The reporter fiddles with his digital recorder. It’s sleek and shiny, about the size of a thumb drive, which is appropriate seeing as he’s all thumbs as he tries to get it to work.
Once, nope. Twice, not quite. Three times… there we go.
He’s young, can’t be more than 21- or 22-years-old, and cute in a preppy, khaki pants and no socks under his leather loafers kind of way. A boxers not briefs kind of guy, for sure.
He looks like he’d probably be a great lab partner, but maybe not such a super duper blind date.
His neck’s a little too long and there are finger smudges on his glass lenses, but he’s human and, at this point, that’s pretty much “off the scale” hot as far as I’m concerned.
Mom sits nearby, fiddling with the clasp of her big blue purse while she troubles another damp tissue. I keep shooting her “I’m okay, really Mom” looks but I know she doesn’t believe me. It would help if I wasn’t still dripping wet from the fumigation shower and wearing hospital scrubs and paper slippers on my feet.
Maybe if I was wearing my regular, teenage clothes she’d believe I was going to be okay. Heck, maybe I’d even believe it, too.
“Contamination,” they’d said as they hosed me down, powerful jets of bleachy, chlorine-y smelling water stinging my body. “Just want to make sure you’re all you, you know? Not bringing anything along for the ride.”
I smiled, blinking back tears, wanting to ask if there was some way to decontaminate my brain, make it so I could forget everything I’d just seen.
Everything I’d just done.
Now I’m sitting in the back of some converted 18-wheeler behind the school, all sterile and rigged with lights and air conditioning and fold-up picnic tables.
They’ve been debriefing me for hours, and it’s dark out, now, but the reporter from the local paper promised I’d get to tell my side of the story, so I’ve agreed to stay a little longer.
That, and they’ve been pumping me full of hot coffee and vending machine cupcakes ever since I walked in, so I’m pretty much wired for anything at this point.
Preppy guy finally gets his recorder working and looks across the fold-up picnic table at me. “Can you state your name so I get it right in tomorrow’s paper.”
“Michelle,” I say, a little hoarse.
He looks up, noticing. “From all the crying,” I explain.
He nods. “Can you spell it?”
“Crying? That’d be C-R-Y…” Then I snort and his frown turns into a half-hearted smile.
I spell my name and he nods. “What class were you in when the outbreak started?”
Already, I have to correct him. “Well, technically school was out for the day, so I wasn’t really in class. But I’m office aide 7th period, and I always like to test the equipment before the morning announcements the next day before I leave.”
He’s nodding, the little recorder on my side of the table, scribbling notes in a little black book on his side. I wait until he’s done, and remind myself to speak more slowly next time he asks me a question. Nothing worse than a blabbermouth firing off words at 55 sentences per second when you’re trying to take notes.
I should know; I have to dictate for Principal Standish sometimes and, man, that dude can talk fast!
Prep Boy looks up, almost greedily, green eyes on fire behind his smudged glasses. “And when did the first zombie break into the front office?”
“Well, that’s just it,” I spit, instantly forgetting my promise and rushing through the tale. “They were already in the office when the outbreak started.”
He makes this little, vaguely unattractive, squinty face at me, like this is a worse story than how he imagined it. Like maybe I should try and rewrite my version so it’ll sound a little better.
“How do you mean? I thought…”
“Principal Standish has this zero tardiness policy,” I interject before he can get his tighty-whities in any more of a wad, “and he’s real strict about it. So, I guess, he went around gathering all these stray students who were wandering the halls tardy for class.”
The reporter stops scribbling, looks up at me. “Well, how many were there?”
I shrug, the stiff medical scrubs they gave me feeling scratchy on my cold, decontaminated skin. “Only three or four, at first.”
He cocks a bushy brown eyebrow. “At first?”
“Well, I wasn’t really paying attention because the announcements room is just off the office, in this little soundproof studio thingie, but… some of the dudes he was bringing in were pretty cute so—”
“Cute?” His face shrivels, his eyes get beady and I notice, lips parted, that his teeth are too small. “Weren’t they all zombies? How… how could a zombie be cute?”
