My blind date is a zombie.
Wow; just… awesome.
Okay, no, I mean… that’s fine.
No biggie.
I’ll just make sure to ask for a corner booth, blow out the candle the minute we get there and order her steak (really, really) rare; we’re cool.
I’ve been quiet too long, standing just outside the cozy little café where in his maniacal, laughing voice Cosgrove told me to meet “the woman of my dreams.”
Now I can see why he couldn’t stop that insane giggle of his when we spoke on the phone earlier that day.
She’s looking at the yellow carnation wedged between the letter on my jacket and my three varsity pins that surround it, so it’s a little too late to back out now.
“Hi,” I say, putting out an eager hand. “I’m Jordy. Are you… Tia?”
She doesn’t look like a Tia.
Don’t get me wrong, even though it’s obvious she’s a zombie she’s not… ugly.
Far from it.
In fact, she’s pretty darn cute; just not exotic-sounding like I’d pictured when Cosgrove told me her name.
Tia smiles quickly, raising a hand to cover her yellow teeth but not stopping to shake mine, either.
I’m good with that; some girls just don’t do handshakes.
I get it.
“Good,” I say. “Are you… hungry?”
She looks around, maybe wondering if anyone is listening and growls in a mock B-movie zombie voice, “I’m always hungry.”
Then she snorts.
Not, like a “Feed me BBBBRRAAAAIIINNNNSSS!” kind of snort but a goofy girl snort, like girls will when they’re sitting in the library among friends and forget that a few jocks are sitting a few feet away in the magazine section looking at the swimsuit issue of Sports for Sports.
I smile and wonder if maybe it’s just gas.
I’ve heard zombies have a problem controlling that kind of thing, so I give her the benefit of the doubt.
Actually, she smells pretty good.
The downtown curb is bustling this time of night, the Saturday evening crowd in downtown Ambrosia, Alabama milling about and everybody waiting for a table, so we’re bunched kind of close there near the front door to the Gouda Café.
She smells like lilacs, maybe; some kind of flower, anyway.
She’s wearing black heels, not too high, black tights, black fingernails and a silver hoodie in this kind of shimmery, metallic material.
The top is pulled up, covering what used to be red hair but is now a kind of wispy, faded orange.
She has on those sexy rectangular glasses and I wonder if, being dead, her eyesight has suffered any.
She looks like any other fun, funky teenage girl on a Saturday night, except for the ghostly pallor and waxy white fingers.
I dunno, it’s not like the zombies are required to wear identification or anything, you just… know… when you see one.
And it’s not just me, either; I can already see folks moving away from her, whispering about her, curling up their noses and rolling their eyes.
She doesn’t seem to notice or, if she notices, care; I wonder if that’s just because she’s so used to it by now.
I open the door for her, even though it was partially wedged wide from the crowd standing in front of the hostess stand.
She catches my eye and winks, waving me forward.
“Hey Melanie,” I say.
The head cheerleader for Ambrosia High leers at me and says, “You know this crowd is going to hate me when I give you a table before any of them, right?”
“It’s okay,” says Tia quietly, in a new voice I haven’t heard before.
I notice her pulling her hood over her head a little tighter as the crowd around us grows and swells and grumbles as we push forward. “We can wait.”
“Forget that,” I say. “Melanie’s got the hookup. Right, Mel?”
Melanie rolls her eyes and I add, “Hey, I didn’t ask you to go out with my best lineman. But since you are… it’s time for me to cash in some chips!”
More eye rolls from Melanie as she grabs up one menu and one roll of silver and sashays in front of us through the busy restaurant.
Tia keeps her head down, following closely.
I’m racing ahead because that’s just how I walk, but Tia moves so slowly I kind of have to keep reminding myself to hang back.
She gives me a little half-smile, as if she’s noticed.
We keep walking and walking, past all the good seats.
I mean, I know I wanted something out of the way so nobody from school would see us together but… this is craziness.
Finally Melanie stands next to a tiny little table just off the kitchen.
I see what she’s doing; so does Tia.
The table isn’t just out of the way, it’s practically… hidden.
I see a cozy booth for two just a little ways away and tug the closest sleeve of Tia’s shiny silver jacket; we sit there instead.
“That’s reserved,” says Melanie with a fake smile on her face.
