Zombies Don't Ride Motorcycles

by Melissa Leo-Pahl

  A bar fight. Yes, that’s all I need. A bunch of intoxicated Undead men fighting to prove each other’s manhood. I’d never considered whether Undead men could even get intoxicated until now. Maybe they pretend, just like they pretend everything else. Clinging to the memory of a bar fight they experienced when they were alive. Let’s recreate it. Let’s relive it.

  The Living Dead world, you come to learn, is just a bunch of actors, and a regretfully bad show of acting. Maybe life was like that too. Actors, playing the role of themselves. Life’s greatest contradiction is also death’s.

  Closed up here in this tiny bathroom, I just shut my eyes and wait for the show to end. The shouting, the scuffle and kicking of feet against floor, the crashing and smashing of bottles, I just shut my eyes and wait it out like I would an annoying person I wish would shut up.

  Thoughts entangle me like a web. I find myself staring at my face in the mirror, puzzled, captivated by … I’m not sure … Am I remembering something?

  Am I remembering me?

  Then without warning, a young man quickly slips into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, pressing his body flat against it.

  I wasn’t expecting this.

  His panicked eyes, his warm brown eyes, they find mine—and horror fills them at once. Why he has this reaction at seeing me, I don’t know.

  “You’re in the ladies,” I decide to tell him.

  He puts a finger to his lips, signaling that I should be quiet. His hand is trembling.

  “What’s so—?” I start to ask, but his other hand goes to my mouth, silencing me at once.

  His soft, warm hand.

  The violent throws of bodies and glass continues for what feels like several minutes, and then instantly falls silent. A single pair of footsteps crosses the tavern floor as though pacing, one end of the tavern to the other, back and forth.

  The man holding his warm hand to my mouth, I notice how strong his arms look. His broad shoulders from which the arms come. His face reflects a warmth that stirs something deep in me, something I’d assumed was lost. His five-o’clock-shadowed rosy cheeks, I’m shocked that any miracle from the squatty pink Refinery could replicate them. Or his lush lips. A noteworthy job they did on this rugged man I have to admit, even despite the odd circumstance. His soft watery eyes are more aware than any I’ve seen yet. I watch his forehead screw up in concentration as he silently presses an ear to the door, listening with all his body.

  Slowly, the steps approach us. This guy’s grip on my mouth tightens so much, I have to bring my own hand up to meet his. He seems to be holding his breath, squeezing his eyes shut like he’s in pain. The mystery walker stops just short of the door, then waits there as though he is listening too. An eternity seems to pass before finally, the footsteps slowly draw away, growing fainter, fainter, then gone at last.

  He finally lets go of my mouth and whispers his first words: “Are you going to eat me?”

  Not the sweetest first words I’ve heard. “What?”

  “Are you going to eat me?” he asks again.

  “Seriously?”

  After studying my face doubtfully for a while, he seems to relax. “Okay, then.”

  And without further explanation, he swings open the door and peers outside. Deciding the coast is clear I guess, he steps out of the bathroom. When I reluctantly follow, I find the tavern littered with skulls and bones of the bodies it once peacefully occupied. None of them stir. This must be part of the big pretend-scene—the part where they all lay in a mess, knocked out by one bottle or another, done in by someone’s wildly swinging fist. Skulls and bones, an unsettling but impressive touch. Among them, shattered glasses and spilled pools of waste decorate the scene.

  This is an impressively disturbing tableau of undeath. I’m genuinely taken aback by its … horror.

  “Is everyone okay?” I ask carelessly, looking around. “A little bit overdone, don’t you think?—this scene? I didn’t know the dead could die. Seems silly, the thought.” I blink. “So … Anyone getting up anytime soon?”

  “No,” the young man murmurs, quickly locking the front door of the tavern—no idea why—then whipping over to the bar counter and inspecting it, looking for something.

  “Is this normal? Bar fights? Is this what I have to look forward to for all eternity?”

  “No,” he mumbles again, agitated, opening cabinets, rummaging through drawers.

  “I’m Winter. That’s the name they gave me.” I watch him scavenge through every drawer behind the counter, curious. “What’s the name they gave you?”

  “No,” he says, slams something shut, tears open another cabinet, a vein jutting out of his forehead with his face scrunched up in frustration. “Not a drop of anything, anywhere. Not even—Not even—”

  “What are you looking for? Wait,” I say, listening carefully. “Do you hear that?”

  He stops his hunting and stares at me now. I meet his eyes, pointing up at the ceiling where I think the sound is coming from. “Do you hear that? It’s like ... a gentle drum.”

  “No,” he whispers, the sound barely making it from his lips this time. “I hear nothing.”

  “Do you think whoever it was that started this is coming back? It sounds like footsteps, or some kind of drum, or ... Wow, I can’t believe you can’t hear that. Just listen ...”

  I draw closer to him, thinking the noise is coming from the counter. Then I cross around the counter and notice him stepping away from me.

  “Wait,” I tell him. “Just listen … Listen.”

  His back is pressed against the wall. Before I realize how closely I’ve come in pursuit of the strange sound, I’m standing right in front of him.

  Then I hear it, clear as a spoken word. A thumping. A drumming.

  The horror returns to his eyes. Thumping. Thumping.

  Drumming. Within him.

  A heartbeat.

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  Celebrating your First Life … Here’s to your Second.

