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Words. Although actions were supposed to speak louder than words, Clover felt as if the opposite were true. At least, lately. Lately, she’d felt as if words were knives and swords, weapons used against her and used against the people she loved. The word love was used in place of more appropriate words, words that would have required a great deal of thought. To put it bluntly, Clover felt as if her world were slowly being ripped apart at the seams and sewn back together with a rusty needle. The rusty needle could have been any number of objects or any number of people. The needle only represented the fact that people were trying to control her with their words and their actions. Words. ******* words.

The stars had only just begun to flicker to life. The night sky had summoned them from their distant slumber and granted them the landscape and the strength to shine. Normally, Clo overlooked the sky. She focused on her destination, acknowledging that little else mattered. That night, Clo decided to devote herself to the sky. She’d left Third Circle and made the short voyage to the Quarantine Zone. It was easy for her to reach the gated area when she could use the water as her own walkway. She secretly enjoyed the fact that she’d mastered that much, at least.

Being outside felt like stepping into another world. For the past few months, she’d spent so much of her time indoors that she almost forgot something existed beyond the four walls of homes and apartments.She forgot that other people existed. Did other people lose themselves the way that she’d lost herself? The question brought up another question, which morphed into a series of questions. The radio silence she’d come to love and loathe had transformed into an explosion of noise that rattled her nerves. She’d lost contact with the ground and forgotten the sky. Why had she gone outside in the first place? Oh yes. She’d gone outside because it had been so long since she’d appreciated the world around her. Something else existed beyond her problems, beyond the selfish, egotistical people scattered around her.

Clover reached around to her lower back and removed her handgun from its holster. Her knife remained in its spot on her right ankle, successfully hidden by her black combat boot. Several feet away, a zombie noticed her presence and began lumbering toward her. The monster was missing its lower jaw and looked bloated, as if it had been in the waters nearby, or maybe it had been decomposing for that long. The weather had been warmer than expected, so it was possible that the sun only aided in the man’s decomposition. Clover turned the safety off on her gun and lined up her shot, but she didn’t shoot. She watched and waited, allowing the zombie to continue on its course. She wasn’t terrible with her aim, but she wasn’t a sharpshooter. At six feet away, the zombie stumbled over its own two feet and went down. Clover sent three bullets through its skull and then finished the creature off with her knife.

That was life. Shooting. Stabbing. The same violence extended beyond physical fights and bled into other types of altercations. Hadn’t she gone full-circle then? Perhaps the zombie represented everything wrong in her life. Perhaps it was just a zombie and she put way too much thought into things. She cleaned the blade of her knife on the zombie’s tattered clothing and then replaced it, but she left her gun out. Clover moved a good distance away and dropped down onto the grass. She lay on her back, her head supported by her right arm, and stared up at the sky. She had to relinquish her hold on her gun, so she set it next to her in the grass. Her crop top, one that proudly displayed a sad little robot, rode up to reveal more of her tattooed flesh and the faint scars from bullet wounds.

Rhett had been right to ask questions. The thought came to her rather suddenly. He had misunderstood, but he’d asked relevant questions, questions that she had wanted to know. What had happened to Grey? Where had the woman gone? As she thought, her eyes still trained on the night sky, Clover reached into the pocket of her skinny jeans and withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She took her time placing the filter between her lips. She could imagine the taste the tobacco; she could smell the tobacco. She had to strike the lighter a few times before she got a flickering flame, but it was enough to light the end of her cigarette. With her cigarette lit, Clover lifted her left arm into the air and tossed the empty lighter toward the water. She didn’t care what happened to it then. Wasn’t that how it worked? Once something was empty, once something had outlived its use, no one cared what happened to the object. At that moment, if it weren’t for her remembering what the lighter looked like or how the lighter felt in her hand, no one would have believed it ever existed. Were they all little lighters?

Suddenly, the night sky didn’t look so mesmerizing. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach made her regret leaving the house. She just wanted to see the four walls around her. She wanted to lose herself in the ceiling and take refuge on the floor. Clover took a long drag from her cigarette and then crushed it out on a patch of dirt. She grabbed her gun and quickly got to her feet; her weapon immediately went back into her holster. Leaving Third Circle had been a mistake. As suffocated as she felt, she missed being inside. She’d become dependent on being hidden away, like some walking example of shame. After all, she knew what people were like. She knew how judgmental people were. If she wasn’t the victim, someone else was the victim. When she was human, she’d called them haters. The same was true. People were ugly. She was ugly. They were flawed. The sky was the best thing going.

