“How did you find me?”
He stands, just inside the warehouse door, grey eyes quietly illuminated in the darkness beyond.
I hold up a little metal cross, about the size of my thumbprint, one of about a dozen lying around the warehouse door. “You have these in the bottom of your shoes most every day,” I tell him.
He blinks his gray eyes, inching forward. It’s still early, the light at my back an almost purple shade of blue and orange. “I do?”
I nod, readjusting the backpack strap on my shoulder. “Yeah, you do. Can I come in?”
He blinks again, slowly, like he does most everything. “I still don’t see how that led you here.”
“My Dad worked in this warehouse for almost twenty years. These little things followed him home most every day. They got in the carpet, in the garage, scratched up Mom’s hardwood floors something awful. She’d call him ‘Jesus’ sometimes, because she said he was always dragging home a cross or two.”
The memory brings a smile to my face. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked about them, either of them.
He sighs. “I thought I was being so careful.”
“I don’t know what the big deal is,” I say, when he finally steps inside, leaving the door wide enough for me to follow. “So what if a Normal knows where you live?”
He shuts the door behind us, bolting it six ways to Sunday. “Not all Normals are like you… Mindy.”
I smile. He remembers my name. Well, almost. Then I remember, it’s on my Nightshade High Student ID Badge. “Mandy,” I correct him gently, looking around the place.
He’s got the whole warehouse to himself, but he’s kind of living in the northeast corner, where a small office used to be. A small lantern sits on the floor, behind an umbrella. I stand near it and ask, “What’s with this?”
He nods toward the blacked out window in the office door. “It’s so you can’t see the light outside, but I can still see inside.”
“Smart,” I say.
“We’re not all dummies,” he snaps.
I arch an eyebrow because, undead attitude much? “Did I say you were?”
He looks me up, then down, then up again. He’s still in his Zombie Employment Department, or Z.E.D., uniform. It’s garbage truck green with yellow stripes down the side, so you can spot them more easily. Like you’d miss Calvin and his cement gray skin, yellow teeth and black-gray eyes.
He’s not tall but he’s taller than me, and wiry, like so many of them are, with about zero-percent body fat and 100% muscle. The custodian’s uniform sags off him, and his leather boots are too big.
There is a chair facing the lamp, and I hear bagpipe music playing somewhere. I scour the cleanly swept warehouse floor until I spot a radio on an overturned milk crate. Figures, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and the only radio station in town has been playing bagpipe music, or fiddle music, or bagpipe and fiddle music, since I got up this morning.
Then again, if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, as if reading my mind.
I sling the backpack around and hold it up in front of him. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Calvin!” I beam, just like I’d practiced about 100 times in front of the mirror in my room back at the Shelter this morning before school.
“What’s so happy about it?” he asks, slumping into his chair and not offering me a place to sit. I drag over another milk crate, flip it over and slide down next to him anyway.
I’ve come this far, no grumpy zombie is going to stop me now.
“You know,” I say, nudging his knee. He growls a little, but doesn’t move. I nod, hands up in a “surrender” stance. “Tonight you get to stay out past curfew.”
He arches one eyebrow, rich and black against his smooth, gray skin. I bet, once upon a time, he was handsome. I try to picture him alive, with full skin, young muscles, thick hair, green eyes. I wonder what he was like, back then. I wonder how it happened.
Maybe, if this whole plan works, he’ll tell me one day.
If we live that long.
“Who says?” he asks.
“Everybody,” I say, tempted to nudge him again but stopping myself at the last minute. “It’s pretty much an unwritten rule that as long as you dress up in all green, and behave, no one can tell whether you’re a zombie or not.”
He frowns his zombie frown. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“Cuz you live like a hermit, that’s why.”
“None of the other ZED workers said anything about it.”
He sounds almost hurt, like maybe they were hiding it from him or something.
“Well, if you’re a downer like this all the time, why would they?”
He stares back at me, unblinking. I sigh and plop the backpack down between us, unzipping it to reveal his “present”: a goofy green clown wig, green face and hand paint, a long sleeve “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-shirt and green track pants with white stripes up the sides (no yellow).
“Who’s that for?” he asks, frowning.
