Zombie Minds

Prologue

I’m surrounded by thoughts. Well, I supposed technically everyone is. But most people don’t hear the thoughts they’re surrounded by. The same can’t be said for me.

God school is so boring.

I want a sandwich.

When’s Mr. Pinnay going to get here?

Oh, boy, I can hardly wait. My grades are fantastic!

Oh, no, I hope I didn’t do badly on this test. My parents are already mad at me. Maybe I can stay at school. . .

That senior over there is so cute. And I’m studying with him. Maybe we can—

Okay, don’t want to hear the end of that one. Of course, I didn’t really want to hear any of them. Not that I had a choice. I sighed, dropped a little lower in my seat and started playing alternative rock on my CD player, just as Mr. Pinnay came in. He spared a glance at me.

Disruptive, he was thinking

I tried not to react. I’ve had the headphones for years as the only way to listen in school, and all my teachers knew it. It was the best way to drown out other people’s thoughts, and if it drowned out the teacher’s voice as well, I could always read lips. I also knew no one could hear my music.

But Mr. Pinnay kept walking up to the front, and the thoughts along with him. They became much quieter, and I could only pick up bits and pieces.

The last thing I caught from Mr. Pinnay was, Why do I bother teaching? No one wants to learn.

I heard things from other people though.

Is Amy’s . . . She’s . . . a starfish. How . . . going white?

I understand math. Let . . . waste of time.

Pencil’s . . . the page. It’s rolling. Now! Hit. . . .

It wasn’t like having powers was unheard of, but it wasn’t particularly common, either; maybe one percent of the population had them. But when you considered the size of the population back then, that was a lot. And there was a wide range. I could read minds. An adult in town could fly. The girl up front, Amy, had the ability to heal people, for crying out loud. The problem was, if it became public knowledge you had a power, someone would figure out a use for it. Mind reading didn’t seem particularly useful, but it was enough to be inconvenient. If it worked differently, I’d make a great spy or interrogator. But for me, mind reading was more like mind hearing. I could hear people’s thoughts like it was their voices speaking. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

Once some exchange students came over to our school and all their thoughts were in French. I didn’t speak French.

I sighed and tried to ignore everything. I can’t turn the mind reading off. Every minute, of every day (until I go to sleep), I hear every little thought of every little person in the room. It doesn’t stop. It never will. I’ll just keep hearing it and hearing it. Forever. And all I wanted was a little peace.

Chapter 1

It was quiet. Seriously, really quiet.

Life was a lot different since my time in high school, but the biggest difference that stuck with me was the silence. I still carried my CD player and headphones around, originally to tune out the noise, but now only out of habit. There was no reason for them now. The only sound had been the one a few moments ago, when I threw a rock at the front window of a house and made the glass shatter. (What? The door was locked.) Now I stood at the window, looking in. It was slightly warmer in here than outside, but I was going to keep my coat on. The open window was just going to make it cold anyway.

There were no sounds. No words, no shuffling of bodies, not even the pitter patter of animals.

Well, that was good technically. If nothing else was alive here, there might still be food. I’d run out of food from my own home ages ago, so now I searched other peoples’ homes. I could’ve tried the grocery store, see if there were any canned goods left. But I was pretty sure most of them were already taken in the mad panic a few years ago, when there were still enough people left to panic.

There was also the fact that there might be bodies there. Bodies, stupid name. They were zombies. They had died, then they came back, moving and biting, and they didn’t think. Their only goal was to bite more people, who would have a few days as they slowly succumbed to becoming an unthinking zombie as well. It had started around sophomore year of high school, but strangely people weren’t too worried back then.

It was a small problem. Just make a few new rules like don’t walk past cemeteries, and let the people with super powers combat the zombies. That hadn’t worked out. The apocalypse had still happened. As the zombie problem got worse so did people. Governments made terrible decisions, normal people started blaming people with superpowers for failing to protect them.

I shook my head and got back to work. No point in thinking about that now. I searched the house’s kitchen. I couldn’t find any food in the pantry, but strangely, when I looked in the sink, I found an open ravioli can.

So, no food in the kitchen, but there could still be something useful. I decided to check the bathroom first, for water. There were a few people who’d filled their tubs, buckets, and sinks with water before the plumbing got turned off by the government.

And later maybe, I could look for another weapon. I had a gun, but I didn’t have much experience using it. Plus, it would run out of bullets eventually.

I reached the door to the bathroom when I heard something, a voice.

Somebody’s down there.

I froze, hand hovering by the door knob. Then I whipped around. No one was there. There was a staircase opposite the bathroom, though. I peered up the stairs. There was a door open at the top. As I watched it, it closed.

I wanted to laugh. Another human? Right here in this house? No way. Just . . . no way. People had either fled or been killed by zombies. There was no one but me. Well, laughing would make me look like a crazed lunatic, so I bit my tongue and started up the stairs.

As I reached the door, I saw it was still open just a crack. That was good in the grand scheme of things. I could still hear a muffled voice coming out.

It’s coming. Zombie. I’ve got to stab and kill the zombie, I have a knife.

There was no uncertainty in that voice. And given the circumstances, I’d say that the voice was a thought, not someone speaking. Thoughts like that had become pretty common since the best way to be safe from zombies was to kill them quickly; what was unusual was the voice itself. It sounded young, like a kid. Well. That wasn’t messed up at all. Sarcasm. Kids prepared to go around stabbing things? Doesn’t sound great.

Actually, I realized I should probably confirm I wasn’t a zombie. With the shock of finding another survivor, and realizing he could be a kid, I’d kind of forgotten about that. Still, I had to be careful. People usually freaked out and treated me differently when I told them I could read minds. I was in no hurry to let him know I could.

