“Stop, Prent, you’re going to make me late.”
He chuckles, face flushed from too much cheap champagne.
“Late for what? It’s almost midnight. You’re here, I’m here… you’re right on time!”
I tug free of his arm and lope off across the golf course, but his stupid long cricket track team legs catch up to me in no time.
“Jade,” he whines, whipping me around. He’s in a tux shirt, the top three buttons undone, not a hair on his chest, a bow tie hanging from either side of his stiff white collar. “What is wrong with you?”
“I told you I didn’t want to come here tonight,” I hiss, yanking free again and stumbling back a step or two. “I told you this wasn’t going to… happen.”
He huffs, hands on his narrow hips, pushing down his maroon cummerbund. “Yeah, but… I didn’t think you meant it.”
I roll my eyes and turn, sprinting down the fairway of the 14th hole, racing toward the woods where I know a few shortcuts to lose him, and make up some time.
I glance down at my watch and see the time: ten minutes left. I’ll never make it if I have to keep stalling Prent.
He catches up to me, leaping forward, lunging, tackling me around the waist as we go rolling into the sand trap on the 12th hole.
“Prent!” I shout, turning around and slapping him across the face. He blinks, stunned, but other than that he’s relatively unphased. “Get. Off. Of. Me. NOW!”
I kick him off and he tumbles, spilling, as I rise to my feet and circle him as he struggles in the sand pit. “Forget it, Prent. I… I should have never come here. I’m sorry. I know it, but… it ain’t gonna happen.”
He sits on his rump, hands palms down behind him. “What’s so different about tonight?” he sneers. “It’s happened plenty of other nights. If I remember correct, it happened last night.”
I shake my head. What a dick! “Dude, don’t flatter yourself.”
He shakes the sand out of his curly black hair, rustling it with his long fingers. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he slurs.
I turn to run again and hear rustling behind me and then something whacks my ankle and I go down with an unflattering tumble and an unintelligible “Huummpphhflazzzlsnat” as air goes tumbling through my vocal chords.
I turn and he’s on his knees, suddenly, holding the sand trap rake and beaming. I stand up on wobbly legs and flash a glance at my watch: nine minutes left.
“I know you’re faster than me, Prent,” I huff, trying to catch my breath, “and I know you’re bigger than me, but I have somewhere I really need to be and—”
“What, to be with him?”
I step back a little, almost staggering. “What? Him… who?”
“I know where you’re going, Jade. To be with your stupid zombie boyfriend.”
I blink twice, staring at Prent on his knees. He’s handsome, long limbed and smooth skinned, but in that way that only really looks good when he’s standing still, or lying still, or doesn’t know you’re looking at him. The minute he starts talking, his features get a little weasely. Like now.
Like right now.
“I… I don’t know what you’re—”
“Terry told me all about it, so don’t even front. He’s on one of the Z.E.D. crews, comes in at night to the Minute Mart to clean up after your shift is over.”
I shake my head. Stupid Terry. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to that cow. But she’s my roommate at the Shelter, so… what was I supposed to do when my old boyfriend came into the store last week, wearing those one of those god awful Z.E.D. track suits, taking my breath away?
I glance at my watch. Seven minutes. No way I’m making it now, not even if I had a helicopter. I grit my teeth and walk back into the sand trap, enjoying the look on stupid Prent’s face as he scrambles away on his knees.
“Listen to me carefully, Prent, because I’m only going to say this once: I’m going to meet Calvin, and I’m going to dance with him and I’m going to kiss him at midnight, and if you try to stop me I will hurt you, and then I will tell all the girls back at the Shelter how small your—”
He flings sand at me, but I already knew he would, so I raise my arm and close my eyes and jam my sneaker down where I think his knee should be. I miss, but only by half a leg because I jam my foot down on his ankle instead.
He screams and jumps to his feet, limping toward me when I scoop the rake off the fairway grass and use it to swipe at the back of his knees. He goes down, hard, clattering his teeth and biting his lip and as he looks at the blood I whip the rake around so that the metal part is against his throat.
Hey, I’m not tops in my Zombie Self-Defense Class at Nightshade High for nothing. The athletes don’t have to take them, of course. Not sure why. I guess because they’re big, dump and stupid? I don’t know.
