EAT SLAY LOVE

by Jesse Petersen

  “I dunno,” Dave said, completely oblivious to what I’d seen. “I guess it’s better than the yummy all-protein brains diet—”

  “Shhh,” I snapped, motioning toward the laundry room with my hand.

  He halted, set his bag down, and slowly lifted his shovel.

  There was a moment of eerie silence and then all hell broke loose. Four zombies, what appeared to be a family of them, actually (aw, a mommy, a daddy and two adorable little monster children… the new American family, ladies and gentlemen), tore into the kitchen from the laundry room.

  And they were not looking for diet bars.

  Happiness is not an accident. Neither is a zombie apocalypse.

  It wasn’t often that I was surprised anymore. The shock value of the apocalypse had been played out at least a couple of months ago and most of the time my reaction to a zombie, even a zombie horde was…“Crap, here we go again.”

  But I don’t know… this morning I was tired and worried about the whole Nicole thing (which I realize I hadn’t addressed yet, but I was getting there! Hello? Zombies!! Stop pressuring me). I guess my reflexes were a little off from the last couple of days because I bit back a scream, a real actual scream, and staggered away from the family of zombies with my boot-clad feet tangling with each clumsy step.

  The lead zombie, who looked like circa-1950s Housewife Zombie—since she was wearing what appeared to be what my grandma had always called a housecoat and still had a couple of curlers tangled in her otherwise ragged and thinning hair—swung at me with a dead, looping hand.

  I fired off a shot but she caught the barrel of my gun with the flat of her palm and the bullet went wild. It tore through her shoulder instead of her forehead and blew a quarter-sized hole in her rotting flesh. She merely whined as she looked at the injury and kept coming in a quick set of plodding thuds.

  I scampered backward. She was just too close to really get off a decent second shot and there was too much chance at getting a slice from her dirty nails or a nip from her gnashing, black teeth. She hadn’t been flossing, that much was more than clear. Her dentist was going to be pissed.

  “Back up, back up, back up!” Dave yelped.

  I dove out of the way; as soon as I was clear, he swung the shovel. Unlike freaked-out me, he had good aim and connected solidly with Housewife’s gray face.

  Zombies are rotting. Have we mentioned this before? Yeah, I think we have and if you don’t know that already, than you’re not much of a zombie expert. But the point is that when you connect shovel to rotting flesh, the flesh never wins. This was no exception to that simple rule.

  Dave’s shovel sank about six inches into the woman’s skull like it was a hot knife in soft butter (mmm, butter). The impact sent a spray of brains, goo, and blood out from the wound to coat half his shovel and his clean T-shirt. See, this is why we couldn’t have nice things.

  The female zombie whimpered, crossed her eyes as she looked upward at the shovel now embedded in her skull, and then went limp. Because his weapon was sunk so deep, she didn’t disconnect from it, instead dangling from Dave’s shovel like a sad marionette whose strings had been cut.

  Dave pressed a boot into her chest and started the struggle to detach said shovel from said zombie head, but the rest of the family wasn’t going to wait for us to clear one zombie (zombies have no sense of honor in a fight).

  Daddy Dearest Zombie, dressed in what appeared to be the remnants if a very nice suit, was already heading our way, waving his floppy arms around in the air (like he just didn’t care and I guess he didn’t) with a series of guttural, throaty grunts and groans.

  I dove over the kitchen island for some semblance of protection and a vantage point to aim better. I positioned myself carefully, then fired off a shot. I hit Dad right between the eyes; he took one final step toward Dave, still struggling to detach from Housewife Zombie, before toppling forward. Luckily as he fell, his body hit his former wife’s (they were a cute couple, by the way, all matching dead skin and empty eyes) and his added weight helped Dave finally pull his shovel free.

  Dave staggered back as the shovel sprayed even more gunk all over the walls and refrigerator, but regained his footing almost immediately and took another swing, this time at the teen boy zombie who had piled himself up right behind his dad (what can I say, they don’t normally have much theory of positioning, which is a good thing—we’d seen some “bionic” zombies recently, and zombies with the ability to plan are not something you want to fuck with).

