Married with Zombies: Book 1 of Living with the Dead

by Jesse Petersen

  From the sink, she eyed us for a minute, but then shook her head. “No way.”

  I got up and she stiffened. I saw her hand move toward the knife block behind her and I stopped moving immediately. “Why not, Lisa?”

  “No offense but I don’t know you two from Adam. You could be serial killers.”

  I stared at her. Under normal circumstances I would have been right there with her about not trusting people you just met. After all, my Mom had taught me not to take rides from strangers, too.

  But this wasn’t exactly “normal” anymore. Lisa was in the middle of a city basically overrun by zombies and she was alone. Not to mention a kid, for God’s sake, no matter how well she was handling herself.

  “But don’t you want to get away from here?” Dave asked. “Seattle is going to be an undead town within a couple of days. You’ll be trapped if you wait that long.”

  “Are you stupid enough to think it’s going to be different somewhere else?” She glared at him. “You have been listening to the news, right?”

  We glanced at each other and shifted uncomfortably. Since that morning, we’d been too busy trying not to die to turn on the radio. News wasn’t a priority in comparison to battling for gas or having to kill a friend.

  Lisa rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, dumbasses, here’s the news flash: this thing is spreading. By now there probably isn’t even a Longview left. At least if I stay here I know where things are and I know how to get them.” She folded her arms, an immovable object.

  I sat back down at the table, totally stunned for a minute. I got that the outbreak was spreading, we could see that with our own eyes, but how could it have gotten so far so fast? Could it really be true that someplace a hundred and thirty miles away could be overrun already?

  I shook my head. Even if what she said was true, we couldn’t stop. We certainly couldn’t stay here. I straightened my shoulders.

  “Well, I guess that’s true, but with more people in a group —”

  “There’s just more chance of getting turned into a zombie,” Lisa finished with a dismissive sniff. “I mean, even your little headless friend out there you had to shoot in the end, right?” We didn’t answer, but our silence seemed to satisfy her. She nodded. “Yeah, seeing her dead in your backseat doesn’t really convince me that you two are my saviors.”

  Dave clenched his fists on the tabletop and I could tell he was thinking of that awful moment when he had to kill Amanda. This bitch might not know it, but she was rubbing that in.

  “Look,” I snapped, pissed off at her now. She was being a brat whether she knew it or not. “You’re crazy to stay here alone.”

  She shook her head with a mocking and rather snotty little laugh. “Yeah? Well, I think you’re crazy to stay together and try to run. You almost got turned in the car dealership today, lady. If I hadn’t come along, you would have been eating your hubby here… and not in a good way. Could you have killed her, Dave?”

  Dave got up and his chair rocked from how hard he’d pushed off. “Whatever, kid, you made your point. You want to stay here and rot, that’s your choice. Thanks for the help back there, and for the food. We’ll get out of your way.”

  I looked at him. “But —”

  “Come on, Sarah,” he said without looking away from the girl. “We’re obviously not wanted here by the little girl who knows it all. So let’s get going.”

  I got to my feet and started after him, but at the door that led downstairs to the restaurant, I looked back. Lisa had pulled her mask off and she was watching us leave. Her mouth was set in a stubborn line, but I saw the question in her eyes. The fear.

  But she didn’t stop us. And she didn’t call us back.

  We left the restaurant in silence and started back across the street together, each of us keeping an eye out for zombies.

  “I don’t get why she wouldn’t come,” I said in shock. “She’s obviously not stupid or blind. She has to know she’s dead if she doesn’t make a break for it. She won’t be able to hold them off forever.”

  Dave shrugged. “Who knows what she’s thinking? Here she thinks she can control her environment. She’s more afraid of the unknown than she is of having her arm chewed off by her former boyfriend when he pops back up from the dead. There wasn’t going to be any convincing her to come. It was better to just get out of there before she decided we were too risky to let go.”

  My eyes widened. “You think she might have freaked out?”

