Zombies! Episode 3 - Love Bites (2 page)

When the room was empty, Arrick exhaled his
relief as he did at the end of every day. It wasn't that he didn't
usually have any more work to do. There were always essays and
exams to grade even if he'd polished his lessons years before. But
today he didn't feel like it and the workload was light due to the
events of the previous three weeks. It was also Friday which meant
he had the weekend ahead of him. Maybe, just this once, everything
would just…keep.

From the locker in his room, Arrick pulled
out his coat and umbrella. The weatherman had promised rain and
then broken his promise. It was still cold, though. It was as if
the zombies had brought a chill with them. For a moment, he stole a
glimpse of the unlikely future. He thought he saw a world with no
government and no civilization and humans, behaving as animals,
trying to survive in the cold of winter. But that was a world of
fiction. In those scenarios, it took days for society to collapse.
But reality had proven fiction wrong again. Zombies on the loose
and three weeks later people were all going about this
business.

Choosing a route from the school that took
him past no offices or occupied classrooms, Arrick stole away from
work. Once on the street, he hurried away from the building.
Ironically, he wasn't very different from Shawn Rudd, who often
rushed away from the school and avoided his friends so that he
could see his secret boyfriend. Of course, Arrick didn't have a
secret boyfriend. Quite the opposite in fact. He had a very well
known bitch of a girlfriend. And they had a date tonight.

He should have probably gone home, but he
started toward
Push Ups
anyway. He wasn't a work-out nut. He
didn't feel the desperate need to be fit or even healthy. But the
exercise helped to clear his mind and somehow Suzanna always knew
it when he worked out. Despite a shower and some cologne, she could
always just
sense
that he'd been exercising and it seemed to
excite her. That was probably why he stayed with her. An excited
Suzanna was an exciting Suzanna. And Arrick, who led a fairly dull
existence, enjoyed the excitement she brought to his life. Also, it
didn't hurt that she was absolutely beautiful.

He supposed it wasn't one hundred percent
fair to say that she was a bitch. She was intense. There was no
doubt about that. While he rarely saw her at the gym (not since the
school year had begun), he knew that she was there almost every
day. She worked out hard two or three times a week and simply toned
on the other days. She was serious about fitness to the point of
obsession. For her, though, it wasn't about looking good. She
wasn't vain in that way. He felt that she was more addicted to it
than anything else. Arrick knew that a regular and proper workout
regimen released endorphins into the human body. It made you strong
and healthy and ready to take on the world. That's what Suzanna
craved.

When Arrick arrived at
Push Ups,
Abby
was sitting behind the counter looking bored. She'd almost quit, he
knew. He wondered if she'd ever considered pulling out during the
mad exodus. The gym had been closed for a few days right after the
news from
Sisters of
Charity had broken. Arrick had wandered
by a few times and seen the police cars and other official
vehicles. There was never any indication that the trouble was
related to the zombies in the news, but then again there was never
any indication against it. Abby wasn't saying.

Arrick knew that Larry Koplowitz had died.
Suzanna had told him. They'd often exercised together and, though
she tried not to show it, she'd been pretty shaken up. There was
another man who didn't come to the gym anymore because he'd died.
Karl something or other. With an
R
. Anyway, all this tragedy
seemed to have taken its toll on Abby. She seemed a bit shell
shocked. Absent minded. Her son had been sick as well, which must
have been scary in light of the zombie plague. It was just a bout
of strep throat, though. Nothing to worry about.

"Afternoon, John," Abby said to him as he
walked in.

"Nice to see you," he responded entirely
sincere. "How's your lad?"

She smiled because he'd asked her that every
time he'd seen her in the last three weeks. "He's fine. He's been
back at school for two weeks."

"Right. Just making sure. And the old
man?"

She shrugged. "He's working at least. Best
Buy over in the Market. He hates it."

"Tell him it could be worse. He could've been
a school teacher."

She laughed at that and gave him that queer
look that she'd been giving him lately. It wasn't readily
identifiable but it gave him the impression that he had a fatal
disease and only she knew about it.

After that, he went to the locker room to
change into his sweats and then hit the treadmill. Arrick liked the
treadmill. He could plug his headphones into the speaker and watch
the television while he walked. It helped him forget how boring it
was to run the hamster wheel, as he liked to call it.

As predicted, the news of zombie infestation
and plague had dwindled to a handful of blurbs. You'd think that
something like that, even without constant support from reality,
would have legs with the media.
The reality of the
supernatural.
And yet they shied away from it as if they were
just as afraid as the rest of the populace. Arrick kind of liked
that idea. Maybe the notion was so terrifying that even the media
didn't feel it was right to sensationalize it. And while the media
were keeping their respectful distance, the advertisers were doing
their best to capitalize on the incident. All of the networks were
scrambling to produce mid season zombie shows. Commercials for
ordinary products now had a zombie flavor to them. One company had
taken its popular cold and flu medication and renamed it
Head
Shot
, the perfect defense against the zombie virus. And with
Halloween on the horizon, it was all even worse.

Sometimes Arrick wondered how the FCC even
allowed these commercials to air. It wasn't right for companies to
prey on the fears of the citizens in a Hail Mary effort to
capitalize.

But life goes on.

