Married with Zombies: Book 1 of Living with the Dead

by Jesse Petersen

  I rested my head on the steering wheel and sobbed. Dave slid across the seat and put his arm around me. We sat like that for probably twenty minutes as I tried to pull it together without much success. But finally I guess I ran out of tears.

  I sat up, wiping my nose on the bottom of my formerly clean t-shirt. “Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said, pushing some hair off my face. “If anyone deserves a breakdown it’s us.”

  “But we didn’t break down,” I hiccupped. “I did.”

  “Well, I owe you one, then,” he said as he slid back into place. We sat in silence for a while longer as I hiccupped out the last of my sobs and he was lost in thought.

  Finally, he said, “Look, maybe we shouldn’t go to Longview after all.”

  I jerked in my seat to face him. “What?”

  He shrugged. “We know this infection or outbreak or whatever you want to call it has gone south, at least to Portland, maybe beyond. But we don’t know for sure about east. Maybe even north toward Canada.”

  “So you think they stopped it at the border?” I asked incredulously.

  He looked at me. “They won’t even let us bring fireworks across. They’re tough.”

  I stared at him for a long moment and then I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of the border patrol asking a zombie what his purpose was in going to Canada today.

  Before I could answer, though, a handful of zombies started out of the wooded area on the side of the highway. I looked at them, lurching and sprewing. They had ruined our lives, they had killed our friends.

  And in that moment, I didn’t feel sorry for them anymore. I hated them.

  I gunned the car as I threw it in gear and roared toward them.

  “Fuck you, fuckers!” I screamed as I slammed into the first one.

  He cartwheeled pretty comically over the car’s wide hood, his jaws snapping at us even as he flipped upside down. The car thumped as I hit the second one, pulling her under my wheels with a thud and then a second thud when my back tires ran over her.

  “What are you doing?” Dave asked as he scrambled for his seatbelt and held on to the door for dear life.

  “Remember Dr. Kelly’s scream therapy?” I asked.

  “Yelling out our anger and purging it? You thought that was bullshit!” Dave protested.

  “It was!” I agreed. “But Kill Therapy isn’t. Tell those zombies what you think!”

  He stared at me and then his gaze shifted to the male zombie in the jeans and t-shirt who was hurtling toward us up the side of the highway.

  “Go to hell, you jackoff!” he said.

  “No, yell it!” I said as we slammed into him. He landed up on our hood, his face smooshed against the glass like a kid on a shop window.

  “Fuck YOU!” Dave bellowed before he reached over to my side and turned on the windshield wipers. They smacked the zombie’s face and he growled before I spun the wheel and sent him flying off the hood to land on his head in the ditch.

  With all the zombies taken care of, I stopped the car again and faced Dave. “We aren’t going east and we aren’t going north. We’re going to Longview to find your sister. I may hate that bitch, but if she isn’t a zombie then she belongs with us. No man… er, woman left behind, you got that, soldier?”

  Dave stared at me. “Okay. Okay! So let’s go to Longview.”

  “Let’s go to mother-fucking Longview.”

  Pick the right time to broach a delicate subject. Sometimes the hillbilly will give you the answers in his own time.

  The moment we pulled off the highway toward Longview four excruciating hours later, it was obvious that the place was a ghost town. The steel and chemical plants, which normally sent steam and smoke billowing up into smelly plumes across the sky, were both eerily silent and still. We turned at the bottom of the off ramp and headed toward the main street of town.

  Longview was a classic small Washington state town. Surrounded by wonderful outdoor beauty, the thirty-five thousand residents mostly made their livings at the factories or in the service of those who did. Economic times had been tough in the last few years, but the town had pulled together. They took care of their own.

  They had a traditional main street with little shops and restaurants, which was one of the only reasons I actually liked coming here when David dragged me down to visit his sister. There was always something new to see or some new craftsperson to speak to in those stores.

