Love, Lust, and Zombies

by Mitzi Szereto

  “Cold…” I said, not sure why, maybe just to fill the silent air and cut the awkward tension.

  “Warm,” she said, pulling her hands around me, her face looming toward me.

  After all, it had been a year, for both of us.

  She pushed me to the bed and I grabbed her by the arms, pulling her to me. She sat on my torso, writhing against me. I was hard, but she was starting to turn me off. I flipped her onto the bed, facedown, and tore the remaining clothes from her. I wish I’d turned the lights off first. Zombie parts are revolting at the best of times. I rubbed against her for a bit, trying to resurrect my own dead organs.

  “Do you have a condom?” she asked.

  “A what? Why would we need one of those?” Surely zombies can’t get pregnant.

  “For STDs!”

  She might be dead but her meticulous sense of health had clearly gone nowhere. I flipped through a few jeans pockets, searched the contents of my wallet, opened drawer after drawer after drawer; no luck.

  “I can’t find one!” I said, hand on penis, trying to keep some inkling of the love going. “But look, I can assure you, I haven’t been with anyone since you, well, since you, um—”

  “I get it, okay, fine. This one time! But next time, use a condom!”

  I was really hoping there wouldn’t be much need for a next time.

  I knelt behind her, one hand on her moist back, the other gripping her bloated bum. It was time. Mr. Johnson, as I like to call him, was back in business. I pressed myself closer to her; she whimpered a little; I shuddered. My premonition from before was correct: she was oh-so-cold. I closed my eyes and let the rhythm take over, trying to block out the odd gurgle that mixed with her moans of pleasure.

  Smoke filled the room as we shared a cigarette afterward. Sweat dripped from my body and my head felt like a lead balloon. Daisy was grinning, twirling a finger around my hair, lacing my chest when she wasn’t smoking.

  I felt weird. Relieved, but weird. I tried not to look at her directly, preferring the vision from my periphery, as though I could see what was meant to be rather than what was. We didn’t say much, just lay there in the smoke and thought of each other; at least I thought of us. I thought of what a life with a zombie would be like, if I could really go in for the long haul. People were supportive, sure, but there were so many more questions to be asked. Do they age? Will I be eighty and old and wrinkly while she’s young and— Actually, that might not be so bad. But what if they age super-fast, their bodies unable to stay sinewed together until they deform into a floating head in a jar of pickled water? That’s not the kind of life I want.

  After a while we both got up. I showered and pulled on a robe. She toyed with her wig some more, easing out the knots. The moon hung in the sky and the clock ticked on, counting down till tomorrow. I got into the bed and pulled the cover up over myself. She watched me again and I patted the side of the bed. She moseyed over, easing herself in and snuggling up to me.

  With her head on my chest and smoke in my head, I smiled.

  “So, how’s life with the living?”

  Same old Daisy.

  STILL

  Delilah Devlin

  Over the long days since his infection, I noted how the mindless screams lessened in their intensity. He ceased slamming his fists and head against the walls and glass until they were bloody. His features, though coarser than they’d been before, and gray tinged, were no longer frightening. Bruising faded. Split lips and cheekbones healed.

  The clumsy jerking motions he made as he moved around the space where we’d trapped him eased into something less inhuman. Still unsteady on his feet, he used his hands to push off the walls or press against the ceiling to keep the wavering from sending him to his knees.

  Physically, he was improving. I recognized him now beneath the dirty clothes and scruffy beard. But his eyes still betrayed his savage soul. They gleamed red. The darkening of his blue irises had been the first sign the disease had struck my lover.

  I’d defied the law, refusing to report him or quarantine myself, and instead, had locked him in the garage studio he’d built when he’d been an aspiring musician, but which now served as his prison cell.

  I’d watched the news as the disease continued to spread. The virus, which caused an unending hunger for red meat, turned average citizens into mindless murderers. At first, the sick had been quarantined in hospitals, and then prisons. Now they were loaded onto train boxcars and sent to internment camps, or so the government said, until a cure could be found.