  You know, normally I’d feel badly about killing a kid, even though we had to do it from time to time and it wasn’t anything personal. But this kid had a Justin Bieber haircut, so I actually smiled as Dave thunked his shovel into the boy’s neck.

  The zombie kid made a garbled grunt, but kept coming despite the fact that his head was half severed from his body.

  “Shit,” Dave snapped as he shuffled out of the way of the boy zombie. “I hate when that happens.”

  I fired off another shot and hit Justin Bieber wannabe, dropping him in a pile where he stood. But as I turned the pistol on the final zombie, another boy, this one much younger, the gun only clicked.

  Empty.

  “God damn it!” I cried as I put the useless gun in my belt. “I’m out!”

  Dave shrugged. “That’s all right, I got it.”

  The little zombie boy was dressed in footy pajamas. At least they would have been footy pajamas if he still had both of his, er, footies. One of his feet was totally gone, gnawed off probably at the beginning of the outbreak and possibly by a member of his own family (I’m looking at you, Bieber Boy).

  The lack of appendage didn’t seem to bother the child, though (not that it ever does with zombies). He made pretty good time as he hobbled around the kitchen in a limping gate. He charged, head down like he was a bull in Spain, but Dave dodged pretty easily. The boy swung around and started forward again, so Dave lined himself up like he was batting for the Yankees. As the child got within his range, he swung the shovel.

  The force of the hit sent the kid flying. Like literally flying backward across the kitchen. He hit the fridge and the door popped open, dumping rotting meat and warm ketchup all over his small, broken body and sending a waft of disgusting odor to fill the air around us.

  “Ugh,” I said, lifting my arm to cover my nose. “Freaking people who don’t eat their perishables first!!”

  Dave stared at the carnage, though the smell seemed to bother him less. “Well, they got turned into zombies, so I guess that was their punishment for lack of planning.”

  We were both quiet for a moment, looking at the wreck that had once been the kitchen. Dave sighed as he wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his hand.

  “So, I’m hungry.”

  “What?” I motioned around us wildly. “After this, you’re hungry?”

  He arched a brow as he folded his arms and stared at me. “Aren’t you?”

  I was ready to deny it, but then my empty stomach let out a loud gurgle. Dave smiled a “Ha, told you so!” smile.

  “Fine,” I muttered.

  “Want to eat some of these diet bars?” he asked.

  I shuddered. “Is that really all there is?”

  He grinned and then grabbed for the bag he’d left on the floor when he started playing gravekeeper with the zombie family. He dug around in it for a minute, then pulled out some pudding cups. You know, the kind that don’t have to be refrigerated.

  “Oh my God,” I muttered as I staggered toward him in an almost zombie fashion. “Have I mentioned I love you?”

  Dave laughed. “Not lately. Why don’t we go upstairs, maybe climb out on the roof to get a better vantage point, and you can tell me all about it.”

  I grinned as I followed him up the stairs. “Deal.”

  The rest of the house was blissfully empty, including what had once been a beautiful master suite. Unfortunately, judging from the sludge stains and the blood pools on the floor, someone had been turned
in that bed. Which really ruined the ambiance, I’ll tell you.

  The survivors had tried to help themselves by barricading the windows (though the zombies weren’t going to climb up to the second-story window, so I’m not sure how that was going to help, but people do weird things when they’re panicking and being turned into monsters). Plywood covered in bloody handprints was haphazardly nailed to the wall to cover the glass.

  “Sheesh,” Dave sighed as he grabbed a big mag light tossed on the floor at the foot of the bed and used it as a crowbar to pry the nails free. They plinked against the hardwood and the plywood section dropped free, flooding the room with light.

  “Ah, much better,” I sighed, but when I looked around me, it wasn’t really much better. Truth be told, I think post–zombie apocalypse world is sort of better in dim light. It’s not a pretty plague.