“You,” I say, sliding out an identical, if smaller, version of the same get-up. “And this one is for me.”
He looks away, as another Irish song plays on the radio, sounding just like the first one. Or maybe it IS still the first one, I can’t tell anymore. “Why are you here again?”
I stand, so he can see me, pacing in front of him. He looks up, smirking. “Don’t you want to get out of here?” I ask, twirling around in the vast, open space of the old washing machine manufacturer. “Don’t you want to walk the streets after dark, see which other zombies are out there, strolling around town?”
“Not particularly, no,” he lies, long, gray fingers fiddling with the knees of his work jumpsuit.
I slump back down onto the milk crate, puffing out my lower lip, working my trembling chin, giving him the full treatment. He fidgets in his seat, trying to avoid looking at me as long as possible, before finally turning to me, gray eyes soft and wide.
“What… what are you doing?”
“I just, well, I thought I was doing a good thing, tracking you down, inviting you out. I thought… I thought you were a good guy. Now you’re just like all the rest…”
“I’m not a guy,” he says, softly, looking at the ground.
“Yeah, you are. Just because you’re… undead… doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a little fun now and then.”
He looks up at me. “Yeah, it kind of does. I’ve done… I’ve done bad things. To people. To people who are no longer here, or if they are, wish they weren’t.”
I look back at him, blinking. Stupid zombies, they think they’re the only ones affected by an outbreak. “You think I haven’t? You think I’m here because I didn’t slice and dice my way through about two dozen of… you?”
He sits back in his chair a little. I notice it’s a beach chair, and it creaks whenever he moves. “So, if you hate zombies so much, why are you—”
I groan and yank on one of my red pigtails. “I don’t hate zombies, dude. Would I be here if I hated zombies? I just said, the world being what it is, we’ve all done bad things to each other. Tonight is about forgetting all that, getting dressed up so nobody knows who, or what, you are, and going out on the town. So, are you in or what?”
He sighs, and finally shrugs. “You… you can change in there.”
He points, one large bony finger directing me to a kind of office with a door. I clap my hands and take my outfit and slink inside, slipping out in under five minutes. Unfortunately, I forgot that zombies are slow ass zombies and he’s still slipping into his track pantts, so I get a shot of the tighty-whities stretched across his bony gray butt cheeks. (Thank God he’s not going commando or, Jesus, I don’t think I’d be here writing this today!)
“Oh,” I grunt, blushing, before slipping back into the office. I wait a few ticks then, just as I’m getting anxious, hear a slight tapping on the door. I poke my head out and he’s standing there, green track pants on,
green shirt on, even the wig.
“Perfect,” I gush, dipping my fingertips into the can of green grease paint I brought and carefully applying it all over his gray skin. There’s not much showing, his hands, his neck above the crew neck collar of his green T-shirt, his face. I cover it liberally and then dab out the rest until every inch of him, head to toe and back again, is covered in green.
“Do you have a mirror?” I ask.
He shakes his head, touching his green face with his green fingers. “Don’t muss it,” I fuss at him, then reach for my purse. I keep my compact in one hand and smear the green paint all over my face with the other. It’s heavier than I thought, and I know it’s going to give me zits and I’ll break out in a few days.
But, then again… not if this all works out like I hope it does.
I put the compact away and cover my own hands, and look up at him, slipping my fuzzy green wig on. It’s like clown hair, curly and floppy, but green. “Now we match.”
He sighs. “Not quite,” and I know he means about the whole living versus living dead thing.
“Okay, okay,” I say, leaving my backpack behind. “Are you ready?”
He pauses at the door, fingers hovering over the handle. “Are you sure about this?”
I turn to him, putting a green hand on his green shirt. “I’m not trapping you, Calvin.”
He cocks his head, a little grease paint dabbing on the lighter green of his T-shirt. I imagine we’ll both be covered in this crap by the end of the night. “How… how did you know my name?”
I jerk a thumb back to a coat rack by the door, where his Z.E.D. nametag hangs from the front of his jumpsuit. But I knew it long before tonight, and something in his eyes – his cold, gray eyes – tells me he already knew that.
