Free Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown Page B

like a bad case of indigestion. His bowels quivered. His stomach roiled. His esophagus convulsed. Again, he should have expected nothing less than exactly what was happening. In what commodity would the Devil deal if not souls?
    “You didn’t think this was a one-way bargain?” Satan asked. “I already own Dale’s soul. What kind of prize is just keeping it?”
    “You said you didn’t want my soul!”
    “No, I said I didn’t want to trade for it. But the chance to have them both? And do practically nothing to get them? Well, that’s just good business, son.”
    Jonah, for all of his anxiety and distress, was forced to agree.
    Satan rolled his watch toward him as he said, “Okay, it’s three o’clock right now.” He wrinkled his brow as he unfastened the band that held the gold Rolex in place. “That means I should see you again sometime before three oh one next Saturday. Here you go.” The Devil held out the watch.
    Eyeing it with suspicion, Jonah asked, “What?”
    The Devil waggled the watch. “Take it. Consider it a parting gift.”
    The instant Jonah took hold of the watch, it transformed. In Satan’s hands, it had been a fine thing: a shiny, gold Rolex trimmed in diamonds, attached to a leather strap studded with rubies, and the whole affair worth far more than Jonah made in his lifetime. But in his mortal hands, it was a plastic piece of digital madness: an ugly, gray thing with glowing green numbers, that proclaimed the time to be exactly one hundred sixty-eight hours and zero minutes and zero seconds.
    Jonah grunted at it. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Makes perfect sense. You have exactly one hundred and sixty-eight hours to find Dale’s soul.” No sooner had the Devil spoken the words than the watch intoned a loud beep and the time flipped to one hundred sixty-seven hours and fifty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds.
    Fifty-eight seconds.
    Fifty-seven seconds.
    “Ah. A countdown. Of course.” Jonah put the watch on his right wrist, opposite his usual watch. He knew how it made him look, but he didn’t care. Looking like a moron with two watches was the least of his worries at the moment.
    “Then that’s all. Good luck!”
    “Wait!” Jonah shouted as a sudden idea stole over him.
    “For fuck’s sake, kid. What now?”
    “I don’t even know where to start.”
    The Devil snorted. “That sounds like your problem, not mine.”
    “The U.S. is a big place,” Jonah whined. “You don’t expect me to just drive around to random places and ask if they have a discarded beer bottle with my friend’s soul inside. I need to at least know where to start.”
    “This wasn’t meant to be a scavenger hunt, son.”
    “I know, but … how about just one clue?”
    Satan pursed his lips. “You’re just sucking all the life out of this for me. You know that?”
    “Sorry.”
    “Yeah. I know.” Satan exhaled slowly as he contemplated Jonah’s request. “One clue?”
    Jonah grinned as appreciatively as he could.
    Satan grinned right back and said, “Ask Mr. Jenkins.” Wild laughter filled the air, mingling with the onrushing sounds of life as Satan faded into the afternoon.
    Jonah’s smile dissolved quicker than the Devil. He looked over at the corpse of Dale, who had one finger shoved so far up his left nostril that one might think he was trying to scratch his undead brain. Could that rotting lump of flesh possibly know the answer? If so, how long would it take to retrieve it?
    “Dale,” Jonah said in a calm, even voice.
    “Huh?” the undead Dale answered.
    Jonah drew close to the corpse, taking it by the shoulders and staring right into its eyes. All life had fled from those eyes, as well as all intelligence. “Take your finger out of your nose.” The undead Dale did as asked. Jonah chanced a weak hope that this might be as simple as Satan proposed. “I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to think very hard about the answer. Do you understand?”
    Dale’s dead eyes