The song for this chapter is "Story Of A Lonely Guy" by Blink-182

Itaituba, The Amazon, Brazil

[I'm not sure if this was worth the trip, because the story I'm coming to get a first hand account of has been made into something of an urban legend in most of America and Europe since the war ended. This latest person has been incredibly hard to contact because of the remote, dangerous area. Vast stretches of charred trunks and ash that was once thick rainforest show how far the people here are willing to go to get rid of the undead that attack their village. I sit in a small hut with a lanky, American man of thirty six. He has wildly long brown hair that obscures most of his face and various weapons are strapped to his person. Although he himself is stringy and frail looking, it is obvious that he makes up for this in some other way.]

Alright, I'm pretty sure I know how this is supposed to go. You just want me to tell you my story, right? How I got started? Where I was when the shit hit the fan?

[I nod]

Ok.

[He grins momentarily, probably remembering something from long ago]

It was an early fall day. The sun was out and shining, it was warm, I could hear birds chirping merrily outside… and zombies were clawing their way through my door.

[He pauses and rubs his chin in thought]

Umm, no. I'll back up a bit farther.

The Great Panic. The Great Panic didn't have much of an affect on me. Everyone was scared that zombies were going to come and kill them, scrambling for the last scraps of food in a store, running to Canada as fast as their energy-hungry pickup trucks would carry their fat asses. Things like that. My dad just completely ignored all of that, thinking it was all just a hoax or a scam (which he was right, we never bought a single pill of Phlanax), and he continued with his day-to-day things, scoffing at the panicking idiots. He went to work, he bet on the horses every Thursday and Saturday, hell, we even went to a concert together just two days before the main swarm of zombies came through our rural, red-neck small town in central New York.

The reason I let my dad be so oblivious was because I was taking matters into my own hands. You see, before even the Great Panic, I was ready for a zombie invasion. I'd seen zombie movies and read zombie comic books, things like that, I and was simply fascinated by them. Whenever I was bored and in a new place, a friends house or at some distant relative's birthday party, I would look around and think about the best way to defend the local from a swarm of stumbling, flesh eating dead people. So when I heard rumors of a possible zombie invasion I spent that week's allowance on a thirty pack of water bottles. Then next week I went to the Army surplus store and bought an old machete, an extra from 'Nam. I had read that one book, um, I don't remember the name now, but it was supposed to be about how to live through a zombie apocalypse. I think it was by, uh, Mak Bronx, or something. I went through the lists of stuff it said to have. When I had what I thought was most important on the lists I just waited. I didn't panic like the idiots running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and I didn't ignore it like Dad. I was prepared and calm.

In the month before the town was swarmed you had the normal stuff; traffic jams on the nearby thruway, small outbreaks that were put down quick, occasional shooting, sirens. You might have some trouble sleeping, and if you were really unlucky one of the "small outbreaks" would come crashing through your living room window, but other than that you just kept doing normal things and hoped the stories were all a hoax. That's why people in, oh, Chicago, or something, were caught with their pants down even though NYC had been overrun for days and the rumors had been confirmed by the Yonkers broadcast. I like to call it human stupidity. So the schools were still open, everyone knew Something was going to happen very soon and they all just sat around on their fat American asses. It was during this time that I met Faye.

The day after I got the machete I went to school and when I walked over to the place where my friends usually hung out before school there was a girl I hadn't seen before. She was a little taller than me, had a pearly complexion that was pale but not sickly and, most striking to me at the time, shiny midnight-black hair that fell past her shoulders and far down her back. Her face was a little rounded and there was a little to much of her to fit the "olympic goddess" look that most guys go after, but all of this was irrelevant as I continued to look at her perfect, beautiful hair. As I walked up my friend broke off the conversation to introduced us. Her name was Faye she had moved from Germany.

"Hello, I am Faye," she said with a very natural accent. I had a Dutch teacher who's accent erased a few consonants in a way that grated your nerves like a whetstone, but Faye's accent was perfectly liquid. Although you could tell she formed the words in a different way, it wasn't incomprehensible or unpleasant. It was like she took the words and reshaped them to fit her mouth instead of trying to force her mouth to imitate the way American's talked.

I smiled and said, "Hi, I'm Jack."

"Oh, you are Jack? The lady in the office told me to show this to you. She said you would be able to help me today." You would think that, having had Jack as a name for sixteen years, I would have gotten used to it, but when her accent caressed the word the way it did I thought she had said a whole different name. Goose bumps rose on my arms as her voice gently swished back and forth in my head. I barley had the mental capacity to keep composed as she handed me a piece of paper with a school schedule on it. It said "Faye vonReiniger" on the top and, having almost memorized my own schedule already, I noticed that she had most of her classes with me.

Now, here I should point out that at the time I had had very bad experience with girls. I remember that I had written a poem earlier that year about the four times I had previously approached girls and the four times I had been shot down in a spectacular fashion. Apparently being steadfast in your pursuit of a girl does not result in her eventually falling for you, like in the movies, it results in her eventually becoming so annoyed that she practices her right hook on your face. I bring this up because at the time I was faced with a serious dilemma. I knew I liked her and she was going to be in close proximity to me all the time. How was I supposed to not act stupid? That is what I did around girls back then, act stupid. Not intentionally of corse, but that is what usually happened. So I just nodded to her and tried not to stutter as I said, "Okay, well your first class is Advanced Art. The bell is going to ring soon so we should get going."

