Call Me Zombie: Volume I: Rose

by Jasmina Kuenzli

  ‘The test results came back positive for both of you. You both have been infected with the zombie virus through saliva contact.”

  I lean forward. “You are both going to die.” Penny flinches, her first reaction since I came in here, but she does not cry. She does not say anything.

  She is only seven years old.

  My eyes lock with Mom’s, and I see a glimmer of understanding there. Mom understands what I am about to do, what I have been ordered to do. She accepts it. She forgives me.

  The thought makes my breath catch for a second, and I stumble over the next words. “Since you have tested positive, you will be neutralized as soon as we are finished using your bodies for research. You have renounced all the rights and responsibilities afforded to citizens, since you are no longer human.”

  I think I might throw up. “Mom,” I say, and it shocks Penny out of her reverie. I am not supposed to be addressing them like this.

  The red woman scowls at me through the glass, one hand reaching for the door handle.

  I shake my head, gesturing with the knife. Just a sec, I mouth, and I mime slashing with it.

  She crosses her arms over her chest, but she doesn’t open the door.

  There is another door across from where I came in, and it might lead to the exit. I just saw someone walk past our window, and his hair was dampened by the rain, his uniform spotted with droplets.

  My gaze keeps flicking to the door as I speak, waiting for an opportunity. The woman has pulled out her phone, fiddling with it, not even looking at me.

  I hope she’s playing Candy Crush, and not setting off an alarm. Regardless, I’m running out of time.

  “Mom,” I start again. “I’m going to make this as quick and painless as possible, because this is my fault. I want you to know— “I swallow, and I don’t have to fake the emotion in my voice. “I want you to know that I messed up, and you and Penny paid the price for it, and I’m sorry.” My voice breaks, and I’m crying now. “I’m so sorry.”

  My hand slides to the handle of the knife, but before I can get up, the outside door swings open.

  “I knew you didn’t have the balls. They never do.” the woman sneers. Mom jumps at the language, but she does not speak.

  I didn’t know she would come in here. I didn’t know this would work so well.

  My lip trembles. “I-I don’t think I can do this. “

  “Are you kidding me?”

  I’m looking down at the ground, hoping she won’t notice the way my hand is curled around the handle of the knife, drawing it to my side as I bend down and lay my head on the table.

  “I can’t do it,” I moan. “I’m so sorry Mom. I’m so sorry” I wail like a child, and I hear the clack of her heels on the linoleum. A hand grabs at my chin and forces me to look in her eyes.

  Before she can speak, I move fluidly and perfectly, and I bury the knife to the hilt in her throat.

  Her eyes register surprise, and a flicker of fury. Then they are dead.

  She puts a hand to her neck and collapses to the floor, choking on her own blood. The red of her throat matches her suit almost perfectly.

  I don’t have time to watch her shut down, watch her body give its last twitches. I’m already drawing the knife out of her neck, turning my head to avoid the splatter of her blood, leaping to my feet and jumping across the table, pulling out the key I stole from her front pocket when she pulled me up to look at her. You’d think in a suit that tight it would have been easier for her to notice.

  I hand Mom the key and grab my chair, wedging it against the door, and that’s when the first gunshot flies. Two guards, dressed in fatigues like me, burst into the room. The red woman must have set off some kind of panic signal.

  The bullet thuds into the wall, and I move without thinking, tackling the other guard before he can get another shot off. The gun falls out of his hand, going off again before it hits the floor, but I don’t have time to see if it’s done any damage. The guard is big and heavy, and he smells like sweat and beer, and I can hardly get my arm out to swing my knife.

  I slash, and a red line opens across his throat. His blood pours onto my face, and I clamp my mouth shut, but I can still feel his blood, smell it hot and red, and some of it leaks into my mouth. I’m afraid I’ll choke on it.

  I put my arms in front of my chest and shove as hard as I can, and his body rolls off of me, still twitching. I wipe a hand across my mouth and stand, panting.

  I have only a few seconds before the alarm is raised, before guards pour in and there is no way out for any of us.

