Sunkissed: A Zombie Novel

Chapter One

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

"Going home?" The cab driver asks me.

"Yeah," I say, closing the cab door as I settle into the backseat. I give her my address, and she clicks on the directional and veers away from the curb.

I rest my head against the window, the glass cool against my warm face. She probably thinks you're one of the drunks out tonight, I think. I want to tell her that I'm not, that I haven't had a drop of alcohol, but I don't. I don't tell her that my roommates dragged me out to the club, and I don't tell her how unclean I felt when guys came up behind me to dance against me, or the way they touched my body like it belonged to them. I don't tell the cab driver, her worn but kind face focused ahead in the dim of passing streetlights, that it was my first time being out since my last relationship. Or that I hated it. That I don't feel guilty for leaving my roommates early, even if it means going home and watching another Harry Potter movie and eating pizza alone on a Friday night.

Being alone isn't so bad. Not really.

I'm finally out of that rat hole, and I'm glad. I don't need that kind of attention. Don't want it. It's not that I'm not ready for them, like Danny and Kylie think. I simply...don't want them.

I thank the cab driver for taking me home and cross the sidewalk to my apartment complex. With a mastered slight jiggle that makes the gears collapse just right and a turn to the left, I enter the silent building and start climbing the stairs. Danny, Kylie, and I are on the fourth floor. Far away from the streets and with nobody living above us, it's always nice and quiet.

"Home sweet home," I mumble, barely through the door before I take off my jeans. The bottoms of my pant legs are soaked from spilled alcohol. I go to my bedroom to pull on my sweats.

Not long later, I insert the fifth Harry Potter DVD into our old PlayStation and crash down onto the sofa with my leftover pizza.

Home sweet home.

"I can't believe they actually did that."

I wake up to the sounds of my roommates coming in, their voices high with excitement. "Can't believe what?" I call, rubbing my eyes. I wonder how many times the DVD menu loop replayed while I dozed.

"Oh, did we wake you?" Kylie asks, dropping her purse and keys onto our kitchen table, which is already overburdened with a mountain of random belongings. It's less of a table and more of a place for us to throw anything we want onto it. Coats, mail, iPods, keys, school supplies. And they wonder why we can never find anything, or why I paid our last gas and electric bill late.

Yes. "No," I respond. "What time is it, by the way?"

"Almost three," Danny tells me, her big eyes bright and full of energy despite the late hour. "And we definitely saw two guys getting kicked out for getting into a fight in the club, and then saw them fighting with the security guards, and then the police came, and, well, you can imagine how that went down."

"They got arrested right in front of the club," Kylie chips in.

"And why were you watching all of this?"

"Well, we had sort of been dancing with them at the time..." Kylie and Danny look at each other and laugh.

"You sure pick the good ones, don't you?" I laugh, believing them for every word. They have a habit of keeping, at best, "questionable" company. But in reality, they're good girls who have managed to stay out of trouble. Never understood how that worked.

"They seemed nice. One was from Milwaukee," Kylie says, stretching out her legs. She notices the TV. "Oh, Harry Potter! Press play, let's go! Which one is this?"