Corpse As Body, Corpse As Meal

8

A smack on Natalia’s cheek made her scream. She was oblivious about how Cjay intended to gently tap her cheek, but ended up smacking her a little too hard because of his poor coordination skills as a zombie.

Panicking, she scrambled up on her bed and looked around before she saw a pair of thighs beside her bed. Her gaze slowly dragged up from the thighs to a clothed body until she saw Cjay’s stern face.

“You sleep like a log,” he glared at her.

Natalia blinked. For some reason, she could see much clearly than before. By looking at Cjay’s face, she could easily make out the fine lines and cracks of the skin on his grayish face. She could also see the little lines in the rich brown lens of his eyes and the reddishness on their each corner. It must be because she had a more decent meal earlier, past midnight.

During the midnight, she waited for Cjay to finish his ‘midnight snack.’ He left quite a few pieces of meat in the freezer, so Natalia looked for another container where she can put them in. She found a small box, a blue and white colored cooler ice box, and kept all the left-over meat in there before heading back to her room. The meats were still fresh, not yet twenty-four hours cold, so Natalia had to hide the ice box in a cabinet below the sink of her bedroom’s own adjacent bathroom. The wait for the meat to be cold enough to eat took her an hour or two, making her hit the sack pretty late.

She did not just sleep late, but for the longest time, she felt full and satisfied which inspired her to sleep deeply. So deep that she overslept!

Natalia took the blanket off her and put her feet down on the other side of the bed, her back on Cjay. “Is there somewhere you’ve got to be?” she asked him while putting on her flipflops.

“I want to jog,” Cjay placed a hand on his hip, so that he can stand properly. “But how can I do that if I can’t get out of this palace without you?”

She glanced at him over her right shoulder and widened her eyes at him. “Malacañang is so big! If you can’t wait for me to accompany you, then you should just jog in here! Run around this house! Climb up and down the stairs!”

“Trying to be funny, huh?” he scoffed. “Take a bath already! You stink!” Cjay turned away and headed to the door.

“You smell worse, zombie!” she retorted as she quickly sprang on her feet and rummaged her cabinet full of clothes that were bought yesterday by the president for her.

A few minutes later and Cjay was already jogging at the garden in Malacañang’s backyard. Natalia watched him stagger in a loop around the yard. She could not decide if she should laugh at the weird way he jogged because a part of her wanted to cuss him for forcing her to jog with him. Because even if she finally got a decent meal of human meat this past midnight, she still hadn’t recovered her full strength yet! As a result, she couldn’t keep up with him! Worse, she wasn’t just jogging but also carrying a drawstring bag that contained Cjay’s bottled water, towel, cell phone, and extra T-shirt!

As she watched Cjay, she kept her combination of awe and disbelief to herself. It was hard to believe that the zombie she was assisting was already far ahead from her! He looked funny though with his arm slinging and his legs staggering as he ran, like a lanky bamboo against a whirlwhind or a glow stick being waved violently on a concert. What she was seeing was enough evidence that being a zombie compromised his motor skills and coordination. But, oh boy, he was quick. His pace was so otherworldly, it made her give up. Natalia stopped in the middle of their jog and put her hands on her knees as she catches her breath.

“Natalia!” Cjay called from afar while still jogging, facing forward.

‘Does he have eyes on his back? How did he know that I stopped jogging?’