  But rumors had started almost immediately that everyone who boarded those trains was destined to be “put down”—a humane solution, which protected the rest of the population. But still, the disease ran rampant.

  Businesses operated, but only because people needed basic commodities and the money to buy them. But there were curfews, and a military presence on every street corner.

  Hiding Danny had proven tricky. The need to purchase large quantities of fresh meat meant I spent a good part of the daylight traveling to grocers in other counties so that my buying habits weren’t noted. I couldn’t risk having my home raided and losing Danny.

  I’d do anything to protect him from extermination. No one knew whether the illness was reversible, but I was willing to wait and hoped the signs of improvement that I noted every day in my journal weren’t just my wishful thinking.

  Today, his gaze followed me through the thick Plexiglas without blinking. The raw, intense hunger was tinged with something else. Regret perhaps? Was he remembering us?

  As I did every day, I unlocked the door to the studio and carried in a fresh set of comfortable clothing, a towel and washcloth, soap, and a tall pitcher of warm water.

  Unlike days past, he didn’t rush toward me only to be jerked back when he reached the end of his chain.

  I slid everything as close as I dared, and then backed away from the door, all the while holding his smoldering gaze. “Please bathe, Danny. I’ll bring you food in a little while.” I reached the door and turned the knob behind me. “I love you.”

  My life was reduced to this. Foraging for food. Cleaning the perimeter of the dirty enclosure where I kept him. He’d helped prepare his own prison, installing a toilet where the old mudroom sink had hung on the wall before he’d converted the space. Welding chain to a manacle, and testing the length to ensure my safety when I entered. He’d removed his equipment and instruments. Placed a sturdy metal cot in the corner.

  The morning he’d woken, feeling as though he had the worst hangover ever and rushing to the fridge for the hamburger I’d thawed the night before, he’d recognized the signs.

  I’d awoken with him standing in the doorway, his eyes haunted.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d asked.

  He’d given me a tight smile, but then I’d noted the deep gray shadows beneath his eyes, the slick of perspiration on his forehead. The red irises. “Danny?” I asked, sitting up on my elbows as my stomach tightened in rejection.

  No, it can’t be happening. Not to us. We’d done everything right. We’d stayed clear of quarantined areas. Used our own vehicles rather than public transportation to get back and forth to work. Never drank after another. Didn’t eat out in restaurants where we couldn’t watch the cutlery and plates being sterilized. Didn’t kiss.

  The disease was passed in saliva.

  “How?” I’d asked, my throat thickening with tears.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, baby. But I have to go. I’ll walk to the center. Turn myself in. I won’t tell them where I live, but you’ll need to sanitize when I’m gone.”

  “You aren’t going there.”

  His smile had stretched, although his eyes watered with unshed tears. “I don’t have any choice. I’m already scared to death I may have infected you.”

  I shook my head, the back of my throat burning. “You know what they say about those places. I won’t ever see you again.”

  He spread his hands and gripped the d
oor frame. His head bowed. “I love you, Terry.” Then he backed away from the door.

  “No! We’ll find another way. Wait this out. They’ll find a treatment.”

  But he walked away, down the hallway toward the front door.

  I’d scrambled from the bed and followed. Before he reached the door, I encircled his waist with my arms and held him back. “Don’t do this. Stay with me. We’ll find a way to keep me safe. You still have a little time.”

  While he’d finished the raw hamburger and I’d drunk a pot of hot coffee, we’d conspired. By the end of the day, I’d hit the hardware store two counties over, and he’d cleared his beloved studio.

  That hug at the doorway was the last time I’d touched him.

  I locked the door and walked around to the glass. The pile was where I’d left it, and my gaze shot to Danny. He hadn’t torn the clothing to shreds as he had every day since the illness had taken his mind.

  Instead as I watched, my eyes filling, he hobbled toward the clothing and soap. He shucked the grimy, blood-encrusted sweatpants he’d worn since he’d slipped the manacle around his own wrist. He bent and picked up the washcloth and clumsily soaked it in the water, rubbed it on the soap and began to wash.

