Sycamore Connelly's returning to her hometown of Edenmouth, Maine, after dropping out of college. Sebastian Do is stuck living with his parents, having never left to begin with. Adrian Steiner, once a drifter, is starting to put down roots. All three's plans are disrupted when Edenmouth begins to swarm with zombies, and time itself becomes caught in a loop. Now the trio must work together to find a way out. But strange forces are at play, and they may not be alone...
It’s warm again.
I’m laying back on my living room couch, legs crossed, head propped up by a pillow, phone in my left hand gently beeping to let me know my call with Sycamore just got dropped. Exactly the position I was in the last two times this happened, like I wasn’t just dying in a ditch a second ago. Slowly, carefully, like my body will shatter if I move too fast, I sit upright. None of the pain is there anymore, not even a headache.
This sucks so bad.
“Uggggggh.” I pick up the pillow from behind me and chuck it at my dad’s armchair, where it lands with a soft paf. All my energy’s back, which I guess is a good sign. Maybe it’s too much energy, though. I get up and start to pace.
The movement helps me think. Maybe “ruminate” is a better word. Time resets every time one of us dies, right? But Sycamore and Adrian both looked like they were in really bad shape. Eyes glassy, noses bloody, unable to stand. Hell, Sycamore could barely talk. Not like I was immune, either; for the last few seconds it felt like I was getting stabbed in the head. Like the three of us were all being punished for leaving town. So who reset the timeline?
I don’t like thinking about this. I don’t like the question of whether my best friend or my boyfriend died first. All it does is pump more nervous energy into my body, which makes me pace faster, which makes me ruminate more. But all this energy needs to go somewhere.
Well, there’s always one coping mechanism. To the kitchen it is.
I start by pawing through the vegetable drawer for whatever looks good: carrot, daikon, some scallions that don’t look too wilted. There’s also some leftover rice in a Tupperware, and some firm tofu I had marinating for dinner tonight. Even some bean sprouts my mom prepped yesterday.
Huh. In all this chaos, I forgot I was gonna make dinner for Sycamore.
Whatever. I chop the carrot and daikon into rough matchsticks, quickly tossing them in salt and squeezing out the moisture. The tofu goes into a skillet to pan-fry while I mix up the sauce: gochujang that I had to drive an hour to find, minced garlic, sesame oil, and a tiny amount of apple juice. The carrot-daikon salad gets a toss in rice vinegar and a little chili paste, the tofu gets flipped over to crisp up on the other side, and the rice reheats in the microwave while I fry some eggs in a separate pan. Hearing the crackling oil & watching the edges brown is better than therapy. A creak from the front door opening and closing and the sound of Adrian’s footsteps snaps me out of my cooking reverie.
“Smells good in here,” he says. There’s a winded panting in his voice. I don’t blame him, considering what it’s like outside right now.
“Fuck, I gotta drain the bean sprouts,” I answer. “Sorry. Hey.”
He peeks into the kitchen as he unlaces his work boots. “Wait, you’re actually making food? Right now?”
“I mean, yeah.” The microwave beeps. I start spooning rice into bowls. “Here, I’ll serve you some.”
“You haven’t told me what it…” Adrian sighs, walks past the kitchen into the living room. It’s good to see him in one piece. “Never mind. I’m not about to say no to your cooking.” A little smile creeps onto my face. He never says no to my cooking.
On top of each rice bowl goes an egg, some daikon-carrot salad, a small handful of bean sprouts, a couple pieces of tofu, and some kimchi from the big jar in the fridge. Everything gets drizzled in the sauce, a sprinkle of chopped scallions on top, and it takes all my willpower to not start eating until I’ve carried Adrian’s bowl over to him. A look of contentment spreads across his face as he brings the first forkful to his mouth. My mom hates it when people eat on her couch, but it’s not like she’s here to scold us.
Where is she?
No, seriously, where is she? She and Dad were out of town for the weekend. But that’s the thing: the time loop only seems to extend to the rest stop. What’s happening to the outside world while Edenmouth is stuck in time, crawling with zombies?
“Your food’s gonna get cold if you keep standing there,” says Adrian. It’s like a bubble pops. I sit down next to him, embarrassed. Me and my hyperactive imagination. In the time I was just standing there worrying, the heat from the rice almost cooked my egg through, which completely harshes the bibimbap’s texture. (Maybe I should’ve gone with the traditional raw egg yolk.) But I’m hungry, and it tastes decent, so I eat. Filling my belly calms my anxieties and helps me think more rationally; we can worry about the outside world once we figure out how to get there.
BANG, BANG, BANG! Someone pounds on the door, so suddenly I almost choke on my mouthful of rice. Shit, that’s probably Sycamore. I launch myself from my seat to run for the door, but Adrian’s long legs outpace me. He yanks open the door, and in stumbles Sycamore, blood splattered across her jeans and something slung over her back. Adrian slams the door behind her and brings the lock back into place, exactly like he did last time.
