The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead)

by Jesse Petersen

  I might have said more and avoided a bunch of drama, but the door opened and Robbie stepped in with another girl at his side. She was probably our age, with a slick ponytail and gloves on.

  “This is Nadia,” he said, distracted. “She is going to help me draw the blood.”

  “Okay, Dr. Robbie,” I said with a scowl. I guess there was no getting out of it.

  Dave shook his head. “She’s a little nervous, can I go first?”

  The girl, Nadia, looked at him with wide eyes. “So you’re the one,” she said. “I heard about you, even in Vegas after the outbreak. You look so… normal.”

  I scowled a little deeper. Nurse Beautiful was just staring at my husband and I didn’t have a lot of patience at present.

  “Yeah, he’s a freaking god, can you just take his blood?” I snapped.

  She looked at me and she blushed. “Sorry. I-I lost someone, you see, on a beach on the coast when this all started. I was thinking about what would have happened if I’d had a cure. I’ll take the blood.”

  Okay, so now I felt like an asshole. I folded my arms and watched as she inserted a needle into Dave’s arms and dark red blood began to pump into the vial. It matched the Sharpie on the label on the vial.

  “We’ll need a lot more from you,” Robbie said with an apologetic tilt of his head.

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “We’ll start with a few vials, though, just for some baseline stuff,” the boy continued. “In the meantime, though, while you’re getting the blood taken…”

  He trailed off as he turned toward a small refrigerator in the room. He opened it and withdrew a bottle filled with purple liquid. He drew some into a hypodermic and turned toward me.

  “We’ll just give you this,” he said, moving toward me with the unknown substance.

  I backed away. “What the fuck is that?”

  Robbie’s brow wrinkled and Nadia looked up from her blood collection. Even Dave stared at me.

  “Shit, Sarah, I’m not going to hurt you,” Robbie said, stopping his movement toward me. “This is a good thing. It’s our inoculation serum. Once you take this, we’re about ninety-eight percent certain that a zombie bite won’t turn you. In another week or two, that will probably be at a ninety-nine-point-nine percent certainty.”

  I swallowed. What he held was a miracle in a bottle. A world-saver, a game-changer.

  And I didn’t want a thing to do with it.

  I rushed to put the table in the middle of the room between me and the rest of them and stood there, bracing against it, ready to maneuver if someone tried to force my hand.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t take that.”

  “Why the hell not?” Dave asked, jerking his arm away from Nadia and sending a squirt of blood to the floor that everyone moved away from like it was poison. He didn’t seem to care, he was too focused on me. “Take the fucking serum, Sarah.”

  I blinked, mostly to keep tears from showing up in my eyes. I didn’t want him to see that. They wouldn’t help me in a few minutes anyway…

  “I can’t,” I whispered, trying to duck his stare, trying to find a way to keep away from him and from them even for a few more minutes.

  “Sarah, you have to take it,” Robbie tried, inserting himself between David and me like a peacekeeping force. “Everyone else on the base has taken it and I assure you it has not hurt anyone, regardless of bloodtype, race, weight or any other variable.”

  “I doubt you’ve seen my variable,” I half-laughed even though this was anything but funny right now.

  “What is your variable, Sarah?” Dave asked, his eyes narrowed. “I know you’ve been keeping something from me.”

  I blinked. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been waiting for you to find the right time to tell me whatever has been bugging you, but now you’re acting like a freaker and you’re making a federal case out of a miracle. So tell everyone what it is now.”

  I swallowed hard. Here it went.

  “I can’t take the serum because… because I’m pregnant,” I admitted. I held stares with David, only because I felt like I owed him that much after all my recent lies.

  He stared at me, the color bleeding from his cheeks, the light in his eyes dimming. He looked angry, confused, shocked, sad and even a tiny bit excited all at once. All the same emotions I’d been feeling while I kept the truth to myself and tried to figure out a way to tell him everything. Some way to soften a blow neither of us had seen coming, certainly hadn’t planned for.