  “She looked like she might be heading that way,” he said softly. “I saw her move for the knife when you got up. I wasn’t going to take the chance.”

  I shivered. The idea that regular human people might try to hurt us hadn’t actually occurred to me at that point. Oh, I was so innocent then. Luckily I didn’t have to wrack my brain too hard about it because by then we were back in the parking lot of the dealership. The big fucking inflated gorilla waved in the breeze and I wanted to pop it with a big pin. I looked at the bloody show room where I’d almost lost my life half an hour earlier.

  “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “We don’t have to,” Dave said. He held up a shiny key. “I grabbed one right before you got attacked.”

  He motioned toward a big black Escalade that was parked nearby. “I think this is your chariot, my lady.”

  I stared at the vehicle. It couldn’t be more than a year old and it looked like whoever had owned it before it got to this lot had loved it like it was a kid.

  The paint was perfectly shiny, not a scratch on her. Its big size would accommodate all our stuff and even a few more people if we found any more survivors who were actually willing to band together. And it could easily push smaller vehicles out of the way if need be.

  “Perfect,” I breathed. “Exactly what we wanted.”

  “Good,” he said as he opened the passenger door and motioned me in. “Then let’s pull her up to our car and move everything over.”

  Our car seemed small and really screwed up as we pulled the newer, fancier vehicle up next to it. Our old one was still smoking gently and I cringed at the pungent odor as I hopped down.

  “You take the trunk,” I said, “I’ll grab everything out of the back.”

  He nodded and went around the car while I pulled the back door open. What I saw there made me stop and stare.

  I knew Amanda was back there, of course. But seeing her slumped over at the oddest angle, a big exit wound through the back of her skull, made my stomach turn all over again. I couldn’t move as I just looked down at her lifeless body. How the hell had we gotten to this?

  Dave came around and stood beside me, both of us quiet for a long time.

  “Come on,” he finally said as he grabbed for one of the boxes of guns that were on the seat beside her, splattered with her blood, but still intact.

  I nodded as I grabbed the other box and a couple of bags from our ill-fated gas station run. At the very least, I wasn’t going to leave them and let her have died in vain.

  We moved everything over to the new car and then we both looked at the old one.

  “I don’t want to leave her in the car,” I said softly.

  Dave looked at me. “Mandy?”

  I nodded. “It seems wrong. Shouldn’t we try to bury her or something? In the end, she was really brave, she saved our lives more than once. She even gave us permission to kill her so she wouldn’t hurt us.”

  Dave stared at the car for a long time. “We can’t take the time to bury her,” he said quietly. “But we could burn the car.”

  I thought about that. “Cremation.”

  He nodded. “It’s better than nothing, right?”

  “Right.”

  Dave managed to siphon some gas out of the tank of Amanda’s now make-shift coffin. Solemnly, he splashed it all over the car. I found a lighter hidden under the floor rug in the front seat from back when I still smoked… hey, I figured I might take it up again, might as well be ready. Dave pulled the new SUV
away from the beater we’d been driving for four years and then I lit the lighter.

  “Bye, Amanda,” I whispered as I tossed it toward the busted-up car. “I’m really sorry.”

  The car ignited right away, the flames jumping high enough to singe tree branches ten feet above. I leaned away from the burst of heat and let out a sigh as Dave got out of the Escalade to stand beside me. We watched the car burn for a couple of minutes, lost in our thoughts.

  And then I heard the sound. A low, echoing growl. Big, though, not the isolated sounds of the zombies like we’d heard before. I turned slightly and jerked back with a small scream.

  Coming from around the back of the dealership were zombies. Maybe two hundred drooling, sludge-vomiting, growling zombies. They were a herd, that was the only way to describe them. Cattle on the stampede, and the two of us were their final destination if we didn’t haul ass.

  “They saw the smoke,” I cried as I grabbed Dave and we dove for the new car. I crawled across to the passenger side from the driver’s seat and he got in and slammed the door just as a dozen of the fastest-moving creatures reached the burning car.

