Call Me Zombie: Volume I: Rose

by Jasmina Kuenzli

  “I just thought— “I swallow the lump in my throat. “I thought I was waiting for someone who loved me, but it turned out I was just waiting for someone who was there.” I take a bite of a cookie. “I feel so stupid, so easy.”

  “Hold up,” Malia says. “I see what you’re doing here, and I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, do you like Perce?’

  “Yeah.” I do like Perce. I like the stupid red bandana he wears and the way he yelled about yelling during the meeting, and how he strode up to me and kissed me like it was the easiest thing in the world on the day we met.

  “And did you feel good when it happened? Was there ever, at any point, a moment where you thought, ‘Ew stop.’” Malia wrinkles her nose for effect, getting the laughter she intended.

  “No, but— “

  “It’s not a bad thing to sleep with people, Rogue,” Normani says softly. “The bad thing is making it define you. Or letting other people use it to define you.”

  Perce cared enough to chase me down when I tried to run, to respect my wishes not to tell everyone about what happened, to not pry when I tried to distance myself from him.

  “I was upset, and he was— “

  “Comforting you,” Tavi nods. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  I join in this time, when everyone laughs.

  Just then, someone bangs on the door, hard. Malia, clutching her hands over her ears, yells, “What? Why are you trying to break the door down?”

  Mason pushes the door open as cautiously as he can.

  “Come on, Mason,” Malia yells, “This isn’t a porno. We are not having an underwear pillow fight!’

  “That’s not even what I was thinking,” Mason protests, but his red cheeks highlight the lie.

  “Right.” Malia says. “What’s up? Why are you here?”

  “I just wanted to know if you guys wanted to give us any of the cookies,” Mason says.

  There’s a loud chorus of protest at this, and Malia picks up a pillow. We all take her cue, facing him down. “Yeah, sure,” Malia smirks. “You can have as many cookies as you want. But you’ll have to go through us.”

  Mason rolls his eyes and shuts the door, muttering something that sounds like, “chef,” and “ungrateful” and “women.”

  We laugh until Malia reports that he’s out of the hallway.

  “Now, Janet,” Lisa claps her hands. “How’d you meet Owen?”

  Later that night, Mason gives me free time to catch up on sleep, before I take the last shift before dawn. My eyes feel heavy with exhaustion, but I can’t sleep. The conversations we had today, the normalcy of them, the buttery chocolate taste of the cookies… It was all so sadly familiar, and it reminded me so much of the way things used to be.

  But it was also new, and not just because I’d spent a few hours discussing things I’d never dreamed I’d be talking about during the zombie apocalypse.

  It was new because we knew it wouldn’t last, and that somehow made it better. No one held back; all of our secret crushes, the boys or girls we’d seen one time and never spoken to, the past relationships and heartbreaks. We all told, a secret at a time, until the comforter swam with them.

  When the world’s ending, you tend to care less about what other people think.

  I wish that my nightmares could be disappear as easily as my regard for others’ opinions.

  But they’re still here, my ghosts. Every time I close my eyes, I see them.

  I don’t know what will happen when I finally sleep enough for the dreams take me. I don’t want to know what will happen when this ends.

  One thing the zombies made sure of is that nothing lasts forever.

  I stand, pacing the room, antsy. I have to pick my way around the sleeping forms on

  the ground, but they hardly notice. They’re exhausted enough to sleep through anything.

  Lucia, curled up on the bed next to Laura, looks so young asleep, completely trusting, like here is home.

  Home. The white trailer with its clapboard shutters. Smoke and clouds and watching Ben slip away.

  Home. The bed and breakfast with stuffy old furniture, and watching the sunset over the rooftop, and laughing to keep from crying.

  I open the door and move as silently as possible down the hallway, hardly noticing where I’m walking.

  I knock on the door, and there is rustling on the other side. I don’t know how late it is, but the moon is high in the sky, which means that my dawn shift can’t be more than five or six hours off.

  I need something to help me get to sleep.

  He answers the door, his hair wild from sleeping on it, making me reach up instinctively to smooth it down. His hair always feels feather-soft in my fingers. He looks at me with the mist of sleep in his eyes, lips wide and bewildered, like he was on that rooftop when he reached for me, and I for him, and we were both falling, pulling each other down.

  We don’t waste time with talking.

  The End

  After, I remember Chase’s face the most, the way he seemed to fall apart when we decided to stay, the way he tried to make us see that we were foolish to go up against Jake, to think that this should be about anything other than getting away.

  I should have known better. I knew what they were better than anyone.

  I should have known that when the monsters close in, the only safe thing to do is run.

  I’m waiting in line for my turn at archery, running my fingers along my bowstring, going over the stance over and over again in my head. I’m still not as good as Traina was, or even Andra, who started shooting a week after me. I still hit the target, but it’s nothing like the confident throws I do with knives, or the way I breathe into the bullets when I fire my gun.

  Perce thinks I’m doing it on purpose—that not being able to hit the target is an excuse for him to stand close to me, to lay a hand on my waist just enough to guide me into the right stance. For him to whisper in my ear, make the hairs on my neck stand on end.

