EAT, SLAY, LUZT: A sexy wild ride through the dark heart of the zombie apocalypse.

by Jillian Stone

  I placed the stack of sheets on the down comforter and stared at Chris. “We’re gong to steal this boat and sail away together.” I plopped down on the bed in a kind of daze. “For many days…”

  “…And nights.” Chris leaned over me. His kiss was slow and sensuous, and I welcomed the weight of his sexy-as-hell body. “Wanna play captured sex slave?” He pushed up a thin cotton T-shirt.

  I slanted my eyes. “As long you don’t mind a little cock and ball bondage.”

  He snorted a soft laugh and lifted my hands over my head. “Do me, baby.” He leisurely sucked a nipple through my thread bare T-shirt.

  A tremor of pleasure moved from my breasts to my womb. “Oh, God yes, I moaned.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  The distinctive popping sound of gunshots made it through my arousal filter. Instinctively, we both sat up, and then thought better of it. “Do you think Ivan’s in trouble?” My words buffeted gently against his mouth.

  “Hard to say who’s in more trouble, Ivan or the z-population of Doha.” He continued to nibble my lower lip, but stopped when shots rang out again. Louder this time.

  “Fuck, he’s leading them this way.” Chris growled and stood up. He reached inside his trousers and made an adjustment. “The last thing we need is a bunch of biters crawling over the boat.”

  I stared at the obvious bulge in his pants. “Sorry about that.”

  He pulled me up off the bed. “You’ve got forty days and nights to make it up to me.”

  Chris grabbed his assault rifle, and we jogged back toward the marina. “No wasted ammo—if anything gets past me, unload your pistol into them.” Rounding a bend, I could see Ivan limping toward us. A dozen fast runners were coming up behind him.

  Chris released the safety on his M4. “Looks like Ivan’s a popular guy.”

  “Fresh meat,” I murmured.

  Ivan reached back and took a few wild shots, but he was no match for the ravenous zombies. In fact, it was hard to watch the badass zombie lord struggle to fast walk.

  Chris jammed his rifle against his shoulder and moved forward. “Hit the ground, Ivan!”

  Ivan ducked for cover as Chris fired. I have to say, the M4 is a serious killing machine. A spray of bullets can shred the legs off most zombies. Chris took down the frontrunners using controlled bursts, and then moved to higher ground.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking good at this.” I backed up the hill, two-handing my pistol.

  Chris glanced over at me. “What happened to that mean machete of yours?”

  “They confiscated my knife and slingshot.”

  “Fuckers.” He reached out and pulled me behind him.

  “I loved that machete.”

  “You were good with it—you looked like Laura Croft versus the Desert Zombies.” He fired and put a bullet through the brain of a crawler.

  “Really? And here I thought I looked Wrecking Ball Miley Cyrus, fighting off zombies in my underwear.”

  I caught a half grin from him. “Her too.”

  Fast zombies are tricky. You can have it covered, and suddenly become overwhelmed. Another pod attacks from a different direction and before you know it, you’re a zombie snack.

  If I haven’t made this perfectly clear, the walking dead are fiercely single-minded and hard to stop. In a few short days, I’d learned a lot about fighting zombies from Chris—like he never got rattled. A focused and cunning warrior, he made the biters to come to him. He’d slow them down with a spray of bullets, then finish them off with single shots. Even the projectile’s trajectory from higher ground made sense. The bullet would travel at a downward angle through the mouth and hit the primitive brain.

  “Friends of yours, Ivan?” Chris brought down the last straggler, a gray-faced zombie wearing a tattered robe and headscarf.

  Ivan peered up at us. “Thanks, man, they descended on me from the terrace above one of the swimming pools.”

  Ivan’s clothes were soaking wet. Arching a brow, I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “What?” he growled. “I swam out to a bar in one of the lagoons. Five fucking pools—not one fucking ounce of alcohol.”

  Chris slung the M4 behind him and headed back toward the marina. He paused near a service road that led to an underground maintenance facility.

  “Is the power on in Doha?” Chris asked.

  “Seems to be, at least down here by the water.” Ivan shrugged. “The hotels likely have backup generators.”

