text: Hi, I’m Dave. Cutting to the chase, the apocalypse happened and now I’m a zombie. I don’t really remember how it happened (memory tends to get a little hazy when there’s a hole in your skull), but I do know it was sudden, unexpected, and generally all the interesting stuff was over and done with pretty early. I was one of those people that always thought they’d make it to the end, y’know? Never occurred to me to think there isn’t an end cause it already happened. Those guys in their parents basement who had a hand-me-down pocket knife and watched every movie so thought they’d survive, find a base, get the girl, and ride off into the sunset. Yeah, kinda cringe with the benefit of undead hindsight. I mean, I didn’t even find a girl at all before getting bit! Well, there is this one girl, but we’ll get to that. Anyway, being dead isn’t all that bad. I’m not tired anymore, I don’t get hurt if I bump into the corner of a table, I get to travel a lot, and I have a bunch of new friends to hang out with. I don’t really know their names, but I could pick them out of a crowd. There’s Blue, I call him that because of his hoodie. Basically my best friend now, even if we can’t shoot the shit over beers or have game night. Really, he’s just been walking next to me for about half a year now. Cool dude. The only bad thing I really can think of is that I’m like, really hungry all the time. It doesn’t bother you, I guess, no pain remember, but you always remember it’s there, especially when you get a whiff of people. Don’t know how it works now since I don’t breathe, but I can smell people from like, half a mile away. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s kinda like smelling your favourite food from growing up multiplied by eleven. When we catch that smell, we all shrug over in that direction and keep up our usual pace. My favourite direction we go in is to the left, because when we do I can just catch a glimpse of Green. Green probably isn’t, or I guess wasn’t, her name, but I gotta make do and so I call her that from the blood stained T-shirt she has on. I’ve never seen her face completely, but I can tell from the still intact cheek I can see when we all turn she really is beautiful. The rot never really took her face, and her hair still has that small bit of graceful bounce it had when she was still alive. Every time we do turn left, and I can just steal a glance, Blue always notices and intentionally bumps his whole body into mine. I know he’s trying to get me to make a move because I can see his exposed facial muscles approximate a smirk. I never do though, always telling myself I should stay in my place so we can keep up. Damn, I wish I had the willpower to push through the crowd to see her. There’s times when the people we’re looking for find us first, those are the bad days. They gun down some of us, or lead us off into some other direction where we lose the scent, or we catch them and we all have a nice bite. Those are the good days. Contrary to what I thought when I was alive, and I guess what the living still think, we undead aren’t assholes. When we get someone down, we hand chunks around so that we all can at least get something. Of course the ones who made the kill get more but that’s understandable. Afterwards, we help the guy up if there’s enough of him left to walk and we welcome him like family. Green was one of those people, joined us about two months ago. I remember when she got back up, the whole crowd seemed to get a new spring in their step. We all kinda, y’know, felt a bit more alive I guess. Even now, we all seem to move at her pace. She is at the front of the crowd, so it makes sense, but nobody passes her or turns without her doing so first. She must have been a really influential person in life, a natural born and died leader. Just the other day, I guess Blue got fed up with my rottenness and haphazardly whacked me with the remnants of his arm. He then let out a noise that I guess was an attempt at encouragement and tilted his head forward. Since then, I’ve been working up the guts, or lack there of, to finally move up that measly five meters that may as well be a thousand miles with a wall in between. I’ve decided I’m gonna, I just don’t know what to do when I get up next to her. Say hi? Can’t, throats perforated. Hold her hand? Nope, seems needy. All I can do, and all I really want to do, is just see her face. Before I can even notice what I’m doing, my usual slow trudge picks up a bit of energy. Blue rasps out a death rattle that must have been a laugh. I press by Suit (some guy who must have been a businessman), by Richard (I could see his name tag on his torn shirt from behind), and manage to settle in a place just next to the most beautiful corpse in the world. If I still had the parts of my bladder needed, I’d probably be pissing myself with nervousness right now. I’m right next to the perfectly sculpted cheek I’ve been admiring from so close yet so far for months now, and I can see her eye and nose too are the kind you could only see on the covers of magazines. Green notices I’m next to her, and turns her neck with only a few muscles torn and I am truly in awe. Even with the other half of her face torn and shredded, she really had the face of a fallen angel. While all of us had dirt and grime caked to our flaking skin, soil seemed to retreat from the surfaces of her face, leaving only the pale porcelain skin exposed. Her hair which was obviously still taken care of after the apocalypse never seemed to go dark from decay and part of it partly concealed the devoured half of her visage. Even her teeth, though exposed to the harsh sun and biting wind from the hanging jawbone, still glinted like bloodstained pearls in the light. Green kept her haunting gaze at me. I have no idea what to do. I’m panicking. What do I say? Do I tell a joke? A pickup line? Wait, that’s right, I can’t. I know it’s corny, and honestly if I saw anyone else do it I’d roll my eyes right out of their sockets, but I reach up into my rib cage and pull out my heart. With a gesture, I hold it up for her to see, hoping I at least got my message across. She sees it. So far so good. She places her hand on my heart and presses it back and into my chest. Did I just get rejected? Did I fail? I never should have listened to Blue! Honestly, I’m just feeling a little defeated. I’m trying to slink back to my place next to Blue, head held low, but her grip on my hand doesn’t ease up. I look back up at her and she’s still looking at me. Her hand drops limply back to her side with mine still held. I’m probably the luckiest cadaver in the world right now, and I have no idea what I’m doing. Green looks back forward just as the scent of people washes over the crowd. We all lurch to the right as, hand in hand, I get to take Green to a dinner date.