Chapter One

Two Things on a Grey Day

There were two odd things that happened before the zombies arrived and ruined everything about my life. I don't want to say signs because I don't believe in signs, but if anyone else told me what I'm about to say, I would have nodded in agreement while thinking that they had either embellished what happened or their recent horrifying experience had affected their memory in such a way that they were making order out of chaos.

The first was the quiz. It was a Sunday, supposed to be a lazy Sunday. Connor and I had those once upon a time, before we got lazy and the world completely changed. Connor used to get up and make cranberry and lemon pancakes or shirred eggs in blue ramekins seasoned with pepper and Hawaiian red salt. I would take the plates of food to the patio to photograph it and to take advantage of the sun's light making its way across our plants and heating up the cement patio. Connor would roll his eyes at me while I took the photos, and then we would eat our food and sip coffee until noon, full and happy. Sometimes, in the afternoons or early evenings, we'd wander out so I could take photos or we'd go shopping for the week's groceries, or we'd thumb through books. At least, that is how I remember it now, sitting here outside in the summer's dark and writing by the light of the moon. I miss those days so much, and him. I miss him so much.

That Sunday afternoon, I'd gone to a local restaurant where they sold breakfast tacos: two potato and egg for me and two carne guisada for him, along with a coffee and chips and salsa. Odd how those little things seem to mean so much out here. Out here where we are facing issues I never believed could happen, and it's those little things I miss the most. People used to say that, it's the little things in life, but no one really believes it until there are no more little things in your life, until everything is big and important and the intensity makes you want to die.

It's not that breakfast tacos are bad. In fact, we used to rotate going out to eat and him cooking and that was fine with me. It was just that our Sundays had changed. Instead of Connor cooking, I almost always had to leave the house Sunday morning for our breakfast. Instead of thumbing through books or moseying to the grocery store or farmer's market, we sat in front of our computers and tried to ignore all our problems. The day before, I said to Conner, "I feel like drug addicts. Our porch looks like drug addicts live here."

"It does, doesn't it?" he said pulling at his short beard. He looked outside at the dying plants and the cigarette butts littering our patio. He was so handsome with his hazel eyes and light brown hair. I don't even know if other women would find him attractive, but I loved everything about him. He made me laugh all the time, but we had fallen in a rut, constantly trying to navigate financial woes and maintain our sanity. We agreed that the next morning we would look at our finances and clean the house, but we didn't. Instead, about an hour later, we fought because he wanted to go out to eat and I didn't. Instead he bought too much beer and was recovering the next morning.

So while he was nursing his hangover, I went for breakfast tacos and when I came back, we ate and sat around on our computers. I suppose I was already aggravated because we were sitting around again and because of our fight the night before. Connor was trying to make nice with me, so he sat down in the pink Queen Anne chair beside the couch I was sitting on (wow, I miss furniture) and he took a quiz with me. This was one of those cheesy quizzes to find out which character you are in a movie or TV show, and this particular quiz was about a popular TV show in which aliens had taken over the world. Connor usually refused to participate in such activities, but he took the quiz that day. I had taken the quiz already, so he had not seen my answers. He only saw that I got one of the lead characters, the woman that every woman taking the quiz wants to get. Naturally, I was happy. I started asking Connor the questions.

"What would you look for first when the aliens start to take over the world?"

A) shelter B) weapons C) food and water D) a getaway car

Connor chose food and water, and I had chosen weapons, which surprised both of us a bit. The quiz continued with questions like "What weapon would you most like to have during the alien invasion?" We both chose a gun. I mean, who really would know how to protect yourself from an alien anyway? It was the question a little later that made us fight, and the question I would think about when I pushed tables and chair in front of our apartment door in a weak attempt to hold off the zombies. I still think about it now. How could a stupid quiz, a stupid question, cause me to make such a big decision? Of course, it might just be lucky that I knew his answer because then I didn't wait around for him when he had no intention of showing up. I still don't know. The question was, of course, who would you go to find first when the aliens took over. The problem was that there was not even a pause. I don't think I even finished the question before he said his brother. I couldn't believe how much that hurt. I chided him for a moment, but we finished the quiz. He got the character in the TV series that everyone hates at first, but slowly his soft side is revealed and he becomes a favorite.

By then, I was angry, hurt really. I didn't want to be, but his answer brought up issues I already had. For the first few years of our relationship, I had always felt that I was more in love with him than he was with me. They always say that that is the case with relationships, and his answer tapped right into my fear that that was true. I cried. I was embarrassed to cry at something so stupid. We didn't fight. He tried to take it back, but how do you take something back like that?

So that was the first weird thing that happened the week the zombies showed up, two days before to be exact. Two days before they showed up, Connor and I had made our "apocalypse plans." I told him, "I take my answer back. I would go find my family before you."

"You didn't even say you would go find me. You said you would stop and help anyone who needed help," he said with only the slightest of exasperated sighs.

"That was only because I couldn't chose between you and them," I said before shutting the door to our bedroom and escaping behind the glowing screen of my computer to watch a detective show, to think about anything other than my own world. Is it bad that it still hurts to think of that conversation? I guess if he had come back for me that day, it wouldn't hurt so much. But he didn't and so I just try to keep going.