But he nods, and we walk through the door. It’s dark out now, and a half-moon dots the cloudy sky above. Even though we’re on the outskirts of town, and will have to walk through several heavily wooded areas to get to Nightshade proper, you can hear the festival atmosphere in the air already. Bagpipes, of course, distant but clear.
I guess it makes sense. Ever since Halloween was outlawed after the Great Trick or Treat Outbreak of 1217, St. Patrick’s Day is pretty much the new Halloween.
It didn’t hurt that it was an Irishman who invented the new copper nightstick that is all the rage now, and helped turn the tide in the Great Zombie Versus Militia War of 1218. So, add Irish as heroes plus no Halloween and what you get is one very energetic St. Patrick’s Day tradition.
We walk through the woods, silently, side by side. The closer we get to town, the louder the music gets. It sounds live, spotty on the wind, getting louder or softer depending on which way the breeze is blowing.
March is still chilly in North Carolina, and I kind of wish I’d brought a hoodie. But then we wouldn’t match, and that would kind of defeat the purpose.
“What about the checkpoint?” he asks, halfway to town, strings of little green lights strung around the light posts.
“They’re usually mobbed by now,” I say, from experience. “So it shouldn’t be an issue.”
“How do you know so much about St. Patrick’s Day?” he asks, shoulder brushing mine on accident as we swerve between the tight trees on the edge of town.
Because I’ve been planning this for a whole year, I think, but don’t say. Out loud I tell him, “My roommate at the shelter is one of the organizer’s of this year’s event.”
He nods but, like the nametag moment, I don’t think he quite believes me. We walk and, as we near the checkpoint at the edge of town, he inches closer to me, our shoulders brushing against one another more and more frequently.
The music is louder now, and I realize the guard at the gate shack is playing some as well. There is a cluster of partygoers, older kids, mostly, from the outskirts of town. They cluster around, cheering, jeering, most of them drunk already.
We inch closer, the guard laughing at something a cute blonde in a tight Sexy Leprechaun costume has said. He’s laughing so hard, so long, staring at her bazongas that, just like that, we slip past.
He waits until we’re closer to town to say, “Wow. I thought you were kidding.”
I look over at him, goofy green clown wig bouncing all over, face covered in green, and smile. “Feel better now?”
He starts to answer when a shot rings out, and he flinches, crouching low, eyes wide as I join him. There are people near us, doing the same thing, gaudy plastic gold shamrock necklaces clinking as they hover and shake. Then someone laughs, then someone else, and more “pop-pop-pops” sound and someone else says, relief splashed all over his voice, “It’s fireworks!”
We stand and Calvin says, “Fun.”
“I’m… I’m sorry about that,” I say, because I’ve been so selfish, I haven’t stopped to think what it might feel like for Calvin to come out with all of… us.
“It’s okay,” he sighs, wig flopping as he nods. “I’m used to it.”
I see my shelter up the street, and grab his hand. “I want to show you something,” I say, and he lets me guide him along. The crowd is thicker here, we’re getting closer to downtown.
The restaurants are open past curfew tonight, and people in green felt hats and green and white stockings stumble around, pinching those stupid enough not to wear green.
The Oxford Street Shelter for Displaced Women is really just an abandoned hotel, left empty when so many of Nightshade’s citizens died in the Great Carolina Outbreak of 2016.
I live there now, on the third floor, in a room of my own. It’s depressing as hell; the room, the floor, the whole damn place. We stand in front of it, the only place in Nightshade NOT hopping tonight.
“Is this where you live?” he asks.
I nod, looking over at him, sad as I can.
“Where… where are your parents? Your family?”
I answer half his question, anyway: “Long gone, Calvin. Like all the other girls who live here.”
I take his hand and lead him across the street, blocked off for the party, jammed with people drinking out of cheap plastic beer mugs and jingling their blinking shamrock necklaces. The coffee shop I like, Dolly’s Donuts, is over there, across from the Shelter. We go inside and it’s empty because, duh, no alcohol.
It’s quiet, after the crowded street and live bands and laughing crowds. The woman behind the counter nods as I slip my credit badge across the counter. “Two iced coffees, two shamrock donuts, please.”