I lean toward her and say, “I have some very revealing photos of you and Cosgrove that say differently, Mel.”
She blushes slightly and says, “Fine; whatever. Roy will be your waiter. Enjoy your… date.”
Melanie makes a big show of handing me the silver and giving me the menu and totally snubbing Tia as she huffs on by.
Tia kind of looks down at the white cloth covering the table.
When Melanie’s gone, I slide over the menu and the silver.
“I don’t really need it,” she says quietly, but I see her eyeing it carefully.
“They’re supposed to treat you equally,” I say, quietly.
She does that little snort thing again and says, “They let me in, didn’t they? According to the Living with the Living Dead Treaty of 2017, that’s all they have to do.”
I hear a little fire in her voice and see a flicker of emotion behind her glasses.
“What color are your eyes?” I ask, partly to make small talk but, mostly, to diffuse the situation. “It’s hard to see back here.”
She snickers and says, “You mean, what color were my eyes?”
“They change?”
She kind of forms a sneer across her lower lip, which is thin and gray beneath maroon lip gloss, until she sees I’m generally interested in her answer.
Then she says, “Yeah, after about six months they drain of color. Mine were… hazel… I think?”
“You think?” I chuckle, reaching for a breadstick from a heaping basket in the middle of the table.
She shrugs and says, “My mom always called them green; my Dad brown. I settled for hazel, but… it’s been awhile since I’ve seen.”
“How… awhile?” I ask, offering her the woven stick of bread covered in a light toss of olive oil and toasted with sesame seeds.
She snorts again – I have to say, I’m kinda digging the snort – and asks, “What, you want to know if you’re on a blind date with a 98-year-old or something?”
“Yeah, actually,” I bluff.
(Secretly, I’ve always been attracted to older women. That’s kind of the reason I let stupid Cosgrove set me up on a blind date in the first place.)
“Would it matter?” she says, kinda dragging the joke down. “I mean, it’s not like anything’s gonna happen anyway.”
“Ouch.”
“Not on your part, anyway. I mean, why would you want to with… a girl like… me? See… I knew I shouldn’t have come on this stupid thing—”
She starts to get up, flustered, but it’s a good thing zombies move so slow because I can reach out and touch her sleeve before she’s even in the half-crouch position.
“Please,” I say, despite the curious eyes of the other diners as they look a little more closely at the striking figure in the shimmering hoodie. “We’re already here, so… we might as well have dinner, right?”
She sits back, but I think that’s mostly just becaus
e she was closer to still sitting than leaving anyway.
I get the feeling moving takes a lot out of her.
She pouts a little and I say, “So, what was it like growing up without electricity? Did you scare the horses with that scowl of yours?”
I wait for the snort – there it is – and she admits, “I’m not that old, jerk; I just had my fifth re-birthday, if you must know.”
“Re-birthday?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like you get a big do-over when you catch the Z Disease. You know, like resetting the game when your guy dies on the first level.”
“So, and don’t take this the wrong way Tia but… you’re only five years old?”
She leans over a little, waits ‘til I do the same and whispers, “Yeah, so… I guess we shouldn’t try to order that bottle of sangria, huh?”
Just then a waiter approaches and says, to me, “Welcome to Gouda’s Café, sir. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Ladies first?” I say, nudging him gently toward Tia’s side of the table.
“But of course,” he says, not even moving. “What will ‘she’ have?”
“I don’t know,” I growl, wanting to launch out my size-12 sneaker and kick him in the shin. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He does this major eye roll-slash-heavy sigh thing and turns to Tia and groans, “Miss?”
“I’ll take a coke and a bowl of sugar, please,” she says, sweet as can be.
“Sugar’s 50 cents extra,” he says. “We’ve had to start charging now that there are some many of… your… kind coming in.”
“I got it covered,” she says, slapping two quarters on the clean white linen.
He turns to me and before he can do the whole eye roll wheeze thing I slap down two quarters of my own and say, “Make that a double.”
He walks away without reading us the specials, which is fine because suddenly a soda with lots and lots of sugar in it sounds about right.
Tia looks around the room, eyes kind of low since most tables are already looking back.
I watch her for a few minutes, noticing the scar on the outside of her wrist when she stretches just a bit and her sleeve flutters up, if only for a second; it looks several years old, and still has some black thread inside, like maybe the stitches never came out.