  “And because of Dave’s… thing…” I continued with a sigh. “I don’t know what your inoculation might do to the baby.”

  Chapter Six

  And zombie makes three.

  The moment my stunning announcement left my lips Nadia and Robbie began talking at once. I’m sure they were saying very important things that I should have been listening to, but all I could do was stare at Dave. Dave who was glaring at me with ultimate betrayal in his eyes. Dave who hadn’t moved or spoken since the word pregnant left my lips like the worst curse in the world.

  Finally, he stepped forward. “What. The. Fuck. Sarah.”

  His voice was so loud and so strong that it silenced the other two in an instant. There was a moment of shocked silence between us all and then Nadia grabbed Robbie’s arm and began hauling him to the door.

  “Come on, kid, let’s go.”

  Robbie resisted even as she dragged him out. “But-”

  “They need a minute, Jesus,” she said as she shut the door behind them. All the animosity I’d felt when I met her faded in that moment of kindness.

  Of course, staring at Dave and his ‘how could you’ face, I sort of wished Nadia and The Kid had stayed and kept it awkward. I preferred awkward right now.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, folding his arms as he stared at me like I was a stranger.

  I nodded. “I took about twenty of those at-home tests, at all times of the day. They all came back positive.”

  I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple working hard. His hands had started to shake, too. Not good.

  “How long have you known?” he asked.

  That one was a harder question to answer.

  “Um, a couple of months,” I finally whispered. “I found out when we were on the road from Wyoming to Montana. I guess it’s why I’ve gained some weight lately. Remember how you kept joking about all I needed was hamburgers? Well, I didn’t just need hamburgers.”

  He clenched his fists on the metal table between us, then turned away.

  “Fuck, fuck, mother fucker,” he said, mostly to himself, I guess. Or the world at large. Probably also at me.

  “Dave, it’s not like I cheated on you,” I said.

  The moment he turned toward me, eyes wide and filled with betrayal, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” he said with a shake of his head. “I mean, that makes it all better, doesn’t it?”

  “No, I realize it doesn’t make it better,” I admitted, hating myself as much as he seemed to hate me in that moment.

  “You kept me in the dark about a decision that affects both of us,” he said. “Aren’t we supposed to be a team?”

  I ducked my head, unable to look him in the eye anymore. “Yes, yes we’re a team. But it isn’t a decision, David! It’s not like I woke up and thought, hey a baby would be a great way to trap this dude. It just happened. An accident despite any precautions we were taking to prevent it.”

  He let out his breath in a long, frustrated sigh. “Okay, okay so decision is the wrong word. I get that there aren’t exactly Planned Parenthood Clinics operating anymore. But you could have told me in the beginning,” he insisted. “No, you should have told me.”

  “Oh God, yes, I should have,” I admitted, fighting those tears again. “I should have. But I freaked out at first and didn’t. Then the longer it went, the harder it was to tell you. I wanted to so many times, I started to, but something would always stop me.
And then Robbie and Nicole showed up and started talking about world-saving and I panicked.”

  “That’s why you hesitated to come here,” Dave breathed, awareness dawning suddenly.

  I nodded. “Yes. David, they’re not kidding here. They already have an inoculation, they’re working toward destruction. And I don’t know. If we’re going to have a kid, what’s the right thing for us?”

  His mouth turned down into a deep, heavily lined frown that broke my heart. “A kid. Huh. Will it be a kid, Sarah?”

  “David,” I whispered, because I knew where he was going and it was a place I had been trying to avoid for months.

  He didn’t care, he pressed on. “If my DNA was altered by the zombie bite, which everyone says it was, does that mean the second our baby isn’t bean-sized that it will eat you from the inside out?”

  “Shit, man,” I said, leaning on the table for support.

  The baby already didn’t exactly feel bean-sized, even though I knew it had to be from the few peeks at baby books I’d been able to sneak. Hell, sometimes I thought I felt it moving in there. Not that I was going to say that with Dave ranting.

