Too Cool for You

Not just some incredibly accurate look-alikes.

“So, Nicky, how was it?”

“I don’t know.” Nicole’s high heels clicked against the parking lot pavement, her eyes trying to locate her car. “He seemed to like me and my audition, but I didn’t like him. He had that creepy vibe to him.” The girl on the other end of the conversation laughed as Nicole’s eyes landed on her red Ford Mustang GT.

Nicole knew she was picky, too picky for an aspiring actress who only had made an appearing in two commercials so far. “Well, at least it’s your second audition this week, right?”

Nicole unlocked her car and got in. “You’re starting to sound like my mom, Hannah. I know I’ll end up being a famous actress, but it takes time. You cannot rush talent.” She retouched her red lipstick in the rear view mirror and winked at herself. “In the meantime, I can enjoy myself.” As the key turned in the ignition, the car roared to life, echoing inside the half empty parking lot. “By the way, are you coming to the party later tonight?”

“I can’t. I have to go to work tomorrow morning, it’s my turn to do the morning shift.”

“Oh Hannah, you’re so lame.” She joked as the car exited the parking lot.

“Not everyone has rich parents, who can provide a life of luxury to an unemployed daughter.” Hannah replied nonchalantly, as she knew her best friend wouldn’t get offended by it. “Not to mention that tonight’s a special night.”

Nicole furrowed her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Well, today is February the 8th, the second half of season five is about to begin!”

“What?” Nicole didn’t pay attention to the road ahead of her, one of her hands holding the cell phone while the other played with the radio, trying to find a station with her type of music on.

“The Walking Dead, Nicky! It’s airing tonight!”

Nicole laughed. “Oh that. I had forgotten you still watched that stupid tv show.”

“Someone used to enjoy it as much as I do, ain’t I right?”

“Well, the first two seasons were okay I guess, but you know I grew out of it.” Her lips formed a big smile as she reminded the times when the two girls would watch the episodes together. “Besides, they killed my favorite character, what was the point of keeping on watching it?”

“Shane was crazy, I never understood why you liked him so much.”

Nicole laughed, ignoring the stop sign and turning left. “I don’t care, he was hot. What’s the point of watching a tv show if the actors aren’t hot?”

“How about for their talent? And there are many hot people on that show.”

Once again Nicole laughed. Her eyes glanced at the traffic light, just as it turned from green to yellow and quickly rested again on the radio. “I never thought you had such low standards.”

The traffic sign turned red, but Nicole never realized it, the sudden burst of light coming from her left side making her feel like a deer caught in headlights. A truck horn made her scream and stomp the brake pedal. Her name was shouted through the cell phone. As soon as the truck collided with her car, everything went dark.
The sun hit Nicole’s face, making her slowly come back to her senses. The first thing she realized, before even opening her eyes, was that a massive headache had already formed in the back of her skull. I must have drunk a lot last night.

She tried to open her eyes, blinking constantly, and only catching snippets of her surroundings. When she tried to move, a searing pain crawled up her spine and almost made her scream. Now that she was fully awake, the previous night’s event flashed through her mind. She hadn’t been drinking. She had been in a car accident.

Slowly sitting up and looking around, it was almost immediately that Nicole realized to be in a different place from the one where she had had the accident.

“This is not Miami,” she mumbled to herself.

***


Daryl stopped the motorbike, his eyes narrowing at the sight in front of him. The car behind him, with Sasha at the wheel and Glenn next to her, stopped too. For a few seconds nothing could be heard except for the moans and groans of the dead.

“There are a lot of them,” Sasha spoke. She and Glenn had now stepped out of the car and walked towards Daryl.
The three of them stared at the building. It was surrounded by military tents, trucks and walkers. Lots of walkers.

The fence that separated them from the dead had definitely been put there by the army, an effort to keep people safe probably during the first months of the turn.

“Food, medicine, this place looks like a gold mine.” Glenn took a stereo from the back seat of the black car. “The least we can do is try.”

The idea was simple. One of them would distract the walkers while another one of them cut through the fence. The third would turn the stereo on, powered by car batteries, and they would all quickly drive away. Hopefully, in a few days the music would have drawn them away from that place.

“Alright, let’s go!” Daryl yelled, as Sasha jumped to the car a drove off to pick up Glenn who was about half a mile away, the herd already getting too close.

