Shambling With The Stars

by Jesse Petersen

  “Now!” Kyle whispered and grabbed for Avery’s hand to drag her into the hall.

  He hauled her away from the studio where Reece was pushing the once-famous zombies back onto set.

  “I wonder if people are still calling in?” Avery muttered to herself.

  Kyle shot her a look. “Focus, girl. No losing your mind yet. Not until you’re on your own time.”

  They scurried along the wall at a brisk pace until Kyle finally drew up short. Avery stared at him. “What? Why are we stopping?”

  He smiled and pointed to the heavy, industrial fire extinguisher that was hanging on the wall in a glass container. “Weapon.”

  He turned his elbow and smashed the glass. At the same moment, the zombies Reece had been herding let out a collective moan. Avery turned back. They were shambling forward again, Reece at the forefront (and no longer in control of himself thanks to the virus). Shambling toward Kyle and her.

  “Shit!” she squealed as Kyle reached into the opening he’d created and grabbed for the fire extinguisher. “Go!”

  They ran through the hallways, twisting and turning toward the staircase that would lead to the lobby of the building and, hopefully, freedom, though Avery wasn’t really banking on safety. After all, someone had turned Blake before their broadcast and that someone probably hadn’t stopped with him. And considering all the bodies that were lying mangled in the hallway (all of them of people Avery knew, had worked with for years, and some she’d even liked), every step seemed to scream out “end of the world.”

  They reached the stairwell and Kyle hit the door with all his might and held it open. Avery rushed past him, catching a brief glimpse of the mob of zombies that were now just feet behind them. Kyle slammed the door shut as they started down the staircase.

  “Were they running?” he panted. “I thought they didn’t run.”

  “In Romero movies they don’t run, but other movies they do,” Avery reminded him as they all but squealed around the next corner. Above them, Avery heard the door open and suddenly a body flew down the opening in the middle of the stairwell, growling and clawing at them as it flew by.

  Avery screamed and looked up. The other zombies hadn’t followed suit and were now crowding at the stairs, tumbling down the first flight, and then dragging themselves up and fallig down the second.

  “Shit, they’re going to catch us,” Avery said and shoved at Kyle. “Hurry!”

  With the sound of zombies piling up behind them, they ran down the remaining two flights of stairs and burst out into the lobby. Avery stopped short as she looked around. There had been a bloodbath here. It was streaked across the marble floor, mixed with pools of thick, black sludge. The guard station, which was normally manned by two big, burly men (Hank and Frank, though Avery never remembered which was which), was now empty.

  Behind her, the zombies moaned again and Avery ran forward to press the button that opened the security-locked front door. She looked around frantically, but before she could find it on the complicated switchboard, Kyle yelled.

  She looked up and the zombies in the stairwell had made it into the lobby. Most had broken limbs from their descent, but that didn’t seem to stop them, or even slow them down. Kyle swung his fire extinguisher wildly, smashing a few heads as he backed away from the reaching mob of dirty fingers and clawing nails.

  Avery couldn’t find the button to open the front doors, but she did see something that both excited and disturbed her. Though the security guards didn’t normally have them out, they had shotguns stored nearby, just in case a crazy stalker managed to get onto the studio lot.

  And one of them was sitting on the desk, covered in blood.

  Avery swept it up and a box of shells that was next to the equally bloody phone and popped a couple of shells into the chamber. She fired off the first shot and dropped the zombie closest to Kyle. Her friend swiveled his head to stare at her with wide eyes. When he saw the shotgun, he grinned. Then he turned his attention back to the zombies. Now that he had some space, he stopped swinging the heavy metal extinguisher and instead started firing it.

  Liquid nitrogen sprayed from the nozzle and hit the closest couple of zombies moving toward Kyle. They sort of screech-squealed like injured puppies and arched back from the ultracold chemical spray. Avery took the opportunity to fire on them with the shotgun as they were distracted by the extinguisher.

