Heart (43 page)

Behind my smiling mouth and teacher
responsibilities, I was made of brittle glass and emptiness. I was
nothing but paper thin defenses and sifting sand.

I had never known this kind of depression
before. I could hardly tolerate my soon to be ex-husband and yet
his absence left me unexpectedly battered.

Once my tenth grade English class had left me
behind, I let out a long sigh and turned back to my desk. I dropped
into my rolling chair and dug out my lunch from the locked bottom
drawer.

I set it on the cold metal and stared at the
sad ham sandwich and bruised apple I’d thrown together last minute
this morning. I couldn’t find the energy to take a bite, let alone
finish the whole thing. I’d lost seven pounds over the last three
months, one for each year of my disastrous marriage. And while I
appreciated the smaller size I could fit into, I knew this was the
wrong way to go about it.

My friend, Kara, called this the Divorce
Diet. But I knew the truth. This wasn’t a diet. I’d lost my self
somewhere in the wreckage of my marriage and now that my
relationship was over, my body had started to systematically shut
down. First my heart broke. Then my spirit fragmented. Now my
appetite was in jeopardy and I didn’t know what to do about it. I
didn’t know if I would ever feel hungry again.

I didn’t know if I would ever
feel
again.

I used to eat lunch in the teacher’s lounge,
but lately I couldn’t bring myself in there to face other people,
especially my nosey colleagues.

Everyone had heard about my failed marriage.
They stopped me in the halls to offer their condolences or hitman
services with empathetic expressions or playful smiles. They
watched me with pitying eyes and sympathetic frowns. They whispered
behind my back or asked invasive questions.

But none of them cared. Not really.

They liked having someone to talk about that
wasn’t them and a topic that didn’t dive into their personal lives.
I was the gossip martyr. As long as they could tear apart my bad
decisions and argue whether it was my frigidness or Nick’s playboy
tendencies that hammered the last nail in our coffin they shared a
macabre sense of community.

They didn’t care that each callous comment
shredded me apart just a little more or that I could hear them
cackling from down the hall.

They didn’t take into account their own
divorces or unhappy marriages or faults or hypocrisy or
shortcomings. They only saw mine.

And now so did I.

The creaky door swung open and my best friend
and fellow teacher, Kara Chase popped her pretty red head in the
room. Her pert nose wrinkled at the sight of my untouched lunch and
she smoothed down some of her wild frizz with a perfectly manicured
hand. She had curls for days, but as the day went on and she dealt
with more and more apathetic high school kids, her beautiful hair
would expand with her impatience.

“That looks… yummy.” Her crystalline blue
eyes lifted to meet mine and I couldn’t help but smile.

I stuck my tongue out at her. “Don’t judge!
It’s all I had.”

She walked all the way in the room and leaned
against the white-washed cement wall with her hands tucked against
her back. “You used to be better at going to the grocery
store.”

The small dig cut deeper than it should have.
“I’ve been busy.”

Her lips turned down into a concerned frown
that I mildly resented. “You can’t wallow forever, Kate. Your
marriage ended, not the world.”

But he was my world
. I kept that
thought to myself. Now was not the time or the place to sift
through my complicated feelings regarding Nick. I wanted this.
I
wanted this
. I had no right to be this upset or depressed.

Deep breath
. “You’re right,” I told
her. “I just haven’t gotten the hang of cooking for one. Last time
I went to the store, I ended up way over-shopping and then I had to
throw half of it out when it went bad.”

As gently as she could, she said, “You’ll get
the hang of it.”

I pushed off my toes until the back of my
chair slammed against the white board behind me. “I hope that’s
true.”

Because if it wasn’t…

Had I just made the most colossal mistake of
my life?

No. This was right.

But then why did it feel so… unbearably
wrong?

Please enjoy an excerpt from Love and Decay,
Season One, Episode One.

Chapter One

647 days after initial infection

Oh, god.

The smell was the worst.
The absolute
worst
.

