[Anh Ngữ] Married with Zombie - Jesse Petersen (English)

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter one

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 line soldiers 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 letters were 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 anything reasonable 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.

But then he glared at me and the moment passed, so I went back to cataloguing his faults, instead. Unsupportive, I added to myself.

“Yes. I do. I’m paying for this shit —” I ignored his flinching reaction to that. “— so I want my full benefit of it,” I said as I pulled the door to the back room open and moved down the hall to the suite where we always met with Dr. Kelly. “Two minutes of money at a hundred fifty an hour can buy me —”

“A bottle of water and pretty much nothing else,” Dave snapped as he followed me. “Come on, Sarah. There’s no reason to be such a bitch.”

“I can’t believe you just called me a bitch!” I said, staring at him over my shoulder as I yanked the door open. “Dr. Kelly, do you approve of my husband calling me a —”

I turned toward the open office and stopped talking. There was our therapist of six months, wearing one of her impeccable black pantsuits with the usual silk shell underneath. This one was a bright blue that matched the pretty necklace dangling around her neck. And she was with the Wonderful Wilsons, just as we had suspected.

Only instead of sitting behind her desk with her notebook, looking over the rims of glasses I was sure were fake as she counseled the couple, Dr. Kelly was kneeling on the floor, her suit covered in blood. Mrs. Wilson, I think her first name was Wendie (with an “ie”), was sprawled out beside her with her throat still leaking blood from a huge bite on her neck. Her eyes were cloudy and blank.

As for Mr. Wilson… maybe it was Mark, I couldn’t really remember.… Well, Dr. Kelly was paying special attention to him. She had his limp hand in hers as she leaned over him… eating great hunks of flesh from his shoulder.

​

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter two

Balance the workload in your relationship. No one person should be responsible for killing all the zombies.

I stared at Dr. Kelly, too stunned to fully comprehend that our Pacific Lutheran University-educated therapist was in the process of eating one of her couples. She did it with verve, too, something I wouldn’t have guessed given the fact that I’d always thought the skinny little twerp was anorexic. But apparently what she needed wasn’t a sandwich, as I’d often muttered as we left her office, but a manwich.

Yeah, David hadn’t laughed at that joke when I told him later, either. But what can you do? In these situations you laugh or cry, right?

That day, I did neither, I just kept staring at the unreal picture in front of me. I guess part of me thought that if I looked long enough, this madness would somehow come into focus and have a logical explanation. Like maybe this was an experimental therapy. Or a joke?

Anything?

“What the fuck?” David said, his voice barely above a whisper as he stared over my shoulder toward Dr. Kelly and the… well, the Less Than Wonderful Wilsons.

His voice drew Dr. Kelly’s attention. She looked up from Mr. Wilson’s neck, where she had begun gnawing with a stomach-churning set of crunches and wet smacks.

The first thing I noticed was that Dr. Kelly’s eyes were no longer blue. Now they were red with huge pupils that didn’t seem to focus on anything in particular, even when she looked right at us.

Her skin was a grayish tone, sickly and pale and… dead-looking, honestly. Except for her mouth, which was covered with a black substance that clung to her lips and teeth. Her chin was bright red with blood and sticky with flesh from the fresh meal she had just devoured.

“Um, Dr. Kelly,” I said, hardly able to breathe. “Dr. Kelly, are you okay?”

She made a low, ugly growl, something that sounded more like a rabid dog than a human and then she lurched to her feet. When she turned slightly, I saw that the left arm of her suit jacket was torn, revealing a fresh wound of her own between her elbow and shoulder.

Blood was caked around the yawning hole, which revealed the bands of muscle beneath her skin, and my stomach turned as the shock began to wear off and the reality of our situation hit home.

“Sarah,” David said from behind me, but his voice sounded weird and almost faraway because I was so focused on the woman before me.

Dr. Kelly lurched forward a step, then she twisted her head at the oddest angle and sniffed the air like a dog.

“Sarah,” he said, this time louder.

I just couldn’t stop looking at her, almost mesmerized by the way she stared at me with those weird eyes. Then she smiled, blood dripping from her lips.

“Sarah!” Dave yelled my name this time and I flinched as his voice echoed in my ears.

“What?” I screamed.

“Move!” he shouted, pushing me aside just as Dr. Kelly made a guttural cry and staggered toward me with remarkable speed for a woman in four inch peep-toe heels.

I fell across one of the couches in the room and flipped around just in time to see Dr. Kelly slam into David with her full body weight. He staggered into the hallway, holding her by the shoulders in an attempt to keep her off of him.

She swung her arms wildly, her perfectly manicured, pink nails slashing and her bloody mouth biting and twisting as she made every effort to get closer to him. The black bile substance leaked from her lips as she hollered and spit, spraying the stuff across her chest and onto David’s previously white T-shirt.

“David!” I screamed, snapping out of my stunned disbelief as I watched my husband of five years fight for his life against what appeared to be a rabid marriage counselor.

“Sarah, a little help!” he grunted, pushing back against her with all his might.

And Dave isn’t a tiny guy, either. He’s just about six feet and playing video games all day instead of working has given him a bit of a tummy. The fact that he had to work so hard against five foot two and maybe a hundred pounds was terrifying.

I stared around me, looking for something to hit her with, but the couches in the room were too big for me to lift and her chair was huge.

“I’m looking!” I cried as I moved to her desk. Her laptop was ultra-light, her books mainly trade-sized paperbacks with no sharp edges.

“Fuck, she’s strong,” David gurgled from the hallway.

“She does Pilates, I think,” I said as I ripped a desk drawer open.

Inside, a letter opener glittered up at me. I rolled my eyes as I realized the handle was printed with the words, “Dr. Erica Kelly, MS Psychotherapy, Marriage and Family Counseling.”

I had to give it to the woman, she knew how to advertise.

I grabbed for it and launched myself over the desk. Screaming like I was in a scene from Braveheart, I ran for her and thrust the letter opener deep into her back. It went in way easier than I expected and immediately black shit began to ooze out around the wound. With a yelp of disgust and surprise, I let go and backed up.

Dr. Kelly let out a growling cry and released David, only to turn toward me. The letter opener stuck out of her back like the hilt of a knife, its happy gold lettering glinting in the overhead fluorescent lighting (so much for Zen). As I realized she intended to attack me next, I reached for the opener, but she was already on me.

We fell backward, sprawling across the floor together. I pressed my hands against her shoulders just as David had, but she leaned into me with all her weight. It was like dead weight, too, extra heavy, and I wasn’t nearly as strong as David. Her snapping jaws lowered, biting, always biting as she got closer and closer.

“David!” I grunted.

“I know,” he yelled as he grabbed for the doctor’s hair and pulled with all his might.

A chunk of blond softness yanked free, along with a bit of rotting scalp. David staggered back in surprise that her hair offered no resistance and hit the wall behind him, but Dr. Kelly didn’t even seem to register what had happened beyond an annoyed grunt followed by more snapping jaws that I barely dodged by turning my head from side to side.

“Her shoe, David!” I cried. “Use her stiletto!”

As I somehow evaded more bites, I tried to look around Dr. Kelly toward David. He grabbed for one of her flailing feet and tore her shoe off. In that supremely crazy moment, I noticed her pedicure matched her fingernails. I guess that’s what my money went to.

Maintenance.

But I quickly forgot that when Dave came down next to us on his knees, raised the stiletto over his head, and slammed it down.

The heel entered Dr. Kelly’s skull with a sickening crunch and then a wet sound I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard. David pulled it free and little chunks of hair, scalp, and what I realized were brains flicked down on my chest and hands. I arched my back and turned my head to keep my face free of the disgusting rain.

He slammed the shoe down again, then a third time. He just kept swinging, pummeling our therapist until she made one last whining grunt and collapsed on top of me.

For a moment, actually probably a lot longer than a moment, we both were silent and still. He stared at Dr. Kelly, I stared at the bloody shoe in his hand. Then I squirmed beneath the weight of her now lifeless body.

“Get her off, David, please get her off!” I whispered.

With a grunt, he pushed her and she flipped away from me. As she flopped onto her back I heard the snap as the letter opener handle broke off against the floor.

I was on my feet instantly, brushing at my once favorite work blouse like somehow I could wipe away what had just happened. I’d gotten the shirt on a deep clearance at Nordstrom, so it was pretty and well-made. I always got compliments on it at the office.

But now it was ruined. The white was stained with blood, brain matter, and that black sticky substance that had drained from Dr. Kelly’s mouth as she tried to eat me.

My stomach finally won in the war I’d been waging with it and I turned my head and vomited on the very couch where Dave and I had tried, rather unsuccessfully thus far, to save our marriage. I leaned over the arm for a long time, fighting dry heaves as I stared at my puke as it was slowly absorbed by the cushion.

Weird. The color of the two was almost the same, a gross, thin yellow.

Finally I straightened up and turned toward Dave. I found him staring down at what was left of the Wonderful Wilsons, half-eaten on the floor. Dr. Kelly’s stiletto was still dangling from his bloody hand.

As I looked at him, my shock wore off enough that I could finally speak.

“Fuck me, David! Dr. Kelly just tried to eat us! Did that really happen? What the hell?” I shouted, my voice shaking, my hands shaking, my entire being shaking as hard as I had ever shaken before.

He turned toward me, the shoe in his hand slipping free and clattering against the floor. It left behind a bloody shoe print on the pale carpet.

“I have no idea what that was,” he said as he pulled his stare away from the dead bodies and back toward me. “She must have gone totally crazy. Like Jeffrey Dahmer-style or something.”

“We checked her references, right?” I asked, looking down at Dr. Kelly. Her head was half caved in on the floor in front of us.

“Are you asking if I knew she was a cannibal psychopath, Sarah, but got lazy and just set up appointments with her for six Goddamn months anyway?”

Dave wiped his hands on his shirt as he spoke, but it did no good. The bright red blood only smeared on his skin and absorbed into the already messy cotton, turning the vintage t-shirt a weird, splotchy pink.

I stared at him and for the first time I noticed he was shaking as hard as I was.

“I don’t know what I’m asking,” I said, softening my tone as best I could. “I’m just trying to figure out what the hell happened. And what to do next.”

He shook his head. “We call 911, that’s what we do next. Though I don’t know how the hell we’re going to explain this to any normal person in the fucking universe. We just have to be honest. I mean, it was self-defense, right?”

I looked at him and drew back in shock. Oh hell, I hadn’t even thought of that. What if the cops didn’t believe us and we ended up in jail for murder?

“It was self-defense,” I said with more decisiveness than I felt. After all, we’d never killed anyone before. “We’ll just tell the truth and they’ll have to see we had no choice but to fight her off.”

I looked at all the bodies scattered about the room. I just hoped they wouldn’t think we’d taken out the Wilsons, too. What was the threshold of kills to be classified as serial killers and mass murderers? I had seen it once on TV, but couldn’t remember.

“They’ll have to understand we had to do it,” I whispered.

Dave reached for Dr. Kelly’s office phone, which had somehow remained undisturbed on her desk despite the struggle, but just as his fingers closed around the receiver, the door to the adjoining bathroom that was in the corner of the room flew open.

Standing in the doorway, her breathing loud and wet through her bloodied nose and mouth, stood Receptionist Candy. She was dressed in a pink wrap dress that now gaped in the front, revealing an ample portion of what was apparently a fake tit. I knew it was fake because saline leaked from the huge gash that had been cut across the perky skin. The ragged edges, rimmed with black, told me the story before she even moved forward in a menacing fashion that almost perfectly matched Dr. Kelly’s odd, jerking movements from earlier.

“Holy fuck!” David cried as he backed away, leaving the phone receiver to dangle from the desk. The sound of the dial tone pierced the air around us with a constant beep, beep, beep that was now our horror movie soundtrack. At least it was better than Muzak Miley.

Candy stumbled into the room, her gray mouth working and spewing black sludge just like Dr. Kelly’s had. Blood stained her chin, her hands, even her clawing fake fingernails as she moved toward us.

“What the hell?” I screamed as I grabbed for Dave’s shoulder.

More moans echoed to our right and both of us swung our gazes toward the sound.

The Wonderful Wilsons were starting to get up, first Mrs. Wilson with her slashed, chewed throat that dripped blood and then Mr. Wilson, who didn’t seem to notice that Dr. Kelly had all but gnawed off his right arm, which now dangled by just a little bit of sinew and shattered bone.

“Run, Sarah,” David said as he grabbed my hand and made for the door. “Fucking run!”

​

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 3

Put the small stuff into perspective. It’s better to be wrong and alive than right but eating brains.

We sat in the car with the doors locked, the panting noise of our matching breathing the only sound either of us made for a long time.

“We should turn on the car so we can listen to the radio and see if there are any bulletins,” David said beside me. “I’m starting to think this might not be an isolated incident.”

I nodded but when I lifted the keys to the ignition I couldn’t fit them in the hole because I was shaking so hard. I tried once, twice, and finally David caught my fingers and helped me guide the keys into place.

“Thanks,” I whispered without looking at him as I turned my wrist and the car roared to life.

He reached out to turn on the stereo and we were greeted by the sounds of the CD in the player. My annoyance, forgotten for a while, returned tenfold.

“Jesus David, fucking Whitesnake,” I snapped as I turned in my seat to glare at him. “Who listens to that eighties-butt-rock shit anymore, let alone buys it in CD format? You realize you actually had to go out into the world and spend money on this, right?”

