Zombie Thanksgiving: A YA Short Story Read online

break down and actually let me open one present on Christmas Eve.

  “Yeah, really. Is this good, what I’m wearing I mean?”

  He looks at me for a long time. “Yeah, that’ll be fine.”

  He doesn’t say anything after that, just reaches for Carmen’s chair and carries it into the hall. I grab mine and drag it into the hall. He makes a sour face at the dragging sound, then points at the scuff marks on the floor.

  “Nice,” is all he says, and I don’t drag anything for the rest of the day. Like I said, it’s hard to argue with zombie logic.

  We pile the stuff from the top of the desk-slash-table onto my bed, and carry that out into the hall. It’s easier than it sounds, because really it’s just two small desks pressed together, back to back. He takes the heavy end, with the drawers, and even walks backward so I don’t have to. I like that in a guy, even one who eats brain nuggets for a midnight snack.

  He’s pretty diligent, too. Like Carmen and I both have these closets, with little green and pink curtains in front, and when he starts moving my shoes and stuff off the floor I say, “It’s okay, you can just clean around that.”

  He shakes his head and says, “I have to clean the whole floor.”

  That’s the thing about zombies; some of them can get pretty literal.

  So we have to move the shoes, and the six pack of beer I was saving to drown my sorrows later that night, which he wrinkles his nose at. “I should confiscate this,” he says.

  “But?” I prod. “I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere, Reggie.”

  He’s holding the beers, looking at them fondly. A lot more fondly than he did my half-backside earlier, I’ll give you that much. “But… I won’t if you’ll let me have one with you later.”

  I cock one eyebrow at that. “I didn’t know you could drink beer.”

  “I can’t drink a whole one. It would make me sick, but… I’d like to taste one, just for old time’s sake.”

  I slug his arm. He’s rolled up his sleeve somewhere along the line, and his biceps are all stringy and veiny, but solid and fat-free, like the dudes on the wrestling team.

  “What, you were a big beer drinker in your Before Life?”

  I’m joking, but he puts the beer on the top shelf with care, almost reverently. “I was a lot of things in my Before Life,” he says without looking at me.

  Suddenly, I’m interested. “Yeah, like what?”

  He starts to say something, closes his mouth tight, then says something else. “I was like… like… you.”

  I snort. “A girl?”

  He blinks twice. “No… normal.”

  Wow, smooth talker. No guy’s called me normal in, like, forever.

  I put my back into it after that, kind of eager to get on with it so maybe we can find a quiet moment at the zombie Thanksgiving shindig to maybe talk about how normal he was before the lights turned out and came back on. One beer for him still means five left for me, and after that he should be looking pretty normal, indeed.

  The floor buffer thingy machine is loud and I stand out in the hallway while he runs it over the now bare floor. The room looks so big without any furniture in it, and his arms look strong as they wrangle the machine around the floor.

  He goes in circles, from left to right, very methodically, very slowly. I get bored watching him, even with the trembling biceps and broad shoulders and his hat pushed back. The hallway is empty, which is weird. Didn’t Reggie say the whole Zombie Job Corps was on floor detail?

  The humming stops and I watch him circle the cord around his arm before hanging it off the side of the machine. My stepfather used to do that, too.

  He tips the floor lawnmower back and there are little wheels on the bottom so he can roll it out into the hall smoothly. He puts it to one side of the door, then helps me move everything back in.

  It feels wrong to leave the Cheesy Puffs and laptop on my unmade bed, and without saying anything we both kind of set about straightening the room, from top to bottom and back down again.

  He’s pretty good, too. Not rough or careless. He puts the books back on the shelf according to size, and squares away the laptop next to the note pad next to the pencil holder, like he’s staging a display in a furniture store showroom or something.

  The room is quiet when we’re done. I think it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without music in my life.

  He turns to me, rolling down his sleeves. “You ready?”

  “That’s it? No more rooms. I was just getting into the swing of things.”

  I only half-mean it. Okay, maybe more than half.

