Page 23 of Doomsdate

The sad-tasting man wields a loose branch, sweeping it from side to side below and slapping the zombies’ outreached hands away. One grabs it and nearly pulls him out of the tree. His voice rises an octave. “I said fuck off!”

I sigh. It’s a universal maxim in the prepper community to save your heroics for yourself and your loved ones and leave everyone else to reap the consequences they sowed by not preparing.

But that’s never sat right with me. This is the first live human I’ve seen yet, and maybe he’s just one of the naïve, unprepared sheeple, but I can’t drive by while he gets pulled from a tree and eaten. If I hadn’t been so busy trying to bang Everett, I might have been able to save Dana from the old bros.

Guilt puts my SUV into park.

I grab the mace from the front seat and ease out of my car. The mob is just ahead, but I’m using the line of parallel-parked cars to shield me. The hysterical man’s doing a great job of keeping the zombies’ attention on himself, what with all the screeching. I heave the mace down like an axe on the closest one behind the knee. The zombie falls down like the lifeless corpse it’s supposed to be, and I bash its head in before it can prove me wrong. Two more drop before the man notices his crowd of admirers dwindling.

I’m gunning for number four when the man in the tree ducks his head below his branch and spots me.

“Oh my god! Maisie?”

The zombies turn around, setting those glowing orbs on me.

Everett

“Thanks a lot!” Maisie yells as the mob turns on her.

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry!”

The flash of platinum-blond hair is almost too fast to track as Maisie slams her mace like the scariest baseball bat of all time into one of the zombies’ heads. It drops with a clump, glowing brains leaking onto the concrete, but she’s completely outnumbered.

I have to help her.

I aim for one of the zombies toddling for Maisie with my weaponized branch, but my weight pitches unexpectedly. I lose my balance and tumble sideways from the tree. Something horrifically squelchy breaks my fall, like a nineties waterbed, but the impact still knocks the breath out of me. My mouth’s flapping open and closed like I’m a fish dying on land, until I roll over and face the bald man in a black leather bomber jacket who tried to eat my calf like a triple with cheese earlier. The scream barrels out of my mouth easily after that. I scramble off the unmoving zombie waterbed, his head already caved in, scooting backward until my back meets something hard. I scream again, but it’s just the tree.

A last phhhlump hits the concrete. My chest heaves as I stare up at Maisie where she stands surrounded by downed bodies on the sidewalk, her mace dripping with gleaming gore.

She looks pissed.

“Um, hi,” I squeeze out. “You’re still human. That’s—great.”

Maisie’s eyes have a hard, glinting set to them, like Clint Eastwood’s when the outlaw’s gone and really ticked him off. But they’re rimmed in red, too, her lids pink and puffy and tired. All the telltale signs of a night spent crying and too little sleep.

I should know. I looked like that every morning for a solid year after Louise died. I probably look that way right now. I sat and bawled on Sandeep’s bottom step until Leather Jacket Waterbed showed up on the sidewalk, the stub of a cigarette dangling from his mouth, eyes beaming like headlights. Then I did what any respectable pacifist with zero fighting skills would do.

I climbed a goddamn tree.

“You just saved my life.” I stare at her, awestruck.

Maisie sniffs. Her maroon sweatshirt reads Thrivin’ & Survivin’. “I thought you were a cat.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure how to respond to that. “Sorry?”

After a second, she spins on her heel and starts walking back to the SUV parked a few yards away. It’s covered in solar panels and looks straight out of a cartoon. She’s probably headed to the bunker.

“Gnnnnennnnggghhh. Gnnnnennngh!” A throaty rumble behind me makes my heart jump. A zombie mom, followed by three of her grade-school zombie cubs, lurches slowly my way. The zombies have been getting progressively slower as the morning sun climbs into the sky, but those undead children still look like they could take me out.

“Um, Maisie?”

The ten-year-old in Taylor Swift pajamas stares at me, hisses.

“Can I have that ride now?”

Maisie pauses outside the driver’s side and sighs, her shoulders falling. When she speaks, it’s with the annoyed resignation of a thousand ghosted women. “Come on.”

I run all the way to the SUV.