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.
About Orbit Short Fiction
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Copyright © 2011 by Jesse Petersen
Excerpt from Married with Zombies copyright © 2010 by Jesse Petersen
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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First eBook edition: June 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-19832-5
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Meet the Author
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction
Shambling With The Stars Page 4
