When I jumped into the truck with her, I was the happiest I have been since the compound. I let out a cheer as we turned onto the road and continued driving.
I looked at her. Steely eyes, fixed on the road. Shoulders set.
I had read somewhere, before all this happened, that you can stare at a person, and they will feel you looking at them, even if they don’t see you. It’s like your gaze has a physical effect on them.
So I stared at her, and smiled, and I waited for her to smile too. But she just kept looking at the road, tense and hunched over the wheel.
“We are not going to die,” I reminded.
“We are not going to die,” she repeated, but where it had been an admonishment, words falling from our mouths like weapons, crashing against the world that hated us, now it was like a computer repeating a command.
I told myself that she was tired and she needed time to process everything.
But now it’s been three hours, and I have to get her to say something.
Finally, I ask her to pull over, tell her that I can drive for a little while.
She pulls onto the shoulder next to a sign that reads, ‘McCallister: 10 miles’ and I flash back to the way she ran, how she refused my help and refused to let me say the things I’ve been wanting to say.
The thing is, people tell you that over and over. They don’t want help. They want to do everything on their own. They want to retreat into a dark place of grief and sadness, and they do not want you to follow.
I know. I was there. But then a girl took off running, and I haven’t stopped chasing her since.
I don’t feel like I’m nothing anymore.
What I’ve always noticed, even before this all happened, is that when the worst happens and you retreat into yourself, you need someone more than ever. You need someone to at least stand on the edge of that darkness in the sunlight and shout your name, and tell you that there are better things waiting on the other side. Even if it’s not true.
I guess that’s why I let her go alone, even though I feel this way. I didn’t feel like I could justify going against her wishes, following her somewhere only she really understood. I waited on the outside.
Or maybe I’m just a coward, too afraid of the zombies, the fact that she was running into a killing ground.
Maybe I’m just too afraid of the person I become when killing is everything and the entire world has a sense of rightness that no one should feel when they’re drenched in blood.
Especially now, after I’ve watched Mom and Penny turn into monsters. After I had to hold Monroe in my arms as the breath left her body.
It’s all too complicated for me. I wonder if it’s the same for her.
I haven’t driven a stick in a while, since I was fifteen and my dad drove me into a field and sat with me as I became increasingly frustrated, grinding through the gears of the transmission over and over again. In spite of my athleticism, the coordination of the clutch and the gas and the stick was something it took me weeks to master.
So when I stall out like a first-time driver, stopping us halfway onto the road, I’m not so much surprised as disappointed. And embarrassed.
She can hotwire cars and drive stick like it’s nothing and apparently, judging by the blood on her hands, she’s not bad with a knife.
I went to the military for a couple of months and I still drive like a drunk teenage girl.
It’s the first time I’ve felt embarrassed in a while. It’s like this girl pulled out this whole other person, a person I thought had died after that first day in the Field.
Something about her is waking me up.
“Whew, my bad,” I say as casually as I can manage, my insides shriveling with mortification. “Gotta get the hang of it again.”
She just nods, once, slowly, as though she barely hears me.
She’s still so far away.
I want to touch her, anchor her here, but I’m afraid I’ll scare her more.
I’m afraid that whatever she faced in that graveyard, whatever happened after she killed the zombie coming after her, broke her entirely.
Maybe my touch will only tear her apart.
“I don’t know if you remember,” I begin, babbling like crazy, “you were running like, as my old English teacher would say, ‘the dickens,’ and I had to chase you down, but your friends who were in the truck? Baldy and the girl?”
She’s staring at me now, but with none of the interest of someone who’s genuinely listening. Her head is tipped to the side, and she licks her lips, and I stop for a second, confused. She’s looking at me but not at me, but when I stop talking, her eyebrows pucker in a frown, the first real expression I’ve seen since we started driving.
She reaches a hand to touch my cheek. It’s so soft, but it isn’t tender, like I expect and kind of want. It’s more like she’s making sure I’m really there.
Her eyes are clouded now instead of glassy. She looks, of all things, confused.
“Okay, so anyway before I took off after you, I was talking to Baldy, and he said that we could stop by at this place in McCallister, if we headed up that way. It’s probably got electricity, and there are showers at least, so you can wash some of that off you, and we can figure out where we’re going next.”
She tips her head to the other side.
“Yes. We.” I say firmly. I don’t know why I don’t just leave her here, leave her with the people who understand her better, who might be able to pull her out. But I can’t.
I held her as she crumpled against my chest, and I remember the way she looked at me the first time she said, “We are not going to die.” I think of Penny, and Rapunzel, and how she is neither of them but something better, something stronger and more dangerous, and so much more vulnerable.
I have to stay with her.
***
She doesn’t speak again until we pull onto the gravel road that leads to the safe house. Even then, she just mumbles something about being hungry, under her breath and into her long hair, which has come down from its ponytail, so that I can barely hear it over the rattle of the truck.