Prent is big, but not strong. He’s long, but not limber. Mostly he’s just pretty, really, really pretty, which is why I hooked up with him in the first place. How was I to know he’d turn into a needy, greedy, pathetic stalker type?!?
I squeeze down, standing above him as he whimpers, squirming in the sand. “Stop struggling,” I sigh, squeezing a little more. “Just lay there and give up!”
I shove down once more, until I hear him grunt and wheeze the last of his air, then I take the rank and snap it across my knee and toss both halves away.
“Happy New Year, Prent,” I huff, tearing off. “Try to follow me,” I call over my shoulder, “And the next thing I break will be your arm.”
I smirk, running, running, listening to him grumbling, cursing behind me. “I know where you’re going!” he screams at my back, but by now I’m too far away to turn back. “I’ll never let a girl who’s kissed me kiss a zombie, Jade! Never!”
I sprint, but it’s hard running and shaking my head at the same time. He calls out after me, voice growing softer in the distance: “I’ll bring the RAP with me, Jade. I’ll tell the Reanimation Patrol where you’re going. They’ll probably get there before you….”
His threats fade in the trees as I reach the forest at the edge of the country club, where Nightshade High School was having its first annual New Year’s Eve Formal. I’d gone with Prent because it was the only way I could get out of the Displaced Women and Girls Shelter past curfew.
I figured he’d understand when I stood him up for the traditional New Year’s kiss. I figured wrong.
The woods are thick and slow me down, but it’s the only way to skip the check point at 14th Street so I twist and turn through the thick trees, feeling my recycled prom dress tear at the waist and twice at the hem.
I see the blinking streetlights on Mott Avenue and follow the tree line all the way to Sate Street, where it’s finally safe to emerge from the woods and walk the last two blocks to the Minute Mart on the sidewalk.
The town of Nightshade is deserted now. Ever since the New Year’s Eve Outbreak of 2018, the holiday has been pretty low key in North Carolina. This is the first time since, I dunno, freshman year we’ve been allowed to have a dance on New Year’s.
Of course, there are only 108 students left at Nightshade High and only about half of them showed up tonight, so the party was pretty lame. And like I said, I only came for one reason anyway.
I see it as I round the corner on Apple Avenue: The Minute Mart, closed now, even though the neon sign out front says “Open 24-Hours.”
Not much chance of that anymore. Curfew at 7 p.m. each night, not enough supplies to stock the shelves on a good week, and barely enough to keep the store open on a bad one. Plus the pay is so low only kids like me, desperate to get out of the Shelter five nights a week will even think about working there.
I slide out of my back pack purse and rustle in the bottom for my work keys. I don’t want to scare him so I slink around the side wall, covered in graffiti, most of it ugly and anti-Shuffler.
I go around back, listening in the dark to see if any of Prent’s threats have come true. The night is still, even though my wa
tch says it’s dead on midnight. I wait for fireworks, gunshots, sirens, the sound of Prent limping along, dragging the ugly end of the broken rake… nothing.
It’s just another night, now, the New Year just like the last, and the last before that. Nothing to live for, nowhere to go, nobody to kiss at midnight.
Except this year, he’s back. Calvin, my boyfriend from The Before. After three years of not knowing what happened to him in the last outbreak, after three years of assuming he was like the rest of them, Shuffling off to parts unknown or rounded up by RAP, the Reanimation Patrol and extinguished or, worse, sent to live in the Z-Zone with the rest of the Untrainables.
But no, not Calvin. Somehow, I always knew he’d come back. Or maybe I’m just rewriting history. Either way, I was just standing there, slipping through a two year old issue of Hair Color magazine when the cow bell over the door rang.
I looked up to see the Zombie Employment Program van parked out front, the big letters Z.E.D. splashed all over the side, and a guy in a suit striding right up to the cash register.
“I’d like to see the manager, miss,” he said, looking at my nametag but not using my name. Or maybe he was just looking at what was under the nametag, if you know what I mean.
“He’s gone home for the night,” I said as he flashed his Z.E.D. badge. “Can I help?”
