Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know Of)

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  “This is for always knowing what I meant.”

  “This is for being the reason I know you.”

  Norman came up with that last one, for the record.

  It was right at that moment when Norman and I held our hands together, like we had in so many games before, to throw the last roll over the edge, when I finally solved Hector’s riddle. I recognized that feeling in my chest, the distortion of time, the vibration in all my senses.

  The Chase.

  I know, I know, it was about time. It was hard to distinguish through all the normal, everyday happy feelings that come with having the best friend ever, but it was always there. Judge me if you will for how close this revelation came after the one about Norman’s sanity not being as airtight as I’d once imagined; tell me I have some hardwired, chromosome-deep weakness for what’s dangerous and bad for me. Maybe you’re right. Though, if the worst trouble it ever gets me into comes in the form of a scrawny little clown named Norman Kaminsky, who happens to be able to take down a hungry corpse just as brutally as I can, I’d say I’ve got a pretty manageable case.

  Oh, and finish up scolding me A.S.A.P., if you would, because I swear, this next part really did go as smoothly and awesomely as I tell it, so you’ll want to pay attention.

  We looked up at each other from where the roll had landed on the street below, I studied that painstaking harlequin makeup job, which was actually pretty hot when I looked at it right, and without choking, without mumbling, without wasting a moment considering alternative phraseology, I raised my voice over the rain.

  “Will you please wipe that ridiculous smile off your face so I can kiss you?”

  Norman smiled for real under the design and reached out to brush waterlogged feathers out of my hair. “Can’t,” he said. “This is really good paint.”

  I laughed, the way only he could ever make me, and kept laughing until I could breathe again. “Screw it,” I said, and kissed him anyway.

  That feeling I’d had before, the one I recognized, that subtle, humming distortion? I’d always thought it meant that I was in one of the biggest, most special, most important moments.

  Nope. Turns out that feeling was a little like simmering water. A hint of something. A prelude.

  This time, right around the moment when Norman kissed me back, I buried my hands in his sopping hair and he threw his arms around me as tightly as he had whenever there had been an excuse before, but for longer. Finally he held me in the complete, shameless, wholehearted way we’d imitated and substituted a thousand inadequate ways, and the simmer hit a rolling boil, bubbling over with a new texture, a new chemical makeup, a new nature.

  This was not just one remarkable, unforgettable moment suspended in nothingness. This was not just something to reminisce over in the smaller, plainer moments; it was something that would redefine us. This was a borderline, and after it, for better or worse (richer or poorer, in sickness and in health and all that jazz), nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Would it be unforgivably corny to call the new feeling The Catch?

  Yeah, I guess it would.

  Never mind.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  But We’ve Still Got a Job to Do

  It was early spring in New England.

  With that taken into consideration, it’s a miracle we weren’t fighting a downpour every single day. But I do my best not to take that into consideration. That way I can remember how, on that rooftop, it felt like the rain was for us. It amplified everything for those vital few seconds, the way it forced us to shelter in one of the dorms for two hours afterward, waiting for the fireworks to dry out, reenacting that first kiss and recounting every earlier opportunity we would have taken if we’d had any sense.

  And maybe it wasn’t just the rain. Maybe everything was for us, everything that led us to be in that exact place at that exact time, feeling exactly the way we felt. We were practically the only people left to enjoy anything after all.

  Yeah, I know, it’s pretty messed up, a little crazy, and unconscionably selfish to even entertain the thought that the end of the world could be worth it just to bring Norman and me together. Plus, it assumes that we could never have figured it out any other way, and I can’t honestly bring myself to think that poorly of us. But I try not to take any of that into consideration either.

  It just makes it so much easier to accept everything else, everything that’s happened and everything that’s been lost, when I think about the rooftop and the feathers and the rain and tell myself that they’re all part of one big package deal.

  Norman wasn’t kidding, by the way, about paying attention to how to drive the scooter. Even if we’d been able to fit both of us plus Rory and the essential luggage onto the one we had all the way into New York, we’d have been stuck once we actually found Lis.

  So as soon as the bottle rockets dried out and the rain let up enough for us to shoot a few to light up the far side of park, thinning out the crowd on our side just enough to risk opening the door from the inside and dragging the scooter in, Norman set me practicing laps around one of the auditoriums.

  My balance isn’t bad—not as paranormally good as his, but not bad. I still had trouble for a while, not wobbling one way or the other into the seats or the wall. He promised it would get easier when we got outside and had more space to go faster. The words “faster” and “outside,” outside being where the zombies were, didn’t mesh well with the word “easier” in my imagination.

  When we were bracing for the road again an hour later with me in the driver’s seat, I’m sorry to say that wanting Norman to myself a little longer was only second or third on the list of reasons that I really, really wanted to find some way to keep stalling. I didn’t, though. The rain had kept us there about twice as long as we’d planned already, and when the sun cut through the clouds, it was high and bright enough to remind us with excessive persistence that it was getting pretty close to noon and there was still a long day of real, forward travel ahead of us.

