“What is it, ‘take your zombie to St. Patrick’s Day’ or something?”
I don’t smile or nod or shrug. “Is it so wrong to reach out to you? I mean, you used to be a person, right? So… pretend we’re both people. For one night, just this one night.”
“But we’re not,” he flares, a little too loudly. “I’m not a person anymore, and you are, so… we have nothing, absolutely nothing in common.”
I ignore his vehemence, his flared nostrils. “We go to the same school.”
He clucks his dead tongue. “No, Mandy, you go to school, and I clean your toilets. There’s, you know, kind of a difference.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “You’re right, you’re right. But, I can still want to know more about you.”
“What do you want to know? Huh? Is this a prank, like… your friends are going to come in any minute and snap a picture and put it in the yearbook. ‘Mandy Goes Out With a Zombie!’ I don’t…”
I reach across, warm hand on his cold wrist. “I’m not pranking you, Calvin. I just… like… who were you, before this happened?”
“I wasn’t Calvin, that’s for sure.”
“Really?”
“No, that’s the name they gave me at Z.E.D.”
“They do that?”
“They do whatever they want, and with those new stupid copper night sticks, they keep us all in line the best way they know how.”
I nod. Somebody, somewhere, by accident probably, realized that zombies run on power. Not blood, not even the food they eat, but the electricity from the brains they crave. Electricity, pure electricity, that’s their food; that’s their blood.
To stop the power, to interrupt the electric current that keeps them alive, or re-alive, whatever, they threw copper pennies at them. It knocked the zombies out, for awhile. Now, with these new copper plated nightsticks, the zombies are pretty much powerless against anyone who has one. They only work at close range, but still, it beats taking your chances with swinging an axe or chainsaw or machete.
“So what was your name?”
He shrugs. “I don’t remember, but I know for a fact it wasn’t Calvin.”
“How do you know for a fact?”
He looks back at me, grinning a little, revealing his big yellow teeth. “I don’t KNOW, know, I just feel it, you know?”
I nod, even though I don’t. “What do you remember?”
“I remember high school. A little. I was a wrestler.”
I squeal a little bit, getting a frigid look from the cashier. “I knew it.”
“What? How?”
“Your height. You’re a good height for a wrestler.”
He shakes his head. “I wrestled, I had a girlfriend, she was pretty, until the Shufflers got the head of her cheerleading squad in the second outbreak. She turned, and I didn’t know it, and I went up to her, to check on her, and…”
“She did this to you?” I ask.
“Not her,” he reminds me, as if defending her. “What she became.”
I nod. Like my parents, turning on each other. And then on my brother, Brandon, who tried to turn on me.
“But now, I mean, now that you’ve fed, and you’re settled, have you seen her?”
“The Reanimation Patrol got her,” he says, looking over my shoulder. “They took her to the Z-Zone.”
I sit up a little, an idea flickering to life. “I… I didn’t know they still did that,” I lie. “I mean, ever since they found out you guys get docile after a few days, after your first brains, I thought they stopped doing that.”
“They did. But they sent her to the Z-Zone before they knew that, back in 2014, so…”
I nod, the same year they got Brandon. He’s still distracted, and I turn to see what he’s looking at when suddenly the café door opens. A chill wind wafts in, followed by three clowns dressed head to toe in green. Not actual, big feet, red nose clowns, but, you know… clowns. Frat boys, jocks, whatever, clowns.
Green ball caps, green glasses shaped like mugs full of green beer, green shamrock necklaces clattering around their necks, green vests, green cargo shorts.
They’re drunk, stumbling, loud, singing, the open door letting in a blast of old Irish fiddle from the live band jamming “Danny Boy” in the town square.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” one of them cheers, making a beeline for us. I can feel the tension in Calvin’s hands as they rest, palms down, on the table in front of him.
“Wuzzup?!?!” blasts another, following the first guy over.
The third stumbles along, quietly, eyes half-lidded behind his cheesy prank glasses.