She smirks, a new face, probably because none of the regular cashiers wanted to work tonight. “You’re lucky, got the last two.”
I smile as she slides my badge through the computer terminal and peels off five quick credits. I only have about ten left, but I’m hoping after tonight I won’t need them anymore. At least, I don’t think they take them where I want to go.
Calvin stands beside me, awkwardly, stiff as a board, as if the Reanimation Patrol are going to be here any minute. “Relax,” I tell him as we carry our tray over to a table for two in the corner. “I told you, nobody cares who comes out tonight. The whole town’s tired of staying alert. They just want to blow off steam, if only for one night.”
He nods, sliding the coffee and donut in front of him even though we both know he can’t eat it.
“I wish they served, you know…” I say, around a mouthful of thick cake donut smeared with bright green icing.
“Brains?” he chuckles, then looks around as if anyone – meaning no one, since we’re all alone – might hear him.
I shrug. “I feel bad eating all alone.”
“I’ve already fed this week,” he says. When I arch an eyebrow, coffee halfway to my lips, he explains, “They make sure all the Z.E.D. workers are properly fed.”
“How… how do you eat it?”
“You’re poking fun?” he asks. The green has faded a little, from his face, or maybe it’s just the bright coffee shop lights highlighting some of the cold, gray skin I missed back in the wareho
use.
“No,” I say, reaching for his donut. I mean, if it’s the last food I’ll ever eat, I want to be full, right? Even if it is full of carbs and spastic sugary green icing? “I’m genuinely curious.”
He shrugs, toying with his straw. “They blend it for us, like a smoothie.”
We both make a face at the same time. “Is that… enough for you? I thought you guys needed live brains or something?”
“They’re supposed to be ‘live’ brains, but… personally I think they water them down.”
I chuckle, shoving my empty donut plate away. “Maybe that’s why you’re so grumpy.”
He sighs, shoving his iced coffee my way. We trade, when the cashier’s not looking, so it looks like he’s eaten something. “Why are you so interested, anyway? Honestly, this is the weirdest night of my afterlife.”
I snort, even though he’s seriously serious. “I just, I’m not trying to be rude. I thought I could, I dunno, get to know you better or something.”
He smirks, skin green gray now. It’s like the grease paint is seeping into his dead pores or something. Jesus, I never thought of that. “What is it, ‘take your zombie to St. Patrick’s Day’ or something?”
I don’t smile or nod or shrug. “Is it so wrong to reach out to you? I mean, you used to be a person, right? So… pretend we’re both people. For one night, just this one night.”
“But we’re not,” he flares, a little too loudly. “I’m not a person anymore, and you are, so… we have nothing, absolutely nothing in common.”
I ignore his vehemence, his flared nostrils. “We go to the same school.”
He clucks his dead tongue. “No, Mandy, you go to school, and I clean your toilets. There’s, you know, kind of a difference.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “You’re right, you’re right. But, I can still want to know more about you.”
“What do you want to know? Huh? Is this a prank, like… your friends are going to come in any minute and snap a picture and put it in the yearbook. ‘Mandy Goes Out With a Zombie!’ I don’t…”
I reach across, warm hand on his cold wrist. “I’m not pranking you, Calvin. I just… like… who were you, before this happened?”
“I wasn’t Calvin, that’s for sure.”
“Really?”
“No, that’s the name they gave me at Z.E.D.”
“They do that?”
“They do whatever they want, and with those new stupid copper night sticks, they keep us all in line the best way they know how.”
I nod. Somebody, somewhere, by accident probably, realized that zombies run on power. Not blood, not even the food they eat, but the electricity from the brains they crave. Electricity, pure electricity, that’s their food; that’s their blood.
To stop the power, to interrupt the electric current that keeps them alive, or re-alive, whatever, they threw copper pennies at them. It knocked the zombies out, for awhile. Now, with these new copper plated nightsticks, the zombies are pretty much powerless against anyone who has one. They only work at close range, but still, it beats taking your chances with swinging an axe or chainsaw or machete.
“So what was your name?”
He shrugs. “I don’t remember, but I know for a fact it wasn’t Calvin.”
“How do you know for a fact?”