“I like Whitesnake,” he said, and his angry expression probably matched my own pretty fucking well. “It’s not like I kept my taste in music a secret from you when we got married. It’s not like —”

“Oh no, you’re right! You didn’t have any secrets when we got married, did you? You were totally honest and look how well it’s worked out.” I interrupted with a wave of my hands. “I mean you told me you wanted to work in the finance industry… oh wait, you bailed on that, didn’t you? You told me I could go back to school once you finished your MBA, but no you decided against that, too —”

“I’m not doing this right now. Put the car in drive,” he snapped.

His tone pissed me off as much as the things I was saying to him did. I glared. “No. I think it’s about fucking time we take Dr. Kelly’s advice and talk this out.”

“Dr. Kelly is dead! Her advice means shit now!” he shouted as he folded his arms.

“Just because she tried to eat us doesn’t mean she was wrong,” I countered, even though I’d really been fighting her advice for months now… not that I was going to admit that to him or anything. “I mean, she made some very good points over the past few months about the —”

He looked past me and his eyes widened. “Drive, Sarah! Drive!!”

At first I figured he was just making that face to distract me from the argument because Dave isn’t about confrontation, but I turned to look over my shoulder anyway, if only to call his bluff.

Only for once it wasn’t a bluff. Rushing through the garage toward our car was the missing security guard, Mack. At first I was relieved. I was pretty sure he had a taser, which was better than anything Dave and I were packing (I think I had some gum, he might have had a pocketknife, but I wasn’t sure). We could just tell Mack what had happened, he could phone it in, we’d fill out some paperwork, and it would be fine.

Except the closer he got, the more I noticed he was lurching like something out of the “Thriller” video. His gray skin and bloody face were enough to show he had been stricken by whatever insanity had turned Dr. Kelly into a ravenous cannibal and her secretary and the Wonderful Wilsons into moaning monsters.

“Shit,” I muttered as I threw the car into reverse and pressed the pedal to the floor.

As the vehicle squealed backward, Mack seemed to recognize, even in his disturbed state, that he was losing a potential meal. He sprinted forward in that awful heaving way and lunged at the car.

I flinched as he grabbed the edge where the windshield met the hood and clung there, his gnashing teeth snapping against the glass and then lower, where he began to gnaw the hard metal of the hood. Even when a few of them snapped off, leaving bloody shards in his grey gums, he continued chewing, like he wanted to eat the car… or eat through it to get to us.

“Go!” Dave cried, snapping me out of my horrified interest in Mack’s dental health.

Somehow I managed to slam the car into drive and take off in a cloud of burning rubber toward the exit.

Mack was a big guy and it seemed like his weight was even more offset than it had been when he was normal, so as I careened around a corner and sped toward the gate to the outside streets, he slid.

His face was awful as it hit the front windshield, a twisted, pained mass of something inhuman. And yet I felt very little sympathy as I burst through the yellow gate arm and sent him flying off somewhere into the distance.

Slamming onto the city streets, both David and I sucked in deep breaths of relief. He pushed a button and got the stereo off the CD and back to the FM station. Just as we’d hoped, the emergency three-beep system was in effect, something instituted after 9-11 to give out info in an emergency.

Beep, beep, beep, then a pause before the facts we so desperately needed piped through the crappy speakers.

“Good afternoon,” came a flat, female voice that sounded like it had been fed plenty of Prozac. “Your attention, please. There has been a chemical or biological emergency. Please stay in your homes with the doors and windows locked until further instructions become available. Only call 911 in a true emergency.”

We held our collective breath but instead of elaborating, the system clicked back into three beeps and then the same message repeated. David hit the stereo power button hard enough that it snapped off and rolled under my seat. At least the annoying repetition ended.

“Great. One more thing broken,” I muttered. He opened his mouth to argue but I shook my head. “It’s the least of our problems.”

“They said biological or chemical,” he said as he rested his head back against the car seat and stared at nothing in particular. “I hope whatever’s causing this isn’t floating around in the air.”

I nodded but didn’t answer because the thought of what David said made my skin crawl and my blood grow cold. Watching someone we knew turn into a raving lunatic willing to kill and eat another person was bad enough, but what would it be like to know it was happening to you?

“Okay, we need a game plan,” I said as I moved up the freeway ramp going north toward our apartment. “What do we do now?”

David stared at the stereo display, dark now after his tantrum. “We go home.”

I glanced at him, able to do it while driving because for the first time in five years there wasn’t any traffic to pay attention to during my merge.

“Go home?”

He nodded as he stared past me toward the cityscape, rising up beautifully with the sparkling waters of the Puget Sound behind it. It looked so peaceful. What a lie.

“That’s what they say to do and I think it’s our best option,” he said. His voice sounded like he was numb. I was, too. “Actually, I think that’s our only option for the moment.”

I stared at him for a moment and then I nodded. “Okay, home it is.”

We drove in silence, our normally forty-minute drive made short by the lack of people on the street. Okay, that wasn’t true. There were people on the street, but they were no longer driving or human. A few straggling… things like Dr. Kelly and Mack roamed the edge of the highway. Crashed cars littered the side of the street. In the median, we watched as two creatures gnawed on the legs of a highway patrol officer. Eventually David closed his eyes and I kept mine straight ahead on the road.

We’d seen enough, I guess.

Our apartment, just north of what they called the “U-District,” was shitty. The cost of living in Seattle is fucking ridiculous and since David hadn’t been working, at least in a traditional sense, we couldn’t really afford something better.

Our neighborhood was dingy, old, and had its share of homeless druggies and girls who turned tricks in the alleys. But we did have the security of an underground garage, although after our last garage adventure… well, I don’t think either of us felt safe as I rolled the window down and reached out to enter the code that sprung the gate open.

I snatched my hand back in and hit the window control in rapid succession so that it rolled up, then we moved into the gloomy garage. I parked in our assigned space and we glanced at each other before we each unlocked our doors and stepped out into the cool air of the underground facility.

A car alarm screamed in the distance. Normally I’d ignore it or just be annoyed by it, but today I looked toward the sound with a shiver. Car alarms took on a new meaning for a long time after the outbreak. I mean, something had to have set them off, right? But that day, in the misty dark of the industrial LED lights, I didn’t see anything moving.

“Sarah, look,” David said. He was motioning toward the elevator and his face was long and pale and sick.

I moved around the car toward him and instantly saw what he did. Another vehicle was smashed against the back wall nearby, its front end caved in and coolant fluid dripping into a greenish pool on the concrete floor.

“Isn’t that Jack and Amanda’s car?” I whispered, thinking about our next door neighbors.

They were about our age, and while I wouldn’t call them friends we were cordial and had copies of each other’s keys just in case we got locked out or needed someone to grab the mail during a vacation.

Sometimes the guys got together to play Xbox or something, normally when I worked late since I didn’t care for Jack and his loud, obnoxious personality. He was a burper and farter… and he thought it was hilarious. Yeah, super classy guy.

“It looks like it,” Dave said as he reached back and took my hand. “Come on.”

After he pushed the ‘up’ button, the elevator seemed to take forever, but finally it opened with a ding that echoed in the garage. David peeked inside first and then pulled me in behind him. As I reached for the third floor button I noticed blood smeared across the number. With a little groan, I pulled my hand inside my sleeve before I pushed it.

Dave shook his head with a nervous laugh. “You’ve got it all over you now, I don’t know how covering your hand can help at this point.”

“Me neither, but I’d rather not rub it all over me regardless,” I said as I leaned back against the metal wall and folded my arms.

“Too late,” he said, motioning behind me.

I straightened up and turned to see I’d leaned right into a large smear of black sludge like the kind the people around us were vomiting when they were… infected or whatever was happening to them.

“God. God!!” I said.

Okay, I whined it. Whatever, cut me some slack. All I wanted was a shower and to wake up from this disgusting dream and have everything just be normal again.

The door opened and like in the garage, Dave stepped out first. He looked around and then motioned me into the hall behind him as he dug for his house keys in his front pocket. With a few half-jogging steps, we reached our door. He let us in and immediately flipped the deadbolt behind him.

With a sigh of relief, both of us looked around our seven-hundred-square-foot apartment. I’d never loved the piece of shit more. Every problem we’d ever had with the place was forgotten in that instant and I wanted to get down on my knees and kiss the floor.

“You know what this is, right?” Dave said, his voice happily keeping me from making out with the linoleum square in front of our door.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Zombies.”

He nodded as I stared at him with what I’m sure was an incredulous expression. He actually looked serious.

“You need to lay off the movies, dude,” I snapped as I shook my head. “Zombies? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“No it isn’t!” He actually sounded offended that I’d doubt his brilliant deduction. “It makes sense. Or at least as much as anything can based on what happened to us today.”

“David —” I drew his name out with frustrated annoyance.

He moved toward me with a frown. “Fuck, Sarah, our therapist tried to eat us. So did about ten other people since then. We saw things I never thought I’d see in my life. What else could it be but zombies?”

I stared. Apparently the stress of the day had broken my husband’s brain or something. At the time I just couldn’t accept that the stuff of cheesy movies was real.

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” I said, grabbing for the remote to turn on the television.

On the screen scenes of smoky downtown streets greeted us. I sighed in relief. At least it looked like the television was going to give us more information than the radio emergency broadcast had on the way home.

“Will you watch?” I asked as I tossed Dave the clicker. “I have to pee and I want to get out of these bloody clothes. Then you can change and I’ll watch.”

He grunted, his displeasure with my dismissal of his theory obvious as he took a seat on the couch. I gritted my teeth at the blood he smeared on the cushions when he flopped back, but decided against starting anything. I was too grimy and gross and uncomfortable for it. I’d just have to put Resolve on the cushions and scrub them while he changed later.

I walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. It was a cramped space so I edged in, dropped my slacks, and sat down on the toilet, only to sink into the water. With a yelp, I got back up and dragged a towel from the rack.

David had left the seat up… again.

I rubbed the water off my ass as I muttered a whole lot of choice names about the doofus out in the living room. As I turned to hang the towel back on the rack, I caught my reflection in the mirror behind me. With a groan, I leaned closer to the mirror to examine myself.

My hair, which is normally a light brown, was caked with blood so that it had a ruddy hue. To be honest, it wasn’t a bad color for me. If we ever had money again, I figured maybe I’d dye it a similar shade.

The state of my outfit pissed me off more. My once-white shirt was smeared with sludge and dirt and brains. It was totally ruined. There was no way I was going to get dried blood out of white linen even if I pre-soaked from now to the end of time.

“Damn it,” I muttered as I started to unbutton the blouse, but as I got to the second button, I froze. From behind the shower curtain came a faint but undeniable scraping noise.

I swallowed. Once again, the scraping echoed in the tiny room. There was definitely something behind the curtain. I prayed it was a cat that had gotten through the window. Or an opossum. A rat.

Anything but what I thought it was.

I grabbed for the closest thing there was to a weapon in the room: a hard-backed copy of one of the Dr. Phil love books. I’d given it to David when we started therapy months ago. It had sat on the back of the toilet tank ever since. I don’t think he’d cracked it, which annoyed the hell out of me, but it was pretty heavy and had sharp corners, so I held it up as I grasped the edge of the shower curtain and threw it back.

Standing in the tub, staring at the tiled back wall as he swayed gently back and forth, was our neighbor, Jack. That’s the guy whose car we’d seen in the garage earlier. He turned with sort of a sluggish boredom toward me and I suppressed a squeal of surprise.

Whatever biological or chemical thing had been released on our city had obviously affected him, too. His body, already hefty from eating too much junk food and playing too many video games, now leaned at a weird angle and his soft gray skin looked clammy.

He stared at me for what seemed like forever and then his mouth opened and he vomited sludge all over my green bathmat before he moved in my direction.

“Shit,” I groaned. “Why couldn’t you be a cat?”

I didn’t wait for him to answer that rhetorical question. I swung my book and hit him square in the forehead. His rotting skin split, covering Dr. Phil’s picture with a layer of gooey blood and chunks of flesh.

Jack blinked at me, almost like a confused gorilla in a zoo, and then continued to lurch toward me. Unfortunately… or I guess fortunately for me, he no longer had the wherewithal to step up and over the tub ledge. His legs caught on the smooth surface and he tottered off kilter and fell forward.

Out of pure instinct and a hefty dose of luck, I flattened against the back wall as his bulky body careened past me. His already shredded forehead hit the thin bottom seat of the toilet with a clang and he let out a whining groan.

I don’t know what came over me as I looked down at our fat, piece of shit of a neighbor lying half in my toilet, the offending seat Dave had left for me still flipped up overhead. I certainly didn’t think about what I was going to do, I just did it. Dropping down, I started slamming the toilet down against his skull.

“Put. The. Toilet. Seat. Down. David!” I accentuated each word with a crushing bang of the seat.

I didn’t stop until I heard Dave’s voice outside the door.

“Did you say my name?” he called from the hall, breaking me away from my furious spell and forcing me to stare down at the mess I’d made.

The toilet was cracked and covered in blood, along with brain matter, some loose flesh and I think part of an ear, although it was so mangled that I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to lean closer and look.

Poor Jack was most definitely dead, his red eyes now dark and no longer clouded by a desire to eat me. Or at least the one still in his skull. I’d crushed the other one sometime during my tirade.

I stared down at the seat again. I still really had to pee. I mean, bad. See, when I get nervous, I have to go and honestly, was there anything to make you more nervous than being attacked by flesh-eating, infected humans?

I’d been holding it since we killed Dr. Kelly and now my bladder screamed at me. The apartment was a one bed, one bath so if I wanted to go… this was it.

And at that point, I have to tell you, bodily functions were starting to win out over being disgusted or disturbed by dead people on my floor. With a grunt, I shoved Jack’s fat body out of the way. He hit the tile face down with a splat that sent droplets of all kinds of gross flying everywhere.