  I’d be lying if Perce being in charge of archery didn’t have something to do with the time I spend here, but I really can’t shoot. Every time I try, it misses the center, usually just clips the edge of the target.

  I pick at my nails. Dirt is caked underneath them from training, and I can never seem to get it out.

  In front of me, Andra hits the bullseye three times in a row, and Perce whistles, walking over to hug her and clap her on the back.

  As I step up to the line, the world stills. Perce stretches, exposing a strip of bare stomach, and I can’t stop looking at him, remembering the nights we’ve spent, every night we can since I showed up at his door, exploring each other, talking and laughing and touching until we fall asleep.

  Perce notices me watching him and smirks, the same grin he gave me that first day, the one that promises trouble and danger and romance, and I grin right back, and the world narrows down to this moment.

  For a second after it happens, the world remains silent.

  And then Perce is falling to the ground, clutching a shoulder bursting with red, and the surprise on his face, the hurt and the edges of panic that crowd into him all at once, flip the switch on my ears.

  It all comes back in roaring colors. The sun cuts into my eyes and the girl next to me is screaming, holding up her friend, who has a hole where her head used to be.

  I’m moving before I can think. I haul Perce to his feet, grabbing at the arm that isn’t covered in blood, and we’re both running together, slipping on the grass that still has hints of morning dew, sprinting towards the house. I’m still holding the arrow I was going to shoot, but the bow is slung across my back.

  But Jake stands on the front porch, arms crossed, not even bothering to fight, watching the chaos.

  Andra and Lucia sprint past us in the other direction, nothing in their hands, running headlong at the lines of men that have emerged from around the clearing. One of them sticks out a hand and stops Andra mid-stride. She drops to the ground like a stone, and
Lucia, too panicked to even see what’s happening, is past him, in the trees.

  Perce and I turn as one and sprint toward the edges of the group, hoping to slip through before they tighten the circle. But there are too many of them; they crowd and push the runners back, and now we’re all cowering against each other.

  Most of us don’t even have weapons. They’re all stashed inside, apart from the handful we had out for training,

  Next to me, Perce floats a hand across the waistband of his jeans, and I see the outline of a gun, pressed to his back. He stands in front of me so that I block their view of him, and his other hand interlaces with mine.

  Perce and I are still facing Jake, and I know he’s got one chance, one moment to end it before it begins.

  Then Perce moves, fluid and perfect, I step aside, and Jake’s friend dives in front of him, and it’s like that gunshot lets off a chain reaction.

  We are Hunters, not given to running. We will not let guns turn us into cowards.

  The Jackal closest to me, with stinking, rotten teeth and stringy hair, drops to the ground and screams, an arrow in his side.

  I aim my bow carefully at the guy in front of me, who can’t be older than seventeen or eighteen, and I try to steady my hands. “Don’t move,” I say, “Or this is going through your eye.”

  He looks at me with wide, scared eyes and nods, then takes a step back. A figure clad in black tackles him to the ground. Her red hair flies behind her as she pins him to the ground, arms crossed over his neck in a chokehold.

  She’s yelling something, I think at me, but I can’t hear. I can’t see Perce anywhere, and Jake, standing on top of the porch in plain view, kneels next to one of his.

  Blood clouds the air, and I wipe my hand across my eyes to find it stained red. I toss the bow to the ground and go over to Lisa, a knife in each hand.

  She stalks toward a Jackal wearing a ratty t-shirt, a scar stretching across his mouth. They leap at each other at the same time, rolling in the grass like wildcats, and then Lisa is standing, panting, while he lays on the ground, throat slashed open.

  And as I help Jeffrey and Lisa take down a trio of men who probably haven’t shaved since the first case, I start to hope that we have enough strength and come out of this alive.

  “Where’s Mason?” Jeffrey yells, punching the lead guy in the face.

  Before I can answer, someone yells, loud enough to drown out the melee. “STOP!”

  The Jackals step back, raising their hands in mock defense, suddenly smiling. The one Jeffrey punched stands, sways, then staggers over to his friends.

  But we’re not looking at them. We’re looking at Jake, and the person he’d holding by the scruff of his neck, blood oozing down his face.

  A scream erupts, all the more terrifying because I never imagined Malia could make such a sound.

  They removed his eyes; I can tell from here, from the mashes of blood and gore that mutilate his face. Those green eyes will never look at Malia again, and the tufty white blonde hair is stained with his blood.

  Malia’s last moments are not worthy of the person she is. She tries to snarl at Jake, tries to hold her stomach in and jump at him with everything she has left, but her effort to move is futile—she’s lost too much blood, from the cuts on her arms and legs, leaking out of her stomach through her fingers, and even as she screams defiance at him, it turns into lament as Mason’s corpse is tossed next to her.

  Malia is gone. And we all are, too.

  And Jake laughs. His men aim their guns at us, retrieved from holsters and waistbands in the lull, daring us to make a move, to try anything.

  They don’t need to. We’re paralyzed.

