Chapter 3

I'm still sitting on the steps. Suddenly, I wish I had a cigarette. It just seems apropos. I haven't had the funds to blow on cancer tubes in quite some time. Ever since cancer was proved, unequivocally to come from tobacco, cigarettes and cigars became the legal drug dujour. You'd think if someone told you that smoking these things would most definitely kill you, that you wouldn't do it. Instead they turned into a high priced hand bag, or designer shoes. Only the super rich and uber cool smoked. And died young. And some of them come back a zombie. I rub my hands across the tops of my thighs, to my knees, back and forth a few times. Decision time. I'm going out. But not to hunt. I need to be around people. Live ones. I skip down the sidewalk, hop over the corpse and head East. I'm a creature of habit. Whenever i leave the house, i head East. West leads toward the water. And I'm about as sick of water as I am zombies. I relocated to Illinois when Florida started to sink. It was a long haul. My car broke down just outside of Tallahassee, and between hitching and buses, Illinois proved to be almost 3 weeks North of the border. I make my way into town, eyes scanning from left to right and nose sniffing for the scent of decay. Unbelievably, it appears that the only walking dead out tonight is laying in my yard. I see the neon flash of the sign up ahead and pick up the sounds of laughter and music as I get closer. The double doors open as I approach, and a cutesy, lovey dovey couple stumbles out, arms around each other, nuzzling and kissing and giggling. Something inside me breaks a little and i am positively green with envy. I squeeze past them and make my way inside. I reach into the fanny pack and depress the scanner to shut my music off. I don't need it in here. This place usually has a solid score riffing. I weave and bob in the crowd, people dancing, people talking, hookers hooking and the hired guns comparing war stories. I'm up at the bar, waiting patiently to be noticed by the bartender. She comes over, with a wide smile on her very pretty face. Her teeth gleam behind red lacquered lips, and I follow her dimples to her elf like ears, filled with hoops and studs. Amazing. I wonder if she ever takes them out? Her multi-colored braids are a mess, a little Medusa like halo around her elfin head. I see her mouth moving, but over the din of the tunes on blast and my mind going a mile a minute, I don't know what she said. And she knows it, because that mega smile shines at me again and she slides a drink across the bar top to me. It's in a highball, filled with round ice cubes (she knows I love those!) a twist of lime balanced precariously on the lip of the glass and tiny bubbles cascading and falling all over themselves to get into my mouth. My grimy hand reaches out, and grasps the sweating glass, bringing it to my lips. I taste the cool liquid, already mellowing with the melting cubes. Ginger ale. She knows me so well. I nod my head to her, and turn slowly around to survey the crowd. It's always hard, this part. I stand there, hoping to be the one that gets noticed. That maybe tonight, despite the walking dead, the fact that I probably haven't had a shower in almost a week and my social ineptitude, that tonight will be the night i meet the one I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with.