I flipped the upper toilet seat back into place. Although it wasn’t covered in as much blood as the rest of the toilet, I didn’t exactly want to sit on it, so I braced myself against the sink and the wall, sort of hanging over the seat as I took care of my business. I flushed, and to my surprise our toilet actually disposed of most of the body parts and blood without backing up. After a second courtesy flush, all evidence of the attack spun away to the sewer.

Well, except for the blood, brains, and body on my floor, of course.

With a grimace, I pulled my pants back up. In the small bathroom, Jack’s dead body blocked most of the floor. Gingerly I stepped up onto his squishy, out-of-shape ass and balanced there as I washed my hands with steaming hot water and probably half the bottle of liquid soap. When I was finally satisfied that I’d cleansed myself, or at least my hands, of all my sins, I went back into the hall.

Dave was standing in the living room now, leaning over the back of the worn easy chair as he watched the TV screen. The speakers were turned up so loud that I guessed he hadn’t heard my vicious clash in the bathroom.

At least I hoped he hadn’t heard me battling against our neighbor and just left me to it while he checked out the sports scores which were still oddly scrolling along the bottom of the screen on the highlighted runner.

Hey, the Mariners won.

“Babe,” I said, calling him by an endearment for the first time in so long I couldn’t remember when.

He turned toward me with an expression of surprise, although I wasn’t certain if it was because I called him babe or because I was covered in even more gore than I had been the last time he saw me moments before. I motioned toward the bathroom. He stepped closer and peered in at Dead Jack and then back toward me with wide eyes.

“I think you might be right after all,” I said with a nod. “Zombies.”

​

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 4

Talk out your big decisions. Hear both opinions before you decide if you’re going to flee the city or hole up with Campbell’s Soup and CNN.

Dave continued to stare at the mangled body on the bathroom floor, which was pooling with blood and mung now.

“So you killed him with what now?”

“I tried that Dr. Phil book at first,” I sighed as I looked at the offending tome, lying next to Jack’s lifeless body, its pages caked with fluids and unidentifiable mush. “And I finished off with the toilet seat. Just so you know, you left it up again. That drives me crazy.”

“Sorry,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

He gave an absent nod as he pulled the door shut. It was weird how quickly all this was becoming normal, commonplace.

“Come on, we have to watch this,” he said as he motioned to the television. “It’s like all hell is breaking loose… literally.”

I’m sort of sad to say that I pretty much instantly forgot about the man I’d just brutally killed in the bathroom. I moved to the couch with David and we sat close together on the edge of the cushions.

CNN was the station he’d chosen. An anchorman sat at the desk, his face long and serious as he spoke in that weird, droning voice that I guess they must teach them in journalism school.

“The outbreak is thought to have begun in a high-security laboratory housed on the University of Washington campus and has spread with enormous speed throughout the city. Attacks by the infected have been reported all across the greater Seattle area, which contains close to four million people. We go to local reporter Henry Greene for more.”

The screen switched to another man in a bad suit who was standing near the famous Pike Place Market. Its iconic sign blinked as dusky darkness began to settle over the troubled city.

“Thanks, Roger,” Reporter Henry Greene said as he looked straight into the camera without even blinking. “There are several reports I can update you on. First, there were rumors that one of the infected managed to board a flight to San Francisco. This has been confirmed by the FAA just in the last few moments. It seems that the plane is now running entirely on autopilot as the crew and the roster of passengers have apparently been stricken by this infection mid-air. The Pentagon is now debating whether to shoot it down over an area of low population rather than allow the flight to land as planned on its auto-nav system. We should have more on that developing situation within the hour.”

“God,” I whispered, trying hard not to think of those poor people trapped on the doomed flight.

I’d never really liked flying. That was the one bonus to barely scraping by, if we wanted to get somewhere, we drove or took the bus. Now I guess it was an even better idea. More room for escape in those modes of transportation.

“In addition, several fires have started in the downtown area and we have heard that…”

The reporter stopped as his never-wavering stare suddenly flicked away from the camera and instead moved off in the distance. His eyes widened slightly.

“Uh, Ken…” he said, clearly talking to a producer or the camera man. “Ken, do you hear that noise? What is th — oh my God!”

The camera spun and looked up the steep hill in the distance. The shaking lens was off focus for a minute, then it auto-corrected and both Dave and I gasped at once. There was a huge group of people standing at the top of the hill just a block from the market.

Okay, not people. Zombies. They were growling and lurching and that was the first time we ever saw them run in a herd. They rushed down toward the market en masse, their cries and grunts audible even from the distance.

“Christ, Henry, run!” the man behind the camera said, his voice muffled since the mike wasn’t pointed toward his mouth.

The reporter was already a few strides in front of him, running toward the partly enclosed market. The camera bounced almost like it was shooting a really low-budget “handheld” horror movie as the cameraman followed, but before they’d gotten too far another mob of growling creatures began to flood from the open stalls in front of them, crowding toward the two men as sludge poured from their lips and bared teeth.

“Oh no —” the reporter whispered, his voice strangely soft and calm as he faced what could be nothing but his ultimate demise.

But then the voice cut away and the screen switched back to the CNN reporter at the anchor desk. He was now almost as gray as the zombies were and he stared at the camera with a disbelieving and utterly horrified expression.

I would assume that wasn’t something they taught in journalism school.

“We — we’ve obviously had some technical difficulties, folks,” he finally said as he shook himself awake from his stunned fog. “But I assure you we’ll work to keep you updated on the situation with local coverage on the ground and try… well, we’ll try to get back with Henry shortly.”

Dave’s eyebrows lifted with disbelief. “Yeah. Henry’s a zombie, dude.”

I nodded. “We now go to Zombie Reporter Henry Greene on the scene,” I answered, mocking the CNN reporter’s cadence. “Henry want brains.”

Dave didn’t laugh, but he smiled, which was about as good as it was going to get at this point. The reporter continued to drone on in the background, telling us all to stay in our homes and remain calm.

I shook my head at the idea of doing either of those things. “Did you hear what he said about Seattle?”

Dave rolled his eyes at me. “Um, that we’re at the heart of a zombie plague. Yeah, Sarah, I got that.”

“No,” I snapped, irritated by his defensiveness. “I meant what he said about how many people are in this area. Four million, David. Four million people.”

He kept watching the screen, reminding me of so many times I’d tried to talk to him but his video game was more important. Or his show. Or whatever.

“So?” he said.

“So!” I repeated with a wave of my hands that finally got his attention again. “We’ve already seen how fast this thing, whatever it is, is spreading. Think about it… if it started at U-Dub sometime today, that’s miles from where Dr. Kelly’s office is… um, was.”

He nodded. “I guess.”

I continued without slowing down. “Hell, someone infected got all the way to Sea-Tac, through security and boarded a plane before anyone caught it, which probably means they were bitten right at or even in the airport which is what… twenty miles away from the university?”

Dave stopped giving me the look and nodded somberly. “I get what you’re saying. It’s spreading fast.”

“I’m saying that this city is a buffet,” I said as I got up and paced the small room. “If they don’t get it under control, there are going to be more zombies than people in a pretty damn short amount of time.”

David’s focus shifted back to the television screen, where they were now showing footage taken from the ever-filming camera at the top of the tower in Red Square at the University of Washington. It was a steady shot, so it didn’t pan as lurching zombies moved in and out of frame below. Occasionally an uninfected person ran through the scene, but he or she was almost always chased by an undead bastard or twenty.

“If we aren’t outnumbered already,” Dave whispered with a shiver. “Maybe staying here isn’t such a hot idea.”

I nodded. That had been my thought, too.

“Yeah, but that means going back out into the street,” I whispered. “And facing… them. Lots of them. So if we decide to leave… then what do we do to keep from getting turned into zombies?”

He pulled his gaze from the screen. “Well, we’ve watched a lot of zombie flicks.”

I arched a brow, a little action I’m pretty proud of perfecting since it took me months of practice. “Are you suggesting that we can battle real zombies with horror movie techniques?”

“Why not?” he asked with a shrug.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. This isn’t that movie Scream.”

He frowned, clearly annoyed once again by my lack of faith in his ideas. “Well, do you have a better idea? It’s not like you can find out information about real zombies online. Anything anyone knows about this kind of stuff comes from watching movies or reading books on the subject. Fiction books, Sarah.”

I opened and shut my mouth, unable to formulate any kind of response. Once again, to my great frustration, Dave was right. I mean, I couldn’t think of one thing I knew about zombies that didn’t come from movies.

We used to love those flicks, sitting together on the couch in the dark. Lately I hadn’t been watching movies with him as much. With all our fighting and me working as much as I could to keep us financially afloat, it hadn’t been a priority. But I guess I had just as good a grasp on the genre as anyone. And at least if we put together a list of what we knew it felt like we were doing something rather than just sitting around waiting for the National Guard to get their act together.

“Okay, so what do we know about zombies?” I finally sighed.

He grinned at my agreement to take part in this little exercise even though I still had serious doubts about it.

“Well, when someone is bitten, they turn into a zombie,” he offered. “But it doesn’t seem to be airborne or passed by any touch that doesn’t break the flesh.”

I shivered at the idea, still more terrifying than anything to me. “And we know that from personal experience, not just movies. So score one for Dawn of the Dead; they got that part right.” I smiled though it didn’t feel very strong. “Maybe this idea isn’t so far off the mark after all.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said in a flat tone. “So what else? We know they want to feed on live people, but they don’t seem to feed on other zombies. At least we haven’t seen that.”

“True, the Wonderful Wilsons and the zombies on the side of the road even worked together to feed.” I was starting to get more into this little exercise and I started to wish I had a notebook to write it all down. “And we both saw the group that just got that poor reporter and his cameraman. They were almost like some kind of fucked up pack of animals from Wild America or something. But what about other animals? Or just meat like in a store? Would they eat stuff like that? Could an animal be turned into a zombie?”

Dave shrugged. “We don’t know about that yet. I guess we just keep an eye out. If animals were infected… that could be bad. They can hide a lot better than a person.”

I shut my eyes and tried not to think too hard about Fluffy the Friendly Terrier or Ming the Cat becoming a killing machine. To keep my mind off the subject, I tried to pull together some more information to add to our running tally.

“It seems like a head injury stops them cold if it’s bad enough. Like with the shoe in Dr. Kelly’s head or the toilet seat and Jack.”

“In the movies they have shotguns and other weapons,” Dave said.

I nodded. That was very true. “Too bad we don’t have anything like that, but I guess we could try to get them if we went out. I mean, sporting goods stores carry that stuff. We could break in or maybe we’ll even find people hiding there to team up with.”

He smiled. “We’ll put it on the to do list.”

I laughed because my ‘to do’ list is legendary around our house. I love crossing off the stuff I’ve done. It drives Dave crazy because he’s much more fly by the seat of his pants.

Dr. Kelly once said we needed to find a way to respect our differences and use them to our advantage. Turns out we only needed to kill her in order to make that a reality. I wish we’d known that months and thousands of dollars ago.

“As far as weapons go, until we can find a place that carries guns and ammo, we can look around the house for stuff that might work. So far we’ve done pretty well with using what was available,” I said.

“We have,” he agreed. “That shoe idea in Dr. Kelly’s office was pretty sharp. So was using the toilet seat on Jack.”

I blushed. Dave hadn’t complimented me in a long time and I felt positively girlish now. “Thanks.”

“We should also see how much food we have that’s non-perishable and portable,” he said. “Even if we decide not to go, but stay here for a while, we’ll have to ration. And we should eat the perishable stuff first since we have no idea if we’ll be losing power or something soon.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t thought about that, but it was a possibility. The government could shut the lights down if they got it in their heads. Or if there wasn’t anyone left to mind the power plants… well, they’d shut themselves down at some point.

I’d learned that disturbing tidbit from the Discovery Channel, though, not zombie movies.

“I’ll start the oven and cook a frozen pizza for dinner tonight. And I’ll start sorting food and make a tally of what we have,” I said, moving toward the kitchen. But before I’d gotten into the other room, there was a knock at the door.

Dave and I froze and I slowly turned back to face him. He stared at the door and then at me before he looked around the cramped living room for some kind of weapon. With a grin, he found the wooden baseball bat that had been propped up in the corner unused since Dave dropped out of graduate school and quit his school softball team.

I smiled at his choice. “Zombie movie classic,” I whispered. “Nice.”

I looked around for my own weapon and my gaze fell onto our wedding photo. It was a big one my Mom had insisted we buy from the photographer. An eleven by fourteen monstrosity of us standing in front of a church with rice scattering in front of us. We looked happy. We were happy.

I pulled the photo down and turned it so that a corner was ready to be used as a bludgeon.

“And once again, very creative,” he encouraged.

I smiled, then cautiously moved toward the door.

The knock sounded again, this time louder.

“Dave? Sarah? It’s Amanda!” came a voice from the hallway.

My mouth dropped open. I mean, I knew I’d had to kill Jack in the bathroom, but I hadn’t really thought about facing his live-in girlfriend, Amanda, after I did it.

I moved on the door, but Dave grabbed my wrist. “Sarah, if Jack was a zombie, it follows that she might be bitten, too,” he whispered in a harsh, low tone that hardly carried.

I jerked my hand away from the door and stared at it. He was right. I hadn’t been thinking about my safety, just my rapidly increasing guilt.

“Please, if you’re there let me in!” she said from the other side. I could hear she had been crying and was just barely holding it together now.

I inched forward and put my eye up to the peephole. Fuck, it was too hard to tell if she was infected. In the wavy image, I could see her clothing was caked with blood and her brown hair was falling out of its usually sleek ponytail. She’d clearly been through something, but both Dave and I were also coated in blood and we were still rational humans.

“Amanda, have you been bitten?” I asked, taking the risk of letting her know we were home and still had tasty brains for hungry zombies.