He looked flustered, nibbling on the end of a thick moustache. “Well, I’ve got this Z.E.D. crew and I don’t want to alarm you…”
I shrugged. “I see them at school all the time, it’s no bigs.”
“Really?” he asked, looking vaguely relieved. “Normally they’d come after hours, you shouldn’t have to deal with them but it’s my first time with this crew and I want to make sure they’re trained properly before I set them loose.”
I nodded slowly, for emphasis. “It’s okay, really. Shufflers don’t freak me out all that much anymore.”
He looked at me funny, like I’d said something wrong. “Oh no,” he scolded, like one of my teachers during Outbreak Simulation Period. “We should never let our guards down. Shufflers should always freak you out.”
I shrugged. “You know what I mean. The tame ones, I mean. The Trainables.”
He shook his head. “Even the tame ones need supervision from time to time.”
I snorted. “That why you drop them off in your Z.E.D. van out there, and don’t come back until they’re through?”
His cheeks got red and he turned, quickly, bald spot gleaming in the harsh convenience store lighting. He went back to the truck and dragged two Z.E.D.S. through the van’s open side door. I watched as they tumbled from the van, wearing their green track suits with yellow stripes down the sleeves and pants legs.
They looked like all the other ZEDS I’d ever seen in town, cleaning up the roads or wiping out toilets in the girls room at school or hauling trash to the curb on Burn Day: gray skin, thick and leathery, stubbly heads covered by close cut hair, gaunt cheeks, shiny black eyes, yellow teeth, that shuffling walk and then… and then… he turned, and I saw him: Calvin.
“Jesus,” I muttered, letting the magazine fall to the sales counter. I was glad the supervisor wasn’t inside at the time because he would have known, spot on, that I knew him, and then he wouldn’t have let Calvin work there anymore.
But I played it cool and watched, carefully, as Calvin came in, shuffling around, eyes downcast as the supervisor dude told him what to do, how often to do it, and when to be ready.
Then he’d left, without a backward glance. So much for “supervising” them.
I waited until Calvin had the broom and was sweeping the aisles and his partner was in the back, swishing toilets, to walk up to him. “Calvin?” I asked, but he didn’t even flinch.
I tapped him on the shoulder and he started, black eyes wide, stumbling into the pet food aisle. Pet food is about the only canned food we stock anymore. Most pets are either dead or strays by now, and nobody can afford to feed them anymore. Not on the measly Existence Credits the state adds to our magnetized ID Badges every month.
But people buy the food anyway, because it’s cheap and vaguely nutritious. Hey, I can’t judge. I’ve been there once or twice, and, well… it’s not so bad. It’s also full of organs: liver, kidneys… brains.
I grabbed one. It was yellow, and called Miss May’s Private Reserve. Yeah, right. I held it up, and said, “This has brains in it.”
He snorted. “Bad brains,” he said, voice barely recognizable it was so low, and dry, and cold. I shivered, as if I could feel it, deep down in my bones. How much his voice had changed; how much he’d changed.
I made a question mark with my face. He said, “They feed us, good brains, every week. Fresh brains, not… from a can.”
I smirked. “Classy,” I said, putting it back on the shelf. I guess I was nervous because it was a little crooked and he’d straightened it on the stack, smiling bashfully at me after it was done.
“How are you?” He looked at me, confused by the question. And his expression, so blank, despite the curved smile etched in his leathery gray skin, I knew he didn’t remember, and my heart broke all over again.
He muttered “fine” and gripped his broom and went back to sweeping the aisles, and I didn’t have the heart to embarrass myself anymore after that.
Every night, for the last week, I’ve watched him sweep the store, straighten the dusty cans on the half-empty shelves, wipe the windows of the beer coolers, shuffling around in his baggy track pants, and thought of what I might do to make him remember.
To make him remember the life he once had, the life we once had, what we’d meant to each other, once upon a time in The Before.
And then, when Prent asked me to the New Year’s Eve Dance, it hit me: a kiss. A midnight kiss, might bring back his memory. And even if it didn’t, it could resolve some unfinished business and maybe I could quit stalking Calvin, let him go on being a Shuffler and living his shuffling life.