  “Or will it burst from your stomach like in Alien?” he continued. “Maybe play a little song and dance routine while you bleed out in front of me?”

  “Stop, enough with the imagery, Dave!” I insisted, feeling so sick that I wished I’d eaten just to have something to puke up now.

  “How can I stop with the imagery? Didn’t you think about all this while you were keeping your little secrets?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I did. I do. But I try to block it out because I’m not sure about the alternative.”

  He frowned and for a long moment he seemed to ponder that. “Maybe in Montana, in that house when we were alone, there wasn’t an alternative. But now we’re here, with a bunch of doctors and nurses and chemists and whoever. There are options now, Sarah, and you know it.”

  “So what do you suggest?” I asked, my tone so flat that it hardly squeaked past my pursed lips.

  “I want you to get tested. I want them to test you, to test the baby, to test whatever they can test,” he said.

  I sucked in a breath. I thought he was going to say he wanted this baby yanked out of me, but the alternative wasn’t much better.

  “David,” I began.

  He shrugged. “I doubt you’re going to have much choice in the matter anyway, Sarah. They know you’re pregnant and now you’re like me. You have something they want.”

  I shivered. “That’s true,” I whispered.

  I guess we were both in the zombie club now. At least until they figured out what the deal was with my kid.

  “I want to know you’re safe,” he said.

  “What about…” I hesitated and then pointed toward my abdomen, pantomiming a pregnant belly for him.

  He winced. “He/she/it is not really my concern right now.”

  We locked eyes and the coldness in his made my heart hurt. Not coldness toward me, though. To my surprise, all his concern was toward me, even though I’d kind of screwed the pooch here. No, he just felt nothing for the life inside of me. The one he’d helped create.

  The door opened and Nicole stepped inside. She was pale, so I knew she had already been told about my… situation. Which meant that Robbie and Nadia had probably already screamed it from various rooftops. I could just picture it:

  “Not only do we have a zombie-Dave, but we have a zombie-baby, too! Everybody come look at the Freak Family!!”

  Okay, maybe not.

  “Hey,” Nicole said, her voice strained. “Um, I’m sure you two have a lot to discuss, but you need to come with me. We’re going to need to have a long talk about this.”

  Dave nodded and took my hand. She left the room first and he leaned down close to my ear.

  “Let me do the talking,” he hissed.

  I glanced at him. “Why?”

  “I’ve been a half-zombie longer.”

  #

  The room we were taken to was outside of the bustling lab, away from the prying eyes of the techs. It was on the top floor of the building in an old room that looked like it had been a faculty office at some point, but it felt like the principal’s office and we were the naughty kids caught smoking behind the school.

  Dave and I sat at a table, facing off with a panel of four. Nicole, The Kid, Lisa and some guy we hadn’t met yet in an old army shirt and ragged jeans were our interrogators.

  “So you’re pregnant,” army guy said, his voice cool and unemotional.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but Dave lifted a hand to stop me. He shook his head.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, protective caveman Dave to the hilt.

  “I’m Colonel Grant Fenton,” he said. “Or I was.”

  “Before the government abandoned you here to die, you mean, Grant?” Dave asked.

  I reached out to grip his hand. Fenton’s lip twitched and I wasn’t sure he was the guy you wanted to ultra piss off. Especially since we’d dealt with military asshole types before.

  “Something like that,” he said softly. “But whatever happened before, what was left of my platoon came here, David. And my duty is to keep everyone safe from all threats.” At that, his gaze shifted to me again. “Are you pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  He arched a brow as if to encourage me to continue.

  “About three months, if my math is right,” I said, blushing a little. I wasn’t a blusher, but this was all so personal.

  “Are the symptoms unusual?” Nicole asked and the lack of color on her face somehow made up for the steaming heat of mine.

  I shrugged. “I’ve never been pregnant before, so I don’t know.”