She looks about my age; 17.
But… older… too.
She’s wearing makeup, but not a lot of it.
Her hoodie is zipped up tight, but another scar creeps over the zipper on the left side of her neck.
Her eyes look sad behind the sexy glasses, and I don’t think it’s just because everyone’s staring at her.
When she’s done watching the room, she fixes her eyes on me; and smiles.
“What?” I ask, twirling another breadstick in my hand nervously.
“Why are you still here?” she asks.
I kind of open my mouth and close it.
“Didn’t you hear?” I crack. “We just ordered my favorite; cokes and sugar!”
“No, I mean… really. Why are you still sitting here once you found out… what… I am?”
“You mean… a sugar fiend?”
She snorts despite herself and then shakes her head.
“You know what I mean, Jordy.”
I shrug. “It’s Saturday night in Ambrosia, Tia. Where else am I going to go?”
She starts to say something else but our waiter comes with two sodas and two white ceramic containers overflowing with sugar packets; one for each of us.
“Will there be anything else?” he asks, setting them all down on my side of the table.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning forward and hearing the leather of my letterman’s jacket sleeves creaking. “You can put the lady’s soda and sugar on her side of the table.”
“I’m required to bring them to the table, sir, not serve them to the… zombie.”
“Jordy, really,” Tia says. “It’s fine…”
“Listen to your friend, sir. She understands—”
“She’s not my ‘friend,’ friend; she’s my date. And if you don’t put that soda and that sugar on her side of the table, I’ll explain to your manager why we’re going to get up and walk without paying for them.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, ripping open three sugar packets at once after the waiter leaves. “I’m a big girl.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a big jerk and if I don’t release a little testosterone every few hours, then I turn into a big jerk and I want to have a nice evening, so…”
I catch a smile and pour one sugar into my soda.
“So, you have to tell me Tia: how does a nice girl like you know a creep like Cosgrove?”
“I was just going to ask you the same question, Jordy!”
“You first.”
She sips her soda and pours in two more packs of sugar, stirring it with her finger.
“He found me on the Z List,” she confesses, avoiding my eyes.
“What’s that, like… a site for hot zombies or something?”
“Very funny,” she says over the lip of her soda. “No, it’s a site where people can hire zombies for all sorts of things. Odd jobs, heavy lifting, dog walking, even—”
“Hold up, hold up; he hired you?”
She shrugs, knocking back half of her soda in two chugs. “No, the Living Dead Employee Pact of 2014 made it illegal to pay zombies. It’s all voluntary.”
“So, hold up; you volunteered to go on a blind date with me?”
“Well, I didn’t know it was you, now, did I?”
“No, I guess not…”
I push the soda away and sit back, the soda far too sweet for my taste.
“You gonna finish that?” she asks, already reaching.
I slide it over and she meets me halfway, our fingers grazing; she flinches, I try not to.
Her hands are so cold, and it’s not just because she’s been gripping her soda glass, either.
“But, why go out on a blind date in the first place?” I ask.
She shrugs and looks at me across the cozy café table.
“Do you have any idea how boring it gets as a… a… you know?”
“More boring than a high school junior on a Saturday night in Ambrosia?”
“Yeah,” she says. “At least you get to go to school. On Z Street, we room alphabetically. Most of the geezers in my building are in their 80s or more. So when your buddy wrote me, even though he sounded like a creep via email, I figured I’d at least get to hang with someone my own age.”
I grin and say, “Well, that explains how you got hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“But not how YOU hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“By force,” I admit.
“Pardon?” she asks, polishing off my soda and sliding it back toward me so the waiter won’t think she’s a zombie and a pig.
I tug on the collar of my jacket and say, “We’ve only been playing football together for the last six years. And baseball, and soccer and basketball…”
“Yeah, but… do you like him?”
“Not really,” I admit. “But then, nobody does. Did you ever talk to him, I mean personally?”
She wrinkles her nose in distaste and says, “We didn’t really talk much; he mostly… cackled. Does he do that… often?”
Uggh; just thinking about Cosgrove’s telltale cackle makes me shiver just to think about it.
“Try every day; all day.”
She nods, and we lapse into a few moments of comfortable silence.
Restless, or bored, or both, she reaches over to my side of the table.
I think for a second she’s reaching for my hand, and I’m not sure how to react when she grabs my sugar packet instead.