It wasn’t enough that I had to pick my way
through dismembered and half-eaten bodies, or that at any moment
one of them could spring up from the ground and make an afternoon
snack out of me.

It wasn’t enough that I hadn’t had a shower
in over a year and a half, hadn’t worn eye liner in even longer
than that and my hair was somehow simultaneously disgustingly
greasy while frizzing into a perpetual fluff ball.

Oh no, that would never be enough. My ugly
tan work boots were a size and a half too small, I ripped my too
big Grateful Dead t-shirt off a very, very dead man, and my jeans….
or what was left of my jeans was the last of my stash from my once
excessive closet.

After all of that- and I mean, the shower
alone should have been enough suffering for any living being to
suffer through- it was the smell that got to me.

Putrid, rotting flesh from both the dead that
littered the ground around me and the remnants of stench that
lingered in the air when the Feeders were finished was what
triggered my gag reflex and watered my eyes. There weren’t enough
words in the English dictionary to describe my revulsion, or the
way my empty stomach flipped with every breath.

I probably would have puked if I had eaten
anything in the last two days.

The best thing about the Zombie Apocalypse? I
was no longer addicted to sugar and caffeinated beverages.

I wiped my forearm across my sweaty forehead
and re-aimed my handgun in the general area in front of me. This is
the point of the story where I’m supposed to tell you what kind of
gun I’m carrying, but let’s be real…. Before the end of the world I
was a cheerleader at a small town school, where I was the debate
team captain and student council secretary. I lived for throwing
parties when my parents went out of town, making out with my
football captain boyfriend and doing the occasional trip to the
homeless shelter where I would put in my monthly two hours of good
deeds.

I’d never even held a gun-- scratch that--
I’d never even been in the same room as a gun until the world went
to shit. Who knew the cure for herpes would turn all those sexual
deviants into people-eating, brain-dead, infection-giving
assholes?

Not me.

The whole phenomenon gave a girl a serious
complex about safe sex.

Not that I was having sex. Or would be any
time soon.

I hadn’t even seen an eligible bachelor in a
good six months and it wasn’t like I had exactly been interested
when we passed each other with guns raised and a suspicious glint
in our eyes. Although there was a sort of mutual give and take
between us that could have been considered an instant connection,
possibly love at first sight. I let him loot the dead gentleman
that had his head literally severed from his body by Feeders, and
he let me raid the vending machine offering one bag of Funions that
had been smashed into pathetic crumbs.

But then we both went our separate ways and I
will never know if he got eaten, turned or found the promised land
of Zombie-free showers and espresso machines.

Plus, I was still pining over poor, deceased,
Quarterback-Chris.

Just kidding! Quarterback-Chris had
apparently been less than faithful to me during our two year
relationship and after things with the government, army and general
world went to hell, Quarterback-Chris tried to eat me!

So I did what any loving, devoted girlfriend
that just found out she had been serially cheated on by her now
zombie boyfriend would do. I plunged a butcher knife into his eye
socket and when that didn’t effectively do the job, I drove over
him with my mom’s Escalade until his head detached from his
body.

God, I was glad I held onto my v-card.

Could you imagine me as a zombie?

Ugh, it made me shudder just thinking about
it.

A rustling to my left had my gun up, pointed
and steady at whatever was stupid enough to make noise in a regular
Feeder playground. I only had three bullets left, so this kill
would have to be spot on.

That was the thing about living in a world in
which it was a very likely possibility that you could end up as
someone else’s meal before lunchtime, you’ve got to be very good at
shooting. Very quickly.

So even though the most I knew about my gun
was that it was a Beretta from the label on the handle, and the
exact kind of bullets it took, .40 S&W- because those were an
absolute necessity and I was always on the lookout- I knew exactly
how to use it. I knew exactly how to get my bullet from my gun to
the perfect dead zone right between the eyes.

In fact, it was kind of freaky how good I was
at killing things.

