Zombie Next Year: A YA New Year’s Eve Story

Face?”

  “She just wanted to get out of the house and knew the only way her parents would let her be ungrounded for New Year’s was to go to the Winter Wonderland Dance with a dork like me.”

  “She got grounded over Christmas break?”

  “You know when those kids got drunk and tore down the Christmas tree in Market Square?”

  “That was her?” I ask, handing him the champagne bottle. He takes a quick sip, like he’s distracted, and hands it back.

  “Yeah, but she totally wanted to come to the dance tonight so she’s been text-stalking me for, like, a week and I figured it was better than sitting around the living room with my mom all night, watching the ball drop and then drinking apple champagne and kissing her on the cheek before going to bed…”

  I snort. “Sounds like what me and my Dad do every year.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Except we prefer the grape juice fake champagne.”

  “Me too,” he admits, “but Mom always buys the apple anyway.”

  “Moms are like that,” I mutter.

  The band switches gears again. This time it’s a slow, kind of waltz-y “Auld Lang Syne.”

  I peel my eyes away from Phil for a moment and glance at the bandstand. It’s covered in white Christmas trees, hundreds of little lights blinking in time with the band’s music.

  There are trees all over the gym, all white, all blinking, to match the “Winter Wonderland Dance” theme.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of us have been cooped up all Christmas break, ever since that big outbreak in Tennessee over Thanksgiving scared us all into realizing zombies were real, and real close; just a state or two away.

  Then with those two outbreaks in South Carolina over Christmas, and the nightly curfew and the National Guard at Nightshade’s borders, well, folks thought it would be good if we had something to look forward to before school started up again in January.

  Enter… the “Winter Wonderland Dance” idea. A gym full of cooped up kids, blinking Christmas trees, plenty of chaperones and a couple of armed guards standing outside the door. What could go wrong?

  And now the zombies are here, right outside our door. The guards are gone, probably zombies themselves, or maybe hiding up in a tree somewhere, who knows. The chaperones have all split, but the Christmas trees are still blinking and the band’s still playing, so there’s that.

  And at least I’ll look good as a zombie, in my snug maroon cocktail dress with the matching beaded purse and creamy maroon lipstick and the black heels that make me just tall enough to put my arms over Phil’s shoulders.

  That is, if they don’t tear me to pieces before I’m reanimated.

  I wag the champagne bottle at him before taking a sip. Then I ask him, “You still didn’t tell me how you know me.”

  “That day,” he says, taking the bottle from me. “That day in Detention. I kind of… kind of fell in love with you.”

  I’m glad he’s drinking the champagne, and not me, because if I was I’d be spitting it out right now. “What? Phil, you barely looked at me.”

  “I was trying to be cool.”

  I snort. “Well, it must have worked because I left there thinking you were the world’s biggest jerk.”

  “Because I didn’t talk to you?” He looks shocked. Absolutely, positively shocked.

  “We were the only two kids in there. Even when Dean Schaeffer left early to pick up his daughter from daycare, you still didn’t talk to me.”

  He laughs. “He told us not to.”

  “He was GONE!”

  I slap him playfully on the shoulder and he inches just a little closer, explaining, “I thought maybe he had closed circuit cameras on or something and was watching us on his smart phone.”

  “I think that would be illegal,” I tell him as he hands me back the champagne. It’s warm and flat but it’s possibly the last thing I’ll ever drink. What possibly? It IS the last thing I’ll ever drink, so… I drink it.

  He shrugs. “I was too nervous, anyway.”

  “I made you nervous? In Detention? You must scare easy because I’m about the least intimidating person on the planet.”

  “You must have intimidated somebody to get into Detention,” he points out.

  “I was framed,” I say, and before he can push for more information I point out, “YOU must have intimidated somebody to get in Detention, too.”

  “More like the other way around,” he says, blushing a little. Phil blushes easily, I’ve noticed – and often. “I let Boner Simpson cheat off of me in History and when Mr. Prescott caught us, I took the fall so Boner wouldn’t tear me limb from limb after school.”