And, yeah, okay; I’m a little disappointed.
“What’s with the sugar?” I ask, watching her fold my packet carefully.
She says, “Other than the dried brains the government gives us once a week – don’t look at me like that – we don’
t really need to eat anything else. We can’t really even digest anything else, which is why I said ‘no’ to your breadstick even though I’d love one. But the soda, and the sugar, it goes right into the bloodstream so we don’t have to digest. Anyway, it’s kind of like a treat between servings of brains.”
“Gross,” I say.
“You’re gross,” she shoots back, and we both snort.
The waiter comes, ignores her, I say we’re not ready yet, he comes again a few minutes later, I say we’re still not ready and finally Tia looks up at him and says, “Can we get the check?”
“With pleasure,” he says, slapping it down in front of me.
I reach for my wallet but she slaps a five down over the bill.
“Do you mind?” she asks, already sliding from the booth.
I grab a breadstick to go and shake my head.
I see Melanie on her cell phone as we approach the hostess stand, which is odd because there are still, like, 4,000 people waiting for a table and she’s only been “Employee of the Month” at his place, like, 17 times so I figured she’d be a more conscientious worker than that.
She sees me, covers the phone, says a few things more and quickly hangs up.
“How was your date?” she asks, voice full of irony, not even looking at Tia.
“I don’t know yet,” I say, grabbing Tia’s hand. “It’s not over yet.”
Melanie’s face goes paler than usual, which is really saying something, as she watches us walk out.
Tia’s hand slides from my own as we hit the street, which has calmed considerably since we’ve been inside.
“Hey,” I say.
“You don’t have to be nice anymore,” she says a little coolly, tugging on her hoodie as we walk down the sidewalk in front of Gouda’s. “And you don’t have to finish our blind date, either.”
My car is in the overflow parking lot two blocks down. The café is behind us now, the twinkling lights in the bushes out front seeming father even than that. Here the light is dim, the buildings deserted, the storefronts cold and dark.
“But I want to,” I say. “I’m having fun. Aren’t you?”
We’re both standing there at the nearest crosswalk, she clutching her hood down tight, her face a gray mask with purple lips and black eyes.
“Maybe,” she says. “I just mean, well, no one’s looking anymore, Jordy. You can go and it won’t hurt my feelings. No one told you you’d be having a blind date with a zombie. I know your buddy Cosgrove was having a go at you. You were nice and didn’t hurt my feelings. But I’ll understand, really, if you—”
“Tia?” I ask, wondering why she’s left off in mid-sentence like that when she was just getting all fired up. “Everything… okay?”
She shushes me, inching close, shoving me tight to the wall at my back.
Her eyes are everywhere, all at once; up, down, sideways.
“Did you hear that?” she asks, voice barely a whisper; breath smelling like raw sugar.
I shake my head, straining my ears; then I do hear it.
That telltale squeak of sneakers on pavement; one pair, two, maybe three.
Maybe even four or five pairs.
Okay, so it’s downtown Ambrosia on a Saturday night.
What could possibly happen?
It’s probably just some kids out past curfew, looking for some—
Then I hear cackling, a particularly high-pitched cackling.
Tia and I look at each other at the same time and mouth, “Cosgrove.”
I try to move but she shoves me back some more, and is surprisingly… strong.
And I’m no wimp, if I may be so bold.
220-pounds, 6’2”, and she’s tossing me around like I’m some… some… café hostess or something.
The sneakers round the corner at the same time; three pairs behind me, two out in front.
It’s not just Cosgrove, it’s half the frickin’ defensive line!
I see Chalmers, all 300-pounds of him, and Philips at 275!
And Cosgrove’s no chump either; about my height, a little taller, a little heavier – all of it tightly-coiled muscle.
“How’s your date going?” he asks, voice slimy as ever, to match his slicked back black hair.
His eyes are glassy and watery, his words a little slurry; like he gets when he’s drunk, or high, or both.
“F-f-fine,” I say cautiously, watching Tia watch me. “Great, actually.”
“Ah,” slurs Cosgrove, slapping his giant pal Brody on the shoulder. “Isn’t that nice? The jock and the zombie, sittin’ in a tree.”
“It’s not like that, Cosgrove,” I blurt through gritted teeth, fists clenched. “Whatever game you’re playing at, leave off. I don’t know why you suddenly have a bug up your butt about zombies, dude but… she’s cool, it’s fine.”