  She moved around the desk toward the stairwell exit, shooting the zombies as they shambled out in chaotic little pods of two or three. She stepped over her kills until she reached the door and fired into the gathered group at the bottom of the stairs. Once there was a bit of space, she slammed the exit door.

  “Kyle, get something to block this!” she cried as she leaned back against the door with all her weight. She could feel the zombies pushing from the other side, though they hadn’t figured out the handle mechanism yet. Eventually, though, one of them would hit it just right and they would be screwed.

  With the zombies in the lobby dead, Kyle set his extinguisher down and ran over to one of the very modern, chichi black leather couches in the lobby. He dragged it across the marble with a screech and shoved it against the door until it was blocked.

  For a moment, the lobby was quiet except for the dull moans and thumps coming from the zombies trapped in the stairwell behind the couch. Avery stared at Kyle.

  “You okay?”

  “Having a small cardiac issue,” he panted. “But okay. Not bitten or scrched. You?”

  “Good.” She lifted the shotgun. “Happy to have found this.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’m not even sure I’d know how to load it.”

  “Please,” Avery laughed. “I grew up in Idaho. Stick with me, kid.”

  Kyle grinned, but the smile fell as he looked over his shoulder at the door. It was rattling as the zombies slammed against it. “That’s not going to hold for long.”

  Avery nodded. “Yeah. So I guess we have no choice but to go out…there.”

  They both looked out the long bank of glass doors and windows that faced out into the street. Already smoke curled down the avenue and there was blood on the sidewalk. Clearly, the infection hadn’t hit just their studio. It was full-on in L.A.

  “I guess not.” Kyle sighed as he snatched up the fire extinguisher and moved to the desk where he easily found the door button Avery hadn’t been able to see. “Lead the way, boss lady.”

  “God, I hate this town,” Avery muttered, and then she cocked the shotgun and moved out into the streets.

  Meet the Author

  A Facebook application once told Jesse Petersen that she’d only survive a day in a zombie outbreak, but she doesn't believe that. For one, she’s a good shot, and two, she has an aversion to bodily fluids, so she’d never go digging around in zombie goo. Until the zombie apocalypse, she lives in the Midwest with her husband and two cats. Find out more about the author at www.jessepetersen.net.

  Author Jesse Petersen. Photo by Imaginate Photography.

  Also by Jesse Petersen

  LIVING WITH THE DEAD

  Married with Zombies

  Flip this Zombie

  Eat Slay Love

  If you enjoyed SHAMBLING WITH THE STARS,

  look out for

  MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES

  Book 1 of the Living with the Dead series

  by Jesse Petersen

  Chapter 1

  The Couple Who Slays Together…

  David and I became warriors in the zombie plague on the first day, but don’t think that means we were front linoldiers or something. In truth we stumbled into the zombie battle because it was a means for pure, physical survival.

  But I never would have guessed that unlike therapy, unlike the self-help books that littered our apartment at the time, killing zombies would save my relationship.

  But let me back up. It all started on August 10, 2010. Wednesday was couples therapy day. It had been for six months, although I was beginning to think that all this talking
and sharing and role-playing that our therapist Dr. Kelly preached was nothing but a bunch of bullshit.

  Despite her advice, despite all our visits to her office, David and I were on the brink. I had even researched divorce lawyers in our area on the Internet. The thing was, when I put “divorce lawyer” into the search engine on our shared computer… well, let’s just say that I didn’t have to type the whole phrase before it popped up in the system memory as something that had been searched for before.

  So by the time we were driving down I-5 South into the heart of downtown Seattle toward Dr. Erica Kelly’s tidy, sterile little office, I was just going through the motions of therapy and making a mental list of all the things I didn’t like anymore about my husband.

  The item I added to my list on August 10th was the CDs. You see, we share the car and the deal we’d struck was that since six CDs can fit into the changer, I could pick three and he could pick three. But as I cycled through the changer, keeping one eye on the road ahead of me, I realized that every CD was his.

