Zombies vs. Unicorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

You hold your too-slow breath and realize that you don’t care which.
    “I knew you’d like it,” he says.
    The air comes out in a rush. You lean back against the carpet and look at the inside of your eyelids. You see red, like always. Muscle and bone and the crunch of your oversize molars tearing through. That’s what Jack would have become if he hadn’t mentioned Joy Division at the end of class. And even now you can feel the heat of him beside you, the soft exhale of his pores, the smell that’s a little sweat and a little detergent and some shampoo with a surprisingly girly flavor—coconut? Hibiscus? How could someone who uses hibiscus shampoo look so suddenly dangerous? He moves abruptly. You wait like you might fall on a blade.
    But no, the door is opening, someone else is in the house. Slowly, too slowly, you turn around.
    “Jackson,” says the man who must be the father. He wears khakis the color of his furniture, and a brown polo shirt. “Your target is still clean.”
    If Jack was icy, his dad is absolute fucking zero. His eyebrowsare so large and thick they cast his recessed eyes in deep shadow, like a pit. His mouth is pursed, not enough to be called a frown, but damn if you don’t want to run straight out the window and make excuses later. Jack glances at you and then back at his dad. He turns off the CD, and the sudden silence is louder than any high-decibel subwoofer. You can hear his dad’s breathing, as slow and icy as the rest of him. Ex-CIA. He was probably their go-to for those “enhanced” interrogations.
    “Sorry,” Jack mumbles, unrecognizable. “I was getting to it.”
    “I can see,” says the ice man. “I’ve just heard from Miller again. That creature they’re tracking definitely passed through here. I need you to be ready.”
    “Sorry,” Jack says again.
    The dad turns to you now, all cool speculation. You know without even trying that there’s nothing your special pheromones can do to thaw this guy. He thinks you’re a cockroach. He wants to stamp you out. Can he tell what you are just by looking? But no, it’s impossible. If he knew, he’d shoot you on the spot and tell Jack to clean the mess.
    Ice man leaves, a slight hitch in his step. Jack takes a deep, shuddering breath and slams the door shut.
    You whistle. “He like that every day?”
    Jack glances at you and then away. His blue eyes dilate for no reason, and blood blossoms in his cheeks like roses. You swallow.
    “He’s … you know.”
    You try to imagine life with someone like that. Your failure to do so feels like something broken, something sucking anddesperate. Because you
know
the ice man—as only one cracked soul can recognize another.
    “‘But my dreams, they aren’t as empty.’” You can’t sing, so you just say it. But you remember the rest of the line: “ ‘As my conscience seems to be.’”
    Jack starts, like someone poked him, and then sags against the wall. He laughs, but it doesn’t sound like laughter.
    “My dad hates The Who,” he says.
    “Your dad’s a dick.”
    For a moment you think he might take your hand.
    4. Maps
    I said I don’t know who I was, but that’s not strictly true. No invading twist of genetic code is that efficient. My hippocampus has been wiped pretty clean, but fragments remain. Hell, for all I know I remember everything, and just suppress it, like Iraq vets who can barely find Baghdad on a map. But here’s what I think I know. I had a sister. She was younger than me and dumb in that dumb little sister way, which means that she’ll probably grow up to be a neurochemist and invent the cure for spongiform encephalopathy. But I remember her loving
Boy Meets World
and
High School Musical
(all three) and the direct-to-DVD Olsen twins movies (in particular
Passport to Paris).
We had a dad, but I don’t know what he did. No mother, as far as I can tell. Dad had a thing for banana plants. He refused to buy regular Chiquita bananas, but he’d bring home any