Teenagers fall in love like leaves fall in the autumn: quick to the ground, quick to die. When my parents decided to move to Boise halfway through my freshman year in high school, to say I was “bummed” would be an understatement. I was devastated. I had developed so many crushes on so many freshman, sophomore, junior and senior boys back in Eugene that I thought it would never end, like so many golden leaves dying off a single tree. Except that these leaves were being raked and put in garbage bag, thrown away or turned into mulch, before I ever had a chance to dive into them.
Boise was small, full of trees (well, compared to the desert that surrounded it, at least), and didn’t smell very bad, but nevertheless I was in a funk, annoyed with my parents, annoyed by the city, annoyed by the stupid people who lived there and seemed to be about ten years behind the times when it came to fashion. A bunch of Mormons lived there, supposedly, though I couldn’t find one for the first four months of my existence in the City of Trees. I spent my entire first semester alone, unwanted and unnoticed by anyone in school. I got straight As, garnered affection from my teachers and counselor (someone must’ve noticed my depression), but that didn’t matter because I had no friends, no one to hang out with after school was over. I invariably went home and played with our cats, or read books, or dawdled on the internet, whichever seemed appealing at the time.
And then, in January, following Christmas break, I met Samuel.
A strapping lad even at sixteen, Samuel was simultaneously very boring and very exciting. He was on the football team, a halfback if I remember correctly, tall, broad-shouldered, handsome. And yet he was also on the fencing squad, and spent more time in the library than any other football player or fencer. Read science fiction. Flirted with attractive women. Went to popular parties, drank a lot, stumbled home, that sort of thing. But at the same time, was one of the first to raise his hand in class (we had one together, French), was always kind to his teachers and fellow students.
He defied typical jock stereotypes and redefined them. When other football players would cause a ruckus, Sam would be the first to chastise them. He would also challenge them to a duel, which made my fifteen-year-old heart melt into a puddle on the floor.
On the first day of French, I sat in the front of the class and Samuel sat right next to me. I made no attempt to communicate with him, but he said Hello and gave me a quick, nice-to-meet-you smile, which started the fire that eventually warmed my icy cold heart. Every day in French class following that was a day where I spent as much time trying to catch a glance at Sam as I did learning.
In March, a week before Spring Break, was the Homecoming Dance. Having not attended the Valentine’s Day Dance (instead sitting in my room the entire night, bawling my eyes out), I had made no plans to go to the Homecoming Dance. I was getting used to the idea of not knowing anyone in this town, at this school, or anywhere in the general vicinity. I joined the chess club for two weeks before soundly beating everyone in the group, including the founder, Mr. Johnson, the physics teacher, and then promptly retiring. I made no friends there.
So it came as quite a surprise to me when Samuel approached me on a Friday, a week after the Valentine’s Dance, and asked me to the Homecoming Dance. My jaw dropped, just like it did in Central Park as I caught his face again in the moonlight.
Everyone at this point in time knew that Samuel was dating our tennis star, Penny Ackerman, who had gone to state in the spring and ended up taking second place there. I thoroughly enjoyed watching tennis matches. I suppose it was the innate Englishness of it, the rules, the funny terms, the hypnosis induced by watching a small neon yellow ball fly back and forth, back and forth. I had rooted for Penny all during her climb up regionals and then through to state. When she won second place, I may have shed a tear that she didn’t get first. I won’t deny it.
Penny and Sam had been dating for six months – an eternity in the realm of high school. To all of us they were the perfect couple; the football star and the tennis star, like a match made in Heaven.
Naturally, when Sam asked me to the dance, my first reaction was, “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated, and for the first time I saw through the jock façade and saw Samuel, a boy, standing there, obviously hurt about something. I knew no gossip. I paid no attention to anything anyone said here. Most of the student body meant nothing to me.
I immediately recognized my lack of knowledge on the matter – I felt like Adam and Eve, biting the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly noticing, and feeling ashamed by, their own nakedness. I felt my cheeks blush. I tried to hide behind my own hair, but it looked more like I was eating my own hair, and I felt even stupider.
“I’m ... sorry,” I said meekly. “I don’t know ... anything...”
Samuel looked at me, really looked at me, like he was reading a book. We kept eye contact for what seemed like ages. Then he smiled, and the ice shield around my heart cracked a little more.