  It was comforting for the first few miles, having Norman hanging on behind me, more comforting, in fact, than I liked to admit even though it’s mostly okay to admit things like that when the guy behind you is actually your boyfriend.

  Boyfriend. It was going to take me a while longer to get used to that word, and Caleb hadn’t sped things up any by throwing it around early. I was already starting to wonder if I would ever have time to say it loudly or often enough. It sounded weird, yes, but I liked it. I really liked it.

  Norman was on the small side for a guy, well, his upper torso was, I mean. But that layer of him folded around me felt like more protection than the child-sized Spiderman helmet could ever hope to offer. For one thing, it took the edge off the teeth-chattering cold that came with the rush of open air over wet skin and clothes, which I couldn’t help noticing once time started to settle back to normal. Steering and balancing even felt more intuitive with the subtle, automatic shifts in his posture to follow and mimic with every turn. And, of course, it was much easier to stay focused on the road knowing that he had Suprbat hooked into his easy, no-singing-required acrobatic instinct, guaranteed to flatten anything that tried to touch us.

  But like when I’d thought I might just barely survive riding with my face shielded between his shoulder blades, this crazy, zombie-eat-human world wasn’t about to let us get by that easily. Painfully unromantic as it felt, we needed a second scooter, and as soon as we could get onto an above ground freeway far enough from ramps on both sides to give us a decent buffer zone from the downhill-loving zombies, I stopped and stood guard. Norman checked a gorgeous, smoke-colored Vespa, the kind of scooter his father would have drooled over, for keys and the fuel level.

  I almost didn’t want that first scooter we found to start just so we could ride together as far as the next one worth trying, but it did, and I knew that was technically a stroke of luck even if it didn’t feel like one. It even came with a couple extra helmets, the freeway-designe
d sort with the face guard and everything.

  We made sure we were ready to drive and swing at the same time, knowing the crowds that waited ahead. It was a lot harder than just doing one or the other. We stuck close, Norman just barely leading the way. I think he didn’t like having to turn around too far to see me.

  I knew how he felt. He could ride, he could fight, I never let him out of my sight for more than the time it took to beat my way around the edge of a bottleneck cluster, and I was still terrified that every single passing moment would be one that ended the fragilely perfect happiness I’d had for just that last few hours.

  It was so inescapably possible, maybe even probable, that I would simply continue to lose absolutely everything in huge, sudden batches, over the course of weeks or months. Of course, I’d been vaguely aware of that trend of things all along; it was just suddenly a lot harder to accept it and put it far enough out of mind to allow me to function.

  Hormones. They’re a bitch.

  We did make it back, though, thirty-six nail-biting minutes after getting the better of the Delaware Bay for the second time before lunch, to that pharmacy in Cherry Hill.

  And Rory was there, waiting for us.

  Not that I was seriously worried she might get overrun or go crazy with waiting and decide to go on without us, never to be seen or heard from again. Honest.

  She was even keeping vigil by the front, and when she heard the engines of the scooters, she rolled up a section of metal shutter and threw open the door just long enough for us both to roll straight in instead of having to go over the roof.

  I didn’t park quite as smoothly as Norman did. I knocked over a rack of hairclips, nothing useful or messy, at least, and Rory had to break a zombie’s hand in the door before she could get it locked again, but other than that, it was a pretty textbook entrance.

  She had everything we’d brought in from the shuttle packed back up and ready along with some extra lighters, lip balm, and a comprehensive new first aid kit. An assortment of all our favorite snacks (or what had been our favorite snacks before we’d had to start living on them) was set out for lunch, and two separate maps were spread out, each with several possible routes already traced for discussion. You could tell she’d had time to prepare every detail at least ten times over and couldn’t possibly be any more urgently ready than she was to get down to business, but it seemed to me we had some pretty significant news to deliver before all that.

  I hesitated for a moment after unclipping the new, sturdier helmet and shaking out my hair, trying to decide how to present it some way that would thank her for giving us the time and space but assure her that we were both still behind her. A way that would convey as strongly as shouting from the rooftops of an actual, inhabited city that this was the biggest, most real and important thing, the farthest thing there had ever been from no big deal, but without making me sound like I was just on some manic drug trip.

  Then Norman walked up beside me, slipped his hand into mine with our fingers all woven together, and smiled. He smiled at Rory so brightly that anyone watching would have sworn they’d been the kind of friends you could sing hallelujah with since the beginning of time.

  Rory rolled her eyes, smiled back, and shot us a thumbs-up.

  And that was that.

  “So.” She cleared her throat and pushed some tins of trail mix in our direction that had gone stale long before the dead rose to encourage us to eat and talk at the same time. “I crossed out all the tunnels, because, you know, darkness, crowding—”

  “Say no more,” I said, thinking of the way we’d seen the zombies gather in low points.

  “Okay, well, the Brooklyn Bridge would get us into the city as early as possible, and from there, I kind of know where I am. I’ve even driven parts of it myself a couple times, so that might be an advantage worth considering, but the Washington Bridge lets us off closer to the latitude of the hospital, and the streets might be easier on the mainland side, for as far as that lasts. I’m just guessing, though.”