Arrick finished his workout, nothing more
than treadmill and a few light weights, and headed home. He hated
showering at the gym so always waited until he'd reached his flat.
For Brooklyn, he didn't do too badly. The teacher's salary was
good, especially after eleven years of it. He had two bedrooms,
which he didn't need. Arrick was not an accumulator of stuff. The
second bedroom, which most people would have used for storage, was
set up as a guest room. Malcolm had come to see him a couple of
years before and stayed three weeks. That had been a good time and
the most use that bedroom had ever gotten. The rest of the
apartment had that bachelor look to it. Arrick had a "little bit of
taste" as Suzanna put it. There was a tiny foyer in which he had a
table and a hat rack. The living room was small also, but that left
room for an oversized kitchen and two spacious bedrooms. It was the
large kitchen that had drawn him to the flat in the first place. He
loved to cook. And he was good at it.

So he started dinner, then got in for a quick
shower, dressed himself up in some nice clothing and a nice scent,
and called his mother while he waited for Suzanna to arrive.

The conversation with his mother went
something like this:

"Yes, mother, I'm coming for the holidays. I
already have the tickets and it looks like the planes will be
flying; I'll be flying into Heathrow and renting a car. I know it's
a long drive but I thought I'd spend a couple of days with Malcolm
first. Yes, but he is my brother and I love him even if you
don't."

That was a contentious point but Arrick never
could let it go by. He loved his mother dearly but resented her for
the way she'd always treated Malcolm. Being the favorite son is
great if you don't give a damn about your siblings. But if you're
the conscientious type, being the favorite son is a sure way to be
consumed by guilt.

He was still on the phone with his mother
when the doorbell rang.

"I have to go now, mother. My date's here.
Yes I'm still dating Suzanna. Yes, she's still very much a bitch.
Love to you too, then."

The phone was still in his hand as he
answered the door. There stood Suzanna in a tight dress cut to a
middling length but with a low neckline. He could tell that she'd
gone all out on her hair, too, but the promised rain had come just
a bit later than promised.

"Poor thing," Arrick said a bit dryly as he
ushered her in and gave her a peck on the lips.

"Don't patronize me," she said. "This is what
I get for trying."

"You look wonderful. Shall I fetch you some
sweats?"

"Yes, please," she mocked in a fake Scottish
accent that sounded more like a cross between a fake British accent
and a fake Irish accent.

As he disappeared from the room, she
sneezed.

As he returned she sneezed again and cursed
along with it.

Grabbing a tissue from the box on the coffee
table, she wiped her nose and began to strip. "At least my
underwear is dry."

"At least," he agreed, watching her as she
pulled off her dress and began to shrug into his sweat pants and
t-shirt.

As he tended to the dinner, she went and hung
her dress in the bathroom. She dried her hair with one of his big
fluffy towels and brushed it out with a hairbrush that a man with
his kind of hair had no business owning. Arrick had short hair,
brown. Sometimes it was flat but when he did something with it it
was a bit spiky.

Dinner was on the small round table outside
the kitchen when she finally came out. Her hair had found its
regular shape if not the glamorous style that had been decimated by
the rain. His grey sweats, cut for a thin man, hugged her hips but
hung loosely about her shoulders and calves. Though he was very
thin, skinny even, she was small and fit and the style just didn't
do her justice. She sat, sincerely trying to find the spark of a
decent mood within herself so that she wouldn't completely ruin the
evening.

During dinner, Arrick tried a couple of times
to start some small conversation but Suzanna's responses were
clipped, her aggravation getting the better of her. She ate in
almost utter silence, dwelling in her misery, sniffling every once
in a while and wiping her nose on her napkin.

"Are you sick?" Arrick asked finally.

She looked up then, her fork raised halfway
to her mouth. "I have a cold."

"Oh," he said, dropping his eyes. "At first,
I thought it was because you were so wet, but you've been sniffling
all through dinner…"

"I have a cold," she repeated. "Is that all
right?"

"Of course," he said, surprised by her
belligerence.

There was another two minutes of silence.

"Have you seen a doctor?" he asked.

Suzanna dropped her fork to the plate with a
loud clatter. "Do you have something you want to say, John?"

He looked at her, lowering the drinking glass
he'd just lifted. Arrick was soft spoken but not timid. He
recognized the challenge in her voice and was ready to meet that
challenge. But Suzanna was no ordinary opponent in such situations
and his smarter half told him to proceed with caution.

"If you are sick," he said, enunciating each
word so as to dispel his accent. "You should see a doctor."

"Do you think I've got it, John?" she mocked,
waving her hands and wriggling her fingers. "Do you think I'm going
to turn into a zombie!"

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, although that
was exactly what he was thinking.

"I've got a cold. People get colds during flu
season and they'll still get them now."

"Mmm," he agreed. "Although it never hurts to
be sure."

Another clatter of silver told him that she
had decided to start eating again and then just as quickly decided
against it. "I don't have to take this." She stood from the table
and went to the bathroom.

Arrick looked up as she passed and waited in
silence until she came back carrying her dress. Tossing it onto the
sofa she went and slipped on her shoes. The heels looked ridiculous
with the sweat suit.

"Are you going?" he asked.

She shot him a cold look. "I'd better," she
said. "Otherwise you might report me to the zombie police."

"Suzanna, you're overreacting."

She said something profane as she pulled on
her coat. The thing of it was that he wasn't trying all that hard
to get her to stay. He did say it once.
Please stay.
But she
could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. He was just like
all of the rest of the frightened masses. What was probably
dominating his thoughts was their earlier kiss hello. He was
probably wondering whether or not he'd gotten sick from it. He was
probably terrified that he, too, was going to turn into a
zombie.

He was all of those things and more. And when
Suzanna stormed out of his apartment, cancelling this and all
future dates, Arrick's mind was on the trip he was going to make to
the store for an armload of cleaning supplies and a bottle of
Head Shot
.