I take about my 435th sip of coffee since I escaped from the school. “Hey, don’t judge. I didn’t know that then. I mean, at first, they just kind of looked… sick. Can’t a cute boy get sick? And still be cute?” After a beat I ask, “And who says a zombie can’t be cute?!?”
I’m actually kind of expecting an answer from him, but Reporter Boy must assume the question is rhetorical because he just sits there, pen in hand, waiting for me to get to the good part.
I sigh and give him what he wants: “Anyway, more started coming. I guess they smelled each other, or us, or both, whatever. There are these six chairs outside of Standish’s office, and they were full, and so a few were standing.”
He nods, head down, scribbling furiously. “And?” he says, not even looking up at me anymore, using his free hand to make that rolling “Hurry up” motion. Like maybe I’m taking too long. Like maybe I should have rehearsed this by now, so his job would be easier. Like maybe I’m not still, you know, in S-H-O-C-K.
I give my mom a kind of “do you believe this guy?” look and dig back in: “Well, nothing much really happened until Chuck Akers showed up just toward the end of the day. He does that, sometimes. He’s a big deal around here, starting QB for the football team, always wearing his letterman’s jacket, whatever. He likes to spend the last twenty minutes or so just killing time in the front office, plus it doesn’t hurt that the new secretary, Ms. Bascomb, is major hot and he totally has a straight-up MILF crush on her, so—”
Mom finally speaks up. “Michelle!”
“Sorry, Mom, it’s true.”
The reporter gives Mom a funny look and then, back to me, “Let’s just stick to the zombies, huh Melissa?”
I give mom another “you see what I mean about this dude?” look. She just sits there, big fat purse on her lap, a soft brown hand clutching one side and the other wrapped around a used tissue.
“Michelle,” I correct him.
He nods. No sorry, no nothing.
I sigh and say, “I AM telling you about the zombies, because this is when it started. Chuck was doing his whole ‘look at me I’m king of the world’ deal, strutting around in his tight jeans, when he bumped into one of the zombies. Or wannabe zombies or whatever they were. The dude growled, Chuck pushed him and, boom, the zombie just dove right in and took a chunk out of Chuck’s shoulder. Bit right through the leather sleeve of his letterman’s jacket and came back with a chunk of flesh, even a little bone, it looked like.”
Preppy Boy looks up from his notes, literally licking his lips. “And you saw all this?”
I kind of avoid his eyes as I confess, “Well, not at first.”
Then, before he can flash those disappointed green eyes at me I say, “But I heard the tussle between zombie boy and looked up just in time to see half of Chuck’s passing arm get gnawed off. Next thing I know, Chuck is projectile vomiting all over the new secretary’s silk blouse, she’s screaming, and he reaches out and yanks her arm right. The. Hell. OFF!”
“Michelle!”
“Sorry, Mom, but that’s what happened. After that, Principal Standish had me turn on the morning announcement video equipment and that’s when he started screaming about the outbreak to anyone who would listen...”
> I notice I’m breathing a little heavy, and that my fists are clenched. I look over at Mom and she seems blurry. I wipe my eyes and suddenly it’s much better.
The only sound in the room now is me sniffling, just a bit, and reporter dude scribbling in his pad. He looks up, stretches his thumb – it must be pretty sore after all that note taking – and squints at me.
“How’d YOU get out?” His voice is vaguely accusatory, like he’d rather ask, “Why did you get out?” Or even, “Why didn’t you stay behind and help save about a hundred of your fellow classmates?”
Or maybe that’s just me, and the questions I’ll be asking myself for, oh, the next 70 or 80 years or so.
I show him the bandage around my sprained ankle, the scrapes all over my arms. “I dove out the window, just like everyone else who survived…”
He nods and thanks me, shoving everything off the fold up table and into a messenger bag.
I look up at him, expecting a smile on his way by, or a handshake or a quick “thank you,” just to be polite or something. Nothing. He walks past my Mom and I without a backward glance.
“Don’t you want to hear the rest?” I ask, watching him pause in his tracks. Just beyond him, lounging in a kind of temporary cubicle midway down the length of the big truck, are a couple of soldiers.