  Not that we had a choice but to come here. Gina refused to come to Seattle. She said she was “afraid” of the traffic and of being raped. No amount of discussion on the matter would change her mind. When she pictured the city… any city, she seemed to picture bumper-to-bumper traffic and rape… quite possibly together.

  Not that it mattered now, I guess. I mean, if the girl on the pirated radio station was right and they were fire-bombing Portland to end the plague, then they were probably doing the same behind us in Seattle.

  “Wow,” Dave breathed, dragging me from my thoughts as I looked down Main Street.

  The charming shops I’d liked so much had obviously seen some action from the infected… or looters… or both. Almost every window was shattered, some of the shards remaining in the windows as a bloody testament to a zombie war it didn’t seem like we could win.

  We drove along the streets. A burned-out husk of a classic car was parked half on the sidewalk, still smoldering.

  “I wonder if that means it was fair time?” David asked.

  Every year in early August, the town had a big fair. Normally we came down for it, but this year with the problems in our marriage and our financial difficulties, I hadn’t kept track of when the big event was. But the classic car was a good indication. They always did a parade, followed by a classic car show to kick off the event.

  “There are the signs,” I said, motioning to the big Cowlitz County Fair signs that pointed toward the Expo Center. “Want to check it out?”

  Dave didn’t answer, he was too busy looking at the bodies that were strewn across the sidewalk in the distance. I’m sure he was thinking about his sister, Gina. She never missed a parade, so she would have been here when all hell broke loose.

  I was thinking about her, too, but in a way I wanted to put off looking for her. The longer we waited, the longer it was going to be before we found out she was a zombie or dead. Seeing the upheaval around us, I feared those were her only two options.

  I followed the signs to the big, open area near the Expo Center. We were still a short distance away when I saw the Ferris Wheel all set up and ready for kids.

  It was running.

  “What the hell?” I said, looking up at the slowly spinning wheel. It was an eerie sight with the rest of the town all but deserted.

  Dave swallowed. “It must have been running when the town was attacked.”

  “Do you think there are people up there?” I whispered.

  “Ones who were stuck on the ride, you mean?” Dave asked, his eyes getting wide. “I hadn’t thought about it, but maybe we should check.”

  I nodded as I pulled the car to a stop in the middle of the street. I grabbed a tire iron from the back, he took the baseball bat and we each had a shotgun as we got out of the car. I locked it behind us and Dave laughed.

  “Worried about the hoodlums, eh?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Hey, nothing good ever happens at a zombie carnival. Recent zombie movies have taught us that.”

  “So true,” he said with a laugh. “And I guess my sister would approve of your prudence anyway.”

  His smile fell at that.

  There wasn’t any opportunity for comfort, though. He limped off ahead of me. I watched him as I trailed behind him. He was moving better now that he was regularly taking some over-the-counter painkillers and the prescription anti-inflammatories. I just hoped once we got to Gina’s, we’d be able to better brace his leg up and get him whole again.

&nbs
p; We passed through the fair gate and the empty ticket booth beside it. There was blood streaked on the brightly painted wood and sludge that had dried to a sticky, disgusting black.

  “Activity,” I said, not explaining myself further. I didn’t have to. By this time, Dave just glanced at the evidence and grunted an acknowledgment by lifting his gun a little higher.

  The happy, comforting smells of batter and hot dogs and cotton candy still wafted through the air, although they were mingled with the scent of smoke and blood now. It was an incongruous combination that was somehow becoming commonplace. Heaven with Hell. Life with death.

  We headed through the different stalls that had been set up for food and crafts on the way toward the ride area. In the distance I heard the growling and moaning of zombies, but I didn’t see any… yet.

  The carnival area had the usual array of silly games for kids, complete with cheaply made, huge stuffed animals made by the labor of little children in far away factories, no doubt. I wondered if the outbreak would spread to them in time. Or if it already had.