He looks back at me, grinning a little, revealing his big yellow teeth. “I don’t KNOW, know, I just feel it, you know?”
I nod, even though I don’t. “What do you remember?”
“I remember high school. A little. I was a wrestler.”
I squeal a little bit, getting a frigid look from the cashier. “I knew it.”
“What? How?”
“Your height. You’re a good height for a wrestler.”
He shakes his head. “I wrestled, I had a girlfriend, she was pretty, until the Shufflers got the head of her cheerleading squad in the second outbreak. She turned, and I didn’t know it, and I went up to her, to check on her, and…”
“She did this to you?” I ask.
“Not her,” he reminds me, as if defending her. “What she became.”
I nod. Like my parents, turning on each other. And then on my brother, Brandon, who tried to turn on me.
“But now, I mean, now that you’ve fed, and you’re settled, have you seen her?”
“The Reanimation Patrol got her,” he says, looking over my shoulder. “They took her to the Z-Zone.”
I sit up a little, an idea flickering to life. “I… I didn’t know they still did that,” I lie. “I mean, ever since they found out you guys get docile after a few days, after your first brains, I thought they stopped doing that.”
“They did. But they sent her to the Z-Zone before they knew that, back in 2014, so…”
I nod, the same year they got Brandon. He’s still distracted, and I turn to see what he’s looking at when suddenly the café door opens. A chill wind wafts in, followed by three clowns dressed head to toe in green. Not actual, big feet, red nose clowns, but, you know… clowns. Frat boys, jocks, whatever, clowns.
Green ball caps, green glasses shaped like mugs full of green beer, green shamrock necklaces clattering around their necks, green vests, green cargo shorts.
They’re drunk, stumbling, loud, singing, the open door letting in a blast of old Irish fiddle from the live band jamming “Danny Boy” in the town square.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” one of them cheers, making a beeline for us. I can feel the tension in Calvin’s hands as they rest, palms down, on the table in front of him.
“Wuzzup?!?!” blasts another, following the first guy over.
The third stumbles along, quietly, eyes half-lidded behind his cheesy prank glasses.
The first one sits down, on my side, reeking of beer and cigarette smoke and corned beef and cabbage, which it looks like he may have thrown up all over his vest before getting a second wind and deciding to stumble into Dolly’s Donuts.
“Hey, darlin’,” he oozes. He’s older, college age, thick, farm fed, burly.
“Hey pardner,” shouts the other, red cheeked, sliding down next to Calvin. Calvin slides over, to avoid being touched. The kid notices, so does his friend. The third is lingering, still standing, watching Calvin closely.
“This party sucks,” says the Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy. “Lame. Oh.”
“I agree,” says his friend, sitting next to Calvin. “We should shanghai these two kids, take ‘em with us, show ‘em what a good time really looks like.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, making conversation so Calvin won’t have to. “Where are you guys going?”
“Shuffler hunting!”
I somehow manage not to flinch, or kick him in the gonads. “Wow, sounds dangerous.”
Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy makes a “pfffttt” sound, beer spit falling on my green T-shirt. “No way. We hear there’s a couple of them, out beyond the checkpoint, hiding out in the woods. We head out there, blast ‘em full of shotgun pellets, watch em try to limp after us.”
His friend, on Calvin’s side, nods. His shirt says “Born Lucky” inside of a gold four-leaf clover. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he grunts, between hearty burps that smell, amazingly, like… corned beef and cabbage.
“Let’s go,” says Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy, yanking on my sleeve. “Come on, you guys come with us.”
“Yeah,” says Born Lucky Shirt, reaching for Calvin. He backs up even more, but his chair is against the window now, so there’s nowhere else for him to go. Drunk as they are, Born Lucky Shirt looks across the table at Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy with a knowing grin.
“Hey…”
“Out!” shouts a feminine voice from behind as we all turn to find the cashier, still wearing her green Dolly’s Donuts apron. “You three, out, now. I told you when you come in here this ain’t no pub, and I meant it.”
The only reason Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy and Born Lucky Shirt Dude and their friend – who I have no cute name for, s
orry – move is because Cashier Lady has a shotgun, twin barrels following them all the way to the door.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” one of them shouts, voice full of warning, as he slides through the door.
