Love Lies Bleeding

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

She screamed.

  Zombie Dwayne stupidly paused to slather his gruesome desire. But then, just as he dipped his head to rip Pamela’s throat out, Zombie Karli yanked him off of her. Pamela felt a moment of relief. But then, having flung Zombie Dwayne to the floor, Zombie Karli lunged for Pamela’s throat herself. The computer tower toppled off the chair, and slid across the concrete floor.

  Frantic, Pamela managed to get the chair up in between her and Zombie Karli, its legs blocking the zombie’s attack. For a moment, all she could do was scream directly into the face of her best friend turned flesh-eating monster.

  Zombie Dwayne rose from where Zombie Karli had thrown him, and with a furious growl, yanked Zombie Karli back from Pamela. As the two began to literally rip each other apart while fighting over her, Pamela, beyond terrified, inched back around the corner and away from the dead predators. She kept the chair in a ready defensive position, and dragged the computer processor along the ground as quietly as possible, but the zombies’ attention was clearly on each other.

  Zombie Dwayne fell. Zombie Karli howled in triumph, then reached down to rip one of his arms off.

  Unable to bear seeing any further horror, Pamela fled.

  Only to be snatched into the arms of a dark-haired zombie, that she hadn’t seen creep up behind her.

  The zombie clutched Pamela to his chest and sunk his teeth into her neck.

  Her eyes widened with the excruciating pain. She was unable to scream or fight. The zombie had punctured an artery, the lifeblood draining quickly from her body as the creature gulped at the flood.

  This was the death she’d been seeking all day, but she hadn’t fulfilled it on her own terms. Pamela shuddered and sighed. “Oh, Grady … I’ve lost you …”

  The zombie jerked back from tearing farther into Pamela’s neck.

  It was Grady.

  Pamela’s blood flooded down and over her bosom to stain the front of her ivory dress. Grady clumsily turned Pamela to face him. She couldn’t immediately focus enough to understand that she was finally back in Grady’s arms.

  Zombie Grady howled in painful despair.

  Pamela swayed. Zombie Grady grasped her, carefully lowering her to the floor. All the while, he let out a low, keening growl.

  Pamela fought to keep her eyes open. She reached up to touch Zombie Grady’s face. “Grady? Grady!”

  Zombie Grady frantically pressed his hands to the open wound on Pamela’s neck, but those hands were made for rending flesh, not healing it. Blood slowly seeped across the floor.

  “I gave up, even though I knew you’d come for me. I knew you wouldn’t have really left. I gave up.”

  With another howling roar, Zombie Grady lifted Pamela up off the floor and cradled her in his arms.

  “But they didn’t break me,” Pamela whispered in his ear. “I didn’t betray us, I stayed true, true to you, my love …”

  She died.

  Zombie Grady was utterly distraught. Like a child, he rocked back and forth with Pamela’s lifeless body in his arms.

  Zombie Karli rounded the corner, chewing on a snack of Zombie Dwayne’s arm. It was his right arm, which would make it the second one she’d managed to rip off.

  Seeing Pamela and Zombie Grady, she dropped the arm. Zombie Karli opened her mouth in a gruesome reflection of her former grin. Then she threw herself to the ground to lap at the pool of Pamela’s blood.

  Zombie Grady roared in indignation, then smashed a backhand across Zombie Karli’s head that sent her flying into the wall. He was crazy strong and insanely fast — stronger and faster than Zombie Karli. The doctor, if he wasn’t lying a few rooms away with a bullet in his brain, might postulate that this was because Grady had been live injected with the serum, and it had longer to mutate his body.

  Zombie Karli reared up on all fours and growled at Zombie Grady. Zombie Grady, still cradling Pamela, carefully lowered his dead love into the chair to which she was still cuffed. Then he turned on Zombie Karli.

  He was absolutely livid.

  Suddenly seeming to realize her mistake, Zombie Karli attempted to make a run for it. Zombie Grady was faster. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and slammed her face against the concrete wall. She struggled, but his anger overpowered her. As she fell to her knees, he flipped her to face him. Then, ever-so-slowly, he twisted her neck until it snapped.