  I could just make out an office at the end of the down ramp. An orange power cord snaked over to a golf cart parked beside an electrical outlet.

  “You two stay here.” Chris moved his gun to the low-ready position and descended into the facility. He approached the maintenance office slowly and peered into both windows. After a good look around, he unplugged the cart and drove it up the incline.

  “Hop in, we’ve got a chopper to unload.” He handed his M4 to Ivan. “Get in front and take point. Lizzy, you’re rear guard.”

  I climbed onto a jump seat on the back of the cart and hung onto a side rail.

  We quickly moved stacks of rations from the cargo bay of the chopper to the golf cart.

  “We’re going to have to make two trips.” Chris dropped down from the chopper with a handful of bungee chords.

  “You and Ivan go ahead.” I wanted to check out the restaurant that overlooked the marina. “If the power is on, there may be real food in the freezers.”

  The frown on Chris’s face remained unmoved.

  “Strip steaks—maybe a few crab legs?” My noisy stomach immediately approved of the idea.

  He turned to Ivan. “You go with her.” He climbed into the golf cart and sped off toward the Zephyr.

  “Half-a-brain before beauty.” Ivan barely leaned on the restaurant door and it swung open. The place didn’t appear to be ransacked, either. The dining room almost looked inviting, like they were expecting guests.

  Wall sconces in the shape of seashells lit up the interior. “It’s so weird that the power is still on.” I murmured.

  As if in answer, the lights flickered.

  “Maybe not for long.” Ivan nodded ahead. “Kitchen’s that way.”

  Weaving between cloth-covered tables, we took slightly different paths to arrive at the swinging doors. I peeked through a porthole window.

  Ivan had my back. “What do you see?”

  “Lots of stainless steel.” We moved in quietly. The kitchen was arranged in two long stations. Grills and ovens along the wall. Sinks with hand-held faucets and cutting boards took up most of the island.

  Ivan moved further into the deserted workspace.

  I reached out and grabbed his arm. “What’s that noise?”

  “What noise?”

  “Shhh—listen!” An exhale of tiny clicks ruffled the air, as if someone was shaking a rattle. “That one.”

  “You mean the alien creature noise?” Ivan asked, straight-faced.

  I squinted at him. “Fuck you, Ivan.”

  The room was a good deal warmer than the restaurant, and there was a sickening stench that grew worse with each footstep.

  “Something’s good and dead in here.” Ivan edged forward.

  “Do me a favor and make sure whatever it is stays dead.” I pointed my pistol at two legs sticking out from under the workbench.

  I squatted down for a better look. “Young adult male wearing swim trunks.” A dark blue metallic pistol lay on the floor near the body. “Looks like a self-inflicted bullet to the brain.”

  I picked up the gun with two fingers, and handed it to Ivan. “Odd to be open-carrying in your swim trunks, don’t you think?

  “The virus spreads fast—zombies on the loose.” Ivan shrugged. “Saving a bullet for yourself is not such a bad idea.”

  The soft clicking sounds were a constant chatter now, and close. “I’m going to unlock the wheels on this table, help me push it back?”

  Green flesh, protruding eyes and swollen tongue.


  A swarm of flies crawled over the corpse. The deceased had been there for a few days and was in an advanced stage of putrefaction. The legs were maybe the worst part. Outer sheets of derma had ballooned up and looked like crepe paper. Maggots teemed beneath translucent skin layers, and the weirdest part was that I could actually hear them as they wriggled around.

  Ivan exhaled a hoarse sigh. “At least we found the aliens.”

  My quest for steak and crab legs suddenly become less appetizing, but we’d come this far and I wasn’t about to leave empty handed.

  Ivan pointed the carbine down a dark corridor lit by glass-fronted refrigeration units. I checked out the fruit and veggies and juice. Most of produce had gone bad.

  “There’s gotta be a freezer around here.” I felt around and found a light switch. Fluorescent tubes buzzed to life overhead.

  Ivan opened a paneled door and found the pantry. I stepped over bags of Basmati rice and lentils. “Look—shelf-stable almond milk!”

