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Being a kid in Zombieland is fun, and not fun, all at the same time. On the one hand, you have a code name, and a shotgun, and no bedtime whatsoever.
On the other, even when there are only two loser boys left alive in the whole world, your sister manages to hook up with one of them.
"Look, Columbus's different from the other guys," Wichita says.
They're sitting in a diner, or the remains of one, for a little “girl talk” while Tallahassee and Columbus—mostly Tallahassee, probably—root through an abandoned car dealership for parts. Before the virus, they used to eat in diners a lot. After a big score, Wichita would let Little Rock order the Belgian waffles with fruit and ice cream for dinner.
Now, it's cold Boyardee from a can.
"Sure," Little Rock says. "Less tattooes."
Later, Little Rock announces to Tallahassee, "I'm never going to have sex."
Tallahassee is sharpening a big pair of pruning shears. "Kid, I'm sorry to say you may just get your wish on that one."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't exactly see a bunch of boys lining up to take you to senior prom, do you? Now, if it was a question of eating you, you could have your pick of the whole football team."
She squints at him. She hadn't really meant it like that.
"Wow," she says. "My life is going to suck, isn't it?"
"Cheer up," he says, going snip-snip at imaginary zombies, "it probably won't last that long, anyway."
She decides that Tallahassee isn't really a good source for advice.
Before the zombies, Wichita had never had a single boyfriend who wasn't a creeper. They all played in stupid bands and showed up at the apartment drunk and stole money from her purse. The stealing money thing Little Rock didn't mind so much—it meant she could snag a few bucks herself without getting blamed—but the rest of it was no fun. Little Rock didn't understand how a sister who was so smart about everything else could be so stupid about boys, in the exact same way, every single time.
Alex was the last one. Tall and skinny and black-haired and always talking about some band called the Ramones. At least, she thought it was a band. For all she knew, it might have been some kind of old candy.
When the virus hit, Alex banged and banged on the door until Wichita unlocked it with shaking hands.
"She bit me, baby," he'd said, stumbling in, "she bit me, you gotta help me—"
"She?" Wichita demanded. "Who, that bitch Cynthia? What were you doing with her?"
Alex started to say something, then his mouth twisted into a kind of drooly snarl and he lunged at Wichita.
And then his head exploded, because Little Rock had already started to learn to use a shotgun and she was sick of jerks cheating on her sister.
"Okay," Wichita had said after a minute of stunned silence and wiping off the brains, "okay, from now it's just you and me, kid, okay?"
"Sounds good to me," Little Rock had said.
That was totally the Zombie Kill of the Week, even if Tallahassee would never admit it. Sometimes what you shot was more important than how.
"So," Columbus says, while Tallahassee fills up the tank. SUVs get crappy mileage, but she isn't about to squish herself into a Prius or something with those guys. "Your sister. What does she like to do for fun?"
She crinkles up her face in fake thought. "Rip people off, mostly."
"Really?"
What a maroon, like Bugs Bunny used to say, before TV went away. "She really enjoyed it when we took you two. Twice. She missed doing that."
"Oh. Yeah." He cautiously flips open the gas station's door. Nothing staggers out, nothing moans. They go inside to scavenge. "Geez, I didn't know how to show a girl a good time before the zombies."
Some of Wichita’s other boyfriends had tried to be nice to her, for about five minutes. Not because they meant it. She’d never put up with that.
"You were kind of a dork, huh?"
Something that had been sleeping in the frozen-foods cabinet jerks up with a growl. Columbus shoots it, then shoots it again. "Yeah. A big dork."
"You still are," she informs him.
"Probably," he shrugs. "I was kind of hoping to get a little personal growth out of the apocalypse, though.”
She picks up a plastic-wrapped piece of Joey’s pound cake.
“Hey,” he says, “that can’t be any good.”
“Whatever.”
“Rule #23: respect the expiration date,” he says. “The need for frequent and unscheduled bathroom breaks has led to Zombieland tragedy more than once.”
“Okay, that’s disgusting,” she says, but she drops the pound cake and grabs a bag of Combos instead.
Life on the road, just the two of them, had turned out not to be what Little Rock expected. It’s not much fun being a hustler when there's nobody left to hustle. Little Rock's happy to be grabbing all the loot she can, but she sees Wichita looking off into space a lot.
One month into their trip, she’d been cleaning out the register in a 7-11, whole handfuls of twenties, looked like someone’d been too lazy to use the drop box, and she looked back and saw Wichita, just staring at her.
“What?”
“What do you think we’re going to use that for, kid? It’s about as useful as those Super Bites over there.”
“Um...” Little Rock glanced at the meat logs on the heater-roller-thing that had once been a delicious anytime treat and now looked like dog crap, and then she looked at the cash in her hands. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
Money had always been the score, the prize, the proof they could take care of themselves. A world where her sister didn’t care about money was actually scarier than a world full of zombies.
Columbus and Tallahassee are playing slug-bug in the back seat. That game is for babies.
Also, Tallahassee can obviously hit a lot harder than Columbus, so it's pretty dumb for Columbus even to be playing.
"Green one!" Tallahassee sings out, and slugs Columbus in the shoulder.
"Ow!" Columbus says.
"It's called slug-bug, Columbus, not massage-bug."
"What I wouldn't give for a single hour of World of Warcraft," Columbus sighs.
Wichita looks back at them, and laughs.
It had been kind of dumb to go into the grocery store. Sure, they needed stuff, but the odds that there were one or two zombies hanging out inside seemed awfully high.
"Look, I just want some fresh t-shirts," Wichita had said, looking tired and irritable. "It's safer than the mall."
"Ooookay," Little Rock had said doubtfully. Not stinking really was kind of an issue those days. The last laundromat they'd hit not only had no power, it had half a dozen zombies sitting around on chairs like they were waiting for their undead loads to finish. Wichita had gotten one head-first in a dryer and banged the door on it until its neck snapped. "But, at least, let's go in the back way."
When they’d heard the SUV pull into the store parking lot, Wichita had smiled like old times.
"So," she hears Columbus say to Wichita late that night, as she's drowsing against the car window, "that Pacific Playland thing, that was pretty much a suicide run, huh?"
For a little while, there's nothing but the sound of the road underneath the car’s wheels. Then Wichita says, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."
"With your little sister?"
Columbus has an annoying way of sounding concerned when he should be sounding freaked out.
"What was she gonna do without me?"
"Point taken."
Another long silence. Finally, Columbus says, "You're not going to do that again, are you?"
"No," Wichita says. "I guess not."
Little Rock pulls more of the blanket away from Tallahassee (what a hog) and decides that Columbus can stay.