There were multiple reasons why zombies were not on Dao's list of prospective roommates.

In the undead localities of South Kolkata, the extra sturdy build of the house and its fittings were a given. On top of that, Dao's flat was an old one, so the materials used were not mixed with too much fluff like the new buildings these days. Dao could have got himself another flat in a newer building, but he had sort of grown fond of his neighbors over the years. As a member of the association of flat-owners of the building, he had been paying the maintenance fee regularly and getting his repairs done every now and then. Dao knew that it could withstand rough handling. Vampires are quite known for their strength, after all. However, Dao wasn’t sure if his flat had the strength to withstand the brute force of zombie muscles.

Rel went in and out of rooms with a bang. Literally. They seemed to be unaware of the way they slammed doors behind themself and how the building shook with each slam. To top that, their uncoordinated zombie movements made them prone to crash into the furniture more than often. Rel misjudged their own speed and momentum too often.

The worst had been when Rel had entered Dao's room for the first time to ask about his wound. They had brought the zombie home and sent them straight to the bathroom with a bar of fragrant soap, in the hopes of getting the typical zombie sink out of the way. Dao had heard Rel come out of the shower but he was still in his room, changing out of his jeans, already feeling the night's exhaustion creeping up his body. Suddenly, the door to his bedroom flew open and crashed against the wall on the other side. Wrapped in a towel from their chest to knees, Rel stood there with a grimace on their face.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to open the door like that. Nice shorts, by the way." Then they took a good look at Dao's shorts, and asked, "Oh my, is this a bad time?"

There was a single banana printed on his shorts, right where it looked conspicuous.

In a moment of panic, Dao, acutely aware of his half naked situation, tried to take off the rest of his jeans, but instead, got his feet tangled in the bunched up garment. He came down with a thud that made Rel rush in to help him.

"Daomir! Are you okay?"

Daomir would probably not be okay after hearing his crush call him by his name for the first time right after seeing him in nothing but a pair of banana shorts but otherwise, Dao was okay.

Rel leant in to help him up but their faces were close, too close in Dao's opinion. Just the next moment, Dao's brain registered the feel of the zombie's sandy skin. The texture of it was not his ideal, not as soft as his own, which was adequately moisturized and manicured. He liked to take care of his body. Rel's was typical of the dry and cracked skin zombies tended to have. But they were warm. As all vampires were, Dao too was perpetually cold. Rel's warmth was what Dao wanted to touch. Love didn't seem to mind rough hands and skin that had a greenish tinge to it from the veins and blood vessels that threatened to break the surface. It sought the warmth and the feeling of their hand fit into his. That was all Dao needed for now. 

"Are you okay?" Rel asked again. "I wanted to ask you about the, um, bite from before and look at what I did instead." Rel dragged him to his bed and made him sit at the edge of it. They knelt down before him and wrestled the last of the jeans off Dao's feet. "There. All good. Now, how's your arm?"

Rel had taken over the living room and made it their own. They draped themself all over the couch with their head on one armrest and their feet propped up on another. They ate a lot. It was a problem that vampires mostly sustained on a liquid diet and zombies needed solid meat. Rel tried to check their appetite, yet Dao and Pom were going out of stock way quicker than they had imagined.

Unlike vampires, zombies had a natural odor. Like zombies, vampires had a strong sense of smell which had prompted Dao and Pom to take turns to remind Rel to wash up frequently at first. But now even their stock of water had dwindled down to one bucket.

Rel also had a slight tendency towards littering — a crumpled juice box thrown thoughtlessly at Dao's bedroom door, a soda can crushed into a two-dimensional disk and frisbeed out of the window, a metal straw aimed at the kitchen sink —

When Rel raised their hand to do that, Dao caught them. With a cold stare and his hands on his hips, he cut quite the foreboding picture of an elderly matron.

"Do you want me to put the dustbin right by your side so that you don't treat my entire flat like one?" Dao asked them with a deadpan face.

Rel withdrew their arm and turned the metal straw this way and that. With a little huff, like they had been thinking over the proposal, they said, "But that would smell bad. I don't recommend it when I'm already starting to smell after my last shower not even an hour ago."

It was hard not to break character. Dao was nursing a crush that had hit him square in the chest out of nowhere. So far, he had gotten no hint that the zombie was experiencing any of the telltale signs of the soulmate bond, so he was already feeling a little defeated. But seeing the puppy eyes on the zombie, he fully surrendered himself. He sat down beside Rel on the couch and plucked the straw off their hands.

"I'm tired of being all cooped up inside." Rel's voice was chock full of frustration but to Dao's ears it sounded even more melodious up close. "And I'm sorry, Pom and you have been so welcoming from day one, but I'm just never… full."

Now, that was a real problem. Rel really wouldn't be able to adapt to his diet, given how physiologically different they were.

"I know," Dao fidgeted with Rel's straw in his hand. There was some movement beside him and before he knew it, Rel's head was gently resting on his shoulder. He tensed up as Rel's warm breath tickled the little hairs at the nape of his neck. "What are you doing?"

