Married with Zombies: Book 1 of Living with the Dead

by Jesse Petersen

  I turned the volume down. That was enough for now.

  “Lisa might be right after all,” Dave said in a low, sad tone. “Longview might be no better than Seattle by now.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t care. That’s our plan. I say we stick to it. At least it gives us something to aim for. Once we get there, we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  He nodded and then we drove, back into silence as we both tried to figure out what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into.

  Support your partner in their interests. You never know when batting practice, kung fu movie moves, or even a poker night might come in handy during a zombie infestation.

  We hadn’t even reached the airport when the sun started to set. Both of us had been watching it droop lower and lower on the horizon during the hours of dodging cars and crushing zombies along the shoulder of the freeway. The entire afternoon I kept hoping some miracle would happen and we’d somehow hit the open road and have a straight shot to Longview.

  Of course it didn’t.

  “We won’t make it before dark,” Dave said with a sigh.

  I nodded without looking at him. “I guess we’ll have to stop.”

  I sent him a side glance and saw how thin and pissed his mouth was. He wasn’t any happier about this than I was. “Unless you want to take your chances on the road at night.”

  He shook his head immediately. “I thought about it. There are just too many cars and way too many zombies. I think it would be a deathtrap.”

  I didn’t answer as I started looking out the car window at the area we were in. We were out of Seattle proper by now so there were no longer skyscrapers, but all the little suburbs were so tight in and crowded that we were still in the city in every way that mattered. There were still tons of people out there, tons of cars, tons of opportunities for death… and undeath.

  I scanned for a place out in the hilly neighborhoods of businesses and homes for a location that looked safe. It’s funny how much you take “safe” for granted until it’s gone. How many road trips had we been on when we’d just grabbed a room at a Super 8 without even thinking about it? I even used to complain about crappy towels or cheap sheets, which drove David nuts. But I’d kill for them at this point if it meant we didn’t have to battle any more zombies to get them.

  “Hmmm,” I muttered as we meandered past a part of the highway where I could see a neighborhood with homes built down on the hill below. They were squeezed close together like sardines. “Maybe a house would be a good pick. If we could break in —”

  “Nope,” Dave interrupted as he eased the car toward the next off ramp. “I know exactly where we’re going to go.”

  I wrinkled my brow. How did he know any better than I did where the safest place to stop was? It wasn’t like we came down here more than a couple times a year for airport runs when one of our sets of parents came.

  “Where?” I asked, totally incredulous.

  “You’ll see…” he teased as he drove along what was once a main thoroughfare but now abandoned cars lined the lanes.

  A Laundromat to one side of the street was on fire, the chemicals within making the flames purple and blue. On the other side there was an antique store with all its windows broken out, only from the inside, not the outside. The shards of broken glass still pointing up from the frame and sparkling in the sunset were tinged with both blood and sludge.

  Basically, it was a ghost town.

  Suddenly on our left I saw the flashing, garish, neon lights of a sign. “Sea King Hotel and Casino.” The “K” was shorted out, so that it only buzzed faintly.

  I turned in my seat and stared at David as he pulled into the half-empty lot in front of the casino and parked.

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  He glared at me. “Um, no. Haven’t we always joked that we need to come down here and bet all our savings on red? It seems like this is as good a time as ever.”

  “Okay, clearly this zombie thing has broken your brain,” I snapped as I folded my arms. “Yes, we talked about that, but a) that was a joke and b) it was before the world freaking imploded and monsters starting rising from the dead.”

  He tilted his head. “But we’re right here. How could it hurt to look?”

  “Are you serious?” I motioned toward the two story building a hundred yards across the lot. “Let’s see… it’s a public place where lots of people were potentially turned into zombies. It’s also a place where there was money and freaky looters could have decided this was their time to clear the tables. If they see us as a threat…” I pulled my thumb along my throat in a slashing motion. “You ran out on Lisa for a lot less!”

  Dave scowled and his tone was a warning when he said, “Sarah —”

  But I wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot. “Also, it’s a huge place, doesn’t the sign say over one hundred rooms? That means one hundred areas we can’t check. Shall I go on?”

  Dave shook his head. “I know all that. But Sarah, finding that girl in Seattle made me think about other people who might be out there like her. And not all of them are going to be too scared to make a run for it. If we just had a couple more people helping us to shoot and to drive, we might have a better chance at survival.”

  I shook my head. “You’re right, there may be people here, but —”

  “Fuck, Sarah!” he said, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. “Do you have to argue about every fucking thing?”

  “I don’t —”

  “Yes, you do.” He faced me. “For six months you’ve been telling me every single thing and every way I’ve fucked up. And I’ve let you.”

  I flinched because the way he was describing me wasn’t fun. But hell, I’d been the one to have to deal with the consequences of his choices. Didn’t I have a right to question them?

  He set his head on the steering wheel for a minute, drawing some deep breaths before he looked at me.

  “Look, if you really think I’m such a colossal idiot, if you don’t trust me and you don’t want to go in there with me… then maybe you should just take the car and go.”