  The fact he could think through the process of cleaning himself made me sob.

  The sound must have penetrated the glass because his dark gaze found mine. His features were still cast in a dull, emotionless mask, but his red eyes told another story. He was there. A glimmer of my lover was fighting to come back.

  I smiled at him, dashing away my tears, and walked toward the glass to press my splayed fingers there. “I’ll wait,” I said. “I’m still here. I won’t give up.”

  This day, I was followed home. Although I’d been careful to hit a new store and to wind my way home keeping to back roads, I spotted the nondescript car parked in a distant neighbor’s driveway where a car shouldn’t be. My neighbor had been taken away weeks ago.

  I left the meat in the trunk, not wanting to unpack until it was dark in case I was being watched. Maybe I was paranoid, but the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

  Pretending unconcern, I stopped to check the mail in the box beside my door and took my time unlocking the front door. I betrayed nothing furtive—not a glance over my shoulder or a deepening breath. Once inside, I stood beside my living room window and lifted a slat in my blinds to take a look.

  The driver’s-side door opened. A tall man in familiar dark cargo pants and a long-sleeved black shirt, an enforcer, stepped out, his gaze on my house.

  My heartbeat thundered against my chest. I backed away from the window. I picked up a remote and turned on the stereo, upping the volume. Should he knock at my door, I’d pretend I hadn’t heard.

  I raced to the garage.

  The moment I entered and turned on the overhead light, my gaze found Danny’s staring back at me.

  He sat on his cot. An astounding fact since he’d overturned it and flung it against the wall the first day I’d refused to free him. It had stayed in a far corner ever since, forgotten.

  He looked better. His hair was clean. His body free of grime and gore. He’d piled his dirty clothing and the linens he’d used to bathe himself in the same spot where I’d left the clean stack. They were folded haphazardly, but the effort he’d made was apparent. He really was becoming more organized in his thoughts.

  I pressed my hand against the window, and then lowered my forehead to press against the cool glass. “We’ve run out of time.”

  Shuffling footsteps drew near. Although my head was lowered, I caught the movement of his hand. I glanced up to find him pressing his splayed fingers over the spot where mine was pressed—only the Plexiglas between us.

  “Waaaa,” he said, his lips twisting then firming as he pressed them closed.

  Was he trying to speak? “What’s wrong?” I guessed.

  He gave a harsh nod.

  There wasn’t time to rejoice at the fact he was communicating. “Someone’s here. An enforcer. I’m afraid he knows.”

  His eyes closed for a moment, and then opened. Regret shone in his gleaming eyes. “Tiiime.”

  “We’re out of time.” I nodded. “We came so close.” My voice wavered at the end, edged with a shaky sob.

  He shook his head and raised the manacled arm. “Tiiime.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not ready.”

  “Nnnnow.”

  My mind raced. He was speaking—after a fashion. His emotions weren’t wild and raw.

  What other choice did I have but to free him? If the enforcer saw him like he was now, he’d call in an extraction team. Danny would be gone, and I’d be jailed for failing to report.

  “I’m afraid,” I said, meeting his gaze. Afraid to free him. Afraid that if I didn’t, he’d be killed.

  His head bent, forehead touching the glass. “I… sssstill.”

  What did he mean? That he’d hold still? Or that he was still my Danny?

  The doorbell rang in the distance. I was out of time.

  I scurried to the studio door, unlocked it, pulled the key from my pocket and held it up.

  Danny slowly raised the manacled arm and stepped closer. He’d either lunge for me and take a bite, or…

  He held still.

  I unlocked his cuff then took a deep breath and turned slowly on my heel. My shoulders tight, I walked away, aware of the shuffling steps following behind me.

  I walked into the short corridor, through the kitchen, where I grabbed sunglasses from the purse on the counter, and a beer from the fridge, which I opened and poured into a towel and then used to blot Danny’s face.