  I was so lost in my musings that I didn’t see the zombie until he stood up at the “Balloon Pop” booth and started staggering over the low counter toward me. He was dressed in some hokey carnival caller outfit, complete with red striped shirt and a hat with a name tag pinned to it. HANK.

  “You going to get that?” Dave asked from my left, his tone calm and bored. One zombie wasn’t worth getting worked up about anymore, I guess.

  I nodded as I raised my shotgun and was about to fire off a kill shot when an arrow whizzed past and hit Zombie Hank square in the forehead. The redness went out of his eyes immediately and he fell forward, landing right on his face in the dirt.

  I spun around and so did Dave. A man in a dingy white tank top and jean shorts with cowboy boots came running up out of the mass of booths.

  “Woohoo!” he shouted as he spit a disgusting plug of tobacco right at my feet. “Did you see that shot, girlie?”

  “Sure did, much obliged,” I managed to say as I stared. Yup, this was straight out of a zombie movie now. Hillbilly saves couple. But would it turn into Deliverance?

  Dave limped forward with a look of relief and shock on his face. “Conrad?”

  I blinked as I put a name to the familiar and yet wacky face before us.

  Conrad Hanvers was Gina’s neighbor up the road. He looked to be about fifty, but Gina said that was just from some hard living and that he was closer to thirty-five.

  He was a nice guy when you looked past the crazy blond mullet, the farmer’s tan, and the tobacco chawing. He had once helped us change a tire when we got a flat up here years ago and always came over to shovel Gina’s drive when it snowed in the winter.

  “Why if it ain’t Davy Boy and Miss Sarah,” Conrad said with a laugh. “Did you all come down here for the fair?”

  I stared at him for almost a full minute before I looked at Dave. I hoped he would come up with something to say because I was speechless at this point.

  “Uh,” he started with an awkward shuffle of his feet. “No, Conrad, we didn’t. We got chased out of Seattle by the, uh… well, the…”

  He motioned to the zombie Conrad had just hit between the eyes. Conrad looked down at the dead man with a whistle.

  “So the television was right, eh? So the whole world’s gone to hell in a handbasket after all.”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said, finally finding my voice somehow. “The whole city was overrun in a matter of about twenty-four hours. By the time we got out, I doubt there were many survivors left.”

  Conrad blinked. “Well, I’ll be suckered. Those city slickers didn’t put up much of a fight, did they?”

  I shrugged, a little annoyed by the implication that we hadn’t even bothered to try up north. I mean, this was a zombie invasion, something out of movies and nightmares. This wasn’t something you just knew what to do when faced with it.

  “I can see it made it down here, as well,” Dave said, his voice tense enough that I could tell he was as irritated by the implication as I was.

  Conrad looked around with a deep sigh. “Yes, yes. It all started about a day and a half ago. Some crazy mowed right through the fair day parade up Main Street in one of them classic cars. We thought he was a drunk, but when he got out, he started trying to eat people. It was the darndest thing. Aw, it took folks a while to sort it all out, but now we’re getting the hang of it.”

  “The hang of it,” David repeated blankly.

  Conrad nodded. “Yup. We plug those poor bastards in the brains and take them to the burning pile over yonder.”

  He motioned off beyond the fairgrounds. In the distance I saw a faint line of black smoke curling up into the sky. I shivered at the thought that it was a big crematory.

  “We even got patrols running twenty-four-seven now,” Conrad finished with a shrug. “So I think we’ll be okay.”

  After the last few days, I wasn’t so sure about that, but at present I was just too exhausted to argue the point.

  “We saw the Ferris Wheel running, that’s why we came in here,” I said, motioning toward the slowly turning ride in the distance. “No one is trapped on it, are they?”

  Conrad looked over his shoulder toward the ride, but then he seemed to get distracted by something else he saw.

  “Aw, no.” He shrugged and then leaned his head to the side. “Hang on, darlin’.”