“We broke up,” Sam said matter-of-factly.
“I ... figured,” I replied, immediately furious with my dumb response.
Sam shuffled his feet a bit. I noticed that there were a few people milling about, watching us. Suddenly thrust into popularity, I thought. Don’t know if I like that.
“I thought we could go as friends,” Sam said, and I felt a stomach punch to my gut. “I mean,” he continued, as though sensing my disappointment at not immediately becoming his next girlfriend, “it’s just that ... we broke up after the Valentine’s Dance, and ... it’s pretty soon, you know...”
All I could do was nod. I understood, and I commended him on his strikingly mature reaction to the matter. But I also really wanted to make out with him.
In the end I agreed, and the school was abuzz with news of Samuel’s new “girlfriend,” and I suddenly had every woman’s eye gazing at me like I was the Antichrist. I went from not being known to being the center of attention. Every part of me, every bit of clothing I wore, was being scrutinized.
I went home and bawled my eyes out that night.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Samuel and I began to talk. During class mostly, and sometimes in French (which really turned me on, though no one would know of this), we started to talk about our hobbies, and found out that we had a lot more in common than we thought. And then one day, Sam came over to my house, about a week ago before the dance, and met my parents and sat on my couch and basically bawled like a baby because he missed Penny and was in love with her and wanted her back so bad. And I realized that I truly was his “friend,” not his love interest at all. My parents weren’t worried about this jock in my house, not after they saw his wet, puffy eyes and his shaking hands. After he left, my mother said, “Is he okay?”
I shook my head. “No, he’s not.”
The next day at lunch some popular girls sat next to me and started asking me all these questions about Sam, really dirty questions about if he was good in bed and all that. I had gone to health class but the whole “sex” thing still didn’t make any sense to me, so I was just filled with the general anger of being poked and prodded by stupid, bitchy girls ... and I snapped, and said that Sam didn’t have sex with me, that he cried about Penny and then went home.
There was this hush, and then stifled laughter, and then the girls were gone – and by next period, everyone in the school knew. I didn’t know what to do: suddenly I was part of gossip. I felt terrible, having made Sam look like a crybaby, and I wanted to apologize and explain myself, but he wasn’t in French class that day. Wasn’t in school that day, apparently.
The story, by the end of the day, was that he had gotten back together with Penny and that they had sex in the backseat of his car. She apparently had heard of Sam’s crybaby moment and thought it was endearing. How people figured this out, I’ll never know. But my heart was crushed, the icy shield around it renewed, and it was a Friday, too, so I wouldn’t be able to talk to him for the whole weekend, and every single possible scenario would run through my head again and again until it made my body hurt. I went home and bawled.
On Monday I was an emotional wreck. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, my hair was ratty from staying in bed all weekend, I didn’t really shower or put on any makeup. It was my first heartbreak and I hadn’t even dated anyone.
I walked into French class and Samuel was sitting there, and everyone was looking at him, and he was staring straight ahead at the whiteboard. He somehow sensed my entrance because he turned his head, looked at me, and rose from his seat. Before I could say anything we were in the hallway. I could hear classmates gasping as the door closed behind us.
He had me roughly by the arm, and I yelped a little bit in surprise. He pulled me to the lockers across the hall from our classroom, spun me around, lightly pressed me against the lockers, and – kissed me. Long, wet, inexperienced, and utterly lovely, we kissed, and he knew more than I did, gently sucking on my upper lip, taking my head gently with his left hand, fingers getting tangled in my hair. In hindsight, that moment felt eerily similar to the moment I was first bitten by my future sire: it was, in essence, rapturous.
When he pulled away, I noticed that everyone in the hallway, teachers included, was watching us. A girl had dropped her books. Another punk looking guy was making masturbating motions with his hand. A nearby teacher hauled him off to the principal. And back, behind them all, stood a visibly shocked, annoyed, stupefied Penny Ackerman, her two best friends beside her.
I wished I hadn’t ruined the moment by not staring into Sam’s eyes, but this was high school, and high school was, by default, a bastardized form of 17th century royal etiquette: dress nice, gossip, and look to see who is looking at you.