  I nod. “That was noble of you.”

  He smiles. “Well, whatever, I got to spend a whole hour with you and, after that, I just…”

  His voice trails off, he looks away and he’s blushing again. I inch closer as the band kicks into a calypso version of “Auld Lang Syne” and whisper, “You should have told me sooner, Phil. Maybe then we could have come to this dance together instead of…”

  He meets my eyes. “But we are together. Now.”

  “Yeah, but… maybe if we’d come together officially speaking, we could have left together. Sooner. Gotten out of here before… this… all happened.” I take one arm off his shoulder to wave around the gym, at the TV monitors and the world’s saddest Winter Wonderland Dance theme band.

  “And what then?” he asks, shaking his head. “We’d already be out there, reanimated, one of them by now.”

  I nod, handing him back the champagne. He looks at it, shakes his head and puts it on the table next to the other empties. “You think… that’s what happened to Chad?” I ask. “And Sasha?”

  He nods. “I do, Cara. I do.”

  I nod and my arms just kind of slip off his shoulders. Before they can flap helplessly at my sides he grabs them, deftly, and holds onto them tightly, looking into my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “And my Dad?” I ask, glancing over his head at the TV monitors, still showing the zombie horde outside the gym doors. I need to stop looking over there. Every time I do, there are more zombies, the crowd outside the door getting thicker, the line to get inside the Nightshade High gym stretching out longer.

  “And my Mom, and everyone in Nightshade,” he continues. “How could they survive… that?” He follows my eyes and, watching the growling, shuffling zombies, we both grow a little paler.

  I slump a little, eager to fall into the chair at the table we’ve been dancing next to. “You can’t give up,” he says, yanking me back up and into his arms. “You sit down now, that’s it. You’ll never get back up.”

  I look back at him, yanking my hands out of his. “But you just said… that’s it. We’re doomed, screwed. Why bother standing up?”

  He pulls me closer, so that I can smell the champagne on his breath and see the little spot of red stubble on his chin he missed shaving before leaving the house tonight.

  “Don’t you at least want to die on your feet?” he asks.

  I shake my head, throat tight with the sudden realization of where we are, of what we’re doing, and what’s… out there… trying to get in. “I don’t want to die at all,” I say, crumbling into his arms.

  He holds me, both of us trembling, the moment intense and sad and embarrassing and intimate, all at the same time. When I’m done crying, I try to push away but he doesn’t let me, griping me closely and I realize it’s because he’s not finished crying yet.

  When he is, he loosens his grip and I inch from his grasp, reaching for two flimsy blue napkins on the cocktail table beside us. They’re full of glitter and confetti, which sticks to our faces long after we use them to dry our eyes.

  I’m busy picking a miniature piece of champagne glass shaped confetti off his cheeks when the band finally stops playing long enough to announce, “It’s here, folks. Twelve o’ clock, midnight. Raise a glass, and kiss your partner, because it’s officially… Ne
w Year’s Eve!”

  Nobody moves. Not a single soul. We look at each other, wondering if it’s a joke, when suddenly the band leader says, as if he’s been listening to my brain think, “This isn’t a joke. It’s New Year’s Eve!!! Happy New Year’s Eve, everybody!”

  Then he turns to his closest band mate and kisses him, dead on the lips, and the crowd suddenly cheers and they all start kissing each other. Guys, girls, girls, girls, guys, guys, doesn’t matter, it’s like someone just released kissing gas into the air.

  You can hear them, smacking and macking all over the gym, and the band guys are still kissing, laughing and hugging each other like they’re probably good friends as well as good musicians.

  Phil looks at me and I look at Phil. “Happy New Year,” I say, voice raw from crying, and I lean in and kiss him. His lips are warm and soft, just like they look, and I forget for a minute that we’re in this gym, and that Chad left me in the girls’ room to face the zombies all alone.

  I even forget about the zombies… for a second or two.

  Then we come up for air and look at each other, and blink, and… something has changed. Not just with us, but in the room.

  There are little squeaks, and