The second weird thing was that morning, before the news started sending out emergency reports and the highways filled with cars and zombies, I had sent out my first query letter for my novel. I had just finished my dystopian novel and so I was writing a query letter to send out to agents. Recently, I had read that agents wanted to curl up in a ball and hide whenever they say "dystopia" mentioned in a query letter. Dystopia was over was the new consensus. Of course that terrified me because I had just spent two years writing a book about vampires taking over the world. I had to make an argument for my book, so that day I sat at my writing desk and stared out the window.

It was a typical Texas winter day, grey and rainy with bare tree limbs scratching against the sky. Everything was dead, a blank slate for the spring to come along and make the world beautiful again. I loved winter days like that. I saw a middle aged man outside, his breath creating little wisps of fog. He was walking his dog, who took his sweet time peeing and pooping. The man was wearing a tattered jacket and jeans. He walked quickly behind the hyper little dog, smoking a cigarette and looking up to the grey sky, chiding his dog for taking so long.

The man's foul humor inspired me. I thought about a couple I had seen at a gas station the night before. They had a little girl and they were fighting about buying her a chocolate. The little girl hung her head while they fought standing outside by the front door. After a minute or so, the woman grabbed the girl's hand and spanked her.

"Get in the car," the woman said and I watched the little girl walk over to a car, rusted and sputtering with the keys still in the ignition. "We don't have the money to buy that stuff for her," the woman said.

"It's one damn candy bar," the man hollered at her and walked to the car. With nothing left to do, the woman shrugged in an exaggerated manner and followed the man.

I drove away then, but it made me think about dystopia. In my query letter, I argued that we, as a society, still craved dystopian novels; they weren't over yet. They wouldn't be over until our own worlds got better. We needed to see worlds that were worse than our own, and we couldn't relate to novels about better times. Dystopian novels both reflected our current state and made us feel better about our current state of being. I reread it a few times and pressed "send." My first query letter, I sat up and looked out the window and smiled at the grey sky and grey day.

I was getting ready for work when I heard the emergency alert. Sirens rang out. I panicked. It took me a minute to get the radio on on Connor's tablet. I cursed at him for not being there. He could have turned it on quickly. There were emergency alerts for Austin, Texas all over; I felt the screen was one big flashing alert. I also thought it might be a joke. That was what crossed my mind first when I saw what the alerts were saying. Zombies, seriously? I thought. The first thing I thought of was the panic of the American people when, in the 1940's, a radio station played a story about aliens taking over. It was just a story, but people all over thought it was really happening. I grabbed my phone, but nobody had called. Surely, Connor or my family would have called if there were any merit to this crazy alert.

It was the man with the dog that made me believe. Well, not really the man with the dog but what happened to him. I looked out the window to see if I could see anything, and I saw the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life. The man was on the ground now and there was a form hovering over him. My limbs went numb, the way people tell you they will. I could feel my blood rushing to my heart, and I swear that zombie woman heard it that day because she looked up from what she was doing to that man. She looked right in the window at me and tilted her head, the way an animal would, blood dripping from her rotted mouth and skin. I froze. There was no fight or flight for me. I just froze and after a moment, she went back to what she was doing. That was when I saw the young zombie boy behind her chewing on the small puppy, the one thing that had been so full of life on that bleary day.

People outside screamed, and I heard scratches on my door. I still think the scratches were made by a zombie, but I didn't stay to find out. I pushed everything I could in front of the door, and by that time, people or creatures were pounding on it. I can't believe I did what I did next, but thank goodness I did. I grabbed a photo, a black and white one of Connor and me right before we got married. We're smiling and laughing, and now it's been folded and unfolded a million times. It's unfolded and out of my pocket now, sitting beside my journal as I write. I broke the frame and grabbed it, and then it was flight for me. I opened the window in my bedroom, the one not facing the zombie woman and the man who had been walking his dog. I jumped two stories and ran past the people and creatures. Like everyone else, I ran for my car. I don't even remember driving out, but I did. I went toward the highway first. I was going to find Connor, but the highway was completely stopped. I could see it from the hill of our apartments. Luckily, my phone was in my sweater pocket. I tried to call him but no answer, so I started the back way to the police station where he was working.

I guess it was fortunate that I had not heard all the radio broadcasts. It was only after I had caught my breath that I turned the car radio on. By that time, it was only screaming and occasionally clips of a broadcaster getting a sentence or two in before it turned to screaming or even more scary silence. If I had been listening before then, I would have heard that the zombies hit the police station an hour before. For that reason, nobody was headed in that direction, but I went that way. The roads were almost empty and by the time I got to the school it was deserted. At least, I didn't see one zombie or person. That's when I thought of the question, just for a second. He'd gone for his brother. He hadn't even called me. I still want to believe that because no matter how much or how little he cared about me is not as important as believing he is still alive somewhere, but it still hurts. I don't know why he didn't call, but I don't believe he died, not Connor. Connor was a survivor. It's just that when I imagine him surviving it's because he's thinking of me, just like how the first thing I thought of was him. It wasn't just that day that he helped me to survive. It was every day of the mundane existence that he helped me survive. Every morning I went to my job thinking someday we would have a better life. We would have a child and a house with a garden and lots of windows for the light to seep into our lives.

I can't shake that from my heart. My mind tells me differently sometimes, but when I imagine Connor surviving, it's for me just like I survived for him. And whether it is true or not, whether signs and fate are true or not, is somehow irrelevant because I have to keep believing these things, these small things, in comparison to all that we now face each day, are the only things keeping me going: lazy Sundays, breakfast tacos, and how he used to make me smile. Oh, how he used to make me smile.