Hello? I called out. Is there anyone there? As if I didn’t know.

He’s not a zombie . . .? No! No, don’t get your hopes up! He could be here to hurt you! Or rob you! Go away! the kid called. I’ve got a knife.

‘Oh, my God, kid. I know,’ I thought. Listen, I don’t want any trouble, I said. I just want to talk.

I started to push the door open, but the kid panicked and shoved the door closed on my face, smacking my nose and knocking my CD player away. The nose thing hurt, but I was more concerned about my CD player currently hitting the ground.

No! I shouted, scrambling to the floor and making sure it was okay. Everything seemed to be in one piece.

The kid, curious what I was so upset about, opened the door just a crack and peered out.

What are you doing? he asked softly. I could hear more of his thoughts. What is that thing? Why is he so upset about it? He’s kind of weird.

I was going to ignore that last bit. Just— I started, without really knowing how to explain it. Something I had before the zombies. Bodies. You can hear music on it.

Music? the kid asked, staring at me blankly. From his thoughts, I could tell he had a vague idea what music was, but he couldn’t really remember it. He’d been too young when the zombie plague started and people stopped listening to music.

Yeah, I said, nodding. Like this. I pressed play.

Notes began to fill the hall. I was lucky the player still worked, and without the Internet or any other high-tech things. The down side was it was the same five songs or so over and over again, but I could live with that. I didn’t listen very often anymore anyway. The words came on and I began to sign with them, softer than the actual singer, but still.

The kid watched silently, even his thoughts were quiet. He stepped out into the hall at some point, and I got a better look at him. He had brown eyes and black hair that seemed surprisingly fluffy for the apocalypse. He looked like he might have some Japanese ancestry in him. He also seemed kind of short. Lack of proper nutrients could stunt people’s growth. I think. I’d heard that once. Maybe that was the problem.

For a moment after the song was over we continued to sit in silence. It was me who broke the silence.

I’m Matt, by the way.

Adam, the kid said shakily.

Well, Adam, it looks like you’re running out of food.

Adam sucked in a sharp breath, and his thoughts instantly started going back to paranoid.

So how about you move in with me? I offered quickly.

Adam blinked a few times. Why would he offer that?

Yeah, why would I? Before the zombie plague, I’d wanted quiet so much, and here I was inviting someone with thoughts back home with me. Child thoughts were worse than adult ones. Like child speaking, they were more insistent and weird than an adult. I mean, it’s not like I wanted this kid to die, but surely there were survivors who’d be better caretakers than me.

Where do you live? Adam asked.

His thoughts seemed to be getting less paranoid, maybe even a little excited. Weirder yet, I found I was fine with that.

The library, I answered.

The library? Adam checked, sounding somewhat upset. That’s for losers.

Hey! I’ll have you know the library is a good place to live with lots of space, lots of exits, and lots of information. It wasn’t like I could learn first aid from the Internet anymore, after all. Adam stared up at me, blinking a few times. He hadn’t expected that outburst, and to be perfectly honest neither had I. I laughed nervously, rubbing the back of my head. So. Do you want to come?

Adam was silent for a moment, thinking it over. Then he nodded. Okay, he accepted softly.

Chapter 2

I sat with a book in my hand on the second floor of the library. In one of the more comfortable chairs, too. I’d been staring at the book for a while, but admittedly I wasn’t taking much information in, probably hadn’t even turned the page in an hour or so. The storm outside and Adam’s thoughts were distracting.

There are so many books here. Why are they all so boring, and with big words I can’t read?

Adam was on the same floor as me, and we must not be separated by any walls for me to hear him. Still, his thoughts were pretty muffled, probably because of all the book shelves between us. I could tune him out easily if I wanted to. Instead, I intentionally listened in to make sure he was all right.

The books downstairs were better. I’m moving down there.

The first floor was where fiction and kids’ books were. For a while his thoughts were silent. Then, Hey, there’s a guy down there.

I frowned. A guy? No one else lived with me. Someone could’ve snuck in, or maybe—

Is he a zombie?

My thoughts exactly, Adam. I got up and moved quietly toward the stairs, where I assumed he was. His thoughts continued, getting louder as I got closer.

I must kill him if he’s a zombie. Kill the zombies. Lift your knife. It’s just . . . he looks so real. He doesn’t look dead. Is he dead?

Adam certainly sounded less certain than when he’d wanted to stab me. At this point, I’d caught up with him. He was part way down the stairs. It was one of those staircases that zig zagged, so we could both see the guy Adam found. It was on the stairs right below him, and Adam was moving closer.

My eyes widened at that. Yes, the guy did look very alive. Even his eyes, which were a little glazed over, could easily be written off to blindness—or something like that—or easy to miss in the poor lighting. But this guy was silent, no thoughts coming from him. Living people were never that quiet for so long. And the dead. Don’t. Think.

The zombie turned toward us. I grabbed Adam’s shoulder and pulled him back just as the zombie came jumping toward us. Adam gave a scream as the zombie lunged up and grabbed the banister, climbing over toward us. It was almost unnatural that a dead guy could be that good at jumping, but I supposed he hadn’t been dead for long, not decomposed enough.

I fired with my free hand when the zombie jumped. Note to self: Your aim is really terrible. Adam’s shaken thoughts seemed to agree with me. The zombie finished climbing over the banister and joined us on the landing. I fired again, much closer this time. Its head blew to pieces and it toppled to the ground.

For a second Adam and I stood