Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (142 page)

I laughed at myself still having a
sense of humor. I briefly wondered if I was really just crazy.
Perhaps, I was living in a fantasy world. The harsh reality of
living with the fact that you will soon be one of the undead was
enough to drive anyone crazy.

When the gas tank finally ran dry, we
got out. I gave Rose a very long talk about how I was her friend. I
told her I would kill her if she tried to eat me. I don’t think she
understood, but I was faster than her, so she just went with
it.

We walked for hours and both of our
stomachs were growling. I had the end of my bag of Cool Ranch
chips, but Rose moaned at me she didn’t want any. I assumed she was
craving something more alive. I watched her chase squirrels for a
little while when she got really hungry.

She wasn’t close to fast enough to
catch them, so she would lumber to them slowly and they would move
long before she could get to them. She would still try and chase
them, which lasted for a while. I found it funnier than I should,
because it was actually really sad.

Finally, she gave up and we moved
on.

“
I’m sorry, Rose; you gave
it a good shot.” We walked away from the park. The squirrels were
not as plentiful in town so I thought maybe I might coerce her into
some chips. She was not having it.

We happened upon a guy hiding
underneath a cardboard box. I assumed he was homeless because who
would think that was a good idea?

Rose flipped the box off of him and
he froze in terror. I waited for her to do her thing but she
didn’t. She looked at me and cocked her head sideways. She let out
a strand of moans that sounded very direct.

I couldn’t understand the moaning,
but I felt like she was asking my permission to dine on this dude.
I nodded, because I didn’t think I could stop her if I wanted
to.

She looked so happy; like that guy’s
body was the only thing in the whole world that she wanted. I
envied that happy feeling, but that was all I envied. I watched the
blood run down from her mouth as she dug in. I heard the sounds of
skin ripping and a man crying and had to walk away.

That was the last night that I
watched Rose enjoy the zombie life without joining in. It was too
much for me to take.

I felt the change when it came. I
suddenly didn’t want to eat anything except for human flesh. The
only thought that consumed me was where my next meal would come
from. I had kept some of my vanity. I noticed, every time I caught
my reflection, I was taking in how I looked.

It was both a liberating experience,
to finally give over to that side of me, and a horrifying
experience.

You never forget the first person you
eat, as strange as that sounds. I had only bitten Brett’s face and
this girl was about to be devoured. I look back on it and find it
almost humorous how apologetic I was with her. Here I was yanking
her from her car so I could attack her in the parking lot; I
justified my actions with the insane hunger that was gnawing at my
gut.

I didn’t even have to give myself a
pep talk. I just went for it. I had not been feeling like myself
anyway, and this was where the last of Cassie went away.

My victim was scared and I couldn’t
blame her, but I was ravenous. It should have been disgusting to
me, but as the desire to feed became more than I could fight, I
enjoyed killing her. I also enjoyed biting off more than I could
chew as the blood ran down my face. I had become a disgusting human
being.

I didn’t finish her. I simply ate
until I was full. Looking down at her, I had only eaten part of her
arm and half of her torso. I couldn’t help but think that it should
be a lot grosser to me, but I found it natural.

I sat beside her body, or what was
left of it, for a while after I had feasted on her, just reliving
it over and over again. When I stood up, I had no clue where I was
going or what I was doing. Soon, I would be shuffling along with
the crowd, toward town, in search of more flesh for my dining
pleasure. I was starting to move slower. It felt like my veins were
full of lead. When I went to raise my arms, they felt heavier, and
when I went to move my legs, I had to struggle to not let them drag
on the ground.

Rose came shuffling up to me and
cocked her head, groaning.

I spoke back to her with a number of
groans and noises. I had woken up one day able to understand what
she was saying. Before that morning, it just sounded like she was
moaning all the time. That is how I knew there was no turning
back.

“
Yes, you can have the
rest of her, Rose.”

Rose had an insatiable appetite. We
had been lucky, so far, that we found her humans hiding on every
stop of our journey to nowhere. The truck had long run out of gas
and we had just been wandering around aimlessly, until, somehow, we
had made it back to our hometown. It was a good thing, because,
with my muscles stiffening more every day and my body becoming
harder to control, driving was next to impossible for
me.

This was the first time that I had
eaten someone and I was dealing with it. I thought about Cage as I
listened to the disgusting sounds of the rest of my poor girl being
devoured. I wondered if he thought of me, and how he was getting
along. I wondered if he hadn’t eaten any good people lately. I
chuckled to myself with that last thought.

“
When you finish, Rose, we
will move on.”

She burped in response and I allowed
my eyes to close for a minute, leaning back against the car I had
drug the poor lady from. We had no purpose anymore. We wondered
around and looked for people who were still void of disease to
satisfy our insatiable hunger.

There weren’t that many people left
where we were traveling; although, I suspected there were people
holed up underground or there were more safety camps than we
thought there were. So far, the people we found seemed to be
renegades. They thought they could survive on their own, or in
small groups. They were often in groups of two or more, traveling
the country, scavenging for food and brandishing baseball bats and
crow bars for weapons. They reminded me of how we had been at one
time, just Rose and I, wandering the streets, not knowing where we
were going.

Actually, up until this point, we had
wandered around looking for those people for Rose to devour. I had
not joined in before today. The desire hadn’t struck me. I had
bitten a couple of people so my desire to spread the disease was
certainly there in my makeup, but not the craving for flesh. It was
a slowly brought on desire that I was hoping would hold off as long
as possible. Then, one day, I no longer craved a candy bar, but a
piece of man candy, or woman candy, whatever I could
catch.