  Every. Fucking. CD.

  That probably seems like a little thing, and in retrospect it was. But I guess that just goes to show you how far off the track we’d gotten.

  I switched the stereo off with a flick of my wrist and glared at David from the corner of my eye. As usual, he was so wrapped up in one of those handheld games he loved that he didn’t even notice my annoyance. Or maybe he was so used to it, he didn’t care anymore. Either way, it sucked.

  “Traffic seems pretty light,” he said without looking up.

  I glided onto the off-ramp and looked around. As much as I hated to admit it at that point, he was right. We’d lived in Seattle since our marriage five years ago and traffic was one of the main things that drove me nuts about the city. At any time of day or night there seemed to be thousands of cars crowding the highways. Sometimes I wondered where the hell they all came from.

  But today, at four-thirty in the afternoon, when there should have been bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks honking their horns and blocking the street, instead there were no more than a handful of vehicles around.

  I shrugged as I stopped at the red at the bottom of the ramp and checked to my left before I started to roll out into the intersection to make a right. Just as I touched the gas, an ambulance screamed by. I slammed on the brake with a gasp and barely avoided getting t-boned, first by the veering ambulance and then by the five police cars that raced behind it.

  “Shit, Sarah,” David barked, bracing himself on the dash of the car as he glared at me. His seatbelt strained against his shoulder. “Watch yourself.”

  “You know, if you’re going to drive, maybe you should sit in my seat,” I snapped, though I couldn’t really blame him for being freaked out. I don’t think I’d ever come so close to having a major accident and my heart was pounding. Without saying another word, I waited for the green before I double-checked for cars and made my turn.

  Within a few blocks we pulled into the parking garage at the downtown office building we had been going to once a week since February. I sighed as I slid up to the guard box to check in and get our parking pass. But as I came to a stop, I realized that Mack, the usual security guy who greeted us every week, wasn’t at his station.

  You may think it’s weird that I remembered his name, but I have a reason. You see, every time he checked us in, he asked who we were seeing, and when we said Dr. Kelly he gave us the look. The pity look. It stands out in your mind when a perfect stranger is giving you a “your relationship is doomed, how sad” face once a week.

  When there wasn’t the usual banter with the security guard, David looked up. “Not there, huh? Weird.”

  I glanced at him quickly then back to the empty box. “He must be around here somewhere. His TV is on, I can see the light of it flickering below the window line.”

  “Maybe he just went to take a leak or something,” David said with a shrug. “Look, let’s just park. We’ll only be here a bit over an hour. If we have a ticket on the car when we come out, we’ll go talk to him about it. He’ll remember us. I’m sure we can work it out.”

  I stared again at the empty booth and gave a shiver. It just seemed so weird that after twenty-four visits with the same routine, today was suddenly different.

  “You’re right,” I said as I put the car in gear and inched into the garage.

  David let out a snort as he pocketed his game system in his hoodie and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Wow, I hardly ever hear that.”

  I swung the car into a space close to the elevator bank and slammed on the brake, purposefully making David catch himself on the dash a second time.

  “Nice,” he muttered with a glare in my direction as he got out.

  So what I did wasn’t subtle, but I couldn’t help but smile as I followed him across the quiet parking complex to the elevator. It took a minute for the elevator to come and since we apparently had nothing to say to each other, we just stood there with the sounds of the streets outside the garage echoing around us as the only accompaniment to our dysfunction.

  There were cars honking, sirens wailing, even the drone of a helicopter as it swooped in low overhead. I hardly noticed any of them. Now I kinda wish I had, though I don’t know if I ever could have put two and two together at that moment. At that moment, it was just city noise, only magnified to the nth degree.

  Once the elevator finally came, we rode up in silence, not even standing close to each other until the car dinged and came to a stop at the fourteenth floor of the complex. This ritual was so commonplace to us by now that neither of us needed to even look where we were going to find Dr. Kelly’s office.