  Zombie Grady dropped the body to the ground, even as it still clawed viciously at his legs. He pressed his foot onto Zombie Karli’s broken neck, reached down, and grabbed a fistful of her gorgeous hair. Then he pulled her head right off.

  Without a second thought, Zombie Grady tossed the head away like a used gum wrapper, then crossed back toward Pamela. He tipped over the computer processor that Pamela had dragged all the away from Karli’s office, and stared down at it stupidly. Then, he cracked the case as easily as a nut, and ripped out the hard drive.

  Somewhat satisfied with this, he snapped the handcuff where it bound Pamela to the chair, gathering her up in his arms.

  Then Zombie Grady carried Pamela’s still-dead body down the hall toward the clearly marked exit.

  THE UNION

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ryerson United Church, Kerrisdale

  Everything was bathed in sunshine. The alleyway situated between well-kept homes, the garbage cans awaiting collection, and even the homeless person tucked into his nest of cardboard, all had a certain angelic look. The cherry blossoms had begun to bloom and release their sweet scent.

  As Zombie Grady passed by carrying the dead Pamela in his arms, dogs barked and lunged at him from narrow city-lot backyards. Pamela’s torn and bloody wedding dress dragged along the ground, occasionally tripping the mournful Zombie Grady as he walked. He might have been wandering for hours; no one was around to see him. He tried to sing, or rather grunt, some sort of lullaby.

  Zombie Pamela, her skin now an icky shade of gray, woke with a groan. At first disoriented, she quickly identified Zombie Grady and covered his face with awkward kisses. Her jutting teeth made soft contact difficult.

  Zombie Grady lowered Zombie Pamela’s feet to the ground. Though awkward at first, she stood on her own. Then she turned and grabbed for Grady’s crotch. She seemed particularly satisfied with what she discovered there.

  They communicated in a series of grunts, growls, and soft touches. Zombie Grady in particular kept reaching for Pamela’s wounded neck and keening. Each time he did so, Pamela would brush his hand away and nuzzle him.

  A dog barked nearby and Zombie Pamela lunged for it. She was ravenous. The dog shrieked in terror and took off. Zombie Grady laughed.

  A police siren sounded from the next street over, and Zombie Grady pulled Zombie Pamela behind a row of garbage bins to hide. She seemed a little oblivious to his anguish, as she began to gnaw on his hand. Grinning again, he playfully pushed her head away, so that Zombie Pamela spotted something over Zombie Grady’s shoulder. She gestured toward it with a mad grin on her face.

  Zombie Grady turned to look down the alley. In the distance, a church sat on a grassy hill.

  Zombie Pamela motioned toward the church again, then clutched at Zombie Grady’s shirt as if imploring him.

  A police car cruised by the mouth of the alley, and Zombie Grady pointed toward it and emphatically shook his head.

  Pamela let out a keening wail and pressed Grady’s hands against her heart. He quickly relented.

  If Zombie Pamela cared anything about music anymore, she might have played Pepper Sand’s pop ballad, So Fine, as she grasped Zombie Grady’s hand and lumbered toward the church. Pamela had always felt, before she’d lost Grady, that her life was like a romance story, so a soundtrack would have been fitting.

  •••••••••

  A wedding was already in progress at the church where Grady’s memorial had been held. It must have been Saturday or Sunday, but time held no meaning for Pamela and Grady now.

  Zombie Pamela stood on the
lawn with her arms thrown out. She spun and spun in an ungainly whirl to the music in her mind, her wedding dress ballooning around her. She seemed to be trying to laugh, though the actual noise emanating from her lungs would have caused a grown man to pee his pants.

  Zombie Grady watched her, utterly besotted. She reached out for him and caught him into her twirl. Their love had conquered all … even death.

  Zombie Grady then led Zombie Pamela to the side entrance, where they ducked inside the church.

  •••••••••

  The Minister’s office was cramped, but felt warmly inviting because of that. The detailed woodwork was kept well oiled, and the stained-glass-topped window looked out on a small herb garden. It so happened that the garden was tended by the Minister himself, not his wife as everyone assumed.

