Eve

Chapter 34 (Part 2)

He doesn't look up, but there's no mistake. It's him. I watch as he tears the woman's body apart, bite by bite, roaring savagely.

"Damian..." I try again, but he's too focused to notice me. Bits and pieces of flesh fly away between him and his friends as they eat.

I stand there watching him. I want to say something. I want to touch him so he'll see I'm here. I want him to call me grumpy and say 'you made it' and smile and hold me. But he's not looking. He's not smiling. He's too busy killing someone. Like I was thinking of doing.

Blood starts spreading in a red tide from their feet, reaching me as it expands across the sidewalk.

And then, from somewhere lost in the haze of my mind, I see a face. Smiling from under a Coachella window inside a CVS, on a lost midnight sometime in my past. A dorky face steering the wheel as I take care of the pedals, telling me about his past and his Mortal Kombat tournament. A face that never killed anyone. That kept me from killing anyone.

The haze pushes hard against my thoughts, trying to take over. Damian howls with every bite in front of me. The hole in my stomach aches.

I see the face with a headphone, smiling above the clouds in an airplane, up in the sky. I see a face asking me to please come to New York with him.

I press my eyes shut. Distorted images and thoughts spin around my head, interrupting each other like a newscaster montage at the start of a bad zombie movie.

What am I doing here? Who am I?

The grunts and growls seem to fade away in front of me.

I am a person.

I am Eve.

The haze pushes against me again, tearing my thoughts apart as I try to put them together.

I am Eve.

And Levon might still be alive.

I open my eyes. The sun's almost fading behind the buildings over the river.

"You think there's more people inside the building?" Damian asks the other zombies, still not looking at me. His voice is different. Scratchier. Darker.

"Maybe," one of them replies. "But there's scavengers around, so we gotta be careful." Under their bloody faces, the woman's body is already no more than a carcass of bones and loose skin.

Levon's face rises above the turmoil of my swirling thoughts. I turn my back and take a step away from Damian, just as they finish eating and rise from the ground.

I take another step. Damian's voice rings behind me, talking to his zombie friend, but I try not to listen. A scooter motorbike is turned over a couple of feet in front of me, its handlebars leaning against dirty gutter water.

I push my feet forward one at a time, struggling with each step.

Like I'm trying to lift a fat Panda from under a slightly fatter Panda, I crouch down and pull the bike up.

"Sorry it ended that way for you, Damian," I whisper, my back to him as I hear his voice growing distant. Closing my fingers hard against the handles, I drop my weight on the seat of the bike. "Sorry. But I still have a chance."

I close my fingers on the key.

Please. Please, work. I don't have the strength to try this again.

I turn it. Nothing.

Please. Please.

Again, I turn the key.

Nothing.

Again.

Somewhere behind me, Damian's voice disappears forever from my life.

Please. Please. Please work.

With a loud roar, the engine comes alive, and the handles start trembling under my fingers.

Yes!

All right. While I'm still somewhat in control of myself and conscious enough, let's put this in zombie facts:

Number seventeen: My coordination is bad enough that I can't even write anymore, let alone drive a scooter.

Number eighteen: I can only think straight in five minute intervals at a time. My body is losing the battle to starvation, and so is my mind.

And number nineteen: It's a two hour drive from Philadelphia to New York City. And I'm gonna find that idiot and we're gonna cure my shit and save his ass or die trying, because fuck eating people when there's perfectly good In-N-Out burgers out there.

Sounds good.

Let's go.