  Before the outbreak, Dave and I had talked about kids. But then things had gone so sour between us, and the topic had left the table with a clanging finality that had scared me at the time.

  “You can be snippy,” Nicole said softly. “But you know what I’m asking.”

  I cleared my throat. Okay, so the time had come for full disclosure. Awesome. I was soooo looking forward to this and to Dave’s reaction and to the fact that I might be soon put in a cage for observation. But I’d made this bed. Accidentally, but still. I guess it was time to lie down.

  “I have had some mild nausea, but not very often,” I started, easing into the worst. “In fact, I’d say my appetite has been increased rather than decreased.”

  The Kid was scribbling down everything I said like a Bart Simpson/secretary, nodding and hmming along with every word.

  “And what else?” he pressed.

  I looked at my hands, clenched in my lap. “Um, I have been… stronger.”

  Dave squeezed his eyes shut, I could see it from the corner of my vision. His jaw was clenched and his hands kept opening and closing like they were on a timer.

  “What about your sense of smell?” he asked.

  “What about it?”

  He glared at me. “Is it more attuned?”

  I swallowed. Hard. “Yes.”

  Dave shoved his chair back so hard that it bounced off the wall halfway across the room. He ran a hand through his hair as he paced off toward the door.

  “I want you to test her. Test… it. And if it can hurt her, I want that thing out,” he growled, a bit zombie-like actually.

  “Wait-” I started. No one had talked about anything getting out of me. At least not in enough depth for him to be ordering people around about it.

  “No!” He spun around and faced me, one finger extended toward me. His hands were shaking. “If that thing in you, a thing I put in you, could hurt you-”

  “That thing,” I said, getting to my own feet. “Is your child. And mine. I’ll take whatever tests anyone wants to do to me. But I’m not agreeing to anything to my baby beyond that until we know more.”

  “Wow,” Nicole breathed. “That is very motherly.”

  I stared at her and slowly sank back into my chair. “Well, it’s the first t
ime since I found out that I’ve felt motherly. And it’s weird.”

  It really was. I had this raging tiger inside of me, ready to pounce. To be fucked with, I was definitely not. Because I would flip a car on someone right now.

  Dave leaned against the door for a moment, letting out a long sigh. Then he moved back to my side and reached down to place a hand on my shoulder. I felt that touch all the way through me. It was his support, his love.

  I smiled as he said, “Will you just set up the tests? Everything else we’ll talk about later.”

  The Kid nodded as he got to his feet and motioned for the door. “Yes, of course. We can do everything we need to do right now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rock-a-bye Zombie…

  “Am I really about to get an ultrasound from a teenager?” I asked as I watched The Kid collect all the vials of blood he’d taken in the last few minutes. He glanced up at me with a heavy blush and a dark glare.

  “No,” he said. “Ew, that’s not my thing.”

  “Actually, it’s mine.” Nadia said as she came in through the cracked door. She smiled at me as she rolled a couple of machines up next to the table, but it was filled with false brightness. Like a ‘sorry, you have cancer’ smile from a doctor. “I was a nurse once upon a time. Well, almost a nurse.”

  “I almost feel better,” I muttered.

  Though to be honest, almost medical training was better than what most people had out in the wilds. I’d often wished I’d almost been anything in the healthcare field during the months since the outbreak.

  To my surprise, she laughed at my quip and motioned for Robbie to go. “I don’t think any of us want you involved in this.”

  “I have tests to run anyway,” he grunted with a half-wave. “See ya.”

  “Stupid Kid,” I sighed as I propped a hand behind my head. “He acts like this is no biggie. I’d forgotten how annoying he can be.”

  “Eh, he’s thirteen… almost. Even with the world the way it is, I don’t think he gets it entirely. Ramifications don’t always stick at that age,” Nadia said as she turned plugged in her machine and started fiddling with settings. “Hence drug use, crazy driving, teen… um, pregnancy.”