  A youthful groom nervously paced back and forth in front of the desk with a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. He practiced his vows in a mutter. “Today, I say hello to the beginning of the rest of my life. And boy, am I glad that I get to spend it with you. We’ve had our ups and downs, but today we will mark as the day that changed all that —”The door slammed open to reveal Zombie Grady. The groom barked a cry of fear, then felt a little stupid for almost losing it. “Pal, the can is the next door over,” he said snidely, before he turned to actually lay eyes on the creature blocking the exit.

  Zombie Grady bared his nerve wracking teeth in a grin.

  The groom paled and took a wary step backward. He lamely attempted to place the desk between him and the zombie, even though the large metal urn or heavy ceremonial communion cup on the nearby bookshelf would have made choice weapons.

  Zombie Grady lunged and took the groom down without a fight.

  •••••••••

  A group of young women were clustered just outside the main sanctuary’s doors of dark, well-oiled wood.

  A young bride stood at the center of this giggling gaggle, preparing to walk up the aisle behind her cluster of bridesmaids. She was the first to marry of her peer group, but despite all her confident demeanor, her voice betrayed some nervousness when she asked, “Is he there?”

  One of her bridesmaids peeked through the door, which swung easily with the lightest push. “Not yet.”

  “I can’t wait for him to see me!”

  “Just a second, here he comes. Wait … who is that?”

  Someone tapped the bride on the shoulder and she turned to see Zombie Pamela. With her gray skin, gashed neck, and gruesome teeth coupled with her practically shredded and blood-covered wedding dress, Pamela was the stuff nightmares were made of.

  The organ music swelled.

  The bride screamed, threw her orchid bouquet in the air, and fled. Zombie Pamela neatly caught the bouquet, snagged one of the bridesmaids as she tried to run, and paused for a snack. It was essential to keep one’s energy up on this most important day.

  The bouquet would have been a better match to Pamela’s wedding ensemble before she’d tried to kill herself, been kidnapped by black-ops agents, tortured by mobster warlords, hunted by a psycho killer, and turned into a zombie. Still, it was tradition to have a bouquet to walk the aisle, so the white orchids would have to do.

  •••••••••

  Inside the church sanctuary, the screaming, panicked guests fled over the pews and down the side aisles. They trampled the elderly and abandoned the young, uniformly avoiding the center aisle as Zombie Pamela slowly wedding-marched up it toward Zombie Grady and the Minister, who stood waiting for her. The Minister and Zombie Grady stood exactly where Grady’s memorial picture had previously sat, underneath the love lies bleeding flower arrangement.

  Zombie Grady was haphazardly dressed in the groom’s tuxedo. The originally white shirt was now mostly blood red, and was buttoned incorrectly. Grady also wore no socks in his too-large dress shoes. This only served to emphasize that his pants were too short.

  Zombie Grady held the terrified Minister by the lapel and grinned as Zombie Pamela walked up the aisle. The Minister had unfortunately peed himself, and his robes didn’t do a great job of hiding the wet stain.

  The organist, who’d also played Grady’s funeral, hammered the keys of the instrument with wild abandon.

  The Zombie Groom, dressed now only in boxers and black socks, stumbled in from the minister’s office. He rather effectively cut off the side-door exit as he began feasting on any guest he could snatch.

  Zombie Pamela joined Zombie Grady at the front of the church. Zombie Grady loosed the Minister so he could clasp Zombie Pamela’s hands. They expectantly turned to the Minister, who could not find his voice in the face of his fear.

  Grady loosed one of Pamela’s hands to give the Minister a comforting pat on the shoulder.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness … a … a … truly blessed event, a … a marriage of equals, of friends, of life partners.”

  At the back of the church, the bridesmaid that Pamela had snacked on earlier woke as a zombie. She began feasting on the last few guests, effectively cutting off the main doors as an escape route.

  Zombie Pamela, utterly in love, looked up at Zombie Grady with a gaze of absolute adoration. He leaned down to kiss her.

  The Minister keeled over in a dead faint.

  •••••••••

  Later, outside the church, the street was blocked by police vehicles. Scattered across the lawn and sidewalks, the surviving wedding guests spoke to detectives and uniformed officers.

