Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown

upper hand, and Jonah knowing there was nothing he could offer that the Devil probably didn’t already own in the end. Jonah lowered his head to his knees again and did the only thing he could do. He waited. He waited for the coming tears to claim him and turn him into a driveling, snot-nosed sad sack. He waited for the derisive laughter that was sure to follow as Jonah wept over his own folly. And he waited for the Devil to finally shove off, to leave Jonah to grieve alone. In peace.
    Instead of shoving off, the Devil said, “Now, I ain’t willing to trade him, but I am willing to make a different sort of deal.”
    Jonah raised his tear-filled eyes to the Father of Lies.
    Satan asked, “The question is, are you?”
    Normally, when presented with any decision, Jonah had a tendency to dwell on the question, deliberating over every possible answer. As a Libra, he oscillated from point to counterpoint, hoping that his final decision would please not only himself, but all present. It was in his nature, this need to weigh all decisions, this inability to just choose and be done with it.
    But this time there was no need to think.
    For the first time in his life, Jonah answered without hesitation.
    “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am. Anything. Anything you want, just name it.”
    “Anything, you say?” The smile that crawled over Satan’s face was bone chilling in its coldness. Not a shred of warmth was in that grin, not an ounce of humor, not a trace of pity. “Why, Jonah, it would be my honor to take a blank check from such a fine young man as yourself, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be very sporting of me. I’ve been known to go a bit mad when filling out such things.”
    “Okaaaay,” Jonah said, in a long slow drawl of uncertainty. “Then just tell me what you want.”
    “I want what you want, son. I want you to have Dale’s soul back.”
    Not fooled by the simplicity of those words, Jonah narrowed his eyes. “But?”
    “But not without effort. I might be in the right here, but I’m also a little bit bored. Smoke?” Satan leaned against the hood of the Focus, pulling a large cigar from his top pocket.
    Jonah shook his head.
    “Sorry,” Satan said. “I forget it’s not kosher these days. But I guess it depends on how you kill the tobacco.” The Devil paused as if expecting Jonah to laugh.
    Jonah did not laugh.
    The Father of Lies rolled his eyes and lit his cigar with a flame conjured from his own fingertip. After a few long puffs on the cigar, he waved his hand to extinguish the flame as he said, “Truth is, I’m not just a little bored; I’m a lot bored. Hell is so fucking dull these days. Ugh. The folks I get are either over-the-top freaks with the wrong ideas about what I think is fun, or kids who think they deserve an eternity of punishment because they masturbated to their mother’s picture. I was actually looking forward to getting my hoofs on Dale.”
    “You knew you would get him?”
    “Let’s say I hoped. And it’s easy to hope when you have a whole network of spies keeping an eye on someone, just waiting for the day he’ll make that simple mistake. What I want to know is who lives so close to the state they can’t enter for peril of their immortal soul? If I were him, I woulda moved clean across the country. Or better yet, out of the country. As far away from California as possible. Wouldn’t you?”
    Jonah hadn’t thought about that. Why did Dale live so close to California? It was a good question. One day, once this whole thing was over, he would have to ask Dale. “I hate to seem impertinent, but what exactly do you want from me?”
    “Impertinent?” Basking in the wreath of smoke that poured from his cigar, Satan mouthed the word a few times, as if pondering the meaning. “Impertinent. That’s a good word. Back in the day, we used to call that a five-dollar word. Of course, back in my day, five dollars was a lot of money. Im-per-ti-nent.” Satan repeated the word slowly,