The first one sits down, on my side, reeking of beer and cigarette smoke and corned beef and cabbage, which it looks like he may have thrown up all over his vest before getting a second wind and deciding to stumble into Dolly’s Donuts.
“Hey, darlin’,” he oozes. He’s older, college age, thick, farm fed, burly.
“Hey pardner,” shouts the other, red cheeked, sliding down next to Calvin. Calvin slides over, to avoid being touched. The kid notices, so does his friend. The third is lingering, still standing, watching Calvin closely.
“This party sucks,” says the Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy. “Lame. Oh.”
“I agree,” says his friend, sitting next to Calvin. “We should shanghai these two kids, take ‘em with us, show ‘em what a good time really looks like.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, making conversation so Calvin won’t have to. “Where are you guys going?”
“Shuffler hunting!”
I somehow manage not to flinch, or kick him in the gonads. “Wow, sounds dangerous.”
Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy makes a “pfffttt” sound, beer spit falling on my green T-shirt. “No way. We hear there’s a couple of them, out beyond the checkpoint, hiding out in the woods. We head out there, blast ‘em full of shotgun pellets, watch em try to limp after us.”
His friend, on Calvin’s side, nods. His shirt says “Born Lucky” inside of a gold four-leaf clover. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he grunts, between hearty burps that smell, amazingly, like… corned beef and cabbage.
“Let’s go,” says Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy, yanking on my sleeve. “Come on, you guys come with us.”
“Yeah,” says Born Lucky Shirt, reaching for Calvin. He backs up even more, but his chair is against the window now, so there’s nowhere else for him to go. Drunk as they are, Born Lucky Shirt looks across the table at Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy with a knowing grin.
“Hey…”
“Out!” shouts a feminine voice from behind as we all turn to find the cashier, still wearing her green Dolly’s Donuts apron. “You three, out, now. I told you when you come in here this ain’t no pub, and I meant it.”
The only reason Corned Beef and Cabbage Guy and Born Lucky Shirt Dude and their friend – who I have no cute name for, sorry – move is because Cashier Lady has a shotgun, twin barrels following them all the way to the door.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” one of them shouts, voice full of warning, as he slides through the door.
Calvin and I look at each other. “You two better use the back door,” she says, lowering her shotgun. She looks at Calvin, hard face softening. “And son, I suggest you get back to wherever it is you came from. Your costume’s wearing off, and this is the wrong place to be on St. Patrick’s Day.”
I follow her gaze and, sure enough, Calvin’s green face paint is all but faded now. If those three hadn’t been so wasted, for sure they would have seen. And even drunk, they were suspicious enough.
“Thank you,” he says, standing.
She shakes her head, free hand reaching out as he passes. He pauses, her hand on his shoulder. “I… my son, he… he’s like you. I miss him, terrible. I don’t want what happened to him to… to happen to you…”
Tears leak, silently, from her eyes. Calvin nods and heads for the back while I pause. “Thank you,” I say, squeezing her shoulder.
She nods, staring down
at my ID Badge on the table. “Don’t forget your credits.”
“They’re for you,” I say, peeling away from her gently. “I won’t need them where I’m going.”
She takes it, greedily, hiding it away in her dirty tip apron. Credits are money now, and money is hard to come by these days.
There is a back room, then a back door, then a back alley. We creep down all three, emerging just past the town square, on the far side of town. There are no more checkpoints out here, thankfully, because now, under the moonlight, Calvin looks like what he is: the living dead.
We hustle, out of town, through the woods, not pausing until we reach the first clearing well out of Nightshade.
He leans against a tree, steadying himself, though I know he doesn’t have to catch his breath.
“I’m not going to help you,” he says, gray eyes avoiding mine. He peers out into the darkness instead, at the path we’ve just taken, watching, listening, to see if anybody’s following.
I let him, until he turns back to me and nods. We start walking again and I say, “Help me what?”
“Help you do whatever it is you want me to help you do.”
I stop him, just across from the warehouse. I tug on his sleeve, dotted with green grease