Well, killing already dead things.

It was like I was born for the Apocalypse.
No, I couldn’t find a hot shower, figure out how to make food last
longer than twenty-four hours and effectively loot a Walgreens that
still had hair products available. But I could stay alive.

I had an innate ability to stay alive.

And in this day and age, ninety-two weeks
after the first recovering STD victim bit his doctor and the world
fell apart, staying alive was very important.

Back to the rustling….

I slowed my breathing, stopped moving
completely and waited for the sound to come to me.

One of the first things I learned about
survival was that there was absolutely no need to go hunting down
trouble. In the world I lived in, trouble would find you soon
enough. It was better to cover your back, stay calm and have a
loaded weapon ready and waiting.

“Reagan, check this out!” Haley squealed in a
loud whisper.

“Holy hell, Hales!” I whisper-shouted back,
“I almost shot you in the f-ing head!”

She made a resigned grunting noise and I
heard her mumble, “Too bad, I bet they have showers in heaven.”

“We are so not convinced you’re going to
heaven,” I whispered back while stepping over a particularly
decayed body.

Did I say the smell was the worst? I meant
maggots.

The maggots were definitely the worst.

“It wouldn’t matter,” she countered with that
distraught, depressed tone even the best of us were known to fall
into. “This might as well be hell.”

We were still whispering, there was no other
option, since Feeders were drawn by sound. And sight, and smell,
and light and movement…. But since we were rummaging around a
dilapidated department store somewhere in what used to be southern
Missouri, we had a little bit of cover.

The floor was covered with dirt and grime;
metal racks that had been looted a long time ago were scattered and
broken across the floor and we’ve already discussed the body count
problem. We were using what was left of the evening light streaming
through the broken window fronts to see and from the sounds of
things we were alone, at least on the first floor.

One of the best things about Feeders was
their incapability for stealth. They were heavy mouth breathers and
tended to stumble over anything in their way. It was like they had
their own warning bells.

Well, if you stayed alert, kept yourself
surrounded by noisy debris and never fell asleep, you could sense
their presence.

“What is it?” I asked; at the exact same
moment my stomach growled.

Haley shot me a sympathetic look and shook
her head, sending her dark blonde hair bouncing around her
shoulders. “Not that.”

I sighed, but continued to follow her down a
dark hallway. Track lighting hung at awkward angles, the glass long
shattered, the bulbs broken since the beginning. The once white
walls were smeared with streaks of what I had to assume was blood
and dirt. But the stench was less overwhelming here, the air easier
to breath.

“I hit the jackpot,” Haley said excitedly in
almost a full-volume voice. We rarely spoke above a whisper so I
was taken aback at first. I had almost forgotten what her real
voice sounded like.

“In?”

“Jeans!” She turned back to look at me over
her shoulder, giving me a goofy smile and waggling her
eyebrows.

Now this
was
a jackpot.

We exited the hallway straight into the
Junior’s section. The racks were less knocked-over in this part of
the store and still stocked with clothes. Racks and racks of fall
fashions from almost two years ago filled the floor. A discount
shoe rack with boxes of clearance items sat in one corner and in
the middle of the department was a makeup counter.

An f-ing makeup counter.

Eyeliner!!!

At this point, you might be wondering who I
could possibly want to look good for. And that is a valid question.
But it wasn’t like that.

In the last two years, I had been forced to
live as a homeless, basically-starving person, with shredded,
usually-covered-in-blood clothes, no shampoo, let alone conditioner
and perpetually covered in dirt. I was tired of looking ugly.

Tired of it!

I just wanted a little bit of makeup, just
something to make me feel like the world hadn’t completely blown
apart in the prime of my life and left me a wandering vagabond.

I had given up on finishing my education. I
had given up on feeling guilty for killing what used to be human
beings. I had given up on being happy again, living in a house,
having a hot shower and whatever dream I had imagined myself living
out. I had even given up on finding love.