“It’s NOT fine,” he shouts, white nostrils flaring as he clenches his giant fists. “Your date is one of them, dude; a meat-sicle, a dead head, a brain-muncher, man. How can you stand there, holding her hand?”
I look down and see I’ve grabbed her hand.
She tries to let go, to pull free, but not even Tia is that strong.
Murmurs of “gross” and “rude” and tons of other stuff not fit for print ooze out of the guys’ mouths, and suddenly I’m thinking: It’s no accident, they’re here. It’s no prank, Cosgrove setting me up with a zombie; on purpose.
He wanted it this way; knew I was the only one on the team who’d sit there with the undead all night while he and his buds drank beer in the car waiting for us to come out of Gouda’s.
How could I have been so stupid?
And what are we going to do now?
I mean, me and Cosgrove in a straight up fight; that’s one thing.
I maybe could take him, I maybe couldn’t but either way at least I could buy Tia enough time to get away and hide.
“Gig’s up, girl,” says Cosgrove, inching forward on uncertain but massive legs. “There’s no going back to Z Street for you tonight.”
“Shut up, Cosgrove,” I blurt, getting a whack upside the head from his buddy Brody that draws blood. “You can’t do anything to her; it’s against the Immortal Peace Treaty of 2016.”
Another whack from Brody and I’m on my knees, wiping my busted nose with the sleeve of my jacket.
Brody yanks Tia away from me in a weak moment, and when I stumble to get up two of the jocks hold me back.
“Treaty my ass,” sneers Cosgrove, circling Tia like a shark with one of those cute baby seals everyone’s always clubbing on TV. “You see any Sentinels around here, guys?”
“Leave her alone,” I spit, the coppery taste of blood on my tongue.
Brody slaps me again, hard, until I can hear my jaw ringing.
It hurts so bad I have to hold myself up with the palms of my hands flat against the pavement; it’s hard and cold beneath my skin.
I’m thinking, “Great, five on one, so how am I going to save Tia now?”
Then I hear screaming, and look up; Brody is on all fours, trying to avoid another rib being cracked by… Tia’s foot!
She’s whipped back her hoodie top, revealing a mane of carrot orange hair tightly woven into braids that run alongside her head and are tied together in the back.
Cosgrove is getting up from the ground, rubbing his jaw.
Where was I when she slapped him around?
That, I would have paid good money for!
Another of the goons, a senior I’ve never liked named Chalmers, creeps up on Tia while she’s caving in Brody’s lungs and she turns, whip-fast, and punches his throat.
I hear a crack and then air hiss out the gash on the left side of his windpipe.
When his pal Philips goes to help him, Tia kicks him so hard in the shin I literally watch his leg explode from the knee down.
He lands with a thud, but not for long; his screaming rouses the neighborhood, lights coming on in the floors above the street.
“Come on,” Tia bark
s, dragging me along the deserted streets.
I tug her back and she growls – growls! – at me but I huff, “My car’s back here!”
She doesn’t say anything, just nods, and follows.
We get in and drive away, the sound of sirens clamoring a few blocks back as I ask, “Uh, what just happened?”
She’s calmer now, the rage has left her; she smiles and says, “I just saved your butt, is what happened!”
“But… how? You just put down about 2 tons of fun back there, Tia!”
She shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “It’s the muscles. When fat dies, it turns to muscle; lots and lots of muscle.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“Stick around,” she threatens. “There’s a lot I can teach you about zombies.”
“Promise?”
She looks at me funny as we put some distance between ourselves and the sirens.
Then she says: “Okay, here’s your first lesson: zombies don’t sleep.”
“At all?”
“Nope, never; not even a smidge. We don’t need to, you know… anymore.”
“So what do you do all night then?”
“Mostly watch TV, but… tonight?”
“Yeah?” I prod when she doesn’t finish her sentence right away.
“Well, tonight, I have a feeling anything might happen…”
I drive, past the Gouda Café, past downtown, past my street, past Z Street; she doesn’t look back.
It’s Saturday night in Ambrosia, I’ve got a badass zombie chick riding shotgun and the night is young.
I ask you, what else could go wrong?
* * * * *
Story # 2:
Zombies Don’t Sleep