I watch them perk up as I raise my voice. But it’s not the volume that has them on high alert, so much as the tone. The deep, scratchy tone that is as cold as my skin. The tone they’ve heard so often today, from so many of the… others.
Preppy Boy doesn’t notice. Not yet. But he is inching his way back, hurrying now, suddenly all smiles. “What… rest?” he asks, slipping back behind the table, his eyes greedy behind those smudged glasses.
I look at Mom, eyes still big and shiny, a fresh tissue in her hand. “I can’t…” I turn to the soldiers and say, “Can you… can you get her out of here? I don’t…” I turn back to Mom, reaching over to squeeze her knee. “I don’t want you to hear this part.”
She looks at me, eyes wise and sad. “Sure, baby,” she says, touching my hand, flinching suddenly at the temperature. “But when you’re through, I’m right outside. We’ll run by the drug store, huh? Get you some cold medicine. I think… I think you’re coming down with something.”
I nod, gritting my teeth to keep my chin from quivering, fighting back the tears. She seems to sense it, and pauses, clutching her big purse to her big bosom. “And then… when we get home later, we’ll make popcorn and watch something funny, okay?”
I nod, knowing there will never be a later, I’ll never eat another kernel of popcorn and nothing will seem funny ever again.
The soldiers are there now, behind her, helping her along, gentle with her, but fast, too. One stays behind as they shuffle her out the door and down the steps. Away from me. Away forever.
“Sir,” says the last soldier, extending a gloved hand to the reporter. “I think… I think it’s best if you come with me now.”
“Why?” he looks up at the soldier, a little impatient and a lot clueless. “I’m sitting on the scoop of my life here, pal, so if you…”
The soldier looks at me, not smiling, but kind of saying, “It’s up to you what I should do with this clown.”
I nod, growing colder by the moment. Colder… and hungrier.
“You… you should probably stay, just in case.” I look at the gun in his holster. “And… that should probably be out. I don’t… I don’t know what comes next.”
He nods, like maybe he forgot all about the holster, and points the gun at me. Or, at least, near me. “I do,” he says, almost comfortingly. “I know what comes next. I’ll be ready.”
I nod. At least one of us will.
“What… what’s going on?” asks Preppy Boy, waving to get my attention, like I’m the waitress at some greasy spoon.
The soldier kicks his chair, scooting it over an inch. Preppy Boy’s cheeks flush red as he looks up at him, snarling quietly. “She’s trying to tell you something,” the soldier barks, gun in his hand. “She doesn’t… she doesn’t have much time. So you should probably listen.”
That’s when it dawns on him. He turns back to me, pushing his glasses up with a finger on each side and suddenly I think, “Oh, so that’s why they have smudges there.”
“You mean…” he stammers. “You… you’re a…?”
“It’s probably better if you don’t say it,” I sigh, feeling slightly hungry. But not too much. After all, I’ve already fed or I wouldn’t be able to sit here, talking to him like this. “I feel guilty enough, after everything I did back in the office.”
“But… How? I mean, the soldiers, the decontamination, the inspection? How did you make it through all that?”
I shrug, hearing my hospital scrubs creak. “What looked like a scrape might have been a bite, or two. And that decontamination, well, it only really works if you haven’t fed yet.”
“Fed?” he asks.
“You know,” I smile, recalling my first taste. Back there, in the front office. Poor Ms. Bascomb, she tasted so… fresh. “If you haven’t eaten a human brain already.”
“Then… you have?” He reaches for his tape recorder but I still him with a cold, graying hand on his forearm.
“There isn’t time for that, anymore,” I say, and he yanks his arm away, quick, like you will from a lit burner on the stove.
“But how… how can you sit here? Like this? And talk, and think, and… control yourself?”
I flick my eyes to the soldier, now standing behind Preppy Boy. “You can ask him later, once you’re safe. For now, I just thought, I thought you’d like to know what it’s like, from one of us…”
He nods, suddenly attentive. I smile.
“Us?” he asks.
“You know,” I groan, voice sounding hoarse and cold, even to myself. “One of the living dead…”