"Can we go shopping?" Zylith gives me a disgruntled look. "Please? We're almost running out of stuff" I plead and she sighs like she's tired of me. Was I a burden?"Fine, just the necessary" The necessary? Makeup and bird food was necessary, for a girl my status. Can you guess my status? Yeah, alive unlike most of the population. Just kidding, hopefully, everyone was just in hiding.~~~~I feel cool under the bedsheets, the orange air-freshner brings a smile to my face. Blinking the crust that gathered at the corners of my eyes after such delicious sleep, I sit up to clamoring. Zylith is by her bedside drawing imaginary signs with one hand and rolling two stones together in the other.What is she doing?, I follow her hand gestures with my eyes trying to decipher the signs. I look hard at the motion of her hands in the air but no matter how hard, it's all nonsense.The clamoring reduces but is still loud enough, I frown and sit up to peek out the curtains when her voice halts me in place."It's them, they came up while you were asleep"Oh...I turn around, shifting the bedsheets wrapped around me to see her vacant eyes staring at me. She has this look like she's always mad at someone or very bored out of her mind. I understand she has good intentions, but when we're together, people frequently glance back as they walk away from us because of her."Why would they come here?" I yawn as I get out from under the sheets, phantom hands cradle my head."Probably from your snoring" She drops the pebbles onto her lampside."I don't snore""Oh yeah, you do. It's like the nuclear alarm""No, it's not! it's like a soft lullaby""Ah, so you do snore" She caught me there. Okay, I snore in a raging zombie apocalypse and should now be hanged for it?"Yes, you should" Wha-"Excuse me?""You should be hanged for it" How did she know, I shiver. She quirks her dyed eyebrows at my body reaction and nods like she understands."How-""You always say how you want to be 'proper executed', I just voiced your thoughts" Zylith's creepy. She does this thing where she tells you what you're thinking or what you're feeling. It's eerie because she can tell you secrets you've never told her and she wasn't one for gossip so it would creep others out when she did. She calls it listening. I wonder what that is..."Oh, they're moving out" Huh? Oh. I look out the curtains to see the zombies are going away from the vehicle. Sweet! I quickly run to the main space."I call dibs on driving" I yell out but her words almost halt me but it's already too late.One of the zombies is standing right in front of the car, it's dressed in a policeman uniform. A black vest and a police buckle are sitting on his waist, his gun tightly lodged between his huge Stomach and buckle. His skin is ashy but there are colorful stains of something all around his mouth. I bet that's some donut powder. Typical.His eyes stray from inspecting our SUV's plate and the passenger seats to looking straight at me who stands there in the kitchen."They're not all gone yet" Zylith's words travel into my ears just at the same time the policeman shouts at me like he's enjoyed catching two teenagers doing unlicensed driving. Bet, he'll get promoted for this.The police zombie points his finger at me and his large gross tongue comes out as he shouts continually like a crying baby. My earlier smile turns into a scowl and I feel my eyes prick. I was going to be put in jail for this. What if they found out I was responsible for the crash?I rush to the driver's seat, my body is growing cold as the officer repeatedly tries climbing over the hood, his saliva dripping down from his long, heavy tongue, coating the white SUV. I start the engine with the key still in the ignition. He struggles to get his heavy stomach onto the hood while glaring at me through the windshield. I drive the car backwards, the tires quietly rolling on the rocky road, causing the zombie to lose his balance and let go of the SUV. It stumbles towards us, its hands coming together as if holding an imaginary gun. Zylith is now by my side as the officer waddles like a duck towards us."Drive him over," Zylith whispers."What?! Run over a police officer?" I stop the car, but my hands remain on the joystick and the accelerator."If you keep going back, you'll get past the other zombies, and that's triple trouble," she nods. "Okay, then you do it," I say."You called it, so you have to," she got me there.She reassures me and places her hand over the joystick. "After all, those damned things never die" At her words, her eyes harden but she still keeps them trained on the joystick."Then how did you-" I hear a loud bang and Zylith turns the joystick to move forward. I press on the accelerator in surprise and the SUV climbs over something.I move the SUV a good distance and glance out the window to see the policeman zombie on the floor and some chewed-up remains splatter out of his guts onto the rocky pavement. The only other zombies around are further back, they turn at the noise and shriek in surprise at the scene. Me too bro, me too.Some of the half-digested stuff looks like donuts.A few seconds later, his big stomach trembles and even more stuff come out from the open slit, his body cracks and he rises from the soles of his feet while more stuff spills out. He moves one step to walk towards the SUV while I look out the rear-view mirror. Upon realizing, his guts her spilling everywhere, he wretches them out of his stomach, and his kidney, liver, and intestines come toppling out along with black blood that splashes everywhere."Sorry bud" I squeeze my hands around the sleek steering wheels at the extremely distressing scene. Now, that was gut-wrenching. Literally.I drive the car away towards our next destination under the instruction of Zylith. She doesn't check the maps or the drones but still manages to lead me through the streets without meeting a dead end.All through the drive, her hand is signing off in the air while her lips order me on where to go, and miraculously we don't meet many zombies other than a couple scattered onto the road."Slow down your pace" Her nose twitchesI drive the SUV straight ahead at the three-way. Most of the zombies are in the cafes, shops and stalls made of Creptonium. Creptonium is virtually an unbreakable glass but insanely expensive. The only reason why the over-filled shops haven't been broken out of is because Novascotia made a degree 3 years ago that forced business owners to make their glass out of the world's most expensive glass. We could afford it, sure and I am glad the government just out of the blue made this order.Most of the zombies don't give us attention and go about their business. One thing, I've noticed is they are constantly on the go, looking for stuff or maybe other people to infect. No wonder, it would have been virtually impossible to get around on foot.Even as we slowly drive through the streets, some of them walk up to us, while most stay behind, cowering in fear but even the coward zombies as I would like to call them would occasionally turn over stones and look around. Looking. Looking out for something. Would it be dumb to say they were looking for something? No.Maybe, they weren't always hyper-aware; a creature that would give 100% to its surroundings at all times, working endlessly. Like the ant. Yes.Maybe, they had someone they had to find, like the fish at the bottom of the ocean that would spend weeks on an activity in the hopes of finding a mate. Good!That was dumb, some species of fish are indeed known for constantly repeating a cycle in the one out of two million chance, that passerby female fish would take a liking to its effort.But humans....zombies wouldn't do that, right? Hmm...I look out my closed window to see a sitting zombie that upon spotting our moving vehicle, dusts its hand, leaving its overturned rocks and garbage. It takes the confidence and stalks our passing vehicle, joining in with the crowd.It joins in with the staring crowd, waiting behind but then for some strange reason, it jolts and starts twitching, then moves away from the crowd almost as if, it's offended by them.As our cars pass by the crowd, the coward zombies break off from the crowd and walk back to their sitting spot. It goes into a squat and continues overturning stones and glasses but right before our car drives off into the horizon, it looks up from its rubbish to gaze at us with determination flashing in its eyes."We're 10 minutes away from The Circle" Zylith's words pass one ear and enter the other."To protect" I whisper softly to myself as it dawned on me. Yes.Shit.