Rel was also kind of touchy-feely. They expressed themself by touching others a lot. Sometimes it was a friendly pat on the back, but sometimes it was all up in one's personal space. Pom couldn't take it, so she talked to Rel clearly about her boundaries, which the zombie tried their best to follow. Meanwhile, Dao didn't hate the physical expressions, he just wasn't used to them.

"You are too nice to me. I'm just grateful that Pom and you are letting me stay here," the zombie replied. Like a switch going off in their mind, Rel jumped on to a different topic. "How do you smell so nice all the time?" They were sniffing all around his neck and Dao guiltily enjoyed the attention.

What Rel didn't know couldn't hurt them. They sniffed and nuzzled his neck, and even licked a tiny strip of his shoulder where Dao's t-shirt had given way. It was innocent and gentle, and Dao found it strangely nice how he wanted to run his fingers through Rel's abundant hair. He was loving the sensations.

It was when Rel bit down on his shoulder this time, Dao sighed a long sigh.

"Rellek."

They had broken the skin. There was no blood, only punctured teeth marks that peeked into reddish pink flesh. Nothing that Dao's regenerative abilities can't fix in a minute.

"Ugh, I'm sorry," Rel cried and dived headfirst into Dao's lap.

Dao finally let his fingers run through Rel's hair like he had imagined. A vampire can only take so much before giving into his desires.

***

Rel's prayers were answered in a way worse than what Dao had hoped for. In a few days' time, the skirmish at the peripheries was supposed to reach Baghajatin, but with no means of modern communication, Dao had to rely on Pom's sixth sense of detecting danger. On a fine afternoon — nobody cared for which day of the week it was anymore — Pom woke up in a pool of sweat and burst into Dao's room when he was still snoring away.

"Get up!" Pom jabbed a finger in his side. "Come on, Dao, wake up. We need to pack."

"What?" Dao could barely open his eyes because of the sleep crust crowding the corners. He smacked his lips together, wetting them to speak better. "Why are you up so early?"

The ruckus had woken up Rel too, who ambled into the room sleepily.

"I don't feel good about the smell I'm getting." Pom pulled him up into a sitting position. "I can't hear them yet, but I know I will, soon. I just know it. We need to get ready. Pack all your sunblock creams. We might have to…" she paused and took in the room around her. Then she sighed. "We might have to leave soon."

"Finally!" Rel looked more awake than ever. They stood up straighter, happy at the prospect of live prey probably. "I'm ready."

"At least one of us is," Pom shook her head in dismay as she watched Rel prance away.

Pom's reaction to a human mob was not surprising, given how most of the undead community were traumatized by the way they had been treated once they turned. Upon turning, the undead rarely retained the memories of their mortal lives. If they turn in front of their mortal loved ones, they are purged into oblivion in the fear of sin. The mortals might not always be religious fanatics, but they would still scream at the top of their lungs how unnatural it was to be turned into an undead. Sometimes, a vengeful or just greedy undead would turn a mortal into another undead, dooming them for eternity. The undead who needed to consume live prey would often put their victim out of misery, knowing how much that kind of immortality cost.

The cults of mortals that worshiped the undead were a different horror story altogether.

Pom was turned because of a selfish vampire who couldn't care to finish their meal or put her out. She could barely make sense of herself or her surroundings before she had stumbled into a human colony, seeking help. The result of asking humans for help was devastating — Dao had seen that with his own eyes. He really couldn't blame Pom for being terrified.

So he tried, "Can't we really defend ourselves from inside?"

Pom met his eyes. "You're just saying that for me. If it was just you and Rel, you would've taken to the streets no questions asked."

"But you are here, and I care for what you have to say."

"I do too," Rel peeked in, already dressed in the polo shirt and khaki shorts they had borrowed from Dao, ready to leave right away. "I only want to leave because I've always been out there and now I know my chances of getting food are definitely higher than before. You have a place to call home. You want to defend it. I respect that."

Pom was touched, Dao could see it in the way a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "That's awfully nice of you to offer but we all know what we need to do."

"We do?" Dao stared blankly.

Pom nodded. "Our stash is over, no? Just some blood cakes left. It's not just Rel, we need proper food too. Pack all your essential things. Just the essentials, Dao, you don't need cufflinks on the run. Each of us takes a backpack and leaves."

"When?" Rel bounced on the balls of their feet. Dao had found that it was an adorable habit of theirs when they got excited about something.

As soon as they had everything they seemed to need, Pom ushered them out of the apartment. Dao locked it up with the charm but there was no saving it if the humans decided to set fire to it like they often do.

"Hurry, hurry," Pom jumped. "The smell keeps getting stronger."

They descended the stairs in a single file, with Rel at the head of the trio and Pom bringing up the rear. Rel's objective was to seek out food while Pom kept a lookout in case they were being tracked. Dao was to take care of the flanks, but in reality, he was just sandwiched between the two.

"Are you going to bite me?" Rel asked out of nowhere when Dao's chin grazed the top of their head.