  Zombies are dumb. There, that’s just the only thing you can say. Their brains are dead, or at least everything in their brain that makes them human and intelligent. So if a zombie sees fire, he doesn’t go around it. He goes through it. And that’s what about five of the fastest of them did.

  As Dave gunned the engine and squealed out of the parking lot away from the horde of infected, I stared in horror at the flaming, lurching zombies who swarmed our old car before they started after us, completely oblivious to their searing flesh and burning clothes.

  Dave pulled the vehicle onto the street between the lot and the back of the row of restaurants and I looked up. In the apartment window where we’d eaten with Lisa, I saw her face. It looked small on the second floor, watching the scene below as we rolled away.

  I hoped we were right to leave her. Dave was correct, we couldn’t have made her go. Still, I figured the chances of ever seeing her again were slim to none. So I shut my eyes and didn’t look anymore until we were back on the highway.

  Listen. Killing zombies isn’t easy. There’s bound to be fallout.

  Although the road was still congested and it was slow going as we inched our way out of the downtown corridor toward the airport area fifteen miles away, we drove for a long time in total silence.

  I think we were both too scared to turn on the radio after what Lisa had told us about the spread of the breakout. My brain was already overflowing with horror, I didn’t think I could take much more.

  And talking wasn’t high on the ‘to do’ list, either. Both of us were thinking about scary, awful things and I’m not sure we trusted each other enough to share them.

  I know, for my part, I just kept thinking about Amanda. About her innocence and her unexpected bravery… about the awful moments leading to her death. And by the way Dave’s jaw was set and the dire expression on his face, I knew he was thinking those same things, too. And maybe wishing he hadn’t been so tough on her before she died.

  Dr. Kelly had once called Dave a “brooder.” She’d explained that he kept his thoughts inside and that sometimes it was better to talk them out. At the time that had elicited an eye roll from me, but I couldn’t help but think about it now as I looked at him.

  Finally, I blurted out, “We had to kill her.”

  For a long time, Dave’s flinch was the only answer. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “Well, we didn’t kill her in committee or something. I killed her.”

  “David —” I started, kind of scared by how hollow his voice was. He sounded really fucked up. The same way he had the day he told me he was dropping out of school and we had fought for three hours.

  “No,” he snapped and his sharp tone cut me off. “I should have checked the bathroom. Why didn’t I fucking check the bathroom?”

  With a yell, he slammed both palms against the steering wheel. The car veered slightly and we almost hit an old truck that was angled into the shoulder, but he managed to pull the Escalade back into a straight line before he wrecked it. More than I could manage, as you already know.

  He was breathing hard as he continued to drive. Carefully, I reached out and I touched his arm. He didn’t pull away, so I patted him gently.

  I thought about what he’d said to me in the garage earlier that morning. About how we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were trying our best in a bad situation. I hoped those same words might help him now.

  “We didn’t check the bathroom because we’re new at this,” I said.

  He glared at me from the corner of his eye. “What?”

  “I said we’re new at this. I mean, it’s not like they teach you how to survive a zombie attack in school.” I shivered. Maybe now they would. “We’re still learning what we need to do to protect ourselves and anyone else who rides with us. Next time we’re in a similar situation, I guess we’ll know better. We’ll always check the bathroom from now on.”

  “Next time,” Dave said, coughing out a bitter laugh. “How ridiculous is it that we know a next time is coming?”

  I didn’t answer. Of course there was going to be a next time. I’d already accepted that as an inevitability.

  He rubbed his chin. “But some good our little learning experience does Amanda.”

  “I know,” I whispered, blinking back tears.

  “She was like a little kid,” he muttered.

  I looked at him. “And that wasn’t your fault, either.”

  “But I should have —”

  I squeezed his hand. “David, Amanda was twenty-three. Old enough to be careful in this situation. So don’t take all the credit or the blame for her survival or her death. We did the best we could. It sucks, but we can’t beat ourselves up. We’ve killed plenty of people we know.”