  It all happens in the space of few seconds, but it feels like a gulf, separating a world with Malia in it and a world without, and I marvel that the sky doesn’t shake, the earth doesn’t crack in two, because even after she falls to the ground with a bullet in her head, hair fanning out around the blood pooling around her body, the sky is the same cloudless blue, and the only difference is that blood shimmers on the damp grass instead of dew. And I can’t breathe, the world feels like it should stop but it’s still going on.

  Someone is screaming, but I can’t move. I can’t do anything but watch.

  A handsome one with the blue eyes is looking me up and down, slowly, like he has all the time in the world.

  I know that I should be facing him down, looking for Perce, trying to figure out a plan, but I am frozen. I am standing still, and the world is falling around me.

  He’s coming closer, and every breath I take, quick and hurried and fearful, seems to be something he draws in like a vampire to blood, bathing in my fear. I can’t get away, I can’t fight, I can’t move, and I’m dimly aware, on either side, of each one of them stalking toward us, inexorably, patiently, like they have all the time in the world. I close my eyes, hoping that it will be easier if I don’t see them come for us.

  There is a scuffling, and a ripping sound, and my eyes snap open as someone lets out a yell of surprise, quickly cut off.

  The guy in front of me is kneeling, clutching at his side, but my eyes only see him for a moment, focusing instead on the woman coming toward me, eyes wide and black, blood dripping out of her rotten teeth.

  The zombies have found us.

  The cord of fear that held me snaps, and I whirl around in a circle, looking desperately for Perce, for anyone to restore some semblance of order.

  But there are too many enemies, so many that I cannot see where any of the Hunters are, apart from the ones lying huddled on the ground, and the others who are fleeing past the lines of zombies, dodging their slow limbs, disappearing into the forest.

  I see a figure in a red bandana with blood on his arm squeeze between two tree trunks, and I know that I am alone.

  I have been training for the past few weeks to stand and fight, because running is a result of cowardice, because running is what you do when you’re selfish, because running means that you care more about saving your own skin that the people next to you, the people who took you in and sat on a bed with you and told you stories, the people who made you feel like the best thing in the world wasn’t to not be in it.

  I have been training to fight, but fighting is foolish when you look around you, and those that are not running are dead, or lying on the ground with wounds that might make them worse than dead.

  And when the person who whispered to you that you mattered, and told you secrets and held you when you felt like you were falling apart and cried in front of you and let you dry his tears, the person who called you back when you ran away, has already broken and run at the sight of his two best friends mutilated and dead, there is no reason to stay.

  There are two knives sheathed on my belt, and the pistol in my hand fits in the remaining holster, the one I never used because of the lack of ammunition for guns. I don’t know how many shots are left, but there are not enough to take down anyone, to make any kind of difference.

  I turn around for one last glimpse of Heavenly Dreams, and then I am moving as fast as I did that day a month ago when I left Ben, faster even, shoving people out of the way, dodging the arms that grab at me and loom in front of me.

  One more zombie stands in my way, a man, with a long matted beard and red-rimmed eyes, and he’s too close to me for me to dodge around him, so I push him as hard as I can, running not so much around as through, until he’s on the ground, and my feet smash onto his face.

  I stumble onto hard ground and I run, slipping on the leaves, as fast as I dare with the branches of trees grabbing at me, scratching my skin, but I won’t stop. I won’t turn around. All I have is running.

  And so I run, watching the sunlight make beautiful dappling pictures on the ground, breathing a rhythm, ignoring the blood that bursts behind my vision and the ache in my chest that has Mason’s eyes and speaks with Malia’s voice, the throb in my arm that reminds me of Perce, fleeing before I can tell him what I wanted to, and the thrum of my state
beats into me with every stride.

  Alone, alone, alone. Breathe.

  Gideon

  I’m getting out. Me and Monroe and Penny and Mom are getting out. I’m getting out.

  I repeat the thought in my head as Stavros screams us into the morning, as I run until I throw up. Through the push-ups and the pain and the thudding of blows on my face, I carry the news in my heart like a talisman. I am getting out.

  The thought that I will live out of here, that it will not end for me with orders shrieking in my ears and the corrosion of what used to be my conscience my only comfort, is enough to keep me aware through the whole thing.

  For the first time, I really have to act like I’m enjoying the blood. And even though it disgusts me, launching myself into the center of the ring when someone goes down and doesn’t get up, stomping and kicking and smashing against everyone, smelling blood and sweat and feeling the electric pulse of bloodlust in the air, even though I feel dirty and sullied, at least I feel. At least I do not enjoy the horror.

  It makes me feel better about myself, like I might be able to recover from this.

  I can tell Monroe feels it, too. We’ve always glanced at each other when we’re apart, always shared a hint of understanding, but it’s different now.

  We have a secret. Even though Monroe is not leaving, the light of this hope, the idea that I am going to escape, makes us look at each other with more than the veiled disinterest we’ve always had.

  When I dive into the ring, my eyes lock with Monroe’s the way they did the first time I saw her. And as my eyes find hers, time stops. The shouts and the blows fade away, and for a moment it is us. Enclosed in this tiny space, invincible, if only for a moment.

  I know that she told me she couldn’t leave, that our night together was a desperate, sorrowed goodbye and not the promise of something more, but I cannot reconcile that with the way she is looking at me now.