Dave slapped at my arm lightly, but I ignored him.

“What?” she sobbed. “Please, Jack went crazy and I crashed the car and cut my arm all up on the glass. I can’t find him now and the TV is really freaking me out.”

My heel bounced on the linoleum, a nervous habit of mine, as I stared out at her. She looked around the hall, huddled up as small as she could make herself. She looked scared, that was the one thing I could see for sure. The girl wasn’t the brightest bulb and her taste in men sucked, but I still sort of liked her.

“Amanda, I’m going to open the door, but if you try to eat us, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“What?” her muffled voice elevated to a squeak on the other side of the door.

“Sarah,” Dave sighed from behind me.

I turned on him. “I killed her boyfriend. I should at least let her in and we can see if she’s… zombiefied or whatever.”

He shrugged. “I guess we can manage to murder one more acquaintance if it comes to that.”

I hoped it wouldn’t as I slipped the lock free and opened the door.

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 5

Don’t discuss your relationship problems with friends. Your zombie problems are another story entirely.

Amanda fell into the apartment more then walked in as the door opened, but her stumbling motion seemed too smooth to mean she was a zombie. I think she was just freaked out and seeing other people she knew gave her permission to lose it a little.

As she sat on the linoleum square in front of our door and sobbed, I nudged her feet out of the way and shut and locked the door behind her.

Dave and I watched her from a safe distance. She was crying so hard, I kind of wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want to end up undead so I stayed near him, picture frame at the ready, and Dave looked like he was about to pop a fly ball over the wall at Safeco.

Once her tears subsided, Amanda looked up at us and our positions and weapons seemed to register with her. Her brow wrinkled with confusion.

“What is going on with you two?” she sniffled as she moved to get up.

“Hey, just go slowly,” Dave snapped as he lifted his bat in a menacing fashion.

Amanda’s eyes widened but she slowed down as she pushed to her feet against the front door and stared at us. She was wearing a tank top and there was blood smeared both on it and on her arms.

Just like she’d said, I saw a small cut on her bicep, but it wasn’t ragged or tinged with black sludge like the bite marks I’d seen on the other zombie victims. Her long cotton cargo pants covered her legs too much to say for sure about ankle nips, though.

“Can you roll your pant legs up to your knees so I can get a look?” I asked, feeling kind of like a cop checking for pot. “Slowly.”

“Come on, you guys —” she started with a Valley Girl pose of annoyance.

“Just do it,” Dave said. “We’ll explain everything to you once we check you.”

She was pissed, there was no denying that, but she bent over and pulled her pant legs up one after another. She had a stereotypical “pretty girl” tattoo of a daisy chain around her ankle, but no visible signs of a bite.

Dave lowered his bat carefully. “Okay, but we’re going to keep an eye on you, so just stay back a ****”

She folded her arms. “Have you two gone nuts? You’re talking about eating people, killing people, hitting me with a bat!”

“You can’t be too careful with zombies roaming around, Amanda,” I explained with a shrug.

“Zombies?” She stared at us with a blank expression that I’m sorry to say was pretty much normal for her. The lights had always been on with Amanda, but I’m not sure she was home much. “What are you talking about?”

Dave stared at her with an expression of both intense annoyance and utter shock. “I thought you said you were watching TV.”

She shifted and her cheeks colored with pink embarrassment. “They were talking about chemicals and infections and I got confused and freaked out. I tried to find something else to watch, I mean tonight is supposed to be American Idol, but every channel is playing the same show, so I just turned it off.”

Dave rolled his eyes and paced across the apartment. As much as I disliked Jack, David hated Amanda. He told me time and again that she was too stupid to be my friend. But she kind of reminded me of a cute puppy. You couldn’t blame her for being dumb as a rock.

And that might be insulting to rocks.

“Okay, Amanda, let me give you the crib notes,” I said with a sigh. Dave was going to be no help here. “Sometime earlier today something bad happened at U-Dub. Really bad. It turned a bunch of people into zombies.”

“Like movie zombies?” she asked, blinking at me with empty disbelief.

“Exactly.…” I looked at Dave and he shrugged. “Well, we think so, anyway. So far they seem to work the same way. Our marriage counselor tried to eat us and we killed her by bashing her head in. That’s pretty much just like the movies, right?”

“Oh my God,” Amanda said, reaching out to pat my arm awkwardly. Her eyes had filled with tears. “Marriage counseling? Are you guys okay?”

“I don’t know,” I found myself saying, too tired and weirded out to be guarded.

Dave moved toward us with a scowl. “Look, that’s not the point. The point is that we got attacked by zombies in this therapist’s office, later in the parking garage of her building, and then Sarah found a zombie in the bathroom here at our apartment.”

I glared at him and he shut his mouth. I think he was so pissed about Amanda’s cluelessness and maybe the fact that I’d just outed we were in counseling that he’d momentarily forgotten just who I’d bashed to death with a toilet.

We were all quiet for a minute and then I noticed Amanda’s cuts were bleeding. The blood made weird little trails down her arm. It was gross, but at least it wasn’t sludge.

“Let me get you a towel,” I said.

At first I moved for the bathroom, but then I stopped. If I opened the door in there, Amanda would see Jack’s body and I wanted to ask her some questions before I revealed anything so horrifying to her.

Checking myself, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel instead. I wet it lightly and brought it back out to Amanda.

She smiled as she took it and started wiping off her cut. As she carefully bound the wound, I decided to broach the subject of her dead boyfriend.

“So you said that Jack went crazy, right?” I asked as I motioned her toward a chair. “What happened exactly?”

Her makeshift bandage secure, Amanda nodded, sniffling as she took a place on the chair. I found a box of tissues and handed her a few. She wiped her eyes as she spoke, streaking mascara across her face until she looked like a Disney-animated raccoon.

Raccoons carried rabies, right?

“Okay, so we went to the Gas Guzzler right up the street,” she began. “Jack had been drinking and wanted more beer, so I drove.”

I rolled my eyes. How charming on a Wednesday afternoon when the rest of the world was working or spending time with their family… or killing their zombie therapist across town.

Not surprisingly, Amanda didn’t seem to notice my reaction to the beginning of her story.

“I stayed in the car while he went inside. He was in there for a while and when he came back he was all upset. He said some homeless freak bit him and then went over the counter at the clerk.”

I shut my eyes for a minute as I pictured Jack’s red eyes and his black mouth before he tried to get to my brains in the bathroom.

“I wanted to call 911 and take him over to the hospital because the bite seemed pretty bad to me. Almost like it got infected right away, but he got all mad at me for saying that and told me he just wanted to go home and drink his killer headache off.”

“Headache,” Dave breathed. “Not good.”

Amanda tilted her head, still not getting it. “So I did what he said. But when we pulled in the garage, he started acting weird. He grabbed for the wheel. I got nervous and I hit the gas when I meant to hit the brake. We swerved and smashed into the wall.”

“Yeah, we saw your car downstairs,” I whispered.

“He was still trying to grab me even after the accident, so I ran away. Jack usually yells, he never hits. I thought if I just let him calm down, he’d be sorry later. But he followed me upstairs.” She shivered. “I locked the door before he got in, though, and he didn’t have his key. He pounded for a little while before he gave up. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Did you happen to have our house key in your car?” Dave asked with a sigh.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess we did. Why?”

I shook my head. “Before I get into that, can you tell me how long it took from the time Jack came out of the Gas Guzzler to the time he tried to attack you in the car?”

She shrugged. “About ten minutes.”

Dave set the bat down. It was pretty clear that if Amanda hadn’t turned yet, she probably wasn’t going to. Lucky girl. I was kind of surprised, honestly. The week before I wouldn’t have given Amanda five minutes in a hypothetical zombie attack.

“So what do you think happened to Jack?” Amanda asked, looking at her bandage job. To my surprise, it was still perfectly tied. It seemed our little Amanda had some talents after all. I never would have figured it.

“Okay, here’s the thing, Amanda,” I said as I took a deep breath. “When zombies bite a non-infected human, it changes them into a zombie.”

“So?” Amanda paled as what I said started to sink in. “Oh… so you think the guy at the gas station who bit Jack was a zombie.”

I nodded. “I have to assume so since even the hungriest homeless guy hardly ever bites someone. I guess there must be some amount of time between when someone becomes infected and when they lose all their humanity and ability to reason and higher brain function. During that time, I have to assume that Jack not only came up here and used our key to get in…”

She nodded. “He knew you had a key to our place. Maybe he was looking for that.”

Dave drew back with a look of surprise. That hadn’t actually occurred to either of us, but it made perfect and horrifying sense. If Jack wanted to get to Amanda and eat her brains, our place was the one way to get to her without breaking down the door, which he was apparently too lazy to do, even as a zombie.

“Good thought,” I conceded and she grinned with pleasure. “Anyway, once he got here, he ended up roaming into our bathroom and getting himself trapped in our tub.”

Amanda’s brow wrinkled. “Huh?”

Dave looked at me. “That’s a good piece of information to have. If they have a little brain function after they’re starting to have a hunger for human flesh… well, that could be bad.”

“Really bad,” I agreed with a nod, but I needed to tell the rest of the story before I chickened out, so I refocused on Amanda. “Anyway, I came home and well…”

I trailed off as I motioned her to the bathroom. There was no easy way to do this so I guess it was better to do it quick, like pulling a bandage off a wound.

She followed me and I took a deep breath before I opened the door, then stepped out of the way so she could see the corpse of her former boyfriend.

She didn’t say anything at first, just stared at him lying face down on the floor. His black blood was pooling all around him and his hands were clenched into claws. Not to mention his head was totally bashed in.

I shifted, thoroughly uncomfortable with what I’d done. Hallmark didn’t exactly make a card for this situation (well, they do now, but not then), so I wasn’t sure what to say to her so that she’d understand I hadn’t done this out of spite.

“He-he attacked me,” I finally explained. “He wanted to bite me just like he wanted to bite you and I had no choice but to kill him. But I’m really sorry, Mandy.”

She nodded before she glanced at me. Her face was pale, but she was pretty calm considering. “It’s okay, Sarah. I was going to break up with him anyway.”

I blinked, staring as she turned her back on her dead boyfriend and walked away into the living room like she was walking away from a squirrel she’d hit on the road or something. Of all the reactions I would have thought she might have, this was the last one.

“O-kay,” I said as I shut the door again.

Amanda sat on our couch for a long time before she looked up at Dave. “So do you really think all this stuff has to do with zombies?”

He nodded. “Jack tried to eat you, right?”

She shrugged. “I guess he did.”

“And the things that attacked us today were after the same thing — flesh, brains, blood… us to eat.” He shook his head. “I guess zombie is as good a term to use as any other.”

Amanda sighed. “So what do you think we should do? That little emergency lady on the radio says to stay at home and wait it out.”

“Well, we’re not so sure about that,” I said, but before I could finish Dave grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me to the corner of the room.

“Sarah, do you really want to tell her about our plans?” he asked, his voice low so she wouldn’t hear us argue.

“Why not?” I asked as I shrugged his hand away.

“Because I’m not really certain she’d make the best travel partner through a zombie-infested city,” he hissed. “She gets confused by Scrabble.”

I stared at him, overcome by disbelief. “Are you saying we just leave her here, like a little kid, to take care of herself? I mean, she doesn’t even have a car anymore.”

I looked at her. She was watching us, still all innocence and confusion. She smiled.

He followed my gaze and after a long pause he sighed. He wasn’t stupid. He saw the same thing I did when he looked at her.

“Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t be cool,” he muttered reluctantly.

“No. Not cool at all.” I glared at him before I moved back toward her. “Sorry about that, Amanda. Anyway, we were thinking it might be better to try to leave the city and get someplace less populated.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense. If there are less people it means there might be less… zombies. Or whatever they are. Maybe we could even find someone to help us.”

“If you want, you can come with us,” Dave said from behind me.

When I glanced at him over my shoulder, he didn’t look pleased, but resigned. Still, I appreciated that he made the offer when I knew his feelings about it.

“It’ll be dangerous,” I added. “If we do this, we’re going to have to stop along the way and get guns and food and other things. And we may have to fight off the zombies. You may have to kill things that look like people.”

“Well —” She looked toward the closed bathroom door. Blood was starting to seep into the beige carpet in front of it. “I guess it’s better to stick together.”

I smiled. “I agree.”

“And you won’t have to stop for guns,” she added with a sunny smile. “Jack had some.”

Dave moved forward, his eyes wide. “He did?”

Amanda nodded with great enthusiasm. “Yeah, he had a safe in the bedroom.”

“Do you have the key?” I asked.

The idea of not having to make a gun run, at least right away, was a very happy one. The less we were forced to stop, the less likely it was that we’d get bitten. Plus, I felt safer with a shotgun than a frying pan as the weapon standing between me and undeath.

Amanda shook her head. “No, he kept it on him at all times and wouldn’t let me have a copy. He said he didn’t want to keep it close to the safe unless he was there to guard it. It’s probably in his pocket.”

Now all of us looked at the bathroom door. I have to say, I was not looking forward to digging around in Jack’s gross jean pocket, which was now all gooey and disgusting thanks to Dr. Phil. And the toilet seat.

Still, we couldn’t ask Amanda to go key diving. Even though she was somehow feeling okay about the fact that Jack was dead, that was probably going too far.

“I’ll do it,” Dave said with a heavy sigh.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He shrugged as we all moved together toward the bathroom door. “Yeah, you killed him. The least I can do is find the key.”

He threw the door open and stared for a moment at this guy who he’d called friend for a couple of years. I felt bad for him.

The thing about the zombie outbreak is that you get really numb to all the death and blood and bodies. It happens faster than you’d probably like to think, too. You may not believe me, but I know what I’m talking about.