  He looks away again. I guess that’s his version of blushing. When he turns back, he admits, “I kind of saved your room for last.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  He shrugs. “It gets lonely in the Corps. Zombies aren’t exactly, stimulating people you know?”

  “Oh, and I am?”

  Another shrug. I’ll take that as a blush. Or a confession. It gets a little awkward after that, the way it will when a guy says you’re “stimulating” and neither of you can tell if it’s a compliment or not.

  “So,” I say, just to kill the awkward silence, “when is this big Thanksgiving shindig going down?”

  “What time is it now?”

  I yank the phone out of my back pocket, realizing I haven’t used it in… forever… and check. “4:29.”

  “Oh, it’s been going on for awhile now.”

  We walk down the hall side by side. He doesn’t move as slow as when he first came in, and I wonder if it’s because he’s limber from working or we’re just late.

  He opens the door at the end of the hall for me, the one that leads out onto the quad. It’s empty, like it’s been since Monday when everyone started heading home early. Classes were canceled by Tuesday and I’ve been here, alone except for the Zombie Job Corps I guess, ever since.

  The air is brisk and the sky is gray and, I dunno, it just looks like Thanksgiving. Quiet, empty, a little sad, like the big table in the dining room after all the plates have been put away and everyone’s gone home.

  He fiddles with his hat as we approach the Zombie Job Corps headquarters, which is really just a double-wide trailer out behind the cafeteria. The windows are dark, though, and when he tries the knob it won’t open.

  I don’t hear any music inside, or any of that thumping sound that always comes when more than one person walks across a trailer floor. “When did the party start?” I ask knowingly as he stands, one leg on the ground, the other on the top step of the trailer. “Yesterday?”

  He kind of nods. “I guess… I guess I forgot they gave the Job Corps today off.”

  Now it’s my turn to blush. I can’t remember the last time a guy ran the whole “hey, let’s go to a party, oh, dang, there really wasn’t a party after all, but… wanna hang out anyway” gag.

  “So, what now?” I sigh, like this majorly sucks or something.

  He fumbles with the front of his pants and I’m thinking “Whoa, Nelly, not so fast there, Reggie” but he comes up with keys. “This one opens the cafeteria.”

  “Jackpot!”

  It’s silent and dark and everything echoes. He finds the light switch in the kitchen and I open the walk-in cooler. For whatever reason I crave milk most of all, and I grab a gallon. And cheese, a wedge of cheese. And bread, a loaf of bread. I see a box marked “Brains” on the way out and slide it on top, even though just grabbing it gives me the creepies.

  He smiles to see it, and moves a little faster to grab it from the stack. “Do you mind if… if… I eat this over there?”

  He points to the dishwashing area, which is kind of in the corner. “Okay, it’s a little rude, but… whatevs.”

  Then I see why. Or rather, hear why. Dude tears open the box, barely rips open some plastic and… dives right in. It sounds like a stampede, a stampede of teeth. And gnashing and tearing, like what I imagine the cavemen sounded like at dinner time, eight or ten of them tearing into a nice, roast sa
ber tooth tiger without the aid of knives or forks or a Miss Manners guide written on stone tablets. Then comes the grunting, so loud and fierce, I can’t imagine he knows he’s doing it, otherwise he’d stop.

  I busy myself making a grilled cheese sandwich in a giant, industrial size frying pan that looks more like a platter for an XXL cheese pizza when the grunting suddenly stops.

  “Shhh!” he demands, as if I’m the one who’s been making wonka-wonka internet porn sounds since we walked in. “Do you hear that?”

  Now that’s hilarious. “You mean, do I hear you?”

  “No, not me, something… something else.”

  His face is so serious, it makes me stop what I’m doing and look out the small window next to the sink. “Oh, it’s just your friends,” I snort, turning back to my grilled cheese.

  “My friends are gone,” he insists, creeping up behind me. I can smell the fresh brains on his breath, in his teeth, and I almost gag. It smells like dark meat and rust and copper.

  “Those… those aren’t my friends.” I look up, at him first, to see his jaws clenched, teeth gritted. Then out the window, where three zombies walk, side by side, toward the cafeteria.

  They’re not in uniform.