Either way, once the thought entered my brain I couldn’t get it out.
And so here I am, at just after midnight, minutes late but still on time, because you only get one chance to rewrite history, and this is mine. I’m not going to let 120-seconds ruin three years of waiting.
I open the back door and slip in, locking it back behind me, just in case Prent wasn’t kidding about the Reanimation Patrol and they come sniffing around before I get my chance.
The place is quiet except for the whisk of Calvin’s broom as he slides it, back and forth, forth and back, across the darkened floor.
The lights are off because they don’t need them, their undead eyes blessed with night vision. I smile, slinking out of the stock room into the dim light of the store, closed for the holiday, lit only by the blinking blue neon of the ancient beer signs, already on their last legs.
“Calvin?” I ask, inching toward his aisle, and the broom stops.
I turn, to face him, but it’s not Calvin, it’s his partner, some gaunt looking Shuffler I’ve never said two words to.
“Hey,” he says, leaning on his broom, “you’re not supposed to be here.”
I ignore him, heart pounding, throat dry. “Where… where’s Calvin?”
He stands up a little straighter, suspiciously, eyeing me curiously. “What do you care? I said you’re not supposed to be here.”
Then I remember, he’s a Shuffler and I’m a Normal, and in this day and age, I still rate. “I’m here to do inventory,” I lie, finding my voice and standing a little taller, “and you’re threatening me. Do you want me to report you to your supervisor?”
He shakes his head, but doesn’t back down. “Nobody said anything about inventory tonight.”
“We always do it on New Year’s,” I lie again. “And you’re still threatening me. I reach for my backpack purse, sliding it off the poofy sleeves of the only prom dress I could still find in the thrift shop over on Mott Street. Inside the pack is the personal size stun gun that is standard issue for all surviving citize
ns of Nightshade ever since the Memorial Day Outbreak of 2019 (Why do they always attack on a holiday? Are they lonely? Homesick? Jealous?!?)
I flick it, just so he knows I mean business, and he quick-like drops the broom. They can’t stand electricity, any kind, and even the little stun gun in my hand is enough to knock him out for an hour or two. Plus it hurts them, hurts them something awful.
I flick it a few more times, corralling him to the front door. I unlock it from the inside, and hold it open for him. “You can wait out here while I decide whether or not to call your supervisor,” I tell him as he shuffles past, eyes downcast.
Only after I shut the door, locking it tight, jiggling it by the handle to make sure it’s really locked, does he stand up straight, eyes cold and black as he stares back at me through the bullet proof, zombie proof glass.
“Don’t worry,” he says, reaching for the beeper in his pocket. “I’ll call him myself.”
I curse and turn from the door, fists clenched at my side as I walk toward the break room. “Calvin?” I call out, but he doesn’t answer.
“Calvin!” I demand, then I hear a toilet flush. He steps out of the bathroom, wiping his long, gray fingers with a paper towel he crumples and tosses into the basket by the door.
I stare up at him, he always was a few inches taller. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
He shakes his head. “That’s not my name.” With dry hands he points to the nametag on his ZED track jacket. It says, “Parker.”
“I refuse to acknowledge that name!” I snap, backing away as he heads back into the store.
“It’s the name they gave me at the Relocation Center,” he explains, standing on the other side of the cash register. He looks back at me, black eyes filled with pain. “After they tamed me.”
I nod. “I don’t care, Calvin. Your name is Calvin. You… you were my boyfriend.”
He smiles, and there is a momentary flicker in my heart where I think, “He’s been lying. This whole time, all week, faking me out by ignoring me. He does remember. What they’ve always taught us, about the Big Blackout, it’s fake, it’s false, they just want to keep us dumb so we don’t go chasing after our mothers, our fathers, our brothers and sisters… our boyfriends.”
Then he says, “I think I’d remember if I ever dated a girl like you.”
I shake my head, throat dry. “You did date me, Calvin,” I croak, looking at the ground. “And a lot more than that. I refuse… I refuse to believe you don’t remember those six months we dated!”
He stands there, shaking his head. We both hear the sirens, at the same time, staring back at each other with wide eyes.
