Can't I remember something normal? Like my first day of high school or blowing out my birthday candles on my sixteenth birthday? I must have done that. Can't I rememer my parents? I must have had them. But it's like I'm shoving a hand into the file drawers of my mind and only finding cobwebs. So far all I have is my name and a vague memory of my favorite jeans...and apparently the last smile of a nameless girl.

I groan without meaning to again as my thoughts begin to overtake me. Her teeth, dentist straight, and then the shock in her eyes as I came for her, mouth open wide, ready to take a bite of her. I don't want the memories from when I was a flesh-eating monster. Memories from a time that I wasn't me, but somehow I was still me. It doesn't seem right to be in recovery knowing that I basically ate some girl's face. Can you even come back from something like that? Is there redemption? The worst part is that I know she couldn't have been the only one. How many could there have been?

"How did I die?" I ask.

"Looks like you've been shot." Pryce says. Before I had thought of her as stony. Uptight. But her profile right now, as she approaches her Jeep is somehow softer. I can see a couple strands of her brown hair that had come loose from her updo as she had navigated the swamp. She hasn't tried to smooth them back as she had while we were walking. "Don't get inside yet."

She's probably just glad to be out of that swamp, I think. 

She goes to the trunk and lifts it, pulls out and unfolds a large plastic square. She opens the back door and lays it over the back seat. Then I notice that the Jeep has a divider installed inside, like a cop car. I suppose in her line of work, you can't drive safely with a threat on the loose. I'm the threat. It feels weird to think it, because I've never thought of myself as threatening before.

"There. We've got to get you to a shower. I think I have something you can wear. Honestly you smell like death."

"Well, I was dead, so..." I say. "How long did you say I was dead?"

"You disappeared six months ago. We don't know if you died then or if you were held somewhere and tortured beforehand."

My breath catches. Six whole months. I've been killing people for six whole months. How many per day? How many per hour? My eyes sting. I don't want to think about it. All of the lives--I just can't. If I think about it, I'll go insane. How is it fair that I'm here and all those people are gone because of me? How is it fair that I'm not behind bars?

"Am I going to go to jail?" I ask. "After you get the memory you need?"

Pryce stares at me a moment before replying. "Anything you did while in the full zombie state will not be held against you now that you're treated. Anything you do while treated will be held against you and could result in prison time."

"Why would someone torture me?" I ask.

She doesn't answer at first. She's staring at her phone screen, swiping her thumbs across things I can't see. Can she tell me that information? I feel like I have a right to know everything they know.

She shoves her phone in a pocket in her camouflage jacket.

"Do you remember where you worked?" she asks.

"No," I say.

I'm in a blue room. The walls are blue, at least, and I hate it. It's not a shade of blue that I would paint anything, so I feel like it's not mine, right away. I see a cuckoo clock on the wall, a globe, but it's open and there are glasses and a bottle inside, bourbon. A mohogany desk. Brown leather couch. Doesn't feel like my style. Too tidy. There's a man behind the desk and I instantly know that's my father. I see the resemblance, how his eyes and lips are shaped like mine. The shape of his chin, same as mine.

"I gave Martin my word," he says, "So don't screw up this interview, Blake."

"I won't, dad, I promise," I say.

"You better not, because he pulled a lot of strings to do this for me, epecially after--"

I'm back to my current situation, sitting in the Jeep on plastic.

"What did you see?" Pryce asks. 

"My dad," I confess. "He was lecturing me about a job interview, but I don't remember where." 

"It'll come in time. You'll remember more and feel more human as time goes on and as you keep getting treatments."

"So you'll have to shoot me more," I say. "Great. Sounds fun." 

**

Shortly after our trudge through the swamp, we pulled into a truck stop. Truck and trucker smells hit my nose like smelling salt. Hot motors, diesel, warm tires..and the natural smells of the truckers, ruminating in the cabs during their long trips. I can hear some of them in their trucks, the soft, even breaths of slumber. Remaining zombie cells in my body must be jittering, demanding me to flee, attack, chomp--but the door won't open. There's no handle on the inside. 

CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK

"Easy there," Pryce says. "You don't want to eat one of these people. They aren't easy targets. They're tough, resourceful, and they pack heat. It would take a whole crew of zombies to take one of these not-so-gentle-men or women down. How else do you think most of them are still around?"

"I don't want them, I swear," but I think I might. I think maybe in the zombie world they might be tastier because they're harder to get. 

"We're here to get you cleaned up," she says. "Come on."

I hadn't really thought about how filthy I was since I first woke up. With everything else going on, it kind of went to the back burner, but I knew I was a nightmare, since I had been dead...ish for six months, slaughtering and roaming the swamps for who-knows how long. 

My nails looked like they had been done professionally with acrylic at one point. They were broken and dirty now, but they had the thick feeling of acrylic. Must have been some strong stuff, I thought, and then I realized that they'd stayed somewhat intact because my body had stopped producing the oils that seep into my real nails. My fingers were dryer than my sense of humor. My nails had also stopped growing and the grime beneath them just kept piling up. It looks like I've dug my way out of hell.

There aren't many trucks around. I see only two, but I can tell more have been here. Some scents are fresher than others. Darkness is just starting to fall and somehow it seems like my senses are growing stronger with the fading light. I see illumination coming from Pryce's hands. She's on her phone again. I wonder who she's messaging and what she's saying. Is she logging my behaviors? Am I being graded? Did I get a C for trying to get out when we pulled up, before I gathered myself?

She locks the screen and puts it back in her pocket. She pulls a forest green duffel out of the back. "Come on, Let's get you in there." 

I have never seen a shower like this. It takes quarter after quarter as the layers of grime seep away, down the drain. With my tattered shirt off, I can see where the wound in my chest was. Straight through my heart. I stare at the thick white scar, tender to the touch. How am I here? The zombie virus kept me alive, bypassed my wound somehow and the treatment...healed it? 

I can feel now, well enough to know I'm in lukewarm water. I would prefer hot, but I take what the quarters bring. I've got some travel soap and shampoo Pryce gave me. I know this shampoo isn't going to help my coarse hair much, but at least it will be clean. It smells like citrus. I scrub my head vigorously, cleaning my nails as I clean my scalp. In fifteen minutes, I'm as clean as I've ever been. My old clothes are in the trash. I put on an outfit that Pryce gave me. It's a workout outfit, leopard print leggings and a loose black short sleeved crop top. 

I stand in the mirror at the sink and brush my teeth with a little toothbrush and a small tube of mint toothpaste, the kind they might give you in a hospital. I can see a healed hole in my head. It's not as large as the one in my chest, but it's definitely a bullet hole above my left eye. I don't know how it missed my brain, but it must have. 

Lucky me, I think. I only have to live with the fact that I've been a monster for six months. I guess we all have bad days. I spit dark, grimy toothpaste into the sink and could have sworn I saw a maggot in there somewhere, but I turn the faucet water on and let the gunk wash down the drain. I rinse the brush and repeat until there's nothing in the spit except spit and toothpaste.

Pryce is waiting at the door, her back to me, toward the entrance with the broken lock, making sure nobody comes in. As I approach her she's staring strangely at her phone. From her profile, I see the worry in her high natural brow, pulled downward, along with her bowlike lips. 

"Is there a problem?" I ask. 

She closes her phone and puts it in her pocket again. "Nothing that concerns you," she insists. "Ready?"

I nod. She picks up the duffel opens the door to a breeze and I catch a different scent that automatically puts me on the defense. It must be some kind of survival instinct for the zombie part of me. Metal and gunpowder. Not good. Pryce had said the truckers were packing heat, but this is a LOT of heat. This is an army's worth of heat. 

"Stop!" I scream-whisper it. There definitely IS a problem...