  Phil arrived at the scene in a nondescript car. As he exited the vehicle, he was immediately approached by Dan Sullivan, the officer in charge. “Special Agent …”

  “Phil. Just Phil. Phillip, if you prefer.”

  “Dan Sullivan. We expected you over an hour ago.”

  “Sorry, reports are coming in all over the city. But I hear you have the two we’re looking for.”

  “This way.” Sullivan directed Phil toward the side street and a police van. “What the hell is going on?”

  “That information is need-to-know only. A containment leak, but we’ve got it under control. It’s what happens when asshole rogue agents think they know better than their partners.” That last bit was more muttered to himself than shared with the officer.

  Officer Sullivan yanked open the back doors of the van.

  The Zombie Groom was held down by multiple chains to one side of the van. He, quite literately, was chomping at the bit to bite his terrified bride, who was curled in the far corner of the van. She was just outside his reach, and had somehow managed to not get a scratch on her, though her hair was a bit disheveled.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Took five guys to get this one chained up and muzzled.” Officer Sullivan indicated the Zombie Groom, who watched both men for a moment, and then lunged at his bride again. Each time he did so, she shrieked. “Had to put another one down ourselves, bullet to the head like you guys advised. A woman. Nasty stuff.”

  “A bride?” Phil asked, his voice laced with concern.

  “No, that’s your bride there.”

  “That’s not the bride I’m looking for. Her dress was a cap sleeve, pink-flowered bustier, and a bias-cut meringue skirt with a train. This one’s dress is obviously off the rack.”

  Officer Sullivan, mouth agape, just stared at Phil. The Zombie Groom lunged and the bride shrieked again.

  Phil sighed heavily and turned to walk back toward his car. Once there, he pulled out and dialed a cell. “It’s not them. Send in an extermination crew. It seems we’ve lost them.”

  He hung up the phone and opened the driver’s-side car door. He glanced up at the church and a slow smile spread over his face. Pamela and Grady were together at last, he had always believed in happy endings.

  Still grinning, he climbed in the car and pulled away.

  THE CODE

  This Agent became attached to the “Love Lies Bleeding” case, so named by
said agent, when Agent Grady Nolan (status: infected; location: unknown) was the target of an assassination attempt and presumed dead. Agent Nolan had previously informed on his then-partner, Agent Erwin Monroe’s (status: deceased) involvement with the [REDACTED: under active investigation], a terrorist organization of known war lords, who routinely and illegally supplied foreign countries including, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED] with weapons.

  This faction was headed by a Mr. Doyle (given name unknown) (status: deceased; location: in containment), who had his enforcer, Shep (surname unknown) (status: deceased), attempt to murder Agent Nolan. The attempt on Agent Nolan’s life was due to his involvement with the procurement and further refinement of the serum known as SS222 (two twenty-two). SS222 was obtained by Agent Nolan through clandestine means from the [REDACTED] organization. Just before his presumed death, Agent Nolan informed the department of the further duplicity of his then-handler, Agent Karli Gibbon (status: deceased; location: containment), who, unbeknownst to her department, had set up a covert testing facility and was using Agent Nolan’s hypothetical modifications to perform her own experiments with SS222.

  After Agent Nolan’s presumed death, Agents Monroe and Gibbon, separately, assumed that Pamela Alexander (status: infected; location: unknown), Agent Nolan’s true love (in this agent’s honest opinion) and fiancée, had knowledge of a code contained within a series of emails she had received from Agent Nolan only days before his presumed death. Agents Monroe and Gibbon, independently kidnapped, tortured, drugged, and then, inadvertently, infected Ms. Alexander in an attempt to gain access to this code, and therefore access to the information about SS222 hidden within the so-called “Barcelona” email transmissions.

  There is some conjecture that Agent Nolan was able to perfect said serum, on a theoretical basis, and create the super soldier. However, seeing as how the laptop and all information housed at Agent Gibbon’s covert location are currently missing, the validity of this claim is unknown at this time. This Agent can only hope that the information, if it exists, resides safely with Agent Nolan and Ms. Alexander, rather than falling into the wrong hands.