***


Nicky got up on her feet and looked around. This could only be some kind of sick joke. Somehow she had ended up in the middle of nowhere without her car or any other mean of transportation, after having a car accident she could barely remember.

The faint sound of music made her spin on her feet. It seemed to echo throughout the woods, but she couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. With forest surrounding her and only a small road to give her some kind of direction, she started to walk along it.

She didn’t know how long she had been walking, but her feet were already hurting inside her stiletto shoes, when the sound of motorcycle’s engine made her turn around. It only took a few seconds for it to show up on the horizon, closely followed by a car, and Nicky finally sighed in relief. Someone could finally tell her where she was.

“Hey!” She waved at the man riding the bike, trying to catch his attention. A big smile decorated her face.

However, as the bike got closer, her smile quickly vanished. She couldn’t understand how, but stopping only a few feet away from her was Daryl Dixon, a character from her best friend’s favorite tv show. A fictional character. How the hell was that possible? Nicky blinked several times. Maybe she was having hallucinations due to the car accident.

The car stopped next to him, rolling the windows down. Nicole couldn’t help but look like a fish out of water, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to say something, but the words didn’t come out. Right there in front of them, with suspicious looks sprawled all over their faces, were Glenn, Daryl and a girl she recognized from the few episodes she had watched from season three, but which name she couldn’t remember.

“Let’s go,” Daryl grunted, his bike roaring to life.

“Wait.” Sasha raised her hand and looked at the girl who started back at her with big blue eyes. She looked like she didn’t belong there; wearing makeup, high heels and a knee length jacket that made her look like she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “Are you okay?”

Nicky only managed to nod. She couldn’t understand what was going on. Her brain worked hard to come up with a reasonable explanation, and the most logical right now was that she was dreaming. Maybe she was still unconscious, inside her car, and all this was just a product of her own imagination. Or maybe this was a prank.

Something inside her brain suddenly clicked. It had to be it, these actors were probably here filming for some tv show where they pranked people. As realization hit her, her eyes widened and she smiled. “Am I being punk’d?” She looked around with haste. “Am I gonna be on tv?” She fixed her hair and placed her hands on her hips, oblivious to the shock on Glenn, Daryl and Sasha’s face.

Daryl started his bike again. This woman was crazy, why the hell did they have to stay there and listen to her nonsense?

Something moving on the other side of the woods caught his attention. As a walker stumbled from the outskirts of the forest and into the road, Daryl aimed his crossbow at it.

“Oh my God!” Nicky was astonished. “You even brought a real looking zombie!” She started to laugh. The dead man shuffled towards her, arms outstretched and teeth showing. “You guys are so good…” She kept on laughing as the walker grabbed one of her jacket sleeves.

A bolt pierced its head. Blood splattered and hit Nicky’s face. The corpse fell to the ground and Nicole was no longer laughing, her eyes widened at the man on the ground, hands shaking and the foul taste on her mouth predicting that all her stomach’s content would soon be on the ground.

Sasha got out of the car, cautiously observing the girl as she threw up. She hadn’t seen anyone act like that since the beginning of the outbreak and without really knowing why she felt the need to help her.

Nicole wiped her mouth. That was real blood, and Daryl had really killed him. She studied the dead man next to her. A real zombie, living dead or, as they called it in the tv show, a real walker.

“I’m sorry about this,” Nicole spoke once she regained her composure. “This is all very confusing.” Her weak smile was directed to Sasha, who seemed the most worried out of the three. “I’ve just been in a car accident and I don’t really know where I am.”

“Are you hurt?” It was Glenn’s turn to speak. Besides the possibility of being crazy, she looked harmless. And unarmed.

“I don’t know.” Nicole rested her hand on her head. Her headache only kept getting worse. “I think I hurt my head.”

“Are you alone?” Sasha asked.

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know exactly how I got here, though.”

“Do you know your name?” Glenn asked.

Nicole smile. “I’m Nicole, but everybody calls me Nicky.”

“I’m Glenn.” He smiled back. “This is Sasha and Daryl.”

Nicole nodded. It was really them, not just some incredibly accurate look-alikes. “Just to make sure” she swallowed hard, before daring to ask the question. “Are we in Georgia?”

Sasha and Glenn nodded.