Still, there are moments, little moments, where you really see how bad things are. This was the first one of those moments for David. His face was twisted and sad as he stared at the body in our bathroom and I’m guessing he must have been remembering some of the good times he and Jack had shared over the years.

I was about to step forward and offer to do it instead when he crouched down on his haunches and dug his hand into Jack’s pocket. After some digging and grunting he pulled out a few keys along with a now bloody, foil-wrapped condom that made all of us say, “Ewwww,” at once.

“Which one?” he grunted as he dropped the condom and held the bloody keyring out for Amanda to inspect.

She squealed, but when he shoved the keys into her hands, she took them and looked.

“This one,” she said as she held out the smallest of the bunch.

He took it back as she dug into her pocket and brought out a little disposable handi-wipe like you get at the doctor’s office or even some rib joints. You know, the ones with the wrapper that you can never get open without help? Well, she was about to bite it to tear the package open. I snatched it just before her mouth closed over it.

“It’s got blood all over it from your hands, Mandy,” I snapped. “Don’t take the risk of exposure to Jack’s zombie cooties. Go cut it open in the kitchen or just wash your hands in there.”

She stared at the blood-streaked package in my hand and then she nodded and disappeared into the other room. Dave stared after her with horror and annoyance in equal measure on his face.

“Is she serious?” he asked me as he turned on me with a shake of his head. “Did that just happen?”

I nodded sadly. “Yeah. It did. But hey, if Jack really does have weapons in that apartment then we might be set. We wouldn’t have to stop at a sporting goods store, which means less chance of encountering someone infected.”

“No, you’re right.” He looked at the bloody key and grimaced as he wiped it off on his shirt, trying to find some little corner that wasn’t already soaked in… well, stuff. You know. Zombie stuff. “So what’s our plan with this?”

“I think you and I should go over to the other apartment together,” I said, looking over my shoulder toward the kitchen. I could hear Amanda running water in the other room. “We can carry more back with two of us.”

“Maybe you should stay here,” he said. “It could be dangerous.”

I stared at him for a minute and then pointed toward my bloody shirt, slacks, and arms. “I’ve killed at least two people already. Really?”

“Okay, just saying.” He shrugged.

“Amanda’s not as messy with goop as we are. Maybe we could ask her to stay here and start the food,” I suggested. I was a little embarrassed that I was starting to get really hungry, despite everything I’d done and seen that day. “That way she’ll feel useful. I don’t think she’d be much help in a fight.”

“As long as she doesn’t end up wrapping the pizza in bloody shirts to take it out of the oven or something,” Dave muttered with a shrug.

I went into the kitchen and Amanda immediately agreed to take care of the pizza. And once I showed her the directions… then read her the directions and reminded her about not touching anything bloody, I felt comfortable leaving her alone.

When I came back into the living room David had his baseball bat in one hand and he held out a big metal flashlight my Dad had bought for us when we moved to the city. We’d never used it, but it was pretty heavy.

“Here, I found this,” he grunted.

I took it and tested its weight in my hand, then swung it around a bit like a sword.

“That will do,” I said with a quick, nervous smile for him.

“Ready?” he asked as he opened the door.

“As I’ll ever be,” I muttered as he turned the doorknob and we set out into the dimly lit hallway.

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 6

You and your partner are on the same side. It’s the side of the living.

We’d been bugging the super of our building to get better hallway lights put in for two years, but no amount of arguing or pleading from the tenants swayed him. At some point in the “negotiation,” he’d threatened to raise our rent to pay for the upgrade so everyone had shut up and just dealt with the buzzing, dim hallways.

Now I hated the fat ass even more because the flicking yellow glow made the entire scene in the hallway all the more surreal and creepy. Trust me, we didn’t need that, it was bad enough as it was.

There was blood on the door across the way from ours and a little smear of sludge on the wall next to our apartment. I had to hope both were from Jack and not some unaccounted for zombie roaming around on our floor.

David looked around, checking all the way to the end of the hall before he motioned me out of the apartment. “Let’s go slowly and keep an eye out.”

“I hear that,” I whispered.

I kept close to his heels, watching every damn door as we slipped down the few feet that separated our apartment door from Jack and Amanda’s. That walk normally took less than a minute, but that night it felt like an hour because we had to move with such care.

When we got there both of us stared at the bloody handprint on the wooden surface that just about matched the size of Jack’s hand. I could almost picture him standing there in his stained t-shirt, wishing he could get in and attack Amanda. I wonder how long he had stood there before his addled brain remembered the key we had in our place. And how long he’d been in our apartment before he stopped thinking at all.

Both of us shivered at the same time.

Dave shook off his reaction first and tried the door. It was open, which made him roll his eyes. Even in an emergency and with a boyfriend who had attacked her, Amanda hadn’t thought to do something so simple as lock it.

Inside, he bolted the lock behind us and we looked around. The apartment was laid out the same as ours, so that would make it easier. Or at least, it should have.

Now okay, I’m no Martha Stewart so I normally don’t judge, but Amanda and Jack obviously didn’t care how they lived. Junk was piled everywhere. There were game systems, clothing, even empty pizza boxes strewn across the floor and furniture. It was like children lived here.

I shook my head as we gingerly stepped over the biggest piles and maneuvered around sharp furniture edges that were wedged too close together. Let’s just say this was not an optimal setting to go into battle.

“There could be ten zombies in here and we’d never know it,” I said under my breath.

“Well, let’s not think about that, huh?” Dave whispered as he gave me a brief look over his shoulder, but I noticed he lifted his bat a little higher.

Somehow we managed to make it through the mess to Jack and Amanda’s bedroom door where she’d said the safe was. Taking a deep breath, Dave turned the knob and pushed, but instead of swinging open easily, it stuck. We looked at each other and I raised my flashlight.

“Did she leave the hall door open, but lock the bedroom and just not bother to tell us?” I asked, incredulous that even Amanda was that stupid.

Dave put his shoulder into the door and shoved.

“No, it’s not locked. There’s something behind it,” he grunted as he pushed to no avail. Panting, he straightened up and stared. “I think I’m going to have to get a running start and force it.”

I stared at him. “But um…”

He glared. “What?”

“What if it’s a body back there?”

“Do you want the guns or what?” he snapped as he kicked some stuff on the floor out of the way to clear himself a little path.

Apparently he didn’t care about my answer, because before I gave one he got a couple steps running start and hit the door and put all the weight of his body into his shoulder. There was a creak and then the door gave way and opened about a foot and a half. Just enough for us to fit inside.

Dave staggered as the door gave and half fell into the room. Immediately I tried to climb in over him, you know, in an attempt to protect him in case there were zombies waiting for us. But did he appreciate it?

Yeah, no.

“Sarah, shit that’s my kidney!” Dave yelped as I tripped over him.

“I’m just trying to help,” I snapped as I got into the room around him.

“Then get off!” he barked, slapping at my legs as he got to his knees and we both looked around.

Lucky for us, since we were distracted by yet another fight, there were no zombies waiting for us, or even any dead people on the brink of waking up undead. I peered around the open door and found only another pile of clothing that had been blocking our entry.

“Remind me not to ask her to do any chores,” I said as I helped Dave the rest of the way up.

He smiled and I guess our little argument was forgotten for now.

“I’ll make sure you don’t lose your mind and do something so stupid.” He frowned as he flicked a sock off his pant leg that had stuck to him in the fall.

I grimaced as I hoped it was clean, not dirty, but then I saw what we’d been looking for and forgot about Amanda and Jack’s pigsty.

“There’s the safe,” I said with the same reverence I would have used if I saw Joss Whedon or something.

Amanda hadn’t been exaggerating. It was a big safe, tall enough to hold long-barreled weapons, not just handguns. As Dave put the key in the lock, I prayed Jack wasn’t just using it to store porno and Ho-Hos.

I’m not kidding you. When the door swung open and David stepped aside so I could see our bounty, I think angels sang. Seriously, I thought I heard choirs, because in that huge metal box were about ten rifles and shotguns, lined up perfectly along the rack. Boxes of shells were stacked on the shelf above. They were surprisingly neat and organized, too, considering the room was such a fucking wreck.

Dave grinned at me. “Thank God for the second amendment.”

I laughed as I reached in to take a few guns. “This may not be what the Founding Fathers intended, but good on them.”

As I positioned weapons over my shoulder by the slings one by one, David set his baseball bat aside and loaded one of the rifles. As he slid the action in place and clicked the safety off, our eyes met. For some reason, now that he had a loaded gun in his hands, the reality of the situation really started to sink in.

We were in fucking Zombie Central. And we had to get out.

“This is messed up,” I said softly, reaching out to pat his arm.

“Yes, it is, baby,” he answered as he took some handguns and put them in his waistband.

I giggled a little at the sight of him with four of them sticking out of his pants. It was like a Western movie on steroids.

He looked down at where I was staring and rolled his eyes. Apparently he didn’t find it as funny as I did.

“Okay huckster, let’s just get back to the apartment before Amanda burns the place down and we have to run into the dark and zombie-infested streets.”

I didn’t answer, but since that was actually a distinct possibility, I got moving toward the door. Before I could open it, Dave grabbed my wrist and pulled me back a little.

“Wait, wait,” he whispered as he stepped in front of me and peeked through the peephole. Once again, I was annoyed to realize he was right.

“So?” I whispered when he remained staring there for what felt like a long time.

“Mr. Gonzales is out there,” he said as he shot me a look from the corner of his eye.

“The super?” I asked, my eyes widening in surprise. I don’t think I’d ever seen him up on the third floor. Hell, he was hard to find in his own office downstairs. “Do you think the old bastard is actually checking in on residents?”

Dave shook his head. “I doubt it. I can’t picture him giving a damn about anyone but himself. Still, he’s not stumbling around doing that herky jerky dance the zombies all seem to have down pat, so do you want to risk talking to him and see if he’s human? Or at least as human as he’s ever been.”

I nodded without hesitation. Just the thought of other living people was a good one. Even if it was that asshole.

“He might be able to help us,” I said. “Or even want to join up when we leave the city. If we’re going to get out of here, we might need more bodies. Um… you know, live ones. I don’t think dead ones are going to be a problem.”

Dave clearly agreed with my assessment because without further discussion he opened the door and called out, “Mr. Gonzales?”

The super turned to face us and seemed surprised to see us coming out of Jack and Amanda’s apartment. Of course we were carrying an arsenal of weapons, so I’m sure that didn’t help in the “shocker” department.

“What are you doing there?” he asked, his light Spanish accent sharp as he moved toward us.

He looked just as mean and obnoxious as ever and I found myself relaxing, even relieved to see the fucker. He was one little flash of normal in a world of chaos.

“Just getting some supplies,” Dave said as he shut the door behind us.

Mr. Gonzales glared as he looked from one of us to the other. “That isn’t your apartment.”

“No, but the tenant, Amanda, is in our apartment. She said it was okay for us to go get the guns,” Dave explained.

I expected the super to say something about the weapons, but instead he shook his head.

“Amanda?” Gonzales asked. “The little dumb one that lives with the big dumb one here?”

I nodded. Awesome. I wondered how he described us when we weren’t around.

“That’s her, but Jack…”

I stopped as I thought of poor dead Jack on my bathroom floor, just another victim of Dr. Phil.

Mr. Gonzales seemed to understand my silence. “He isn’t okay, eh?”

Dave must have sensed my discomfort with the topic because he changed it. “Hey, is anyone else left in the building? Maybe we survivors could all meet up and talk about some strategies to stay alive.”

Mr. Gonzales tilted his head and for a moment he just stared at Dave. I shifted the six guns I had, three on each shoulder and they were starting to get really heavy. Why couldn’t he just say something so we could go back to our apartment and I could put these damned things down before my shoulders exploded?

“Mr. Gonzales?” Dave asked, his brow wrinkling. “You have been watching television, haven’t you? You know that there has been an attack or something, right? People are getting sick and trying to… well, eat other people.”

Mr. Gonzales smiled. “Of course, I know that. Now why don’t you get little Amanda and come with me? We’ll find the others. I’m sure we can find others.”

I stared. There was something weird about how he was acting, not that Mr. Gonzales had ever been normal. He always stared at my tits when he talked to me. Today, though, he was staring at my head. Not my face. My head.

He tilted his chin and in the sickly yellow lights of the hallway I caught a reddish glint in his iris. Actually it was more orangey as the yellow and red met.

“Fuck, David!” I cried as the situation became clear. “He’s a zombie. He’s transitioning!”

Mr. Gonzales smiled and through his clenched teeth a thin version of the black zombie sludge seeped through. The guns on my back were heavy and I must have seemed like the easiest prey because the super lunged for me. I tried to dodge, but couldn’t quite get out of the way with my load of firearms slowing me down.

He hit my shoulder and I slammed into the fire extinguisher box. The sharp metal edge jammed against my skin and I couldn’t help but cry out in pain even as I continued struggling to get away.

Gonzales grabbed for my shirt and caught a handful of the stained white linen. It tore as I yanked against him, but that only made him grip harder, fisting the material as he pulled me back toward him. I smashed into his fat belly, pulled to his clammy chest. He was so close I could smell his breath and it smelled like cigarettes and death.

The transition was happening faster now. His skin was graying, his eyes fully red as his mouth snapped at me like some kind of rabid dog. I strained my neck to get away, to back up but I could only manage six or eight inches of space between my face and his.

There was a huge bang from behind me and suddenly the teeth and head were gone in an explosion of acrid gun powder and smoky blackness. Brains splattered on the wall, on our door; they seemed to fly everywhere. I felt the back spray of them on my face and made sure to keep my mouth shut as I turned my head in horror.