  Mom and Penny are sitting perfectly still, looking at me in complete shock, the shackles a heap on the floor.

  “Gideon, what are you doing?”

  “I’ll explain later, now let’s get out of here!” I gesture toward the door, and Penny wanders toward it.

  “Gideon,” Mom’s voice drops; her eyes flick to Penny. “We’re infected. Penny’s later than me. We’re already dead.”

  Penny is close enough for me to scoop her up, and she rests her head on my shoulder like she used to when I we came back from Six Flags, and she got too tired to pretend she didn’t want me to carry her.

  “Hey Penny,” I say. “Wanna come kill some zombies with me?” Mom shakes her head, and I can tell that she thinks I’m insane, that the stress of training and my own guilt at their infection has made me snap.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I say with as much conviction as I can. “This isn’t what you think it is. They’re not who you think they are.”

  Penny, silent and numb until now, perks up at this, and I feel my body sag in relief. “I thought that the Army were the good guys.”

  “No, sweetie.” I say, still looking at Mom. “They’re not the good guys.”

  I will Mom to believe me, to follow me. The guards will be here any second, and I still don’t know how we’ll get across the compound and out of it.

  It depends on so much. If Monroe went ahead with her part of the plan, even though I couldn’t meet her. If Monroe knew anything about where I was going, and what I had to do when I got there.

  But I can’t think about that now, can’t think about the possibility that I’m leading us outside only to be mowed down by soldiers.

  At least if they die, I won’t be the one pull the trigger.

  I’m already moving through the door, holding onto Penny. I know that Mom will follow wherever Penny goes.

  I don’t know how long I have until they start to want to eat me. With Dad, Penny and I came home and Mom told us to take a shower and pack, and the next thing I knew he was gone. How many hours was it before he got murderous? One? Two?

  How long has it been since Penny got bitten?

  I look at her for a moment, and I see the blackness creeping across her eyes. She looks dazed, like she’s in a dream.

  “Penny, I want you to look at me, and never stop looking at me,” I face the door.

  Outside, it’s raining, coming down in sheets. Even though it can’t be later than 4 or 5, the sky is dark like twilight.

  Good. The weather will help hide us.

  I run across the yard, and no one stops us. There are too many other people running, civilians and soldiers alike, trying their hardest to get out of the sudden weather. The storm must have come quickly and caught everyone unprepared.

  I reach my hand behind me and feel Mom grab onto it, and the three of us run across to the barracks, to the truck that Stavros uses to chase us around the grounds.

  Just as Monroe promised, the keys are in the ignition. I look around at the walls, where the sentries are supposed to be patrolling, but the rain must have driven them inside.

  No one looks twice at us as we pile into the Jeep, me in the driver’s seat, passing Penny to Mom, who hops in on the other side.

  Before she can buckle her seatbelt, I roar off, churning up mud. The rain is coming so thick and fast that I can barely see. The Jeep’s top is open, and I don’t have time to close it.r />
  I swerve, narrowly avoiding a girl with short black hair. She turns to shout at me, her face twisted in fury, but then she stops when she sees my face. Her eyes widen in shock, but I don’t give her enough time to try to stop us.

  I press my foot down on the gas and the Jeep jolts past her, and now we are hurtling down the main road. People see us up ahead, and when it’s clear that we’re not going to stop, they dive out of the way.

  There is no way that we could be more conspicuous, and I’m not even surprised when we get to the gates and watch them clang shut. In front of us, three Jeeps face us, each containing four soldiers, armed with M-16 Assault Rifles. And in front of them, standing in the mud, not caring about the rain ruining his dress uniform, is General Laos.

  “Gideon,” he says, and his voice, combined with the megaphone, cuts through the pouring rain. “You have disappointed me.”

  “Everything’s always about you,” I mutter. Somehow the pressure of the impossible situation, the inalterable fact that I’m not getting out of this alive, is enough to wash away the layers of military severity and the seriousness of the moment.

