...“Oh. You’re a…zombie.”

Peter Reese sighed and tried to look anywhere but at the gaping, shocked man in front of him. So far it looked like his meeting with the guy he knew only as “Shane1990” wasn’t going to go well. “We prefer Arisen, actually. Or life-impaired, if you want to be all politically correct.” Anything was better than “zombie.”

Shane1990 had the good grace to look embarrassed. A flush spread across his high cheekbones. He pushed a stray lock of wavy, dark hair behind his ear. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just…well, you never mentioned you were Arisen.”

“I know.” Peter shrugged. Most of the blame for this whole mess could be placed squarely on his shoulders for that particular omission. “There’s so much prejudice and misunderstanding out there. I got tired of being blown off before the guy bothered to get to know me. I thought maybe if I kept this one thing to myself, people might get to know me as a person before they judged me.”

“Oh. Wow.” The other man grimaced. “I’ve always thought I was an open-minded guy, but I guess I’m as judgmental as the rest. Worse, because I tell myself I’m not.”

Another twinge of guilt hit Peter. Dating was difficult for people like him. Was that a good enough excuse for resorting to half-truths and omissions? This was his third experiment in meeting someone using a blind date website, without revealing his reanimated status. The third time was supposed to be the charm, wasn’t it? Apparently old sayings didn’t hold true in real life, because all three of his attempts had ended badly.

The last time he’d tried meeting someone without telling them the whole truth, the man had gotten angry and stormed off, after yelling a few well-chosen slurs. The time before that, Peter’s “date” had grabbed a nearby barstool and tried to crack him over the head with it. If the bartender hadn’t intervened he might be dead all over again. Maybe that should have been a hint of how stupid his plan was.

The handsome young man he was supposed to be meeting tonight seemed upset, too, but more at himself than Peter.

He wasn’t the one who should feel bad. Peter had misled him on purpose, after all. “I don’t blame you. Most of us don’t. We’re different, and we get that.” He paused and offered Shane1990 a rueful smile.

Things had come a long way in the eight years since December 21, 2012—the date the first dead had Arisen. Ordinary people thought the zombie apocalypse all those horror movies had warned them of was upon them. The first cases had been greeted with hysteria. Mobs of people had attacked the awakened dead with whatever was available, and they’d been shot on sight if they managed to escape. Some had been captured by governments and experimented on.

After the initial carnage and terror ended, people realized the “zombies” they were killing weren’t anything like those from horror movies, games, and comics. They didn’t eat brains, or try to attack people, with the exception of a few who went insane from the trauma of their return or had been evil when they were alive. In fact, the newly returned dead were almost the same as they had been in life. Sure, their body temperatures were lower. They ate a lot more rare red meat, and a lot of candy and other sweets (because it apparently took a lot of energy to reanimate a dead body and keep it going), and they moved a bit more slowly, but other than that they weren’t much different than anybody else. Except for the ones who had been autopsied or embalmed. Those poor creatures were never the same, if they managed to survive.

Progress had definitely been made since the first, dark days. The Arisen referred to the first months of horror and murder as The Apocalypse, and the few of Peter’s kind who had survived the massacre preferred not to speak of their experiences. Peter himself hadn’t become life-impaired until two years ago. Times were better now, with laws protecting the dead from being embalmed or autopsied before they could be tested for the virus that was believed to cause reanimation, but a lot of prejudice and fear still existed. Peter’s ex-boyfriend had driven that point home by dumping him the day after he reanimated, saying he would never let a zombie touch him.