Three years a zombie, and I still can’t bring myself to eat people. Most days, I just blend in. I shuffle along with the horde, moaning and groaning for show, before slipping off into some abandoned supermarket to steal a pack of stale cupcakes. That’s what I was doing today, crouched behind a collapsed aisle of canned goods, meticulously peeling the plastic off a Twinkie. Suddenly, the cold, hard press of a gun barrel met the back of my head. A low voice, laced with amusement, drifted over me. “Miss Zombie, I do believe you were about to take a bite out of my ass.” My movements froze. I lifted my head, slowly, and my gaze met a pair of devastatingly familiar dark eyes. Oh, hell. Of all the asses in this apocalyptic hellscape, I had to find his. Caleb Hayes—the boy I’d silently crushed on all through college—was looking down at me with a half-smile playing on his lips. 1. This had to be a hallucination, a side effect of the virus rotting what was left of my brain. Caleb Hayes? He was alive. He was here. How could he possibly be here? And… did he recognize me? My nearly-dead heart gave a frantic, painful lurch. It was a sensation so achingly familiar, so fundamentally human, that for a second I forgot all about the gun pressed against my skull. I raised my hands over my head, a dumb, frozen statue in the dust-filled aisle. Caleb nudged the barrel of the gun forward, a gentle reminder. He leaned down, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “So, Miss Zombie. A review, if you will. How’s the texture?” Okay. My eyes dropped. The brief, insane flicker of hope died. He had no idea who I was. It’s for the best, I told myself, a familiar, bitter comfort. I must look so different now. Unrecognizable. Better that he doesn't connect this… thing… to the girl he once knew. Better not to tarnish his memory of her. The thought was a strange cocktail of relief and a deep, hollowing sadness. 2. I replayed the last few moments in my head, trying to follow his logic. I’d been crouched low, unwrapping a package of expired peanut butter crackers. As my hand reached for another, my fingers brushed against something soft. What the hell? It felt… human. Unsure, I did what any zombie would do. I leaned in for a test bite. The target was firm, springy even, but covered in a thick layer of denim that my teeth couldn’t get through. I gave up immediately. Who knew it was Caleb Hayes’s left butt cheek? Fearing he might pull the trigger out of sheer annoyance, I answered him with total honesty. “It’s… nice. Firm.” The words were out before I remembered: the low-level infected, the ones shuffling around outside, they don’t think. They don’t speak. A high-functioning, articulate zombie like me was, to put it mildly, a freak of nature. A slow smile spread across Caleb’s face. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners made my head spin, just like it always had. “Interesting,” he mused, tilting his head. “First talking zombie I’ve ever met.” He paused, considering. “I should take you back to the base. I’ve never dissected your particular strain of infected.” Oh, god, no. My face fell. I held out the rest of the peanut butter crackers, a pathetic offering. “This is my favorite kind,” I said, my voice small and pleading. “You can have them all. Just… don’t kill me. Please?” 3. Maybe it was the desperation in my voice. Maybe it was the crackers. Caleb lowered the gun, his eyes scanning me with a new kind of intensity. “You… you don’t eat people?” I nodded frantically, like a bobblehead. There was a sudden click at my throat. I reached up in alarm. A collar. Cold, metallic, and securely locked. “What did you put on me?” Caleb dangled a small key from his finger. A terrible feeling washed over me. Sure enough, a cruel, merciless curve touched his lips. “A bomb.” My stomach plummeted. “A remote-detonated collar,” he clarified. “No matter how far you run, I press a button, and you go up in a thousand little pieces.” I felt a surge of indignation. Caleb Hayes was a petty, petty man. So I accidentally tried to bite his ass. It wasn’t on purpose. Did he have to be so dramatic? “But don’t worry,” he said, his tone shifting. “As long as you meet me here every night with a fresh supply of food and water, I won’t have any reason to press it.” Ah. There it was. His real motive. “It shouldn’t be too hard for a creature like you. Besides,” he added, a glint in his eye, “you took a bite out of me. It’s only fair you pay me back somehow. Right, Miss Zombie?” He was smiling again. It was still a devastatingly handsome smile, but now it just seemed cruel. “Fine,” I mumbled, my head hung in defeat. “I’ll do it.” Then, I found a tiny scrap of courage. “And my name isn’t Miss Zombie. It’s Nora.” Caleb let out a low chuckle. I couldn’t tell if he’d even heard me. As he turned to leave, he snatched the half-eaten bag of crackers from my hand. He’s eating something a zombie touched, I thought, a fresh wave of outrage washing over me. Doesn’t he know he could get infected? I scowled at his retreating back, silently cursing him. 4. “Wait, what?! You ran into your old college crush, and he’s alive? Nora, that’s practically a post-apocalyptic fairy tale!” Sadie was so shocked she had to pop her glass eye back into its socket. She was the only friend I’d made since turning. We were both high-functioning—we’d kept our minds—and had bonded over our shared predicament. Unlike me, the first thing Sadie did after turning was eat her abusive ex-boyfriend. The experience had… rewired her tastes. The smell of human food made her sick now. When she got hungry, she’d chew on tree bark or grass. If things got really bad, she’d scavenge the leftovers from other infected. “It doesn’t matter, Sadie. He doesn’t remember me at all.” I pointed to the blinking red light on the collar around my neck. “And he wants to blow me up.” Sadie was a hopeless romantic. “If he wanted to kill you, he would have shot you on the spot. Why would he ask you to meet him every day?” “Because he needs supplies, and who makes a safer delivery girl than another zombie?” This time, she got it. The dreamy look on her face vanished. “Men are trash,” she muttered. “You should just eat him. I hear the smart ones have the sweetest brains. My ex was a dumbass, but even he tasted pretty good.” I shook my head, horrified. “I can’t do that. I have standards. I don’t eat people.