  He grimaced, but didn’t move. Not even when I placed the sunglasses on his head.

  I grabbed his hand and led him to the living room, shoving him gently into an armchair. I put the beer bottle in his hand, and leaned close...I whispered, tuning off the stereo and hurrying to the door.

  The moment I unlocked the door, the man in the black uniform shoved past me.

  “Excuse me?” I said, stepping into his path and lifting my chin.

  “Step aside, ma’am. I’m with enforcement.”

  I didn’t like the coldness in his features, the flinty eyes.

  “Leave herrr beee.”

  I held my breath as the enforcer’s gaze shot past me.

  His eyes narrowed. “Sir, would you please stand up?”

  Danny set his beer beside his chair, then slowly pushed off the seat. He was taller than the enforcer, and swayed only slightly.

  “Hell of headache,” Danny said slowly.

  “He has a hangover,” I said. “Try not to speak too loudly. He gets pissy when he’s drunk.”

  The man walked closer, his gaze locking on the sunglasses. His nostrils flaring as he sniffed.

  But he could only smell soap and beer. I knew because I sniffed too.

  Danny’s lax expression hardened. His mouth lifted in a onesided snarl.

  “Seriously, you’re welcome to look around,” I blurted, getting more nervous by the second, “but it’s just us.”

  The enforcer glanced at me, and then back at Danny who stood so still I couldn’t detect a breath. “Be sure to keep your doors locked. This whole area is red-zoned.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” I murmured, quivering with relief as he turned and stomped toward the front door.

  I shot Danny a charged glance before following the enforcer to the door. I turned the bolt, then slowly faced Danny, unsure of what I’d unleashed.

  I pulled up sharp when I realized he’d moved closer. His hand reached out, touched my shoulder then my hair.

  “The glasses, Danny,” I said, my teeth chattering. I needed to see his eyes, be reassured the savage gleam wasn’t darkening again.

  His head dipped.

  Reaching up slowly, I took off the glasses, and let them fall to the floor beside me. I hadn’t stood this close to him in forever, so close the air warmed between our bodies.

  His finge
rs clenched around my shoulder, a little too hard. I winced. “That hurts, Danny.”

  His features hardened. “Lllock meee.” Shuffling backward, he turned, swaying so hard he nearly fell. He strode toward the kitchen.

  I followed him into the garage where he walked to the studio door. His hand pawed at the knob, but couldn’t quite grasp it.

  Sensing his growing frustration, and fearing it would escalate to anger, I patted his arm. “Let me,” I said, doing my best not to show my trepidation as I stepped between him and the door and twisted the knob.

  Once inside, he held himself erect as I returned the manacle to his wrist. “I’ll bring you food.”

  Two more days passed. I skipped work, calling to reassure them I was fine. I didn’t want another visit from enforcement.

  I hadn’t slept well the night before. Had avoided Danny’s cage, feeding him, but then claiming fatigue so I could leave quickly.

  Watching him, not being able to touch him without fear, was taking a toll. I missed him. And the more his appearance returned to normal, the more I fought my desire to draw closer. But I couldn’t be sure I was safe. His hair was shaggy, and I longed to comb it, but just because he’d somehow restrained himself enough to behave when the enforcer had threatened our safety didn’t mean he was fully in control.

  I watched him feed, with his hands, his teeth tearing through the meat like an animal. His hunger still drove him. He might still be infectious. If I wasn’t well and able to care for him, what would happen to us both?

  So I’d stayed away, keeping to my bed, where memories of us lingered. His scent was still on the comforter, and I’d balled it into my arms, wrapped a thigh over the bundle and pretended I slept beside him, until my dreams had turned to carnal thoughts, and I’d rummaged through the bedside table for my vibrator.

  I was lonely and horny. Depression made me tired as well. The news offered little hope. I scoured the Internet for the whack-job sites, anyone who might offer me a glimmer of hope. Was I the only one who’d fought back? The only one willing to wait out the illness? Or was everyone afraid to admit they hid their loved ones for fear they’d be traced?