Craig of the Dead

37. The Thing About Clyde

"He looks so...."

"Scared."

"I was gonna say 'dead' but, I mean, yours works too." I tried to peer through the mass of people blocking my view with little avail. I could see a tattered figure crawling on the floor, but that was all I could make out. Apparently, according to Kenny, Clyde had woken up. And judging by the hoard of scientists dying to get a look at their specimen, I'd say that Kenny was right. After Clyde was given the "antidote", he had made just collapsing out of nowhere a habit. I guess it was a bizarre side effect. But he'd always get up and start, you know, being a zombie again. However, last time he had collapsed he didn't wake up. At least, until now. Still, it made my stomach churn to think about seeing Clyde again. For reasons other than he was still zombified...

Clyde and I had always had a rocky relationship. And by rocky I mean he was just too naive to ever believe that I could just be a bad person. He was my boyfriend in between boyfriends. My date when I didn't have a real one. Every time he would take me back, saying that people change or that he was gonna work on his flaws. Every. Single. Time.

And of course he had his flaws. Clyde was far from perfect. But the problem was never him. He would always welcome me back with his dopy grin and pudgy arms ready to embrace me after a bad breakup. It wouldn't have been as bad if we were regular friends, but that wasn't it at all. Because I was never there for him. I only came back running like a hurt puppy with it's tail between its legs when I needed him. Whenever he would call me in tears over some stupid thing, well, I just was never in the mood to deal with one of his meltdowns.

The last time we had broken up, it didn't go as smoothly as it usually did. And by "broken up"  I mean I had found someone from another school who was more popular or hotter. That was the constant struggle. Considering the most popular boy in our grade was really gay and already with someone, the second and third most popular boys were both in relationships, one of which was with my best friend, and the other one held a grudge against me in particular for something I did when I was younger, well.... I kinda needed to look outside the box. This breakup was different in the sense that it wasn't me breaking up with him. At least, not exactly.

His crime? Wrong place, wrong time. I had told Brandon, my new boyfriend, to get wait for me in the car so I could let Clyde down easy, but Bran just wasn't having it. He was one of those uptight jock boys, you know? Itching to prove something to someone. So Bran decided to prove that he was superior to Clyde by beating the shit out of him after school. Now Clyde, I love him, but he's not a fighter in the slightest. It took a few minutes until a teacher actually intervened, and by that time Bran had spat every jealous-boyfriend comment in Clyde's face. Afterwards, when the sniveling Clyde asked if it was really true, well, I couldn't really deny it.

It's not too hard to imagine how our last phone call went.

"Clyde t—this is B—Bebe... P-p-please, can I come over? I was cheerleading at one of his g-g-g-games and his friends g-g-got drunk and s-s-started to harass me and even though I called the p-p-police, I wanted to see you—"

"Bebe, I'm actually kinda busy right now. You've got Craig's number, right? He could probably beat them up for you later if the cops haven't already got them. Look, I'm really sorry that something like that happened to you, but I don't exist simply to be your emotional support dummy."

"Clyde, I—beeeeeeep—" Silence.

That was two weeks before the apocalypse started. We didn't look or speak to each other in the halls. He seemed perfectly content without me. And I was perfectly content without him. Better, actually. Now I didn't have to dump him every time I found a better boy. And, of course, Wendy had all the girls meet at Nicole's house once the undead began to roam, so it's not like I was chatting with him while zombie hunting.