I was planning to get her to talk to me while we were stopped, poke and prod her until she cracked, until whatever she’s stuffing down came out.
Monroe taught me that not telling someone is always worse, not acting is always harder.
If she doesn’t talk, it’s going to destroy her from the inside out, and she’s never going to come back.
I need her to come back.
But as soon as we pull up, someone comes careening out of the front door. A girl with dreadlocks opens the girl’s door, yelling what must be her name, “Rogue!”
Rogue, seriously?
The girl pulls her into a hug, which Rogue doesn’t return. She holds Rogue out at arm’s length and peers into her face, “It’s me, Tavi! I thought you were dead!”
“Wha— “the girl starts to say.
Tavi smiles. “Come on. Everyone’s inside. Lucia told us you might be coming.”
Feeling invisible, I climb out of the passenger seat and join them, walking toward the house.
“Did you bring her here?” Tavi asks, looking me up and down, slowly. “I’m Tavi.”
“Gideon.”
At my name, Rogue’s head whips around to stare at me, the fastest I’ve seen her move since we left the farmhouse. “Rose,” she whispers, eyes pleading. Desperate.
She lets go of Tavi’s waist and turns so that she’s completely facing me, and the intensity of her gaze almost knocks me over. “Rose,” she repeats.
I reach forward and touch her cheek, letting my hand rest there for a moment. “Rose.”
“Whoa.” I withdraw my hand, but Rose doesn’t stop looking at me.
“What’s this?” he’s wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, with a headband tied around his thick black hair. He looks like a wannabe Rambo, or a disgruntled former boyband member.
“Perce,” Tavi warns. “This is Gideon. He brought Rogue here.”
<
br /> “He brought her here?” Perce asks, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Yeah,” I say slowly, “Is that a problem?”
“Oh no, not a problem. I just wasn’t under the impression that Rogue could be brought anywhere,” he says, eyes narrowing down at her.
She stares back at him, but he must see something concerning in her expression, because his own morphs from irritation to concern in a second, “Are you okay?”
“Do you know anything about someone named Ben?” I ask.
Tavi shrugs, but Perce takes a step back. He swallows. “She called out his name sometimes, in her sleep.”
At his words, a shard of jealousy pierces my insides. I push it aside. This isn’t the time or that.
“Well, I think she killed him, last night. Or he went zombie.”
“From what I understand about Ben, that would have been an improvement,” Perce growls.
SMACK. Rose slaps him, hard, across the face. “He was my brother,” she practically spits in his face, and all of Perce’s bravado disappears, replaced by a simmering rage that makes his dark eyes glitter.
“After what he did?” He says softly. “Rogue, if you hadn’t knocked off his head, I would have done it myself. I would have done that for you.”
And she leaps at him, frenzied, furious, and it’s only then that I see the mark on her left shoulder, right above her triceps. Teeth marks.
“Shit,” I say, launching myself toward her and placing my arms around her, holding her back. She’s impossibly strong, stronger than she looks, corded veins standing out on her neck.
“Your eyes,” Tavi whispers from her position in front of Perce, holding him back with one hand. “They’re— “
“Black?” I ask over her screams.
Tavi nods, slowly.
Perce reaches behind his back, pulling a gun out of the waistband of his jeans. “Get out of the way,” he says, his voice breaking.
“No, Perce, you can’t!” Tavi cries. “It’s Rogue.”
“No. It isn’t. Get out of the way.”
“Wait, wait,” I’m speaking as quickly as I can, trying to delve into the images in my head, find an answer. “When I was in the military— “
“The military?” someone scoffs, and I turn to see the short-haired girl from the gas station, standing in the doorway. “They don’t know shit. They’re just trying to make you feel like someone’s in control, well guess what?” she gestures to Rogue, who is still straining against my hold, utterly focused on Perce. “That’s all we have.”
“I know!” I protest, “But I found some zombies, and they weren’t completely gone. I think there’s a way for us to save them.”
Rogue screams again, screeching so loud that I feel like I can hear her throat tearing, and I turn her around to face me, without thinking about it.
“Look at me!” Her eyes are dart around me anxiously, breathing rapid and shallow. She doesn’t attack me, though. On some level, she recognizes that I’m not an enemy.
I grab her chin, careful to stay away from her teeth, and I hold her head to mine, pushing her against me.
I can feel her squirming, and I know that she’s about to hit me, that she’ll smack me and rush to Perce, and it won’t matter. None of this will matter, and I’ll be alone again, and she’ll haunt me like Mom and Monroe and Penny, hunt me into a grave.
I don’t think I’ll survive if she dies. I’ve only known her for a day, but it feels like she’s the only thing keeping me alive.
So I hold her face with both hands, and I just stare at her, trying to capture her eyes with my own. Trying to display every moment we’ve had, from me swaggering up to her at the gas station, to her, crashing into me after the worst night of her life, feeling her screams against my shirt. Holding each other so that we won’t shake apart. My thumb brushing across her lips, watching the moonlight turn her eyes to silver.
