“Make sure he doesn’t have any bite marks,” Emery continued. “That’s how you turn into one of them. They bite you and then you die, except you don’t stay dead. I’ve watched it happen, and it’s happening all over the city, maybe even the country, I don’t know.”
“What the hell are you talking about. I’m fine,” 3B yelled. “You must be on something, because what you’re talking about is zombies, and zombies aren’t real.”
“You’ve been out there,” Emery countered. “I know you’ve seen it, too.” 3B didn’t reply, and when we didn’t find any bite marks on him, Emery stepped aside to let him go to his apartment.
“Zombies aren’t real,” I stated. I couldn’t explain what the hell I saw, but there was no way in hell that zombies were real.
Emery looked at me. “They are now.” She scowled at us one last time and then turned to run up the steps to her apartment. She was halfway up when she suddenly stopped. “Thanks for saving my life,” she said without turning around.
“It was our pleasure, Em,” Luis replied.
We watched her jog the rest of the way up the stairs and disappear behind her apartment door. She blamed us for what happened to Eddie. Hell, we blamed ourselves. Which was why we never asked for her forgiveness, no matter how desperately we wanted it. If hating us was the price we had to pay in order for her to keep going, I’d pay it for all eternity in this life and the next.
“Ok,” I said, turning back to the door and turning the deadbolt on it. “Turn off the lights. We are only allowing residents in the building, and they can’t go upstairs until we have thoroughly checked them for bite marks. We protect our home.”
One of them killed the lights and joined me at the door as we watched complete chaos descend upon the neighborhood. It was going to be a long night, and I wasn’t sure what tomorrow would bring, if tomorrow ever came.
I glanced back up the stairs where Emery had disappeared. For a moment, it had felt like old times filled with casual touches. As I turned back to the door, I thought back to when I had seen Emery for the first time. We were just high school kids back then, though I’d felt like anything but.
“It’s ok, my grandparents said you could stay with us as long as you needed,” Luis said to me as I hesitated on the front steps of his building. I doubted that was what they said. I knew theydidn’t approve of me, or of what we did, but they loved their grandson. Luis didn’t understand how lucky he was to have people in his life who wouldn’t give up on him, even if it meant bringing in his street urchin friends. They probably thought with me under the same roof, they could guide us toward a brighter future. I wasn’t going to tell them how wrong they were, I needed a place to stay.
“Well, if he’s moving in, so am I,” Miguel stated. Miguel wasn’t much better off than I was, but he still had a house to go back to thanks to his Mom’s unconventional arrangement with the landlord. My crackhead mother had kicked me out weeks ago. I’d gone to my dad’s for a spell, but I became an unwelcome distraction. The distraction being that his whores were more interested in sneaking into my bed instead of his when they weren’t working the corner.
So I came to Luis’s house, all of my belongings stuffed into the backpack slung over my shoulder. Luis might not realize how lucky he was, but I did, and I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that his grandparents were taken care of—even if they didn’t approve of the things we did to do so.
“I’ll be up in a second,” I replied. We’d been to Luis’s house plenty of times, but now that it was becoming my house as well, I wanted to check out the neighborhood. My neighborhood.
It was a hot summer day, and the Fire Department had cracked open the fire hydrant, so everyone was outside. I spotted a girl in a black one piece bathing suit near the hydrant with her friends. You could tell they were trying to act like they were too cool to play in the water with the little kids, but they wanted too.
“Who is that?” I asked, pointing out the curly haired girl who had caught my eye.
“That’s Emery. She lives in 1A with her parents and brother, Eddie. She’s fourteen. Eddie just turned eighteen. Their dad isa garbage man and their mom makes the best cookies.” Luis prattled off what he knew about Emery while my eyes stayed glued to her. A boy ran up to her and her friends and sprayed her with a water gun, causing them to shriek and laugh. As Emery tilted her head back and laughed, her eyes met mine.
We stared at each other for a few more seconds before her friend got her attention. As I continued to watch her, her eyes shifted back to mine and I smiled at her. Emery’s cheeks flushed as she looked away again, but it wasn’t long until she was looking at me again, as if there was a magnetic pull between us that kept her from looking away for too long.
I should stay away from her. She’s way too good for the likes of me. Even as I told myself this, I continued watching her. As long as I kept my distance, what was the harm in looking?
My plan at sixteen to keep my distance from Emery hadn’t lasted long. I was entirely too selfish not to interject myself into her life where I could. I grew to know Emery better than she knew herself, and in one afternoon, everything had fallen apart. Now, I was back to doing what I should have done to begin with, watch from a distance and let Emery live her life.
But now? It felt like something bigger than all of us was happening, and I would do everything I could to keep the woman who I’d loved since I was sixteen safe. Even if she hated me.
Chapter three
Emery
My parents were on the couch watching the news when I walked in.
“Pequenino!” Mom said as she jumped up and ran to me. “We were worried sick about you! Are you ok? Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine, Mami,” I replied as she wrapped her arms around me. I sank into her embrace, the feeling of being home bringing my guard down faster than anything else could. My tears started to fall, and when a ragged sob slid from my lips, my mother led me to the couch. She sat me between her and Papi, who wrapped us both in a hug.
“It’s ok, Piccina,” he said softly. “You’re safe now.”
“It’s bad out there, Papi,” I cried. “Tony is dead. He died making sure I got out of there and could make it home.”
“And you did. There’s nothing we can do for Tony now; God rest his soul. I’ll forever be grateful he made sure you got back to us.”
They continued to hold me until my tears had stopped, then my mother fetched me a bowl of beef stew and watched me like a hawk until I had eaten every drop. The rest of the evening,I alternated between watching the news and the streets below. The news didn’t have any information worth a damn, just a bunch of warnings to stay inside. Not that the warning was necessary. All you had to do was look outside to see that the streets were in complete chaos. The screams started to die down as the night progressed, but that didn’t mean they were silent. A person would be brought down, killed, in some cases devoured, and then soon, what was left of them would begin to twitch before slowly reanimating and joining the others on the hunt for the living. When the living stopped showing up, the... zombies shuffled around on the streets aimlessly.