Calvin and I look at each other. “You two better use the back door,” she says, lowering her shotgun. She looks at Calvin, hard face softening. “And son, I suggest you get back to wherever it is you came from. Your costume’s wearing off, and this is the wrong place to be on St. Patrick’s Day.”
I follow her gaze and, sure enough, Calvin’s green face paint is all but faded now. If those three hadn’t been so wasted, for sure they would have seen. And even drunk, they were suspicious enough.
“Thank you,” he says, standing.
She shakes her head, free hand reaching out as he passes. He pauses, her hand on his shoulder. “I… my son, he… he’s like you. I miss him, terrible. I don’t want what happened to him to… to happen to you…”
Tears leak, silently, from her eyes. Calvin nods and heads for the back while I pause. “Thank you,” I say, squeezing her shoulder.
She nods, staring down at my ID Badge on the table. “Don’t forget your credits.”
“They’re for you,” I say, peeling away from her gently. “I won’t need them where I’m going.”
She takes it, greedily, hiding it away in her dirty tip apron. Credits are money now, and money is hard to come by these days.
There is a back room, then a back door, then a back alley. We creep down all three, emerging just past the town square, on the far side of town. There are no more checkpoints out here, thankfully, because now, under the moonlight, Calvin looks like what he is: the living dead.
We hustle, out of town, through the woods, not pausing until we reach the first clearing well out of Nightshade.
He leans against a tree, steadying himself, though I know he doesn’t have to catch his breath.
“I’m not going to help you,” he says, gray eyes avoiding mine. He peers out into the darkness instead, at the path we’ve just taken, watching, listening, to see if anybody’s following.
I let him, until he turns back to me and nods. We start walking again and I say, “Help me what?”
“Help you do whatever it is you want me to help you do.”
I stop him, just across from the warehouse. I tug on his sleeve, dotted with green grease paint. “You have to,” I say, voice cracking with emotion.
He pauses, holding up a finger. We stand, quietly, listening for drunks or a Reanimation Patrol or hunters or all three, but nothing. Not yet. “No, I don’t,” he says at last, walking as quickly as he can toward the door he let me in earlier.
We walk inside and he bolts it again: click, click, click, click, click, click. When he’s done, he yanks off his wig, tossing it to the ground. I do, too. It’s hot and itchy and gross and I never want to see the thing again.
He paces, using his long sleeves to smear the last of the paint from his skin. “So this was all a plot,” he says, huffing. “The whole time. There was no getting to know me, no wanting me to experience what life was like after curfew. You were just… using… me.”
“Yeah, I was.”
He pauses in his endless loop around his living quarters, looks me in the eye and says, “You suck, by the way.”
I stop, short, gasping like he’s just punched me. Then, I realize, he’s right; I do suck. Big time. “But I’m desperate,” I say.
“For what?” he asks, throwing his hands up in front of him and, so help me God, when he does it, he looks almost… human.
“For what you have,” I say, inching closer. “For what you can do for me.”
“The only thing I can do for you is kill you,” he growls, lowering his hands. Just then, gray skin covering his taut body, gray eyes boring into me, a dead smile on his dead lips, he seems on the verge of doing just that.
And suddenly I realize what I’ve come here for. It becomes real to me. This whole last year, watching his every move as he cleaned the hallways, the bathrooms, the locker rooms of Nightshade, waiting for tonight, when I could lure him into town, show him my sad life, and make him feel bad for me, now… it’s here.
And I’m not sure if I’m ready.
“Is that what you want?” he asks when I’m silent for too long.
“Yes,” I murmur. “No, I mean, I don’t want it, but it’s the only way to...”
We’re face to face, him a few inches taller, me looking up into his eyes. “To what?” he asks, cold voice crackling.
“To find my brother.”
He steps back, one step, two, and shakes his head. “Now I get it,” he says, sagging down into his beach chair. “He’s undead, isn’t he? Like me. And you think, if I help you, you can find him, get him back, get your life back.”