  Ivan’s grin told me he’d one upped me. He held up a large bag of roasted beans. “Coffee.”

  The tag on the bag of beans was printed in several languages. Transfixed by the possibility of coffee, I literally whispered. “A double café torréfié. Double roast coffee.”

  Ivan helped me drag bags, and stack boxes outside the pantry. “Let’s check out the meat locker.”

  A loud bang came from outside the kitchen. “Chris?” I raised my voice. “We’re back here in—”

  Ivan raised a finger to his mouth, and we both listened. Something was moving around in the dining room. “I’ll go see who it is, you check the meat locker.”

  I nodded. “Be careful.”

  “Or what? I might get bitten and turn?”

  “Fine, don’t be careful.”

  I opened the freezer door, and a blast of cold air hit me in the face. I gasped from the shock of the chill and the sight before me.

  “Dear God.” Icy fog breath puffed out of my mouth. Several figures huddled together in the back of the freezer, surrounded by flash frozen meat.

  I crept closer. The clothing on the frozen bodies had crystallized and appeared eerily sparkly. An adult female cowered in the corner of the freezer sheltering her children. For some unfathomable reason she had chosen to make this frozen cave their crypt. I backed away and checked the door to just make sure I couldn’t get trapped inside. She could have waited, and then hit this lever and escaped.

  I contemplated death by slow asphyxiation and hypothermia, versus zombies. I would definitely have chosen a face off with the undead. Something didn’t add up. Mothers were fierce protectors of their young. What on earth could have frightened her into such a heartbreaking choice?

  I could either stand there and wallow in horror or get to work. I chose work. I dragged a serving cart inside the freezer and thought about all the crazy choices I’d made in the last few days. I piled boxes of imported shellfish on top of frozen steaks and got the hell out of the freezer. Rice, lentils and coffee beans fit on the bottom shelf. We were going eat like Saudi royalty for weeks.

  I maneuvered through the kitchen and was about to push the cart through the double doors, when something raised the small hairs on my body.

  Hold on, Lizzy.

  In this strange new dystopian world, too quiet was almost always a bad sign. Like you’d dropped into the eye of the hurricane and were about to feel the full force of the storm.

  Call it zombie radar.

  Chapter Twenty

  KABOOM!

  What I remember most about the blast was the whooshing sound after the boom. There’s a vacuum left after an explosion, like this massive chunk of air gets sucked out of the world in an instant. Then comes the high-pitched noise of shattering glass, the crack of tables and chairs hitting the ground.

  In that instant, I thought the force of the discharge might take down the entire restaurant. I had no time to think or react as the shockwave knocked me down. Where the hell was Ivan? My arms flailed in the air. What the hell was going on? In the blast, the cart had gotten jammed between the kitchen doors and the workstation.

  A blue haze hung in the air, and there was an acrid, chemical smell. I pulled myself up off the floor and peeked out of one of the porthole windows. The dining room that had once seemed tranquil and inviting was now filled with smoke and charred furniture. Small fires sputtered quietly.

  There—not ten feet away, Chris and Ivan crouched behind a table they’d turned on its side and made into a barricade. I backed off and plastered myself against the wall. What the fuck was out there? I checked to make sure the pistol Chris had given me was stuffed in my waistband.

  What were they up against? Terrorists? US Army? Doha militia? I slid over to get another look.

  Chris and Ivan both turned at once and fired at—something—but what was it? I saw nothing. Nothing but smoldering carpet and broken windows.

  Wait. Something was moving out there. A shimmer in the fog of debris particles.

  “Get back, Lizzy!” Chris yelled as he and Ivan dove in my direction. I kicked the cart back, as they crashed through the double doors. Seconds later, a blast of bullets hit right outside the door.

  Chris used the stock of his M4 to knock the gooseneck faucet out of the sink and jam it though the door handles. “Is there a back door out of here?” He moved toward cold storage.

  “The freezer’s a dead end.” My heart pounded louder than the voices around me, “Try the other way.” There had to be a back end to the restaurant, some kind of receiving bay.

  Ivan reached out and Chris pulled him upright.

  “What the fuck are those things out there?” My gaze shifted between them.