  Dave didn’t answer, but popped the lock on the window he’d uncovered. It slid open easily, sending wonderfully fresh air into the stuffy house. He kicked out the screen and smiled as he motioned outside. The window opened onto a lower roof, perfect for our purposes of observation and pudding eating.

  As we climbed out, I tossed my husband a side-glance. He’d been afraid of heights before, but now he didn’t even seem fazed. In fact, I was the one clutching for his arm as I inched down the slanted roof and sat down.

  Dave was right, the vantage point was great up here. Through the overgrown trees we could see at least a mile, including across the parking lot to the hospital we’d come from and a series of parks, businesses, and schools that composed this fucked-up hamlet.

  Oh yeah and zombies. We could see a lot of damn zombies, milling in the distance, roaming aimlessly through streets, groaning loud enough that we could occasionally hear them when the breeze shifted.

  Dave popped the top on one of the puddings, gave it a quick smell, and then passed it over to me, along with a plastic spoon. That boy comes prepared, you have to give him that one.

  “Thanks,” I said as I stared down in awe at creamy vanilla awesomeness. I would have preferred butterscotch, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, I guess.

  “Good God, that’s good,” Dave grunted as he licked his spoon clean. We were both silent for a moment (aside from my little orgasm noises as I ate) but then he sighed. “Okay, so all morning I’ve been thinking about what you said at the hospital.”

  I blinked, still starstruck by vanilla-y, sugar-y, processed goodness. Later I’d pay with a sugar crash and a massive headache, but for now… heaven!

  “Huh?”

  “About Nicole having suspicions about me,” he explained before he tossed his pudding cup over the edge of the roof.

  My appetite fled in an instant (luckily, I had already licked my pudding cup clean) and I followed suit before looking at him.

  “She’s noticed your… um… odd habits.”

  He blinked and it seemed like he really didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. “What do you mean, odd habits?”

  I stared at him. “Come on, you know what I mean.” When he didn’t answer, I blinked. “You have to know what I mean, Dave.”

  He slowly shook his head. He was looking at me like I was crazy and if I hadn’t had such a clear list of all the weird things that had been happening since he was bitten, I might have been convinced he was right, too. But unfortunately, I did have that list in my head.

  I shifted. Shit, I hadn’t thought I was going to have to actually say everything I’d noticed out loud, but he really seemed clueless. I didn’t really want to say it, it made it more real. I wanted to pretend it away a bit longer.

  “Sarah,” he said softly.

  I nodded before I took a really deep breath and started talking.

  “Okay, so ever since you got bitten by the zombie in the lab and I gave you the cure, you’ve been…” I shifted again, trying to find the right word to describe my fears. “You’ve been different.”

  “Well, I did survive what should have been certain death.” Dave shrugged, but his eyes were hard and had no humor in them. They also didn’t quite focus on me. “I guess if that doesn’t change a guy, I don’t know what does.”

  “It’s more than that,” I whispered, but I looked away from him over the dead town.

  At the zombies roaming mindlessly in little pods, looking for any sign of human life. I shivered and it wasn’t something I could have controlled for the life of me.

  “Since you were bitten, you’re stronger.”

  He blinked. “Stronger.”

  I nodded. “David, you were lifting so much weight in that gym a few days ago. And last night, you opened the locked sliding door at the hospital like it was nothing. And we both know from personal experience that those things are a bitch to cram open when they’re locked.”

  His brow wrinkled. “Come on, Sarah, you’ve got to give me some credit for being in way better shape now than I was when all this first happened. You’re a lot stronger, too.”

  “Not bench-pressing-almost-twice-my-body-weight stronger,” I whispered as I dared a quick side-glance at him. “Plus you’ve been hungrier, and then there’s the sleep thing.”

  “The sleep thing?” he asked, but now his voice was clipped and irritated.

  Shit, I remembered that tone. I’d heard it tons of times during therapy before the zombie outbreak. I really didn’t want to hear it again.

  “You breathe out more than you breathe in,” I whispered. “It happens every night.”