  “Yes, we should take the car and go,” I said with a sigh of relief. Finally, he was being reasonable.

  He shook his head. “No. I said you, not we.”

  There was a long silence while I let that sink in. He wasn’t talking about taking a break. He wasn’t even talking about me looking for someplace else to stay and coming back to pick him up after he’d checked out this place and had his fill of poker tables and cocktail waitress zombies.

  He was talking about us being done. Finished.

  “You-you want me to leave?” I said. Well, I whispered it, really. I couldn’t seem to talk louder than that.

  He reached out and his hands cupped my shoulders. “No, honey, I want you to stay. But not if we’re going to keep doing this.”

  I stared at him. I’d never seen him like this. Even with Dr. Kelly poking and prodding for “honesty” during therapy he’d never been so frank.

  “I know I’ve fucked up,” he whispered. “When I quit school and went off the grid it screwed up all our plans. It put all the pressure of our lives on you to bear because I didn’t know who I was or what to do anymore. Trust me, I know everything that I did wrong and I think I’ve hated myself almost as much as you’ve hated me. But you can’t punish me forever, right?”

  I blinked, still stunned. He let me go and unbuckled his seatbelt with a sigh. I watched his every move as he got out and closed the door behind him. He walked around the front of the car, his gun ready as he looked around for zombies. At my door, he stopped and opened it.

  “Now, are you coming or going?” he asked, holding the door open for me.

  The question broke my spell. Nodding, I grabbed for my own shotgun, stuck a handgun in my pant waist and got out.

  “Coming,” I said as I shut the door behind me.

  He clicked the AUTO LOCK button on the door and then he reached for my hand. As I
took it, he smiled.

  “Good. Because this is probably going to be messed up.”

  He was right. It was messed up. When we entered the building, both of us wrinkled our noses and stared in stunned disbelief. The casino had been built probably in the sixties or seventies, when Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack were swinging in Vegas and making hip, cool cats want to play their hand at roulette and high stakes blackjack while they sipped martinis and made passes at broads.

  But since those times the place hadn’t been updated, so instead of being cool or even kitschy, it was run down. The once red carpet at the entryway was worn with holes and dotted with stains and it had faded to a salmon pink… except in the spots where blood had dried it.

  But those updates were recent.

  All the walls had black marks where things had rubbed against them over the years. The dirt was noticeable, the mold around the corners disturbing and the splashes of black sludge and flecks of flesh and brains that marred the yellowing white paint… well, they were telling.

  A registration desk for guests of the hotel was off to the left, but activity with the infected had obviously continued here because blood was slashed across the wall behind the counter, including on the cracked screen of a dingy television that was half-pulled out of the wall. It dangled precariously just by its connection to the cable outlet behind it while its shredded electric cord sparked and smoked faintly.

  We exchanged a brief look and raised our guns at the same time before we moved onto the main casino floor with its colorful flashing machines and big, empty tables.

  To my surprise, there were still people sitting at the slot machines, pulling the handles methodically. Although they were mostly blue-haired old ladies frittering away their social security checks, there were also some really fantastic bits of trailer trash mixed in. Men with huge guts, leather vests, and two-foot-long pony tails, and middle-aged women with pierced belly buttons and huge tattoos on their saggy boobs.

  I guess the place just attracted the most pathetic clientele in the city. People who didn’t care, or maybe even know, that the world was coming to an end outside these gross, dismal walls.

  At least that’s what I thought. Until we actually got closer. And that’s when I realized that the little old women at the slots weren’t human anymore. Their skin was grey, sludge smeared the screens of their machines and they groaned and muttered in that zombie way under their breath even as they yanked on the slot handles with a never-ending rhythm.

  “Shit,” I whispered, grabbing Dave’s arm and pointing wildly at the closet one, who looked like she had been about ninety before she received the huge bite that I now noticed on her wrinkled, dropping neck.

  He stared at her and then at the others, his eyes as wide as I’m sure mine were.

  “Well,” he whispered. “I guess we know now that this particular activity doesn’t require higher brain function. I wonder what else zombies can do in their spare time.”

  “I don’t care about what they can do,” I hissed in his ear, still clinging to his arm. “What do we do? Should we fight them?”

  He looked around the casino floor while he pondered that question and then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, look at how many people are on these machines.”

  I followed his gesture out across the floor and counted over twenty people tugging slots.

  “We have to assume everyone out there is a zombie.”

  “They might not be,” I said, more as a hopeful statement than a secure one.

  He speared me with a look. “Come on, Sarah. Even the biggest gambling addict would have to notice if zombies attacked the guy next to them. And if they didn’t, if they were so caught up in what they were doing that they didn’t try to fight, that would just make them better targets for the infected.”

  I nodded. “Okay, okay, that makes sense. So they’re all zombies.”