  Dave was quiet for a minute, but then he started laughing. I stared at him, hoping he hadn’t lost his mind since he was driving and I didn’t relish the idea of trying to find another car if he wrecked, this time on a zombie-infested freeway.

  “I bet you never thought you’d be saying that,” Dave said as he continued to laugh.

  I smiled despite myself. “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “‘We’ve killed plenty of people we know,’” he chuckled, mimicking my voice.

  I have to say, I hated when he did that, but today I didn’t take it personally. I actually laughed along with him.

  “Well, we have. Let’s see, there was our debut with Dr. Kelly.”

  “Who overcharged us for advice I could have gotten on a fortune cookie,” Dave said.

  I giggled. “That’s as good a reason to kill her as the fact that she was going to eat us.”

  “The Wonderful Wilsons,” he offered.

  “Technically, we didn’t kill them,” I reminded him. “But they were posers and I think they liked to rub it in when they came out of Dr. Kelly’s office every week. I can’t be sorry for them.”

  “Total posers,” he agreed. “How about Jack?”

  I hesitated. Jack had been David’s friend, even if I despised him. Maybe I shouldn’t kid about him, it might be a sorer subject than my husband let on.

  “Oh, come on, don’t stop now,” Dave encouraged with a wicked little grin. “I know you wanted to beat him to death in the toilet for way more than one thing.”

  “Wellll,” I dragged out the word.

  “Here, I’ll start.” Dave took a deep breath like he was about to confess something really bad. “Jack cheated at Halo. In fact, he cheated at all video games.”

  “What?” I asked, turning toward him. “He did not.”

  “He did. I caught him at it a hundred times.” He winked. “Now you.”

  “Okay, he also played his music too loud on weeknights and he smelled like sausage,” I said, covering my mouth as I said it.

  “Sentence: Death!” David snorted. “Mr. Gonzales is obvious.”

  I rolled my
eyes. “Too easy. Jackass, looked at my tits, refused to fix anything, total slumlord.”

  “And I guess that just leaves us back to Amanda,” he said with a sigh.

  I looked at him, still feeling bad no matter how much we both tried to lighten the mood.

  “A cheerleader was mean to me in high school,” I said after a long pause. “And Amanda always reminded me of her. So I guess that’s a good enough reason for a rampage. In reality, you were defending my honor.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I’ll take that.”

  “So we’re good?” I asked. “We’ve confessed our sins and said our Hail Marys and we’re okay to kill again?”

  He nodded. “But now I guess it’s time to do the thing we’ve been avoiding and listen to some news. We better see what kind of situation the rest of the world is in.”

  I turned the stereo dial and the awesome speakers blasted a woman talking. I looked at the display and smiled, “Heyyyy, satellite. I’ve always wanted satellite radio!”

  “I know. It’s part of why I picked this one. I mean, Playboy radio, Howard Stern.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and relief washed over me. Dave was going to be okay.

  I gave his arm a light slap. “Pervert.”

  I flipped the dial until it read MSNBC on the dial and turned it up as a female reporter with a lightly British accent talked in a calm and even tone.

  “Officials have abandoned the city, with one anonymous source telling us it is ‘left to God’ now. But as the disease spreads unabated, with more and more undead popping up in almost every West Coast city, there are increasing questions about whether local, state, and federal forces are equipped to deal with what scientists are now saying will soon be a global plague.”

  “Shit, she was right,” I murmured, thinking of Lisa walled into her tower trying to will the zombies away. I hoped she was okay even if she was a bitch.

  “While officials do stand by their suggestion that people stay in their homes, they also tell those who do venture out to arm themselves and aim for the head if they come in contact with one of the infected. Those who are bitten seem to have between ten and twenty-five minutes until they are fully transformed, depending upon body chemistry and the location of the bite. There is no known cure —”