Perhaps I have been unfair in my description of Eliza. After all, it is easy to become bitter living in the basement of a bodega on East 12th, living off of watery coffee and Ramen noodles, going out on two-hour zombie hunting shifts. Last night, I killed a man who may or may not have been a zombie. It is so hard to tell and you have so little time to think out there in the shadows of old Manhattan. Sleep is hard to come by on a dirty pallet. The sound of rats is a constant preoccupation, broken up only by the coming and going of other zombie fighters looking for a meal or a pillow. It's funny how, after all this time facing off against the undead, the fairly harmless presence of rats still creeps me out.
Eliza is my ex-girlfriend, you see. We broke up four months ago, before the virus. We were going different places, she said. She had no idea how right she was, since she was one of the lucky ones whose apartment happened to be in one of the barricaded zombie-free zones on the Upper West Side, a neighborhood protected by armed troops - the last bastion of old New York left in these dark days.
So you can see why I describe her with a tad of bitterness. And yet, maybe I am unfair. After all, she only wants life to be as it was. And for once, she and her friends are right in at least one of their shallow off-the-cuff observations; there really are very few straight, single men left in New York. Unfortunately, it is because they were eaten alive or turned to zombies themselves.