Samuel helped me by gently nudging my chin with his forefinger. He smiled, and I gulped. He went in for another kiss and I said, “I haven’t showered.” My inner monologue was smacking me.
“I didn’t notice,” he said.
“We’ll ... be late for French.”
“Français peut attendre,” he said, and if there were still icy pieces of shield around my heart at this point, they sublimated into steam as my heart was set on fire. I didn’t even know how to fuck a boy, and yet I wanted Samuel so bad.
We ended up going to French anyway (because we were kids and the vice principal was yelling at us for displaying affection), and I was giggly and he was stoic and manly and everything was sexy for the rest of the day.
My mother took me to a very nice department store and bought me a very nice dress for Homecoming. Our football team won that Friday, and the dance was on Saturday, so Samuel was very pleased, and I was very pleased, and we slow danced with my head in the nook of his neck, him insisting to dance like “real dancers do,” one hand against my shoulder blade, the other in my hand, slowly swaying to the music.
Samuel and I started dating that night (we had “the talk”), and Penny was out of his mind. We got along swimmingly as my grades steadily dropped throughout the rest of high school. It wasn’t his fault. I was getting bored with school. My parents enrolled me in some gifted and talented classes, but they weren’t gifted or talented enough. They made us do stupid things like build houses out of index cards and solve ridiculous riddles like “A plane crashes on the US/Canadian border. Where do they bury the survivors?” and talk about our feelings and other nonsense.
Sam and I first had sex (both virgins – the Penny story was a lie) at Prom. He was a year older, and they had a junior-senior prom, and so I went and thought I was pretty awesome. It was in the backseat of his car, and it was awkward and kind of painful, but it was also very fun and exhilarating. For the record, he wore a condom. He’s not an idiot.
We dated for three years, Sam taking a year off after graduating to work and save money for college. Then I graduated and we started looking for an apartment together. And then, in August, he disappeared. Right out of the pale blue sky. We sent out search parties, his parents were devastated. And he never showed up. Until tonight, dueling with me under the trees in Central Park.
++
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Delia says.
“You’re a ... vampire?” I say. The shock hasn’t worn off. We’ve probably stood here for fifteen minutes as the memories of being high school sweethearts flood in like someone took a sledgehammer to an aquarium. The fight around us has intensified, as more from each side continues to cascade into the park. It’s like 17th century warfare in the park, a show of strength from both sides.
“You’re a werewolf,” she replies. “Or an apprentice.”
I shake my head. “Werewolf.”
“Does that explain where you’ve been?”
She, of course, means my absence post graduation.
“Yes,” I say, “and no.”
“Obtuse motherfucker,” she spits, and before I can react she’s dueling again. Her epee flicks up toward my nose. I counter by swinging my rapier counter clockwise, hitting her epee from the top and knocking it back to pointing at the ground, where I like it. She growls at me, lunges not with her sword but with her body. I’m not prepared for this, and we go tumbling to the ground, rolling down a slight incline towards a pond where a bunch of werewolves have grouped together, somehow keeping vampires from getting into the water as they patch their wounds. The vamps stand at the edge, looking bored.
When we finish rolling she’s on top of me, fangs bared, wanting to chomp down on my neck but unable to because of the liberal amount of garlic salve I have applied to my neck and shoulders. She could bite my face but it wouldn’t be as effective, and plus it’s just bad vampire etiquette.
I push with my left hand, knocking her away and onto her back. Leaping to my feet, I survey the scene – me, a bunch of vampires, and ... slowly shambling people in the background.
I hear a scream. The wolves look up in time to see a young vampire get shredded by zombies, tearing into her flesh like it was butter. More screams. The wolves in the pond jump out and run past me. The vamps scatter. Suddenly there are two, no, three hundred ... no, five hundred zombies, young, fresh zombies, running on fresh legs, fast and hungry, surrounding us. As I scan the scene, I find that they’re all over, attacking vamps and wolves alike, police cars being upturned and various policemen already zombified.
Delia is on her feet. I hear her mutter, “They know...” which is nice and cryptic. We are quickly being enclosed in a wide circle. She turns to me.
Sheathing my rapier, I run up to her, grab her by the waist, and jump.