I grab his hand, yanking him to the front door. “Here,” I say, shoving off his shoulder to leap onto the sales counter. “Look, just… you don’t have to remember me, okay?”
“Good,” he snits, “because I don’t.”
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to sound so proud of it…” I grunt, on my tippy toes, to reach the store clock. It’s a battery deal, and is never right anyway. I fudge with the time all the time, depending on how early I want to go home, or how late I show up.
I show him as I use a little wheel in the back to whirl both hands of the clock back to midnight. Then I leave it out, so the clock’s guts won’t start back up. “Look, now it’s midnight again!”
I go to step down and he reaches out a hand, to help. I hesitate, then take it. I haven’t… I’ve never touched one before. At least, not unless I was killing it. It’s cold, so cold, dead cold, but why should that surprise me?
I reach for the radio by the register and flick it on. Sure enough, “Auld Lang Syne” oozes out, old-timey and beautiful, as if I’ve never heard it before. They’ve been playing it non-stop since pretty much noon today, and I figured nobody’s there at the station this time of night anyway, so it’ll be playing ‘til morning, for sure.
“There,” I say, feeling self-satisfied. “Now, one more thing…” I drag him along with me, back past the candy aisle, and the paper plate aisle, and the motor aisle, to the chip aisle, which is right across from the long row of coolers in the back of the store.
The sirens wail in the distance, battling it out with “Auld Lang Syne” as I reach into the milk cooler. He’s hovering, behind me, shifting from one foot to the other in his stupid track pants, smirking.
“I think the traditional drink is… champagne?”
He adds the question mark as I yank the last bottle of champagne out from behind the last gallon of milk. “I knew we’d sell out,” I say, jerking a thumb at the empty wine cooler two doors down. “So I hid this earlier.”
“I can’t… I can’t drink that,” he says, but I see his eyes widening, licking his lips just the same.
“I know,” I say. “It gives me a headache, too. But just a little bit, for old time’s sake?”
He shakes his head, but ends up nodding. “Maybe, just a little. It gives me gas, though. You haven’t smelled gas until you’ve smelled zombie gas.”
I chuckle, dryly, putting the cold champagne bottle between my knees. “Thanks for putting that thought in my head,” I croak. “Very romantic like.”
The sirens are closer now, probably already on State Street. Not much time. I make quick work of the cheap gold label, and the cork, sending it ricocheting off one of the ceiling tiles and raining down little clouds of asbestos, I’m sure, on top of our heads.
“I don’t think we’ll be around long enough for me to experience your zombie gas anyway,” I say, breathlessly, pouring champagne into two paper cups. It fizzes over the top and gets on our hands.
“Cheers!” I say, brightly, as if our world hasn’t ended, as if the town’s not deserted, as if everyone we know isn’t dead, Shuffling or, like me, wishing they were.
We clink paper and then sip, carefully. It’s cold, and cheap, and sweet, just the way I like it!
I put my cup down, empty, and stand, arms extended. “Now what?” he asks, following suit. And so we stand there, inches apart, arms out, looking stupid, the clock set on permanent midnight, Auld Lang Syne playing on auto repeat from the tinny dime store radio on the sales counter.
“Now we dance, silly.”
He takes a step back, but I notice he doesn’t lower his hands. “I… I don’t remember.”
“You didn’t know enough before to forget,” I scold him, lurching forward until our hands are clasped together and I waltz him around, there by the milk coolers, separated from the front of the store by four or five aisles.
It’s oddly intimate, twirling around, head full of quick, cold, cheap champagne, holding a boy you never thought you’d see again, even though from the sounds of it, every Reanimation Patrol until in Nightshade is going to be bearing down on us at any minute.
“Where did you go?” I ask, putting my head on his shoulder. It smells like bleach, from the bathroom.
“I went where all zombies go,” he sighs, breath cold on the top of my head. “Into the Forgetting Place, deep inside the Big Blackout, and then I came out on the other side, and they tamed me and named me ‘Parker’ and handed me a broom.”
I swallow hard and ask, quickly, because time is running out and I want to know so badly, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
He pauses, saying nothing. I’m about to ask him again when he says, “Actually, it’s this. I think. I mean, dancing with you. But… how… how can that be?”
