Gasping, she dashed her wrist over her eyes, and he came into focus.
Chad. Not dead. Not clad in a baseball cap, faded jeans, and a Miller Lite tee. Not smiling goofily at her. Not harmless.
The zombie had leapt upon her, clearly, and she was near death herself, hallucinating in her final, semiconscious moments upon this earth. Because Chad—just Chad, dude, last names are dumb—was wearing an open black leather hoodie, hideous blackcloven-toed shoes, and what appeared to be sheepskin underwear. Also a bored, disdainful expression directed unmistakably at her.
That was all. That was everything.
No shirt. No pants. Not even a hint of gratitude or friendliness.
At his feet lay the zombie, rent in two distinct pieces, both soaked in sickly yellow blood. The head to Chad’s right, the body to the left, separated as neatly as any guillotine could have done. Robespierre would have been envious.
For some reason, her poor dying brain supplied a propulsive yet chilly European beat to the sight of Chad the Zombie Slayer staring down his nose at her.
With a graceful flick of his hand, he tossed aside his over-the-ear headphones. Nightfall had darkened his golden-brown hair and transformed his blue eyes into shadowed black pools. His brows were thick slashes drawn over that strong, straight nose, and his full mouth drew thin in seeming disapproval.
“You’re a fool,” he pronounced.
She didn’t take offense. Given her current state of abject confusion, he might very well be correct. Although if Bro Chad had ever made such an accusation—which he never would—she’d have howled with laughter before removing the Miller Lite from his hand and pouring it over his head.
Even his voice was different now. Deeper, more clipped and supercilious, with the faintest hint of a French accent, even though she could have sworn he was one hundred percent Mid-Atlantic Bro down to his marrow.
Numbly, she took stock of herself.
When she prodded her throat, her neck felt entirely intact.When she scanned her surroundings, she saw exactly what she’d have expected to see, excluding Euro Chad.
His ranch house, with its sagging front porch.
All the other crumbling homes arrayed on either side of their street, empty since the Breach twenty years ago. Which would now be called the First Breach, most likely, since a second had clearly occurred.
Her little brick split-level next door, its windows pitch-black, its shutters unsecured for the night. She hadn’t anticipated an after-Christmas rush at the post office, and by the time she’d dealt with all her packages and hastily supervised the construction of her burrito, she’d been running far too late for comfort.
Wall Two still hunkered in the near distance, a reliable landmark and one of four thick stone barriers arrayed in concentric circles around the zombies’ once-secret fireproof, bombproof underground compound. As always, the wall blocked the low-hanging moon early in the evening, along with any lights from the houses on the other side.
She patted her head. As far as she could tell, her brain remained unmasticated and still in her skull. But if she’d somehow survived intact, she didn’t understand how, and she couldn’t explain the appearance of Euro Chad.
Was this a dream?
The dampness from the grass had begun seeping through the thick fabric of her coveralls, though, making her butt increasingly clammy and cold. Just like it would if she were alive and conscious and not either dying horribly or thrashing through a nightmare.
She stared up at Euro Chad, trying her best to ignore the body at his feet. “Am I asleep?”
“No.” He wiped his blade off on the grass, then tucked it somewhere in his hoodie. “Get up.”
“Are you some kind of reaper, then, here to escort me to my afterlife? Because you don’t look like one, frankly.” She squinted at him, her ass still planted on the ground. “Although maybe all reapers wear sheepskin granny panties. I don’t know your lives. Er, afterlives. Non-lives, whatever.”
His sneer became a scowl. “These aren’t granny panties. They’refashion.”
“Look like furry granny panties to me.”
Muttering something under his breath, he turned his back to her, the movement abrupt and impatient.
Her brows rose at the sight of a thong, as well as what surrounded that thong.
Say what you would about Euro Reaper Chad—both versions of him, each aggravating in his own way—but he apparently did his share of squats. Gluteus maximus indeed.
“That has to chafe,” she pointed out, cautiously getting to her feet and tucking her burrito into her cross-body bag, just in case people still needed to eat in the afterlife. “Don’t reapers get wedgies? Either the ass or toe variety?”
Because those aesthetic abominations on his feet and his sheepskin thong had to be freaking uncomfortable, fashionable or not.
