Derek

When I opened my eyes everything hurt. I drug myself out of bed to my full length mirror in the corner, and I gasped. My skin had acquired a pale blue tint, and my wounds were closed but puckered, and still had blood on them from the night before. My bouncy chocolate brown curls had been reduced to limp tendrils. I was a zombie. I pressed my fingers against the mirror, in disbelief, and found that the mirror was not cold. No...that's not right. It's not that the mirror wasn't cold, it's that I wasn't warm. I was the same temperature as the mirror.

There was a knock on the door to my room. A normal looking teenage boy walked in, his right leg limping behind his left one. Well, he was normal looking except for the torn clothes and slightly gray-blue complexion."So...you're the newlydead?" he asked, looking me in the eye. His tawny brown eyes lacked the milky glaze that the girl's had had the night before. "The what?" I said, answering his question with a question. "Never mind. What's your name, kid?" I shot him a look. "Emmaline Dobbs. I'm also fifteen years old, so don't call me kid." I replied.

He seemed to be amused with my answer, and a twinkle emerged in his dead eyes. "You're a sassy one. I'm Derek. No last name needed," he said to me with a smirk. He had an air of arrogance about him, and I couldn't tell whether that was a good or bad thing yet. "So, why are you here, Derek? Are you my zombie spirit guide or something?" I asked sarcastically. He scoffs at me. "Not the word I would use," he says, "but in a sense, yes." 

I wonder if he is kidding, but he seems to be serious. "I'm supposed to take you back to the the clan when night falls, to see if you're," he searches for the right word, "valuable." Valuable? Are they going to sell me as a zombie slave? Donate my organs to science? Derek notices my discomfort, and says, "To the cause. To find a cure for vivere mortus, or "living dead."