  DR. ERICA KELLY, MS PSYCHOTHERAPY, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY COUNSELING.

  I hated how the little letters etched on her door were so even. I can’t even draw a straight line. The letterswere a damned judgment.

  The office was quiet as we stepped inside. Dr. Kelly had once rambled on and on about creating a calming “Zen” environment. I had only just kept myself from asking her if she wanted “Zen,” why did she pipe in muzak versions of Nirvana songs that made my music-loving heart stop and my stomach turn every time? Today, though, the muzak wasn’t a good band. I think it was Miley Cyrus, which was probably worse.

  I turned toward the sliding glass area where Dr. Kelly’s receptionist, Candy, generally sat. But, just like in the garage, the enclosed area was empty, though her little rolling chair had a pink sweater draped across the back of it and a half-drunk bottle of Diet Coke sat on the table top.

  “Hey, Candy?” I called into the back office area as Dave flopped into a cushioned chair. “You here?”

  There was no answer, so I signed the sheet that sat on the counter. It had a smiley face in the corner and Dr. Kelly’s name and credentials in pretty lettering across the top. I wondered if they’d notice if I drew devil’s horns on smiley? If Candy did, I guessed I’d have to explain myself to Dr. Kelly. I wasn’t really in the mood to discuss which of my feelings had inspired me to be so naughty, so I fought the urge and set the pen down.

  With a sigh, I took a place next to Dave. The couch was uncomfortable.

  “What is up with everyone today?” I asked as I grabbed for a Cosmo magazine with the article title, “Please Your Man — In Bed and Out!” emblazoned across it. I didn’t flip to it, but went straight for the horoscopes in the back.

  “Just chill, Sarah,” Dave said as he pulled his game out of his pocket. It lit up as he opened the case. “I’m sure she’ll be back in a second.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said as I looked at the empty vestibule a second time.

  “So were the Wonderful Wilsons signed in?” Dave asked in a sing-song voice.

  I let out an involuntary groan. The Wilsons. They were the couple who had the appointment right before ours. God knew why, seriously. They totally held hands on the way out, making little coo noises at each other. It was borderline disgusting.

  Once I’d asked Dr. Kelly why the fuck they came to
therapy and she had tilted her head in that “how-do-you-feel-about-it-Sarah” fashion that made her perfect blond hair swing prettily around her heart-shaped face. Her smile was so calm it kind of made me want to punch her. Hard. Twice.

  Then she said, “They come here for maintenance. Don’t worry, Sarah, we’ll get you and David there.”

  Maintenance. Like we were a car. Oh yeah, except that since I was spending a hundred and fifty dollars a week on a therapist, I couldn’t afford the maintenance for my car and now it made this weird clunk sound whenever I turned left.

  I glared at the clock. It was almost five now and Candy still wasn’t at her desk.

  “Do you think Candy Cane quit?” I asked in a hushed tone.

  Dave laughed without looking up. I mean, really, who named their kid Candy and didn’t expect people to crack that joke? I think it was her whole name, too, not short for Candace or anythingheronable like that.

  “Okay, it’s after five,” I said as I watched the minute hand slip past the twelve.

  “One minute.” He looked up briefly. “Maybe the Wonderful Wilsons actually had a problem to discuss today. Do you really want to derail their perfect existence?”

  “Their problem is that stick up their asses,” I said as I tossed the magazine aside and got to my feet. “And now it’s two minutes, Dave. Didn’t Dr. Kelly lecture us about punctuality and how it equates to respect?”

  “God, you are obsessive,” he said as he snapped the game system shut and pocketed it. “Do you want to barge in there and demand two minutes’ worth of cash from the woman?”

  I stared at him, looking up at me from his slouched position on the couch. Sometimes I caught myself and remembered why I had liked him when I met him. Even now he looked… bad. You know, in a good way. Just a little tousled, just a little imperfect. Sort of sexy.