I cling tighter to him, remembering. Remembering the last time I saw him, at some stupid house party, on some stupid street, at some kid’s place that must have been real popular that night but now I don’t even remember if he’s alive or undead anymore.
It was just before midnight, three long years ago, and Calvin Phelps held me in his arms, just like this. It was a few minutes until the big moment, and I was nervous about our kiss. Not because it was our first, not by a long shot, but because I feared it might be our last.
There had already been a few outbreaks in our neck
of the woods by then: the Halloween Outbreak in Tennessee and, later, the Thanksgiving Outbreak in South Carolina. We were halfway through our freshman year and the Reanimation Patrol was lowering its age restriction with every new outbreak. I knew Calvin wanted to join, and I feared, after the New Year, he would.
And so I was nervous, about that kiss. And I shouldn’t have been, because we never got to have it after all. At two minutes until midnight, the sliding door crashed apart, smashing open, from the outside, and I turned to find six Shufflers, mouths already bloody, eyes black and undead, stream into the room.
“No!” Calvin shouted, shoving me back, back, and I stumbled over some silly tramp in a hot pink dress running in the other direction and went down, hard, cracking my head against the stairwell. The last thing I saw was Calvin, arm up, defending himself as two zombies bit him solid, bit him good.
I woke up an hour or so later, buried under a pile of bodies, still warm. I shoved them off of me, my classmates, my friends, my study buddies and lab partners, and all I cared about was Calvin. The RAP was already there, and when they saw I was alive, they sent me straight to Processing.
The fallout was hard, ugly and swift: my mother and little brother, gone. Half my neighbors, gone. My postman, my doctor, my PE teacher, gone. Half my junior high class, gone.
Calvin, gone.
And I never got my kiss. I got put in the Shelter, with all the other girls from school who lost their parents. I went back to school, I put my head down, I rebuilt my life and never looked back.
And now, here we are again, back in each other’s arms. He shifts, back and forth, awkwardly. I rock, forth and back, just as awkwardly. He never could dance, and I’m no better.
Suddenly, tires squeal in the parking lot as the sirens threaten to explode our ear drums, and a fresh Reanimation Patrol threatens to crash our party.
He seems fairly calm as he looks down at me. I’ve finally gotten used to his cold arms. “What now?” he asks.
“Now we’re screwed,” I huff, inching slightly away to peak around the corner and see what we’re facing.
He pulls me back, tighter, and shakes his head. “No, this, the clock, the song, the champagne, the dance. What’s next?”
I smirk. Jesus, all this planning, everything I’ve risked, and I almost forgot!
“This,” I whisper, leaning up on my toes the way I always used to. “This is next.” And we kiss, his lips cold against mine, crisp, dry and surprisingly soft.
The front door jiggles as the first Reanimation Patrol attempts entry. I hear voices, the clang of metal, the grind of heavy equipment and turn reluctantly from Calvin, inching my face around the top of the potato chip aisle.
“Just break the damn door!” screams Prent, standing front and center. “Look, I see her there, peaking her stupid head around the potato chip aisle!”
The RAP Team shoves him aside and I watch him wince as he favors his left leg, the one I cracked with the rake while he was still trapped in the sand trap. He’s still in his tux shirt, dots of blood on the collar from where he bit his lip.
I shake my head. I turn, as something metal and sharp and effective slips between the front doors and cranks and cracks and wedges them open. “Happy New Year, Calvin.”
He smiles, lips thin and gray and cold. “Happy New Year, Jade.”
My heart lifts and I leap into his arms, wrapping his broad shoulders in a merciless bear hug even as the zombie proof glass shatters in the front windows.
“You said you didn’t remember,” I squeal, slipping from his arms.
Hard footsteps on the ground, rubber boots as the Reanimation Patrol floods inside. “I don’t,” he says, pointing to the supply room door. There, hanging from a hook, is my employee apron, the nametag on front as big as you please: “Jade.”
He smirks, just before the first taser digs into his shoulder. “But I loved the way you looked when you thought I did!”
Zombies Don’t Read: 25 YA Short Stories Page 53