Rose stood up and we continued on our
way. The town was desolate and eerily quiet. We had discussed
finding a hoard to join. Zombies worked better together and we
thought it would be beneficial for when we needed to find food.
Once or twice, I thought about what would happen to us when there
were no more fresh humans to devour. Eventually, we were going to
run out of food, weren’t we?

We moved slowly down the road
together. I was glad I had been able to keep Rose around when Trent
wanted to leave her. Sure, she had tried to bite me several times
before I fully turned. I think this was more her instincts to feed
herself kicking in than her, actually, craving my flesh. I was
infected and most of our kind avoided me, but she was around me so
much she had the urge. On occasion, I would have to fight off a
walker that had been starved for so long that it didn’t matter I
was mostly dead. I understood now why those that had almost fully
turned had wanted to eat us in the barn, and why Evelyn had been
eaten in her own basement hideaway. It was because they were
starving.

It didn’t matter; she was the best
friend I had, and my only ally. Letting them chain her to the back
of that truck was the best thing I ever did.

When we made it to the Kelmart, I had
fond recollections of Trent and Cage. I also smelled human flesh,
the undead kind. I smiled at Rose. My smile looked like a normal
face, because my muscles were no longer working. She smelled it,
too; I could tell by the way her eyebrows went up. We were both
surprised she could still do this. Once, we spent a whole day
trying to move different parts of our face.

Eventually, time didn’t really mean
anything to us anymore. We could not tell how many days we had
spent wandering. When we finally did meet up with a hoard, they
were an eclectic group.

Some people I had known, and some I
hadn’t. They had the same agenda we did; groan, shuffle around, and
eat flesh. We thought they were as good of a hoard as any so they
became our zombie cronies.

Day in and day out, we wandered
around. Sometimes our numbers were taken down by a rogue group of
humans that had figured out we die if you shoot us in the head. I
was reminded of the vigilantes that had chased us down in Evelyn’s
hideaway town. That seemed so long ago now when it really had,
probably, only been a couple of months. My former race was still
trying to fight us. I had no idea how many people were left in the
world.

As the days went by, it took a lot
more effort and time to have a conversation. Even if you understood
Slopar, you would have to be patient with us. It would take a long
time for us to get out what we were trying to say.

I am still shuffling across the
parking lot to Rose and her box-dyed supper.

As I figured, it has taken me an
incredibly long time to get there. I look down at my hands and take
in how hideous they are. No manicure in the world could ever fix my
monster hands. I try to think about how I am the best-looking of
the group, and that gives me some solace.

“
Rose,” I call out to her
in our language, “how’s the blonde?”

“
Delicious” she says
through a mouthful. She lifts one of the girl’s arms and watches it
flop back down, “and dead.”

Across the parking lot, my victim
begins to twitch. His blood is still trickling down from the main
artery I bit into. At first, I think that it is just his body
reacting. When he lifts his head to look at me, that’s when I know.
Old Neil has just been zombified. It hadn’t happened that quickly
before, so my venom must have gotten stronger the longer I had been
in my current non-alive state.

“
Rose, we are going to
have a new friend to play with.” I am excited as I turn around to
start my long shuffle back across the parking lot to
Neil.

Epilogue

Joseph slowly sat up from his spot in
the parking lot. How had he gotten there? What the hell was going
on? He realized where he was when he saw the zombie walking across
the parking lot to him. He couldn’t really say she was walking to
him. She was more shuffling slowly over to him. He couldn’t believe
he had allowed himself to get killed by a zombie. Look at her, how
did this happen? I’m a runner; I had trained for this type of
situation.

He wanted to tell her not to bother
walking over to him, but all that came out when he opened his mouth
were groans and noises.

He tried to say, “You killed me, stay
away.” That is not what came out, though. He had no choice but to
wait for her to get to him. She shuffled over at the speed of a
snail. He wished he had a watch so that he could look at it with an
annoyed expression.

There were a lot of them around. How
had he gotten himself mixed up in a hoard of zombies? There was
something off about the situation, but he couldn’t put his finger
on it. He had been so careful throughout the whole invasion and
even after. Avoiding zombies had become something he was really
good at. He had killed people, some good friends. Was this payback
for that?

He realized that his face wasn’t
really moving the way he wanted it to. She was saying something to
him, and he thought he understood it. How could that be?

“
Neil, I’m coming Neil.”
Was she talking to him? Who the hell was Neil? This zombie was
already scaring him with her craziness.

He
decided to try to communicate as he stood up. It took him an
extremely long time to get his limbs to function the way he wanted
them to. He groaned and
,
finally
,
stood up enough to yell back at
her.

“
My name is Joseph, not
Neil” He noticed there was a lot of his leg missing. He assumed
that was her fault. So much for being a runner now; I probably
can’t even shuffle fast.

“
Hang
on, Neil;
I am coming, but I can’t really
hear you.”

Joseph attempted to roll his eyes.
This was going to be a long day. Half of it would be spent waiting
on her to get to him. The other half would be spent trying to get
her not to call him Neil. He decided he better start moving toward
her and found that he couldn’t move fast at all. They shuffled to
one another in the middle of the parking lot and so began Cassie’s
next adventure.

The End

I can
be reached at:
www.lyramcken.com
or
www.selfpublishordie.com