"Why would I do that?"

"Every time I get this close to you, I want to bite you. I know I'm going to love the way you taste," Rel said wistfully. "Too bad it's not true."

"Lucky me," Dao snorted. "No, I'm not prone to biting people like you are."

Rel squawked out a protest, "I don't bite just anyone! Just the tastiest ones."

Flattered, and not really offended anymore. Dao had thought getting familiarized with Rel's zombie habits would nip his crush in the bud quickly. It took Dao a while to process but soon he discovered that he didn't hate them. Rather, those just made Rel even more endearing.

"If you're done with your lovers' quarrel, may I request you to keep to your left?" Pom quipped but her tone took a serious pitch quickly. "I can hear something on the right."

Rel appeared unfazed. "So you mean, something is not right on our right?"

Pom clicked her tongue but she was smiling. "You're a class act for dad jokes."

"Thank you, thank you," Rel did some sort of an awkward bow. "I can smell too many humans on the left. What do we do?"

Pom's smile faltered. She didn't stop pushing Dao right on top of Rel but she slowed down. "How many on your side? I think I've got a small group here. Three, like us. Their speed is high for humans, so I'm assuming they've got a vehicle."

"This one's a mob." Rel shook their head. "We better seek out those three and make a feast out of them. Then, of course, we get out of here before the mob tracks us down."

"Shit, okay." Pom switched her direction as if she was switching gears. "We're really doing this then?"

Dao stretched and cracked his joints. "Blood bags and iron supplements are fine but there's nothing like sinking your teeth into a human and draining them off all their warm blood. It's been a while, but I think I can still drink all the blood at one go."

"What if they're a family trying to escape?" Pom kept moving but Dao could see that she was burdened by the guilt of having to kill mortals.

"It's your first time," and of course, who would know it better than Dao? He swung his hand back to get a hold of Pom's hands. "Think about how good it’s going to feel when you take a drink directly from the body. And they're not a family." Dao listened intently for the sounds that were now loud enough to be audibly frightening. "No family cheers like that after knocking over some undead with their car, can you hear that? Some people deserve to get eaten."

As soon as he said that, the revving of the engine was heard around the corner of the street. Dao picked up a log of wood that lay near his feet and threw it with all his might when the nose of the car peeked around the corner. It crashed into the bonnet of the car, and three rowdy-looking mortals who rode the car, howled at them.

"Ready?" Dao squeezed her hand as the car slowed down to a halt before them. The three riders jumped over the doors of the hoodless car and approached the undead before them. "Remember, Pom," Dao whispered in her ear, "Remember how people like them chased you down when you were first turned. Remember what they would do to us now if we don't strike back. Tap in on that anger and focus it on them. They deserve to be a part of the food chain, right below us."

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Rel said from his other side. "You are terrific."

"I could never do anything bad to you." Dao bent his knees and took up a fighting stance when one of their pursuers zeroed in on him. They took out something from the back pocket of their jeans and ran towards him.

"Kick their ass, pin them down and drink from the neck, right?" Pom asked.

"Yeah, you've got this," Dao encouraged her. "We're vampires, we're meant to prey upon humans like this. What have they got in their hands, can you see?"

"Aren't those wooden stakes?" Rel squinted. "They think I'm a vampire, too?" The one that had chosen to deal with Rel, quickly swapped their stake for a metal bat and Rel laughed. "Aw man, they really want to bash my brain in." Meanwhile, Dao and Pom’s attackers closed the distance between them with wooden stakes in their hands raised high above their heads, which made Rel quip, "Does this mean, your lives are at stake?"

"Stake jokes are so last century," Dao clicked his tongue and tackled the mortal before him. The stake was useless, there was no way a puny human could put it through a vampire's undead heart. Soon enough, both Dao and Pom knelt over their victims on the road and drank deeply from them.

"Don't be greedy, guys," Rel licked their fingers and smacked their lips before taking out a knife. They had to use only a single punch to knock their human out and have their flesh to their heart's content, undisturbed. "Remember the tupperware. We should keep some meat and blood in stock with us."

"Wow," Dao took a look at the corpse Rel was finishing up. "You drank like a vampire and ate like a zombie. That human is all shriveled up."

"Well, I learnt a thing or two from you." Rel put the boxes away into their backpack. "Can I have the brain if you're done?"

"Go ahead, I'll just collect the blood from the arm into the tupperware."

"Here, you can have my brain too," Pom screwed on the lid of her bottles full of blood. "It's your favorite, isn't it?"

Rel smiled with blood and innards smeared on their lips. "Duh. Soft, squishy, jelly meat, what's there not to love?" They took a large bite off of the brain in their hands and looked back up at her. "How do you feel?"

Maybe it was something to worry about, but Dao wasn’t worried. Pom was a vampire through and through, no vampire felt bad after feeding off a live prey.

"I feel good," Pom's face broke into a brilliant smile. "Like I'd been thirsty my whole vampire life and only now did I get to quench my thirst."

***