Clover heard snippets of conversations, but one stood out. Who said “boss man” anymore? Clo took one long look in the direction of her home and then moved toward the voice. She watched a figure move away and she followed, expecting that the man would take her on a short journey. Instead, he tripped, and she heard the sound of something hitting the pavement. Clo rolled her eyes and walked for the fallen item. A phone. A cracked phone. She picked the phone up and turned it around in her hands.

“I think you dropped this,” she finally spoke, her voice light. She held out the phone, her fingers clutching the corner of the device. “It looks like you’d better get another one. You could ask your boss man to pay for it.” The last two words were said with some hint of sarcasm and a slight narrowing of her eyes. Boss man. What a strange character. And was he really so clumsy that he'd tripped over the curb or was he running from something? Clover understood running. She'd lived her entire life running from something or someone. As odd as it was, she wondered if she'd found some sort of kindred spirit. And yet he had a pulse. What a shame.

Graceless. Uncoordinated. Clumsy. There were several words that quickly came to mind, and none of them were all that flattering. Clo really had to look beyond his words and actions to find anything that she found appealing. In the end, she decided that she liked his glasses. The man had nothing more going for him that his glasses. And he had a bit of a baby face. She edited her final opinion and settled on the face that he was cute, cute in the way that puppies were cute. Everyone loved puppies, she decided. She could find some enjoyment in looking at his face and imagining keeping him as a pet.

“Yes, insurance. Upgrades,” Clover agreed, her tone revealing her disinterest. She sounded bored. He’d rambled, whether he knew it or not. Clo knew about rambling--she rambled all of the time--but she hadn’t really been on the receiving end of someone rambling. His attempts at salvaging his reputation and making her laugh only sent her further into her word coma. “At least he’s cute,” she thought to herself. But he wasn’t cute enough for her to lose herself in his words. He wasn’t appealing enough for her to try and lure him into a pleasant conversation. Honestly, he was just the type of cute that made her want to snap his neck.

His question roused her from her thoughts and she found herself blinking at him, dumbfounded. The night air was chilly and she’d worn a crop top and skinny jeans; she’d dressed as if it were late spring or early summer. She forgot to update her wardrobe, yet again, and someone had noticed. Of course it had to be Clumsy Guy. That was her nickname for him: Clumsy Guy. “I must have left my coat in the park,” she lied. The thought of taking his scarf left her uncomfortable. She didn’t need a scarf. The cold had never really bothered her, even as a human. She’d always dressed in jeans and t-shirts, but she’d always had a jacket too. “Thanks.” Clo took the scarf from him and wound it around her neck, curling and knotting the warm fabric into a neat circle. She felt suffocated, but she offered him a grateful smile. He was nice. He was nice in the way that Anton was nice. She missed her Anton.

Humans were always curious. As a human, she had been curious; as a vampire, the trend continued. So when he asked her about the quarantine zone and everything that it concealed, she turned to look at the fences and the peaceful waterline separating the open side from the rest of the city. Everyone wanted to know about the quarantine zone. The only people that really knew about the quarantine zone and all that it had to offer were members of the groups responsible for constructing the zone, vampires, and the curious humans that decided they’d satisfy the itch and investigate on their own. One look at Clumsy Guy and Clover knew that he fell into the latter group.

“They keep it walled off to keep the zombies inside,” Clo replied. Her tone left no room for discussion. She sounded as if she were entirely serious, because she was very serious. Nothing prevented Clover from revealing knowledge to humans, whether the knowledge dealt with the city or with the city’s many inhabitants. Hadn’t she already proven her willingness to divulge information? To her, the masquerade was a joke, but a quick thought about her family had her sighing. “I'm kidding. It was an outbreak, I believe. They keep the infected inside. It’s the same as any other quarantine zone. The government’s trying to keep the area contained.”

The pout was evident on her face. She’d wanted to leave it at zombies and let the man fall victim to his own curiosity. Clover never got to have any fun. As an afterthought, she turned her attention from the quarantine zone back to him, “I could show you.” Her voice was playful, and she tried to add a creepy undertone.