We had art together and I mostly stayed out of the conversation. She talked with my two other friends (both girls, but one was lesbian and the other had a boyfriend, so I was able to be myself around them), and from being in the group I was able to learn about Faye as she answered the usual questions that I myself would have choked on if I had asked them. I found out that her father had acquired a moderate amount of money in engineering and had moved because of a job offer that had then went up in smoke because the company had gone bankrupt. He was very angry at the whole american way of doing business because it was fueled by scams and had led to the world wide recession. She said that he was really just pissed that the job had fallen through, but he liked to look at the big picture and blame the underlying causes. She said that was also what made him a great engineer. They had enough money to last with no income for a long time, but her father had found a low class job anyway so that the reserve money could be saved and spent on a house when he found another engineering job. She said that they really didn't have much money, but her father had done research on the american housing market before they left, so he knew that they didn't need much money to buy a house.

The day went on and I showed her to the classes that she didn't have with me. The ones that she did have with me the teachers usually placed her next to me because, as they put it, I was supposed to "help her with the transition." I was more than willing to stay with her the entire day and help her, but that left me with a problem: in the future, how was I supposed to act normal when she was always there? Sooner or later I was going to do something really stupid. And this was beside the fact that, other than getting to the classes, she didn't need my help. The teachers anticipated that she would need to catch up with the other students. They could not have been more wrong. Trig, American Lit., Chem, it didn't matter. She could answer any question they threw at her. In Art she started the project that the rest of the class had been working on for several days and, even while answering questions from my friends about why she had moved, she still completed more than I had done in a week, and made it to a higher quality than mine.

She also had lunch with me, which was nice because the few friends I had been able to make since the beginning of the year (it was my first year at the school) did not have lunch with me. So I led her through the line that led to a bunch of crappy, greasy heart-attack-on-a-plate and when she frowned at the horrid selection I showed her the secondary line that led to the salads, fruits, chips and pre-made subs. She got a sub and water, I think, and I got my usual 2 rolls, apple and chocolate milk. We sat down together and after a minute of silent eating I asked, "So, your pretty good in school, aren't you?"

"Yes, well, the English class was very simple. I have read most of the books on the reading list already. Also, before we moved I would often go to work with my father after school and he showed me some of the things he did. Engineering involves art when you draw blueprints, a good knowledge chemistry so you know what any one material's limits are and complex math, much more sophisticated than Trigonometry. So far everything has been easy."

I replied to this astounding bit of informa- wait. I'm getting way off track here, aren't I? This part doesn't have anything to do with zombies, do you want to here it?

[I tell him it is his story, if some of it does not involve the living dead, that is fine.]

Well, I'll just pick up the pace. So I learned some things about her, she learned some things about me. She seemed perfect, I tried not to seem like an idiot. I found out that there was one subject that she was not good at: American History. First, it was a bit different from what she had learned, and second, it was one of the few things her dad had not personally tutored her on. So, because she needed help with it and I was good in it we soon had an after school study schedule set. She took school very seriously, something I had seldom seen in the other kids at my school, and it was something we had in common.

The first study meeting was at her house, which happened to be a motel room because her dad might have to move if he found a job, and went well. I met her dad, who was a bit heavy, (it seemed that was where Faye got it from) balding, and had looked as pissed as a high earning engineer that had to work at Denny's because he'd been screwed over by some American asshole. I couldn't really blame him, and although I could easily tell he was mad he was very polite to me and thanked me for helping his daughter with her school work.

The next night me and my dad went to a concert. Then two days after that was the second study meeting, which was at my house. My house was a hellhole, with just me and my dad living there and neither of us being able to sweep a floor to a reasonable level of clean, so in preparation I had cleaned off the large coffee table so we had a place to work and planned on not letting her see the rest of the small apartment, especially my room. My dad was planing to go to the track at 5:30 (it was Thursday) and I thought I had everything I needed for the few hours she would be at my place.

Now, because I was thinking of Faye all the time, I had completely forgotten the fact that zombies were attacking. The machete and case of water bottles were stuffed into my closet, forgotten, instead of being ready to be used next to my bedroom door. The small supply kit that contained what I had considered to be important was in a backpack, lying under a coat next to the TV. The plans I had made for defending the apartment, possible escape routes and destinations, places that weren't likely to be looted, all of this was at the back of my head, ready to be forgotten if I drew a blank under pressure. So when, halfway through the study session and about an hour after my dad left, a strange pounding came from the front door I was completely unprepared.

AN/ Faye vonReiniger almost literally translates to "Noble Elven Cleanser." To be more accurate, "Elven Cleanser of Noble Blood." Although Faye is not technically German, it closely resembles the Scottish Fey- "fated to die," which comes from the Middle English Feye, which has its roots in an Old English word that is sort of related to the Old High German word Feigi- "doomed." I don't know how Faye's definition wound up as "Elven," I guess all the elves died or something, but... whatever. It is kind of German, in a very indirect way. So all you name/language critics out there can stuff it.

Also, In my other story I have a character with a speech impediment. I HATE writing that character's dialogue because I always have to go back and make sure it is perfect. So, I will not be trying to show Faye's accent. Just remember that every time she talks it sounds like angels, or something.