Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 33 - We Are the Sinners, We Are the Saints

As morning sunlight streamed through the window, Zahra slowly came awake. Her body was stiff and sore, and she shivered slightly from the cold. She attempted to blink away the sleep from her eyes, and as the seconds ticked by her awakening mind began to remember where it was.

She sat bolt upright, inadvertently knocking away the blanket that the stranger must have wrapped around her at some point in the night. She had slept in the chair the whole night, and now dawn was lighting up the horizon.

She was alone in the room now, with almost no trace that the woman had been there. She was surprised that she had even let her guard down enough to fall asleep.

She sprang from the chair and over to the window, looking out to the street below. It was empty now, just another thing from the day before that seemed like little more than a quickly evaporating dream.

Was she going crazy?

For a brief moment Zahra wondered if everything had been a dream. If she had simply grown tired while exploring one of the abandoned houses and curled up in a chair to rest a moment, then fallen asleep and suffered through horrible dreams of everyone she knew and loved having been horribly murdered and then the town being overrun by an endless parade of the undead.

She clenched her head in her hands and wondered if this was all just some sign of insanity.

Then she smelled it.

It was so faint that she was sure she had to be imagining it. But the more she tried to convince herself it wasn't real, the more sure she became that it had to be real. Before she knew it she was moving, down the steps, out the door, and then down again to the first floor.

The stairs let out on a large open living room that connected to an open kitchen area, and the woman from the day before had managed to light a small fire on the stove and was busy cooking with some of the pans that had been hanging from the ceiling the night before.

The sizzle of the cooking food was loud enough to mask the sound of Zahra's entrance, but after a moment the woman turned around to deposit something on a plate and finally noticed her company.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, looking only mildly surprised. "Good morning! Hope you like omelets. Came across a backyard chicken coop someone was keeping before... well, all this. Don't really have a way to preserve chicken meat, but I figured they wouldn't mind if I snatched a few eggs. I checked them, they're safe to eat. Unusual bit of luck. It would be a shame to let it go to waste. Got some herbs and vegetables from a different backyard garden just down the street here. And I haven't cooked for anyone in so long. Anyway, should be a nice start to the day, don't you think?"

Zahra didn't answer. She just stood there, staring at the omelet on the plate, the warmth from the kitchen seeping into her cold bones. She breathed in the delicious smell of the herbs and the eggs freshly cooked, and the tangy smell of the smoke. She listened to the soft sizzle of the grease slowly dying away from the hot pan now that it had been removed from the fire.

Suddenly she wasn't in the middle of a zombie apocalypse anymore. Suddenly it was two years earlier. She was standing between the kitchen and the living room of their one bedroom apartment. Saturday morning cartoons hummed along softly in the background behind her. Her mom stood at the plug in griddle, cooking omelets. It was a tiny griddle, barely able to cook a single omelet at a time. But it was what they had, and every Saturday morning she insisted on cooking them both omelets. It was the one day of the week her mom didn't work in the morning, and she was adamant that they spent the time together. Even though she had to be exhausted. Even though she could have - should have - been spending the time catching up on sleep.