  I shuddered a little inside when the eyes fell on me again to make the call. I still wanted to pull away at the very first hint of “what now,” ask why they would even want to hear from me on that subject after the mess I’d made of a simple safety sweep, but I didn’t.

  Peter could have done it better. I never doubt that. He would never have made the mistake I’d made the night before.

  But I’m just as sure that, in any upside-down parallel universe where he somehow would have made it, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to how hard he’d try the next day. Not in any universe.

  “The streets will be hell anywhere near the city’s escape routes. That’s where these come in.” I pointed to the pair of scooters.

  I hope my face didn’t go quite that pale the first time I was presented with the prospect of climbing onto one of them.

  I helped clear space around the pharmacy’s perimeter and then took the maps a few aisles inward to study while Norman and Rory practiced on the Vespa. It wouldn’t be worth the time to get her fully proficient on it by herself, not with less than half a day’s ride left there and back and the possibility of making it both ways before dark if we hurried. It was definitely worth letting her get a feel for it before going outside. If she could get the confidence to swing a crowbar from the back of one, it would make a huge difference to our chances.

  Rory didn’t learn quite as fast as I had. She’d never been that good with horses either, but she tried so hard to be useful, to be capable, getting right back up after every time a freak-out of an overzealous swing took her off the thing, that I couldn’t be smug about it.

  Well, maybe just the tiniest bit.

  Give me a break. It wasn’t exactly fun for me, stepping back and watching her share the little seat of a scooter with him, when I’d been so happy there less than an hour before, especially knowing that I was looking at a full day ahead of more of the same.

  I could have made up some perfectly good excuse why Rory had to ride with me and no one would have questioned it. I wasn’t as strong a rider, Norman could dodge quicker, I needed to focus on recalling the route I was busy memorizing, I needed her swinging to protect me more, blah, blah, blah.

  But if riding with Norman scared her that much, I couldn’t ask her to ride with me. I couldn’t reassure her when I didn’t even trust myself to keep her safe. I could just see it, the same uncertainty that would monopolize so much of my attention was also almost guaranteed to make me turn or brake or hit a bump just a little too hard, right at some moment when Rory very bravely had all her strength and focus diverted to the closest zombie, and before I could even understand whatever reflex I’d been acting on, it would be over.

  That wasn’t going to happen. Not again. There was no way I was going to track Lis down now only to deliver horrible news. And it wasn’t just for Lis. I wasn’t going to lose Rory. Not then, not like that, not after Hector and Peter and everyone else. No hormonal rush of envy was going to change my mind on that point.

  Norman would drive all the more carefully with Rory to consider and to fight for him, and I could cut the easiest, most direct path for them in advance once I knew where I was going.

  In retrospect, it was a slightly selfish decision, maybe completely, but I was going to make damn sure if anyone had to fall short of making it to that hospital, it was going to be the one in the lead on the pizza scooter, Suprbat in hand.

  Knowing what it was like to watch Norman ride through clusters of zombies, close enough to see but too far to reach, made the seating arrangement a little easier to swallow, too. That’s probably the best thing you can say about zombies. They put everything else in perspective.

  Leaving the pharmacy wasn’t like leaving any of our other shelters.

  There was none of that cold but tidy feeling that always went with packing up everything we could possibly need, looking back, and knowing we would never see a place again, that no one would ever know or care that we had been t
here in the first place.

  This time we were prepared for a two way trip. We packed up the bare minimum to carry on our backs, just two days’ worth of food and water, hopefully overkill, heavy jackets, a necessity I’d quickly come to appreciate, maps, weapons, the first aid kit, although the odds of anything happening that would make it useful but leave us a chance to use it were next to zero.

  I carried more or less what I’d carried since the beginning—Suprbat and the evil bunny bag filled with the remaining explosives, trail mix, and Peter’s journal.

  The rest we piled in the corner farthest from the blood, the melted ice cream, and the rain puddle under the hole I’d made in the ceiling, preserving it for later, wondering when, if, and under what circumstances we’d get to make use of it.

  At least, I was wondering that.

  It probably shouldn’t have taken us as long as it did to sort things, especially not after Rory’s prep work. Maybe I didn’t need all the time I took with the maps either. My memory’s not photographic, but it’s pretty good. There was no way I’d ever absorb all the information jumbled on that paper, and the important details I could pick out were pretty well locked in within about twenty minutes. Rory probably didn’t get much out of riding after the first fifteen, at least nothing that wouldn’t take days more on top of that to become useful.

  But after almost a week of racing from one coast to the other, resenting and ultimately conquering every setback and obstacle, once the end was finally within reach, no one really, completely wanted to take that next step onto the home stretch.

  It wasn’t just the question of whether or not we’d make it back to that temporary home base and the Graceland shuttle that could take us more comfortably west. We set off at the beginning of every day wondering to some degree whether or not we’d live to see the end of it. It was the certainty that this time, if we did, we would come back finally knowing how this whole rescue mission ended, one way or another.