The smell of cordite and blood hung in the air as I turned toward my husband. David stood to my left, his smoking rifle still positioned on his shoulder. He was panting as he stared at the headless corpse of Mr. Gonzales. The dead super slumped over and ended up propped against the fire extinguisher box at a weird angle.

He still had my shirt in his hand and I tugged helplessly to get free, but his dead, clenched fingers wouldn’t open. Finally I tore the fabric, leaving a fluttering remnant of white caught in his hand. Like a flag of surrender.

“Are you bitten?” David asked, his voice weird and faraway to my ringing ears.

I looked at Gonzales again and shivered. The blood at his empty, gaping neck hole was black, not red.

Suddenly Dave grabbed me and pulled me away from the sight. He spun me around and shook me hard.

“Damn it, Sarah, did you get bitten?”

My haze cleared as I looked down at my arm. Our super had made finger-shaped bruises on my skin, but I didn’t see any broken flesh or black teeth marks to indicate my certain doom.

“N-No,” I stammered. “I wasn’t bitten.”

Dave grabbed me and pulled me against his chest in the hardest hug he’d ever given me. His heart was beating pretty fast. So was mine. Even though we’d been attacked before, this was different. I had been weighted down, too off-balance to really fight or escape. Without Dave there to save me, I would have been undead for sure.

He let me go and looked around. “There are probably more of them in the building,” he said.

I nodded as we walked away from what was left of Mr. Gonzales. “He was only just transitioning, so he would have been bitten ten or fifteen minutes ago, maybe.”

David didn’t respond, but opened our apartment door carefully. “Amanda?”

She popped out from our kitchen with a sunny smile of welcome. I stared. Once again, the former cheerleader looked terrific. In the time we’d been gone, she’d changed out of her bloody clothes into some of mine and washed herself up, I guessed in the kitchen sink since I couldn’t imagine her climbing over Jack in the bathroom.

She’d even found an apron some hopeful relative had gotten me when we got married. It said, “Cooking for two” with a little arrow that pointed at her belly.

Why hadn’t I thrown that thing away?

She was a regular fucking Donna Reed now.

“Oh lookie, you found his guns,” she said with all the excitement of a kid.

Dave stared at her, I think as stunned by her absolute obliviousness as I was. “Yeah. Didn’t you hear the shot in the hallway?”

“Hmmm?” Amanda said. “Oh, yeah. I heard a bang. I thought it was a really loud car backfire. Did you have to fire the gun?”

Dave was gritting his teeth and I could tell that he was on the edge of a meltdown of biblical proportions. Honestly, so was I, but I thought he might not be able to control it, so I stepped in between them and placed a hand on his chest gently.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Why don’t you take all these guns and put them in our bedroom so we can figure out the weapons and ammo situation after dinner. Then maybe we could roll Jack into the hall or out the window or something so that we can each shower. I know I don’t want this disgusting shit on me anymore and I’m sure you feel the same way.”

Dave kept his eyes trained on Amanda for another minute before he looked at me.

“Fine,” he said, the word accentuated as he reached out to take some of the guns I had almost died for.

He left me with a shotgun and shells before he went into the bedroom. I loaded the gun carefully.

“Better check the pizza,” Amanda said in a singsong voice.

She was still totally oblivious to the fact that she had just narrowly escaped getting killed, and this time not by a zombie.

I shook my head as I went to the phone. By now I was sure my parents were freaked out by the news of the problems in Seattle. In fact, as I stared at our machine, I was kind of surprised that they hadn’t called already.

When I picked up the phone, I realized why. Instead of a dial tone to greet me, there was only a repetitious beeping sound that indicated the line was dead. I stared at the receiver for probably a full minute before I replaced it and went for my cell.

My bloody purse was in its usual spot by the door, though I swear I don’t remember putting it there. I snatched my cell out of the side pocket, wiped a smudge of blood off the screen with my mangled sleeve and powered it on (I always turned it off in Dr. Kelly’s office). But when it lit up, there were no messages on it, either, and the “No Service” sign glowed on the screen.

I looked back and forth between both phones in my hand as a horrible realization hit me. Whether by government assistance or zombie, we no longer had a way to call for help.

And no way to let anyone know that we were alive.

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 7

Never go to bed angry. Terrified is okay.

Amanda was asleep on the couch by the time I finished logging the non-perishable foods and putting them into a couple of big boxes to take with us the next day.

Since I don’t cook very often, I’m sorry to say we didn’t have much of use in our cupboards. There was some old soup, a few Power Bars, a really sad box of store brand chocolate cereal. Oh, and Pop Tarts. Wonderful Pop Tarts in a variety pack I’d found on sale a couple of weeks before.

I hoped that Amanda and Jack’s apartment would give us a little more booty when we stopped there on our way out, but after seeing the sad state of it earlier in the day, I somehow doubted it. In fact, I was starting to think I wouldn’t want anything they had.

Another box and a backpack sat by the door as I entered the main room. Those contained our weapons cache which now consisted of the guns, ammo, a big butcher cleaver I didn’t even know we owned, Dave’s baseball bat and my heavy flashlight. Once again, I wished we had more. Where did people find their missile launchers in zombie movies anyway?

Still, it would get us going and I hoped we’d find provisions along the road, or even make it to someplace untouched by the outbreak where we could just go to a store and resupply while we waited for all of this to blow over.

I walked to the couch and looked down at Amanda. She was a couple of years younger than me and right now she looked even more than that. Like a teenager and in some twisted way I’d become a twenty-seven-year-old Mom to her. My only consolation was that she was out of the diaper phase.

I grabbed a blanket from the back of the other chair and spread it over her. She didn’t wake up, though she did snuggle down deeper into the couch cushions.

I shook my head as I moved away from her. I had no idea how she could do it. I doubted I’d be sleeping much tonight, that was for sure. Not with zombies still roaming around the apartment complex. But I guess she somehow trusted that Dave and I would take care of the situation… and her. Which was sweet in a really weird way.

I walked into our bedroom to find Dave already under the covers. The loaded rifle was propped up on his nightstand and I could see he had put some easily slipped on shoes at the ready, too. I did the same and put my shotgun within reach before I got in beside him.

The smaller television we kept on the dresser was on and he was watching some channel. This time it wasn’t CNN since we don’t get cable in the bedroom, but a local affiliate that had gone all news all the time in the crisis. You know, “Zombie Watch, 2010.”

A really freaked-out anchorwoman with no makeup was sitting at the desk.

“Let me repeat that information again. Yes, the phone systems in the Greater Seattle area are currently down. And we’ve had reports that most cell phones are also not getting service. State and local governments have denied any involvement in the loss of telephone communications, and it may have to do with an outbreak of the plague at a local tower facility earlier in the day.”

I moaned. “Maybe it’s just crappy reception.”

“Told you to upgrade to a better system,” Dave said as he leaned forward and continued watching the small, fuzzy screen. “Can you hear me now?”

“Right now we can update you with some shocking numbers,” the anchor continued. “The Centers for Disease Control is telling us that based on the aggressive spread of the outbreak, up to a million residents could already be stricken with what people on the streets are calling zombieism.”

“Ha,” Dave said in a flat tone and shot me a look. “Told you so. Did I call it or what?”

“I’m sure you thought of it first, dear,” I said as I patted his arm.

“I’d like to go now to Dr. Emmett Elias, a University of Washington professor who worked in the lab where the outbreak apparently started. Joining us in the studio is Dr. Elias. Thank you for braving the drive across town, sir.”

The camera panned back, and sitting next to the woman at the anchor desk was a fat, balding man in a really bad suit. Like beyond Men’s Warehouse. I did not like the way he looked.

“Thanks for having me, Karen,” he said with a smug smile.

She frowned at him. “Dr. Elias, can you tell us exactly what your lab was studying that could have caused such a terrible outcome as we’ve seen in our city today?”

The guy looked at her, his gaze sharp and his lips thin with anger. “No, I’m afraid I’m not authorized to discuss what we were specifically studying in the lab.”

The reporter stared at him and Dave laughed. “She’s ready to punch the guy, look how freaked out she is.”

“I hope she does,” I said as I glared at the doctor. “Asshole ruined my city and nearly got us all killed.”

“Sources have told us that there may have been some government grants associated with the research,” the reporter pressed. “Was this some kind of government program? What branch was it related to?”

The researcher’s beady eyes narrowed. “Well, it is a state school, Miss Finch. Federal and state funding helps us provide many programs.”

“And do most of those programs lead to everyday citizens turning to cannibals all around us?” the woman asked, her tone rising enough that it was clear she was as on edge as anybody. “Do you know that I saw a five-year-old child eating a cop on the way to the studio tonight, Dr. Elias?”

There was some hustle and bustle off-camera and the reporter blushed as she glanced at the screen. “I’m sorry. But you must see that people deserve to know more about what has caused this terrible outbreak that seems to be spreading at an outrageous rate.”

Dr. Elias looked at her, tilting his head. I frowned. The way he was moving reminded me of something.

“It’s quite all right, Miss Finch,” he said. “You have lovely hair.”

“He’s a zombie,” Dave whispered from beside me.

I nodded because the second the doctor complimented the reporter on her hair, I realized that his twitchy, weird movements reminded me of the super in the hallway. Mr. Gonzales had also turned his head all weird as he looked at me and so had Dr. Kelly before she attacked in her office. All zombies reminded me of a dog in an alley or the freaking alien in the Alien franchise.

I think the reporter realized what he was at the same moment because she let out a gut-curdling scream and pushed her rolling chair away from the desk. But she wasn’t fast enough. The doctor lunged across the space between them and grabbed her. He yanked her close and then his teeth sank deep into her neck.

Dave and I both lurched back with combined cries of, “Oh!”, like we were watching football or something. Red blood spurted around his black teeth from the wound, spraying across the desk. A few little specks even hit the camera lens so now we watched the rest of the horrifying scene through a slightly reddish haze of smeared blood.

A whole bunch of people came running from all directions. See, they still ran toward an attack in those days because we were all so shocked by what was happening around us. I guess we figured we could do something. We hadn’t fully realized that wasn’t any way to help someone who was bitten except to blow their head off before they turned into the living dead and lost all control of who and what they were.

A group of four men grabbed for the doctor, who was pulled off the bleeding, wailing reporter. She lifted her hand to her neck and when she saw blood coat her fingers, her screams grew even louder. The zombie doctor, both in that he created zombies and now was one himself, groaned and smashed his teeth at his captors. His higher brain function was clearly gone now and he thrashed about like a trapped animal.

Someone grabbed the boom mike from the stand above and starting hitting him until the doctor and the crew who held him slipped off frame behind the desk. The only thing we heard were growls and the only thing we saw for a minute or even more was the crewman’s hand as it lifted up and then slammed down behind the desk. With each smashing blow the mike came up more bloodied and gruesome.

The reporter lay across the desk now, blood pooling under her head as she whimpered softly. But I already could tell she was starting to transition. Her posture went from weak to something more ready. And when she lifted her head, her eyes had a red glow that had nothing to do with the bloody camera viewfinder.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “Those poor people.”

Sure enough, she turned toward the group of men who had just tried to save her. With a crazy grin, she dove down amongst them with a guttural scream and then the screen went white with just the words, “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.”

Dave opted not to follow the neatly printed directions on the screen and instead clicked the TV off. We sat in silence for a long time, staring at the black screen. Finally, I rolled over on my side to face him.

“It’s getting worse,” I said after the silence had stretched out a long time.

“It seems to be,” he agreed.

“If there are a million infected in less than twenty-four hours,” I continued, “by the end of tomorrow half the city or more will be gone. So is the plan the same?”

He thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. “With the telephones out, the power is probably next, and I’d rather not be in the city when they shut her down completely. I think it’s going to be mass hysteria.”

“It’s a crappy neighborhood anyway,” I said. “Between the thugs and the zombies, we’d be fucked if we stayed.”

He shrugged. “I say we get up early and get moving as soon as it’s light out. My sister lives what… a hundred and thirty miles south in Longview? Maybe that will be far enough away. And without traffic to slow us down, we might even make it there in less than two hours.”

I groaned as I flopped back on the pillows in dread and frustration. “Gina? You want to run to Gina in a crisis?”

There was a long pause as Dave clenched his teeth. Finally, he asked, “Why not?”

I looked up at him. “Um, she fucking hates me for one.”

“I always figured the feeling was mutual,” he said, his eyebrows lifting. “Come on, admit it, you never really tried with her.”

I folded my arms. Okay, so I’ll tell you something I never would have admitted to him. He was right (again, that asshole). I hadn’t ever really tried with Gina.

She was only five years older than us, but acted like a mother. A really boring, plaid-wearing mother. And she doted on David. Nothing he could do was wrong, which meant everything I did was. When we were with her, he acted like her little brother, not my husband. And he deferred to her, never taking my side if we disagreed.

I hated visiting her.

“Okay, how about this, which is worse,” he asked. “Zombies or Gina?”

I hesitated too long, I guess, because he grabbed the pillow behind him and swatted me with it playfully. I laughed as I fended him off.

“Okay, okay, zombies are worse,” I admitted. “But just barely.”

He pushed the pillow behind his neck but remained lying on his side looking down at me. As I stared up at him, I realized we hadn’t been so close in bed for a long time. I’d forgotten how nice it was. And he smelled good since we had tossed Jack out the window earlier in the evening and taken showers to clean up.

“Thanks,” he said softly. He reached down and brushed a little damp hair off my cheek. “I know you hate going down there. I think I even get it, though I wish you liked my family. But I have to see if she’s okay, at least.”

I nodded. Okay, so I got that. I wondered about my family, too, but Gina was closest.

“This is going to be really dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice soft in the dark.