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her the real truth: I was a bit of a hopeless romantic, too. Even after he’d held a gun to my head, strapped a bomb to my neck, and spoken to me with such casual cruelty, a pathetic, traitorous part of me was still completely, stupidly in love with Caleb Hayes. 5. Despite the threat of imminent explosion, I was excited to see him again. Sadie helped me curl my hair into a new style. I changed into my best dress—a faded sundress I’d salvaged—spritzed myself with perfume from a shattered department store counter, and even put on a little makeup. I was at the Evergreen Market long before our agreed-upon time. When Caleb appeared, he stopped short, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Did I overdo it? Is it too obvious? Panic seized me. When humans get awkward, they pretend to be busy. I coughed and started wiping down a dusty shelf with my sleeve. “What… what are you staring at?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for me. I flinched back instinctively, my foot catching on a piece of debris on the floor. I cried out, stumbling backward, windmilling my arms. The cigarette fell from Caleb’s lips. In a flash, his arm shot out, his fingers locking around my wrist. He yanked me forward, hard. I slammed into his chest, my nose colliding with solid muscle. The familiar scent of him—woodsmoke and something clean, like antiseptic—filled my senses. Through the thin fabric of his shirt, I could feel the steady, powerful thrum of his heart against my ear. The embrace was so sudden, so unexpected, it felt like a dream. I stood there, paralyzed, not daring to move. His grip on my wrist didn't loosen. “What happened here?” he asked, his voice low and rough. My face flushed, hot and prickly. My own heart was hammering against my ribs like a drum solo. I couldn't look at him, my head sinking lower and lower. 6. “I was… looking for things in a pharmacy this afternoon. I cut myself.” “I don’t remember asking you to find medicine.” Caleb’s voice was cold, laced with an irritation that stung. He hadn’t. But I remembered he used to have stomach problems in college. In a world of scavenged, unbalanced meals, it was bound to act up. When I passed a pharmacy, I’d gone in, hoping to find some antacids for him. The shelves had collapsed, and in the mess of it all, I’d sliced my wrist on a piece of broken glass. His voice grew even sharper, as if he were drawing a line in the sand. “Nora, I was very clear yesterday. I need food and water. I’m not going to remove this collar just because you bring me extra supplies.” He gestured vaguely at me. “There are other high-functioning infected out there. If I blow you up, I’ll just find another one to do the job. If you get yourself hurt again, I might just press the button myself.” He leaned in, his voice a low threat. “Do you understand me?” I didn’t know what he meant by “hurt like this,” but I didn’t want to be blown to bits. He was worried about me, I realized, but only because an injured delivery girl might disrupt his supply chain. The thought didn’t make me happy. “I understand,” I mumbled. Heartless bastard, I thought. I hope your stomach hurts forever. “Don’t move.” A sudden warmth spread across my wrist. I looked down, surprised, as Caleb pulled a small Band-Aid from a tactical pouch on his belt. A zombie’s wounds don’t heal. I wanted to tell him not to waste it. But as I watched his strong, calloused fingers peel back the wrapper and gently press the worn-out teddy bear Band-Aid over my cut, my cold, dead heart did a ridiculous, traitorous little flutter. It felt like floating. I couldn’t bring myself to say no. He finished, his thumb lingering for a moment on my skin. He looked up, his dark eyes searching mine. “Nora, why are you so afraid of dying?” “That’s a secret.” He started to ask again, but I cut him off. I tilted my chin up, mimicking the arrogant tone he’d used with me just moments before. “And Caleb,” I said, a flicker of defiance in my voice, “I’m not going to tell you my secrets just because you put a teddy bear Band-Aid on me.” 7. Sadie shrieked when she saw the Band-Aid. “And you say he doesn’t like you?! Nora, a human putting a Band-Aid on a zombie? Do you have any idea what that means? Tell me!” A warmth spread through my chest, but I stubbornly refused to acknowledge it. “You’re reading too much into it, Sadie. He was just patching up his delivery drone.” “Then what about this?” She gestured to the pile of snacks he’d given me in exchange for the supplies. “He knows you eat human food, and he brought you all your favorites. Don’t tell me that’s not a little bit… flirty.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. My ears burned. I mumbled an excuse and scurried away. The next few nights, I met Caleb as promised. I used to hate the nights. The darkness was always filled with the gurgling, horrifying moans of the infected, a nightmare I could never wake from. But now, because of Caleb, I started to look forward to the sunset. Tonight, though, something was different about the Evergreen Market. A makeshift barbed-wire fence had been erected around the entrance, and the usual low-level infected that milled about were gone, their bodies piled nearby. As soon as I stepped inside, I heard a soft, feminine voice. “Caleb, I’m fine, really. Cough, cough… That medicine you got me worked wonders. My stomach feels so much better. You don’t have to worry about me.” I saw Caleb’s profile. His eyes were lowered, his handsome face etched with a deep, tender concern. The girl, who was leaning against a wall, reached up and gently smoothed the worry lines from between his eyebrows. The smile on my face froze and shattered.
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