Those scientists have tailed you for a year. What are the chances they’ve finally caught up now? “What’s your dad do?”
    “Ex-CIA,” Jack says. “Shattered his hip five years ago, so now he mostly does consulting.”
    When you climb the staircase, you catch a whiff of gunpowder, but the only weapons you see are older—a row of antique and modern swords mounted on the wall.
    “You know how to use these things?”
    Jack sighs. “Sure. Dad’s made me do weapons training since I could walk. Guns, swords, martial arts. So long as there’s a potential for violent death, he’s interested. It’s all bullshit, really. Fake heroics so you can pretend you’re not really killing people. ‘One, two! One, two! And through and through / The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!’”
    “Frost?” you say, though you know you’re wrong and you can’t wait for him to tell you so.
    He smiles. “‘The Jabberwocky.’ Lewis Carroll. Dad likes that one ’cause it’s all about slaying an evil beast. You know, I think he’s
happy
about this nutcase on the loose? Always before it was rabid animals and no-kill tournaments and—Yeah. It’s a fixation.”
    He looks away, holds himself too still, and you wonder whathe’s not telling you about his dad’s “fixation.” Then he shakes his head and leads you the rest of the way up the stairs. Jack’s room is like a huge middle finger up the ass of the rest of the beige-on-white medicated-Vail-yuppie house. Every inch of wall space is covered with posters. A few sports stars but mostly musicians. Pete Townshend holding up a bloody hand; Gorillaz with their animated tongues lolling; Johnny Rotten grinning like a redheaded demon pixie; all of Devo with their weird space suits and jerky, vacant expressions. There’s a walk-in closet in back, and when he opens it, you see a few thousand CDs and vinyl albums lined neatly against the wall.
    “I’ve got a few hundred gigs of MP3s, but vinyl is better, I think.”
    And if you weren’t turned on before. “Fuck me,” you say. “This is amazing.”
    He grins at you, awkwardness forgotten. “I’m lucky. So long as I practice, Dad tends to leave me alone.”
    His killer sound system includes a subwoofer about the size of your torso, so the first notes of the recording are suitably deafening. He lies down on his thick beige carpet and then looks up at you, a gesture that might be an invitation if it weren’t so wary. You wonder what he thinks of you, and if you needed more evidence that something weird is happening here, that would clinch it. Part of the benefit of frontal-lobe-devouring prions is not needing to worry what the hell other people think. That’s a human thing. Not whatever you’ve become.
    You sit down next to him. He smiles a little and leans backon his elbows, closes his eyes. You watch him. The floppy ginger hair falls over his forehead, almost concealing a long, thin scar that runs from his hairline down to his left ear. He nods in time to the screeching, childlike vocals, the swinging sixties rhythms, the psychedelic atonality.
    “James Bond on a Nipponese acid trip,” you say, softly.
    He opens his eyes, and now they’re not buggy at all. They’re hard and fierce and iced. He looks like he might kill you or kiss you.