“We are not going to die, Rose” I say fiercely, furiously, forcing my tongue to form the words, refusing to look away from her. Refusing to notice the people around us, who must think that I’m insane.
I’m not letting her go.
For a long time, she just looks at me, breathing hard, eyes still black. But she isn’t attacking, even though she could escape my grip in a second, could sink her teeth into me if she wanted to, and I wouldn’t have time to stop her.
“I’m not letting you go.” I will myself to believe it, to remember the woman in the tunnels, to refuse to listen to the voice of Mom in my head, calling me a murderer, telling me it is all my fault, that I killed them because I was foolish and stupid and I saw something that wasn’t there.
It’s there. I can see it.
Her eyes, once black as night, are showing light at the edges.
And then, all at once, she blinks, and the black fades away.
They’re gray again, thunderclouds over the sea.
“Gideon?”
The adventures of Rose, Gideon, Perce, and the rest of the Hunters will be continued in Call Me Zombie Volume II: Gideon, debuting Fall 2017.
Acknowledgements
Call Me Zombie is my first novel, and there were a lot of times where I didn’t think anyone was ever going to read it. The only reason it made it out of the drafts on my computer and onto Amazon was the people in my life who made me feel like I was worth being heard.
So for my mom—my ever-present cheerleader, fearless role model, and one of my closest friends. Thank you for listening to me, encouraging me, and keeping me close no matter what happens in our lives. Thank you for the Starbucks, the willingness to read what wasn’t your type of literature, and the acceptance of my fandom obsessions.
For my brothers, Jeremiah and Joseph. This book is dedicated to you guys because it started when I was at home, in our super cold house, trying to figure out why I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. Jeremiah, thanks for introducing me to superheroes and video games. Joseph, you’re my favorite person to text memes to, even when you don’t reply. The two of you gave me a childhood that was adventurous, competitive, and full of stupid jokes. I miss you guys so much, and I hope you like this book.
To Brenna, my best friend in the entire world, the George to my Fred. We’ve been best friends since we were seven, and I don’t think I could have gotten through life without you. Thanks for the late-night conversations that dissolved into laughter, hilarious cheer adventures, driveway dance parties, One Direction concerts, and all that bad reality TV. I know that we’re going to be in each other’s lives forever, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here. Thank you for reading my writing even though you hate reading, and sharing with me the frustrations of a career in the arts. We’re going to get there, I know it. I love you so, so much.
Of course, I can’t thank Brenna without thanking the Sturdivants. Kathryn and Conner, you are my second set of parents. Thanks for letting me stay with you all those years ago, never really getting upset when I ate everything in your fridge, and giving me my best friend. Thanks to Bonnie and Cullen, the sources of a creative, adventurous childhood where the only thing limiting us was the scope of our imagination. Bonnie, thanks for teaching me to dance and not getting too frustrated when I broke character in our plays. Cullen, thanks for VR, Guitar Hero, and DDR. Thanks to Brittany and Chadley, and your litter of children that I get to watch grow up. I love you guys so much.
Thank you to Ariba, my beautiful roommate who has become one of my best friends. I love you, and I’m so glad I moved into this crappy apartment a year ago. Thanks also to Lizzy, the blonde badass that I’m lucky enough to have stayed friends with.
Thanks to Dakota, Lucy, Sarah, Madison, Andrea, ChRi, Danton, Sean, Nick, Taylor, Edgar, and everyone who I’ve become friends with through the Y. Work always sucks a little less with you guys around. Thanks for long conversations, shared fandom obsessions, epic basketball games, and nights where I was so tired, you were the only thing keeping me upright. Getting to know you guys is the best thing that’s happened to me sin
ce I graduated college.
Lastly, thank you to the artists that inspired me, whose words paper the walls of my bedroom. There isn’t enough space to list every musician and author who has changed me, who has given me a push when I needed it most, who has dared me to keep going after what I want, even and especially when it’s crazy. Thank you for giving me someone who understood, someone who was there in my darkest moments. Thank you, most of all, for giving me the courage to write my own stories.
This is only the beginning.
--Jasmina
About the Author
Jasmina Kuenzli is a poet and novelist from Austin, Texas. She holds a B.A. in History and English from Texas A&M University, where she began her writing career. Her poetry and fiction has been published in Germ Magazine and Z Publishing. This is her first novel.
When Jasmina isn’t writing, she enjoys running, dancing, and badgering people with useless information about Harry Potter, One Direction, and the Marvel Universe.
For more about the inspiration behind Call Me Zombie as well as news on all of Jasmina’s upcoming projects, visit her website, jasminawrites.wordpress.com, and follow her on twitter @jasmina62442.
Call Me Zombie: Volume I: Rose Page 22