He didn’t answer for a long time, but finally he nodded slowly.

“We might die,” I continued.

He nodded again, his gaze never leaving my face.

I reached up and cupped the back of his head and drew him down toward me.

“Well, I guess we better go out with a bang.”

He smiled before he dropped his mouth to mine and kissed me.

​

 

[Khổng Lồ Một Mắt]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN

Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 8

Give each other compliments every day. Even when the undead attack, it’s nice to feel pretty. Or badass.

I should have known that having “end of the world” *** wouldn't solve our problems. Though, it was pretty great and I highly recommend it. It’s one of the big benefits of an apocalypse that no one tells you about. It just makes everything… better, because you know it might be the last time every time.

But despite all that, by the time we were traveling down to the parking garage the next morning, David and I were snipping at each other again. It was like our mind-blowing night had never happened.

I guess it had all started up when I woke up in the middle of the night with a stunning realization. I hadn’t checked the Internet! I had bolted from bed and logged on to our ancient desktop to find that I did have mail, as the old AOL saying used to go. One, from my Dad, dated earlier the previous day. His tense one-sentence, “Are you okay?” had said more than any page-long tome could have.

After shooting him an e-mail to let him know we were all right and planning to leave the city, I’d told Dave I wanted to go to San Diego and that had started a three in the morning bruiser about the intelligence of heading to another highly populated area.

I knew he was right that it wasn’t smart and that we should stick to our original plan to go to Longview and see how things were after that, but I wanted my Daddy in that moment. So now this morning we were back to fighting.

“I’m just saying, maybe we should have checked a few more of the apartments in the building for supplies before we left. You never know what people have in their cupboards,” I said as the elevator moved down floor after floor slowly.

Dave glared at me. “And risk bumping into a passel of zombies who could be hiding in any part of that building? No fucking way am I dying for some extra Power Bars! No, thank you. We’ve got enough supplies, at least for the time being. We’re not going very far.”

I looked at him incredulously. “Come on, David! It might take us longer than we think to get to your sister’s. And she might not even be there when we get there. The last thing we should do is find ourselves stuck in some podunk town at the Washington/Oregon border without any supplies.”

“As opposed to going to… say… San Diego?” Dave clenched his gun tighter, his eyes straight ahead. “Oh, big surprise, Sarah, you bagging on my family, my ideas, my —”

Amanda frowned as she adjusted the hand truck we’d found buried under at least five loads of laundry in her old apartment.

And why did she have a hand truck?

Well, it turned out it tired poor old Jack out to take the garbage out by hand, so he’d stolen a hand truck from the loading dock at his job. Annoying story, but it was helpful for transporting boxes of food, ammo, and the backpack stuffed with extra guns.

“Guys, as entertaining as this all is,” she said, “the elevator is about to open and my hands are full, so I’ll need you two to figure out if there are any zombies around. I don’t really want to get killed because you two are fighting over… um, whatever it is you’re fighting over.”

I scowled at Dave as I cocked the shotgun. The sound of the slide of a shotgun is awesome. Dave popped the safety off his rifle just as the elevator slid open. Our twin glares said we’d finish this discussion later, but for now we concentrated on the task at hand.

Gingerly, we moved forward like some kind of trained unit of the military. Yeah, we catch on quickly. I looked to the right, scanning the garage for any sign of movement or infestation. Dave did the same on the left.

“Are we clear?” I asked as the three of us slipped from the elevator posed like some kind of ridiculous Charlie’s Angels. Only Amanda really had the hair for it.

“Clear,” he verified.

We inched forward. The garage was in far worse shape than it had been the night before. Amanda and Jack’s wrecked car had been flipped onto its roof at some point. I guess the zombies must have wondered if there were easy victims inside waiting to be eaten.

Blood slashed one wall of the garage. A lot of blood. I shivered as I wondered if it was one of our former neighbors who had lost their battle there or just some poor soul who had managed to get inside thinking it might be safer. Wrong choice, for sure.

“It looks like lots of activity here last night,” David said, motioning to the other side of the garage.

More pools of black sludge and blood sat beside a few of the cars that were haphazardly parked at odd angles.

“We’ll have to be extra careful,” I agreed. “Amanda, stay close and don’t be afraid to drop the hand truck and run if it comes to that, okay?”

She nodded as we reached our car, but her pale face told me how terrified she was at the prospect of seeing a fully transitioned zombie since she hadn’t yet had the pleasure.

When we reached our old beater, I peered into the backseat, but there was nothing lurking there.

“Car seems clear.”

“I’ll check the trunk,” Dave said, positioning his key. When I looked at him incredulously, he said, “Hey, Jack got into our tub.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I guess that’s true.”

I stood guard beside Amanda. We both looked around nervously as Dave cleared the trunk. He motioned to her and she wheeled the cart to the back of the car. Together, they loaded the food into the trunk, leaving out only a few things for our trip down to Longview.

The guns and ammo we had decided to put in the back-seat, so Amanda opened the back passenger door and began work positioning the weaponry for easy access.

“I still feel like it’s not enough,” I said as I looked at the car with worry.

David slammed the trunk hard enough that the car shook.

“Sarah, God damn it, nobody knows if we’re doing this right or not. Seriously, maybe you’re right! Is that what you want to hear?”

I opened my mouth, but apparently he wasn’t done.

“Maybe we’ll get ten miles up the road and be wishing we brought more fucking Pop Tarts. Or maybe we’ll get all the way to Gina’s without incident and find out that the rest of the universe is safe and happy. I have no fucking clue and I’m doing the best I can.”

I stared at him. For all our snipping and all the strain in our relationship over the past six months, it was pretty rare for him to snap and say what he felt. Now I stared at him and I saw the strain on his face.

“You’re right,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry. We’re both doing the best we can in a bad sit —”

Before I could finish the thought, a blood-curdling scream echoed from the backseat of our car. I spun toward Amanda and found her half in and half out of the vehicle, pointing wildly toward the garage gate that led to the street.

“Look!” she screamed over and over. “Look! Look! Look!”

Dave saw them first. “Fuck!”

Three zombies were coming toward us from across the garage. I recognized one as a homeless guy who stood near the bus stop every morning hawking the charity newspaper Spare Change. The other two I didn’t know, but one of them was fucking huge. Using the car roof as a place to balance my weapon, I took aim as best I could and fired off a shot.

Okay, so I wasn’t so good with a gun at the time, but with a shotgun you don’t really have to be. The buckshot just flies out like a net and catches anything nearby.

I managed to hit the biggest zombie in the shoulder and blew off a chunk of his rotting flesh. He paused for a minute and looked down at the injury. His mouth twisted like he was mad, as well as totally confused, but then he started toward us again, this time at a much faster and more purposeful clip.

Next to me, Dave fired his gun and dropped the homeless guy in one hit. I reloaded my gun by opening and shutting the chamber at the same time he did and this time when I fired the zombies were close enough that I hit the big guy full in the face and chest and he whined as he fell backward and hit the concrete floor with a thunk.

The third zombie kept moving forward and surprised me by launching himself over the low roof of our car. He slid between Dave and me and snapped his mouth at me. I barely dodged as I staggered backward and hit the still open passenger door. Inside the car Amanda was cowering and screaming.

“Gun’s jammed,” Dave called out as he frantically tried to fix it.

I guess I should have fired my shotgun, but like I said I was pretty new to all this then. Instinct kicked in and instead of firing my perfectly good gun, I swung it. The butt met the zombie’s face with all the force in my body and there was a satisfying wet thud.

The creature roared in pain as I shattered his nose and caved in part of his head. I ignored any pity I might have once felt for another living creature. I had to remember that this creature wasn’t. He was nothing more than a crazy animal who needed to be put down.

With that in mind, I swung a second time and this time he didn’t make any more noise because he was dead. Well, I guess no longer undead. A vague, but important distinction.

Amanda was still screaming. Her thin, piercing wail traveled through the parking garage and bounced off the concrete walls so that it echoed back to us in an eerie, never-ending cry.

I stared at the dead body on top of my car. I stared at the other two on the garage floor. Then I stared at my husband. He was smiling at me. Smiling even though we had just bumped our formerly human, currently zombie killing spree up to a nice round six (not counting Mack, since we didn’t actually know if we’d killed him when he flew off my car in the parking complex).

“Amanda, it’s over. For the love of God, shut up!” I snapped with a roll of my eyes.

I moved out of the way so I could close the back passenger door of our car. Her cries continued, but they were much quieter behind the shut door and then they finally trailed off entirely. Through the smeared glass I could still see her lying in a fetal position on the backseat, twitching with fear every once in a while.

“What?” I asked, because Dave’s smile had gotten wider. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

He shrugged as he moved around toward the driver’s seat. Before he got in, he grabbed the car zombie’s ankle and yanked him off the roof with a violent tug. I heard him hit the ground below with a wet and somehow also crunchy smack.

“Nothing,” Dave said with a shrug as he stood at the driver’s side door. “I was just thinking how much cooler you are than any other girl I ever knew.”

He opened the car door and Amanda’s low whimpers greeted us. He motioned his head toward our guest. “Especially this one.”

I couldn’t hide my own smile as I got in the car. Putting on my sunglasses, I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Okay, David. Let’s roll.”

​

 

[Clarkdale]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN
Genre: Horror - Zombies​

Spoiler: Chapter 9

Make requests, not demands. “Please” kill that zombie, honey, I’m out of bullets.
Dave didn’t have to open the window to enter our garage code because some time during the night the heavy, metal gate had been torn from its hinges. Without further incident, we pulled out onto the surface streets and Dave began to dig around under his seat as he kept one hand on the wheel.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the stereo button that broke off.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “That you broke off,” I corrected him.

“Is it this?” Amanda said from the backseat and she held out the little button. “It must have rolled back here.”

I took it with a brief look toward Dave, but he was staring straight ahead, his mouth a thin line of irritation. I laughed as I fiddled with the button until it slipped back into place and I was able to turn the radio on.

They weren’t playing the “stay in your houses” bulletins anymore, so we all sat quietly as the voice on the radio droned on about the plague spreading throughout and even beyond the city. Even if they hadn’t talked about it, we could see the devastation for ourselves.

Up and down the streets, there were burning cars and broken windows. Buildings were slashed with blood and sidewalks pooled with it, but there were no bodies.

I guess because there were zombies, instead.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies lurched along the blocks that led up to the highway. They dragged themselves along side streets, they carried mangled and broken limbs in their mouths like wolves with bones of prey. And they came in every shape and size, women and men, they were of every color, there were children and toothless grandparents.

“God,” Amanda whimpered from the back.

“I’m not sure there is a God,” I said softly. “How could there be in the middle of all of this?”

Dave didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes on the road, maneuvering around debris and powering through intersections where the zombies seemed to wait for potential victims. Eventually he managed to make it to the highway and we edged the car down the high-walled onramp.

When we reached the actual highway, all of us gasped. The day before when we had made our way to and from Dr. Kelly’s office, the traffic had been so light that it was creepy. Obviously residents of Seattle’s first response to the crisis had been to go home or stay at work, just as the bulletins had advised.

But as the local and national news coverage had gotten worse and worse, it seemed like the entire city had come to the same conclusion we had: that it was time to run. Only many of them hadn’t waited until morning. They had ventured out into the dangerous night without a plan.

From the empty cars that were lined up, bumper to bumper in every lane to the bloody pavement beneath them, it was clear the freeway had become a deadly battlefield in the last eight or ten hours.

“Holy shit,” Dave muttered beneath his breath. “Look at that.”

I followed his gaze upward and sucked in a breath through my teeth. On the overpass was a hanging highway sign. You know the kind — the electronic ones that give out Amber alerts or warn about highway construction. Only this one now read, WARNING: ZOMBIES AHEAD.

“Whoa,” I said as we rolled slowly underneath the sign. “Hey, I’ve read about those! It’s a hack of the system. They’ve done them all over the world.”

Ahead of us, a legless zombie dragged himself along the shoulder, holding a severed hand in his mouth that he worried like a dog with a bone, shaking it back and forth. Eventually the pinky finger broke off and flew out of my line of sight.

“I’m not sure it’s a hack this time, Sarah,” Dave said as he gripped the steering wheel tighter.

I didn’t respond. Amanda only shivered in the back and for a while we rode in silence.

Dave maneuvered the car through the wreckage and for the first time in a long time I felt lucky that we could only afford this compact piece of shit. We were easily able to fit our way through small spaces that bigger cars would have struggled with.

“At some point we might have to move some cars,” he finally said quietly as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Can you handle it or do you want to drive?”

I swallowed hard. He meant I’d have to get out of the relative safety of our vehicle. Outside the possibility of a tangle with zombies was almost one hundred percent. But it had to be done.

I managed a nervous nod. “I-I can handle it. But…”

I turned around to look at Amanda. She stared back at me, wide-eyed and oblivious as usual.

“Hi,” she said.

I smiled, hoping to keep her calm as I told her what I’d need her to do. “Hi. So Dave has to drive and I may have to move cars. But I need someone to cover me from the car with a gun while I’m out and can’t protect myself as well. Do you understand what I mean?”

Dave’s gaze flashed to me, “Sarah! She can’t —”

“No,” Amanda interrupted from behind us. “Look I know you think I’m dumb, David, and I guess I probably am. I just never had to do much after cheerleading. But I can learn things, you just have to explain them.”

Dave kept driving in silence, his clenched jaw speaking what his lips wouldn’t, but my smile for her grew wider as I motioned to one of the rifles on the seat next to her. You had to give the girl points for being willing to try.

“Okay, Amanda. Here’s the thing about loading a gun…”

For the next ten minutes I explained the mechanics of the rifle to her and got her to the point where she seemed pretty comfortable with both loading it and clicking the safety on and off.