I’ve only done this once before, back in the War – werewolves can leap up to ten feet in the air, and up to fifty feet forward if they get a good running start (this is why we don’t participate in the Olympics) – though I’ve not done it with someone in my arms. Wolves call it “zombie hopping,” and essentially all it is is jumping over zombies and landing on them, running on them as though they were the ground itself. Sometimes if you’re lucky you can run across them, but most of the time is spent falling on them, reorganizing, and then jumping again.
Now we’re being corralled, and all I can think of is to z hop. So I do.
Delia screams her lungs out as I bound into the air and land right on the head of a skateboarder looking zombie kid, cracking it with a disgusting noise and coming down right in the middle of a bunch of zs. In the air, however, I noticed that the crowd was thinning, and with another leap I find myself back on the grass, with a few zombies ahead of me. I set Delia down and she immediately produces a longsword from the sheath on her back. Impressive. She dives into the zs, hacking and slashing, heads flying everywhere.
I push aside the remaining zombies and in a moment we are clear, on the street, surrounded by upturned cars and the bodies of policemen, vampires, and werewolves. It looks like a massacre.
Delia turns to me. “What the hell was that?”
“Zombie hopping,” I reply. “It’s a thing. We do. Sometimes.”
The zombies are slowly lurching around, attempting to chase after us. The fast ones are in the middle of the circle, though, and are clawing their way through the slow ones, looking like a very disturbing game of red rover.
We run to the nearest car that hasn’t been flipped over – a fairly new Honda, unlocked, and with the keys still inside and the engine running. A man lies in the passenger seat, slumped over, blood congealing from the bite wound on his neck. In a couple of hours he will wake up a vampire, or he will be obliterated by the sunrise, whichever comes first.
Delia throws him out of the car and we hop in. “Lucky,” she says.
“Whoever was driving didn’t want to drive anymore,” I say.
“At least they were nice enough to put the car in park.”
I hit the gas, speeding through wreckage, the shocks bumping with each dead body we run over. The scene is amazing: zombies are everywhere, in tightly packed groups, wandering, attacking, shambling ... the usual things zombies do. There must be a thousand of them, easy. I haven’t seen this many shamblers since the climax of the War. But there is no fear of an oncoming war. This is more of a tactical strike by Jason, who must’ve heard the news about him...
And then, something I’ve never seen – a police car, hurtling through the air, smashes into a series of cars about twenty feet ahead of us, at an intersection. Bits of glass and metal fly everywhere. I slam on the brakes. Delia screams.
To the right, where the car came from, a second car, civilian this time, somehow begins to rise into the air. It’s back end is masked by a large building, a bank or something, but the front, headlights still on, is definitely hovering a good six feet in the air. “What the fuck is that,” Delia says, sounding like she’s hyperventilating.
The car tilts back slightly, and then launches through the night sky, as though propelled by rocket fuel, sailing over the first car toss and getting tangled up in the trees of Central Park. The boughs bend and twist and crack and finally the car gets the best of them and crashes into the ground. Somehow the horn is pressed, making a loud blaring sound that is instantly annoying.
I start to unbuckle my seat belt, but quickly put it back on when a pack of ten or so zombie dogs rush onto the scene. Delia screams, starts pawing at the door, the seat, the glove compartment. She’s had a fear of dogs since she was a toddler, when a pit bull ran around a corner as she was walking to school and attacked her. So this is a familiar sight.
The dogs quickly surround our car, some hopping on the hood and barking with such ferocity that their saliva and blood splatter against the windshield. At the same time, behind the building ahead of us comes a loud, low roar, kind of like a lion but more ... human. Delia screams again, and whimpers, eyes wide, backing herself against the seat, terrified of the dogs and of the roar in the background. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little terrified at this point as well.
I put the car in reverse, twisting my body to see through the back windshield, and start navigating through the cars I just drove through. The dogs on the hood jostle a bit but remain there, barking and scratching at the front windshield. I have to remember to turn the steering wheel the other way. After a couple of winding turns I make it to the next intersection. I twist back around, shifting into drive just as I see a zombie step into view from behind the building.
Tall, impossibly muscular, wearing a black fedora and a skeleton’s grin, with odd tubes and metallic joints popping out of his skin and bone, stands the zombie called Macaroni.
And that’s when I know we’re fucked.