  He pulled an arrow from the Wal-Mart brand arrow holster attached to his hip. He set it into the bow and fired off a shot. In the distance I heard a thump and then a sickly groan before silence again.

  “Hot damn, I’m on a roll!” Conrad said as he turned back. “Now what were we talking about?”

  I looked at Dave. How could this guy be so… jubilant? His town was being overrun by monsters!

  “Um, the rides,” I said. “If there were people trapped on the rides.”

  Conrad pulled a can of chaw from his back pocket. “That’s right. No worries, we got all the living people off. Some of the sick ones were still riding last I checked.”

  I looked up. Now that we were closer I could see there were people on the spinning chairs, lurching softly as the ride turned. I wondered what, if anything, the zombies thought of that.

  “So how many did you lose?” I asked. “Before you ‘got it under control’?”

  Conrad shut his eyes, like he was doing complicated math in his head. “Well, all told I guess about seven or eight thousand.”

  I staggered back. “That’s a quarter of the town.”

  He nodded and the joviality he had been expressing faded somewhat. He might talk a good game, but the horror of losing friends and neighbors wasn’t lost on him.

  “But now that we know what to do, I doubt that number will go up much,” he said softly, almost like he was trying to convince himself.

  Dave sidled closer, his face pale. “What about Gina, Conrad? Did you lose Gina?”

  The other man turned on him. “Aw, hell, Gina. I should have told you right from the start. I swear sometimes I don’t have the sense of a goat!”

  “What about Gina?” Dave pressed, his teeth clenched.

  “She’s okay,” Conrad hurried to say. “She was at the parade and nearly got herself killed by the first wave of those crazy bastards. But I helped her get to her truck and back toward home. I checked on her just this morning and she’s just fine. Waiting it out just like everybody else.”

  Dave wobbled just a little and I caught his arm to steady him. “Thank God,” he muttered.

  “You all going to go down and see her?” Conrad asked.

  I nodded, my own relief welling up in me. No, I wasn’t Gina’s biggest fan, but I didn’t want the woman dead… or undead by any means! Especially since I knew how much Dave cared about her.

  “Yeah, we’re going that way now,” Dave said, motioning me to leave the fair and head for the car.

  “I’ll come and check on you all later,” Conrad said with a lopsided grin. />
  We waved goodbye and headed back out to the car. As we got in, Dave flopped his head back on the seat and sighed. “I can’t believe they lost so much of the town.”

  I nodded, trying not to think of all those men and women and children who we had seen at the fair over the years. It was too awful to think about the infected flooding into the parade and attacking them, turning them against their own families and friends within moments.

  I shivered as I pushed the thought from my head. I smiled at him.

  “The good news is that Gina is okay. So what do you say we head on out her way and show her that her baby brother is alive and well.”

  Cultivate a good relationship with your spouse’s family. You never know when you might need shelter from a zombie storm.

  Gina lived out in a little three-bedroom rambler just outside of town which was situated on about three acres of pristine land that she rented out to farmers for their crops.

  She had gotten it in a divorce settlement with her high school boyfriend-turned-husband a few years back, along with pretty much everything else the poor guy ever had. I think he’d had to move back in with his parents by the time she was through with him. I’d always felt bad for him, really.

  I guess I was the only one.

  By the time we reached the house, the afternoon was getting long and the sun was starting to set. As we got out, I looked around for any signs of the infected, but in this secluded place there weren’t any, or they were just too hidden to see. The house was intact with no broken windows or obvious blood or sludge on the grass, walls or door.

  “Looks okay,” Dave said with a relieved sigh, but the tension didn’t leave his shoulders. I guessed it wouldn’t until we’d seen Gina for ourselves.

  I nodded as we went up to the door. I knocked and then stepped back. It was a good thing I did because the inside door flew open and the quiet afternoon was shattered by the explosive shot of a shotgun. The glass storm door shattered and Dave and I dove for cover in opposite directions to avoid the spray of pellets.