'Wait a second Jimbo, before you do anything.' Jimbo paused in his fixing. Tentatively Red examined the memories in front of him, then compared them with the ones that had already been made. 'I can tell when something's been changed.'
'What?'
'Yeah, look here. This part of his mind has been modified; I can clearly tell that something happened here. But this part, that you haven't touched yet, is smoother. Can you see it?'
'You know, I hadn't looked before, but I can see it now. That will help, if I have some major surgery to do on someone.'
Red continued to look around the boy's mind. He spotted some other sections that were changed. 'Jimbo. What did you do to him?'
Jimbo went on with the changes he was making to the boy's most recent memories. 'Things were complicated at the beginning of his new life, Red.'
'What things? You've changed entire parts of his mind!' Red was aghast at the sheer amount of what he was seeing.
'I know. I had to do my learning on the fly. I didn't realize what I had done until later. I tried to fix things as well as I could but the way this boy was made was one major corn-hole job. I couldn't leave that in there, it would have driven him mad.'
'I can't tell what you erased, only where you changed things.'
'I told ya, you can't restore memories that have been replaced, they are just gone. Look, if you can see the mess I've made, you can also see that I haven't screwed with him any time before he turned too.'
Red looked around, keenly aware that Jimbo was watching him look around. Grudgingly he said, 'Yeah.'
'I don't have to justify myself to you, but I kind of like you and I don't want you to be pissed off at me.'
'So tell me what happened? What great secret did you have to remove to keep the boy sane?'
'He killed his family, ate them and came back to what he was over their bodies.' Jimbo didn't elaborate to Red, he didn't say the boy had only done so because Jimbo told him to.
'Aw, shit. Well it wouldn't be the first time though would it. Half the people running around did that.'
'And most of the zombies who remember who they used to be are batshit insane now too.'
'Some of them. Did you kill your family?'
'No. This bitch Nancy brought me back, I think I ate some of my friend. Then she killed him. The only food I got was spread out and just enough to keep me going so I could do the heavy lifting. Nancy found out that smaller people needed less food to function, so I got the scraps because I wasn't efficient.'
'How'd you kill her?'
'I told you yesterday.'
'You told me a few things, but you only said you stomped on her head. How'd you get away that first time?'
'She was pinned down in this office by the cop and Max and their friends. This is after I let Max live in the bathroom, though that pretty much took everything I had to keep Nancy out of my head then. We didn't know what we could do yet. I got lucky. When Nancy was held off I got away, then I ran into Fred, her 'father' in the parking lot and we found Bobby when I was trying to make Fred stronger to resist Nancy.'
'So you only changed what you thought was best in here?' Red asked.
'I wish I could be sure. I did what I can and I don't plan on doing anything like this to other zombies.'
'Why not? You could train them, show them how to defend themselves and make them fanatically loyal to you. You could be an emperor.'
'I think we already have one of those, if half of what you are telling me is true. Nobody likes a dictator; especially not one this invasive. People would revolt and I would be cast down, I think I will live longer keeping a low profile.'
'You might have a point there.'
They both left Bobby's mind and Jimbo sent him off to watch the sunset alone. Now they spoke out loud and Veronica came in from doing the chores in the barn to make coffee. Jimbo started, 'You think Red, that when you take care of this Ramey fellow that the ones who sent him will leave you alone?'
'I don't know. I might take a page out of your book and just lay low somewhere.'
'You can come back here, we'll help with that.'
'I am not sure how much of a risk that will be, but I will think about it.'
'Okay. Well we better get you on your way.'
The coffee, while easier to swallow than the first time Red had tried it, still tasted off.
Chapter 4 — Whatever happened in Nebraska?
Ramey was ahead of him. Red was back in Nebraska, he had left the farm after a surprisingly fast tutorial on how to keep Jimbo out of his mind. It turned out he had a pretty strong defense against what Jimbo called 'the push', which was any effort by other zombies to get into his mind. Even Jimbo had to cheat to break hold through Red's defense and then, infuriatingly, he didn't tell Red how he did it. Red suspected the man couldn't explain some of the philosophies he was developing and how he did what he did. As for how fast Red was able to develop his defense, well, Jimbo had an analogy for that too.
'Remember when you learned how to ride a bike?'
'It was a long time ago Jimbo.'
With startling clarity Red suddenly did remember struggling to ride a bike, and how it felt immediately after he did so.
'I thought you weren't going to mess around in my head?'
'I'm not messing, just helping you remember. That's not messing and this is important. Now you recall how often your dad had you out there, how your friends were watching and cheering you on and how you fell over time after time. Except the last time. Then it was like you were flying along two feet above the ground, it was magic. One minute you weren't riding the bike, you just had the fear of falling and the stronger desire to join the big kids pedaling around. The next minute, you got it. This is like that. I showed you how to ride the bike. You'll get better at it with practice, but you can still ride it pretty well right now. You should be okay. I held off Nancy, when push came to shove. How much more powerful than you is this guy you're going up against?'
'Just slightly more powerful than me, enough to dominate me.'
'You'll do fine.' said Jimbo.
Now Red wasn't so sure. The man ahead of him was herding the zombies, thousands of zombies. Tens of thousands of zombies. More than he Nita and Hugh ever handled at one time.
The zombies were not quite marching in an orderly fashion, but they were avoiding fences, buildings and other obstacles with an almost military precision. After arriving on the edge of the pack Red found he could pull up Ramey's surface thoughts without any effort at all. He was reluctant to press into the man's mind, it was one of the tricks Jimbo had mentioned, the first attack might succeed, or it might just be a critical distraction when the man was doing something like trying to dodge as Red shot at him. Neither he nor Jimbo thought Red had much of a chance to get into Ramey's mind, but they both thought the effort might serve as a distraction.
Red was rather proud of the fact that the other zombie didn't know he was here, before when he had approached Ramey knew he was coming, they were aware of each other. Slowly Red searched through the minds of the other zombies, looking for Hugh. He thought Ramey might keep Hugh close by him, but so far Red couldn't find his friend.
Jimbo and Veronica had filled a couple gas cans and then they drove Red to his motorcycle, where he fueled it up and turned east. He left them there waving goodbye, Bobby looked sad, the boy had found another pellet gun