Sycamore shrugs off her burden and unceremoniously lets it fall, clanging, to the floor. It’s Adrian’s machete, still in its sheath. “This showed up in my goddamn car,” she says.
“What.” The word comes out of my mouth without me really meaning to say it. “I… why? How?”
“Hell if I know,” she says. “It was in the passenger’s seat the second I opened my eyes. There’s no way someone could’ve put it there in that amount of time.”
Adrian’s leaning against the wall next to the door, nervously chewing on his thumbnail again. “It’s not just you,” he says. “Y’know that gun I’ve been carrying? Well, it’s not mine. Technically it’s my boss’s. She keeps it in a locked drawer for ‘emergencies.’ And every single time, it’s been in that drawer, except this time.” He lifts his jacket to reveal a belt cinched around his waist, with an attached holster where the gun sits. “This is not my belt.”
“Fuck,” I breathe. Something’s starting to occur to me. I get up from my seat and start rooting around under the couch. Under all the dust bunnies, my hand finds something familiar: a cold, hard metal rod. It rattles slightly along the floor as I pull it out from underneath. My suspicions are confirmed when I extract that goddamn crowbar.
A long silence hangs in the air between the three of us. I just kinda set the crowbar down on the floor and stare at it, trying to wrap my head around what all of this could mean. Is it, in some convoluted way, my fault? After all, I was the one to give Sycamore the machete and myself the crowbar.
Hell with it. If this is my fault, I might as well try to exploit it. “I have an idea,” I tell Sycamore, and run for the junk drawer in the kitchen. I shuffle through piles of paperclips, screwdrivers, and lighters until I dig up my prize: the spare house key. I re-emerge with key in hand, explaining myself along the way: “If weapons keep reappearing next to us, maybe other useful stuff will, too.”
Sycamore takes the key from me with a skeptical look: first at the key, then at me, then back at the key. It’s her signature “are you sure?” type of look, one she’s refined since middle school. But her frown eventually relaxes & she shrugs. “Guess it can’t hurt.” She takes her keyring from her pocket and slides the new one on, jingling with the rest of her miscellaneous keys and accessories. I never know how she manages to sift through all those.
“Right!” I suddenly yell. I dash back to the kitchen. “Sycamore, are you hungry?”
“I… what? I guess, but…” She gives a sidelong confused glance to Adrian, who just shrugs and shakes his head, a visible smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Seb, why are you cooking?”
“Why not?” I shout back over my shoulder. The remainder of the rice has cooled off a little, but it’s still edible. Into a bowl it goes, with more veggies and an over-easy egg (the way Sycamore prefers her eggs cooked). I rush back into the living room, where Adrian’s now leaning back on the couch again, and hand it off to her despite her perplexed expression. My mood is starting to lift. I’m finally back in my element, even if for a short while. Relaxed, I plop myself down next to Adrian, allowing my right thigh to brush against his left for the first time in… I don’t want to try and calculate how long it’s been. Does it count as one day if three people keep reliving it, never quite getting to midnight?
“Thmmf mf rmmfy gmmf,” Sycamore says as she crosses to my dad’s armchair, her voice muffled by rice and egg. She sits, swallows, and wipes her mouth. “Sorry. This is really good.” She takes another bite, this time managing to speak clearly even with a mouthful of food. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Hell yeah, I do!” I answer, and before my mind can second-guess it I’m up again. My legs carry me off the couch and to the fridge. Inside is the other thing I was saving for tonight, before everything went to shit: two bottles of hazy IPA from the local microbrewery. Doesn’t matter that I wasn’t anticipating Adrian’s presence; he doesn’t drink anyway, and I always have a six-pack of Dr. Pepper on standby in case he comes over. Out of the fridge come the two beers and one soda, and back to the living room I go, drinks in hand. This is one of those times where movement seems to power my brain, not the other way around.
Adrian accepts his soda from me with a warm, infectious little grin. Sycamore’s expression, meanwhile, lights up when she sees the beers in my hand. “Are those–”
“Yeah, they are!” I hand a bottle to her. “Straight from 5 Dogs Brewery.” She opens it up with the little bottle opener attachment on her pocket knife.
Sycamore seems to notice Adrian’s puzzled look. “Y’know, the microbrewery downtown,” she explains. “Their beer is pure ass, but it was the first alcohol Seb and I ever drank. Nostalgia and all that.”
“Some kid brought a bunch of ‘em to a house party back in high school,” I add. “His dad owned the place, until–”
“Until he got arrested and that other guy took over.”
Adrian snorts into his drink. I finally relax back in my spot next to him. This is nice. Tension is releasing from my body already.
Sycamore takes a sip. “Adrian, have you tried–”
“I don’t drink,” Adrian answers flatly. God knows how many times he’s had to give this explanation. “Family history.” I inwardly wince a little. This is kind of a sore spot for him.
“Jeez,” Sycamore mutters, “my bad.” An awkward silence hangs over the room for a little too long. I’m about to break it, but she does the job for me. “Why do you think this house has heating and light while the other places don’t, anyway?”