I cock my head to the side. “I don’t want my life back,” I say. “I don’t have a life. That’s what tonight was about, Calvin. To show you what my life is like, so you won’t feel bad when I ask you to… to…”
He stands, quickly for a zombie, and grabs my throat. “To what?” he asks, loud, in my ear, breath cold on my skin as he drags me a few feet across the room. “To bite you? To turn you? And then what? You change your mind, halfway through? You regret it, every day of your afterlife? And I have to re-live with that for the rest of my days. No thanks…”
He shoves me away, hard, so that I fall against the hat rack where his Z.E.D. jumpsuit hangs. “He’s in the Z-Zone,” I confess, voice shaky. “They… they took him there, before the Reanimation Reunification Pact. I need to find him, and you and I both know I can’t go there like this.”
The Z-Zone. For zombies only. A former National Park, now littered with the undead, lost and forgotten, a No Man’s Land for the Undead, a suicide pact for the living.
“You’re not going there at all.”
“I have to, Calvin. I must! I can’t live like this, alone, until I die. No family, no friends. This isn’t a life, it’s a death sentence!”
“You don’t want this,” he insists, pacing now, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. “This is no life, either.”
“But at least I’ll have Brandon,” I say. “At least we’ll have each other. He’s alone, he needs me.”
“If he’s been in the Z-Zone that long, Mandy, he doesn’t need anybody.”
“He needs me, he’s… he’s my little brother. I owe him that much.”
“He’s undead, Mandy. Like me. YOU don’t owe him, you don’t owe anybody anything except to live out your life while you can.”
I shake my head, inching toward him. “We can go… we can go together. You can find your girlfriend, the cheerleaders. She’s there, too, right?”
“Do you know how big the Z-Zone is?” he asks. “It would take forever to find them.”
“Lucky for you, you have forever.”
“But you don’t,” he adds, pausing in his own footsteps.
I stop, too. Stop chasing him. We’re a few feet apart, the cold oozing off of him. I wonder, how it will feel, being that cold all the time. Or if I’ll even notice after a few hundred years.
“Not yet,” I say.
He shakes his head, but I know he’s close. “What are you going to do, Calvin? Go back to school tomorrow, wipe out our toilets? Mop our floors?”
He shrugs. “It’s what I do. It’s better than the Z-Zone.”
“You don’t believe that,” I say, taking a step toward him. He holds up a hand, but I ignore it. “Then don’t come with me, I don’t care, just give me this gift, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s not a gift,” he says, but he’s taken his hand down. “It’s a curse.”
“So is living all alone,” I say, and I don’t really realize how true that is until I say the actual words. He seems to hear it, in my voice, the deadpan, the dread, the fear, the sadness, the crackle of tears hiding just beyond my emotions. “It’s not even living, Calvin. Not even a little.”
He sha
kes his head. “Don’t ask me to do this, Mandy.”
“Don’t make me ask you.”
“God,” he says, looking away. “God,” he says again, but deeper this time, harder, and when he looks back, there are flecks of yellow in his eyes, and his mouth is open, gray lips peeling back from yellow teeth, lips quivering.
“Oh,” I say, as he leaps at me, biting into my shoulder, tearing into the flesh. His teeth are cold, raw and sharp against my bone as I cry out, crumpling to the floor.
He stops, wiping blood off his lips, turning from me. Already I can feel the coldness move through me, but something else, too… a sizzle, flickering in each cell, like Pop Rocks in my veins, like the rush of soda foam when you first open the can.
“You’ll sleep now,” he says, standing over me. When… when did he turn around? When did he walk back to me? “For a day, maybe more. Then, I’ll feed you, and we’ll go to the Z-Zone. Together.”
I nod, looking up at him, so handsome, so gray. Will I look like that? Gray, like him? Lean, wiry… not quite human?
Will I look like… me?
The lights flicker, or maybe it’s just in my head because he just stands there, watching me, not looking away. Now they dim, the room growing darker and darker with every blink of my heavy, heavy eyelids. The cold seeps in, like a blanket oozing over every limb, covering me in a deep, wet chill.
He mumbles something, or maybe he says it clearly but I’m lost because I’m going down, down, down and can’t hear it so well but it sounds like, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”
And it’s the last thing I hear as a human, and the first thing I hear as a zombie…