  Breathing heavily, Ivan leaned against a worktable. “Predator zombies.”

  I stared. “Say again?”

  Ivan returned my stare. “You put a smart zombie inside a silica coated carbon nanofiber exoskeleton and you get—”

  “A smart zombie in a stealth suit. Are you fucking kidding me?” I checked in with Chris who shook his head. “Don’t look at me—this is my first encounter.”

  Ivan rolled his head back, popping the vertebrae in his neck. “Seemed like a badass idea at the time.”

  Chris checked the room opposite cold storage, and was back in seconds. “Found the back door. We need to fall back and hunker down.”

  I pushed the cart full of real food forward, ignoring his frown. “You’ll thank me when I fire up the grill on that six hundred thousand dollar yacht.”

  We barricaded ourselves in the receiving bay and took a position close to a roll-up door. I sandwiched myself between Chris and Ivan. “What’s the deal with these predator zombies?”

  “Basically, it’s a bunch of miniaturized cameras embedded in an armored suit. Background images are projected to the front and vice versa.” Ivan paused a moment to let the concept sink in.

  “So they’re invisible—sort of.” I half whispered, half croaked.

  “They’re not all that smart, but they are specialized. These two seem to be programmed for demolitions work.”

  “Where did they come from—why are they here in Doha?”

  We both stared at Ivan.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Ivan groused. “I’ve never met one until a few minutes ago, and it tried to kill me.”

  “How many are there?” I asked.

  “Two—” Chris shrugged, “—we think.”

  “Can’t we just shoot them?”

  “Negative,” Ivan answered. “The exoskeleton is ten times stronger than any body armor currently in use—bullets bounce right off.”

  I closed my eyes and made a conscious effort to take deep, calming breaths. “Okay—how do we kill them?”

  “Got any C–4 handy?” Ivan asked.

  I shook my head. “They must have limitations, weaknesses.”

  “If we could get close enough to damage the head gear, I could maybe get a shot in.”

  Chris offered.

  “P
hysically, they’re not much stronger than your average smart zombie.” Ivan furrowed his brow and actually appeared thoughtful. “And there may be a weakness around the neck where the helmet attaches to the body armor.”

  “There’s a thermite grenade in the helicopter, would that work?” I asked.

  Chris stared at me. “Where?”

  “In my backpack. They took my slingshot and machete but they missed the side pocket under the mesh netting.”

  Another blast shook the walls of the kitchen.

  “Ivan and I will draw them in here, so you can get to the helo and grab the backpack.” Chris rolled the delivery door up a few feet. A row of potted palms followed the curve of a raised patio.

  “Go palm to palm, then make a run for the bird.”

  I crawled under the door.

  Chris checked in with Ivan, who was removing parts of the barricade, making a lot of noise, drawing the enemy toward the receiving bay.

  My limbs were shaking as I ran for the first potted palm. In seconds I was crouched behind a giant concrete planter.

  “You’re clear, Lizzy.”

  On my toes and ready to run, I looked back. “Watch me?”

  Chris half-smiled. “All the way, baby.”

  It’s a weird thing when terror strikes. For a moment, I thought I might be paralyzed by fear. Something about these new creatures had me spooked. Ordinary generic zombies were the known enemy. But programed zombies with impenetrable, stealth exoskeletons…

  Shake it off, Lizzy.

  I ran in a crouched position from palm to palm. A loud, thumping noise came from inside the restaurant, and I took that as my signal.

  Breathing hard, with my heart pounding, I made a running dive and landed on the floor of the chopper.

  I checked the dim corners of the cargo bay, then rolled over and scoped out the cockpit. My gear was stowed under the crew chief’s seat. A part of me wanted to just lay there, on the cargo bay floor and give up. But then, that just wasn’t me.

  Eyes wide and frosty alert, I made it to the front of the helicopter and reached under the seat for my backpack.

  The floor shimmied, as if something heavy had entered the chopper.

  I grabbed the backpack and shrank behind the panel that separated the crew chief’s station from the cargo bay. I thought about Predator, the movie. Did the alien hunter have night vision or thermal imaging capability? Both, I thought.