  “So let me get this straight, you and Nicole suspect me of… something. I’m not really sure what, because I can lift more weight, I’m hungry in a world where we’re nearly starving, and I might need one of those night-breathing machines now?” He shook his head. “That’s sort of crazy, Sarah.”

  “The zombies in the pool didn’t come near you, David,” I choked out and finally I looked at him head-on. “We didn’t talk about it afterward, we never even acknowledged it happened, but shit, you can’t pretend it didn’t happen! The zombies ignored you. They swarmed around you to get to other people. The only things they do that to are… are…”

  I dragged my sentence to an end, but David didn’t stop looking at me, straight in the eye.

  “The only things they ignore are other zombies, you mean,” he finally said in a flat, dead tone that hurt as much as his irritated one.

  “Yes,” I admitted softly.

  He was silent for a long time. So long that I started to shift from discomfort and to search helplessly for a new topic of conversation just to fill the void.

  “Do you think I’m a zombie?” he finally asked.

  He no longer seemed mad, which I guess I should have been happy about. Though how you could be happy about anything in this scenario was beyond me.

  I shook my head immediately. “No, not a zombie. But… something happened when you got bitten, honey. Something changed, even though you didn’t turn. You have to know that’s true, even if neither one of us wants to admit it.”

  He looked away from me finally and out into the town like I had been. He was watching the same zombies I was, and I guess he was probably having the same thoughts as I’d been. Of how close we had been dancing to the edge of death since the outbreak.

  And how much closer we’d come to it when he was bitten. There were so many more ugly, nameless, terrifying “what ifs” now.

  “I feel like me,” he said and then let out a long, heavy sigh. “But different, too.”

  “Different,” I repeated.

  He nodded. “Yes. I didn’t want to say anything to you because…”

  He stopped, but I knew what he meant. My white knight wanted to protect me and I smiled regardless of how painful this topic was.

  “But I’m not a zombie,” he hastened to add as he looked at me another time. “I swear to God, I don’t want to eat people, I can’t smell brains like some of those people who were changing said they could. If I thought for a second that I was a danger to anyone, especially you—”

&
nbsp; “You would tell me,” I interrupted, mostly because I wanted him to know I knew it without him having to say it out loud. “But I don’t want you to keep things from me in order to protect me. We’re in this together, right?”

  I reached out to cover his hand, the one with the bite scar on it. It disappeared under my fingers and we both breathed an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.

  “Right,” he promised.

  “Good,” I sighed. “But we still have a problem.”

  “Nicole,” he said softly.

  I nodded. “Everything I’ve noticed, she’s noticed, too. Especially the ‘zombies didn’t eat Dave’ thing. Last night she pretty much flat out said she thinks you were bitten and that we’re hiding that and a whole lot else from her.”

  He shut his eyes. “We haven’t known her long, but I’m guessing she’s not going to just let a potential ‘story’ go, is she?”

  I shook my head. “No. So how do we put her off the scent?”

  “Well, I’ll try not to be a zombie weirdo as much as possible,” Dave laughed. When I didn’t join him, he cleared his throat and stopped. “And, well, we can always hope McCray distracts her. He’s a big star, right? And that was her beat.”

  I nodded. “And she does hate the guy. We could probably feed that.”

  He nodded, but his mouth had gotten thin and tight the way it always did when he was worrying about something.

  “What?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

  “Sarah, I’m not a zombie, but the cure I took… maybe it wears off. Or maybe the virus developed an immunity. There’s got to be some explanation of why I’m… different now. We don’t really know what’s going to happen down the road.”

  “David—” I started, with a strange urge to cover my ears and scream “Lalalalala!” until he stopped talking.

  But he didn’t.

  “Just listen,” he said, his tone sharp and silencing. “If I do ever change, Sarah, I want to know that you’ll… take care of it.”

  I looked at him, blinking at tears that suddenly stung my eyes. Stupid boy, making me want to cry when I hadn’t done that in weeks. I thought I was over it.