It's Complicated: A Zombie Romance Novel

Faces

You'll never forget the face of the first dead girl you see. Never. So when that face stood before me alive ... Ok, she wasn't really standing since I was kind of on top of her, but really. Is it my fault I'm a klutz and she happened to be going up the stairs as I was going down?

That wasn't the point. Does falling down stairs rattle ones brains? Because I totally felt rattled. Her yelling profanities didn't help much either. Man, she had a potty mouth. My mother would wash my mouth out with soap if I said half those words.

I didn't know girls swore like that, let alone dead girls. I distinctly remembered not finding her pulse at that party. I blanched. Maybe it would be best if I got away from her, just in case she started using that mouth for something besides yelling at me. She was so close to my caves. They were my best feature and I really wouldn't want anything to happen to them. I tried to push myself away from her as best I could.

Once up, I brushed myself off and wondered what virus brought her back from the dead. Was it a fluke, or was she just one of a hoard that hid out in abandoned building parties? There was just so many possibilities. Then it hit me. She must have been turned into a zombie at the party. I'd been right to be so afraid of her coming back and eating me.

"Man, you really know a lot of cuss words," I spurted out taking a side step backward. That stopped her tirade for about two seconds.

"I know a lot of cuss words?" she countered stepping closer to me. I so did not want her closer. I tried to take a step back but there was no room. The crowd on the stairs was too big.

"I know a lot of cuss words?!" she repeated, "What does that have to do with anything?!" She pushed her perfectly manicured dead finger at my large chest. She looked at me strait in the eyes. I looked back. She wouldn't start eating me in the middle of this crowd would she? Unless they were all zombies too. Not good. Totally NOT good. I watched as a light came into her dull, blood-shot eyes.

"Hey, you were at the party Saturday, weren't you?" I nodded non distinctly. I could be saying yes, or no. There really was no way for her to tell.

"You totally were!" she concluded out loud to everyone around us. Good, maybe they will think I'm one of them and not eat me. There seemed to be quite a few people on the stairs now, not just the ones that looked like they might have been traveling somewhere with her. They had us pinned in.

"You spent forever staring at my butt!" she exclaimed. Great, now everyone here will think I'm a perv. Or maybe not; this was a liberal college campus and all.

"Isn't that why you put a tattoo on it?" I muttered. I don't think she heard me because she continued to say, "I bet you set this whole thing up so you get a better look." There was a long pause before she added, "You could have just asked."

I turned scarlet red. What could she possibly be thinking about me right now? It wasn't that I was a zombie like her. That's for sure. Whatever it was, there was absolutely no truth behind it.

So I'd stared too long at her at some stupid party. I'd been drunk. I stared at a lot of things that night for far too long. The list included a spot on the wall that I could have sworn was liquid metal, a pile of leaves, and an array of crushed red cups that were as disposable as other things I could think of that were standing in front of me at the time.

I almost mentioned the fact that she should be grateful to me for carrying her out of the party, but part of me knew better than to bring that up. It wasn't my proudest moment and I really didn't think she needed to know. I held it back.

She adjusted her metalic-gold cheerleading shorts. They'd gotten wedged somehow. Not that I'd had anything to do with that. Ok, I confess, the fail was all my fault. So was the state of her shorts. But did she have to use that minute to fix the problem? In front of all of those people. Yeah, just my luck.

"You living in this dorm?" she asked, pointing at the doors I'd just come through. She'd moved on to adjusting her top back into place. The fabric had gotten shifted so her bra was exposed.

"Something like that," I said, talking a little louder this time. I had my back halfway turned. I don't think my face could be any redder, but it was impossible to hide in this growing crowd. If she was going to stand here in public and do that, I wasn't going to watch. I really wasn't like that. I just happened to always run into her. Literally, now a couple of times. It was getting beyond coincidental.

"Babe, we're going to be late for practice," the guy that had helped her up said. "You know how coach is."

I gave him a good looking over. He was too tall, too broad, and if the vacant expression told anything it was that there was nothing upstairs. I could understand why he didn't want to get on his coach's back side. Brawns were all he had. He was probably riding on a scholarship.

The funny thing was, the longer I looked at him the more familiar he became. Like I'd met him before, only I never had. I shook the thoughts from my head. I would remember later, long after this moment had passed. It wouldn't be worth remembering at that point. But that's just how my brain worked, worthless in the moment.

"Yeah, 'babe,'" she threw the word back at him. Guess she wasn't into being called 'babe,' either. It was a little degrading. She got higher marks in my book for that one.

"Let's take the other short cut," she said directly at me, "this one seems to not be short anymore."

"But, babe," the guy started to say before she elbowed him in the gut. Man, that looked like it hurt. All his air seemed to get knocked out. He was in too much pain to finish his sentence.

She flipped her hair at me and the group of them marched off to wherever this practice was taking place. I sighed with relief. That inner part of me that had kept my mouth shut liked that they were gone. It was too bad though. Maybe one of them could have told be where Brian was, since they'd been at the party as well. Or at least they could have told me more about the party. They had the long-time partier look about them. The 'too cool to not get wasted' feel.

The crowd of onlookers had dissipated when Bite My Butt left, leaving me mostly alone on the steps with just my thoughts. That's when it hit me. That guy had been at the party in full on zombie clothes. He'd been the guy guarding the stair door. What was a college jock and a cheerleader doing at that party, anyway? With Brian for a host, I didn't think it would be cool enough for the likes of them. There was something here I was definitely missing.