  “If you let the infected go, we can talk,” Laos says. “I don’t want to lose a good soldier like you over something like this.” He sounds so understanding, so utterly convinced of his righteousness.

  What an asshole.

  But I don’t see a way out of this. I don’t know what to do. We’re surrounded. If I surrender, they kill my family. If I don’t surrender, they kill all of us.

  I thought I would rather die than stay with the Army. I thought that I would prefer not living to living as someone who loves killing, who fires without thinking, who causes the expressions of desperation and terror.

  But I want to live.

  “I love you, Penny.” I cover Mom’s hand with my own. “I love you both. I love you so much.”

  I turn off the Jeep.

  A fireball explodes just behind General Laos, beneath the middle Jeep. He falls to the ground, the megaphone tumbling out of his hand. The standoff erupts into chaos.

  I reach for Mom and Penny and pull them across the seat behind me, not daring to take my eyes off them for a second.

  Over the screaming, I hear a loud screeching noise. Someone is opening the gates.

  Monroe. It has to be. She must have set the bomb off, as a distraction. I look to the top of the wall and I see a flash of bright white hair.

  I just grab Mom and Penny and I run, toward the source of the explosion.

  We’re not so much running as shuffling now, picking our way over the bodies, and I yell, “Penny, close your eyes,” but I hear her scream and I know she must have seen something. Any of them would be enough to give her nightmares.

  A man convulses in the mud as blood gushes out of the stump where his hand used to be, and he’s only the first I see.

  She’s still screaming, and Mom’s hand is slick in mine, and before I can redouble my grip, she lets go. I turn around immediately, stepping over a body toward them, but Mom shouts, “No, Gideon. Stop!”

  She’s grappling with Penny, and at first I think it’s because she’s upset, hysterical from the blood and bodies and the horror, but then I see the gouges in Mom’s flesh, the wound on her arm that is more mangled than I remember.

  Penny is still shrieking, but it’s not fear that’s making her scream. She wants to rip, tear. She is hungry.

  Penny is a zombie.

  “Mom, I can save her,” I yell, running back. There’s no way she’s completely gone yet. That woman was a much older zombie, and she still was trying to help. She knew enough to get Maya to a place of safety. Penny can’t be—

  But she is. She’s snapping like a wild animal, and her hair is slicked to her head from the rain, enough so that I can see her eyes, completely blackened.

  And Mom is freeing her good hand and bending down, down to a soldier with a hole through his chest, scrabbling through the mess of uniform and gore and dirt, and she comes up with a gun, and I can’t get there fast enough, I open my mouth to shout—

  The gunshot shouldn’t be loud enough for me to hear it over the rain, the screams, the thunder, but I hear it anyway.

  Blonde hair, tinged with red, crumples to the ground.

  “NO,” I’m screaming and crying, and Mom is looking at me with pity and saying, “I had to, she wasn’t Penny anymore.”

  She isn’t crying somehow—her lips are pressed together, and it is her who lifts my arm across her shoulders, her who drags me out into the woods, who walks us out of the campsite, the horror and confusion from Monroe’s bomb enough to make them forget about us.

  I’m still yelling, wailing, begging for Penny, for Monroe, for Mom, God, someone to come and fix this, deliver me from this nightmare. Please, please let this all be an awful dream I can wake up from.

  I won’t go with Mom. I won’t leave Penny’s body. I push her off of me and turn to where we left Penny on the ground, covered in blood. Soldiers crowd around her; one of them nudges her corpse with a steel-booted toe, and the sight of them treating her like roadkill tints my vision red

  I run toward them, and my vision narrows to the pile of bloody blonde curls at the soldier’s feet. The soldiers are flashes of green and black in my peripheral vision, as though my brain has registered them with a broad paintbrush.

  In my head, I am flying across the ground. I am a freight train at a hundred miles an hour.

  But I can tell by their delayed response to my approach, the half-hearted way one of them reaches for his weapon, that I do not present a real threat. That I am too weak and too bloody and too upset to be anything but a minor annoyance.

