Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown

want it for free. I don’t want anything. Why can’t you go just one night without getting laid?”
    “Because sex does a body good. Even an undead body. Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that. Would you?”
    Jonah gasped at the implication, as did several others. To Jonah’s surprise and embarrassment, a small crowd had gathered to watch the ongoing argument. The fact that no one gasped at the word ‘undead’ didn’t surprise Jonah. Why worry about something so strange when there was something even weirder in their midst?
    Dale turned to an onlooker and commented, almost offhandedly, “Twenty-four, and he’s only been laid three times. Says he wants to wait until he’s in love before he fucks again. Can you imagine that?”
    The group chuckled at Jonah’s shame.
    Though, to Jonah, in his heart of hearts, it wasn’t a shameful thing.
    It wasn’t that Jonah never thought of sex. Like all other healthy young men, he thought about it a lot. Quite a lot. A lot a lot. But those were just fleeting fantasies on the backs of erotic dreams when compared to the possibility of being with someone he loved. Jonah’s three experiences with sex were all brief and awkward, filled with lots of fumbling and apologies, and each ending with an embarrassing, and not to mention premature, mess. It was after the third time—a ten-minute romp in a closet at a party with a half-drunk friend of a friend who denied she had slept with Jonah the next day—that Jonah decided to wait for a real relationship before he attempted sex again. He wanted to wait and share his body with someone he loved.
    He knew most other men—make that all other men—felt differently on the matter, but he didn’t care. Dale often said Jonah’s uptight attitude about sex confirmed that he was indeed super gay, but Jonah didn’t care about that either. Because one quiet night a while back, when Dale was blasted out of his gourd on weed and booze, he confessed to Jonah that he too thought the idea of waiting for real love was a beautiful thing.
    ‘A beautiful thing,’ his best friend had called it.
    Now here the same man was debasing him in front of a load of total strangers.
    Except that it wasn’t the same man. Not really. It was then that Jonah realized that this soulless Dale was indeed a morally depraved version of the live one. The living Dale would never have made light of Jonah’s shyness. Jonah’s timid nature. Jonah’s desire to wait. Sure, the man made jokes in private, underhanded jabs or lighthearted quips. But Dale never brought it out to be scrutinized by passing strangers. Dale had never, in all of the time they had been friends, mocked of Jonah for it in front of others.
    Jonah had nothing to say on the matter. He just grunted, then left the zombie alone with his filthy thoughts. Before he could reach the car, Dale was at his heels again.
    “Come on,” Dale said. “You know I was just kidding.”
    Employing a stomp that was not only righteous but very, very angry, Jonah ignored the corpse and fumbled for his keys. They were still a block from the car, but he wanted to be ready the moment he reached it. Ready to jump inside and lock the zombie out. The beast could look for his own damned soul by himself.
    “Come on, buddy,” Dale said again.
    “Don’t ‘buddy’ me,” Jonah said.
    “What? I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “You’re the one always going on about how proud you are of it!”
    “Yeah, between you and me. That doesn’t mean I want it announced to a street full of strangers!”
    “Why? Like they care. No one will remember that shit tomorrow.”
    “No. They won’t. But I will. You’re supposed to be my friend.”
    “Why are you being such a pussy about this? It was just a joke.”
    Jonah whipped around again and stared at the zombie. “A joke? I guess when you’re dead everything seems funny. I don’t know who you are, but the real Dale would’ve