“Downed power line somewhere?” I guess. “It’s not like the whole of Edenmouth is daisy-chained together.”
“That doesn’t explain why the rest stop didn’t have hot water, though. Or why the Dunkin’s menu screen things were all fucked up.”
Something occurs to me. “Adrian,” I say, “you never told me whether the garage had power.” His workplace, Rose Auto Body, isn’t far from my neighborhood. If the power line theory is correct, then theirs wouldn’t be out either, right?
He scratches his neck. “It does. But it’s not any safer than here, if that’s what you’re wondering. Or more comfortable. Hell, the ventilation’s so shit it’s barely any warmer in there than it is outside.”
“Maybe it is a power line after all, then. Shows how much I know about electricity,” Sycamore says, shaking her head. “Fuck, dude, why did I major in botany?”
“You majored in botany?” Adrian says.
“Oh my God, don’t say it.”
“Named after a tree, and you majored in–”
“You are the twelfth person to say that! Twelfth!”
“And you’re keeping a tally?”
“You don’t get to make fun of me! You shot me in the head!”
I can’t help it. I burst out laughing.
There’s half a second of stunned silence from the others, then Sycamore starts laughing too. Even Adrian cracks up, which turns into a cough, which morphs back into laughter. All the tension from earlier is released. God, I needed this.
Eventually we all calm down. I let out a sigh. “Man, I thought you guys wouldn’t get along at–” As soon as I opened my mouth, I shut it again. The others’ expressions have both dropped. They look at each other, then at me. What just happened?
Without turning his head, as if moving too quickly is dangerous, Adrian looks toward the door. “Did y’all hear something outside?” His voice is barely above a whisper.
“No,” I answer, my voice also at an involuntary low. “What was it?”
“It sounded like someone– Sh! There it is again!”
From outside my door, there’s a soft murmur, as though someone put a radio on the doorstep. I can’t make out any words, only the rhythmic, almost robotic cadence of a person reading from some kind of list or reciting something from memory. The wind is starting to pick up out there, which doesn’t help. Slowly, without really thinking, I get up and approach the door. Still nothing. It gets louder, but no easier to make out the words. Almost like there aren’t any words at all, just a nonsense mishmash of syllables. The sound of creaking boxsprings and footsteps across the floor tells me that the others have gotten up, too. Cautiously, gingerly, though I’m not sure why, I put my eye to the peephole.
Sitting on the doorstep, her back to the door, is the zombie in the black coat. The same one I killed (God, I can’t believe I killed a fucking zombie) last time. I can’t see much of her face through her stringy curtain of hair, just a sliver of a corpselike jaw moving up and down. The blue-tinted darkness encroaching outside doesn’t help with visibility, but one thing is clear. It’s her who’s producing those almost-words.
Holy shit, can they actually talk?
Before I can fully process that, the zombie’s head whips around to face me. Not the door, me. The look in her milky eyes is more focused than I’ve seen on any of the zombies before. Her neck is at an angle that shouldn’t be possible, shoulders not following behind. She’s looking right at me. Her mouth creaks open again, agonizingly slow, and she speaks:
“Get out of my fucking dorm or I’m calling the cops!”
She bolts up from her seat and rushes the small curtained window next to the door. Like a goat, she collides with it headfirst, sending a spiderweb crack radiating outward. The sound rattles my eardrums. All three of us rush backwards at once. Not fast enough. Through the gap in the curtain, I can see other figures gathering behind her. How many are out there? Fists begin to pound on the glass, cracking it more and more. It’s about to give.
“Upstairs!” Sycamore yells. She gets to her feet and rushes for the stairs. Adrian follows after. I try to get up, but I’m shaking so hard my legs barely work. I can’t get up. Why can’t I get up? Why won’t my body listen to me?
It’s at that moment that the window shatters. Adrian curses loudly as a forest of arms emerges through the broken glass and torn curtain. His feet thud on the tiled floor as he returns for me, his hand roughly grabbing my wrist to yank me to my feet. Despite my stumbling, he shoves me in front of him to give me a head start. Fuck that. I turn around to look at him anyway. “Come on!” I shout. He tries to follow my direction, but enough hands are grabbing at his clothes that he trips. I don’t even hesitate; the crowbar connects with a zombie skull before I even realize I’ve picked it up. Adrian unholsters his gun, rolls over onto his back, and squeezes off a few shots before righting himself. I grab his hand and begin to sprint towards the stairs.
Then I feel it.
In the midst of all the chaos, I didn’t even notice the figure crawling across the ground, the jaws approaching my shin. It’s only now that they’ve clamped down that I look to the floor and see the black-coated woman chewing on my leg. Not until I see the blood pooling does the pain start.
Someone pulls me out of the way, drags me up the stairs. I can’t feel much of anything besides that; the pain consumes everything else. I don’t recognize the faces looming over me. I don’t understand the words they’re saying. All I know is the spreading, burning, all-consuming pain radiating outwards and across my body, like molten lead through my veins. Every other sense, every other thought, is numbed until it falls away and