Rose Chapel Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. October tenth, 2028. Noon. 

It was always hard to say goodbye, but even more so to someone I’d used to care deeply for and someone I still cared about in my own way. I’d thought that I was inured to death. I’d seen so much of it in the past year, it wouldn’t affect me. I thought that way, convincing myself that I was right.

Deep down, though, I knew that I was wrong.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” intoned the minister. “We commend the body of Amanda Worthington to that of the earth while her soul soars to heaven.”

The minister, an aged and withered man, spoke with the certainty of his faith. I had no such faith. When you were gone, you were gone, and the girl I’d once loved was now in her coffin, lying peacefully in repose, and would forever more be one with the planet on which we lived. The minister then asked, “Does anyone wish to say anything before we conclude the service?” 

Only three people attended. Grover Plover, a veteran of the wars against the undead, his girlfriend, Genevieve Gray, and me, Carl Silverman, the former boyfriend of the deceased.

I lifted my right arm to wipe the tears from my eyes. It still hurt, courtesy of the explosion that had killed my ex, along with another member of our group—Teal. He’d taken the brunt of the blast, but a shard of metal from the grenade had pierced Amanda’s throat, and there was nothing anyone could do to help her. She’d died instantly.

“Amanda,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

I didn’t want to cry, and at the age of eighteen, I thought I was too old. Not so, and the tears coursed freely down my cheeks as her coffin was slowly lowered into the ground. I felt like a piece of me was being interred with her as well. As I grieved, the minister said a few more nice words about Amanda, and with that, the service was over.

A chilly wind blew across the cemetery, scattering the fallen leaves and sending small swirls of dirt in mini vortexes hither and yon. The sky was gray and cloudless, like a lead blanket of despair. From the low temperature and because I’d been raised on the east coast, I knew how harsh wintertime could be. It would come early this year. 

Plover patted my shoulder. A stocky, muscular man in his mid-thirties, in a change from his usual attire of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, he wore a black suit and tie, and he sported a stubbly brown beard that matched the brown stubble on his head. With an iron grip, he steered me in the direction of his van that would take us home. 

His girlfriend, Genevieve—everyone called her Gen—who stood on the short side of five-four, dark-skinned, with plain features and long, black hair—also wore a matching dark jacket and pair of slacks, and she whispered that things would be okay, while fighting back her own tears, “Time is a healer, Carl.”

“No, it isn’t. Don’t pretend that it is,” I replied, feeling miserable. I couldn’t see much. Tears still obscured my vision, but as we passed through the main gates of the cemetery, I caught sight of Miranda, the girl I’d been dating for the past three months. I’d told my guardians about her, but they’d never met her, and now…perhaps now wasn’t the best time.

She nodded at me, her face twisted with pain, but she didn’t approach us. I knew her, knew how she thought and what she was. She’d also lost someone in the blast—Teal, her brother. 

Miranda was a vampire, one of those changed and resurrected by a virus that had sprung up in the wake of the zombie virus that had threatened to engulf the world roughly a year ago. 

Vampires—our neighbors and sometime allies against the zombies, called themselves vamps and were proud of that appellation—and humans didn’t usually mix, but in our case, we were the exception.

The exception—not the rule—and we had a special place in the world that we now lived in.

Gen cast her gaze in Miranda’s direction and asked, “Carl, that girl who’s staring at us—that’s Miranda?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to speak to her? You told me that you two are together, and—”

“Later,” I said. “Later…”

Two days earlier. Seven PM. Our suburb of Baltimore.

“Ready to go zomboffing?” Amanda asked in a bright voice, a marked change from her recent sullenness.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied while pulling on my black bodysuit and kicking myself mentally for uttering such a stale cliché. 

“Then let’s go.”

Amanda wore the same outfit. It was light as well as tight, offered maximum freedom of movement, and was cold resistant, as well as aerated, which made it perfect winter or summer wear. “We meeting Miranda and Teal tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She grabbed her weapons, her Olympic-level bow, her custom-made arrows, three hunting knives, and night goggles—sunglasses, actually, that had the same function as night goggles—and a pistol from the mini-armory we kept in our hallway. 

I had the same pistol—a Desert Eagle—and I carried my trusty ax as well as a hatchet plus three knives. We also had smartphones with our contact numbers—Plover and Gen, in addition to the other members of our zombie-killing group, the police, and the paramedics, just in case. Suitably armed, we stepped outside and walked over to the park where we’d meet our vamp contacts.

Some people didn’t like the idea of others walking around carrying weapons, such as we did. They could complain all they liked, but they weren’t the ones who were killing zombies. We were, and against the flesh-eating undead, we needed any edge that we could get.