Meet Me

Chapter 15 - When Ash Met Kate

Ash

I am here, crying. I am feeling so sorry for my stupid self. I shouldn’t be crying, I know that. I know I deserved to be dumped, but I shouldn’t be such a pussy about it.

I glance up, when I hear a sugar coated voice talk to me. In front of me is a girl, as beautiful as the earth itself. If the earth counts as being beautiful? I suppose so. She had radiant, curled, copper hair. Her eyes are like heaven. Bright, with a little adventure to kill the angelic hint.

Around her eyes, she has applied black eye liner and mascara and eye shadow that is an autumn red. Her nose is very petite and feminine. The girl has high cheekbones, which she has added some blusher onto. Her lips are in a smirk and painted dark red. Her body isn’t slender, but she has a great figure. It seems to be a figure that the media doesn’t want anymore – not curvy, but not skinny. She sways slightly, so I know that she is intoxicated. As am I. If I hadn’t just broken up with my girlfriend, she would be the type I usually go for.

She looks down at me and repeats herself when she doesn’t realize I heard. “Fuck it, I’ll say it again. What’s wrong with you?” She slurs, a little Italian in her accent. And a little drunk. I wonder if she if from Italy, or not? Probably, there are a lot of foreigners moving to the UK. My mother hated this. I found it rather interesting. It was a chance to meet somebody who had been out of the country before. I had never been out of Scotland, let alone the UK.    

  “Nothing is wrong.” I lie. She looks at me, as if she can tell I am lying.                                                

“I don’t believe you.” She says stubbornly, putting her hands on her hips.                        

  “Okay. Why should I tell a stranger, a drunk stranger, about my problems?” I admitted. She shrugged, then opened her mouth and spoke in her sweet, Italian accented voice again.           

   “So, you do have a problem. Rather, problems. As for why you should talk to me, I am drunk, and won’t remember this conversation in the morning.”  She confessed. I laughed, because that was very true if she had drunk how much she had seemed to have drunken. “Also, fuck it. Talking helps get everything out, doesn’t it? Hell, I’ll even talk about me. Unless, you don’t want to talk to a self-centered, drunk, idiot?” She winked, pulled me up from where I sat, and dragged me outside. The fresh air hit me like a wave. A wave of freshness.

We sat on the fence and she told me about where she lived, a care home, her family, just her brother, and her abusive parents. She also told me that she was ‘Fucked up’. She was fascinating to watch and hear. Whenever she was angry, she would flip her hair out of her face, when she was upset, she would clench her fists and her words would get more slurred. She swore a lot, but so did I. She kept saying ‘Fuck it’. Eventually, it was my turn to talk.

“My girlfriend dumped me.” It sounded so lame, compared to her problems in life. She tilted her head.  She looked sorry for me, but I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking. I was good at reading people, but this girl was almost impossible to read.                                                                  

“Girls are bitches. That’s why I don’t have boyfriends” She explained, as if she were trying to convince herself. I sighed. “Fuck. So, what are you going to do about it? Sit here and slope in a corner drowning your sorrows into a bottle?” I was about to point out that she was a hypocrite, but decided against it.

She looked the type that could beat a guy in seconds. Not that she would be able to take me down. I went boxing every week and was constantly getting into fights in school.

I had gotten a lip piercing underage, my parents had gone mental over it. I hadn’t cared. It had been a dare after all. I had been dared by my friend, Nate. He got a tongue piercing. He had already had his eyebrow pierced. It didn’t look great. A little while later, I had gotten an underage tattoo.

It was a script. It was my dead sister’s name. Kate pointed it out to me. “Is that her name? God, that’s going to take a lot of dosh to get rid of…” She trailed off. She hung over the side of the fence and was violently sick. It made me feel sick too. “Crap!” I wasn’t sick, though. “Fuck… If you remember me, remember that you should never get drunk in the moment. Don’t make a rash desicion when you’re happy or sad. You’ll live to regret it.” I helped her up, called a taxi to take her home (I knew where, because she had mentioned the care homes name: Halfway Home), and asked her name.

“Kate. Farah. And you?” She asked through the car window. I never got the chance to tell her my name, as the taxi whizzed off.

I took her advice. I never made a decision in the moment. I lived by that rule that the gorgeous stranger had given me

Until the zombies moved in.

Then I made most of my decisions in the moment. It didn’t pay off every time, though. I had lost five people, five of my friends, to a cannibal group. I live to regret not making a rash decision then.

When I saw Kate again, I was mesmerized. First of all, she wasn’t drunk. That was always a start. Second, she hadn’t really changed. I supposed she did always look older in a not too old way. What was I saying? She was badass. She had matched up to me. I knew, even though I only knew her through sorrowful drunk conversation, we would be able to survive this zombie apocalypse till we were dying of old age. Disease, zombies, cannibals starvation, dehydration, those things wouldn’t stop us.

While I am confessing things, I might as well add something else. Also, Katherine wasn’t my girlfriend. I don’t know why I had lied to Kate. To impress her? I don’t understand myself fully. Katherine was Nate’s girlfriend. I had promised to look after her.

Another thing, Katherine had been dead. Bitten by a zombie. She had been dead for precisely 3 hours, 4 minutes and 56 seconds. Nate had counted. Before she woke, we found a cure. We didn’t even know we had found it until we used it. It was just a chancing. But, I didn’t think I would be able to make it again. The cure was blood. The blood of somebody who had been bitten, but had never turned into a zombie. They never collapsed, died, and turned. That person was dead. That person was Kate’s friend. Luisa.