  Prologue

  It’s not my fault. I didn’t kill my mother. She killed herself, I shout over and over in my mind while the lashings come down upon my body with brute force. The welts from this morning’s beating are still throbbing as he adds more to my already disfigured body. I see nothing except an infinite abyss of blackness. My eyes are forced into darkness behind a blindfold as they are every time he beats me. Stop! I am screaming in my head. Stop! Shaking my head back and forth, I plead with God to take my life, put me out of my misery that has been going on for the last eight months. The handcuffs are digging through my delicate flesh, piercing my skin each time I twist and pull against the restraint. With each jerk of my body, the clinking sound of metal against metal sounds as I struggle to pull myself into a ball and protect my already bruised body from each blow. It’s no use. I can’t move. There’s no way to defend myself. The crack of the belt connects with my skin once again, followed by the intense, agonizing burn and the ripping of my flesh. I taste the salt of my tears as they leak from my eyes. I feel the warmth of my blood trail down my arms, legs and stomach.

  When it’s done, my stepfather tosses the belt to the floor, winded from my beating. “Are you ready to be mine, my little Margaret Darcia?” he whispers in my ear, then turns on his heel and slams the door shut.

  The sound of gravel under his Mercedes travels to my ears and I know he is gone, but this time, he won’t stay away. He’ll be back; he’s left me with a warning. His words couldn’t have been clearer than if he wrote them on the wall. Once my stepfather returns, this time it will be different. This time I will need to be clean. The rancid smell of urine is to be washed away from my body, he will come back with a new bed, new clothes, and I will now have to fulfill the duties of my mother now that she is dead. Once he returns, I will no longer be the fourteen-year-old girl he blames for her death, but a f
ourteen-year-old replacement for his dead wife.

  It’s been months since he brought me here. Years since the first scar decorated my body. Almost ten years total of abuse, and I can’t do it anymore. I have two choices, survive or die. Which one would I choose? I burrow through the dark depths of my soul. Trying to find a reason to live because, every path I take, tells me death is my best choice. It’s the only choice. Death will take away the guilt over my mother. Death will eliminate the aching pain of my scars—inside and out—and my soul will finally be at peace. Death will be easy. Do I have it in me to give up, though? If I die, he will win. If I survive, there’s a small shadow of hope that I will be free. Rescued from the hell that is my life.

  I ultimately decide I am a survivor, a fighter. I want to live my life like any other teenage girl. I want friends, to go to sleepovers, attend school, and do everything else that accompanies a coming of age teen. I have no one to fight for me, though. From the moment I was a toddler, no one has saved me from his abusive hand, not even the one person who’s supposed to protect me. I can’t let him take the only innocent part left of me. I won’t be my mother. I can’t be weak.

  As soon as the thoughts of survival cross my mind, a frantic sound rips from my mouth. It starts out meek and then instantly escalates to pleading. I scream. I scream with the only fight I have left. I scream in hopes that someone will finally come to my rescue. I scream because I am a fighter and I truly want to live. I can’t exist in this hell any longer, so I scream. I’m hoarse with desperation, but I continue to cry for help.

  Then I hear it. My death is coming with the sound of a door slamming against a wall and feet traveling up the stairs. The fast plodding of footsteps gets louder with every second and I prepare myself for his wrath. I release a sob from my throat, knowing my fight is over. My stepfather will kill me and I welcome it. I’ve thrown in the towel. I’m done.

  As the door to the bedroom flies open I continue to scream. Instead of pain, I feel comforting hands slide down my arms and the blindfold is tugged from my eyes. I’m too scared to open them. If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up. Yet, as an unknown smell passes through my nose— a smell of a men’s cologne and the sweetness of sweat—I know instantly this is not him, this is not my stepfather. This is the smell of salvation. After months of darkness, my eyes focus on the only color in the room, aqua blue. Suddenly, I am lost in an ocean blue pool. I hear the key unlock the handcuffs and my arms and feet are finally free, but I keep my focus on his blue irises. The small pang of relief subsides as I look at this stranger and I know in this moment he’s my protector. The one person who would keep me safe from the hell that exists in this world. Weakly, I pull myself to my elbows and whisper, “Are you…my knight in shining armor?”

  The stranger yanks the hooded sweatshirt from his body and places it over my naked skin, drowning me in fabric. He lifts me into his strong arms and my head instantly falls to his chest, absorbing his safety. As he rushes down the stairs he says, “Always. You’re safe now.” For the first time in my fourteen years of life, I feel what I’ve craved all along…hope.

  About the Author

  M.S. Brannon was born and raised in the Midwest. She still resides there today with her wonderful husband and son. When she is not writing or reading, M.S. Brannon spends time with her family, goes to the movies, and discovers new music. She writes romance because she believes love and heartache are the rawest emotions one can experience.

  FACEBOOK

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/MS-Brannon/361712440596820?sk=timeline

  TWITTER

  @MSBrannonauthor

  BLOG

  http://msbrannon.wordpress.com/

  GOODREADS

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7103293.M_S_Brannon

  Other Books by M.S. Brannon

  Sulfur Heights series

  Scarred Love

  Tragic Love

  Blind Love

  Surviving Love

  Redeemed Love

  Everlasting Love, The Evans Family Epilogue, coming in the Winter 2014

  Stand Alones

  Last Call

  Forbidden from You, Forbidden for me, release date TBD

  Believe in Brave, YA Novella, coming in Winter of 2014