  “I’m afraid if we fired on one, it would wake the rest of them up from this gambling stupor and we’d end up with God knows how many undead rushing us from all sides.” Dave shook his head. “With just the two of us to fight and so few weapons, I think we’d be screwed.”

  “So what then?” I asked, edging away as the slot machine that the zombie in front of us was sitting at suddenly dinged loudly and dropped a payout into its bin.

  The grandma zombie whined and looked down at the tokens as they clattered against each other in her bin. She hesitated, then drew one from the bin and popped it back into the slot machine to continue her run at riches. Not that a zombie would have any use for them.

  “We could sneak by since they’re so caught up. I mean this one could care less we’re standing here,” Dave said with a shrug.

  I should have listened to my gut, which was telling me to make a run for it and get back in the car. But Dave had scared me so badly when he said we should part ways that I was determined to prove to him that I wasn’t going to argue with him about every decision.

  So instead of backing out, I said, “I guess there could be people in the back rooms like the kitchen and that kind of thing. There are a lot of areas here to search before we give up on survivors entirely.”

  He nodded and I think he was relieved that we were on the same side for once.

  “If we could find others… we would be safer. I mean, every time you got out of the SUV to clear out a car today, I was so scared you were going to get hurt. With one or two people to cover you…”

  I stared at him as he trailed off. So all this was for me? To protect me? And a bunch of warm feelings I hadn’t felt for him in a long time swelled up in me: Pride. Love. Comfort.

  It was nice. And I wanted him to know it.

  “You’re brave,” I whispered.

  He shrugged, but beyond his discomfort and the way his cheeks turned beet red, I know what I said meant something to him.

  “Well, somebody has to be the hero like in those books you read,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

  I smiled as I followed him toward a doorway that led to the kitchen in the back of the casino floor. I don’t think he heard me when I whispered, “You are.”

  Talk openly about important issues like money, sex, and religion. They can affect your life and happiness a great deal. Especially when it comes to cults.

  The kitchen door was one of those that swing in and out. David pushed it open and caught it with one hand as it came back toward him.

  We peeked in. The kitchen was a large, industrial one with shining metal counters and cabinets, but it was anything but clean. The faint smell of rotting food wafted toward us from the piles of meat and vegetables that had obviously been in the process of preparation when the infection hit this part of the city. I looked at the flies buzzing around a piece of beef and my stomach turned. It reminded me too much of rotting zombie flesh. Weird because I’d lost my gag reflex when it came to them within a few hours of the outbreak.

  “It looks clear,” Dave whispered as he slipped inside and motioned me to follow.

  I moved into the space and started to come around beside him, but he put an arm out and blocked me, keeping me behind him.

  “Just in case,” he whispered. “Now call out.”

  I tilted my head in confusion. “Call out?”

  He nodded with utter certainty. “If someone’s hiding in here, they might be less afraid if a woman calls for them than a man.”

  I rolled my eyes but since I didn’t want to argue the concept of feminism with my husband at that particular moment, I cleared my throat.

  “Is anyone there?” I called. “If you’re a survivor, please come out. We might be able to help you.”

  There was no answer. I looked toward Dave with a shrug but he motioned his head as if encouraging me to try again.

  “Hello?” I said, this time louder, though I didn’t think there was any point. “Is anyone there?”

  Dave shrugged. “Okay, I guess —”

  Before he could finish, I grabbed his arm. In the distanc
e, I heard a sliding sound. As we stood there, it came again. It seemed to emanate from the large walk-in freezer across the wide expanse of the kitchen.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked as I motioned toward the unit with my hand.

  Dave nodded and we moved forward together, checking around us down the kitchen corridors and through the metal shelving for any people… or zombies… who might be hiding.

  But there was nothing to be seen or found until we reached the metal doors of the freezer. I leveled my gun as Dave reached out and gently turned the handle of the fridge. He pulled the door open slowly. A blast of frigid air hit us and we both flinched back from the cold.

  Inside the freezer was dark. I could see the outline of a bulb at the top of it from the light of the kitchen, but it was broken.

  Broken.

  “David, I think it might be —” I started.

  Before I could finish a zombie rushed from the unit. If he hadn’t been so terrifying, I might have laughed at the sight. He wore a white chef’s jacket that had once been pristine, but was now covered with black vomit. His skin was blue-grey from the cold and his dark hair was filled with ice particles, including little icicles in his eyelashes that made his red pupils all the more pronounced.

  All those things made him look ridiculous, but I couldn’t find it funny because he lunged so quickly at Dave that he was on him before I could fire my weapon and the two of them staggered backward and fell to the floor.

  The zombie bit at my husband and it was only because David jerked his head to the side that he wasn’t turned to the ranks of the undead. I flipped my gun around and swung, crushing the butt of it against the zombie’s temple. He fell off of David and rolled away across the white kitchen floor with a furious growl of pain and aggression.

  I shoved the butt of the gun against my shoulder and began to depress the trigger. But before I fired, a machete came flipping through the air and struck the zombie in the back of the skull. He whined softly and then the light went out of his red eyes.