  But I am so angry, I can practically already see their uniforms splattered with the red rain of their blood.

  I blink water from my eyes and look at the ground for a moment. The bodies of the other soldiers, the ones who were in the Jeep or around it when the bomb went off, provide a kind of grisly obstacle course. I am not so much running as leaping, shuffling, tapping on a thigh or stomach and then off just as quickly.

  I try not to look at the faces, to see them only as body parts, as what remains. But I cannot help but see the twisted limbs, the hands risen up to shield themselves. The expressions of terror, heart-stopping panic that may have killed them faster than the bomb.

  I will never stop being able to see all the dead I stepped on to get Penny, the dead I ordered to die to save my sister, who died anyway, who lay there with them.

  When I finally get to her, the other soldiers are watching me with expressions of amusement. I am a spectacle, the idiot deserter who came back for a dead body, and they don’t even reach for their guns when they come for me.

  The one closest to me pushes rain-soaked hair out of her face, and I recognize Harmony, one of Monroe’s friends. She was always the one to nudge Monroe’s elbow whenever I walked into meals. Monroe told me that she and Harmony took turns raiding the medical supply closets for drugs when it was late at night and neither of them could sleep.

  And now Harmony looks hyped up on something, her eyes wild in her head, her hands shaking with energy and excitement. Before she can speak, I rush to her, knocking her aside, and kneel over Penny.

  Penny’s eyes are still open, staring at the rain that drips into them. If I look just at her eyes, it is easy not to notice the way that the front of her forehead has been blown away, leaving only curls attached to the back of her head.

  Someone swears next to me, and I hear the thud of blows, but I can’t move. I can only sit and stare at the one person I swore to keep safe, the one person I cared about more than anyone else in the world.

  It doesn’t matter that Maya might not have been going full zombie. It doesn’t matter that the zombie woman looked at me and tried to speak, and in the process turned my entire world into chaos, turned me to the way that does not sacrifice the all for the few, that refuses to choose a path simply because it is easy.

  It doesn’t matter, because Penny i
s dead. She held onto me as though she trusted me utterly, shocked out of her blankness by my conviction that all was not lost, that we would get out alive. And I let her down. I let her die.

  I close my eyes, praying to God harder than I ever have, praying for a time machine or a body switch, praying that I can be the one lying in the mud staring at nothing, and she can be the one kneeling next to me.

  I wish for everything to go back to the way it was.

  But God does not deal in bargains. God does not deal at all. He watches, and He feels sorry for the corruption of His creation, but He does not interfere. He lets us tear each other apart.

  And Death, Death does not take deals. Death does not come when it is convenient.

  I don’t know how long I sit there before I feel a hand on my shoulder. A soldier must have stopped letting me grieve. I must be taken in, tried, and executed. I have disobeyed direct orders. I have cost soldiers and civilians their lives.

  I look up into the face of my captor, and a flash of blonde hair and dark eyes greets me.

  “Time to go, traitor,” Monroe growls. Then she winks. She pulls me roughly to my feet, so that I stumble against her.

  “Get off me, freak!” Monroe shrieks, but I can hear the laughter in her voice. Her hands grab my shoulders and push me back from her so that I face her.

  The rain is still pouring down in sheets, and it does something to the words she says next, making them resonate through me. “Tell them,” she orders, and she’s smiling the way I haven’t seen her smile before. At once reckless and vulnerable, a world weary adult and a troubled child. Sad and happy and afraid all at once.

  I cannot help but reach a hand forward to cup her face, not caring about the green and black-clad figures behind her, not caring that Mom has already disappeared into the surrounding forest.

  For a brief moment, we are back in the shed, back looking at each other across a crowd of fighting, sweating, dying people, and the world fades into background music.

  In an instant, it’s gone, and her lips pull down into a frown of determination. She’s pivoting, turning into the soldiers pressed almost next to her, and the gunshots follow too quickly for them to do more than scream in pain, and she’s pulling me forward, toward the gates that still hold open, beckoning us forward.