When the Dead Dance at Midnight

The zombies arrived during the wedding reception, which struck me as poor timing even by apocalypse standards.

I had been watching Charlotte from across the pavilion, my ex-fiancée in her bridesmaid dress, laughing at something the groom said. Three years since she left me. Three years since I learned you could love someone completely while they felt nothing similar in return. The wound had mostly healed, I thought, until I saw her again tonight.

Then the screaming started.

The first corpse shambled through the garden entrance, its jaw hanging at an unnatural angle. Others followed. Maybe twenty of them, their movements jerky, purposeless, hungry. Guests ran. Tables overturned. The string quartet abandoned their instruments.

Charlotte stood frozen near the cake table.

I grabbed a champagne bottle, smashed it against the fountain, ran toward her with the jagged glass held like a weapon. The nearest corpse lunged. I drove the bottle into its skull. It collapsed. Another came. I kicked its knee backward, heard something crack, watched it crumple.

"Move!" I shouted at Charlotte.

She stared at me, her eyes wide. "Daniel?"

"We need to go. Now."

I pulled her toward the service entrance. Behind us, chaos. The bride was screaming. The groom was trying to fight off three corpses with a chair. Someone fired a gun. The sound cracked through the summer night like a branch breaking.

We ran through the kitchen, past the catering staff already fleeing, out into the parking lot. My car was blocked in. Charlotte's was near the exit.

"Keys," I said.

She fumbled in her clutch, hands shaking, dropped them. I picked them up, unlocked her sedan, pushed her into the passenger seat. More corpses were emerging from the tree line. How many? Fifty? A hundred? Where had they come from?

I drove.

The highway was empty. Street lights illuminated nothing except pavement stretching into darkness. Charlotte sat silent beside me, her breathing gradually slowing.

"Are you hurt?" I finally asked.

"No." Her voice was small. "You saved me."

"Anyone would have."

"Most people ran the other direction."

I kept driving. What was I supposed to say? That I had watched her all evening? That seeing her in danger overrode every rational thought? That three years apart had done nothing to diminish what I felt?

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I have no idea."

My phone had no signal. The radio played only static. Whatever was happening seemed widespread. Civilization had ended while we were eating dinner rolls, drinking prosecco, pretending we were happy for people who had found what we lost.

Charlotte looked at me. Really looked, maybe for the first time tonight. "You changed your hair."

"Two years ago."

"It looks good." She paused. "Everything looks good. You look healthy. Happy."

"I am happy." The lie came easily.

"I'm glad." Another pause. "I got your letter. The one you sent last Christmas."

I had written it drunk, sealed it sober, mailed it in a moment of weakness. In it, I had explained everything I never said when she left. How I understood why she needed to go. How I forgave her for falling out of love. How I hoped she found whatever she was searching for.

"You never responded," I said.

"What was I supposed to say? You wrote this beautiful, heartbreaking letter that required no response. You gave me closure I never gave you." She twisted the fabric of her dress. "It made me feel terrible."

"That was absolutely the opposite of my intention."

"I know." Her voice broke slightly. "That made it worse."

A corpse lurched into the road ahead. I swerved, kept driving.

We found shelter at a gas station just before dawn. The building looked abandoned. I parked behind it, out of sight from the road. We sat in the car while pale light spread across the horizon.

"Do you think everyone at the wedding is dead?" Charlotte asked.

"I think some of them got out."

"Emma was my best friend. Her wedding. I introduced her to Marcus."

"I know."

"If she's dead, if they're both dead, that means I was part of creating their happiness right before it ended. How do I live with that?"

I turned to face her. Her makeup was smeared. Her carefully styled hair had come loose. She looked more like the Charlotte I remembered than the polished woman at the reception.

"You live with it the way you live with everything else," I said. "One moment at a time. One decision after another. You keep moving forward because going backward is impossible."

She laughed, a bitter sound. "Is that how you got over me?"

"I never said I got over you."

The words hung between us. Charlotte's expression shifted through surprise, confusion, something else I could recognize from when we were together.

"Daniel..."

"Forget I said that."

"I can never forget anything you say. That's part of the problem."

A corpse appeared around the building's corner. Then another. I started the engine.

We drove for hours, searching for other survivors, finding only more of the dead. They seemed drawn to movement, to sound, to anything living. The sun climbed. My fuel gauge dropped toward empty.

"Tell me something," Charlotte said. "Something true."

"About what?"

"About why you really came to the wedding. You RSVP'd no. Emma told me. Then you showed up anyway."

I watched the road. "I wanted to see you."

"Why?"

"Because I never stopped hoping you would realize you made a mistake. That you would come back. That what we had was worth fighting for." I gripped the steering wheel. "Pathetic, right?"

"No." Her voice was soft. "Honest."

"Same thing, sometimes."

Charlotte reached across the console, placed her palm over mine. Her touch sent electricity through my nervous system, the same as always.

"I did make a mistake," she said. "I realized it about six months after I left. I was too proud to admit it. Too scared you had already moved on. Too convinced I had broken something that could never be repaired."

I looked at her. "Are you serious?"

"Completely. I have been miserable for two and a half years. I dated other people. I tried to build a new life. Nothing felt right because the life I wanted was with you, being the person I was when we were together."

My heart was pounding. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because the world is ending. Because we might die today, tonight, tomorrow. Because I watched you risk your life for me even though I hurt you. Because I love you." Tears were streaming down her face. "I never stopped loving you. I was too stupid to recognize what I had until it was gone."

I pulled the car over. We were on a side road, trees pressing close on both sides. The engine ticked as it cooled.

"Say something," Charlotte said.

I kissed her. She kissed me back. Three years of loneliness, regret, unanswered questions dissolved. Her lips tasted like salt from tears, like the peach lipgloss she always wore, like coming home.

When we finally separated, she was smiling.

"So what now?" she asked.

"We survive. We find other people. We figure out what caused this, how to stop it, whether there's anything left worth saving."

"Together?"

"Together."

A corpse slammed against the driver's window. I jumped, started the engine, accelerated away. Charlotte laughed, a real laugh this time, full of relief, joy, possibility.

We drove into whatever came next, the dead shambling in our wake, the future uncertain, our fingers intertwined across the console. The world had ended. Something new was beginning.

Maybe that was always how it worked. Maybe you had to lose everything to understand what mattered. Maybe love only revealed its true shape when tested by impossible circumstances.

The fuel gauge read empty. We would need to stop soon, search for supplies, find shelter before dark. More corpses would come. Survival would require constant vigilance, sacrifice, courage.

"I'm glad you came to the wedding," Charlotte said.

"Me too."

Outside, the dead continued their endless march. Inside, we held onto each other like salvation, like forgiveness, like the last beautiful thing in a world of horror.