Soulless (A Zombie Erotic Romance) (2 page)

...

I'm walking through the city,
confused. Why am I here? I can't remember. I need to go to my
doctor's appointment, I'm sure of it, except where is my car? Do I
have my keys? Reaching to my side for my purse, I realize I must
have left it at home.

My hand, my skin. I stare at my arm,
unsure if what I'm seeing is real or not. My skin is a pale blue
all the way from my fingertips and up my forearm, to my shoulder.
It looks like I've painted my fingernails purple, but I never paint
them that color.

Then I remember everything.

I can't remember why I came here or
what I needed to do, but I can't stay. The others shamble around
nearby or lay in a huddled mess somewhere in the shadows. No one
wants to do anything, but I do. I must. Except what?

Sometimes I find it hard to walk, but
I know that I need to. If I focus on one step at a time I can act
like everyone else; like I used to. Strolling through the street,
looking at the storefronts, I pretend it's just any other day.
There's a shop I like, a small custom-craft wardrobe boutique, and
I stop in front of it and look inside. Someone's broken the window
and upturned the dress dummies that used to show off the owner's
most recent fashions, but it doesn't matter.

Reaching my hand out, I grab the hem
of a pretty red dress and feel it between my fingers. It's soft and
comforting and I want to try it on. Walking to the door, I try to
pull it open, but it's locked. I could go through the window, but
the broken glass might cut me.

Not everyone cares. Looking around, I
can see the shattered fragments of people's lives on their bodies.
A dark-blue skinned man has cuts all along his arms, probably from
grabbing things out of broken-windowed shops or digging through the
trash. A child nearby, motherless, stumbles through the streets
with bruises all along her legs from falling too much. She almost
looks like any other little girl except these bruises are large and
angry, a thick purplish-blue color.

A woman stares off into the horizon. I
imagine she's the mother to the child, letting her little girl play
before they go home for the day and sit down to a nice family meal
in their cozy dining room. I don't actually think that's going to
happen, but it's nice to think it.

I used to attend college nearby, so I
decide to walk there. A quick, brisk pace, no shambling or
stumbling. One foot in front of the other, watching myself walk,
forgetting about anything else. I walk with a purpose, with
determined strides. At the front of the college, I stop for a
moment and peer into the front gates.

The gates are chained shut to keep the
students in and unwanted intruders out. That's how it's supposed to
be, anyways. Maybe I wasn't the best example of a student, but we
used to slip out of our dorm rooms late at night and climb over the
campus walls. It wasn't very safe, nor was it a great idea, but we
did it anyways. Making my way alongside the walled off college
campus, I head through an alleyway leading to the back of the
building. Who knows why, but there's a small park here with a
couple of trees and a bench, hidden away in between houses and
society.

I stand on the bench and reach for the
lowest branches of the tree, pulling myself up. It takes awhile,
but I manage, and in a moment more I have my leg up and over the
wall. Then the other, pulling myself up higher, sitting,
and...

I jump down and land inside the
college campus grounds. No one else is here since the gates are
locked. I don't think anyone knows how to get in here, but I wonder
about that. It honestly shouldn't be too difficult to break the
chain or the lock since they aren't the best quality, but I suppose
no one really cares. Why should anyone want to go to college
now?

Because, I think, it's nice. Quiet and
alone, I walk down the pathways winding through the different
enclosed buildings. I used to sit outside on nice days and pretend
to study while watching cute boys walk by. And if I actually needed
to study, the library was close to my dorm room. We had an
elevator, but I liked to use the stairs, so I could just skip down
them, out into the open fresh air, take a short walk, and there the
library was.

Through the large glass windows of the
library, I see someone sitting at one of the tables reading a book.
My feet stop, frozen in place. Is that really a person? What are
they doing in there? Why would someone else come here besides me?
The windows are tinted and I can't see through them clearly, but
this man doesn't look like the others I'm used to
seeing.

...

Evan knew Alex wouldn't appreciate him
leaving like this. He knew he shouldn't do it, either, but he
needed to. Just for a little while, and after that he'd go hunting
for deer and bring back something for the camp to eat. Alex was a
bit difficult to deal with sometimes since he was ex-military, but
he knew what he was doing. If not for him, Evan probably wouldn't
have survived this long.

Or, actually, he knew he could survive
on his own, but the social interaction really saved him. You never
realize how much you miss talking with people until there's no one
to talk with. He only had to deal with that for a few days before
joining up with the survivor's group, but those few days were some
of the worst of his life. Confusion and chaos, hoping everything
would calm down and return to normal, except it never did.
Situations escalated, people panicked, droves upon droves of
craziness.

In the movies you always saw zombie
situations dealt with using extreme force. Bombs and military
blockades and things like that. Except this wasn't that. Would
anyone expect the military to go around shooting hospitalized
plague victims? He doubted it, and he sure wouldn't, though a lot
of people he talked with now wished for that very thing.

Anyways, better not to
dwell on it, he thought. He needed to study fast. Sticking his nose
into the copy of
Robbins Pathologic Basis
for Disease
he found in the library
stacks, he continued reading as much as he could as fast as he
could.

Something caught his eye outside,
though. Looking out the window, he saw a woman standing in the
courtyard. She looked back at him, blinking, eyebrows crinkled with
a slight smile on her face; the sort of look that asks something
like "What exactly are you doing here?" The glass was tinted, so he
couldn't see her too well, but she looked nice. A little ragged,
but everyone looked like that now.