“Are you ready to try a few shots?” I asked as I used the power window button to roll down her window partway.

“We can’t waste ammo, Sarah,” Dave said and I could tell he was trying hard not to snap.

I glared at him. “Well, I’d rather not have her shoot me because she hasn’t practiced. If you feel like that’s wasting ammo, please let me know.”

He let out a sigh that told me everything, but he nodded. “No, you’re right. Just don’t do too much. We might regret it later when there are zombies.”

“If you see zombies, Amanda, shoot for them. Otherwise, pick a target and squeeze the trigger gently,” I said, hoping to reassure her. She looked pretty nervous and Dave’s attitude wasn’t helping.

She nodded as she braced the gun on the window ledge. “I’m going to shoot the window out of that van over there.”

I nodded at her choice of targets and waited as she squeezed off the shot. It was pretty close to the mark and zinged off the side mirror instead of the window. Amanda made a little noise of frustration and I reached back to pat her leg.

“It’s okay, just try again.”

Her second shot went better and the window shattered.

“I did it!” Amanda squealed, raising the gun up. It slapped the roof and she barely caught it as it slammed back down.

“Careful,” Dave admonished her. When I glared at him, he smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “But good job.”

She grinned before she popped off another couple of reasonably good shots.

“Okay, that’s enough. Dave is right,” I said. “We can’t waste any more ammunition. But do you think you can stay calm and do exactly what you just did if there are zombies outside when I have to move a car?”

She looked nervous. Honestly, I felt nervous even as I tried to keep it together. She could easily shoot me while trying to “protect” me. I didn’t relish the idea of having a hole in my shoulder while trying to fight off a zombie. For all I knew, the smell of my blood might even bring more.

“I can do it,” Amanda finally said.

“Well, we’re about to find out,” Dave said as he motioned his head toward the road before us. There were six cars across, without any space to get around them on either shoulder.

I grabbed for a handgun from our stockpile in the backseat and made sure it was fully loaded before I popped it into my waistband. Slowly, I opened up the door and looked around for any zombies.

I hadn’t fully gotten out when Dave grabbed my arm. “Be careful,” he said softly.

I leaned forward and kissed him, hoping to reassure him even though there was no way to do it. The fact was that I was about to go into the fire and I might not make it through.

I shut the car door behind me, vaguely aware that Amanda was climbing up from the backseat into the front so she could pull off easier shots from my window.

My heart throbbed as I made my way up the highway. I pulled the gun from my back waistband and carried it at the ready as my eyes scanned from one side of the big highway to another. I tried to find a medium-sized car to move, hoping to create a large enough space that our smaller car wouldn’t struggle to fit.

There was a red town car in the middle of the fray so I approached it with caution. It was too close to the big truck next to it and I had to wedge myself between the vehicles to look inside. As I peeked into the backseat there was a groaned growl that echoed from somewhere in front of me.

I leveled my gun toward the sound and pulled off a shot when a zombie dragged itself up along the shoulder. He fell instantly, dropping the bundle in his arms. When I saw it was a baby blanket, I made myself look away. I didn’t want to see anything else, especially since whatever was in the bundle didn’t cry.

Behind me another shot exploded and I looked over my shoulder to see that Amanda had dropped another zombie drooling black sludge into a car behind me. I raised my free hand to give her the thumbs up before I returned my attention to the town car. Its backseat was empty and it looked like a good prospect.

Immediately, I realized that I couldn’t get the car door open with the vehicle so close to the one next to it so I used the butt of my hand gun to break the glass.

Carefully I dragged myself through the shattered window and turned the key that had been left in the ignition. As I put it in drive, I noticed a pool of blood in the seat beside me and shivered. The car inched forward until I bumped against another car.

I couldn’t help it. I grinned as I slipped my seat belt into place.

Have you ever just wanted to smash a car? Or break a television? Or maybe burn a big fire in the middle of a city square? If the answer is yes, then you’d have some fun during a zombie infestation. It’s the little moments, you know?

Anyway, I gunned the car and slammed forward, shoving the smaller vehicle in front of me. Throwing it in reverse, I backed up and slammed forward again, blowing the car in front of me out of the way.

I reached my hand out the window and motioned Dave forward. In the side window I saw him creeping our car through the space I’d made. As he pulled up next to me, I popped the glove compartment to see if the previous owner had anything of use.

Tic Tacs were all I got, but I pocketed them before I got out and started toward the backseat of our car. Hey, they were one and a half calories, right? In a pinch they’d provide some value.

Before I got back to our vehicle, a zombie opened the passenger door of a nearby SUV that had flipped on its side and half crawled, half fell out of the vehicle. This one was a woman dressed in what appeared to be some kind of stripper outfit. I stared, unable to help myself, at her skintight vinyl nurse’s uniform that was unbuttoned to her bellybutton, which was pierced, of course.

But my shock at the ridiculousness of her appearance faded as she let out a roar and from behind her came five more stripper zombies, like she was their leader calling for a charge.

“Shit,” I cried as I dove for the car. “Drive!”

I closed the door behind me and Dave burned rubber on the asphalt as the stripper zombies threw shoes at the vehicle and limped at us with that weird “Zombie Speed” that they seemed to sometimes have.

“Well,” Dave said as we swerved around a broken-up motorcycle. “I’m guessing those girls may have been the day shift.”

But none of us laughed even as I looked through the back window to see that we had lost them.

Nơi tổng hợp, chia sẻ và giải đáp thắc mắc về Thành ngữ tiếng Anh
http://bachngocsach.com/forum/threads/8099/

Trợ giúp dịch thuật (tiếng Anh)
[url]http://bachngocsach.com/forum/threads/8020/[/URL]​

 

[Clarkdale]

LIVING WITH THE DEAD
MARRIED WITH ZOMBIE
by JESSE PETERSEN
Genre: Horror - Zombies
​

Spoiler: Chapter 10

Address one issue at a time. You can’t load gasoline, pick up food, AND kill fifteen zombies all at once.
Well, we have a problem,” Dave said after we had repeated the car-moving excitement a few times and made it all of five miles up the freeway.

I couldn’t help but snort out laughter from the back seat. “Just one?”

“One more,” he conceded with a glance toward me in the mirror. He looked nervous and my brow wrinkled in suspicion.

“What is it?”

He hesitated before he blurted out. “It looks like we’re pretty low on gas.”

I leaned forward and stared at the gauge over his shoulder. He was right, the needle was under a quarter of a tank. I glared at him. I knew he could feel it, even if he refused to look at me anymore.

I clenched my teeth.

“I thought you told me yesterday morning that you would fill it up before you picked me up at work to go to therapy,” I said, trying really hard to keep my tone even but failing.

This was another of those bullshit things he did that drove me crazy.

“Yeah. I did,” he admitted, his tone way softer than mine. “But I forgot.”

“You forgot,” I repeated as I flopped back in the seat and folded my arms. “Great.”

He was silent, but in the rearview mirror I could see his dark brown eyes boring into me. They were apologizing, but also sending me a message that he didn’t need any additional punishment from me.

I sighed. “Look, I know you were busy yesterday,” I finally said. “And how were we to know this would happen? I’m sure you would have stopped if you’d realized a zombie outbreak was on its way.”

“I would have done a lot of things if I’d known that.” He nodded. “But you only asked me to do one thing and I fucked up. Sorry.”

“There’s a Gas Guzzler right off exit 165,” Amanda offered helpfully. “It’s kind of busy most days, but I we can get in and out quickly.”

Dave sighed. “Well, it’s not that we think there will be a line, Mandy. It’s more a zombie issue.”

Her smile fell. “Oh. Right. I guess they could be roaming around there. A gas station is where Jack got bitten by that homeless guy.”

I shut my eyes. She still didn’t totally get this situation.

“Well, we’re armed and we’ll just have to be careful,” I said, swallowing hard.

Dealing with the freeway zombies was scary enough. I was trying not to think about surface streets where more of the horde would be roaming free.

Dave nodded as he worked his way to the exit ramp, got off and turned toward the Capital Hill area of the city. It was actually one of my favorite places in Seattle. There were a couple of universities up there and a lot of houses, stores and restaurants, plus the aforementioned Gas Guzzler which was right off the highway. We pulled up to a gas pump and Dave cut the engine.

It was quiet, but by this time we’d started recognizing the difference between quiet and too quiet.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Dave whispered before any of us even unbuckled our seat belts. “I’ll get out and start pumping the gas. You guys will have to cover me as best you can because I won’t be able to watch my own back. Once we’re done, we’ll lock the car and go into the convenience store and get anything we can from the shelves.”

Amanda nodded and so did I. With a brief look between the three of us, we each opened our door and stepped out with weapons drawn.

It’s a weird thing to be in a city that is, essentially, dead.

Undead. Whatever.

I hadn’t realized just how accustomed I’d become to the rush of cars on the freeway, the honk of horns, the chatter of people on the street, even the whine of airplanes up above.

Now there was an eerie silence that seemed as loud as any freight train. I shivered even in the warm summer air but forced myself to pay attention as Dave popped the gas tank door and moved around to start pumping fuel into our car.

I faced the front of the vehicle and Amanda took the back. Any movement was suspect, any sound made us lift our guns. But somehow, some way, we managed to keep from drawing attention from the infected the entire time Dave was gassing up. Finally he pulled the pump away and capped the tank.

He looked around. “I don’t like this.”

I nodded. “Maybe we should just go. Not try for supplies.”

He stared at me. “Earlier all you wanted to do was search.”

“That was then,” I said. “This is now. Our task is to get to Longview and as slow as we’re driving right now it could take the whole day to get past the airport, let alone to safety.”

Dave moved toward me. “You’re scared.” I edged away, but he caught my shoulders. “We’re all scared. But we’re here now and we should look.”

I looked toward the store. For some reason Dave was right, I was freaked the fuck out. More than I had allowed myself to be since this mess started. Maybe it was because the store was an unknown. A zombie standing three feet in front of me was starting to become commonplace. But I was scared about what I’d find in a convenience store.

“Come on,” Amanda said with a bright smile. “Maybe we can find some antibiotic cream for the cut on my arm.”

I sighed. I couldn’t deny that request. We hadn’t had many first aid supplies back at our apartment and certainly they hadn’t either. It was only smart to keep all of us healthy as best we could and that meant preventing infection.

“Okay,” I said quietly. I grabbed a handful of ammo and stuck it in my pocket before I locked the car and followed Dave and Amanda.

The automatic doors were still working, which was a bad thing. There wasn’t anyone in the store, which meant that whoever had been working at the time of the outbreak hadn’t had the wherewithal to lock up the store.

We peered in as the door slid open. As it shut in our faces, I nodded. “Okay, it looks pretty clear.”

When the door opened a second time, Dave stepped into the store with us behind him. It wasn’t the biggest convenience store in existence. Probably three hundred square feet at the most, with six or seven low aisles of food. Coolers lined the back walls. Although the store had been unmanned for at least some amount of time, it hadn’t been as cleaned out as I would have suspected.

In some way that made me nervous. No looting meant there weren’t many humans left to loot.

Dave motioned toward the back of the store and I nodded, realizing he wanted us to clear the store from back to front. Amanda was less aware of pretty much anything around her, so instead of following us, she roamed away toward the aisle with cupcakes and candy.

Dave opened his mouth like he was going to call her back, but then he shut it and just moved forward. I angled myself to the other side of the room and did the same. I reached the back wall and looked for a moment at the cooler in front of me.

Beer.

Fuck that sounded good. Even though it was barely eight-thirty in the morning. But zombieism breeds alcoholism. It’s true. Look it up.

I managed to get it together, though, and watching David out of the corner of my eye, I moved along the length of the store, checking each corner and every cooler (hey, you never know, wouldn’t it suck to reach in for a Coke and come out with a zombie gnawing your hand off?).

When we reached the front, we walked toward each other and met near the front door.

“It’s so quiet. How can there be no zombies here?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But let’s take it while we can get it.”

He popped behind the counter and grabbed for plastic bags, which he handed out to us.

“Okay, ladies, let’s shop,” he said with false brightness. “Non-perishables, medical supplies, liquids if we can carry them are our priorities. If you’re hungry right now, feel free to grab some perishables that you’ll eat in the next few hours.”

He stared at the walls of cigarettes and to my surprise he started pulling boxes off the walls.

“Um, are we taking up smoking?” I asked as I shoveled armfuls of beef jerky and chips into my bags. “I thought you were so against it, I mean the shit you gave me when I was trying to quit last year…”

He arched a brow. “They might be worth something to trade later.”

I stared at him. “David, that’s prison movies, not zombie movies.”

He didn’t answer, but came around the counter and dumped some candy bars into his cigarette bag.

“I have medical stuff,” Amanda said, bring out a bag brimming with those materials. She’d picked pretty well as far as I could see. She had different sized Band-Aids, creams and even some painkillers. I’m not sure I would have stocked up so thoroughly from the selection in the gas station.

“All right then, let’s go,” Dave said, motioning us out the door.

“I’ll drive if you want,” I offered as the automatic door slid open.

“Yeah, that might… be… good…”

Dave trailed off and his bag hit the ground. So did mine. Even Amanda couldn’t dumb her way out of this one. If the zombies hadn’t been in the store, there was no shortage of them waiting outside. A group of maybe fifteen of them stood in a semi-circle in the area behind our car. And they were all staring directly at us.

Nơi tổng hợp, chia sẻ và giải đáp thắc mắc về Thành ngữ tiếng Anh
http://bachngocsach.com/forum/threads/8099/
Trợ giúp dịch thuật (tiếng Anh)
http://bachngocsach.com/forum/threads/8020/​