Evan waved to her and gestured for her
to join him if she wanted. Would she? He didn't know. The offer was
there, though. Smiling bright, wondering what kind of person
besides him would come to a college campus during a zombie
apocalypse, he set himself back to his studies.

...

The man in the building waves to me
and gestures me inside. I don't know what he's doing there, but he
seems different. Maybe I'm dreaming, and I don't think it'd be the
first time. If I came here for a reason, maybe he's it, though. I
do need to go to the doctor's and I forgot my keys, so I should ask
him for a ride. Is that weird to do? No one else is here, though.
The worst he can say is no.

I stumble on a rugged piece of the
sidewalk while making my way to the front door of the library. It
must be a nice day outside because someone's propped the door open
with a rock, letting the fresh air inside. The light wind brushes
against my cheeks and sends my hair aflutter. Sighing, wistful, I
step inside.

I feel very cold, but I think it's
just the air conditioning they keep on in the library most of the
time. It's funny because sometimes during the winter the central
air system would kick on by accident and chill the place to near
freezing. It never happened for too long because the librarians
called up the maintenance man in a huff, but whenever it happened
it made me laugh.

Is it winter now? It
is
very cold, but I
don't see any snow on the ground so I doubt it is. Autumn,
probably, or a chilly summer day.

I believe the man I saw must be a
medical student; he was sitting in the health sciences section at
any rate. No one's sitting behind the front desk which is a little
odd. No one is anywhere, though, I remind myself. I walk through
the turnstile into the library, holding onto the railing for
support, and notice the pale blue color of my hands.

Everything changes.

No, I can't. The turnstile clinks
behind me as I walk through and I pause at the other side, fearful
and frozen in time. I don't belong here, not with him. I belong
outside with the others, somewhere far away. If he sees me, he'll
scream and panic. If he sees me, he'll run, and if he can't run
fast enough they'll catch him.

Or maybe he isn't as fearful as that.
Maybe he'll see me and become angry. Does he have a gun or a knife?
I have no idea. All I saw was a book, but who knows what he had
under the table. And, even a book hurts when someone repeatedly
slams it against you. It's hard to feel pain sometimes now, but I
still know it's there. I have little cuts and scrapes, scars, from
when I first became like this and I don't want to feel that way
again. I don't want to look at myself and know that I'm like this.
I don't want reminders of how horrible a situation I'm
in.

I want to go home. I want to eat
something warm and steaming and lay in bed for my half hour of
warmth while reading my book. I want to cry and know what happens
to Ally and Noah and I want them to be happy and live together
forever. Is that too much to want?

Just as I'm about to turn and leave,
the man approaches me. He left the book at the library table and
it's just him. He smiles, sees me, and then stops smiling. Face
contorted, confused, lips pursed, he stares at me.

I don't know what to say. I try to
leave, try to turn away from him, but the world is such a mess and
I can't seem to figure out which way is which.

I fall. My foot catches on the edge of
the turnstile and I begin to topple backwards.

This is going to hurt. I don't know
how much I'll feel, but I know it'll happen. I look up, somber,
watching the ceiling as my body seems to crash backwards in slow
motion. Everything seems slow when you don't want it to happen.
Slow, but that doesn't mean you can change anything. You have to
watch it, wait for it, feel anxiety and fear in the pit of your
stomach as your heart races and you worry.

I fall, but he catches me.

...

Evan didn't expect the woman to be a
zombie. He didn't even want to call her that, but he didn't know
what other word to use. It seemed like a type of racism to him,
though. If he said something like that would she be
offended?

Casual, Evan, he told himself. Act
casual. She wasn't trying to eat him, which was good. He didn't
actually know how that worked, since he tried to never to put
himself in that kind of situation, but the stories people told back
at his camp were never good. Vicious, vile things, creatures of
death and anger, chasing people through the streets, and if they
caught you...

Everyone knew what happened if they
caught you. It was no secret. Evan disliked it, didn't want to
believe it, but he knew, too. He'd seen it happen once from far
away. But why?

This woman didn't do that, though. She
wasn't chasing him and she had no horde of followers intent on
trapping him in the library. She was just herself and he'd asked
her to come inside. He'd waved, friendly, gestured her in, then
went back to reading. He'd invited her here, and she came. There
was nothing wrong with that.

She looked so uncomfortable, though.
Pale, blue skin and a worried look on her face. Grabbing the
turnstile at the entrance to the library, she tried to turn around,
maybe to leave, but she slipped.

Fuck! Evan ran. He had time, they
weren't too far apart, and he just barely made it. Jumping the last
few feet, he caught her in his arms and fell with her, softening
her fall with his body. They lay in a heap on the floor.

Evan laughed. "Sorry about that," he
said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

His hand touched the side of her arm
and she was soft to the touch. And cold. Not too cold, but
noticeably cool. He eased her off of him slowly and stood up,
reaching a hand out to help her up. She stared at him from the
ground, looking at him funny.

...

I fell but he caught me.

So tight and close, he must have
jumped to reach me in time. He looked athletic from afar, more than
capable of dashing forward and catching someone, but I honestly
didn't know why he did it. I was so grateful, though. I wanted to
cry for another reason now, but it felt so silly and
inconsequential.

He touched me, too.

It sounded bad in my head when I
thought of it like that, but that was exactly what he did. His
gentle, warm hands held onto the side of my arms, rubbing up and
down, relaxing me. His heat was like a blazing furnace to my cool
body. I felt alive and warm under his touch, so wonderful and
amazing. I knew this was how the others felt, why they rushed
towards people in a frenzy when they saw them, but I'd never felt
it before myself.